Oh America… it’s been too long!

Recently I started to scrapbook some photos from my trip. Yes, folks, I scrapbook. And it has reminded me of a bunch of ye olde americaland stuffs that I miss. I feel the need for bullet points!

• Massive packs of Jolly Ranchers for a low low price. To buy the same size bag here in Ozland, you’re paying about seven times what you’d pay in America. And seeing as I only really like the grape and the watermelon ones, and kept the rest for my dad to eat (he’s not picky), I’m not paying $15 for a bag of JR’s.
• Uuuh… Junior Mints. Same deal as the Jolly Ranchers. Junk food is so gloriously cheap in Americaland, and because its all imported, it costs a bajillion trillion dollars to buy out here… It’s kind of just the Junior Mints and the Jolly Ranchers that I miss in the way of food.
• Freaking out in Stairwells! Good times. Thanks for the memories, Savannah Ghosties.
• Old Navy. Sure… the clothes are cheap for a reason, but … Oh my god… The few items I did pick up last year were deliciously comfortable… I spent hours cruising around the Old Navy website, selecting a brand new wardrobe all for a low low price, only to then discover that they don’t ship to Ozland. WHY, oldnavy, WHYYYYY? *damsalindistress*…. for a while there I thought I could bribe one of my america friends with timtams, so that I could get my stuff delivered there, and then get them to send them on to me, but I don’t quite have the heart.. I think postage would ruin their own personal economy.
• Urban Outfitters. Dudes… they had MADLIBS. Massive chunky paged books FULL of madlibs. I could’ve gone mental in that place just on the books they had. But again, I’m almost sure they don’t ship to Ozland. Poohs. I also scored myself some Havaiana’s in Urban Outfitters in New Orleans in a lovely mermaid green colour. They’re metallic and I have never seen that same colour in any store here in Ozland. I always look.
• Walmart. I know its got that white trash type reputation, but we literally spent hours in those places.
• Disney. I seriously regret not grabbing more disney stuff while I was there. Mostly keyrings. I have a pluto keyring on my car keys that I got in Disneyland… (it could’ve been disneyworld, I can’t remember), and it occured to me recently… what will I do when Pluto breaks? Nothing is going to compare!? AND, you can’t get the stuff available inside the disney parks OUTSIDE of the disney parks so there is nowhere online that I can order them from. My only option is to email disneyland itself and hope to bejesus that they can find me some keyrings and send them to me… apparently they do this? It could be interesting because the sippy cup I brought back for my neice broke. Anyone know if it’s true?
• It was warm in America when we were there. It is currently not so warm in SydneyTown.
• Stopping in all those random little towns where they have giant billboards promoting prayer and abstinence.
• That whole awesome thing where I got to spend five weeks with my bestie, and met two girls who are just as awesome, became friends with them, and now stalk them via handmade postcards in the mail, or on those random trips where we actually get to see each other.

Good times, good times. I miss a lot of America. I miss travelling. I’m getting itchy feet and I’m feeling the need to get on a plane and zip off somewhere far away. I miss waking up in different cities. Waking up early, and not hating it entirely because you knew you were going to experience something amazing. I miss staying up ’till all hours of the night just chatting with my room-mate, about everything and nothing at the same time.

But mostly I miss Old Navy…

Dear Ugg Boot Companies,

I am an avid wearer of your Ugg products. I like how toasty warm they keep my footsies during the chilly winter months here in Sydney. For someone who dislikes the cold as much as I do, you simply cannot go past the Ugg. I may have even been so bogan as to wear them out of the house, but lets keep this between us.*

I have a proposition for you.

I have to wear steel cap boots as an OHS requirement in my workplace. I’ve managed to escape this only one time when I couldn’t physically get my foot into my boots because of blisters. But that’s not the point. I HAVE to wear them.

Now, as anyone who is familiar with steel capped boots and or working on hard surfaces such as concrete may be aware, they don’t hold the warmth very well. They also don’t give very much, so when you say you’re a size seven, and you recieve your size seven boots, you can only ever wear them with one pair of thin socks, even after they’ve stretched out. So basically, your feet turn into little steel capped icecubes during the winter time. It makes walking painful and no amount of pepermint foot fizzies from The Body Shop will ever save them.

Do you see what I’m hinting at?

By far the best part of cold feeties during wintertime is when you can come home, get all refreshed, and slip your footsies into a nice cozy pair of fluffly lined comfort clouds. Aka, my ugg boots. Now just imagine if you could have that feeling all day long, while still keeping your toes safe should anything large and heavy fall directly onto them. Lets ignore the fact that I’m pretty sure Mythbusters proved that in some circumstances, steel-caps can cause more damage than protection. OHS people. Lets stick with the rules.

Dream with me here, folks. Imagine a pair of ugg boots that you could wear to work. Naturally they wouldn’t LOOK like conventional slipper type ugg boots, because only full bogans like me would ever be inclined to wear them out of the house and into a public place. In my imagination, they look like a more relaxed version of your conventional steel-capper, and would obviously include some kind of toe protection. But they would be lined with that same fluffy, toasty warm cloud like substance you find inside ugg boots.

Imagine the market! How many blue-collar workers are required by law to wear steel-caps? It’s guaranteed they’re also the same crowd that changes into their trakkies and uggs when they get home. Possibly the Ugg’s biggest market, besides those skanky girls who still think its a good idea to wear ugg boots with short denim skirts in the middle of a snowstorm. Or Pamela Anderson. Ignoring those, YOU COULD MAKE A FORTUNE!

I am available on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for any meetings you may wish to have to discuss this revolutionary idea.

Yours,
Miss K.

*.. Before you judge me, I wore them out of the house once when we were visiting friends who live literally around the corner, and a handful of times when I’ve had to nip out to the grocery store to pick up a few things. All times it has been under the cover of darkness and I was wearing long pants, not a denim skirt.

You go on an extended interstate weekend getaway, where you visit friends and sing and dance and steal things. However, you have to take a day of unpaid leave of work.
+10,000 Life Points, but – 500 Job Points.

Game of Life fans will get that reference. Even if I made up that part about Job Points. Because they sure don’t exist in the Game of Life.

So anyway. I was lucky enough to zip off to Melbourne for a few days. I flew down on Sunday morning, and flew back thismorning. Bright and Early. Okay… maybe early, but certainly not bright.

My Thoughts On Flying:
I had a great flight going down to Melbourne. I flew with Qantas, and was lucky enough to score myself an exit row seat, so I had a little bit of extra leg room. Quite lovely. I didn’t even realise we were decending until we practically hit the ground (aka.. the way it SHOULD be). I had two nice ladies sitting next to me who fell asleep before the plane had even taken off. Tops.

However.. I flew back with Virgin Blue and did not enjoy the flight at all. They’re a cheaper airline and it kind of showed. There were far too many spew bags used. Not by me, but by other people on board, and the cabin crew did little to hide the fact that someone was horrifically ill during the flight. “Hello sympathetic vomiters! Lookie over here where one of your fellow passengers is trying to see just how much stuff will fit into one of the on board motion sickness baggies! Oh score! Almost completely full! Well done, lets everyone give him a round of aplause!”

But seriously. I was rather surprised at how.. erm… unprofessional the flight crew were. The girl doing the voice over things was laughing hysterically all the way through it, so tough luck if you actually wanted to know where the safety exits were!

I also have to wonder if the cheaper airlines don’t have the same presurisation doo-dahs in their planes. Whenever I fly with a more expensive airline, like Qantas, or even when I did my America flights with United, I was perfectly fine. But when I’ve flown with Jetstar or Virgin, I’ve had massive problems with giddyness, and dizzyness and have felt entirely .. ‘off’ during the flights. Is anyone smart with their aircraft/airline knowledge and can actually tell me if this is in my head or if there is some kind of phenomenon whereby cheap airlines mean higher chance of mid-flight illness due to poor inflight conditions?

My Thoughts On Melbourne:
I love Melbourne. I fell in love with it when I was there last in 2006. It was good to be back.
There was also a 24 hour 7-11 downstairs from our hotel this time that satisfied all our 1:30am slurpee needs.

However… St Kilda beach has an odd smell, our hotel had a weird atrium thing in the middle of it that freaked the bejesus out of me, and entirely too much junk-food was consumed. There was also a questionable food item that smelt delicious, but resulted in the fact that the mere thought of vegetables now turns my stomach.

Hooray for socialising:
I got to catch up with an old friend, who.. when we worked it out.. I had not seen in FIFTEEN YEARS! It was lovely to see her again, and her little boy and her growing baby bump! Was nice because she’s moving further out from Melbourne soon, and with a 1year old son, and another baby on the way, I can’t expect that she will come to Sydney to see me, and it’ll probably be a while before I get back to Melbourne again on account of trying to save for going overseas and getting The Man and I on the same continent for an extended period of time. So it was a nice catch up.

And then of course I got to hang out with Miss Juliekins and she is pretty damn awesome.

My Thoughts On Melbourne Events:
Comedy festival shows are great.

However…. it’s slightly weird when you walk into a venue that is actually smaller than your bathroom. I’m not kidding. There were five rows of five chairs and barely enough room to lie down across ways. Not that you would, because it smelt a bit seedy. On the way out, we noticed the door said “CARPET ROOM”, which leads me to believe it was a storage room for carpet. Tops Venue.

Mraz. Round Two.
There were more Jason Mraz concerts. Both had different setlists to Sydney and on one occasion, he skipped getting Stinking Lisa Mitchell to sing Lucky with him. Greatly appreciated by the masses. Thumbs up for Mraz. My faith in Jason Mraz was completely restored after this trip. Amrazing.

Thanks to Juliekins’ stealthy ninja moves (shes so small and stealthy.. she just sneaks in and people don’t realise until it’s too late!), she grabbed me the very last Polaroid book of the entire tour. THUMBS UP. That very Polaroid book is now signed by Toca, the percussion and back up singer guy who is very awesome, and Bushwalla, The Mraz BFF.

However, it is not signed by Mraz himself though, because he decided its more fun to jump into van and leave straight away before acknowledging the handful of fans who just wanted to wave and say hi.. andgethimtosignmyphotobook. AHEM. Nor did he come out and say hello to us when Toca was sitting with us for almost half an hour. Hells yes. Toca came over of his own accord and sat with us for a while. Then some fangirls came over and recognised him and did the “OMG YOU IS AWESOME!” craps that fangirls normally do. But anyway. We got to hang out with Toca, and that is pretty fabulous.

I went and saw Jason Mraz in concert last night. For the forth time. Its safe to say that I’m a rather big fan.

The previous three times I’ve been to a Mraz concert, he has wowed. The first and second times he played without the backup of a full band. Just his guitar, Toca on the percussion stuffs and a bass player. I remember being blown away by the first show I saw at The Forum in Sydney. Notably… this was also the only time I’ve seen him peform without a hat. Also the only time I’ve seen him play ‘Plane’.

The third time I saw him, he had a full band, including a brass trio, with him. He played the Enmore in Sydney. It was three days before I was due to fly out to America for five weeks… and I’d also managed to pick up a stomach bug. But I had seating so I still went, knowing I could relax into it and not move for several hours. I just had to make it back to the car afterwards….

Last night was the Horden. Here’s my thoughts in point form, I’ll start with the bad and end with the few good ones in order to finish on a high note.
1. I had venue pick up tickets, because the ticketing company wanted to charge me $13 to send them out to me in the post. So when I first arrived (early so we got a good parking spot to get out of the carpark quick), I asked the security guard what time the ticket office opened to pick up tickets. He said 5:30, so we went off and had some dinner before coming back to pick up our tickets. We got there just after 5:30, and they weren’t open. We then proceeded to wait outside the ticket office for a further forty minutes before they opened it and then they took about five minutes to find my tickets. By that stage, the line had started to curl back around upon itself.

2. The line…Lucky us got stuck standing in front of what was initially two teenage girls… this began to grow exponentially as the line shifted a little when they compressed us to fit everyone in without causing traffic problems. I didn’t have a problem with that… I DID, however, have a problem with the fact that they did not allow any extra room for their plethora of what I am assuming were private-school-kid friends.
2a. Dear Initial Girls Who Stood Behind Us: You did not “meet” Jason Mraz. He shouted something at you from across a carpark after you shouted something at him initially. That’s not “meeting”… thats acknowledgement. One “OHMIGAWD” would’ve been enough. It’s not that exciting. Also…. buy longer dresses.
2b. Dear Friends Of Initial Girls Who Stood Behind Us: I’m lead to believe that you were all from a private school. This caused me concerns on a few levels as none of you seemed to have any respect for anyone standing around you. I counted being kicked seven times by one or more of you, I was leaned on a few times, elbowed several more, and at one point, one of you sneezed on me. I got one apology when I basically stared one of you mofos down. What the fuck are your parents paying for in a private education if you clearly don’t know how to apologise and treat the people around you with some level of respect?
2c. I’m also pretty sure you were all drunken skanks. I really enjoyed hearing about your drunken escapades… especially seeing as I don’t think any of you were over the age of 16. I will point out though that when you say that you’ve been skinny-dipping, and then adding in that you were in your underwear…. thats not skinnydipping. That’s swimming in your underwear.

3. More on the line! Apparently there was a delay on the music people getting from Brisbane to Sydney.. (They said something on the news thismorning about a flight being delayed because some baby snakes escaped in the cargo hold), and thats fair enough. Delays happen. Its not a big drama… But I, and mostly everyone else in the line did not appreciate the wait in line being extended by a further hour without any information from the security guards as to what was happening. Seriously.. just get them to say “sorry folks, we’ve had a bit of delay thisevening, but we’re working our hardest to get you guys inside as fast as we can”.. Not that hard… they weren’t doing anything else anyway. You would have given them something to do.

4. Lisa Mitchell. Oh my holy jesus. Does she know or is she capeable of more than three notes? Perhaps she also should’ve thought a little more about her wardrobe choices too… I was way up the back in the seats and I could see from there just how close she came to one of those “malfunctions”.
4a. She also did ‘Lucky’ with Mraz later in the night. She did not know the words and warbled through most of it in those same three notes from earlier. I’d have been upset if I was a performer and I’d picked a support act who clearly had so little idea of who the fuck I am. I laughed. I laughed my ass of at you, Lisa Mitchell.

5. WHERE WAS GNOMIE!?!
this should’ve been a sign that things weren’t quite right.

6. Mraz did come on stage. Mraz was still good. However, with the exception of three songs.. Mraz only played songs off the new album. He played ‘Unfold’… no one knew it, and for a song no one really knew.. I thought he stretched the instrumental part in it out a little bit and people started to get bored. It was around this time that a few people near me actually LEFT. Packed up and LEFT. I saw maybe one pair of hands up and waving and two people with their cameras up… everyone else just looked confused. I am rather disappointed with the set list. He didn’t play The Remedy… how could he not play The Remedy? Nor did he finish with the usually AMAZING acoutic version of You And I? Sure, the setlist would’ve pleased a whole bunch of new fans – which was probably about 80% of the crowd.. but I don’t like that it seemed to completely disregard any older fans. Fans that know songs from the coffee shop days. It felt like a bit of a sellout setlist to me.  In the sense that all the old stuff that established him as a kick-ass live performer in the first place appeared forgotten in favour of the newer stuff that more people would know simply off the back of I’m Yours. And this wasn’t just me… I was near an exit and a LOT of people left early. Or they hung out at the bar out the back… because I did not see them come back in.

7. When elevators say they can’t hold more than 14 people…. you and your five closest friends will not fit, and its kind of rude to everyone else already in the elevator to keep on shoving until something gives.

Now the good.
1. Eric Hutchinson. Gloriously dorky. Gloriously upbeat. Good fun. I seat danced.

2. The Dynamo of Volition. WOW. Still one of my faves.

3. Bushwalla! Who expected that!

4. Jason Mraz is still Jason Mraz. And even though this was the least enjoyable of all my Mraz concert-goings, it’s still Mraz. He’s still pitch perfect and he’s still incredibly talented, and he’s still the best live performer I’ve ever been lucky enough to see. Maybe just alter your setlist for next time. I’m seeing him in Melbourne next week… I’ll be upset if I get a copy of what I saw in Sydney. I want the older stuff!

5. Getting home before midnight, coz I had to work today.