The popoular italian song
Com’è bello far l’amore da Trieste in giù
attacks me while I plough through the pvc curtain at the entry of the factory.
This is my first experience working as a labourer. There’s a loud noise inside
blended in with Raffaella Carrà’s voice at full blast. I wear a light blue
polypropylene uniform and a headdresse of the same colour and material.
Santiago is my manager, Argentinian, physically half Maradona half Homo
Sapiens, his English is very poor. He supervises the work in the factory on the
day-shift because on the night-shift there’s another manager. The factory never
sleeps!
In the beginning they had me
building boxes. There are a lot of Italians in the factory, the majority of
them being guys between 23-30 years of age. Some of them arrived a couple of
months ago, others have been here for years. Most of them are from the South of
Italy; they live close to the factory because it’s a cheap area, sharing the
apartment with other Italians. Apart from the Italians, there’s a nice Chinese
girl – she always smiles at me –, two Indians, the oldest is kind, the younger
isn’t, and a 33 year-old woman who looks like a 50 year-old, from Macedonia.
She asks me astonishedly why I’m not married with children yet.
«Do you like this job?»
Yes, of course! How long are you
planning to stay here? Ah, a lot! It’s my life’s dream to work here.
So, I start to work and I with it
I start making mistakes. I’m the first mistake in a long, long string of
mistakes. I understood that it would be better to quit if I didnt improve than
to continue to make mistakes. Anyway, the order of mistakes is:
- Read what it is written on the labels: My boss gives me two different kinds of labels but I didnt notice that they were different. Something goes wrong and so the other labourers and I have to open all the boxes, pull out all of the tomato pizzas and then put them into their correct box, which wasn’t the focaccia box.
- Count the boxes on the trolley: I didnt count correctly the first time and when my mistake was noticed, I had to enter the warehouse and pull out all of the packed boxes. Then recount them– but someone else counted them for me this time – then I packed up.
- Look hard:
learn to recognize a perfectly baked dough from an overbaked dough and
then place the overbaked on top of the underbaked for packing. Ok, this
was challenging.
- Check the dates on the packs: I made mistakes here too as I didnt put a
dated label on all of the packs. We then had to reopen all of the boxes
and put a date-label where there wasn’t.
- Test ablity a, b, c. A) Put tomato sauce over two pizza bases within four seconds because the roller runs fast and if you take even one second longer, the other labourers have to rush over to the pizzas to arrange them before they enter into the oven. B) Quickly collect batches of 5 and 10pizzas while the freezer blast-freezes them. C) Count 7 pizzas and pack them up the right way while a flock of angry pizzas advance towards you.
I have to admit, I did better in
the ability test than I did on the factory floor. In my defence, I think that
it would have been better if Santiago had communicated with me using words
instead of gestures. I’ll give you some examples: to explain to me how to stick
the label onto the box, he tapped his finger on the square on the box, or to
tell me that I could have lunch he pointed at his mouth in an eating motion;
and to call me (as he had forgotten my name) he made a weird, guttural sound so
I would inevitably turn around. Maybe he was simply deaf-mute but I never
noticed.
The factory didn’t suit me. Poor
Santiago was a good man, but I think I drove him crazy. Given that I don’t like
to have a starring role in people’s nightmares, one morning I decided to speak
with him to apologize and to quit the job as I didn’t want to create any more
problems. My behaviour struck him unexpectedly and he thanked me for my
honesty.
And as for Giuliano?
He had been laid off after three
days. In his case, it wasnt his fault, the management wanted to give a job to a
friend and so let Giuliano go.
So, does that mean we were still
together? Yes, we did stay together but it was long-distance. He was far away
from me. There was the girl from Treviso in his life and although he tried to
be a tough guy , he was in love with her, like I was in love with him. The
problem was that he didn’t fall for me at the same time that I fell for him.
The timing was all wrong! It was impossible to imagine a hapy ending becuase
our future plans were completely different: I had to move to London for study
and he wanted to go to Indonesia looking for adventures.
I’ll tell you, a lot of things
have happened since then. He knows everything about me. My life still flows
under his bridge, a river where golden boats sail, with parties and princes on
board. But when all these boats sail away I’ll forget them quickly, unlike
Giuliano. He is the jumper that I always have with me in my bag for when I feel
cold. He’s the 4/4 time of musical arrangement, around which my notes dance.
Meanwhile, I changed house as it
didnt suit my lifestyle and needs. I couldn’t sleep on the couch anymore with
the guys that would play the Playstation and smoke marijuana until late when I
had to get up at five o’clock in the morning and work for ten or twelve
consecutive hours.
My new house is on Albion street,
Brunswick. I don’t want to live far from my friends because I know how it works
in a big city- If you live far away from friends you end up not being able to
catch up with them.
Although my new house is very
expensive I am not worried because I earn $1700 every fortnight. The problem is
that I quit. For a month I will survive, and so i need to find a new job within
a month, aaaaaahhhhh!!!
The days after I quit my job in
the factory were idyllic. Finally I could sleep! You can’t imagine how damagd
my body was: scratches, black-and-blue bruises, my arms looked like Christan
F’s arms, I mean, like a heroin-addict’s arms. I felt shame wearing T-shirts.
My arms looked THAT bad. Anyway, I didn’t come to Australia to earn money but to
have the longest teen-aged party of my life. And Daddy, who was a hard-worker
all his life, agrees with me.
I haven’t any clue about what
kind of shape or direction my life will take. But it’s ok, I came here to show
myself that its ok ok not to know. My agent in Bruxelles doesn’t call me
anymore because I’m on the opposite side of the world and he doesn’t trust me
enough to give me new jobs, illustrations I mean. But thats ok, as well. I
spent years and years worrying about how many publications I would make. I have
come to understood one thing as a result of my travels in australia: The
struggle isnt worthwhile. Just try and if it doesnt work out, move on. Simple
as that! The webmastering has taught me that sometimes the worst thing you can
do to is to try and fix mistakes; it’s better to throw away the old file and to
restart from scratch. To travel through the same paths again forces you to
become more able to deal with their obstacle. Regret is just a waste of time
and energy.
My new housemates are: Tamish,
he’s indian and works as a chiroprator – it isn’t an illness, it is something
similar to an osteopath –, and Alicia and Tom, she’s australian and a
physiotherapist, he’s californian and a bricklayer. The house’s cleanliness,
polished look and beauty makes me anxious. So far its going great. Today, when
Tom came home, tired and weary after a long day’s work, he took a beer from the
fridge and swallowed it quickly. Then he made a very loudy burp that sounded as
if the whole house had colapsed to rubble. It was at that moment I started to
feel truly at home.
