Scariest woman alive...

My friend just sent me this video of a very, very scary woman, who he said will be me in 20 years. I think it'll be more like 10 years if I keep working late nights. Someone's lost a mum/gran/sister/aunt to this mess of a human being though. Very sad.

Running away from boys...

Having had a rather hectic day in the office, running around and rushing out late, I rocked up to the bar in which I’d arranged to meet my Internet date, slightly out of breath, with my strapless dress hanging marginally below my bra (as usual). He didn’t stand up. He clearly saw me come in, but for some reason, pretended he hadn’t. THE CHEEK! Had he been hot, I would have been pretty upset at this. I would have thought something like “F*** am I REALLY that gross? I mean I know I’m a sweaty wreck and my underwear was just on display in public, but am I honestly so bad that he’s pretending he’s not my date, right in my line of vision?”

However, because he was slightly ugly… well, not ugly, but definitely odd looking, I just adjusted my dress and thought “How annoying, I can’t believe I rushed here.”

He cocked his head like a confused Labrador and grinned only as I plonked myself down next to him. He revealed two wonky teeth set in his gums at a very disturbing angle. I tried not to reel back in my seat as I performed a quick analysis. Up close he looked like a middle-aged, Kendal mint-cake eating lesbian woman crossed with an inebriated Cheshire cat – absolutely nothing like the slightly grainy, black and white profile picture he’d posted online, in which he was poised with a cello, making him look arty, sophisticated and deep (so I thought). Ok so my own picture wasn’t exactly me as I look having run three blocks in a dress that’s too big for me, but still. I felt a little deceived as he bore his beady eyes into my face and wrapped his fingers round his beer like an evil old man about to ask a very naughty question to an innocent child (ahem).

I waited for him to offer me a drink, as his glass was almost empty and I was clearly in need of one. His eyes never left my face, or chest, as he started talking about himself. He’d had a flood in his office two days before we met. Uh oh. It was pretty bad and he’d been forced to mop. Apparently... wait for it... the office hadn’t been designed with flooding in mind and it had also been built with certain materials that I’d never heard of before. I tried to sound intrigued. Big mistake. “Oh really? You’ve never heard of that material before?” he replied incredulously. “Oh well… it’s a very versatile form of blah blah...." EffingHELLblahBLAH whatever-where's my drink?!?!

I called the barman over and ordered my own drink, at which point he stopped talking and hurriedly ordered another one for himself… and then proceeded to talk about his time living in Japan. Apparently all the girls were dying for a western boyfriend over there and he was swamped with offers. There were too many numbers in his phone to call… so he says. I asked if he knew any Japanese. Even bigger mistake. He knew ten popular phrases, and he was damn well gonna list them for me, one to ten, with in-depth explanations for each one. Jaaaysus!

Now, maybe I’m a bitch but in the first five seconds of meeting someone, who clearly needs a drink and perhaps some form of greeting, (in no particular order), at what point does it even cross your mind to talk about materials prone to help in the prevention of flooding? And Japan?? I’m all about a decent conversation covering randomness… I recently spent about an hour discussing the attributes of cockroaches with a guy who used to live in Costa Rica, but this was just a little too much.

It got worse. I ordered another drink. He never asked me anything about me… my absolute favourite topic, obviously. He just talked and talked and talked me into a bored stupor until I sent “the text” quite sneakily under the table. “The text”, of course, is the one all girls send to their best mate when they’re on a first date – a progress report if you will. Mine read: “I’m running away. Put the kettle on.” I looked up to find the Cheshire cat staring at me intently once more and before I knew what was happening, his hand was reaching for my face, and he was stroking it. This time I DID reel backwards, asked him what the FCUK he was doing, to which he just grinned that gummy grin again. Uuurrgh.

I stood up, told him I had to go and he followed me outside, at which point he grabbed me again and tried to kiss me. I pushed him off, seeing his freakish mouth bearing down on mine in slow motion, imagining an actual repulsive, gob to gob encounter and wanting to puke. “Um… that’s not going to happen,” I said quickly, before turning round and running away. Yes, I actually RAN down Crown Street, all the way back to my house. I’m 30 years old, and I’m running away from boys.

When I got back, he’d sent me a text. It said: “I just wanted to confirm. When you said ‘that’s not going to happen’, did you mean just then, or never?”

Something tells me he should probably go back to Japan. And I should go back to Oasis Active… or perhaps not follow the crowds online anymore. There must be someone decent left in the real world... somewhere? Hello???

A is for Alphabetised CDs...

The date I had last night was an hour and a half of my life I will never get back. What an absolute douche. Seriously. I’m getting a bit sick of online dating in Sydney if I’m honest. When I first activated my profile, I thought the free site ‘Oasis Active’ was a gateway to all sorts of exciting adventures, a wonderland if you will, full of interesting men all dying to wine me, dine me and,… well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I couldn’t wait to get going… was practically chomping at the bit to have my pick of the crop, but what I’ve plucked from cyberspace so far can only be described as fucking awful. Maybe it’s me? No, SURELY not? Is it me?

Well, maybe a bit of it’s me. I do tend to scrutinise every man who sits before me like a mad professor prodding at a beetle under a microscope. Sometimes, the guy won’t have even made it through the door and to my side before I’ve dismissed him for having shit hair or bad shoes. A little voice in my head shouts “NEXT” before he’s even bought me a drink and therein lies my problem. I’m too picky. I’ve been spoilt.

Sometimes I think I might have just dated way too many men from the Internet in the past, and now a little part of my brain sparks up in their actual presence and categorises them without me even asking it to, like a computer: Too short. Too fat. Older than he said he was. Libra. Taurus. Won’t sing karaoke with you. Warning Warning. Warning. Delete!

There’s too much choice for single people, these days, isn’t there? I mean, why linger on something or someone who’s not absolutely everything you desire, when chances are, everything you desire is right around the next corner? And hey, if the next awesome boyfriend’s not around the next corner, he might be around the one after that? Or the one after that. But if you don’t keep turning those bloody corners, you’ll never know.

Back to last night. To be honest, before we met up, I just wanted to cancel. We’d spoken on the phone quite late the night before and he’d sounded a bit dull, but determined to silence that irritating voice in my head, which at the time was screaming: “He’s probably wearing stripy pyjamas and sipping hot chocolate, surrounded by his alphabetised CD collection – DELETE HIM!!”, I agreed to meet him anyway. Even better, he said he really didn’t mind whizzing by my workplace once I’d finished for a quiet glass of wine round the corner, which meant I didn’t have to go to any effort at all to give him the chance he rightfully deserved. Perfect.

I finished work late… another night of filming and uploading a video of the presenters at the radio station performing a stupid task (last night it was snorting Whiz Fizz – how delightful) but I still managed to arrive before he did. I had a bit of a flirty exchange with the cute barman in the pub, who knocked 50 cents off my glass of Merlot, and settled myself into a chair. I was texting Stacey when he turned up. Part of me wanted to run away. As he stood grinning like a full moon in front of me, the first thing that went through my head was: “Karaoke man”. He looked exactly like the kind of guy who might run a mobile karaoke business. Usually I love people like this – they’ve given me HOURS of pleasure – but not because I’ve dated them.

I realised I should probably get up and do the obligatory peck on the cheek thing, so I did, and it was then that I clocked the mass of wrinkles round his eyes and mouth. His profile said he was 34. He looked about 50. Holy shiz!!!

In all my years of online dating I have never, ever actually met someone who’s lied about their age on their profile. I mean, you hear about it happening all the time… maybe I’ve always been lucky in that respect, but this guy had clearly not only told one huuuge fat porker of a lie about his age, but he’d also uploaded a photo that didn’t look anything like him. The guy in the photo had been 20 years younger, tall, slim and very, very smooth.

Just when I was thinking it really couldn’t get much worse, I was struck by the fact that his head was massive and he actually had a pot belly. He looked like a helium balloon wrapped in a black and silver cowboy shirt. Ugh. Everything about him was ugh. No wonder my freak-radar had picked up the image of his middle-aged pyjama wearing lifestyle. I will never doubt that little voice again.

When he came back with another glass of wine, he sat down and grinned at me again, eyed my crossed legs in my new pink skirt and said absolutely nothing. I thought I’d initiate a conversation, which went something like this:
“So, how old are you?”
“I stopped counting at 36”
“So you’re older than 36?”
(more grinning)
“But your profile said you were 34”
“No it didn’t!”
“Yes, it did, because I don’t go out with guys who are older than 34”
“No, you must have read it wrong”
“I’m sure I didn’t. Anyway, how old are you really?”
“I told you, I stopped counting at 36”
“That’s nice, but mother nature didn’t. So how old are you really?”
“You’re not going to leave it, are you?”
“Well, I kind of want to know the person I’ve agreed to go out with isn’t lying about his age… I think that’s kind of creepy.”
“I stopped counting at 36”

At this point the voice in my head was screaming so loudly I thought I was going to pull my hair out, but I did a pretty good job of finishing my wine, listening to him talk about how much he loves to travel and how much he loves working from home (probably wearing pyjamas) without acting like a bitch. When we were done, he offered to drive me home. This would have been a nice gesture if he hadn’t shown up quite tipsy after being at a dinner with friends (or another bad date, probably) and then proceeded to drink even more. Again… ugh.

I walked outside with him, told him I’d be fine in a cab, at which point he stopped outside a silver hybrid sports car that looked like a fucking space pod and asked “Are you sure?” with another infuriating grin. He was clearly waiting for my jaw to drop open at the greatness of his awesome, zillion dollar vehicle, but I decided I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction, so I acted like I hadn’t noticed. He got out his keys, waved them about a bit, obviously disappointed he wouldn’t get to demonstrate a drunken wheelspin at the next set of lights and waiting for me to change my mind. He asked: “How much is a taxi home gonna cost you?”

“I’ll stop counting at 36” I replied, before walking off into the night. Tosser.

Waiting on armpits...

It's been a while since I've blogged - I started one last summer but only lasted a few posts because I happened to choose the most complicated fucking blog host in the entire world, so I'm coming back to blogspot, who served as a trusy companion for a few years before I switched to livejournal, after which Dubai banned me altogether from the blogosphere! Swines! Maybe I can fish my old blogs from wherever they're lurking in cyberspace at some point. It would be such a shame to lose all those words - I spent hours slacking off in my day jobs, writing those. Hmmm...

Anyway... since I left Dubai, things in my world have been slightly more normal. Well, if you count staying late at night to wait for radio presenters to lick each other's armpits as normal. This is what I'm doing right now. I am waiting to film one undetermined person lick another undetermined person's armpit, with a camera. And then I will do my very best to upload said footage to a website, because it will make people laugh (probably) and because this is the kind of thing that's now paying my rent in Sydney. Sometimes I think this place is upside down in a lot more ways than one.

Normal is a word I don't really know the meaning of anymore, if I'm honest. I actually thought something like this would be a normal job, back when I was in Dubai... back when I couldn't even write the word "wine" without fearing the wrath of an angry Arab, or my ex boss accusing me of corrupting an entire city with one little restaurant review. The idea of a normal job is somewhat skewed in my mind at this point but I'm taking this experience for what it is and hoping I don't barf when I have to zoom in on a sweaty armpit.