i LOVE! this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7X7sZzSXYs

Stolen Conversations....

4.30pm

At work.

Watching the clock.

Phone Rings.

I pick up.


Me: Hello
Caller: Is that Colin speaking?
Me: Yes
Caller: Is that Colin Modern?
Me: Aha
Caller: It's Carmen Jones
Me: Carmen who?
Caller: You know who I am
Me: Do I?
Caller: Yes you do.
Me: How?
Caller: You wrote to me this time last year regarding the Afrika Central Bank
Me: Oh yes I do remember you. You gave the $200K to the African you met in a bar.
Caller: Yes that's me.
Me: Am gathering you haven't found him.
Caller: No I haven't. I have your letter.
Me: That's nice
Caller: It's not very nice.
Me: How so?
Caller: You should be investigating this matter.
Me: As I explained to you when I met with you, your complaint is a matter of Fraud and as such you should report it to the police.
Caller: You did not meet with me
Me: Yes I did; with my colleague Sharon.
Caller: Are the young man who met with me?
Me: Stop it ya big flirt.

C

Old Friends

Old friend: Oh my god....I thought you were dead!
Me: I thought I was too.
Old Friend: Get out. How the fuck are you?
Me: Ya ya.....am good. Back living with the folks at the Thoroughly Modern Compound
Old Friend: How are u coping with Brisbane?
Me: Strangely: Am loving it. London wasn't for me and I don't think I want to go back to Sydney.
Old Friend: What are u doing this weekend?
Me: I can't. I am absolutely flatstrapped. Am doing post grad in Creative Writing at the moment....my mid life crisis.... and I have five thousand things due on Monday; maybe next Friday night?
Old Friend: Oh my god where are u doing that?
Me: QUT
Old Friend: Stuart Jones
Me: Yes....he's one of my tutors.
Old Friend: That's the Stuart I used to talk to you about
Me: Are you serious? That Stuart?
Old Friend: Yes
Me: Oh gosh now I remember.
Old Friend: You did meet him once.
Me: I wondered where I knew him from
Old Friend: I think I took him to your 30th.
Me: He wore a leather overcoat in November.
Old Friend: Yup that's him
Me: How could I forget?
Old Friend: Don't mention my name.
Me: Really?
Old Friend: He kept calling my mother for ages asking for my number.
Me: Well you did kind of end it abruptly.
Old Friend: I met that engineer
Me: He was hot.
Old Friend: I know
Me: What happened to him?
Old Friend: I turned 40.

C

A Very Armagedon Xmas‏

Hello everyone...unfortunately I have been laptopless this last month as my old faithful blew up a week before xmas. And because I am a hopeless shopper, I cannot make up my mind as to which laptop to purchase. So I haven't been writing much...which is driving me nuts. Find below my xmas email to friends all over the place. Am currently sitting in the coldest internet cafe in Britain attempting to type with my iceblock fingers. Never again am I doing winter in the UK! NEVA!


.......Seasons Greetings from the land of transport chaos. Yes one flake of snow and this whole nation falls apart. Airports are turned into refugee camps, train stations into soup kitchens and roads into spaghetti. It's Armageddon The Musical!!!!! Come and bring a bucket of panic!!!!

Ok there has been slightly more than one flake of snow but everyone seems to react with an absolute aghast that this may happen.....that it may snow .....like lots...in this country! As if it has never happened before. The mother country is certainly one hell of an old woman. Ques for instance. This country invented the que when the ration was invented in World War 1 and they literally have not looked back since; never. They will que for anything without protest....for hours. Never question; never investigate; simply stand there turn on their facial screensavers and wait. The number of ques I have seen with people waiting for either something that is broken down or not even in existance is quite harrowing. Any wonder they lost the Empire, they were too busy queing.

Enuff moaning........ update as to life of mwa.

Well I arrived on the 14th of September.

For the first 7 weeks, I stayed with my friend Matt in the town of Reading which is about an hour's north of London. Reading is kinder like the Blue Mountains minus the Mountains and the Blue. A town of quaint cottages, third rate universities and pregnant 13 year olds. Matt's place was right on the river and had a terraced garden leading down to it. Twas lovely although as much as it was Jane Austen out the back, it was more like Trainspotting in the front. There was a pub on the corner formerly run by the IRA and now run as a drug front by the local Nigerian Mafia. Navigating one's way to the train station was often spent negotiating with wired bogans (or chavs as they like to call them here) or Nigerian godfathers dressed like Liberace. Needless to say I spent alot of time in the terraced garden or in London.

The first couple of months was spent doing countless interviews with recruitment officers who promise you everything from sets of steak knives to walking on water and then never call you again. In London they all speak so quickly and jump and down so much, you begin to think you're being interviewed by a human breed of chiwawa. To cope with that, I spent most of my time in one of the five thousand pubs in London and then a few more thousand in Berlin and Paris. I also managed to sit four interviews with the FSA (equivalent of my work in Oz); they managed to reject me four times as well which was awfully generous of them; every time I came into an interview I felt like that nerd who continually comes back to Australian or American Idol and re-auditions and re-auditions and they eventually get him to release a single to make him go away; so am hoping the FSA will offer me a recording contract soon.

Since November I have been working at Camden Borough Council as a lawyer in their child protection team; not ideally what I wanted to do but for the time being, it's a job and it allows me to continue to look around for something better. I always said after my time at DOCS, that I would never do child protection again and I now remember why....I used to always think it was because of the subject matter but it's actually dealing with the nutty social workers which drive you to the edge. Having said that, the group of lawyers I work with are very nice; out of ten lawyers, I'm the only male lawyer....so not much different to MBR!

I am living a ten minute walk away from work having become the Demi Moore of flatmates moving in with a 23 yr old guy in Kings Cross...... mind you I still can't get into work before 9.30. I had my first sitting at my desk "oh my it's snowing" experience last week. Snow is only good for one thing.....sitting in ur office looking at it; nothing else. Suddenly roads turn to slush, footpaths turn into surprise skating rinks and ur boots turn into clogs. Not a great look. And it has a tendancy to shut down airports which can be a bit of a pain when you have booked a weekend escape to Barcelona and can't leave because the airport is iced over. Was not happy last Friday Jan! Still London does xmas really well with Oxford and Regent streets amassed with Xmas lights and decorations. Strangely having grown up with summer xmas's, it seems a bit strange not to be sweating this time of year and looking forward to that storm coming over the horizon.

I was in Berlin the weekend before last and it was seriously "call the f'ing police' cold. -8 with -20 wind chill factor and all these crazy Berlinas out at the xmas markets drinking mald wine and eating their bratwursts. At one stage I thought it was hailing, then I realised it was snow and consequently ordered more bratwurts to put in my shoes to revive my blackened frost bitten tootsies. Berlinas are such lovely people.....almost too lovely.....anywhere we went someone would always talk to us ....it was almost like they were constantly trying to say "Hey...we're not Hitler!...Have a drink!". Which I guess is understandable.

We went to the world's best nightclub called Berghanhauff (am actually making that name up...I can't remember the name...it was huge) located in an abandoned factory in East Berlin. It was so underground, I thought perhaps we were being put in jail. We qued for two hours (yes Berlinas que as well) to get in and the door bitches were trully terrifying throwing people out who didn't have "the look". I wasn't quite sure what "the" look was as it varied from mad max to Julie Andrews on crack. Considering my friend and i were dressed as two yetties wearing our wearing parker dounas, I was concerned we would be cast out into the anti Berhanhauff abyss. But thankfully we were not. We must have been two hot looking yetties. And i must say what an amzing club. 7 different levels; arena after arena with varying music and electic group of people. It was fantastic. Not to mention am crossing the dancefloor and bump into two people from Brisbance. You can take the guy out of Brisbane.....

Anyway peeps, I've babbled enough. Am off to Switzerland for xmas and then driving to the Black Forest....fingers crossed....it's not snowed in so we can fly. Miss you all more than bricks. Have a merry xmas and a super new years. Please keep in touch.

Much Love

Jbxx

PS: laptop blew up on the weekend. have crazy indian dude try to perform some sort of mircale on fried mother board.....I've got to remember not keep the laptop on the bed under a quilt....it kinder stuff things. So am facebookless for the forseeable future. I may die.

Note to Self.....

Don't sleep with the heater at full belt.... I am so groggy today. I feel like a half baked potato....make that a mash potato.

I cannot wait for the weekend and want it to be here now. It's the first of my three minibreaks this month. My friend A and I are going to Berlin this weekend, then I'm off to Barcelona the weekend after and then it is four days in the Black Forest over Xmas.

I really haven't done much travel since I arrived in September except going to Paris a couple of times. The first two months here was spent looking for a job, marrying a bottle of scotch and having a nervous breakdown. I think I underestimated how full on it is moving to another country. And there is the misconception between english speaking cultures that a move between one of these countries won't be that hard because there is no language barrier. Yes we all do speak English but it's a completely different language once you get there.

The first two months, I stayed with an old best friend of mine M; he and I lived together in Sydney many years ago when he was in Australia on a working holiday visa. We've remained close ever since. If it hadn't been for him, I think I would have been back in Australia by now. He offered his spare room rent free until I found a job which was very generous of him. Yes he did live in Reading (west of London) which is kind of like Woollongong without the beach but with the same ratio of pregnant teenagers and bogans ....or chavs as they call them over here. Oscar Wilde was jailed in Reading; Kate Winslet is from Reading and there is the Reading Festival and the television series Beautiful People which is shot in Reading. I kept reminding myself of these highlights every time I commenced the two hour late train journey home from a boozey night out in Soho and for the first two months of unemployment and a smithereened heart, that was nearly every night. Not to mention that an off peak return train fare was £20; peak is £34......it is cheaper flying to Madrid.

All that aside, it was lovely to stay with M. His houses backs on to the River at Reading with a lovely terraced garden. Catching the dying days of Summer sipping cheap aussie wines (there are more here than are in Oz) was a nice distraction to the turmoil in all directions that I was experiencing. It's nice now though to be right in the middle of it all in Kings Cross. The flat is the first place I looked at; it was renovated and clean and had a dish washer, dryer/washer and a fan forced oven which seems to be a rare combination in London town. And my flattie seems relatively sane albeit 12 years my junior. The best part is that I'm a ten minute walk from work, twenty minutes from Soho and West End and 25 minute walk to the cool stuff of Shoreditch and Brick Lane. Life is harder here than in Oz; I've basically gone back to living like my university days; no car; walking everywhere and buying homebrand! Not to mention I haven't flatshared with a stranger in nearly 15 years. But then again I didn't move here for it to be like home!

FAUXBOOK

Brilliant article on friendships in the 21st Century: hit the FAUXBOOK title to link to the article. Poor yaself a cup of heroine before you read.....

C

More Issues Than French Vogue

So have been a slacker again.

To be honest, I read my last post a couple of days after I wrote it and was totally embarassed. Why I choose my return to blogworld following a bottle of wine and a heart that has had an argument with a few kitchen appliances is beyond me. But once I hit that publish button, the deal was done and since then I haven't been able to work out how I wanted to follow the last post. So found myself in eternal writer's "how do I write the next part?" limbo. And the fact of the matter is I don't want to go into it in depth. In short, we didn't work out. It's been shit but I'm feeling better. Generally we both had issues but I concede I had a lot more than him. It was the wrong time for me; too much change happening in my life and too much upheaval on all fronts to let us run smoothly. He's the first person I've ever fallen for completely and trully which is actually a great thing because before him, I really did think I was autistic! Sadly it was just the wrong time for me. Sometimes when things you've longed for eons finally arrive, you actually doubt their reality. And that was me. I couldn't believe he was for real. I was determined to make him my too good to be true....and in the end I succeeded. C'est la vie.

So yah that's it. There's been lots of walks and wonderings through London, Paris......Reading.. these last few months; all wonderfully melodramatic. And every pop song from good to woeful suddenly takes on shakespearean importance once the heartbreak kicks in. Matchbox 20 are poets; Roxette were geniuses and Kylie was on to something in preferring the devil she knew. Ms Lennox.....Love is a stranger in an open car....and don't let me get started on anything written by Everything But the Girl. And then there's Mr Ben Harper.....ah....my therapist these past few months.

But enuff.....no more talk of this.

So now I find myself living proper in London: Kings Cross to be precise. Am working as a government lawyer; my flat is a ten minute walk from work and I am sharing with a 23 yr old university graduate. Yes I've become the Demi Moore of flatmates. Although I think I'm more Mrs Robinson......she at least drank, chain smoked and had a facial expression.

I'm still majorly finding my way here. I am firmly back to square one. It's scarey but I'm excited. As Yazz once wailed.....The only way is up!

C