Cough up Nam!

So based upon my ravings about my time in Vietnam one of my co-workers has decided to go there during the term break. Uh hum, Vietnamese Tourist Board, I think we need to talk. I just hope that she bloody likes it because if not I will be in all kinds of trouble. Although of course the same things don't appeal to everyone so I can always jump on that liferaft if any trouble occurs. Maybe not everyone enjoys taking their life into their hands everytime they cross the street? It was fun for me though. Anyway, it has also just made me exceedingly jealous that someone is getting outside of Japan. It's now, what, a mere 4 months until my contract is up and I can leave here. And if every goes according to plan I will have the finances to just chill for a while instead of racing back and looking for work. Until I am so poor that even the Centrelink office can't believe it I'll just potter around. Before coming to Japan I was on the old Newstart payment, switched over from the Youth Allowance I was getting while studying. You have to go for a bunch of interviews and that to determine that you are poor enough to qualify. At this interview they asked me "if you took everything you own and put it out onthe front lawn, how much do you think you would get for it?" Haha, that was funny. I don't have a TV, a stereo or computer or anything related to kitchen (cept a blender, it's quite shiny and stuff too) and at that time my car was stalling constantly and no one in their right mind would have bought it. The woman was very disappointed with my answer, as if she couldn't believe that anyone could survive without a computer, or a tv or cutlery! Actually that's the good thing abut share houses, you don't need any of that stuff. She kept suggesting things I might have that I could sell, but even so the -$45.67 in my bank account was more than enough to qualify me as a financial cripple.

The job seeker diary thing is quite fun. Every 8 weeks or so you have to go in and submit the thing and supposedly they call the people you have been looking for jobs with to make sure you have actually been submitting a resume. But I was looking for work in Japan so all I had to put on the form was e-mail addresses for Japanese people and I am sure they just thought, oh that's just too hard. But by the time I got to that point I was already leaving the country so it was all good. The best bit about the whole experience was when I went in for the required "job skills assessment". This meant some girl who was probably just the same age as me and had just graduated herself sat down and looked at my resume and picked faults with it and then looked up in her database for jobs I could apply for. Trouble is that her database didn't have much in the way of work in Japan and she was rather embarrassed to admit she couldn't do anything for me.