The big relax

Regular readers will know that when I fist landed in Melbourne I was particularly unimpressed. First off, there was no more ‘wow, I could never see that at home’ factor as there had been in any of the S.E. Asian countries. Everyone spoke English too, of course, and this naturally takes a significant amount away from the sense of adventure from traveling.

One of my first posts based on the city was scathing, and a Melbourne expat living in Canada (excuse me if you’re still reading this and I got this wrong,) was quick to jump to the city’s defense in the form of a comment at the end of the post. I agreed with many of the points made, and settled it in my mind that I would give the city time and see how it took me.

Two full months later and I am so fed up I could eat my own hand. Seriously.

Perusing the internet, though, I thought I’d look up things to do in Melbourne. This is quoted from what I can only guess to be an unofficial Melbourne tourists website (unofficial in that it isn’t made by the VIC government;)

‘Special Melbourne’

Some things suggested by the site as special things to do in this special  city are:

‘wander along Southgate [and] look at the cars parked on the lawns of suburban homes.’

‘meet someone under the clocks (I assume this means Flinder’s street station,) and listen to the sounds of passing traffic.’

‘talk to a stranger in the street,’

‘Have a pizza [at] 2 in the morning,’

These are genuine things recommended to do on the website. Is it just me or is this just descriptive of a knees up in Festival Leisure Park, Basildon? Of course there are some other things listed, but when a block of text recommending a city’s best attributes lasting no longer than a paragraph consist of these four ‘must do’s’ it only highlights how Melbourne is dull, dull, dull.

I cannot wait to leave for the east coast and insofar I spend considerable portions of my time working out how many days of this neither here nor there purgatory will last.

In reality it’s 10 days, but the 28th doesn’t count because we’re leaving at 4 in the morning. 9 days.

Then there’s Christmas Eve = big celebration 8 Days.

Christmas Day = Bigger Celebration lots of food and drink at our mate’s apartment on St. Kilda Road. 7 Days.

Boxing Day = Hangover and hopefully some awesome T.V. 6 Days.

So, although the calendar tells me there’s 10 days left, in reality it’s only 6. Thank the soon to be birthday boy for that!

Not sure how much this made international news, but last week policemen shot and killed a 15 year old boy armed with knives in a skatepark 10 minutes walk from my house.

Yes, the kid had two ‘very large, cleaver type knives’ according to witness reports, but was such a ludicrously heavy handed approach needed to stop the agitated child? This to me is another example of the Victorian police force spreading fear and anger throughout Melbourne.

Last Saturday I was in a small club avec mon amis. It wasn’t packed to the rafters and while there were some dodgy tattoo’s on neck type people there, me, Lauren and friends were there ’till 5 a.m. without the slightest whiff of trouble. In fact, we made such good friends with some people that we exchanged email addresses for facebook and that. This did not stop the police showing their presence though, by standing in the middle of the club for 20 minutes and glaring at anyone passing. I do not go to clubs to be eyeballed by the fuzz while I’m on my way for a tinkle. Surely that’s what bouncers are employed for. Four or five coppers stood menacingly, it did nothing to make me feel safer, instead it just reasserted that I shouldn’t be feeling safe, although following the news of the 15 year old kid being shot and killed, I felt threatened not by the aforementioned tattoo on neck gang, but instead by the group of police. Judging from the excessive force used to stop the boy, would they stamp of my neck if I swore? Maybe they’d night-stick me across the nose if I accidentally bumped into one of them? Would you say the upgrade of that puts being fatally shot for threatening people with knives as a minor is on the same scaling? I would.

So what if the boy threatened the officers? So what if the boy was a member of a white supremacist group, as local press reports? This does not excuse that when he produced knives he was gunned down. This is surely not the way to tackle violent crime, as it effectively transforms the police into just another gang who are equally as bad, if not worse due to their ‘law on their side’ feelings of self-justification, as the other gangs that fight in inner cities across the globe.

I really hope this does become something that internationally shames the police force of Victoria, I have never had anything against the police, ever. The very few times I’ve had to deal with them I’ve been more than obliging and they have been equally polite back, but this is inexcusable.

Sorry for the heavy nature of this post. Farts! There, that lightened it up a little bit for you, go have a cup of tea.

I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s the white chocolate in my cheap as chips Target Advent Calendar. (For Target, see Primark.)  It feels a little like what I imagine morning sickness to feel like in pregnant chicks.

Came home from a day in the city yesterday to find Lauren in the midst of a Tudor’s marathon. First off was The Other Boleyn Girl, I’m not really one to judge, but from Lauren’s angry muttering of ‘bloody historical inaccuracy,’ and ‘David Starkey would never agree with this,’ I have to say that I don’t believe it to be any more than pretty people running around in corsets. Next up was the Tudors series one, this placated Lauren much more, and she watched happily in silence for the next few hours.

One good thing about living in a boring city is that it allows one to get on with other things that aren’t seeing fun stuff. I know that this may be in direct opposition to the point of going traveling, but being stuck here has given me ample time to write, and a new project is already underway.

The weather feels much more Christmassy now, by the way. It’s been raining heavily all day. Much better!

In under twelve hours now, the first half of our year long trip will have diminished into memory. Six months have gone by faster than nearly anything else I can think of. A big part of me is refusing to believe that it really was 5 1/2 months ago that I was on that two day slow boat up the Mekhong to Laos. Seems I have no choice.

Been Christmas shopping today for Lauren. Can’t help but feel that the element of surprise will be lost on the big day though due to our room being just that, a room. Ergo seriously lacking in places to hide presents. It is decidedly difficult to really feel the Christmas spirit this year, and not only because it is my first Christmas ever away from my family (although I’m sure this plays a part,) but rather, this is my first celebration of big J.C.’s birthday where wearing shorts is mandatory. The weather is far from baking yet, but it’s getting there and the lights down Swanson Street (the main road that intersects the city center from Flinders Street station) do nothing to remind me of the festive season. Instead, they put me in mind of Basildon council at home, leaving the Christmas lights up, although not illuminated, all year round.

Lauren had her staff party on Tuesday. It was the reverse of the scenario played out at the weekend. This time it was Lauren’s turn to roll in the door after one or two sherries, although she made it back at a much more respectable 11:30 p.m. rather than my 8 the next morning fiasco.  She had a great time, the food was meant to be delicious (this in itself is usually a good indicator of Lauren’s enjoyment of a party.)

Speaking of my better half, she has taken the step and created her own blog! Forgoing bootsnall.com she has instead opted for another website. She’s refusing to tell me the name of it for now, insisting that she wants it to get off to a good start before she lets me see it. Feel free to badger her for info.

Cutting spending down as much as I can really isn’t going too well at the moment. Considering that I am unemployed (and who is going to employ me when I leave town in 2 weeks?) I’m having to ration myself. Particularly considering that we’re hoping to buy a van in Brisbane to drive down to Sydney in. Still, pasta and pesto is sort of good for you 5 nights in a row I guess. Reminds me of Uni, only it’s hotter and I feel more like I should be on jobseekers allowance.

Reading back over this, I am aware of its vaguely incoherent rambling nature. No other comment, just wanted you to know that I’m with you on this.

And so, just four days shy of half a year travelling, I’ve snapped. I’ve had it up to here. I’ve had enough. That’s right folks, today I finally bought myself a cheap laptop. I cannot stand being away from a word processor for this long.

It came to a nice and tidy $400 which is around what? 190 quid? not bad considering it has Microsoft Office, a DVD player and a CD burner attached. All very lovely things considering the possibility that Lauren and I could be spending the next 4 months or so in a camper van. Even more, I can just sell it when it comes to home-time. All in all, a good investment that hasn’t put too much of a dent in my savings. Been desperately trying to get some pictures up (anyone familiar with my facebook accuont will have seen these already) but this blog is playing silly buggers and not letting me put them up in their current size. I’ll try again in a wee while.

I’m now unemployed. Not so bad as I saved plenty while working, and I’ll be finding employment asap once we get to the East coast.

Don’t tell anyone, but I think Lauren has started work on her own blog, but she is being very secretive about it. Family and friends feel free to get her to ‘fess up.

Disco dancing was the order of the night, my feet are blistered and I’m 100% cream crackered, but there’s no rest for the wicked I’m afraid. Lauren had work today so she couldn’t come out last night so now I’m forced. forced. to do it all over again.

Went for drinks at our mate’s hostel, there was quite a group of us, around 9 or so. Lauren could make it for this bit, (and as I recall even managed to put away a whole bottle of sparkling before going home!) A particularly rude Australian sat down with us and before long he was insulting the entire group, spoiling for a fight, and bouncing around putting his dukes up like a right tit. It was a bit tragic really, never seen anyone become so hated by strangers so quickly before. He was the sort of guy who made extremely racist remarks about races that weren’t at the table and tried to get you nodding along. Needless to say he was stonewalled by all of us, before coming out with some genuinely cracking insults. I mean truly. I don’t quite recall, but I think I may have mentioned earlier how when we were living in the red light district of St Kilda on arrival in Melbourne, someone had daubed on a wall ‘Ellen Thompson is a rat!’ This is the red light district! Surely there is a stronger vocabulary than that to describe that rat Ellen Thompson. The Ozzy last night though, showed me how insults out here can occasionally miss the mark. One pearler was (when having a rant at me,) ‘yea, you’re wearing glasses and you’ve got a pretty girl.’ I digested this, and rescanned it in case I missed the sarcasm. There wasn’t. This feral imp honestly considered Lauren being pretty to be insulting to me. Was I meant to thank him? Was this psychological warfare on such a deep level that it is so subtle that years from now I’ll wake up screaming? Was he just a little retarded? Hmm…

Before long though he became more of a nuisance than a focal point of mirth so one of the girls in the group called out the big guns, Rasheed the night manager. Our Ozzy champ though wouldn’t go down without an event (his words,) and in the end a squad car had to be called to evict him. Hours later, we saw him a few blocks from the hostel being beaten up by a taxi driver for some heinous crime. That’ll learn him.

So, onto the night itself. T’was alright. We saw some guy called Luciano who’s meant to be quite big on the techno scene. I know nothing about said scene and I gotta admit that a lot of it sounded like robots talking to each other. I found 50 bucks on the dancefloor when I had run out of money. 4 Stella’s later and I’m not so sure that it was such a good thing. I came rolling in at around 8am.

There were two smack-heads arguing on the train on the way home too, last thing I needed as my hangover stated to kick in proper, I even learned some new heroin jargon from their heated debate. Rozzle some goodies anyone?

Tonight we’re heading into a new suburb. The name of which entirely eludes me now. It’s a big thing on the backpackers scene. There’s a restaurant called Bimbo’s that does $4 gormet pizzas. Word like that gets around. Then on for some drinks, I think Lauren’s work friends are out tonight too so that’ll be grand.

Hmm… reading back over this post makes Melbourne seem a bit scummy. It’s not at all, I’ve never felt threatened here. Promise. I think it’s more that the destitute folk are so much more vocal here than back home. Or maybe it’s that I don’t use public transport at home but here it’s a daily procedure, and if there’s one thing that slightly scummy people like doing, it’s venting their feelings to each other on public transport. Bless ’em.

Forgot to mention t’other day, but had a bit of a close one at work about a week ago. We were sitting as a group out in the back garden having ‘smoko’ (morning break.) We sit there for perhaps 45 minutes each day, 15 min smoko and 30 min lunch when we heard this faint creaking. Within seconds the tree we were sitting under collapsed on the spot where we were relaxing. Luckily we were all fast enough on our feet that nobody was hurt, but it took 2 hours, three people and a chainsaw to clear all the detritus away, there was that much of it. Some of the logs that had been cut down into manageable 3ft by 1 ft chunks were still heavy enough to require two people to carry them. Close one.

Work should be finishing by the end of this week,this is a good thing. My hands are beginning to resemble Ben Stiller’s bloody stumps in the scene of Trpoic Thunder where he has his fists cut off at the wrist.

Me and Amit, a fellow backpacker from Brighton, are in discussions about taking 3-4 days out of the city with a big group of us  and hiring a car to go and see the Great Ocean Road or some other such marvel. Should be good fun, I’m desperate to get out of the (still incredibly tedious) city and this excursion should do nicely.

Just got off working a 60 hour week doing heavy lifting. My boss is an absolute liberty taker. Talking me into working the second consecutive Saturday in a row telling me that ‘it’ll be a short day, only 10am until about 2’ making me think that I would actually get a worthwhile weekend this week. I ended up working 10 hours non-stop. That coupled with the impromptu 12 hour day I had on Friday means that I am an absolutely knackered (albeit rich) backpacker.  That’s the only thing with working cash in hand (if there are any authorities reading this, this is hypothetical of course,) and that’s that the employee doesn’t have any say so or recompense if his employer takes all the liberties he can with your time. Thankfully the pay is well above minimum wage, and due to my excessive workload, I haven’t really been able to spend too much – there’s only so much you can do with your evenings if you get up at 5:55 am and don’t finish work until 8p.m. that night.

There was on nice bonus though, my boss took the boys for a meal in one of his restaurants. He is a very successful, and wealthy, restauranteur.  For the first time since our anniversary back in July and back on Koh Tao I had a full 3 course meal. The most preposterously pretentious appetizer of fig salami with some kind of cheese. I forget the name now, but it was the sort of cheese that comes in a cheese board. Not the brie/camembert, not the blue, not the cheddar, not the soft/wendslydale, but the other-one. An Edamarien cheese. All very tasty, but if I was paying I would have assumed that the kitchen staff were trying to insult me. $10 for 2 bits of fig salami the size of my little fingernail adorned the plate, although the cheese portions were more generous.

Mains was a lambstravenganza.  Rump cooked pretty well along with a spring roll filled with lamb cooked in a greek style. t tasted delicious, although the spring roll did look odd on the plate with the lamb, like it was a last minute edition.

Desert was tiramasu. One of my favourites.

All this was free, lucky really ‘cos my dinner alone probably came to around $150 with drinks, and there were 4 of us. The boss joined us later in the evening and we had some more drinks.

Next week is my last week of employment. Between you and me, internet, we’re trying to eek it out as long as possible really. We’ve definately got 3 solid days of work left, but we really wanna try and make it last until Friday.

Lauren went out last night with one of her friends from work. I met up with the briefly before I had to go for the meal. They were patronizing a trendy bar whose entrance was set down a grimy alley between two bins. I hear that this sort of thing marks the entrance to most of the genuinely cool bars in the city, so we’ll have to keep an eye open.

I have been particularly lazy with my blog entries recently. There are myriad reasons for this, the most prominent being that I have been working, a lot. The second most important being that I haven’t really done all that much. I’ve been out for drinks with people from work, I’ve done various things in the city, but nothing that has made me want to write home about.

So what’s coming up? well, this Saturday our boss is taking us three pommies out for a meal in one of his restaurants. I’m not sure if I’ve already mentioned but theres a rumor circulating the site that every morning, his restaurant’s coffee sales alone equal around $30,000. Wowzers.

So we’re planning to let him buy us plenty of sweet-as food come Saturday. Then more likely than not a big knee’s up afterwards.

Gosh. I think I’m out of things to say. Rock n’ Roll.

Oh, wait. There must be something else…

‘Sweet Lord, take me instead.’ I prayed, holding the lifeless carcass in my palm. It looked so small now that it was dead. I could feel a tear wetting my cheek. I held it up to my face, letting my breath gently touch it, giving the warm illusion of life which I closed my eyes and wished to be true.

My wish didn’t come true though, as easy as this thing of beauty was given to the world, it was taken away.

Yesterday, with 7 months of backpacking left, my Ipod broke.  I’m sorry, I’m too upset to say anything more on that.

This was not to be the end of my Job-like suffering though. The story runs thus;

I had a parcel sent out to me from home (thanks mum!) which I have been patiently waiting for since arriving in Melbourne. Tapping my fingers, tap, tap, tap, drumming my feet, drum, drum, drum. Growing evermore impatient with the delay in getting my box of necessary goodies; think contact lenses for the next 6 months, think jeans, think clothes that I could wear on a day to day basis because my Asia clothes are fetid and in need of burning. Lauren had a package sent on the same day and got hers within a week of arriving in Melbourne. I got to the 2 week stage and still there was no clue as to the whereabouts of my belongings. Finally, I snapped. Last Friday a bunch of people were going out and, damnit, I wanted in. I went out and spunked 100 much needed dollars on clothes for the night. You’ll never guess what turned up promplty on Saturday morning.

Spent the day at work using highly concentrated hydrochloric acid with no eye protection. Feel lucky to still have vision in both eyes. This stuff smoked when I put it on the floor it was that strong. Thankfully, I remembered to take the protective gloves off before I had a pee.