So You Think You’ve Moved In With A Serial Killer…

The trouble with housemates is that you live with them, so you really better get along. The process of housemate selection is historically fraught for everyone involved. Typically it should be more rigorous than your underwear choice and less rigorous than the (utterly vital) selection of your television viewing. The key is to hover somewhere in the middle, avoiding addicts, country music fans and homicidal maniacs, while clinging to those who own fridges. Of course no one has a perfect record (though if I had fulfilled my dream of staging a Bring It On style cheerleading tryout panel I suspect I may have had a better chance).

Don’t get me wrong, Jim and Mick are great, the panel method wasn’t necessary for them. They’ve accepted the random photos of my nephews in the lounge room, telling visitors they’ve fathered one each, and they both know all the incorrect names I’ve inexplicably given the local food outlets, so when I say…

“Let’s get breakfast at that place I call Inferno, that’s not actually called in Inferno.”

… they know what I mean (and no, as I sit here and stare vacantly, I still for the life of me can’t think of what the ‘place I call Inferno, that’s not actually called Inferno’ is actually called). I have accepted that Jim has a weird height fetish that makes him occasionally stand on furniture, we’ve accepted that Mick calls us Big Gay and Harlot, and they’re thoughtful enough to offer warnings when necessary if they suspect I am indulging in some nude time upstairs.

I am not a nudist, but I have been caught out by a housemate before. Back when I lived with Peta, a rather complicated comedy of errors one morning (involving impeccable timing) left me trapped naked and towel-less in the bathroom while she was collapsed in a drunken heap in the corridor blocking my escape.

Peta herself has had some housemate selection issues, which leads me into 3 vital rules that seem applicable to everyone. These aren’t the obvious ones about hygiene or sharing, these are the ones that people often have to learn the hard way.

1. Don’t go looking for a soul mate
When I was moving out, Peta met with a series of replacement applicants. They were all perfectly acceptable, but there was no obvious winner. Then came Dan. She offered it to him on the spot. When he left I quizzed her on his job, previous residence and last name. She didn’t know these, but she had all the information she needed – he was a rugby player. Guess who Peta has a weakness for? 10 points if you said ‘thick-necked men’. Guess how that ended? A further 10 points if you said ‘without a wedding’.

2. Don’t live with someone who is dating someone who is insane
Leah thought she was on to a good thing when she moved in with her old friend James who she’d lived with once before. Unfortunately James had a girlfriend who was as crazy as a loon. And the Loon got herself a house key cut. James and the Loon’s fights were so epic they actually involved the use of diagrams – they used graphic drawings to illustrate what they thought of each other. That household lasted a month and a half.

3. Don’t move in with someone who might be a serial killer
This can be tricky – how does one spot a potential serial killer while searching desperately for accommodation so you can stop commuting for an hour every morning at 2am to your shift job? I was ripe for a horror movie homage.

Of course I had no proof that Bob was homicidal (though so mysterious was he that I briefly theorized he might have been in the witness protection program). All I had was the gradual eerie sensation of slowly realizing I was living in a home that was decorated with framed pieces of wrapping paper, while being assured that there was a 3rd person living in the town house… he was just away on business… all the time. Then there were the barrels in the basement. That sounds like a bad joke, but it’s not. I checked them – they were empty.

I once failed to wash a tea spoon so he left it, still dirty, resting on my handbag. I once walked in my room too loudly, so he requested henceforth I remove my shoes at the bottom of the stairs.

Finally, overwhelmed with dread I decided to ease my mind by doing a highly secretive, politely restrained, yet utterly necessary search of his room to assure myself that Bob was normal. Aside from discovering that Bob had an ensuite (which I didn’t know existed) filled with a supermarket worth of cleaning products, all I found in his wardrobe was 3 crisply ironed shirts, a large collection of neatly stacked DVD’s of a show called Prisoner and a single disc of All Saints. Somehow the All Saints disc is what tipped me into paranoia. Aussie drama is great and all, but surely only psychopaths feel the need to watch it repeatedly.

It’s hard to believe Bob and I haven’t kept in touch.


Painefull Out

A Genuine Snow-Kicking Injury

I’m not sure if I’ve made this clear yet, but I am not a summer person. I don’t yearn for long hot days or sun drenched frolicking. As an owner of a Kidman complexion (minus facial immobility, plus freckles, minus alabaster, plus albino) I have learnt to accept that my borderline fluorescent state is a sign that Fate has a sense of humour – why else would she have set me down in Australia? It only seems natural that in between burning, sweating and chafing I spend a lot of time counting down to winter.

That’s the explanation I tried to give to several kindly residents of Europe who expressed concern that I didn’t realize it would be cold in their continent in December. When I got sick of spelling out that reason, I simply informed them the weather had come as a complete surprise to me seeing as I run my life based on the Mayan calendar… then asked them how they felt about the fact that the world was ending in 2012.

Travel offers almost as many life lessons as movies (almost, it is hard to compete with the medium that gave us the word ‘shmashmortion’ as a perfectly acceptable euphemism for ‘abortion’). One of those lessons is undoubtedly…

Be careful what you wish for
Though I longed for snow, I didn’t know quite what I was getting myself in for. The snow that closed down trains and airports wasn’t too bad, the snow that coated the countryside was gorgeous, and the snow that fell as I sipped mulled wine at the Christmas markets in an old German town was perfect. The problem was that in my pure, unbridled cold weather joy I took to expressing my delight aggressively in all the white power and managed to score myself what can only be described as a genuine snow-kicking injury. While it has been a good long while since anyone might have described me as athletic, it’s never easy to explain that you screwed up your knee skipping and cavorting in snow like the child you have long (allegedly) ceased to be.

Some other travel lessons include…

Pay careful attention when booking accommodation
If you don’t you might accidentally find yourself checking into a Christian hostel in Amsterdam, where you are told upon arrival that Jesus loves you and group prayer begins at 10.

Also, if you don’t, you might find yourself bedding down for the night in an old converted hospital that is less hostel, more halfway house, as evidenced by the vaguely homeless looking man wandering the corridors in his underwear.

Think long and hard before spending the night in a caravan
Especially if it’s the perfect size for 2 people and there are 4 of you. This is also a bad time to discover you might be slightly claustrophobic.

Accept compliments, they will often be thin on the ground
A charming Columbian girl I was sharing a dorm with one night explained that she was working on perfecting her 3rd language (French).

Me: Wow, 3 languages, that’s phenomenal. I spend enough time struggling with English.

Columbian Girl: Your English is really quite good.

Me: (after considering my response options) Thank you, my parents were really insistent that I make an effort with it.

Embrace cultural experiences
When in Belgium, there’s nothing wrong with eating a chocolate Belgian waffle each morning for breakfast. That’s just showing a little thing I like to call ‘respect’. Needless to say my eating tour of Europe was very respectful.

Customs officials are universally humourless
Don’t try, you won’t be funny.


Painefull Out

Ode to French Bread

Oh crunchy carbohydrate
Loaf-shaped apple of my eye
With your freshly baked aroma
It's enough to make me sigh

You go with every other food
Be it chocolate, ham or pasta
And if you're described as 'crusty'
It's never a disaster

Your gaze is judgment free
As I eat you by the basket
Bread, my light, my love
Just one question I would ask it

As I use you with a dip
As I carve you on a bench
As I eat you in a sandwich
Why is it better when you're French?


Painefull Out

The Clothes On My Back

As all women know, packing for a trip is a sweet, sweet science. First you layer in the basics, then you add the essentials, finally you pepper in the must-haves. After you’ve done this it becomes apparent you have double what you can actually fit in your bag, so you start the whole process again. It takes at least 3 rounds, and tends to occur in the 5 hours you have before lift-off (despite the fact you have known the trip is coming for months). In the final, panicked flurry you will add a random, and often fateful item to your luggage that will either prove pivotal to the entire endeavour, or be an amusing discovery that you forgot you even had when you return home.

Now imagine, after all this thought and obsession, that you have arrived in Germany during the coldest beginning to December that Europe has had (not this decade, not this quarter century, but since someone turned to someone else and said “Hey, it’s like there’s some kind of cyclical pattern here, I swear it got hot then cold last year as well, do you think we should start writing this stuff down?”).

This is what I was touching down in when I arrived in Frankfurt at the start of this week. I didn’t know this because I quite proudly failed every language class I ever took, and people were noting the historical importance of the GIANT SNOW STORM RAVAGING THE CONTINENT in German, a form of communication I find soothing and potentially fictional. I was off my face with exhaustion, 24 hours into travel and all my fellow passengers were speaking in sentences that seemed to end in guttural exclamation marks. We were lining up for our flight to Dusseldorf as I tucked into my 4th block of chocolate (plane travel is the chocolate version of a free pass to me, what’s eaten in the air stays in the air) and trying to reassure myself my contribution to the body odour wave was minimal when it was revealed in several languages that our flight had been cancelled. We weren’t even special, 300 flights out of Frankfurt were cancelled that day.

I was delirious enough to find this amusing. The single woman dealing with the 50 passengers from my flight one-by-one was equally delirious and amused by the time I reached the front of the line.

LUFTHANSA LADY: (with German accent) I can put you on a wait list for a flight this afternoon, but they are all full and will probably be cancelled. I can put you on a flight tomorrow, but that will probably get cancelled as well. Or, you can have a train pass.

ME: (lengthy pause, due not to deep thought, but the mouthful of chocolate I was swallowing) Train sounds good.

LL: Here’s your pass. Here’s the form for your luggage.

ME: Great, where do I grab my bag from?

LL: You don’t. We won’t be able to track it down for a while. I don’t know when we’ll be able to find it and get it to you. Next!

There I was in snow-struck Germany with nothing but the clothes on my back. The clothes on my back were picked in the confident knowledge that upon arrival my uber-warm jacket was waiting for me in my bag, along with everything else remotely wind resistant. I love cold weather, that’s why I packed for it, but I didn’t anticipate stepping straight into it. I was bathed in cotton - specifically a t-shirt, cargo pants and a pair of converse shoes.

I tried 5 different versions of a doe-eyed sob story with 5 different Lufthansa officials that day. All of them ended with the gasping, hysteria-tinged statement…

“Look at what I am wearing! It is snowing outside and I am in a t-shirt!“

The last time I tried it on an uninterested woman I gave it an Old Spice variation to see if it might spark her interest purely for originality (I wasn’t the only one begging for my luggage that day).

“Look outside, now look at me. Now look outside, now back to me. I’m in a t-shirt!“

Nothing. Waste of a good line really.

Either bemusement is the national default expression of Germany, or everyone on my 2 trains that day agreed that my outfit choice was a little faulty. I made an emergency jacket purchase when I finally arrived in Münster, then found my friend who was living in the town who put me (1 serving of fried cheese later) to bed 48 hours after my journey had begun. When I woke up the next morning I discovered the jacket I bought was green… which was odd because I distinctly remember thinking it was blue the night before.

I came away from this experience with 2 things. Firstly, I really admire the survival skills of the needy and the homeless in making do with what they have under all conditions. Secondly, if nothing else, this experience has affirmed to me my deep and unwavering commitment to materialism. I really, really like owning stuff. When my pack finally arrived today I actually held it in a passionate embrace for far longer than was necessary. I like having things, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

As a side note, you’re probably not wondering, but what was the final, panicked item I inexplicably threw into my hand luggage as I headed towards the door? Summer pajamas. I have no idea why. They weren’t practical, but at least they gave me something to change into while I washed the clothes on my back.


Painefull Out

You’re Surprisingly Pretty

There are some things that need to be said, some things that must be said, and others that inevitably, one way or another, will be said. It might be important (‘Your hair is on fire’), it could be informative (‘Your dress is tucked into your underwear’), or perhaps it’s interesting (‘They didn’t find out they were related until after they got married’). But far more infamous and unfortunate are the things that are Better Left Unsaid.

Exhibit A: Compliments are awkward enough to take when they’re clear. So what about when they’re bewildering? A relative stranger had this to say to Peta during a recent Saturday night.

Stranger: I’m not hitting on you or anything, but you’re surprisingly pretty.

‘Surprisingly’? Really? How does that work exactly? Did you view her from afar, and upon closer inspection find yourself shocked? Did someone say ‘Hey, there’s Peta’ then you turned to discover Peta was female (understandable, her name is her curse), to your astonishment? I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if you were hitting on her it was a swing and a miss.

Needless to say words uttered on a Saturday Night make up their own sub-category in the Better Left Unsaid department. Another grouping, which is something of a niche field for me, is Attempts At Humour that are Better Left Unsaid.

While on the phone to my boss one day I made a vintage entry into this cannon. We were discussing a beloved and respected colleague’s latest achievement. It was a spirited conversation in which I closed out with what I felt was the perfect punch line, mimicking the voice of said beloved colleague while uttering words he would never dream of saying.

Me: Suck on that bitches.

Boss: (delicate pause on the other end of the line) The 7 year old in the back seat of the car is rather amused by that.

Yes, I was on speaker phone. That old chestnut. Clearly declaring ‘suck on that bitches’ in the presence of the boss’s children goes into the Better Left Unsaid file.

Nervous quipping is also a constant source of unfortunate phrasing. A medical professional was preparing to take a blood sample from me at the doctor’s surgery just the other day. Needles make me particularly anxious, which is the only excuse I can come up with for responding to his question about the origin of a bruise on my arm with…

Me: Probably from some violent sex game.

Let’s be brutally honest, that one-liner’s not even funny when you know it’s not true. For a stranger it’s just going to be awkward and creepy. For a humourless stranger holding a needle it’s an excuse to be in no way reassuring or communicative.

To round out my most recent top 3 Attempts At Humour that are Better Left Unsaid I turn to a drunken, ill-conceived, ill-managed exchange with a potential client of Sister Lawyer when I was introduced to him at a little soiree Mother Painefull threw last night.

Mother Painefull: Blah Blah, this is my youngest daughter…

Blah Blah (of the Carolina Blah Blah’s): Pleasure to meet you… (holds out his hand politely)

Me: (offering my clenched fist) I prefer to bump.

Pause to allow crickets to chirp mournfully in the background.

Blah Blah: What?

Mother Painefull: She’s joking.

Just so we’re clear, white, middle-aged businessmen don’t prefer the fist bump. They also don’t appreciate fist bump humour/won’t understand what you are offering. Another fun fact – a boozy Christmas work lunch, followed by a boozy family event = innumerable things that are Better Left Unsaid (among them, inexplicably, the bellowing of the phrase “I’m 25, I don’t get hungover!”). When those things are said through a mouthful of bread and laced with more expletives than a Mark Latham rant, in the presence of some of your parents oldest, dearest and kindest friends you will get mocked mercilessly the next day. The mockery is deserved. So is the death via embarrassment.

Some things cry out for verbalization. Sometimes I suspect I may actually specialize in all the other things, the ones that are clearly Better Left Unsaid.


Painefull Out

All The Lovers

Romance isn’t really dead, it’s just not returning my calls and pretending no one’s home when I drop by unannounced. That may seem like an extreme statement, exaggeration perhaps, but sadly it’s true. One of my friends has taken to (accurately) referring to my residence as The Nunnery.

A little while ago several work colleagues turned their laser-beam gaze upon me and asked about my love life for the first time (apparently 4 months into any job is the point when one is contractually obliged to share) and my response was so disappointing they seemed to think I was lying. Wouldn’t it be a better lie if it involved someone genuinely lusting after me? Aren’t lies meant to be comforting… to someone… somewhere?

Me: Oh me? No. Love-free… loveless…

Colleague: Come on now…

Me: No, really. Nothing right now. Nada. My love life is a vacant field – occasionally tumbleweed blows through (but the tumbleweed gets embarrassed about being seen there and moves on quickly).

Colleague: Oh, you’re boring then.

Me: Yep.

Don’t think my mother hasn’t noticed my barren spell, she recently took the left-field strategy commonly know as ‘When Are You Planning On Having Kids?’. I think she wants to avoid getting stuck in the mud of my single status (we’ve already had the earnest conversation where she assured me she could handle a gay daughter, if it came to it) and is going for the long con that if I become clucky I’ll start a desperate man-hunt. She’s had to stop telling me about her friend’s cute sons now that they’ve all gotten married. I have responded with my own gambit entitled ‘Random But Pointed References to IVF’.

Not to sound like Katherine Heigl playing yet another shrill, workaholic in a badly written Romcom, but there’s still time. I’m 25, so not only is there still time, but my vacant womb hasn’t exactly started running down a clock on me.

There’s also other things in life. I am not simply trying to reassure myself, I do have interests. And yes, in time, should it be necessary, I will simply buy some cats (before I do that, I’ll figure out a way to find cats endearing).

It could be worse, I could be in a relationship, let’s not pretend the commentary doesn’t stop there. I totally understand that for many women getting married is really important. It’s all… special, and… best-day-of-my-lifey. Some women even set themselves deadlines (not that there's anything wrong with that, I am not here to judge people’s life choices, I’m open-minded, I just don’t like seeing it in public).

When it comes to romance I might not win any awards, but there are always some to hand out.

The No-Surprise, Surprise! Award (aka If Katy Perry’s Married It’s Probably Time Dear…)

Kate & Will

I’m sure there will be a part of the impending 12 months of royal wedding mania I enjoy. It will probably involve any discussion of wedding cake, and the moment when the guests start arriving at the big day and you see just how small the gene pool is for European royalty. For Kate Middleton it will be the relief of knowing that now the tabloids will stop focusing on her ring finger and sullenly unmarried looks, and instead move on to obsessing over her weight and whether she has a bun in the oven.

As a side note, people have got to stop calling it a fairytale wedding while playing vision of Diana and Charles… I don’t know that that marriage should be a template. For anyone.

The Come On Now, I Swear You’re Just Out Of Nappies Award (aka Bieber-fied)

My nephew David

He’s in Year 5, and he just updated his Facebook status to ‘In a relationship’. Apparently the girl in questions is ‘really hot’, and they do regular Couple Things like hold hands and hang out. Did I mention he’s in Year 5? His Facebook announcement received a comment from someone so equally junior that they had to do a follow-up comment just to ‘lol’ the fact that they had used the word ‘whom’.

Yes mum, he probably will get married before me. Them’s the breaks.

Finally The Seriously? That Was You On A Date? Award (aka Jennifer Aniston Will Never Be Truly Alone)

Some Random from RSVP.com

He attempted to seduce my friend Peta (a girl, who’s seen every gender mix-up gag there is) while on a first date at a bar by telling her she was too tall and demanding she take off her heels, and begging her to take her hair out so he could see how long it was, after which he couldn’t help but point out that she had a few split ends.

Thank you, Random from RSVP.com, for reassuring women everywhere that yes, they can do better. Oh, and stop emailing and messaging Peta to try and set up another date. I can’t imagine how you could possibly top your first attempt.


Painefull Out

Confessions of a Gen Y

There comes a time in every Gen Y’s life when the universe delivers a well-deserved, gift-wrapped slap to their smugness. Let’s be frank, these aren’t one-off events, these are necessary course-corrections. Like the recession we had to have or the election we had to live through, they are the discomforting moments that remind my generation that we are indeed mere mortals. Some of us go to rehab and some of us wake up with a facial tattoo. Some wash out of reality television and discover no one can differentiate us from the last 3 blondes that could sing and cook at the same time. Some of us are clever enough to have a blog, and stupid enough to think people won’t come across it.

Guess which one I am.

It could have been worse. I could be that girl who made up a superbly private power point presentation of all her sexual exploits only to have it go viral (yes, ‘viral’, I haven’t had to show this much punning self restraint since a friend who lives in both Australia and Germany referred to herself as ‘dual-rooted’).

There’s nothing more clichéd that a Gen Y getting caught out by the fact that they’ve lost the ability to differentiate between the private, the public and the social network. Is there a switch that gets flicked in us that turns off our ability to stop sharing minute, superfluous details with the world? I am writing this online, so I suppose the answer is yes. I almost feel like I should start a Facebook group for fellow over-sharers (I assume that like riding a segway, starting a Facebook group is something that can only be done ironically).

You know what else is clichéd? Gen Y types bitching about work online. I thought I’d try something a little different.

The Top 3 Reasons My Workplace Rocks Are…

3. Cheesecake Day. A day dedicated to eating cheesecakes. Work was also done this day, in between the consumption of cheesecakes.

2. The field trip to a Gold Class cinema in the middle of business hours (ignore the fact that it was to see the utterly pointless, effortlessly boring Eat Pray Love – oh woe is me, I’m middle class and white, suffering through the indignity of living in one of the most glorified cities in the world, pity me as I travel and narrate my convenient life lessons!)

1. The Boss who didn’t lose her shit, and was indeed rather cool in general, upon discovering I have a blog… in which I may or may not have described her (vaguely).

In my defense I am a horrible judge of first impressions. I am also a horrible giver of first impressions. Knowing both of these things, Communications really does seem like an odd career choice. A few key lessons – word choice is everything, 1st impressions should never be recorded, cheesecakes are forever.


Painefull Out

P.S. I was saving these up and have no where to put them…

How many Chilean miners does it take to change a light bulb? They don't care - they’ve got sunglasses on, they can’t see shit anyway.

Name two global events which provoke religious fervor, but which Australians don’t fully understand or care about, unless there’s a chance an Aussie might win something? The World Cup and Canonization.