May 15th, 2013

On a street in Ho Chi Minh City…
Me: Is there a bin around here?
Ryan: I think you’re standing in it.

After having my bag slashed in Hanoi…
Me: I’m just glad they didn’t steal my wallet out of my handbag.
Ryan: I’d be impressed if they could find it, there is that much shit in there.

Just after checking in to a fancy resort in Nha Trang…
Me: Do you want to have a beer in the bath?
Ryan: Why do you think I’m running the water?

On the overnight train to Sapa…
Ryan:  Chinese people really know how to fuck up a bathroom.

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January 22nd, 2013

Recently we had an unsettling airport experience at Phuket, mainly because all passengers had to get both their hand luggage and their suitcases searched. I was nervous because I had bought some “valium” from a pharmacy on Bangala Road and tossed it inside an empty vitamin bottle which now lay at the bottom of my suitcase. I hefted my bag up onto the counter and unzipped it, trying to act casual.

“You have firework?” the Thai man said, patting my dirty underpants and wet swimmers.
“No.”
“Lighter?”
“No.”
“Have a nice fliiiiiiiiight.”

In addition to the luggage search, we were subjected to four security checkpoints, where at each one I was forced to throw out all the bottled water I had purchased since the previous check. By the time we boarded the plane, I had thrown away seven fully-sealed bottles of water and I was pretty pissed. Ryan had paid for all the water, so he was a little more pissed.

A few rows ahead of us, a young blonde woman fussed around her bags as her husband held their 6-month old baby, who immediately burst into tears. In any other situation, people would tsk tsk affectionately and smile sympathetically at the couple. “Babies will be babies!” you would tell them. But on a plane, the mood is different. To carry a crying baby onto an international flight is the fastest way to make 300+ people passionately hate you. There were several babies on this flight, and they were all beginning to wail.

“Ughhhhhhh,” I moaned, rifling through my backpack for a pair of ear plugs.
“They’re like dogs,” the man beside me observed, “As soon as one starts howlin’, they just set off all the other fuckers.”
“Why doesn’t she put it in the overhead locker?” Ryan said.

For the next nine and a half hours, the blonde lady paced up and down the aisle while her baby screamed. Every time I nodded off, she would pass our row and wake me up. I began to fantasise, unashamedly, about ways to kill the baby.

By the time we reached Sydney, the mother looked as though she had experienced the longest nine hours of her life. Again, under normal circumstances, I would have felt sorry for her. But I didn’t. Because thanks to her, I had now been awake for two days.  And also, because even though I don’t have children, I can give totally advice on how to travel with them.

Tips on how to travel with a baby

1. Don’t take it on a plane

Just don’t. At least not on an overnight flight. Babies don’t like planes. They will probably cry when they are forced to get on one. That tiny person who has no inhibitions, isn’t toilet trained, can’t equalise their ears, and is probably terrified because they don’t understand what the hell is going on? Just take them on a road trip this year, because when you get on a plane with them, everybody hates you. So you don’t get to go to Fiji this year, tough shit. The baby won’t know the difference between a trip to Fiji and a cardboard box. Plus, it’ll probably be more fun for you in a few years time once the kid is a less of a fucking nightmare to travel with.

2. Phenergan

I’ve spoken to several okay-seeming mothers who have doped their babies on flights and so far none of them have stutters or eat cat biscuits. Not only will sedating your child spare all the other passengers from nine hours of torture, but the kid will get a good buzz out of it too.

3. Relocate

If you ignore number 1 and 2, and your baby is upset about being on the plane (which is likely, as explained in number 1), just go sit in the toilet. Sure, it’s probably not the most pleasant place to spend a flight, but your baby is clearly already hating everything about this experience. What’s it going to do, cry?

4. Timing

If you’re a parent, you’re probably reading this and getting all bent out of shape because I don’t have kids. You probably think that bringing a baby on a plane is fine, maybe it even adds a bit of excitement to an otherwise uneventful ten hours. But you have crossed over. Try to cast your mind back to before you had a kid and gave up on personal comfort. And if you absolutely must fly with a baby, make it a day-time flight. That way, even though you’re still annoying the shit out of everyone, they were probably going to be awake anyway. Getting on a 10pm international flight with a shrieking baby means you are really going to fuck up everyone for the next two days. We know it’s not fun for you either, but you are better equipped to deal with the sleep deprivation and noise torture, because you love your child. Nobody else does.

Lessons / rants - 9 Comments »

November 29th, 2012

There are a lot of things in life that I don’t care about. Horoscopes, fashion, hearing about people’s dreams, vegans, etc. But what I really don’t care about, what I could absolutely not give less of a fuck about, is what you and your boyfriend are thinking of having for dinner. Or whether you miss each other. Or the fact that you just wanted to say hello from the office.

It’s as though some couples are so blinded by their love for each other, they have forgotten that there are a hundred ways to communicate with a person other than writing on their Facebook wall.

So here is a handy rundown on alternative methods of contact. If there is someone in your life who has totally forgotten basic fucking communication skills, please feel free to pass this along to them.

Email

Might seem a little daunting at first, but totally easy once you get the hang of it. Just go to www.gmail.com or your preferred email client and sign up. Once your partner has also registered for an email account, you can send each other perfectly private and instantaneous electronic communications. They can even reply to you straight away!

Phone

Don’t waste time pining for the sound of your beloved’s voice during the work day. Just ring them on a phone and you can discuss anything at all to your heart’s content. The great thing about phone calls is that you can speak directly with the person you want to talk to, rather than posting a message on one of their public social media profiles. Amazing!

Text

Don’t be fooled into thinking that phone is just for voice-talk. Now you can take advantage of the wonderful world of Short Message Service (or SMS as I like to call it) by typing a text into your phone, hitting a button, and BOOM – sending it instantly to your BF/GF’s phone. They can read it whenever they want and reply to it whenever they want. And best of all, no one else will have to read the fucking thing.

IM

This is just a fancy word for “instant messaging.” There are so many ways you can do this, and I have found it to be a really effective way of communicating with all kinds of people, including my significant other. My favourite ways to IM include Gchat, MSN messenger, Whatsapp and Viber, but feel free to explore the internet and find one that suits you!

Facebook messaging

Now we know you’re comfortable on Facebook, because you use it as your main medium for 80% of your relationship interactions. So perhaps you’ve already come across the Messaging feature but you just couldn’t get the damn hang of it. Well, never fear because I am here to save the day.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. click on “Messages”
2. then click on “New message”
3. enter your boyfriend’s name where it says “Name”
4. type your message in the box
5. Have I lost you? Don’t forget to hit “Send” when you want to send it!

I personally guarantee that if you use any of the above methods to contact your partner, it will be just as effective as writing on their Facebook wall. In fact, it might even be more effective since you would actually be directing your message to the person who needs to read it, rather than your entire list of mutual Facebook friends who are bored as shit.

But wait, I’m missing the point. Obviously you’re not actually posting on your partner’s Facebook wall because you need to tell them something. It’s because you need to tell everyone else something: that hey, just in case we didn’t notice, you have a BF/GF. Well for the record, most of us don’t give a shit. But if you’re still feeling the need to publicly announce this fact, I have a few more tips for you:

• tattoo your partner’s name onto your forehead
• put out an ad
• head to Speakers’ Corner in the Domain, grab a soap box and start yelling at strangers like the rest of the crazy pricks down there.

Or if you really want to keep it on Facebook, maybe you should just own it. Why not avoid all the subterfuge and just make your status the truth?

rants - 5 Comments »

October 23rd, 2012

• Listening to my neighbours rotate a limited playlist at extreme volumes that would normally be appropriate for Mardi Gras comedown parties, 14 year old girls, and the autistic.
• Seeing an aboriginal guy take a shit on Crown Street.
• Being woken up regularly on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings around 4am when the girl next door would bring home whoever fingered her at the pub and then act coy by chatting to them for 45 minutes outside my bedroom window.
• The tranny who used to steal my mail.
• Calling the police every Friday and Saturday night to come and clear away the hipsters drinking goonbags in the gutter.
• The cockroaches.
• The maggots.
• The wasps.
• The time a rat ran up the stairs.
• Finding a homeless person in my garage.
• Having your front door pissed on.
• Listening to idiots setting off their own car alarm (at least once a day.)

rants / reflections - 5 Comments »

July 12th, 2012

• Looking at your own poo was important because it told you whether you were healthy or not.
• Female pleasure was considered essential for conception to occur, so if you got knocked up in a rape you could never press charges because obviously you enjoyed it, you swampy whore.
• When you were dying, the priest would announce it at church and then everyone would come to your house to stand around and watch you die.
• If you didn’t die “properly” and went under screaming, crying, or freaking out, you were considered a huge pussy and would have to kill more time in purgatory than people who died more pleasantly.
• Rich people didn’t eat garlic because it was considered peasant food.
• Vaginas didn’t really exist. Girls just had inverted penises and if you jumped up and down enough, it would eventually fall out.
• It was considered “womanly” for an unmarried man to sleep with a lot of women, so in order to maintain his masculinity he would bum dudes instead.
• You could swaddle your baby and hang it from a tree all day while you were off ploughing fields and nobody would think less of you.
• Generally speaking, there was never any need to take a bath.
• Women had no souls, just like black people and slaves.
• People would take a dump in most places. There were no toilets anywhere and no real concept of cleanliness, so you could poop pretty much wherever you wanted and not be embarrassed about it like I was. If you were royalty you might have a “toilet” on one of your castle’s turrets where you could shit off the side of the building and your shit would slowly run down the wall into the shit-filled moat below.
• It was a pretty gross time for everybody.

aka I am doing Open Uni again.

Lessons / reflections - 3 Comments »

February 14th, 2012

1. She can see photos of you fucked up (that’s a given.)
2. She can’t remember her password and will get drunk at Christmas lunch and bang on about what a stupid website it is and how she’s going to ring them on Monday and tell them to “let her back in”.
3. She takes ambiguous status updates literally and will complain that your cousin’s status simply said “sigh.” (“Just sigh. Nothing else. Why is she sighing? What does it mean?”)
4. She calls you and asks you how to delete things from her feed once she’s read them. (“What, you mean other people’ s posts?” “Yes, how do I get rid of them?”)
5. She is giddy at suddenly being privy to so much of your personal life and comments on every single fucking thing you do.
6. Your creeper flatmate tries to add her as a friend.
7. She emails you asking you to explain what is a creeper?
8. She posts horrific anecdotes that refer to your father and her “doing it”.

reasons - 6 Comments »

January 24th, 2012

Dead Europe This book contains a lot of same-sex sex, orgies, beastiality, incest, rape, drug use, Jew h8ers, and descriptions of men jizzing in various places. And while I can appreciate a brutally violent anal sex scene as much as the next reader, I was hoping for a few plot points in between visits to pound town. My mother bought me this book for Christmas.
Coonardoo Aboriginal people herd cattle for 800 pages = TLDR. Can you believe that when this book first came out, it was banned for being so controversial? Me neither, cause it’s fucking boring.
The Alchemist What would be quicker than reading this book is if you just got someone to shit directly onto your lap and then got on with your day. The best part of this book was when I threw it in the bin.
A Wolf at the Table Augusten Burroughs tries not to be funny and succeeds. Could put it down.	.

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January 19th, 2012

If you’re on Facebook, you’ve probably seen some moronic updates floating through your feed lately about people going to various countries for various periods of time even though they’re not. The conversation usually goes something like this…

Idiot: I’m going to Spain for 4 months!
Curious friend: Omg really?
Idiot: Nah it’s for breast cancer lol!
Curious friend: wat.
Idiot: You choose the country that matches your bday month and then your bday date is how long you’re going for and then you change your status
Curious friend: (deletes you from Facebook because you’re a fucking idiot)

This kind of genius has been around for a while now. It usually starts with a message people forward around to their female friends that goes something like this:

Hey ladies! It’s that time of year again when we annoy the shit out of our friends and contribute absolutely nothing towards raising awareness about breast cancer!!!

This is how it works. First, choose the number that matches your IQ:

1 – blue
2 – pink
3 – black
4 – yellow
5 – red

Next, how many people would admit to being your friend?

1 – syphilis
2 – chlamydia
3 – gonorrhea
4 – the clap
5 – herpes

Then update your Facebook status with the colour and STD that match your answers! For example, “Omg my bf’s balls are red, think I have the clap?!!”

Now remember, don’t tell any of the boys what your statuses mean because we need to maximise the awareness!!! Keep them guessing so more people learn about it. Also pass this on to everyone you know so they can raise a awareness too!!!

 

Ugh. Just ugh.

1. Do we really need to be raising awareness about breast cancer?

If you can show me three people over the age of 12 who are not aware of breast cancer, I will start watching Glee, because neither of those things are ever going to fucking happen.

Where are these people? How often is this conversation happening?

Judy: Excuse me sir, but I’m going to need some time off work because… well, I have breast cancer.
Boss: What’s that? Never heard of it. Should we all get tested? I really don’t understand.

We’re all aware. Breast cancer gets more publicity than Kate Middleton holding her hand over her stomach in a few photos like she’s totally pregnant. Why not try and raise awareness about something that people don’t generally know a lot about, like melanoma or how to clear your cache. Or if you still want to keep the focus on breast cancer, why not aim to raise awareness about its symptoms, detection methods, treatment options or other ways to help. Or fuck, why not just really go for it and try to raise something actually useful, LIKE MONEY?

2. How does not mentioning something raise awareness about it?

Here is the other way these status updates are often received…

Moron: I’m a champagne flute so tuck it back.
Innocent friend: What are you talking about?
Moron: I can’t tell you lol.
Innocent friend: Don’t call me anymore.

The dumb bridge club president who comes up with these brainwaves and composed the original message urges people not to disclose the reason behind their mysterious status update. Now I’m no genius, and I only just found out that reindeer are real so who am I to judge, but I do have one question: how are people supposed to know what cause you’re supporting, if you don’t fucking say it?

I really want to know how the conversation went when this was decided.

Shirley: So then we get everyone to update their status to raise lots of awareness….but it’s a secret.
Tonia: Wow, I think it’s a great idea, I mean it’s definitely got legs. But how will people know that the whole concept is about breast cancer if it’s a secret?
Shirley: Because that’s the whole purpose.
Tonia: Yes but shouldn’t we mention the cause or maybe include a link to a site with information on breast cancer, maybe even a site where people could donate money?
Shirley: Nah, nah, nah. Trust me, it’s better this way.

3. Doing lame crap like this gives people a false sense of action

Telling people that they can help raise awareness about breast cancer by posting something inane on Facebook is counter-productive, because some of those people who wanted to help might have ACTUALLY supported the cause through donating things like time/money/ideas/labour/goods/etc. But instead, they will now sit back on the couch and tune in to Oprah, satisfied in the knowledge that they’ve done their bit for breast cancer.

4. It’s really annoying

Stop it. Not only is it annoying, but you might find that it actually achieves the opposite of what you were dumb enough to think you were doing. Most of the time, when people discover that a particular brand is behind an ad or campaign that they find super irritating, they feel less sympathetic towards that brand. I’m not saying I am pro-breast cancer, but I’d probably chuck my dollars into another cancer charity that wasn’t being endlessly touted by a bunch of idiots.

Of course, having said all that, there is a silver lining. If you are keen to cull your Facebook friends, little initiatives like these will help you sort the wheat from the chaff. (Checking which of your friends have liked the Two and a Half Men page is also a good method.)

rants - 26 Comments »

January 9th, 2012

• Pack ear plugs anytime you go anywhere because people are awful.
• You should always take spare headphones in case you sit on somebody else’s on the plane and break them with your strength/arse.
• When ordering food on your holiday, think about the country and the landscape and the stuff on it. If you haven’t seen a cow for a while, skip the beef.
• The kinds of people you want to avoid when you travel are: children, people who have children, and anyone who has written a self-help book.
• Even if you are traveling with your favourite person on earth, they are bound to annoy the shit out of you at some point. The best way to deal with this is to sweep all your belongings off your banana lounge and dump everything onto the ground, say “You want this chair? Take the fucking chair,” and then lock yourself in the hotel room and eat a whole tube of sour cream and chives Pringles.
• Overnight train is the worst form of travel after Holocaust box car.
• If someone’s body language doesn’t quite make sense, it’s probably because they are cutting open your handbag with a stanley knife and trying to steal your wallet.
• Staying at a fancy resort turns you into a jerk fairly quickly and you will soon find yourself asking a waiter where the fuck is my mojito?
• Boys don’t really appreciate spa treatments and are likely to describe an amazing and luxurious experience as “being hit with bags of seeds” or “someone wiping their hands on my face, like a lot, and those satin pyjama pants made my balls really sweaty.”

Lessons / reflections - 3 Comments »

December 16th, 2011

 

Ryan: I watched Drive today.

Me: How was it?

Ryan: There’s no story, absolutely nothing. It’s a 20 minute script shot in slow motion to make up an hour and a half of footage. Mostly it’s just shots of Ryan Gosling wearing a gold jacket and chewing on a toothpick. He also walks down a lot of hallways. And there’s no driving. It shouldn’t even be called “Drive”. That’s misleading. It should be called “Ryan Gosling chews a toothpick in slow motion for ninety minutes”. If you want to know what happens in Drive, just look at the DVD cover. That’s the movie. The whole thing.

Me: I heard the soundtrack was good?

Ryan: I can’t remember, I’d have to watch it again. And that’s not going to happen because it’s fucking boring.

rants / reviews - 2 Comments »