With Each Call My Soul Decays And Listlessly Ebbs Away

OK, so let's get this straight. After four months of traversing the skies with little more ambition than to touch the soil of new exotic lands, in time participating in adventure and high spirits, I found my bank account had become nothing more than a depleted reservoir. My aspirations for a sunshine embalmed sojourn to Latin America set adrift towards the sediment of the sea bed. My penchant for throwing copper pennies towards expensive burgers and at the Cyber Cafe where I seem to have spent so much of my time alongside nature's cruelest joke - the geeks playing Halo and Half Life on their PCs - had hit me hard with a skimming blow to the wallet. I needed money, and rather copious amounts in order to lengthen the stint of the South Island, and in particular to ensure I could sit and watch the leaves warm in colour with the gradual tint of age as fall time arrives, complete with its supine lament. A change in season that I am very fond of.

I took a look in a Job Centre on Shotover Street, a warehouse relic with one meagre plastic chair, sat on which was a fairly old lady, with rustic musk and dishevelled appearance, who welcomed me in with a peculiar menace. She had an expression of a pessimistic koala, wrinkled and tight with yellow brown teeth. When she grimaced a smile, her mouth formed like a paper cut wound, as if playing the part of the tyrant Jafar in Disney's technicolor marvel: Aladdin. The only job going (apparently Communications or Public Relations opportunities are not in abundance here in Otago) was for telesales. As I mentioned before, I really need the funds, and so with a shrug I accepted. It concerned me that my new employees did not even require to view my CV / résumé.
Some people may suggest that to go back to working in a call centre (Winter 2003 in South Yorkshire was indeed a savage time to be alive) is a backward step for my career. Those people would be absolutely correct.

Queenstown Gardens

Jafar, when completing the relevant forms, asked me what my name was, and as I said my full name to her she immediately stated:
"Well, let's call you Chris. Say it's Chris and it'll sound English on the phone".
Brilliant.
Her cunning manner, reminded me of Bebe Glazer, Frasier Crane's devil incarnate amoral agent.

I made my way to the new office complex by the rugby field later that day and as I walked into my new cellar of cables and wiry chains made up of telephone chords, I was greeted by the doe eyed faces of fellow backpackers, also in the same predicament that I had found myself. Blaring out of the stereo was relative dance tosh, giving the place a vibrancy of a student hideout, sans the proud portrait of the Marxist revolutionary, Ernesto Guevara scattered on the walls. So far, so Hollyoaks. I walked in with seven other new joiners, and as I traced the dubious faces of the incumbents, I swear I could see them mouthing words of foreboding, whispers for us to turn around and run before it was too late.
It was, of course, too late. We had a brief half an hour induction, which incorporated reading a document on equity and superannuation out loud in front of the fellow newbies, as if in fifth form in school, reading passages from the New Testament in Religious Education class to the commanding Mr Kenyon. We were then escorted, rather shabbily to our monitors and hooked up to the dialer's.

A charming message on my monitor on my first day depicting my unruly tardiness

What happened in the next six and a half hours, I do not fully wish to explain. It is not something a man should be asked to relive and if he does he is in danger of imploding. I've given myself a total of sixteen days to get through this ordeal.
Myself and a young man from Cork, whose craggy beard and lantern red bandanna makes him look remarkably like a Caucasian Monty Panesar (the English spin bowler for those of you not inclined to cork and willow based activities), amused ourselves in the first day with mixed stories of the conversations that we had with our clients. Aside from the obvious irksome recipients of our mass calls, swearing and demanding us to 'get a proper job', the pensioners have provided the most entertainment. A little old lady from Townsville in Australia invited me for a game of bowls and a swig of her 'grog' (I assume that's an alcoholic beverage and not something....abhorrent).

An oddity of a man from Brisbane responded to me, after my initial telesales introductory salutations, simply by meowing as if a cat. This went on for some time before I tired of speaking to a person with a feline affinity and eventually had to hang up. Best still was a colleague who sat by me, a Welshman called Gareth, whose angular profile hid a soothing voice, who had to call a gentleman named Clint Eastwood. His sales call didn't make his day as poor Gareth was unable to remove the motions of his unprecedented convulsions of laughter.

Deco Backpackers dorm room

It's not all as bleak as this (though really it is rather heartbreaking), there must be positives in everything so long as you are patient enough to tear them out with your incisors, as one perk we do get are daily bonuses consisting of backpacker gold - drinks vouchers at a rather plush cocktail bar, Debajo. I managed to rack up $65 worth on my first week which I exchanged in a moderate elation for numerous effervescent Moscow Mules. Not quite enough though to forget about the script of sales spiel that continues to rerun in my head well after working hours, like a smoke alarm on a loop that I can't seem to destroy.

Still, only twelve more days of this before I can continue back on my trail of care free exploits across the Pacific. Back now to the relative home comforts of my new long stay hostel, Deco, sat aloft the top of rather monumental hill (great for the calves but less so for the onset of perspiration). It has a wonderful garden around the back, wooden deck chairs and curious sparrows laden with a view over the Lake and the town below. It's certainly nice enough to stay for a little while.

Views from Deco Backpackers' communal garden

6 Things That I Have Learnt This Week:

1. Toasted Muesli might just be better than my usual breakfast combo of a banana and apple
2. My roll on deodorant has indeed run out. I now know who to blame for that lingering scent that follows me around town
3. Showering without soap does not constitute a shower
4. Flip Flops and shorts are optimistic attire for Autumn in the South Island
5. A heady diet of Pâté and Houmous is not appreciated by my dorm mates
6. If I was on the receiving end of one of my telesales calls, I'd offer to buy me a car so that I could drive off the nearest bridge into the river so that it would empty me

i-Pod Song of the Day: Midlake - Head Home
A generous slice of Americana here from the folk rock assertions of the Texan five-piece's excellent, mournful album, Trials of Van Occupanther. It is ideal for a ride down the winding Pacific drive of Highway Number One. There are shades of Fleetwood Mac and classic folk rock in this yearning lilt. Thanks to my old boss in Manhattan for introducing me to these vagabonds.

Bring me a day full of honest work / and a roof that never leaks /I'll be satisfied

Bring me the news all about the town / How it struggles to help all the farmers out /During harvest time

But there's someone I'd like to see / She never mentions a word to me /She reads Leviathan


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un_55LrZnCo


http://midlake.net/