Fatter By The Minute

Happy Thanksgiving!

Just wanted to check in and assure you that not only did Thanksgiving in Sydney go ahead as usual this year (devolving into a mini-dance party ending after 1am, sorry neighbors!) but we even managed to demolish a bottle of Patron XO Cafe within well under 30 minutes.

We were musing the other day about how a half Jamaican half Scottish New Yorker throws a Thanksgiving dinner in Sydney, attended by mostly non-Americans, to eat food that includes a stuffing recipe that I obtained from a Japanese friend, and then everyone ends up dancing to awful European house music by the end of the night. Drunk on alcohol from New Zealand, Russia, and Mexico.

Imagine how pissed off the Pilgrims would be.

Alcohologic

I met up with Newman for some drinks after work yesterday, and we decided to be responsible and grab some food to go with our beer and wine.

We stopped into a tapas bar, had some great food and a bottle of good French wine. Except once the bill came, we noticed they'd only charged us for a glass, and we may have forgotten to bring it to their attention. Oops.

Instead of appreciating our good fortune and heading home as planned, we applied what I like to call "alcohologic" to the situation, and decided that we clearly had to go celebrate our good fortune by spending the money we'd saved on more drinks at another bar. It made perfect sense at the time.

It's quite similar to the reasoning behind pretty much every night out, where I say I'm going to call it a night and someone negotiates with me, saying that they're going to a bar between our current location and my apartment, therefore I should come along for one more. Forget the fact that a bar being "on the way home" has nothing to do with actually being at home, in bed, and not consuming more alcohol. It's all the rationalizing I need to extend my evening.

So what I'm trying to say is, alcohologic is a beautiful thing, even if it is an ugly word.

Opportunity

I just over heard the big boss say that she's on leave from December 2nd to January 7th.

Guess who's "working from home" for a month...

Avoiding the Hoi Polloi

In an attempt to participate in the snootiest and most obnoxious event happening in Sydney this past weekend, some friends and I went to watch the polo being played in Centennial Park.

While this was my first polo event, I am more than happy to make sweeping generalizations based on my single experience, and explain how these things go. Basically you dress up pretty nice, pay a silly amount of money just for entry to the event, and then overpay for cheap champagne while sitting with your back to the game and judging every single person that walks by. Ridiculous tan lines are part of the package.

Can't wait to do it again next year.

And The Award For Most Ridiculous Restaurant Dinner Ever...

...goes to Juice, which I suppose should be no surprise.

We went to a Japanese restaurant where the food is good and cheap, but the main draw is that we had our own private room with touch screens to order our food and drinks, not to mention our own entertainment system. Once we'd plugged in the tunes, it wasn't long before we were:

1) dancing on the table and seats to whatever song we were in the mood for

2) posing with various items around the room that were meant as decoration but worked better as props

3) rapping along to hip hop classic "Put It In Ya Mouth" by Akinyele

4) drinking enough that some members of the party wouldn't even remember leaving the restaurant

So, well done, Juice, and happy birthday. Your complete and utter inability to keep even dinner at a restaurant as at least a mildly classy affair deserves recognition, and we should probably just be happy that recognition didn't involve us all getting kicked out on our asses or charged for the damage.

Zero Motivation

I should blog more than once or twice a week, but I just can't find the energy sometimes. I have no excuse considering I'm really not that busy at work. Hell, I just spent 12 minutes talking to Juice about how we should launch a debaucherous airline that completely ignores international law and has a policy of "not our problem, airport security should have caught it". Trust me, you don't want to know what goes on in our imaginary planes.

In any case, I'll make a real blog post tomorrow. Maybe.

Halloween in Sydney 2010

Well I flew back in to Sydney yesterday morning, but you'll have to wait a few more days for the recap (or if I'm feeling lazy, just the photos) of my luxurious getaway to paradise.

In the meantime, here's a rundown of just a touch of the awesomeness that was in attendance for my annual Halloween bash:

He-Man, She-Ra and Skeletor

Yes, that's me in the blond wig. Wait, I mean the short blond wig.

The Hangover

Not only an awesome "costume", but something of an accurate omen for most of us that night.

The Birds!

Most people would have completely missed the reference to Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. And before I sound too snooty, the only reason I had a clue was because my flatmate in Brooklyn did this costume about 7 years ago.

The Winner

This was the guy who won the prize - not only because his costume was entirely homemade, but because it even involved electrical engineering to get those lights working. Also, he couldn't sit down.

Scary Stuff

Well folks, it's finally that time of the year again - tonight is the big Halloween party that I throw with Jules every year, and I'm pretty sure this will be the best costume I've had in ages. A comment that shouldn't be lessened by the fact that my costumes are usually half-assed and thrown together at the last minute.

There will be music, prizes, and hopefully a mix of fake and real vomit.

Of much more concern, and much more horrifying if you ask me, is the fact that I need to be up at 6am tomorrow morning to head to the airport for an international flight to the Maldives via Singapore. Given the condition I was in when I woke up the morning after last year's Halloween party, I guarantee whatever I look like tomorrow morning will be the scariest thing those Singapore Airlines flight attendants will have seen all year.

Seal of Approval

Someone just sent me an article in Psychology Today titled "Why Intelligent People Drink More Alcohol". Not that I actually read through this thing to find out what the actual reason was, but it's good to know I'm behaving appropriately for my clearly superior intellectual level.

Desperately Seeking New Friends

Granted I was totally busy being hammered and would have had trouble squeezing this in to my busy schedule, however I am incredibly upset that there is apparently an annual Zombie Walk in Sydney, and no one told me about it. New friends required, immediately.

In any case, it looks like it was an awesome time, so enjoy the photos:

For Shame

Started boozing at lunch yesterday, and basically continued through the afternoon in anticipation of the big work party last night.

Woke up this morning with little recollection of coming home, and an empty box for a Pizza Hut large pan pizza on my dining table.

(That's over 2000 calories, in case you were wondering. All eaten by me.)

And now I feel pretty average, and need to be ready to start drinking again by this evening, and then wake up again for a boozy pub lunch tomorrow. That will be followed by book club where we'll be discussing Faulkner, which has to be the worst planning of any sequence of events by anyone, ever.

Speaking of Career Management

Juice alerted me to this classic news headline, made much more inappropriate by the fact that this is actually one of Australia's more respectable daily news publications:

The headline was updated within minutes to something a little more professional, however we're betting the original headline writer will either be fired today, or treated to free drinks for the remainder of the week.

Done

Well for the most part, the weekend turned out to be what we thought it would be, with two people falling over (a total of three times) in the first night. But instead of writing about it, I'll let the photos tell the story...

Circle of Death (1 of 4 games):

Modern interpretive dance to Khia's classic tune, "My Neck, My Back":

The end of the night:

Back to Basics

I know I've been boring you all to death with my quiet weekends of not acting like a complete ass-hat recently.

To make it up to all of us, I'm thrilled to announced that I'll be driving up the coast today to beautiful, sunny, beachy Port Stephens, with a few of my friends who would be identified by some professionals as clinical alcoholics. We have already planned to spend some $500 over the course of two nights, which means in less than 10 hours a few of us will definitely have thrown up on each other.

Photos and stories to follow. Unless it's bad enough that we have to pretend that the weekend never happened at all.

Skid Marks

A couple of years ago, a group of friends from here in Sydney all moved to London. While it was sad to see them go, and we all still trade stories about the insane drunken times we used to have together, I still appreciate the fact that I don't see how I'd have a job at this point if I still partied like I did back then.

Fortunately, they've generally continued living exactly the same way, which means there's always at least a trickle of stories that get passed back to us Down Under. Just a week or so ago, Mickey reported having woken up in bed one morning with the lights on, wearing his suit and shoes, and without a clue how or when he got home. On the plus side, someone pointed out, at least he was ready to go to work.

And then there was this instant message conversation this afternoon:

Juice: oh did you hear [franz] shit himself at a bar the other night

Zander: WHAT?!?!?!

Juice: yeah at the Village

Juice: flushed his undies and kept drinking

Zander: how does that even happen???

Juice: i don't know

Juice: he said it was close to the start of the night as well so he wasn't that drunk

Enough

I barely believe it myself, but I just finished my THIRD (and probably last, don't worry) quiet weekend in a row. It's actually getting a bit creepy, I am starting to understand what characters in sci-fi horror movies feel like when they're being controlled by an alien entity.

However, this quiet weekend was pretty much unavoidable. I flew to Brisbane on Friday night for dinner, had to wake up early on Saturday for a christening (yes, a christening), and flew back to Sydney on Saturday night but had to go to bed early to wake up and bake banana & raspberry muffins at 5am.

Stop laughing and I'll explain.

See Sydney has this annual event called Breakfast on the Bridge, where they close the bridge for a few hours on a Sunday morning, lay down grass, and let 6,000 people have a breakfast picnic with music, gift bags, and various entertainers. When I first won the tickets I was horrified at the thought of eating breakfast on a bridge at 6.30am on a Sunday, but I have to admit it was a very unique experience. I mean in the end, how many cities would actually close their iconic and well-trafficked bridge so that bleary-eyed residents can eat croissants on grass that is barely worth the trouble to put down so it can be ripped up and disposed of hours later. Have I mentioned I love Australia?

The End of Productivity

After almost 4 months of avoiding having a TV on my desk (which is no small feat given the fact that I work at a major TV company), I've moved desks and my new location has come equipped with a television and cable box.

My first few hours were spent clicking around trying to find something to watch at any given moment, before I realized I was at work and not sitting on my couch, and needed to consider how much this was pissing off anyone sitting near me. I've now mostly settled on watching music videos or the news, as both are relatively easy to tune out.

Having said that, it's only a matter of time until I start watching my favorite movies and shows (and bringing popcorn to the office, of course), and I personally don't think they should be allowed to reprimand me for it, since they're the ones who put the TV on my desk!!

Will let you know how far that argument gets me.

Why We Watch

As I mentioned previously, the highlight of my week (month? YEAR??) was being able to attend the live finale of Australia's Next Top Model last night. I've been watching this show from the first season and what it lacks in the entertaining ghetto-ness of the contestants, it makes up for in actually recruiting girls who have a shot at an international modeling career.

Anyway, the event was fun, if a little dragged out, until it was time to announce the winner. Judging from the dozens of emails I had from overseas about one of the biggest television screw ups in memory, you've probably heard about it already. If not, I think Dlisted had the best write up:

"This kind of mistake does not happen! Babies getting switched? That's a mistake that happens. Accidentally pouring NAIR into your roommate's bottle of leave-in conditioner. That's a mistake that happens! Marriage. That's a mistake that happens! But declaring the wrong winner on a dumb reality show? This does not happen!"

I mean, really, I couldn't have put it better myself.

Mission Bored To Tears: Achieved

After a few unnecessarily boozy weekends, I had promised myself that this last weekend would be different. And so, despite the AMAZING weather, I refrained from planning any fabulous lunches or drinks, and focused on dinners and the sorts of things that I know are far less likely to end up with me doing tequila shots.

On Friday I met up with a friend and checked out a new bar, but ordered some food (this is what passes for personal growth in my life) and headed home around 10pm.

Saturday was easily the most painful part of the weekend. I ignored an invite to rooftop drinks nearby and simply stayed at home all day, gazing at the warm and sunny weather outside. What's that you say? That I could have gone outside and done something that didn't involve alcohol? If that's what you're thinking, then you clearly know very little about Australia or me, and probably shouldn't have an opinion on such matters.

Eventually I went out to dinner to a tapas restaurant I've been dying to try out for a long time now, and after one post-dinner drink, headed home and got into bed. Sunday was a picnic with the gang, and we limited ourselves to a couple of bottles of champagne between us, after which I went home and cooked up a storm.

Most people I've told about my weekend have noted that even my version of a quiet weekend seems to involve doing a lot more than most people would do on a busy weekend. But still, all I could wonder was how fat people live like that every weekend and don't cry from the utter boredom of it all. (Or maybe they do. I've never spent much time with one.) Granted, no one needs to be shockingly drunk every (or any) weekend, but forgive me if I plan a long lunch for this coming Saturday.

Squeaky Wheel Gets The Grease

As you may have picked up from the occasional posts about the topic, I generally try to watch any incarnation of Top Model that's available to me. Because I don't see how there could be anything more worthy of my time than judging other people on their appearances. I'm sure you agree.

In any case, I've had a vested interest in this year's competition because a draw in my office where the staff who were allocated the models to make it to this year's live finale would get tickets to be in the audience. Naturally, my model (who I never would have picked if it were up to me) got booted in the first episode, so my best hope was that one of the people in the office who cared the least about the show would get a ticket to the live finale and give it to me. Once again, no such luck.

And so, I spent the 2 days after the second to last episode bitching and moaning about the fact that "everyone except for me" would be attending the live finale, and get to see if Kelsey, Amanda, or Sophie becomes Australia's Next Top Model.

People, don't ever let anyone tell you that complaining never gets you anywhere. Within 48 hours someone was so sick of hearing me whine about it that I had a ticket on my desk, courtesy of their connections in Marketing.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be practicing bitchy comments about the models just in case I get interviewed on live TV.