Possum Problems

Welsh Gareth and I are having a torrid time clearing small spherical craps from our shoes each and every time we walk to my front door. This is due to the fact we have an abundance of pesky possums living in our garden.

The only suggestion we have had so far is to grow chilies everywhere as a deterrent but I feel that may be bit of an old wives tale, also I'm not much or a horticulturist. If anyone else has ever experienced this problem and has managed to get rid of them, any advice is welcome.

Bulldog & Sicky's Visit

This week I've had the absolute pleasure of hosting two of my very best of friends from my university days, as well as having the opportunity to show them a few of the sights and sounds Melbourne has to offer.

Bulldog and Sicky arrived with good intentions. They spent the entire morning hunting for Soccer Crazy so that they could surprise me by turning up at the store unannounced, but sadly things didn't go entirely to plan. The thing is, I don't actually work in a store called Soccer Crazy. Soccer Crazy is just a pseudo name I use for privacy reasons. You see I don't want people knowing too much about me, in a world of cyber crimes and identity theft you can never be too safe. So these two poor men walked between almost every soccer store in Melbourne before they eventually turned up in my shop. I must say it was worth the extra effort, I was indeed surprised and extremely grateful to see them.
They had spent the last 2 months travelling through Thailand and the east coast of Australia so they both looked extremely well but in good need of a haircut so I recommended Dr Follicle and told them I'd meet them in the local after work. We sat down had a few pots, caught up on recent events and reminisced about the past until we were all shattered and ready for bed.

As mentioned in an earlier post, my new apartment is stuck in 1989 and it comes with a wonderful example of an eggshell spa. I'd been wanting to try this out since I moved in and this was as good of an opportunity as ever, so in keeping with the 80's theme I knocked up a few White Russians and we all jumped in. I'll be honest, it's not made for 3 fully grown males, it's not even made for two, but after a few twister type moves we managed to squeeze in. My universal travel plug (I knew it would come in handy eventually) was only just big enough to fill to plug hole, so the slightest of nudges and we lost water at an alarming rate. This happened approximately once every 2 minutes causing the water level to drop below that of the water jets resulting in the bathroom floor receiving a quick watering. Each time this happened Bulldog, who had drawn the short straw and was sat beneath the tap, had to stand up and receive a splash of boiling water to the feet until the level was high enough for him to sit back down again. By the time we had finished there was more water on the floor than there was in the spa and there were bubbles everywhere.

Before I they arrived I had arranged to attend a leaving party at my Australian friends house as he is soon leaving to visit the UK. We had to get the train to his house as it was good 35 minutes outside of Melbourne and when we eventually arrived in Brighton we spent another 15 minutes walking around lost and asking directions from strangers. Eventually we turned up at the party and were quite impressed with what we found. It turned out that my friend lived in a house that could easily be confused with a castle, it was huge. I've never seen a house quite like it. Anyhow, we drank our embarrassingly cheap larger's out of tins, ate our fair share of vol-au-vents, and left before anyone thought we were the cleaners. On the way home we sat in the train station waiting for about 20 minutes before I got a little impatient and when to find out when the next train arrived. I pressed the button that advertised train information and I was greeted by an automated message stating "There are no more trains departing from this station today". Typical.

Eventually we managed to find our way back to Melbourne and met up with Spuffs and a few of our other friends and spent the night reliving university days. I hope they enjoyed themselves as much as I have this week, I've not laughed so much in a long time. If anyone else fancies a few nights free of charge in Melbourne staying in my humble abode, knock yourselves out, the more the merrier*.
*Booking fee's may apply.

The New (Old) Apartment

After the emotional departure of Rory I had to find a new place to live. Luckily Welsh Gareth from the Soccer shop also needed to find a new place so the search began. After contacting a local landlord who owned a few properties, we got picked up from work and went to view a few that fell within our budget. We started off by looking at what can only be described as a crack den, it reminded me of something from the film Trainspotting. As we were looking around the flat Welsh Gareth came across a large DVD collection and gave me a funny look, so I went over to investigate. I only required a quick glimpse of the box containing “Busty Babes 4” to understand Welsh Gareth’s queer look and on that note we left sharply. Call me picky, but I’d prefer not to sleep on urine stained mattresses or share a flat with the entire content of blockbusters adult selection.
Luckily we found somewhere to suit our needs and I can quite honestly say, our new place is possibly one of the best apartments in Melbourne, the best apartment that hasn't been updated since 1989 anyhow. It's like the place is stuck in a time warp, all the appliances are practically brand new and have hardly ever been used. The only problem is that they were brand new back I was 3 years old. I don't actually mind the decor, I'm a big fan of retro, but most people who visit do find it amusing. I can't decide which aspect of it is my personal favourite, whether its the salmon kitchen or the mirrored walls in the bedroom. It's not all bad however, it does come with a brown dish washer, Star Trek style gas Hobbs, tennis courts and a swimming pool and is reasonably cheap for the facilities it has.
The worst part of it all is that it's only one bedroom so me and Welsh Gareth came to a compromise. He pays more and gets the bedroom and I pay less and sleep in the lounge. This has worked fantastically well so far as he has a girlfriend and is hardly ever at home, so I get free reign most nights. The down side is that I can get a little too comfortable and recent events has left his girlfriend holding me in very much the same regard as say Spike from Notting Hill. I've been caught in just my pants cooking dinner on several occasions and I've even had the misfortune of falling asleep on the sofa, yet again in my pants, in front of the television only to be woken up by them coming through the door an hour later. It's not the fact I fell asleep in front of the TV in my underwear that I found embarrassing. It was the fact the the documentary I was watching on blue whales had long finished and there was now something far bluer on the screen.

The MCG

Me and my colleagues from the soccer store managed to get hold of some free tickets for the final game of the Socceroos qualifying campaign at the MCG last night. The MCG is an amazing stadium, it holds over 100,000 people when full. Last nights attendance was just shy at nearly 70,000 but it still made for an amazing atmosphere. The only annoyance was that Australia have already qualified, as have Japan, so they both decided to field reserve teams. The football was atrocious, absolutely appalling, I was actually surprised at how bad they were. But luckily for me the MCG crowd supplied me with 90 minutes worth of entertainment to make up for the shocking match.

In Australia drinking is allowed at sports venues. You can go to the MCG buy a pint and sit back and enjoy the match with a beer. I think this is a splendid idea and it also gets the fans going. About 10 minutes into the game a man about 10 seats away from me produced a trumpet from under his coat and started playing a few anthems. This was soon stopped by the stewards and they started to escort the gentleman out of the ground. Within moments there were boo’s targeting the stewards and the crowd started chanting “Let him play, Let him play”. The stewards at this point let the man play one last song to which he received a standing ovation then the stewards ejected him from the ground. That was the start of the crowd vs steward war. People started to collect plastic cups from their empty beers and stack them into “snakes”. The snakes would then get passed along a row and everybody would add their empty cups to the bottom. The stewards yet again tried to get involved but they couldn’t keep up with the crowd and the snakes started to reach tremendous lengths. The crowd then started singing “You can’t stop the snake, you can’t stop the snake” to the tune of "We are top of the league".

With about 5 minutes to go the MCG crowd secured a worthy victory against their oppressors. A big bald security guard had a young girl by the arm and was dragging her out of the stand when someone started singing “Is she really going out with him” by Joe Jackson and soon everyone was joining in. The match finished, MCG Crowd 3 - Stewards 0.

The New Face of Japanese Television

This week Japan are playing Australia in a world cup qualifier at the MCG in Melbourne so the Japanese national team have flown over to prepare for the game. Along with the team and the fans, the media have also come in search of a story and it just so happens they came across me. I was at work on Sunday morning when a film crew just popped in and asked if I would do an interview for Japanese television. They obviously didn't have a clue I wasn't Australian or that I wasn't even a fan but I thought I'd do it none the less. They started off with a few easy ones like "Which jerseys do you sell most of?" and "Do you think Tim Cahill will have a big influence on the match?". They than started asking me all sorts like "What was my view on the growing popularity of soccer in Australia" and "Where I thought soccer would be in 5 years time". After they had finished asking all their questions the interview lasted over 30 minutes. The director said that I was so articulate he had to keep the camera rolling. If I ever get bored of selling Soccer merchandise, apparently I could earn good money in Japan as a pundit. It's probably not worth packing in the day job just yet as he also mentioned I'd need to be fluent it Japanese.

P.s. They made me wear the scarf.

The Great Ocean Road

After nearly 5 months of travelling together,  sleeping in the same room and sometimes even the same bed, my compadre Rory is finally leaving me. His girlfriend is coming to visit so we are parting company for a a few weeks until we meet again in New Zealand. This weekend was a bank holiday in Australia which meant both Rory and I had a few days off work. Our housemates had both gone gallivanting around the country and we didn't fancy another weekend in Melbourne so we decided to go on a little adventure. For quite some time now we have been weighing up the idea of travelling along the the southern coast of Victoria but just never got round to it. I managed to chalk up over 60 hours last week so I was practically swimming in money, compared to the last few months anyhow, and Rory's impending departure meant this would be his last opportunity, so we gathered together the essentials and headed towards the Great Ocean Road.

The Great Ocean Road is a 200 odd kilometre stretch of road between Torquay and Warrnambool on the south coast of Victoria. The B100, as it's known on the map, was originally constructed by the government to provide soldiers returning from WW1 with employment. I read somewhere that the great ocean road provides one of the most picturesque drives on the planet and I'd have to agree.

We spent the morning winding along the coast and taking in the scenery. I've already witnessed Rory behind the wheel of a hire vehicle, so in the interest of public safety I decided to do all the driving myself. Constantly concentrating on avoiding death made it very difficult to take any photos, so I though I'd leave Rory in charge of all camera operations. After about an hour we pulled over to take a break . It was at this point that I discovered my sidekick had managed to take about 100 pictures all of which containing at least half a shot of either a windscreen wiper or a wing mirror. He was relieved of his duties immediately.

Due to budget restriction we were unable to book any accommodation so we were forced to sleep in the car. To make things a little more comfortable, we popped to the bottle shop and got ourselves a crate of beers before settling down for the night on the beach front. We sat laughing and chatting away for a good 4 hours before eventually falling asleep and 8 hours later we woke up to find the ocean in front of us. It really was quite spectacular.

We eventually made our way home and dropped the rental car off. I'd just spent two days in nobody's company but Rory's and when I dropped him off I realised how much I'm going to miss the little fella. Despite the fact he can't take photos, he really is a great friend and he'll be sadly missed while he's away. I just hope for his and his girlfriends sake he doesn't hire any motorbikes.