Begging for Beggars

Hello everyone! So every year since I started university I've done something that involved raising money for charity. In my first year, I had a great time treasure hunting around Europe for Sheffield RAG with four amazing people, having the best time, and got barked at by French dogs and whipped by a stripper.

Last year, I hitch hiked to Krakow, Poland via Slovenia with Todd and Steph on Bummit - we experienced eastern European chavs throwing rocks at us, and all had an absolute roller coaster of emotions - but at the end of the day I still had an amazing time and would do it again in an instant.

This year, though, I will be "living below the line" between 7th and 11th May - which means living below the national poverty line (that's just $2 per day) to raise awareness of the extreme poverty that goes on in the world. The money raised for this will go towards building schools, finding teachers and providing scholarships for children in Papua New Guinea, one of the southern hemisphere's most poverty stricken countries. I was inspired by a dear friend of mine, Helen Pitman, who went through the ordeal last year, and was further encouraged by several other Kooloobong residents taking part.

Anyone who knows me knows I like my food, and I like a lot of it, so this will definitely not be as much of a treat as my previous charity experiences! So PLEASE sponsor me for this. Maybe you will spend $5 (about £3.50) on charity this week instead of booze. My target is AU$400, which is about £260 - no easy feat with the amount of time I've given myself!

You can sponsor me by clicking the above image ...

... or following this link: https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/danjenks

Much love! x

Reggie's Last Stand

Friday the thirteenth of April 2012 saw the passing of a close companion to many. Most of the people in Kooloobong will be able to tell you a story about how they felt unsafe whilst inside of him. We've had a lot of ups and down - sometimes we hated you, sometimes we loved you, but you were always there, and you will remain in our memories forever. This is the story of Reginald's departure from this world.

We had a great day planned. We would head to the seaside town of Kiama (about half an hour south of Wollongong), have a look around, take touristy pictures of the blowhole, pump up the tunes in the van and then move on to the descriptively named Seven Mile Beach. After a shaky start (we had to jump the battery)  we got to Kiama while singing along to many classics courtesy of Beyonce, Shania, Skaira and S Club. 

We lined up along the railings at the blowhole to take touristy pictures (I'm such a tourist that I took pictures of people taking pictures...).

A quick pit stop in Woolworths to grab some lunch, and we were on our way to seven mile beach. About half way there, I started to hear a rattling sound every time I used the accelerator (which, coincidentally, was a lot since I was driving) and that the temperature had sky rocketed. I pulled over next to some B&B and realised that the van was full of smoke and that we should get out. Luckily the woman who owned the B&B was lovely and let us chill out in the gardens to give the van some time to cool down. It definitely wasn't the worst place to break down in the world - such nice views!

A while later, we went back to Reggie to see how he was doing. After looking in the radiator, we saw that we needed to fill it up as all the coolant seemed to have disappeared, but when we filled it to the top, we could see that the water level was dropping quickly. So something in the coolant system was leaking (great news considering we bought a new radiator only three months ago). This didn't quite explain why the engine wouldn't start, though. We decided that we should get it towed to a mechanic, and see what they thought. When the tow truck arrived, I described the situation, and he said it sounded like a blown head gasket. Replacing one of those is a big job - definitely not worth replacing, and so we just called up a scrap yard.

When we got there, we were welcomed by a pack of men smoking and drinking beer in a shed full of spare parts. We unloaded the van, filled out the paperwork, and I asked about the money situation. The alpha male of the group said that on the phone, I implied that I just wanted to drop off the van and didn't want anything for it. I feel like this was categorically incorrect, but once he had the van, he had the power, and we couldn't afford to tow it to any other scrap yards because there wasn't one for miles. And so, the van was legally stolen from us. It actually was daylight robbery. 

As the sun set over Wollongong, so did it set on our hopes and dreams of freedom, convenient transport and not having to rely on the extremely unreliable free shuttle bus. Reggie managed to get us all the way back from Adelaide, and for me, anything after that was an added bonus. He will be missed by many, and remembered by all as one hell of a great van.

Long overdue update

So, about two months ago, Matt, Amanda and I arrived back to Wollongong (after a treacherous drive down a mountain with very sharp turns in the dark while it was raining and foggy) where we were greeted by a small gathering of the people who also lived here last session and had come back for more. We spent a few hours regaling them with our tales of radiators replacement, beach house borrowing and koala encounters before we all went back to our new rooms and tried to settle in.

So this semester, I've been pretty broke, and so it hasn't been too eventful. Here is a quick run down of some of the major occurrences

• We went to a pool party where I almost gave Charlie concussion, but she was fine

• Noor made a surprise reappearance and announced that he'd be here for at least one more semester

• I've been going to the beach A LOT, but forgot to moisturise my forehead, so it peeled

• I decided to take on a research project that dominates the latter end of my week

• KB residents went on a pub crawl where everyone had to wear orange and I got kicked by a member of the bar staff in one of the pubs

• We had a formal dinner with a 50's theme

• I saw The Blanks (Ted from Scrubs' band!) at Unibar - they were awesome

• I got a job as a dish pig / kitchen hand. I regularly come home with blisters from over-chopping
• I had to use my first two weeks' wages paying for the fine I got for driving an unregistered vehicle...
• I have a new found love of my friends' band The Omissions 

• I became one of the members of the 4am club (where we stay up until 4am watching movies and being nuisances) but I may have to retire soon, it's making me late for all my classes
• We discovered the magic of 24 hour shops such as K-Mart and McDonnalds

• I've embarrassed myself singing along to Beyonce a lot of times
• We ate pancakes IN A FORT!

• I beat Amanda in a sumo wrestling challenge. She never even had a chance (I let her win one round so that we could have a longer go...)

That's all I can think of for now. Next week is the Easter break, but I don't have anything planned yet - maybe something exciting will happen, maybe not, but it all depends on when I'm working - hopefully a few days in Canberra/Sydney are on the cards :)