Letters To Australia

Ok, so

My last day of work was fun. James took Dev aside who passed on the message to Corynne and I that even though it was my last day, we were not to slack. Then – and I might have been imagining this but I’m fairly sure I wasn’t – James went out of his way to make sure I had more work to do than was humanly possible, and no chance to slack. I didn’t start facing until after 8.

But whatever, I still had fun because I chilled with everyone before and after my shift.

For weeks and weeks Dave and Chad have been inviting me out drinking with the choices crew and for weeks and weeks I’ve been saying no becase a) they go drinking at the Two Parrots, where Rosie works and where I therefore never want to go and b) I’m boring when I drink, I usually just tell everybody to fuck off and I take a nap.

So instead of drinking we did a Choices crew breakfast at the Templeton, which is this fabulous fifties style diner with some seriously good food.

I showed up early because I thought it was a longer walk than it actually turned out to be, then Corynne and Dev showed up and while we were sitting there discussing Dave, a bleary eyed, unshaven drunk stumbled up to a ‘Sidewalk Closed’ sign accross the street, stood there for a good thirty seconds looking confused, then stumbled over to the diner. It wasn’ta drunk, it was Dave! Who had literally just gotten out of bed and apparently forgotten to wake up first.

Talking amongst ourselves we decided Wes probably wouldn’t come, Chad would bail because he was sick, and Rebecca had probably just forgotten, so we ordered and started eating.

Halfway through my pancakes Rebecca showed up and there was no room so she sat on a bar stool kind of near the table and it was kind of awkward, but funny so it doesn’t matter.

We were done with breakfast with like two and a half hours to spare before we had to work, so we walked across the bridge (don’t ask me which one) to Granville island where Rebecca bought a very trippy poster, Corynne spent several years talking to a woman in a store about tarot cards and I bought lots of postcards and two little silver charms. Dev just kind of walked around going ‘This is awesome! ‘  like he usually does.

Rebecca worked earlier than the rest of us so she left early and we hung around for awhile, looking at cedar sculptures and things then caught a bus back and worked for eight and a half hours.

When the shift ended I broke out my camera and so I have a lot of footage of Dev, James and Rebecca doing their best Steve Irwin impresonations, only Dev is HORRIBLE at impersonations, James was doing Crocodile Dundee and Rebecca didn’t really seem to know who either of them were. I also have some nice footage of Dev dancing. The guy is not self concious at all, I love it.

I meant to get a video of him giving me the thumbs up and saying ‘Tae, nice work!’ because that’s what I see him doing when I think of him, but I forgot.

Then we all went home the end.

I seem to have managed to lose my USB card reader thing, so youse all will have to wait until I get back to MO to see the video’s and pictures.

Today is my last day in the city. I’m supposed to catch up with Josef and Blair at some point, I also have to go to London Drugs and BMO and I have to call choices and I have to figure out tax stuff and I have to figure out health insurance stuff and I have to… I have a lot to do and I only have until like six to do it because Lynda is throwing me a going away get together with her crew at Bixie’s Bar, which is in her lounge room.

She’s designing me a customised drink which I will probably not like because I am yet to discover an alcohol that I DO like, but I’m ridiculously excited anyway. My OWN drink! I wonder what it will be called.

Well, it’s 12:32 now and my stomach is so hugry it’s sizing up my lungs, so I’ll leave this here and go get oraganised I guess. I fly out tomorrow, and I need to shower and pack all my shit up AND accomplish everything else on my list before then.

OK, sorry, but before I write anything remotely relevant I just have to share with you the gayest picture I have ever seen:

That’s Sara Quin, Tegan Quin, Amanda Palmer and some other queer I don’t know but apparently should.

I’d  be surprised if any of you straight ladies out there reading this are still straight. I mean seriously, look at that photo! I am!

So anyway, tomorrow is my last day at work and shortly after that I’m getting the hell out of dodge Vancouver.

Vancouver has not been at all what I thought it would be. I had a great time, don’t get me wrong, and I regret nothing – save my innability to get the girl I’ve been chasing – but it’s time to go.

I fly out saturday, but before then I’m having a Choices breakfast with the grocery crew and some others, I’m going shopping with the Blair Man (though I suppose he’ll do most of the shopping while I count pennies),  spending a night at Bixies Bar where Lynda has promised to create a sugary drink in my honour, and I’m going to eat my WEIGHT in poutine and Tim Hortons doughnuts.

Should be good.

Today was beautiful an sunny. I meant to bike around Stanley Park, because it was the first day in forever that it wasn’t crappy and raining, but I’m not organised enough to do things ever.

Some construction in Yaletown, on my way to work.

Leaves in the park by work.

Oh look, I am Josef!

Josef managed to show up for work two hours early, so we got POUTINE!

With vegetarian gravy!

This thing drove past us. I have NO idea what it was about, but it didn’t even look big enough to fit a person in it.

At work, fooling around before Josef started his shift and I left for the buffy marathon with Lynda (buffy!!!), we decided to go downstairs. Then Dev showed up with the cardboard recycling bin and there was only one thing for it: we got in.

Dev! I don’t think he has been featured on my humble blog before, but this is him. Pushing us around, singing theme music. I think today’s theme music was Star Wars.

Josef Vs. Deven!!!!!

Happy endings: All of us in the bin.

How I woke up the other day. A parade of soldiers past my dorm room window, there were japanese soldiers, scotsmen, navy guys, some other kinds I didn’t recognise, and my favourite – MOUNTIES!

Room 215. My junk, Miete’s junk, Kierstie’s junk. we are slobs.

My bed is the top bunk on the right.

Some bad photography of a pretty tree last night near Langara College

Josef and myself waiting for the skytrain

The J man, jus chillin on the skytrain

The fourteen year old boy, jus chillin on the skytrain

Remio? Romio? Something. Josef likes graffiti and this inexplicably impressed him. He insisted on a photograph.

Josef and the Caramel Asshole. The boy’s got class, what can I say?

This is at the Tim Hortons near my hostel. TIM HORTONS!

fuck hostels. no really. fuck them.

1. The Fridge: I’ve been at this hostel on and off for over a month, and not once has the teeny tiny fridge been cleaned. It’s packed so full of bags of stuff that rarely can you close it properly, and opening it is a fun game because you get to play ‘Catch the milk before it falls and splashes all over you’ and then ‘Fin your bag of food’ because it will invariably have been removed and crammed into a spot different to the one you crammed it into last.

2. Four plates, two bowls, one sharp knife, one dirty chopping board, LOTS of butter knives, two spoons, no cups… four hundred hostellers.

3. Showers that run cold enough to make me press up against the perverts dream glass shower door, and hot enough to make me open it and jump out – I prefer HAVING skin, thank you very much

4. The little sign they put up at 12 today, saying the water would be shut off at 1 and sorry for the inconvenience.

5. The sign taped to the back of the door in my teeny tiny room that says ‘Please lock your valuables in the lockers provided.’

6. The fact that my teeny tiny room has no lockers.

7. BED BUGS

I am not kidding. Mighty, the girl below me, is COVERED in a giant red rash, so the three of us have been relocated (this morning) to a room so small that when I’m lying in bed and Kirstie is lying in bed I can, if I for some reason desire, reach over and touch her without stretching. The DOOR doesn’t open all the way because the BED is in the way. The lock jams. The window doesn’t open and the heating is automatic.

I woke up this morning to some guy who didn’t speak much english walking in – to my female dorm, where female me was sleeping – and searching for bed bugs. Then Mighty and Kirstie came back with garbage bags and we have to wash EVERYTHING we own to get rid of the bugs. Only we couldn’t do it today because we were all busy so all the bed buggy clothes are in the new, un bed buggy room. Which makes me think that that room will soon be bed buggy so what’s the point?

Also it’s on the first floor, right above the very very loud bar (today is saturday, too), and right next to the FUCKING common room where people are always yelling and the big, silver, brand new tv is always on. Loud.

8. The big, silver, brand new tv – BECAUSE A BIG FUCKING TV WE DIDN’T NEED IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN SAY, EATING UTENSILS AND A DECENT FRIDGE

fuckers

9. The Cockroaches.

10. The Mouse. We refer to the mouse as if there is only one, I think because it makes us feel better. He is very cute, I will say, but also smelly and dirty and there are at the very least six of him.

Walking to the library just now (on the sidewalk, which is for people who are walking), some fucker ran me down on his bike. He came up behind me, rode straight over my heel, stopped to avoid smashing the both of us into a wall – though I doubt he was concerned for my safety - and yelled ‘FUCKING BITCH!’ at me for getting in his clearly inebriated way.

I was halfway through springing off my back foot to push the fucker off his damn bicycle before I realised that that was actually a very bad idea.

For one thing, I am not the kind of person who pushes other people off of bicycles, full stop. It doesn’t matter what kind of obnoxious asshole they are. For anothing thing, he was angry and yelling sure, but he wasn’t about to attack me so there was no sense in attacking him first. Fights are to be avoided, especially halfway around the world.

I turned around and walked to the other library entrance and he rode straight off the curb into the middle of traffic, yelling at the cars. By the time I got into the library he was there too. He’d ridden his bike in through the automatic doors, and was sitting on it in the middle of the lobby smoking a joint and yelling at people.

When I encounter people like him I try to remember that he probably came from a seriously shitty environment, he’s probably a drug addict as a result of that environment and he probably has some serious mental problems as a result of the environment and drug addiction. He needs help, not hate. But assholes like that… I get so angry at people who take out their problems on others, who make trouble for other people, who are so selfish and so self involved that they just have no consideration for anyone but themselves. Who run people down on bicycles…

Angry.

Another thing that makes me angry is theft. Why is it that people think it’s such a victimless crime? This keeps coming up.

Stealing products from your workplace: wrong. Stealing music using a stolen credit card: wrong. Stealing clothes from an op shop: wrong. Stealing money you see someone drop: wrong.

It would never occur to me to do any of those things, and I’m shocked when people do them. But what shocks me more is that they’re shocked when I’m not impressed and don’t think their crimes are funny and rewarding.

Again it makes me consider whether or not I should be judgemental. I know these people, in all other aspects of their lives they are good people and they have certainly been good to me, but theft is just wrong.

And where does that disconnect come from? The disconnect between themselves and the rest of the world that allows them to do it. I can see how someone might think stealing from a shop is not such a big deal – after all, no one particular person is going to have to deal with it, pay for it, or get fired over it. But why do they think that they are so important, worth so much that they are entitled to take what they want without having to work for it? Like the world is their own personal playground. 

And how do they justify stealing from a specific person. Why should they be allowed to take what that person has worked for, and how do they do it without feeling remorse? 

They would never steal from me, I know that, because they would never want to disadvantage me or cause me pain. But because they don’t know the person they are ripping off, it doesn’t seem to matter to them.

You could draw a parallel between this and eating meat (perhaps I am ranting here, but bear with me). I don’t know anyone who could abuse or kill an animal, but almost everybody I know is happy to eat animals that have been abused and killed for them.

They can’t cause suffering, but are happy to reap the benifits.

People need to think about their actions and the impacts they have on the world around them. Nothing is free, even if it seems like it is.

Getting ready for work

It’s all in the details

The view from the Blair Man’s apartment

Mr. Hat [NIN] says:

       why don’t you get more aggressive?

Motherfucker don’t step on my spectacles says:

       because i’m so passive!

On halloween I met a boy named Diego who was dressed as a bondage swan.

Last night I woke up, sat bolt upright and thought to myself ‘OH MY GOD I HAVE NOT DONE (blank) YET!!!!!’

But now I can’t remember what it is that I haven’t done.

In a day or two I will be homeless againt. A vagrant. A vagabond… My stay at Blair’s has been wonderful and fun, full of clean showers, cockroachless kitchens and good company, but it’s coming to an end. I suppose I will move into another hostel now. I’m greatful for having been allowed to occupy his couch for so long.

Chad, my fellow australian and coworker, found Tim Tams yesterday. The London Drugs on the corner of Granville and Robson carries them! I was so excited I about died. Tomorrow, I will buy six packets.

Today my nose started bleeding for no apparent reason. Must be all that coke I’m always doing… You know, between wild, drug fueled parties and drunken orgies.

Now I have to go to work.

PIRATES ARE THE BEST

I think we should be allowed to wear costumes to work EVERY day, and EVERY night should be haloween.

Best. Holiday. Ever.

I went out with Rebecca tonight, to some place called Falls, or The Fall.. or something. I don’t know, it was full of electronica, drugs and fabulously dressed people.

Quite predictably I did not drink and I did not do drugs, but totally out of character I had a good time. No moping and leaning against walls for me! No sir.

I wouldn’t say I danced per se, but I definitely stood in front of the speakers, shuffled my feet and rocked my torso around a bit. I noticed that without even thinking about it I made sure I was standing behind everyone I knew so that they couldn’t see me, NO CONFIDENCE when it comes to dancing but that’s because I never do it and also I was sober.

Other highlights of the night include nearly getting whipped in the face by a drunken french maid wielding a whip stolen from catwoman, dancing with a vampire who was all height and curves and teeth, accidentally eye fucking* a thirty something sleazy cowboy character who followed me lecherously around the dancefloor for a good ten minutes, and attacking a demon clad entirely in a leather suit of armor – only his eyes showing and a small slit for a mouth – with my pirate sword.

He grabbed my arm and tried to hit me on the head with his scroll thing he was carrying (a map? a spell? a grocery list?) so we battled and I vanquished him.

Then some other stuff happened and this and that and Diego lost his phone and some guy passed out in the parking lot and some asshole ashed his cigarette on me and melted my pirate stocking to my leg, and all of a sudden everyone was going to Tyler’s house for a party.

Except it was three thirty and I have to work at twelve (until when? nobody knows!) so I walked home. And by home I mean the Blair-man’s couch.

Now it’s 4:34 in the morning, I smell like smoke (fake smoke, tabacco smoke, weed smoke, god knows what else smoke), I’m FUNGRY and I’m wired. I’ll never sleep, not ever.

*I was checking out his costume, seriously, guy must have been desperate for some attention to a) misinterpret that as eye fucking and b) fail to understand when I refused to look at him and strode purposefully to the other side of the room several times. Yuck.