Slight bump in the road

I wish my return to blogging could be on a more cheerful note but life’s just not that easy.
Life’s not that predictable either. One minute everything can be going along smoothly, you’re happy, there are no major obstacles ahead, then all of a sudden everything changes and you can never completely recapture the same life you had before.
This doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing, sometimes a crisis can result in positive changes and show sides of yourself that you didn’t know you had.
Over the past week I’ve discovered something about myself, that something relatively minor can scare the hell out of me and that it’s so easy to become complacent about your life and assume that nothing will change.
Since this is a public forum I don’t want to go into detail about what happened but I’ll just say that I’m worried about a family member and I’m now looking for somewhere else to live.
On its own moving house is stressful but generally not too traumatic. Combine this with a tense and upsetting family situation and the possibility of not having a job at the end of the year and it quickly becomes an extremely stressful time. What scares me most is that I didn’t see this coming and I wasn’t prepared (those few months at Girl Guides when I was 12 clearly didn’t teach me anything!).
Typically I’ve made more of a drama out of this than is probably warranted but underneath the drama there are things I have to do and luckily there is time to do them.
Its funny, I’ve just come back from a 3 day work off-site in the Yarra Valley, this was designed to give us a reward as we’ve all worked extremely hard over the past 12 months but also to ‘help us transition into the next phase of our careers outside of the DPC’, the last session was on coping with change and transition (surprise surprise) and from a work perspective I got nothing out of it but from a personal viewpoint it was really helpful. I’ve realised I’m currently in the ‘neutral zone’, a limbo state between the old reality and the new, a time when the old way is gone and the new way doesn’t feel comfortable yet, so I’m just going to have to sit it out and wait for a new and exciting beginning.

Variety is the spice of life

It’s been a mixed bag of activities over the past few days.
Friday started off with 9 holes of golf at Yarra Bend golf course. Golf as some of you may know is not my favourite activity; it’s the only sport I know that feels like the more you play the worse you get!. Anyway it was a work thing and one of the teams needed a player so I volunteered. Plus it was on work time so you can’t argue with that. Even after a 2 minute crash course in golf technique from my grandmother I played pretty badly. I got very well acquainted with the long grass on the edges of the fairway and an expert at patching up divots. On the bright side the weather was lovely, it was a relaxing walk, and I didn’t once end up in a bunker or lose my ball. Luckily no-one on my team would have close to challenging Tiger Woods our most common encouraging comments to each other were “don’t worry that was a practice swing” and “well done at least it went forward”. It’s a lovely golf course (see pictures), one hole even has a colony of endangered flying foxes in residence, very cool.
Friday night I went to the Spanish Club in Fitzroy for dinner with some friends from work. I’ve come to realise that I’m not a huge Tapas fan, a bit too much meat for me, the seafood dishes were yummy, especially the calamari. The Sangria was also delicious.
Saturday afternoon I went to Princes Park in Carlton to see a free public talk by the Dalai Lama, it was amazing; he is a charismatic and entertaining man. He spoke for about an hour on the need for peace in the world and the importance of having real compassion for all human beings. There were thousands of people in attendance and I’m pretty sure everyone was touched and moved by his words.
That night I went out for drinks with my netball team (no game on this week) in the city. I was also able to catch up with someone I worked with years ago and meet some new people, which is always rewarding.
And Monday was a public holiday, bonus!

The end

I’ve not blogged in ages because frankly I’ve not been inspired and not much has happened.
The highlight of the past week was my Skype chat with SO on Tuesday, I was feeling quite crap and he cheered me up enormously.
The second most exciting thing that happened was the ‘End of DPC party’ held on Friday at the MCG!. It was very cool, above is a picture to prove I’m not making it all up.
It was a slightly sad event, even though my job continues until the end of October, the 700 or so temporary Census staff finished up on Friday, after about 9 months of furious processing. The DPC (Data Processing Centre) environment is very unique, it’s short term but at the same time the contract is quite long (some have been with the DPC for 12 months) so people from many different backgrounds get thrown together to work towards a common goal. Its repetitive work, that at times can be boring, the workforce is broken up into groups of up to 70 and then sections of about 12 people, the floors are decorated with cartoons, photos, pictures and other assorted and colourful artwork.

Many of the staff have become extremely close, a few romances have developed and I have no doubt that many will remain in contact for a long time to come.
I came to Melbourne last year without knowing anyone and I am extremely pleased to say that now I have made many good friends who I would never have met had I not worked with them on the Census. I will be very strange going into work on Monday knowing that there are only about 100 of us left. Last week I had to move from my lovely office (see picture) on level 4 back down to a cramped desk with a missing partition (I’ve had to use a white board to block out the distracting traffic walking past my desk) on level 3. Sigh.
Anyway back to the party, there was a band doing covers, the food was buffet style and very good, although we only had enough seating for about a third of the crowd. The idea was that we were supposed to eat in shifts and share the tables but everyone was hungry so tried to eat at once, people were standing around trying to balance drinks, plates and cutlery and eat at the same time, quite a feat, which most managed quite well. Drinks were free for the entire evening (except spirits) so as you can imagine there were a few inebriated people by early afternoon, but I must say, given the size of the crowd no-one was that badly behaved. At 4pm we all got kicked out so that the staff could clean up ready for the game to be played at the MCG in a few hours. Half of us went to The Corner Hotel in Richmond and the rest to a pub somewhere in Collingwood. The Corner must have wondered what was happening, one minute there was about 7 people and then within 15 minutes, about 100!. By 7pm I figured that 7 hours of socialising was as much as I could manage so I went home, crazy party animal that I am. The end.

Music and mothers

I’ve gone from a musical drought to a bit of a flood, no concerts in aaaages and then during the weekend just passed I attended 2. The first was on Friday night, I went to see Josh Pyke at the Hifi Bar in the city with the sister of one of my friends.
The Hifi bar is a very cool venue, quite small and intimate which is great and it also has an upstairs part with seating and its non-smoking (a definite plus). Despite the fact that Josh had a cold he was fantastic, it’s really fun to hear your favourite songs sung live and be able to sing along with other fans.
One of the supports was ‘Old man river’, I only recognised one of the songs but they were really good as well.
After a BBQ at a very fancy house in East Melbourne on Saturday (my friends’ parents’ house....I had visions of bad American teen movies as the parents were away but it was very quiet!) I attended another concert, this time at the corner hotel in Richmond.
The band was called ‘Art of fighting’, I had heard of them but couldn’t actually recall any songs…why did I go you may ask, well I was asked and I rarely knock back a concert invite…unless its Christina Aguilera or someone equally as dodgy ;-)
Anyway, the venue was disappointing, it looked like a giant basement, all concrete with silver air-conditioning ducts winding across the ceiling, this look could be cool but in this case wasn’t. The stage was in a bad position, not helped by the fact that there were giant pillars in the best viewing positions. The air-conditioning was set to -10 degrees and was on full blast so everyone froze. I hate to imagine what was on the carpet but my feet kept sticking to it which is lovely.
All these things unfortunately detracted from the band who were good, not great, and not really suited to that venue, better for a cosy place with couches as they are a bit mellow and a lot of the songs sounded the same. It was also great fun standing next to a very drunk teenager who talked loudly, sang the wrong words loudly and kept dancing and bumping into me. It was sad when we moved to another area!.

In contrast to these activities I spent Sunday in a very busy but quiet park in Ivanhoe having a Mothers day picnic with my family. It must be some weird Melbourne thing instead of the usual horde of annoying flies we were harassed by a swarm of wasps, very odd and a bit scary, I had to concentrate really hard not to eat one as they just land on your food. Despite that it was fun to relax and soak up the sun and we only got hit by one stray football, a great day!

It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye

A couple of weeks ago I decided to kill 2 birds with one stone (geez that’s a really horrible saying!..don’t worry no birds were actually killed during the making of this blog)
I have wanted to get back into horse riding for a while now and I’m always on the lookout for an opportunity to meet new people so when I found a group of girls who go horse rising regularly I decided to join up.
We met up at Uncle Nevs in Whittlesea at 9:30 Sunday morning, I’d like to point out that I managed to find my way out there without a map and only a vague recollection of the route I had checked the day before, yay me.
Anyway, I had no idea what these girls looked like but I managed to guess correctly and find them without looking like a complete idiot.
The entire group was quite large, about 30 people, my group (the experienced riders) had about 10 but we all had to start together so it took about an hour for everyone to get a helmet and a horse.
My horse was called Highgirl, I’m fairly sure its spelled like that instead of the greeting, Higirl as she was freaking enormous, I almost sprained an ankle getting off and I needed a ladder to get up!. We developed a system that seemed to work, I let her do whatever she wanted……unless it meant trying to decapitate me with a branch…and we got along well. Unfortunately she seemed to hate all the other horses and attempted to bite them every opportunity (once she apparently caused another horse to lose an eye ew), this made it slightly difficult to talk to anyone else but oh well at least there were no unpleasant incidents.
The whole thing took about 4 1/2 hours; we went up hills, down hills, across streams and paddocks at various paces. I was particularly inspired when one of the young guides called us ‘quadriplegics waiting to happen’ under his breath, clearly he was not in charge of marketing in the business!. Despite that unwelcome dose if reality it was fantastic, so relaxing and exhilarating at the same time.
Afterwards my little girls group (5 of us) had a late lunch at a café down the road, they are all lovely people, it was great to meet them. I was in pain for the next week from using muscles I didn’t even know I had but it was totally worth it.

The rebellious boring person

Once upon a time if you said to your parents, “mum, dad I’m going to work in a low paying job, live in a share-house with 5 other people, travel to exotic and dangerous parts of the world and be happily single”, they would have been appalled and given you a serious talking to!.
Today your parents and peers are disappointed if you haven’t tried one if not all of the things above. You can’t go to a social gathering without hearing stories about what weird things I ate in India, my year in London, my gross housemate tales and all the crap jobs I’ve had. Even parents are perpetuating this new trend, they all get together and try to out-do each other with stories about all the crazy stuff there kids have got up to. My parents have the impossible job of trying to make the ABS Census sound exciting, good luck with that mum!
Well you know what, I was never cool in school and I have no desire to be cool now.
I’ve never rebelled in my life but I’m starting now! I don’t want to travel to Tunisia, I don’t want to live in London, I don’t want to live in a share-house, I don’t want a crappy low paid job and I’m a slightly discontented single person, shock horror!.
I love to travel and see different places but I also love being at home, I love my friends and I like to talk to them about what they have been up to and how they are doing and not how much partying I did in London or what my annoying house-mate did. Perhaps I’m a boring introvert with issues but I really don’t mind. Not everyone is the same and we don’t all have to do the same things.
Bring on Friday nights in front of the TV and a job in the public service ;-)

We’re off to see the fishes

Today my friend LZ had the brilliant idea of going to the aquarium, at first I was hesitant, fish are boring I thought…a good fish is one cooked on a plate!
I’m happy to report that I am very wrong, at the aquarium you are able to get very close to the fish (once I’d shoved the annoying kids out of the way).
They are quite fascinating, all sorts of different shapes and sizes, some are very unusual, some are cute others creepy. If anyone is thinking of going I highly recommend watching the fish being fed, the giant sting rays are amazing, the turtles are funny and of course the sharks are incredible.
We finished our tour with a ride on the Subsonic Simulator, you sit in a seat and the whole floor moves to simulate the underwater rollercoaster ride on the screen, its really fun!

Yet again I have to apologise for the qaulity of the pictures, not bad for a phone but not great.

I believe the pictures are of a grey nurse shark, a spider crab and a sea dragon.