Why I Should Be Cast as Kitana...(are you listening, McG?)

I pulled my pyjama top over my face earlier this evening- I don't know why, I just felt like annoying my sister while she was using the bathroom mirror, and pretending to be a masked bandit in bright pink Chupa Chup PJs and waving my hands in the air behind her head just seemed the best way to go about it- when I realised something.

I could totally be Kitana if they ever made another horrible Mortal Kombat movie.



(Kitana always wears a mask that hides everything but her eyes. Thus, it hit me like a lightning bolt when I was mucking around in the mirror.)

I have given this considered, educated thought (mostly because the alternative to this train of thought was going back to a large pile of legislation and national employment standards) and have come up with the following reasons why I could totally be cast as Kitana:

1) I'm Asian. She's Asian. In fact, Kristin Kreuk got cast as Chun-Li for Street Fighter and she's only half-Asian. Therefore, am TWICE AS QUALIFIED as Kristin Kreuk for this role. (Am still irritated at Kristin Kreuk and the fact that she got to star as the love interest of Tom Welling AND Jensen Ackles in Smallville. That's just plain greedy.)

2. Drop-dead gorgeousness is not a deciding factor. She wears a mask over most of her face.

3. Even acting is not an issue. Of course, I do have the unrivalled experience of having a minor speaking part in my Year Six school play, but at any rate, Kitana's voice comes out muffled in MK v DC...quite possibly due to having an entire scrap of blue fabric plastered to her jaw. So I could botch my lines and no one would notice!

4. I really like the colour blue. It's meant to be.

5. KISS OF DEATH! KISS OF DEATH!

And as you can see, my study for the next exam is not going so well....:P

It's What I Go To Work For

GFC.

It always takes me a little mental minute to process acronyms. Whenever someone mentions the GFC my brain kicks into overdrive. Does it stand for Games For Consoles? Gluten Free Cooking? Grease Fried Chips?

Alas, the rather prosaic answer is the Global Financial Crisis. Nothing quite so fun as the other food-related alternatives my mind tossed up.

Anyway, the 'GFC' has meant that consumer spending has dropped, which means that retail stores are laying off staff, cutting hours and slashing wage budgets. Which means that when I walked into work today for my first shift in two weeks, I was apologetically informed that I wouldn't get another shift until the 10th of July. And this shift would be a grand total of three hours. Huzzah.

However, given the lack of consumer enthusiasm, it meant that my Thursday night shift was very very quiet. This was basically my night:

(M is my Manager, AM the Assistant Manager, 3IC the third-in-charge).

5:45 p.m- Arrive early for shift. AM has downloaded two episodes of Season Four of Supernatural on his iPhone for my viewing pleasure, so I stand in the backroom annoying M, making little squeaky noises when the little Jensen Ackles on screen lifts up his shirt. I get an inordinate amount of pleasure turning the iPhone upside-down so the image rotates too. Why doesn't everything come with built-in accelerators?!

5:55 p.m- M and AM start humming. They enjoy stringing my name along to the Spiderman theme, probably because my full name has three syllables and the tune is as catchy as anything.

6:00 p.m- Shift starts. 3IC is having a teary argument because apparently the Area Manager noticed her very frayed pants hems and told M that 3IC must buy new ones. M informs 3IC that if she doesn't get new pants and comply with uniform standards he can send her home for her next shift. 3IC threatens to call the Union, because obviously the Union does not have better things to do with its time than look at people's trousers.

6:25 p.m- M gives 3IC way too much leeway. I make a mental note that tears will get you out of anything. M and 3IC leave.

6:45 p.m- Colleague is stuck with an Asian woman and her two kids trying to haggle down the price of some kind of robot kit with Bluetooth capabilities. In three years, I have never seen a customer successfully put that thing together. The control box always karks it or something.

7:00 p.m- Am stuck with someone looking for Components. Crap it.

7:05 p.m- Have located a crystal earpiece, but am now combing the Components area for bloody ferrite rods.

7:10 p.m- I emerge triumpantly from the midst of fuses and resistors with three ferrite rods, only to be told that they're not suitable because they lack coils. Why do ferrite rods have coils?! It's a rod! It's ferrite! Why add coils to it's rodly goodness? AARGH.

7:15 p.m- Am now stuck looking in the diodes section for some kind of obscure diode. I hate diodes.

7:18 p.m- Asian woman still haggling.

7:20 p.m- Find a dude roaming the tools section looking for an AV switch. Dump him in front of the right section while discreetly checking him out. Final verdict: nah.

7:25 p.m- Asian woman still haggling.

7:30 p.m- Another customer wants to know if he can ask a tricky question. I say sure- he's holding a SCART-3RGB adaptor, it's not like there's anything else he needs to know about. Except:

"Is it bi-directional?"

EH?!

7:32 p.m- Apparently bi-directional is just a fancy name for input/output. Point-of-Sale database, how I love thee.

7:45 p.m- Boss brings me giant coffee, latte with two sugars. Wish my favourite barista was working so we could bitch about the trials of law school during the coffee-making process. Ooh, it's a large coffee. Daphne the Caffeine Squirrel ain't gettin' any sleep tonight.

7:50 p.m- AM hooks up his iPhone to a 22" Samsung in the back room and Jensen's glorious visage fills the screen. Were my life a Stephenie Meyer novel, I would be gasping at his smouldering dark eyes and chiselled chest, thinking how sweet and intoxicating his breath would be and bemoaning my own feeble insignificance next to his heartbreaking beauty.

AM tells me to stop drooling.

7:53 p.m- Jensen is sharpening a knife. How manly he looks in his singlet and his gun arsenal.

7:54 p.m- AM asks me if I can blow up some more balloons for the sale display.

7:56 p.m- Have filled the last two minutes with blow-related jokes.

7:59 p.m- I attempt to earnestly give a brief etymology lesson to AM by arguing that the word 'erect' cannot be used in relation to a balloon, as 'erect' implies something being built from foundations or rising up, and really, the word 'inflate' is more appropriate. What can't you do with a B.A in English?

8:00 p.m- AM decides to test out iPhone and component cable on a larger LCD screen. Am impressed that such a compressed file can be shown in clear 576p. Have reevaluated my scorn of the iPhone, but I still wouldn't get one.

8:30 p.m- Remember that my coffee is still sitting out the back. Coffee is duly sculled, luke-warm and all, but still coffee.

8:45 p.m- Almost home time!

9:00 p.m- End of shift.

And they pay me $21/hr for this* :D

*Well, in the good old days when I had weekly shifts

Attention Span FAIL...

My attention span has actually decreased from when I was a kid.

I used to be able to sit through long, painful school assemblies. Chapel, every week (although I once copped detention for sliding with my friends on the pews.) Speech Nights. Double periods, sometimes triple- of the same class. Hours of let's-go-through-every-line-of-Romeo-and-Juliet in English. Yet now, I am unable to sustain my concentration for more than 20 minutes at a time.

And just to prove a point, I am writing this in the middle of my Equity lecture.

It's only one and a half hours and I am so painfully bored that I have actually exhausted the distractions of all other websites, including Facebook.

Currently, the lecturer is talking about 'equitable monetary remedies' and I am blogging about not paying attention.

Sigh.

Beast

I am currently hibernating in my Study Cave.

My Study Cave generally looks like the kind of underground lair that you see in horror films- where the creature drags the remains of their meal and lets it rot in the corner while it goes out to kill more innocents. Currently, my Study Cave looks like I've gone out, killed something, dragged it back and fed it to my young because there are piles of clothes forming a strange kind of nest around my bed and coffee cups strewn all over the desk.

(Rule Number One of my studying habits: if it requires more work than adding boiling water, don't drink it.)

Anyway, one of the main rules that outsiders must understand is that when the Beast is studying, the Beast does not enjoy having unannounced visits by stray humans such as the "Have you ever considered switching from Tru Energy to AGL?" man, the "Have you ever considered switching from AGL to Tru Energy?" man, and the Avon Representative (the latter of which has been taken care of. Permanently.)

This is mainly because on Study Days, the Beast finds getting out of her pyjamas is a pointless exercise and that makeup is not necessary if her waking hours are spent in the Study Cave. Therefore, the Beast looks like...a beast. Especially when she wakes up.

In my Beast form, I have already managed to permanently frighten off the Avon cosmetics representative- all it took was a 9 a.m visit with unbrushed hair with no makeup and my bunny pyjamas squinting at the hideous sun behind the Avon lady's head...(plus I generally can only splutter out monosyllables before 10 a.m) and from now on, she just leaves the catalogue at the doorstep before presumably running for her life. I think she now understands that sometimes, there are faces that cosmetics just can't fix.

So this morning I heard the doorbell ring. My sister had just left two minutes before, so I assumed she'd forgotten something and come back for it.

So I stumbled downstairs to the door in my little Soho cotton stripey PJs and my V-neck pullover and made my way to the door. When I opened it, I realised that:

(a) if I'd had put my glasses on I probably would have seen that this was NOT my sister; and that
(b) I was about to encounter another species of stray human that would have to be taught a lesson.

"Hello," the human said. He was medium height, skinny, male, probably would have been quite attractive looking if I'd had corrective lenses of some sort over my eyes, except all I saw was a tall blur in a suit.

"Hello." That's it. Be the sparkling conversationalist that you are before luring him into a false sense of security...then we rip out his innards. Bwah hah hah.

"How are you this morning?"

"Good." Very good, in fact, human. How would you like to be strung upside down by your ankles while I GO BACK TO BED?

"I'm from...*insert agency here* and we just sold a house in your area for a very good price, and I was wondering whether you were interested at all in putting up your house for..."

He trailed off as I squinted at him.

Boy am I good at that. I really think that being Asian lends my eye-squints an extra squinty charm.

I continued my Death-By-Squint technique. This probably would have worked had I been a ninja. Or an assassin in black latex. Or Julia Gillard. But in my morning state, I just looked like I was half-stoned and trying to blink out some kind of flash code with my eyelids. I think that just confused him because he said, "Um...are your parents home?"

ARE MY PARENTS HOME?!

Excuse me, but I just turned 21! I'm a big girl! I'm an ADULT. A MATURE ADULT WHO JUST HAPPENS TO BE WEARING PASTEL STRIPEY PYJAMAS BECAUSE YOU THINK THAT EVERYONE IN THE WORLD ENJOYS WAKING UP BEFORE 10 A.M?!

Little girl? I'll show him little girl! So I called for backup, like the mature 21 year old I am.

"Daaaaddy!"

And I stomped off to let my father deal with him.

If he comes back, there will be a price to pay. And if he comes back during SWOTVAC, he will never cross our driveway again once the Harpy in Pink Flannelettes has seen to his trespassing.

If You Seek Huxley

I smell like wet dog.

Possibly because for the last forty-five minutes, I have been chasing after one.

My sister had just shut the door to go to her night shift at 11 p.m when she opened the door again and shoved in a lost dog that she'd found roaming on the street- because not only is it cold, our area is prone to people hooning around the streets and it is not safe for a little pup to go trotting around at Hoon Happy Hour in suburbia.

Off she went to night shift, and I was left staring at this random, damp dog in the hallway.

And then I heard an outraged "Meow!" coming from the other side of the door where the cat was now demanding entrance.

Great.

Just great.

I had to let her in, and I quickly grabbed her before she could pad into the hallway, but halfway to the laundry and her basket, Huxley trotted into view. I had to leap away to separate them, because Anna stiffened in my grip and let loose the most venomous, furious hissy snarl that I've ever heard from her, and I hastily stuffed her in the study before a full-blown animal war took place.

The dog was obviously well-cared for, since he had a nice little collar and a registration tag and even a little bone-shaped engraved tag with a phone number and the name, "Huxley". (Most excellent name, by the way. A most excellent author who wrote a most excellent book. Classic.)

Rang the owner four times. No response.

Looked like Huxley was staying for the night.

This is Huxley, by the way, looking somewhat demonic:



(Don't you just love the digital era? One hour of lost-dog guardianship and I'm already uploading his image onto Blogger.)
Anyway, he LOOKS scary but he's actually a real sweetie. He also looks like a Maltese x Bichon Frise from this angle but he looks to me more like a Poodle x Bichon Frise because in reality, he's about twice the size as Maltese and the shape of his underbelly is oddly whippet-like. But you be the judge:



It soon became apparent that Huxley was hungry. Not having any dog food in the house, my mother cooked up a bit of chicken and rice, as I was slightly worried that the dog might be allergic to something, and then we'd have some kind of hideous anaphylatic fit on our hands without the canine version of an EpiPen. (Paranoid? Yes. But you never know...)

We lured Huxley into the spare bathroom with the food, left him an old bedsheet with a nice patch of old carpet, and some water before shutting the light off to let him sleep. Then I yanked the cat out from the study, dumped her in the laundry, and went upstairs.

Then I heard whining.

Then scratching.

Then meowing.

Then whining again.

Followed by more anxious scratching.

With more outraged meowing.

In the end, I finally had to move Huxley outside, because property damage to our door was not something I had factored in when sheltering the dog for the night. Huxley quite enjoyed taking a turn about the lawn- he attempted to pee in our vegetable patch, then in our rose bushes, and had a merry trot around the grounds.

Looking at his happy little doggy face, I really wanted to have a dog again. They're just so adorable and cute and happy.

Thanks to Huxley though, my studious efforts at doing my workplace law essay have been thwarted. I shall endeavour to change out of my now-smelling-like-wet-dog-pyjamas and attempt to locate Huxley's owners on the morrow.

The Miracle Cure-All

Today, I had a headache. I blamed it on the early morning start at the legal centre and the fact that we had NO clients, so I was doing filework all morning, staring at the computer screen while trying to figure out how superannuation works in matters of divorce.

In the afternoon, I tried:

1. Drinking more water
2. Drinking green tea with lemon
3. Eating
4. Eating something with sugar
5. Eating something high in sodium
6. Eating something else just because I wanted to
7. Taking paracetamol
8. Playing Rainbox Six Vegas 2 and getting myself repeatedly killed
9. Eating (again)
10. Sprawling on my sister's bed interrupting her study session and thumping my head repeatedly on her mattress to the sound of my own wailing

Then I had to go to work.

Now that I'm doing an average of 3-5 hours a week, instead of 30, I'm finding work much more relaxing- a sort of antidote to law school. Of course, working full-time in the holidays really did suck, so I suppose absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that jazz. I don't know how my managers put up with the weekly tirade that follows their innocent question of, "How's uni?"and I sure as hell don't know why they bother to listen, but it's nice to get an outside perspective on things.

Anyway, headache persisted until I was about to get another paracetamol from my bag- it's a giant tote that I discovered is actually giving me back pain in my left side, that's how much crap I stuff into it on a daily basis- when my assistant manager (bless him) shoved a $20 note and a loyalty card at me and told me to get coffee.

Coffee.

COFFEE.

So we got coffee.

And headache DISAPPEARED.

Gone. Dissipated. Goooooone.

Which just goes to show that coffee is a miracle panacea and the most amazing thing ever.

(And also why I'm awake and blogging at 12:48 a.m in the morning.)

And yes, this is yet another of my 'Coffee is the Best Thing Ever' posts...prepare to see quite a few of them in the lead-up to exams...

21 Going on 60

Boss: So what are you going to do today?

Me: Study. Oh, and Target are having a sale. On cardigans.

Silence.

I didn't mention, "And I need to buy toothpaste," because that would have just been WAY too much excitement for one afternoon. Although considering the way my social life is going (thank you, stupid workload that is threatening to break my fragile spirit) I might as well have said I was going to get soaking solution for my dentures before going off to play bingo, thank you very much.

Then I stood in front of the toothpaste aisle for 15 minutes (I was texting, in my defence) weighing up the advantages of Cool Mint with Mini Breath Strips versus the 12 Hour Antibacterial Protection offered by Colgate Total, just because handing over the $3.99 at the checkout meant that I had no more excuse to linger in the shopping centre- and that meant I had to go home and open my books and study, and hey, that didn't work either because I am now procrastinating by blogging.

Sigh.