What Do You Make of This?

Just a quickie, I applied for a job last week...blah, blah...won't get into it here, but didn't hear anything back so thinking "keen is good" I contacted them again to follow up. Here's the e-mail I just got....

Hi
Thanks for your follow-up. We have now received 90 applications and have not under the circumstances had resources to get back to everyone.
I can inform you that at this stage you are not under consideration. However, we have not appointed anyone either.
I will certainly keep you informed once a decision is reached.

Thanks

What do you make of that? He sent this almost as soon as he got my e-mail, did he skim read my 10 page CV, or does he not like my "keenness".
It's a no and naff off message isn't it?

Facebook

With Facebook there are many shades of involvement - from those that update their status on a daily basis to those who are on it, maybe have 7 friends and don't really update it at all, with many shades of grey in the middle. Me, I sit somewhere in the middle. And as for my friend Kate, well she flat out refuses and I admire her for her resilience because as we know, it can be damn addictive - you find yourself looking through photo albums of people you used to work with 10 years ago, searching for random names you use to go to school with, and generally just wasting time.
However, from a little bit of school yard mum chatting, there appears to be "friend" etiquette issues with Facebook, and I've been caught out a few times. And bare with us Kate, IF you were on Facebook, you'd understand....here's a few...
1. The "Accepting Someones Invite to be Their Friend When They're Not Your Friend" Syndrome. You suddenly realise that you don't want X to be privy to all your personal info, photos, status updates etc as you actually have just met them, barely know them and are unlikely to have much contact in the future. That doesn't define friend in my book.
2. The "Family Member Friends" Syndrome- when you become friends with your second cousin-in-law who you haven't seen in 15 years but whose still tight with your in-laws and suddenly realise they can see your " ...is too hungover to function" status update and gathers little pearls of naughtiness to purge at the next family function. (and no this isn't me, as my family, myself included are too technically challenged to use Facebook widely - I'm not sure if Dad even has an ATM card yet).
3. The "Friend that's not really a Friend" Syndrome - you reconnect with someone you haven't heard of since you had kids, and you have an intense "OMG, it's amazing to catchup" series of e-mails, only to fall into an awkward silence once you've exhausted your catch up topics. There's nothing to keep the "friendship" moving forward. Especially if you live in different countries and have different lives.
4. The "Friend Who Doesn't Reply To Your Friend Invite" Syndrome - you put an invite out there to someone with a carefully worded message to let them know you weren't stalking them or randomly searching names but that you GENUINELY wanted to get in touch with them and there is a deafening silence, when they don't reply. In effect you have put this person in Syndrome No 1 quandry - "if I say yes, then she's going to have access to all my photos, status updates, personal info and I don't know if I want that.".

Are there any other syndromes you've experienced with Facebook - don't get me started on the Facebook Applications as I don't think my friends who I USED to play Scrabbulous with have realised that I have stopped playing in protest to the fact that they either used a dictionary or are sodding walking dictionaries , what's wrong with the good old days when "boats" was a great scrabble work.
So you may realise now why I call my friend Kate, "my clever friend Kate", she's clever enough not to a) waste ridiculous amounts of time on a website and B) write a blog about it.

Sushi

This post is long overdue.

There are many positives about living in Australia compared with NZ and there are also a few downsides. I try not to compare, as like my children, "I love them both the same but for different reasons".

However..... sushi. There is no comparison. Unless of course going to a swish, expensive sushi restaurant like Sushi E, or an authentic japanese restaurant, or a sushi train, there I'm sure they are parable. However...if you're at the mall and you just want to pick up some run of the mill sushi, instead of eating the crusts of the kids sandwiches for a change, then you run into trouble in Australia. In NZ, even the "bad" sushi places in the mall like Saint Pierres, blows the Aussie equivalents out of the water. Australia does sushi "logs". They are called "rolls", but I believe the only way to describe something that is solid, round, cold, tasteless, did I mention solid, is a "log".(pictured) And yes I know I could saw through, sorry I mean slice, the logs into small sushi rounds (pictured), but that still doesn't remove the solid, cold, tasteless components of the sushi. It just doesn't look so much like a log. And the ginger? Isn't blimmin ginger grown in Australia? If so then why import salty, weird tasting ginger that looks like it's been in a dusty box behind a stack of other dusty boxes in one of those asian supermarkets in a dodgey back street. I don't do ginger anymore. And it used to be my favourite part of eating sushi.

Vent. So every now and again, the desire for sushi gets the better of my common sense and I get some, only to be rudely reminded of why I don't eat mall sushi in Australia. In fact there is a vile sushi joint in the mall that is so offensive that not only once did my clever friend Kristin return her sushi (and get her money back) because the salmon just didn't taste right but Will now knows to say "don't do it Mum" if I'm ever seen veering on in the direction of a tuna or chicken teriyaki roll there. So today I was in a different set of shops with a authentic looking japanese sushi place, so I succumbed and bought some.

Verdict: "don't do it Mum"

Murphys Law

Why is it that every time I use a public toilet, the person before me has either been unwell (!) or used up all the loo paper, even the tiny smidges with glue on them attached to the toilet roll. Nature called in the mall the other day, and as I walked in, I was assaulted with that tell tale sign that someone had had to do in a grotty mall toilet what we would all rather do in the comforts of home. "Yeah right", I thought as I waited for a free cubicle. "That'll be mine". The next cubicle came free and an old lady left, glancing guiltily across at me. I sighed and went in. But no. It can't have been her. However, there was no loo paper, not even a skerrick left on the toilet roll. I shook my head. Of course. But begs the question, why didn't she mention it to me as we passed each other. Unfortunately for her, she was waiting for a friend to finish so when I came out she was still there. Now many of you will testament to the fact I am pathetic when people are in a sad, emarrassing situation. I even think I've bored you with it - remember the man who ripped his shirt (and arm) as he walked to work, the blind man trying to cross the road...... "Well not today honey" I thought. And as I washed my hands slowly I gave her a long meaningful look. She knew what it was for. And as I walked past her, I looked at her and just shook my head.
Was I a little hard perhaps?

A ha!

Every Sunday I read a kind of chick lit column in the paper written by Maggie Alderson, who also happens to have written a "novel" that could only be described as pure unadulterated fluff, I offered it to The Sister when she stayed suggesting it would only take a matter of hours to read and was the equivalent of watching the Sex and The City movie, only a smidge longer. Anyhow, a column is ok to be fluffy, and last week she hit the nail on the head for me. I quote....

"..after noting that I have at least 4 planets in the anally retentive sign of Virgo, my astrologist concluded that if I ever felt confused or low, tidying up would always make me feel better. I could only agree and ask him to tell me something I didn't know....Nothing works as well as tidying a drawer. I think it is the finite nature of the task. A drawer is a limited area and you can start quite confident of finishing the job, whereas "clutter free whole house" as I recently included on my mile long ongoing To Do List is a prospect so daunting, it is likely to send you supine to the sofa, clutching the remote control at the first obstacle..."

Finally, there was a reason for my innane, desperate desire to have a clutter free (or as I like to describe it...a "noise" free house. It's not my fault, it's my parents for forcing me to have a birthday in September, making me a Virgo and therefore a wannabe organised and cleanliness geek. Unfortunately my planets mustn't be aligned properly as I have the DESIRE for organisation, but seem unable to deliver. I live in a constant state of mess, picking up like a mad woman behind three boys and one boy/man. I'm grateful not to have girls with all the bindies and my little pony shoes and hair clips, however a small single square of lego can hurt just as much if you stand on it in bare feet. I claim that we can't replace our nanny/cleaner, the fabulous Flora, now back in Brazil, due to the GFC (Global Financial Crisis for those who haven't read a newspaper for 6 months and picked up on this fresh new acronym), however the reality is I think I'm the only person truly capable to scrubbing those toilet floors and removing the "old mans toilet" smell with an enormous range of cleaning products. Now that I have two days a week free I have also started to tidy a space every day or so, with my family paperwork now organised and efficient. However Saturday to my horror, The Husband tried to find Will's old soccer boots for Rafe. He started to go through the boys wardrobes. A space I HAVEN'T STARTED YET. He was a man on a mission. The boots were almost new (soccer boots in Oz barely get dirty on the hard turf) and they'd cost a bit and we are in a GFC (or at least in our house we are). I stammered..."I'll sort that cupboard out on Monday, I'll find them". Deaf ears. I tried to intervene and do it my way. I realised this would create more tension than there already was. I did the only thing I could think of. I went and cleaned somewhere else. Two hours later, the boots emerged, the cupboards were cleaned and tidy and "noise free". The Husband had done a great job.

So today is Monday and I have a hour before the afternoon onslaught. I think I may start on the study. There are a couple of drawers that need tidying.

Wildlife No 6

Never in Auckland would I have found a baby lizard in my kids beds. Never. Getting Smiths bed ready tonight I noticed a small black toy thingee in his bed, but in my heart of hearts I knew it wasn't one of his many spiders and bugs that he actually does take to bed with him. And as I tapped the bed around the toy, it transformed from a plastic toy into a baby lizard which then took off and ran under the sheets. Knowing this was a two person job, I summonised The Husband who initially annoyed, saw my face, the can of flyspray and knew there was an incident.

We, ok, he, managed to catch it and set it free outside (flyspray doesn't even kill some of the spiders over here let alone small animals - I had it more as a security blanket).
But it got me thinking.
That baby lizard must have a family, it looked too young to be on its own.
Where are they now?

Addiction

I blamed yesterdays headache on the fact I hadn't drunk enough water, now that water is my drink of choice after beating my diet coke demon (33 days and still on the wagon). But the reality is more sinister. My Diet Coke Demon has a friend and his name is The Jersey Caramel Demon. He is not the constant presence in my life like my Diet Coke freind, but more an occasional visitor, who arrives without warning (usually preceded by a trip to Big W), and who settles in for a short, intense stay. He takes the form of a bag of either Plain Brand if I'm feeling bad about myself and choose to have a bad unsatisfying jersey caramel experience (to punish myself for succumbing), or if I'm feeling indulgent and deserving, then he arrives as a bag of juicy, fresh, soft big label delights.

So yesterday was a bad sign, two successive weeks of trips to Big W with two successive visits by my Jersey Caramel Demon has set an ugly and scary precedent.

I'm now on the Jersey Caramel Wagon.

Fire

Being reasonably new to Australia, the concept of bushfires is a developing understanding. When we lived in Wellington, earthquakes were a real, tangible fear, we'd felt small and medium sized ones, with each shake creating that horrific feeling of helplessness and "is this the big one?". I had kind of placed bushfires in the "Things to worry about living in Australia" with snakes, posionous spiders and freshwater crocs. I didn't really have any "feeling" about them - they were simply not tangible yet, they hadn't touched me.

Until this weekend.

Friday night we smell smoke. We are two houses and a football field away from a national park. We don't quite know what to do, we don't hear any sirens, so we go to bed. It turns out there were bush fires 6 or so suburbs away.

Saturday night, we flick on the news to see 14 people have been killed in bushfires in Victoria. We started watching, and understanding, and feeling. And today we are still watching. And now there are 108 people killed, with more expected. We have watched fire sprinting across the ground, destroying everything. The speed and magnitude of the fire is heartbreaking. We have seen incinerated cars parked haphazardly in clusters as fire must have surrounded these poor people thinking they could escape in their cars. I would have thought the same. We have seen people interviewed on TV, displaying only trauma and raw grief for the tragedy, none of the usual nerves when being interviewed for national TV, simply shock and disbelief. Their faces reflecting the horror and incomprehensibility of what they have just survived. All we can do is shake our heads and understand.

And there is talk that this tragedy may have been intentional.

Arsonists, firebugs ..... murderers.

Dog Poo

I thought my blog yonks ago about rissoles was as low as I could scoop (tee hee) on my blog, but give me a small break, I'm just finding my writing boots again after my summer hiatis and I'm still feeling a tad random.
So I freely admit, I'm not a dog lover, but this morning, driving home from school, I saw something that tipped me over the edge. Why do people have dogs? As I was driving, I saw a big "police dog" dog (Ok, I know they have an official dog name but can't find it in the memory banks) being walked by it's owner and as I passed, it squatted and did what can only be described as a big, stinky dog diarrhoea. Totally disgusting. And then the dog owner bent down with her plastic bag. Are you kidding me? Can you imagine what she had to do to sort it out? Why put yourself through this? Ok so dogs may have oodles of personality and are "man's companion" or whatever but really we ALL know how stinky dog poo is and I can't imagine how bad her hand must have smelt if there is only a smidge of cheap black plastic between her hand and the poo. Actually maybe all dog owners can be spotted by raw red poo scooping hands from the constant scalding water and soap routine they have to do.
My neighbour has a dog (who incidentally poo'ed on our front lawn, and I flat out refuse to move it as The Husband is Director of Dog Poo, along with his other directorships of boys teeth extraction and vermin removal) and the other day she stood chatting to me after her walk with Jaffa the dog, and a bulging black plastic bag. She stood chatting for ages. Did she think it was socially ok to hold a bag of poo while having a conversation or has her sense of smell and grossness long left her?

Enough. Next post will be intellectually challenging and informed. No more dog poo stories.

Home Alone

Today is my second day of having 3 children in school or kindy. 2nd real day in ...8 years, excluding when I worked as that time alone at my desk at the bank simply didn't count. So Day 1, I spent a quick 30-40 minutes catching up with all the goss on my trashy websites. No! This is simply not going to happen. I have broken the diet coke addiction (3 weeks 4 days without a sup, yessirree), I can also break the trashy website addiction. So I whizzed to a different, further away mall and raced around with a long list of things I wanted to look at or buy. "Slow down little lady..." I said to myself "I don't need to do it ALL at once". After an unsatisfactory mall trip (although I had some very good sushi as a treat), I raced home to do the school/kindy pickups.
Today, Day 2, time to get motivated and moving, get purpose, deliver some stuff. So after another 30 mins on my trashy sites (I am climbing on that wagon tomorrow - I gotta have some vices), I started to do stuff, randomly and without purpose. But at least I'm not shopping. And I do have my running gear on.