Clients Aren't All Bad

While my clients generally inspire me to contemplate suicide approximately 2.3 times each week, every now and then one of them reminds me that they're not ALL bad. Or at least, they can be bad in a good way.

Case in point - I went to a meeting with a new client and dialed into a conference call. When a certain woman started talking, the client in the room with me muted the phone and yelled "Someone needs to shoot that woman!" and unmuted the phone.

Seconds later another woman started talking and the client once again muted the phone and yelled even louder "And someone needs to shoot *that* woman in the ASSHOLE!"

Will you marry me?

Good Question

I was genuinely curious about why Americans call the main course an entree (turns out that it's a perfectly valid reason, we're not just completely retarded), but I can easily say that this was the best part of my search (click to enlarge):


What, only 39,800,000 results for "why do americans think they are the best"?? Ah well, I guess it's better than "why do the french smell".

I Love You Guys, But...

Today, two of my lady friends who had been visiting me for a couple of weeks headed back to New York. It was awesome having them here and showing them around town, but I do have a few comments about my lovely houseguests:

1) Did you realize that women apparently need four towels each day? I'm on my 5th load of laundry, and it is ALL TOWELS. That is insane.

2) Women really, really like to snack. Judging by the crumbs all over my apartment I can only imagine that their apartments back home are permanently carpeted in Nabisco products.

3) This is the first time I've seen any table tops in my apartment - for the last two weeks every inch of them has been covered in various beauty and hygiene products. I don't even understand how someone would have the time in the day to use all of them.

4) Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. There's a certain amount of toilet paper that tends to last me about two to three months. These girls used it in ONE WEEK. I have actually come up with various creative theories on what they could possibly have been using it for. Maybe there's a toilet paper sculpture under my bed that I haven't found yet. Or maybe it's what they were eating when they ran out of biscuits.

5) I was surprised to find out that when someone has a glass of water and wants another one, they are apparently supposed to leave their old glass sitting on a table and just go get a new one. Go figure.


Being the tactless asshole that I am, I've already ranted at them about all of these things, but thought I would give anyone out there a heads up in case you're considering having some female friends come and stay with you.

Now if you'll excuse me, I think the clothes dryer just finished.

Why I Love Australia, Part 179

Juice just told me about his colleague, a 40-something year old man who called in sick on Monday and Tuesday. When he showed up to work on Wednesday, the reason he gave to his coworkers and even his boss was that he had been having nightmares. Yes, really.

And to think I used to make jokes about people 'calling in fat'. I finally live in a place where that might actually happen.

You've Changed

This week I'm reeling from the fact that NYC keeps daring to change in my absence. First was the news from J.Lee that she walked past Tribe the other day and it no longer exists. This should be upsetting for anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis, as a solid 50% of everything ridiculous that happened between 2002 and 2005 would have taken place in or near Tribe. Finidng out that my favorite bar in NYC is gone was a pretty crushing blow, I have to say. Where else will I go with friends on Sunday evenings to sit in a near empty bar with an awesome DJ and chat to the bartender in order to get free drinks all night? Recommendations are welcome.

The other is that Walgreen's has apparently bought Duane Reade, which is a pharmacy/chemist throughout NYC and no less than a New York institution. My only hope is that they at least don't change the name or the shockingly poor customer service that I've gotten so used to and strangely comfortable with over the last 30 years. I would actually miss walking up to the cashier with a ghetto hair sculpture and impractically long fake fingernails and saying "Excuse me, madame, I hate to interrupt this conversation about how your baby daddy is a whack ass nigga, but can I quickly purchase these q-tips?"

Welcome To Australia, Don't Forget Your Bucket

Miss Jessica and Boss arrived from New York on Saturday morning, and within 24 hours Miss Jessica was shocking hungover/sick and closely inspecting my toilet bowl.

We attended a birthday party that involved free booze. There was also free food, but clearly we didn't partake in much of that. Around midnight the girls were hit with jetlag and I was forced to continue partying without them until 3am.

Don't tell the girls, but I'm starting a competition with myself to see how many times I can get them to throw up from drinking too much. What can I say? I'm bored.

Omen

I got another one of those FAIL emails earlier this week, and I felt like this photo is really symbolic of my average Friday night:


Yeah I look like a loser with an extra chromosome, but the rest of you don't look much better, so stop judging me.

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.

Bad Habits

Met up with Becs and the Hickster for lunch on Sunday, with the Hickster and I proclaiming that we were NOT going to have a repeat of last week's Sunday lunch that ended with the Hickster incomprehensibly ranting about Ikea taking over the world.

Long story short, we pretty much repeated the entire affair all over again but with a slightly different cast of characters, and the Hickster harassing an old woman in the street. (She had the best of intentions, if that means anything to the old woman who is probably afraid to leave her apartment now.)

I'm tempted to plan another Sunday lunch for the upcoming weekend, but I'm concerned that the Hickster may not make it home alive this time.

And The Winner Is...

I haven't even talked to most of my friends about how their Christmas went, but I am well and truly confident that the Hickster finding her boyfriend Copps unconscious and covered in blood (after falling off the sofa and hitting his face on the corner of the glass coffee table) after Christmas drinks with friends won't be beaten.

Any Christmas evening that ends with paramedics is a good story. I should start planning something for next year.

We Wish You A Bogan Christmas

I'm about to head to the airport to spend my Christmas up at the Gold Coast, pictured here:


Yes, it looks lovely, doesn't it? However it is known for being populated by bogans, a type of person pictured here:


Should I not post again for a week, send Santa.

Just Like Old Times

Yesterday was a Sunday lunch with a few friends, which we knew would be a bit of a piss up, and so we all got a bit carried away.

Carrying the torch for the group though was the Hickster, who managed to go from sober to drunk over the course of about a minute somewhere around 6pm, and never recovered. After her incomprehensible ranting about Ikea taking over the world, Wilks and I faked all of us leaving just so that we could get her into a taxi home. (We then went back inside for a few more rounds.)

Needless to say, the Hickster woke up fully clothed the next morning, calling around to find out what the hell had happened, since she essentially didn't remember anything after 5pm or so.

And it's not even Christmas yet.

And So It Begins

Well my two weeks off work have begun, which is rather timely as it means I can focus on getting hammered every single day until January 4th. That seems to be what the Australians think the Baby Jesus would have wanted.

Due to a long stressful day and a big dose of jetlag, I managed to remain relatively steady in my drunkeness throughout the night. Carrying the torch, however, was Stranger. Among his many atrocities committed during the course of the evening, he at one point decided it was appropriate to urinate on the fence in the front yard of the house party we were all at, instantly earning the total and likely permanent disgust of the party hosts, who have since declared they want nothing to do with him.

If nothing else, I should at least be able to churn out a few blog posts based on his drunken stories alone. Bring on New Years...