Sunday, June 6th, 2004
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4:19 pm - Weekend? What's that?
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Yesterday I did three loads of clothes washing, one load of dish-washing, went grocery shopping and bought tickets to see HP next weekend. I also watched Dangerous Liaisons and Legend.
Today I put some hand-washing to soak in the tub, put yesterday's cleaned dishes away, packed a bag full of costume and caught a bus out to Figtree to change in the dingy Hellenic Club toilets (screwing up my blusher and having to scrub it off with toilet paper before re-applying), in order to spend an hour and a half either sweating and dancing and feeling sick from nerves (I'm out of practice at performance, and it shows) and watching others dance. Then I got a lift home (thanks to a passing friend), cooked my lunch for most of the next week and did another load of dish-washing.
( I'm tired. )
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(1 blessing | kiss me?)
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| Thursday, June 3rd, 2004
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7:53 pm
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I should have guessed when a stranger woke us this morning by banging long and loud on our door prior to 6am that today was not going to be a good day.
Today I have had the first outraged customer since I began work here. She insulted my intelligence, yelled at me till she'd worked herself into a state, and refused to let us really help her. Just kept abusing us. I think some of our customers have been taking customer service lessons from Americans. They've turned pushy.(You could not pay me enough to do customer service in the US. I think I have had a grand total of one American order that was not pushy in any way, did not ask for at least half a dozen freebies, or simply EXPECT them.)
These days I am painfully aware of the cultural differences that create the seas between being American and being Australian - and the ways in which those seas seem to be overlapping more. When I say 'Americans are pushy' I mean it of course, in comparison to Australians - who are far more informed by the English, and tend to be more reserved and far less ebullient and likely to have freaking arguments over whether a merchandiser thanks them for their order. Do not laugh. I have seen this debated in the NA forums.) So many of you, my friends here, are wide cultures apart from me. It's a wonder we can even begin to comprehend each other as much as we do.
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(5 blessings | kiss me?)
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| Saturday, May 22nd, 2004
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6:02 pm - Performing and Shopping.
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There's a hafla on the sixth of next month - at which I've repeatedly said I'm going to perform my first solo (five and a half years of classes, and I'm only now doing my first solo, heh). I think I've decided on my music - well, it's a choice between Alabina & the Gypsy Kings' Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood, and Cheb Mami's Le Rai C'est Chic, with my leaning towards the latter. The lyrics are all in Arabic, which is providing me with my only qualm - if it's raunchy or political in nature, I could offend people and/or end up looking like a right twit.
But it's catchy, very different (I don't think anyone will have heard of it, unlike the Alabina), and quite cute and up-beat, something an audience can clap along to. Which is what you want in a first-time performance when you're not sure of your ability to hold an audience spellbound for a long period of time.
I paid some more cash off on a layby'd purple bra today (more fodder for my beading machinations), and found a purple spiderweb-lace top for $5 at Moussette's (are we sensing a theme here?) Also picked up a good-as-new copy of Jane Routley's MageHeart for a buck! I have the second book of this trilogy, and have been keeping my eyes peeled for the other two. Am so chuffed this fell into my lap, in such perfect quality, so cheaply.
I spoke to ![[info]](http://library.vu.edu.pk/cgi-bin/nph-proxy.cgi/000100A/http/web.archive.org/web/20040610041538im_/http:/=2fstat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ellandar and mrquackles on the phone tonight, as those of you with them on their lists may be pleased to know. they are well, alive, and simply lacking in internet connection. They are both also newly addicted to The Sims, which reminds me I haven't played it for a while...
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(1 blessing | kiss me?)
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| Thursday, May 20th, 2004
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9:11 pm - Proof that I really am a freak
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Think Pink launch is up, on the site.
I am a happy camper indeed. Despite the garish pinkness (which I almost think I may have done that shade just to see if anyone else at the office went cross-eyed... only they all love it! Just as well it's actually kinda funky in a weird, pink way)
I tried to eat a sugar flower that fell off a Think Pink on Monday. It tasted like a sugar flower (oddly enough), but kind of dusty and bi-carby too (again, strangely). I blame the forum girls, who all talked about eating their product... oh, and Malek on the UK staff forums, who eats the damn Ma Bar sugar cubes.
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(2 blessings | kiss me?)
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| Monday, May 17th, 2004
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8:39 pm - On cynicism
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I'm going out to a shop tomorrow (for the first time ever on that side of the counter!). Scary. It's only a four hour shift, which seems almost a waste to go to Sydney for, but at least it will be a blessedly short day, and afterwards I can wander Oxford Street (woo! House of Fetish, here I come!).
Bili in Fresh was talking today about how gung-ho the other states are about sales targets and new products. She thought it was freaky. I was shocked that anyone could think like that in a work environment like ours (where you'd expect the staff to all be super-psyched).
Is it NSW? Or is it just Sydney? We are the jaded, pretentiously anti-pretentious capital of Australia, after all. Everyone's as creative as they are in Melbourne (Bili's a singer, Nathan does musical theatre - starring and writing, Sarah A paints in oils, Sarah Q left to pursue her screen career), but we lack the idealism of the Victorians. Everyone seems so cynical, here.
Maybe it's just that we're the corporate office? Employ idealistic staff, get the cynics and bean counters to run the show kind of thing?
I don't know. It's a depressing thought, either way.
JenZen's mantra is "No Cynics!", and whilst I have always admired sardonic wit, I think she's onto a good thing. What can you say to the truly jaded that they will not posture and be jaded about even more? Where do they find their joy and meaning? It's self-fulfilling, poor things.
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(kiss me?)
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| Monday, May 10th, 2004
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4:39 pm - Random Work thought bubble
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Dear Fool,
If you are too stupid to write your postal code on your slip of paper requesting you be added to our mailing list, I am definitely too lazy to pull out the postcode book & look up you and the dozen other foolish people. On top of adding all the semi-sensible people to my lists.
In short: No mailout for you!
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(1 blessing | kiss me?)
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| Sunday, May 9th, 2004
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8:04 pm - Winter's Here
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I am freezing. Today it is cold, damn cold, real cold! I tried to do hand washing and my little hands froze in the water and went white with the shock of such an icy plunge.
My big news of the weekend is that keftiu and her man split... which was coming for a while now I guess, but it was still a bit of a shock. Four years is definitely long enough to be habit-forming, and even mutual break-ups can be emotionally awful. Spent several hours yesterday helping Steve move Sarie's stuff over to her aunt's place.
What with J being at his grandparent's for most of the day, we didn't see each other a whole lot.
Then we had to catch up on grocery shopping today, and shortly afterwards celtic_raven came over to collect her laptop and chat, and ended up helping me cook cheesy risotto (from scratch! From scratch guys! *does the happy dance of the cooktastic*) and hung around for the afternoon. Continuing the theme (and because a hot oven helps heat our tiiny cockroach box in this cold), I cooked choc-chip cupcakes this evening.
It's been a really social, busy weekend, but I kind of ended up missing spending some time with just J - we usually go for a coffee together or grab something to eat when doing the shopping, but today we were expecting Clare, and it was prohibitively cold, and most of the shops weren't open. Right now I just want to be a hermit next weekend - either that, or train myself to live on far less sleep and he on far less TV, so I can spend more time of an evening with my boy.
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(kiss me?)
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| Sunday, April 25th, 2004
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7:05 pm - 10 Friends Meme (with a twist)
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You remember This?
Take two.
Right now on my friends list I have:
1) Five sufferers of endometriosis
2)
3)
4)
5)
6) Five teachers/teacher-wannabes and/or teachers' aides
7)
8)
9)
10)
So what I'm saying is that when I'm not being told about how much it sucks to be a woman, I'm being lectured about grammar, spelling, the construction of my arguments during a debate...!
^-^
i am masochist. hear me meow.
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(10 blessings | kiss me?)
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5:57 pm - Lost summer
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It's too cold for me. The sun shines all day and the sky is beautiful with cottonwool clouds, but the ice on the air makes my fingers and toes numb, my cheeks feel feverish. I can't get warm, even out of the shade - and in it - brrr!
Winter diminishes me. I know some of you adore it, but here there's no snow to make the world into a wonderland - it's simply cold, and wet, and windy. I expand with the heat of summer. Some of that is my skin gasping for breath in the cottonwool air, but I grow with it - now, I am shrinking, drawing away inside, curled up about the hot coal at the core of me.
I know the seasonal necessity of this time, but i miss the season that my lifes revolves about, like a centrepiece - forever anticipating, missing and being.
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(1 blessing | kiss me?)
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5:56 pm - Quiz night, it seems...
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5:16 pm - Oh dear
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| Friday, April 23rd, 2004
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7:25 pm - speaking in short. truncated sentences.
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Hi. My day was okay. But lonely.
I daydreamed, most of it. And was so tongue-tied with customers on the phone it's a wonder they comprehended me at all.
I filled so many boxes with so much product it's a wonder my fingers aren't still twitching.
I listened to The Cure's greatest hits CD, and old eighties pop on the radio.
I gave advice on long hair and solid shampoo bars, and psoriasis of the skin.
I smiled at the old Italian man outside his al fresco restaurant, on my way home.
I don't think I ate or drank enough.
On the way home I bought myself a bunch of cream-coloured roses, like old lace. I have been eyeing off the cheap flower stall just outside the Devonshire exit from Central Station for the past month and a half.
And this is how I write when I'm reading Wally Lamb. Who I don't, incidentally, enjoy but one of whose books is important to me for other reasons.
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(1 blessing | kiss me?)
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| Monday, April 12th, 2004
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9:20 pm - Dear Mercury, F*** you.
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Mercury is retrograde.
I stumble on my words when speaking to Ally at work and Mercury is retrograde.
J and I fight one hour, coo the next, and Mercury is retrograde.
Therese at work asks me to repeat everything I say to her and Mercury is retrograde.
I bubble over with ideas, moon-time creativity and words that I cannot commit to, and Mercury is retrograde.
Dammit.
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(kiss me?)
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