Tag: africa


I still haven’t found what I’m looking for

September 16th, 2006 — 10:03am

Right now I am looking for these things:

1. A new job. They announced my resignation at work so I get to wear the leaving beads now. The leaving beads look like Mardi Gras beads but I’m pretty sure I haven’t shown my boobs to anyone here at work in order to earn them. Unless there is actually a camera in the hole in the ceiling in the bathroom. I’m looking for writing/editing/web/communications type work, so lemme know if you hear of anything that’s going.

2. A new flatmate. Bart’s going off to find new adventures on the other side of the tunnel, so if you know of someone who’d like to live in Sunny Hataitai and pay $120 a week for a good room in a great house with Smoo and Seb and I, then please do send them in my direction. The ad is up here if you want to perve at photos of our lounge and dining room.

3. A bach to stay at over New Year’s eve. There will be six or more of us, and we want to be close-ish to Wellington and on a beach. Yes I know we left it kind of late.

4. People to party with at our ‘Meat Market vs Bart’s Goodbye’ party. It’s on Saturday, and it should be fun, and you should come, and you should bring some people we haven’t met before.

Things that I have done lately that have been of some sort of note:

1. Looked for jobs.

2. Looked for flatmates

3. LiveAid for Africa – despite its sparse attendence we raised $100 which was enough to buy two chickens, two AIDs awareness kits, some farmer training and soap for ten families. Go us. You can see some photos of the events in my flickr space, but if you are too lazy to click a link, here’s a photo:

4. The drum & the bass. At a party, and then at Indigo San Frindigo Bathhouse on Saturday night. I had forgotten how much fun it could be. I especially liked the guy who bumped me, and then went to pat my shoulder in apology but grabbed my boob instead and so we had an “it’s okay dude” hug. I was somewhat less fond of my taxi driver who seemed to mistake my slight interest in why he chose NZ instead of Norway as a refugee as interest in him, and decided to ask me out for a drink then and there. At 4am. Really really inappropriate and sleazy, and it made me feel so uncomfortable that I got him to stop a half block from my house.

5. Dinner parties. Food Baby was at my house last week, and so I went with my staple beef burgandy and mashed potatos. Last night I went to a potluck dinner for Lisa Fur‘s birthday, and I made apple crumble. Another one of her friends had made a crumble too, but mine was better. Heh.

6. Had my last boxing lesson. I want to do more, but my trainer’s having a shoulder operation (as if I didn’t already feel bad enough about punching towards a tiny little blonde girl), and I have to control my finances (sort of) until I get a new job, and then my membership is up in November, and while I will be continuing to go to the gym, my new job location might dictate somewhat the gym that I join. So it is all to be confirmed later.

7. Obsessed over Rockstar: Supernova. I don’t know what I’m going to do after Thursday when it’s all over.

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Buy me a goat

September 3rd, 2006 — 9:16am

So tomorrow is Africa at the Country Club, and I will be asking people to make a donation. Then with the money collected from donations, I won’t be paying off the rest of the keg from America. No no. I will go to http://www.oxfamunwrapped.com.au/ and buy some things to the total amount of what we collected, and perhaps some more. I’m gutted that they’ve sold out of goats, but perhaps we can buy some chickens instead. If you can’t come to Africa, and I suspect most of you can’t, you should do the same, okay? Awesome.

EDIT: Mad props must go here to Robyn who bought a chicken. Yay!

I need to be careful with my money though, because I resigned from my job on Monday. Four more weeks and I’m out of here. I don’t know where I’ll be after that, but it won’t be here. If you know of any writing/editing/communications/web coordination type roles going in Welly, please do let me know.

I still have a food baby in my stomach from last night with the tripleK. Apparently I’m not supposed to call them that anymore, but meh, it’s just so good. And if they keep up with the lynching, I’m going to have to keep calling them that. Food Baby is at my house next week, which means that I feel better about being part of the group rather than just being a tagalong, and also I can drink instead of driving as I did to Brooklyn last night. In my car that had $583 worth of repairs and servicing yesterday to get its warrant. Right after that $200 fine. Good times. And my laptop is back at the shop. I have adopted a very mellow sense of calm about all this, somehow. I suspect it’s mostly brought on by laughing my guts out at Family Guy. And being proud of saving Magni. Mmmmmagni.

I thought I was going to cry again in my boxing lesson, but I didn’t. I mastered the right uppercut very quickly, but not the left one. Stupid left arm. It’s so useless, I can’t do anything with it. Why do I even bother having a left arm? Maybe I should cut it off and replace it with a hook. I bet that’d pull in all the chicks.

Also, in other social event news, we’re having a Meat Market on the 16th. Everyone should come, and bring some single friends with you. Woo woo. Remember the last meat market that I held? I was just saying to Tom (exactly!) the other day that 2006 was the new 2003. Except better. But without drugs and therefore with far less sexing. Haha sexing. LisaB was talking last night with all these new words like ‘performancing’ and ‘materiality’, and I was like “you are so awesomenating”. Except I didn’t say that, but I wish I had. It was such a change having civilised grown-up conversations instead of spending the entire dinner talking about butt sex as Eta Beta Pi tend to do.

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B A N A N A N A S. Plus or minus an N A

September 2nd, 2006 — 9:07am

So, if I was going to be Gwen Stefani, which I wouldn’t want to be except that maybe I wouldn’t say no to sleeping with Gavin Rossdale, and I kind of dig the Franz cover of ‘Whatchu waiting for’, plus I think that’d be a good song to add to my workout playlist, I’d say that right now, my shit is B A N A N A S.

+ Smoo said he’d pay me $50 if I took a shit in his mouth. Hahaha awesome. To be fair and contextualise it, he did say that when I warned Bart that if he told me who was going to get kicked off The Amazing Race I would come into his bedroom while he was sleeping and shit in his mouth. I warned Smoo that I have some serious lack-of-fibre issues, although that said, I think eating an avocado for dinner last night was quite a clever thing to do, and it counteracted too much dairy.

- I got a parking ticket. For $200. When I was parked outside of my own house, on my own street, in a quiet suburb. I wasn’t on the footpath, or facing the wrong way, or anything like that. I just don’t have a warrant. And the part irony of this is that Smoo’s been keeping his car in the garage cos he didn’t have a warrant either, but now he does, and yet his car was in the garage and mine was on the street, and I got the ticket. Yes, not having a warrant is badwickedevil. However, surely there are better places for parking wardens to hang out?

+ I did however, somehow apparently manage to save $750 on my laptop repairs by the guy at Bond + Bond “calling in a favour” as apparently the problem wasn’t with the power supply but rather that some liquid had got into the computer and corroded the motherboard, or some such happenstance. Of course, if they’d told me that the repair bill was going to be that much, I would have said “but I can buy a new one for a grand” and done that instead. But anyway, I very much snickered a lot at the way that guy on the phone was like “whoever is using the computer needs to keep all liquids well away from it”, all avoiding placing the blame on me, ala Fightclub’s “the dildo, not your dildo”.

-/+ My body is wacksicles. Because I have lost weight around my stomach (you probably can’t tell unless you spend as much time staring at me as I do, in which case I’m both creeped out and a little turned on) my pants are all about the falling-down-ness, but in a case of delicious deep-fried irony, they stay up by virtue of the total and utter lack of gap between my thighs. And now that I finally had a period, Mary-Kate and Ashley are deswelling, and my waist is becoming more and more prominent, and yet my under-boob rolls appear to be growing. It’s like having another set of tits, and it’s very very strange. They shouldn’t be growing. But maybe they just appear to be more prominent because my waist is getting smaller faster. But that’s okay, I can accept that I am a freakshow, and I will not drink Rum with Nate about it too much. Plus, I think I got the left hook last night, when I did a big cardio push and boxing practise at home last night. The bare feet help with the twist.

- Snakes on a plane is obviously a cultural phenomenon (and when I say “cultural” I of course mean “what some people on the interweb talk about), and yet I’m having a devil of a time trying to find homes for all the tickets that the delightful KateH sent me. It’s not that people don’t want to come, apparently, it’s just that apparently tonight is the busiest night in Wellington ever. Just to prove my point, check out this list of my friends and their diverse excuses reasons they can’t make it:

  • Anji: Spanish class
  • Brad: crewing for one of the plays at school (more about that later)
  • Chrisana: working
  • Karen: work meeting
  • Kartini: not fond of snakes. I think she’s okay with planes though.
  • Katy: Real Hot Bitches rehersal
  • Lisa B: working
  • Lisa Fur: sick
  • Peti: Packing
  • Sarah-from-work: needs to go hoooooome.
  • Smoo: working
  • Tom: teaching
    I’m actually pretty sure that there’s a secret meeting of the No-Jos club. B A N A N A N A N A S!

    + But to prove that I do actually participate in real culture, last night Karen and I went to see Brad’s solo show at the drama school. There were four people doing their self-written pieces. The first was a guy who told the story of a typical night for a bartender, starting it with puking and needing a pie, and then going back to opening up the bar, and then the after-work drinks. He only played the one character, but it was really good in the “ahaha it’s funny because it’s true…. and maybe I should stop drinking” kind of way. Plus, he took off his shirt and showed his ass and he was built, so he gets bonus points for that. The second piece was about science, and it juxtaposed a high school boy now doing a presentation on atoms and his great grandfather working in the influenza epidemic in 1918. I especially liked the actor’s characterisation of the principal who made the audience clap nervously when he addressed the assembly. Brad’s piece started out comically with voiceovers about the African safari, as he was portraying a guy who sponsors five kids in Africa, which makes chicks think he’s adorable, but it turns out that he’s having some trouble with errections, as his monologued poems displayed. And then it got a lot darker, which was awesome, and also a little perculiar – I mean, Brad’s such a nice guy, and yet he was swearing, and treating people badly, and MASTURBATING ON STAGE. Or at least you know, miming it. Except without the beret. Those crazy wacky actors. The last girl did a more comical piece, which was highly reminiscint of The Nanny Diaries. It worked though because her characterisations were so strong, and because she staged it so well. And yes, so that’s me, at the theatre. Ooh la la.

    - I’m shitty about a thousand things at work. This is mostly caused by the fact that I have almost no friends left here, and that sucks cos who likes being left behind, but there’s a hulk’o rage inside me for whomever it was that filled in the sudoku in the newspaper, and whomever it was that ran off with the front section, and whomever it was that decided that the watercooler tasted funny and put it out of action, and anyone who coughs and sneezes and gurgles at me all day, because OH GOD THE PAIN, THE PAIN, THE PAIN of it all.

    + Rockstar tonight! After Snakes of course, with Bart and Blair and Jimmy and some random guy from Anji’s work and his partner. If anyone wants my last double pass, you know what to do.

    - My iPod has started to give me occasional electric shocks up the earphones. Huh? How does that work? Can someone explain it to me please?

    + My first Food Baby tomorrow, unless the No-Jos club declare it ain’t so behind my back tonight. I’ll be making lemon pie for it. Which reminds me, I really must start posting some Africany recipes so y’all can do Country Club with me around the world, yes? Yes.

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    Lessons in living from the past five days

    August 29th, 2006 — 9:00am

    Okay my dear loyal readers from around the world, I need your help. In fact, it’s not just me that needs your help, it’s Africa. Which also happens to be the subject of the next Country Club. Yes, since we’ve neglected that continent so badly so far, we’re going to do it all at once on September 2, and we’re going to do it like Live Aid. And therefore you should too, and then we can link it up all around the world. And that’d be awesome. In Wellington, we’ll dress up like rockstars, eat some Africanish food (that as I plan it in my head bears more than a little similarity to the Caribbean feast, but that’s where the origins were, I suppose) and then we’re going to do Singstar and deliver our stunning concert performances. I’m going to suggest to everyone who comes that they might like to make a donation to a charity that I’ll finalise later, so that as well as having the awesome time that we always have at Country Club, we can do a little bit of good as well. Awesome. And now that’s out of the way, on with the week!

    And the second thing that I wanted to talk about in the general category is who is subscribed to my rss feed? Only Jessie is listed publically. Come on kids, you show me yours and I’ll show you mine. And here I go with the showing:

    Lessons Learnt on Thursday

  • If you cannot master the art of the left hook instantly, you will become incredibly frustrated with yourself, and find yourself crying in your boxing lesson, which will make you even more frustrated with yourself and you will cry some more.
  • If you try to recover in the spa afterwards and are just starting to settle down into nice quiet time, you should expect stupid loud Americans to get in the spa too and talk loudly about how they’re going to drop their World Vision kids because they’re not in school any more.
  • If you go to the supermarket after having such a crap day, expect to come home with little more than five bottles of wine, sparkly body wash and an eggplant.
  • Your flatmates will make fun of you while you bawl watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition but it doesn’t matter because the crying will still feel good.

    Lessons Learnt on Friday

  • Everyone will leave you. Even the receptionist. You can, however, set her up with a blog so you can stalk her in Korea.
  • Even the most cynical people will admit that Jordis and Marty are fucking awesome when you make them watch their clips on the ludicrously large screen in your work’s boardroom when you’ve all been drinking.
  • Topping up your mobile phone via credit card is very very hard to do when you’re on the long bus home and you’ve had a couple of bottles of wine. But if you finally manage to do it, you will manage to finangle yourself a party invitation.
  • If you’ve had a bottle of bubbly, and some white wine already and you come home and throw it up, perhaps it’s not the best idea that you’ve ever had to grab two bottles of red on your way out to the aforementioned party.
  • You will always have fun at parties at Nial’s house, but you will probably stay for far too long.
  • If you ever get to the stage where you’re like “I should just tell so and so that I think that what they did was dumb” and the other half of you is like “yeah! you should so totally do that!”, you’re wrong. And if you can manage to not do so, as I’m pretty confident that I managed to do, then you should be commended.
  • If you drink rather a lot, you will no doubt have some fantastic conversations, but you may struggle to remember them all beyond remembering that there was much discussion of the Country Club, and The House of Leaves and antidepressants, and ummmm huh, I don’t know what else. But they were like, rad!
  • If there’s a fire in a barrel outside and you toast marshmallows over it, and if you accept puffs of other people’s cigarettes because the headspin is fun, you will be smelly in the morning.

    Lessons from Saturday

  • If you mix many bottles of wine, you may find that you’ll be trapped in bed until 5pm, getting up every hour to have things streaming out of every hole in your body except your ears.
  • Lime toilet cleaning block thingies might not be as hideously stinky and smellable from the front door as the lavendar flavoured ones, but they’re still not something that are fun to spend a lot of time with your nose right up against.
  • Garlic bread is awesome as the first food of the day when you’ve had difficulty keeping down water.
  • Brendan Fraser is really hot, and The Mummy makes me want to do a seperate Egypt at Country Club. But that was probably just the hangover talking.

    Lessons from Sunday

  • Getting up before 11am means that you can accomplish heaps. And by “accomplish heaps” I mean “do some laundry and put away two baskets’ worth of laundry from the previous weekend”, and that’s good enough for me.
  • The Mediterranean Warehouse is always a good place for brunch. And if you take a stroll around the shelves afterwards, you’ll clear enough room for gelati.
  • Shopping for records is best done by yourself instead of with people who don’t own record players and are therefore not interested in combing every bin.
  • Kmart’s underwear selection is awesome enough to yield you that much-searched for sports bra that actually fits, even if it’s perhaps a tiny bit too tight and therefore points your nipples at the sky. Kmart will also offer you up a lime green masterpiece with enough padding to cover up nipples but not change your cup size. Wahoo!
  • You really should have bought your pants in a smaller size, which is quite exciting.
  • If you buy a striped top from Farmer’s, you can talk about forming your own emo band called Fragment Consider Revising, which conforms to the three-word-name-which-makes-little-sense rule.
  • Even though your lasange is awesome, your stomach does not appreciate the double dose of dairy.
  • Surprisingly few of my friends are available to come see MOTHERFUCKING SNAKES! ON A MOTHERFUCKING PLANE! at the preview on Wednesday. What the fuck is wrong with you people? Have you not seen Jon Stewart interview Samuel L Jackon in what is perhaps the best interview ever?

    Lessons from Monday

  • If you wear the aforementioned black and white striped shirt to the gym without taking your hoodie along, it will start to pour. And the awesomeness of your new green bra will be able to be appreciated by the whole world. Awesome.
  • If you send your pregnant friends clothes from Babylicious, they will love you.
  • You are too obsessed with Rockstar, and it’s just self enablement if you discover that the reality episodes can be found online before they’re posted on the official site. And also the guy in the kebab shop you frequent who still hasn’t learnt that you will always have tahihi, garlic yoghurt and hot chilli as your sauces and that you’ll ask for three mujaver and three falafel in your mixed vegetarian instead of two of each and two dumplings, looks like a cross between Magni and Ryan without being hot.

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