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Someone remarked to me recently that bloggers are all really just self-opinionated geeks who they feel their responses to matters are so important that it is necessary to post them online, to make sure everyone knows how much cleverer they are than everyone else, particularly those who disagree with them. Essentially they're a bunch of whingers with access to an instant medium for publication.
I thought to myself "Well that's not really fair. I use my blog to publish encouraging thoughts and ideas to make people think."
And then I read over some of my more recent post and came to the conclusion that, actually, it really is just an outlet for whinging.
At first I was taken aback by this discovery, and immediately began composing a paragraph aimed at being the most inspiring, encouraging and thought-provoking message of hope ever uploaded.
I got about three words in and decided "Stuff it. Complaining is more fun, easier and more in keeping with the established theme and tone of this blog anyway." So now I am somewhat less than proud to present my latest effort of literary brilliance:
The top ten things that annoy me right now.
Track work
I recently completed a sign language course. The primary school we were using was only a few suburbs away from where I live, so I figured it couldn't be too difficult to get there. I carefully set my alarm every Friday night to make sure I was up in time to make my class.
The course went for four weeks and I didn't make it on time to a single one. Okay, the first one wasn't so much the fault of public transport but more a result of me going to the wrong school (who was the genius that decided having two schools called Homebush Primary School and Homebush West Primary School would be a good idea?). For the other three, however, I arrived at my train station with twenty minutes in hand, only to discover that trains weren't running and I had to go catch a bus, which not only stops at each stop, but also red lights, pedestrian crossings and traffic jams. For my final effort I was determined I was going to make it on time, only to find it took me an hour to get from Ashfield to Homebush, an epic journey of about five stops by train.
Oh well. I suppose if we didn't have track work we'd all just have to put up with trains constantly derailing and killing hundreds of people, which would also be quite inconvenient.
The Phantom of the Opera
It might surprise some people to find this on my list. I'm a bit of a fan of the music, but I went along to see the show in Sydney last weekend, which I'd never done before. I was really quite excited about the chance to hear Anthony Warlowe sing The Music of the Night, which is one of my favourite songs in the world. Words cannot fully describe how ticked off I was when the announcement was made that we were getting the understudy. Ooooooohhhh, so annoyed.
The understudy was pretty good, and the girl playing Christine was sensational. The chandelier was pretty soft though. I really was expecting it to plummet from the roof and smash on the stage, but it just sort of got lowered gently down, only slightly faster than it was hoisted up, and settled lightly on the stage, obviously posing no health and safety risk to anyone. Biggest anti-climax ever. Still, the second half was pretty cool.
Smokers
Given what we all now know about the effects of smoking, I can't say I fully understand what would motivate someone to smoke. Having said that, I'm not going to try and argue with anyone who says they have a right to inflict it upon themselves if they want to.
I'm about ready to clock the people who think they have a right to inflict the same effects on me however. There is nothing that irks me so frequently as walking through a crowded mall and having the person just ahead of me trail a cloud of noxious gas, like a derailed steam train. Or a flatulent cyanide factory. Just because it's outside and therefore technically legal, does not make it okay to poison those around you while you take in your morning carcinogenic fix on the way to coffee with colleagues. Aaaaarrgh!
Losing at Chess
Maybe I'm a sore loser (maybe I'm just a loser...) but losing chess games has been really bugging me lately. The circumstances haven't really been helping. A week or so ago we had an away game to Rooty Hill. Apparently Rooty Hill is in Western Sydney, but I think it was closer to Ayer's Rock than it was to my house. After travelling all the way out there, eating the worst pad thai I've ever eaten, and finding the obscure room in the hotel behind the club that we were playing in, we got thumped 3.5-0.5. What an annoying night.
And then we had a home game this week against St. George. It took us half an hour to realise that the group of four kids sitting in the corner were our opponents for the match. A family of four little chess prodigies, lining up against a bunch of guys just out for a game and a laugh. Yeah, we lost that one 1-3. It's hard to describe the feeling of losing to a nine year old girl, and realising that it probably wasn't a fair fight, as you were never going to beat her anyway. Good grief.
Winter Rain
It’s been raining fairly solidly here for about a week now. Being from Darwin, normally I quite like the rain. The knock ‘em downs season in Darwin is my favourite time of year. Rain up there is warm, powerful and sounds great on a corrugated iron roof. And don’t get me started on lightning. I don’t think there’s anything in this world that is sexier than a monsoonal thunderstorm. Except maybe a beautiful woman with an Hispanic accent playing the cello during a monsoonal thunderstorm.
Sydney rain by contrast, is completely crap. In fact (to take my admittedly strange imagery way too far) if a monsoonal thunderstorm is a beautiful woman, then Sydney rain is a 53 year old ladies’ hairdresser named Tony. It doesn’t have any force or passion behind it, it just wisps around and makes everything damp, cold and miserable. The rain, that is; not Tony. Tony is probably a really nice guy. Damn metaphorical hairdressers.
Immigration laws
If you’re expecting me to start wailing on my own country here, you’ve got another thing coming. I’m currently most annoyed at the immigration laws of Spain. Specifically the set of clauses which make it basically impossible to legally seek work in the country without a European passport.
I’m sure it does a great job of stopping impoverished foreign factory workers walking in and taking jobs from Spaniards for half the pay. But it also means that anyone who would otherwise employ me as an English teacher has to first take bunch of forms into the government office to demonstrate why they need to bring a foreigner in to do it. And no-one is going to do that when they can just hire some pom to teach them the language. Freaking English bastards. What do they know about English anyway?
Kevin Rudd
Due to funding cuts aimed at making it look like we have some idea how to make working families better off, this paragraph has been abolished.
Australians who pretend to know things about the US elections
I’m all for being informed, and for subjecting a process which will elect one of the most powerful people in the world to a responsible amount of scrutiny. But I’m quite sick of having the intricacies of who said what about whom and what possible ramifications it could have on a primary for a state I can’t point to on a map explained to me by someone who I suspect would also struggle to point to it. “McCain said this week that Obama doesn’t have enough experience at warfare, so that will naturally increase Hillary’s share of the vote in Philadelphia amongst voters who like to wear green.” Honestly!
The fact is that no Australian can claim to understand the American electoral system. In fact, I haven’t spoken to an American who understands it yet either. Just tell me which one wins, and point out which character on the West Wing they correspond to, and that’s all I need.
The ever-decreasing size of ice creams
I bought a Cornetto the other day and was astounded to discover how small the things have gotten. Magnums are even worse. I can remember the time when you had trouble eating a whole one because of sugar overload. Now I have trouble eating a whole one in more than half a dozen bites.
They say one of the greatest geniuses of the marketing world was the guy who told toothpaste manufacturers that they could sell more toothpaste if they made the hole at the top of the tube bigger. Somewhere, some jumped up business graduate has wandered into an ice-cream packaging plant and said with that all-knowing “I’ve read studies about behavioural science amongst primary schoolers” voice of unjustifiable bravado, “you know, you could sell more ice cream if you sold less ice cream per ice cream”. Filthy communists!
The compulsion to come up with ten things for every list
So who ordained ten as the number of items that have to be on a list? Why does “top ten things that annoy me right now” sound so much more convincing than “top eight things that do that thing that I just said?”
I was thinking maybe it is all David Letterman’s fault. He’s always publishing his top ten lists of things. Maybe he’s got it ingrained into our social psyche than lists have to come in tens. But then I realised the idea is actually a lot older than that. It all started with “The top ten reasons to let my people go” closely followed by “the top ten things thou shalt not do”.
Actually I was having so much trouble coming up with a tenth thing that annoyed me, that it started to annoy me. And eureka! There it was. The tenth thing that annoyed was in fact the fact that I couldn’t find a tenth thing. I’m sure there’s a technical term for that sort of paradoxical profundity, but I don’t know what it is. So I’m going to call it Olchiflorianism.
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs
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I recently attended a work friend’s birthday party. It was the old dilemma of wanting to go to affirm your friendship with the birthday girl, but also being aware that you’re not likely to know many other people there. My one hope was that the birthday girl was friends with a girl at her church who used to go school with my housemate. I figured I could manage at least five minutes of conversation with her before we ran out of things to say. Unfortunately she was sick and couldn’t come.
To make matters worse, the party had a forties theme. I had no idea what level of creativity or effort to expect as the norm, and no way of knowing if I was going to be able to blend in or not. Okay, that’s a lie. It’s fairly unlikely I’m going to blend in to any crowd at the best of times, much less at a themed birthday party. The point is I had no established standard of expected effort to work off. I was seriously considering piking altogether, rather than getting all dressed up to head out and talk to no-one.
Fortunately I had what is fast becoming my trademark hat to fall back on, which in combination with just about anything roughly smart looks suitably forties (not to mention devilishly attractive (if I may say so myself (and I do say so myself, whether I may or not (so there)))).
And there I was, standing in an unfamiliar hall with no guarantee of having anyone except the rather pre-occupied hostess to chat with. Thankfully a few other workmates had come along, though none of them looked remotely forties. We were chatting away for a while when the hostess came and introduced one of her friends from bible college. We looked at each other suspiciously before I broke the expectant silence with “wait… don’t I know you?” It turned out she had left St. John’s the year before I got there, and we had actually met fleetingly a couple of times before (I submit this as further evidence to the claim in my previous post that my college is stalking me.)
To make an already strange evening even more bizarre, our hostess, who is quite an avid swing dancer, had invited her instructor along to give us all a free lesson. So, after heading out to a party fearing I would be standing alone in some corner of the church hall all night, I ended up spending most of the night dancing the Charleston with another old jabba, and walking home singing songs by the Ws, which I hadn’t heard for years. And I have my hat to thank for all of this. Okay… and also the birthday girl.
I can’t wait to see what I can pull out of the hat next weekend.
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs
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I think the time has come for me to let loose on an issue that has been getting my goat for quite some time now. And, metaphorical though it may be, my goat is quite fast and difficult to pin down. Just like me.
Those of you who know me in person will possibly be thinking "wait… Garry is actually quite slow and could be pinned down without too much trouble by just about anyone." And you’d be right, more or less. But compared to the floppy-jacketed economic girly-man that has so incensed me for so long, I’m a veritable Andrew Symonds, keeping one step ahead of the pack with the speed and agility of… well, of a goat.
Now… what was I on about again (before I was so rudely interrupted)? Oh yes – a subject that has been… annoying me for a while now.
I had thought I was the only one who felt this way, but recently I heard a radio announcer discussing his opinions on the subject and was encouraged by the fact that they lined up fairly well with mine. This radio announcer was expressing his opinions on the behaviour and nature of a fictional character that has largely enjoyed the adoration of millions of fans without ever really having to stand up to any serious moral scrutiny. A character of book and films (or rather, films of the book) who is recognised all over western civilisation as Mr Wonderful.
You know who I’m on about, right? That ineffable gentleman whose name starts with “Mr D” and ends with “arsey”.
I’ll admit straight up that I haven’t read Pride and Prejudice. It’s on my list of things to do when I get bored. Really bored.
I have sat through the six hours of the BBC rendition wherein our hero was played Colin Firth. Twice (I got in trouble the second time for letting on that I was constructing alternative plot lines in my head, which may or may not have involved dinosaurs). As far as I can understand, the basic premise is this (correct me if I’m wrong):
He doesn’t like her because she is plain and ordinary and well below him in social standing (that’s the pride bit)
She doesn’t like him because he’s an anti-social git and, she is informed (unreliably it turns out) he mistreated some guy who was in the army (whose name I’ve forgotten). She finds it so easy to believe the worst of him because he’s an anti-social git (that’s the prejudice bit).
As the plot (I use the term loosely – basically it’s a series of dances and every so often a peripheral character gets married plus I think someone tries to buy their house at some point?) unfolds, Mr Darcy falls in love with her because… he likes her eyes. Initially she won’t have a bar of him because he is an anti-social git and mistreated her friend what’s-his-name. But once it is revealed that the stories about what’s-his-name aren’t actually true, she starts to warm to him. And what really clinches it is when her sister runs off to town with what’s-his-name and Mr. Darcy goes and fetches them back. Once this happens – Ka-Bam it’s a match made in Heaven.
We can discuss the implausibility of the plot at a later date. What really riles me up is that all of a sudden he’s Mr Wonderful. At no point has there been any hint of dealing with the fact that he’s an anti-social git.
Now by contrast, let’s look at England’s other most eligible bachelor; Prince William, who admittedly has the marked advantage of being less fictional, if no more realistic. Patriotic republican and renowned pommy-basher though I may be, even I am forced to admit that P.William has serious style. When the crown prince comes a-courting, does he take a turn about the estate and remark upon the weather? I don’t think so. Does he dress himself up in his best white blouse and throw himself in the duck pond? Hell no! What does Prince William do to show a girl his affection? He lands helicopter on his intended’s back lawn! Now that’s romance!
In light of this unmistakable demonstration of the proper way to do it, I’m going to add my voice to that of the radio presenter.
“Mr Darcy; you’re a disgrace”
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs
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This might just be the most self indulgent post I’ve made yet. Apologies to those for whom that which follows will make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Get over it.
For all my university years, my life centred largely around St. John’s College, St. Lucia, where I lived for all my undergraduate years, and through which I’ve made friendships that will last for the rest of my life. Many of you may understand the unique culture and social conventions that accompany college life, and no-where in the world is this truer than at St. John’s. But however determined my singing, chanting, posturing, roaching, drinking, chirping, disk hurling, and out-whipping may have been in years gone by, I’d recently started to feel the effects of getting older, living somewhere else and with different people. To be blunt, I’d started to feel like I was getting over it. Normal people would accept that that is probably fair enough.
Then the other night, as autumn started to show its true colours (brown and gold, funnily enough), I got cold enough to dig my jersey out to wear to church. At the risk of sounding (and indeed, potentially being) idolatrous, I’m afraid I can’t come up with a better description for the feeling that came over me when I put the thing on than to say it was like a religious experience. A stranger and stupider religion would be hard to find (except maybe Scientology), but that’s really what it felt like. When I slipped that jersey on, all of a sudden I felt like “ah… yes. This makes sense.” Like all of a sudden I stopped being a project manager and I was once again Garry with 2 Rs, chirpiest jabba this side of the Buttery. I accidentally dropped a “you won’t” at bible study (“you won’t burst into song in the middle of a prayer session”) the other night. They all looked at me as if to say “that doesn’t make sense”. And objectively speaking, they were right, of course.
It was just a feeling, but then the weirdest thing happened. The college started to stalk me.
It started out simply enough. I was watching an episode of Doctor Who, when Donna Noble looked straight at the Doctor and said “She’s engaged, you prawn”. I laughed pretty hard at that, but I didn’t really make that much of it. And then as I sat down in the café the other night there was a busker playing the flute outside and what does he chirp up with but “when the saints go marching in”. That was awesome.
The kicker came just this evening. I was at the movies, and I got a trailer for Will Smith’s next film. It was all about this superhero with an attitude problem. The whole trailer was a sequence of shots of Will Smith crashing into things: cars, busses, buildings, trains; you name it, he was crashing into it. The name of the film? I kid you not. “Hancock”. I almost fell off my seat I was laughing that hard. Hancock. You’ve got to be kidding me.
So to hell with getting over it. I may be constantly on the move, but this is where I am now, and this, apparently, is still who I am. Garry with 2 Rs, chirpiest old jabba this side of the Harbour Bridge. Now what did I do with that packet of frozen s.s?
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs
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Every day on my way to and from work I ride the train over the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I really do try to appreciate it every time I do this; the view of the harbour is magnificent and the bridge itself is spectacular when viewed close up. Obviously it's easy to take it for granted when you do it twice everyday, but whenever I reach the other side and realise I've neglected to appreciate how good it is I feel a slight pang of guilt at becoming so blasé about it.
But the other day as I looked up at the giant grey steel pylons and thought "that really is an awesome bridge," I had another entirely different thought. I suddenly realised, with a fair amount of surprise, that I'm really comfortable here in Sydney. As much as I like to whinge about my job and complain about how un-tropical everything is I'm actually really well off and have settled into a great community.
I imagine (possibly a little narcissistically) that by now alarm bells are going off in the heads of all the people I have promised to return to in my home town. You can switch them off – I'm definitely still planning a return within the next few years. And that is itself the point (yes, it's taken me three paragraphs to get to it).
Apart from an inherent urge to keep moving, I could quite happily stay here indefinitely. Sydney is awesome, but something still compels me towards once again uprooting everything and shifting somewhere else. It could just be a love for Darwin that does it, but as I've already said, I'm starting to love Sydney as well.
It’s more than just wanderlust. While I admit that there are other motivating factors to keep me moving on before I get stuck (for information on this theory, ask Daniel Langlands), I'm convinced now, more than ever, that ultimately the Lord is calling me back to Darwin. Possibly via Europe (that's another story).
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs