To say or not to say?

For some years now I’ve been struggling with the dilemma of whether I should say hello to complete strangers that I pass while jogging around the neighbourhood.  Firstly I should mention that I usually run between 5am – 7am.  I think this point is important as you’ll discover while reading this blog.

I assume the majority of people reading this would say – “do the friendly thing and say hello”,  and to the most part I agree but I find that saying ‘hello’ has some mixed reactions from my ‘hello’ recipients, therefore my dilemma.

Firstly the reaction is dependant on ‘eye contact’ – this if very important.  I can tell that many people avoid eye contact by pretending you don’t exist.  I struggle with this one because as much as I’d like to pretend they’re not there, finding something to look at and focus on in order to avoid eye contact can be wrought with danger when jogging.

This danger became a realisation on a lunchtime jog around Parramatta Park a few years back. In order to avoid eye contact with a larger than usual walking group, I diverted my eyes to the left to take in the beautiful Parramatta River. Ok I exagerate, it’s not a beautiful river but I wanted to give the impression it was more interesting to look at than where I was going.  Result: arse-over-tit, embarrassment, and thankfully no injuries.

Then there are the eye contact people.  They fall into three categories:

  1. Makes eye contact but looks away without a response – this usually leaves me with a unrequited ‘hello’ and a promise never to say ‘hello’ again (hence my dilemma)
  2. Makes eye contact and gives a half hearted smile – I suspect these people are, like me, struggling with the same dilemma
  3. Makes eye contact, smiles and says ‘hello’ – these are the people who feel that we share a special bond and that may be we should form a group and celebrate the fact we get up at stupid hours of the morning.

Back to my dilemma and whether I’ll say ‘hello’?

Given I’ve had this dilemma for many years, my answer to this one is that this dilemma will never be resolved because it depends on the whether – whether or not I feel like falling into 1 of the 3 catagories outlined above and this is very much dependant on my personal weather: whether I’m hot or cold or mild.

So, if you see me out and about on my morning jog, remember my 3 categories and my personal weather pattern:

  • If I’m ‘hot’ you’ll get a smile and an ‘hello’
  • If I’m mild you’ll just get a smile
  • If I’m cold, don’t frikkin look at me because you won’t exist.

Sydney is a morning person

There is one thing I’ve learnt since living in Sydney and that is Sydney, like me, is a morning person albeit to a degree.

How do I know this to be the case?

On the most part Sydneyites use public transport to and from work each day.  I’ve been unlucky enough to use all form of transport, depending on where I live and where I work.

 This blog has come about through my travel to work via the ferry.  I caught the ferry each day at Cabarita Wharf and the trip itself was probably the best form of transport going,  as ferries don’t have to worry about road traffic issues. 

You see, there is a definate protocol to follow while waiting to board a ferry, bus and train. However, the protocol for ferries and buses are similar, trains are another story.

The morning ferry protocol

At most wharves along Parramatta River there is a long walkway between the main part of the wharf and where you board the ferry.  Cabarita ferry wharf is no different, see image below.

Each morning people line up along the gangway, first person starts the line and each person afterwards falls behind and so on. I’ve also learnt that Sydneyites don’t make friends at transport line-ups no matter how many years you come across the same people waiting for the same ferry/bus/train, you just don’t talk. You might smile but generally not.  Anyway, if someone breaks the line protocol, no one calls them out on it even though you know it’s bothering some and as much as they want to tell the line protocol breaker to adhere to the protocol,  they won’t say a word.  When the ferry arrives people quietly and politely embarks. Generally no one breaks the embarking protocol (oh yes, there is an embarking protocol too).

The protocol for disembarking the ferry (yes another protocol) is a little less routine but civil non-the-less. Once people are off the ferry they make their way to their prospective office blocks usually buying a coffee at their favourite coffee vendor along the way before they disappearing into their high-rise office building and their work day begins. 

All rather civil to this point.

The afternoon ferry protocol

The afternoon ferry protocol, if you can call it that, is somewhat dishevelled. And the issue starts with the wharf.

The offending wharf I started my journey home from was King St Wharf near Darling Harbour.  There is no gangway that forces a nice neat line towards the ferry so that doesn’t help the cause.  People have to mill around on arrival. Who comes first is not monitored or taken into consideration, when the millers are in great numbers, who came first is impossible to tell.  As time marches on the miller numbers increase exponentially and the anxiety levels increase.

So why do people get anxious you ask?

The answer to this is all in the number of millers to the number or standard of seats available to the ferry passengers.  Now this was never a problem for me, there were always enough seats but people’s anxiety levels still rose because of the eagerness to get the hell home after a day in the office and the eagerness to get a good seat far away from those horrid kids that make the trip home all that more annoying.

To add to the anxiety, the line protocol is no where to be seen. It’s not about who got to the ferry first, it’s about who got to the little bridge between the ferry platform and the boat itself. This involves pushing and in some case shoving.  Thankfully I kept my anxiety in check by being polite and letting the people I though deserved it, go ahead. But of course there were always the people who either arrived to the wharf after me or I didn’t like the look of, so I held my ground and ensured I embarked before them regardless of means.

So in conclusion, I came to the conclusion that Sydney, like me, is a morning person.

It’s kind’a funny

It’s kind’a  funny that I’ve started writing after all these years of threatening to do so but thought that I’m too damn lazy to start.  But I have to thank two of my bestest friends: Bel and Gee and of course my father who was a journo. 

As a child I was rather oblivious to his work.  To me it was a man’s job and I know he would be rather surprised by my sudden interest.  And come to think of it, I’ve done a fews things that I’m sure my father would be surprised at such as:

  • going to uni and getting, not one, but two degrees
  • visiting his father’s birth place in Scotland.  Although my father was very proud of his Scottish heritage, he never went
  • and of course writing, he would never have thought for a moment that I would write anything other than a to-do lists – not that I was a list person back when he was alive.

It wasn’t until long after Dad died that I ran into an old friend of his, who at the time was the headmaster of the high school I attended a few years earlier. When I told him I was studying he said that Dad would have thought that rather amusing. Turns out my dear ole dad was a bit of a macho man with very old fashioned values such as a women belonging in the home.  Sorry Dad!   I say that with tongue in cheek as I’m sure he would be thrilled.

He may have been a little old fashioned, so it seems, but he was also a fair man and I miss him dearly.

It’s Monday morning, here we go again

As previous blogs have had a direct relationship to even more previous blogs, this one too has a cousin – the last blog.

It’s 6am and I’m getting some therapeutic writing done to lift my spirits up before I start the morning ritual of getting ready for work. The weekend has been busy with friends and family. It’s Josh’s birthday on Tuesday so I have a few errands to do in my lunchtime today in regards to getting a few pieces of jewelry repaired, which is what he wanted for his birthday.  But as the case on most Mondays, I really really don’t want to go to work.  Yes,  I know that the last blog went on about loving my job, and I do like it a lot (love is a bit of a strong word to use about work) but what I don’t like about work is it’s the last place I want to be on a Monday.

What is it that I really want to do on Mondays you ask?

To answer this question right at this very minute (6.21am), I’d have to say ‘nothing’- “I really want to stay home and do nothing”.  And that would work up until about 9am when I’m sure I would decide what I’d really like to do today which would be one or more of the following:

  1. Go to Kristy’s and spend the day with her and the kids – this would be the high contender of the day
  2. Stay home and clean – this would take me up until about 9:15am, as the place is clean at the moment
  3. Stay home and exercise – the last time I exercised at home during the hours of 9am and 5pm is well……mmmmm……never
  4. Stay home and write – this is also a good contender but I have to be very much in the zone, meaning I can only write when I’m stressed or feeling up or down or emotional – so this possible contender is very much dependent on my emotional state and today I don’t have any emotional issues at this moment in time (just my dumb luck)
  5. Start painting – have I mentioned before that I can’t paint?  Yes I have, so there lies the issue with this contender
  6. mmmm….let’s see, is there a possible 6th contender?  mmmmm….Nah….. So moving right along

Ok, looking back over my list I’m sure I would select ‘2’, following by ‘1’ then possibly 4 depending on how the day went doing number 1.

[insert music here that gives the impression of coming out of a dream]

Well it’s 6:38am, I have until 7am of dreaming what I’d really like to do today before I start the morning ritual which means:

I’m going to work!

I love my new job

It’s been far too long since I’ve said that I love my new job. For the most part I’ve hated the first 6 weeks of any new job I’ve started.  I think the reason for that is what seems to be a big misinterpretation of what a ‘Business Analyst (BA)” really does.  With the exception of BT, I think I was a little frightened when I started there because of their reputation and my lack of confidence.

My new job is off to a flying start. I’m working in the digit media space and it’s very exiting to be at the leading edge of the new ‘digital media’ era. Ok, I know that digit media has been around for a while but with the smart phone revolution, digital media has now a whole new channel via smart phone and Internet TV.  The move out of the superannuation industry has been the best thing that’s happened in my career since working at Cards Etc who were working with leading edge technology at the time in the smart card space.  Smart cards are the ones with the micro chip used nowadays as extra security such as verifying pin numbers when purchasing stuff via credit card.

Anyway, given that I’ve only just got my new smart phone, a HTC Desire HD, of which I’m very happy with, I’m really getting my teeth into this job.  I’ve even worked way past my usual leaving time just because I couldn’t drag myself away.  I’m sure I’d still be there this morning if I hadn’t been dragged away by Michael, who also works there, to share our drive home.

And yes folks, I did mention that Michael also works there.  First time in 13 years since I moved to Sydney that we’ve ended up in the same organisation,  but given he’s a Project Manager and usually has BAs reporting to him, it was bound to happen eventually.  And since we are both in the digital media space, it may well be that I end up reporting to him for a project I’m assigned to in the future, assuming I will have a future working at Optus.  Future as in at least 2 years because that’s the longest time Optus allows their contractors to work for them,  and I stand by my policy of never taking up a permanent role.

So here I am loving my new job. The affects are apparent as in I’m sleeping much better, it doesn’t bother me that I get to work around 9am and leave around 6pm and it doesn’t bother me that I’m relatively dumb when it comes to the telecommunications industry so I’m running fast to understand. 

So fingers crossed this gig and my enthusiasm lasts!

It’s been a while

There is something significant about today’s blog.  The significance being that it’s related to that terrible day, see my last post –  ‘A job to be had’.  Anyway, this blog and ‘that’ blog are very much related.

You see, this morning I got up and went for a jog – this is the first jog since that terrible day.

Why?  It’s very apparent that on that terrible day I was clearly out of sorts because of several factors:  adoption and medical test results.  Since then I’ve done nothing other than eat, drink and worry about the worst case scenarios such as suffering, deformities (go figure) and of course my impending death (which BTW isn’t going to happen that’s just my overactive mind).

My worries were at their worst in the first week when I just sat on the lounge like a beached whale,  watched telly and drank oodles of wine (good stuff mind you).  Second week I was away with my daughter and grand kids which cheered my up somewhat.  The third week I attended a wedding in Coffs Harbour which turned out to be the medicine I needed to get over myself.  It’s taken a few days to actually get going since returning from Coffs but I started a new job this week,  so give me a break.

Regarding my medical issues, which are still ongoing and inconclusive:  anyway it seems Kristy is more concerned about  it. However, I’m not too concerned at the moment but watch this space things can easily take a turn for the worse.

A job to be had

I’ve taken to waking up day after day at 4am, and today is no different. I was going to go for a run but woke up in a funny mood. I seem to recall a dream about bio dad.  Very odd given the day ahead.

Today my schedule includs an appointment with the Dr about a lump on my little finger and to get the results of a routine blood test I’d taken last week. I also had a 12.30pm lunch date with Belinda.

As I do most mornings when I wake up too early to go for a run, I log into Facebook.  I had a message waiting for me from a friend.  Her message indicated that she had revisited her search for her birth mother with some success, she then did a name search on FB and came up with a possible match for relatives of her mother. I’m genuinly happy for her. However, when I hear these positive adoption stories what follows is a journey down the slippery slope of depression hell. And today is no different.  My mood is made all the worse by a visit to the Dr with the news of a slightly high calcium reading followed by buzz words such as ‘tumor’. Everything else the Dr said, whether it be positive or not, paled into insignificance, for as far as I was concerned I had little or no time to live.

Anyway, no time now to grieve I had a 12.30 appointment with Belinda which didn’t eventuate, long story short with no mobile receptionI had no way of telling Belinda I had arrived at the destination.  After a 30 minute wait just in case she turned up, I headed home knowing full well the afternoon will consist of a lounge, alcohol, food and hopefully some uplifting TV to get my mind of the mornings events and news.

All turned out true except for the uplifting TV.  Firstly I had recorded three out of four of Oprahs visit to Australia. I gotta say it did make me proud to be Australian but also made me fell like a failure. Here was a overweight, not overly attractive yank trying to inspire people to follow their dreams.  After all, she was born into a very poor family and here she is 50 years later with a friggin ‘O’ on the harbour bridge. Good ona!

My delima in all this is that I don’t have a friggin realistic dream.  Don’t get me wrong, I do have dreams.  I would love to be an artist, only issue is –  I can’t draw. Or the dream about the one where “I want to write a book’ . What story do I have to tell?  The adoption story’s been done to death and there is nothing else I can think of except maybe the one about the women meets man and falls in love, but family and distance keeps them apart forever. However, I’m sure Mills and Boon have also covered that story too.

To add to my dreary day, there is a movie on foxtel called ‘Mother and Child’. It’s about adoption and the effect of it on 3 women: The adoptee, the adopter and the adopted.  ‘Oh great’, I can turture myself more today – and that I did.  I closed the curtains, turned on the air conditioning, poured some wine and watched the movie.

If I’m going to do a job on myself today – it may as well be a good one.

Who’s your Daddy?

After laying in bed for a short time the other night, I decided to get up and see what was on TV. At midnight there is usually very little choice.  The Foxtel menu listed a show on SBS (or maybe it was ABC) called ‘Who’s your Daddy?’. The title suggested it was a Jerry Springer equivalent. I was wrong.

The show was already into the 20th minute of an hour long episode.  It was about 4 English people who had just found out that the man they know as Dad, may not be their biological father.  Of course this interested me instantly being an adoptee myself.

Two of the four were brothers, aged about 16 and 18 and they had only been told that they were the result of a sperm donor. The catch was that there were several sperm donors, one being the father that bought them up and another unknown donor and it wasn’t known as to whose sperm fertilized the mother’s egg. As I missed the first 20 minutes of the show I wasn’t sure why the  father donated sperm; wouldn’t that suggest he was capable of impregnating his wife, the biological mother?

After an agonising wait and interviews with all affected parties, the boys being my concern,  found out the father that brought them up was ‘not’ their biological father.

I felt so sorry for them. Life as they knew it has changed forever. I knew there and then they began to question their own identies.

I was totally pissed at the parents who were so intent on having a child they decided to play Russion Roulette with sperm with no regard for how this would affect the children. To make matters worse, they choose not to tell the boys until they were teenages, making life for the boys until that point in time just one big fat lie.

What angered me further was seeing the mother plead that the boys were ‘special’, ‘wanted’, and ‘loved unconditionaly’. She was clearly scared she had lost the love and trust of the boys. And it was clear from the boys, trust was certainly lost. It was at this time I realised the boys and I shared common feelings – uncertainy about the past and the life jouney ahead.

One of the boys repose to the mothers pleading was;  how special can one feel when one party involved in his creation wanked into a tube in order to get some money to get himself through uni?  Thankfully that’s wasn’t the case with my creation which probably was the result of an aging (40 yo) man being attracted by a younger (24 yo) women and lust taking over.

My conculsion to all this is that sperm donation should only be allowed if you know the doner and he is preparted to be a father in some way that is 100% acceptable by the child.

Playing ‘pick a sperm’ may get you a kid but that kid may end up damaged goods and we all know that’s not what the desperate parents want, now is it!

Tolerance – or lack there of

I’m not sure if I’ve ever been a tolerant person because it’s never something that I’ve thought about.  However, over the past couple of years I have noticed that certain things or events affect me in such a way that I want to explode.  Things like:

  • Kids (excluding my grand kids).  It’s not really the kids that give me the absolute shits, but the parents.   kids are not given the tools to cope with life and the ups and downs incurred as a result.  Kids aren’t able to do simple things like walk to the local shop,  go to the park or even meet up with friends at the local cafe.  They’re not allowed to interact with anyone not known to their parents and on the most part they can’t even get themselves to the school bus stop without being dropped off by Mum or Dad.

“Kids aren’t kids anymore. They’re pampered little bastards. “

  • Really stupid people.  Ok, so maybe I have fallen into this category over the years.  But at least I know when, where and how I’ve been stupid.  Really stupid people don’t know they’re stupid.  To combat and control really stupid people would require new new type of police force  – The Stupid People’s Detection Force SPDF.
    The SPDF will be given the authority to tell and charge ‘stupid people’ accordingly.  Now what constitutes a really stupid person is subject to variation and change and judged on a case to case basis.  To get around the issue of recognising the different between a person who has done ‘a’ stupid thing and a really stupid person.  The really stupid person does this said ‘stupid thing’ no less than 3 times.  This follows the American criminal law system of “3 strikes you’re out” which makes perfect sense to me.

Punishment for stupid people is obvious – death by stoning!

The Village

I live in a village.  Well technically it’s a 9 story apartment block but to me, it’s a village. Because like any village, especially small villages it’s made up of the following people:

The villagers – normal people who go about their daily chores in peace and harmony with one another. They work all day to enjoy their weekend activities. But sometimes their peace is upset.

The village councilors– a small group of people who look after the well-being of the villagers, the village infrastructure and village finances.  The Villagers make up these people and are voted in every year for the privilege.  However, like many democracies  every now and again one of the members of the following two groups slip through the net and become members of the village councilors.

The village idiots– this is a small group of people who, on many occasions, make life a little harder for the other villagers. They are a group that make up the crowd of hecklers who flock to the village centre to listen to the next group of village occupants – the village bullies.

The village bullies – this is one or two individuals whose soul purpose in life is to upset the villagers, by applying bully tactics, abuse and intimidation to get what they wants no matter how trivial or ridiculous it is.  They drum up support by making up lies and stories for the village idiots to feed off.

And lastly, there is the village mad woman

The village mad woman – this is one individual who wants to live in peace and harmony but when the village idiots and the village bullies go on their village rampages, this woman goes mad.  Not the ‘I’ll get you back’ mad.  No, this woman literally goes mad, she rants and raves about the downfall and destruction of the village, she dances around cauldrons, burns effigies and makes up spells to rid the village of the idiots and bullies.   What’s funny about the village mad woman, no one knows who she is until….

The village crierHere ye, here ye, the village mad woman is me!