these past 2 days have been crazy. It's almost like the influx of people is like at winter capacity!

and may I present the 2 most annoying customers of the weekend:

The OJ guy

he orders 2 freshly squeezed orange juices. Please note the words "freshly squeezed". It takes ahell lot of time to prepare, and when orders are flying in at a manic rate, OJ preperations are at the bottom of the staff's favourite dessert because they take YONKS.

When we finally serve it, the wifey complains

"it's not cold"

while the husband says

"it's pulpy!"

Honey, I understand your complaint about it not being cold, but pulpy? Orange juice has pulp.
If you want some depulped OJ go down 2 flights of escalators to the big Safeway and buy yourself some additive-riddled, reconstituted sweetened (20% real) juice.

GAH.

he then went on to demand similar products for $9. (the price of 2 OJs) or 2 diet cokes and a waffle with bananas.

The cokes and waffles cost more than that obviously, but we HAD to give it to him.

The 2 minute lady

Her food had arrived, and as I walked past she caught my attention.

"Hi can you please check on order 23?"

I nod.

It's usually the staff's problem where they lose an order or can't find a table.

I pop my head back in

"How's order 23 going? The lady's got her food and she's waiting on her hubbies and she's asking"

"I'm doing it right now" my friend replies

she calls me back after a few seconds.

"Myst, myst."

I turn back.

"It's been two minutes"


It's people like these that make me want to kick them in the shins repeatedly for a minute.


A special mention to


The mini-Paris Hiltons

Oh God. Where do I even start.

They've been arriving in droves.

Khol lined (slightly cross-eyed) eyes, blonde sideswept fringes, mini skirts and white singlets, fake tans, too-pink too-glossy lip gloss, a mobile constantly plugged to one ear and all armed to the teeth with their indespensable accessory

equally annoying friends.

They stay long past the time they've eaten when it's milling with people or an hour past closing after all the other chairs around them have been taken in, demand water and return glasses with dishwashing (unremovable) stains (they're grooves, not the scary dirty look), put their pedicured feet on other chairs people are hungrily eyeing, and of course, take up far too much space since they usually order 2 desserts between the 5 of them since they're all watching their stick insect paris figures.

The most annoying award will have to go to them by far.

oh yes. this ought to be interesting. Corn starch during sex. Yes, Yes, YES!

Confessions of an (ex) Underage Drinker

Talking to one of my fellow boarders a few weeks ago, we talked about burnout. We were one of the youngest entrants into the boarding house at 14, sharing a dorm with 5 other girls.

People have this idea that boarding is a really strict place, full of matronly cane-wielding mistresses and regulated by bells.

The bells part is true, and we did have a lesbian matron but no canes. I guess laws are far to tight for that to happen, as are the fact that 96 rich brats crammed into a square area smaller than most of their houses would mean a much lighter hand.

There are schools where as I read somewhere

“the girls are all too rich to bother passing their finals, but come out knowing how to braid a pony’s tail and make a mean salmon confit”

My school was nothing like that. The girls were rich enough not to bother passing, but we did. My school was consistently one of the top finals scorers. Out of say, 16 of the top Australian students for the cohort, at least 3 or 4 would come from my school.

It was a proud history that about 80% of our school consistently scored within the top 10% of Australia, while inculcating proper ladies’ values into us. (equestrian was never an option at our school, but Elizabethan dancing for the Year 7s was compulsory, as was ballroom dancing in Year 9)

No matter what the school culture however, when highly coddled girls suddenly get set free into the wilderness, despite incompetent neo-Christian boarding house wardens or perhaps because of it, we didn’t just go wild, we went feral.

Don’t get me wrong. It was just as dramatic as stories tell you. A girl tried to commit suicide every year. One a semester was the usual number. We’ve had a coke addict openly shooting up in a bathtub, and lesbianism is indeed a feature. Especially since many of the girls were sent into boarding because they were lesbian. (don’t ask. I don’t understand the logic either) Nearly all of us were depressed and borderline. Most of us came from broken homes. There were 3 bulimics in my year alone. It wasn’t particularly healthy. Perhaps it was combined with the freedom and the need to numb the pain that made us turn out the way we did.

We started partying way younger than everyone else. Public school kids may start young, but they still had to go home to parents. Us? We got kicked out for 2 weeks every term, where we would have to find our own lodgings. HA.

And partying so hard so young, when everyone gets into the crazy drinking phase at 18 when they 1st hit uni, we’d join in the fun, just because this would be the first time we were legal.

After that, it was burnout. While 18 was the beginning for everyone else, it was the beginning of the end for us. Not only had we done the same thing for years that everyone else was seeing as novel, now it was LEGAL. Where was the kick now?

And slowly, our tastes in alcohol changed too. All of us started on the usual Vodka Cruisers and Bicardi Breezers, and we all moved on rather quickly to JDs and 80% Vodkas (I did say we were party hard people) and now, as I talk to my friend, I realise it seems most of us have hit the merry middle.

We’ve developed “our drink” a lot younger. I drink Whiskey/Bourbon and Cokes. I make the exception for Chivas. She drinks fine vintage reds. Others I’ve talked to have all developed their own preferences.

Some have gone all natural and started taking Liver Cleansing Pills.

3 girls have gotten married. 2 engaged. We’re 23.

Our days of rebelling against the tyranny of not being able to watch X-Files, Buffy or Charmed and even Dawson’s Creek are now over and it’s time to settle into those men’s club leather chairs and drink port in bunny slippers.

Someone pass me the Johnny. And say hi to Jack and Jim for me.

Let's Talk About Sex, Baby

I watched Alexander, and I actually liked it. For what it was (a biography) it was really quite good…a biography with narration by Anthony Hopkins, it’s good and bad because of that. Without Hopkins, you wouldn’t follow much of the story or believe a biased account and accuse Stone of portraying a romanticised version of Alexander the Great. With Hopkins, it sometimes breaks the flow of the movie.

Alexander lagged a bit in the middle, but is seriously a quality film. Colin Farrell isn’t half bad, and all the eye candy can act! (shock! horror!) the cast of Alexander makes me finally understand what other women mean when they say a movie with a feast of eye candy.

Historically rather accurate, the sexuality issue didn’t even occur to me until I started reading the reviews and imdb (and later on found myself at the official website). Largely panned by the American critics, I somehow suspect that this movie will gain recognition as time goes on.

Having dinner with my friends last night, we got to discussing ancient Greek philosophy and mindset, or more specifically, those topics in terms of sexuality.

Eros, Platonic Love (in the way Plato defined it), and the different types of Love defined.

My friend went on to name several types of sexual relations, and quoted different types of sex, love and desires (other than with ‘your woman’). (The word “wife” doesn’t exist in Ancient Greek or Hebrew either)

The Bible only states 3 kinds of sex being “evil” with no mention of homosexuality being wrong. (if you go back to reading the texts in its original language) AND the idea of a Pure Love between men, (platonic love) where there’s no sex involved necessarily, but all other quotients for ‘soulmate’ status are there no longer exists in modern society.

On the flip side of the coin, women weren’t considered exactly human in those times, much like how Africans weren’t considered human in the 18th century. Well, not really.

Still one wonders at our boundaries of sexuality. While not all of us are Christian, Judaeo-Christian thought pervades almost all societies today, as part of being a ‘developed or developing’ country.

And many Christians sit there and yell at ‘aberrations of nature’ when in many species about 20% of the population is homosexual (and is shown to be uniform in many human cultures, from The US to Australia to China) when their bible, if they go back and read it in its original language, does not actually agree with what they are saying.

While many people cannot reconcile the idea of two people of the same sex being in love, most focus on sexual part of the relationship.

Perhaps the gay and lesbian community have this to blame with their own culture, and yet, most people who don’t like the idea have no friends or know no one who is “crooked”. Of course this makes perfect sense, since if you don't agree with it, why the hell would you hang around with them? But the people who distance themselves from former best friends who come out really sadden me.

While the whole world is looking for Romantic Love, why do we frown on people who have found it simply because they are of the same sex?

If you got to know some of them, and saw that not all of them are promiscuous, and see the love in their eyes, see the devotion they have towards one another, you would understand why I believe it isn’t wrong.

And there is so little love in the world today, even between straight couples.

hello world, this is me

like the rest of me, it seems even my writing tendencies seem to crave a move every now and then.

I guess I'm tired. Tired of too many readers. Too many reciprocations I have to reply to, nice things to say to their posts.

Like a mutual masturbation of egos.

And I realised it was the blog platform I was with. And that over here, in blogger, I am under no duress whatsoever to reply.So it's going to be articles there, and everything here.

Hello world.