Slow as

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Yesterday was such a slow day. I had zero plans and struggled to find something to do. I redecorated my room, brushed my hair (fyi I never brush my hair; I just smooth it out with the palms of my hands like a brushless tiger) and did the laundry.

Then 11 am hit and I yelled: Snap out of it ! before putting on some presentable clothes and heading to the shops. I ran the usual errands- Priceline, Asian Grocer, Woolies, oovie vending machine and JB Hi Fi.

True to my promise that I will one day be a good driver, I shopped around for the most helpful GPS system that wouldn't cost me my gammy knee and left shoe. Did you know that some GPS systems have lane changing instructions and also tell you to turn left "at the petrol station" and not just in "120 metres"? Now they are my kind of GPS. Half my struggle is trying to estimate distances while I change lanes!

The JB guy was too busy for his boots to serve- so I left all sweaty, claustrophobe-d and empty handed (doesn't JB make you feel like that?). I'm thinking I'll go today when I return my oovie dvd- The Young Victoria, which I watched in bed on my portable dvd player. I was that lazy that I couldn't be bothered to sit myself in front of a proper tv to watch a movie which would have looked 10 times better on a big screen than my 20cm by 15cm square. In any case, it was a wonderful movie. Romantic, bits of scandal and visually pretty stunning.

On the other end of the east coast of Oz, Man from Mars was watching his own oovie dvd- some Mike Moore doco about Capitalism. He kept saying that it was "interesting!" and I kept saying that it was too serious. Who would forgo romance and scandal for realism and insight? Really, who would do that??

Bus driver banter

In the evenings I catch the bus home.

The bus drivers know me now. On Tuesdays, there's a smiley Japanese driver who kindly takes a shortcut and stops right in front of my driveway. He always grins joyfully and warns me to "mind your step!" as I get off blindly into the dark.

Today, there is a new bus driver who tells me that he has never done this route before. As the last passenger before me, gets off, he engages in the usual conversation:

Driver: So you're not having a big night out tonight?
Me (at the risk of sounding like a total nerd geriatric): Nah, I can't be bothered. I just wanna go home and watch Masterchef
Driver (not too surprised): Fair enough! Yeah, I'm really getting into Masterchef too
Me: Yeah I love it! Everyone cries and makes good food! But you wouldn't get to watch it if your driving your bus at night, right?
Him: Nah, I don't usually do this route- but I find that I miss 2 episodes on average a week.
Me: You can watch it online!
Him (dubious): Yeah, I'm not too up to speed with watching it online!

And then I asked him to stop at my driveway and he chuckled- maybe because he's not officially my chauffeur and you're not meant to ask the driver to drop you off at your door.

I thanked him and told him to watch it online and he promised that he'd give it a go.

Bus drivers are so underrated.

Happy birthday your royal highness...

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It was the Queen's birthday long weekend and I headed down to Melbourne for a mini rendevous with Man from Mars.

It was an excellent weekend full of renting $2.95 dvds from oovie vending machines (Up in the Air is such a top film; Sherlock Holmes also very enjoyable); fine Man from Mars company and Archery Wii.

The hightlight though?

Having lunch on the Tram Restaurant- a beautifully restored old school tram equipped with a tiny gully for the tram chef, antique lamps and velvety tunes of decades gone by. I waved gaily (like a nerd) at pedestrians (who occasionally kindly waved back) and everyone on board was in stitches as the waiter (Steve) impressed us with his quick humour, sharp wit and attentive service.

Man from Mars and I grinned like happy larries the entire trip- it was romantic; a slow meander through town where you had a chance to sit still, be spoilt with simple tasty food and enjoy the cosy warmth of the golden lighting, the sound of laughter and the exchanging of stories.

When we got off the tram it was like stepping back into a different country- cold, windy, grey and cloudy-- people running around like headless chooks (my year 4 teacher's favourite turn of phrase) at Crown, the crazy sound of the polkies against the swoosh of the entrance waterfall. We looked back at the tram and vowed we'd do it again.

The next day I flew back to Sydney and went over to my sister's place to spend the night. She's living in Glebe and we watched Masterchef while eating vegetarian moussaka and a second course of lebanese bread, hommous and babaganoush. I found a super long red curly hair in my moussaka courtesy of my sister's house mate, and after my initial recoil, my sister made me focus on the fact that her housemate washes her hair more religiously than I change my bedsocks (well they're bed socks!). So, I conceded that the hair wasn't so bad and I tried not to think about it too much...

Another long weekend's come and gone and now the next one won't be until October. Why, creator of NSW calendars, why??

In other news, work is going well. I love listening to guys talking about the issues they're having with their girlfriends. I don't mean serious break-up worthy issues; I mean guys feeling completely bamboozled, hard done by and unhappy because their girlfriends are going off at them when they absolutely haven't done anything wrong. The number of times I've said "Look, your girlfriend probably wasn't even mad at you! She was probably just taking it out on you cos she could!" is more than I can count, and the insight makes me cringe at the number of times I've ticked off at Man from Mars purely because he was there to take my wrath, and by the way, take it in a classy way. If I were him, I would've blasted his ears off right back, but 99% of the time, Man from Mars lets me chuck a sook, calmly tells me that I'm obviously stressed about X, Y and Z and then proceeds to allow me to hang up so that no further damage is done.

I'm also enjoying D & M emails I'm exchanging with a friend from my old work- Miss Glam-ela. She's super tall, glamorous and wise and I always come away from those emails feeling like I've learnt something valuable. On Thursday, we were sharing our deepest fears. Hers is public speaking- a mildly annoying issue given that she's a lawyer and has to give presentations every so often. Mine is driving- again, a mildly annoying issue given that most people compare it to walking and really, it's not that hard. Plus, am I going to walk everywhere my entire life???

Voicing a fear is cathartic. Admitting a fear to someone else who offers their own fear in return is a hundred times better. I think we both inspired each other to do whatever the hell we need to do to get over them. I entered the weekend with a renewed enthusiasm to drive as often as I can and she signed up for an introductory Toast Masters meeting. A fear is after all, something that's become disproprionately problematic because someone else has (somewhere along the way) made you think it was scary. That, or something happened when you were little and it's made you insecure about whatever it is, ever since.

Everyone has fears, but like I said to Miss Glam-ela, most of the time you forget, because everyone comes across so damn confident all the time.

Thems my profound words for the week.

You snooze, you dooze like a doozy

This morning I fell asleep on the train. As the train mosied along, I dreamt that I was watching Oprah on tv. It must have been around 1995 because Oprah had her old short hairstyle and not the voluminous curly style she wears nowadays. She was taking her camera crew around Coles and stared directly into the camera:

This pasta is 10 cents! Imagine how many packets of pasta we can buy!

she declared.

Even as I dreamt, it occurred to my that pasta never would have cost 10 cents, even in 1995, right?

And as I considered this as I dreamt, for some reason, some how, I twitched (or more like hit out) involuntarily in my sleep. Poor lady sitting next to me copped a punch in her right boob.

I woke up with a start and muffled: "Oh! Sorry!"

She shifted uncomfortably and kept reading her John Grisham.

I shrank back down into my seat and stared firmly out the window for the rest of the ride.

Like a fly in my eye!

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Last week, Miss K Kaif and I were walking up Liverpool St when she began recounting the story of her sister falling asleep on her shoulder during Wog Boy 2; not because she was bored, but because she got tired. She had mentioned the fact that her sister tends to fall asleep during movies on a previous occasion, and while I was laughing at her story I chimed in "Ohhh cos your sister always falls a-sleep!!"

The combined effect of me laughing hysterically while I said this, walking wonky because I was laughing and my inability to form words properly because my mouth was hanging wide open, meant that my top and bottom teeth didn't connect properly when I said the 's' in "asleep". The result:

Ascthchleep!

Followed by: a cascade of spit spraying out in a perfect upside down parabola. To my mortification, one particularly huuuge globule lands exactly and quite delicately on Miss K Kaif's eye lash.

There is a momentary stillness as I realise where it has landed.

Miss K Kaif recoils and stares upwards struggling to identify the weird white globule that's clouding her vision- bewildered:

What is that, a fly?????

And then I can hardly stop laughing as I tell her no, no it isn't a fly, it is my spit and yes, I'm gross and I'm very very sorry to have done this.

Rather heroically ( I thought), Miss K Kaif takes it all in her stride, wipes it off with her thumb and index finger and we laugh all the way up the street. She keeps saying how she was surprised because the "fly" came out of no where and she had thought it had flown into her eye.

I keep wondering how much more perfectly I could have timed my shameful display of long distance spitting and consider that even if Miss K Kaif had been just half a step away from me, the spit ball would have missed her face and landed on the ground- no one would've known.