So now I've got the final 2 Episodes of the Palunawack Tours uploaded, what better way to kick off than a bit of an update on the sporadic string of reality-challenging randomness that is my life (there's an easily understood sentence for all you internationals out there. Get out the dictionary...).
'Jumping the fence'
For those who don't know that term, it does not refer to property boundaries.
I'd been home all of three days when my Rover Crew phoned me up and invited me down to the annual Crew break-up down the beach. Now of all the non-human things I missed most about Australia, the beach was number 1, so I dived at the offer. Little did I realise where it would lead.
Maybe being home had me over-excited.
Maybe I was still jet-lagged from the flight home.
Maybe I was still operating on the same 'no-one knows me here' policy as I was in Europe.
But whatever the reason may have been, the fact remains: I spent most of the night wearing a dress.
And not just any dress! This was a long floral number, surprisingly tight through the chest given I'm a man, and just to add to the disturbingness of the whole mental image I'm currently conjuring up for you, it turned out too be my mother’s.
Perhaps the most disturbing revelation of all however, was that thanks to my hair I now strike quite a feminine figure when viewed from behind.
But despite all of this, I it wasn’t for the social implications, I reckon I’d be wearing a dress right now. Those things are comfortable!
Buck’s night
Four days later, having inexplicably felt the urge to post photos of me in the dress on Facebook, I found myself at the first buck's night I've ever attended. A buck's night, for those who don't know, is the party thrown for a man just before he is married.
It's meant to be some sort of macho last-hurrah before his soul is crushed by his marriage.
Instead it generally turns out as an excuse to ritually humiliate the groom-to-be, and then hand him over for the obligatory soul crushing. Generally this involves a stripper or some other poorly conceived sexual innuendo.
This buck's party was different. They didn't get a stripper, they got a face painter.
Sounds pretty lame, doesn't it? But bare in mind only the best man knew this. So when the young lady wandered in and proceeded to shave the groom's chest, we were all a little worried.
Two hours and a hell of a lot of body paint later and I have to admit the results were impressive, both artistically and in terms of embarrassment.
Madam Michelle is available for hire anywhere in Melbourne. She also does children's parties.
The great Hair debate
I'm going to devote more time to this topic at a later date, but here's a nice quick summary about the controversy surrounding my now fairly long hair.
Next time you happen to find yourself forming an opinion about my hair, what I should do with it, or pretty much anything to do with my looks in general, ask yourself the following question:
‘Are we currently in a sexual relationship?’
If you answered 'No', then your opinion is completely irrelevant.
CASE CLOSED.
New Years
Celebrated new years at a friend's house which he has recently bought. It's quite scary that I am now at the age that my friends are buying houses. Having to admit we're growing up. If one of them gets married or has a kid or something equally stupid for a 24 year old to do (a topic for another post) I'm going to get very worried.
Despite the fact the new yeas parties always inevitably suck, thanks to the massive expectations we have for them for some reason despite the fact we've been disappointed every year prior, this year had a few highlights worth mentioning:
Rain - what's the deal with the rain guys? When I left in 2008 we were in a drought and had been for 10 years. Since when does it rain in summer, let alone pelt down in monsoon proportions on New Years Eve? Nonetheless I loved it. You can't beat the feeling of warm rain.
Champagne - I used to have quite a reputation for being under the table after 2 beers and it seems my mates are having with the idea that, thanks to Ireland, I'm now virtually bomb-proof. So I brought a rather large bottle of champagne (or 'sparkling white' if you prefer to be a litigious wanker) along and let events take their course. Two hours later, with one of my mates claiming he could no longer actually see anything, I had to admit things had backfired somewhat.
Mates - man I missed my good mates from home. I didn't realise until we were all crashed on the couches how good it was to have them back.
The Uni Application that Loved Me
So the biggest problem when you get home is trying to decide what the hell to do with your life. I have attempted to hide from that decision by going back to Uni and studying a Masters of Ethics.
I know from experience that universities have some of the most extensive and convoluted bureaucracies in the world - getting permission to put up a poster at RMIT was comparable to applying for a pilots license - but even I was amazed at what was required to apply for a Masters.
For the privilege of paying the university $20,000 per year I am required to provide a certified copy of my passport and academic transcript. What I want to know is who’s faking this stuff?
What sort of 007-esque criminal mastermind is going to the trouble of forging ID, faking up an academic transcript and starting a fraudulent bank account in order to pay the uni for a course they will inevitably fail if they aren’t smart enough to do it in the first case anyway?
Admittedly, it’s not quite up there with strapping the super-spy to some elaborate machine instead of, say, shooting him in the head, but it’s still pretty stupid!
Work work work work work…
Thanks to a friend of mine I managed to slip into a job pretty quickly when I got home. And despite some teething issues as I got used to this bizarre idea of sitting in one place for 8 hours doing not-fun-stuff (remind me again why everyone’s so keen on this work stuff again?), I’m actually settling better than I’d hoped.
There is one downside though, and that downside comes squarely in the form of Government Reports. There are two types of these delightful gems:
1) The Sleeper
Specifically design, through the overwhelming use of facts, figures, poor presentation and a writing style perfected by high-school science teachers, to make the report as un-readable as possible. My standard reading rate here is 1 page per hour, assuming I don’t just give up and go for a walk.
2) The Sleazebag
If there was a crime for the perversion of language, the people who write these reports would be executed.
Words like ‘undeniable’, ‘unavoidable’ and ‘necessary’ were bad enough, but the phrase “We must avoid moral judgments of those who make the decision to drive instead of taking public transport” literally had me swearing at the screen. If that speech writer had been nearby, a considerable amount of violence would have ensured.
Beating them back with a stick
I had one of my friends come and stay with me in early January – those of you familiar with the Palunawack ours will remember my time in Sweden (if not, just scroll down), so it was a pleasure showing Josefine around the place during her own world trip.
Now I knew the arrival of a stunning Swedish girl was going to cause trouble. Let’s just say that I had no idea how much.
Of all the beautiful women I have ever met over my life, no-one has received so much attention ever. Imagine George Bush turning up at a peace protest.
A great example of this is when I took Josefine to a fundraiser for a mate’s cricket club. On explaining where we were going to her she looked at me all wide-eyed innocence and asks “What’s cricket?”. My reply, “Well, this is going to be a pretty interesting evening…”
Unsurprisingly, Josefine didn’t have any shortage of people willing and eager to explain the intricacies of cricket to her. Most of them were already casting glances her way, but as soon as you introduced her as Swedish you should have seen their eyes light up.
Suddenly everyone had Swedish grandparents. One fella actually had Josefine send ‘his friend in Sweden’ a message in Swedish. I suspect this ‘friend in Sweden’ probably was probably also in the cricket club, but hey it’s not a bad opening line all things considered.
Hong Kong’s newest Cricket Star
It was during this surprisingly international fundraiser night that I learned that one of my good mates, The estimable Mr Arbuckle, is apparently a much better cricket player than I thought.
So good is he, that he's taken it upon himself to apply for the position of Head Coach for the Hong Kong National Cricket Team. This would be a slight move up from his current role as captain for the Hydroflow Cricket Club. Check them out here: http://hydroflowcc.com.au/index.html
Despite the fact that his resume of experience included three national cricket tournaments that don't happen to exist, and one of his references is a friend of his who only started playing cricket socially 2 years ago and furthermore isn't aware of the scam, Mr Arbuckle felt confident enough to include the following demands in his application:
- I will need a house to myself within 15 minutes of the cricket ground
- A car with driver to reach the ground on short notice
- A salary of at least $450,000 plus expenses
Updates!
This one took me about a month to get around to and ended up looking like one of the old Episodes. This must and WILL improve, I promise you!
I plan to update this bad boy every Friday, so keep tuned! Oh and for those of you on the old email list who though I was finally done harassing you: don't worry, I'm only going to alert everyone to new posts via email a couple more times.
So if you'd like to keep up to date with the various bizarre things I stumble across in life, sign up as a Follower!
Life remains interesting.
Gordon
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