Sixth stop: Australia

Sydney, looking for a job. There must be hundreds here, but unlike most places I've been the agencies are not that approachable, it seems (or even open until mid-January). I know I should just take my C.V. everywhere I want to work...surprisingly enough takes guts.

So here I am, eating a really spicy salami salad wrap in a lovely little cafe/flower shop on Oxford St. (a family-run affair or I would immediately apply), and the only other customers sitting in this small back garden are...Frenchies. I cannot tell from where, but what really are the chances? I still find it odd to hear French voices and accents somewhere so far away and British, but I forget that New Caledonia is not that far (compared to France or QC), so it shouldn't come as such a surprise.

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Have you ever created a lie that's gone on so long you've eventually started to believe it yourself? Where, unless you concentrate, that fictional world has become, even to the creator, intertwined with your daily life or, more simply, a given that merges with all the others?

The one bugging me now started about 10 years ago, when I turned a couple of nights drinking in a cocktail bar into a few months of work (funnily enough I no longer recollect the name of the establishment, although for some reason I think it included 'banana',) so I could get a job in a different bar. In a different city.

This all comes about, I think, from some current slight doctorings of my C.V. in order to procure some kind of casual employment in Sydney (so far with no luck). The main thing I've done, in fact, is really reduce my experience...and extended a one year stint in a cafe to 4... not too terrible a white lie, surely? I've always (yet only very recently rediscovered) the love I have of the differentiation - including wording - between a white and a black lie. Are there other tones, one wonders?

No-one at either bar knew I'd told a fib about my experience...and very few people here know (or will know once I get a blimming job) that I never really worked on the espresso machine all that much - in all honesty I rarely did make coffee, spent most of my time on the grill - but it is bothering me a little nonetheless. Partly because I now have 2 versions of my C.V. and want to be sure I keep track of who has been sent which one, partly because I really want some work (for various reasons) and don't see why someone can't just walk up to me and offer me a job on the spot. Typical job seekers' lament. Funnily enough, being somewhere a mere 2-3 months means you don't really care what you do - no, Samantha's occupation still doesn't interest me - but it can be even harder to find something when you are in this situation.

Wish me luck - I'm starting to think I might need it! (Or possibly just a 3rd version of my C.V.....)