Australia Day Awesomeness

Soooo.... Australia Day Awesomeness. I promised it, and I shall deliver. I may have been a little bit misleading by calling it that – I don’t mean that I will necessarily deliver awesomeness myself, but I will definitely deliver something about the Australia day awesomeness that I was involved in.


I like to think of myself as quietly patriotic, much like most Aussies. That truly is the Australian way – we love our country so much; but the part we love the most is the laid back attitude, so our patriotism is usually conveyed without moving from the lounge room sofa. Australia Day is generally celebrated as such, mostly involving sitting in the sun all day doing as little as possible while enjoying the things we like to consider the truly Aussie traditions.

We’re only a very young country, so our traditions aren’t quite steeped in history the way traditions of other countries are. Our traditions mostly involve relaxing and enjoying life. BBQ’s, beer drinking, backyard cricket and the hottest 100 form the basis of our Australia Day celebrations and that’s exactly the way I spent my day - minus the cricket, of course. I think I’ve well and truly made my thoughts on sport & exercise in general known by now.


After debating what radio station to listen to, I did end up listening to the Triple J hottest 100 after all. My best friend came around and we sat outside in the sun, listening to the countdown and drinking beer. I chose to drink Crown Lager, because it seemed fitting to drink a beer that was originally only available to visiting dignitaries but after being released to the public has been embraced in truly Australian fashion by being given a good Aussie nickname. So I drank ‘Crownies’ all day.

The countdown was followed by an awesome Paul Kelly tribute concert, which apparently was filmed/recorded back in November of last year somewhere here in Melbourne. It’s a shame because if I’d known about it I definitely would have gone along. I’m not a massive fan of Paul Kelly as such; I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to go to a Paul Kelly concert, but he is an amazing songwriter and hearing some of his songs performed by other artists was pretty cool. There are a few that really need to be sung in his very unique voice, but it was otherwise a great show.

We rounded out the day by watching Aussie Comedian Carl Barron on the Comedy channel. I just about wet myself laughing, which is much better than the traditional ‘wet-yourself-from-drinking-too-much’ that can generally follow an Australia Day celebration.



So that was my Australia day awesomeness. I’ll end by sharing some highlights of my day - the number one song in the hottest 100 countdown, one of my favourite performances from the Paul Kelly Tribute and a bit of Carl Barron.

Happy (belated) Australia Day everyone!

Instead of Awesomeness

I like to try to keep my blogging relatively upbeat when I can, but today has been one hell of a bad day so far. I was going to blog about the awesomeness of Australia Day, but instead I'm spending the day thinking about the fact that I'm pretty sure I'll be resigning from my job very shortly.


I joke quite often about spending a lot of time slacking off at work, but the truth is, I really do work my arse off - the nature of my job just means that it all comes in random spurts, so I'm often idle between tasks.

Today has been kind of a culmination of a lot of crap that has gone on over the last year that basically makes it seem like my boss considers my hard work to be reasonably worthless.


So I'm feeling pretty low right now. Australia Day awesomeness will have to wait until tomorrow.

Australia Day 2010

It’s the Monday morning before a public holiday, and because of the fact that I’ve run out of annual leave, I’m pretty much the only person in Australia who’s working. So I’m using that time wisely to do things like update my blog, and surf the web. So I guess I’m working just about as hard as everyone else. Ah well, it’s the Australian way.


Tomorrow is Australia Day, which really means we get the day off to have a BBQ and listen to one of the myriad of music choices available on the day. The big one is the Triple J Hottest 100 which is counted down every year on Australia Day. Triple J is Australia’s big alternative music station, and I hold a kind of secret hatred for it because much like Mac users, Triple J listeners are interminably smug. They are over the top anti-commercial-radio, which annoys the hell out of me, because every comment they make seems as though it’s designed to put you down for daring to listen to anything else.

It’s a shame really, because they play a lot of good music, but the attitude of the average Triple J listener really puts me off. My best friend is a Triple J listener and she complained nonstop when she had to stop listening to the countdown in order to go out to a hen’s night drink-a-thon that she wasn’t even paying for!


Anyway, enough of my ranting about Triple J. The other radio stations are all doing best of Australian music countdowns, which I’m looking forward to because there is a hell of a lot of awesome Australian music that, as demonstrated in my previous posts, I mostly had no idea was Aussie.

So I suggest that even if you don’t live in Australia, you should spend tomorrow cooking some lamb chops on the BBQ, drinking beer and listening to some good, Aussie music.

The greatest addition to a car in automotive history

Some people might call this statement silly or frivolous, but I’m going to go way out there and state that I think that the cup holder is possibly the greatest addition to the car in automotive history.

I know that car buffs around the world will argue with this and say that things like the automatic transmission or fuel injection are much more impressive, but I disagree. You can drive a car without an automatic transmission. You can drive a car with a carburettor if you don’t have fuel injection. But you absolutely cannot drive a car if you’re holding two large cokes or two scalding hot cups of coffee.

In my opinion, the person who thought to first include cup holders in the car was a truly great thinker.

Having said that, I’ve since discovered that in some countries (well, mainly just the US but I was trying not to point any fingers) cup holders are installed in buses and trains. Now that’s just lazy. Unless you don’t have a seat, in which case – genius. It's a fine line.

Back at it

I’m back at a work and already it feels like I never even had a holiday. It doesn’t take long to slip back into all the old habits –singing out loud on the way to work, 5 hour long meetings with no point, too many cups of coffee and secretly wearing my slippers under the desk where no one can see my feet.

The only thing that felt any different yesterday on my first day back was that I was a little more relaxed than on a regular working day. It took me most of my 3 and a half weeks of holiday to wind down and by the time I did, it was time to go back to work.

That relaxed feeling has been obliterated now from being thrown headlong back into pointless tasks by my doddering boss. I feel as though I spend a great deal of time humouring him and his crazy ideas while trying to get my real work done. It’s like some movie where the multi-million dollar corporation is owned by the crazy old timer in the wheelchair and they nod and smile at him while some sleazy manager is making all the real decisions behind his back. Although that would make me the sleazy manager, so maybe it’s not like that at all, since I’m not a manager and I’m reasonably sure I’m not sleazy.

Actually I shouldn’t be saying all of this, because if there’s one thing those sorts of movies teach you, it’s that the sleazy manager always gets his come-uppance.

So.....Work is fine. My boss is wonderful.
Really.

The Confrontation...sort of

I’m furious with myself, because no matter how angry I am at someone, I can’t bring myself to let them know that I am and last night was a perfect example.


We went to an engagement party for the sister of the girl who I wanted to punch. I said that I’m not usually the sort of person who wants to physically hurt someone and that was the truth, which is why last night I decided on a non violent strategy for dealing with the evening.

So I got myself all dressed up and looking fantastic. I swore that I wouldn’t hit her, because that would kind of ruin the party for everyone, so I said that I would just ignore her, and if she tried to talk to me, I would tell her in no uncertain terms where she could stick it. And if she tried to talk to KJ, I would be even more nasty about it.

Did it work? No! Because for some ridiculous reason I can’t bring myself to be mean to someone like that! If someone talks to me, I can’t tell them to go to hell, because some stupid sense of decency or something that is ingrained in my brain says that I shouldn’t do it. So I’m totally and absolutely disgusted with myself, because not only was I not mean to her, I was polite and friendly! Argh! I couldn’t do it! She spoke to me, and my brain somehow overpowered my feelings of hatred and I responded as if I didn’t want to kick her in the head, which is not the case.


It’s always been like this for me. No matter how badly anyone has ever treated me, I can’t bring myself to be just as horrible back. It sucks. In high school there was a girl who was so completely and utterly cruel to me that I can’t even imagine what was going on in her head. I had so many opportunities to just give it right back to her, but I couldn’t. And if I ever did, even a little bit, the guilt would eat away at me. I think there’s something wrong with my conscience. It’s way too aware and in control of my actions.

It’s not like this girl doesn’t deserve it. She’s absolutely got it coming to her, so why can’t I tell her how I feel without feeling guilty about it? I’m so disappointed in myself.

Nice Night

It’s nearly 11:30pm and the temperature here is sitting at around 36 degrees. Stepping outside it’s a lot like a very nice summer’s day, except that trying to frolic in the sunshine leaves you with a high probability of ending up with a broken bone of some sort, because it’s pitch black outside.

When the weather is like this, it seems like a waste to sleep. I feel like I need to go out and do something, only I’m at a loss for what I should do. I’m thinking maybe it would be a good night to go out and take some photos, but I don’t have a tripod and it’s a little hard to take photos in the dark without one.

It’s nights like this that I miss being closer to the city. I would love to be able to step outside and stroll around knowing that things would be open and there would be things to do. Instead I live in the outer suburbs, where the only thing open at this time of night is the local pub, which is full of bogans.

Really, I’m like two different people stuffed into one body. On one hand, I’m the lazy homebody who likes nothing better than to sit down with a good book and do absolutely nothing for hours and hours on end. On the other hand, I’m also this person who longs for something more fun to do – to go out and wander the city, being caught up in the constant movement of it all. I want to live near a whole heap of cool bars that I can just walk to whenever I feel the urge. Here, I have 2 pubs within walking distance, but they’re the kind that are full of old men with only half their teeth who spend their evenings drinking cheap beer and betting on dog races.

I’m sure there must be some compromise between the two. Maybe I need to wander around the streets with a book while drinking beer. Not sure how well that would work. Maybe I’ll give it a go. It’s such a nice night, after all...

Too hot

It's disgustingly, stiflingly hot today. 43 degrees and completely cloudless. The second you step out into the sun you can feel your skin start to sear. So I'm stuck inside with nothing to do but read books I've already read a hundred times or to watch tv for hours on end. It's even too hot to sit at my computer in the study where the aircon won't reach, so I'm writing this letter by letter on my iPod.

At least I've managed to kill a bit of time... How do people live in climates that are like this all the time?!?

Painting and Stuff

It’s been a long week. Despite the incredibly high temperatures, I’ve been working hard to paint the lounge/dining room and entry to the house in aid of preparing to get rid of our hideous brown 70’s shag pile carpet. I’ve worked solidly from 8am til 7pm for the last 3 days and I’m almost done and incredibly over it all. I'm also a little high from the paint fumes.

The guy who owned the house before us decided that he was too lazy to paint the ceiling white, so for the last 3 years we’ve lived with an entirely beige house. The only highlight to the beige was a lovely floral wallpaper border that he thought might ‘brighten the place up’! (Insert vomiting motion here).

Luckily, I have a super secret talent – I am an incredibly gifted house painter. If I was bitten by a radioactive spider or something tomorrow, my new super power would be the ability to paint walls quickly and incredibly well. It might be a dull super power by comparison to say, Superman, but it’s dead useful and requires no spandex whatsoever. Wearing my undies on the outside is also purely optional.
So it’s been a long and yet oddly uneventful week up until now.



I know I’m being slack about posting lately, but I’ll be back in the swing of things soon. I have one more week of holidays and then I’m chained to my desk again – so expect more in the not too distant future.

2010: The Year of the Mini Age Freak-Out

2010 is the year of the early mid-life crisis. Well maybe not, but it’s the year of some kind of personal crisis, and I’m not really sure what I should call it.

It has suddenly struck me that I’m getting older because I’ve reached that terrifying age where I have to decide about having kids before my body is too old for the whole process.

I’ve spent a lot of time avoiding having to make this decision. When I was very little and knew nothing about life (and in particular men) I always imagined that by 27 I would be happily married and have one, maybe two kids. Then I got a bit older, started to notice boys and had some contact with babies – and I decided that procreation was not for me. That’s pretty much how I’ve continued to feel right up until now.

When my sister in law (who is 2 years younger than me) got pregnant with her 3rd child last year, I began to think about the whole thing and weigh it up. I decided it might not be THAT bad. But still, I wasn’t ready. And now 2010 is here and I’ve realise that if I leave it a whole lot longer, I might not have any say in the matter.

So for me, 2010 is the year of the mini age freak-out. It’s crap to have to make these kinds of choices just because I’m getting older, especially since I’m a person who is too lazy for serious decision-making.
Surely there’s some way to just hold off on the whole getting older thing just for a while. How the hell do people decide stuff like this?

I Like Mondays

Mondays are a beautiful thing when you have the week off and the temperature is going to be mid 30’s every day!