Julia's World and British project

Ray's working holiday

Ray is a backpacker who comes from Hong Kong. Last year, he brought many dreams to come to Sydney. When I asked him "why you come to Sydney, not to work in your country?" He looked at me for a few minutes and said that " I don't have any choices, it is a way to earn money quickly and I want to own my business ". I thought that many backpackers had different reasons. They either want to earn more money or have different experiences in the foreign countries. Anyway, it was a beautiful thing to come to other countries, wasn't it?

Ray was a hairdresser and have been worked for about six years in Hong Kong. He said to me: " I am a hairdresser but also I likes music and wants to become a music composer. " In fact, he had a team of music before and meanwhile the music composer's goal was too unrealistic. When I heard that I could feel the bad mood from his face really stronger.

Ray's first job was to work at meat product factory(牛肉工廠). It was a good salary. He totally had two experiences in factory, one is about four months, the other one is about seven months. Also, you could earn and save the money from this job. On the other hand, you would have occupational injuries from your job, for instance, hand ache.

He is the smallest than other workmates, just one meter six tall. They taught him to drink "mother" which is a kind of the sports beverage in Australia. When you drank "mother", you will have more powerful. In the factory, he was a first person comes from Asian countries to do the shave of beef's bine. His workmates almost from Brazil or New Zealand. Some Asian countries workmates asked him" why only you from Asian and work with them? " He said that he didn't know why and just accepted the order from supervisor. The four months was the most painful days in Sydney. However, he told me that although that was not happy hours in Sydney but he learned English a lot and more quickly. Now, he can talk with foreign people.

Meat product factory had advantages of salary and learning English. It also has some disadvantages, first of all, the beef's blood will stained your clothes and dirty body would made you sick. Even though he used the washing powder, it did not work. So you needed to buy some secondhand clothes. Secondly, the job is too dangerous. He told me one true story and it happened at three months ago. He said that his workmate, who substituted his job before, one day lost the leg from this job. Everything cannot be controlled in our life.

Working holiday is a nice experience, he said. He also told me that he wanted to come here again. The backpacker has something need to know: first, discriminate is a problem. For example, some local residents won't become friends with overseas residents. Next, language is a problem, too. Although, when you use the body language, everybody can understand you, you might tend to misunderstand the conversation of topic. Third, you need to be confident at your life because we are not live in our country and the emotion is more sensitive.

Anyway, good luck to work in Sydney.