Plane Crash in Africa
October 2, 2000
Amber: Hello, I’m Amber!
Me: Hi.
Amber: I’m going to be your waitress todayyyy! (trills)
Big Mo: (grimacing) Ugh. Okay.
Amber: I just moved up to Sydney, you know! And stuff!
Me: From the USA?
Amber: YEAHHHH! (giggles)
Big Mo: Did you waitress over there too?
Amber: Why YES!
Me: Cool.
Amber: I used to work by the ocean at a seafood restaraunt.
Big Mo: Okay. Well, I’d like to order a grill-
Amber: I used to get SO many tips back there.
Me: Um.. okay. Well-
Amber: Once, this shark ate this guy who was swimming in the ocean!
Big Mo: Can I please order a gr-
Amber: It was really sad when the shark ate that guy.
Me: I can imagine.
Amber: I sure got a lot of tips that day, though!
*****
It’s an official Cam Weekend. Cam arrived here late Thursday night, and leaves in a few days time. I met up with him on Friday afternoon while I was on my lunch break and we ate lunch together.
I had a sudden craving for an ice cream, so we located the nearest outlet and I waited patiently to be served. It took me at least fifteen minutes, I’m sure. It was kind of worth the wait, because I got to stand and laugh at Cone Woman, whose sole responsibility was rolling waffle cones. I liked the way her face lit up when she put them all in a box and wrote the description of the cones on it. You could tell she was really looking forward to that bit.
All monotonous jobs are like that. It’s the little perks that you keep looking forward to. If you’ve ever worked in a call centre you’ll be familiar with the Hourly Bog Break, where your hourly trip to the toilet provides solace from the angry customers you deal with all day.
Later that night Cam caught the train home with Adam and myself, and promptly discovered the joy of our local petrol station. Honestly, our servo is the king of servos. He was particularly impressed with our range of energy drinks. I took him on a little tour around the servo because I was so excited.
Thinking about it, the reason I’m probably starting to become unfit is the servo alone. It’s too easy just to run up the road to the servo and buy crap to eat. When we move, I think we should live close to a convenience store, but not TOO close. I know I’m not the only person who has a love/hate relationship with the servo - I once overheard a woman screaming at her boyfriend ‘This service station is in the shape of an armpit’. It isn’t, but I like anyone who can see armpits in everyday objects.
We then gave Cam the tour of our place, including the Plastic Bag Dispenser (just a cupboard that’s packed full with too many plastic bags - you just open the cupboard slightly and bags cascade out everywhere). He also witnessed the Non-Ironing Iron ™, and Adam’s hilarious music collection. There’s always something new and funny I find there whenever I look. Cam managed to locate a Celine Dion CD I’d never seen before. We confronted Adam with it and he yelled something about how it was his old flatmate’s, or something. I’m not so sure. Any ninja cred he may have had is fast slipping away.
Adam has grown a goatee again, which is good. Goatee Adam is far superior to Clean Shaven Adam. However, he did a very very bad thing:
Me: Hang on. Hang on.
Adam: Huh?
Me: You’ve been fucking around with your goatee, haven’t you?
Adam: What do you mean?
Me: You’ve shaved off the bit under your chin.
Adam: So?
Me: That looks fucking terrible. You look like George Michael or something.
Adam: Hey, don’t FUCK WIF ME! (kickboxes the air)
Me: I don’t need to fuck wif you, you look like a dickhead enough as it is.
Adam: Hey, you wanna fuck wif me, I’ll FUCK YOU!
While the three of us were drinking that night, Adam spotted some bugs flying around in my room. Without a moment’s thought, he hastily dashed out to the kitchen, then back into my room and sprayed something everywhere. I didn’t realise we had fly spray in the house, so I asked him what it was. He showed me the can, which was ‘Spray Adhesive’, also known as Glue In A Can! Now I think about it, this is a pretty effective fly spray, but not necessarily the most humane (Cam was pretty mortified).
I can’t remember much of that night, except Cam revealed to Adam that I’d put onion rings in his scanner a few weeks ago. Adam wasn’t supposed to find out about this, and not even my ‘at least I used plastic wrap’ excuse worked.
The next morning, Cam woke up with mysterious carpet burn, and I woke up with a weird gash on my side. I think when I was drinking, I attempted to sit down on the VCR cabinet, except it wasn’t the VCR cabinet, it was a sharp piece of glass. Or something.
Next up? We’re all spending a night at Star City Casino, which will only lead to trouble.
*****
Answering The Rhetorical Questions Of Musicians, #03:
‘Do you believe in life after love?’ - Cher
Maybe. But what about you? Do you believe in terrible comebacks after career failures?
*****
Me: (rolls over in bed) Mmmrgh.
Adam: (snores)
Me: (puts hand on Adam’s body, and can’t quite figure out what I’m touching) Is that… is that your armpit?
Adam: That’s my BUM you idiot.
Me: Oh.
Adam: (puts hand on my jiggly bits) Oh my god. Is that YOUR armpit?
*****
Me: I know I’m going to forget to send these orders out by the end of the day.
Vanessa Undresser: You should tie string around your finger.
Me: What?
Vanessa Undresser: You tie string around your finger so you remember things you have to do.
Me: Tying string around my finger? The only thing that’ll make me remember is to not cut off my blood circulation.
*****
My youngest sister arrived back from a month-long student exchange program in Japan this week. She was telling me all the funny stuff she saw over there, and also recounted a conversation she had with her host parents when she first met them. In Japanese culture, when someone compliments you, the polite thing to do is to say ‘Oh, thanks, but I’m not really THAT good’ or something like that. Bearing this in mind, this is what my sister said to her host parents in Japanese:
Host mother: You are so pretty!
My sister: Oh, thanks! But I’m not really THAT pretty.
Host mother: No, you really are pretty!
My sister: Um… thanks! But I don’t think I’m really really pretty.
Host father: No, you are pretty. You really are.
My sister: No I’m not. But thank you anyway.
Host mother: You are so pretty.
My sister: (snaps) NO!
Host mother and father: (look worried)
*****
I think this new job of mine is both the best and the worst job I’ve ever had. It’s the most stressful, and the most responsibility I’ve ever had, but the cruisy environment I work in coupled with my fun workmates makes it an enjoyable experience.
Big Mo is a real laugh. Apparently his flatmate is a big nightclubber - he was telling us of the conversation he had with his flatmate last weekend:
Flatmate: Big Mooooo! (embraces)
Big Mo: Hello. You seem happy.
Flatmate: Yes! I’ve just been in the shower for three hours!
Big Mo: Why?
Flatmate: Because I took an E in the shower by mistake!
Big Mo: How do you take an E… by mistake?
Flatmate: Oh, I was stoned from the dope.
Big Mo: I see.
Flatmate: And all I know is, I was in there for three hours, and when I came out I’d shaved off all my body hair!
At this point while Big Mo was recounting the story, Vanessa Undresser innocently interjected:
Vanessa Undresser: What’s an ‘E’?
Me: Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know. You’ve got guilt written all over your face.
McCraig: No, she just hasn’t showered.
*****
I have now offically begun my mission to get to know the waiter-guy at my work. He’s so damn hot - looks like a junior version of the Almighty Robb Flynn, singer of Machine Head. I’ve been making a point of visiting our cafeteria more than necessary, but Robb Jnr never seems to serve me. I was elated when he finally served me a ham and cheese toastie, and would have happily waited half an hour for him to cook it.
When he finished cooking it - that’s when I fucked things up. He told me how much it cost, and I was about to give him the money, wondering if I could get away with touching his hand. In my head, I was conceptualising a way I could give him the money and manage to touch his hand at the same time.
In execution, it didn’t quite work. Basically, I threw all my coins into a sink full of hot water and dirty dishes by mistake. I was incredibly embarased, especially because he gave it to me for free out of pity.
I must redeem myself to Robb Jnr.
*****
Last week, I met up with Adam and a friend of mine after work so we could go out for a bite to eat. What was supposed to be a trip to a hamburger joint ended up becoming a drunken trivia night at a city pub. We found this hat on our seats, and Adam was wearing it all night and even took it home - my friend later found out it’s a designer hat label and is likely to be worth about $50. Which is weird, because we just thought Helen Kaminski was the owner of the hat, and had sewn her name onto it - it looked that budget.
We were cheating a bit during the trivia quiz - I was sending Cam furious text messages because he was getting a lot of them right. Adam was drunkenly shouting out random answers - usually the first thing that came into his head. This was when he wasn’t pretending to be English and trying to pick up an Irish girl at the bar, for a laugh. It amused myself and my friend no end that the Irish girl actually believed he was visiting Australia on holiday from Newcastle in the UK.
As he sat back down and joined us again, we continued to laugh at him. ‘I really am from Newcastle,’ he persisted in his new-found British accent. ‘Newcastle. It’s a really fucking big castle, you know?’
‘It’s a fucking big castle’ is now one of our new catch phrases, but it’s absolutely nothing compared to the next one. This saying is something that will not leave either my or Adam’s for some time to come.
The trivia host asked the question ‘How did the band UB40 get their name?’ Immediately, Adam yelled:
‘A plane crash in Africa.’
I was in tears of laughter. He was utterly convinced of this. When my friend asked him why UB40 was named after a plane crash in Africa, he offered:
‘Planes always crash in Africa, you know. They don’t have any runways. They have to land in the eucalyptus trees.’
Eucalyptus trees? Do they have them in Africa?
‘Yeah, eucalyptus trees. The monkeys climb in them. Honestly, the planes ALWAYS crash in Africa. It’s dangerous. Didn’t you ever see Predator?!’
*****
During one of our lunch breaks, McCraig and I were discussing our favourite game shows of the past. It’s A Knockout was a common favourite, as well as any of Ian ‘Turps’ Turpie’s work. Somehow we got onto the subject of favourite movies as well - McCraig is a big Star Wars fan. We both agreed it would be a great idea if we could combine our favourite game shows with our favourite movies:
Wheel Of Fortune host: And our next puzzle is an ancient Jedi mind trick. Yoda - it’s your spin.
Yoda: (spins wheel) N for Nellie, Yoda chooses, yes.
