Doing the work part of the working holiday visa

My first weekend as a waitor at the Wai-iti beach resort cafe has now been a few days behind me. And it was a long weekend as well since Monday, the 14th was Taranaki day, an extra holiday for the people in this area, but not for me.

I started working on Friday but it was pretty quiet so I only worked a few hours. But Saturday and Sunday were pretty busy. They kept telling me that it is usually not this busy. And the girl that I am replacing was working alongside me as well. And we were both busy. Ah well, so much for getting eased into the job. What is my job, well, working at this idyllic beach resort which has a cafe. The cafe part is leased by Marta and Kevin, an Argentinian lady and a New Zealand guy. Marta started hiring backpackers to work in the cafe since it is part time and it is too far for locals living in New Plymouth to ride out there to work (well, it’s not that far, but for the amount of hours it is maybe too far for some). Which is good for me I suppose. I actually found out about the job by coincidence. One day I went to the surf beach, and just as I was starting to put my wetsuit on, I asked a fellow surfer about the conditions out in the water. It turned out that she was from Germany and when the topic of work came on the ‘table’ she told me about this cafe that she was working at that needed a replacement for herself. So I found the job ad on a backpacker board and applied.

I met Marta the next day and I could start during the weekend that was coming up. I have had no real cafe experience, but I’ve served customers before, being inside a waffle stand on markets. Similar enough.

It went pretty well, a few mixups here and there. The biggest problem I have is running around with a tray full of cofees that are filled to the rim of the cup. Not always without spills :/. And then there is the cash register. Not all of the food items and drinks are preprogrammed on their own distinctive buttons. There are 5 or 6 items that have no button, and I don’t have them all in my head yet, together with their price. But that will work itself out.

Other than that, it is alright. Lots of running around, feet definitely hurt at the end of the day. But the location is really nice and not a lot of tourists come around, mostly locals, which is nice as well. Since it is part time and I only work on Friday, Saturday and Sunday it gives me the rest of the week to go surfing or do some exploring. Well, last week it has been mainly surfing…

I am living in one of the houses of Marta and Kevin which is located in Urenui, a small town about 30km of New Plymouth and about 7 minutes from work. The town has a pub, a library and a supermarket… that’s basically it. And no cell phone reception for my phone provider. And no internet at the house, and no TV reception. So a pretty remote feeling.

Not very helpful when you find out about an earthquake in Japan and want updates on tsunami warnings. Everybody was a bit worried on what awaited us, but in the end it was only a 10cm wave that hit the very north of New Zealand.
We heard about this on the radio. When Kevin came over during the weekend, he brought a working satellite decoder and we could see some of the footage of the Japan quake / tsunami. Unbelievable, it makes the Christchurch quake look like a minor event. Simply incredible.

It gets to you more after experiencing a big earthquake yourself. Although what I experienced was absolutely nothing like what has hit Japan. You all heard about the Richter scale right. Well, the scale works as follows, each increase by 1 means a difference in intensity of 10. So, if you have an earthquake of 4.0, this is 10 times less strong as a quake of 5.0.

So, to put in perspective, the quake in Christchurch that I witnessed was a 6.3. The Sendai quake in Japan was a 8.9. That is almost 3 points on the Richter scale apart. So, the quake in Japan was about 600 times as strong as the Christchurch one. My head starts to spin just thinking about how that must have felt. And they have aftershocks in the magnitude of 7.1 etc. Sends shivers down my spine. But that tsunami, nothing can stop that. Shocking. Every time they show the footage, it doesn’t matter how many times I have seen the footage before, I can’t seem to believe what I see.

And a volcano erupted in Japan as well. Hope this is not a sign of what is to come for the nice volcano that I see here every day.

So what can I say, I write down stuff on my blog about small annoyances here and there and they are just that, small meaningless annoyances. All these events make me realize I should be even more thankful for the things I have and can do. Not that I wasn’t thankful before, don’t get me wrong.

Hang in there Japan.