The latest and greatest from a Karratha supermarket checkout counter:

Barely Weaned Checkout Guy: Do you want me to pack the disinfectant in with your ice-cream? (proceeds to do so)
Niki: No.
BWCG: (surprise on his blemish-free young face) No?
Niki: (rolling eyes at the Dreamboat) No.
BWCG: Oh. Ok. (sorrowfully removes disinfectant from bag)

It was an easy assumption to make. The disinfectant was citrus-scented, you see. It obviously just totally belonged in the same bag as a waxed cardboard container filled with lemon sorbet.

Why, you ask?

Citrus ... lemon ...

Vitamin C.

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Trans-Tasman Cultural Differences

One of the strangest things about being an ex-pat is going home and hearing your own accent.

Until I left NZ I didn't realise I had an accent. Accents were things foreign people had. When I was a teenager working on holiday jobs, I used to ask British and American tourists what the Kiwi accent sounded like. British people usually said, "Like an Australian accent, but nicer." I took that to mean: "Closer to our own." Americans would say, "A cross between English and Australian." I could never quite bring myself to believe them. Anyway, they all sounded like Canadians to me.

In the five-and-a-half years I've been living in Australia, something has definitely happened to the voices of everyone back home and it gets more pronounced with every visit. The vowels are all wrong. 'Bed' has somehow become 'beed'. 'Six' definitely sounds like 'sucks'. So when a friend asked me if I was enjoying my holiday thus far, the answer she got was, "Yes, but it's bloody cold and everyone talks funny."

I noticed other Aussie/Kiwi differences this time around as well. Take greetings, for example. If you're greeting an Aussie, you'll probably get a full body hug and a kiss on the cheek. Kiwis are less demonstrative. (I'm generalising, of course, but it's a fairly accurate generalisation.) You'll still get a hug, but it's done by leaning in from the waist and it's unlikely you'll get kissies. Your Correspondent has grown very accustomed to giving and receiving kissies and considers them a fundamental right, so there was a lot of interesting head-and-neck weaving action happening whenever she tried to plant big smackers on the cheeks of startled acquaintances. They probably thought I was trying to seduce them, or something.

The Dreamboat's theory to account for the difference is the far stronger Mediterranean influence in Australia. This makes sense, which is another reason why I'm marrying him. It's not all about his outstanding prowess in the boudoir, y'know.

I'd forgotten how friendly Kiwis are. People chat away, ask questions and take a genuine interest, which probably accounts in part for the high standard of the NZ service industry. In my experience, the only place in Oz that rivals NZ for friendliness is Melbourne. Ah, good old Melly. I didn't appreciate you nearly enough when I lived there.

The biggest difference I saw this time around concerned the 'cultural cringe'. Australian culture is far more relaxed and confident about itself. It celebrates its uniqueness. It's proud of its achievements and home-grown talent. New Zealand has a hell of a lot of catching up to do in this area. I have an example to relate which illustrates the point, but it deserves a posting all to itself. So be warned, Superheroes: rant imminent.

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Towards the end of her holiday in NZ, whenever Your Correspondent contemplated returning to Karratha she cried. Yep, she cried, alright. She sobbed, sniffled, whined, whimpered, howled and blubbered at every opportunity. In fact, she even cried during that opening shot of the Southern Alps in Return of the King. "Homesickness," she later told the Dreamboat ... which was a bit of a worry, considering she was still in the bloody country and could see the Alps in the distance every time she looked out of her bedroom window.

This torrential state of affairs greatly upset the Dowager Empress, my mother. Apart from the fact that a) she hates seeing me so distraught and b) it was very uncool and distinctly un-funny of me, it was also c) damned inconvenient. It's well understood by everyone in my family that whenever I'm home, my role is to dispense sweetness and light and sort out any and all dramas they've been cooking up since my last visit. Dissolving into tears every five minutes isn't exactly what you'd call a useful performance indicator.

The first time I started snivelling, the Dowager Empress worriedly inquired what was wrong. And Your Correspondent, to her great surprise, found herself blurting out, "I don't want to go back there. I'm so lonely."

Then I realised it was the truth.

It's not that we have any shortage of drinking buddies, camping mates, friends and/or acquaintances here in Karratha (and dotted all over Australia, for that matter). Quite the reverse. But there's a certain sort of company I miss and it took that trip back to NZ for me to realise just how starved of it I've been over the last few years.

On the second week of our holiday we stayed in the Marlborough Sounds with my little brother and a large group of his friends -- musicians, artists, writers, people involved in film, teachers and academics. All of them were intelligent and all of them were bloody nice people. Some of them were/are incredibly talented. And I ... I was in heaven. Some of the best conversations I've had in years were conducted over that week. We drank rather a lot too.

I started remembering things ... like how I used to play the guitar nearly every day and sing and write music that other people seemed to like. I remembered living-room jam sessions and how I was once invited to join a band as a backing vocalist. I remembered the enormous well-being that always seemed to come from those times. And then I started wondering how the hell I'd managed to forget it all.

I'm not sure why that week had such a profound effect on me. Part of it, I think, was because most people there were quite a bit younger than the Dreamboat and I ... still young enough to be caught up in the love of what they were doing, rather than their own egos. Some of it was because they were genuinely interested in us (as opposed to this, for example). Or maybe some part of me just really needed to be around it all again.

I miss hanging out with creative people ... particularly nice, sane ones who aren't burrowing up their own arseholes. Creativity, I've found, tends to rub off. My best and most successful fiction writing dates back to a time in NZ when I had a circle of friends like those people I met in the Sounds. Nothing I've written since even comes close.

Sure, there's email and there's online collaboration and all that, but there's nothing like actually mingling with people who share the same interests. That's why I know I could never complete a degree through distance learning: it's the people contact that matters. To me, anyway.

I'm not complaining, Superheroes. I just can't believe that for years a massive hole has been growing in me and I didn't even realise it. But what to do? We move from place to place, following the big construction jobs, never staying anywhere longer than a year or so and usually ending up in places filled with other construction people, where the conversations very seldom go beyond work, kids, houses and sport. What to do?

Well, here's what I did: when we got back to Karratha I went to a cupboard, pulled out a guitar that was still wrapped in some moving company or other's plastic, tuned it in a weird key that suits my musical bleats and played the fucking thing for the first time in three years. Then I fossicked around in another cupboard until I found a long-forgotten book of chords, downloaded a bunch of songs I love and started twanging away with gusto. It feels good to have callouses on my fingertips again.

I'm going to keep the guitar in the living-room from now on, so that anyone who comes over will see it and maybe pick it up and let rip. Then we'll look at each other and one will say to the other, "Shit, I never knew you played." Perhaps they'll bring their own guitar next time and we'll jam. The time after that they might bring along somebody else who secretly writes music or screenplays or does sketches in charcoal.

It's worth a try, at least. I'm going to do my damndest to sniff 'em out ... my sort of people. They're out there somewhere, I know it.

Well ... I bloody hope so.

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Highlights from Your Correspondent's first training session as a radio presenter:

1. Before Starting
Boss: OK, get your cans on.
Niki: Huh?
Boss: Headphones. Put on your headphones. Little bit of jargon there.
Niki: Oh god.

2. After Thirty Minutes
Niki: I'm supposed to be doing this for real next Saturday?
Boss: Yep.
Niki: You're kidding.
Boss: No, but it's okay. Don't worry. I'll sit in with you for the first couple of weeks. Or I'll do next week's show if you like, and you can sit in on th--
Niki: Yes please.

2. After One Hour
Boss: Right, when this song finishes you're going to do a back-announcement, play a promo, give a time call, do an intro to a pre-recorded interview, run it, back-announce it and play another song. Calculate your times to lead right up to the news. Ready?
Niki: Uhhh ... yeah.
Boss: OK ... go!
Niki: Er ... (five second pause) ... shit!

3. One Minute Later
Boss: Let's try it again. Ready? Go!
Niki: That was ... um ... some music. Coming up, we'll be ... hearing some more music.

4. After Ninety Minutes
Niki: That was Brisbane-based band Miles From Nowhere with Shimmering Blue.
Boss: (waving arms)
Niki: You're listening to Saturday Breakfast on (station). My name's Niki (surname) and it's great to have your company today. It's twenty-nine minutes past eight.
Boss: (waving arms)
Niki: Coming up, we've got regional news and weather and some exciting news for North West soccer players. (to boss) How was that?
Boss: Good, but you forgot to switch on your mike.

5. After Two Hours
Niki: I really need to come in and practise every chance I can get. Is that okay?
Boss: Yeah, that's fine. It was good for a first-ever attempt, but you're not ready yet. Practise reading the weather every day and make sure you time it. Come in at 6 o'clock on Tuesday morning and sit in when I do Breakfast.
Niki: Great. Thanks. (collects things and dashes out the door for calming cigarette)

And here's where Your Correspondent (aka DJ Munted) signs off for today, in order to start drinking very heavily indeed ...

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Smoochy thanks to everyone who voted on the mini poll ... you really should know better.

Here's what you thought on the subject of a bride's most essential accessories:

1. Bridal attendants who are uglier than she - 34%. You pack of meanies. All I can say is I'm bloody glad my sole bridal attendant hasn't seen this poll.

2. A wonderbra - 17%. Wouldn't want those udders bashing the bouquet around, would we?

3. A tie at 14% between 'something well-hung' and 'a get-away car in case she changes her mind'. I can see how these two could be related.

4. A watertight pre-nuptial agreement - 9%. Ouch. Sounds as if a few of you have been stung in the past ...

5. A three-way tie at 3% between 'something new', 'something stolen' and 'a fake tan'. Leave it with me. I'll find a way of tying these three together somehow.

A new poll starring the Dreamboat is now up. Vote early and often. He'll be thrilled to know your thoughts.

On another subject entirely, it's rather worrisome that almost a month has passed since Christmas and the only thing I've managed to write about my festive time in Middle-Earth was how we got there. I'll try to knock out the rest of it over the weekend, before the memory gets any hazier.

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Breaking News

Holy snapping arseholes, as my dear old Mum has never said in her life ... I'm going to be a radio presenter. The Saturday Breakfast presenter, to be precise.

This had been mooted as a possibility by my boss a couple of months ago, but she'd also said it was unlikely. So extremely unlikely, in fact, that I put it out of my head altogether and concentrated instead on other things, like trying not to have a nervous breakdown before Christmas.

Yesterday's phone conversation with said boss, therefore, came as something of a surprise:

Boss: If you're seriously interested in presenting Saturday Breakfast, you can.
Niki: What? Really? (gurgling noises)
Boss: Yes, but peel yourself off the ceiling and listen. You're going to need a lot of training on the desk and on timing out. You'll be doing your own producing, so you'll need to tee up your talent (note: 'talent' is radio-speak for the people being interviewed) during songs. The show runs from 6:15-9:00am. Come in on Saturday morning at 7 o'clock and we'll start the training ... mock phone interviews and stuff.

Niki's first reaction: transports of delight.
Niki's second reaction: Bugger. There go my Friday nights.
Niki's third reaction: transports of delight.
Niki's fourth reaction: Oh fucckk ...

There's something else, you see: Saturday Breakfast is a sports show and Your Correspondent doesn't know the first bloody thing about sport. On more than one occasion in her life she has been known to declare that she 'hates fucking sport'. That has all changed since yesterday, of course. Now she adores sport. It's her whole raison d'être. She'd die without her regular sports fix. Yay sport. Good one.

I've been informed that this ignorance of most things cardiovascular and competitive doesn't impair my ability to do the job. Apparently, it's no different to what I've already been doing as a Drive Show producer. Although I always try to research as much as possible, the talent is meant to be the expert, not me ... so all I really have to do is ask the questions. And if I don't know what questions to ask, I find out from the talent what he or she would like to be asked. That's how it's worked up until now. I don't know how effective it'll be when applied to the mysterious and frightening world of sport.

I'm not altogether without some sporting experience, of course. One can't grow up in New Zealand without being exposed to it in one form or another. Maybe I'll be able to put some of the following to good use:

1. Netball
Sucked at it. When I was at high school, there were ten netball teams. They ranged from A (the crème de la crème) to J (if they were horses, they'd have been chopped up for dog meat). I was in the J team. My performance was so dreadful I was soon demoted to Reserve on the J team and there I languished for the rest of the season.

2. Softball
Totally sucked at it until the day the PE teacher bought some new aluminium bats. Then I became quite a slugger. It turned out the old wooden bats had been too heavy for Your Diminutive Correspondent. The PE teacher stopped making her usual sarcastic comments and actually took an interest in me for the first time in four years. She invited me to play in a competition team but by then I despised her so much I laughed in her face and refused.

3. Playing Pool in Seedy Bars
Excellent at it, but only when that tiny window of opportunity between the third and fifth drinks is open.

4. Volleyball
See here.

5. Indoor Beach Volleyball
Slightly better, but still on the sucky side of the scale.

6. Ballroom Dancing
Former NZ Champion and highest-ranked Kiwi (for her grade) in the Asia-Pacific region at one stage, but I doubt my regional West Australia listeners will be too impressed. It's ballroom-fucking-dancing, after all. Hardly sport.

7. Mattress Aerobics
Undisputed world champion. Ask the Dreamboat.

8. Tennis, Badminton, Petanque
Reasonable, in a half-arsed 'I'm so over this, can we go to the pub now?' sort of way.

9. Golf
Niki rocks up to golf course. Niki swings club. Club catapults down the fairway, to the amusement of half a dozen rather edible-looking guys awaiting their turn. Niki gives up in disgust.

10. Drinking Alcohol
Past winner of the Ladies Race for skulling jugs of beer at a Canterbury University Drinking Horn. Has never looked back.

Finally ... let's see how Your Correspondent is going to stack up in the loyal and devoted listeners' popularity stakes against the former presenter of Saturday Breakfast.

He was:
1. Male
2. A local
3. Very knowledgeable about all aspects of sport.

I am:
1. Female
2. A Kiwi
3. Enough said.

Well, Superheroes, I think it's very plain for all to see that I'm going to be fucking crucified.

Ha! Bring it on!

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The Middle-Earth Saga Continues

Part the First (continued): The Fellowship of the Wrung Out (Melbourne to New Zealand)

I remember standing on top of a hill at Sydney’s Kuringai-Chase National Park on a summer evening a few years back and marvelling at the noise made by the cicadas. A chorus would start on the hill to the left, build to a crescendo and die away. Then all the cicadas on the hill to the right would do the same thing. This went on for half an hour. It was an eerie stereophonic experience, remarkably similar to what we were treated to by the disgruntled urchins who shared our flight to Melbourne.

It was as if they had some sort of telepathic baby tag-team thing happening. No sooner would one shut up than another would start squalling. The entire three and a half hour flight was punctuated by the shrieks of infants who’ll probably grow up to be rich and famous and always fly First Class, therefore sparing themselves the tiresome histrionics of other people’s offspring.

We arrived in Melbourne at 5.30am with hangovers and shredded nerves. The Dreamboat immediately put his accumulated Air Points to good use and upgraded our seats on the NZ flight to Business Class. The intensity of my flying phobia inexplicably lessens by a good third whenever we fly Business Class. How strange ...

Everything proceeded smoothly until our carry-on luggage went through the security x-ray. Your Correspondent, with her all-consuming need to liberally coat her lungs in carcinogenic substances quite often, had meandered three times through the metal detectors in Perth without incident and had therefore anticipated that the Melbourne experience would be equally uneventful. And indeed it was, right up until the moment when she was ‘invited’ to step off to one side … the side where the naughty kids go.

A middle-aged woman with a permanent scowl was seated in front of the screen, staring at the x-rayed contents of my handbag in disbelief. She called her female colleague over.

Scowlface: Look at that. She’s got seven cigarette lighters in there, at least.
Niki: You’re kidding. That many? Wow. I can barely find one when I look, let alone seven.
Scowlface: At least seven.
Niki: Is that bad or something?
Scowlface: You’re only allowed one and you’re supposed to be carrying it on you.
Niki: First I’ve heard of it.
Female Colleague: (brandishing plastic tray) Would you please empty your handbag, Madam, and place the lighters in this?
Niki: (Starts emptying the contents of her bag. These include half a dozen old pay slips, assorted pieces of fluff, a ballpoint pen smeared in melted chocolate and a tattered piece of a gas bill dating from 1999. Final lighter tally: eight, plus one I was allowed to keep.)

Nothing particularly eventful happened after that. We snored in the Air NZ club lounge until it was time to board the plane, at which point a helpful young guy showed us to our seats, introduced himself and informed us he was going to be our gimp for the flight.

His colleague did all the in-flight announcements. I was in his direct line of sight and the only person who could see him. He had me in stitches every time he made an announcement because he accompanied the words with wild and flamboyant arm gestures, grinning widely all the while. I love flying Air NZ. Their food’s the best too.

Nearly all of my family were there to greet us when we finally stumbled into the Christchurch international arrivals terminal, looking somewhat the worse for wear. It was very disturbing to discover my 13 year old niece is now a head taller than me. That incident with the 2 Minute Noodles a year and a bit ago obviously brought on a growth spurt …

More anon.

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In Which Your Correspondent Relates Tall Tales and True Pertaining to Her Three-Week Holiday with the Dreamboat in Middle- Earth

Part the First: The Fellowship of the Wrung Out (Karratha to Melbourne Segment)

It took exactly 24 hours to get from Karratha to Christchurch, NZ. The flight from Karratha to Perth is now a blur in Your Correspondent's mind -- not due to a hangover, as regular readers might reasonably expect, but because it involved sitting in an aeroplane many thousands of feet above terra firma and we all know how much Your Correspondent loves that.

Once we'd landed and the Dreamboat had successfully managed to extract Your Shattered Correspondent's fingernails from his thighs, he announced we had eight hours to kill in Perth before our flight to Melbourne. He was forced to repeat this announcement five minutes later after finally having caught up with said Correspondent, who'd made her way through the airport terminal with unseemly haste and was outside, frantically sucking on a medicinal post-flight cigarette.

How does one productively use eight hours when visiting a large city only four days before Christmas? Networking with potential future employers, perhaps? (Boring; not in possession of anything even remotely resembling a life.) Visiting art galleries and museums? (Boring and either pathologically single or too old to do anything else.) Finding a gym and working out? (Boring and obviously in dire need of sex.) Catching a movie? (Totally lacking in imagination ... hence, boring.)

I am pleased to report that we, being very cool and fun, didn't fall into any of these traps for the Totally Sad. Here, rather, is how to slaughter eight free hours in Perth when you're a Niki in the company of her Dreamboat:

1. Wander around the CBD for an hour and peer into jewellers' windows in search of the One Ring. Scrutinise a $36,000 diamond specimen and scornfully announce at elevated volume for the benefit of passers-by that the only reason it's not suitable is that it's ' totally fucking ugly'.

2. Sit outside at a cafe that's conveniently placed in a large-ish square so there's a Speakers' Corner on one side and a South American band performing on the other. Then spend another hour discussing them:

Niki: Why do South American bands always sound great performing live, but their CDs always sound like crap when you play them the next day at home?
Dreamboat: Dunno, but I know what you mean.
Niki: Have you ever noticed that every song's just a variation of El Condor Pasa?
(Band starts playing El Condor Pasa)
Dreamboat: That's your fault, that is ...
(pause)
Niki: Hey, check out that End Discrimination Against Men guy ... the first letters of each word spell 'Edam'. He's advertising cheese, for god's sake. He should change the first word to 'abolish', so the first letters spell 'Adam' instead. More in keeping with his cause, and all that.
Dreamboat: Hey, that's a good idea. You should go and tell him.
Niki: (shrinking back into chair) Nah.
Dreamboat: Go on.
Niki: (shrinks back further) No way. Too scared. He might think I'm oppressing him and shit.

3. Decide you've dallied long enough and it's time to get serious. Jog/trot to Belgian Beer Café Westende. Start drinking enthusiastically. Vary the beers to demonstrate your great respect for both the nation of Belgium and beer in general. Eat healthy food. Then order and devour hot chips with mayo that appears to have been prepared with four dozen egg yolks and little else. Speak at length on profound subjects:

Niki: Hey, babe, I've jush worked out a missing Commandment. The fourteenth.
Dreamboat: Wha' about the other missing ones?
Niki: Fuck them. You wanna hear it?
Dreamboat: Yeah ... wha' is it?
Niki: 'Thou shalt not eat thine own loins'. Hahahaha! Tha'sh great. Tha'sh really great.
Dreamboat: (nods in seeming approval ... or maybe the beer was really getting to him at that point)

4. Rock up to airport in plenty of time. Sit in departure lounge and attempt to focus on book. Pass out Fall asleep with head on fiance's shoulder. (Snoring may or may not occur at this point.) Emit Belgian beer fumes from every pore and also quite possibly snore very loudly, until awakened by the Dreamboat. Stumble around airport searching for a friend who's travelling on the same flight to Melbourne. Follow him up stairs of great exclusivity and cleanliness into the Qantas Club lounge. Eat lots of little marinated things and drink three cups of Earl Grey tea in fifteen minutes. Try hard not to pass out fall asleep again.

5. Board aircraft for 11:00pm flight. Note with increasing horror that there are large numbers of babies and toddlers on the plane and one of them is directly behind us. Inquire of the Dreamboat in pompous tones why parents would disrupt their kids' sleeping patterns by travelling at that time of night. Then repeat question because the baby behind us has just started screaming at the top of her lungs. It's going to be a very long flight ...

(to be continued ... )

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Returned I am, and it just goes to show that I can't turn my back on you lot for five minutes without being nominated for some bloody Aussie blog award or other. Thanks to Wattlegirl for the 'Best West Australian Blog' nomination and thanks also to the person who deftly inserted me into the 'Best Humourous Australian Blog' category.

I strongly suggest y'all pay the site concerned a visit and vote for someone way more deserving than me. From what I can tell, there are no monetary prizes, so I don't really give a shit who wins. It's still very nice to be nominated, though. It makes all those 3.00am bedtimes worthwhile. (You don't really think I post at the modest and sensible times shown, do you?)

The nominations are rather ironic, really, given that hot water has been distinctly un-funny for quite some time. This has been due to Your Correspondent's ongoing state of exhaustion, excess alcohol intake and general stress. (You don't really think I share all the shit that's actually going on in my life with you folk, do you?) Before Christmas I nearly (shock, horror) called off the sacred hot water nuptials in order to run away from Karratha and start a new life as a destitute, middle-aged single person, fated to die alone in a large city and be found in an advanced state of decomposition by some itinerant but earnest Mormons. I teetered on the brink of (gasp) canning this saucy little blog altogether. I almost even considered working full-time for shit wages as an administrator in an office peopled by slaves to pop culture who weren't actually involved in radio (shriek).

It's amazing how a fabulous holiday and a couple of award nominations can inject some optimism into one's state of affairs.

The rest of this week will be devoted to some of the more diverting and edifying aspects of my holiday. It's high time I did another travelogue but until I can consult the Dreamboat on some of the hazier details, here's another little Karratha gem. It was emailed to me by a friend at work and was penned by the graphic design/layout person of a local media publication (and then printed in said publication):

"To my beautiful family (Clint, Kayla, Kayci, Jamie, Mum, Dad, Mick, Glenn, Donna, Garry, Mist & Shae) I love you's all heaps, To my cherished friends, you's know who you are & you's rock, thanks for just being great friends & loyal party animals. TO ALL - HAVE A ROCKIN GOOD XMAS. See you back safe in the NEW YEAR - partying ofcourse!"

You've got to love the sentiment ...

P.S. Glad to see that Jonas, Miss Jenjen and this country's fine leader are also distinguished nominees.

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