Post-Flight Blogging!

I'm baaaaaaaaack!

Sorry for the lack of updating- I didn't get much chance to use the internet while I was overseas, and when I got back I had to complete a take-home exam for consumer law...and that sort of involved actually learning the about the examinable topic while I was completing the exam. Multitasking for the win!

I was actually extremely fortunate to get the chance to hand in the exam at all, because the Iceland volcano (it's ICEland...where does it get off having gigantic heat explosions?) shut down operations at Heathrow Airport the day I flew out from London to Singapore. However, our pilot made the decision to take off an hour early, meaning that we literally got out of Heathrow forty minutes before they shut down. Ironically, when we got to Singapore I flicked through the cable channels and 'Dante's Peak' was playing on the cinema station :D

It feels weird to be back in Melbourne, tugging on gloves in the cold when only a few weeks ago, I was wandering around Spain in the Andalusian sunshine. It also feels weird to be facing a giant pile of law readings when a few weeks ago, my only concern was whether eating a Magnum for lunch would elicit a sense of loss for not getting the limited edition Cornetto sitting next to it in the ice-cream freezer. Such dilemmas were easily solved (the Magnum was purchased for lunch; the Cornetto for an afternoon snack) but alas, the giant pile of law readings currently sitting on the table downstairs cannot be vanquished merely by the provision of three euros.

The trip was amazing. It was my first trip to Europe, and I was stunned by the amount of history behind everything. Earlier this year, I was reading a collection of 19th century Australian essays and stories- and one of them noted that although Australia lacks the history of European buildings, our beauty and value lie in the natural wonders of our landscape. And that's true. Australia is lovely. Australia has much natural beauty to offer to the marvelling eye.

BUT EUROPEAN HISTORY KICKS ASS.

I walked along 2000 year old walls in York, built by Willliam the Conqueror. I wandered through old Moorish palaces and centuries-old Cathedrals. I saw the tombs of English monarchs in Westminster Abbey, and saw busts from Ancient Greece and paintings from the Renaissance in the Prado.

And it was freaking awesome.

I'm just going to post a photo or two up for fellow blogger (and now fellow Aries 22 year old!) miku, as she was recently in Barcelona and it was ridiculously exciting to look at her photos and squeal, "Ooh I've been there!!!" The salamander says happy birthday- and I hope the salamander of your dreams comes along and picks you up and takes you over his salamander shoulder! :D (Photos are smallest size as takes me a while to upload!)





(The photos above were taken in Park Guell, one of Gaudi's architectural creations. I love the gingerbread house on the left side- it even has little button candies along the windowpanes.)

Before I pop back downstairs to resume my readings, a few tips I've picked up:

Daph's Travel Tips for Spain and England

• in Spain, when people say 'I only speak a little English', don't believe them. After saying this, they will then wax lyrical in fluent English to the point where they could probably write a 2,000 word essay for English Literature and surpass most high school students in Britain, America and Australia.
• in Spain, when people say "Muy poquito" when you ask them if they speak English, they actually do mean that they don't speak much English.
• Spanish coffee is amazing. In Spain, ask for a 'cafe con leche' (there are accents there but admittedly I'm too lazy to format the plain text, sorry!) and you'll get a lovely strong latte. Ask for a 'cafe solo' and you'll probably get knocked out by the intensity. In England, coffee mostly needs a bit of improvement before it can be classified as coffee. Ask for a double shot, or a strong latte, or you'll just get very nicely foamed milk.
• take a travel pillow on long flights. Otherwise you'll wake up with the Neck Crick to End All Neck Cricks.
• 'American Psycho' is not a relaxing book to read on a flight. However, it will keep you awake, and horrified, if you need to stay up to switch time zones.
• They have one pence coins in England. Run away before the service assistant can give you a wallet-clogging bronze coin after buying your 99p Ribena.
• If you are regret not buying something from Zara or Mango in Spain, don't sweat it. One will magically appear every 20 metres down the street across the entire country.
• If you're around Andalusia at Easter and you see people in white cloaks and white pointy hats with eye-holes marching past, they're being pious Catholics and not racist redneck Americans.
• If your hotel offers a laundry service, be aware that they will charge about three euro PER PAIR of underwear. It is much more fun to construct a shameful makeshift washing line in the bathroom- even though the maid will think you're a cheap bastard, it's awfully fun to get a calculator and add up just how many euros you've saved...my calculations for one load came to at least 150 euros.
• Hotel tea in England is frightening and makes strange dymorphic forms that creep up the teacup when you add hot water. Be wary of new British tea-based lifeforms brewing in your cup. High tea, on the other hand, is most excellent and quite free of strange liquids trying to grope their way up the side of your cup.

Hope you've all had a good past month or so- will hopefully update a bit quicker this time! :)

Pre-Flight Blogging!

I'm flying to Barcelona tomorrow.

Well, today really, since it's 12:17 a.m on what is technically Friday morning...but in approximately twelve hours I'll be grabbing my backpack and heading off to the airport.

It still hasn't sunk in yet that I'll actually be heading overseas for the first time since 2004- I did go to New Zealand in 2007 but I don't count New Zealand as exactly 'overseas'...it's more like popping across the Tasman to visit Australia's weird dorky cousin :D On that trip, I embarrassed my family by collapsing into a hysterical fit of laughter in the airport queue because the New Zealander who checked our passports said quite seriously to my American aunt, "Oh, you've come from the Oo-Iss?" and I ended up having to leave the queue because tears were leaking from my eyes and every second breath was being inhaled as a strangled, "Hee! Hee! Waaaaah hah hah hah....New Zealanders...funny....talk....funny....HEEEEEE!"

Don't even ask what happened at the supermarket when the attendant asked my Dad to confirm that he wanted 'six' slices of ham.

Anyway, I think that there's much more scope for potential humiliation in Spain, as my Spanish is nothing short of horrendous (as evidenced by what was possibly the most pathetic attempt at conversation I had the other day when I phoned our accomodation in Spain- I think I coughed out a 'Como estas?' in reply to a torrent of indecipherable Spanish before I blurted out the inevitable, "Usted hable Ingles?!")

Hopefully I'll get the chance to blog while I'm over there- tomorrow I've got the epic 22-hour flight extravaganza which will be alternately spent eating, sleeping, exhausting my inflight entertainment and fighting over what constitutes a legitimate word in travel Scrabble with my sister. (The Official Scrabble Dictionary would be too heavy to drag along in our backpacks :P) My long-suffering sister gets to put up with me in a confined space for 22 hours, and I'm pretty sure that at some point during those 22 hours the two of us will end up like this:

Catch y'all in Europe!

xox

Detoxing Is For Chumps

I got back from Sydney earlier tonight, after one week of sunny bliss, massive overspending (mostly on copious amounts of food) and the company of two very, VERY patient friends.

And yes, I should probably be sleeping but today they had this COFFEE FESTIVAL at the Rocks. They had Segafredo lattes for only ONE DOLLAR. ONE DOLLAR!!!

(Thus, why I cannot sleep.)

Anyway...I will not regale you with the full details of my trip tonight, because I probably need some measure of shut-eye (I'm going for a Broadway dancing class tomorrow night...I haven't taken a dance class since my early attempts at hip hop in second year so this is going to be highly amusing...) but there is just one aspect of my trip which I just had to share.

Our 'detox'.

On Friday night, the three of us (myself, Kris and Katherine) hit the streets of Sydney. We went for cocktail happy hour first (two for one!) then trotted off to this pizzeria/gelataria where we had some Baileys and Kahlua, then ate our way through two pizzas and then one extremely large Kahlua soaked gelato sundae each.

Anyway...after our sundaes we made a slightly drunken pact to detox for 24 hours. This was probably not the smartest idea in the world because we cut out every single food group from the food pyramid except the fruit and vegetable part. Oh, and salt. In fact, this was a stupid idea, period, except we shook on it and agreed not to renege on the pact unless it was a mutual, unanimous decision to break it.

To use the old defence, it seemed like a good idea at the time. We had been eating pretty badly for the past five days, and ingested quite a lot of junk and a fairly decent amount of Strongbow. AND IT WAS NOT MY IDEA. Never promise to do anything without:

(a) being 100% sober
(b) clarifying on what exactly the pact entails

(Are we beginning to see why I almost failed Contract Law last year?)

Anyway, we met up with one of Kristine's friends in the city afterwards. We celebrated our last detox-free hours by shooting tequila. As the clock ticked into 12:01 a.m into the first minute of our detox, Kris' friend sat there with a giant brownie sundae calmly digging in with a spoon. (To be honest, our massive dessert at the gelataria meant that we weren't tempted anyway.)

The next morning, Katherine and I decided that the best way to cope with our self-imposed detox of stupidity was to sleep through as many hours of it as possible. We woke up at 11:30 a.m. Kristine had already gone to breakfast with her cousin, and faced terrible trials of self-restraint (which I am sure she will cover in her blog at some point) and came back with fruit. Lots of fruit.

We each had a lovely little fruit salad for lunch. It wasn't exactly the same as ripping into a steaming hunk of meat but we coped quite nicely until we wandered down to the markets, where they were selling hot waffles, hot dogs with fried onions and fresh pastries.

This was the first test of our detox.

The only thing we were able to eat at the market was corn-on-the-cob. This was safe as it involved no dairy, no meat, no salt and no sugar. Although we could have probably chowed down on some vintage threads...they probably would've been full of fibre. We ordered three corns-on-a-stick:

Woman: Would you like butter on that?

(Dairy was forbidden. Thus, so was butter.)

Us (somewhat morosely): No.

Woman: Would you like salt?

(Salt was also forbidden. In fact, anything that made FOOD WORTH EATING was forbidden)

Us (even more morosely): No.

Woman: Would you like pepper?

Us: No.

(This was merely a taste preference. Pepper was allowed.)

Kath and I were so grateful to have something that wasn't cold, or fruit, that we went back for another one.

We last five and half waking hours into the detox.

Then we cracked.

At the bus stop, we formally reneged on our pact, with the words 'screw this' featuring prominently. Food was made to be ENJOYED.

Detoxing is for chumps.

I broke my detox in spectacular fashion. It involved fries, schnitzel and cream sauce. Kris had been fantasising about bacon for the past 15.5 hours so she broke hers with that. Kath had raisin toast with butter and jam. On the way home, we picked up another bottle of Strongbow. So in the end, we broke our detox in STYLE.

Hours spent in detox: 15.5
Hours spent awake in detox: 5.5

Conclusion: Detoxing sucks balls. We only did it as a little personal test, because we've never ever dieted at all and we wanted to see if we could get through 24 hours of excessive-veganness without breaking it or stabbing each other with forks.

And in the end, we could not.

Sometimes, failure is a very, very good thing.

Jerks and Dickwads

"Well, animals are not like people, Mrs. Simpson. Some of them act badly because they've had a hard life, or have been mistreated...but, like people, some of them are just jerks."

Today, I was forced to serve a pompous jerk of a customer.

Firstly, let me just say this- I have a lot of respect for the elderly. Really, I do. And yes, calling an elderly person a pompous dickwad really does not sit right with me, but in this case I think I was somewhat justified.

So this man comes up to the counter, and wants to get a personal digital recorder. Fair enough (except I hate digital recorders with a passion. For some reason, that sale category just seems to attract morons and incompetent people who CANNOT READ INSTRUCTIONS. Even when the manual comes in seven different languages.)

Anyway, I try to open the cabinet- but the work cabinets often stick and they're difficult to get open. The old pompous guy stands behind me and says something like, "You shouldn't force it, you're young, you should know better."

Meantime, I'm pushing at the glass door thinking, "What the fuck is he on about?"

(Had this been spoken by my 3IC, it would have probably devolved into an extremely immature conversation about sticking things into slots.)

Then later on, as I'm asking him whether he wants the extended warranty, he says, "You've got to be kidding me about that stupid marketing bullshit."

I said, very politely, that I saw no problems with extended warranties and that I actually do take them out myself. Which is absolutely true- they're brilliant for iPods, and I bought one for my Xbox 360. They are a total waste of money on stuff like small radios and printers, and if you get one on a television that doesn't cover dead pixels you're practically throwing your money away...but they come in handy for other things. The XBox warranty was actually a tactical decision- I figured that if anything went wrong, the replacement might end up being an XBox Elite. Tee hee hee.

Anyway, the old guy's response was something along the lines of, "Well, then you're a gullible idiot for falling for that marketing crap."

This made me a little pissed off.

I take very, VERY badly to people insulting my intelligence. I also take very badly to people who address me in an extremely rude fashion. And I can make my own damn decisions, thank you very much. Especially when it comes to the electronics industry, which I have worked in for the past two years.

Except that I work in the retail part of this industry. And you have to be nice. So I pointed out, POLITELY, that I have a sharper marketing sense than that. What I wanted to say was something along the lines of I'M DOING A FUCKING LAW DEGREE YOU ASSHOLE, D'YOU RECKON I CAN FORM MY OWN BLOODY LINE OF REASONING?!

He also read my name badge and said, not in a particularly polite way, "You don't look like a Daphne."

Which coming from him, sounded fairly perjorative, with possibly racist undertones. In my old branch, I used to have to put up with moronic dialogue like:

"Daphne...is that your real name?"
"Yes."
"No, is it your REAL name?"
"YES." (Are you an idiot, woman?)
"No, but is it the name you were born with?"
"YES. IT'S ON MY BIRTH CERTIFICATE, I'D SAY IT'S MY NAME." (Politely.)
"Because sometimes Chinese people come over and take a different name..."

AAAARGGGGHHH.

Born. Here. In. Australia. Get. Over. It.

Do I SOUND like I'm fresh off the boat? Nooooooo.

Except I bit my tongue and said, "Well...that's the first time anyone's ever said that."

(YOU MORON.)

I don't care what race you are, how old you are, what religion you are...a jerk is still a jerk.

On the other hand, towards the end of my shift, six hours later, a Chinese man came in with his little three year old girl, clinging to his leg. When it was time to leave the counter, I waved down at her. She stopped, then smiled, and waved back. (My heart melted. Right then and there.) But she didn't stop there- after another moment of deliberation, she smiled shyly and blew me a kiss. I blew her a kiss back, in front of the entire waiting queue- because if a gorgeous little child like that can show such affection for a complete stranger, the dickwads and jerks of this world have a lot to learn.

And you know what? I don't have to even think about work for the next week. As of tomorrow, I'm on ANNUAL LEAVE.

No customers for an entire eleven days.

Off to sunny New South Wales, then four glorious days off for sleeping in, coffee-drinking and relaxing.

Current mood? Happy :)

I'm Baaaaaack...

Sorry for the lack of updating...I was in New Zealand for two weeks and internet cafes were ridiculously expensive ($3 for 15 minutes?!)

We did a whirlwind tour of both the North and South Islands in 16 days, going through Christchurch, Dunedin, Queenstown, Twizel, Auckland, Napier, Wellington...plus a whole host of smaller towns. I can't quite explain the sheer number of sheep that whizzed past through the car rear windows, but I was quoted something along the lines of 14 million sheep happily residing in the country's rolling green hills and sunny pastures.

(Really, 'shag' was almost inevitably going to be attached to the word 'sheep' when talking about New Zealanders. They're EVERYWHERE.)

Highlights of the trip were the Shotover Jet in Queenstown, the helicopter flight around Fox Glacier, landing on aforesaid glacier, and watching the glaciers melting (which was actually rather tragic, but utterly spectacular.) I also went rolling down a hill in an 11-foot high inflatable sphere filled with water, squealing all the way...if you ever go to Rotorua, you have to go Zorbing. Admittedly, I wasn't too fond of Rotorua because the whole town smells like one big sulphur pit. To further exacerbate this, we went to see the sulphur pits at Wai-O-Topo, which hitched up the stink rating from 'sulphur pit' to 'boiling sewage' level.

I felt like retching.

Onto sweeter-smelling highlights, I also got to see this awesome rose garden in Wellington at the Botanical Gardens, and saw a Maori Haka.

On a more prosaic note, I also got immeasurable joy from the fact that almost all New Zealand supermarkets have a MUFFIN CABINET DEDICATED TO FRESH MUFFINS AND PASTRIES.

For $1.99, you could get a triple chocolate muffin smothered in chocolate with a chocolate Flake stuck in the middle. Or a lemon crumble muffin for 95 cents. Or a black forest muffin.

*drools*

Their pies really really sucked, except for the one steak pie I had at the top of the Gondola centre in Queenstown. I'll have to post up a picture of a Memphis Meltdown ice-cream, because the one that I opened had the most disturbing, phallic-looking chocolate protrusion at very top that I was forced to bite off. Even more disturbingly, it was filled with raspberry goo. But it was very tasty :P

Anyway...when I got back I was thrown into a 29-hour working week, followed by the boss asking me to go full-time until Christmas. It just meant that I got 9 more hours on top of my current roster, so I thought I'd give it a shot. So for the past week, I've been talking myself almost hoarse to customers- the pre-Christmas influx made last weekend absolutely insane, but I found myself actually enjoying it, mostly because I didn't have to go around stalking potential customers.

I know this hasn't been much of a post, but as I once said on my first blog, more Daphne-madness is pending...

P.S- Rosy, I hope you have a fantabulous time in London and thank you for your kind words on your blog. I almost apologise profusely for saying Happy Birthday in your Christmas card but I had to send it immediately because I was afraid it wouldn't get to you in time!!!