If you could, would you? (Part 1)

If you could fly, what would you do? I mean if you had the power of flight... Take, for example, birds. Not any old birds though, I'm talking about seagulls and ducks. You know how they sometimes will fly around in the air (duh, where else would they fly, Adam?) and randomly crap on people? Well, if you could fly, would you randomly crap on flocks of seagulls? I probably would. It would look pretty funny if anyone on the ground saw you, but I think it'd be worth it.

Or how about magpies? They seem to get immense joy out of harrassing us land-dwellers, swooping down on us and sometimes stealing our "shiney things". To be honest, I'd probably do the same thing. It'd be so much fun doing dives and barrel rolls in mid-air, and then catching a set of keys in your mouth, only to deposit it a few hundred yards away from where I got it from. So much fun...

Or, if you wanted to completely abuse your power of flight, would you fly around rich neighbourhoods and pool dive? Or maybe crap on the bonnet of their expensive cars? Or watch as they sunbathed nude? That's taking it a bit to the extreme, and not something I would do, but the option is there.

Or would you use your powers for something good, like solving crimes, or transporting people around the world for free, on your back? All they'd have to pay for would be a meal to keep your stamina up, and you'd get to see the world! That's what I'd do. I'd just travel around the world whenever and wherever I wanted, my backpack in tow. I could be the first person to climb Mount Everest in under twenty minutes!

Sweets for the sweet!

What a start to the day! Last night as I closed the shop I made sure I had most of the next day's fruit prep done, so I could just come in and relax and do whatever I wanted. That was a good start to the morning.

Then another mall employee that works at a gourmet candy shop came up and asked if he could use the internet for a few minutes to check something, and in exchange he'd bring me a bag of candy. This is real gourmet stuff, you know, hand made sweets. In the middle of each of the lollies is a picture of what it's meant to taste like: orange, passionfruit, strawberry, et cetera. I haven't tasted them out of fear that they may be laced with arsenic.

However, slightly more exciting than a free bag of candy also happened to me today. One of the mall managers came up to the shop with a piece of paper in her hand (turned out to be a mall comment card). She showed me that and asked if the person that wrote it was talking about me. Sure enough, at the end of it was a description of me: Tall, mid-twenties, with an American accent (how was she to know that I'm actually Canadian?). Then mall manager tells me that I've been selected as the mall employee of the month! So she then asks me if I drive, because the usualy prize for being selected mall employee of the month is two free months parking in the secure staff car park. When I say no, she tells me that she'll go away and try to organise something in place of the free parking. Then she takes my photo with a very old digital camera, says congratulations again, and walks off.

I can only imagine that either she really IS going to sort out some other prize for me, and that my face will be plastered in the next mall newletter, or she's actually a bounty hunter hired by Vodafone and she's tracked me down and is going to extradite me back to England to pay my unpaid mobile phone bill. I still haven't recieved a prize, so it's entirely possible you know...

Look everyone! It's a Sun-day!

Watch those steps, you might slip on the two centimetres of snow! I woke up two mornings ago to see this sight outside the front window. It's mid-spring here in New Zealand and people are wearing winter coats and long johns... Granted, I'm no different, but when you're travelling you have to try and fit in with your surroundings.

So I got to work yesterday morning and the place was completely dead. By ten o-clock I'd recieved word that all the schools in Christchurch were closing one-by-one, probably in an effort to flood the city with rampaging children gradually, so I thank the city council for that one. By 10.30 the mall was bulging at the seems with school kids, and by 11.15 we were back to normal. Maybe they figured out that being a MallRat wasn't a good life-long job...


Around 11.30 I'd heard through the grapevine that all the city buses were going to stop running for the day, even though the snow had stopped a half hour previous and I'd noticed brief moments of sunshine peaking through the television static sky. About the same time I heard that the buses were stopping I'd also heard that the mall management was giving shops permission to close up early if they wanted. I thought to myself "Well, that seems pretty silly since the snow has stopped..." Then again, I'd been at work for three hours and I hadn't sold anything at that point, so maybe it would be a good idea for me to close up shop.

Which is what I did, after getting the word from the manager. In the end I'd finished on $5.00 worth of sales for four hours' work. At least I had something to show for, however pathetic it might have been. So I picked up a case of beer and got some friends to come over for my first "Snow Day" in nearly three years. "Snow Day" eventually turned into "Kind Of Sunny And Nice Outside Day". I couldn't help but feel ripped off in the fact that I got sent home for just about no reason. There were rumours that the storm was going to come back that night and dump even more snow on us, but mostly it just rained and was cold. I woke up this morning and didn't notice any difference in snow levels.

So in the end I got a little bit drunk, complained about the state of New Zealand Weather Preparedness, and laughed. Here's a couple more picture of what caused Christchurch to come to a stand-still...

Bend it like Blogger.

That great British film of a few years ago "Bend It Like Beckham" is on television right now. I can't help but wonder if that great British football star David Beckham gets royalties from the producers of the movie for using his name in the title. I don't even think they use his name in the actual script, but he's in the title, so surely he's entitled to some sort of cash settlement... Not that he needs it.

Also on television right now is that doyen of reality tv "Growing Up Gotti". It features the Gotti family, of the famed modern-day mafia variety. Does a high profile mafia family really need more money by selling themselves into the worst thing that has ever happened to television (I'm talking the reality type)? And how come one of the richest families in the USofA has such horrible taste in everything? Their house looks like it's made of plastic and came out of a bad Eighties movie, as does their fashion and plastic surgery sense.

Speaking of bad taste, I watched "World's Wildest Police Chases" earlier on television. My main problem with this program is that it's in fact "America's Wildest Police Chases", and not the World's.

I just peaked up from the compter monitor and saw a Gotti family member with a mullet. WHAT THE HELL?!?

A Cryptic Wing-ed Horse Has Landed...

It's been a fairly good few days, everyone, and here's why. On Sunday last I went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which was good, but not as good as I'd prepared myself for. There was just something missing, and I think it was too easy for me to compare it to the original Gene Wilder picture. Thanks go to Mel for shouting me the tickets, and thanks go to Kim for hooking us up (you know what I'm talking about, don't pretend you don't!).

Monday and Tuesday were pretty standard, really. I worked a full ten-hour shift at Tank on Tuesday that simply DRAGGED on and on and on, so in the end I was very happy to park my ass on the couch for the rest of the night.

Wednesday, today, is where the big even unfolded. I woke up and had some breakfast, a cup of tea, and Tam and I went to the vet to get LB the cat's stitches out of her foot. She was such a good little cat, and we're all very proud of her. Upon returning home I had some leftover pizza that I had for dinner last night and readied myself for my visit to see Steve The Tattooist. Steve is very talented, and I'd brought a sketch over to him on the previous Sunday to see if he could come up with something. He did, and after 90 minutes the wonderful work he did was etched for eternity on my inner left arm. Here's a bit of a photo to see him in action:



So thanks to Steve, and thanks to my mum for not giving a crap what I do to my body. I've uploaded more photos of the event into a new folder of my yahoo.ca photos, which you can find a link to (second from the top) on the right. ENJOY!

I do not know everything.

I'm going to get a t-shirt made that says "I Work At A Juice Bar, Not An Information Desk". At least eight times a day when I work at Tank I get people coming up and asking me where this or that store is, or where they can buy lottery tickets, or stamps, or if they are as dumb as they look.

Case in point an elderly gentleman just came up and asked me where he could buy some bread to feed the birds. I pointed to the GIGANTIC BRIGHT YELLOW SUPERMARKET DIRECTLY BEHIND THE TANK STORE!!! For some reason he still couldn't comprehend what I'd just said, and asked if they sold bread there.

I must need a vacation, or at least some time off on a tropical island, to get my head back in the the "I love humanity" mode that I generally am in. Preferably there would be hula girls there...

God help us all... Part 2.

Old Meathead: You do coffee too, do you?
Me: (Standing right beside a large cappuccino machine and huge coffee bean grinder) Yep.
Old Meathead: I'll have a long black please. Back in a minute.
Me: Sorry, what size did you want? (Pointing to the small, medium, and large paper cups we serve them in)
Old Meathead: You don't do coffee in cups?
Me: No, just these paper takeaway cups.
Old Meathead: I'm not drinking coffee out of that...!
Me: (Sigh) Okay. Bye.

God help us all...

I thought for a second I had escaped them all. Yesterday I worked a long shift at Tank Juice, at the normal location of Northlands Mall. Now everyone knows that shopping malls around the world are filled with homeless and hearless wierdos that have nothing else to do but hang around shopping malls being homeless and heartless. For some unknown reason yesterday there was a disproportionate number of wierdos in the mall, and for some further unknown reason they all seemed to gravitate towards me and my little wee shop. I can't explain it. But when I finished at the end fo the day I thought I'd gotten away from them, and that it would go back to the normal number of homeless and heartless wierdos. How wrong was I?

Today I'm filling in for a couple hours at the work-out-gym capital of the world, Les Mills Christchurch. Meatheads and protien junkies from all over the world seem to come here to pump iron (this comment is not directed at those of you that I know that come to Les Mills, I know you're not like the regulars that come here every waking minute of their day). I figured that these people couldn't possibly be a bunch of wierdos that would annoy the shit out of me, but for some reason it happened. Here's an exchange I had with two people, one wierdo and one ultrawierdo, about half an hour ago as they came in to get some nutritious and delicious Tank drinks...

Wierdo: Hi, I'll have the veggie combo juice, but with spinach instead of spicey tomato juice (Sidebar: You cannot get a whole hell of juice out of wilted, dead spinach. Trust me on this one.).
Me: Uh, sure, not a problem, I'll work it out.
Wierdo: (Insert Ultrawierdo's name here), are you getting anything?
Ultrawierdo: (In a voice loud enough to hear across the busy street outside) I'll, uh, mmm, huh... I'll have one of these ones on the board up here, but I don't want frozen yoghurt or strawberries.
Me: Okay, no problem. I can leave the frozen yoghurt out of anything that's up there, and there are quite a few that don't have any strawberries...
Ultrawierdo: Well I definitely don't want frozen yoghurt, that's for sure! And no strawberries! How about this one, on the board up here! (Sidebar: At Tank Juice, we have six different boards of options, all with on average seven or eight juices and smoothies. For me to pick the exact drink he's looking for is a near impossible venture.)
Me: (Sigh) Uh, okay...
Ultrawierdo: This one, with peach nectar, oranges, strawberries, and orange sarbet (He meant sorbet). But I don't want any strawberries!
Wierdo: I think he means the Tank Up. He'll have the Tank Up. Give him the large. No strawberries (just in case I didn't catch it the first four times...).
Me: Actually I'm sorry, but we haven't got any orange sarbet at the moment.
Ultrawierdo: Well put some frozen yoghurt in it then...
Me: (Sigh).

Did I mention that he was missing the front four teeth from both the top and bottom of his mouth?

Bring it on (with or without Kirsten Dunst)!!

I'm going hard out. I've promised myself, just this instant, to have a good week. Last week was fairly good, but at the end of it I was pretty tired and a bit bummed out from not doing too much. So this week I'm going to be happy chappy Adam again. I promise.

I haven't had a full day off from work since Tam's birthday over a week ago, and won't be having one again until this Sunday coming. At least I'm not stuck in a hurricane or going without food or water for days on end (and even if I was, I'd probably still blame George W!). I'm working 30.25 hours this week at the juice bar named Tank, plus I've got three shifts coming up over the weekend at The Club, so this should make my bank account grow significantly next week. This past week I did 28 hours at tank and 15 at The Club, which will be very nice to see when I get my next bank statement.

Yesterday, unbeknownst to me, Mel went out and got a new tattoo. She claims that she only went in to see him about the design and to book in a time to get it done, but I think that she actually called ahead and arranged it. I'm all full of conspiracy theories. Either that, or I'm just jealous. Yeah, well, you just watch and see when I call in sick for work and actually go get a full sleeve done!!! Then who'll be laughing, eh?

This is also the week in which I start to harrass Bridgette on the telephone. For those of you in the know, well, you know what I'm talking about. Those of you who don't know Bridgette probably don't need to know at this point. Let's just say that if it all comes together I'll be a very happy person, as will Tam and Patsy probably.

Two days ago I came to the mall with Tam to get a few groceries and we popped into a shop called JayJay's. They have some nice clothes there, and since I'd been thinking about buying a new pair of jeans for a couple weeks I thought I'd go have a look. Normally I hate shopping, but I bit the bullet and swallowed my pride. They had one pair in particular that I liked, and low-and-behold they were even on sale. But alas, they didn't have my size. Oh well, not to worry, thought I. The next day I ran off to another branch of the shop at another mall. Wouldn't you just know it, but they had my size. Now, I'm no dummy, but would you expect these to be on sale too, since they are from the same shop? Me too, but these weren't. I liked them, but I didn't like them "full-priced like them". So fast forward to today, and I got to Tank Juice a bit early so I could run in and see if my size had magically appeared at the shop here. Amazingly they had, and even more amazingly they were on sale!! Now here I am with a fresh pair of jeans sitting on the bench next to me, and I'm quite looking forward to showing them off.

Look out world, here comes Mr. Skinny Arse!!

Ps. Hey Kirsten, call me!