Call me gullible, but I watched The Day after Tomorrow a couple of nights ago, and now I'm way too edgy about the weather. Thing is, as soon we start to get regular rain I get all suspicious and excited, as if that's at all unusual.
Sure, sure, sure, I know that I shouldn't link anything as vague as a piece of eye-candy with the real thing. But, after some of the dry-spells I've experienced over here I start to be on the constant lookout for rain, if not only to break the monotony. Is it my fault that every time we get a bit I think, this is 'the big one'?
I guess my only real excuse for resorting to a film like that one was desperation and boredom. Looked great, sure, but it had a plot so thin I wouldn't let my daughter out of the house in it, and dialogue so boring I thought seriously about just switching off the sound altogether and listening to a CD instead. My only bad, but stock standard excuse, has to be that I'm only house-sitting for mates and it's their fault.
For those of you who know Melbourne, I'm taking care of a place (with no internet) out in the country. I mean this place is too far from the local telephone exchange to get broadband!! The section is HUGE though, the backyard alone being bigger than my entire flat back in Carlton, and the nearest shops are an over-priced petrol station, a dodgy pizza place and an under-stocked dairy. As I write I’m pausing to look out the kitchen across a vista of daisies and dandelions to the back fence, way in the distance past the Mandarin tree.
Where am I? Clayton.
OK, so I can't lie well. Clayton is actually barely outside Zone One, but it's still a half hours drive from where I usually live, which is 10 minutes north of downtown. And for those of you unfamiliar with PT here, the train/tram/bus system uses 'zones'. You can PT anywhere in Zone One for up to two hours on the one ticket, and all for about $A3. Outside of this is Zone Two (unsurprisingly), and is pretty much the 'Burbs. The most obvious difference is that they can’t get trams. And outside of that, somewhere, is Zone Three.
I think. Or at least I heard a rumour. One day I'll have to go see if it's 'real'. I'm actually suspicious that this whole Zone Three thing is a story made up to scare children. You know, "be good or we'll go live in Frankston".
And, to be even more honest, Monash University is out here, and I spent my first year in Melbourne living on campus. But only because I had to! Pesky damn non-negotiable leases and desperation for a place to live. Pretty much as soon as I could make up any excuse I could I bailed.
The one thing about being out here that's blog-worthy though is how culturally different it is to Carlton. My neighbourhood is so damn white. Plenty of Italians and Greeks sure (my barber likes to tell every Kiwi he meets about 'us' saving them on Crete), but still, white. I went out in the car to find food yesterday and it really struck me how multicultural the local shopping strip is (of course, in Carlton I can walk to the shops). There's the ubiquitous Italians and Greeks, but also Vietnamese, 'Chinese', all kinds of 'Indian', Africans, Polynesians, Crackers, a Subway.
Anyhow, I digress. The opportunity to rifle through a friends private things without actually burglarising them aside, this house-sitting lark isn't too bad, as I'm sure you're all aware. Thing is, I've been thinking about making the move to living by myself for a fair old while now. What's kept me back is mostly the cost, but equally important is that I just like being around people. So this staying here in Clayton alone thing is a bit of a litmus test to see if I can cope.
Thus far no worries, just being away from the NOISE housemates make is fantastic. No hushed humping. No being accused of responsibility for someone else's mess. No wondering, where in the hell did my [insert object here] go, and who the hell took it? No bad cooking smells. No having to watch 'Everybody loves Raymond'. No being hassled about lying in a bean-bag for 14 hours playing Xbox and eating tim-tams and KFC and sinking bears while only wearing boxers (it was a Sunday).
I mean, this morning I got to walk from the shower to look in the fridge, naked. There wasn't even any food! I just wanted to strut! And with only the baby Jesus to tutt-tutt disapprovingly! Bliss.
Oh, and 'ladies', you're going to want to picture some seriously pasty-white skinny-male action there.
There's every chance that I'm just rehashing some good stories that everyone else has already written, if not only He died with a falafel in his hand, but here's a few housemate stereotypes I won't miss should the fortress of solitude ever eventuate.
The Pilferer. The one you find chowing down on your or flat food at 3am, night on the piss or not. They inevitability "promise" to replace it, usually with supermarket-generic shyte you wouldn't even use to wipe your dairy air.
The Stinkers. The ones who just plain stink. They can't seem to do anything about it. They just stink. Their room is often worse, and the stink seeps into the hallway and towards your room like a rolling miasma of festering stench. It's especially great when they have the room nearest the front door, so it steps up to welcome you home, every, single, day.
Mr. Lover Lover. Need I say more. The ones who try to fill that hole in their empty lives with bonking. They inevitably have hordes of boy/girlfriends over, all of whom you get to share the couch with at some stage before they make weak excuses to never be seen again. The best, in my experience, was a housemate who deliberately brought a guy home at 7pm, so I'd know (or approve of?) who she would later hump, loudly, at midnight. I was in a six-month dry-spell. Thanks for the picture.
The Accountant. They always have money for booze, drugs, baccy, but can't get it together to pay the bills any earlier than a month late. They also constantly borrow "one or two bucks for the tram", that adds up to hundreds by Christmas time.
The Parental Unit. Most often a single person wishing they weren’t, the Unit is the one who disapproves of nearly everything. Nothing is ever clean enough. There’s too much loud music, booze and bonking, and not enough flat outings. There’s too much time spent on the PC/xbox. Are you wearing a hat when you go out in the sun? We’ve all lived with these. Usually the flat outing is when things catch up with the male version of this type.
The Pilferer Mk.II. You can NEVER leave more than your 'very last beer' in the fridge. And they'll still try to take that one ("I'll buy you two beers tomorrow!").
The Pedestrian. They'll constantly offer you $5 to drive them to: their dealer, the bottle shop, their partner, work, the airport. And all as if $5 will compensate for the hassle of being regarded as a personal chauffer. And you can never get that perfect shape you had in the bean bag back again once you get home.
I could go on, but this is an old gag and I'm sure you've heard it all before. We'll see if I can afford the luxury when 'real' work rolls around in February, when the thesis WILL finally be submitted.
And, as a final note, it's great to see so many people digging deep to help the Tsunami countries. But, watch who you're donating money to. Dodgy internet scams aside, I've heard that allegedly some of the major aid organisations only let as little as three percent of the donated cash get to the ground. The rest apparently disappearing in 'costs'. So, if you're looking to save the children with anything like a significant proportion of your own or someone else's money, you might want to do a little background checking.
From multicultural Clayton, Talofa.