Chapter 10

Chapter 10

I took the thick map book the agency had pressed on me and left the chicken coop early.

2004, when a smartphone navigation app could not even be imagined.

I flipped the index pages of the map book this way and that, asked people passing, and was able to find the bus to the western industrial zone.

They say Western public transit is a mess, but Australia was a country with public transit better prepared than I thought.

The place I arrived, leaving the city, was Wetherill Park, the industrial zone called the huge heart of southwestern Sydney.

I found the heavy steel main gate of Crane Australia, the destination, told the guard I had come for an interview, and stepped inside.

And the next moment, I stopped where I stood and my mouth fell open.

"Wow······ this is crazy."

A huge yard ruled by steel and exhaust.

I had expected an indoor warehouse for a logistics warehouse, and a scene you only saw at a Korean shipyard spread in my view.

A vast outdoor concrete yard with the sky wide open, and steel, pipe, and nonferrous materials going all over Australia piled, literally, like a mountain.

Under my feet a heavy vibration came without rest.

Dozens of 40-foot B-double trucks, just over from Botany port, waited in a line with engines not cut, and the diesel exhaust and roar they poured pressed the air down heavy.

The clumsy 2.5-ton indoor baby forklift I had ridden for the test was nowhere to be seen.

To handle long pipe, side-loader forklifts with forks on the side cradled huge lumps of iron and wove the narrow aisles like a crab walk.

Catch even slightly on that end and somewhere would clearly tear or smash.

Crossing between them, 6-ton large diesel forklifts spitting black exhaust.

Equipment used in the army when moving shells or armored-vehicle parts.

Every time they reversed, a heavy, sharp beep burst out and filled the whole yard with taut tension.

Muscular Australian workers, thick leather gloves on, a towel padded under the hard hat, mixed in fucks without rest and threw thick work orders over the radio.

The rough smell of iron on site, and the smell of heated exhaust.

A real site, the kind that boils the blood of me, bones grown thick on construction boards.

But the admiration was brief, and just scanning once, the fatal problem of this place came into the eye at once.

'Against the volume, equipment and people are hopelessly short.'

Against the steel piled like a mountain and the trailers in line, the number of 6-ton forklifts running the yard and the number of workers dashing about was clearly short.

Here and there bundles of pipe were jammed like a bottleneck, and the forklift operators were stepping on the accelerator like mad, sweating, squeezing out a route.

At a glance, hands short enough to dry and twist, a situation, literally, that only turns if you grind people in.

'Like this, I get hired no question.'

Cheering inwardly, I walked toward the main office set on one side of the yard.

The scale of the warehouse office building was dumbfounding too.

The closer I got, the building was so huge it would not come in at one look.

Not only the yard on the building's exterior, but the size of the office.

I stuck my tongue out once more at Australia's huge scale, on a different track from Korea.

The fortunate thing was that, opening the glass door and going in, a quiet mood made a complete contrast with the fierce mood outside.

If the inside had been a war too, I might have seriously reconsidered the job.

Grabbing a passing employee and asking, I went inside, and at last was guided in front of the person who would help my interview.

"Hi! Are you Han? I'm Rosie."

A round, cute white young woman, jeans and a neat white T-shirt, offered a greeting.

"Good to meet you, Rosie. I'm Han Jeong-su."

"Han Jeong-su?"

Rosie tilted her head.

"In some East Asian countries the family name comes first and the given name after. Han is our family name, Jeong-su is my name. Friends call me Jeong-su. Calling only by the family name is a bit awkward."

"Oh! Okay. Jeong-su. Got it. Good to meet you. As I heard, a funny person."

However I looked, she did not seem the manager who would run my interview.

She looked too young for that.

"What on earth did Sam say? Where is there a serious man like me."

"Ho ho. According to Sam, nearly a comedian."

"Hmph. This body is a bit funny."

"Haha. Don't do that too much. I feel like I'll burst out laughing."

I truly swear to heaven I did nothing.

I only spoke, and people here collapse saying it's funny.

Do I really have a talent for comedy?

Am I really letting a talent rot?

Come on, no way.

"Coming in, this place is really big. I thought I'd get lost coming in from outside."

"Haha! Everyone is like that the first time. Our warehouse is the size of eleven soccer fields put together. There are big trucks and scary equipment outside, weren't you a bit cowed?"

At Rosie asking as if quietly teasing, I lifted my chin.

"Cowed! The iron smell hitting hard, my chest was all racing? I nearly lost it wanting to snatch that forklift and ride it right then."

At the good-natured answer Rosie laughed again, bright.

Thanks to the rankless, easy Australian way of talking, we grew familiar like neighborhood friends who had known each other long, in under five minutes from introducing ourselves.

"I like that confidence! Our manager is pretty strict with working-holiday people, so push on with that force, like you just did with me. Good luck!"

Rosie winked and guided me to the interview room inside.

* * *

The mood of the interview room was different from a stiff Korean interview.

A big white manager, arm hung slanted on the desk, tapped my resume and threw a sharp straight ball from the start.

"I'll say it straight. We don't hire working-holiday people, originally."

"Oho. Is there a reason?"

"This isn't a farm picking tomatoes and packing boxes."

Haa. A sigh comes.

Rosie definitely said he was strict?

Looking at the manager speaking with eyes wide, why is there no pressure at all?

If this is strict, how far is not strict?

Still, I focused as much as I could and listened to his words.

"This is a dangerous site where one slip and a life comes and goes. And what working-holiday people did in their own country, whether the career written on the resume is real, how would we confirm it? There isn't just one or two who bluff that they can handle equipment a bit and cause a major accident. Every time an accident hits, the company's cleanup cost flies in the tens of thousands of dollars."

Not simply because they leave soon over a visa, but an extremely realistic reason, the safety problem of a brutal site and the limit of proving career.

But far from being cowed, I rather gave a short laugh and leaned comfortably on the chair back.

"Yeah? But..."

I paused a moment, lifted the corner of my mouth, and said.

"Coming in, I looked around the yard a bit... at a glance it was a board where you'd have to borrow even a cat's paw?"

At the words with bone in them, the pupils of the manager who had been setting a strict edge shook.

He made a blank face like a man stabbed in a gap, then soon swept his face with both hands and let out a deep sigh.

"Haa······ damned. You're right. Right now a crazy construction boom is blowing across all of Australia."

Look at this.

I told you he isn't strict at all.

"Everywhere is in an uproar saying materials are short, send them fast, and the people to sweat carrying these heavy, dangerous lumps of iron are hopelessly short. Everyone tries to work only under a cool air conditioner."

What to do with this naive manager?

At his honest grumbling I slapped my knee and burst a hearty laugh.

"Hahaha! That's incredibly good news. No one to work, and the goods have to go out fast? Then our manager, you'll look after my pay real fat?"

"Uh······? Ah, no. Pay is according to our rules······."

The manager, who had spilled the company's urgent weakness without knowing it, flustered at my direct joke and strung excuses.

Then soon, whether he too found this situation unbelievable, or whether he had been shaken empty in a fight of spirit by a twenty-four-year-old Asian and lost his mind, he burst a loose laugh, "Puahaha!"

"Kahaha! You, this guy, pretty good? The nerve alone is very thick."

The awkward air of the interview room loosened cheerfully at that one laugh.

The manager sat up again and began digging into my resume in earnest.

"Good. Nerve passes. English, the conversation so far is enough. Then shall we check the real skill a bit? You wrote you came out of the Korean army combat engineers. Exactly what equipment did you run there?"

"The most basic, 2.5-ton and 6-ton forklifts, I ran like eating rice. I drove a 15-ton dump truck too, and a tracked excavator, a large armored dozer for building field positions, a payloader. When building bridges, calculating crane load, hanging chain, rigging, that was my specialty too. Ah, when equipment sank in mud on a rainy day, shifting the center of weight and getting out yourself, that kind of knack is loaded as basic. And I know how to build a position, went out on civil support and did recovery in damaged areas, and, well, building a house is easy. And also..."

"Wait! Wait, stop!"

The manager urgently raised both hands and stopped my words.

His eyes grew as if they would pop out.

"You're saying now you operated all that equipment? That you set up the rigging yourself? Is that real?"

"Of course. What would I lie for. Look at this."

The certificate wallet taken from inside my clothes spread wide again.

This time too, dramatically, the wallet drops and the certificates come out.

This feels good whenever I do it.

"No, by common sense······ you're twenty-four this year? How on earth, at a young age, can you master that much heavy equipment and field skill? Is there a technique in Korea for hiding your age?"

It was not the depth of skill a twenty-four-year-old youth could have by common sense, so a reasonable suspicion.

"I told you. I was a heavy-equipment operations assistant instructor, a post teaching trainees every piece of equipment the army uses. If I can't, who teaches."

Of course things learned in the previous life were mixed in there a lot, but they were things I could actually do, so it was not a lie.

At the calm answer the manager held his forehead and shook his head.

When he simply would not believe, I put a hand in the inner pocket and took out another piece of evidence.

Those were photos taken in the army.

Knowing it would be like this, I had brought them from Korea before coming to Australia.

I showed them to the manager.

"Seeing once is better than hearing a hundred times. Look at this."

In the photos, me, face burned black, a muscular body, stood square in front of a huge tracked military excavator and an armored dozer an ordinary person could not even imagine.

Smiling wide, arms around comrades in the dirt dust of a brutal training ground, proved my words were real.

Seeing that, the manager sucked in empty air.

"Jesus······ did you come from running a whole mechanized unit. You drove this monstrous tracked bulldozer yourself?"

"With machines like that I built field positions and cut mountains."

Of course a bluff.

I had only quietly done training inside the safety zone.

But this person doesn't know?

"The 6-ton forklift outside? Honestly I could drive it with my toes, eyes closed."

The manager, unable to take his eyes off the photos, in the end as if raising both hands and both feet, gripped a pen and drew a large circle at the top of my resume.

"Okay. I surrender. You're hired, no question. As soon as the safety training ends, bring the white card and come straight to work. I'll put the forklift key in your hand right away."

"Haha, thanks. Then this is a full-time job, right?"

The mood was so good I poked once.

But the face of the manager, excited at succeeding in the hire, hardened again in an instant.

"Uh······? No, no! Calm down! Full-time is tangled with visa sponsorship too, it isn't something I can decide alone as I like. First let's start on a casual contract. The rest of the details, hear them from Rosie outside!"

The manager cleared his throat in a hurry and hurriedly sent me out.

'A shame.'

Still, I have three months.

In that time I prove my value and have some left.

Coming out to the office again, Rosie came up as if she had been waiting.

"How was it?"

I lifted my chin once more and preened.

"Hmph. Hired, of course."

"Wow. Really amazing. I thought Asians were all quiet and shy, and there's a person like you."

"That's ra.cial. dis.crim.in.a.tion! Rosie."

When I shouted, deliberately serious.

"Eek! Quiet! Be quiet!"

Rosie, face gone pale, reached a hand to cover my mouth.

I quickly caught both her hands, playful.

"Eek!"

"Heh heh."

"Let go. Villain!"

"Racial discrimination is bad, Rosie."

"I only asked because I was really curious."

"Fine. I'll forgive you just this once."

"Ha! Really. You are really..."

Rosie ground her teeth.

Then, showing hard that she was angry, she strode back to her seat.

I followed her, and Rosie pressed a bundle of documents pulled from the copier into my chest.

"Here, bad mister. Welcome to joining the company! First I'll explain clearly the shift you'll work and the hourly system. Come here and sit."

I sat tight beside her and played.

At that Rosie is appalled.

"Ai! Go over there a bit!"

"Heh heh heh."

"You really are mischievous."

What is this.

Not even a kid with a hole in his pants.

I was like an uncle teasing kids and snickering.

I put on a straight face and sat properly.

"Haa. Really. First, start time is by six every morning. Late is absolutely not allowed. Got it."

"Don't worry. That much I wake up with my eyes closed. So, the most important thing, how much is the pay?"

Rosie pointed at the numbers on the document one by one with the pen she held and went on explaining, neat.

"It's a casual contract, so the day-shift base hourly is 22 dollars. If you go on afternoon or night shift, a loading of 15 to 30 percent sticks on that, and it becomes between 25 and 28 dollars."

"Oho, not bad?"

Australia's minimum hourly is 12 dollars.

If ordinary working-holiday people get 12 to 15 dollars, I am getting close to double that from the start.

"This isn't the end. Past eight hours of regular work, the first two hours are time and a half, 33 dollars an hour. And overtime beyond that, or special work on weekends and holidays, double time applies, and it jumps to 46 dollars."

I narrowed my eyes and nodded.

Rosie smiled and went on.

"I don't know if the manager said it, but right now all of Australia is in a construction boom, so our warehouse volume is crazy. A veteran operator like you, more than two hours of overtime every day, and Saturday special work, is not a choice, it's essential. It means six days a week, 58 hours a week packed full, grinding your soul into the site."

Saying 58 hours is grinding the soul, no wonder hands are short.

In Korea you work until the work is done!

I gave a short laugh and asked Rosie.

"If I grind my soul in, how fat does the pocket get?"

"Shall we calculate? Say Monday to Friday, ten hours a day, five days. Base 40 hours, 880 dollars, overtime 10 hours, 330 dollars. Add Saturday eight hours special, 264 dollars······."

Rosie paused, playful, then smiled wide and recited the amount.

"Before tax, about 1,474 dollars a week. Gather that for a month, that is four weeks straight, monthly income is fully 5,896 dollars! Convert it to Korean money. Huge, right?"

In that moment a calculator spun fast in my head.

5,896 dollars a month.

Even knocking the 2004 Australian dollar rate at roughly 850 won, it is a large sum nearing five million won in Korean money.

An amount a twenty-four-year-old working-holiday person just discharged could not even dare imagine holding.

If that Park Ji-hun heard it he would try to die of a sore belly.

I pulled up the corner of my mouth and laughed, refreshing.

"Well, seeing the hourly this fat, carrying lumps of iron until my bones break is going to taste good. Okay, call."

At my refreshing answer Rosie held out another sheet.

"And this is the most important thing. When you go on site, a fluorescent work uniform that stands out, and sturdy safety boots with a steel cap in the toe, are essential. Don't bring these and entry to the yard is banned without mercy, so remember."

"Isn't this the sort of thing the company issues, originally?"

When I asked with a deliberately regretful face, Rosie shook the pen as if no chance.

"There is no welfare like that for a casual worker! Go to a nearby Kmart or a workwear shop and there are lots of cheap ones, so before you start, bring them as your own kit, no question. Got it?"

Hearing her neat explanation, I gathered the joining documents and, smiling bright toward her, asked slick.

"Okay. So, when is our date?"

At my out-of-nowhere play Rosie snorted as if dumbfounded and tapped my shoulder with the pen.

"Dream on, mate!"

Well. We'll have to see...

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