May 30, 2011

Nipper and Kiki's guide to Australian Capital Cities

City: Brisbane (also BrisVegas)
Residents known as: Brisbanites
Description: Nothing like Vegas.

City: Melbourne
Residents known as: Melbournians
Description: Where everything happens.

City: Sydney
Residents known as: Sydneysiders
Description: Where everything that didn't make it to Melbourne happens. Also still not the capital of Australia.

City: Canberra (Nation Capital, but we try to forget)
Residents known as: Politicians
Description: Politicians congregate here and pretend to run the country.

City: Adelaide
Residents known as: Radelanians
Description: Adelaide is in the south.

City: Darwin
Residents known as: Darwinians
Description: Very hot.

City: Perth
Residents known as: No one is from Perth
Description: Thought it was a marsupial until I googled for this post.

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Clothing

"You know what fashion I'd like to see make a return? Clothes that fit. I'd really like to own a shirt that doesn't go down to me knees in the name of 'cool', thanks."

Cup of tea count: Just finished our box of 100 teabags... and are already making our way through another pack of twenty five.
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May 27, 2011

Driving

"Okay, it' just up here. If you can, try to throw yourself out of the car in a stylish and conservative manner; we don't want to look like lunatics."

Cup of tea count: stuntman levels
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May 22, 2011

Winter Cleaning

"Right. The bathroom is now so clean that if someone asked you to eat your dinner off the floor you would still say no, because someone who is mad enough to ask you to eat off the floor is also probably mad enough to mix up salt with arsenic... but the floor is pretty damn clean is what I'm trying to say."

Cup of tea count: One each- after a full day's worth of scrubbing the house to within an inch of its life.

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May 16, 2011

DVD Blurbs

A new segment of the blog: translating DVD blurbs into their simplest and most basic forms. As an example, Magnolia. The original blurb is as follows:

"Throughout one tumultuous day in the San Fernando Valley, a group of fractured lives collide and intertwine through a series of chance encounters, secret betrayals, shared histories and divine intervention... finally building to one of the most unforgettable climaxes in cinematic history. Some will seek forgiveness, others escape it. Some will mend damaged lives, others will open old wounds. Some will reap what they have sowed. But towering above it all is the belief that the past forever affects the present."

The simplified version:

"One day in California, a few people meet up. Quite by coincidence, some of them have met before, but don't remember. It gets pretty dramatic. Some of the people will be happy, others not so much, but in the end, most of them start to believe in cause and effect."

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May 15, 2011

On Politics

"Well, it's a bit of a joke, really isn't it?"

"Yeah; whenever anyone asks me whether I'm left wing or right wing I always get the mental picture of two birds with one wing apiece spinning ineffectually on the floor and nothing ever happening."

"So, basically, you visualise politicians."

Cup of tea count: slurped from an elephant's trunk, with a couple of monks.
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May 14, 2011

The Alarm Clock Saga

Like any other self-respecting university students, we have great difficulty getting up in the morning, and have come to rely very heavily upon our alarm clocks. The problem is- and I'm sure this won't fall upon deaf ears- is that when you start to become familiar with your alarm clock's bleat, you become desensitised to the brain-shatteringly deafening sense of sheer panic that accompanies it, and eventually become quite comfortable in hearing the alarm clock, shooting your hand out like some kind of predator to shut it off, and curling back to sleep in the snugness that is your blanket.

As we all know, completing your degree is a common precursor to employment, and in order to complete your degree, you must attend classes. You may underestimate the importance of this next link in the chain of life, but in a world where classes begin at 8am sharp, and your usual hours of dormancy begin somewhere in the vicinity of midnight or 1am, the alarm clock becomes an invaluable tool in ensuring that you go to class, and therefore complete your degree and get a job- which allows you to earn money, which leads to food (also something that university students prize higher than gold) and the promise of a better life.

So then, the task to which we have assigned unequivocal importance is that of finding an alarm clock that emits such an awful, ear-splitting, gripping sound that you have no choice but to wake up and drag your sorry arse into the shower to begin another day immersed in the pursuit of knowledge. Or booze. Or both, simultaneously, as is usually the case.

And here's the thing: we did it. Or, rather, I did it, with a nifty little $9.95 purchase from Ikea: a black circular alarm clock fashioned in the traditional two-bell-and-clanger format that not only shrills like a banshee, but also shudders its way across your bedside table so that you have to chase it with your predator-arm, usually with the ultimate upshot of knocking the thing onto the floor, where it continues to be vociferous.

Of course, with such a purchase- and the unspoken but universal rules of housemateship - mi casa es K's casa tambiƩn; the alarm clock is shared. Now, for three months, this hasn't been so much of an issue- we've simply worked it into our routine that every evening preceding an early morning class, you embark upon a minor retrieval operation to collect the clock from across the landing. But - and there is always a but, isn't there? - of course there are days when we are both in need of the alarm clock, and then what began as a minor search-and-rescue becomes a battle strategy of amazing proportions, in which rainbow-coloured socks are launched, cats go flying and full-scale skeletons become barricades for doors.

Needless to say that we reached a point eventually, with Dr Bob the Skellygog's bony hand around K's neck and the cat clinging to my face, that this had to stop. We needed to get a second alarm clock. You can therefore imagine my delight when one evening towards the end of semester I arrive home to discover that K has bought a classy white number in a similar style to the original Bringer of Noise, but which has that French sort of je-ne-sais-quoi chicness to it with fits in very nicely with her bedroom decor. I go to sleep that night safe in the knowledge that I will be awoken at an appropriate time the next morning to hightail it back to Brisbane to enjoy an afternoon transmission from the National Theatre in London of 'Frankenstien' at the Dendy Portside.

Well. I was awoken, but by a cat-to-the-face (also an excellent method of rousing yourself from slumber, although one that is a considerable deal harder to program) and not by my alarm clock. Furthermore, I discover that, unless I had been labouring under the delusion that alarm clocks do not have that rare ability to sprout legs and perform hearty jigs from one room to another, my trusty timepiece has been taken.

I decide it is merely a result of habit; and brush it off- after all, a morning study session is of slightly more import than a frivolous date with le theatre...

... But then four weeks later, when I get back from holiday, and announce my triumphant return, my alarm clock is still. not. in. my. room. It is, in fact, in K's room sitting next to her own, very frenchy, very chic alarm clock, which has no battery in it.

Exasperation does not even begin to cover it.


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