Home...the junkies are too many

You learn a great deal about yourself when you isolate yourself to the otherside of the world. Self-sufficiency is the name of the game and something I’ve been really revelling in since I moved into my new house in Surry Hills. I’m living with two Aussie students who are just fantastic and far too cool to deserve a random Scot cramping their style.  

However, I’ve also discovered a peculiar side to myself in this self-sufficiency drive. I spent the day out last Sunday going to the odd barbeque and making stock lead balloon jokes about shrimps before coming home in the evening to find my laptop was missing. We’d been robbed! Given my entire room fits in a suitcase, it’s needless to say they didn’t find much else worth nicking, but my housemate’s room had been ransacked.

 They’d busted in through our backdoor which has an iffy lock, so I made sure everything was properly secure before returning to waiting for my housemates to get back and being miserable. A while later though, the ruddy robbers came back! They were rattling at the back door despite being able to see I was in.

Most people’s normal reaction would be to shout “I’ve called the police,” actually call the police or just do a runner. For some ridiculous reason though, I went in to stealth mode. Slick as a Bond villain (in a floral dress) I grabbed the biggest kitchen knife I could see and crept around the corner of the kitchen to await my thieves. Luckily they were fairly half-hearted about the whole thing and skulked off as I have no idea how I’d have played out the whole ‘clutching a carving knife’ scenario had push come to shove. Perhaps I’d have launched into a Braveheart battle cry- could this ridiculous instinct be an effect of too many hero films?

My housemates got back not long after and did actually call the police who were pretty much just Aussie lads in uniform. They attempted to placate us by saying “aw, it’ll just be some dirty Abos or stupid junkies. They’ll always find ways to get in”... very comforting.

I am now both stripped of my faith in humanity (the last crime in Ardgour probably dates to the 1800s and involved some strong words over a creaky gate) and my ability to waste time on the net. My evenings have becoming unintentionally wholesome with reading, walking and conversation. Give me youtube clips of cats any day.  

I'm on a boat

With a sensible job, life has settled down and I’m in fear that there isn’t anything terribly original to write anymore. That may be tempting fate slightly though as I’m sure I’ll be cheerfully booted out of the office the moment they discover what a phoney I am. Instead of the business pages of The Australian, my most visited website is ‘Investopedia’ (how Chessie would cringe) and when we have office meetings to discuss the global markets I’m picturing unicorns prancing around castles.

With a 5 day week though, I’ve discovered the joy of weekends. A fairly indistinct phenomenon when you’re a student. I’ve been sampling the more boozy side of things with such events as a Sydney Uni Ski-club Halloween booze cruise around the harbour which was about as epic as the name suggests. My shape making repertoire on the dance-floor was blown wide open with the rocking motion to contend with. The climax of the night came when Lonely Island’s “I’m on a boat” began blaring and the fancy dress T-Pain emerged from the crowd in all his un-PC glory. I also had a night out with Ian and Bea the unlikely (sorry Bea, but we were all thinking it) and intrepid explorers.

What’s more I was privileged to see the whole of Sydney grind to a halt for the Melbourne Cup. Women went to work in cocktail dresses and fascinators and champagne corks were popped at a relentless rate from midday onwards. As the day wore on it was classic to see an entire city suffering from peaking too soon. By 7pm co-workers were either in the throes of a public tryst, waltzing or slumped in bus stops. I was fondly reminded of the royal wedding.

My brother had warned me before I got out here that I might find everyone a bit ‘uncouth.’ I dismissed this instantly thinking ‘Ewen is clearly underestimating how battle worn I am.’ And largely I was right; the girls out here are great. The guys though...urgh, it seems you can’t even instigate a conversation with one out here without first proving your worth by chugging a beer or doing a good impression of Austin Powers’ Fat Bastard...apparently the archetypal Scot. I was hoping he’d been forgotten about, damn you Mike Myers. Give me the politeness (and probably disinterestedness) of a Brit any day. It looks like I won’t be returning with any Bruces on my arm (audible sigh of relief from my father).

I’ll soon be moving into a perfect little house in the artsy/cool suburb of Sydney, Surry Hills. Luckily there is no screening process to see if I meet this criteria. It’s got a pretty little garden and is seconds walk from some of the city’s best cafes. Translated: I will soon be a fat lobster. I feel like my Sydney dream will really begin then.