Last night I went to yogi dancing. This is basically yoga with a deejay, and then a “freestyle” section where you “just dance” for 15-20 minutes and feel like you are in a nightclub rather than a sandstone church in Paddington with a bunch of hippies.

What to expect at a yogi dancing class

1. Upon arrival, place your havaianas in a room full of havaianas. I positioned mine next to a dead cockroach for reference.
2. Enter the church. Inside it is eight hundred degrees and there are four thousand hippie backpackers sitting on the floor. They are all surprisingly attractive. Make awkward small talk with some of them. There is a pile of glow sticks at the front of the room and flowing light projections on the ceiling. There is one toilet. Behind the organ.
3. Meet the yogi, Angel. She is wearing a microphone headset and what I suppose you could call shorts. She has a glow stick in her hair. She is the nicest person you have ever met.
4. The yoga begins. Angel takes you through each routine, then leaves you to do it in your own time. So she’ll show you how to draw circles with your heart, then leave you to continue drawing circles with your heart on your own, while the deejay plays Sigur Ros and sways at the front of the room.
5. The difficulty increases unexpectedly. The poses pretty much go from swinging your arms from side to side to a headstand. You sit down on your mat, defeated. “This is bullshit,” you comment to the Irish girl next to you. She doesn’t respond though as everyone has their eyes closed.
6. Angel asks you to put your mats to the side and come into the centre of the room. She shows you some basic tribal-esque dance moves. The lights go down and the class pretty much turns into a rave, complete with glow sticks and smoke machines, but without any drugs. Then you just dance, frantically, for twenty minutes. (This was an issue for me, as ordinarily I do not dance unless I have a gun to my head or a blood alcohol level greater than 0.1). You are all sweating buckets. The hippies fucking love it.
7. The dancing stops and you are told to do a few “cool down” laps around the room, introducing yourself to everyone you walk past. You meet River, Ariel, and Clover, and shake their sopping hands and then you stop caring.
8. Everyone does some wind-down poses to Sufjan Stevens or whatever. Angel walks around spraying eucalyptus or something over you.
9. You discover a puddle on your mat and glance up towards the ceiling before realising it is your own sweat. You smell pretty bad.
10. You all lie in the corpse position for 5 minutes. Someone farts and nobody reacts except me, because I think it’s funny. Anytime anyone ever farts in the world is very funny.
11. Angel asks everyone to come onto her mat so we can pose for a group photo. She tells us to tag ourselves in the photo when she puts it on Facebook, so that we can all become friends.
12. On the way out, Angel gives everyone a kiss on the cheek. You feel a slight buzz as you leave, but that could just be due to the fact that you are severely dehydrated and inhaled quite a bit of that eucalyptus stuff.
13. This all takes just over 2 hours.

Actual helpful advice:

• BYO mat. You don’t have to, but this is a very sweaty, full-on class and you might get pregnant if you don’t.
• Take a towel too.
• If you’ve never done yoga before, take a few beginner classes at a yoga centre to familiarise yourself with some basic poses (like downward facing dog, warrior pose, salute to the sun, extended angle pose.)
• Make a booking. Classes are pretty popular. It’s $25 a pop. Deets here. That is also where I stole the above image.

Me: You should write me some blog posts about being a lawyer.

Keira: Why? They would all say the exact same thing: ‘So then I reviewed the documents and then I wrote some letters and then I sent the letters, and then I got a response, and reviewed that, and can you believe they deny liability? Ha, so anyway I wrote another letter.’

• my friends will want to go to the Tav tonight and I will flatly refuse, as since I have moved to the city, I have grown out of getting shitfaced at dirty bars in the Hills.

CORRECT – in honour of the Tav’s famous night club re-opening, my school friends were extremely keen to pay $15 for the pleasure of reliving our youth by chugging breezers, dancing on a podium and getting fingered in the carpark.

• a few hours later, I will be standing on a table in the beer garden at the Tav doing shots of sambuca.

INCORRECT – I went to my parents’ house, watched an episode of Studio 60 and then went to bed. I am so boring.

• I will yell at a taxi driver and pass out in the study at my parents’ house.

INCORRECT – I was able to sleep in my old room, as the lesbian couple who has been staying there was away for Christmas.

• Mum will knock on the door at 8am tomorrow morning and ask me if I want to go to church. I will pretend not to hear her.

INCORRECT – the woman is learning.

• My brother and I will wake up 5 minutes before my parents come home from church and pretend we have been up for hours.

INCORRECT – I got up early and went for a run, then made avocado on toast and read a weight loss magazine. Oh the shame of it.

• My mother will give me a Bryce Courtenay book, which I will never read, and I will give her a scarf, which she will never wear.

CLOSE – I got a novel by Philippa Gregory (an author I liked around 2001) and a Jamie Oliver cookbook, which I will never open because I am in no way gifted when it comes to food preparation.

• My brother and I will hand each other cards containing $50. Sometimes, we just pull out our wallets and exchange notes.

INCORRECT – we have developed a new arrangement where we request very specific gifts and nobody is disappointed. I am hoping to work my mother into this system for 2011.

• My mother will drink a glass of champagne while she’s preparing a dip plate, then have a hot flush and retire to the lounge while my father finishes all other food preparation for the day.

CORRECT

• Our Christmas lunch guests will be church families and awkward singles, because my mother believes that the days surrounding Christmas are for catching up with relatives and in-laws, but Christmas Day itself should be spent with her spiritual family.

CORRECT – this year’s line up included some people who were our neighbours during the 80s and an elderly woman with severe dementia who stared at a blank television screen for most of the afternoon.

• My brother and I, faced with the prospect of a long lunch with our estranged childhood Sunday School friends, will begin putting away beers as though our lives depend on it.

CORRECT – I don’t remember much after 5pm.

• Lunch will include a lot of seafood, which I will remind my parents I do not eat. (“Oh how nice of you to provide for everyone. Thank you so much.”)

CORRECT – but my mother also made a ham, which was the cause of many arguments but tasted delicious.

• I will start a fight with someone about Christianity, get shut down by my mother, sulk for the rest of the meal and then leave the table as soon as is vaguely socially acceptable.

INCORRECT – however I did make several racist jokes which were met with awkward silence and a lot of throat-clearing.

• I will sit for half an hour with my cat and then fall asleep on the couch.

INCORRECT – I partied all day and drank cocktails in the pool. Obviously the cat decided to spend Christmas Day hanging out with all her loved ones (ie. herself.)

• I will wake up after all our guests have left and my dad will make up a fruit platter just for me. We will sit in front of the fan and watch a documentary about Hitler.

INCORRECT – after a drunken stumble to a BP station to purchase microwave popcorn, my brother’s girlfriend and I watched Ricky Gervais’ Science and then I passed out around 10pm.

1. The one where my mother tries to prove her knowledge of contemporary music to my brother…

Mum: Is that Metallica?
Chris: No.
Mum: Is it Korn?
Chris: No.
Mum: Who is it?
Chris: It’s Jesus Christ and the Shut-the-Fuck-Ups. Do you mind? We’re trying to watch a movie here.

2. The one in the car…

Dad: Can you please stop clicking your pen?
Mum: What, so you couldn’t hear that annoying woman who kept announcing the keno numbers at the restaurant but you can hear my pen clicking? What is this, some gender-based selective hearing where you can’t hear annoying women?
Dad: Well I can hear one now.

3. The one where I think my grandfather’s girlfriend was trying to ask me whether I have a fuck buddy…

Edith: So, have you got a fella?
Me: Nah.
Edith: Do you have a special friend though?
Me: Huh?
Edith: Do you have a…you know…a special guy friend?
Me: Um, I have male friends?
Edith: Good.

4. The one where my grandfather’s girlfriend insults the modeling industry in general…

Edith: Have you tried any modeling yet?
Me: No.
Edith: Why not?
Me: Well for one, I weigh more than a hundred pounds.
Edith: Yes but you’ve got nice hair.
Me: I dont think that’s going to cut it on the runway.
Edith: Yeah well some of those girls really shouldn’t be up there anyway. They look like dogs.

• my friends will want to go to the Tav tonight and I will flatly refuse, as since I have moved to the city, I have grown out of getting shitfaced at dirty bars in the Hills.
• a few hours later, I will be standing on a table in the beer garden at the Tav doing shots of sambuca.
• I will yell at a taxi driver and pass out in the study at my parents’ house.
• Mum will knock on the door at 8am tomorrow morning and ask me if I want to go to church. I will pretend not to hear her.
• My brother and I will wake up 5 minutes before my parents come home from church and pretend we have been up for hours.
• My mother will give me a Bryce Courtenay book, which I will never read, and I will give her a scarf, which she will never wear.
• My brother and I will hand each other cards containing $50. Sometimes, we just pull out our wallets and exchange notes.
• My mother will drink a glass of champagne while she’s preparing a dip plate, then have a hot flush and retire to the lounge while my father finishes all other food preparation for the day.
• Our Christmas lunch guests will be church families and awkward singles, because my mother believes that the days surrounding Christmas are for catching up with relatives and in-laws, but Christmas Day itself should be spent with her spiritual family.
• My brother and I, faced with the prospect of a long lunch with our estranged childhood Sunday School friends, will begin putting away beers as though our lives depend on it.
• Lunch will include a lot of seafood, which I will remind my parents I do not eat. (“Oh how nice of you to provide for everyone. Thank you so much.”)
• I will start a fight with someone about Christianity, get shut down by my mother, sulk for the rest of the meal and then leave the table as soon as is vaguely socially acceptable.
• I will sit for half an hour with my cat and then fall asleep on the couch.
• I will wake up after all our guests have left and my dad will make up a fruit platter just for me. We will sit in front of the fan and watch a documentary about Hitler.

Ryan: Men just love to break stuff, so we get destructive when we’re drunk.
Me: And that is why women will inherit the earth.
Ryan: If that was actually going to happen, I think you bitches would have done it by now.

Ryan: I don’t understand why religious people are so happy all the time. Although, I guess I’d be pretty stoked if I thought that when I die, I’ll get to live in the clouds with Natalie Portman on a neverending coke binge. Being religious is like lining up for a really awesome rollercoaster. Like, you could be in that line for fucking days, but you don’t really care because you’re so excited and you know it’s going to be amazing.

Ryan: The problem with Bear Grylls is he’s too unrealistic. He’s like, “So if you find yourself parachuting in the Maldives and you’re being attacked by a bird, this is the knot you need to tie in a rope to kill it. And don’t forget to eat its eyeballs after it dies, Pelican cornea is packed full of vomit-inducing protein.” That would never happen. But if he was like, “This is how you change a tire if your car breaks down on the Habour Bridge during peak hour,” that would actually be helpful. People would watch that.

For more offensive statements, you can follow Ryan on Twitter.

Literal Man decided to finally talk to the hot girl at the coffee shop, even though she was sitting with a group of friends, whispering conspiratorially.

“Hey baby,” he said in a low voice. “Wanna go out sometime?”

“I’d rather die,” she replied.

Her girlfriends laughed wildly and he joined in, lightly slapping his hand against the table.

“Seriously, fuck off,” she said.

“Oh. Okay.”

He went out to the carpark and rummaged around the boot of his car.

What a strange girl, he thought, smashing a cricket bat into her head as she exited the coffee shop.

By the time the police arrived, her face was bashed in completely on one side.

“You should date somebody from Twitter,” my flattie JC told me one night at the pub. This was a couple of years back, when meeting people from t’internet was still something of a novelty and you didn’t tell your mother when you were doing it.

“Don’t be an idiot,” I said and waved my beer dismissively. The truth was I had already considered this and had reasonable-sized crushes on more than a few of my followers. Plus my Twitter network was relatively small, highly interactive and privy to a lot of details regarding my personal life. It’d save a lot of the legwork involved in getting to know somebody on a first date.

“No, seriously,” JC continued, “I bet that if you tweeted on a Saturday night and said you wanted somebody to take you out, you’d have at least 5 offers in the first hour.”

I didn’t know whether he was right or wrong, but the likelihood of me actually doing this was roughly equal to using my beer money to sponsor an African child. I had met enough people online to know that some of them were fun and could become your new BFFs, but others were fun and then later proved to have a very tenuous grip on reality. In the beginning, it’s almost impossible to tell which category the stranger sitting on your couch chopping weed will fall into.

So I put aside the idea of Twitter dating for the meantime, but then after a depressingly dry season, I began to consider it more seriously. I mean, if I was on Twitter and I wasn’t a freak, then surely most of the other people who were on Twitter weren’t freaks either? Maybe I should be more open minded?

Later that week, I was on the bus after 6 or 7 cocktails and recklessly decided to ask out someone from Twitter. I looked through my list of followers and finally settled on a guy who had flirted with me a little in the past.

“Want to grab a beer sometime?” I DMed him.

“Sure!” he replied.

I arranged to meet him for drinks after work the following Wednesday. Then I texted my friend Keira and said, “I just asked out a guy from Twitter.”

Keira wrote back, “Two words: Mister Burns.”

Mister Burns was a philosophy student I had met a couple of years earlier through RSVP.com and, after seeing his reasonably attractive profile picture, agreed to meet in real life for coffee. But when he showed up on the day, he looked a bit like Gollum and was wearing a matching block coloured tracksuit. He smelled vaguely of urine. “I have to go,” I said, not even bothering to formulate an excuse, then climbed straight back into my car and drove away.

I wasn’t so worried about meeting this Twitter guy though. I’d seen a few photos of him and he looked okay. I was confident about the date, but when Wednesday arrived, I found myself feeling nervous. “What if he’s ugly?” I asked the girls at work. “Or what if he’s fat? Oh my god, what have I done?”

Fortunately, he wasn’t fat. In fact, he was pretty cute. We smashed some beers and had great conversations and I thought, yes, this is going so well, snaps for me.

I agreed to meet him for a coffee the following weekend, and I was genuinely looking forward to it. But in the harsh light of day, he was nowhere near as attractive. In fact, he kind of looked a bit like my brother, which was cause for immediate disqualification. It was too late to back out though, so I sat down, ordered a coffee and began mentally scraping together a list of possible excuses to leave early. He seemed nervous in a sober setting and spoke at great length about his cats.

This date was very borderline: bad enough that I knew I wouldn’t see him again, but not quite bad enough to leave after only half an hour. But then he solved my dilemma by shifting the balance.

We were discussing his vegetarianism, and I inquired about his iron levels. “Do you get sick a lot?” I asked. “I went off red meat for a while last year and just seemed to come down with cold after cold.”

“Well it’s different for women,” he said, “As they have a tendency to….you know…”

“What?”

Here he made a violent flowing gesture with both hands and whispered, “Bleed.”

I picked up my bag and left him with the bill.

After I ignored him for a few days, he messaged me.

Him: “Was that initial drink supposed to be a date or a networking thing?”

Me: “A networking thing. Why do you ask?”

Him: “Oh I’m embarrassed… Not that I had assumed one way or the other, but yeah… Shit, I’m an ass.”

Me: “It’s okay, everybody makes mistakes.”

He unfollowed me on Twitter not long after.

• talk to myself in the mirror
• inhale deeply when I walk behind the French guy’s desk at work, because he smells good
• google all my doctors, yoga teachers, hair dressers, therapists, etc, to try and find personal information about them
• set up fake email accounts under my parents’ names and feed them through my inbox, even though I have never actually used them
• photograph strangers on public transport
• wear the clothing of anyone who has left jackets/shirts/pants at my house
• look up girls’ skirts when they’re above me on the escalator
• smell other people’s hair