Growing, as, like, a Person..., man.

In the simplest terms, I came to Perth to find a job and earn money before continuing onward with my travels. Many travelers that had been through Perth told me I'd be able to find a job here, especially lucrative engineering jobs because of the booming mining industry. And if that failed, I figured that I'd find a manual labor job and still be able to save, seeing as minimum wage is around A$20/hour.

It's true. I found plenty of work available in Australia. It's just not many employers wanted to hire me, or the jobs weren't the right fit for me in retrospect:

• For skilled engineering work, employers seem reluctant to hire an engineer who does not have previous industry experience. I get it: The company would have to "train" me but then in six months I'd take off and they'd lose their investment. But here is the truth of the matter: A lot of engineers, like many professionals, earn a degree only to find out that they are employed as worker bees with monotonous and asinine responsibilities that require very little use of their expertise. If someone recognizes you have a talent at your job, I think it takes three to five years on average before an employer starts asking you to take on stimulating professional responsibilities -- and more often than not, that added responsibility comes with additional stress. All I wanted was to be a contracted monotonous worker bee while I saved up money and grow professionally. Regardless, the search continues for this elusive engineering job, but I'm not holding my breath.
  
  
• I found plenty of manual labor jobs advertised. Dishwashers, grounds crew, and construction jobs were plentiful, but they came with a caveats. Many of these positions require a car to travel to various destinations, and applicants have to be physically fit. Well, I don't have a car. Two, I realized during a few unsuccessful job trials that my body isn't that indefatigable and chiseled Adonis it used to be. Bending over all day is agonizing, standing on my feet all day isn't much better, and lifting heavy loads is utter misery. There are few things that are as demoralizes as trying to apply yourself in the real world and then coming to the realization that your body is old and decrepit. Awesome.
  
  
• The service and hospitality industry is booming in Perth, probably because of all the money filtering in through the mining boom. Working in the front of a restaurant appealed to me because it seemed less grueling than manual labor. The challenge in pursuing this career path was that I'm an engineer with an engineering personality: I like to think about things internally and express them afterward in a thoughtful manner; my brain doesn't work very well while trying to talk at the same time; and I don't really smile for the sake of putting on a friendly face.  Probably on more than one occasion, a stranger has passed me in a work environment and thought, "That guy is a dick," just because I wore a smirk on my face while dreaming of Lalaland. I'm not perfect, but I'm not unfriendly.
  
  I did a waiter trial at a beach-side restaurant in Cottesloe.  Cott, as it is commonly called, is a very wealthy area because of the beautiful beach and extremely gentrified property values. Accordingly, the restaurant I was to do the trial for attracted a similar caliber of customers. I found the early diner crowd tolerable to serve since the mood was more relaxed and casual. But in the evening, as the customers became more serious, smugger and pretentious, I couldn't pair my personality to match the one that would have succeeded in the situation.
  
  For example, I would try to fill water glass but no one would acknowledged I was around, which made it very difficult to fill them, and I was forced with the decision of a) should I squeeze my way closer to grab the glass, b) interrupt the conversation to ask for the cup, or c) just ignore that that person doesn't have water. A more dynamic personality would have known, but I didn't.
  
  The clincher for the evening was when I carried over desert menus to a large table and couldn't figure out when to interrupt the conversation -- the youngest woman at the table, probably my age, acknowledged my feeble attempt to get their attention. Even then, only the women at the table stopped to ponder the question momentarily before the chatter started up and I was lost holding all the menus minus one that I'd put on the table just in case, smiling awkwardly like, "What the fuck do I do now?" and the women my age was looking at me with a face that said "Why are you here? You don't fit in." Sweeeet.
  
  The manager, who was a kind chatty lady from Denmark, said she'd call me the next day to discuss a purely barista position (which is what I originally applied for), but she never called back. I wasn't disappointed. Lesson learned in Round 2 of job trials: It's not very satisfying to find a job that challenges deep-seated personality habits while people watch the train wreck.
  
  No worries, though. Baby steps.
  
  
• I had failed enough in previous jobs, in enough variety of ways, that I had become pretty sure that I wanted to be a barista that was either entirely behind the espresso machine, or at least behind the counter of a cafe. Cafe's don't have the same atmosphere and personality constraints that fancy restaurants carry with them.  I was also running out of cash and I needed to find a job soon. I started applying everywhere and calling, and eventually got a job trial in a nice area with a seemingly nice manager.
  
  The manager turned out to be anal retentive and of the micro- variety. I thought back to mentoring people at work as an engineer and wondered, "Was I ever that bad?" (I don't think so, at least; sorry if I was). At the end of a three hour trial, she seemed happy with my barista skills. We sat down and she took the wind out of my sails when she said, I think I want someone more familiar with being a barista... (insert long banter about how she needs to train me at the other parts of the counter and that I might not be good at it, etc etc). All in all, I knew what she was saying: I don't want to pay you until you are sufficiently trained, so give me something in return. I offered her two days of unpaid work (about 10 hours/day) to get my foot in the door (which, technically, I think its illegal to not pay me -- but quid pro quo, Clarice). Those two days sucked, mostly because she was nitpicking every minor detail I didn't get perfectly right, and had me memorizing a lot of arbitrary rules.
  
  Anyway, the search is over, I officially have a job! The other staff members are pretty chill and fun, which makes up for my boss. And when my boss is just stopping by the cafe, instead of watching every move over my shoulder, she is pretty agreeable too. And now that I make several hundred coffees a day, I've been working on my free-poured latte art and it is slowly improving. Here is a picture of the test coffees I made recently before we opened for work. 

Left: An attempt at a rosetta; Center: A heart; Right: Another attempt at a rosetta