The Awakening of a City

Thanks Monday.

Speaking of Lemon Awards (refer to my last post), I was about as engaged and functional at work as a lemon sitting on a kitchen counter. Thankfully, the day sped by and I was able to work out some frustration at the gym. Having not checked the mail box for a while, I grabbed the contents before heading inside to have a nice salad for dinner. One piece of mail for me, and here is what it was:

I have now been flagged for research by the "Trauma Registry." Well, I guess if my injury stint in the hospital helps better the Australian healthcare system, then it was worth something.

I'm just setting a new trend, that's all.

My Friday started off basically like any other one. The night before, Kelly had slept over after a nice dinner of prawn tacos and wine. I had a mountainous pile of wash to do, so while I sorted and started a load, Kelly was working away making some homemade guacamole. We hadn’t really caught up since our voyage out the Great Ocean Road, so it was nice to swap all the new gossip and near future plans.

I hung that laundry to dry on the clothes line, just like every other load I was (we don’t have the luxury of a dryer). Last Thursday night though was one of those ‘winter is definitely here or just around the corner’ types of nights. Neither one of us could get warm not matter how much we bundled up (we don’t have central heating or air in the apartment – just one small gas furnace in the living room. Handy when you are sitting, watching TV – it at least helps to warm the room up a tad). I tossed and turned that night trying to sleep as well because of the sub-zero temperature of the tip of my nose. So when my alarm rang in my head at 6:45am, I was exhausted, frozen to the bone and not in any mood to drudge myself to work. But because of 3 girls having to share 1 bathroom that morning, I quickly headed to the bathroom to take a shower. Fridays at work are casual dress days, which on mornings like last Friday (another Baltic day), I was happy for the option to wear jeans and my tall boots in an attempt to stay warm.

Checking my jeans from washing them the previous night, I was utterly disappointed to find them still soaking wet, and not even just damp, but literally almost frosted over because of how cold the house got during the night. (There is no way I would leave that gas furnace in the living room to run all night for fear of blowing up the whole apartment complex.) This was probably the only moment since moving here that I was genuinely upset with our lack of dryer (well maybe that and having to use cold, crunchy towels due to the indoor clothes line versus hot fluffy ones straight from the dryer; heated towel racks are a much needed investment I think.) Making a split-second decision (I was in a rush to take my shower and desperately wanted to wear those jeans to work), I blasted on the gas furnace (you have to ignite it with a grill lighter because the ignition switch has long since broken – I mean, this thing is straight from the ‘70’s):

Becoming nice and toasty in a jiffy, I threw my jeans on top, hanging the top bit in front of the front grill, since that was the wettest part of the jeans. Running to the shower, I was washing as quickly as possible, knowing Bec and Kelly still had to have a turn. Mid lather of my long mane, I hear the smoke alarm going off. ‘Strange,’ I thought, ‘Bec must have burned some toast in the toaster.’ (We have an extremely sensitive smoke alarm that cries out even when I have a stir-fry on the cooktop) – so the fact that burnt toast was setting it off did not even phase me. Well, not until I heard, Waaahhhhhhh!!!!AHHHHHHHH!! OHHHHH MY GOOOSHHHH!!!! YOU’RE PANTS ARE ON FIIIIIIIIIIREEEEEE!!!

I have to admit, I’m not even 100% clear on what happened for about the next 90 seconds. All I know is that, for still recouping from the ankle, I have never in my life bolted faster from a bathroom, thankfully grabbing a towel in the process to cover at least my front half. Widely rounding the corner into our living room, I see my jeans, lying in a heap in the middle of the floor and Bec running towards the kitchen. Flinging open the doors to our balcony as quickly as humanly possible, I grabbed the jeans with my only free hand, threw then jeans outside, just in time for Bec to arrive with a huge pitcher of water (I had never even seen the pitcher before – so no clue where it magically appeared from), but thankfully it had appeared, in Bec’s hand, to douse out the smouldering jeans now laying limp and charred on our balcony. After regaining my breath, and fully wrapping myself with my towel, I look over and Kelly, poor, sweet Kelly is perched on the edge of the couch, with the most shocked, sleepy and bewildered face I have ever seen. She was speechless. Now, I can’t be too sure if it was because after she finally was able to speak, she admitted she thought the house alarm was sounding because a stranger had broken in to rob and murder us all, or because she just had to look at my hind side running around the living room for a good minute and a half. Either way, after the shock had worn off, she declared that she would have to stay over more often because we were just so amazingly amusing.

Finally able to return to the shower, I rinsed out the now-drying-shampoo from my hair and jumped out to a wall of swirling smoke still billowing throughout the house. I threw on my only other pair of casual pants and attempted the best I could to open all the windows and doors, turn on the fans and spray some air freshener. My only concern at this point was Bec now hates me because of nearly giving her a heart attack and death scare at 7am on a Friday. I also was worried that we would all die of smoke inhalation and our clothes would be ruined (especially all those freshly cleaned ones still hanging on the clothes line.) Having to run off to work though left little concern for the rest of the day because there really was nothing else I could do at that point. I just had to hope the smell of smoke dissipated by the time I got home that night (which it had, phew!) Bec helped clear the air with not only a Facebook post, but also a sweet text message stating:

“Sad to say good-bye to a nice pair of jeans. Maybe we can make some artwork out of them??? Hahaha… sorry, I’m peeing my pants laughing.”

Well, this wasn’t really the ego boost I was hoping for, but at least she didn’t want to murder me! The continual waves of laughter persisted for the entire rest of the day between her, Kelly and me. I called my mom while waiting for the train to tell her what had happened. The connection was tragic, so all she heard was something about fire, the loud noises from the station (which she convinced herself was the fire department outside my house), and then my laughing, (which she couldn’t distinguish between laughing and crying.) Frantically texting to ask if I was ok, I told her everything was fine and that I would call her back. Once I reached the office, I called her back to explain everything, to the response of, “Well, I guess there’s a new meaning of ‘hot pants!’” – HA!

At work, our project team is called Project Orange (don’t ask me why, this was already in place when I joined), we have stand-up meetings every Friday. This is where each of the work streams can give a progress update, new joiners can be introduced, and we give out awards. Orange awards go to people who had excelled on something the last couple of weeks - an award of grandeur. The other award is the lemon award. You can only imagine what the qualifications of a lemon award are. People have been known to nominate themselves for moments of idiocy over the past two weeks, but usually the award goes to the person who had not realised anyone had seen their moment of idiocy.

Now, I know what you’re thinking – someone saw Kelly and Bec’s brilliantly humiliating posts already on Facebook by 8am that day – and nominated me for the award. This isn’t so. Being the loud mouth that I am, when my manager arrived to the office, and asked how my morning was going, I just had to reply, ‘Well, thankfully I’m still alive. I almost burned my house down this morning.’ Of course, he and the rest of the team sitting around me had to hear the explanation of this outrageous admission. So, although I did not win the lemon award that day (it went to a moment documented on camera of a fellow team member parked in a pedestrian crosswalk with people attempting to walk around his car), I was nominated that week.

You know, thankfully I could laugh at myself because no real damage was done (well maybe minus scarring Kelly and Bec forever with my living-room-streaking and near death experience). Our porch is now starting to look like a dump between my jeans that are yes, still out there and Bec’s mud-covered-tennis shoes from Tough Mudder.  I might just have to take Bec up on that challenge to create some artwork – who knows what masterpiece could be created!?

So yes, my Friday started out just like any other day, until my smart-self decided to speed up the drying process with an antiquated heater. Lesson learned the hard way.

Humiliation.

Gold Coast. The Panama City of Australia.

A couple of weekends ago, I headed to the Gold Coast for a girl’s trip. I had more fun and laughed more than I have in a while with just a bunch of girlfriends. There was no drama (well minus Nikki threatening to throw all her clothes in the rubbish bin after the Tiger Airways desk clerk told her that her suitcase weighed too much). And we spent 4 days relaxing on the beach, acting like little kids running around Dreamworld (think Six Flags of Australia) and enjoying nice dinners followed by dancing to live music at the locals. I am slowly making my way around Australia, attempting to visit everywhere worthwhile seeing. Hopefully my tales will give you some insight for that if-and-when you plan a voyage down under. For a little glimpse into the Northwest area of Australia, Gold Coast is essentially a version of Panama City mixed with Miami. We stayed in Surfer’s Paradise – so don’t get me wrong, the beach was gorgeous, great waves for surfing, but the people, oh my! the people! Not only did we feel stuck right in the middle of either an 18 year old or 60 year old crowd, we also wore more clothing to cover ourselves than they all did combined. Now I know, we are at the beach, but some things should just be left covered, if you know what I mean. And this was just the girls! The boys were no better versions than all the guys on that awful reality TV show, Jersey Shore. “Guidos” as they are so kindly referred to as, have that Latino, Miami look going on: slicked-back, gelled hair, graphic printed t-shirts and a smug look plastered on their face. Needless to say, we were not interested in talking to ANYone outside of ourselves – and I think this led to the amazing weekend that we ended up having.

Along the beachfront, they had large prints hanging on wooden boards of sunbathers in the exact same spots on the beach, beginning in the 70’s and continuing right up to modern day. It’s pretty hilarious to look back at pictures like that and realising, not much has changed with the human race, except perhaps the length of men’s swim trunks and the size of women’s hair.

Dreamworld is pretty much the same as Six Flags, and was fun to feel just like a kid for a day. A large section of the park was also a wildlife/petting zoo type exhibit – we got to see tigers, feed kangas, and of course snap pictures of my favourite – koalas. Zoo keepers were also inside a pin feeding two baby tigers with bottles (we later saw these two precious babies riding through the park in the back of a golf cart!) I don’t think I could ever get enough of seeing all these animals.

Leen, my Belgian friend from work came to meet us Friday night. She has been put on a project in Brisbane, which is just 45 minutes from the Gold Coast, so she hopped on the bus to spend the weekend with us. Friday night we saw a cool band and Saturday hung out on the beach until we were hungry enough to have a snack at a local beach bar. That night we had an amazing Japanese dinner right by the water, and then headed to Waxy’s for some more live music and dancing.

Great weekend, great place to visit – but if you do make it over here, I wouldn’t put it on the very top of your list. There are better places to see while you are here. There aren’t many differences in high-rise-condo beachfronts. Once you see one, you’ve seen them all.

Still on my list to visit in Australia are: The Whitsunday Islands, Port Douglas/Diving in the Great Barrier Reef, Cairns (pronounced Cans), Darwin down to Uluru and Ayers Rock (in the Outback), and Byron Bay. Frasier Island and Kangaroo Island are also on my to-do list. But then, there is still Fiji and New Zealand – and those are whole separate trips in themselves! Basically what I’m saying is that there are just too many places to see, and now that I have a travel bug – I want to go to as many as possible. Time to start saving money and vacation days!

At work, I am finally beginning to feel a part of the team – with projects to work on and having recognition from the exec team. Being on the Great Place to Work committee, I have been able to design a logo, create a sharepoint website and help to plan events for the team to attend outside of work. Last night we had a kick-off dinner at a restaurant in the city that I helped plan. It went really well, with an amazing turnout. It’s fun to have people around this huge office recognise who you are and congratulate you on throwing a great event. Brownie points!

Well, last highlight for me: 10 more days until I come home!!