12 Down, 2 To Go!

Today is a good day. Spring is officially here. I think. The weather forecast is calling for something like 24 tomorrow, and 23 on Saturday. To convert it for you, it would be 73 and 75, respectively. It will finally break 70 here! Woo hoo! I am getting a little tired of wearing jeans. And this great weather is just in time for my plans to get out and enjoy the neighborhood this weekend, for the little bit of remaining time that I have here!
Two weeks from today, Sally arrives here. I have to say that I am pretty excited about it. I mean, Sally and I have been friends for a long time, and I am excited about spending two weeks of vacation touring around Australia and New Zealand with her. But I think that I am just excited about seeing someone from back home! In just two weeks, I will get to see someone from back home after three months of not seeing anyone. As I said, it is pretty exciting for me!
Now, on a serious note, in some ways, today is not such a good day. It is 11 September over here, which means that it is the 7th Anniversary of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. It is strange for me, because the people over here just know it as another day. I have not heard or seen anything yet today that mentions 9/11. I’m sure there is stuff in the paper I don’t get, or on the news I didn’t watch this morning. I did not have a chance to watch the news tonight, but I did not see anything about 9/11 anywhere. I guess it is a bit outside the sad “norm” for me. I am sure that it is being discussed regularly back home in the States. I guess I am just used to the anniversary being a big deal, discussed for the entire week leading up to it.
I have been in the US on 11 September every year since 2001. I was in London in 2002, but the airline changed my flight time “to be safe,” and I ended up flying home on the 10th instead of the 11th. So with it being the first year I have been out of the country for the anniversary date, I guess it is just an interesting perspective here… At the same time, I guess we don’t look back too often at the days where other countries were attacked or suffered significant losses, so maybe I am wrong to think that the day is a big deal to anyone outside of the US.
Okay, enough of the melodrama. I think I am starting to sound like Bob Costas. And after two weeks of hearing him on Olympics coverage, I’m sure melodramatic hooey is the last things you guys want to hear.
On a lighter note, I will share with you the story from this morning that I am sure you will all find funny. I walked into Kim’s office to hand off something to her. When I turned into the door of her office, she looked over, saw me, and said, “Here comes Trouble.” What? Now, I have been here almost three months. During that time, I have had limited contact with Kim. And yet, somehow, she has figured me out. I swear, I thought Michelle, the receptionist in my office back in the US, had emailed Kim and told her to call me Trouble. Michelle tells me “Here comes Trouble” or something to that effect every time I walk past her desk. But, after looking around Kim’s office, I didn’t see anything that looked like a hidden camera, so I figured I was wrong.
I laughed and told Kim, “I hear that a lot.” She laughed and said, “I’ll bet you do. I think it’s the red hair. Everyone I know with red hair is a troublemaker.” Nice. Then she told me that it was her job to keep the people in the audit department out of trouble, and I just grinned at her. I said, “So what? Are you going to follow me back to the US and keep an eye on me?” She proceeded to tell me that she will be emailing me over in the US, just to make sure I am staying out of trouble. I asked her, “Do you really think that will work?” She laughed and shook her head.
So in less than three months, with limited interaction (I have only been in the office maybe three full weeks during that three month period), the office over here has figured me out. I have people emailing me for ideas for random things (contests in the office, plans for nights out, joke ideas, etc.). Well, I always say I’m an open book. I guess Kim just proved me right!
This afternoon, an email went out, inviting some of us on a weekend trip to Newcastle, one of the towns on the east coast of Australia. I replied back and asked if anyone thought they served Newcastle Beer there. That response sparked a long email conversation among the group about beer, and how Newcastle is crap beer to anyone in the UK. (Ollie, one of the guys from UK, referred to it as “cack.” Kid friendly translation = crap.) The conversation then turned to attack American beer. I believe Jamie referred to it as Bud Lite and But Not-So-Lite. Nice. Remember this story…
Thursday Night Supper Club met at a pub in North Sydney. We have gotten quite good at finding places with good, cheap food and pints of beer! And my trip is now officially complete. I had a killer meat pie for dinner – the one thing I wanted to enjoy while I was over here. I can go home happy now!
When I went up to order my food, I noticed a sign on the bar that was Budweiser. Apparently this pub served Bud. I pointed it out to Ollie who laughed. We had to explain the beer email conversation to his girlfriend, but everyone at dinner was laughing about how odd it was that we had picked the one pub in Australia that serves Bud.
As people started leaving, Ollie and Louise wanted to stay for one more beer. Since I had given them a hard time about Budweiser, they were willing to try it. Plus it was on special for $5 a bottle. So I walked up to the bar and ordered three. The bartender looked at me and said, “What?” I said it again, and she got excited. I turned to the random guy standing next to me and said, “Oh, look. She’s excited because someone finally ordered the American crap beer.” The guy started laughing and kept asking me why. Then the guy standing on the other side of jumped into the conversation, telling me American beer was crap. I told them both, “It’s the best we have!” So they finally backed down, and we started talking. As the bartender brought back the beers, she handed me these three forms to enter for some sort of contest. The first guy helped me fill them out. You can win a pretty sweet prize! So the bartender took the forms and put them in a box. The guy helping me fill them out asked her, “Can’t you just go ahead and do the drawing?” I said, “Yeah, I don’t think you will get many more entries.” The bartender laughed and told me that there was some guy who came into the bar regularly and ordered Budweiser because he has some stomach condition, and it is the only beer he can drink. (What a terrible, terrible tragedy.) Probably more than I needed to know, but whatever. Then she said, “I think you have matched his entries though, so you stand a really good chance!” SWEET!
After our drink, Ollie, Louise, and I hopped into a cab and headed home. (They both liked Budweiser, by the way.) I ended up getting out in the same spot as Ollie and Louise, and walked over to the bus stop to catch a bus to my suburb. I had just missed the bus (for the second time tonight), and started walking to the next bus stop to see if another bus would stop there in the next few minutes. Nope.
So I hailed another cab and climbed in, telling the guy, “Spit Junction, please.” The guy took off and then randomly said, “Hey, you’ve got an accent!”
“Yes I do.”
“Where are from?”
“The US.”
This response sparked the most entertaining (and random) discussion of the day. The guy looks at me and says, “So who is going to win the race?”
Let me first explain something: The number one question I get from people is “Where are you from?” (Obviously.) The number two question I get is always something about the Presidential election.
So back to the story… I tell the guy I have no idea. That the media is having a field day over there, and that there is no way to guess how it is all going to turn out. Later in the discussion, the guy informs me that he sees a huge economic collapse coming this year, regardless of who wins the election, because of the baggage that is being inherited. Then he goes on to tell me how he has “researched” all of this information about economic conditions and the state of the US economic affairs, and starts talking about how much the President can screw up the economy. To which I interject and tell the guy that his comment is the whole reason we have the Federal Reserve, and that while the President can have an impact on spending patterns and the overall comfort of the American citizens, I personally do not believe that any President can take full credit or full blame for the state of the economy. At that point, the guy pretty much stopped the conversation, because he knew I wasn’t really buying into his “research.” Plus the cab ride had ended about 5 minutes earlier, and he wasn’t making any more money off of me.
What made my night, though, was this guy telling me that he knew that there was no way Obama was going to win. I thought he might pull out some of his “research” to come up with this one. But apparently it comes from an experience a few months ago, when he figured out that Obama was going to get the nod over Clinton. He told me that he saw that the US was way too conservative for Clinton, and he thinks the US is too conservative for Obama. (Compared to what I have seen over here, I will agree that the US probably is more politically conservative, overall, than Australia.) And how did he come to this conclusion about the election results? “I read it in the tea leaves.” Well I’ll be damned. I guess I don’t need to vote in the election, since the tea leaves have spoken! And yes, this guy was dead serious. I think he repeated the phrase “in the tea leaves” three or four times to emphasize his power of reading tea leaves to determine the future.
Whack job? Perhaps. But I have to say that riding with this guy was probably the most random and entertaining cab ride I have ever had. Well worth the $6 I paid for it!
I want to close with an update for everyone (before the mX update, of course). For anyone reading this blog post that has not gotten an email update, I wanted to let you know that John, Sally’s brother, made it through surgery just fine, and is in recovery for the next 24 hours. For those of you who know my roommate Sally and don’t know the story, her brother had to have bypass surgery Thursday morning. (The doctors said it was mostly genetics that caused these complications at such a “young” age.) They tried to clear the blockage in two arteries with stints, but weren’t able to get the stints in because of the location of the blockage. So John has been in the hospital for the past 5 days, waiting for the blood thinners to get out of his system before the doctors could do the surgery.
John is doing well. The doctors said the surgery went very well, and that there were “no bumps or blips” during the procedure. He is expected to come off the ventilator soon, and I hear that the ventilator is the biggest hurdle to overcome immediately following surgery. So he is ahead of schedule, and will begin the recovery and healing process over the next few weeks.
I want to thank everyone for the prayers and support for John and his family. You all know that John is pretty much my big brother, since I have known him for so long, and it was tough to not be there for John, Sally, and the rest of the family while he was going through all of this mess. But I knew he was in good hands, and that all of his friends and family would be there for him. Now he just has to deal with what I can only imagine as incredible pain and discomfort over the next couple of weeks. Yuck!
Okay, folks… Have a great Friday, and if I don’t get anything posted before then, have a great weekend! And now, without further delay, the mX Update. Drum roll, please…….
TEXT VENTS:
“Chris, personally, I like ratties. Don’t stop growing and bleaching, boys.” – Wendy, Wetherill Park. (We can thank this woman for the end of civilized hair fashion as we know it.)
“To those girls who go after guys with girlfriends to break them up. Some advice: get some self-respect, some integrity and some dignity. People like you don’t get far in the world. Yes, it takes two to tango, so you may get him now, but he’ll do the same thing to you.” – Someone with a future, Sydney. (Oh my…)
STORY OF THE DAY:
Police in Vienna were called to a car crash where they found the driver, sitting behind the wheel on a plastic box. The guy had taken the seat out of his car for cleaning, and replaced it with a plastic carton that he thought would suffice. The problem was that the carton was too short to allow the guy to reach the brake pedal. Now, it is not so much that the guy couldn’t reach the brake pedal that got me on this one. Or even the fact that he was sitting on a plastic box. What really blew me away was the fact that the guy took the seat of his car out to have it cleaned. Dude, I don’t know what you do in your car, but I can honestly say I have never thought it necessary to take out a seat and have it cleaned.