Melbourne
So, I told myself, I'm too lazy to go to coffee with the boys, instead I decided to go into the CBD for a walk and possibly some mouth watering snack that I come across unexpectedly and just couldn't resist the temptation to buy it.
The train arrived just as I hopped onto the platform, a FIRST for Connex. Empty besides having two dodgy looking guys with enough of piercing on their faces to help China overcome its insatiable appetite for metal in the commodities boom. And they stank too. Could smell their stinky hair from where I was sitting (I'd like to imagine it was their hair and not any other body part)
Melbourne Central Station seems to be active in promoting country music, because every time I arrive there the speakers are blaring songs about Mary and her Radiata Pine or Bill and his Bunny Farm. You get the drift. Fucking country people, infiltrating the subways. They should go back to the dry and dusty paddocks where they belong, away from us city people who wear Armani and Prada just because we can.
Anyway, there was a fat lady standing right in front of me, a bloody Chinese one, on the escalator. In one hand she had a Safeway green-bag loaded with goodness-cares-what, and in the other she had this enormous handbag the size of a toolbox complete with buckles from hell and colours inspired by the Pet Shop Boys. Like, nylon green. Her fat butt framed by the flowers on her lacey dress would not budge, let alone allow another person to walk past her. She just stood there in the middle of the way, wiggling her fat butt and green Safeway bag as though she fuckin owned the escalator. Behind me, a line of people had already started piling up, all swearing under their breaths for this gargantuan beast to move. And she did, but not to let us through, just to scratch her elephant legs, bending over precariously to make herself look like a beached whale. Sigh.
The CBD was filled with people from all walks of life, from those who had a lot going for them to those who were just plain ugly. I mean, ugly people should be banned from the streets. Okay I didn't mean that. I'M JUST SAYING, sometimes it’s hard when the guy next to you looks like Marilyn Monroe and the girl in front of you has make-up like Gene Simmons from KISS.
Bloody lazy Big-W. Today, because it is Easter MONDAY, they conveniently decide to close at 5pm. Just because they are too lazy to work they use the excuse of a public holiday to shut down three hours earlier than usual. So while I was busy looking at the light bulbs in the electrical section, a hoarse Indian lady barks through the PA system that they are about to close in 5 minutes. 'Please make your final selections and proceed to the checkouts', she says. So I'm supposed to pool together all my intestinal juices to make a decision on whether to buy a light bulb that is energy efficient or not, that's white or blue, that's 40W or 60W or 100W or 120W, that's screw-on or a slot-pins-into-hole, that's a bulb or a coil, that's fluorescent or incandescent. All the choices and possibilities for the SAME FRIGGING PRICE. How am I, the Mr-I-decide-on-a-purchase-based-on-the-cost-quality-and-benefits-I-get-for-every
-extra-dollar-I-pay, supposed to come up with a decision in 5 frigging minutes?
Fumbling with the boxes, I accidentally knock a box over and it hits the floor in a SMASH. $40 spotlight gone in a second. The angmoh next to me who was also having trouble making his choice laughed and told me to keep quiet. And so I did. We instantly became partners in crime, united by the Shopper's Rule of Thou-shall-not-force-us-to-pick-a-lightbulb-in-under-5-minutes-just-so-you-can
-friggin-shut-early.
I make my way to the checkout and the lady asks me, Cash or Credit. I bark back at her with no mercy, flinging my green Commonwealth Bank card at her face.
EFTPOS, I say.
~
Bloody kids in the front window of Borders, not sure what they are doing with their eyes and noses but it sure as hell looks disgusting. Twisting and contorting it in more ways than one, passersby do not seem amused. The boy drops a Jamie Oliver book onto his leg and screams for help. Good on ya.
You know that you're a plant nerd when the first thing you do when you enter a bookshop is look up the directory for the 'Gardening' section. And in the case of Borders, it is usually in the most dingy, deplorable and neglected corner of the vast glitzy bookshop, huddled together with the other dodgy fantasy books that nobody really bothers to read anymore after the invention of computer games.
So I head into the dodgy corner that is the Gardening section and pull out a book on ‘Contemporary Sculpture in Australian Gardens, 'Small Backyards' and 'Name That Tree'. Going through the colourful pages I instantly forget the urban stinkhole that is the CBD and am drawn away into the vast open plains of suburbia with quaint little cottage gardens and beautiful bridges across calm rivers and streams.
'Name That Tree' went on and on about the Fruit Flower Bark Leaf Stem of each of the trees that it featured, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but the pictures were quite crappy. And while I was looking up Fagus sylvatica this fat chick with a HUGE-ARSE Borders nametag hung across her neck like a cow, comes up to me and tells me that I cannot sit on the floor because it's a 'Safety Issue' and I am more than welcome to use the 'chairs' that they provide.
I mean, what's with this obsession about 'Occupational Health and Safety' bullshit? Is it the invention of some fucking idiotic bogan who wants to make everything difficult for everybody? Since when have I become an 'occupational hazard'? So, by sitting on the floor in the most NEGLECTED department of the bookstore, somebody might just TRIP over me and be killed by the impact. Occupational Health and Safety my firm tanned and toned Asian arse. I think it's all a bunch of bollocks, just like all the other billion and one pages of legislation that the Victorian Parliament has come up with to date, including how the pathways should be shaved so that people do not trip over or how books should be arranged so that some old woman does not die after a book falls onto her while she's browsing for cross stitch patterns.
If anyone in that bookshop was to be an occupational hazard, it would be that fugly lady who told me off for sitting on the floor, because her stinky bleached hair and cheap MissSixty shoes will send any fashion guru into a stroke.
Grunting in the rudest way possible I pick my ass up and walk around the store in search of a 'chair' only to find the few chairs that are available all taken up by other people. Surprise surprise. I wonder what is it with this city. While many cities try to provide more seating for the weary traveler (especially the old people... gotta think of the grey-haired wrens too) but this city in particular seems to want to reduce the number of benches/ seats available for use. Take for example Flinders Street station, which is like, the centre of all railway activity in Victoria if not Melbourne. The number of benches on each platform does not exceed the number of fingers I have on my hand. During rush hour most if not all are forced to stand and wait for the bloody trains that take 10 hours to arrive, if ever.
Even along the streets, chairs are few and far between. Even if you DO come across one, some bloody PRC will be occupying 1/3 of the space with their trishaw legs and the other 2/3 by an obese Australian. So to ask a person to 'go find a seat' is like asking someone to dig a tonne of gold out from Ballarat.
So I resort to standing at the Travel Guide section, albeit humiliatingly, and I go through the 'Name That Tree' book very fast. In front of me, travel guides to Britain. I pick one up and flip through very fast too, such that I tear the corner of one of the pages out of sheer anger (though I'd like to think of it as merely accidental). To worsen the insult, I chuck the books back onto the shelf in the most unkempt manner possible to man, and storm out of the store with my nose up in the air as high as the Eiffel Tower.
I barge through the barriers at the train station only to find that the trains are arriving in 30 minutes.
BLARDY IDIOTS.
The train arrived just as I hopped onto the platform, a FIRST for Connex. Empty besides having two dodgy looking guys with enough of piercing on their faces to help China overcome its insatiable appetite for metal in the commodities boom. And they stank too. Could smell their stinky hair from where I was sitting (I'd like to imagine it was their hair and not any other body part)
Melbourne Central Station seems to be active in promoting country music, because every time I arrive there the speakers are blaring songs about Mary and her Radiata Pine or Bill and his Bunny Farm. You get the drift. Fucking country people, infiltrating the subways. They should go back to the dry and dusty paddocks where they belong, away from us city people who wear Armani and Prada just because we can.
Anyway, there was a fat lady standing right in front of me, a bloody Chinese one, on the escalator. In one hand she had a Safeway green-bag loaded with goodness-cares-what, and in the other she had this enormous handbag the size of a toolbox complete with buckles from hell and colours inspired by the Pet Shop Boys. Like, nylon green. Her fat butt framed by the flowers on her lacey dress would not budge, let alone allow another person to walk past her. She just stood there in the middle of the way, wiggling her fat butt and green Safeway bag as though she fuckin owned the escalator. Behind me, a line of people had already started piling up, all swearing under their breaths for this gargantuan beast to move. And she did, but not to let us through, just to scratch her elephant legs, bending over precariously to make herself look like a beached whale. Sigh.
The CBD was filled with people from all walks of life, from those who had a lot going for them to those who were just plain ugly. I mean, ugly people should be banned from the streets. Okay I didn't mean that. I'M JUST SAYING, sometimes it’s hard when the guy next to you looks like Marilyn Monroe and the girl in front of you has make-up like Gene Simmons from KISS.
Bloody lazy Big-W. Today, because it is Easter MONDAY, they conveniently decide to close at 5pm. Just because they are too lazy to work they use the excuse of a public holiday to shut down three hours earlier than usual. So while I was busy looking at the light bulbs in the electrical section, a hoarse Indian lady barks through the PA system that they are about to close in 5 minutes. 'Please make your final selections and proceed to the checkouts', she says. So I'm supposed to pool together all my intestinal juices to make a decision on whether to buy a light bulb that is energy efficient or not, that's white or blue, that's 40W or 60W or 100W or 120W, that's screw-on or a slot-pins-into-hole, that's a bulb or a coil, that's fluorescent or incandescent. All the choices and possibilities for the SAME FRIGGING PRICE. How am I, the Mr-I-decide-on-a-purchase-based-on-the-cost-quality-and-benefits-I-get-for-every
-extra-dollar-I-pay, supposed to come up with a decision in 5 frigging minutes?
Fumbling with the boxes, I accidentally knock a box over and it hits the floor in a SMASH. $40 spotlight gone in a second. The angmoh next to me who was also having trouble making his choice laughed and told me to keep quiet. And so I did. We instantly became partners in crime, united by the Shopper's Rule of Thou-shall-not-force-us-to-pick-a-lightbulb-in-under-5-minutes-just-so-you-can
-friggin-shut-early.
I make my way to the checkout and the lady asks me, Cash or Credit. I bark back at her with no mercy, flinging my green Commonwealth Bank card at her face.
EFTPOS, I say.
~
Bloody kids in the front window of Borders, not sure what they are doing with their eyes and noses but it sure as hell looks disgusting. Twisting and contorting it in more ways than one, passersby do not seem amused. The boy drops a Jamie Oliver book onto his leg and screams for help. Good on ya.
You know that you're a plant nerd when the first thing you do when you enter a bookshop is look up the directory for the 'Gardening' section. And in the case of Borders, it is usually in the most dingy, deplorable and neglected corner of the vast glitzy bookshop, huddled together with the other dodgy fantasy books that nobody really bothers to read anymore after the invention of computer games.
So I head into the dodgy corner that is the Gardening section and pull out a book on ‘Contemporary Sculpture in Australian Gardens, 'Small Backyards' and 'Name That Tree'. Going through the colourful pages I instantly forget the urban stinkhole that is the CBD and am drawn away into the vast open plains of suburbia with quaint little cottage gardens and beautiful bridges across calm rivers and streams.
'Name That Tree' went on and on about the Fruit Flower Bark Leaf Stem of each of the trees that it featured, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but the pictures were quite crappy. And while I was looking up Fagus sylvatica this fat chick with a HUGE-ARSE Borders nametag hung across her neck like a cow, comes up to me and tells me that I cannot sit on the floor because it's a 'Safety Issue' and I am more than welcome to use the 'chairs' that they provide.
I mean, what's with this obsession about 'Occupational Health and Safety' bullshit? Is it the invention of some fucking idiotic bogan who wants to make everything difficult for everybody? Since when have I become an 'occupational hazard'? So, by sitting on the floor in the most NEGLECTED department of the bookstore, somebody might just TRIP over me and be killed by the impact. Occupational Health and Safety my firm tanned and toned Asian arse. I think it's all a bunch of bollocks, just like all the other billion and one pages of legislation that the Victorian Parliament has come up with to date, including how the pathways should be shaved so that people do not trip over or how books should be arranged so that some old woman does not die after a book falls onto her while she's browsing for cross stitch patterns.
If anyone in that bookshop was to be an occupational hazard, it would be that fugly lady who told me off for sitting on the floor, because her stinky bleached hair and cheap MissSixty shoes will send any fashion guru into a stroke.
Grunting in the rudest way possible I pick my ass up and walk around the store in search of a 'chair' only to find the few chairs that are available all taken up by other people. Surprise surprise. I wonder what is it with this city. While many cities try to provide more seating for the weary traveler (especially the old people... gotta think of the grey-haired wrens too) but this city in particular seems to want to reduce the number of benches/ seats available for use. Take for example Flinders Street station, which is like, the centre of all railway activity in Victoria if not Melbourne. The number of benches on each platform does not exceed the number of fingers I have on my hand. During rush hour most if not all are forced to stand and wait for the bloody trains that take 10 hours to arrive, if ever.
Even along the streets, chairs are few and far between. Even if you DO come across one, some bloody PRC will be occupying 1/3 of the space with their trishaw legs and the other 2/3 by an obese Australian. So to ask a person to 'go find a seat' is like asking someone to dig a tonne of gold out from Ballarat.
So I resort to standing at the Travel Guide section, albeit humiliatingly, and I go through the 'Name That Tree' book very fast. In front of me, travel guides to Britain. I pick one up and flip through very fast too, such that I tear the corner of one of the pages out of sheer anger (though I'd like to think of it as merely accidental). To worsen the insult, I chuck the books back onto the shelf in the most unkempt manner possible to man, and storm out of the store with my nose up in the air as high as the Eiffel Tower.
I barge through the barriers at the train station only to find that the trains are arriving in 30 minutes.
BLARDY IDIOTS.
Fell from the sky at 3:24 AM
4 Comments:
lol.
u know what i'm referring to.
"Just because they are too lazy to work they use the excuse of a public holiday to shut down three hours earlier than usual."
Mate, that's what a HOLIDAY is: it's a day when you don't have to work, or (until work choices really kicks in) you don't have to work unless you are paid more money for it. That's why (if you were a worker) you were free to go on your expedition, and why Big W decided (decision of the management, nothing to do with the laziness of the workers) it wasn't worth its while staying open for longer and there were even fewer trains than usual.
But you were venting,I guess...
Yeah well, it seems to suggest, 'We don't want your money; who cares about your needs, we just want to go home.'
I'm feel a deep sense of regret that I used to think so highly of First World culture, because clearly in terms of shopping, Asia does the word more justice.
interesting. shopping is what - a functional activity subverted and masked by corporations and human desire to fulfill real and artificial desires and needs and hence the ascension of the status ladder where most purchases are not necessary to daily life, but to the satiation of acquisition, masking of boredom, distraction and curiosity. shopping 365 days a year at all times is a product of free market, choice, capitalism and individuality where people think they have a right to be able to shop on their terms when in fact its private enterprise and the laws they champion to let them trade as well as the fact whether they make a profit or not that dictates what freedoms you have or have not when it comes to parting with your cash.
when shops close down for one day (good friday) we all cry out in pain at the outrage (well i did) that (coles) is not open and the choice is not there to shop or not to shop.
good service or bad, hrmm. good service lubricates and masks the fact that they are making a profit off you from usually inflated prices. i think, a great marketing trick to make you feel worthwhile of giving your money to them. guilt-free, free of scepticism of whether they ripped you off or not, you gladly walk out feeling loved. bad service makes you more conscious of the money you spend, who you spend it to, their ethics and morals and how their employees feel. i think bad service is more real because no one is really fulfilled being paid shit or working on a holiday when everyone else is at leisure. bad service is an individual expression of an unhappy employee, which rises above the streamlining and gentrification of employees to be numb soulless bodies taking money for someone else > look at the japanese shopping experience :) their wage is a promise; a promise to do what they are told in exchange for this money. if they hate it, then, in this world, they surely will not survive this menial job if they do not embrace the idea of being fake to everyone until they find what they love to do, then it becomes real. some people never get there. its a lazy friday afternoon :)
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