Ode to the Amora Porters

I once promised to write a post dedicated to the Amora Hotel Porters. The time has come for me to make good on that promise.

As many of you know, I worked as a porter for four months in Sydney. I am currently in New Zealand, backpacking like a madman and trying to work on my Jesus look (AKA razors and haircutters have not been in my bathroom repetoire for quite some time) while I scour the countryside for glimpses of hobbits, Peter Jacksons and opportunities for absurdly beautiful panorama shots. More of this in future posts.


But back to the Amora porters.


This is Masa.

Before...

and After...

Masa came over from Japan on a student visa 7 years ago after deciding he didn't really like being part of a gang anymore. No joke. I think this realization came somewhere in between beating a guy up whose car he hit and his 37th street brawl. Needless to say he's an excellent wingman when a taxi driver gets particularly unruly. Or when our local Japanese street gang roles up and tries to demand a "protection" fee from our receptionists...Masa's speech mannerisms can only be described as a mix between Marlon Brando's Godfather and Hatori Hanso from Kill Bill and his post-Japan image makeover is of such outstanding magnitude that I suspect he could have qualified for his own lucrative reality TV deal had he landed in LA instead of Sydney.



This is Daniel Faust.




Dan must have been very tan when this was taken, but it has to be him because this was one of his profile photos...As you can see, Dan is kind of like Arnold Scharzeneggar. That is, only if Arnold was Australian, 5' 10", and looked nothing like Arnold Scharzeneggar (or Ronnie Coleman for that matter), than Dan would be like him. What I'm trying to say is Dan likes to go to the gym. And lift weights. Three years ago he was smaller than me and decided he didn't really want to be smaller than me anymore and now he weighs about 35 pounds more than me. He's got an easy laugh and a carefree demeanor. Dan could care less about his job at Amora and still happens to be quite good at it. I would estimate his advice earned me about 15% of my tips. Good on ya, Dan.


This is Nirakar (pronounced Near-a-car).





Nirakar is from Nepal and is cursed with one of the most appropriate first names I have ever come across. Early on in his Amora career Nirakar crashed (scratched) five cars. Surprisingly, management decided to ban him from parking cars. He is now cursed with with the catchphrase "Don't let him near-a-car!" (Drum hit please). Nirakar's eyes go wide at the mention of beer and droop back down to about the half way mark after the consumption of a few. His default porter stance reminds me of how a gangster might stand in a back alley with the knowledge that at any moment there might be a drive by shooting but the comparisons stop with posture; Nirakar is the aggest guy.


This is Will Riley.





Will Riley is what would happen if Dane Cook's approximate sense of humor woke up one day with a hangover and fostered a child with a jolly Australian Woody Harrelson. Anyone? Needless to say Will is a character and a mainstay in the Amora Hotel biosphere. No opportunity for a wisecrack is ever missed and he pretty much operates outside of any sort of hierarchy Amora management attempts to establish. This makes him a hilarious co-worker and a solid drinking buddy. It doesn't hurt that he refuses to share rounds, opting to just buy all the beer, all night, himself. On the few occasions I had the honor to meet Will out on the town he singlehandedly bankrupted Star City Casino, charmed the socks off a number of my female friends and explained to me the ins and outs (and loopholes) of Google's AdWords program at a level even Google's engineers might go blank at. Chance.


This is Sebastian Ricardo Camus Alvarez Conception Hurtado De La Puente*

*His real name is actually Sebastian Ricardo Camus De la Puente

Sebastian has, and uses, so many different names that his 5' 5" frame is pretty much squashed by the weight of them all. He is Chilean and I have a sneaking suspicion he is using his apparently endless surnames to either confuse the taxation department or line up back to back visas, each under a new set of names. His name tag says Sebastian and thats how he introduces himself, but three weeks before I left Amora I asked the concierge, after looking at the roster for the 6th time that day, who the hell this "Ricardo Camus" was and why he was on so many of my shifts without me having met him. Duh. Of course I should have assumed Sebastian was actually Ricardo Camus. On the other hand, its not really apparent to me why it took me over three months to ask this question. Sebastian is a world traveler, an amatuer Tarzan imitator, master Blogger and supposedly an entreprenuer with big plans for when he returns to Chile. I never could get him to tell me exactly what those plans are though, so I expect they either involve international sex trafficking or he's really worried that I'll decide to set up shop in Chile with his ideas before he does. I'm not sure which is more plausible.

This is Riaaz Variawa. He was my boss and is from South Africa and as such he tends to annunciate hard consonants at the end of words with an emphasis only rivalled by the extent to which he rolls his R's. If he doesn't like a CD that he's listening to in his car he throws it out the window. Literally. When he told me this the first thing that came to mind was "what was the shortest time a cd has ever lasted, and of course, who was it" but somehow I never got around to asking this question. His best quality as a boss was his ability to lose all boss like qualities after three and a half sips of a beer. That said, it shouldn't be surpirsing that, despite his 220 pound frame, I drank him under the table on more than one occasion. He'll probably comment on this post below now and regardless of what his retort may be, he knows the truth.

If I had six words to describe Jai Donaldson they would be "when i lived on hamilton island". These six words for Jai replaced the average person's "oh, thats funny, I had a similar experience" or "that reminds me of the time" or "oh yeah? I can do one better" phrases when introducing a story. It seemed like whenever someone told their own story, whether it was funny, tragic, about the weekend, about a dream, or about the time in Bali when they woke up in a ditch without their shoes or wallet, Jai had his own correspending and vastly superior version of the same story starting with "When I lived on hamilton island...". It normally contained more nefarious activities than the entire series of "The Sopranos" and ended with Jai roundhouse kicking both Chuck Norris and Jack Bauer simultaneously. Still, despite the consistent absurdity of so many of his stories, I never actually believed he was lying, which either makes me an idiot or Jai one of the most outrageous people alive.

Unfortunately, my ode must stop here due to time constraints. There were many other admirable and interesting people I worked with at Amora and I apologize I don't have time to pay homage. You can work your way into my blog when we meet again further down the road!