(Day 41) Heroin Highway and "The eyes have one language everywhere”

Wednesday 11^th April (Day 41)

Right, well I got my new job last Tuesday and had the training last Thursday.  Today is Wednesday and I have phoned up ill the last 2 days.  Since the weekend I have been ill and unable to get a decent amount of sleep.  I wasn’t feeling much better today but I was worried that the fundraising company were going to fire me before I had even started.  So I made a commitment to go in today.  Today I was working in a suburb called Cabramatta.

I googled Cabramatta and according to Wikipedia Cabramatta is a predominately Vietnamese surburb with a high crime rate and a large drug problem.  An MP was even assassinated here.  Great, I can’t wait to work here!  Though apparently there was a large police crackdown on the area a few years ago and the area is supposed to be alright now.

I got onto the train and headed off to Cabramatta.


At first I was feeling alright but it wasn’t long until I started feeling really ill again.  I don’t know what is wrong with me but I just want to projectile vomit everywhere.  Today I was working with a girl called Sarah and I texted her on the train saying I was on my way but to be honest I was feeling very ill.

I didn’t know what Sarah looked like but it wasn’t hard to find her at the train station with her charity clipboards and folders protruding out of her rucksack.  She said we were waiting for more people and she made me hold up one of the charity tee-shirts in front of me.  I was basically doing the same thing people do at arrival lounges in airports where they hold up a surname on a piece of card or something.  I was doing this with a tee-shirt and I must have looked like the worst fundraiser in the world, just walking around showing the back of a tee-shirt to people.

After a while nobody else came up to us so we headed off to the main high street where we were going to fundraise.  I had to pitch Sarah to show her that I knew my script and, well I didn’t know it.  I have been ill and I didn’t feel like learning it.  I thought I was going to get into trouble but Sarah was really fine about this.  She just said I had to go home and learn it for next time.

One thing I noticed about Sarah was that she was exceedingly pretty.  She had brown hair with bits of red in it, deep brown eyes, perfectly white teeth and a beautiful face.  I had been told she was a good fundraiser and I could see why!

There is another thing about her eyes, Sarah is German and so far I have met 2 German girls here and they both have the same eyes.  And when I say eyes I don’t just mean the colour of the eye but also the shape of the eye, facial structure around the eye and the eye brow.  All of these features were the same in both German girls.


Like both girls look different but they both have the same eyes.  Is this a German thing?  Do all German girls have eyes like these?  Or is it just a coincidence with the 2 girls I have met?

Either way you need to be careful, looking into eyes like these for too long just makes you want to lean forward and kiss that person, which would have been inappropriate for me with either girl.

Anyway another girl showed up after about 15 minutes.  I think Sarah had texted the main office saying that I wasn’t able to work and she needed another person in her team so they sent a girl from a neighbouring team.  You can’t fundraise on your own.

I wished both girls the best of luck and headed off home.  I had to get home, stop thinking about Sarah’s eyes and start learning my script.  Hopefully I will be better tomorrow and then I could start my second attempt at being a street fundraiser.

Cabramatta is about 30km from Sydney

A nice Vietnamese archway

Cate Blanchett starred in a film where she plays a
heroin addict living in Cabramatta.
Apparently heroin was so easy to get the main
highstreet in Cabramatta was dubbed as "heroin highway"