Christmas

Christmas is almost here! I’ve been so busy pining for a holiday lately, that without me even realising it, it suddenly became December. And now there's only a week and a half left until Christmas.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned before how much I adore Christmas. It’s not a religious event for me. It’s not about the birth of Jesus, and it’s most certainly not about a fat man in a red suit sneaking into my house while I sleep and leaving presents.
For me, it’s about family. It’s about getting together with all of the people that I love and having a big meal. It’s about giving gifts to my loved ones to show them that although I don’t always say it, they mean a lot to me and I appreciate them.

But while these are the things that I love about Christmas, sometimes life and the people in it don’t seem to want to work with me on this. Some people seem to feel that Christmas is all about obligation, and whinging about Christmas obligations can just suck the fun right out of it in a matter of moments.

Take, for example my step-sister-in-law. This is only our second Christmas together as a family; and for some reason she felt the need to have a very long and complicated discussion (via facebook) about gift giving and who would be gifting to who and how much we were spending. This was while hinting all the while that she didn't want to buy anyone gifts.
As far as i'm concerned, gift giving does not require pre-meditation. The act of gift giving shouldn't be done with any sort of expectation of reciprocation, and most importantly, gift giving should never be done grudgingly. People seem to forget that there is a reason behind it all that isn't just 'because it's Christams and that's what you do.'


Christmas this year has been further complicated for me by crazy family members.
In every family, there are the ‘strange’ relatives. The unusual ones who are crazy or perpetually angry - or sometimes both.

In my family, we have more than our fair share of these, but most specifically my Uncle and Aunt on my Dad’s side. Some years ago, they moved away from Melbourne to a small town about two and half hours drive away. This wasn’t a problem for Christmas lunches, because after years of jumping from house to house at Christams, we had settled into a routine of having Christmas lunch at my parents place. It's the most centrally located place for all of the family, meaning that everyone has the shortest drive possible to spend Christmas with their family. My Aunt and Uncle knew this when they moved, and each year they drove down to see the family for Christmas.

But as the years progressed, my Aunty and Uncle became more and more withdrawn form the family, until they stopped coming to Christams all together.
Then this year, out of the blue, they decided that they wanted my 83 year old grandmother to spend Christmas with them. Only they didn’t want to make the two and a half hour drive to come and get her. Instead, my other Aunt (also on my dad's side) had to offer to give up her regular family get-together on Christmas day and take my Nanna all the way to spend the day with my crazy relatives. And while it sounds nice that my Nanna gets to see her son and daughter on Christmas day, there's one person that got forgotten in it all. My dad. And it's not a case that the two and a half hour drive is too much when the rest of his family lives here. It's that they didn't even invite him.

So I guess that Christmas isn't about family for everyone.


As well as Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles not being around for Christmas lunch this year, my brother and his wife are in England with their three kids, visiting my sister-in-law's family for the holidays.

So it's going to be a quiet one this year. Instead of 18 of us having lunch together, there will be five. But that's ok, because it's five wonderful family members that I get to spend a whole day with. And I get to spend the evening with my new family-in-law, who despite all the trauma of the gift-giving debate, are great people too.

And for me, that's what really makes Christmas.

Whinge Week: Work

After two days of not being at work, I feel as though I should be more relaxed. But I’m not. Instead I spent all weekend feeling like a hermit because I had no plans and did nothing. And while doing nothing, I had no internet access. So I wasn’t even like a good, internet social hermit. I was just a lonely, sad person with no one to talk to and nothing to do but drink.

Then, after a weekend of wretchedness, Sunday night was spent thinking over and over “I don’t want to go to work tomorrow, I don’t want to go to work tomorrow.” My car ride in to work this morning was spent thinking “Why do I have to go to work today? Why do I have to go to work today?”. When I arrived and sat at my desk it became “Why do I have to be here? Why oh why do I have to be here?”

By the time I had read my morning emails I was so agitated that I had to avoid everyone. I need a holiday damn it!!

I may have mentioned before (repeatedly) that one of the things I hate most about my job is the fact that I am the only female employee. At the best of times this is nothing – it can even be mildly amusing. But when your workload becomes so great that you begin to lost control, working with men is a nightmare. They’re disorganised and stupid and they spend most of the time patting themselves on the back for how well they’re doing, when really they’ve just dumped all of their work on me.

On Friday afternoon, right before work finished, the boss called a meeting. He then proceeded to crack the shits at us for not having done some obscure task that was set a few months ago which had to be put aside because we’ve been so busy and so understaffed. As I am at my wits-end with all the bullshit; and since in the best mood I am strictly no-nonsense; I just yelled right on back at him. And while this is not such an unusual thing, because this is the dynamic we have, it always makes me feel like shit afterwards.

In the last two months I have been yelled at, bitched to, back-stabbed and harassed at work and I am so well and truly done with it all that I just don’t want to be here anymore. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve given as good as I’ve gotten. I’ve yelled at a co-worker or two, whinged about them and left work in a rage. But men and women feel differently about this stuff. And men never seem to see the vast workload which leads to this point. They just gloss over that and put down any bad mood to ‘female troubles’. Well, here is news for you men: my real female trouble is YOU. You’re lazy and ignorant. You’re incapable of multi-tasking and you can’t seem to ever talk about anything except cars. You forget that I’m a woman and joke about how annoying your wives or girlfriends are and some of you take to backstabbing when my work shows up how your work isn’t being done properly.

You suck, male work colleagues. You SUCK.

Whinge Week: Sometimes Life is A Pain in the...

In waiting until everything that you want to whinge about piles up into one giant heap, you end up with the problem of not knowing what you want to whinge about first. I guess, logically it would make sense to start at the very beginning, but I’m not sure that starting at the very beginning will give the full effect of how whinge worth things have been lately.

If I were to start at the very beginning, I would start by moaning about my job. But before I complain about my job and how I have a workload so big that I would need an army of office-serfs to get it done before Christmas, I’m going to whinge about something that affects each and every other crappy thing that has happened lately.


Some time during the last two weeks, I did something strenuous. I know that’s kind of vague, but I can’t recall what exactly I might have done that was strenuous, I only know that one morning, I woke up with a slightly painful twinge in my lower back. I put it down to sleeping in an odd position and tried to ignore it.

The universe, of course, decided that since I was ignoring that twinge, it would ramp things up a little to get my attention. When I woke up the next morning, the twinge had become a sharp stabbing. I got up out of bed so that I could stretch it out. Faster than I could stand up, I found myself on the floor writhing in back spasm-ing agony.

‘Fear not!’ I told myself once the pain had eased a little.’ Your sister is a physiotherapist! You’ll be fine!’. And as a good sister does, she immediately came to my house to work her magic. Half an hour of painful poking and prodding later, my lower back was taped up and I had an ice pack in hand and a belly full of Nurofen. As I headed to bed that night I felt relaxed and I was convinced that by the next day, I would be fine.

I’ve always wondered why people with back pain make out like they’re the most hard-done-by people in the world. Now I have a fair understanding. When I woke the next morning, the pain was excruciating once again, and it stayed that way for quite a while.

For the following week, my back was a constant source of pain. It was fine provided I didn’t try to do silly things like bend, stretch or move in any way; but you really don’t realise how much bending your spine does until it doesn’t want to do it anymore. Even something as simple as coughing becomes a giant pain the...well, in the back.


Now, there is a reason that my stupid back has been my first post during whinge week. This little tale of my back pain woes is something to keep in mind during the rest of whinge week. Because every single crap thing that has happened, every annoying person or irritating moment that I have come across recently – all have been accompanied by a sometimes stabbing, sometimes aching, always agonizing back pain. And when people and things suck, a pain in your back makes it all suck even more.

So to excruciating back pain caused by a mysterious strenuous activity, I say this:
You SUCK, back pain. You suck.

Commence Whinging

With the huge workload I’ve had at my job recently I haven't really found myself with a lot of time for writing, and when I have found time, all that comes to mind is a whinge about how busy I’ve been and how I have no life. I've always tried to stop myself from whinging too much on here, because I figured once I started it would be hard to stop; and if people wanted to hear someone complaining, they wouldn't have escaped to the internet in the first place.

So a few days ago, I finally mustered up the motivation and creativity to write something. It was a glorious little piece about some observations I had made regarding wine drinkers. The writing started slowly, but after a little while the words began to flow and I ended up with a fantastic, tight piece of writing that I was proud to post after my lengthy absence.

Then, as I copied and prepared to paste my writing into blogger, the unthinkable happened. My computer crashed.

Luckily, I am well prepared for such an eventuality. I save my work almost obsessively for just this reason. So I hit the reset button, and waited for windows to reboot. A strange message flashed across the screen, suggesting that I run a check disk. Impatiently, I opted to skip the check. The message disappeared...and the computer restarted. Same message again. This time, feeling slightly more cautious, I chose to run the check disk. The message disappeared...and the computer restarted.

And with that, my wondrous blog post, along with everything else on my PC disappeared into the great and mysterious virtual void.


That moment there; that brief but devastating moment; was the beginning of what seems to be the universe's attempt to make my life very difficult for a while. So many annoying, upsetting and painful things have happened to me in the last few days that I need an outlet for them all. And despite my attempts to keep this blog whinge free, there comes a time when whinge I must.

And so begins my 'Week of Whinge'. For one whole week I’m going to be totally self-indulgent and just write about how bloody annoying everyone and everything is at the moment. And maybe, just maybe, it will help me to feel a bit better.

So read away and feel free to join in by commenting and sharing your own similar experiences; or judge me and call me a grumpy old lady - but if you choose to do the latter, keep it to yourself. For one single week, I intend to complain without feeling guilty, so 'suck it up princess' type comments will be deleted - and then possibly whinged about. Because everyone needs to complain once in a while without fear of being permanently dubbed a 'whinger'.

And that is all I have to say about that. For now.

Let the whinging commence.

Jargon

One of the funniest things about working in the play industry is the terminology. In fact, you often overhear parts of conversation that could easily be mis-understood should your mind be dirty enough to make the connection (and alas, mine is).

Just this morning I overheard this little snippet of conversation between one of our sales guys and a customer:

Sales Guy: Did you check out David’s balls while you were down there?

Customer: Yeah, I had a feel of them, and they’re quite different to mine.

Sales Guy: Oh really?

Customer: Yeah, they were a lot firmer. I would prefer if mine were like that too.

The knowledge that you have to keep a straight face during a conversation like this somehow makes things like toilet humour so much more hilarious than they would otherwise be. And things seem to have a dirtier undertone to them once it becomes inappropriate to laugh. For example, it’s not appropriate to laugh at ball jokes while talking about kids’ playgrounds, yet somehow that only serves to make it funnier.

For the record, it was actually a conversation about a playground ball pit.

Personal Subtitling

No voice? No Worries!

Wouldn’t it be great if people had subtitles? It would save people having to learn new languages. It would also be handy for those times when you’re having trouble understanding what someone is saying. Like Closed Captioning for real life. And if you lost your voice? No worries! Your personal subtitling would spell out everything you were trying to say!
I think it’s a wonderful idea. In fact, I propose that someone invent a device to do just this. I’ve already played my part by coming up with the idea. Surely there’s some brainiac out there with the necessary means to make personal subtitling happen.

On the down side, personal subtitling could land you in a lot of hot water. Like if you accidentally left your subtitling on while whispering to a colleague about what a tool your boss is. Or if you were playing Chinese whispers. And it’s probably not very helpful for people who can’t read. Or are dyslexic. Or for when you’re on the phone to someone you can’t understand.

Still, it would be useful a lot of the time. So I’m offering this invention idea for free. Tossing it out into the world wide web so that some techno boffin (I love that word!) can stumble across it and invent a truly useful piece of technology. I'd be particularly pleased if Apple were to come up with this little knick knack - not because I particularly like Apple products, but because they're the only company who could get away with calling it the 'iUnderstand'.

International Talk Like A Pirate Day 2011

Every year 't comes along, an' every year I miss it on account o' I be too busy not bein' a pirate. But today I’ve done it. Today I’ve made history! I’ve remembered that it’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day, while it still be International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

I thought I’d use this year’s TLAPD t' provide a helpful public service fer them o' ye who find ye’selves spendin' yer TLAPD all on yer lonesome.

Courtesy o’ the official Talk Like a Pirate Day website, I’d like t' share wi' ye the top ten pick up lines ye can use t' try t' score yersef a lass on September the 19th. So now ye can not only talk like a buccanneer, ye can hit on random strangers like one too!

10 . Avast, me proud beauty! Wanna know why my Roger is so Jolly?

9. Have ya ever met a man with a real yardarm?

8. Come on up and see me urchins.

7. Yes, that be a hornpipe in my pocket and I am happy to see you.

6. I'd love to drop anchor in your lagoon.

5. Pardon me, but would ye mind if I fired me cannon through your porthole?

4. How'd you like to scrape the barnacles off of me rudder?

3. Ya know, darlin’, I’m 97 percent chum free.

2. Well blow me down?

And the number one pickup line for use on International Talk Like a Pirate Day is...

1. Prepare to be boarded.


If that wasn't enough Pirate silliness for ye, why not try bloggin' like a Pirate? Or get yerself a Pirate name.
Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day everyone!

Remembering September 11, 2001

It was getting late; just before 11pm, but I couldn’t sleep. Beside me, my boyfriend was already dozing. Restless and bored, I flicked on the TV, turning the volume right down so as not to wake him.

At first I thought I’d flicked onto a movie – the towering inferno or something. Then the text began to roll across the bottom of the screen: ‘Explosion reported at WTC in New York.’ Then moments later ‘Reports confirm a plane has hit the WTC’.

Gobsmacked, I watched as the tower smoked and smouldered. A hundred thoughts flickered through my mind all at once. ‘How could this happen?’ ‘Why was a plane that close to the city?’ ‘What’s going on?'.

Watching the smoke rise from the middle of the tower, worry began to creep over me, and new questions began to form.

‘Why isn’t anyone doing anything? Where are the lights and the sirens? Where are the firemen with their water hoses and their ladders? Why isn’t anyone doing anything?’

I kept asking myself these questions over and over. The tower smouldered and smoked and the world went on as though nothing was happening.

But of course they were there. Of course people were helping. But what could they do? Their hoses and their ladders couldn’t reach the 100th floor of a skyscraper. In my distant view of the towers, I couldn’t see the flurry of activity going on below. I couldn’t hear the noise of sirens and people. Here, thousands of miles away with the sound muted, all I could see was the lonely view of a skyscraper smoking steadily.

I suddenly felt myself flooded with a sense of complete and utter futility. I felt helpless, knowing that I was on the other side of the world, that I could see what was happening clearly - perhaps better than the people caged inside that concrete tower. That here, on the other side of the world, completely removed from the situation, there wasn’t a thing I could do. All I could do was watch.

And that’s what I did.

I watched. And as I watched, a second plane entered the screen. A tiny speck of a plane from the camera's distant point of view.

I watched as it crossed the sky, its destination obvious from the second it appeared. Even so, the surprise that racked me as it smashed into the second tower was jarring.

It was in that instant that my heart sank. In that brief and violent moment that stole the lives of so many people, my world changed. I could feel my heart sink; feel my innate feeling of safety slip away. Not only because I had just witnessed what I knew would be a huge loss of life, but for what I knew this meant. For how our lives were all going to change. Because as soon as that second plane hit, it was obvious that this was no accident. It was obvious that this was intentional. And that could only mean one thing as a result.

War.

There was no way that a country as invested in self-defence as the USA would let this go by without some kind of retaliation; and who would expect them to? If that attack had happened on my own home soil, I know I would have wanted the same thing.

But here on the other side of the world, watching the horror unfold before me, I knew that this meant more than just war for America. It meant war for us. For me. It meant the ANZUS treaty being invoked. It meant more death, more fighting. It meant the end of feeling safe in my own home, in my own country.


Those close to the events may sometimes forget in their grief over the attack on their nation, but on September 11 2001, Al-Qaeda didn’t just launch an attack on the American people. They launched an attack on the free world. They knew what the result of attacking the USA would be. They knew that retaliation would come, and not just from those to whom they had struck a direct blow. They knew they were bringing retaliation from multiple countries upon themselves.

They knew, the same way that I did in the split second when that second plane hit, that this would mean war. And it meant more deaths, not just for other countries, but for their own.

And therein lies the secret to how truly evil these people are. They struck, knowing that it could only heighten the violence around them. Knowing that they weren’t just signing their own death warrants, but those of everyone around them.


All this knowledge hit me in the fleeting moment of the second impact, and it left me feeling breathless. I suddenly felt sick.


As I continued to watch the events unfold on TV, a deep and permanent worry set in – a niggling worry that is still with me to this day.

Disregarding my sleeping boyfriend, I turned the volume up, desperate to hear what was unfolding. The sound woke him and he joined me, unusually silent as we watched.

As reports of a plane hitting The Pentagon flashed across the screen, followed by the collapse of the first tower, it became too much. Distraught, I got out my phone and began to call my family. I needed to know they were ok, to hear in their voices that same concern that was growing in me.

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Ten years is a long time to worry about your safety and the safety of the people you love. Ten years is a long time after an event to still be able to remember it as if it were yesterday. Ten years is a long time to still feel the terror of an attack like what happened on September 11, 2001. Terrorism that can span an entire decade is why that niggling worry deep within me will never ease. Despite the death of Osama Bin Laden, despite increased security around the world. The knowledge that there are people out there capable of things which I could never even conceive of has changed my life forever.

Today, ten years on, I can still feel what I felt that night. Today I remember the terror, the aching sadness. Today that worry that niggles at me has heightened. I worry that this ten year anniversary will mean more attacks. I worry about my friends who are scattered all over the world; my friends and family here at home. I will remember these feelings and I will carry them with me all day and all night, until the sun sets on September 11th all over the world.

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This post is included over at The Neon Lounge on September 11th, 2001: Where Were You?. Head over there and check out a collection of posts from bloggers all around the US about where they were 10 years ago when it all started.

A Phone Call from Last Night

Me: Hello?

Caller: Um……..er…….ah……hi there!

Me: Hi.

Caller: This is John calling from *Insert random company name which I ignored*.

Me: Hi.

Caller: Um….Can you put mummy or daddy on the phone please dear?

Me: Excuse me!?!

Caller: Er…..um…ahhh….oh! Are you the lady of the house?

Me: Ok, bye now.


Now I’m not sure whether to be flattered or offended at having someone think that I was a child.

I also think I missed a golden opportunity for a smart come-back to the ‘Can I talk to your mummy or daddy’ comment. Maybe I could have said “Sure! Have you got a pen? I’ll give you their number.”

Or, “Tell me John, Who’s your daddy?”.

Or I could have just said ‘Sure! Hang on a minute!’ and put the phone down and gone to watch TV.

Sadly, comebacks like this only come to mind after the fact.

Food Memories

Everyone has memories of the foods that they ate during their childhood – the standout dishes prepared by family members that have disappeared from their diet as they’ve grown up. Well, actually, I’m just assuming that everyone has these memories, because I certainly do. And those memories are shared by various members of my family.

For me, the standout dishes from my childhood were all cooked by my grandmother. My mum’s mum was always the standout cook in our family. She was Greek, although she emigrated to Australia from Egypt; and although she didn’t speak English that well, she spoke volumes through her cooking. Baklava, Rum Baba, Avgolemono Soup, Spanakopita, Dolmades and Galaktoboureko amongst other distinctly Mediterranean fare are the strongest food memories of my childhood. I was never one of those children who refused to eat anything without having tried it – I had an adventurous palate for a kid, and I adored these beautiful Greek foods that were rich in flavour.

Sadly, my Grandmother passed away some years ago, and since then the foods of my childhood have slipped from our diet. Like all the best cooks, most of her recipes were stored only in her mind, and while she was here to cook for us, we never thought to learn these secrets from her.

We tried, sometimes, to help with the cooking. But my grandmother was particular in preparation of her food, and you could easily fail basic food preparation while working with her. I can distinctly remember a time when I was around ten years old, helping her to make baklava. She reluctantly let me take charge of the pastry brush, and watched like a hawk while I brushed the sheets of filo pastry with what I thought were copious amounts of butter.

It wasn’t long before the brush had been removed from my hands so that she could slap on copious amounts more butter as though she’d never heard of cholesterol or calories (which she probably hadn’t); filling the places that in her mind she could see needed more. From then on I stepped aside, letting her work her magic. Once the Baklava was finished, my mother then failed dismally at arranging the baklava on the plate in a satisfactory manner. My mum and I laugh about this now, but I see that same level of particular-ness in myself all the time.

It might seem overly anal, but the results of her cooking spoke for themselves.


It’s been quite a few years since my grandmother passed away, and most of these foods have been just a distant memory for me. Then recently, my mum bought me a Greek cookbook which turned out to be the best cookbook that I have ever owned. I made a few of the recipes, and the flavours therein reminded me so much of my grandmothers cooking that I became inspired. My mum booked us into a Greek cooking class which actually turned out to be run by the same woman who had written the cookbook, and after making some fantastic foods there, I became inspired to try to recreate some of my grandmother’s recipes.


Which brings me to where I’m at now. The first place I had to look was in her battered old cookbook. My mum held on to it after her death, knowing that a lot of her recipes were based around the basic ones in this cookbook.
The problem is that the cookbook is in Greek. And it was written in the 1950’s, so it’s slightly out-dated Greek. Well, at least I think it is. I can’t be sure because I don’t actually speak or read Greek. Which makes the whole idea of using my Grandmother’s cookbook to relive my childhood food memories ever so slightly more difficult.

My first attempt at recreating 'Galaktoboureko'

Luckily for me, it’s the 21st century, so I have many and varied tools at my disposal – most crucially, the ability to switch quickly between a Greek and English keyboard on my iPad, and Google translate.

With these two things, I’ve begun the long and arduous process of reading a book that to me, appears to be nothing but a bunch of squiggly lines.

Despite how slow the going is, it’s not been dull because it’s amazing to see the foreign characters appear on the screen and then miraculously appear on the other side of the screen in English. And it’s also been quite amusing to read the garbled translations.

You can’t help but laugh when you find a chapter in the meat section titled “minds” or a recipe tells you to do things like “Dive your fingers into some water” or “Anoint with butter”.

Or when you mistype some characters and end up with translations like “Boiled Husband Soup”.


Translating the recipes is proving to be a painstaking, but incredibly enjoyable experience. And more than allowing me to rediscover some well-loved foods, I feel as though it’s bringing me a little closer to a grandmother who during her life was always ever so slightly distant to me through the language barrier.