Brown. Paper. Bag.

Me, Fry and cigarettes

2011-04-22T14:23:00.004+10:00

We sat in the “Great Court”, surrounded by what we imagined to be sandstone buildings, but in actual fact was merely cladding over ordinary boring standard bricks. There was an element of pride sitting outside the cafe at this great university. Of course we sullied it with our language and our cigarette butts, but that doesn't mean we didn't appreciate how beautiful our surrounds were.

Looking back, I wonder about my fashion choices. I seemed to be going through my slightly slacker phase, having bought a retro 1970s suede jacket and my skater shoes. The rest of the group in some semblance of that same theme. Sneakers, raver shoes, platforms those were footwear styles that defined the late 90s.

So we’d sit in this here called great court and believe ourselves to be full of promise. My arm would be raised with my elbow rested on the back of the chair and a cigarette extended from my fingers. I would follow the cigarette with my eyes as I brought it to my lips. Inhale and exhale, watch the smoke leave my lungs and my lips. I’d gesticulate wildly with the hand holding the cigarette, watching the great arc of light I’d created from the lit, colloquially known, cancer stick.

It’s because I’ve been reading Stephen Fry’s "Fry Chronicles" that this memory has pushed itself to the forefront of my mind. I find Fry pee your pant funny as well as being incredibly brilliantly minded. One of my favourite parts, so far, covers cigarettes and how hard it has been for him to give up the wretched habit.

I can’t really empathise with that bit, as I am not a 100% non-smoker. Well I am as far as any response to a survey would suggest, but I am still a sometimes-when-I’m-drinking smoker. The reason is that I had a love affair with cigarettes, and they were also the essential accessory to my late high school and university years. Smoking now, when I do it, makes me feel young. I forget the wrinkles, the sagging boobs, wide bum and I remember what it was like to be free. It's the next day that I am wracked with guilt and worry about my health.

Cigarettes introduced me to people I would have never met. There’s a smoker’s convenant, and us smokers would huddle in groups outside of buildings making immediate friends with strangers. Cigarettes provide opportunities for people who might be slightly socially awkward. On some level, I probably believed they made me cool. I’m fairly sure that cigarettes helped define me, or my brand, in my own mind.

I was wholly convinced that I smoked to still the dizzying speeds of my mind. Now my brain is so slow that thoughts stumble across my brain like drunken, disoriented old men and they are so rare I am so delighted to see one that I grab onto it with both hands while mentally doing a 'congratulations for still thinking' dance. The little suckers, (ha) were quite powerful in terms of their abilities to make me believe I couldn’t do anything without having a cigarette first.

But again, thankfully I don't smoke all the time anymore. If I had any self control at all, I probably wouldn't smoke at all. Well I do think I have self control until I have a drink...then things start falling apart. From bad food to cigarettes, after booze I am apparently still a teenager at heart.

So when Fry tells his story of addiction, I am amazed that someone as supremely intelligent as him can have such issues. I'd have expected him to be more in control than the rest of us mere mortals. So tomorrow, when I catch up with my uni friends, I am will hopefully not feel quite as guilty as I usually would, because even the likes of Stephen Fry finds it hard to give things up.

Lost in execution

2011-04-10T16:36:00.003+10:00

You would have noticed that my last post departed from the usual style and focused on something other than the first person stuff I’ve been banging on with. I’ll probably do that from time to time as I am so frequently outraged by some numpty or other in the news, I may as well share my opinion with you too! However, today we go back to my usual banging on.

LSH is Canadian. Not sure if I’ve mentioned that before. But he is. And we forgive him for it. That’s a joke, by the way. I truly love that he’s Canadian and a proud Canadian – at that. I am, mostly, a proud English person. I love the country that I’m from. There’s so much about it I find wonderful. Okay, mainly just the awesome access to music, great variety of fashion, great junk food and the pub culture. But there’s something different about the way LSH truly loves being Canadian. He wears Canadian shirts (apparently something they all do, but I am yet to see for myself) loves his Roots (the brand, you dirty minded people) and he love loves ice hockey.

Roots is a ridiculous name for a brand, I admit that. LSH bought me a Roots jumper a few years ago on one of his trips home and it said “Roots Squad”. I wore it to my parents’ place for dinner one evening and told my dad that I was in LSH’s Roots Squad. Only now am I realising how completely awkward that joke was. At the time, LSH went bright red and slid under the table. Not sure if he was embarrassed for himself or for me.

Anyway, occasionally we have some lost in translation moments. For instance, instead of saying orange, he said awnge. Of course he thinks I say oringe. Instead of mirror he says meer. Again, LSH says that I say meeeroor. He says Ceyan wrap for Glad wrap or cling film. He seems to believe that I say porn shop instead of pawn shop (since we don’t actually frequent either establishment, you’d be surprised how much this comes up in conversation). Apparently the difference is that porn, as in buw chicka bup bow, is pronounced porn, whereas pawn, as in second hand, is pronounced pahan.

Occasionally, he’ll add an “A” to the end of sentences. So “let’s have lunch”, becomes “let’s have lunch A”. Oddly, and probably thankfully, for fear of my merciless teasing, he doesn’t say aboot. So, after nearly eight years, I’ve grown accustomed to some of his vernacular and he mine. However, just this very morning, we had one of our “huh” moments.

I was sitting on the couch, eating my porridge, as I do, for breakfast. Our dog loves porridge, and since I have lactose free milk, she is often the happy recipient of my leftovers. So we sat, Ginger, the dog, with her head on my knee looking wistfully into my bowl of porridge, and me tyring to ignore just how cute she is when she wants something.

LSH pipes up with “she only has eyes for the porch.” Now, we don’t actually have a porch in our house, we have a front deck, but no porch. So, I said, thinking he has lost his mind from too much caffeine, and couldn't see the dog such was his hallucination, “but she’s right here, in front of you and in front of me.”

“I know,” he said, “she’s only interested in the porch.”

So now I’m thinking is he calling me a porch. Is he making comment about my thighs? Is my knee a porch? So while, perhaps, he might not say that I’m the size of a house, he would instead say that I’m a front porch?

“What are you talking about?” I said, starting to lose my patience, as I so often wrongly do when I don’t seem to understand something. I have a tendency to think it’s the other person not, as the case may be, my lack of intellectual ability.

“Your breakfast,” he raises his voice, “that” and points to my porridge.

I start laughing, “how on earth can you possibly think that porch is porridge?”

“It’s porch. Porch. How can you not understand that when I say porch I mean porch,” LSH is starting to get frustrated and sharply stabs his finger at my porridge.

“Uhm, because it’s porridge,” I say, slowly, like I'm talking to an idiot. I think I'm being funny so much so that I start to laugh again and a little bit of spit and porridge may have fallen out of my mouth. LSH is trying to be stern but is having one of his Seinfeld moments where his voice raises an octave when he's trying to prove a point and not laugh all at the same time.

“Again, you’re saying paaawreedge. You should just say porch. It’s just like how you can’t seem to phonetically differentiate between pahan (pawn) and porn… ”

Here we go again. Half the fun of our relationship is never really understanding what the other person is saying. Realistically, that’s probably why it works.

And the man said, "Racism is in our DNA"

2011-03-30T20:09:00.001+10:00

Australia’s Race Discrimination minister, Graeme Innes, said, “Racism is an inevitable part of society and it’s almost part of our DNA,” last week when he spoke of a project to improve relations between the police force and Muslim communities.

There were millions of alarms bells clanging loudly in my mind when I heard this new piece. And I have two major concerns.

One. So, racism is almost part of our DNA? What this means is that hate based of ethnicity, race and colour and not personality, are inevitable.

If it’s part of our DNA, we can’t help it or stop it. If racism is as natural as our genetic strengths and weaknesses, then much like we can’t alter our propensity for disease, we also can’t alter our attitudes. Surely this makes programs such as teaching police officers how to interact fairly with the Muslim community, futile – well at least until genetic engineering becomes more commonplace.

We can throw money at anything, doesn’t means it’ll stick. Of course, my more politically astute and sometimes cynical LSH will say that it’s not the result that matters, it’s the perceived intention. If this is the case, the government is winning hand over fist. They have mastered the illusionist's trick – the art of diversion.

Two. If we need a program to help improve the relationships between police and the Muslim community, then I’d imagine we need a program to help police engage and relate to the Aboriginal community due to the overwhelming number of aboriginal deaths noted in police custody.

If we are hell bent on overcoming our genetic predisposition, surely we also need education programs in workplaces, in schools, in restaurants, in shopping malls, in suburban streets, in every single space that humans may inhabit.

However, for a moment, let's believe that racism isn't in our DNA and that it's a choice, why do we need these programs for the police force? Surely, the police, in upholding a least one corner of the moral flat sheet of our society, realise, understand and appreciate the laws protecting citizens from racism and if they don't they should, at the very least, not partake in negative behaviour. However, it seems that, unfortunately, the police force could potentially be one of the most corrupt, both morally and behaviourally, institutions on the planet. If Mr Innes is right and we have racism in our DNA, it would only be natural, literally, for there to be issues and they cannot be fixed.

Since I disagree with Mr Innes and believe that racism is in fact a choice, surely the hiring practices should be more stringent for police force than they are for regular organisational roles. Perhaps attitude to race and ethnicity should be included in the psychological testing. Of course, not all police are corrupt, but as a group, as a mass under the microscope, there appears to be a lot of toxicity. And the toxicity spreads far and wide, initiated by all types of people, into parts of the community and into people's lives causing damage and pain.

For a community that constantly talks about being multicultural and respecting each other's differences, its astonishing that these types of scenarios with these outrageous comments are still commonplace and happen more often than anyone would think.

I love this city...well that one actually.

2011-03-08T21:24:00.000+10:00

We went to Sydney for the weekend and it was amazing. It was my birthday the week prior and the trip really just happened to coincide with that event. While the trip was a much needed getaway, we said it was my birthday celebration.

So last Friday morning, I managed to get onto a plane without hyperventilating and flew to Sydney. Shortly after disembarking we jumped on the underground train and headed into town.

I hadn’t been to Sydney for pleasure for about a year. I’ve been for work a couple of times, but that doesn’t count since all I do is hop into a cab, go to an office, hop into a hotel bedroom to order room service and talking to LSH on the phone.

As I exited the train, the cool Antarctic winds chilled the otherwise scorching 30 degree day. The people moved fast, the city buzzed with life around me. I felt like I was back amongst it again, like I was alive.

I did live in Sydney for a while after I returned from a stint in London, only I hated it then. I thought it a poor cousin to the vastly more interesting, fabulous and fantastic London. I worked for a branch of the company I had worked for in the UK. The people in the satellite office were dramatically different from those in London and we just didn’t click. These people were sour, rude and a little bit wanky. All the while the people in London had been really welcoming and fun. So I left, came back to Brisbane, where I figured I would spend the rest of my days. Now, I’ve been here for so long that going to Sydney seems so appetising, so tantalising and so much like the big smoke that I almost wonder if I now look like a backwater local to the city’s residents

It took a few months to learn the “well ‘ard” face of a Londoner, not sure how long it takes to master the stern, determined face of a Sydney-sider. I am sure I didn’t pick it up over the weekend, although I did try to look pensive with furrowed brows, ducking out from under my sunglasses.

There are so many things to love. I love that there are tourists filling the city, pouring out of every orifice, yet there’s a professional purpose to the city too, people walking officiously about with headset to ear, talking in bullsh*t bingo buzzwords that mean nothing really, except to their own sense of self importance. I love that the city is caressed by brilliant blue water, I love that there’s an enormous bridge that takes my breath away. I love the old dodgy looking opera house that everyone raves about. I love the recently revamped suburbs that were once home to drug dens and prostitutes, but are now filled with incredibly wealthy yet tortured, arty types. I love that things are old and there are architecturally interesting buildings. I even love the merchandising in the stores, I especially love the great expanse of brands, I love the choice. I love the variety of people, products, music, food, sounds and smells. I also love driving out of town for 30 minutes and sitting on a the back deck of our dear friends' house listening to the kookaburras that rest in their yard of paperbark trees. I love it all.

It seems that I have managed to properly fall in love with Sydney, this time. And just like a new crush or lover, I can’t stop wondering when we’ll next see each other.

Soon my dearest, soon.

Dear liza...

2011-02-24T19:38:00.001+10:00

There’s a whole hole in my brain. I’m sure of it, simply because information, data, instructions, to-do lists, fast facts, quick quips, punctuation, spelling, all fall through the giant, gaping hole in my brain.

I am unable to remember the basic of things. I walk into my wardrobe then out again meaning to tell LSH some salient point only to have it vanish, just as quickly as it appeared.

I am often left standing in the lounge, in my underwear, pointing to the sky, mouth agape, with my eyes twitching from left to right searching my brain for the story I meant to tell. The dog’s heads lifts from her paws as she anticipates my no doubt great oratory (loyal little pumpkin that she is), but is instead left confused, re-resting her head on her cute feet, wondering why she bothered.

A couple of years ago, I was finishing a post graduate degree (I know, roll your eyes, I sound like a self promoting twat), while working insane hours. I discovered back then that pieces of information would fall out of my brain as I tried desperately to retain anything to do with the degree.

“It’s because I’ve got so much going on, two subjects at uni, lots of crazy work hours, while planning my wedding,” I thought, “It’s no surprise things fall off the radar. When I stop studying, things will be better.”

Only things aren't much better. Now, I have nothing to exercise my brain with and I’ve more time to drink. I’m sure I did serious damage to my brain over the Christmas break when I consumed almost three bottles of champagne to myself plus some further glasses of vodka in one sitting between 1pm and 11pm. It was very messy. I woke at 3am feeling a strange heat bubbling under my skin, with the hairs on my arms standing up on end. I was feeling faint all while my stomach churned Malaysian curry, champagne and vodka from left to right, up and down and back around again.

An overwhelming urge made me shift to the lounge room floor so I could feel the wood beneath my back. I’m fairly sure I fainted. The indelicate thud of my body, crashing to the floor woke LSH. Sober as a sensible judge he asked, “Do you need anything my love?”
“Nope, I’m fine, only I feel hot, weak and like I need to rip my skin off. Plus, I might throw up. But that aside, all good”
“You’re going to throw up here?” he asked.
“Yup,” I said.
“So, you’re going to throw up on the lounge room floor?”
“Yup”.
“Okay then,” he said in a way that suggested he’d had to put up with my ridiculous behaviour so many times before. He fetched me a pillow and went back to bed.
I lay on the cold floor trying to remember how Jim Morisson died ( lookey there, I remembered something)!

Previous to that drinking binge I’m sure some synapses were still firing, but that night made the left side of my brain completely separate from my right, voiding all synapses and creating a big black gaping hole in between.

Soon, I’ll be one of those poor people who drank too much in their formative years only to have their limbs stop responding to their brain neurons firing instructions to the extremities of their body. You’ll spot me walking through the mall, dragging my left leg behind me, inarticulate, unable to calculate % off discounts in my favourite stores unable to remember who anyone is. Here’s hoping I don’t lose bladder control too. Or I’d give new meaning to pissfit.

I’m still contemplating a glass of wine tonight though, I’ve had a tough week. Or at least I think I have, if only I could remember it…

It's a mighty punch and a kick

2011-02-23T17:01:00.001+10:00

I’ve a new thing to be anxious about – some other series of thoughts with which to knot my stomach. These thoughts are about the fact that it appears the planet might very likely explode kind of soonish.

It appears mother nature has had enough of my big feet stomping all over the earth. She’s tired of your feet too. Frankly, she hates us all. She’s the geek in school, the one all us “cool” kids made fun of, ignored, treated like a pariah while blowing smoke in her face from our big fat cigarettes and now she’s turned into an enormous angry mother and is seeking her revenge.

We’ve been in drought, had 6% water in our dams, we’ve then been flooded with 197% water in our dams and we’ve had a cyclone or two, bush fires and now a massive earthquake in New Zealand.

Something about the footage from New Zealand drags on my heart strings. Sure I watched the footage of Haiti and I was both moved and saddened. But in counties with low GDP, I sort of callously expect their buildings to crumble when their foundations are shaken from underneath. I don’t expect New Zealand’s to.

I’ve seen devastating footage of earthquakes in California, but their earthquakes seem so much more severe, with giant rips through layers of bitumen – it’s an earth split, rather than an earth shake.

So this Earth shake has, in an instant, left families without their mothers. This image I saw online, scratched at my throat. The look on the boys face as he tries to swallow his sob captures it all. Just one moment and someone you love is gone in a horrific natural disaster.

I regularly say to LSH after part of our country is affected by flash flooding that it would be the worst thing, in my mind, to have my life or the life of someone I love, taken in a natural disaster. There’s no good way to go, I can’t imagine anything is good, after all, grief is grief. But to get up, say, “I love you, have a good day and I hope you’ve packed your lunch” before heading off to work, only to either be swept away in some random flooded river water or have your office wall crash down around you, that’d be, again, in my view, very very shit. More than shit, actually, completely fuckety fucked.

A split second changes it all. It’s mental. It’s crazy. I can’t get my little brain around it.

I know trite platitude after trite platitude: life’s fragile, special, short etc etc blah blah, but we never think it when we’re in it. I spend so my time wondering what I should be doing with my life, as I run round and around in circles chasing some invisible goal, but there are those moments, that unify us for a moment and quiet the dull drone inside our heads a feel something for someone we don’t know.

So, I have a knot in my stomach, and it’s getting bigger with every mighty punch from mother nature, as I am more convinced that I’ll have no choice, it’ll all end with a massive natural disaster.

I really hope the planet calms down soon, it’s getting to be beyond a very bad joke.

Something to be grateful for.

2011-02-13T21:22:00.001+10:00

Everyone said, “don’t have a list”.
“You’ll never find Mr Right if you have a list. It’s too prescriptive,” they said.
But of course I had a list. Not having a list is like going shopping for shoes without knowing the colour, style, heel type, toe style, material or price range and expecting the perfect pair to magically appear and match every outfit in your wardrobe.

Mine was a relatively specific list, but I was prepared to wait to have at least most of the “requirements” ticked off. I noted things like:

must have straight, white teeth
must have a strong, biggish nose
must be a few years older (men my own age have not stood the test well and there’s something super sexy about someone a little bit older…)
must have blue eyes and brown hair.
must have good sized ears. (I dated a man once who had small ears, it was weird).

Then when I wasn’t so superficially preoccupied, I added:

must make me laugh
must laugh at my jokes
must be easy going
must not be moody (I’m moody enough, thank you very much)
must be able to deal with me and my many other personalities
must get along with my friends
must must must love dogs and animals in general
must love all music (except country and western, I can forgo having to listen to country and western)
must have travelled and be interested in travel
must like curry and food in general
must like alcohol and be good with it.

I’ve had this list since I was about 15, adding and subtracting where necessary. And as a result let’s just say dating was always a pretty boring occasion, until I met LSH. Unbelievably, he meets every single one of my criteria and so many more (and a fair few others that aren’t mentioned here). I often wonder if I ever meet any of his.

He’s my incredibly wonderful, unbelievably generous, totally selfless, caring, warm, centred, funny, sarcastic, understanding, fun, patient (except when he’s driving), sometimes argumentative, pissfit, smartass, tender, honest and kind husband.

I call him my Long Suffering Husband (LSH) partly because he’s a very private person and tends to merely tolerate my telling our stories both here and out in public with a laugh and a shake of the head, but also because he puts up with all my many idiosyncrasies and they are many. So plentiful are my slightly crazy habits that my mother once said she never thought any man would ever want to commit to me, but would rather have me committed.

He’s the warmest person I’ve ever met. It’s really hard to explain, but usually I feel kind of filled with a frenetic energy going in every direction. My emotions move up and down, while my thoughts go around and around. Yet, when I’m near LSH it all stops. I’m still because he is still. I am convinced his energy, which is so steady and centred, spreads to me when I am near him. Someone once said that talking to LSH was like smoking a good joint. That person was patently an idiot, but I understand the sentiment that was being expressed. Being near LSH, for me, is like taking a really deep breath and then exhaling. This all sounds so selfish. This is what he gives me. And I have to say I feel like it’s everything. I am not sure what I provide him in return, except perhaps a headache and maybe even hypertension..

I do know that I am the luckiest woman alive, I’m lucky to have even found LSH – what will all those criteria, let alone have him love me with the same limitless and never ending amount that I love him.

Happy V day all and, in particular, my dearest LSH!

Loose cannons and Sunday roasts

2011-02-06T17:03:00.002+10:00

My parents have, what I would consider, connections with people who live in Offensive Town. A place that shares its borders with Ignorant Ville and Judgemental Hill – where the glass houses have views of the high horses put out for agistment.

There was once a “friend” who made comments about my sexuality when I didn’t bring any boys to dinner. He would also question my political beliefs as a young woman at university who was enjoying sharing feminist ideals with her new colleagues, by eloquently stating that “you can’t be a feminist because you wear a bra”. How underwear relates to one’s ability to think, I’m yet to learn.

In this man’s presence I drank and smoked more. It was my only line of defence. No point in arguing with someone who is patently stupid. Plus, my mother would take umbrage with my calling him a “fuckwit”, at someone else’s dinner table.

His wife, when I met LSH – the first man to be tortured by being a guest at one of these gatherings said, “I am pleased you’re happy.” I smiled, although thinking that I hadn’t realised I was unhappy before. I’m being harsh, but that type of un-thought out platitude makes my trite-ometer go haywire.

Until recently, I’ve been safe, somehow protected from the silliness of my parent’s friends. Now married and having been working full-time for what seems like an eternity, I had my lifestyle choices being challenged over a Sunday roast. I’ve mentioned before I’m not a great wife in the traditional sense of the word. I don’t actually like the terminology for married folk particularly that of ‘wife’. They are too labelling and smell of pigeon holes. LSH and I think of ourselves as a high performing team, working synchronistically to achieve goals. This, for so many people of my parent’s generation seems impossible to fathom.

“Do you make lunch for LSH?” One woman asked.
“No”. Was my deadpan reply.
“Who does the ironing in your house?” The same one woman asked again.
“I do it, in the main, but when I’m out or too tired and it needs to be done, LSH does it.” I said, wondering why I am giving away all this boring, mundane detail about our household chores.
“Do you cook for him?”
“Uhm, sometimes,” I replied.
“Do you clean?”
“Yes, we share tasks.”
“When you have a child who will look after it?”
Things are starting to get out of hand and I, in turn, start to behave like a five year old.
“Oh, LSH will,” I say, my tone thickening, “He’s better with remembering to feed things than I am. I can barely remember to feed the dog.” This is not entirely true, I just take longer to get ready for work than LSH does, so he’s already on the front foot with dog things.
“Oh Michelle.” Super offensive nosey woman says. “Tsk, tsk tsk. Poor LSH.”

LSH who doesn’t do confrontation, said nothing. His silence made this woman feel like she’d uncovered some great relationship secret LSH had been hiding from me. She gave LSH a knowing, pitying look of knitted eyebrows, sad down-turned lips and puppy dog eyes. I’m insulted for both me and for LSH. Apparently while I am a crappy, selfish wife, LSH is an idiot who can’t cook or clean for himself.

I can’t believe I have to endure these types of conversations. Anything I say as retort is going to be inflammatory, hence I say nothing and bury my face in a big glass of wine.

“Are you getting drunk?” asks super offensive woman.
“Yes.” I reply.
“Don’t you have to go to work tomorrow?” she asks.
“Yes. And that’s precisely the point of this entire conversation.” I say, while my inner voice does fist pumps.

I've joined another institution

2011-01-29T15:28:00.000+10:00

For the first time in my life, I have joined a gym. I never thought I would. I have been idealistically opposed to the idea for so long for so many reasons.
some of these reasons are:
1. I’m not so keen on parting with my cash unless I’m buying shoes, pants, necklaces or handbags.
2. Gyms scare me.
3. It's institutionalised and I'm convinced I partake in enough institutionalised activities.
4. I’m not good with routine. Well I am, but not long term routine. In fact, what I do is get fit and trim, then slowly get bigger only to then get trim again. The only difference that this time, getting trim has been difficult. The doctor tells me that my metabolism is slow and my thyroid is lazy. Yeah, you don’t say.

After last year's holidays and eating a week’s worth of great food, I realised that a lot of what I might have considered healthy eating is, in fact, terrible. As a result, I have cut out most wheat and most unnecessary dairy – like ice-cream. Apparently, I don’t need ice-cream to survive.

So as part of the next phase of my fitness and, I suppose, my life, two weeks ago I put all my anti-gym sentiments aside and I joined one! In saying that, though, some anti-gym sentiment remains as I have yet to dispell the idea that gyms are, in the main, horrendous places. Vacuous, sterile rooms with palpable undertones of judgement and general evil. Even the little tiny gym I have joined has me paranoid. Just this morning, in fact, I was on the treadmill, merrily walking and jogging to some classic ministry of sound tunes (LSH thinks that’s an oxymoron) when in my peripheral vision I spot two girls on the elliptical trainers behind me and one of them starts laughing.

The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. My paranoid, high school shackles are raised. Is she laughing at me? Is my running style so bad that I make people laugh? Sure, I don’t wear make-up to the gym, but surely my face, well what she can see of it at least, isn’t that funny? I love the idea of working out in solitude and I like going to the gym on my own. But when there are two or more girls together, I feel small and vulnerable. I’m not wearing my face armour and I am not wearing my heels, nor a great pair of pants to protect me from being judged. In fact I am looking at my worst, wearing some crappy pants, an ill fitting tee-shirt and a hair bandana my folks picked in Bali that looks like it was made by a pot-smoking hippy in Nimbin. Suddenly I realise why Lorna Jane does so well. Her brand of gym gear stops women from feeling so hideous in front of other, fitter women. Wearing Lorna Jane says to the potential judgement maker: “caste your judgement elsewhere, I am wearing great, expensive, pants.”

I stop running and start speed walking only to realise that I am absolutely on my own. Stopping the treadmill, I worry about my next move, which is to go upstairs into the weights area. Suddenly, I don’t want to. I see these girls on the elliptical trainer and I want to leave. I can just imagine them whispering behind their hands about untidy hair. At that moment, I’d rather come back some other day when there are other, older, more quiet, mind your own business types in the gym. Thankfully, some part of my brain kicks in and tells me to stop being ridiculous and grow a pair. I grab hold of that thought tightly and walk upstairs, where one guy is stretching and he politely asks how I’m going. I grab my weights and start moving my arms. He doesn’t look at me, or laugh at my little weights. He just goes about his own exercise regime. I let out a giant, yet silent, sigh of relief and berate myself for being such a fool.

Returning downstairs, I see the young woman who was laughing is watching “Who’s line is it anyway?” A show that makes me laugh out loud too. Turns out, I was paranoid for no good reason. Well, if there was good reason, it wouldn't be paranoia, it'd be reality, but that's beside the point! I'd even go so far as to say that it is likely that no-one even noticed my existence. It’s just such unfamiliar territory and I’m not comfortable there yet. Probably none of the people are, since the gym is still quite new. It is possible we’re all just pretending to be cool and get on with our workouts, while hoping no-one notices our back sweat or any body odour. It’ll be a hard balance. I don’t want to make friends with anyone at the gym, even though I know that would make me feel more comfortable. Yet I don’t want to feel like an awkward teenager either. Hopefully, the next two weeks see me establish some level of comfort and a good routine and I'll be institutionalised in no time. Mwa hah ha ha.

Nothing ironic about this...

2011-01-11T19:30:00.000+10:00

"Flood" at Brisbane Powerhouse. Nothing ironic at all.

And so the rains are here.

2011-01-11T17:04:00.002+10:00

So Brisbane, the town I’ve lived in – on and off since I was a teenager, looks like it’s about to be pummelled by flood waters.

We’re not used to this type of thing here in Brisbane. We’re a capital city for goodness sake. Maryborough, Rockhampton, Townsville, those northern and extreme parts of the country are the ones that are most affected by nature’s extremes. Brisbane, well, we pull through, unaffected, right?

Apparently, not this time. Apparently, this is like some enormous payback for getting through the other times.

Yesterday, Toowoomba, a town 2.5 hours west of Brisbane, was flooded and people died in a sudden and horrific torrent of water rushing, gushing and ripping through the city streets. It’s a town that sits on a mountain range, so it’s flabbergasting how this can even happen. My dad, due to go to Toowoomba for work today, said he didn’t believe the news. Said “newsreaders always like to say the closest township so people know what, or where, they were talking about”. This is true to an extent. LSH’s family in Canada saw the floods in Rockhampton and were told through their newscasters the images were from Brisbane. Only slightly funny because Rockhampton is a 1.5 hour flight away. Dad probably still doesn’t believe that it was Toowoomba.

The water from Toowoomba’s inland tsunami is set to rush through Ipswich to the Brisbane River where it will break the banks and gush into our suburbs. Tears welled in my eyes as I saw my floating boardwalk at Southbank, where I often take a Sunday stroll, is under water. And this is just the beginning. Can’t even begin to fathom how I would feel if I saw my home like that.

I always think, in times of these natural disasters, “I hope they have insurance”. Funny thing is we’re with NRMA for our home and contents and they don’t insure for flood damage caused by overflowing rivers in Queensland. Of course, five years ago when I took out the policy, we were in a drought and I no doubt scoffed at these limitations. Frankly Brisbane hasn’t flooded since 1974 – so NRMA, in my mind are just pricks, if every 30 years is ‘prone’ in their books – I don’t know what frequent would mean. So, regardless, this morning, I started ringing around multiple insurers and my suburb is on an embargo list – along with 70 or so others. Do Not Insure, they say, likely flooding. Hmmm. Comforting words.

Maps of the city have been drawn up to show residents which houses are likely to be affected across which areas. We’re in a state of emergency, declares our Premier, a woman who looks too much like a girl I went to school with, it’s awkward and scary. The water is all starting to roll down the mountain. And the non-stop rain isn’t helping.

Our city centre was evacuated. How on earth does that happen? Our financial district, our government services our central retail all shut down. I work out of town, thankfully, but my drive home at 12.30 today was manic, thousands of people left their offices and hurtled home so as not to be stranded. The roads were busier than at peak times. Some workers were already stranded. Some people weren’t able to get home, already. I thank the universe that LSH and I have been able to arrive home and pop our dog upstairs.

People’s attitudes are interesting. My workplace said, “Look after your families and friends, look after your homes and your pets. Be safe. We advise that you don’t visit any areas that are flooded. Work will be here when you get back.” LSH’s company and a husband of a friend of mine’s company both said, “nope, no need to leave.” LSH was nearly flooded in and unable to leave his office.

My personal attitude has been to stress and worry. I have no flood insurance. I might have a flooded home tomorrow. Not sure how high the waters are running, might be my downstairs, might be my upstairs. Might be none, might be all. I have now consumed three very quick glasses of bubbles and am starting to relax. 11pm tonight is going to be the worst, and we’re expecting some king tides tomorrow and Thursday. Some sunshine might raise our spirits a little. It’s harrowing, surreal and also completely ridiculous. I was planning a dinner out tomorrow, dinners for the weekend. Gym excursions and walks as well as mini-breaks to Sydney and now…we’re wet. All just wet. I’ve left the PC downstairs, here’s hoping that wasn’t a really silly decision.

A day of Facebook updates

2010-12-13T20:23:00.002+10:00

“Marbles loves it when the alarm goes off in the morning and she throws a lazy, tired arm across LSH’s chest for five minutes of snoozing, before taking the dog for a walk.

“Marbles smiles widely at her dog who walks like a crazed lunatic.

“…dislikes looking at a wardrobe full of clothes that seem never to be quite good enough and don’t match any one pair of her boxes of shoes. Anyway, she would rather wear pyjamas to work instead. She also believes that one should be judged on one’s ability to one’s work, not by one’s clothes. She storms off to the bathroom with determination to start her new world order, but knows she’ll end up at the shops at lunch, instead.

“…arrives at work, early, in a bid to get a kickstart on her day. But due to new found memory loss and truncated attention span, can’t remember why she’s even there in the first place.

“…does not enjoy being talked at by people who talk about themselves and their activities in terms of money. “I drank an $200 bottle of wine last night”. “I rode my $7000 bike on the weekend.” “I’ve just had a $30k pool put in.” She wishes somebody would save her from this boring self promotion/absorption.

“ …Tunes out in most meetings and really rather likes the smell of nikko and petrol. She wonders if tuning out and sniffing toxins are related?

“…thinks that perhaps some people are sent to drive her crazy.

“…gets cranky when LSH takes four hours to reply to her email. What do you want to eat for dinner?!!!!

“…also finds herself getting cranky at people who have the audacity to call instead of email her. She dislikes talking on the telephone about work. Email and face to face are fine, thank you.

“…is starting to wish it was the end of day, week, month year.

“…is troubled that she’s wishing her life away and doesn’t seem to achieve much except working, drinking and eating.

“…spends much of her day wondering about the point of her existence and the meaning of life. Then gets sidetracked and starts thinking about new shoes and exercise.

“…pushes things around, walks with purpose and plays this little game called “grown ups”.

“…leaves the office and has supreme case of road rage after total muppet changes lanes in front of her without indicating and nearly cuts off the front end of her car. Sadly, the driver of the other car did not notice her wild gesticulating and jumping around in her seat in anger. Others, however, did. Now she’s worried she’s made a dick of herself… again.

“…opens bottle of wine (not $200 worth) at home and sits on the couch.

“…enjoys a nice comfy snuggle with dog and LSH and wonders when she’ll win the lotto.

“…speaks to electricity people and narrowly avoids major confrontation. She sighs, finds the fish bowl and fills it with wine. *Drinks*.

“…is pissed and off to bed.

Beige pants and white shirts

2010-12-01T20:46:00.000+10:00

There’s a man that stands by the side of the road and we pass him, each day, as our dog takes us for a walk.

We only ever see his back as he stands, waiting patiently for the bus. His head is hairless, his shirt always white and pants always beige. He carries his backpack, probably full of lunch and papers, slung over his left shoulder and he stands with his feet slightly apart. I don’t think I’ve ever seen his face. Every day I consider saying “morning”, but I never do.

I can tell he knows we’re coming as the dog huffs and puffs, pulling me and LSH behind her and making them walk faster than they ever ordinarily would. He doesn’t say anything either, just slightly turns his head to the side and then returns it back to front and centre.

It’s been the same routine for months. We get up at the same time, walk at the same pace and pass him waiting for the same bus every day.

That is until today. This morning we still saw the back of a man’s head, but this head was covered with dark, thick, brown hair. He was also wearing a white shirt and beige pants. It was the same outfit, but a different guy. This made me think, quite logically: what if our man has was part of some space/time continuum experiment and is now 30 years younger?

He’s wearing the same daily uniform, his stance is the same, he wears his backpack in a similar fashion. The time space continuum has done him some favours, he looks good, a bit trendy, even if he is wearing chinos. Perhaps he works for a bank – wearing chinos, he’s unlikely to work for an advertising agency, but none-the-less the experiment seems to have been a roaring success.

According to appearances, only his hair is different. But there is something else. Without saying anything, he seems louder. His presence is louder, more assertive, more filled with exuberance and frenetic energy that those within two feet can feel. So without his saying anything, we can hear him.

I’d imagine his rocking up to work, saying “hello laydeez” with his new style and hair. No-one questions how odd it is that he looks younger, better, more alive than ever before. So he doesn’t tell them. I wonder what he’s thinking, what he’s going to do with himself now that he has his time over again? Should he have wisdom or should he continue to make foolish decisions? What will he do with his 30s? What will he change? What will he keep the same?

Then I realise, if he had been in a time space continuum experiment and ended up 30 years younger, he wouldn’t be pootling off to work, by bus.

Hopefully the bald man who stands, quietly, by the side of the road waiting for his bus will be back tomorrow. Change to my morning routine appears to make me uncomfortable.

Night terrors

2010-11-28T19:16:00.000+10:00

This is something I wrote one night before I fell asleep. It’s not my life. It’s an amalgam of some of the women I know and have known and things they’ve (we’ve) felt. It was spawned, undoubtedly, by Portia De Rossi and her coming out of the anorexic kitchen (so to speak).

*

It was pitch black and all was quiet outside as she sat cross legged on the floor, in front of the open fridge. The little yellow interior light caste a long shadow that shuddered each time she jammed a fistful of cake into her wide open mouth. From the back, her arm moved from cake to mouth in quiet, methodical motion. From the front, the view was markedly different as she grabbed at the cake, with her hands, tearing it apart, digging into the rich, triple layer chocolate sponge. She had dark mud coloured sponge under her nails and the chocolate fudge icing stuck to her fingers. She didn’t care, she just wanted to shove as much cake into her mouth as possible, cramming it in, ramming it down her throat. All too soon, however, the family size cake was finished and she started desperately licking her hand, in a rapid feline motion, preening her hands free of dried fudge. She gnawed at her nails, plucking out the remnant chocolate with her teeth. Not satiated, she grabbed the plastic cake tray and lifted it to her mouth, where her teeth began tearing at the surface to remove all evidence of there ever being a cake.

Suddenly, she stopped and looked back into the empty fridge. Her eyes darted left to right as she calculated the calories she’d devoured and the weight she was about to gain. Her breath quickened with the short sharp bursts of air that started to wrack her small body. Moving to double breathes in half the time, her mouth suddenly swung open agape and distorted. Brown coloured crumbs hung, in limbo in the stalactite of saliva that hung from her lips as she began to sob. “No, no, no” she cried out, hands clasping tight around clumps of hair, tugging at the roots. She had devoured the whole cake in 10 minutes and eaten a week’s worth of calories.

Her name was Carmel. Like caramel, like the caramel colour of her skin and of her hair. She was beautiful, but couldn’t see it. She was funny, but couldn’t see it. She was already so thin but completely missed it.

“Okay, okay, calm blue ocean,” she huffed to herself. “So if I go to the gym for four hours tomorrow and eat only apples, this will be fine, right?” All while trying to work out how to fit in four hours of gym. “Oh god.”

She picked herself off the floor, slammed the fridge door shut and ran towards to the bathroom. Too much of a princess to even think of hanging her head in the toilet, she ran to the bathroom sink and stuck her fore and middle fingers down her throat, tickling her tonsils, until her stomach spasmodically started to heave. Her body convulsed with “bmmmmmlear” “bmmmlear” over and over, but nothing would come up. As her stomach started to ache with the almost unstoppable motion of being turned inside out from years of practice, tears streamed down her face and Carmel started to shake.

“Why, why, why can’t I even do this?” She slumped against the bathroom sink cabinets. And again started to cry. “Why you fat, ugly, fuck, can’t you stop eating?” The verbal flagellation she beat herself with was becoming too familiar and the words were starting to lose effect. He head in her hands, lump of disappointment and fear in her throat, she rubbed at her eyes with her palms, and kept rubbing until they were red and raw.

Empty of any more tears with a sore body from sitting on the cold tiles of her bathroom, she leant over to all fours and crawled her way past the scene of her crime, the kitchen, and back to her bed. She drew her sheets to her chest and closed her tired, red eyes. Exhausted from self hatred Carmel fell into a deep sleep and dreamt of being skinny.

The curious case of how to meet your baby.

2010-11-20T08:04:00.000+10:00

I just want to mention that I have added a guest post on a beautiful young woman’s blog: http://www.cozshelikestoeat.com/blog/2010/11/malaysian-food-experience.html
about a Malaysian food experience we recently enjoyed while in KL. Please pop over and check it, and her blog, out – particularly if you want to devour her recent food experience of Greece!

*

We watch a lot of “How I met your mother”. It wasn’t a love at first viewing thing. In fact, it was only when some friends recommended the show by piling the entire series on DVD into our hands with enthusiastic faces did we sit down and dedicate any real time to the show. And it made us laugh, out loud.

LSH was even so bold as to say it was better than “Friends”. In some ways yes, the relationships seemed to have more depth. In others, no, because it wasn’t quite as funny and the characters weren’t exaggerated versions – to the point of caricature. I guess that’s what LSH liked about it so much.

The show is very clever in the way in a couple of ways. It uses flashbacks to excess, but in a fantastic and hilarious way. It also uses a continuing theme to tie multiple episodes, which are not necessarily obviously related, together. There’s one character, Marshall, who is allowed to punch his mate, Barney, five times – and every season there’s an episode dedicated to “the punch”. It’s exactly like a real friendship where the past is often brought up in moments of hilarity.

There’s also an obsession with doppelgangers. Marshall and Lilley, the married couple, have a pact that dictates when they see each of their friends’ doppelganger the universe is telling them to have a baby.

LSH and I have discovered we have a similar thing. While away on holiday I brought to LSH’s attention that some of the people who passed us on the street looked, to me, as if they were the Asian versions of some of the Caucasian people we know at home.

It’s a particular idiosyncrasy that when I look at someone an element of their face will often remind me of someone else. This is better than my friend who looks at people and sees animals. She’s forever telling me that such and such looks like a rat. Or such and such looks like a lizard. Personally, I prefer to tell people they look like movie stars.

For instance I have a friend who has the same lips as Angelina Jolie. Another who has Angelina’s eyes. I know someone who has Daniel Craig’s nose. It’s like Kym Valentine (Libby of Neighbours) reminds me of Cathy Freeman, I even think their accents are similar. LSH mainly humours these ideas, acknowledging only that I am slightly mental, but he certainly started to warm up to the Asian doppelganger idea. I pointed out a guy who looked like our friend’s husband, even a guy who looked like LSH’s boss. Suddenly he started getting into the groove and pointing out some of his own examples. Saying of that woman looks like your friend Susan, or that woman has hair like her friend Mary. Granted his examples were much more tenuous and inaccurate than mine…but he was getting the general idea.

It was then that we decided to steal from “How I met your mother.” We’ve been deliberating about a baby for a long time now. Do we? Don’t we? If we do, when? If we don’t, will we change our minds in a few years and it’ll be too late? But now we have a decision. When we see the Asian version of LSH and the Caucasian version of me, we know we should try to have a baby. Of course, we didn’t see the Asian version of LSH or the opposite version of me while on holiday and haven’t seen anyone even remotely close since. So, the universe is sending a message, loud and clear, that we shouldn’t have a baby yet. Message received universe. That solves that dilemma, quite nicely, doesn’t it?

This isn't toilet humour. There's nothing funny about this loo!

2010-11-01T20:56:00.002+10:00

Without wanting to state the obvious, it’s been ages since my last post/confession.
So many reasons, but only one valid; we’ve been away in Singapore and Malaysia for an eight day whirlwind trip.

It was fantastic and much needed. I was practically tearing myself out of my skin before we left, really desperate to get out of my house, state and country and in need of seeing something different.

It might come as a surprise for some of you who know how much I hate flying that I managed to go anywhere. I hate it so much my whole body shakes before and during a flight. I do fly, of course. How else am I to see the world? So I bought a book about conquering the fear of flying and it helped. I no longer shake. I just feel sick and dry mouthed. So I sat nine days ago on a plane, dry mouthed ready to experience something else, touching wood the whole time that I would make it there alive and not make news as a passenger in Australia’s biggest air disaster.

We arrived early into Changi airport after seven hours of quite unnaturally, flying through the air, where I couldn’t use my phone or my keycard to get money out. Turns out my global roaming hadn’t been turned on and my keycard didn’t work either. My cousin was late picking us up, so I felt very much stranded. Thankfully LSH’s card worked in the machine and my cousin arrived 15 minutes (that felt like an hour) later.

The rest of the trip really went by in a blur. A blur of colour, taste, excellent food, deep, rich spicy smells, great shopping, dodgy side streets in KL, fear of dysentery again in KL and some of the scariest toilets I have ever been to in my entire life.

The toilet thing is really a thing. It’s a very traumatic experience visiting a scary loo. Particularly for a woman. I even took a photo of one of the “bathrooms” I visited while on a bus from Singapore to KL that housed Asian toilets. Asian toilets in general freak me out. They are porcelain holes in the floor, which a woman has to crouch over and pee into. As a kid in Singapore I was traumatised by this concept and refused to go. I strongly believed, and still do, that I might fall in to the hole in the floor. My thighs are useless at the best of times, let alone when it comes to something important like hovering above a hole in the floor. Even with months of yoga behind me as an adult, I couldn’t see how I could manage it.

So, in some places, like this place, there are only one or two European toilets. You know, the ones where you just sit and don’t have to squat. I say it but I even hate the word squat. I don’t like to say squat and in fact rarely do. I don’t like seeing people squat. I certainly don’t like to squat. I am entirely unsure why. A couple of years ago, mind you, I couldn’t bring myself to say nipple. I couldn’t even hear it without it making my teeth grind. I’m over it now, though. So perhaps squat is the new nipple. Just another idiosyncrasy to add to an ever growing pile of lunacy.

Anyway…I was in this “bathroom” in KL, and it was hideous. Dirt was on every inch of this room. Greasy cardboard lined the floors, the doors of the cubicle didn’t hang straight, and there was one European loo and it was all wet. Each cubicle is hosed down after each use, which kind of sounds great in theory, but the floors are always wet and I am a very suspicious person. There was a stench of waste that had been boiling in the 34 degree heat and it didn’t just waft by, it firmly rammed itself right up into the depths of my nostrils. It was all I could do not to gag. If my bladder wasn’t ready to burst and I wasn’t reminded of the American woman who held her pee for so long in a ‘Win a Wii’ radio competition that she died, I would have waited until the hotel in KL, another three and a half hours away.

Instead, I held my breath, tried to look kindly at the people in the queue and asked in some crazy broken English, which was really me speaking English with a Malaysian accent, about the tall toilets. “You know, the tall ones, big toilets, off the ground? Where is that one?” Thankfully the attendant hired to rinse the cubicles out, but clearly not clean the bathroom, knew my persnickety kind and pointed me in the general direction of a loo. I breathed a sigh of relief that is until I opened the door of the loo and saw a seatless porcelain bowl.

“FARK” was pretty much my first thought. I thought of the woman that died and thought of my kidneys and shut my eyes, tight, while I teetered over the loo and held my pants around my knees so they wouldn’t touch the wet floor, while on tip toes so the bottoms of my shoes wouldn’t have to touch the floors either. It was practically a acrobatic feat. Trauma over, I went back to the bus, where LSH gave me a look that said his experience was equally disturbing. I felt comforted by this. I always know that if LSH thinks the same as me, I am not doing what I do best, which is over-reacting.

I am always very aware of my behaviour in other countries. I don’t want to be the tourist that everyone complains about, like when you watch Amazing Race and there is always an annoying couple who wonders why no-one in China speaks English. I don’t think I am half of that couple as I am, in the main, open to new things when overseas and aware of everything being different/interesting. As one would expect the rest of the trip was more than marvelous and more than made up for the challenging latrines.

So traumatic I took a photo.

What came first the stereotype or the people to fill the stereotype?

2010-10-08T06:58:00.002+10:00

I’m in the marketing game and I love it and hate it all at the same time. Done right it can make a business. And I've seen it done well (and I’ve also seen it done badly). But I find that marketing doesn’t tend to receive the credit that it truly deserves and, from my own and colleagues’ experiences, I’ve found that marketing gets blamed for a whole world of things.

Sales aren’t being met. “It’s the marketing”, so the sales team yells from their speeding, finger pointing, bandwagon.

No-one wants the product. “Marketing didn’t tell the right story.” At least that’s what the product managers will tell us. We daren’t mention that what some product managers consider ‘bleeding innovation’, marketers consider ‘bleeding obvious’.

Advertising is one of the four, six or seven Ps, dependent on which marketing genius/speaker/talker of shite you listen to. So as part of our roles we’ll work with advertising agencies to create something amazing. It’s an interesting experience with mountains of research, plenty of buzzwords about consumer needs states, lifestyle paradigms, attitudinal ratios etc, being tossed around the room along with a good dash of stereotyping.

Recently, I sat, swiveling in a purple chair in an otherwiise all white advertising agency “think” room where a presentation was blast at me, full of research about women.

According to this research, women filled eight categories. We are either: Bold, Confident, Composed, Gentle, Grounded, Carefree, Controlling or Liberated. Each had, alongside the word, an image of a famous woman as well as some text advising us what the bold woman’s fears, goals, aspirations and inspirations were.

I nearly threw up.

Real life women are supposed to fill each of these categories. I made mention, with my eyebrows raised, that woman, and people, are actually quite complicated and simplifying to such an archaic degree might just alienate the market we’re trying to reach.

But of course, my outrage and contempt for this type of research, fell on deaf ears.

I thought about all the advertising I’d seen on TV. Insipid women smiling from ear to ear because their homes are clean, toilets are clean, kitchens are clean, husbands are clean and children are clean. Because all women care about is cleanliness?

It’s well known that advertisers try to make women feel guilty for doing something or not doing something. The only time when woman are not feeling guilty is when they are in their 20’s drinking coke, in a bikini on a beach with a boy. Every other time, little lady, you should be thinking about donning your floral frock, dancing around kitchen on point shoes, making a gourmet feast for your husband and children. After dinner, you should read stories to your children, help them with homework and ensure your husband’s scotch glass remains full. That’s it babe, that’s all we got. Unless you want to drink diet coke in your 30s when you work for an advertising agency or a magazine, then you can have some fun again too So long as you buy all the right clothes, wear the right make-up, spend a fortune on wrinkle-eradicator and don’t mind objectifying the young, buff window cleaner.

Not to say I don’t do any of these things. I occasionally cook for my husband, I clean from time to time, I use wrinkle eradicator and I have worked in publishing. But still, I am fairly sure I don’t fit any of those stereotypes and neither do any of my friends or other women I have met, who are more than one-dimensional, more than just bold, confident or composed. Most of the women I know are mainly funny and kind but sometimes they’re argumentative, opinionated and moody, but mostly just fantastic and interesting.

Why can’t advertising agencies get this? Why does all the research they do, even in 2010, still put women into little boxes? Are the women answering these surveys living in another dimension? Even Myers Briggs has worked out that people are multi-dimensional with different behavioural characteristics that become dominant at different times.

So which came first - the stereotype or people to fill the stereotype? The chicken or the egg. I have yet to find a woman who fits the stereotype. But then, I am quite lucky and only know wonderful women.

And I recognise it’s advertising and we only have 30 seconds to send a message to reach the right people who will buy the product and tell their like-minded friends. I get that, but can’t we do something else? Can’t we not be predictable for 30 seconds and start breaking down these silly, ridiculous stereotypes? Can’t we find real women to answer the questions and find intelligent people to interpret the data, instead of relying on boring, tried and tested criteria that gives the same results year in year out?

I’m going to answer my own question and say that until we aren’t commercial beings and are willing to take risks and test to see if images of a woman who is multi-dimensional and real, can resonate with the public and encourage them to buy the product, we might never know. Dove ads portraying real woman worked. Now advertising agencies have turned the 'real woman' advertising strategy into a stereotype too! Of course, the real woman was always the grounded woman!

Maybe if we’re prepared to take a financial loss for a while, until advertising starts to shift these attitudes, if we change the research groups to not deliver the responses we want, but ones that inspire us, and if we change the criteria we’re marking against, we might be able to make a shift from these trite advertising stereotypes. But that’s a maybe, assuming that the stereotype came second.

Tickets to the Oprah house

2010-09-22T20:55:00.002+10:00

It’s my life- long ambition to be interviewed by Oprah Winfrey. Not just meet her, have her interview me. I’m not entirely sure why. It’s not like I don’t recognise that she can be a little annoying, that most of the topics on her shows are aimed at people who seem to have no idea and sometimes they seem a little exploitative. Still, that doesn’t stop me wanting to meet the woman who I think has most of America, and some other parts of the world, eating out of the palm of her hand.

Recent advice of this, her 24th season, being her last will clearly have a serious negative impact on my actually realising this goal. Other factors, clearly come into play, but I’ve neglected to consider those.

In my dream state, I’ve achieved some enormous amazing feat, like developed a methodology to eradicate poverty, drought and famine (all at once) that’s been adopted by multiple international governments, or in another one of my many dreams, I’ve written an award winning emotionally charged novel that leaves thousands, if not millions, of people in tears and changes the way we all live our lives. As a result of these fabulousness, Oprah has no choice but to interview me.

In this particular dream, on the day of the show, Oprah introduces me and the audience rises from their seats and I walk onto the stage, humble despite my overwhelming achievements, clutching my clasped hands to my chest smiling and blowing air kisses into the crowd.

Oprah and I will hug, she’ll kiss my cheek in response to the great contribution I have made to the world, hold my hand and raise it to the air in a joint fist pump. I’ll smile, shrug coquettishly and say “Oh it was nothing, really. Anyone would have done the same thing in my situation. ”

I’ll sit, arrange my incredibly expensive skirt on her yellow couch, flash the red bottoms of my Laboutins that are similar to Oprah’s and pretend the incredibly manicured hair, makeup and nails that I’m sporting is how I get about every day. Since, even as a humanitarian I appreciate good style and design.

Our chat will bring her to tears, members of the audience will dab at their tear ducts, wet or otherwise, in a bid to show empathy and that they too are charged with emotion, at least to get their faces on TV.

We’ll talk about how special we are. Oprah may make mention of how much money she has, I’ll try not to feel uncomfortable, but nod knowingly, while the audience whoops.

We’ll both engage the audience, asking them if they know what we’re saying is right, right?
We laugh at each other’s jokes and pat each other’s arms to exaggerate a point or when we’re excited about a point.

Basically, I’m a roaring success. And Oprah clearly thinks I’m the shiz.

After the show, Oprah and I chat, exchange mobile numbers and promise to stay in touch. I know we will, as we’ve so much in common.

So, in reality, I’m a bit excited by Oprah coming to Australia. I’m jumping on board and joining the ticket lottery!

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."*

2010-09-14T20:11:00.000+10:00

He walked as if a eunuch. His knees knocking together as he lumbered his large, Homer Simpson size frame from one end of the office to the other.

He reminded me of H.J Simpson in so many ways – down to his slightly jaundiced, disturbingly yellow, skin. While Homer’s only offence is stupidity, this man’s was a malice that ran deep, like the Executioner on crack.

Lulling people into a Venus Fly Trap of workplace hell, with his vacant eyes that seemed to have trouble focusing solid objects, we foolishly believed he was just a harmless fool, who worked earnestly for the greater good of the business. In reality, he was like a Tiger sniffing out his next victim to outwit, out manoeuvre and completely f&ck over.

His manipulative ways and underhanded manner were signs of his lack of intelligence. It was a sign that blared red neon above his head, but senior management ignored it. The senior management team did what we thought was impossible. They promoted him.

Now armed with more power than he deserved or knew what to do with, his evil inner-self was able to run, unfettered. He’d complain at every opportunity about everyone to anyone, like an artful illusionist moving attention away from himself.

He would deliver instruction to his team and then, when a senior manager disagreed with his instruction, he would back track, protesting that his team were making unilateral decisions while leaving his team member exposed and alone – like a sitting duck waiting for the firing squad. I was regularly astounded at how quickly and easily he would take the first shot.

Frequently he gave misinformation but would most often withhold information or exclude relevant parties from meetings only to then complain that the work he wanted done hadn’t been provided within deadline…work that no-one knew about, but himself.

He banned people within his team from talking to each other and those outside their pods – a rule they thankfully broke.

His cover to management was that everyone who worked for him was either too slow or too stupid, rallying them to believe his stories. And they bought it, willing to blame those that worked late into the night, those that were trying to hold the place together and those that repeatedly complained about their manager’s ineptitude and his bullish, unstable, behaviour.

Not surprisingly, no-one liked him. He’d jump up and down when he wasn’t invited to events and wondered why team lunches didn’t include him, all the while oblivious to the fact that we couldn’t abide his company and thought he was both an arse and a bore.

He spent his days slowly eroding his team’s sense of self and achievement with words
– potentially the most powerful weapons available - until one by one they left the business, tired and exhausted.

Today, he continues to stomp on people’s self-esteem and professionalism, he continues to waddle, ever expanding in both ego and weight and he continues to demand respect with his fe-fi-fo-fum management style. The saddest thing, aside from the damage this one man has done to the business and those that work for and near him, is that not one person has been strong enough to make him stop. I no longer wonder how it is possible for lunatics to achieve power.

*Edmund Burke

I like bands that are so new, they haven't even formed yet.

2010-08-28T16:52:00.001+10:00

I saw this on a t-shirt a few days ago and it first of all made me laugh then second it yanked me back a century or two to when I was a teenager. As I travelled in reverse through time, to a period when I was more awkward than what I am today, when I was half child, half woman, with small breasts and puppy fat. When school was my life, my parents a cross to bear and what was hot and what was not was more important than being true to who I am on the inside.

I remembered being 15 and the friend I had who epitomised this t-shirt’s copy. She had older siblings who were at university and because they were infinitely cooler than we were, she spent much of her time loitering around them. They kept her informed about what was happening on the music scene, using multi-syllabled words they had just learnt from a text book or dictionary to describe the complexities, subtleties of the depths of musical awareness they were embracing. So between these informed uni students and Triple J, she liked to pretend she knew what was going on.

“Oh have you heard blah blah,” she’d say casually – lording her musical superiority over me.

“Nope, not yet,” I’d say, feeling ashamed at being such a musical pariah.

“Oh, really, you haven't heard them? How strange? They’re really cool. They’re like, defining the whole social-music paradigm, writing post-modern elliptical lyrics that, like, are mobilising whole tribes of people to find their higher self. The beats are practically telling people to move away from capitalism and towards a shared consciousness of enlightenment. You know? ”

Did I mention they were doing Arts Degrees?

Anyway - in addition to knowing everything about the music business, or at least as it applied to 19 year olds, she also decided that she knew everyone in our age group throughout the district.

Each week, we were subjected to an inter-school sports day, where we would climb onto a stinking, rotten bus that rattled and clunked with every wheel rotation. These buses are likely to be accountable for the entire denigration of the ozone layer. For the privilege of getting high on Co2 that was pipped, like elevator music into the bus carriage, we paid $3.50 for the ride 20 minutes down the road to another school. Once off the bus, the first person who could nonchalantly tip their head in the direction of another student native to the school, and have the nod reciprocated was, for a fleeting moment, completely cool.

Before getting on the bus my friend would always talk about the person she knew, loudly, “I am so looking forward to seeing William. He’s, like, totally into art and stuff and I just adore him. I can’t wait to see him again”. I’d nod and smile, while quietly wondering why I’d never heard of William before this day or hung out with him at parties or during the holidays.

“Oh, I only see him sometimes, and he doesn’t like new people or else, I’d introduce you,” she say when asked.

When we’d arrive, jump off the bus and look around, she’d say, “oh I think he must be sick today.” Your friends are sick at every sodding school we visit? Are they all afflicted with the same disease? Are you the carrier? Am I at risk?

Basically, this was the high school equivalent of the girl I went to primary school with who, when bored, would place one hand over her nose and mouth and put the other hand up her nose. When confronted, she would say, “I was just flicking my front teeth with my thumb nail.” I thought the same response at six as I did at 15: Bullshit.

While I knew she had no friends at other schools I didn’t have the ability to catch her out, simply because I didn’t know anyone at the other schools, either. Until one day before our next sports outing, I asked if she knew Paul Wallace. “Yeah, totally, I know him,” she said.

“You know Paul, tall, brown hair, plays soccer and is on the debating team?” I asked again to be sure we were talking about the same guy.

“Yes, I know Paul, his mum knows my mum.”

Oh the mum defence. That’s a game changer. We can’t question anything when you throw “my mum...” into a sentence. I smiled and nodded then turned my head away as I muffled a snigger. I’d completely made him up. There was no Paul Wallace in Grade 10 at that school. Pure fiction. Ha. Bam. Caught you out. Little pants on fire.

Oddly, from that day on she never did rave on about how many people she knew from everywhere so on some level, she must have realised I’d busted her. It didn’t stop her being a complete pain in the ass about music though. I’m still considering sending her the t-shirt.

Summertime and the living is, well, easy. Or at least, so it seems from here.

2010-08-25T21:15:00.000+10:00

I’m sitting here, wrapped in a blanket, in my pyjamas, wishing it were summer.

It’s spring next week and I’m holding my breath. Soon, the Jacarandas will be in bloom. Soon, the sun will dry out the earth, the air and the water. Soon it will be scorching hot and every inhalation will burn my nostrils. Soon I will start sweating as soon as I wake up. Soon, I’m not going to be able to sleep because the sheets stick to me like glue. Soon, I’m going to boil in my own skin. Soon it’s going to be summer and I can’t wait.

The humidity will soar – in conjunction with the mercury. The heat will rise from the rooves of houses and the bitumen and I’ll be able to see it and I'll think it marvellous, reminding me of old school Australian films that used that locked off shot of the heat sizzle rising from the road to indicate just how remote some of the properties are.

The fruit will be amazing. I’ll over-indulge in lychees, mangos and watermelons that will be so ripe and juicy that I’ll need to eat them over the kitchen sink.

LSH will grumble and say “I’m melting” wicked witch style at least four times a day. The dog will pant, with her long tongue hanging to the floor. She’ll either position herself under the air-conditioning or on a cold patch on the floor, moving every few minutes, to find a new spot not warmed by her body. I’ll spend at least three weeks deliberating if I should have her shaved, only to have the vet tell me that some dogs are actually quite vain and it’s likely that shaving her will make her feel self-conscious. So I’ll leave her hot and panting so as to not destroy her self esteem.

My little black car will be a hot box of steam. When I jump in it, my sunglasses will fog up from humidity. I’ll be able to wear bright colours for a full six months, instead of the customary winter blacks and greys. I'll be on my way to a lunch with the girls, we'll be drinking, eating and laughing - as we can only do under the big bright blue umbrella sky of summer.

But, by Christmas Day, I’ll wish I could stand in the middle of Antarctica, if only for a moment, for a reprieve from the heat. I’ll stand in front of my wardrobe in January looking at the winter clothes stacked haphazardly on the top shelf and wonder if it could ever possibly be cold enough to wear them again. I’ll quickly look away, because sometimes, just looking at a jumper makes my skin freak out into a sweat.

By next March, I’ll be so totally over summer. Tired of sweating from just sitting on the couch. I'll be tired of having my make-up slide off my face as soon as I've put it on. I'll be tired of trying to straighten my hair, only to have it spring back into a curl, like the little recalcitrant it is. I'll be frustrated with being covered in a permanent layer of silt, that my damp skin has attracted during the day. I'll be tired of wondering if I smell and if having sweaty feet is weird. And I’ll have forgotten just how excited I was just this past August.

Still, right now I’m under a blanket and I’d rather not be. Right now, I think summer’s going to be wonderful and I simply can’t wait.

Realisation: the grass isn't always greener.

2010-08-13T07:54:00.000+10:00

Almost two years ago now, I had a massive accident.

It was very traumatic and I underwent copious amounts of therapy to get me back on the right track, as the accident left me in a state of shock, confusion and mildly depressed.

You see, I was thrown, head first, into my thirties.

A year and a half later, I have lost the ability to use my 20s. My youth, exuberance and the foolish belief that I could achieve anything, was ripped out from under me, so suddenly, I hardly saw it coming and crashed with a thud into the reality of domesticity.

I’m probably mostly sad about no-longer believing the world is my oyster, that I’m unencumbered, free and can do anything, that I can change everything anytime I like. As now, I have a mortgage and a dog and we’re talking more seriously about planning for a child. It seems like life is all mapped out before me. It’s then that I start to hyperventilate. Brown. Paper. Bag. Anyone?

That was until yesterday, when I had breakfast with some dear friends. Blindly, we ended up at Racecourse Road, so named because it’s the road you have to drive up, wait for it – to reach the racecourse. Mind blowing, right?

Right, so we’re talking, sharing stories of the ridiculous and falling about laughing, when a tsunami sized wave of nearly naked early 20 somethings comes stumbling on plastic high heels, towards us.

Being a bit prudish about not having my bits hanging out from the top or the bottom of my outfits, I might have been taken aback when we were practically beaten over the heads with breasts, thighs and va-jay-jays. The boys thankfully, had their bits tucked away inside their suits.

Some of these nearly naked girls, who had clearly spent ages getting ready had not thought to practice walking in their shoes and had, after only half an hour, taken their tight, ill-fitting, plastic and cheap versions of the more comfortable, leather equivalents, off. Some were already feeling insecure about the length, or lack thereof, of their skirts, tugging at the hems as the fabric started to bunch up around their waists. By the end of the day, I’d imagine, these same girls would stumble down the street, shoes in hand, mascara streaming down their faces, fascinators in pieces, breasts falling out over the top of the strings of fabric now holding them in place perhaps, if the audience is really lucky have a lace thong out on display.

It was only 9am. They had a long day of drinking, pretending to watch the horses while trying to find a mate, to...uhm…well, practice mating with, ahead.

Now why would I want to do that again? Why would I want to go through the pain of being 20 or 21? Do I really want to go back to a time when I had no money, had to follow fashion trends to the nth degree, worry about finding a job, plus try to find a bloke interesting, intelligent, funny and with any luck – good looking - to date, in a bid to conform with society?

So what if I might have put on a couple of kilos. So what if I can’t wear anything remotely “on-trend” for fear of looking like an idiot. Sure I can’t get blind drunk and spend the next day curled on the couch feeling sorry for myself…Oh wait, nope that’s not true. I managed to do that two weekends ago – only it wasn’t funny and I’m still cranky for wasting 50% of a perfectly good weekend!

Now I don’t have to worry as much about what the future will hold, because I’m already in it. I don’t have to worry about never getting a job, because I have one and I’ve had a few, so I know I am able to fool people into believing I actually have a clue. I don’t have to buy plastic shoes anymore out of necessity, but now rather, if I do, it’s out of choice. I don’t have to worry if the bloke I just met will call me. I have a bloke I rather like and he calls me because he wants to, and mainly because we make each other laugh, not because he’s deluded into thinking I’m some sort of princess or hussy.

So, hopefully, after seeing the pre-train wreck that is the start to the races, I will stop mourning the loss of my 20s* and hopefully, well okay maybe, just for once in my life, take a moment to enjoy what I’m doing, right now without planning what’s happening tomorrow or wishing I could relive yesterday – particularly since when yesterday drunkenly struts towards me, it doesn’t look like something I’d want to be a part of.

*Mourning the loss of my 20s must be attributed to my blogless and completely hilarious friend, Chi, who in planning her 30th said she was going to have a wake. She didn’t have a wake, we were instead invited to share a feast of French food and too many bottles of champagne. Much better.

I am also reminded of my very talented friend, Cathy, who was published in One Book Many Brisbane’s. If you have the time, be sure to read: Trashing the field. It perfectly encapsulates the race day that we saw the start of.

A Sundays worth of memories

2010-08-08T17:05:00.000+10:00

There’s a certain smell that sends my olfactory senses into overdrive. The memories evoked are thrust into the forefront of my brain and are watched in my mind’s eye like an old silent and scratchy home video.

Whenever I come across the strange combination of smells that is stale cigarette and dog (rarely, I admit), I am reminded of my Grandma. Not quite the scent of lavender one would have expected. None-the-less, when my nostrils flare to that particular mix of smells, I am dragged back to a time when I was little and the half hour journey from my family home to that of Grandparent’s in Watford, would send me to sleep.

I’d awaken, groggy and grumpy (a trait I seem to have held onto over the years) outside a series of brilliant, dark and rich green hedges that I was too small to look over and for some reason they held great mysteries for me and my cousins. We were convinced little people lived amongst the branches and leaves of the hedges, and we constantly peered and prodded into the hedges hoping to catch one of the tiny people frolicking amongst the branches, fairy style.

My parents would open the back passenger door and I’d slump out of the car. We’d walk along the pathway, from street to door, smelling hydrangeas and dodging bees. Ringing the bell, we’d hear, “Len, Len, they’re here,” my Grandma would yell to Grandad, wiping her floured hands on a tea towel and rush to the door to greet her middle son, his wife and grand-daughter.

Door flung wide, she’d wrap me up in her arms, crush me to her stomach and heavy bosoms and sing, “oh you are a funny-un, with a nose like a pickled onion and a face like a squashed tomato...” Or she’d screech, in an acquired Hyacinth Bucket English accent, “Oh my little duckie.” I breathe in her soft, crinkly, white skin that smelt faintly of perfume or perhaps Yardley talc, cigarettes and of the wonderful German Shepherd, Bess, who was my first four legged best friend.

All 60 kilos of Bess would bounce from the living room, down the skinny and short red carpeted hallway in one giant leap and onto my dad. Her tail would nearly take my head clean off as it thwacked from side to side. The hallway credenza was battered into submission by that giant of a dog. My Grandad would stride down the stairs and arrive in the shortest hallway of all time that rather unimaginatively drew the house together, and draw me to his stomach, while looking at me questioningly, but with much love, as we were shuffled into the kitchen/dining room for our Sunday feast of roast beef, the creamiest of roast potatoes, the tallest and lightest of Yorkshire puds, all drizzled in thick onion gravy. Oh and some torturous brussels sprouts on the side, which I’m now pretty sure, don’t come from Brussells.

I have some very fond memories of my Grandma.

She would cook every minute of the day. Baking was her thing. I am sure most women of her generation cooked, but I’m fairly convinced she was the best in the county. Out of necessity, she made everything from scratch. Her cakes were extra-ordinary. Those Battenburg cakes, with their crazy cross coloured squares, are still my favourite today – but I've never seen one in Brisbane, jam drops, eccles cakes, all made at home to share with her family. Sometimes, the cakes would include just a hint or a dash of cigarette ash.

Grandma smoked during everything. She knitted with a fag hanging from her lips. I’d stare at that ash as it grew longer and longer, she’d feel me staring, look up and wink at me. That slightest movement would send 3cms of ash tumbling into the knitting, which was likely my next jumper. Of course, she’d do the same thing when cooking. I’d sit next to her on a chair, too short to stand on my own, as she rubbed butter and flour together and occasionally gravity would attack the hanging 3cm of ash that couldn’t clutch onto the white of the unburnt cigarette paper anymore, and it would fall into the cake mix. I’d stare wide eyed, mouth agape, up at her and she’d smile back at me, wink and say out of the corner of her mouth, at least the side that wasn’t still smoking, “don’t tell anyone.” Of course, I never did. Never any need. Everyone knew, but we ate everything just the same.

My Grandmother would dance the Charleston in the kitchen/dining room, in her beige well pressed pants with a crease sharp enough to slice your fingers, a beige jumper and a long string of pearls bouncing as she waved her hands at me, eyes glinting under her eyelids, that had drooped with age, laughing like a teenager and telling me, “you’re no fun,” as I sat puzzled as to what on earth she was doing.

Of course the one thing I know about her that isn’t one of my memories, it’s not even one of my dad's, this one belonged to my Grandad who said, that during the war, my grandmother rode a motorbike. Of course, instead of driving in a straight line – she rode in one of those “Wheels of Death” globe shaped things made out of steel. I can see why you’d fall in love with a woman like that. A woman that can do anything is a woman who can ride a bike upside down. She must have been completely crazy, full of enthusiasm and completely devoid of fear.

Occasionally these memories will waft over me and tug at my heart¸ pulling it into my stomach and make my chest tight, as I heavily swallow a lump in my throat. Even now, as I type these thoughts out that have been swimming in my head all day, I have to swallow deeply, press my lips and flare my nostrils to control the tears that are welling. I wish that I could ask her to teach me how to dance the Charleston, how to make pastry - properly and how to ice a cake neatly and to just to talk about her life – something I don’t think I did as a kid.

It seems that the saddest thing about grandparents is that they are never around for long enough. Of course, we moved to the other side of the planet, so never really could make the most of having my grandparents around. I only saw her one more time, it was when I was 14. Such a crappy age and I never appreciated anything back then – and occasionally, if I'm honest, still don’t. The thing is, I’d be happy to see her, if just for an hour, to be squashed by that air-expelling hug/heimlich manoeuvre and have her sing, “...with a face like a squashed tomato – oh you are a funny-un,” and then fall about laughing, with her big blue, Angela Lansbury like eyes sparkling, with happiness.

So, just casually, who's your office pervert?

2010-08-07T08:04:00.001+10:00

I drive to work. Every single day. I have to. And I hate driving to work. I would much rather sit on a train and control my motion sickness, than drive. Alas, I drive and as a result, I'm often dodging an accident - caused by someone else, or watching someone who swerves from left to right, incapable of staying in their lane.

I arrive at work and regale my team with the miracle of my safe arrival. They all nod and smile, knowingly, and say, "Yeah, the road is full of idiots. No-one can drive anymore." We share, round robin style, driving tales of woe about how they too, saw an idiot driver this morning on the way to work.

I never questioned the validity of these arguments, until one day a few years ago; I drove behind a colleague, who drove like a lunatic. She was all over the road, checking her phone, not indicating, not merging until the last minute, changing lanes for no reason, driving in the right hand lane at a slow speed etc. Unbelievably, she arrived at the meeting safe and sound.

At the following week's Friday drinks I said "since there are 30 of us around this table, and because of the undisputable facts relating to the law of averages, one of us must be a bad driver," I pause for dramatic effect, looking coquettishly underneath my eyelashes at the disastrous driving colleague. " I mean, think about it - we can't all be great drivers, at least one of us has to be crap, right, it only stands to reason. There's a bell curve to driving like there is to everything else." Of course, no-one thinks they're a bad driver. If they do, they won't admit it in a public setting.

But it got me thinking.

Now, I've realised that the tone of this blog is lowering faster than a pair of porn star's panties, but I started to question how many people I have worked with and what they might get up to in their nocturnal activities - in a completely not weird way.

I used to know a dominatrix, when I was younger. She was very insane, but also, in light of her career choice, more normal than one would expect. If she walked passed you in the street, you'd never think she tied men, and some women, up. Or walked over them in stilettos, whipped them and sometimes even burnt them, just for fun.

She told me that the boring looking Clark Kent types have the odd insatiable and sometimes embarrassing cravings for the perverse. Living in my little bubble, I found this all very fascinating. We're not talking about the colleague that told me about the intricacies of her vibrator purchase, or about the woman who once professed she desperately needed a holiday so she could get some action with her husband. We're talking about the ones who have an S&M closet, the ones who visit the prostitutes, or the ones who advertise for a third sexual partner, so their husband can watch the action from the closet. Oh wait, I know of one of those. It's the life of a friend of a friend of mine.

But, again, as the law of averages suggests - one of these folk must walk among us at work. And while I honestly couldn't care less about what people do in their own time, it makes me laugh a little that we all go to work, looking respectable and then at night and on the weekends there are some who are completely different. I used to work with a woman who wore bad fitting shift dresses to work and ugly court shoes. I was told she was a Goth on the weekend. I can't say I was altogether surprised. I'm not sure why she felt she couldn't be herself, nothing that outrageous about being a Goth.

There must be loads of people like this. Those that are totally different at home to who they are at work. The ones that have two lives, and are never going to be able to be true to who they really are because of fear of being ridiculed. Or perhaps, these folk believe they have to stifle their true selves because perhaps who they are will shock and appal. There's the argument that without laws, we'd live in a state of anomie - a crazy sociological term that means without laws, rules and social pressures, we would all be running around naked, shagging everything that moved, killing people, overthrowing the government etc. Still, we should be able to deviate a little from the norm, surely, to at least wear what we want and be who we really are, at work?

Anyway, aside from the dark realms of humanity, I sometimes wonder, who, in the office, am I taking instruction from, giving instruction to, collaborating and negotiating with or influencing, is the one who goes home pops a dog collar around their neck, chains themselves up and has someone whip them, for pleasure?

Somebody answer the phone....and please know what you're talking about.

2010-07-31T08:24:00.005+10:00

"Thank you for calling your bank."

No, thank you for ripping me off at every possible chance and telling giant porkies to take more money away from me than necessary.

"Please press 1 for someone slightly annoying to talk to, 2 for someone really annoying, 3 for someone to patronise and belittle you and 4 if you're really into hardcore verbal abuse.

I press 1.

"Please enter your customer number, followed by the hash key. If you do not know your customer number, please hold."

I hold.

"Please enter your customer number, followed by the hash key. If you do not know your customer number, please hold."

URK. I don't know my customer number, muppet IVR, so I'm holding.

"Please enter your customer number," I'm hearing attitude from the IVR, I swear it, "followed by the hash key. If you do not know your customer number, please hold."

"ARGH" and randomly press numbers, to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle, until I hear ringing.

"Hello, you're speaking with Maureen, how can I help you today?" She says it in a way that can only be described as chirping through gritted teeth, the way I do when I meet someone I can't stand, my voice becomes high pitched as I scream out "Hi - so lovely to meet you", while wearing a Stepford wife smile and internally chanting "twat, twat, twat".

"Maureen, my name is Marbles and I need to confirm some details regarding my banking. I was promised a letter two weeks ago and have not yet received it."

"Sure. Can I have your customer number, please?"

Have I not just been through this? "I don't know what it is. I use an account number."

"That contravenes our banking policy. You have to have a customer number," says Maureen putting on her stern and slightly patronising voice. Steady on, honey, I didn't press 3.

"Okay. Well can I have my customer number?"

"Sure." She says chirping up again."Okay that's done. We know have to set up 15 different sets of security codes that will help the bank identify you. Each code must be a series of numbers and letters and cannot be a birthday or significant other's birthday. Can I set those up for you now?"

"Uhm, no, can we do that next time, please?"

"Well, if we don't, we won't be able to help you from the call centre - so I suggest we go through the process now and then it'll be done for you."

"Okay then sure," I say, seeing my life slip away from me. Headlines tomorrow will be "Body found of woman bored to death setting up numerous and unnecessary codes with her bank." Key quotes from people that know me will follow the tune, "she didn't enjoy process" "she never much liked talking to people at her bank." "She always prefered to email enquiries, so that she wouldn't get stuck in conversations where there was no way out."

"Thanks for your patience. How can I help you today?"

"Well as I mentioned, I am wanting to confirm details and wondering if you can either fax or email me the confirmation letter I was supposed to receive a short while ago?"

"We don't fax or email those details. You'll have to request a letter."

"Uhm, yes, I did and it didn't arrive, can we find another solution, please Maureen?"

"No, I'm sorry madam, you'll have to request another letter."

Huge sigh, "Fine, can I please request another letter and hopefully, this one, has the good sense to arrive."

"I'm sure it will arrive," She says, barbed. "However, if you do want another letter, I will have to put you through to one of our Specialists and they can look after your request."

"Didn't I press the right buttons for this request?"

"Oh, yes, you did, but we have a "Specialist Centre" that can organise the letter for you. I can't help you with that, I'm afraid. I'll just put you through to the queue now. Thank you."

F*ck! If you don't have the authority to post a letter, what is it that you can do? I am beginning to feel that time has come to a grinding hault as I am assailed by aggressive elevator music. I'm reminded of Gotye track and quietly hum to myself, "You've been placed in a queue..." while trying to make eletronic sounds with the bits and pieces on my desk. Several minutes later, I'm transfered to Mumbai.

" 'Allo, you're speaking wth Prakesh, how can I assist you today?"

"Hi, Prakesh, I'm Marbles and I am hoping that you can confirm some details for me over the phone and then send me a letter."

"Of course, can I have your customer number, please?"

Here we go again with the freaking customer number. Here's my series of digits that identify me to you. Where is your customer number, why don't you identify yourself to me? Huh? Urk this bites.

"Okay, can I have your first name, please?"

I think I might have just said this, but okay, let's play this game, "Marbles"

"What was it you wanted to sort out today?"

You have to be kidding me right? Did I not just say this? Deep inhalation, think yoga thoughts. "Prakesh, I need to confirm some details and I am hoping that you can send me a letter to confirm?" My eyebrows are raised in what I hope are a cheery expression and the corners of my mouth turn upwards in what I believe to be a smile, in a bid to curtail my growing frustration at having to repeat myself. I actually just probably look like Jack Nicholson's: The Joker.

"Marbles, I can see that you've been sent a letter two weeks ago confirming that information."

"Precisely, Prakesh, it hasn't arrived yet, that's why I'm calling. I need it in writing from your bank. Since it's only being sent from Adelaide, I think it's safe to say it's probably got lost in the mail."

"Well, Marbles, it still might turn up, we allow three weeks for postal delivery. I would wait until next week and if it hasn't turned up by then, call us back."

"But, Prakesh, I've been on the phone for some 40 minutes now, and I just would like you to verbally confirm something and then re-send the letter, I don't have time to call back next week and have this same conversation."

"Marbles, I cannot send you the letter, you'll need to wait another week."

What the hell? Why not? "Prakesh, I'll pay for the paper, envelope and the postage, I just want the agreement in writing, please."

"No need to pay for these items, madam, the agreement is in writing, in the mail and will be with you next week."

"Okay fine," I say, verbally stamping my feet, "Can you please confirm the details with me over the phone, so I know that what the bank says is going to be done has been done?"

"Of course, madam, I will have to put you through to another section of the bank and they can help you with your enquiry. Just transfering you now."

Come the f8ck on.

Headlines now read, "New inmate for Mental Asylum. Husband said bank literally drove her mad."