My Life is like a Whirlwind

That’s right. A whirlwind.


The kind that blows around for five minutes about ten feet off the ground in a dusty patch of Nebraska; in other words, utterly mundane.

Obviously, it has been wonderful to meet Cate in the city for her lunch hour and to spend time with her and the fam for dinners, but that’s about all I do these days. Since the disappointment of Fake-Sports-Marketing-Job-2.0 a couple of weeks ago I have entered mild crisis mode. After rebuffing the offer from the company which shall not be named (I feel kinda bad for belittling what they do/did so much in one of my previous entries, so I’ll just never mention them by name again), I applied for a series of jobs in cafes, restaurants, and retail establishments. One of my favorites (sarcasm) was for a management training position at Hungry Jack’s, or as American’s and Australian’s on the east coast of the country know it, Burger King. If accepted in this role I would be trained to manage a Hungry Jack’s franchise, certainly not an ideal way to spend my time here, but it would be better than operating the fry-o-lator. A couple days ago, a representative from the company called me and said he would email me the details for the interview; namely the location. Yet, the interview is meant to be tomorrow, and I have not heard from them, I also have no means of calling them back because the call was from a private line. Alas, so I sit and wait to hear back about other positions for which I have applied and continue looking for new opportunities.

Of course my life isn’t really as boring as I make it seem; just last Friday Cate and I joined her parents to see Roberta Flack accompanied by the West Australia Symphony Orchestra (WASO) in Kings Park. I’ll include some pictures of the event and the park itself, both exuding class and style. The WASO does a series of outdoor concerts every year with pop artists then charge an arm and a leg (I heard tickets were going for $100!). But no matter what the motivation of the WASO, the concert was handled very nicely. Roberta Flack only sang a couple of her own songs, but rather, opted to cover more well known contemporaries like Stevie Wonder. Cate and I splintered away from the business talk of her father and met an African- American man who had married an Australian woman! He and his wife have lived in three Australian cities over the past ten years and when prompted to give some advice to someone in a seemingly similar situation give this pithy reply, “hang in there.” Thanks, guy. ANYway, this chance encounter (only my second with another African-American male in Australia) was a reminder that I didn’t really need, but was and is good to keep in mind. Just because we are both African- American males does not mean that we would instantly hit it off or have all these points of connection. But that really is another topic for another time.

OH! Before I forget, happy birthday Nicole Patrice Davis, 20! Wow, so old, so mature, look at you go/ grow/ glow? I’m not sure when I will actually post this entry, but know that I was thinking about you on your birthday even if I did not call you (I was going to, but I figured you would not want a 6am wakeup from me J ) I love you and miss you!

Now, other than my quartet of lunch dates with Cate each week, Roberta Flack, and finding a job, there has been just one thing that has been consuming my mind. Rugby. It has come time to see whether or not rugby is just a new sport to add to my canon of those that I follow doggedly OR if it will become something much bigger than that, my new sporting passion. Football took hold of me the final couple years of high school and the first two of CU and in many ways, I gave a good deal of my life to it as well. I missed out on family vacations because I was so dedicated to my training schedule, not a drop of alcohol ever passed my lips until my football career ended, and to top it all off, my right shoulder, both knees, and my feet are not quite right (100% functional, but definitely well worn, haha, it’s an eBay ad for my body). To make a long story short, I’m diving in head first. Rugby is the next athletic summit I will attempt to climb and it’s going to be a slow process, but ultimately one which is already paying dividends. For starters, I belong to an athletic team again. Unless you have been a part of a sports team that takes itself seriously you really would not understand the significance of joining up again; and if you have, then you already know the thoughts of sacrifice, championships, and camaraderie that are dancing through my mind. Secondly, and very closely related to number one, I have a uniform again! I’ll be able to proudly don the Blue and Gold (again! J) of the Nedlands Rugby Union Football Club. Finally, and I’m not sure how high this actually ranks on my scale of importance, but it warrants mentioning; I will be in great physical shape again. I did a lot of work to get to this point, but the past few days of sprints with Cate got me pretty sore through the hamstrings and when paired with today’s first practice on grass it reminded me exactly why I loved and yet disliked football. In sport, there’s a constant tension of, “God gave me these tools, how can I best cultivate them and use them to His glory?” And, “God, do we really have to run eight more windsprints?” The soreness I’m feeling right now is the good kind, when you know that you’ve put in a hard workout and your body will be better for it in the end; but trust me I’ll keep you posted on my soreness quotient as the season picks up speed.

That’s pretty much all I’ve got… Except that Cate and I are going to see Coldplay live and in concert on Friday night! Yes! There will DEFINITELY be pictures from that show! Hope all is well with you in whatever corner of the globe you are reading this, and by the way. Thank you for taking the time to peer into the inner spewings of my brain, I really appreciate it. And if I ever get too narcissistic, please, please call me on it.


Zip it up.
And zip it out.








Oh, and just for fun, below is a picture of my house in Mandurah.