So this morning, I was shuffling around getting ready for work and it's been quite muggy lately so I had the fan on.
I stopped for a second (to stare into space I think) when all of a sudden the fan fell off its perch. split out of its cage and proceeded to continue whirring about 5cm away from my toe.
5cm more and my fourth piggy would have been shark food.
I sat down (far away), really relieved that I wasn't spending my morning in the hospital.
--
So I went with my boss to a meeting close to home today and when we finished we both headed home in our respective directions.
When I got back to home comp, I was greeted with this image.
That's my building (I can wave to you from my window on the other side), that's a crane on fire and that crane is about to topple over into construction.
So they closed off the road, evacuated the building and sent everyone home. Lucky, lucky, lucky that no-one was hurt because it doesn't look like it from the photo but that crane is extraordinarily close to some windows (there must have been quite a few people wetting their pants from the view. Or maybe they were already halfway down the stairs at that point)
--
I will be extra careful today and not go outside and not tempt fate (also not turn on anything which is likely to kill me)
My cousin Matty looked at this photo today and said "Mush, this is awful. You look fifteen. It looks like one of those Japanese .... (trails off) magazines!"
I didn't ask him what magazines he was referring to but I am taking the fifteen year old thing on board as a compliment. Please everyone tell me that I look fifteen and I will do my best to accentuate with graphic tees and coloured converses.
Which leads me to..
I interviewed a lady the other day (and I cannot believe I'm calling her a lady, but that's what she is.) She is just a few months older than me and she is just so poised and unlikely to spill coffee down her white top or sit on yoghurt on the bus (you know, I don't think she even takes buses). She doesn't eat muffins, she always wears heels (without slouching) and standing near her I kind of feel like Pig Pen trailing after a very clean Linus. I've had two meetings with her and each time I've felt like there's a tumbleweed of garbage following me.
But you know here's what I figure (other than if I don't see her for a long, long time I'll be really relieved): I am who I am, I wear scuffed shoes. My hair will never be 100% neat, I'm goofy, I make really bad puns, I sing to myself in public and that's fine. Reaching towards the looming 3-0 is about fundamental accepting who I am and if that means I'm not a person who can wear a pristine white blazer then so be it!
Which brings me to..
My mouse broke at work the other day so I had to run to Kmart and buy myself a new one. My choices were the navy blue, silver and hot pink. I picked up the hot pink and made my way back to the office.
When I got back, my boss turned around and said "What did you get?"
I showed her the mouse, she laughed and said "That's so you! It's such a mush mouse!"
I was never the kind of person that had to have my morning cup of coffee, I have family members who say that if they don't get their dosage, they get headaches, they feel sick, the world comes off its axis when then go without. It just doesn't seem like a fun place to be.
Anyway I kicked my coffee habit a while ago, and this morning I was like 'why the hell not?' I had two back-to-back meetings- what could be wrong with two coffees in a row?
I met someone who said they used to have 15 coffees a day and now they're allergic to caffeine (True story. Maybe.)
That was at 11, and now it's four in the afternoon and I'm still struggling with heelarious heart palpitations.
So here we go, recorded for posterity. I. am. old. and drinking too much caffeine in one sitting is threatening to kill me.
If you don't hear from me in more than two months time, it's because my heart spazzed out and I'm playing the harp in the Holy Diner in the sky.
So I had had a long day and I was sitting outside on the ferry on my way home. It was a cloudy and overcast and I was pissy and feeling sorry for myself and I was tempted to bury my head in my hands and have a good weep.
That was when I noticed that sitting 2m away from me, there was a young guy imperceptibly crying, reading a text on his phone.
There was just two of us on this bench in the blasting wind, getting teary. It was like the ferry seating of doom.
I was going to write something about difficult it is to be friends with a republican. But then I shelved it in favour of this.
So if your mouse doesn't work and you can't click the link, basically the story is of a Chinese lady who decided to donate a portion of her liver to her ailing ex-husband to save his life.
And because China only allows donation from spouses and blood relatives... they then had to get remarried.
Good for her. There are some really selfless people in the world who will gladly donate body parts to their exes.
But you know if I put my hands behind my head, leaned back on my chair and thought about it, I don't think I would.
I think that if you're my ex and you've buggered off into the ether and then returned to ask me for my liver. I would briefly admire you for your sheer brazenness but I would still show you where the door is (it's over there!). Seriously, I don't think any of my exes deserve my liver.
On the other hand, you know if I came to a grisly end under a bus (erk) and my 'donations' could save someone, I don't really care where it goes, as long as a) you leave my eyes alone and b) it's not going to a notorious serial killer/paedophile/dictator. So exes, if you're reading this, you may help yourself when I'm dead.
Which brings me to.. doesn't the liver regenerate anyway? Or is that just a Greek myth?
So what would I give my exes (when I'm feeling kind and generous and not bitter)?
There are boundaries everywhere: I would offer them a chip if I was holding a packet of chips.
I would not shout for coffee.
If they were homeless, they would most certainly not be sleeping on my couch but I would gladly point them towards Airbnb.
I wouldn't lend any of them anymore books because frankly no-one ever returns them (and I pet hate it to death) and who knows if they would disappear into the ether again with my book??
But then if they asked for money, I probably wouldn't begrudge them twenty bucks (hey big spender!)
So in summary: Boys of the past, you may ask me for chips, twenty dollars and directions and that would be about it.
Also if your ex-wife willingly donates you a liver, you might want to think about keeping her.
I thought I would camho to show that I still exist and that my blog hasn't been taken over by the government and that I haven't been run over by a bus- although the photo shows no body so I could very well be a robot or a head on a stick.
I am not going to take a photo of my body so you will just have to take that leap of faith that me is still me.
It's 11:15 at night and waaaay past my bedtime (I am 29 going on 84) but my guilt is keeping me typing.
So very quickly ten thoughts of the last two weeks in no particular order.
- Watching the presidential election map on the NYT cover page was giving me major heartburn. Looking at that middle strip of red made me think that Romney was going to take out the crown. Thank God, he didn't. And when Obama's victory was announced, I had to stop and cry a little.
- I am too lazy to put on nail polish anymore
- There's a mythological Malaysian monster who separates at the neck and flies with her entrails behind her. That isn't scary per se but that is legitimately gross. And I would run simply because I wouldn't want her to flop me with her big intestine.
-Which reminds me. Cabin in the Woods is a great movie. I spent a lot of time afterwards counting monsters on my fingers. Good times.
- George Lucas doesn't look like a greedy guy but his actions sure make him seem that way. I think you have enough money George.
-I had always thought that Brunei was located in the UAE. I was really wrong. Why a sultan then? Aren't sultans specific to the Middle Eastern area? What am I missing?
-If you were one of those kids that tried to make money as a kid, chances are you have that entrepreneurial spirit as an adult. You can't really be a successful entrepreneur without one of those stories about you trying to sell off your baseball card collection for money.
-I am 700% more wary about female colleagues of partners than before. It was only just something that I noticed today - not jealous, just wary. The only way to solve that is to a) date a guy who works in a monastery or b) not date at all. It's seriously easier to lean towards the latter.
-Don't walk your dog in the eye of a hurricane even if he really needs to pee. Let him pee indoors if you have to. If you venture out with your partner (!) and your dog into the middle of a natural disaster then yes, an electrical cord is going to snap and set you on fire, leaving your dog an orphan in a puppy pound.
-Next year, I am going to try for Nanowrimo. I am aware that no amount of eye cream will ever make up for it.
So at least two of my friends have said to me in the last month "I can't look at my Facebook anymore because I can no longer bear to look at everyone getting married."
I am not sure if I'm surrounded by emotionally stunted adult-children or whether I'm selectively ignoring the wedding stuff but none of my close friends (all ten or so or them) are even close to getting married. Not even teetering on the precipice and we're all about to tip on over to the grand 3-0.
The not-so-close friends I have that are married, I'll be honest, are Chinese nationals. They have kids, they have station wagons and they have baggage coming out of the damn wazoo. I say this because I feel that most of them marry less for love but more because they feel that they *are* supposed to and this leads to more problems than it's worth.
I don't know how many times I've sat with one of them or the other and they've asked me if its time yet. Why the heck am i not married? I don't know how to explain to them that tripping to the altar is liable to lead to a broken neck. I just say impatiently "I don't know. I don't want to be" and then they look at me like I just poked myself in the eye on purpose. Borne of love and pity and complete cultural misunderstanding.
So in guessing that none of these friends read my blog. Here are two really fun examples of why you shouldn't get married too damn early (and how I couldn't stop the train from driving off the cliff)
Sailor: got married when she was 25 to her first boyfriend and has been bored out of her mind ever since. Except that she won't admit that she's bored, and because she's been bored, she's been having emotional affairs with other men. One, while she was pregnant with her kid and the other one just last year. She knows this is wrong but she has decided she won't leave her husband because he's a good man and he provides her with a sense of security.
So in this just past affair, she very blatantly hid the fact that she was married with a kid to this oblivious guy. I exasperatedly said "wth lady. What is the point of this? what do you think is going to happen once he discovers that you are married! And you have a little boy! Are you going to leave your husband?" and of course, the answer was no.
I get why she's bored. She's isolated out in the country and her husband is so staid that he won't try pasta (for dinner!) to try something new. But how many affairs can you have before hubby figures it out and then the train falls off the cliff creating a catastrophe?
(Personally, I think she's being subconsciously self destructive but who the heck knows what's really going on in the human brain.)
Mooncake: is not the prettiest girl you've ever seen, so when she got pregnant, at a "marriageable"age to a guy she had been dating for six months. She took the offer, it was a readymade family and he decided to spirit her away to China after the baby was born.
Before she got pregnant, she had said to me that she wasn't even sure that he really loved her. Sound the alarm bells. Before she left, she mentioned she wasn't even sure she wanted to go.
Two years later, she's completely stuck and she doesn't want to be there anymore. She can't get divorced because the family will take the kid away from her (they have money and influence in their home town and custody battles are a cinch) and she's pregnant with another one- which she can't terminate because it's too late.
What can you do? What would you do? He doesn't beat her and he's perfectly nice to her most of the time, but she has really well and truly dug herself into a big hole.
So what is the moral of the story here folks besides a) just because people say you should get married doesn't mean you should and b) it's not just about pretty white dresses- it's a lifetime commitment that you have to seriously think about. It's sounds so stupid and basic and it never occurs to people until they wander into a shitty marriage without properly thinking about it and the ramifications.
(out of pure curiosity, I wonder how the kids of both marriages are going to turn out)
If you ask me where I've been, I'm just going to say I was right here.
I have five different hats on this point and have had no time to dedicate to this blog. You may now commence scolding me on my disloyalty (are we in eight years in now? Jeebus.)
So I have my day job (my super awesome day job), I'm trying to put together a zine, I'm ever so slowly writing a novel, I'm still freelancing and I'm event managing for ND and so if you'd like to imagine how my apartment looks like right now- I don't think it's ever been this messy.
I am complaining and I'm not complaining. I love what I do- I love to write, I love to talk to people and there's been a plethora of cute boys coming by the office to shake my hand of late, but sometimes I want to just go home at 5 o clock, cook a roast chicken and watch back to back episodes of American Gothic/The Tudors/Freaks and Geeks.
And that means that my personal life is taking a backburner in more ways than one. About two months ago, my stepbrother and his partner flew in from Perth and we had all dinner together. They came again just recently and it was mentioned that I hadn't seen my mum the entire time. It was the running joke that they should visit more often so I can attend family dinners. It's not like me hey?
(I called my cousin Hexagirl just then and to multitask as I type this, it turns out that my great-uncle Jim just passed away. I don't think anybody was by his side and it occurs to me that the elders of my family are slowly slipping away. They worry that no-one will go to his funeral. How's that for an Ebenezer Scrooge type wake up call? I asked her what about his friends? won't they be at the funeral? And she said 'He was eighty. He probably had no friends left.' Which is probably true that no-one keeps a full social circle at that age)
My mum keeps telling me to call my dad. I think the whole Julia Gillard father thing has affected her more than she lets on.
--
I'm letting my friendships slide too, and for once I think I'm okay with it. Who knew. Speedy and ND always tell me that I'm good at making friends, that even if I moved overseas and was there by myself, I would have nothing to worry about. I'm bubbly (when I want to be) and I'm good at establishing connections and keeping them there. It made me think about the stability of my friendships over the years, they lapse when I let them lapse. Of course some of them will be there forever like Dylmah and MD, I don't have to talk to them every week but there they are.
I just received a box of makeup in the mail and it was parceled with absurdly large bubble wrap. Which of course made me think of Mexicana and when we took a roll of bubble wrap and ran over it with the car (which today remains one of my favourite memories of all time) and so I just sat there popping this stupid large bubble wrap missing her. How do you like that for morbid sentimentality? It's not as if she's dead or anything, she's just 800km away and I want to talk to her about boys, stupid tv and zombie cannibals.
--
(excerpted from the Gloss. Love that site.)
Ashley: Also, do you just look at the world in terms of who you could be friends with and who you couldn’t? Jennifer: Of course. Don’t you?
Ashley: I do not!
Jennifer: Frankly, I could probably be friends with
anyone who was just really, really nice to me. Like, if Hitler came up
to me and was all “Jennifer, I am such a big fan! I think you are so
pretty and smart and nice. I bought you a goldfish. I like dogs.” I
would probably say, “You know, Hitler, you and I disagree on some
points, but I think I see the real you.”
Ashley: To everyone out there reading along in Gloss
land, she is absolutely fucking serious. I think that can be an
admirable trait, though, because I have really high expectations of
people and become absolutely crushed when they fail to meet them,
whereas you’d be friends with someone forever if they found out your
favorite cookie and baked a batch for you. And then, if that person
killed your family and fucked your dog, you’d be really angry until… well, until they made those cookies again. It’s crazy! You’re like a golden retriever in this way.
--
ND and I went to Melbourne the other day (i.e I went home) and for the first time, I was not feeling it. I do not know why. If that's not home- then where the hell is it? Here's hoping it's just temporary diaspora.
--
And then in an mmmbop you're not there. Signing out.
This seems to be a conversation that I'm having a lot lately.
After watching the two ladies wail on their kids in the station, I had had enough.
Me (to the Ticket Man): There are two ladies beating on their kids. Can you do something?
TM: I am not a policeman!
Me:.... I know you are not a policeman. But someone has to do something. Can you call someone?
TM: What are they doing?
Me: They're hitting their kids!
TM: This is Paris, everyone here hits their kids. Like this. (makes slapping motion)
Me: .......................
TM: Where are you from?
Me: Australia.
TM: And do people not hit their kids in Australia?
Me: Not as far as I can see.
TM: You need to travel more little girl and see the world. Things are different here.
So on my day home sick from work, I decided that it would be a fun idea to sit down (or lay down) and watch the entire season of Girls. Girls, for the uninitiated is a new HBO series which follows four twenty something girls around New York as they navigate love and life (.. If I'm starting to sound like a movie poster, lay off it's midnight and I'm past my bedtime).
Well fun is kind of an overstatement. It was more like a precise instrument delivering kidney kicking torture and I slogged through the entire thing even though I hated it and I hated (almost) everyone in it. (We may need to talk further in another post about masochism, specifically my masochism). So blah blah blah if you've read any of the reviews, you'll know that it's supposed to be 'true to life'. These are supposed to be normal girls in normal apartments wearing normal clothes doing normal things. It's targeted to Gen Y females and we're supposed to love it because we relate.
Firstly and foremostly, I don't understand how anyone can relate to Hannah Horvath (the anti-heroine) because she is just an atrociously annoying human being who has yet to show one damn good quality in ten episodes (maybe optimism?), and I think there were more than a couple of Hannah Horvaths in my high school and they were weird and friendless and kind of mopey and I didn't want to be friends with them then anymore than I want to watch her on my tv now. Sorry, Hannahs of the world, I'm sure you don't want to be friends with me either.
However barring Hannah, there are things that (hooray?) the show got right, which are kind of integral to the Gen Y female experience. Here we go:
At some point, in your living-outside-of-home-experience, your flatmate will snippily ask you for rent. Or maybe you are the flatmate that snippily asks. Anyway, money will change hands snippily.
You will botch up a job interview. Maybe you're super lucky and you're as suave as James Bond in a dress and this has never happened to you, but for the rest of us, it's happened. Probably not as bad as jokily accusing your interviewer of date-rape (Oh, Hannah.) but never talking about it again sounds pretty good.
There's always a boy who plays the I-won't-text-you-back game. You don't need me to tell you to dump him right? Right?
Shredding your friends when they're not around is kind of a given but it doesn't mean that you love them any more or less. It's anti-sisterhood but it's the truth. Girls are prone to taking about each other and sometimes that talking turns to shit talking. And if you tell me that you happen to be the patron saint of friendship and you never ever talk badly about your friends, then I think you're a liar. Or deluded. Maybe both.
Surprise anal. I don't know what it is about guys that think you won't notice them trying to stuff up a meat sausage up your butt. It's your butt, that's a small hole, ergo it's kind of hard to miss what with all the nerve endings.
Public fighting with your boyfriend. Been there, done that.
And then there are things that most people can't relate to (list is long):
Trying to extort your boss for sexual harrassment
Not knowing where your boyfriend lives after dating him for four years.
Marrying a stranger after two weeks. A stranger that tried to have a threesome with you and then yelled at you when wine was spilled on his ten thousand dollar rug (yes, that sentence is as absurd as it sounds)
Masturbating standing up in a public bathroom. Sorry, I get how this works for men, I'm not sure that women do this. I'm not even sure that they can. How do you climax exactly? Do you squat?
Mistaking crack for pot. .... I'm not even going to touch this one.
Spitting on two perfectly nice men having a conversation and then taunting them for fun
And the last last thing before I leave this show and scrub my brain of it forever, I understand it's a really short show (half an hour) and they don't have time to detail all aspects of their hipstery lives but do these girls ever buy groceries or do laundry?? I only ask because I feel like I spend a whole chunk of every damn weekend getting these things done (as does for some reason, Penny from the Big Bang Theory. Random.)
I feel better having vented all that out. Still hate the show.
The men are very very forward and will always size you up down wherever you go. All the cars are small and especially in the cities, all the fenders and bumpers are always cracked. The children are all impeccably dressed. No-one actually eats pizza. Coffee is cheap. Speaking of, cappucino is a breakfast drink. Coke is expensive. The streets of Rome are cobblestone so don't bother to bring a rollie suitcase unless you want it destroyed.
When you have a Madonna and Child painting gazing down at you from above the hotel bed, you are much less likely to feel amorous.
David is disproportionate. But still amazing.
I didn't throw a coin into the Trevi fountain but I do feel like I will be back. I did love Milan.
Sorry for the long silence again, but I've been busy eating my way across Europe.
So just a quick recap. I am alive and about 7kgs heavier, so there's more of me to miss I guess. And I will write a super duper long post when I get back, complete with photos.
If you ask me what I think of 'the continent' right now (and maybe I'll have a more lucid response later), I am hugely and insanely conflicted. I love it. I hate it. When people are nice they can be awesome but a large chunk of them are surly surly assholes. Food is expensive everywhere and yet so so tasty. Clothes are expensive. I'm drinking in my weight in history. It's damn cold (in springtime!). I've seen people beating their kids at train stations but everyone everywhere loves their dogs. Entire sections of Italy need liquid pinesol (omg, don't graffiti in the fucking Duomo! A little respect ey?!) while London could do with some WD40 on .. everything. And maybe invest in some stairs for the paralympians.
I want to stay. I want to go home. I need to learn more. I can't take anymore walking in tourist traps. You'll have to yank this down pillow from my really cold dead hands.
So I was looking for a dress for this upcoming wedding (not mine of course, der) and I was hemming and hawing over whether I should buy the teal or the red dress.
The reason that I was having a Sophie's choice was because if I bought the red then I'd be breaking the wedding guest cardinal rule: don't wear red and upstage the bride, dummy. But the teal just didn't look as good.
So finally I broke down and went to the store and asked the salesgirl for the red dress.
Thanks to my ridiculous indecision they only had a size 8 left and no amount of wishful thinking/pushing and squeezing myself into place was going to induce that zipper up and the only other size 10 was alllllllll the way across Sydney. I was going to have to drive a million kilometres to pick up this stupid red dress.
Another sane person would have just bought the teal and been done with it.
So I hauled myself across space and time and peak hour traffic to acquire said garment, I tried it on again in the dressing room and after all that it just didn't look as good, it looked weird. Go figure.
I bought it anyway because of the said blood, sweat and tears drive and when I got to the carpark I pulled it out again to take a look at it.
It was oddly familiar and as I stared at it some more, I realised that the damn thing was a carbon copy of my mother's dress. Her favourite dress that she wore when I was a teenager. Rather hilariously, I didn't have to run cross country to get at it, I could have just dug around at the bottom of her wardrobe.
Don't fight it, you'll turn into them one day and it'll be beyond you how it actually happened.
Because I wasn't feeling very well this morning, ND suggested for breakfast instead of bacon and eggs, we should go out anf eat something healthier like congee.
I really didn't want to go to the congee place in Chatswood because I'd had prior experiences with them before, namely their appalling servce especially when the boss wasn't around.
But the craving for a thousand egg and pork congee was too great so I acquiesed. I should never make concrete decisions when I'm sick and hungry.
So we got there and shocker, shocker the boss wasn't there so the waitresses all had their best FOF (fuck-off faces) on and we got our food and all was right with the world for a little while.
You know, as long as we weren't interacting with each other.
So after a little while, I get up (sigh) to ask them for the bill and they hand it to us with a total of $19.50, which is not a large amount by Australian standards for two people.
I only had a twenty so I put it down and they take it away (for a really damn long time) when a waitress comes up to clear the table and in between her putting things together, the little tray comes back with 50c from another waitress.
It comes back as a combination of two twenties and a ten, which is what Chinese restaurants do when they really really really want you to tip.
The clearing waitress is eyeing me like a vulture, as if she's never seen a tip before (she probably hadn't) so I was waiting for her to leave before I decided what I wanted to do.
Normally, I don't care about fifty cents ( I really don't) but lately I feel like I'm giving my money away willy-nilly to undeserving people. And should I not take that fifty cents and give it to a busker or a charity instead? On the other hand, what the hell you can't take money with you to the grave- right?
So I was mulling on this, when the vulture cleaner finally left and another waitress (the primary rude one) snatches up the tray with a muttered thanks.
Dude, I haven't even left yet. I looked up at her with puzzlement and said 'Excuse me? I'm still thinking about it.'
She turns to me and says 'What's your problem?'
Politely but firmly, I gesture at the tray in her hand 'I am still thinking about it.' (well not really, you kind of made up my mind for me!)
She bangs down the tray down and storms off mumbling expletives under her breath.
And we leave, coins jangling in my pocket. **
Afterthought:
The thing is, I feel like I am complaining a lot lately about the service of resturants in Chatswood, not just on here but in real life. It's just something I've noticed going on a really steep and fatal decline. Yes, the influx of Asian immigrants into my one-time hood has turned it into a mini Hong Kong, with a dozen Chinese restaurants on every corner and while there are advantages to variety but it's also bringing with it all of these underpaid mainlander waiters/international students who just don't want to be there.
And I get that most sane people would rather be at home on a Sunday afternoon sleeping or playing games than serving me soup. I get it. But I'd rather pay five dollars more in a nice place (in a friendlier suburb) than have to wrangle once more with a resentful waitress who'd rather spit in my food than serve it to me. Who knew the effects of globalisation would trickle into suburban restaurant hospitality.
Anyway, I'm voting with my feet. I won't eat in Chatswood anymore. Do you hear that fwoinky waitresses?! Go find someone else to give your FOF face to. I'm out! (and with that, you will most likely hear less about crap service inrestaurants and more of my regularly scheduled programming. One can hope.)
So I haven't touched this blog for over a month now and so out of my own personal disgrace, I've come back to make it pretty again. Doesn't it look fresher and sparklier and aren't you glad those doinky squares are gone?
I am the mum that forgets to feed her child but buys it a ribbon for its hair instead.
The scene: Outside an Indonesian Restaurant in Randwick Players: St Mary, ND, Mush (myself), Old Con lady
Mush, ND, St Mary: Blah blah blah.. weather.. pancakes... randomised small talk Old Con Lady: (rolls up in walker, is wizened and hunched and about a hundred years old): bus money... bus money.. please bus money (holds out coin purse) Mush, ND, St Mary all look at each other and start patting out pockets for change. St Mary: I have nothing Mush: I'm out ND: I have some money (passes her two dollars)
Old Con lady: (receives the money, looks up, looks down, looks up, looks down) .... two fifty?
ND: (patiently) you have two fifty. There's fifty cents in your coin purse.
Old Con lady: Oh. No? (Visibly deflates. Stands there deflated.)
(The restaurant door opens and a waiter comes out with a big bag of takeway and hangs it on the handle of her walker)
Waiter: Here's your takeaway! (whistles, strolling back inside)
Mush, St Mary and ND: (eye her as they realise they've been conned by a master and that that fifty cents isn't going to be so forthcoming)
Old Con Lady: (surreptiously wheels away to enjoy her food and free transport home)
( I wonder if this title will get any SEO hits. Probably.)
Here's the thing, I am the world's largest doormat when it comes to bad service at restaurants. I am the abused wife that crawls back to the asshole husband- I always give restaurants with bad service another chance.
Maybe it's the optimist in me but I always think that the next time won't be so awful, that it was a once-off, that it'll never happen again! More often than not, I am left gypped and fuming.
It's not like there's a shortage of restaurants in Sydney for me to go to so... don't ask me to explain what's going on in my head really.
Anyway it was late on a public holiday holiday and ND and I were searching for something to eat on the lower north shore, when he announced that he felt like Shanghainese food. There's really only one place that's open that late and I was pretty wary about going back.
I had tried it three times previously and each time there was something rather hilariously comical about just how hard the waiters/waitresses didn't care about anything. Really they should rename it the New Shanghai Restaurant of Apathy. If I don't know better, I would seriously say that the owner has been long dead in the closet in the backroom and the service staff are running the show because I honestly can't believe that any person that really gives a stuff about their business would only hire angry depressed teenagers.
If I didn't mention it before, the restaurant is called New Shanghai and you can find me validated here.
But back to the story, I just looked at ND with wounded eyes and said "Because I love you, I will sacrifice myself and go back to a restaurant where they're going to be rude to us."
He just laughed and said "You're just picky. Don't be so melodramatic." ( I really was not being melodramatic.)
So we sat down with St Mary and of course the same rigamarole ensued of no tea, no food, slow service and plain ol' just being ignored. I probably would have been okay with that (not happy but okay).
Generally as a bunch, we're pretty environmentally conscious. We recycle and switch off our switches at the plug and blah blah blah. The menus in New Shanghai double as placemats, kind of like the ones you used to find at McDonalds. Someone has put them some effort into them and as such we all felt loath in wasting that kind of paper so we put them aside on the table next to us and proceeded to keep talking. The waitress picked them up and tried to hand them back to us (and in all honesty, don't you think keeping us fed and liquified is more important?!) and we gave her a puzzled look and said "it's okay, we don't need it.... you can recycle it?"
This for some reason triggers the inner hulk in her and she flies into a rage. I don't even know how to convey the suddenness or the violence of it.
"YEAAAAAAAGGH!"
She snatches the placemats and crumples them up, slams into the counter and bins them.
We're all left blinking at her. Actually I'm blinking. ND has his jaw agape and St Mary is spluttering "whatthefuck? whatthefuck?"
Well, yeah what the fuck just happened? Why does she hate the green movement so much? And then to look at her, she was just wandering around serenely afterwards as if flying off the handle at customers is an everyday occurence. Bad service is one thing but Jekyll and Hyde-ing it out is another.
Needless to say, we didn't leave a tip and we will never ever go back, not even if those dumplings are awarded a Michelin Bloody Star. Four times and a placemat rage experience is more than enough for me to say goodbye to it forever. If you choose to venture into the Gorgon's lair for food, don't say I didn't warn you.
Ok, so I know people read this blog because I have the stats (and because my darling friends tell me so) but not many people leave me comments and when they do it's often something about viagra for sale or something they've paraphrased from the book of revelations. There are lots of crazies out there.
Once in a while, someone will say something smart about anime or comment on my 'JTT is gay?!' post but all in all as far as discussion goes, it's really quiet in here.
Even though I'm fanatical about SEO at work, I have absolutely none of that on this blog at all. There are no tags, no meta-keywords, no blog circles, and so when people come in from Turkey and Iceland, I often wonder what they typed to get here. (Haha, How did I get here right?)
I logged on today to see that Joel had left me a comment on a post I had written on Photoshop all the way back in 2008. Apparently if you type in Google 'photoshop draw a fucking rectangle', my blog comes up as first. Needless to say, that totally made my day.
That's the kind of internet footprint I want to leave! (Adobe still does frustrate me from time to time)
As the clock struck twelve (AEST of course) while everyone started to gather on the balcony, I followed ND into the bathroom and at 12:01, I stood there aghast as he hurled exorcist-style all over the Happy Wrestler's bathroom.
I have never seen so much intestinal juice in my entire life. It covered the walls, the floors and the sink was full of it.
Normally (normally!) I'm the one holding people's hair as they throw up but even I couldn't step into the swamp of vomit. If you say your love is unconditional, I defy you to try walking through the contents of their stomach. No- wait, I mean on. On the contents of their stomach.
And then he went to collapse on the couch, exhausted and not very kissable (unless of course, regurgitated acid is your kind of thing). I think he might have tracked it on the carpet.
Leaving me leaning in the doorway of one filthy bathroom at 12:06. And who was going to clean it? This is when my Asian martyr complex officially kicked in (do I have one? yes I do.): oh fuck, it's going to have to be me.
And so there I am on my hands and knees mopping up vomit for the next hour mumbling to myself:
There are cleaners out there who will be doing much worse tomorrow morning. There are cleaners out there who will be doing much worse tomorrow morning. Of course, they are doing it for money and I am not. There are cleaners out there who will be doing much worse tomorrow morning.
This is while all my friends do drive-by inspections of the bomb site. Complete with witty and vibrant commentary of 'ew!' and 'Oh my God, I will never get to pee.' Someone tried to get a camera shot in (in which I say, over my dead and disintegrating body.)
A little while later, ND's woken up and is feeling guilty so he decides to help. By pouring water all over the hallway. I look down at the matted carpet, look back up at him, look down on the carpet and I think I am turning a nice puce colour- the colour of a vodka cranberry. He hightails it back to the lounge room before I can kick him like a puppy. And then promptly passes out again.
By 1:15, everything is clean except the sink, which had clogged itself. And at this point, I am this close to bursting into tears at the thought of having to dump my hand in there and scoop stuff out. My hands were made for typing! and manicures! and being pampered! And no chopstick/fork/sparkler/kitchen utensil was making a dent. So in the end, I had to bail the water out with a plastic cup. Which is what people do when their boat is sinking normally I guess.
Eventually it's all done and I go and collapse on the couch, smelling like peaches and cream (you believe me right??). We are both hella exhausted (imagine how our goodbyes went- they were sort of muted) so I take him home, I'm holding bags of something and he's holding a big bowl of pasta.
I swing open the door and I think he's holding the door behind me. He is not. So the door flies back and hits him (in the face) and sends the bowl of pasta flying everywhere.
There's pasta and food all over the floor.
I start to peal in hysterical laughter and then begin to rock backwards and forwards like a mental person. Happy 2012!
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(Of course, then the next day we locked ourselves out with no keys and no mobile phones. It's an extremely auspicious start if I must say so myself.)
Hello, my name is Mush and I have no idea how I got here either. Must be sheer good luck (just kidding, Blogger was the only option beyond Geocities when it first started. I clearly am on the steep side of the technological bell curve.)
I love peanut butter, power ballads, bad jokes and books. I am known to break into dances randomly so don't be alarmed if you bump into me on a street and it looks like I'm having a conniption.
Anyway this is my worded life. I try to come back as often as I can.
