Whatcha lookin for?

So, I now have this thing on my blog that allows me to see how people got here, and it is revealing some interesting things.

The majority of people land on this site because they are doing a Google search for “Rayban Wayfarers”. GET OVER IT PEOPLE! They are stupid, ugly, over rated sunglasses and the fad has passed. Let’s leave them in 2008 shall we?

Someone stumbled here while searching for “Groove Armada Hvar”. I don’t know if they were expecting the band to be playing in that sleepy little Croatian town, but I am pretty sure they weren’t trying to find the adventures of the hos and mos on the Adriatic Sea.

Another person came here looking for "refill beverage etiquette". I hope my rant about lazy colleagues making me fetch them cups of tea helped to answer your query.

Quite a few people have come here because of a search for "mumble pants", I hope they found what they wanted.

Then there is the grammar fool who wanted to know... How do you punctuate Exhibit "C," or Exhibit "C",? The answer is the latter.

The funniest though is the person who searched for “leather pants tube”! Ha ha ha!

Second thoughts

I may be having second thoughts about moving home at Christmas, and these are keeping me awake at night.

When I left Australia in April 2008 I was moving to the unknown – no job, no where to live, not many friends, no family, no real idea what I was doing.

Moving back home in December this year is sort of the same.

I am worried about finding a job. While my CV boasts a fantastic job progression with The Government Agency, I don’t know what the market is like in Australia and if any potential employers would be impressed with that experience.

I am worried about living on the Gold Coast, so far away from all of my friends in Brisbane. This is also worrying if I do get a job, because how am I going to get there, so…

… I am worried about how I am going to get around. The public transport system in London is fantastic, there really isn’t any need to have a car (apart from if you want to buy a watermelon at the supermarket). I don’t want to have to always ask my parents for a lift, so I will have to look at buying a car when I get back.

I am worried about money, because I haven’t really saved much money while I have been here. I’ve been making good money, but have been spending it on holidays to Croatia and Europe, dinners in the dark, music festivals, dresses from Joy, PowerPlate sessions at the gym, and having fun with my friends.

I am worried that I am going to be bored in Brisbane, and warn you all that you had better be prepared to entertain me. I used to do a whole lotta nuthin in Brisbane, but plan to change that, so you will all get dragged along to dinners, road trips, mini golf, markets, football games, and the such.

Please assure me that things are going to be okay?

"So he tells me his last year, and what he'd like to change, I say to get down to the beach and to give us a call, he hears nothing at all, so he sits there all alone, waiting for that golden sun in the Morning Light, just let go, just let go, last year's gone so leave it all behind”
Sparkadia, Morning Light

A little late jumping on the bandwagon

This story from popbitch makes me want to join Twitter...

Crazy Little Party Boy - Poor Aaron Carter's lost it

Since the passing of his dear friend Michael Jackson (who once bought him a Bentley), Aaron Carter seems to have gone into meltdown and is now determined to rid the world of disease and suffering.

He tweets:

2:46pm - THE FIRST THING I WANT TO DO IS HELP FIND A CURE FOR AIDS!

2.47pm - I WILL SPEND THE REST OF MY LIFE SEARCHING FOR ANSWER'S FOR MANY DIFFERENT REASON'S,THERE IS A LUPUS WALK IN NEW YORK THAT I WILL START WITH

2.50pm - I HEARD ONE OF THE JONAS BROTHER'S HAS DIABETES AND ONE OF THEM WENT TO THE GOVERMENT TO VOICE HIS OPINION... NOW THAT'S WHAT I MEAN! :)

3.06pm - STOP TELLING ME WHAT TO DO! I WRITE IN CAPS FOR A SPECIFIC AUTISTIC PERSON! LEAVE IT ALONE! I WILL NOT CHANGE FOR ANYONE

AIDS, lupus, diabetes and autism. All in 20 minutes.


"There's something that I've got to say, you're always with me even though you're far away"
Aaron Carter, I'm All About You

Observations of driver

Four and a half hours is 270 minutes. That is a very long time to be in a car by yourself. Driving for nine hours in a 36 hour period will make you slightly crazy, will result in you talking to the radio, and will make you hate your own company.

British radio is rubbish, absolutely rubbish. The reception was patchy and the selection was poor. The worst part was, once I got back near London and the stations started getting a little better they all simulcast the Big Top 40 and all they played was freakin Michael Jackson. If I don’t hear another MJ song for 20 years I will be happy. The only saving grace was chancing upon Keane’s “Somewhere only we go” as I drove into Hertz to return the car.

Unlike Australia, there are not many red cars in England. The most popular colours are metallic silver and blue.

Like in Australia, there are plenty of idiots in England that don’t know how to merge or overtake.

Did you know that the symbol ^ is called a chevron? I found this out because these were painted on the road and there was a sign telling me to keep two chevrons in between me and the car in front. However, this caused massive traffic problems for the two miles that they had painted chevrons on the road, and then everyone went back to driving with common sense and the traffic sorted itself out.

Roads in England are crazy. Back home, if you want to go to Sydney you get on the freeway and go there, or if you want to go to Townsville you get on a freeway and go there, or if you want to go to Toowoomba you get on a freeway and go there. You get my drift. In London, if you want to go to York you have to get on a freeway, then another, then another, then six others, then you get there. If it wasn’t for my £14 a day sat nav I would still be driving circles around Heathrow wondering how to get the hell out of there.

But the drive was worth it to see Great Aunty Ana and Great Uncle George, and I had a great time visiting them. It’ll probably be a couple of months before I can handle being stuck with myself for company again though…


“Oh, simple thing, where have you gone? I'm getting old and I need something to rely on, so tell me when, you're gonna let me in, I'm getting tired and I need somewhere to begin, and if you have a minute why don't we go, talk about it somewhere only we know? This could be the end of everything, so why don't we go, somewhere only we know, somewhere only we know?”
Keane, Somewhere Only We Know

Celebrity spotting

I love me some celebrity spotting in London!

Whilst having drinks at Covent Garden with Dom and Alex last Friday night, Kimberley Stewart waltzed past. (Mum, Kimberley is Rod Stewart’s daughter)

However, I am more excited about today’s celebrity.

I am just sitting at my desk enjoying a salad for lunch when Kevin McCloud from the television show Grand Designs walks out of a meeting room. If he wasn’t with one of the Group Directors and I didn’t have a mouthful of avocado I totally would have gotten all crazy fan on him.

Kevin is the host of a reality television show that follows people as they build or renovate their dream homes. He is a pompous twot though, always criticising them throughout the project, telling them where they went wrong, and generally reminding them that he is better than them. Then at the end when the house is finished he wanders through and waxes lyrical about how lovely it is and why it all works so well.

I love him and I hate him all at the same time.

Yes, I am a lazy blogger

I don't feel like writing a blog entry at the moment, sorry.

I'm tired, a little run down, and have developed a cough that is completely unrelated to Swine Flu. The Health & Safety Manager at work asked if I had a back up plan, with someone in place to continue Internal Communications should I fall ill. It's just a cough dude, settle down.

Instead I am going to direct you through to another blog - the BBC Magazine Monitor 10 Things blog.

10 things we didn't know last week

Snippets from the week's news, sliced, diced and processed for your convenience.

1. There are 2,500 year old bird nests still in continuous use.

2. The Fred Perry sportswear logo was almost a pipe - Perry was a keen smoker - but his business partner thought this would put off women customers.

3. As a cold-blooded insect, flies are slower in the early morning and evening when the air is cooler, and speed up in the heat of the day.

4. C, the single-letter codename for the head of MI6, dates from when the first boss, Captain Sir Mansfield Cumming, signed himself "C" for Cumming.

5. Streetlights cause problems for bats.

6. The pilot and co-pilot on a passenger plane are not allowed to have the same meal in case they both get food poisoning.

7. The Queen has an allotment.

8. Scotland has the lowest age for criminal responsibility in Europe.

9. Hitachi makes trains.

10. Pak Do-ik, the North Korean footballer, is still known as "the dentist" among Italian football fans for causing them pain by scoring the goal that saw them beaten 1-0 in the 1966 World Cup.

You learn something new every day...


"I'm wicked and I'm lazy, ahhhhhhhaaaaahhhaaaaa don't you want to save me"
X-Press 2 featuring David Byrne

Update 2

While I have actually been getting out and doing stuff, there has been a lapse in blogging again. So I shall summarise the goings on of my life in bullet points, because I like bullet points and this is my blog and I can use them.

• I ventured back to the Walkabout at Temple to watch the first State of Origin game the other week, after managing to avoid any updates on the score throughout the day by getting a colleague to screen all of my text messages. Honestly though, you need to be drunk to be able to handle that place and as it was a Wednesday night I was not in a position to have a great time. Amber and Nicole did though!
  
  
• Jodie has returned from Australia but is yet to find employment, which leaves her free to hunt around on the internet for cheap theatre tickets – yay! We went to La Clique the other week and it was fantastic! The venue was really cosy and set up sort of like a circus, with strings of lights, and the stage in the middle. And the acts were great – a man who squeezed his body through a tennis racquet and made me laugh so hard I cried, a couple that did amazing spinning tricks on roller skates, a massive black man dressed in drag singing, a little guy dressed as Freddie Mercury that did juggling tricks and jokes, and crazy acts.
  
  
• This week we got £10 dress circle tickets to La Cage Aux Folles (aka the Birdcage) which was pretty good. The highlight were the five extremely fit, male chorus dancers, who were extremely entertaining from the stalls, but I don’t think I would have liked it as much if I was in the front row tables!
  
  
• Last weekend we did a day trip to Brighton which was really fun. The weather was unexpectedly gorgeous, and we all ended up getting a little sunburnt. We went down to the water, played games on the pier, went on our favourite ride – the Crazy Mouse, had fish for lunch (actually I had salad), did some shopping in the Lanes, and then whiled away the afternoon at the beachfront bar, le sigh…
  
  
• PowerPlate is either going to be my body-firming saviour, or the death of me. I’ve started doing PowerPlate classes at the gym, as I got a few sessions free with my membership. The idea is that you do exercises on a platform that vibrates, so a 30 minute session is equal to a 90 minute session on standard equipment. And at the end of it you feel like you’ve done a 90 minute session. The good thing is that the last couple of minutes you lie on the ground with your legs on the machine and get a muscle-stretching and cellulite-busting massage.
  
  
• I have been invited to the wedding of a colleague friend of mine in September, which is very exciting. When I asked what the dress code she was rather vague, though stipulated that most women would be wearing hats or headpieces. Crap. So the search starts now in the hope that I will find something appropriate in the next two and a half months.
  
  
• Just to fuel the fire that Jackie started at Christmas lunch, I bought a pair of Birkenstocks on the weekend. I had quite the internal fight prior to the purchase – extreme comfort and purple patent leather vs blatantly looking like a lesbian. Comfort won out. Though I won’t be wearing them with my new green skirt from Joy, as I saw an actual real life lesbian wearing the same skirt a few months ago.

PS. Mum, I am not a lesbian.