Full circle

Back when I was a biotechnology undergraduate at the University of Queensland, one of my main sources of money for the year came from a Christmas job I had at Australia Post's major mail centre here on the Gold Coast. The volume of mail going through the system increases substantially at this time every year, so the mail centre recruits a team of casual workers, mostly uni students, to help out for the few weeks leading up to Christ’s birthday. If you worked on the night shift, as I did, you got a bit of extra loading on top of the normal hourly wage. All in all, even though stuffing envelopes into pigeon holes was a bit mundane, it was a great little job for a uni student.

Six years later, I've come full circle. I'm back at the post office sorting Christmas mail. Go figure. :)

I was actually pretty fortunate to get the job. Yeah, yeah, exactly what you were thinking, I know. But really, I walked into the post office, spoke to the head supervisor (also named Dave), found out that despite applications having already closed a place on the Christmas casual team had just become available the previous day, and fifteen minutes later had myself a job.

But you don't have to worry about me spending the rest of my life on the mail centre floor or one day "going postal". There are plenty of people whose faces I remember from 1999 who are still there, still doing pretty much the same job as they were back then. There's apparently not much room for career progression at the Gold Coast Mail Centre! But rather than joining their ranks, come January, I'll definitely be moving onto something new. More about that later.

Some things do change even at the post office, as I found out this week upon first returning to the floor. For starters, instead of just learning all the postcodes and passing a basic sorting test, now they put the casuals through a full two-day orientation, covering the operation of the postal system, occupational health and safety basics, fraud prevention, and hazardous materials handling, amongst other things. I used to turn up wearing sneakers and clock in by writing on a timesheet - nowadays we are issued with steel cap shoes, a neon yellow vest for working on the dock, and a magnetic swipe card for recording our work times. And although the total volume of mail increases every year, the amount of manual sorting done is even less these days, thanks to the advent of Multi-Line Optical Character Reading technology - multi-million dollar machines that can read the addresses on most envelopes and process up to 35000 items of mail per hour. Serious technology at use in the post office, probably well worth a visit for high school science classes. Even I am still amazed at what happens to the letter once you stick it in the little red box.

So the actual work is a little different to what I remember. We still do manual sorting, because there is always mail that just can't be automatically read, so I had to pass the sorting test all over again. Approximately 300 standard envelopes in under 9 minutes, as mistake-free as possible. After a little practice, I clocked 6:30 with no errors. Apparently there's a record time of 4:30... There are also parcels to be sorted, which is a bit more physical and gets us out on the dock using some power lifting machinery. The major change is working on the automatic sorting machines - feeding mail into the machine, running up and down to clear out sorted mail, dealing with jams, and trying to remember to do it all the occupationally healthy way.

OH&S is a big deal in Australia Post. The repetitive nature of the job means that people who have been there for a few years are at risk of a range of injuries - strained wrists, shoulders and backs would be the main ones, I'd guess. There are also lots of moving machine parts and heavy equipment by which you can get yourself hurt if you’re not careful.

I'll start work on the night shift this Sunday evening. As fascinating as I'm sure the post office is for you, however, I guess I should talk about WHAT'S NEXT.

Firstly, the Boxing Day test cricket match in Melbourne. My family is going, it will be HUGE. This Ashes series has already generated more interest than any test series I can remember in my short life. The first test kicked off in Brisbane just yesterday and I’m glad to say that Ponting and his boys are well on their way to giving England a good spanking. Come on Boxing Day!

We'll get back to the Gold Coast and see in the New Year here, most likely in the good company of my best mate Ben, as has been my habit these past few years. Then upon entering 2007, I'll be saying goodbye to the Gold Coast once again and heading up north, way up north, to Australia's main gateway to the Great Barrier Reef - Cairns.

Why Cairns? Well...

One reason is the rafting. Cairns has a couple of decent rafting rivers - the smaller but closer Barron River, and the more highly regarded but also more distant Tully River, both of which operate all year round. Especially with the drought elsewhere in Australia right now, Cairns is the best place for me to put my newly acquired rafting skills to use and gain more experience that I might one day use to travel elsewhere.

A second reason is the constant swarm of Japanese tourists. Which is to say that I can easily get work in the local tourism industry, since I can speak some pretty reasonable Japanese. It'll be a good way to keep my language skills up to scratch - I can already sense them slipping!

I note also that there is an Australia Post mail centre in Cairns. With this Christmas under my belt, I can hopefully go there for a little extra work on the side, too.

However, the main project I'll be embarking on with my move to Cairns is something a bit different. It's not a sure thing yet, but it’s looking quite likely that I’ll be starting my own business. While it gets up to speed I'll use the above job options to keep the money coming in. The business?

Chess coaching. I kid you not. :)

Since coming back to the Gold Coast, I've spent a lot of time at the local chess club. I was involved in the chess scene here on the Coast when it was getting started in the early 90s, and since then it has gone from strength to strength, thanks to the hard work of a couple of key individuals, establishing the Gold Coast as one of Australia's top chess communities. Part of that success has been the emergence of chess coaching in schools, not just so that schools can field strong teams for chess competitions, but more generally for the educational benefits that kids derive from learning to play chess. Thus the basic premise of the business. Cairns has apparently got a nascent little chess scene that is just ready for this sort of service. And of course, I've spent the best part of the last five years dealing with children in classrooms - had I been teaching chess that whole time, I'd probably still be in Japan!

So with rafting, tourists, and chess, it seems like Cairns is calling me. I hope I can deal with the heat! I also hope I won't miss Japan too much. Until now, I'd figured I was probably heading back to Japan in April. Now that I'm thinking of staying in Australia in the medium term, I realise that I will miss Japan. Of course, if I earn enough money, I can head back for a holiday - hopefully in the summer for Awa Odori! - but making a commitment to starting a small business like this will require settling in Cairns for a year or two. We all deal with reverse culture shock in different ways, I hope a bit of exposure to things and people Japanese in Cairns will soften mine a little.

If anything stupendous goes down while I'm sorting mail this Christmas season, I'll put out a December bulletin, but I think we can safely assume that life on the mail centre floor will be pretty straightforward. Therefore, let me get in my very warmest season's greetings and best wishes for the coming year, albeit a month early. If anyone would like to catch up while I’m still on the Gold Coast, please drop me a line. Take care and enjoy your summer!

Lots of love,

Dave