Things A Cabbie Can Tell Just By Looking At You

The other day I discovered that holy grail of transportation, that unicorn of the taxi world, that fictional character I had only previously heard of until now – a truly, utterly honest cabbie. This isn’t to say I have never ridden with one before, this is simply the first time I realized my good fortune. Perhaps my being sober had something to do with it.

Fortunately he looked nothing like this...


I was exiting a fast food joint on Oxford Street, having procured myself a cheese burger for the road, when I hailed that fateful vehicle. What followed was not the usual awkward exchange with a random, over-charging stranger.

I smugly asked (smug, as if I myself were immune to alcohol) whether he had to deal with many drunks over the weekend. Ultimate Cabbie replied stoically that it’s always a mixed bag. Then, as if sensing how boring his own answer was, UC launched into a crash course in how a taxi driver assesses potential fares.

Sure it featured some serious racial profiling (which I in no way endorse), but it was fascinating to hear how they choose who to pick up.

Using what I learnt from UC, I have put together some handy hints for hopeful passengers…

A Guide To Catching A Cab In Sydney:

1. The easiest way to get a cab is to be an Asian woman.
UC Assessment: They are the passenger of choice because they are polite, don’t cause trouble and pay without argument.

2. The only way being an Asian woman can backfire is if you are sitting down.
UC Assessment: Asian women can’t hold their drink like other people, so if they’re sitting down I just avoid them.

3. If you are an American or Indian passenger, be prepared for an absurd level of honesty.
UC Assessment: They both look for a reason to cry ‘bullshit’.

4. You know how taxi drivers will often pull up a couple of metres from you, forcing you to walk to it? Walk the line, they are watching.
UC Rule: This way I watch a potential fare approach. If a girl staggers or trips over, I just drive off, she’s not worth the $50 you’ll get to charge when she throws up in the car.

5. If you’re French, don’t stand on the side of the road eating a baguette, wearing a beret and conducting a mime performance.
UC Assessment: French people are rude, I just avoid them at all costs.

6. If you’re Irish… look cheerful.
UC Assessment: You can never be sure whether they’re going to start a fight, or invite you in for a drink.

7. If you think you’re going to throw up do it while crossing a bridge – you’re less likely to get kicked out while you’re doing it.
UC Assessment: It’s not worth the headline ‘Cabbie Allows Girl To Get Hit By Car To Avoid Vomit In Vehicle’

8. If you’ve just watched a game of football, it would be better if it was Rugby League, Not Rugby Union
UC Assessment: League fans might seem a little rougher around the edges, but union fans are more likely to be snotty, self-aggrandizing North Shore brats.


Painefull Out

Mother Painefull’s… Things That Will Make You Feel Better

Visiting the Parentals Painefull at the Dsor* is always a fairly glorious event. It usually involves an epic sleep in, it always entails copious amounts of delicious food and it gives me permission to drink sherry (a beverage I cannot find excuse for under any other circumstances, despite its surprising delights). Molly and Milly (known to my dad as Old Dog and New Dog) stand guard, the open fireplace crackles with warmth during the winter, and every day my parents (who are incapable of simply doing nothing, a feature I failed to inherit) will invariably get bored and do something I’ve been putting off.

Another inevitable feature is the shared wisdom Mother and Father Painefull endeavor to impart. With dad it’s usually a series of concerns about paperwork, timeliness and adult responsibilities. His current cause célèbre is personal insurance. With mum there are several categories. One which never fails to amuse me are the suggestions she offers, which are always given with the reassurance that they will make me feel better.

This afternoon featured another fantastic entry into the canon, so it seems as good a time as any to share. I can only hope these words will help others. And so I give you a sampling of…

Mother Painefull’s… Things That Will Make You Feel Better**

Kicking off with today’s entry…

Next time you’re at the service station spend $2 and vacuum your car – it’ll make you feel better.

Next time you visit why don’t I make you an appointment for a manicure? It will make you feel better.

Go for a run – you’ll feel better.

Put on some mascara, it will make you feel so much better.

Make a fantastic salad, you will feel so much better.

You look tired. You don’t visit enough. If you visited more often… you might feel better.


Painefull Out

* - The ‘s’ is silent

** - Not to be mistaken with other sub-categories such as Things That Will Make Me Happy, Things Men Find Attractive, Meals That Will Fill You Up For The Day and Reasons That I Should Live With You In My Old Age.

So You Think You Can Dance… How Unfortunate

Dream sequences and big nights out have a lot in common – they both tend to end with your very own version of Dorothy’s return to the real world at the end of The Wizard of Oz. Instead of the classic…

“And you – and you – and you – and you were there…”

You find yourself saying something along the lines of…

“And everyone from work… and a trans-gendered puppet… and the cast of Happy Days were there… and then we all ate lasagna.”

So when I uttered this sentence to Fi on the phone the other day…

“And the bride and groom… and a whole heap of people I used to work with… and Guy Sebastian* was there… and then I got in a dance off… twice.”

You might be excused for thinking I was describing a vivid unconscious imagining rather than my Saturday night.

It was superb weather for a fairytale wedding overlooking Sydney Harbour. The bride was stunning (the bride is stunning as a rule, the type of woman who probably serenades birds as they help her dress in the morning), the groom was dashing, the gathered friends and family were aglow with the goodwill generated by coming together for a truly special event.

I wore a borrowed dress, borrowed accessories and my very own, extra special Heels-That-Make-Me-Want-To-Cry-Or-Alternatively-Chop-Off-My-Own-Feet. The shoes came off the minute the ceremony ended and I had my first glass of champagne in hand – I liked to think I was rocking a bit of a bare-foot hippy look, when in actual fact I was probably giving off more of a hillbilly-lush vibe.

The evening was going absolutely swell, I had just lost a fictional sheep station as part of a rather elaborate bet, and had managed to scrawl out an appallingly nonsensical series of messages in the guest book (I think I referred to myself as “the Judy Greer to the bride’s Anne Hathaway”, which is both obscure and misleading because I can’t guarantee Judy Greer is actually a widely understood reference, and I’m fairly sure those 2 women haven’t actually ever shared a substantial amount of screen time) using the kind of horrid handwriting that would usually be attributed to a 14 year old boy (sadly that’s not drunk handwriting, that’s just what it looks like whenever I put pen to paper).

Then the alcohol in my body flicked that most tiresome of switches in me – the one that leaves me convinced I’m a fabulous dancer. I hate that switch, it is an old, time-worn, mortifying, inhibition-free version of myself that is certain people can’t help but be impressed by my amazing moves.


Before you know it I’m in a retro dance off with some random guy I had never met, and failed to speak to before or after. People backed away. I wish I had backed away. But no, there I was throwing out some robot, some running man, some shopping cart, a little decorate the tree, a hint of drive the car followed by the necessary sequel, reverse the car… it was like one of those conversations where someone grabs a joke and runs with it far beyond its used by date.

It would have been fine, a weird blip, if it only happened the once. The 2nd dance off had a format change that saw me going move-for-move in the middle of the dance floor with a friend. I maintain it was her idea.

The evening was rounded out with the bouquet toss. After the first throw saw it land on the ground, I (hater of bouquet tosses) stepped in a little closer (as I thought everyone would do) with joke serious face on for the next throw. Turns out no, no one else stepped in closer, thus it appeared I was some desperate, superstitious spinster out to snag those flowers whether it was the last thing I did. Suddenly I was Desperate Deidre, Crazed Candice, Man-Hunt Mandy. Appalling. How do you then make clear to a group of relative strangers and drunken friends that you were joking? You can’t – it’s too late.

Dancing and drinking continued – laughter and merriment galore. It was, on the whole, a perfect evening for a rather perfect couple (off-putting, I know).

As I took myself off to bed that night (after briefly and inexplicably trying to boil an egg) I could not help but be grateful to have been invited to such a important, intimate event. Then I tripped over the Evil Heels of Doom, slammed head-first on the floor, and suddenly I was pondering how I managed to store so much crap under my bed. But the wedding glow of seeing a happy friend still lingered - it warmed my cold, cold heart as I drifted off to sleep.


Painefull Out

* = Guy Sebastian, the proof that talent shows find actual talent, the single most delightful male singer Australia has produced in quite some time, and a freshly re-acquired crush.

Domestic Vuvuzelas

For a while now I’ve been waking up before my alarm. I don’t need to tell you how spectacularly awful this is – everyone is familiar with the overwhelming anger one feels upon discovering there’s still 10 good minutes in which you could have enjoyed being unconscious. Instead you get to spend those 10 minutes with your eyes clenched shut, willing yourself to get your money’s worth of bed time (or trying to return to the absurd, but erotic dream you’d been enjoying), and then just as slumber decides to take hold you’re ripped back into reality by your alarm.

My first alarm (there are 2) goes off at 4:30am, so needless to say I found it incomprehensible that my body would actually choose to be awake any earlier than that.

After a while I realized it was an odd sound that occurred each morning at precisely 4:20am that was spring-boarding me into yet another new day. The noise was so very foreign that I couldn’t actually peg it. Was it a bird? Was it a plane? Was it that woman next door having particularly loud sex again?

This probably would have remained one of life’s less important mysteries, except that I ended up waking up even earlier the other day and hearing something much more recognizable, and annoying. The honking sound of a pre-dawn bird delighting in the silence of the wee hours by filling said silence. Then I heard what has been waking me up every morning for the last month, and I knew.

It was a Vuvuzela.

To the fortunate who are unfamiliar with the instrument, it sounds like a million monotone matronly women yelling at you to stop running, filtered through a fog horn, and it looks like this.


The world knows them as the scourge of World Cup football events, and I know them as perfectly weighted alternatives to baseball bats, especially when you’re a 7 year old entertaining yourself by smashing the crap out of Moreton Bay seed pods.

Apparently they are now also the go to for scaring away birds, greeting the new day and waking up neighbours.

Discovering that the Vuvuzela is now a domestic tool wasn’t even the weirdest thing that happened that morning, pre-dawn. That honour goes to the nudie fruit drink which exploded on me as I inhaled breakfast in the kitchen. I know these beverages are famed for getting violent when they go off, but my calm was severely harmed when this one went kamikaze and forced me to change clothes before work.

The reason I have a highly repetitive morning, pre-work ritual is so I can do it while still half asleep. The paranoid part of me (and a large part of me is routinely paranoid) is starting to suspect that vuvuzelas and exploding drinks are conspiring against me.


Painefull Out

May The Fan Be With You

I kind of admire the Über Fan. It must be hard, not to mention exhausting, to live with that much conviction. Like working on breakfast television, or being a vegan, or believing in god… the pure emotional drain of being so freaking sincere about one thing all the time must take its toll (especially if it involves not eating steak).

I like Coldplay, for brief periods of time. I enjoy tuna mornay, but life experience has taught me that it doesn’t taste nearly as good on the fourth day. I’m partial to Russell Crowe, as long as he’s being someone else.

But Über Fans… they don’t qualify their love. Their love is pure, eternal, slightly unnerving.

Imagine being so committed to a pop star you have a calendar of him at your work station. Now imagine that pop star is Darren Hayes… and it is 10 years since Savage Garden* broke up. I don’t want to call my colleague Helena ‘Darren’s Number 1 Fan’, but she must come fairly close. She once considered putting a sticker of Darren’s web site on the back of her car, to try and push more people to check it out. When his latest single was officially released she got up at midnight to listen to it, and spent the day touring the office so everyone could sample it from her ipod. She once referred to Darren has her ‘Horcrux’… which, for the non-Harry Potter fans in the room, means he contains a part of her soul, so if he dies a part of her dies. Helena then admitted that she occasionally switches on the news and thinks to herself, ‘God I hope Darren hasn’t died’.

She knows, as a woman, she’s not Darren’s type. That’s not the point. Somehow, at some formative point in her life, Darren took some chaste part of her heart, and her dedication hasn’t faltered since.

LJ: (after one solid Helena monologue about her Darren Dedication) You aren't fickle in your love are you.

Painefull: You certainly don't blow with the winds of fate.

H: No. (triumphant, she continues) I don't blow... (head tilt) well...

Usually you’d call something like this a phase. Like when Livinia wrote fan fiction about Hanson**, or when Peta and Calliope tried online dating, or when Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tiger Woods tried monogamy. But it’s been well past a decade now, and Helena’s love goes on like a power ballad over a sinking ship. There’s no stopping it.

Yes, I kind of do admire the Über Fan. They put the ‘madly’ in ‘Truly, Madly, Deeply’. And I suppose someone’s got to balance out the painful amount of cynicism people like me bring into the world.


Painefull Out

* = Savage Garden, the 90’s go-to Aussie band for songs that were catchy initially, but more annoying each time you heard them (as opposed to the name of The Be Sharps, which needed to be witty initially, but less funny each time you heard it).

** = Hanson, the trio of brothers responsible for 'MMMBop'. Go on, hum it. See if someone nearby hits you.

*** = This one goes out to Helena...



Caption: Oh there she is, so it's true, she did buy 5 tickets to my Sydney concert.

An Education… again

When it comes to the first day of school I always had a problem – I really don’t make good first impressions. At about the fourth go on the impression front people start to take pity on me. Does anybody actually enjoy the first day of anything? Do they relish befriending strangers, making constant small talk and being hit with a barrage of administrative information that won’t make sense for another month?

I have returned to the education pool a good 6 years after graduating from university.

Of course I don’t just give bad first impressions, I also take them in. Orientation Day involved that usual series of two minute judgment calls on whether you can only hope and pray people aren't doing your course. There were chatty people, quiet people, and several bolshie, middle-aged, loud scarf wearing women. There’s the guy using a walking stick/cane which you like to imagine is due to a sporting injury, but in all probability is a prop (Fi informs me canes are quite the men’s Autumnal accessory). Of course, the first person to dodge is the young man who turned out to be a horrendous silence filler via that detestable habit of echoing the last bit of the last premise to be raised before the silence.

Example: a conversation about high school, amongst 4 people who haven't been to high school in a while, runs out of puff. A brief pause followed by Silence Filler slowly uttering "Yeah... high school hey... high school... aaaah high school".

That’s not a contribution Silence Filler, it’s just repetition of the same phrase.

Then there’s all those etiquette issues I’ve completely forgotten about. Putting your hand up before talking, arriving anywhere on time, having to bluff your way through an answer when asked a question about something you were meant to have read but haven’t. And you have to remember to not roll your eyes when people gush about their plans for world domination and the earth-shattering moment when they knew they had found their calling.

It’s my fault I’m so cynical. Earnest people are just so… earnest. It’s like Captain America is going to writing school and the sheer scale of his sincerity is boggling.

Anyway, I’m back in the world of hitting the homework, rocking the readings, and mentally high-fiving my former 16 year old self whenever there’s a class spent doing nothing but watching a movie. No one ever said learning was easy.


Painefull Out

Farewell Friday Flirtation

Everyone needs a person in their life who is there simply for the purpose of flirtation. I am not positing a theory, this is just a fact. It’s an outlet, a way to stay in practice, and a serving of assurance that, despite the occasional paranoid thought, you don’t actually repel all people with your presence.

Mine was a Friday Flirtation.

He works in a local, independent book store. As someone who has long held the misled belief they should be working in a book store*, I find this rather appealing. It was my way of celebrating the end of a working week – walk in, peruse weekend reading options, flirt with attractive book guy, occasionally buy something.

All chatter was meaningless, all attention fleeting. And then I ruined it.

My taste in reading has always been eclectic. I tend to have several books going at once so there’s always something to suit my mood. I liked Grisham, and then it got repetitive. Same goes for Ludlum, Forsyth and Evanovich. I always find sticking with an author for too long will eventually lead to disappointment, so these days I tend to go for the book itself, rather than who writes it. This does nothing to explain my recent purchase.

The other week, on a bizarre whim, I bought a novel entitled Robopocalypse.

The title was so stupid, I had to buy it. When my Friday Flirtation raised an eyebrow at my choice as I paid, I was probably just as appalled as he was (which is why I forgot to use my failsafe excuse for all embarrassing purchases** – “I hope my little brother likes it!”). I shook all this off by the time I was out the door, assuming he barely noticed I had just chosen a book specifically marketed at male teenage, Dungeons & Dragons fans with posters of Gollum on their walls.

But he did notice. And he’s brought it up in the 2 Fridays following. It’s really hard to flirt when someone begins a conversation with “How’s Robopocalypse going?”. I think that very phrase might have actually rendered me gender-less. How can you hear that sentence and even remotely consider yourself a sexual being for at least 3 hours after the fact? I am allegedly a grown woman. I wanted to back away from me at that point.

So farewell Friday Flirtation. I may visit your store again, but the bloom is definitely off the book. I will remember our witty banter with fondness, especially the exchanges involving word play and references to books I haven’t read, but managed to convincingly imply I had.

I may never need to see him again anyway. The more of Robopocalpyse I read, the more certain I am that all technology will soon bring on our doom (yes, I just said that on a blog, I get the irony, I'm ignoring it).


Painefull Out

* = my desire to work in a book store is derived from the fact that it looks pleasantly mindless, you get to talk about books all day and, as fiction and film has taught me, all book stores are peopled with quirky eccentrics and owned by affectionate incompetents who will come together to provide support and life lessons at the most opportune moments.

** = I can only hope everyone else suffers similar internal terror at being judged over a purchase by shop workers who, if I was really being honest with myself, don’t give a shit about what I buy. Like when I bought a guy’s t-shirt in a clothes store because it looked comfortable and loudly declared to no on in particular “I sure hope my brother-in-law likes this t-shirt!”, or the fact that I still (absurdly) avoid all eye contact when at the check-out with sanitary products, like it’s a friend I’m mortified to admit I came to a party with.