Driving and Diving NSW

I met some divers and dove Fairy Bower with them. They invited me on their next trip to South West Rocks, about halfway up the coast to Brisbane. After much delay and more planning, I decided to move to Gold Coast and start working promo jobs, which I knew I could get with no issue. I was in a hurry to start making money, as the trip to Europe was rapidly approaching and flights aren’t cheap. Therefore, I accepted the dive trip to SWR and packed up my things and began the move. The dive at Fish Rock Cave was by far the best dive I have ever done. There were endless amounts of wobbegong sharks, sand tiger sharks, clowfish, turtles, lionfish, etc. In the cave I had to carefully move around a giant loggerhead that was nomming sponges on the narrow section of the cave. Many pictures and a video of this dive. The divers dropped me off at a CSers in Port Macquarie, where I stayed two days before catching a ride with two Americans and a Swiss CSer to Byron Bay. Port Macquarie was quite nice; my host took me to a tidal pool and found an octopus for me. He was truly helpful but unfortunately, it was the first time I’ve truly clashed with a host. I won’t go into detail though, you can write me to ask about the experience if you wish to hear more.

The ride to Byron Bay was uneventful after the initial trauma - they didn’t look up directions to where I was in Port Macquarie even though I asked them to make sure they looked it up because I didn’t know how to give directions and I knew I wouldn’t be able to ask anyone for directions, being as they planned to pick me up at 3am. Sometimes, even as good as I am at foreseeing future troubles, people just don’t listen to me and f it up, no matter how much I try to control the situation and prevent things from occurring. In any case, they didn’t listen to me and I was stuck walking around Port Macquarie at 3am to try to find them. They also didn’t listen when I asked them if it was ok that I had two 20kg suitcases with me (they said yeah sure no problem): there was no room for my stuff and we had to cram everything in, I still don’t know how we fit everything. But after that, we all got along quite well and I look forward to seeing them again in the future. Around 2pm that day, we arrived in Byron Bay. I received a phone call from: take a guess… FIRMENICH! They told me they have a position open for a flavor laboratory position and offered me to come in for an interview. The day I moved away. I’ll tell you what, life has a way of throwing way too many curve balls. I had to make a decision and quickly. I ended up declining the offer, due to the fact that I had just moved from there and the fact that I could not commit a full time position at the time. My business trip to Asia was only two weeks away, and Europe only six weeks away. Meaning that if I got the position, I would work two weeks, be gone two weeks, work two weeks, be gone 4 weeks, then be gone traveling around Australia with my family for 3 weeks before I could settle into a full time position. I explained my predicament to Firmenich and they ended up hiring someone else. Now I just pray that in a few months they have another opening. At this point I still don’t know if I made the right decision…but living a life of “what if” isn’t healthy either.
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