Canberra, Rugby & Psychedelic Dinosaur Anarchists

Ooops! I’ve actually been quite busy since finally defeating the nasty virus that Rebecca was kind enough to share with me. But busy Dara means lots of time needed to recap in my personal journal (I have the slowest handwriting known to mankind), and the poor blog seems to get shafted a bit :-(

So let’s go back a week and a half, shall we? Alright, follow me…

Last Sunday evening I finally exited sick mode. The cold was pretty much gone by that point anyway, and I had already lost like 5 days laying around staring at the wall, sneezing, blowing my nose and watching bad Australian reality shows, so it was time to go OUT.

Cheryl came to Newtown Sunday night, and we went out for Thai food. Newtown has a lot of cheap restaurants, but like 75% of them seem to be Thai. So Thai was the obvious choice. We went to Thai Po-Thong, which has won awards for being Sydney’s best Thai restaurant. It was pretty big and fairly busy as well. They even have a gift shop inside the restaurant. I got pad thai, and it was quite tasty indeed. We went down the block afterwards to the Bank Hotel (which, being Australian, isn’t a hotel – it’s just a giant multi-level bar) and hung out there for a couple of hours in a comfy booth. Got a nice bottle of sparkling wine and chatted the night away. The place wasn’t terribly crowded, being a Sunday night and all, and since they closed up shop at midnight we headed back to my house and amused ourselves there for awhile. I handed over the tomato plants that I had bought for her, which made me happy since being in charge of someone else’s plants was making me nervous.

Tuesday we went for more Asian food. I’d been wanting to head over to Ashfield for a while, which is in Sydney’s western suburbs. It’s a super asian neighborhood, but not the touristy Chinatown kind. Basically Sydney’s version of Flushing. There were two restaurants that I wanted to try, and since they were right next door to each other it worked out nicely. At restaurant #1 I ordered soup dumplings and rice. Scarfed all that down, evaluated my thoughts on this new soup dumpling, and then headed immediately next door to the 2^nd restaurant, where I ordered – wait for it! – more soup dumplings. These were quite good too. Cheryl got her own massive assortment of dumplings at both places as well, and we washed it all down at restaurant #2 with an order of fried ice cream. We then walked over to Five Dock, which was maybe a 40 minute walk, to go to gymnastics. Massive quantities of dumplings followed by acrobatics really wasn’t such an amazing plan. I felt moderately lethargic, surprisingly.  I left a little early for the first time ever. I figured since every time I was upside down I was fighting the urge to take a quick nap before finding my feet, then mayyyyyyybe it was time to call it a night.

The next day we went to our nation’s capital! How many of you out there can actually name Australia’s capital city?  Although the title of the blog entry sort of does give it away… I honestly had never even heard of Canberra before I accidentally stepped on an Australian girl outside of a Las Vegas nightclub last year (who later on in the night informed me what the city was called), so I shan’t judge you for not knowing! Although three cheers for you if you did actually get the answer right.

The Canberra trip was good, but it was a bit rushed. It sort of has to be though, since the city really isn’t all that close. It was a good 3 and a half hour drive to get to ACT, which is the “state” that Canberra is in – Australia Capital Territory. Disaster struck early on in the trip when my left contact lens ripped out, so I did the daytrip half blind. Proper depth perception is definitely something that’s not overrated. Anyway, we went to the Australian war memorial, the national museum and the parliament house. We briefly observed a parliament session, where they were yapping about the carbon tax for umpteenth time. The war memorial was a very nice tribute, and it had a great museum underneath which our tour guide whisked us through. The art museum was good as well, although it was again a bit of a whirlwind. The parliament house was very pretty inside, but it lacks the historical value of other government buildings I’ve been in – this one is younger than I am.

Thursday was back to work, followed by gym. I ripped my hand on my last swing on bars. It was quite meaty, I took several nice pictures of it which will eventually be posted to facebook. You’re welcome for giving you something super awesome to look forward to!

My next outing worth recapping was Saturday night. I watched rugby! Apparently the rugby world cup is going on right now, which is a big deal I think in most of the world. The United States has a team too. Someone at work informed me that they won a game, or a match or whatever the heck they are called. I didn’t know there were even enough people in the United States who knew what rugby was to make up an entire team. Anyway, one of my coworkers is Irish and since Ireland was playing Australia, she recruited a bunch of us to go to a sports bar after work to watch. There was also a rugby league game on one of the side tv’s – not to be confused with rugby union, which is what the world cup is. Apparently these are sort of different sports. I dunno, it all looked the same to me. Ireland won, you can’t throw the ball forwards, and there is a lot of tackling and not a lot of padding. That’s all I really grasped. Rugby is odd. It’s like the secret lovechild of football and soccer that the United States then sent off overseas to never be seen or heard from again on our shores.

This past Monday I went to trivia night at the Light Brigade Hotel (which, if you’ve been paying ANY attention, you have already deduced that this was also a bar) with Cheryl and her friend Jared. It was quite fun! I haven’t done organized trivia like that since the Carnival cruise! Got a giant plate of nachos and answered a lot of questions wrong. Their trivia was tough! It was a good time though, a very nice way to spend my version of Friday night.

Tuesday was quite the jam packed day as well. Headed over to Cheryl’s place in Randwick for some homemade sangria on the balcony. It was super yum, she did a great job making it! Whereas my balcony has a view of the street below and the houses across the street, Cheryl’s apartment is higher, and it overlooks a park with palm trees. It was also a really nice day out, maybe like 75-80 degrees, so sangria on the balcony overlooking the palm trees was quite nice J We then got manicures and pedicures for cheap in Randwick, followed by some yummy food back at her house. She calls them “piggies.” They were sort of chicken dumplings that we ate with sour cream and butter, topped with a bit of salt and pepper. Also homemade.  Good stuff!

Her roommate came home as we were finishing up the food, and then the 3 of us headed off to the city to go to an event at the Australian Museum, which is basically their natural history museum. I’m glad we went, since it was the oddest event I’ve ever been to. Whoever came up with the concept was absolutely 100% on drugs. There’s no way a normal mind conceived that eclectic collection of random crap at the dinosaur bones and minerals museum. It was $15 for entry to the museum and a beer or wine. You were able to browse the exhibits, and then there were also the bars set up and live music and various temporary stalls and stations set up. There was a silent disco, where you could grab a glow stick and throw on some headphones and then go rock out in a dark room with a bunch of other people also wearing the headphones, It was funny to watch everyone dancing though, when there’s no music… There was jenga and connect four set up on cushions on the floor, random giant collages of Paris Hilton hanging out with dinosaurs projected onto the wall, an arts and crafts station and a table set up by an anarchist group, whose sole purpose seemed to be handing out flyers to promote – anarchy? There were also liquid psychedelic paint light projections in one section. Basically random people playing with ink in a pan and then projecting the swirls onto the museum walls. The entire place was darkened, and jam packed with drunk people. On the way out we caught the tail end of a performance that seemed to consist of a half naked girl in pasties covered in glitter taking her underwear on and off to reveal the teeny tiny thong underneath. I have no idea what psychedelic paint, Paris Hilton, anarchists and glitter pasties have to do with dinosaur bones and natural history. Like I said, this event, while wildly popular and quite unique and entertaining, was obviously the brainchild of someone who was on some sort of  very strong mind altering substance.

Today was a calmer day. I wrote the blog! I also cleaned the bathroom and shopped for food and did various other domestic things.

So that’s that! I also went to work a bunch of days, but talking about phone calls isn’t all that blog-worthy. I hit my 1,000^th call though! I keep track of all of them on a pretty excel spreadsheet, and recently recorded my 1,000^th. That’s a lot of phone answering. I wonder how many calls I ever answered at Bernstein. I doubt it was that many.

Random Thoughts:

The uninvited fetus has left! She moved… somewhere? I don’t know, she told me but I wasn’t really paying that much attention. I am back to being by myself again, but as before, it’s day to day. I worry about who they will bring in next… Rebecca didn’t say goodbye per say, but she left the house a farewell letter on the dining room table. She wrote it on a paper towel., which I may or may not have swiped to keep for my scrapbook…

Tom and Claire put in their 2 weeks here as well. They are headed back to England shortly, after a year and a half of travelling. I also worry about their replacements. What if they bring in 2 party people who know each other? They could turn this into a party house! Not acceptable. I hope for the best though…

I have started putting wheels in motion for the post-Sydney era. Part of me wants to stay here, I like Sydney! But I do want other experiences too…

We got the schedule at work for how the migration is going to work for October. Parts of the day the new Manila office will take all the calls, and our office just does the backup work. As October progresses, Manila picks up more and more of the work. By the end of the month I very well may be getting paid to stare at the wall. I’m pretty excited about that.

Tomorrow is going to be a marathon of a day. 8:30-5 at work, then gymnastics, then out to Kings Cross for a night out on the town. I may fall asleep on the phones on Friday.

The Mental Melbournian (or Montenegran)

First off, let me apologize to those of you out there with a taste for things like “political correctness.” Don’t think me heartless or cruel based on the title of the blog. I know it’s unkind and not PC to refer to someone with problems as “mental.” But honestly, once I get up to MM’s description, I challenge you to find a more appropriate word. Plus it was a housemate who started referring to him as “the mental guy” anyway, not me. I simply adopted the already established terminology. Confused yet? That’s fine, you’re supposed to be.

Before we even touch that issue though, let me declare something that has been defining my existence for the past 5 days: I’m SICK. Ugh. The magic vitamin C pills didn’t do the trick this time. I must have started knocking them back too late, since the cold came out in full force. This is, of course, entirely the fault of the uninvited fetus. Now granted, the rest of Sydney is basically sick too. Everyone is sick. Something is definitely going around, and then going around and around back again. But would I have gotten sick if I had not been confined to close living quarters with a child that knows not of things such as “nutrition”? Probably not. I have to give my body credit though, I went about 3 weeks breathing in her germy air before a rogue germ finally snuck in and set up shop. But as a result of my recent illness I lost my mid-week weekend AND couldn’t go to gymnastics for the whole week. This means that next week after my class my muscles will feel like jelly and I probably won’t be able to lift my arms for the following 3 days. Thanks Rebecca! I loved spending my weekend drinking tea and sneezing my brains out. It was good fun. Definitely much better than the soup dumpling marathon that I had planned.

So now let us revisit the aforementioned subject. Per my previous blog post, the other Tom woke up one day and ran back off to merry ol’ England, since he completely ran out of money. The office quickly replaced him.

I’m not sure what his name was. He was only here 6 days before he was essentially evicted. I was coming down the stairs on his second day here, and we introduced ourselves. I didn’t understand what he said when he stated his name. However, in the 2 seconds that passed between whatever it was he uttered and me shaking hands and saying nice to meet you, my brain made the quick decision not to ask him to repeat it. I sort of instantly knew that no matter how many times he said his name, I probably wasn’t going to get it. Between the Aussie accent and the slurring and mumbling, there was no way I was ever able going to be able to decipher the actual name. I decided I’d just refer to him as “hey you” should I ever need to address him directly.

The first morning when I left for work he was fast asleep on the couch in his boxer shorts (thank goodness everything was contained…), sitting upright. Other than that I avoided him for the first couple of days. I casually asked at one point what he was doing in Sydney. He said he was here to “party.” I asked if he was doing tourist things as well. He sort of shrugged at that one. Apparently he was primarily in Sydney because his hometown if Melbourne has no alcohol? I didn’t ask for further clarification. He mentioned some friends in town and a nearby cousin, none of which anyone saw evidence of in the days that followed.

A couple of days went by before I found out what had gone down the first couple of nights. I came home and Tom and Claire were in the living room, as MM was out drinking (most likely by himself) somewhere.  Apparently MM’s first night was quite the disaster. He went out drinking at the local bars, and then of course had no idea where he lived or how to get home, so he ended up calling the night manager who guided him over the phone back to our townhouse. Naturally he had trouble getting in, so someone had to open the door for him. Then he refused to go to bed, and kept wandering around. At some point he fell asleep somewhere, but seeing as he’s a sleepwalker his wandering about aimlessly did not cease. At some point in the middle of the night he went out the back door (of course leaving it wide open) and slept on a bench in a park out back for a couple of hours. Tom and Morritz (MM’s unfortunate roommate) spent a good deal of the night trying to get him to stay put, but were largely unsuccessful. The second night was more of Tom and Morritz trying to get the guy (who was BIG – over 6 feet, and quite hefty as well) to at least physically remain in one spot. At some point in the middle of the night he sleepwalked his way into the bathroom, fell asleep on the toilet, and then keeled over and crashed into the glass shower door. Fortunately for me, due to Rebecca’s snoring, I sleep with earplugs, and heard none of this. I’m a bit sorry I missed all of the drama though. I’ve never seen anyone sleepwalk before.

I believe it was after night 2 that Morritz complained to the office that our new friend from Melbourne needed to get the boot. The office said he’d be out by Monday. Morritz did not spend another night at the house. He has a girlfriend in town, so he just shacked up with her until the MM era was officially over. After the second night, MM physically moved his bed to block the bedroom door, so that he wouldn’t be able to escape at night should the urge strike him.

Rebecca was the one person in the house who didn’t actively avoid him. The rest of us scattered, either hiding in our rooms or just spending more time out than usual. She said she is good at tuning people out, so she just hung out in the living room as normal. She learned quite a bit about the Mental Melbournian. He has narcolepsy (duh), as well as ADHD (that explained the inability to stay put) and on top of that, is bipolar. Lovely, a trifecta! Apparently he also told Rebecca tales of his youthful promiscuity and heavy drug abuse. Also not surprising. Lucky for us girls though, he was gay. Or maybe he said he thought he was gay? I wasn’t really 100% sure on that detail, nor did I care to ask him to clarify. We also weren’t really sure about his being from Melbourne. He also said he was from Montenegro. For those of you who are geographically challenged, Montenegro is a small country in Southeastern Europe, near Croatia and Serbia. He claimed that he only came to Australia to collect disability benefits every few years? But he also did say he was from Melbourne, and did have an Aussie accent. So he might have been the Mental Montenegran instead of Melbournian. Not sure. Regardless, he did tell us upon his arrival: “f they ask, I’m from Montenegro…” I’m not sure who “they” refers to though.

He also smoked like a chimney, had no concept of closing doors, threw temper tantrums, unplugged our microwave, made the ceiling leak and broke our washing machine, which took several hours and a crowbar for the repair guy to finally break back into it. He was certainly well intentioned though. He offered me ice cream at one point, mopped up the kitchen floor, and cleaned out the oven for Claire. He even picked fresh flowers and put them in a little glass cup on our poor excuse for a dining room table. So we all did try to be nice enough, but the house was super awkward for quite a few days. Plus it’s hard to be nice when he goes out to pick the flowers in the side yard, and then proceeds to leave the side door to the house completely open late at night until someone notices the breeze…

But the worst offense? The one I simply cannot forgive? Sunday. I was officially getting sick. I could feel it coming, I knew no amount of vitamin C pills could help me now. I knew the congestion and stuffiness and sneezing was on its way. So what did I want Sunday night when I got home from work? What did I want to have, before I lost my tatsebuds for the next week? Yes, that’s right. A can of coke. I wanted a can of coke Sunday night. I got home. I took my shower.  I went to the refrigerator.  Opened the door.  Guess what, dear reader, was NOT in the refrigerator? Now Tom and Claire don’t drink sodas ever. They didn’t swipe it. Morritz has been here for 6 or 7 weeks. He’s a respectful guy, mostly keeps to himself. He didn’t take my coke. And Rebecca, stupid and germy as she may be, has shown no signs of thievery. I can be nice to someone who has problems. I CANNOT, however, be kind to a coke thief. No way, no how. Sorry Charlie. That’s where I draw the line.

My suspicions were confirmed when I found that other housemates had suffered similar fates with their food and beverage items. MM had asked Tom for a tea bag. Tom said fine, since it was only a tea bag. MM proceeded to drink ALL of their tea, and used ALL of their sugar. He then complained to Tom that there was no more tea and no more sugar. He also stole 2 kiwis and 2 apples from Rebecca. He admitted this to Rebecca. He said he could not help it. But NONE of these items are as important as one of Dara’s sodas. Not acceptable. Dude’s GOTTA GO.

Monday he was out. The rental office dumped him in a single room somewhere. Good riddance. The whole thing was a mess. Not only should that guy NEVER have been allowed into shared accommodation, he really shouldn’t have been travelling by himself at all. He needs supervision. He lost a toenail at some point during his stay here and freaked out, not knowing what to do. He asked Rebecca, who said she wasn’t sure. He yelled at her for not knowing the answer to his question. He definitely needed supervision. He spoke with his mother quite a bit on the phone. If my child had all those problems, there’s no way they’d be out and about drunk in the streets, going home to shared housing with a bunch of strangers who don’t give two shits about him, other than when his last day in the house is. I hope he makes it back to Melbourne (or Montenegro…) in one piece.

Other random thoughts:

I got my contract extended at work, until the end of October! Sweet! No need for me to look for more work in Sydney then, which is a relief. The call center officially migrates to Manila at the end of next month, so I’ll be there until the end.

I randomly popped into the big giant fancy movie theater on George Street one day after work. I went all out, I even got my popcorn and giant soda, saying to hell with the expense! The theater is quite fancy, they even have assigned seating, and you can buy “first class” tickets where the movies are shown in even fancier theaters, with full bar and waitress service and a special lounge to wait in before the show starts. Cool stuff.

We’re all trying to teach Rebecca how to be…. an adult. She knows about door locking now. Tom’s teaching her that things can be recycled. She now knows that sausages are unhealthy. Last night she showed me the insides of a piece of chicken she was cooking, and I confirmed that the inside had been sufficiently cooked and was safe for her to eat. 

Speaking of Rebecca, I overheard her on the phone saying that she might be moving out, because apparently Enmore is just too far from the city. Now to put this in NYC terms, this is basically the equivalent of someone leaving Astoria because it’s just too darn far from Manhattan. Yeah. Now two weeks ago, in the pre-MM era, when the house had two Toms and Rebecca’s snoring kept me punching the underside of her mattress all night long, this news would have had me leaping with joy. But now that I’ve seen that the rental office will provide housing to ANYONE who can pay the $150/week, I’m a bit worried. I mean, they saddled us with a 35-year-old chain-smoking narcoleptic bipolar thief with ADHD who did not shower once during his 6-day tenure at house #17. Who knows what drudgery they might find to stick in MY room once Rebecca leaves for the bright lights of the city? Granted, this new girl could be my new best friend. Or she could be MM Part II. Scary thought.

I’m getting hooked on Australia’s American Idol show, so I went cold turkey and stopped watching it because I was starting to get disgusted with myself.

I’m starting to toss around ideas for job #2… It’ll be time to bid Sydney adieu before I know it… still so much to do before I head out!

Happy belated birthday to Reason!!!! Can I have a comment now??????