Like a Virgin

I phoned my mum last night for our weekly catch up, I won't tell you how long we were on the phone for! I love my conversations with mum as we go off in all different tangents and directions and we have opinions about everything. We can also, quite literally talk about the price of peas.... but usually it is the price of bananas.

One of the topics we covered was British Politics and how there really isn't anyone in any party that fills us with confidence enough to vote for them. I've actually, um, quite liked the Tory party and was saddened to see Labour (Sorry, I mean new Labour because they are more Conservative than the Conservative Party ever was) win with Tony Blair the first time, let alone get in for another term! I really liked William Hague, why did he have to leave? And thought Ian Duncan Smith wasn't too bad, but would still opt for William Hague! And I now find myself looking back at John Major and thinking "He wasn't that bad as a PM". Of course dear Maggie was my fave PM, she may have made changes that upset a lot of people but my god that woman had balls! I also think the Poll Tax was good in theory and is actually a fairer system, but they were charging too much, that was the only reason why it didn't work. Whether you love her or hate her, as a woman I think that she is a great role model. But David "Hug a Hoodie" Cameron..... Oh, Peeerrrrlease! I'm sorry Mr Cameron but you have no charm or charisma and as for hugging hoodies, well, you clearly haven't walked down some of the streets in the UK have you? When you get some real experience of real life on the British Streets, then come back and try to win us over because after that statement I would rather vote in Tony Blair again than have you run the Country. Such a shame because I think it's time for a change of government again, but there is no one out there that appeals to me.

I think voting should be compulsory but I also believe that we should be able to show our apathy but having the option "None of the above". As the famous quote says, and by whom I cannot remember at the moment "It doesn't matter who you vote for because the Politicians always get in". How true. And there aren't many Politicians that have a single clue about real life in Britain. So then Mum and I got chatting some more about the subject and the craziest idea entered my head, the man that has a lot of charm and charisma and does know what real life in Britain is all about - Richard Branson! I know it is completely crazy, but I truly love the idea of Sir Richard Branson being the PM. Of course he would have to set up his own party, how about the Virgin Party? Yep, I'll vote for that! Let's be fair, it's not like he could stuff it up anymore than previous parties who have got in, so why not let him have a go?
But I have heard that Sir Branson isn't interested in entering Politics :-( Such a shame as I really do believe that he would get a lot of votes. Perhaps he is scared of loosing his brilliant public image? And, perhaps, just perhaps, he could back a damn good job of running the country. If nothing else, it would be great to see him try.

Alas, I guess this will always be a dream.....

Thoughts and other mad ramblings

I can't think of one topic in particular so I'm going for the shotgun approach of blogging - random thoughts!

First, I really shouldn't blog when slightly intoxicated as it highlights my bad typing. Please note that I have bad typing and it is not my spelling that is bad, it just happens to make my spelling look bad.

Second, George Clooney. He looked gorgeous at the Oscars. Don't care about anybody else there *grins hugely*. Staying on the subject of George, Mr M has a colleague over from Atlanta who we caught up with again on the weekend. We talked about the American take on Australia with the Outback restaurants, Harley motorbikes *drools*, Keith Urban and how much his girlfriend loves him, and of course if the topic of convo heads to people you will never get a chance with but enjoy to drool over anyway, I say that my Homer Doughnut moment happens with George Clooney. Well, I must have said the magic word 'cos this guy just did not stop saying how great it was that I liked George. I did mention that as there is a bit of an age difference between myself and Mr M that it just fits it with my sexy older man thing I have going on. Perhaps that was why it was so good, who knows. But most people would have just said that they agreed, disagreed, didn't really care. Nonetheless, the reaction tickled me.

Third, family. Oh yes, the dreaded family. For most parts my family are good and don't bother me that badly but of course that would be my immediate family consisting of my mum, my brother and his family, my dad, my stepmum, her family. Even my almost family which is actually Mr M's family, his mum, his sister and her family, his aunt and her very close friends. Yes, all those family people are generally pretty good, of course we all have our moments but on the whole my family isn't that bad. So why doesn't my cousin comply! Bless her, I know her heart is in the right place but..... but..... please drop the subject of residency otherwise we are gonna have such a major falling out and I really don't want that to happen. And of course my cousin speaks often to my aunt who happens to live in North NSW who then phoned to ask how the residency was going. My cousin lives with rose tinted glasses and would dearly love to move to Australia, this is fair enough because Australia is a lovely country, but I and Mr M miss home... Lots! That's not to say we won't miss aspects of Sydney when we finally go home but home for us is still very much the UK and we want to go back.
We would have liked to have gone for residency and been granted citizenship as we could have moved out of Sydney to somewhere else and Mr M wouldn't be tied to the company. But the only option we have for getting residency is Employer Nominated, which I have stressed to my cousin and aunt is just not an option we are willing to look at because it means we are, yet again tied to the company. Besides which we don't have time on our side, if we even did consider it as the company would go for the option until the current four year Visa runs out in December '08. We would then have to wait at least 2 years until we could go for citizenship and by which time Mr M would be undesirable in the workplace because of his age. Which means if we did then go back to the UK he would struggle to get a decent job and the same would apply in Australia. And what's the point in applying for Permanent Residency unless you go for Citizenship, if you leave the country for too long your residency gets revoked and you have to start from scratch so your better off going for the full monty. But for us it is not going to happen. We both have elderly parents (I hate calling my mother elderly! She can still kick arse!) and they won't be around forever and it would be nice to be closer to them. And we still have many close friends back home, not to say we don't have friends here, most of them know that we will be going back but my other best friend doesn't know that we will be leaving yet. Somehow, with my moving countries I always seem to hurt a best friend :-( Fortunately they are both fantastic women and I'm sure my Aussie best friend will be just as understanding as my UK best friend was when I left. Plus, she would love to get UK citizenship so at least we will sort of help as she can stay with us when she comes over. I will miss her, just like I miss my UK bestie. Perhaps we should all go and live in Spain!

Four, why is it when I have no job that I find sooooo much stuff at good prices that I need to buy? Thank heavens for savings even if it was earmarked for a new, or rather nearly new car back in the UK. I have the pleasure of having student discount so I have found the software I want and a Wacom Tablet to boot! I can get such a huge amount off that I would be stupid not to buy the things I need now. As opposed to the things I don't need such as the pair of Converse Allstars I bought a few weeks ago and that I still haven't really worn. They're great and look so good but my feet are having problems with them. For some bizarre reason my feet will not let me wear shoes with no arch supports anymore. So to combat this I bought heel and arch supports to go into my Converse but because they are three quarter lengths, which Scholl reckon are brilliant because they don;t cramp your toes, they slip down the shoe! So then I get rubbing and blisters - thanks Scholl! And my feet still don;t like my Converse as much as I do. Just have to stick to my New Balance for now.

Five, I am a night bird. I hate mornings with a passion but have plenty of energy at night. It's not normal and I'm beginning to not like it because it makes me sleep in until midday and not sleep (even though I do go to bed early most nights) until gone 2am! It's getting annoying now, I do have stuff I need to do during the day.

Six, I really need to find motivation to study and to exercise. I've let both slip recently and feel terribly about it. The only good thing is I feel much better for finishing the cross stitch I did as I'd been itching to do cross stitch for ages and feel so much better for scratching my itch. I though it would aid my studying by making me focused, but sadly it didn't. Tomorrow I MUST make a real effort to at least answer the questions in assignment 3 even though I haven't finished by practical for assignment 2 and am generally still not happy with assignment 2.
As for exercising, looking in the mirror should be enough motivation for that, I just need to get up earlier!

Seven, I think I must be having a sense of humour failure. It seems lately that what most people find funny I simply don't. I think it started when "The Office" was the comedy on everyones lips. Sorry, leaves me cold. Not tickling the funny bone. I also can't get on with "Extras", actually I just don't find Ricky Gervais funny. Just not funny, not to me. And my not funnyitis has spread. Everybody, supposedly found "Little Miss Sunshine" hilariously funny. I, however, did laugh out loud and almost cried with laughter at Olive doing the strip to Super Freak. That whole section was the best part of the film, just a shame it took so long to get there.
I am clearly missing something!
But it's not all bad, "Family Guy" is funny, "The Simpsons" are funny, "Phoenix Nights" is funny, most but not all of "Little Britain" is funny, "Crackerjack" is hilarious as is "Keeping Mum"..... Hmmm, I must still have a sense of humour it just doesn't seem to match everyone else's. I can handle that. Crisis over.

Time to Dye!

Yes, it's that time again. The grey hairs are showing through and my blonde highlights and red flashes are looking dull and lifeless and it's time for a change!

I would usually, on such occasion's when my hair needs to be re-dyed, go to my favourite Toni & Guy Salon and get my hair re-coloured and cut at the same time. At least $250 later, and I walk out feeling invigorated and sporting a new colour and cut. unfortunately, due to lack of cash I'm forgoing my usual trip to T & G and plumping on DIY Dying!

I can live with my hair getting a bit longer but I MUST have it dyed. I went into the Chemist two days ago and looked at the L'Oreal hair colours. Oooo, which one to choose.... do I go bright red, copper, or back to brown? As much as I've wanted to go bright red in ages, there was a doubt in the back of my head that it could all go horribly wrong. My colourist has wanted to make my hair many shades of red in ages and what she had planned was a sort of patchwork quilt of all of the red shades. I saw a picture of what she wanted to achieve and loved it! If I could have made myself pay the money this time around then I would have had it done as previously work has held me back as I don't think it would look very professional. So due to my doubts and the fact that if I were to go that bold I'd want the patchwork version, I decided that bright red was not for me. Copper, a nice shade of red but would I turn out looking, well, Ginger? Probably, so no. Brown, my natural hair colour. I like brown but I like my brown with the copper bits that sparkle in the sun but the browns I saw looked, to be quite honest, boring!

So what shade? I went for L'Oreal Feria in Intense mahogany Auburn. The Mahogany part did put me off a little as I didn't want to go too dark as all the home dyes I had at home were always very dark and it makes me look pale. But the look of the hair on the model persuaded me to give it a go. Damn those packaging people!

I am not about to have a go about L'Oreal. I have always used L'Oreal hair dyes and have never had any problem, even the dye I have in T & G in L'Oreal, so I think that says it enough. However, my results didn't look as it did on the box. Or did it? You see, it was only after that I looked and the picture of the model again and realised that they weren't really lying, my hair kinda resembles the picture (not the hairstyle though). I realised that they had used a lot of light on the model to highlight the reddish colour of the hair, to make it look lighter, but if you look at some of the bits in the shade you see the real result - dark brown!

Yes I've gone back to my roots, so to speak, and I am now, yet again, a dark brown colour. But rejoice, I have lots of red happening! It may look dark brown at first sight but when the light hits it you see the redness shine through. I am happy with the colour but I had hoped that my blond highlights would have turned out a lot more brighter the same goes for my grey hairs. L'Oreal do warn you that you will get a much brighter colour on your greys but I was actually disappointed with that result. Though I'm sure that if I had have opted for a shade such as Intense Red that I would have been a little shocked at the brightness. As it was, I opted for safety but with a dramatic enough effect.

What is even better is the change it has given me personally. Most people feel better after dying their hair, I guess it's a case of the old adage 'a change is as good as a rest', but I actually, for the first time in a long, long time, feel more like me again. As much as it was nice to have highlighted hair and it did improve my skin tones, I have realised that I'm just not ready to be light headed just yet.

Here are some picture of the box and of my hair:

The Box


My hair result:


And not a single blonde highlight in sight!

This was the first time that I have dyed my hair at home. On previous occassions my mum has done it for me so I'm also proud of my efforts for doing it single handedly. I did create rather a mess in the bathroom though. It's not my fault, they put too much liquid stuff in it and they tell you to use all of it. I had more dye than I knew what to do with so it was inevitable that some of it would end up on the sink, the tiled walls of the bath tub, the floor, my foot (I now have a rather fetching brown little toe!) and last but not least, the actual sink vanity cabinet.

Of all the places to get the hair dye I would have to get it on the cabinet, a pourous surface. After applying the dye and letting it set on my head for the 30 minutes required, I set about cleaning up the mess I had created. Everything wiped up easily except for...... yep, you guessed it, the cabinet. Why put a pourous surface underneath the sink? Am I the only person to find this absurd? I walked rather briskly to the main bathroom to get the Easy Off Bam to see if that would remove my stray stream of dye. No. Not even a glimmer of hope, so much for Bam! Then I remembered the best product for cleaning bathrooms - Exit Mould! It's pretty much watered down bleach but after several applications my streak of dye doesn't look as prominant as it did and I'm sure with the help of Big Bad Dom tomorrow that I'll be able to remove all traces. But at least I have a head of nice dyed hair for my efforts :-)

Sing it Frank!

Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars......
Playing among a particular star was a Qantas cabin crew member recently, who, by all accounts joined the mile high club with Ralph Fiennes.

We've been asked by polls on the TV shows if we think she should have been sacked by Qantas. My answer: Yes. I don't give a flying fuck (pun intended) whether she's shagging some actor or if she's shagging some dodgy politician, the fact is when she was on that plane she was working and being paid for it. What she does in her own time is up to her but when she is working, she should not be canoodling with passengers in toilet cubicles.

I must admit, the whole Mile High Club thing just doesn't appeal to me. I don't understand why anyone would want to have sex in any toilet, let alone one where there is just enough room for you to sit down. I feel sorry for the parents with kids on planes when little Johnny asks his mum or dad to take him to go wee wee because there is just not enough room in those things. So if you have two grown adults in there...... well, what sort of shapes must they have to get into? Yes, I realise that if the lady is wearling a skirt it makes things easier as the man can just whip out the ol' boy and get the job done. But is it really worth it? The Qantas cabin crew member clearly thought so!

Of course, because Qantas is Australian the news has been flooded by this story and the best I've heard is the disbelief that the woman crew member could have instigated such a thing. Why? Why is it so hard to believe that she grabbed him by the hand and dragged him to the toilet? Admittedly, Ralph Fiennes is hardly going to be kicking and screaming and telling her to go away, how many men would if it was handed to them on a plate? No, I'm not saying that Ralph Fiennes didn't play his part in it but why does the media have such a hard time accepting that women are strong and independent and can't make up their own minds thank you very much! So she wanted to shag him and she did. While I don't agree with her doing it while she was working, I do commend her for going out and getting what she wanted - a romp with a sexy actor! You go girl!

Now where is George Clooney.....

February the 14th

Yes it's that time of year again but really it is just another day.
In the words of the great Public Enemy "Don't Believe The Hype".
Why are we dictated to by the media and the greetings card companies who insist we must celebrate our love on this day? It's BOLLOCKS!

No, I'm not single and bitter, I'm in a long term relationship thank you very much but I still think that Valentine's Day is overrated. I also think it is unfair to people who have lost their loved one (silly because they should know where they left them *rolls eyes* LOL) and it's also unfair to people who are single. Some people are single because they are happy to be not because there is something wrong with them so why do we make a big deal out of Valentine's Day? I hate to shout discrimination but the word is bandied about everywhere these days, so what the hell, I'll jump on that bandwagon! Does the single person feel discriminated by it?

I went into the supermarket today and the lady at the checkout wished me a happy Valentine's Day. WTF?! Has Valentine's become like Christmas now? Dear me. I had to smile sweetly at her rather than moan and whinge purely 'cos I couldn't be bothered to waste my energy or time and also because you could tell that she felt she HAD to say it to people. Well, you don't. Honestly, I will not be offended if you don't wish me a happy Valentines, in fact I'd be more grateful if you didn't.

Fortunately Mr M also hates Valentine's Day and thinks it's great that I feel the same way too. It also means we don't need to go out buying cards and gifts and basically waste our money. We love each other and that's enough, well it is for us. I was rather pleased to here from him yesterday that a colleage he works with also thinks the same way as us. He and his wife also believe that Valentine's is an excuse to print money and feel that it is much better to buy flowers etc at any other time in the year becuase it has more meaning then. Exactly my sentiments! If I did happen to get flowers or a gift from Mr M on this day I would personally think that he feels he has to do it rather than actually wanting to do it or even meaning it.

But there are plenty of people that buy into Valentine's Day and spend a fortune on their loved one. Another colleage of Mr M's is so caught up in the whole thing that she has ordered three large balloons and a big card to be delivered to her boyfriends place of work! Oh dear. I wonder how long that relationship will last? Not only because of the interesting public display of affection that he will receive at work but also because if he evers goes anywhere for work (including travel in the same state) she has to have a present brought back for her. Dear, dear, me. The mind really does boggle. But hey, she's happy and so far they seem to be doing well so there must be something.

So how am I planning on spending the rest of the day? Well, I'm gonna continue doing the cross stitch I started today as a break ffrom studying and then probably in an hour or so I'll start cooking Lasagne, then wait for Mr M to come home from a long hard day at work, have dinner and several glasses of wine, ask about his day & discuss, watch the TV and go to bed. Almost a typical day just like any other, but I did already tell you that it's just another day :-)

Dream a little dream

I've had two dreams about death recently and while my dreams are often very bizarre, these dreams have left me feeling slightly disturbed.

The first and most bizarre, was a dream I had about two nights ago. As all of my dreams do, they change and amalgamate and change while my brain churns out the stuff it needs to. The part of my dream that I remeber vividly was where I was back in my hometown at the bus station in the town centre, I looked across the road past the trees and saw water. Not like rain but more like you were looking into a fish bowl. I turned to warn the people next to me but I saw that we were all underneath water and that they were dead. Their feet were still on the ground but their hair was floating upwards and waving slightly in the water. I realised that I was still alive and panicked, I woke myself up after I gasped for air.

Then last night, I was in a shopping centre which didn't look familiar to me at all. There were several floors and the centre scetion on all floors was open so you could see right to the bottom floor. I was on one of the top floors where, for some reason only known to my mind, there were apartments in the centre. I went to see some people who I knew (who I don't know in real life and don't have a clue who they were) and we walked out of their apartment and saw their neighbour who lived across the hall, slumped dead with their door open. Somehow we knew that the dead person had contracted some deadly virus and that's what had killed them. We legged it from there into the main shopping centre and they realised that the outbreak had happened so they were closing off floors to keep the infected contained but also locking in people who were still virus free. I ran down one area along with several other people and we cam across more dead infected bodies, so we ran back the other way only for me to realise that I was heading back in a circle to the dead people. I found a door that was still open and ran for it but by the time I had got there it had been automatically locked by the security. I headed for the centre of the floor and looked over to see that there was a coffee shop on the next floor. It had plush scarlett sofa's and chairs and I scouted for the best place to jump. As I climbed over the wall people were shouting at me, telling me I wouldn't make it but I jumped anyway and landed on the sofa's, they were so soft that the broke my landing perfectly and allowed for me to run for the doors and out of the shoppong centre. I then woke up.

Clearly my brain has some issues to get over! Hopefully tonights dream(s) will be a lot less eventful and will be nice and mellow.

And no, I didn't eat cheese yesterday. Perhaps I should have.