The main difference between Melbourne and Wellington at this time of year seems to be flowers. While Wellington is a world greener, Melbourne is still covered in a variety of summer flowers. Which is very nice, and particularly pleasant.
Fortunately the place warmed up a little by ANZAC day, and I got to spend a little time in the outdoors getting around looking at stuff. All in all a very pleasing.
Something else fun was hanging out with a few of the people I once worked with at the restaurant. Back in the darkest of study days it was the crew at La Luna that really carried my sorry arse with long, wine-fuelled conversations after closing and promises of better days to come.
It's true that groups who spend a long time working together, or who go through traumatic experiences tend to bond closely in a way that can only be compared to family. And Luna was a family to us all for a while there. From the nutcases in the kitchen to the control freaks on the floor, the common bond was perception that the customer really is "out to get you".
Not that this is the strangest thing I've ever heard though, stranger still was the waiter who was obsessed with the idea that gingas are "cursed by the baby jesus". I wasn't sure where she got the idea from, as funny as it is. For one thing she's from the South Island, and New Zealand does seem to have an extraordinary number of redheads compared to Australia, so you think she'd learn to cope? As we all do. I'm thinking the Aussies got all the Irish, and we got the Scots. So maybe the waiter just had an issue with Janet Frame? Who knows.
The traumatic experience thing relates to that bond between blokes that forms in those unique situations of hardship. I mention this because while wandering around buying cheap shoes (Adidas, one pair, brand new, $60...) I needed a wee rest and a cinema hove into view. Seen as the only film on any time soon was Kokoda, the Aussie tribute to the diggers in dubya-dubya-two, I parted with my cash and sat down.
I shouldn't have bothered. What was a great opportunity to relate a potentially great story degraded into an Australian version of Platoon. They could have just dubbed the latter with Ocker accents and have been done with it.
Ah well. Once I got out of there I went back to enjoying the necessity to not go someplace and shoot other blokes, and bought some trousers. Which I managed to stuff up royally. I bought this blue pair, and upon getting them home realised they were unnaturally tight in the region of the buttocks. Knowing that this was likely to draw some unnecessary attention I took them back and attempted to trade them.
So this is what you need to know. I traded the blue trousers for a kind of chocolately-brown pair. This was because they were the only pair in the store that fit my ape-longish legs. Unfortunately, I had bought a pair of chocolately-brown trousers the day before. I was also already in the possession of a pair I bought just after Christmas. So I now own three pairs of trousers that look pretty much... exactly the same.
This is my tribute to masculinity.
What I should have spent the money on was new undies... I got home to find that the washing machine couldn't process the backlog fast enough, and had to dip into the emergency supply. You know the ones. They live in seclusion at the back of the undies draw on account of their ugliness. The elastic is gone. They're likely a little stained, a little torn, a little manky. But when wash-day runs around and there's potentially nothing between you and an unfortunate introduction of zipper to oldfulla, out they come.
But sometimes a bloke just has to prioritise his spending. As it was one of my chocolately-trousers, selected because they conveniently hide the majority of stains, was a little too large in the waist. I checked out K-Mart for a belt, but they were hugely expensive at $15! I wandered into the emporium version of a cheap and cheerful and found what is possibly the greatest belt ever, for $5!. The buckle has a central bit that can flip between a faux-Harley-Davidson emblem... and a Mexican flag.
So why the Mexican flag?
Because all the best fun is South of the Border, baby!
(Oh, and I also bought a T-Shirt that says, "The Man, The Legend". You know the ones. Even better than a BBQ apron that says, "Please kiss the Chef").