New Favorite Game: Drunken Pictionary

So, Sunday. To be honest it might be one of those things where "you had to be there", but all I know is that I'm so glad I was. I really don't remember ever laughing so hard in my life, mostly at the stupidity of others, which is always a treat.

Sorry to bombard you with another list of crap, but it's really the only way to break this down:

• The best decision was deciding to start the BBQ at 1pm on a Sunday, since "BBQ" is the Australian excuse to get absolutely plastered during the day.
  
• About 3 hours in, someone decided it was time to play Taboo. The best was probably the person who couldn't find the words and started miming things out as if it was a game of charades, including headbutting his partner who was already extremely unimpressed with his team's performance.
  
• And then...there was Pictionary. Most people already suck at this game, but imagine how they do after two bottles of wine or 12 beers in them. Apart from the appalling drawings, our favorite guess at an answer was "Dog in a maze!", said with so much certainty that you almost believed it would EVER be what someone would tell you to draw in Pictionary. (Having said that, the "artist" in this case had done a pretty piss poor job of drawing a racecourse.)
  
• My favorite drawing was easily when KitKat was expected to draw "Florida". While I was praying to get something that easy, she had trouble, and started by drawing Australia, and then some large squiggly thing to it's right that was supposed to be North America (I think. Still not clear on her logic). Either way, it was made so much more entertaining by her persistent attempts to defend what the hell she had done. See here my recreation that we were emailing around on Monday while mocking her:

• Meanwhile, the guest who decided it was appropriate to drink a small bottle of vodka without mixers all afternoon eventually knocked over a beer bottle. It wouldn't have been so bad if, after spending 10 minutes cleaning up his mess, he hadn't dropped an entire new bottle of beer on the ground. I wasn't sure if I wanted to laugh or punch him, but I guess it's all rather amusing in hindsight.

I'm pretty sure I have abs from laughing so much. Who needs a gym membership when you're friends with idiots.

I Love My Colleagues

I spent all of Friday and Saturday night parting with my coworkers, which is always an interesting experience. Made even better by the fact that we all got so drunk and trashy. As usual, here's the highlight reel:

• Starting to drink in the office at 4pm, and then heading to more free booze at firm-wide drinks. Mostly inoffensive, although about 5 girls in our office got caught checking out "a hot guy" rather blatantly. At least no one dived into the fountain this time.



• Unable to catch a taxi, about 12 of us took a drunken bus ride to the Green Park to carry on once the free liquor had dried up. At least 2 people moved from the back of the bus to get away from us. Good times.



• One of the messier members of the gang trying to do some kind of a trick with his beer glass and spilling beer EVERYWHERE before finally just dropping the glass on the ground.



• The birthday girl crying in the bathroom for no particular reason.



• Getting into a trendy club without being on the list (the bullshit artist in the group claiming we were there for "The Depeche Mode party", WTF does that even mean?) and getting kicked out about 10 minutes later because two people were wearing sombreros and 3 others fell backwards into a drum set. Ridiculous.



• Heading to a trashy place in the Cross to continue dancing like assholes. I also want to commend two people who did the "Hard Ass Tequila Shot", where you snort the salt, do the tequila shot, and squirt the lemon in your eye. Who the hell thought that one up??

And that rounded up Friday night, you can see all the pictures here. We've been advised that the reason all of the pictures at the end are red and blurry is because none of us noticed that the flash had been turned backwards and was flashing at the wall. Smooth. Saturday night was fun and we all got together again for another coworkers birthday, but fortunately none of us were kicked out of any of the establishments we ended up at.

Sunday was hilarity in itself, but I will blog separately about that because there's just that much material. And I'm falling asleep at the computer right now.

Birds Of A Feather

Lately I've been roped into interviewing new candidates for positions in my division. My last job really tried my patience for this sort of thing, and most of the people I'm interviewing won't be working on my team, so I have to admit I really don't care enough.

However I do love commiserating with other interviewers after they've met the same candidate, particularly when that other interviewer is just about as bitchy as I am.

Case in point - after discussing the candidate's experience and perceived character, the following ended our conversation:

Coworker: So yeah, I'm not sure he'd be the right guy for the job.

Zander: Agreed. Besides...that shirt he was wearing?

Coworker: Oh thank god you said something, cause I didn't want to be the one to bring it up. That was just horrendous.

Zander: I know. We are totally not hiring him.

Why I Am Leaving Australia Immediately

Okay so maybe that's a slightly dramatic title for my post, but I had an awful and traumatic experience this morning and I am almost considering it.

Just this weekend I was saying to friends how I'd been here a whole 18 months and hadn't seen a massive Australian spider. How lucky am I???

Uh yeah, until this morning when I walked into my lounge room and THIS was staring at me:

People, that is not cool. I was tempted to wake up my flatmate to deal with it, but remembered she is the type who opens the windows and doors and ushers such creatures out like some f*cking honored guest. Which completely clashes with my policy of obliterating anything related to the insect family before it can reproduce and its spawn can take over the world.

So after about half an hour of girlish shrieking and prancing, three-quarters of a can of insect spray, two thrown sneakers and possibly breaking the only broom we have in the apartment, I had killed the great beast and then woke up my flatmate to take care of the corpse.

Needless to say I am very shaken by this whole series of events, and may have to take stress leave from work for a couple of days to recover.

All Of You May Die

Eh, a quiet week so far (not including work being a bit hectic) so I think I'll just bitch about everyone and anyone. The following people dying would make my life more pleasant:

People who wear digital watches -- What are you 12 years old? Get a real watch dumbass, I'm sure you'll figure out how to tell time like all us other grown-ups soon enough.

Adults who wear backpacks -- Once again...how old are you? I'm not a briefcase man myself, but how about a stylish messenger bag? At least this way you don't look like you're walking because you missed the short bus to "special school" this morning.

People who read while walking down the street -- Holy crap, could you possibly be any more inconsiderate? Even if you manage not to bump into anyone (which is probably more because they are paying attention to what the hell is going on around them to make up for your obliviousness), surely you can wait 7 minutes to get home and find out that Dumbledore dies at the end? Twats.

People who whistle -- Hey cheesedick, there's a reason a song where someone whistling for the whole four minutes has never hit the top of the singles chart. BECAUSE IT'S ANNOYING. Shut the f*ck up.

Fat people -- No this isn't one of my general rants against fat people. This is more specific, because it affects MY LIFE. My company is now only supplying "healthy" snacks in the rec areas of the office, mainly inspired by all of the fatties waddling around these days. So, no more tasty shortbread biscuits for slim little me anymore, all because Chubby McRetard couldn't keep his hand out of the cookie jar. Even better, the fruit is only delivered 3 times a week, which means that by Tuesday afternoon we have three boxes of rotting bananas and tangerines to walk by every time we want to get a glass of water. Great planning people.


I've got more but I need to go to lunch and eat something fattening enough to make up for the fact that I won't have a REAL afternoon snack today, or ever again. Sure these things may sound petty, but hey, it's the little things in life, as they say.

Unce Unce Unce

That's the sound that's still running through my head after an awesome and mostly relaxing weekend. Friday night was just the usual nonsense, although I did manage to get home and in bed before 1am in order to save my energy for the much anticipated Good Vibrations Festival on Saturday.

Saturday was off to a questionable start (I managed to walk through a crowded shopping area near my place and was almost all the way through before I looked down and realised that my fly was not only down but WIDE OPEN) but ended up with more than a few high points to make up for it:

• My cousin and her friends came by my place to hang out and drink before Good Vibes (which was in the park across the street) and made so much noise that my flatmate closed the door between our parts of the apartment. She also said something about us blasting Ace of Base and being concerned that the neighbours would think she "listens to that crap". Chill out?
• While drinking at a pub between my place and the festival, I found out that Dom wouldn't be coming because he's working as a cameraman for none other than...The Real World! My sinister plan has been set in motion...
• I lost all of my friends about 2 minutes after entering the festival, leaving me alone just long enough to get a couple of beers and grab some food before meeting up with a couple of others
• Sneaky Sound System is officially even more awesome than I previously thought. They were brilliant.
• Despite it not being of any interest to me, I'm not opposed to other people popping a few pills every now and then. Having said that, if your eyes are rolling back in your head and you look like you're about to fall over backwards, maybe you've gone a little too far. Idiots.
• Jurassic 5 was great and the Beastie Boys mildly entertaining (I've never been a huge fan), but easily the best part of the whole day/night was a surprise appearance by none other than SNOOP D-O-Double-G. Made even more fantastic when he did my recently blogged current favourite "I Wanna F&#k You". I think I was rapping and singing louder than anyone on stage at that point. Sorry folks.
• I insisted all day and into the evening that I would want to go out after the show was over. So I went home, showered, changed, and promptly passed out on my bed wearing my jeans well before midnight, with people sitting in my lounge room. I'm such a good host.

Anyway, the rest of the weekend was just a little bit perfect. Met Becs in Double Bay for brunch, then a couple of beers at the Golden Sheaf before heading to Chip & Mickey's rooftop pool for beer and swimming, a combination only Allah himself could have intended. And then finished off the afternoon with some SingStar on PlayStation (Mickey is still the champion) until I had to head to Ellen's place for the Project Runway finale plus wine and champagne. (I'm guessing all the booze had something to do*w ith me stubbing my toe so badly on the way home that I took a nice chunk out of it, but it was still a good day overall.)

Working my ass off for a few days so forgive any silence. I think the U.S. has a three day weekend anyway so I doubt many people will miss me.

Incriminating Evidence

After a week of saying I would get around to it, I finally finished off the photo album for the New York trip. There are WAY too many in here (heading for 200) but considering everything that went on it was the lowest number of photos I could slim it down to.

So go ahead and take a peek if you're bored and happen to have 10 minutes to spare, and you will discover why I shall never be invited to another wedding again.

Me, Myself and I

Ah yes, Valentine's Day.

I wish I could say I hated it, but to be honest being single on Valentine's Day is a blast. You get together with all your other single friends to have more than a few drinks and thank god you're not the one in a relationship who has to spend the night sitting across a table at a restaurant and staring at some asshole you have to look at every other day of the year already.

Just the other day my friends and I were debating via email whether V-Day was good or bad, and someone questioned the statement that "all relationships end in disaster". Please note Juice's response:

we all have to die honey! so one goes and leaves the other all heart broken and lonely, and it’s us singles that have to listen to the crap from the one that’s still alive, moaning and groaning about how much they miss the dead one...vomit!

I thought it was hilarious, most others said something about it being "the worst thing anyone has ever said". No wonder I loved it.

Only Tuesday

I have a feeling this will be one of the slowest weeks ever (I'm pretty sure it should be Thursday by now, how is it only Tuesday??) so why not pass a little time by blogging.

The past weekend ended up being a ton of fun. Partially because there were plenty of stupid little drunken stories, and also because I reaffirmed the fact that being responsible is not the way to cure jetlag. Drinking like an asshole apparently is. So I'm mostly back to normal now and will remember to schedule drunken benders immediately following any trip that required me to pass through more than 4 times zones.

Saturday was Sesame's ferry pub crawl to celebrate her birthday, which was fun of course but unfortunately fell a bit short of my expectations. Namely I was hoping someone would take an unplanned dip in the harbour at some point. Juice was the prime candidate, but he managed to wait until we arrived back in the city at the end of the night to lose any sense of coherence or coordination.

And Sunday's highlight was getting all excited about the Project Runway finale (for which we picked up wine and an extra bottle of champagne and started drinking) only to realize the bastards had split it up into two parts and it won't really finish until next week. Damn. Guess that means we have to drink ANOTHER bottle of champagne next Sunday. Talk about a rough life.

This week my goal is to finish the photo album from NY. The main hold up at this point has been that I have way too many pictures and can't delete enough that don't need to go in the finished album. All the remaining ones (close to 200) are either relevant to the storyline or make me look really hot. Clearly I can't get rid of the latter, so expect some holes in the plot this time kids.

Whatever

I'm honestly too ridiculously exhausted to make a proper post right now, and it's not even my fault. So here are a few bits and pieces to end the week:

• The reason I'm so stupidly tired is that I'm having the hardest time I can remember dealing with my jet lag. I've even been responsible and made sure to go to bed at 9.30 or 10pm every single night, and I still wake up at some godforsaken time in the morning and can't get back to sleep. Meaning by 2pm each day I start to nod off at my desk, and then barely manage to make it to 5pm. I'm actually plotting to leave early today so I can go home and take a nap and have enough energy to go out tonight.

• I'm getting used to my new phone, purchased last week in NY (for hundreds of dollars cheaper than it costs here in Sydney, for some reason) because I needed a replacement for my oh-so-fancy LG Chocolate which I managed to sit on and break back in November. I actually tried to insure this new one and was informed that I wouldn't be able to because I didn't buy it directly from Vodafone at their exorbitant prices. Friends are already taking bets on how long this one will last, and I plan to prove them all wrong.

• The latest song on constant repeat on my iPod is "I Wanna Love You" by Akon & Snoop Dogg. Other than being way too catchy, what I really love is that the original title is "I Wanna F#%k You" and is about wanting to bang a stripper. Obviously a classic.

• And finally, I love you all, but if one more person IMs me about Anna Nicole Smith they are getting blocked. I really really don't care that much. I doubt anyone else does either, and I find it hard to imagine that there will be candlelight vigils popping up around the world for her anytime soon. The poor woman is probably better off, and the only person who will really be very upset about this is her new husband because she kicked the bucket before he could get his hands on her potential fortune. Boo hoo.

R.I.P. Anna Nicole

Dumb and Dumber

Sorry folks, but I'm going to need a little help deciding which is the most retarded thing I've heard in the last few months.

CONTENDER #1

Anonymous: So what do you guys use for money in Australia? The Euro?

Zander: WHAT? The Euro...as in the European dollar??

Anonymous: Whatever, shut up. I figured maybe you guys had it cause Australia is part of the Commonwealth.

Zander: Oh my god. What does the Commonwealth have to do with anything? Even Britain doesn't use the Euro.

Anonymous: Really?


CONTENDER #2

Zander (reading trivia): What was the first country to give women the right to vote?

Person #1: Australia?

Zander: No, but you're close!

Person #2 (thinking VERY hard): Um...hmmm...

Zander: Yes?

Person #2: Africa?

Zander: *speechless*


For the record, the answer to that question was New Zealand. Fine if you didn't know it, but I'm hoping that the vast majority of people would a) guess an actual country b) if they were to guess a continent (you know, just for kicks), maybe pick one where most people, men or women, can currently vote.

I also last week had to explain to a good friend (who is a freaking investment banker) that you lose money when you convert currency and that it is not, in fact, a free service that the government provides out of the goodness of their hearts. The best part is that I'm not sure she believed me at the end...

Travellin' Man

This morning I got off my fourth 24+ hour flight in the past 5 weeks and thanked god it was over. The question a lot of people have asked me lately is how I can stand so many long haul trips on such a frequent basis. The fact is that while sitting on a plane with 400 other people for 14 hours or so at a time isn't my first choice of hobby, there are worse things than sitting around napping between movies that you always wanted to watch but couldn't be bothered to see in a theater or rent the DVD.

This trip was a little more interesting because I was recently upgraded another level in the Qantas Frequent Flyer program, and supposedly was meant to benefit in various ways. While I'm not sure that most of these benefits actually mean anything, one thing I was looking forward to checking out was the Qantas Club, so I did this in Sydney before flying out a week and a half ago. The whole thing would have been much more exciting if I was more of an alcoholic, since they did provide free beer, wine and hard liquor. As it stands, even I am not going to binge drink by myself at 9.30am before a 24 hour journey, and so I simply grabbed some free juice and cake and went on my merry way. A bit of a disappointment to say the least.

Coming back was a little more soul-destroying, as I had to fly from NYC to LA on American Airlines. I generally avoid any American carrier at all costs because anyone who has flown on a half-decent foreign airline knows what crap the US is when it comes to domestic flights. Sorry, but if I'm going to be on a plane for 6 hours then I don't care if it's not leaving the country, food should be provided and not charged for. Not only that, but their first and business class areas were the saddest things I've ever seen and I don't remember being completely not jealous that I wasn't sitting there until now. I really just felt bad that people had actually paid extra for it.

Otherwise it wasn't that bad, and easily the best thing was walking off the flight in LA and having Nigel Barker (of America's Next Top Model fame) standing right in front of me. I realise this will only be appreciated by people who have just as trashy taste in TV shows as myself, but I thought of more than a few people to text in Australia and across the US about my sighting. Alas, he totally saw me but didn't tell me that my walk was fierce when I passed by, so I'm trying to get past my heartbreak and move on with my life post-Nigel.

And now it's Tuesday afternoon and I'm questioning the wisdom of coming to work when my flight landed at around 9am this morning. My logic was that when you come back from vacation, your first day is going to be a waste anyway, so it might as well be a day when you're not capable of doing much. However I have spent the last 3 hours wishing for an early grave, so I'm not sure I will be doing that again anytime soon.

If I don't actually try to end my life in the next few minutes, I'll blog again this week and maybe make some mention of the most awesome trip back to New York that could ever be imagined.