Emotional Striptease

Bread

2011-09-06T10:40:00.004+01:00

Right, after a long absence I have decided that the top of my complaining list is now occupied by people who define themselves by their food 'allergies' or 'intolerances'. It shits me off the number of times I hear a person say "Oh, I've just become gluten intolerant/lactose intolerant/purple intolerant." in the same tone of voice they'd use to say they've decided to change their hair colour. I'm not really talking about people who have decided to do something for health reasons, neither am I really miffed about people who have the kind of food allergies that lead to epileptic shock. But the people who one day 'decide' that they are intolerant to something, based on nothing more than a vague feeling that they're not feeling so well and they felt "soo much better once they stopped eating bread."

Gluten intolerance is the top of my shit list right now. It has literally sprung up out of nowhere and I'm going to accuse most people who say it of jumping on the bandwagon. Because, god knows, humans are completely rational creatures who would never be able to convince themselves that they feel a bit bad when they eat a slice of bread, and marathon-ready when they don't.

Yeah, yeah Celiacs disease and etcetera. Fine. But stop fucking defining yourself based on your inability to eat certain foods. I have very, very mild asthma only in certain conditions, like when it's really cold. But I've never put it down on a medical form, and I don't wander around eating special bananas for asthmatics. Likewise, I've noticed that when I have a lot of milk my tummy feels a bit bad (OR SO I'VE CONVINCED MYSELF). So I've started trying rice milk. But I am not lactose intolerant. I'm not magically convinced that rice milk will be the answer to my problems. And I'm certianly not convinced that by cutting out the right things from my diet I will never feel uncomfortable, bloated, or a bit crap ever again.

Listen people, humankind has survived in one form another for thousands of years. Gluten intolerance is just something we've convinced ourself is a problem because people like feeling special. Hence definining themselves by what they can't eat. I don't care if you don't like foods that have an odd number of letters in their name, or if the whiff of a capsicum sends you delirious. Just shut up, eat the foods you want and don't eat the foods you can't. Stop being so eager to define yourself (And, really, if you're so eager to give yourself a label, go for something that's actually original. By calling yourself gluten intolerant, you're just giving yourself a label that approximately a kazillion other people have too. Aim big! Say you're 'oxygen intolerant')

People say that if you have Caeliacs disease, you're more likely to get cancer. Well, if you've ever: smoked a cigarette; stood next to someone smoking a cigarette; been overweight; been underweight; stood in sunlight; drunk alcohol; dyed your hair; used artificial sweetner; used a hormonal contraceptive device; taken or made a call on a mobile phone; had an X-Ray or aged, you're also likely to get cancer. So eat the fucking bread and die happy!

Unless you've been medically diagnosed with a disease, then I'm just going to nod politely when you say you're "_ intolerant" and secretly (or not so secretly seeing as I'm writing this on a blog) think you're whiny.

2010-08-03T06:29:00.002+01:00

In the last year I have done some important things (Got married, moved house), some non-important things (Had three haircuts) and some super important things (Found three used stamps that hadn't been franked and soaked them off the envelope and now I have THREE stamps, FOR FREE) but I have also read The Age alot. I'm strangely addicted to the bogan comments section but the article about cellulite back in April took the cake. Basically an article about Lady Gaga and how she has celluite and OMG she's such a real woman! The article ended with the questions "How do you feel about your cellulite? Are you out there and proud like many of Lady GaGa's followers? Or do you prefer a bit of artful camouflage, whether that be fake tan or long trousers? How do you really feel about it? How does cellulite affect the way you conduct your life?"

My response:

"How does cellulite affect the way you conduct your life?"

Well, I wake up in the morning to my alarm clock blaring "You have cellulite!Cell-U-Lite! Wake up, cellulite woman!" I hop into my specially-adapted cellu-shower and put on three pairs of trousers, just to make sure that no inkling of a hint of cellulite can be detected. I take the special cellulite tram into the city, and grab myself a cellu-cino from the nearest cafe (I have to stand in the "people with cellulite" line) and then head to work. I have to work in a separate room to ensure that my co-workers aren't affected by my cellulite. After a day at my desk crying pitifully because I have cellulite, I go home where my husband makes me stand in a corner and yells "You are a disgusting, cellulite-infected waste of space" at me for about 4 hours or so. I then curl up in the dog's kennel and suffer nightmares for the rest of the night about dimpled thighs.

So, as you can see, my cellulite doesn't really affect the way I conduct my life. Thanks for asking!!

Just to let you know....

2008-11-13T19:53:00.003Z

...That if you ever thought that planning your wedding would be fun,

IT'S NOT.

Insert scathing, yet incredibly witty and amusing title here.

2008-08-16T18:11:00.005+01:00

You just can't take anyone seriously when they're wearing a purple suit

Have you seen this? Have you SEEN this??

Apparantly, it’s an attempt to discourage people from downloading films and music illegally. Because the music industry, not content with charging people outrageous amounts of money for a CD (Of which only a very little amount is ever set over to give to the performer) now wants to stop people downloading, and is doing stupid things like getting information about the people watching music videos and TV shows on YouTube and using ISP’s to track down music downloaders. ANYWAY, the point is, this ad is just….terrible.

I really, really don’t understand how this ad will discourage anybody from downloading. It’s so….crap. Some guy in a hideous 70’s purple VEST SUIT accusing someone of being a ‘knock-off Nigel’ who ‘downloads knock off films.’ Woah, I'm scared! If I download a film, someone might accuse me of being a knock-off Nigel! And I'm not even a boy! And DON’T get me started on the various changes in tempo and time signature as they try and fit all their crappy lyrics into an equally crappy tune. It’s quite possibly the least convincing ad I have ever seen. I would even consider the Sheila’s Wheels adverts to be more persuasive.

You know what the worst thing is?

At 00:15 he’s not even playing the flute. It’s physically impossibly to play a flute with your fingers in those positions.

Oh, the excitement!

2008-06-11T15:07:00.004+01:00

When I become a god, Busts of me should look like this

Woohoo, it’s nearly travel time! In a few short days, I will be off to….ATHENS! Yes, that’s right. The pinnacle of civilisation is travelling to the birth of civilisation. This meshing of greatness might cause a rip in the space/time continuum, so if that does happen, my apologies.

Because there’s so much to see there, I feel like I should be well-prepared in order to get the maximum out of my time. I’ve borrowed some books from the library, and am reading a detective novel set in Athens and called “The Athenian Murders.” So, while the MATH is at some maths conference doing hard maths stuff, I shall be touring the sights, and getting some inspiration as to how I’m going to design my own temple. I mean, I know that I can’t be deified until after death, but there’s no reason not to be well-prepared and have a wishlist left behind.

2008-05-25T17:06:00.002+01:00

Oh gosh, I know it has been a very long time since I last wrote. But to be honest, not a lot has annoyed me recently. Sure, there’s the whole hating England and not being able to find a job and missing my friends thing, but that’s just normal background feelings now. Nothing has made me actively angry. UNTIL NOW.

Yes, I know that everyone claims that it’s summer. But here’s a secret: It’s not hot. In fact, right now it’s raining and I’m typing this wrapped in my duvet. Bearing in mind that I am the Queen of the world (Next stop: Complete universe domination!) and that what I say goes, I conclude that it is not summer. So, you fine specimens of English manhood, stop GALLIVANTING AROUND WITH YOUR TOP OFF. It’s bad enough that I have to stare at your pasty white bodies when I walk through Hyde Park, but when I see you wandering around Headingley with your short off and a can of beer in one hand, I actually want to vomit.

You have a big white flabby tummy which is the cause of too many curries, lager, and nights in watching the football. Just because Ronaldo whips his shirt off at the slightest cause for celebration does not mean that you should too. Keep your damn clothes on.

OK, so volunteering in a bookshop is a pretty awesome, fun job. There books! Hundreds of books! Millions of books to read! Oxfam is great! Support Oxfam! And the other volunteers are really cool and eccentric, and it’s fun. However, there is one thing that really annoys me:

It seems that everytime a book goes on sale at Waterstones, or is part of a “3 for 2” deal, about a week later we get 500000000000 million copies of it donated. Which basically indicates that everyone in England is having their reading choices dictated by what’s on sale at Waterstones or Boarders. Which depresses me. A lot. If I see another copy of “The Abortionists Daughter”, or the latest Harry Potter, or Ian BLOODY Rankin, I’m going to hurt someone with a pricing gun.

Insert title here

2008-01-20T23:40:00.000Z

Oh, I've thought of some more things that annoy me:

The fact that at Starbucks today I had to order some ridiculously complicated-sounding drink, and then the (admittedly quite hot) Barista was all like "And what size would you like, gorgeous girl", and I couldn't remember if the name for "small" was Venti, Grande, Latte, Frape, Guiseppe, or whatever, and so I just barked out "SMALL" at him. Because that is what I wanted. A small drink. The smallest. Starbucks is stupid, plus they gave me food poisioning. TWICE.
The fact that bus tickets have gone up in price, and I was RUDELY caught off guard when I tried to buy one this morning.
The fact that I have decided that I want to read Edith Wharton's "The Age of Innocence" and everywhere I go to try and buy it, it is not there.
Peter Garret.

My philosophical thought for the week.

2008-01-20T21:45:00.000Z

For some reason, Ani DiFranco really really annoys me.

Discuss.

Christmas balls

2008-01-10T18:52:00.000Z

These are not my friends. They are just a cartoon.

Did everyone have a good Christmas? I did! Here is my Christmas day adventures:

7:30
Wake up because I set my alarm to wake me up. Fondly remember a time when I didn’t have problems waking up on Christmas day and would jump excitedly out of bed yelling “Hooray! It’s Christmas!! I love the baby Jesus! But I love Santa WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more!”

7:35
Shower. Pretend to show a lack of interest in presents, although I’ve already mentally composed a scathing “non-thank-you” note to people who have bought me crappy presents.

7:45
Wake up brother who is still asleep. He grunts “I was out last night until late. Go away.” Sit on him repeatedly. Consider taking his present and reading it myself.

8:00
Say Merry Christmas to father, who has to go off to work. Gaily inform entire family (all 3 of them) that I bought all their presents from the Oxfam bookshop in which I volunteer, and so the books might be a bit stained and torn, and none of them cost over about 2 pounds. But they’ll have to just deal with it, because I am poor, but if they don’t give me presents that reach a minimum financial threshold, then they will pay for it (metaphorically) for the next forty years, and the parents can forget about a nice nursing home, and can instead contemplate spending their dotage in a box. In Uzebekistan.

8:00-9:00
Presents. I am happy to report that it was a good haul.

9:00-10:30
Make our way from the hotel in which we are staying to the other side of Hong Kong to the Church we used to go to when we lived there. See many old friends whilst standing in line for communion, and try to mime “Yes, I’m living in Leeds, no, no career yet, just doing odd jobs and then using the money I make to travel to Europe as much as possible, just back in HK for the Christmas period, lovely to see you, how have you been?”; which ultimately fails to get my meaning across, and looks like I have just made distasteful references to the relationship between the Three Kings and the sheep.

11:00
Randomly end up going out for Yum Cha (Chinese-style lunch) with some Asian family friends before we go to our Western family friends for Turkey. I tuck into seaweed soup and red bean buns, and noodles and Char-Siu Bau before I stop and realise that I have to go and eat a full Christmas dinner in about ten minutes time. Oh well. Those puddings don’t just eat themselves, you know.

13:00-18:00
Spend the rest of the day at the house of some old, old, old friends marvelling at the fact that I knew their teenagers when they were just a SPERM AND AN EGG* and now they’re telling me about their boyfriend/girlfriend troubles.

17:30-18:00

Pudding.

19:00-20:30
We trek back to the hotel. By this time my brother is complaining that he’s tired, and so has decided to steal my puffy jacket and use it as a pillow. A brief scuffle breaks out of the subway, from which I emerge victorious, but not without some serious bruises, and some severe looks of scorn from the old spinsters sitting opposite us.

21:00
Realise that I am taking a flight back to the UK tomorrow. Frantically try to pack by putting everything in the suitcase and then staring at it critically, hoping that the clothes inside it will get the message and STRAIGTEN OUT.

And that was basically my Christmas. As I’m sure you can appreciate, much more stuff than just this went on, but I couldn’t find a way to make it funny. In fact, one might argue that I didn’t find a way to make THIS funny.

*Just to clarify, I do not know any sperms or any eggs personally, and never have. It’s just a metaphor to express my disbelief at the passing of so much time. And also, because it's funny to write the word "sperms" and not feel like you're being obscene.

Tips on how not to be an obnoxious British tourist and piss me off

2007-10-01T19:13:00.000+01:00

1) T-shirts proclaiming “Jane’s Hen weekend-Prague 2007” are stupid. As are buttons, tank tops (especially if you weigh in the neighbourhood of fifteen stone), sparkly tiaras, angel wings and alice bands. If you are wearing all of the above, then you deserve to die alone in a room.

2) If you and your mates wear T-Shirts saying “Bill’s stag weekend- Muff chasing 2007”, then consider it a given that you will not be getting any muff at all. European girls do not think you’re classy, they think you’re oversized oafs, who have all the sex appeal of a walrus that’s come down with a nasty case of herpes.

3) Do NOT applaud when the captain lands the plane. For one thing, he cannot hear you. For another thing, he doesn’t care. He would not be in the slightest bit interested if he knew. He refers to you as “The pay packets.” He doesn’t give a shit whether you think it’s amazing that you landed without dying. It’s just his job.

4) When in a Spanish airport, do not say loudly and condescendingly to the café staff “DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?” Of course they speak English, you dickwad. They work in an airport; they’re probably trilingual and that’s better than you can do. You couldn’t even be bothered to learn to say “Hola”, or “Gracias”? Yeah, then again, it might eat into your sunbed time.

5) Yes, believe it or not, airport information billboards contain both the Departure time, and the boarding time. Get. It. Right.

6) When your friends convince the cabin crew to wish you a very happy 40th birthday, the correct procedure is to slump in your seat, hissing that you’ll never talk to them again, and that they’ll regret it for the rest of their lives. You are not supposed to shriek “Oh my god, thanks soooooo muuuuuuuuch guys!” and then proceed to get drunk.

7) Trying to chat up the flight attendants is so incredibly lame and cliché, I can’t even get angry about it. They’re already done this return trip four times today, and just want to go home.

8) Don’t try and look all blasé when we hit turbulence. Admit it; deep down you’re just as worried as I am that the plane is going to drop out of the sky, because, really, HOW THE HELL DOES IT STAY UP?

A three act tragedy of paranoia and hysteria in Suburban Leeds.

2007-08-14T18:45:00.000+01:00

A conversation between the MATH and I this morning:

Me: what time did you get home last night?
MATH: Oh, about 5
Me: Well, when you came in I thought it was a burgler! You scared the hell out of me!
MATH: Yes, because, burglers in England have copies of your house keys, and stand there for ages twiddling them in the lock.
Me: Well, I didn’t think anyone who had lived here for a YEAR AND A HALF would still have trouble opening the door.
MATH: Just shut up.
Me: Were you drunk? Speaking of which, did you walk home through Hyde Park?
MATH: Of course I did!
Me: But, Hyde Park is dangerous! Did you not know that it was the epicentre of the 1996 drug riots?
MATH: Yes I did. What’s your point?
Me: That it’s dangerous! That there are creepy drug addicts just waiting to choke the life out of your lifefull body! And there are people sitting around....SMOKING. And there's bugs and I'm not entirely sure that malaria isn't still a major health issue in this country. And there's also an old man with a dog who always keeps asking for money, but…….he’s a fraud. Because I saw him at Sainsbury’s buying strawberries and beer, and so he must be asking for money so that he can buy a gun and kill a likely rich-looking person…..oh my god. I look too rich. I have to take off my watch, and my shoes, and my eyeliner so that he doesn’t try to kill me.
MATH: Paranoid, much?
Me: He might want to kill me because he thinks I’m dainty.
MATH: Not bloody likely.

It's a cruel, scary world out there

My Day

2007-07-25T21:37:00.000+01:00

Today I have:

Watched a girl get hit on by a bus driver.

Been hit in the bottom with a Ninja Turtle

Rescued someone from drowning in a ball pit

Made up several new verses to "The Wheels on the Bus"

Nearly been attacked by a wasp in the bathroom. OK, theoretically, the wasp was sitting on the window and I was screeching "It's going to kill me! Help! I can't wash my hair, because it's watching me, planning its attack. I hate nature!" But that's still an attack in my book

Done that weird "Step side to side thing with someone approaching me on the pavement" dance

Had an in-depth discussion about shocking drink-driving ads whilst feeding stewed apple to a baby.

And you wonder why I feel professionally unfulfilled????

The wheels on the bus go round and round and round and round.

2007-07-12T18:55:00.000+01:00

Oh my goodness, just over three months since I last wrote, and I've been getting so much stick recently from my devoted fans (all 1 of them) but, in my defence, I got a job and the job involves children and so there goes every scrap of energy I have ever conserved, ever.

Basically, my day involves getting up and going to work and being thrown up on. I'm not joking. Did you know that babies drink a lot of milk? They also like to throw up milk. It gives them a sense of achievement. Babies also can't walk. So I spend a lot of time carying a crying baby in one arm and picking another one off the floor with the other.

And then there's the toddlers. Toddlers like fighting with each other. And biting. And scratching. And then they cry and then they fall over and when they're not doing that, they're stealing food from each other which reminds me a bit of dinnertime here at home and really, it's rather hard work looking after them.

I have a fear: I hate walking past spiky railings, because I'm always worried that I will trip over on the footpath and impale my eye on a spike. Does anyone else worry about this, or is it just me? Just me? OK, then.

They are in NO WAY representative of typical Australians

2007-04-11T22:29:00.000+01:00

I was in the library today, and there was a woman talking on her phone. I really hate it when people do this, and I was very, VERY tempted to storm over, grab her mobile out of her hands (It was pink, no less. Why doesn’t someone just kill me now?) and start beating her around the head with it saying:

“I am TRYING to READ, you stupid woman. Well, I WAS until your inane chatter caused me to put down my fascinating book on the origins of the French Feudal system (Which I was only reading because there was a cute guy almost facing in my direction and I wanted to impress him) and march over to you and start smashing your face in with the book, and now the cute guy is going to think I’m deranged, which I possibly am, but that’s still NO EXCUSE FOR TALKING ON YOUR MOBILE IN A LIBRARY”

Ahem.

Considering that she was talking very loudly, I could hear what she was saying which was basically:

“Hello, can I have the phone number for Sheila’s Wheels insurance? And can you text it to me? Because I’m so “modern” and “with it” that I don’t know how to scrawl down telephone numbers using a crumpled piece of paper that I found in my bag and a pen that possibly hasn’t had ink in it since 1957. If I don’t use my mobile phone to do every little interaction, then I die from my own stupidity.”

Which got me thinking about Sheila’s Wheels itself. Basically, it’s a car insurance company that is tailored towards women, with things like lower premiums, a £200 handbag cover deal, and free……counselling if you need it. Which is all well and good, I suppose. If you drive a car. And are a woman. And are such a wuss that you can’t deal with accidents (OK, yeah, a minor crash, not anything that kills you or crap) without having to call up your insurance company and be all, like “oooh! Validate me! I was going to go to the new Primark opening, but now I crashed my PINK car, because I was talking on my PINK phone, and like, I totally lost my fags in the crash and now I can’t go shopping. Oh, Help!”

I kid.

The main reason for this entry is to vent some annoyance at their stupid adverts. For those of you not in the UK- I’m so jealous of you. Basically, the ad consists of three (pink) women sitting in the front seat of a (pink) car driving along a really crappy digitally enhanced background that sometimes appears to be going forwards, and other times appears to be going backwards and singing the most annoying jingle ever. AND, they put the words at the bottom of the screen, along with a bouncing ball, so that you too can sing along at home! Can you believe it! I know what’s been missing in my life! The ability! To sing along! To insurance jungles!

Anyway, there’s women, they’re singing! Nobody is steering the damn car, or looking at the road. Instead they are simpering at the camera in a way that makes me want to go around to everyone’s houses and say “Us Australian don’t do this! We’re not this stupid! If we’re going to drive cars in an unsafe manner, then we usually just crash into trees after drinking 42 stubbies! And we’re usually not wearing pink, sparkly dresses at the time!”

There’s singing, there’s dancing, then, suddenly, what appears to be a brass band materialises in the back of the car. Colour me impressed. That’s a damn good insurance agency if they can magic up some trombone players if you’re ever bored whilst driving across the Nullabor. They’re doing that annoying thing where they wave their instruments (not a euphemism) back and forth wildly. Oh, if only they had decapitated one of the singing, pink, sparkly ladies. Think how enjoyable advertising would be if people got killed in hideous ways. Imagine the joy on my face if the annoying wax lady had been slowly boiled to death in a vat of her very own Veet wax (See post written ages ago for more details)

And then we have the dog.

Yes, ladies, apparently dogs have now been trained to wear a chauffeur’s hat and drive cars so that you and your mates can warble on about how great your insurance is, because you are a woman and wear pink. So, we have a dog driving a car, a brass band in the boot, and three singing ladies. For a company that encourages you to be a safer driver, this advert really isn’t doing it for me.

Overall, it’s just a really, really stupid ad, with a really stupid, lame song, that I REFUSE to karaoke along to, and it’s just stupid, and people who insure with Sheila’s Wheels are stupid (no offense), and pink mobile phones are stupid, and did I mention I’m in a bit of a belligerent mood today?

Because I am nice, here’s a link to the ad on youtube: THE AD

Shopoholic is kidnapped by Al-Qaeda and forced to make a ransom video at gunpoint

2007-04-11T21:35:00.000+01:00

Right. Well, I WAS going to write more about my adventures in Edinburgh, but then normal life was swept aside by the discovery that someone I know has seen Colin Firth, and so therefore by proxy I have kissed him. I mean, where does one go from that? So, I have decided to abandon my recitation of my Scottish holiday (Which, whilst awesome, can be summed up in one sentence: Go to Edinburgh and you’ll have a wonderful time, I guarantee you!)

Now that we’ve decided that I am fact going to marry him and have his babies, we can talk about other stuff. Namely: me.

· I spent the last week at University, with a bunch of mathematicians. Basically, Melbourne University has been having their annual puzzle hunt, where they release fiendishly difficult puzzles and it’s up to teams to try and solve the puzzles. So, the maths dudes at uni decided to solve them, and, considering that I have nothing better to do, I joined them all. My contribution consisted of sitting there and saying things such as “This is a very hard puzzle”, and “I think we should do some more work on this”, and other such priceless gems!

· I was at the Post Office today and saw an old, totally blind man with a cane. The Postal workers helped him out of the office and took him to the supermarket, where the people there helped him buy his groceries. It was so sad, it almost made me cry.

· I can wield a vacuum cleaner with the dexterity of a monkey.

· Is it wrong that I kind of want to see Mr. Bean’s Holiday? Do you think I should steal some kids and take them to the cinema with me, so that I don’t look like a pathetic 20-something year-old, who still actually finds this stuff funny?

· Every time I go to Somerfield, I start composing very indignant letters to the manager in my head along the lines of “Well, I only shop here because I have a choice between here and Morrison’s, and Morrison’s is WORSE, but given the choice, I would shop in a supermarket where they the checkout staff were not so damn RUDE! And that did not offer customers plastic bags. At all. AT ALL.”

· I have a Boots card, which basically means that for every pound I spend in Boots, I get some points, and then I can use the points to redeem basically anything in store. But I am worried that I am now just going to Boots and spending money in order to get points so that I can…..buy stuff. And now I am confused as to whether I am becoming the kind of spendaholic, shopaholic, idiotic, financially immature kind of person that Chick-Lit authors love to idolise. I seriously hate how the lead character in Chick-Lit is practically always some emotionally stunted, chain-smoking single girl who talks about shopping in the kind of breathy superlatives that one uses to describe well, anything OTHER THAN SHOPPING. Grrrrrr. Anger, and literary superiority complex taking over now….

Swoon

2007-04-01T23:22:00.000+01:00

Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today
Miss Grenada saw Colin Firth today

He Loves Me.

My trip to Edinburgh: Day 1

2007-03-23T13:00:00.000Z

It really was like being in a Bamboo-infested land.

· Catch very early train from Leeds up to Edinburgh. End up not sitting in the seats the ticket machine assigned us, and spend most of the trip wondering what will happen if some people get on and look at us and say “Move, you’re sitting in our seats.” Construct an elaborate response in my head which involves an amputee (hence the inability to get to our further-away seat), a missing boat of schoolchildren, and a Hobbit. Am somewhat miffed, to tell the truth, when we arrive in Edinburgh and I haven’t had to use this excuse.

· Arrive at Edinburgh Waverley station. Have a MASSIVE arguement with the MATH over which exit to take to get out of the station.

· Ask myself “Do I really want to have babies with this man?”

· Meet up with our Aussie friend The Biologist.

· Check into our hostel. Realise that the 3 of us are sharing a room which has a deadbolt door and are only given 1 room key to share. Therefore must always figure out who has the key when going to the bathroom. Find myself asking such intimate questions as “Well, I’m only going to brush my teeth. Is anyone going to the toilet? You might take a little bit longer than me, depends on what you’re going to do in there. So, shall you take the key?” Feel quite uncomfortable asking these questions.

· Lunch at American Pizza Bar. Amuse myself by thinking how all of these dishes would taste better with Haggis on them: Pizza with haggis, garlic bread with haggis, banana split with haggis, the list is endless!

· Reach end of menu.

· Walk around the city and admire the Scottish Parliament. Although realise that it looks like someone built a building in the middle of a bamboo field and then thought “Oh crap, what am I going to do? I know, I’ll just pretend that the bamboo is part of the décor. Nobody will ever notice.” And then I come along and notice and foil their evil plan.

· Go on a Ghost Walk of Edinburgh city, replete with a guy in a scream mask jumping out at us in a cemetery. Woooo. Scary. Spend a lot of time thoughtfully contemplating the guide. He is charismatic. Try and figure out whether he is a charismatic bastard, or…a charismatic bastard.

· Decide that I’m going to launch a speaking tour telling girls to date an academic (preferable a mathematician), because whilst they are dorky, they also treat you very well, and then I shall wax lyrical about the joys of having a boyfriend with a nice big scholarship every month. Then, as I leave the podium, I shall casually flash my Louis Vuitton bag, and my Chanel wallet, and my sparkly diamond bracelet. And everyone will be impressed but I will have the last laugh because I bought it all for 10 bucks at Fa Yuen Street.

Now, let's all be literary together.

2007-03-15T22:53:00.000Z

I would like to share with my loyal readers (all 2 of them EXCLUDING Portia) an excerpt from a novel I am writing. Co-writing credits go to Professah Vanessah, but not to Portia.

Passion Under the Coconut Palms:

The sun shone brightly and reflected off the sea like the lights at a Hollywood premiere. But this was about as far from Hollywood as you could get. Or so he thought. Christian Van Essen stepped slowly off the pier onto the beach gripping his lab coat in his sweaty, manly hands. He wiped a bead of sweat off his strong forehead and scanned the pristine beach for any signs of life. As he scanned the lush tropical beach with his steely-grey eyes, he started. Emerging from the dense foliage came a small, almost comical nut brown figure, arms waving frantically. Removing his ray bans Christian squinted. “What or who is that?” he asked contemptuously, in a low bass voice which seemed to emanate from the depths of his strong, masculine chest. The figure continued towards him, pursued by three, tall, dark men wearing nothing but crisp white shorts which contrasted sharply with their broad, bronzed chests. Christian, his upper lip curled in disgust, stepped back towards the sea plane from which he had just disembarked.

Combing her fingers through her long, dark, lustrous silky hair, Saari gazed out over the pulsating waves. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a commotion on the beach. Her friend Ricardo lay sprawled upon the sand surrounded by a group of seemingly confused individuals. A tall, strong man with pasty skin was kneeling beside Ricky, tenderly caring for the injured larrikin. With his deft scientists’ hands, he massaged Ricky’s temples until his eyes flew open and he smiled weakly. Saari smiled in spite of herself. Ricardo was always getting himself into trouble. As she smiled, she heard her father call for her from within the hotel “Saari! Get to work, it’s getting late”. The handsome greying man appeared at the door.
“Oh father” She sighed “Whatever will become of poor Ricky” Brushing past the somewhat confused man, she couldn’t help but laugh.

An open letter to a person who knows exactly who she is

2007-03-12T22:20:00.000Z

You know, we started off with such high hopes. We had a dream, you and I. I was going to make a blog, and write in it, and lavish tender love and care on it, and you were going to read my blog. Together we would laugh over the witty things I wrote, and I would bask in your love and admiration. It was going to be special.

For a while it worked. You commented, I blogged, and I felt secure in your love and affection.

And then things changed.

At first it was subtle, oh yes, it was subtle. A mention here and there “A friend said that this blog is really funny. I heard from someone that they had read an amusing blog form Paraguay.” I was suspicious, but decided to give you the benefit of the doubt. After all, we were far apart, and I didn’t want you feeling that I was checking up on you.

Until I got that email.

Oh, it was an oversight of your that someone passed it on to me. Whether they meant to warn me, or whether it was a genuine mistake, I’ll never know. But there it was, in black and white, how you had visited another blog, and even found it amusing. It was all there you know, facts, names, places. And to add insult to injury, you told all our friends. So now they’re laughing at me behind my back, paying my blog ‘pity visits’ whilst they commiserate with you over how the other blogs are so much shinier, and wittier, and have less spelling mistakes, and are less strict about proper spelling, punctuation and grammar.

So what if I write entire blog entries about how much I hate plastic bags? So what if I thought today that I’d write an entry about how I’ve found 69 pence on the ground this month and I’m thinking about making a living out of collecting money on the ground? So what if I’m excited about the fact that I just bought an Elemis facial mask on EBay for 50% of the shop price? I have my likes and I refuse to feel guilty about them.

If I’m not cool enough for you then fine! Go read other blogs. In fact, I hope you read so many blogs that you develop a blogably transmitted disease and have to seal yourself up in a room with no internet access.

I’m not bitter, oh no. I just think you’re a horrible person who can’t keep her mouse in one place. Frankly, me and my blog are better off without you.

I really, really need to get a job if this is my idea of an exciting day

2007-02-28T19:01:00.000Z

Today I decided to go shopping, because nothing takes your mind of being broke than spending money on stuff you didn’t need. It was an interesting day for several reasons:

· I found another ‘free’ toilet in the city that’s really good quality. I shall add it to my list of places that I find posh enough to wee in.

· I am genuinely baffled regarding H&M’s trouser sizing policy. I saw some really nice pants there, and I tried them on. They fit (fitted? Fat?) really well on the waist, hips, etc. but they were trailing on the floor. Maybe people in H&M land are really, really tall. Genetically altered, even. So, if I do decide to go and buy them, I’m going to have to have them altered. Either that, or I can just hack away at them with nail scissors. Whatever’s easiest. Hong Kong has really cheap tailors. I wish I was there.

· I got accosted in the street by a very nice man wanting to know if I would like to do some market research. I hesitated, and then I thought “What the hell, it’s started to rain, and all I have to do is sit in front of a computer and answer questions.” So I did just that, and was taken into a nearby pub, given a hot drink of tea and asked to answer some questions on a laptop. The funny thing was that I was picked to answer questions about alcohol, and I’ve given up alcohol for Lent, so it was interesting. Thankfully you had to take into account the previous 12 months, so I just gave answers based on my previous, alcoholic self.

· I bought my first Easter eggs today, but that’s only because they were the delicious Cadbury’s Crème Eggs and they were by the cash register, and they were cheap, and yes, I’m using Easter as a legitimate excuse to buy chocolate. I am *so* going to hell.

· I really needed some new shoes, so I decided to get some ballet flats, because they are comfortable, look good, and don’t make me look 30000000 feet tall. And I was in the shop, musing between the red pair and the silver pair. So guess what I did???

Shopping really does fill the void of despair and joblessness.

A post filled with happiness and sunshine

2007-02-28T18:14:00.000Z

· I hate that fact that everyone is lauding “the Departed” for its brilliant-ness, when it’s based on an AWESOME HONG KONG movie, and everyone is totally overlooking that fact that Martin Scorcese got an Oscar for basically doing a remake.
· I hate getting up every morning and checking my email hoping against hope that this will be the day that an employer will actually acknowledge that I sent in a resume and either tell me that I’ve been selected for an interview, or that I didn’t get the job.
· I hate knowing that I’m probably never going to live in Hong Kong again.
· I hate going to bed every night miserable because I can’t see how I’m ever going to get a job.
· I hate that I cannot have chocolate or sweets in the house, because I eat them all in one go.
· I hate that the roads and footpaths here in Leeds are full of potholes and you really have to watch where you’re going.
· I hate postmen who decide to deliver parcels at 7:30 in the morning.
· I hate our upstairs neighbours who borrowed the key to the back garden 4 months ago and have never given it back.
· I hate having to empty all the coffee granules out of our coffee plunger that have all compacted together like some solid mass of crap, and I have to prise it out even though I don’t even drink coffee.
· I hate my current “slobbing out at home” tracksuit pants, because of two things. Firstly, they are meant to be really short, so they end a few inches above my ankle, and if I ever go out wearing them then I look like the BIGGEST NERD IN THE WORLD and also, the inside is a sort of fluffy, felt fabric and it sheds, so when I take them off, there are little black balls of fluff all over my legs.
· I hate that I will no longer be able to afford to take airplanes after November this year, because I will be too old to be considered a staff dependent.

Tah-Dah

2007-02-19T23:43:00.000Z

It's only the hardest dessert in the world to make. It only requires tremendous dexterity in juggling eggyolks and egg whites. It only requires patience and a steady hand. It only requires that you have an eye for colour and taste when assembling the damn thing. It's possibly the only dessert in the world that looks beautiful on the serving plate, and like vomit when you finally get it onto your plate. Yes. It's.............

PAVLOVA

Oh the coldness, it is so cold here right now.

2007-02-19T17:18:00.000Z

OK. So. I totally realise that I haven’t written anything for a while, but I do worry that if there is too much greatness too often on your computer screen, it might explode. That’s right. Just think of me as the saviour of LCD monitors the world over.

• Hong Kong is brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And cowering in an airport toilet blubbing “I don’t want to go back to the crappy UK. I want to stay heeeeeeeeeeeere” is perfectly acceptable behaviour upon leaving it.

• The immigration officer asked me suspiciously if I was aware that the terms of my visa prohibited me from working as a professional sportsperson in the UK. To which I raised a recently shaped eyebrow, drawled “There’s no danger of that, honey” and walked out. Yes, I now officially live in a Greta Garbo film.

• If I die, who gets to have my stuff? Are my parents really going to want to fly 23+ hours to pick up a copy of Pride and Prejudice and 15 bottles of shampoo? Don’t answer that. It’ll just depress me.

• Working in a Chocolate shop: Paradise, or the first step on the long road to bankruptcy, diabetes and death. You decide.

• So, I watched the Apprentice on the plane, and there was this one episode when the contestants had to host an opening party for a hair salon, and Trump was all like “People think my hair is fake, but it’s not. I SAID, IT’S NOT FAKE. NOT AT ME. IN FACT YOU CAN COME AND LOOK AT MY HAIR TO SEE HOW UN-FAKE IT IS. THAT’S RIGHT. EVEN IN A STIFF BREEZE, IT STAYS ON! And everyone looked terrified, like he was some hair-obsessed maniac, and, ultimately, methinks he protesteth too much.

• Hmmm, so, jobs. I have seen ads to work in a betting shop, or in a tobacconists, or, you know, I could just murder innocent babies.

• Myspace: Harmless peer networking site, or evil dictatorship, bringing the fear and ostracisation of the playground to your computer? Discuss. With references please.

• I have a surprise to post in a few hours, but I’m waiting to see if it all turns out OK. And it’s got nothing to do with engagements, babies, teeth or careers. Actually, it’s not really exciting at all. But it means you’ll have to come back to see if it’s really worthwhile. HA!

2007-01-28T01:17:00.000Z

Oh, if only all ghost movies could be this scary...

Things I have learned from watching the Chinese Supernatural /Horror /Romance movie "Rouge":

1) All Courtesans in 1930's Hong Kong were given unusual, yet attractive names like "Fleur" and "Maxine". In 2000's Hong Kong, McDonalds workers are called things like "Dystentry" and "Fat".

2) If, as a coutesan, you fall in love with a man, and he won't get over himself and marry you, then drinking Opium is acceptable.

3) Drugging your boyfriend without his knowledge so that he'll die too is not acceptable.

4) Ghosts that come back to haunt you are usually broke.

5) You may lend broke ghosts some money, but make sure you get her to pay you back, otherwise she'll just spend all your money on crappy fortune tellers that work next to roadside restaurants

.
6) Don't bother giving ghosts Coke. It just dribbles out the side of their mouth.

7) If you are watching a film and it seems boring (Oh God, so very, very boring), then some hot journalistic sex will usually spice it up.

8) When your girlfriend comes back from the dead and starts warbling at you that "My love is like a bucket of water in the ocean" you know it's time to drive a stake through her heart (Or do whatever you need to do to actually vanquish a ghost for good).

Porn, Porn Porn

2007-01-19T05:50:00.000Z

Because I know, just know, that people are seraching for "Striptease" and coming up with my blog. I know who you are, and where you live, so stop being so disgusting and searching for PORN.

I hate going to Doctors. I really do. I've had a horrible infected throat for a long time, and the tit of a doctor merely suggested that I suck on a Strepsil, and drink lots of fluids to keep my throat nice and LUBRICATED. Yeah, if your search engine caught that words and you were looking forward to reading dirty stuff, then you are a WEIRD FREAK. What the hell? When I go to a doctor, I expect for him to actually, you know, doctor me. But I'm glad that he did tell me to stop chewing on sandpaper and smoking forty cigarettes a day. I had no idea that was irritating my throat. Thank god for highly trained doctors!
It's raining. And for those who don't know about the MATH's surprise farewell picnic, well, rain is NOT GOOD!
The Australian Open is on at the moment, and I know that there must be famous tennis players walking around the city, but I'll be dammed if I can find any of them! I'm not exactly stalking them, but I am keeping my eyes peeled. Mega peeled. Like, I haven't blinked in three days. I mean, part of the problem may be that I shop in the Reject shop, and they shop in Gucci, but still, I mean, c'mon.
www.gofugyourself.com is a very very funny website.
I changed the ringone on my mobile phone, and now when someone calls me I stand there thinking "Why doesn't some stupid person answer their phone?? Gee, dumb people shouldn't be allowed to own a mobile. It's just ridiculous." And then I realise that it's mine.
Text messages sent to me at 8 am asking about the rain in relation to our picnic tonight do not help. Yeah, I'll just call up God and ask him to postpone the rain.

A New Year!

2007-01-18T06:22:00.000Z

Well, one of my New Year's Resolutions was to develop a new and/or existing skill. So, I have decided to work on my poetry. I don't think many people know this, but I actually really like writing, and I've been getting into poetry alot recently. I've been working on a couple of poems that I'm pretty happy with, and I'm eager to see what you guys think, so please do let me know!

Something to Think About:

My Moroseness
Drips lovingly into
my hot chocolate.

Like DEW DROPS from a cocoa plant....

Is this a poem?
Can my moroseness ffffllllllllllooooowwwww from my pen like
Stale Tea
From the spout of my Grandmother's teapot?

Untitled:

SPEIGEL
Speigel of mirrors/Rotunda of silver
All. That. Jazz.
Sparkles like the sequins on the clouds...
My obnoxiousness hurts like the speigel.
SPEiGEL.

I am Free.
I am free.
I am a prisioner.

Turkey and Stuffing and Plum Pudding and Tiramisu and Other Stuff is what I ate over Christmas

2006-12-29T04:45:00.000Z

Woah! Now that I have come out of my food-induced coma, I guess I can report on my doings over Christmas. I spent it with the MATH and his family in Braidwood, which is a small country town about an hour's drive from Canberra (The REAL capital of Australia). The timetable for the festivities went as follows:

Christmas Eve- Eat
Christmas Day- Eat
Boxing Day- Eat

You know, in my head, that little bon mot was going to be really funny and amusing. But then I looked at it and realised that everybody else who celebrates Christmas probably did the same thing, and so I'm actually being completely unoriginal.

I have some very well-connected relatives-in-law. You know, the kind that can get you into the Queen's Annual Garden Party (She's so important that the event deserves capitalisation, dammit!)
For anyone who remotely cares, we won the 4th Test.
I was once on TV. My family and I were visiting a small Victorian town called Glenrowan, which is where a famous bushranger/highwayman/thief and all around scoundrel called Ned Kelley was finally arrested. Anyway, so we were all sitting in a coffee shop looking very cute (I was 10) and this film crew came in! They were filming a documentary called "Great Train journeys of the world" and there was a particular train that went through Glenrowan. So anyway, the film crew wanted to do some filming in the town and so we got on TV. But I think we were edited out. We had to sign a waiver though.
I did some driving! I drove for three and a half hours straight and it was very exciting. I even overtook slow trucks and felt very hardcore, but then they overtook me straightaway, and it's actually very scary when a 24-wheeler truck goes roaring past you.
Here is a poem dedicated to Canberra:

Oh Canberra, you are so boring.

So very very boring.

But.

You do have Parliament house, so that's alright.

I really love not having a job. I mean, I really, really, really like it. There are so many things one can do when one is not working. The only problem is not having money. Perhaps I'll make one of those websites where you just say "Give me money" and people give you money.

I have been 23 years old for a month

2006-12-18T02:13:00.000Z

Well, I am angry today, because I was supposed to have my hair cut today, but I have just found out that the salon doesn't open on Mondays, which now means that my hair is dropping out all over the house, because I have a lot of it, and, not only that, because it's so long, I'm actually a bit worried that it's going to completely cover the bathroom floor, and that everyone who goes into the bathroom will have to wade through piles of hair before they can wash their hands. I know it's a bit of an apocolyptic vision, but when you read a newspaper and it says "Girl, 23, died from being suffocated by her own hair" then you will remember how I was right. Ha!
I feel very sorry for Mimi because she has been in Singapore doing maths stuff, and when she hasn't been doing maths stuff she has been gossiping with maths people about mathematicians, and when she hasn't been doing that, she has been living in a mathematician's house. That is some hardcore maths, and if that ever happened to me, I think that I would actually cut off my leg with a spoon so I could say to people "I'm sorry, I would love to talk about maths with you, but I've just cut my leg off with a spoon, and I need to go to hospital. Sorry about that!"
The bushfires in Victoria are really quite bad, and my friend Miss Frizzle comes from a small town which has been threatened by fires in the past, and now every time somebody talks to her they are saying "How is Bright?" And so now she has decided to preface every conversation with "By the way, Bright has not burned down!"
And I was so much looking forward to a haircut today!
Living in a small flat with my family is really not a good idea.
There is a department store in the city which always puts displays in its shop windows around Christmas time, and this time it's the story about a wombat, or a hamster, or something that wants to be part of the nativity scene, but he doesn't fit anywhere. He's too heavy to be the archangel Gabriel, and he can't be Mary, but in the end he gets to be Jesus. All together now: awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
I got to play with my little cousins, L and N, and I have decided that I am going to drive to their house in the middle of the night and kidnap them. I shall then change their names, and keep them locked in my flat so that I can play with them all the time.

Can you believe that it's nearly Christmas? So much to get excited about, so little time!

Ramblings

2006-12-09T10:32:00.000Z

Wow. It's been a really, really busy last week or so; I guess mostly because I've been, oh, you know, travelling for approximately fifteen thousand hours. Anyway, after a stop of about 36 hours in Hong Kong, I madeit down to Australia. I was going to write a blow-by-blow description of my travels, but I have become quite a fan of bullet points, because I get to write in incomplete sentances, so I'm going to do that instead.

LONDON:

If you want to have an (affordable) meal in London with a view overlooking the Thames, then I would suggest going to the Nandos restaurant located by London Bridge. The restaurant is actually built Underneath the bridge, where it overhangs the river, so our table was only about 5 metres above the water line. It was awesome. We had a lot of fun talking about Tyra Banks, and then we walked to the toilet, looking fierce.
Because I travel on a staff air ticket, I have to go up to the check in desk and tell them that I'm here. They usually send me away for about 20 minutes, and then I come back to find out if I have a seat or not. Sometimes the news is good, sometimes it is bad. Anyway, so when I got to Heathrow, I had to go to register. I had a business ticket, and there was a huge line at the economy class check-in desks, but nobody at the business ones. I had to walk in front of hundreds of tired-looking, cranky people up to the business check-in desk. I really, really wanted to just sink into the floor. The worst part, of course, was that once I went up to the desk, and identified myself as staff, they just said "OK, come back in 30 mins" so I then had to walk away with all my luggage, still under the mean eyes of everyone else. I bet they were thinking "Oh look, she tried to beat the line by going to that desk, but she didn't notice that it's business class only and they're sending her back to the proper line. Stupid, silly girl" And then I really felt like explaining it to everybody, but I couldn't because there were too many people, and I ended up getting downgraded anyway.

HONGKONG

The Donkey (and his car) is a God. Really. I worship at the alter of your godness. That is all.

AUSTRALIA

After arriving in Melbourne, my mother decided the best way to greet her daughter whom she hasn't seen in six months was to stay at home in bed and say "Ugh. I went to bed late...g'away......Talk later........hmmmm"
I went out to a Poetry reading with Miss Frizzle and her housemate Dr. Doolittle. Some of the poetry was interesting, especially one girl who solemly announced that she would like to acknowledge "The Indiginous people upon whose land we stand, and also my deep shame regarding my inability to do anything." And then she read some crappy story about birds and her sister.
There are some really bad bushfires in Victoria at the moment, and today dad and I had to do some driving. There was smoke everywhere, and you could barely see across the road. You can even smell the smoke inside our apartment, with the doors closed and the aircon on. My eyes feel gritty, like there are smoke particles in them, and my clothes smell like a fire. I hope my friends won't die in the fire, because that would suck. Alot.
And, I know it's a few days late, but I would like to say this to boxcar:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR BOXCAR

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!

That is all.

I bet Lizzy didn't wear dirty trainers and look like a cream puff

2006-11-28T23:59:00.000Z

This photo is proof that I am an idiot.

A couple of weeks we had to have the plumber around to re-install the shower. He popped by at around 1 in the afternoon, just as I was going to make lunch. I showed him into the bathroom, and he set to work. I asked him if he wanted a cup of tea or something, and he refused, saying that he was fasting (It was Ramadan). So then, I felt really guilty about the fact that I was planning on eating lunch, lazing around the house like Lady Muck. So I didn’t eat or drink anything, even though I was starving, but I knew that it would be very rude too.
He had to pop out for a while to get a new part, so I frantically tore into the kitchen and made myself some toast with leftover curry. I ate it standing over the sink, with the extractor fan on in order to dissipate the food smells lest the plumber smell it and cry. Afterwards, I opened all the windows in the house, and put on a lot of perfume to try and cover up the food smell. I felt so guilty about doing it, because I actually start gnawing at pieces of wood if I don’t get fed regularly, and here is this guy managing to not eat for periods of 12 hours or so.

Oh dear. You know when you think you’re being really cool, and so you try and do something even cooler, but it just backfires on you and you look like an idiot? Well, that happened to me yesterday.
I was walking through the park on my way into town (Nursing a terrible hangover). Because it’s autumn, all the leaves have fallen off of the trees, and they decompose and create this kind of slushy, slippery surface to walk on. Also, it rains a lot and so the paths through the park are slippery and the holes in the asphalt tend to fill up with water. I was walking along the path when I noticed a HUGE puddle of water in front of me. I obviously couldn’t have walked through it, so I had to walk around it, on the wet and slippery grass. As I was doing so, I was struck by the thought: “Wouldn’t it look lovely if, instead of detouring back onto the footpath, I continued walking across the grass, in the manner of Lizzy Bennet as she strides- strides I tell you!- across the moors at Pemberley*, being watched lovingly by Mr. Darcy”. I must say that this fantasy was fuelled in part by the rather handsome young men who were walking behind me.
Anyway, so I strode confidently across the grass for about 14 seconds before my shoes got bogged down in mud. I realised that entire hill was covered in mud. Thick, squishy mud. I had to use my arms to pull each foot out of the mud, as I walked precariously along this incline. Nothing shouts “Confident, beautiful nature-girl” like a parka-wearing, hung over, balance-challenged Australian, knee deep in mud. I am now the proud owner of a pair of mud-spattered trainers that I intend to take a photo of and to post here, just to prove what an idiot I am.
*Yes, I know what you’re going to say. Shut up anyway.

I have been hearing about how Ricky Gervais (of The Office fame) has a podcast, so I put one on my iPod this afternoon before I went to the Supermarket. The trouble was that it was so hilarious I ended up laughing hysterically in front of the onions.

On Sunday night, the MATH and I went to see a choral concert of Carmina Burana at the Leeds Metropolitan University. The opening movement, “Oh Fortuna” is quite famous. ANYWAY. We walked into this ginormous hall which is usually used for graduations, and it was very well-equiped, with a huge stage, and even a couple of camera men and huge TV screens all around the room. The trouble was, I don’t think the performers knew that they were going to be filmed, so we go lots of shots of people standing there looking gormless, or adjusting their underwear, or fluffing their hair (As a side note, it’s amazing how bad members of a choir can look if they have their hair down, because you can’t see their mouths properly, and they spend most of the performance doing that annoying little hair flip which really PISSES ME OFF. I hate the hair flick. If I ever run a choir, I’m going to shave everybody bald.), so I spent most of the night giggling at the close ups of oblivious choir members.
The performance wasn’t great. I personally think it was a bit overambitious, and the inclusion of a full orchestra would have helped; but instead we had a couple of pianists and a few percussionists. The end result sounded like this:
Choir: Oh Fortuna!
Piano: Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, oops, that was meant to be a sharp, PERHAPS IF I JUST PLAY LOUDER NOBODY WILL NOTICE
Percussion: BOOM!
Choir: Oh Fortuna!
Piano: E#
Percussion: BOOOM
Choir: Oh Fortuna! Oh Fortuna!
Piano: Shit.
Percussion: BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!

Isn’t this wedding dress precious? Those are Portia’s words, although I have to agree. If I was entering a “cream puff lookalike” competition, that’s exactly what I’d want to be wearing.

2006-11-23T15:52:00.000Z

A Moor
Another Moor

Wow. These have been busy times, but I shall do my best to condense it all into a blog entry (or two!)

I had been stressing over what to do for my birthday. I like thinking of fun, creative things to do on my birthday. For my 18th, we took a boat ride around the Hong Kong harbour. For my 19th, I got food poisoning. For my 20th, I had a picnic and almost got attacked by swans. For my 22nd, I had a glass of champagne spilled in my chicken when the tram that I was eating on suddenly turned a corner and Miss Frizzle’s champagne overbalanced and fell into my already marinated-in-champagne chicken, and so I got drunk just eating my dinner.
Anyway, so, I decided that this year I was going to go to Haworth-the home of the Bronte family. So here is a blow-by-blow description of my special day:

9 AM Wake up, immediately think “Oh my god, I’m 23, I’m going to die soon, plus I have wrinkles under my eyes, and they seem to be growing at an extreme rate.”
9:15 Cry.
10 Meet friends at railway station. Attempt to figure out which of the approximately 500 million trains we actually need to take. Wish I had private helicopter.
11 Arrive at Haworth. Immediately start talking very loudly about “Deconstructionism in Wuthering Heights” very loudly. Nobody seems impressed. Dammit.
12 Go for a walk on a moor. Become very, very glad that I’ve put on weight recently as the wind is so strong I’m in danger of being blown back to Leeds. Get wet. Get very, very wet.
1 Pub
3 Go to the Parsonage museum. Look at the sofa on which Emily died. Ewwwwww.
6 Wait at the bus stop for 40 minutes in the rain. Lose sensation in toes, shoulders, and fingers, Run up and down road to warm up. Nearly die.
7-12 Arrive back at Leeds; dinner, drinking, bla bla bla.

Anyway, It was a fun day, and I’m glad I did manage to get up to Haworth. It does feel a little touristy, and some of the signposts are even in Japanese, yet it’s still a very pretty town, and the Bronte society must have a hell of a lot of power and influence to be able to keep it so neat and tidy, and to promote it so heavily. Whatever. By now, I’m just writing things so I’ll look intelligent.

I am the ruler of the universe!

2006-11-17T18:54:00.000Z

HaaHaa, I did it! I finally solved the Guardian Quick Crossword, and I did it all on my own. Obviously, now that I am getting older, I am getting smarter too. The next step is to crack the Crypic Crossword. Give me until my birthday next year for that.

Once again, I would just like to say that I rock. Now I have to think of a new aim for my life.

It's Blog-Tastic!

2006-11-17T12:25:00.000Z

I have recently realised that the only way I can fall asleep is if I sleep with my arm wrapped around my neck. Honestly, one of these days I’m going to strangle myself in my sleep. If that does happen, this is how the MATH will react:
9AM- Wake up, have shower, eat breakfast, mutter “Lazy cow” under breath.
10 AM-leave for uni, throwing pillow in girlfriend’s general direction.
2 PM-Come back from uni, yell “WAKE UP WAKE UP” and throw shoe at girlfriend.
3-7PM- Downloading.
8PM-Discover blue, cold, dead girlfriend in bed. Shrug and think “Oh well, at least I won’t have to fight her for the doona anymore.”

I would like to say that I hate Tom Cruise for scheduling his wedding on my birthday. Great. Just great. So now all of the world’s attention will be focussed on him, and not on me, where it rightfully belongs.

I had a dream last night that I was at Tom and Katie’s wedding, and Katie and I spent most of the occasion hiding in the public toilets. And THEN, I had a dream that my dad had to take a bus home, but he didn’t want to, so he got all pissy about it.

I was reading the blog www.overheardintheoffice.com; and one person said that every time there was a stressful project going on in the office, she would hear her boss saying to himself “I am a ball of fire. A BALL OF FIRE.” So now, when I have to do something scary/stressful I just mutter to myself “I am a BALL OF FIRE” and then people tend to stare at me in disbelief, because I’m usually just yelling in the middle of the street.

Some things I wish I had with me right now:
1. A confirmed plane ticket to Australia
2. A baby. It doesn’t matter whose.
3. Chocolate. Some chocolate would be good.
4. A pretty summery dress I can wear at Christmastime
5. Colin Firth
6. A hundred, million birthday cards, because, in the end, it really is all about me.

Ciao!

Stupid people shouldn't be allowed to fly

2006-11-13T23:08:00.000Z

OK, so I found something else that I really hate. When I travel majorly (i.e. not just for cheap weekends away in Europe), I have a big hard-shell suitcase that I use. It’s really cool, because you can extend a handle and wheel it that way, OR it has 4 wheels on the bottom which swivel, so you can just sort of push it across the ground, and it moves perfectly easily. When I was in the Samsonite shop in Hong Kong buying it, I was so excited about the possibilities of these 4 wheels that I put my forehead on the suitcase and then spun it around and around, and then I tried to walk in a straight line, and fell down in the shop. And during this whole activity, the shop lady is just staring at me as if to say “I hate white people”. And meanwhile my dad is all like “Yeah, we did this in the Navy and it was fun, except we did it with a ceiling fan and a baseball bat”. And there you go, ladies and gentlemen: the men who defended the free world during the Cold War were dizzy most of the time. And drunk. AND fighting over balsa wood tiger statues (The squadron’s mascot)

I think the point of that paragraph was to say that I have a suitcase that is very easy to manoeuver, due to its extendable handle.

BUTTTTTT, I really, truly, deeply, honestly hate the people who, when they take a plane trip, feel the need to extend this ‘handleness’ to their carry-on luggage. You know, the luggage that has to be tiny anyway so that you can fit it in the lockers? And every time I go to the airport now I just see people wheeling backpacks around. I mean, they really are backpacks; with the shoulder straps and everything. But then, some idiot has had the bright idea of sticking wheels on the bottom of it, and inserting a handle which makes the bag weight about a million pounds, and that’s just the least of my complaints.

I mean, seriously, every time I get onto a plane I stuff my cabin bag either in the locker, intending to get my stuff up later, because, yes, it is possible to walk around in an airplane; or I put it under the seat, get my important things out at leisure, and then do something with it. What I don’t do is wheel (WHEEL!) my fricking bag down the aisle of the airplane, then stop, look at my ticket, look at my row number, look at my ticket again, look around in case I’ve magically been transported to Narnia, and then open up my massive bag, completely blocking the aisle as I rummage through my collection of cough medications to reach my trashy romance novel that is set in 1950’s Ireland, so therefore it’s intellectual, even if it has been made into a movie starring, like, the Nanny.
I then don’t pull out: the middle section of the newspaper, taking time to refold it again, sleeping pills, laxatives, glasses, contact lens solution, travel pillow, those travel “improve your circulation socks” (which, incidentally, are a death trap, because they are made of non-natural material, so if there is a fire they will melt and fuse to your legs. Seriously. I heard this from someone who works in the Civil Aviation Department), a stuffed animal and a mobile phone recharger.

I then don’t attempt to hoist my bag into the overhead locker which is dam near impossible because it weighs so much, and then have it fall out and hit a harmless young lady (ME) on the head as she walks by quietly, because she’s not stupid and knows exactly how to get onto an airplane without pissing everybody off, thank you very much.

I just hate these bags so much. Everybody knows that the easiest and most stress-free way to travel is to take a really small carry on bag with the essentials, and then you can move around more easily and get off the plane faster. These people with their stupid bags think they are so important and actually make life harder for everybody else (= me). If they were just inconveniencing themselves, I wouldn’t give a damn.

More stuff about America

2006-11-12T14:49:00.000Z

Yep, it was the Coke fountain of happiness and caffeine.

OK, So, I didn't get as much time as I thought to update this in the US, so now that I'm back in the land that Sun forgot (i.e. England) I shall search my mind and share with all of my lovely readers some of my adventures:

Gainesville:

I was walking through the University one day and this posse (about 20 or so) of hot (Both literally and metaphorically) guys were running shirtless along the road and I nearly fell over, which is possibly because I'd walked into a stormwater drain, but I prefer to think it was because their collective hotness had cast a spell on me.

I was idly flicking through the channels on TV, and came across ESPN sports which was showing liver coverage of this year's.........Competitive Cup Stacking Championships. The basic premise of this "sport" is that you stack plastic cups, and take them down again. Let me repeat: you stack plastic cups, and take them down again. There's even a website: www.speedstacks.com

There was a town fair in the city centre, so I went and checked it out. It was okay, lots of artists exhibiting their wares, and these really cool windchimes made out of old cutlery. The artists had bent all these knives and forks so that they looked like fish. It was cool.

Yeah, I still can't stop laughing about the speed stacking.

Atlanta:

We went to Atlanta to visit an old school friend of mine; Chicken Poop. I know it's a mean nickname, but that's what her Anglicised Chinese name translates to. Ha!

Anyway, Chicken Poop has a lot of animals. OK, 4. But that's a lot for me. The two doggies are very cute, but very demanding, so our day would go like this:

Wake up

Push dog off bed

Go to toilet; accidentally shut door on dog's nose.

Let dogs outside

Let dogs inside

Brush dog hair off clothes for three hours

Leave house in a SWAT-Team-like maneuver, as the dogs have separation anxiety.

Etc.

We went to the wonderful world of Coke (TM) Which was very exciting indeed. It was the most one-sided history of the Coca-Cola story that you'll ever hear. It just consisted of lots of posters talking about how many countries sell Coke, and how Coke takes their community's needs very seriously by......Giving out Coke? But anyway, the best thing about the visit (And indeed, the whole trip) was the massive Coke fountain at the end of the museum, where you could drink as much of the sugary stuff as you could. So we drank, and drank, and drank, and it was kind of insane how much we drank, but anyway, it tasted good.

Miami:

What an awesome place Miami is. It's everything you think it will be; but better. After spending most of the holiday trying to organise flights, deal with animals, cope with conference schedules, it was great to finally be able to totally relax for 24 hours. We went swimming at the hotel pool, swimming at the beach, lazed around drinking cocktails, and basically enjoyed the clear blue skies and fluffy clouds.

Then, we got on a plane and went back to Leeds where it is freezing.

I'll leave it there for today.

Fun in America

2006-11-02T22:44:00.000Z

I am in America, and here is a list of things I have done:

Today I went into Gainesville town centre, and I was just looking in the shops, but there aren't that many shops because they all live in the mall apparantly. Anyway, so I went into this bookstore which looked a little new-agey, but I was like "Hey, whatever, I can get away from the crazy street people". And then as I entered the girl at the desk complimented me on my red ballet pumps, and I was quite flattered. Then, as I looked at the books, I realised that I was in, oh, A LESBIAN bookshop. And then I was thinking "Oh my god, what if she was hitting on me? Should I have said something nice back to her?" And, I was also trying to send out "I am not gay" vibes. But all the books were called "Mom, I'm gay: How to come out to your family." And I couldn't very skunk out without looking at anything. So Eventually I fled, and I nearly knocked over the woman who was cleaning the outside front windows.
Food and drink here come in 2 sizes: Huge and Humongous.
On the bus ride from Miami to Gainesville, we got talking to a couple of people our age. The girl was taking a three day bus ride up to Pennsylvania to be back with her family, and the boy was, oh, A CONVICTED FELON, who caught his ex-wife in bed with another man four years ago, and drove the guy's car INTO THE FLORIDA KEYS, and then, when he went back to the keys 5 months ago, was caught by police and PUT BACK INTO JAIL.
On the bus ride, the driver was this young woman who drove like a bat out of hell, and then halfway through one of our legs she made an announcement over the intercom saying "If you're going to talk, you must talk at a level so that only you and the person you're talking to can hear." She was a tough one.
I have yet to find a supermarket, so I am buying things for breakfast from little petrol station convenience stores, and everything seems to be a shade brighter than it should be. i.e. my orange juice faintly glowed all of last night.
It is entirely proper and normal to finish every sentance in Gainesville with the phrase "Go Gators!" The Gators are the University's football team. e.g. "Hello, I have a reservation for a hotel room, Go Gators!?"
When I wake up, I eat glowing orange juice and energy bars from the corner gas station. When the MATH wakes up, he goes to the conference where he eats fresh coffee, bagels, muffins and pastries provided by the lovely University of Floridia. Dammit, I should have been a mathemetician.
Actually, no, wait. I don't want to be a mathematician.

I will finish here now for tdoay, unexpectedly I managed to blag my way into the University computer room, which is pretty good and has nice air conditioning. I may even be able to do the same tomorrow!!

Au Revoir.

Does Indiana smell like Cupcakes?

2006-10-29T15:55:00.000Z

So this weekend I had something that I have been looking forward to for a fortnight…….All night Indiana Jones movie marathon!! I had never seen Indiana Jones before; I seem to remember that someone would always play them at sleepovers, but I was always braiding someone’s hair, or eating the food. That still happens. I go to parties, and I don’t mean to establish myself next to the food table for the entire night, but somehow I always end up doing just that, and then I have to develop a reason for standing there all night, other than the obvious “I’m a pig.” So, I make a joke out of it, and say things like “Just checking that the dip hasn’t been poisoned!! Haw haw!”
So, to recap: Never seen Indiana Jones; Eat too much at parties.

So I went along to the cinema at 11 pm, along with some maths geeks; not the MATH. We loaded up on coke and chocolate, and popcorn, and then we settled in for 6 hours of whip-cracking fun. It was a great night. Everybody would cheer every time anything funny happened, Sean Connery got the biggest cheer of the night, and I’ve had the theme music in my head for the last three days.

Good things always happen to me after church. This afternoon I went to a bagel shop to buy a bagel; and I decided upon an aubergine and hummus bagel.
Side note 1: Sometimes I forget that you say “Aubergine” in the UK, and I ask for “Eggplant” and they just look at me like I’m crazy. And yes. I know that there is a difference of names, but if I worked in a fruit shop in Australia and someone asked for an aubergine, I wouldn’t look at them like they were stupid. But here, when I ask for an eggplant, they look at me like I have asked for a plant that grows eggs.
Side note 2: A plant that grows eggs would be really, really cool.
Side note 3: If I ever adopted a vegetarian diet, I would eat so much more healthily. Because when you eat meat, it’s easy to say “I want a bagel with sausage on it.” But the veggie options have more vegetables and healthy things in them.
So, to continue, I asked for this bagel, and then the manager came up to me and said that they were training some new staff, so they actually had a ready-made aubergine bagel that I could have, including a discount. So I got a whole pound off the cost of my bagel.
I think God love bagels too.

I’m quite a fan of America’s Next Top Model. Their main sponsor in Cover Girl, and the winner gets a contract for a year to shill their makeup. Anyway, I was watching an episode, and as part of the challenge the girls had to film an advert for their lip gloss called “Wetslicks”.

Most of them were making idiots out of themselves, because, let’s face it, even high-class models are incapable of stringing a sentence together, and the kind of girls that audition for ANTM are functionally illiterate. Anyway, so they all have to think of things to say about the wetslicks, and some girl comes up before the camera and says “Try new wetslicks! Great colour, long lasting shine, and they smell like cupcakes!”
Can you guess where this story is going? Today I was in the 1 pound shop, and I saw some Cover Girl wetslicks! I was so excited, I had to buy some, in a rather fetching shade of raspberry, and as I walked home, I had it jammed up my nostril trying to inhale the lovely quasi-cupcake-y smell. I have to say, it does smell a little like cupcakes. I made the MATH smell my mouth, and now he thinks I’m weird.

I'm off to America in 48 hours, so I may or may not update this blog, and I may or may not send out mass emails detailing how I nearly got eaten by an alligator.

My day of fun and stealing in the city

2006-10-25T19:16:00.000+01:00

I wrote this a week ago, but decided to finish it up and post it here today.

Today has been a wonderfully lovely day for complaining about stuff. I needed to do stuff in town, so we decided to go into the city centre and enjoy ourselves amongst the teenage single mums, homeless people who abuse you when you don't buy the Big Issue, and families with far too many tattoos between them.

I went to Boots, which is the equivalent of Watson's (Hong Kong), or an Amcal Chemist (Australia). So, anyway, the point being, that if you spend 10 pounds there, you get a voucher and get an extra 5 pounds off your next purchase. But they won't let you do it at the same time, so I went and spent 10 pounds on "makeup", as the MATH calls it (Honestly, there is a Biiiiig difference between lipstick and bath foam, for any heterosexual males out there)

And THEN, I received the discount voucher, and so I had to go out of the shop, and then walk back in again, and then decide what else I wanted, and then line up AGAIN, except for I had to make sure that I wasn’t going to get served by the same girl, because then she would have just thought that I was an idiot. Too. Much. Hassle. Just to buy some “Makeup”.

And then we went into a Department store in order to use the toilets. I never actually buy anything there, because it’s way too expensive, but on the plus side, their toilets are really nice. And anyway, as we walked into the store, we went through the “Stop people from stealing stuff even though there’s a side entrance over there which is completely unmanned” bleepy things, and they started to bleep.

Now, obviously, I hadn’t actually stolen anything, so I just walked on regardless, but then I noticed a security guard standing at the entrance, who muttered something into the microphone attached to his shirt. Now, I like to think that he was saying “OK, it’s bleeped for this girl, so if it bleeps again when she goes out, then not to worry.” But I did get really worried that the people in the security room would be watching me the whole time I was in the shop, to make sure I actually didn’t steal anything. But then, I started freaking out, because all I really do is go in there, use the toilet and leave. So the security guards would be monitoring me while I pranced into the toilet and then out of the shop.

So, I had to engage in the elaborate charade which consisted of walking around, looking at expensive shoes and engaging in inane chatter with the MATH which went like this:

Me: Do you like shoes? I like shoes. I like shoes very much
MATH: What?
Me: Oh my god, that shop assistant is looking at me, Walk away.
WALK. AWAY.
MATH: Are you on drugs? I thought you needed to go to the toilet.
Me: LALALALALALALALALALA!!! I also think I need some Tea.
MATH: I hate you.

And then, in the bathroom, I had to rearrange my bag. Because I figured that if I was going to be stopped and searched because I set off the alarm, then it would make sense to have all of my prior purchases and their receipts in the top of my bag. So I duly rearranged everything.

But then I realised that my bag looked a bit too well-organised, and, if I was completely innocent, why would I choose to organise the contents of my bag?

So then I tried to re-re-organise my bag which would make it appear that my prior purchases, with the receipts neatly attached to them, had randomly happened to place themselves in the uppermost part.

And then I worried about whether it would appear that I had spent all this time actually re-arranging my bag in order to make it not look re-arranged. Then I cried.

So in the end I just fled the shop, the MATH in tow, trying to talk very very fast and look important. I also left through the side exit which had no bleepy thingys, and success!

Of course, now I don’t think I can ever go back to that shop, because they probably have a warrant out for my arrest.

If the museum burns down, I had nothing to do with it

2006-10-25T16:29:00.000+01:00

What a lovely picture of ancient Irish architecture.

I have just been to Ireland, and I had a really good time! Somewhat randomly, I found out that my old school friend, Sweet Charity, is working in Dublin, so I popped over for a weekend. Here are some of the highlights:

The stamp that the Irish immigration guys put in your passport is actually made of green ink!
Do you think that they make green ink by squishing leprechauns?
Fundraising for a charity involves standing on the street for 8 hours a day, wearing a really sexy fluoro orange jacket asking people if they want to sign up and give food to children in Africa, and usually receiving the response “fuck off”.
Before I left, I downloaded a podcast from the “Visit Dublin” website, which would take you on a walking tour around Georgian Dublin to look at houses, architecture, etc. Most of it was good, but sometimes the narrator would say things like “Walk to the end of the street, and then cross the road when the lights are green.” I’m sorry, but if you have the ability to download a podcast, fly into Ireland, and have an interest in Georgian history, then you’d think that you would know how to cross a road properly. Wanker.
Shopping is very, very tiring.
There is a huge metal spike in the middle of Dublin, and Sweet charity believes it’s because Dubliners suffer from collective penis envy.
I spent an afternoon at the National History museum, and it was sort of organised chronologically, so you studied the caveman remains in Ireland, and then moved onto the Viking invasion, and thence to the Middle Ages. There was one more room to go, and I thought it would look at Ireland’s struggles for independence, but instead it was a display on……..Ancient Egypt.
I went to the Dublin writers museum, which was really interesting and informative. At the end of my visit, however, I needed to go to the bathroom (as one does) and so I went. I was drying my hands on the hand-dryer, and it was one of those machines where you have to push the button to make it start, and to stop. But I forgot to do that, so after I had dried my hands, I just kind of wandered out, assuming that it would stop automatically. And then, as I was walking down the corridor I could still hear the dryer going, and people were starting to notice the sound, so I walked faster and faster out of the museum, and I swear, if I listen really carefully I can still hear it going.
I heard from someone that when he is in Dublin, Bono just hangs out at pubs and stuff. And I looked in pubs and stuff, but I didn’t see him. Boo.
Flying back into Leeds, I was really really nervous about the prospect of having to explain to the immigration people, once again, why I was not interested in living in this crappy country. So I sat on the plane rehearsing what I was going to say and I heard these 2 Australians sitting across the aisle from me, and I was all like “Ha! You’ll get interrogated too, but I know what to say, and I’m going to look really posh and well-travelled when I do it, too. At least I’m not wearing an ugly tracksuit like you.” And I even had a good song ready to listen to (Shania Twain’s That Don’t Impress Me Much) in order to pump me up for my run-in with the British law people. Instead, we were bussed from the plane to a separate part of the airport, and taken directly to the baggage carousel! And that was probably the best bit of the entire holiday.
And, a final rant. Last night, the MATH went to a seminar and then out to dinner with the postgrads. And everybody knew that I was back from Dublin, but like, a million people asked him “Where’s your girlfriend?” “Where’s avacarrdo?” And he was a bit bemused and said “At home?” And I think people expect us to be always stapled together. Maybe they think that at night time we sit around gluing body parts to each other. Well, we really don’t. Sometimes we just don’t go to the same place. Like Ireland.

Long live the Leprechauns! And the sexy-accented Irish men! And Guinness!

People are Strange

2006-10-17T15:00:00.000+01:00

This is just my friends on a normal day.

Some of My Friends are really weird. See if you can match the friend with their life ambition!

FRIENDS

1. Professah Vanessah

2. Boxcar

3. Miss Frizzle

4. Portia

5. The Donkey

AIMS

a. Stay conscious throughout Birthday Party

b. Develop a way for empathising with poor people without offending them

c. Have someone actually want to verify those "enormous package" rumours

d. Live in a house for over 6 months and never cook a meal

e. Develop a daytime drinking habit

Answers:

1e, 2d, 3a, 4b, 5c.

I have other friends too, but they are not so weird. Well, actually they are, but I just can't think of what to write about them.

Bye!

An Update!

2006-10-14T21:34:00.000+01:00

I discovered all the nice, shiny new templates, so I have been having fun choosing a colour scheme. I can't think of anything to write about tonight, so I'm willing to take suggestions.

My Restaurant Experience

2006-10-13T22:00:00.000+01:00

I haven’t written anything recently, because I have been sick. Very sick. MAJOR props to the MATH for putting up with me waking him up at 3 a.m. to tell him that I was sick all over the bathroom.

Anyway, so, tonight we went out to a restaurant in Headingley. And of course on a Friday night in Headingley, there are approximately a thousand students doing a pub crawl, and there must be some rule that you must dress up, so there were like, a hundred “Dorothy-from-the-wizard-of-Oz” look-alikes stumbling drunk up the road. Except for the fact that many of them took their costume decisions very lightly and just wore some red shoes. Or a hat. Or a ski jacket.

Now, the restaurant we went to had a lot of reviews in its window, and all the reviews promised something really good. Apparently the reviewer doesn’t meet many people who aren’t restaurant reviewers, because he had written “There are all sorts of people here; you might sit next to students, or old people, or even families!” Wow. There is so much diversity in the world, and I had no idea.

So we order, and I should say firstly that the food was very nice, so I can be negative and critical for the rest of this piece of writing. Anyway, the MATH ordered a glass of wine, and when it came, we noticed that there were flies floating in it. Yes, that’s plural. Flies. As in, 5 of them. I mean, seriously! That’s just gross. So we spent a considerable amount of time picking the flies out and staring at them, and the restaurant was pretty empty, so the staff were just standing around, and I’m sure that they could see what we were doing, but they didn’t really seem to care. I mean, did they think that we were looking to see if the grapes had indeed been squashed correctly? I don’t know. Perhaps they thought that we were weird people who got sexually aroused by picking interesting fauna out of our alcoholic beverages. Whatever the reason is, you guys suck.

So, when I finally pointed out the problem, the chick just got him a new glass of wine. And buy “new glass of wine”, I mean that it could have been the same glass, and the same wine, and she just carried it away and then brought it back again. Or it could have been a new glass with the old wine poured into it. Or, it could have been the old glass with some more wine poured into it. I don’t know.

And then, when we got our food, the staff kept coming up and wanting to put cracked pepper on our food. You know those novelty, oversized pepper grinders? I hate those. And I hate people who come up to me mid-meal, with my mouth bulging with food and ask “Are you enjoying your meal? Is there anything else I can get you? What do you think of the Blunkett tapes? Is Tony Blair doing a good thing by not naming the exact date he’ll resign? Talk, dammit, TALK.”

And after some yummy, yummy food and dessert, we got the bill, and it was about twelve pounds short of what it should be.

Which is 22 US Dollars/17.8 Euro/29 Australian Dollars/34 Bulgarian Leva/173 Hong Kong Dollars.

Yeah, you can see how bored I am that I actually spent that much time researching. If my arts degree has taught me anything, it’s how to research useless crap in an effort to waste time.

And we politely, smilingly, told the girl and she went and brought us our proper bill.

So, in the end, there was no discount for the fact that the wine had bugs in it, and we actually told the restaurant how much more money we owed them. But the trouble was that the food was very, very good. I think I’ll just steal their recipes and cook the food myself. Yes.

Oh, just some random crap that came spewing out of me. Not literally though.

2006-10-05T21:58:00.000+01:00

I don't know if you'll be able to read this, but squint hard, because it's hilarious! Everybody in Amsterdam is trying to make everyone happy, and I don't like it. My drugs menu is going to say things like "Will make you want to kill yourself", or "This one will cause you to wake up in a gutter with skanky American frat boys vomiting on you whilst rogering you from behind" (Yes, I saw rules of attraction last night, and it certainly portrays American frat boys, and their vomitory habits in such a nice, wholesome, light.)
But actually, it won't say anything of the sort, because my 'drugs' will just be, like, talcum powder mixed with i dunno, drum wheat semolina, or bakers flour, which has a slightly coarser texture, or wholemeal flour, which takes less time to rise. Yeah, dammit, see what having a breadmaker does to you?? I know far too much about flour and it's just pissing me off.
Anyway, so, people will pay me all this money for drugs that are not really drugs, and then I'll take that money and buy some shoes and make my dwarves stomp around in them, but not too hard, because then they'll ruin them.

My fingers are tired from typing.

2006-10-04T14:49:00.000+01:00

Well, now that I’m back in good old rainy Leeds, I can write about my time in Amsterdam. Firstly, though, apologies if there are numerous mentions of toilets; as I spent the whole time with a terrible stomach problem which meant that I suffered from major stomach pains as well as other unmentionable problems. But anyway, if you don’t want to hear about it you can just go away, or you can just pretend that you read this entry and then say “Wow. That was the funniest blog entry ever! I’m going to tell all of my friends how amusing that was.”

Sunday:
Thankfully, the flight was not until early afternoon, so none of these “get up early to get on an airplane” shenanigans. Because of the time difference, we arrived very ‘soon’ after we left, and got into the hotel, which had a tiny room.
We had asked for/booked a double room with an ensuite, and instead we got a room with 2 single beds and a toilet and shower out in the hall, shared with 6 other rooms. So, from this information, we can conclude that “Double Room” in Dutch means “Single beds” and “Ensuite” means “Hey, let’s put the toilet across the hall, so when our sick guests spend most of the night running to and from the toilet, they’ll have to avoid all the other people using it too!”

Anyway, we went and had a look at the red light district, which is really very confronting. It’s that classic ‘Car Wreck’ syndrome, where you don’t want to look, but you do anyway. Lots of girls in bikinis standing around in their windows, and guys on street corners muttering “Coke? Coke?” at you. And then, as we were going off somewhere for dinner, there was an “adult theatre” and this guy was like “Come in! Very couple-friendly. Couples fucking live on stage.” Friendly, indeed! So, in conclusion, the Red Light district is a bit squiky, but once you get out of the tourist centre with hookers and pot, Amsterdam is one of the most lovely cities I have visited. There’s so many cafes and restaurants on every corner, you could eat out every night for the next 10 years I reckon.

We ended up in a lovely little cocktail bar drinking White Russians, and when we got the bill, I noticed that on the bottom they had written “We make you drunk but also very happy!” Ha! I love it. I’m going to open a bar and its slogan is going to be “We make you so drunk that you’ll end up crying about all the shitty things that have happened in your life, and then you’ll pick up inappropriate men and by the way, you’ll be broke because the prices for my drinks are sky high! Take that, you alcoholic bitch.”

Sunday night:
Divided my time between lying in bed and moaning in pain and in the bathroom. Good times!

Monday:
Did you know that the only day of the year that the Anne Frank museum is closed is on Yom Kippur? And did you know that this year, Yom Kippur falls on Monday, October 2nd? Ha! What a coincidence! I think God hates me!

But instead, we went to the Rembrandt museum, which is actually the house he lived and worked in for about 20 years in the 1600’s. Although most of his belongings were sold to cover his debts, they have tried to reconstruct it as best they could. And it’s very, very cool. I especially loved going into his studio, where he actually painted. Being a history nerd, it’s just magical being in the place where people actually lived. I mean, actually lived. And worked. And argued. And debated whether or not Friends went downhill after Monica and Chandler got together (Yes, it did.)

And then, we passed a toyshop which sold, get this, finger puppets of some of the greatest classical composers! I mean, having a Mozart finger puppet? Awesome. I’m going to be one of those mothers whose like “Come on little Mary, this is Mozart. And this guy here? He’s Bach. Now, it’s time for bed. Let’s read Animal Farm so you can understand exactly how Communism never works. And tomorrow, we’re going to Iceland to study Fjords!”

And also? It rains a hell of a lot in Amsterdam. So I had wet socks.

Tuesday:
Got up at a ridiculously early hour to fly home. Schiphol airport is the coolest airport every in the history of coolness. It’s got a supermarket, modern art, awesomely clean toilets, and lots of shops, and hot immigration guys.

Speaking of immigration guys, coming into England is such a tiresome process. Heathrow is the most popular destination for Australians to get turned away, and the men and women there have no sense of humour, and seriously think that everybody is dying to come into England and I’m like “Yeah, how about NO? Do you really think I’m dying to illegally stay in a country where drivers don’t use their indicators when they’re about to turn the corner, and so you try and cross the road and this car nearly slams into you and then the driver thinks that he has the right to start yelling at you to look where you’re going????”

At Leeds airport they are slightly better, but this is the explanation I had to give to the man: “Well, I came to the UK at the end of 2005 just for a few days for a holiday, and then I came back down again in June to visit friends, but then I went to Prague for a weekend, and now I’ve just been to Amsterdam, and I’m also going to be going to Ireland and America, and I’m a teacher and I’m going back to Aus at the end of the year to work again.” And I pretty much sound like an illegal immigrant who has been caught up in this mass of lies. Sod it, I’m just going to tell them I’m a traffic inspector or something.

Best bits of holiday:
1. Having flight attendants called “Kitty” and “Lulu”. Hear that? That’s the
sound of stereotypes being smashed!
2. Hot Dutch guys who have bottoms that look really good in jeans.
3. The fact that it’s considered rude to draw your curtains, so I could stand in
the street and look into people’s houses and say “Yes, I’d like that one
thanks!”
4. People watching.
5. Clean Dutch toilets!!!!!!!

Worst bits of holiday:
1. The smell of pot everywhere, including the room next door to ours.
2. Not being able to enjoy much food
3. Realising that I can never aspire to being as cool as Europeans.
4. Having to stand in the very long and slow-moving “All other passports” line
at immigration whilst an entire Iranian clan in front of me was being
interrogated, whereas EU passport holders just breezed though security
carrying, like, a bomb.

This blog entry was brought to you by my stomach. Because one’s life is very much improved by having to be within 50 yards of a bathroom at all times.

Amsterdam for 2 days

2006-10-01T10:07:00.000+01:00

So basically, I'm going to Amsterdam to have a shower. We've now progressed (or is it regressed) to pouring buckets of water over ourselves because the shower totally doesn't work now. So I.am.going.to.Amsterdam.to.have.a.shower.
I'm going to look back at this holiday in 20 years and be like "Amsterdam? Yeah, went there one year. The shower was great! Can't remember anything else, but the shower was good."
Am NOT happy today.

2006-09-27T21:05:00.000+01:00

So, anyway, apparently I write this blog on command, so today I thought I’d write about some things in England that annoy me:

I don’t like the way that double beds in England are made by somebody pushing 2 single bed frames together and then putting a mattress on top. On our bed, the fames have been put on top of each other, rather than side-by-side. So it means that rather than there being a join down the middle of the bed, between the MATH’s body and mine, the split runs along the middle of the mattress, effectively separating the tops of our bodies from the bottom. And it’s really shoddy quality too, so when either of us turn over or move in any small way, the bed kind of separates, and I normally end up with my bum wedged in between the 2 mattresses. And it’s really annoying.
It reminds me of the time when I was in Year 8 and we were doing the high jump, and if you couldn’t make a certain height you were out, and you had to watch everybody else jump higher and higher heights. Anyway, I was pretty much the last one left being practically the tallest chick in the school (i.e. over 5 foot) and I ran up and did this awesome jump in front of everyone, but then the two landing cushions had been pushed apart slightly, and I landed right in the crack. I mean, I didn’t even bounce into the crack, I just landed straight in there. Plop. It took me a while to get out of the crack, but I think that was because I was laughing so hard.
And speaking of domestic annoyances, I hate our shower. Like, I actually hate it. I didn’t know that you could actually hate inanimate things, but I guess that you can. The plastic knob to turn the water on doesn’t work, so every time I want to have a shower I have to get the MATH to unscrew the plastic casing, turn the water on using pliers, and then screw the plastic casing back on so I don’t electrocute myself, and then turn on the water heater and wait for the water to heat up, and then get in. I seriously think that I could run errands in the time it takes me to actually get in the shower.
And then once I’m in the shower, you can’t adjust the temperature. Today’s temperature was ‘slightly above freezing’, which made a change from ‘lobster-cooking scalding’ yesterday. Then, when I get out I have to yell “I’m finished” so that we can go through the whole charade in reverse. I feel like a little kid who has to yell “Mum! I’m fiiiiiiiiinished” every time they go to the toilet.
I think I’ll keep a record of the temperature of my shower each day, just to entertain and inform you all.
And I also hate how distances here are measured in miles even though the
UK is a metric country. Although, I have to say, it’s pretty cool when you’re like, “yeah I walk to the shop. It’s only a mile.” Which literally means ‘around the corner.’
It reminds me of that scene in Pride and Prejudice where Lizzy is all:
“Yeah mum, by the way, I’m going to visit Jane at Netherfield ‘cos you made her catch a cold, you dumbass, and she'll probably die, and then who is going to marry Mr. Bingley?”
And her mum’s all like “No way is anyone going to want to marry you if you walk three miles covered in mud”
And Lizzie’s all “Yeah? Well, I don’t care if they see me anyway”
And her mum's all like "You will marry Mr. Collins, and then you'll have a carriage and you won't have to walk anywhere."
And Lizzy's all "Oh yeah? Make me."
And I’m like “Gee, I wish the only obstacle to me getting married was that I’d been walking three miles and was covered in mud, rather than, you know, being unable to find a man who wants babies”
And finally, I hate the way people use their debit cards at the Supermarket to buy a loaf of bread or something equally small. I’ll be in the Supermarket trying to find the quickest line, and I’ll be mentally scanning all the check out queues being all: “Nope, old granny with half a year’s worth of tissues; single mum with 4 screaming kids and numerous bags of frozen chips; drunk homeless man who smells of wee and dog; aha! Young professional with hummous and pita. She’ll be quick. Oooh, fat-free hummous. Somebody’s watching their weight, aren't they? Although she’s probably going to go to the pub and drink and smoke and put all the weight back on, so why don’t you just get the normal fat content hummous? It tastes better, and maybe if you stopped drinking so much you’d lose that half a stone which makes your bum look so bad. I’ll get in line behind you, so I can feel all superior with my full-fat cheese.”
So I get in line behind her, and they scan the items, and then she takes out her debit card, and then she swipes it. And it doesn’t work. So she swipes it again. And then she does this little titter as if to say “ooh dear, I must have spent too much money HAVING PINK PEDICURES”. And I’m standing there rolling my eyes back so much I think they’re back in aisle 4 along with the milk. And in all this time she could have paid cash.
Anyway, I think my method of payment is better. It consists of fishing around in my bag for my wallet, opening my wallet and spraying coins everywhere, then picking them up, at the same time trying to shout “No I don’t want a bag, for, you see, I CARE about the environment” and stuff my shopping into my nerdy Green bag and give the woman the money and take back the money, all the time trying to look hot. But in the end, paying with money is a lot simpler than that stupid fricking card.

I must give credit where credit is due, and say that many of these suggestions were made by the MATH. We hate the same things; it must be true love!

Media Watch

2006-09-25T13:22:00.000+01:00

I really like the weekends, because you get to read all of the weekend newspapers. There’s a massive one on a Saturday, and an even massiver one on Sunday. And so, I’ve been reading them as fast as I can, and I still haven’t even finished Saturday’s articles (It’s now Monday.) But here are some of the more amusing/interesting/irritating things I found:

You know how Jamie Oliver has been on a campaign to get school children eating better food? Well, he has. And some columnist was being really rude and snarky and he was annoyed at how people think he’s a saint, so he said that “The whole nation bent down and collectively gave Jamie Oliver a blow job.” Tee! Although, I’m still trying to figure out how that would be possible. And what about all the men? They wouldn’t want to be seen as gay. And what about people who live far away? And children? Do they have to participate?

Another woman, who writes as a columnist in the “Style” magazine was cheerfully explaining how she went to the ATM and she has insufficient funds in her bank account, and she was all like “Whoops! Even though I have a well-paid job, and I’m 46, I’m just soooooooo bad with money! I’m glad my boyfriend can give me some!” I mean, come on. Only in England are women proud of the fact that they don’t know how to save. It wasn’t even like she was a broke student- she was a professional. And she was going on about her love of pedicures in “Pale Pink” and that’s why she has no money. So this silly bint gets a job writing a column every week and getting paid (Maybe they should just burn her salary in front of her each week, instead of actually giving it to her) and I’ve got friends struggling to make 14 pounds a week go far. Cow.

Apparently, Prince Charles is very fussy about his eggs, and when he orders boiled eggs in the morning, the staff bring out 7 or 8 so that he can decide which egg is more perfectly cooked to his specifications. And people are laughing at him, and I’m like “So what? It’s only eggs! He’s going to be King! He’s allowed to do this; give the remainder to the chickens or something. It’s not like he’s asking the Church to rewrite itself because he fancies the kitchen maid or something *cough*. Henry VII *cough*.” When I’m Queen of the world, I’m going to go and buy shoes, and then have a series of midgets walking around in them to break them in, so that they’re really comfy by the time I get to them.

I just wish they would all die

2006-09-24T20:39:00.000+01:00

< This would be, like, porn, to English people.
> And this would be anathema to them. Did I spell that right? If only my mother was here to check my spelling.

OK, I've just had it with English people and their narcissism when it comes to saving the environment. The last straw was when I went to the shops this afternoon. Uni starts tomorrow, so the shops were full of students, and the only people I could see who had their own bag, was me and the MATH. EVERYONE was taking plastic bags, and for the most minute amounts of shopping, like a chocolate bar and an apple. The shop assistants don't ask if you want a bag, and indeed, this morning I popped around to the corner shops to get the newspaper. It was raining, as per ususal in England, and I had my umbrella, but the shop guy tried to put my paper into a plastic bag. When I very politely said "No thanks, I don't need a bag, you stupid twat" He looked at me like I was on crack and said, increduously, "But it's raining! It will get wet!" I was like, "Way to go there Einstein. Even though I live 10 metres from this shop, and even though I'm carrying an umbrella, I tend to fling my newspaper around with gay abandon, therefore subjecting it to WETNESS. I'd better have a plastic bag to ensure that my flinging is damp-free." Idiot.
And it's probably not a very sexy thing to blog about, but tough, because it's my blog and I can write about whatever I want. I just feel that not using plastic bags is quite possibly the easiest thing you can do to have a huge, positive effect on the environment. At the moment, everyone's full of it about Climate Change, and whilst getting rid of your car is not always a viable option, using a freaking re-usable bag is!! In Australia we all took our own bags, and even in Hong Kong, where people are like "Environment? What's that? Oh, who cares, let's go shopping, there's a sale at Prada!", people in shops now ask you if you want a bag, and Supermarkets are slowly starting to think about putting a tax on plastic bags.
But in England? The people who live, and consume, in this country, are, on the most part, stupid. They can't even plead ignorance, they're just stupid.
See, if I was hot, I'd go to Supermarkets, and I'd be all like "Hi! I don't want a bag. Check out my cleavage. By the way, I'm really hot and I reuse my bags." But, because I'm not hot, I just look like this weird freak who takes her hessian sack wherever she goes.* England, more than any country I've been to, doesn't care about the environment. It is a nation of consumers who are arrogant, ignorant, and self-absorbed.
I would rant more, but I don't know how to say what I've said without repeating myself. Also, I've drunk most of a bottle of wine, so I'm not very coherent. Although, I am full of rage. Always full of rage.

* Just for the record, it is not a Hessian sack, but a rather tasteful Green bag (In both senses of the word)

Why work in an Office when you can do this??

2006-09-20T14:03:00.000+01:00

...Because you can NEVER have too many pictures of people in Banana suits

When you're unemployed, strange things happen to your brain. Forget grand dreams of being a ballerina, or an astronaut, you get to the point where you're so desperate that you will take anything. Between me and some of my unemployed friends, we have found the following jobs:

Helping to promote perfume at a party by standing there naked and covered in said perfume, whilst guests walk into the party blindfolded and smell you. If I was one of those models, I'd want to staple those blindfolds to their heads to make damn sure they weren't seeing no wobbly bits.
Dressing up in a banana suit and (Direct Quote from job application) "Running around, hollering, having fun, letting go and basically acting crazy!" to promote a new juice bar in central London.
Painting people's houses dressed in a "Revealing, yet non-erotic costume".
Volunteering to be part of medicinal trials because, oh I don't know, you'd really like a third eyeball.
Dressing up in pink and lime green spandex and standing on stilts in the Leeds town centre handing out brochures for new nightclubs.
Being a female wrestler, albeit one who is comfortable wrestling in a bikini.
Being a "Lice Assassin" and go around to Primary School curing children and their families of the problem that is Head Lice.
Being a model for an acupuncture training video and be (Again, direct quote) "Immortalised in the acupuncture world."

Hmm, that banana suit job is starting to look pretty good.

TeeHee, Bento is a funny word

2006-09-20T12:45:00.000+01:00

It's yummy yummy bento-ness!!!

I haven't posted recently because I had nothing to hate, but hallelujah for friends who have too much time on their hands! Portia sent me the link for a website, although I did think it was going to be footage of her meeting Jamie Oliver. That would be cool. What she sent me instead was the website of quite possibly the funniest movie ever. Seriously, the MATH and I are sitting here in our pyjamas obsessively watching it in case any pearls of wisdom jump out at us.

Basically, this website, www.bentotv.com, is a website with a new video every day dedicated to the art of Bento. Which, as far as I understand, are those Japanese lunchboxes you can get with a little bit of rice, sushi, vegetables all compartmentalised. When I was in Japan, we took the bullet train and bought these bento boxes, but because I don't like fish, they managed to replace my tuna sushi with, like, fries. Well, last I checked, fries were not an essential part of Japanese cuisine, but maybe the big sandwich board I was wearing that said "I Don't like Fish!" kind of gave it away.

Anyway, bentotv.com is the funniest thing I have seen in a long while. This girl, Sarah, as I believe her name is, will give you all sorts of handy tips on how to make bento, how to make various foods, or, if you're really lucky, she will explain the ins and outs of taking a lid off a Bento box. Seriously, she's so literal; she starts off instructions with "Take off the lid of your soy sauce". I for one am glad that she told me that, because sometimes I try and pour my soy sauce without taking the lid off, and it's just a disaster, I tell you, a disaster.

There are handy tips on the size of your bento box, such as "If you like to eat more food in your bento, buy a bugger bento box!" along with the always helpful, "You can put a bento strap around your bento box so that your bento won't fall out and get mixed up with all the pencil shavings at the bottom of your school bag."

So, if you feel that your life is missing out on yummy bento-ness, then check out Bento TV. That's right. Monday to Friday, direct to your living room, via some American school girl who probably went to Japan once and is now one of those annoying people who thinks they're all but Japanese because they went to Tokyo Disneyland once.

Some more hatred of mine

2006-09-11T18:26:00.000+01:00

There are some authors that I really, really hate. And unfortunately, I had to read most of them for university. Here is a list of some of them:

Emily Bronte
Oh wah, wah, so you never found a husband. Just shut up about it. If your idea of a love story is to have people scampering over hills abusing each other, then I'm glad you didn't get married. Your "love story to end all love stories" is just a stupid piece of crap that I had to waste a week of my life reading.
Worst Novel: Wuthering "Crappy" Heights

Virginia Woolf
Sweetheart, there is a fine line between describing stuff in detail, and writing books that are so stupefyingly boring that I want to pull my arm off and chew it. Yeah, so it's a garden party put on by stupid villagers looking into ponds and having affairs and looking at clouds or something. I don't care! I could have put on my own village fete in the time it took me to plough through this tripe.
Worst Novel: Between the Acts

Philippa Gregory
If you write a crappy love story, setting it 400 years ago doesn't make it any better.
Worst Novel: The Constant Princess. Poor Katherine of Aragon didn't deserve such a terrible book written about her. Yes, we get it. SHE WAS AN INFANTA.

Milan Kundera
I once had to go to a lecture about this book, and I just sat there trying to harm myself with the blunt end of my notebook. Not really. But you get the idea. Kundera is a really, really, boring writer, and all his writing seems to be like "Hey! Life sucks! Buy my book!"
Worst Novel: The Unbearable lightness of being. Yep. Unbearable is about right.

Dan Brown
Oooooh, that man. Leaving the whole religion thing apart, he's just not a very good writer. Really. I love how his characters seem to always conincidentally know what to do next. "Help! We're in a car driving through Paris! I don't have a drivers licence!" "Don't worry, I used to be a world-championship formula 1 racer, and look! Here's a street map of Paris I wrote on a matchbox when I happened to be having dinner with the Dali Lama!" "And, did you know, that it's nearly the end of the Chapter, so something important is going to have to happen so we can have a cliffhanger!" "Watch out! It's a................"
Next Chapter:
"Watch out! It's a traffic light."
Worst Novel: I can't remember the name of the book that I disliked. What's the name again? Anyone?

That's all the hate for today. I'll try and dredge up some more soon!

Some Haiku I have written for my friends

2006-09-11T12:50:00.000+01:00

Miss Grenada:
You are exotic.
But one thing does bother me:
Where is Grenada?

Boxcar:
You are a maths dude
But you do Model Theory.
So it's OK, then.

The Donkey:
You are so so big
Really, really, really big.
What is your secret?

Miss Frizzle:
Your hair is curly.
You like authors that I don't.
Why is life so cruel?

Mimi:
You are a woman
So we can do woman stuff'
Like hair, movies, drink.

Portia:
If I ever get
Caught breaking the law badly,
Will you defend me?

Professah Vanessah:
We are both jobless.
But you can speak Korean
So you are cooler.

Randomisation

2006-09-07T09:29:00.000+01:00

Some questions that I would like answers to:

With paramedics, does the man/woman who is driving the ambulance also know how to do medical stuff? If so, those would be some hard core driving lessons. “Mirror, brake, indicator, and here’s how to crack a chest open!”

You know when you’re at the post office and you give them the letter, and then they weigh it, and then they give you a stamp? Well, I never know whether to take BACK the letter, with said stamp, and put it in the mailbox myself or whether to leave it with them and they’ll put it in the box. But somehow I just don’t trust them to do it. Am I a control freak?

Apparently, there are loads of rubber bands on the ground in England, but I have never noticed them because if you look down at the ground when you’re walking around, you tend to bump into light posts.

In October, I am going to both Amsterdam and Florida. Consequently, I will be too broke to do anything when I’m there, so I guess I’ll have to sleep in the airport and eat faeces.

Waterstones has a “Buy 3 books and get the cheapest free” deal which is just EVIL. Because I always tend to find 2 books that I really want, and then I have to run around trying to find a third book, and I tend to buy something that I don’t really want to read, and then it’s just false economy.

I have imaginary conversations with prospective employers when I’m in the shower. And I’m REALLY impressive. I’d hire me!

I’m going to Oxford tomorrow, and I wonder if it will be fun, or if nothing will happen and I’ll just be bored and fall out of a punting boat.

And yes, I know that technically most of these aren't questions.

Teaching can be fun, or it can make you want to harm yourself

2006-09-05T20:33:00.000+01:00

These are my babies.

Oh my gosh, I am so so sick of doing my TEFL course. I really, really wish that I could send them an email that said:

"Dear Mr TEFL Certification man,
I have been an English teacher for 6 years. In that time, I've had a little boy flash his penis at me, had to help 2 year olds make fairy bread, had a chair thrown at me and organised a play of "The Princess and the Pea" in a class with no girls and the boys fighting constantly over who had to play the princess. I think I am qualified enough to be a teacher. SO GO AWAY.
Love, Me."

Speaking of teaching, here is a list of names of Students that I have taught. Miss Frizzle lived with me in Hong Kong for 6 months, so some student names are hers as well:

1. Strawberry
2. Chicken Wing
3. Lost
4. Raisin
5. Pussy
6. Andrea. For a BOY
7. Einstein
8. Koala
9. Tiger
10. Witty (Hey, I like it! Adjectives as names! Very cool)
11. Joyous. And she really, really was.
12. Queenie
13. Sydney
14. Mozart
15. Bobo Chan
16. Bobo Wong
17. Shita. The only way I can think of to pronounce that is very rude.
18. Ice Cream
19. Elvis
20. Speculum
21. Alien

OK, I admit it, those last three aren't students. They are McDonalds workers. More random thoughts tomorrow! Yippee!

oh Prague, you are full of Czech people

2006-09-02T13:04:00.000+01:00

So, anyway, I went to Prague, and it was fantastic! Lots of good things to see, and I had a great time. Now that I'm back, I thought that I would post an abbreviated version of my Praguian adventures.

Tuesday:
Wake up very early in Leeds, with a list of things to do that I lovingly prepared the night before. On the list: Some important things (pack toothbrush, look up address of Hostel); some not-so-important things (pack makeup) and some plain old random things (Must decide how many socks I'm going to take, even though I can't wear socks with my Birkenstocks, but then maybe when I go into a restaurant I can take off my shoes and put my socks on, in case my feet are cold. But how many times is this going to happen?? AUGH)

Take a bus to Leeds Bradford airport, which is actually rather small and cute. It's efficient and clean, and it was very full of people taking flights.

Get on plane. We were sitting next to some woman who seemed nice, and just read the paper, but we were sitting behind a family who had 2 girls, and they just screamed most of the flight. The mum was a bit of an idiot; she didn't know how to keep them under control, and dad had a look on his face which said "Damn, I hate my family." The girls' names were Scarlett and Sophia, which are nice names, but together? I hate it when families try and give everybody names starting with the same letters. Like "Hi! We're the Smith family! I'm Sam, this is Sally, and here are our kids, Susan and Steven! We sound like we belong in a cartoon!" I hate people like that.

Arrived in Prague, and very quickly got into town. Thanks to my extraordinary map-reading skills, we found the hostel very quickly. It was kind of weird. It was in the basement of an apartment building, so it really did feel like you were living in a cellar. It was fairly clean, but there was quite a variety of interesting animal life (Read: massive spiders as big as my hand lurking in corners. I swear, the spiders of the world are ganging up on me. I think that they must have some underground social club, where meetings go like this: "Ugg, where have you been recently?" "Well, Speee, I've been hanging out in Leeds, at avacarrdo's house. It's great! She freaks out, and then you get to hang around in corners so that she'll see you every time she gets out of bed to go to the toilet. Don't forget to puff up as big as you can to really make her scared! I hear she's off to Prague next week. Shall we send Lurr to her hostel to greet her upon arrival?" "Sounds like a plan.")

Then we walked around Prague, and saw that the National Museum was having a concert. So we went in, and sat on the steps and listened to a chamber music ensemble play some popular classics. It was nice, and then we went to sleep. Well, obviously, we didn't go to sleep in the museum. That would be stupid.

Wednesday
Today we did a lot of things, including looking at the astronomical clock in the old town square, but it only does it's special, magic thing, on the hour, and it was about 10 minutes to 11, and we could have waited for 10 minutes to see the clock do special things, but instead we got some ice-cream. We went to a massive art gallery, and spent 2 hours looking at paintings that weren't that impressive, until we got to the Frenchies, and then it was great. I really like Pisarro, but Picasso not so much.

That night, we had dinner at an Afghan restaurant, which almost felt surreal; sitting in an Afghan restaurant, being served by a Czech man, and communicating in Pidgin English. It felt like a Monty Python sketch. And, also, you're not supposed to drink the tap water in the Czech Republic, because its full of Kryptonite or something like that, so I was pretty much dehydrated the whole time, because I refuse to pay money for a bottle of water with my dinner.

Thursday
Today we saw the Opera! We saw "Turandot" but Puccini, which was finished in, like 1926! I didn't realise that it was written so recently. Anyway, the storyline goes like this:

Once upon a time, there was a Princess in China called Turandot. I have issues with this name, because it is not a Chinese name. No indeed. "Alien" in a Chinese name. "Strawberry" is a Chinese name. "A Little Bit" is a Chinese name. But "Turandot"? No. Anyway, Turandot is a bit of a bitch, and if people want to marry her, then they have to answer three riddles. Nobody ever does, so all these suitors get put to death. Then this other guy turns up and is all like "Wow. She's hot. I'd do her." So Turandot poses him the riddles, and he guesses correctly! Happiness and Sunshine! Turandot is mad. So the guy says, "OK, if you can guess my name before dawn, then you don't have to marry me."

Turandot makes everyone scurry around trying to find out his name. It's kind of like Rumplestiltskin in China. There's some slave girl who gets tortured and kills herself; sorry if that's a bad description, but I can't be bothered writing anymore about her. Anyway, in the end, the man tells Turandot his name (It is Kalan), and she decides that she does love him, after all. And they live Happily Ever After!
It was a pretty good production; a bit rough around the edges, but enjoyable nonetheless.

Friday
We came back to Leeds. Goodbye scary Czech spiders! Goodbye Prague! I will come back again one day armed with a big can of Bug Spray.

A list of random-isation

2006-08-28T15:16:00.000+01:00

At the moment, I have waaaay to many bits of small change floating around, so I have taken to paying for things in 1p coins. I think the people at the corner shop actually hate me.
Last night there was a Spider in my lingerie cupboard, and so I lay awake until 5 am freaking out about it.
Consequently, I am very, very tired today.
Sometimes I leave the house and I'm not too sure whether or not I'm wearing pants.
I made brownies last night, and put them on the bottom of the oven, and now the bottom of the brownies are all burnt. Seriously, it's like eating charcoal. I have thus wasted the price of three eggs, 2 blocks of chocolate, 250grams of both flour and brown sugar and a pinch of baking powder on these disgusting brownies from hell.
I have so far thought of 47 ways that my holiday in Prague could get ruined.
No, wait, 48 ways.
I may have to relinquish my moniker of "Domestic Goddess" to someone who can make brownies properly. Any takers?
I went down the street today and bought some contact lens solution, but it came with a contact lens cleaning case. I now have approximately 84 contact lens cases.
How much money do you think I can make by selling 84 contact lens cases on Ebay?

Must leave my rambling there, as I have a ton of things to do before we're off to Prague tomorrow! I'll send out emails to my friends (Actually, I probably won't, but let's say for arguements' sake that I will), and if there are any random people reading this, then I'll put a short list of highlights here as well.

The Papadum's Big Adventure

2006-08-26T17:52:00.000+01:00

So last night, I went out with some mathematicians. And a guy who studies drama therapy for people who are mentally ill. I don't know his name, but he was from Norway. He had cool hair that kind of loked like dreadlocks, BUT (And this is the amazing part), it wasn't!

>This is a picture of curry. This is not what I ate last night. Gee! This curry has got fish in it. If I ate that, I'd probably die. Or at least puff up most unattractively. Thanks for caring about my health, you idiots.<

Here is what went down:

7:00- Meet people on the steps in front of the University. The one other girl (Out of a group of 12 of us!) has been on holiday for three weeks. She immediately notices that I got my hair dyed. I've been living with the MATH 24/7 and he only asked me yesterday "Have you done something different to your hair??"
7:20- We wait for the slowcoaches to turn up. Honestly, considering that they're maths dudes, and, oh, I don't know, work with numbers all day they'd be able to figure out what time we're meeting, and get there on time. My cleavage attracts great attention.
8:00- I'd forgotten how much fun it can be when 12 people go to an Indian restaurant, and order food. Half of us are non Native-English speakers, and none of us are Native Indian Speakers, so when we order there is a lot of chaos. I order my Chicken Tikka Massala. mmmmmmm. Chicken.
8:20- The food arrives, and the poor waiter is yelling out stuff like "Balti Rice with Prawn Korma! I said, BALTI RICE WITH PRAWN KORMA!" Everyone else is still talking maths. Perhaps they won't know if I just accept all their food on their behalf. mmmmm. Balti Rice.
8:23- Great confusion as everybody tries to remember what they ordered.
8:30-9:00- Eating. Yes, there is a seven-minute gap between getting our food and eating it. I do this for hightened dramatic effect when I write about it in my blog.
9:00- I discover my neighbour really enjoyed the "Unbearable Lightness of Being". I direct him to talk to the MATH. They're so smart.
9:05- Twiddle my fork.
9:06- Drop my fork.
9:07- Discover that among guys it is entirely legitimate to fill in a coversational gap with the phrase "So, Fred, what do you think is the Opimum breast size?"
9:10-9:20- Debate about porn.
9:20- Figure out how to split the bill. For God's sake, these people are maths dudes! I pay seven pounds. In coins. Because my wallet is really heavy with coins in it.
9:30- Pub. Drink much. Realise that there is no joke in such bad taste that men will not a) Laugh at it. b) Tell it. Spend most of the night shifting my seats as to get away from the majority of the smokers. Ask everyone about Prague. Nobody's been to Prague, but apparantly it's quite good. It better live up to expectations, otherwise I will be mad. Go to toilet. Oooh, toilet is carpeted! I find this a weird English habit. You know when you go to visit somebody's house, and their bathroom is carpeted, and it just feels a little bit odd? Well, that's how I feel. Odd. Am also possibly drunk. Go on an ultimately futile search for toilet paper.
12:30- Thanks to licencing laws, the pub is now shut, and we are still sitting outside it. Somebody suggests lying in a gutter. Quite possibly this is my suggestion.
12:35- Riddles. Now we have to tell riddles. And not the sort of "A man is walking across a field in Springtime. He comes across 2 lumps of coal and a carrot. Why are they there?" riddles. No, these are hard Maths-type riddles, and I don't care how many pills you have to cut in half in order not to die. Even the people who don't speak English very well understand more about this riddle than me.
1:30- Fall asleep.

All in all, it was a fun night. I don't know how to end this entry. So I'm just going to stop.

I have a Tiara....I must be engaged!

2006-08-23T19:08:00.000+01:00

There's this ad on TV that I really, really hate.

It starts off at a "hen's night", but really, it doesn't look anything like a hen's night. There's this fairly unattractive (OK, butt-ugly) bride-to-be, who is hanging with her girlfriends, in what appears to be a shoe shop, or maybe a warehouse. Or maybe just a big, well-lit box. Anyway, her friends are so much hotter than her, and she is wearing a tiara thingy, which just makes her look like an idiot. I'm sure if you're actually getting married, then you want to wear a tiara (Do all men have to go to Tiffany's to buy the ring, and then say "Ooh, wait, I also have to pick up a cheap, tacky-ass tiara so that my girlfriend can wear it with her friends"?) Imagine if every time an engaged girl went out with her friends, she had to wear a tiara. God, tiaras are so stupid. I hate them.

Anyway, the friends are all hotter than she is. I thought that this was against bridal etiquette, I mean, aren't you supposed to make friends with ugly people, so that you'll look fantastic on your Wedding Day? So anyway. There's this ugly girl with hot friends. She is engaged. She has a tiara.

AND THEN, the most annoying woman ever comes onto my screen. Seriously, she's so annoying I just want to put on my special superpower tiara, and ram the sharp edge of it right into her eye sockets. And she comes bursting into the room in a burst of crapness and shrills "Jane! These lovely ladies have nominated you as a bride-to-be whose still a Wax Virgin!" And the hilarious thing is that she creeps up on them, and scares the hell out of them, and they all look really shocked and kind of pissed off. I mean, if I were sitting in some kind of room, and some weird creepy lady came up to me and started berating me loudly about my method of hair removal, I think I'm punch her. But they don't. And I am sad. And I'm sitting there being all shocked and confused, and thinking, "What exactly is a wax virgin? Someone who hasn't had sex with wax?" And then I think "Gee, this woman looks really sad, how lucky for her that she has found a Wax Virgin to harass." Actually, this woman never looks sad. She kind of looks like someone shoved a battery up her ass, and so she just keeps buzzing and buzzing. Apologies for the crudeness, but I must emote.

Anyway, Jane's friend, in a betrayal that falls just short of the time that Hitler promised not to engage in any military agression against any other country, especially the countries containing Jews whatsoever, cross my heart and hope to die, admits that Jane always shaves. Jane is mad. See Jane mad. Mad, Mad, Mad. Battery woman just looks shocked, and explains that waxing lasts for up to 4 weeks! And then, in a bit of mathematical genius-ness so intense that the MATH like an idiot, says that four weeks will cover her wedding, her honeymoon, and.....even longer! But what if Jane's wedding lasted four weeks, like those Indian Celebrations? Then she's have stubbly legs for the Honeymoon. And what if her honeymoon is 4 weeks? Then her hair-free legs will not last for even longer! Battery woman has some explaining to do.

Anyway, so stupid tiara-Jane gets to wax her legs. With Veet Wax. Which is actually rather good, I have to say. Battery woman, and all her friends start chanting "Smooth down, hold down, pull off!" Perhaps they're high. Then Jane rubs her leg, which looks suspiciously smooth and pale and says "So Smooth!" Now, you're only supposed to wax your legs if the hair is long. Like, "I can plait it if you like!" long. So how did battery woman know that Jane's leg hair was long enough to wax? Perhaps she sleeps in Jane's bathroom, and keeps a written diary. Jane's fiance is an idiot.

And then, the best part of the ad, battery woman says "You'll be fighting him off!" While making little punching gestures in the air. WTF??? She's marrying the guy! Why would she want to fight him off? Is he a rapist?? Has he been involved in Domestic Abuse? I think Jane should consider very carefully whether or not she wants to go through with the wedding. Indeed, Veet commercials have their dark side, and should be viewed with caution.

Battery woman ends with the line 'Wax Virgins, lose it or lose out." And I think I'm about to lose my lunch.

Because I am a sad loser, I actually went to the Veet Website. You can actually watch the ad. Go to http://www.veet.co.uk/waxvirgins.shtml down the bottom, there are four little movies. This one is the bottom left. Oh, it's not a shoe shop. It's a bar. It looks like a crap bar. I would not wish to have my Hen's night there. No Way. Oh God. There's three more advertisements! She goes across the country terrorising all these women. Watch the videos. I'm going to go and kill myself.

And in other news, the bus driver yelled at me today, and I didn't finish the crossword.

Happy Happy Joy Joy life of Anne Frank!

2006-08-22T18:59:00.000+01:00

Today's Random Thoughts are dedicated to The Donkey. He would like me to inform all those lucky ladies out there that he is:
a) Single,
b) Desperate, and
c) Hung like a baboon.

Ha! Not really, that's not true. He's not desperate.

I'm looking at the website for "Innocent" smoothies right now. Wouldn't it be cool if there was a way you could taste drinks, etc. over the internet? Kind of like scratch and sniff? In fact, I wish that they had scratch and sniff on the internet as well. Or maybe you could experience what things feel like to touch. Because then if you were buying some fabric online you could feel it and then you'd know what you were paying for.
I have a fantastic T-Shirt that I bought in Hong Kong, and it's got "Chinglish" writing all over it, which is hilarious, and it says things like "Happy is my dog. Go wide!" But the problem is that the writing is on the front of my T-shirt, exactly where my boobs are. So if I want people to laugh at my t-shirt, in effect, I have to invite them to check out my rack.
I have a friend called Spanish Tom. He once had a Spanish girlfriend and therefore thinks that anything remotely Spanish is wonderful (no word yet on whether the ex-girlfriend is also wonderful by default of her being Spanish) We once spent the whole afternoon sitting outside and he was saying things like "She's hot. But the girls are hotter in Barcelona. That's a nice piece of pavement. But the pavement is better in Madrid. That's a really nice English person. But English people are cooler in Spain." It's kinda annoying. But he is a really nice guy. He sends me text messages in Spanish.
You know when you're really hungry, and you want to make dinner, but you don't want to eat dinner quite so early so you promise yourself you'll eat dinner at 8:30, not 7:00, so instead you eat some ice-cream? Yeah, I did that.
I have four one-pound coins in front of me, and they all have something different on them. No, you idiot, on the other side. The Queen is always on a pound coin. Although, having said that, I've just noticed that on all of the coins, the Queen looks slightly different. Aha! She's ageing! Isn't that nice? If you become a monarch, you get to have your ageing process embossed onto the Nation's money.
When I become Queen of the world, I'm going to have the MATH's face on coins instead of mine. Because he's prettier than me.
If I was going to turn this blog into a book, what would it be called? What would it be about?
Sometimes when I'm pretending to write a newspaper article, I have to remember the "Who? What? Where? Why? When?" rule of reportage. So then I have to mutter "whowhatwherewhywhen" under my breath and I worry that people think I'm crazy.
I once had a Chinese name, but I've forgotten it now.
I think that Gwen Stefani was marginally cooler when she was in No Doubt.
There's been controversy over here in England because apparantly the Pakistani cricket team were accused of tampering with the ball during some testing match or something. How do you tamper with a cricket ball? And then I found my answer in the Guardian. Apparantly you can eat sweets, and then expel your sticky, slightly sweet saliva all over the cricket ball which changes its mid-air trajectory. That's disgusting.
I like reading Jasper Fforde's books because if you haven't read the classics then you don't understand them.
Don't you just love the bit in the Simpsons where Homer's hippy mum is singing "How many roads must a man walk down, before you can call him a man?" and Homer says "five!" And then Lisa says "Dad, it's a rhetorical question" and then Homer says "oh. Six!"???
The Guardian crossword today was really, really hard and I would like my money back please, Mr. Guardian newspaper man.
I'm going to go now. OK? OK.

A thought full of Mondays

2006-08-21T18:32:00.000+01:00

Today it is raining. Rain is nice. I like rain, except for when I'm in it. Hong Kong rain is warm. England rain is cold. Who knew there could be so much variation in rain?

I tried to write a letter to my 3 year old cousin yesterday. It's really hard writing to a three year old. The only three-year-olds I know are my ex-students who are Chinese and called things like Flatulence. Or Chicken Wing.

When Chicken Wing goes through puberty, is she going to change her name to Chicken Breast?

I went to the flower shop and bought some sunflowers. I'm looking at them now, and I wonder if Monet was alive today, would he like to paint them?

Working in a flower shop is cool, except for, have you ever had flowers for so long that they seem to die and collapse, and then they smell like rotting plant? Do you think flower shops smell like that all the time?

Currently I am obsessing about the following things:

Why does Eva Longoria look so good in photos, but so, SO BAD in real life?
When you press "random play" on your iPod, do you think the songs are really played randomly, or does the MP3 player have a secret order to play them in, like skipping every 6 songs?
Is it wrong that I'm addicted to "Hope and Faith"?
What exactly IS computability theory?
Where can I find more songs by Texas?
Am I asking too many questions?
When I see people walking back from the supermarket carrying toilet paper, I snigger and imagine to myself that they have diarrhoea. But today Somerfield was having a special-12 toilet rolls for the price of 9! (And quilted, too!) Do you think the people who saw me walking home think that I have diarrhoea? Maybe they think I live in a house with lots of other people. Maybe they think I have a big family, and I can only afford to buy toilet paper when it's on special. Do you think I should chase down all the people in their cars and explain to them the real reason for my excess of toilet paper?
All primary school corridors smell like wilted lettuce sandwiches.
Jobs. And lack of jobs.
Did I mention jobs?
The fact that I promised the MATH that I would go for a run each day while he's at a conference. But it's raining right now, so I can't go for a run. Do you think that eating chocolate is an appropriate action given the circumstances?
The fact that my mum is going to read this, and then send me an email highlighting all of my spelling/grammar mistakes.
You know sometimes you write something funny, and then laugh at how funny you are?
I have never laughed out loud at anything I've written.
Professah Vanessah and I once wrote a romance novel. It was brilliant. How about we hit the publicity trail next week with it?
I have three friends who I had Pizza and Wine with. (let me clarify, I do have more than three friends in the world.) They are Portia-our future lawyer, who will not sleep in Hessian Sacks because it's insulting to people who actually do have to sleep in Hessian Sacks; Miss Frizzle, who sleeps with a copy of the 'Middlemarch' video under her pillow, and Professah Vanessah who had the nicest flat out of all of us.
Does anybody know anything about Prague?

I am obsessing about the above things.

On a slightly less obsessive note, I am on my own for the next 3 days, so I have decided to clean our flat. I haven't actually done it, but I've decided to do it.

AND, I was OUTRAGED when I went to the library today, and they told me that you have to pay 2 quid per DVD if you want to take them out. I thought the point of a library is that they are free. What next, a pay-per-word charge??

I have almost learnt the lyrics of Billy Joel's "We didn't start the fire" off by heart.

Writing random thoughts is alot more fun then I thought it was.

Sadly, I did not manage to complete the Guardian Crossword today. I shall prevail, I tell you, I SHALL PREVAIL!!

Neurotic Airlines

2006-08-17T22:16:00.000+01:00

2 Planes diverted in the last day. I would really like to know why. The Virgin Blue flight apparantly received a threat "from the Philippines". That's vague. Very vague. And on the flight from LHR to Washington, a 60 year-old woman was under suspucion for (allegedly) having hand cream, matches and a screwdriver on her person. I really didn't know that 60 year old women were considered a security threat, but maybe that's why I'm not a high-ranking government "Security" consultant. According to a United Spokesman, there were no connections to terrorist activity. You don't say! It seems now that if you cause any sort of 'altercation' on board a plane, you'll get diverted, and probably arrested. Maybe she just suffered from chronically dry hands, was worried about getting locked in the bathrooms (hence the screwdriver), and kept a pet slug in the matchbox. I had a pet slug when I was 6, but it crawled off the leaf and my parents wouldn't let me take it home with me.

Airliners are getting neurotic about safety now, and I don't know what I think about it. It seems that every time airline safety is compromised, they put safety proceedures into effect that belong to the "too little, too late" school of thought. I don't know if banning liquids is really going to stop terrorists. If they're determined to blow an airliner up, then they're going to find a way.

My dad is an airline pilot, and he and his colleagues share the same point of view. If "they" want to kill people on a plane, then stopping people bringing hair gel on board is not going to do a damn bit of good. It's best to be fatalistic about this stuff. But the prospect of getting searched at the gate when I go to Florida in November will be fun. I hope I can bring a book. An intellectual book! (See post below).

Also, as a Staff traveller, this is going to make flying a lot more stresful. I mean, the check-in staff make you wait until the last second, before they release seats to staff. And I've done my fair share of running through airports in order to make it to the plane on time. But what am I going to do now? If they give me a ticket and tell me I have 20 minutes to get to the plane, how am I supposed to speed up my luggage/body cavity search at customs? Start yelling "I'm not a terrorist, I'm just staff!" at the customs men? I hope Cathay gives out guidelines, because otherwise I'm screwed. Hopefully, though, everyone will be scared off flying, and I'll actually get a seat! That would be nice...

Just a bit of light reading

2006-08-16T14:14:00.000+01:00

She put her book in the windowsill so that all the world could see how intelligent she was.

Today's entry is inspired by my friend Portia. She wants me to talk about the dreadful habit that some people have of buying "Intelligent" books for the sole purpose of putting them on the shelves to look clever.

I have to say, I am partly guilty of this myself. I do buy books intending to read them, because it's a waste of money buying books you're not going to read. If you're going to do that, then why not spend the money on something else? But there is a huge gap between buying the book intending to read it, and actually reading it. I should know.

For example: I saw the Oscars this year. I know that Philip Seymour Hoffman won for "Capote". It looks like a good movie. I should really watch it. I was in Notting Hill the other day, in a bookshop. I bought "In Cold Blood". I felt really smug and intelligent.

Unfortunately, it's still sitting on my window sill. That's right. WINDOW SILL. I unpacked it from my bag over a week ago, and put it on the windowsill, meaning to read it. I haven't read it.
And it's not like I'm never going to read it; I just have to be in the right frame of mind to read something deep and hard-hitting, and that's the problem with reading "Intelligent" literature, I think. You have to be in the right mood to read books like this, and then you can (Well, I can) rip through them in a day and a half.

This is my confession: For me, the "right" mood to read intelligent literature is when there are other people around who would be impressed. It's awful, I know, but if I'm going to be going on a long train ride, or take a plane somewhere, I'll pack my most responsible-looking, highbrow book so that people will look and think "Wow. She's clever. And Hot." And, of course, there is a whole art to how you can hold the book so that others around you can read the title of your book but without it seeming like you purposely hold it that way.

Everyone else is probably really unimpressed by it, but the nasty little sprite inside me is giggling gleefully when I nochalantly open my well-thumbed copy of 'Anna Karenina'. (Note: If your expensive edition of great literature is not well, thumbed, then you may have to cheat by remembering to spend 5 minutes every day opening pages at random; maybe giving it to a small child to chew on, and folding down the corners of random pages in order to make it seem like you've read it a million times before 'And it's such a bad habit I have, but I simply love this book so much, I couldn't tear my eyes away from it for 2 seconds to reach for a bookmark! Actually, I was reading this book when I gave birth to my son. Look! Here's a bit of placenta on page 57!')

So, in conclusion, I'm a snob, and if you see me in Waterstone's looking at a posh book, thump me over the head with it, and send me packing to the Detective Fiction. I'll be as happy as a pig in mud.

Comments and questions welcome. What do you do with your great works of literature??

Wasteful

2006-08-14T15:14:00.000+01:00

You know what else I hate? The number of people here in England who don't recycle their plastic bags, or use re-useable ones. Just went to the supermarket with my trusty Green bag, which makes me lok HOT and noticed that the people in front of me and behind me in the queues all paid for their things and then popped them into a plastic bag. Seriously, is it that hard to remember to bring your own bag to the Supermarket? The few people I did notice who had their own bags were older people, and good for them!
It's the 30-something crowd who must be spending all their money on oversized sunglasses (In Yesterday's Sunday Times, they are retailing for 129 pounds. That's right: A HUNDRED AND TWENTY-NINE POUNDS for a pair of sunglasses) And that is the reson that they cannot afford to buy a funky bag to carry home 2 tins of soup and a chocolate bag. Yes, the woman who was behind me today, I noticed how little you bought but still grabbed a plastic bag. You are stupid and wasteful. Go fall down a hole into a landfill and become choked by all the plastic bags already lying there.

Humph

Coffee in a Glass? Please Explain.

2006-08-08T19:06:00.000+01:00

I haven't written in this for a while, mostly because I could never think of anything worth saying. But I've just been in London for a week with my friend, who I shall call Miss Grenada who mentioned that I should "Create a blog or something so you can complain about things." So that's what I shall do; take this opportunity to rant about things that annoy me.

First up: Coffee in a glass. I haven't really noticed whether this is prevalent in England, considering that I don't drink coffee, but in Melbourne, if you order a Latte (Which is just wanker talk for "coffee with milk") it comes out to you in a teensy tiny little water glass. Let me repeat: Water Glass. WATER GLASS. Now, is it just me, or is this the most bizarre thing imaginable? It's so wrong, on so many levels.

Firstly, coffee is hot. Glass is a "uniform amorphous solid material" (Thank you Wikipedia) which means that when you have hot coffee in a glass and then you try and pick up the glass the glass is hot, and then you burn your hands, and then you can't drink your coffee until the coffee gets cold, and by then the coffee smells like crap and you don't want to drink it anymore. You have therefore wasted the price of a cup of coffee which you could have instead given to a homeless person, unless they want to use the money to buy drugs, in which case you can give the homeless person some food and give the money to your friends, or save it up and buy a really nice skirt. Although you'd kinda have to buy a lot of coffees in glasses to afford a skirt.

Proper coffee cups are made of (and probably in) China, and have handles. So that you don't burn yourself on the coffee cup, which I think makes a lot more sense. And you can get some really pretty coffee cups too, so I don't see why cafes have to be so damn stupid.

The MATH (Man About The House) was recently in Italy, where they drink a lot of coffee, and he says that they use cups with handles. So if the Italians can do it like that and look so much cooler than the rest of us, why do us poor Australians and Brits have to sit there scalding our hands on the same kind of glass cups that you get if you buy some Nutella, eat it, soak it in hot water to remove the label (the jar, not the Nutella itself, you weirdo) and then use the glass to serve coffee in.

And also, if you drink coffee from a glass, you just look like a bit of an idiot.

As I type, the MATH is making a coffee so that I can take a photo of it, and drink it. Although, because I don't like coffee it will sit there and get cold until he yells at me for making him make a coffee that I wasn't even going to drink.

What do you think of the photo? Sure, it looks good, but it's still coffee served in a FRICKING GLASS.

I think I've said "coffee" way too much.

Beginnings

2005-11-01T00:55:00.000Z

I can't believe I'm doing this. Emotional Striptease indeed. However, I suppose writing to an audience (however nameless and faceless) is better than writing...nothing. Hm, thoughts. Thoughts indeed. I never have any thoughts sitting in front of a computer. Something about a blinking carrot that cries "Use me! Use me! I'm getting bored just sitting here and blinking on and off! Type something you no-good talentless hack writer!" which puts me off, surprisingly enough.

So I'm going to try and write in this often enough and see if it gets me writing more. If only I had something good to write then I could start writing my own things. It's hard to be inspired to write when you feel that every idea that pops into your head is just an idea that you read, saw on the side of a tram, etc. I'm sure originality is a problem that many writers suffer from, except for writers such as Salman Rushdie who come up with such bizarre scenarios that nobody in their right mind would have thought of it. So let's see where this goes.

Till next time.