I was interrupted about five times while posting this, for example

I am one of the few lucky people who "need access to Youtube at work".
It's "for work purposes".


But it allows me to perform wonderful feats of magic. Yes, the italics mean that you should read that word to yourself in awed whisper. Let's do it again: MAGIC (oohh aaahhh).


Every time I "need to" watch a Youtube video for "work related purposes", I can make the phone ring. I can have the video there, all queued up, ready to roll for some "work-related" yucks and have it sit there for an hour, while nothing happens. I can be motionless; still, like a heavy rock in a mountain stream. But the moment I click that little triangle, BBBRRRING!! BBBRRIINNGGG!!


'Hi, I'm just ringing up. I've got a question? I don't know if I've called the right place ...'

Bobo sad

I'm sick today.
I hate being sick because it's like a weekend, but you're not allowed to do anything fun and you have to wait in bed until Monday when work starts again. Except that when work starts it just starts for you and everyone else has already had the 'boring shit I did on the weekend' conversation. All they are left with is the 'what was wrong with you' (emphasis on the 'you' part) conversation at which you just have to go 'I was sick', which is a code phrase for 'I couldn't think of anything more boring than discussing past ailments can we stop now please'.

Also, I have a new laptop with a web-cam that does facial recognition:

Two questions which may reveal much

1) Why have I just spent an hour reading a year-old, statistics-heavy article in The New Yorker about the state of health care in McAllen, Texas, which I'm pretty sure I've read before?

2) Why can I never get more than three of five toes through the leg-hole in my jocks on any given morning?

Rule #75

If you are not sure if you've called the right number, then you haven't.

Rule #75.b
If the reason for your call takes longer than 10 second to explain, you are a wombat-faced buffoon with no cognitive filter between brain-stem and mouth.
Remember to water yourself periodically.

Question of the weeeeeeeeeeeek!

"Do you think the reason we've been having so many earthquakes recently is because we've
taken so much oil out of the earth's crust? You know, because oil is a natural lubricant?"


I'm not kidding about this. I tried a few half-hearted rationals, but they're not worth even recording. I mean, where do you start?

That, and being drunk

Almost nothing else makes an idea for a good blog disappear faster than sitting down to write it.

Writing the first sentence and waiting a second, brilliant sentence to appear before losing patience and hitting 'Publish Post'.

Sorry team, I'm pulling this all out from under my fingernails after two hours of study after eight hours of work after six and a half hours of sleep after eight hours of work after six hours of sleep.

After Charlie had a few sick nights last week and I was reminded of the good ol' days back when he was hungry every two hours without fail, I was also reminded that I probably would have traded anything for a solid amount of sleep.
It's not the same heroic feeling of making it through to the morning light when you were a kid. It's not even that hilarious panic that sets in when you trudge home from the pub and look up to see the palest blue leaking into the night and you know you've got work in twelve hours.
It's probably more akin to the inevitable horror that torture victims must experience when they see the bolt-cutters and realise that they have plenty more extremities. Every corner in your body and mind begins feeling like it's been vigorously rubbed with sand-paper and you're just as cheerful about the whole thing too.

You could say the answer was blowing in the wind ...

While telling a story, how many times can someone say "to cut a long story short" before it becomes redundant?
Yesterday, I counted four.

I'm tryin!

In fact, we're all so busy that I've discovered a new measure of 'busy-ness': pee smell.
More and more lately, I've been noticing that my pee smells like fragrant tomato paste. I don't have some weird disease - it's because the more stuff Mele and I have to do, the more often we resort to one-pot wonders such as:

• Pasta sauce
• Chicken Provincale
• Anything where you cook all the ingrediants in a single cauldren with spices because the prep is reduced to shop, chop and heat.

The upshot is that because we're cooking all these things in a single pot, we tend to use onions, tomatos and herbs as a base and hence, when I'm taking toilet breaks in between machine-gunning the office around me with speed, efficiency and a dry wit, my pee smells like meaty pasta sauce.

Or maybe I should just see a doctor ...

And speaking of which

I promised myself that I wouldn't post about work, but some things are just too, too sweet. For clarity, I work in a university department which helps students with learning techniques like essay writing, referencing, research and time management. I returned today to a message on my answering machine from a student:

"Hello. Can you tell me how to use Endnote?* Oh, but how are you going to call me back? Hmm. This is a perplexing concept ..."
*hangs up*

Me (to answering machine message): "Madam, if the concept of the telephone is beyond your ken, then you haven't a hope with Endnote."


*bibliography software

I hate all racists. And the Dutch.*

What do you do when, in your professional capacity working in a university, you come across someone who needs help, but somehow blames that need on "cashed-up Asians"? Not literally, but in that roundabout way that ingrained, casual racism has which makes it seem more thought out and considered to the user, but just proves how circuitous a route your racist is willing to travel in order to shift blame and retain their ideological laziness.

To sum up: her lecturer is unhelpful because universities care so much about attracting internationals with the folding stuff that they forget about "Australians". A guy doing a Phd studying Australian states is unsuitable because he's being paid to do so by a foreign government, the implication being that he will return home, taking that knowledge with him. Which is apparently a bad thing. All these foreign students have money and laptops and broadband.
"And many don't."
"Oh yeah, yeah! Heaps of us (note the familiar "us") are doing it tough."

It might seem unusual, but I'm actually pretty dry and straight forward when I'm at work. I take a little bit of pride in my direct, professional manner. I'll slip in the odd dick joke, but by and large I'm not "on". It means that I relax. I don't have to think of my own interesting little chit chats and opinions, it's just the company line, straight up and let's move on. I have a small reputation for efficiency and proficiency. It's comfortable; easy.
This doesn't really help when university policy has neglected to include tearing the retched flappy ears from pug-nosed racists who repeatedly identify themselves as being victims of equity issues.

So I went and wrote a blog.
That'll show 'em.

*Oven.

I don't care if it IS an OH&S issue

if I come into the lunchroom and there are bowls, cups, spoons, food containers or coffee plungers sitting in the sink, soaking in cold water, grease and cabbage, I will assume that, because they are in the sink (o ye crucible of cleansing!), they are all clean and washed up and only in need of neat stacking on the drying rack, which I am more than happy to do for you.

What a blast!

As you can imagine, I am an absolute bastard to work with. I never just do my job and smile politely. I'm always up to something strange and disconcerting: making an odd face, lying, breaking stuff,* doing a half-arsed job, teaching new employees to do half-arsed jobs and saying all manner of creative, artisticky things to cure the three Panadeine boredom of performing menial tasks that I'm convinced monkeys could be trained to perform if people didn't mind risking the odd louse in their latte.

If you are reading this and don't work with me, here's a slice of life around Franzy, Baristero Extraordinaire:

I use a lot of chocolate powder. We use it to make hot chocolates and we sprinkle it over cappuccinos. It is atomically fine, does not obey gravity and consequently, gets everywhere. If you were thinking "in between the clean cups and on the milk bottles", you were right. If you were thinking "down every moist orifice a person possesses", you were more right. Have a biscuit. I know the biscuit looks just like the spent coffee grounds from the group handle, but you'll notice that I've put it on a little plate with whipped cream on top and cinnamon sugar all around. It's coffee flavour. Try it!
Anyway, because of This Generation's Asbestos, frequently I am to be found, crouching behind the counter, tissue wrapped over finger, attempting to expunge the chunky, chocolaty build-ups from my nose. This exchange is recorded verbatim.

Chef: What are you doin'? Havin' a cry, mate?
Me: No, man. I'm picking a winner. It feels like I've got a skateboard up my nose, grommet and all! (sniffs)
Superviser: What's he doing?
Me: It's massive! (sniffs again) Jeez, it's like a loose storm shutter! Bang bang bang!
New girl: Yuck.
Me (Blows. Examines.): Oh no.
Superviser: What?
Me: So sad.
Chef: What?
Me: He didn't make it. Poor little bugger. (shows tissue) Still born.
New girl: (wide-eyed silence).
Me: I should have had that abortion when I had the chance.
Superviser: Franzy ...
Me: Oh god, it's got a little spine and rudimentary organs and everything. I'm calling him Steven. (To New Girl) What's the date?
New Girl: (Too traumatised to talk)
Me: What's the date?
Superviser: August twenty-first.
Me: Not any more it's not.
Chef: Why?
Me: Today ... is Steven's Day. (sniffs, sheds a tear). Do you want to hold him? Just for a moment?
New Girl shakes her head.
Superviser: You've got coffees up.
Me: Guess I'd better wash my hands then ...

*Just yesterday I lifted a garbage bag full of coffee grounds only to have it split open and spray everywhere because I was spinning the bag around to make a tie at the top. Just before closing. On the supervisor's last night. And the day before that I dropped four wine bottles on myself.


***
GTH - Points to Adam_Y and The Ninj for "hairless pygmy-foot" and "400m Thunderbird Impression". This GTH actually had an extremely tenuous link to my old birthday invitation which should probably see Adam take the gold in the tie-break, but because I'm an Australian judge, I'm just going to mess things up for all the colonial powers out there.

Even those homicidal reality show contestants had heard it

This is what I wore today on our scheduled appointment with the high priestesses of skin (dermatologists) at the Royal Brisbane Hospital. This isn't a post about Mele's Medical Mayhem. This is about ... well ... The Juxtapositional Nature of Elitist Humour in an Australian Regional Setting (see Adam? The Flowfield Unity affects all!). And snobbery.

The difference between The Island and the Royal Brisbane Hospital is that on Bribie, everyone just reads the shirt and continues staring blankly ahead. At the Royal Brisbane, people stare, frown, double-take, even smile. The lady at the newsagent who sold me our copies of New Weekly and Australian Top Gear drew the ire of her boss for cackling so loudly.
"No happiness at work," grunted her superior, in semi-seriousness.
"But it's! You see! The llama! And the little picture!" hooted the young lady before releasing a satisfied sigh. "Ahh ... it's just funny to me on so many levels ... that these people ... they just ... they just don't appreciate ..."

I know that there have already been a couple of posts that point towards two increasingly obvious facts:
1) Bribie Island is a cultural wasteland, populated by gentle, white folk whose whole lives are shaped by bland food and commercial television.
2) Mele and I are massive toff-nosed, chin-in-the-air, holier-than-though, elitist snobs and living on the island has thrown this endearing little foible into sharp relief.
Everything is groan-worthy, if not sneertastic in its drollery.
The two-screen, tin-shed cinema, the adorable Bribie Twin, is little more than a creche for the elderly with its infuriating policy of "Nothing Over M 15, Nothing Later Than 7pm".
The pub food is all prepared from the same recipe book: "Deep Frying on a Budget".
There are no decent book stores within cycling distance (the one book store deals mostly in gardening, new age and war).
There are no ethnic restaurants anywhere. Indian Brothers doesn't count because the proprietors appear to be neither Indian, nor brothers. The Chinese restaurants definitely do not count because the Chinese food here is so bad it peels little splinters from your very soul. I had it once. The lemon chicken was like a deep-fried thong covered in fluorescent yellow treacle. Never again.
The fish is all off.
The monthly markets all sell detective novels and carefully-archived lever-arch files of thirty-year-old Grass Roots magazines (sorry, Mum, I would have bought it and mailed it to you, but I was already too deeply into the role of Bad Husband - refusing Mele a house plant by citing the pre-eminence of edible versus decorative household greenery on our weekly budget).
Everybody smokes all over their kids. Even the unborn ones. No one bats an eye-lid at the dozens of heavily pregnant women buying cigarettes, smoking cigarettes, giving cigarettes and lighters to their surprisingly-dexterous-for-sufferers-of-foetal-nicotine-poisoning offspring to hold while they waddle into the supermarket to buy more cigarettes.
The local IGA doesn't stock mustard. They will sell a pregnant woman three packs of Holiday 50s, but I can't get anything spicy to put on my luncheon meat.
As my boss at The Club declared on a recent slow Saturday night: "This is a bloody hick-town, isn't it?"
I bitterly agreed.

That said, bear in mind that these are the ginned-up musings of a middle-class humanities post-grad student who has never lived outside a capital city or experienced anything other than privilege, love and luck for his entire life. All hardships have been overcome, all heartbreaks have been educational, all worst moments are slowly being converted into cash. I even order lattes with nary shudder nor shame.
I know the snobbishness and colonial sniggering will undoubtedly continue ("I say, Mele! Look! That one's using a fork!"), but I was a little surprised recently when one of my work-mates hadn't heard of post-punk rockers, Joy Division. No, don't nip off to Wikipedia just yet, bear with me.
Before I go on, I have an important question to ask of you, the reader. You. Reading this sentence right now. I'm asking you:
Have YOU heard of Joy Division? Think carefully. Yes or no.
Got your answer?
Good.
Now click on these blue words and journey to the very bottom of this page where I keep all the links and histories that you've probably never even seen before because I like this blog to read like a wide book, rather than an easy-to-scan blog. Silly me. I'll change it soon enough.
Now VOTE. I'll wait for you.

Back? Great.
I want to see how well-known they really are. I assumed that everybody had at least heard of them or were familiar with their most popular song 'Love Will Tear Us Apart'. It's even included on The CC's blandtacular musak CD. But no one, in a staff of at least ten people ranging in age from 16 to 46, had heard of the band or could identify my off-key, Kermit-The-Frog-on-cream-chargers warble version of Love Will Tear Us Apart.

Be honest now. If you've never heard of Joy Division, but are familiar with Love Will Tear Us Apart, I will count that as a "yes". If you have no idea what the fuck I am banging on about, even after clicking on the sample, then you are a "no".

***

And, speaking of culture, here is a little ditty for you along the lines of 'Bananaphone'. If you have heard 'Sorta Dunno Nuthin' before, but haven't heard 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' you are a very confused personality with many questionable priorities. Call your mother. She is worried. Either that, or stop calling her so much, she needs her personal space.

True story ...

I fear this "travel blog" might start becoming a "work blog", what with the work:travel ratio tipping in favour of wiping stainless steel benches over and over and away from flitting about the Glasshouse Mountains oohing and aahing at the rainbows and chasing bush turkeys.

I'm a bit remiss about just writing in the goings-on down at the cafe, simply because they're not terrifically interesting. A good writer should be able to make things interesting, but hey - I'm saving the A-game for my Phd thanks very much.
Kidding.
Not a lot goes on. The staff are all very nice and the one who I thought was a bit tedious has left.

The bosses are interesting though. Hospitality bosses don't have a good reputation, by and large. I've had some arseholes. Other people have had worse. I've even heard of worse ones on the island. These ones are a married couple and, from what I can gather, have been in businesses of some sort for most of their lives. The other night it was the tedious one's last night and he was rushing me to get out of there. The next morning, both bosses were in and had the typical "This place is disgusting" reaction which all hospitality managers must necessarily have when they come in and find that the night staff, eager to leave, have left a surface or two unpolished by the recycled chux we all have to share. When I arrived at two, there was a long list of things that were left undone. My heart sank, just a little, because although I knew it wasn't (entirely) me, the tedious one had left and so all was going to have to answer for it. Instead of a telling off, a lecture or a lashing, one of them waited for a quiet period and then quietly walked me through all the things that I'd missed (we, actually - the tedious one was still the night manager and it's still their ultimate responsibility to make sure no one leaves a turd in the dishwasher). So, in spite of the shit pay, shit benefits and vague feeling that I'm wasting my life, it's not such a bad place to work.

Despite all this, I've got to recount a story that probably says more about this place than complimenting their managerial style.
There we all are, fairly quiet night, but both bosses are there, along with me and a couple of other staff. The talk turns to busking and homeless people and giving them money. One boss tells a story about how they were recently in Chicago and noticed a large homeless problem there.
"The people we were staying with told this extraordinary thing about the beggars on the streets," she said, wiping the coffee machine.
"Yeah?" I'm interested. I like stories.
"Oh yeah," male boss says. "Listen to this."
"They said not to give the beggars money, especially at night, because most of them actually have day jobs as brokers and traders," she says.
"Oh yeah," agrees male boss. "They do it for extra cash apparently, they get a couple of hundred a night!"
"Pf," I say. "Rubbish. That's an absolute urban legend. That could never ever ever be true."
"It is!" they both insist. "Our friend gave one bum ten dollars!"
"Think about it," I say. "If it were so lucrative, why wouldn't everyone do it? And a couple of hundred dollars a night? I don't make that in an entire shift!"
"I don't know," says male boss. "I was watching these two guy in particular and they were just too clean cut to be living on the streets ..."
"Come on," I say. "You're a businessman, think about how much they would make an hour, standing out in the cold freezing weather with a cardboard sign and a cup when they could be at home, resting up in their comfortable stockbrokers' houses relaxing for another day of trading. How much would they need to make it worthwhile?"
"Apparently it's true!" they both say.
I didn't push it any further. I went home and tried to find any evidence on the net, any stories anecdotes or lies about people with well paid white collar jobs for whom it is worthwhile to dress up as someone who's destitute and spend a good eight hours of rest and recuperation time begging for spare change. I found nothing. Not even snopes could help me. Snopes does, however, often provide a rationale for the reason these kinds of stories gain currency. They tap into the suspicion that it is possible to get something for nothing, a large reward for little or no effort. And I think for two people who have spent a large portion or their lives working very very hard for what probably doesn't ever seem like quite enough money, the idea that there are people out there who can make just a little more through cunning, minor deception and a clever idea is probably very appealing.

I'm not sure what this story was about. I just couldn't believe that two people who seemed fairly intelligent and resourceful could believe that kind of bullshit out of hand.

I'm now sitting, watching the rain and waiting for the repairman to come and fix my computer between 11 and 12. It's 11:35am. Mele's in the bath and I need to go to the toilet. Must .... wait ....

He can also put buffalo to sleep

Work's okay.
Cheers.
I'm getting better at making coffees, nothing anyone's complained about. Yet. That was entirely my fault. I'm still new enough to blame everyone else when I make a mistake for not providing proper training. That shit should fly for about another week and then they're going to get sick of explaining which button does which. That should just about coincide with the moment when my need to please customers and my employer falls below my desire to get away with whatever cut corners I can, so you can look forward to my future job search blogs in about a month's time!
For all those of you who haven't worked for a corporation - here's some of things that come with my minimum wage:
* No free food. Half price during shifts only.
* ONE free hot drink, during breaks only (apparently the counter began to look like a share-house lounge room: half drunk coffee cups and spilled milk everywhere).
* Regular staff meetings for which I assume we are not getting paid, even when you come in on your day off.
* No choice of superannuation.
* Only found out about this last night from a fellow employee: security cameras. They film staff as well as customers. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I don't mind it, because they did actually help catch someone who held up the store (more on that in a minute). But I'm not really down with not being told about it.

Apart from that, the staff are all nice and kind (bear in mind that this is still my second week) and even the boss is probably the best hospitality boss I've ever had. He's business-like without being rude, friendly without being unprofessional and somehow constantly over my shoulder showing me how to do everything without being intrusive, which I find incredible myself. How am I not telling him to piss off?

The store did get held up recently, but it was more entertaining than dangerous. Here's how it went down (Nb. All men will be jealous).

Barry* is a no-nonsense kind of guy. Approaching fifty, works at CC, knows how it runs. One afternoon he's there behind the counter, part of which faces onto the footpath for takeaway customers. He's preparing and arranging cakes for the chilled display cabinet.
'Oi!'
He looks up. There is a fifteen-year-old girl in a hoody brandishing a small fishing knife.
'Open the till! Give me the fuckin' money!'
Barry is dumbfounded. Not shocked, scared or disturbed in any major way.
'Are you serious?' he asks politely. 'You're getting any money and you're gonna get caught anyway because your face is on the security camera.' He points up. She pulls her hoody closer over her face, never having heard of 'record' or 'rewind' or 'pause' (or 'Make higher resolution', but we'll stay away from techno movie pet-hates for now). She waves her little knife again.
'Open the fuckin' till!'
Barry smiles. (Boys, get ready to wish it was you getting held up). He picks up the foot-long kitchen knife he's been cutting cakes with. 'That's not a knife, this is a knife.'
Girl's eyes pop out of her head. She leaves. Barry gives chase and runs off into the Hall of Fame for people who have actually been able to use Mick Dundee's immortal phrase in real life. Lucky bastard. Wish I got held up at knife point.

***
GTH - TWO points to Kath for getting right into the spirit of Guess The Header with an astute summation of how I'm feeling about my life. Because, and here's a clue, GTH is always all about me.