Working Holiday in New Zealand (April - June)

On the sixth day I arrived in New Zealand, I started picking at a Mandarin Orchard at Warkworth. It was the most terrible job I have ever done. You needed to work fast and picked as much as you could. For each kilogram we picked, we earned NZD 0.17. In the name of “self-employed“, we tried to save as much time as we could to pick more. We drank less or even not drinking as the loo was far away. Instead of having break, we ate but our hands kept picking. Still, the fastest could get slightly higher than the minimum pay. For the rest of us, we were underpaid (The minimum pay was NZD 12.75 per hour) as roughly NZD 8.50 hourly.

Coins always have two sides. I have made heaps of Asian friends and several Moari friends there. I was promoted to be a Quality Controller after a week and my job was to walk around and check (or chat?) if the pickers cut off the branches, leave a long stalk on the fruit or picked the green ones. You should not be surprised that I got on well with most of them with my lovely characters.

Singaporean: Kaiyang;
Chinese: 周超, 老呂;
Hong Kong people: 李秀群, Kennis, Gideon;
Malaysian: Cassie, Lee Heong, Gan, Jia Er, An;
Taiwanese: Incole, ??, ??;
Korean: Na;
Japanese: Chihiro, Aiya;
Moari: Montz, Joe.


Early in the morning, the rain was pouring. Workers came to knock my door and asked if they still needed to work. That was the reason for Akira/John to employ Asians only. We obeyed, we tolerated and we worked hard.

“You don't need to ask me. It was your choice to work or not.“
「自己決定」


People were exhausted from all the hard work, long working hours, harsh conditions and wanted to finish early.

“Be determined no matter who stopped you.“
「立場堅定」


Pickers at my end would give me a shout if they needed help. We could be quite noisy.

“Ying...“ (Pickers at the other lanes may need to pass on calling as I could be far away.)
“Who's talking?“
“It's me.“
“Who are you???...“

「瑩呀~」
「誰呀?」
「我呀!」
「你是誰呀?」
「...」


Montz, who was a Moari truck driver, and I worked as a great team. We helped the pickers(especially girls) picking, moved their pilates to make their lives easier and sometimes made fun with each other, e.g. peeping continuously on walkie talkie, throwing Mandarin at each other, hiding to be lazy...


We went through the hard time and supported each other. On our day off, our drivers would give us a lift to town or sightseeing. On the last Friday night out, we had three cars driving to the pub at Warkworth. We were not fooled and we would quit more or less the same time. Goodbye Akira! Goodbye John Lee! Goodbye Jactive Pacific Limited!

Those six weeks were crazily busy for me. Life was new. Work was hard. Fantasy was attractive. By the time I left, I only weighed 45 kg which was the lowest in my life.