You Are The Definition Of 'Petty'

I am finally trudging through my last week of being in Perth for work, thank god. Maybe it's just because I can count the number of actual friends I have here on one hand, or maybe it's the total lack of culture or anything interesting, but being in this city makes my soul die a little every day.

To top it all off, I have to deal with absolute nonsense on a day to day basis at work. Ridiculous requests, total ignorance, and petty bullshit, to name a few types.

This week, however, gave me a truly horrible example. On Friday afternoon, I received an email regarding the first draft of a document that my team had produced two weeks ago, delivered and asked for feedback which never came. The person said that the content was great, but then spent the entire email complaining about the formatting. And when I say the formatting, I don't mean that we had used Comic Sans as the font. I mean that she actually complained about bulletpoints on different slides not being indented in the same way. And then attached screenshots of the different indentations.

But wait, there's more. Tuesday was a public holiday in Australia (called 'Australia Day' - creative, aren't they?) but I was unfortunately unable to join all of my friends at the pub in Sydney because myself and a colleague had an early morning client meeting scheduled for the Wednesday and had to fly back to Perth on the Tuesday evening. Except, when we woke up on Wednesday morning, the meeting had been canceled at the last minute. While this was annoying for me, my colleague had actually flown across the country purely for that meeting. Congratulations, assholes, for the amount of money you just wasted we could have housed a Haitian family for a year.

Only three more days...must...not...commit...murder...

A Matter Of Perspective

I was saying to my friend/colleague/current flatmate in Perth this morning how I'm not nearly as drunk and obnoxious as I was in my younger days.

She promptly reminded me that last night at dinner (and after a few drinks, of course) I told our colleague that she does "pretty good for an Asian girl", referring to the size of her breasts.

Still awesome.

Lessons Not Learned

Just under a year and a half ago, I went to a BBQ and had the misfortune of encountering a friend's sangria that apparently consisted of 1 part of either rum, tequila, gin, or vodka for each part red wine. Later that night, I ended up showing up to a friend's birthday party so hammered that I got the entire group kicked out of an area that had been booked for the occasion.

And so, you'd think I would have been more careful when I started drinking the same sangria on Saturday afternoon, instead of ending up having no idea how or when I got home, wondering why the Spice Girls were the last song played on my iPod.

You would be wrong.

Just Call Me Grandpa

In my younger days I would have blogged here about my awesome drunken weekend, and how crazy me and my friends are. And while my Saturday did involve a 10-hour bender ending with one of my friends incoherently babbling about the conversations he has with the birds in his backyard, I spent most of the weekend in my apartment (hiding from the hideous heat) being annoyed by other people having fun.

To give you a bit of context, it appears that my new corporate apartment in Perth is where they will be filming MTV's Spring Break, perhaps as an alternative to Mexico now that it's been overrun by drug lords and shoot outs. Starting at midday on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, hordes of European students would swarm the pool areas of my building, start blasting tacky dance music, and dance around in their bikinis and board shorts for the ENTIRE DAY.

And just in case you think I'm exaggerating, here's a photo from what was actually one of the quieter moments of the weekend - please note the couple making out in the pool, and the guy climbing over a wall for no apparent reason:



I don't know exactly when I started to be annoyed by drunk and half-naked young people with hot accents, but rest assured that I have actually called corporate housing to file a complaint. I'll be applying for some sort of senior citizen discount any day now.

So You *Didn't* Miss Me

I spent the first half of this week in Melbourne, a city that I hadn't been to in over a year despite how much fun I always have horrifying the locals.

I landed early Sunday afternoon, and within hours was sitting by the pool with a number of work colleagues, beer in hand. In the end though, despite a visit to the local beer garden at the Belgian Beer Cafe, I managed to end the night at a reasonable hour.

If only the same could be said for Tuesday night. A quick rundown of the evening's events included:

5:30pm - Arrive at Madame Brussels rooftop bar.

5:31pm - Order a large jug of Pimm's.

5:48pm - Order a large jug of Mai Tai.

6:12pm - Order a large jug of something involving gin, which is never a good idea, even when it's not chasing Pimm's and rum.

6:53pm - Wine. Lots and lots of wine.

9:42pm - Realise how hammered we are and jump in a taxi.

9:43pm - Realise we haven't eaten dinner and tell the taxi driver we need to go to a McDonald's drive-thru, stat.

9:57pm - Arrive at a Hungry Jack's (Burger King), at which point Buggy refuses to have any food because it's not McDonald's.

10:17pm - Get home just in time for Buggy to "vom-vom" on the balcony.

6:00am - Alarm goes off meaning we need to head to the airport for a flight across the country.


If you think watching someone throw up on a balcony on a Tuesday night sucks, imagine sitting next to them for 5 hours in economy the next morning.

Guess I'm not heading back to Melbourne for a while.

Ah, The Memories

Just so we're all clear, that's the last happy memory I have. Also to be clear, I have had happy moments since then, but I don't remember any of them. Two bottles of wine in one sitting will do that to you.

The first day back at work was horrendous, and I was bitching about it with some friends later that day until we all realized that we were at a dinner party that we had thrown purely because we needed an excuse to finish off an extra bottle of Moet from New Years, at which point we shut up and tried to think of the less fortunate people in the world, few as they may be.

I can't quite get out of my emotional funk, evidenced by the fact that I just informed our team assistant that January 6th is when Christmas decorations need to be taken down. Upon receiving a scowl and a few unprintable words as a response, I walked away while shouting "I'm just saying, if you didn't want the responsibility, you shouldn't have put them up in the first place."

Guess who's not getting invited to anything fun in 2010...

Worse Than The First Day Of School

This morning I have to go back to work after two weeks of an office shutdown for the Christmas/New Years period.

I don't remember the last time I was so depressed. Much drinking will be needed to get through this time.

That is all.

Poor Bastard of the Year

Juice seems to be going out of his way over the last few weeks to prove that the cost of drinking is often far more than the booze.

Less than two weeks ago he was out partying and someone spilled a drink on his iPhone, rendering it inoperable. After taking it to the Apple store, it turned out that he would have to pay $250 to get it repaired, and he got it back two days ago.

Last night he realized he had no cash when he went to pay the taxi driver upon getting home, and essentially left the driver his iPhone as collateral to prove that he'd be back with money in a few minutes. Unfortunately for him, the driver had basic math skills and promptly drove off with the phone after calculating that a $1000 gadget was probably worth more than a $20 cab fare.

Better luck for the rest of the year, dude.