My full name is Turara Pomprap
but in Thailand everyone been given a nickname, which my nickname is Bhoom
and Bhoom means dimple.
Volunteer work always been my passion and I really like to work for people and working
for community.
And I chose this course which is Lifestyle and Leisure
Validate -
Agree with what they're saying.
But are we allowed to do that?
Absolutely.
Oh, we can?
All right, sorry.
I just really want to do this course and finish and get some experience and my wish is maybe
in the future I can go back to Thailand and use this experience for my country.
After my class I pretty muchhang out in the city with my friends and we go for coffee
or go for a walk.
In Bangkok everything it's like on 24 hours, which is here you can have a very nice and
relaxed and enjoy the quiet time.
I bought a painting the other day from a shop.
It's really cool.
It's from Kenya.
From Kenya?
It's like bright orange and blue together.
It's really nice.
I didn't cook much at home because I live with my family so when I first have to cook
myself and sometimes it not taste as good.
We have to make this last for four things.
A good looking mushroom.
Yes, nice and big.
Because the first night I get my housemate around but then the second night I've been
alone by myself because my housemate went to their parents place
and I get really hungry and then I don't know how to use the oven because in Thailand we
don't use the stoves that you have here.
And I'd go on Google, how to like use the oven and nobody can tell me really.
So I'm just, 'Okay, I'm not eating tonight.
I'm just eating banana.'
Good morning Bhoom
Good morning.
and welcome to Meals on Wheels.
Hi, nice to meet you.
Hi Bhoom, how are you?
Hi.
I am really looking forward to this volunteer work I am going to do.
I was hoping that I can learn more about communities and I can contribute in some way.
First of all I can learn about what actually was the food that they eat with Meals on Wheels
and I also what is the work culture in Australia with volunteer food which I never experienced
before.
We'll go for the carrot section and start peeling some carrots.
And we'll be cooking for 120, maybe 130.
Okay.
I'm a bit nervous and a bit awkward because everybody is just so professional and do things
so fast
and for me, and for me, even peeling the carrot,
it's just so hard for me, it keeps falling off and Andy's very quick and you know,
fast and he finish one carrot in like two seconds, but for me it takes like one minutes.
Have you ever done this before?
No, not really cooked.
No?
How would I be able to help to prepare over 100 meals because only one carrot take me
quite some time to peel off
and now I have to prepare meal for many people and I'm not sure if I can do that on time.
I've never cooked before today, got here, so it's quite hard for me to cook, even you
know, peeling vegetable.
It's quite hard for me.
Yes, yes.
Your family does all your cooking?
Yeah, and plus sometimes in Thailand it's cheaper to eat outside so, yes, I've got family
who prepare for me.
Well, that's great, that's excellent.
Yeah, I just finished, made my first peach crumble desert.
I feel so much more relieved because at first I thought it's gonna be much more complicated
and lots of method to do but
but this time I've got somebody to help me and tell me what to do.
You just do that with your fingers like that, so that the butter gets mixed in.
It's not that hard and I hope they like it.
Volunteering, it's a big passion in my life and every time I do some sort of volunteer
work it just makes my day
and it makes me feel good about myself and feel like today I do help some people
which makes me really happy and really good, feel really good.
And do you have a lot of clients here?
Yeah, we've got - how many clients have we got today?
One hundred and twenty, I think.
Yeah, that's right.
One hundred and twenty.
It's one hundred and eighteen.
My feeling concern is before I arrived here, I really concerned about how would I get along
with people, how would I make friends.
I know very few people here, how would I make, make a new friend and belong in the society
and like would I be confident enough to talk to people and, but yeah …
it's not that bad.
So how long have you been doing this?
Twenty-six years.
Impressive!
Andy do I start this one?
No, that one there.
So you carry on like that.
We just dished up over one hundred meals and it's almost the time that the delivery people
are coming and then we are going to deliver for 25 people.
My first impression when I came here I loved it because where I go is very well organised
and very clean and there's a lot of rules to follow.
But it's a very good thing to put everything in order which is
back home sometimes, people will not follow the rule with the traffic and it can be quite
dangerous
but here people strict on the rules and very well organised.
At some houses it can make me feel that I'm the only person that they contact on the day
and I deliver them meals and they try to talk to me and keep me and be their company for
a while
but I can't stay with them and I have to leave because I still have many people's meals
and have to deliver and they get so excited to see you and yes, it's very nice.
Mrs Alexander, Meals on Wheels.
Hello.
How are you?
Good, thank you very much.
You're welcome,
Happy Birthday for next week too.
And you told me what was the best birthday present you had?
The best one is from my doctor to get my licence.
Your driving licence.
Ah, very nice.
Well, we're going to head off.
We've go some other people we need to deliver to.
Okay, bye bye.
I have learned a little bit more about Australia today, especially when I first peeled the
carrots today so now I know the trick,
how to do this faster and what do you eat for food and you know you have roast pork
and some vegies and some potatoes
and so I learned more about Australian food and culture and stuff.
Well done Bhoom for helping out with a great organisation.
Next up today we take you into the world of music.
Often in Australian cities you'll see people outside the train station or the bus stop
playing music and if they're good they might earn a few bucks as well.
When I heard our next guest, Rif, was jamming near my place I thought I'd drop by and see
how he was going.
All right, so how can I help you today?
Rif is 22 years old and comes from Bangladesh.
He met his girlfriend Praia in Malaysia and they both came to Sydney to study.
Rif recently completed a media degree at Macquarie University and got a temporary job working
in a call centre with Datacom.
Good morning, you've reached Datacom.
My name is Rif.
Can I please start with your first and last name?
He and Praia know a lot about cardboard boxes.
So far in Sydney they've moved house eight times.
At the moment they live in a flat with two girls from Norway.
We work at the same place so that's one of the main things.
We also come back home, watch the laptop, go down to the shopping centre, The Macquarie
Centre, watch movies.
Yes, she loves window shopping.
I can't like ... some of the times I will be tired and I want to go home but she will
drag me to every shop.
I guess all girls do that.
Every day at the gym for about two hours I do about an hours worth of cardio and another
45 minutes of weight.
My main interest is just keeping my body looking good, that's the main interest so that's what
it started off as.
And nowadays, after like, ever since I was a kid and I watched Brue Lee I've really been
into martial arts so that's the main thing.
It's just martial arts and weight training.
Right now I'm not playing as much guitar as I would normally do but I'm working more on
electronic music production.
Because it's much simpler.
I can just put on my headphones and be on the computer.
Whereas the guitar I'd have to set up the whole amplifier and people would get annoyed
with me.
I always watch the people that do the busking and if they're really good I will sit there
and watch them for a little while.
I always liked performing and busking is probably one of the most interesting forms of performing
because you're just doing it just for the love of actually performing.
You're not doing it for - most people at least are not doing it for getting the money out
of it - they're just doing it just because they love performing.
I'm excited.
I want to see how it goes.
Yeah, I want to see how everything plays out.
I don't know if they have this busking culture in Malaysia.
I've never seen this, this kind of thing, I guess it's mainly in the more western countries
that you see this kind of thing happening,
maybe in England I've seen buskers and out here I've seen buskers.
Malaysia, no.
Bangladesh, no.
Nice sunny day today so I think that's a good thing.
There's some pretty nice buildings out here.
The Town Hall building was really nice.
There's also the Tower.
That's a really nice building.
Just generally just looking around and seeing what the place looks like.
I do get a real buzz out of performance.
It's unlike anything else I guess, like just if it's in front of a big crowd
that's like probably the most fun you can ever have in your life because you just feed
off the energy and it's a really interesting feeling.
Hi, how are you?
I want to apply for a busking permit.
Okay, great.
Have you filled out the paperwork?
Yeah, I have.
Excellent.
Okay.
So you've got your passport there.
I'll just take a copy of that for our records.
Okay, so you're just playing guitar?
Yes, playing guitar and vocals as well.
Fantastic.
Okay, that's ten dollars thank you.
Okay, that's all fine and we'll just take your photo now.
If you'd like to take a seat just here
and that's great.
Here you go.
You're all done.
Thanks a lot for that.
You're very welcome.
I think my next step is to find a spot and just set up and start busking.
I guess I'll see how people on the street will react to a person of my background just
standing there and playing.
I mean I'll be playing stuff that probably most people wouldn't play when they're busking.
Yes, I saw another busker over there.
He had a really interesting instrument.
I've never seen that before.
I've seen an upright bass, electric bass but he was playing it like a cello kind of.
So, yeah, that was pretty interesting.
Yeah, I'm not really worried about much.
I'm pretty confident in my playing ability.
It's mainly my singing ability that I'm a bit nervous about.
Yeah, this is a very, a really interesting song.
It was written by my dad initially.
It's a protest against institutionalised religion.
It's based on how people have warped religion to a certain degree.
That was awesome.
I loved it yeah.
I was a really nice feeling to just be outside and playing.
Initially I thought there'd be a lot of people walking up and down.
It kind of dried up when I started playing.
Maybe it's something to do with my playing.
So maybe we'll try a different spot.
When there wasn't any people passing by it didn't really affect me that much because
I was just playing and doing my thing
so I didn't really care that much but it would have been better to have a bit more people
though.
Next place I went to was Martin Place.
There was a lot more people there and so there was a bit more of a crowd.
There were more people listening.
Again, I didn't really get that much of a reaction.
I blame the camera crews.
It did put people a little off.
They didn't know how to react.
They didn't know whether we were shooting a music video or what we were doing so they
wouldn't come in line with the camera.
They'd just kind of walk away but it might be my music as well.
There you go man.
It felt pretty nice.
Somebody actually paid money to hear me play.
It was awesome.
People were kind of wandering off so I decided to go down to Pitt St Mall and the walk down
there was really interesting.
There was a lot of buskers over there.
And there was also a really, really young kid playing the saxophone.
And the dollar I made, I gave it to him.
Pass the buck along I guess.
We had a guest coming in.
His name was Vijay and he came in and we had a little jam, a little blues jam.
Hey, Rif.
How's it going?
Hey, Vijay.
Nice to meet you man.
Nice to meet you too man.
How's it going?
Pretty all right.
It's been an interesting day.
Yeah, really.
You've got your licence there man.
That's cool.
Yes.
yes.
It was all kind of on the spot so it was interesting.
It was fun.
We made I think, it was $3.50, something like that.
Yeah, we got some money at least man.
These guys have a hard job.
You see them and they have coins in their cases or their hats but it doesn't come by
that easy, is what I figured out.
Like after what, I did about three or four hours and made about four dollars so
yhese guys, for them to actually make $10, $30, it's hard.
You know there's enough for one beer but not two.
We'll go halves man.
Yes, Rif and I didn't exactly make millions busking but,
as any musician will tell you, it's not about the money man.
Thanks for watching My Australia.
Here's what's coming up next week.
Ken goes to a quiz night to experience a unique Australian tradition
Acky swims with a huge fish on the Great Barrier Reef
and Sarge has a go at ballroom dancing.
I'll see you then.