The Apple Tree

I've come across this little analogy about three or four times now:

Girls are like apples on trees.
The best ones are at the top.
The boys dont want to reach for the good ones because they are afraid of falling and getting hurt.
Instead, they get the rotten apples from the ground that arent as good, but easy.
So the apples up top think something is wrong with them when in reality they're amazing.
They just have to wait for the right boy to come along, the one who's brave enough to climb all the way to the top of the tree.

Boys that are too scared to climb to the top of the tree!? Ha! That's as far-fetched as the straight man denying a request to sleep with Maria Sharapova or the girl that knows the offside rule in soccer. So let me tell you boys and girls how it should really go:

Girls are like apples on trees.
The best ones look like they are at the top.
The boys see these good-looking apples on the top, and decide to reach for it.
Upon reaching the top apples they take a bite, but deep inside the apples are disgusting and they make the boy feel sick.
So the apples up top which were initially so amazing, actually leave a bad-taste (ie. are self-obsessed, inconsiderate, thoughtless, insensitive she-devils who like to tinker with the boy's emotions until she's drained him completely before leaving him out to dry).
Filled with hurt and sadness, the boy ends up falling off the ladder. And since he went all the way to the top, he falls down so hard that the resulting violent forces hitting his chest lacerate the skin, split the underlying subcutaneous tissue, tear through the muscle underneath, crack through his rock-hard sternum and ribs.......and breaks his heart.

Meanwhile the so-called rotten apples on the ground aren't actually rotten. They've just been so ripe for so long. It's just that the boys were too busy trying to get the ones from the top.

Then there are the apples from the market......

The company golf game

There are only three certainties in life: Death, taxes, and the uncontrollable urge to kick the arse of every hardcore hippy in the world and tell them to do something useful with their lives. Now there is a fourth one: Every golf ball that is hit by me off the tee will slice horribly to the right side of the fairway and into the trees. My golf game wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for this... oh, and the odd occasion where I swing, take my eyes off the ball for a split second and muff the shot...not to mention, my inability to pitch the ball over short distances. Hey, I'm pretty decent at putting! But all in all, I was quite happy with the way I played for a person who never plays golf, bar two goes on a driving range at least six years ago and the odd pitch and putt outing during high school. And no, mini-golf doesn't count. It helps when your boss is on your team and demonstrates the same golfing deficiencies as you. It also helps when another member of your team actually has a vague idea of the concept of "straight" and can actually place the ball in a position where the next shot doesn't require bending around about four trees. After the nine holes though, our team finished just five over par and came second. Not bad. (The rules were that all team members hit from the same spot and you all take the next shot from the best position the ball is in). Oh and the other thing I discovered about golf: it's bloody tiring! Even only after nine holes we were all wrecked. And we're talking about a bunch of physios here which means we're all pretty fit. Well, we should be at least. Anyway, 'twas a fun day and it was good to meet other people from the company which I'll hardly see since they work in other locations.

Why I'm enjoying my job

Is it because:
- the hours I work enable me to drive during off-peak times, and even when I have to go during the morning rush, I'm going away from the city and hence the traffic?
- during my first week as I build a patient caseload from scratch, I haven't had many patients so all I've ended up doing is sitting there reading stuff and getting paid for it?
- whenever I don't have a patient, I can just hop over the road to the shopping centre and grab a milkshake?
- I get a little consultation room all to myself which makes me feel all professional-like?
- the people I work with, both the physios and the admin staff, are all pretty cool?
- I get weekly tutes, which is pretty sweet for a new graduate working in a private practice?
- so far, starting out as a private practice physio isn't as daunting as I first thought it would be?

The answer is...no.

The reason why I'm enjoying my job is because, on stinkin' hot and humid days like today, I don't have to suffocate like most nine-to-fivers who wear a business shirt and neck tie. Instead, I get to wear comfy open neck polo shirts that allow my body to breathe.

Having said all that, I'm over work already and I wish I were on holidays once again. And I'm only doing 25 hours/week for now.

The perks of being Chinese

You get TWO New Years!! Take that Western Society, with your skilled drivers, non-angry-sounding language, wide eyes, and superior forms of going to the toilet.

Xin Nian Kuai Le!
or
Gong Xi Fa Cai!
or
Kung Hei Fat Choi!
or
Happy Freakin' Chinese New Year you Pigs!

Maybe I'm just high on an overdose of vitamin C tablets to counter this damn cold.

I can see Japan from all the way up here

So I've started work. After all these years of school and uni I'm actually starting a career. The novelty of it hasn't worn off yet. For the most part though, "work" is just code for sitting around doing nothing. I'm still in the process of building up my own caseload of patients. So far seven unfortunate beings plus a class of hydrotherapy patients belong to me!

Anyway, onto yet another rant. I seem to be quite the angry person lately.

You know, I love being (pseudo) Australian. I wouldn't leave this country except maybe to live in Hawai'i. Retirement perhaps. But anyway, as much as we rock as a country and as a people, man, there are some tools out there. I base it on public comments left in Australian newpapers and forums online in relation to that explosion on the Japanese whaling ship, leaving one man missing. The general consensus as you'd probably gather is that the majority frown upon the practice of whaling. Fair enough. I'm in agreement. But some of the arguments, and moreso the emotional remarks are astounding. There's no compassion to the missing man with many even dismissing him saying he deserves it. Some of the comments are pretty racist as well. There aren't any direct swipes at the Japanese, but if you read between the lines you can see the implication plain and clear.

But the one thing that really pisses me off about it is how so many of us are sitting on this high-horse looking down on other countries/cultures with ignorant distaste and a narrow-minded belief of the superiority of the Australian way, or perhaps the Western culture in general. C'mon people, if you're going to say that killing the minke whales is wrong, give me arguments that aren't hypocritical or set double standards. How dare we call the Japanese "wrong" and label them all sorts of colourful adjectives when we go home and eat a souvlaki made of kangaroo, which for all intents and purposes has all the same rights as the minke whales. If the minke whales were endangered, ok that's a different thing altogether. But they are not. It'd be hilarious if the Japanese population had a soft spot for kangaroos and had a reciprocal dislike of our kangaroo hunting. It also parallels the Muslim people not eating pork. Many a typical Australian family sit at home eating a nice dinner of roast pork. Yet the Islamic community aren't up in arms tying themselves to pig-killing factories. Why? Because they respect our decision to kill the little oinkies. Contrary to belief, we are not the superior race. We are not the superior culture. We are just different. How dare we look upon this practice of whaling, when we use such flawed arguments and thought-processes that we don't even pass. And how sad it is that we use it as an avenue to mistakingly present our culture as the superior one.

For the record, I hope they do stop hunting the minke whales...because I reckon they're such cool, graceful dudes!!!!

Airports, the end of a holiday, and why some people just need to remove themselves from existence

Went to pick up the folks from the airport. Ended up sitting there for two hours due to a busted baggage transfer which saw our box of asian goodies and our new wok end up in Perth somehow. Anyway, as I sat there I realised something. The airport is the perfect analogy for contrast. Think about it. Downstairs at the international arrivals terminal are hugs, kisses and broad smiling faces of happiness and joy, as people welcome a close friend or family member. But directly above in the international departures lounge you get the sad faces and the flowing tears from the ones who have to stand there, watching their loved one off for the last time in potentially years as they walk through the double doors. (Ah, the double doors. For those who have never been overseas and hence through those double doors, you're missing out! Behind those doors is a land of rainbow-flavoured chocolate, alcoholic waterfalls and pixies that sing to you as you wait for your plane!) I guess you could take it a step further and say that just a few metres inside the arrivals lobby, are faces of frustration and anger as customs officers confiscate the food you've brought back from whichever part of the globe you just came from. Ah well, just a thought I had. The house dynamic has already changed with the return of Mum and Dad. TV and stereo volumes have lowered, questions are being repeated followed by answers of frustration from Julius and me and I no longer walk past the kitchen looking at what needs to be cleaned. 'Twas good to catch up with Mum on what's going on with the relatives back in the land formerly known as 'home'. Looks like I'll be back there at the end of the year for the first time in three or four years.

So now I sit here in the twilight of my long summer holidays - the last of which extends beyond more than a month for perhaps years or even decades to come. I start work this coming week which will be interesting. The last week or so I've been filled with excitement one minute, but then depressed at the thought of an ending holiday the next. I've already had some tutorials with the other graduates in the company, to shake off the rust from our soon-to-be-stuffed therapist hands and to discover that filling in forms and dealing with TAC, Workcover, Medicare, and the Department of Veteran's Affairs is like trying to teach a rabbit or a George Bush to find a cure for stupidity. Where it says "length of expected treatment" I'll just write down 12 weeks for every diagnosis, and when Workcover rings up and asks why such a long period of time I'll just say "'Coz I like the number 12".

Oh, and a rant:
A mate has had the unpleasantness of dealing with a dodgy person recently. This person, whom for our purposes I shall call "Captain F&#khead", had his daughter ram the car of my friend. It's been a month now and he's pulled all these dodgy strings to avoid paying up. Now he's stating that my friend's car was already damaged before the accident (which it wasn't) and that he shouldn't have to pay for anything. He's willing to go to court for it despite the fact that 1) It was clearly his daughter's fault and 2) He wasn't even in the accident to begin with so what the hell does he know?! Well, he knows a lot by the sounds of it. From what I've been told this guy knows what he's doing and he's been one step ahead of my mate. But that's beside the point. The point is, someone needs to chop his penis off and tell him "that's what you get for being a bad man!" My friend is considering whether or not going to court is worth it. By the sounds of it, there's a realistic chance that Captain F&#khead will win, in which case my friend will lose money through legal fees. Even if the court ruling were favourable, it might only be enough to pay the legal fees in which case, there's nothing to gain from it. Well there is something to gain! It's the principle of the matter, as cliche as that is. Yeh I know it's easy for me to say this, when I'm not the one going through the distress that my mate has to go through. Put me in the same position and I might end up letting it go. But if the chance of winning is extremely good, then theoretically, you should go for it. Now I'm usually one to frown upon going to court and sueing others, because it's usually by people who trip over their own front doorstep then sue God for it for creating the world. But in this case, Captain F&#khead needs to be taught a lesson - he needs to be taught that you can't just run over people and cheat the system of morality and ethics. That is the thing about sueing others which I agree with.

Muse concert pics

Courtesy of Deb. Ten points for bringing your camera along ;)

Putting the MUSE in music...ok that was a bad heading, I'm sorry

So I went to see Muse last night. If I were gay, and weren't part of a religion that's not exactly gay-friendly, and didn't have a mum and dad that would probably disapprove of me being gay, and if homosexual marriages were legal (is it? I can't remember now), then I would marry Matt Bellamy (the lead singer). People fall in love and marry others for certain reasons. Some marry because of the intellect they see in their partner. Others for their sense of humour. Still more for their kind-heartedness. Shallow ones would marry because of their money. And some are simply entranced by the natural beauty of the other.

I'd marry Matt because he belts out songs with mind-bending natural, and synthesised vocals, that includes a phenomenal falsetto, all while he creates alien sounds out of the ten million strings, knobs and buttons on his custom made guitar with a little computer screen on it, whilst jumping around like a mad man on nodos but still being able to hold down smooth vocals, before quickly moving to the piano to effortlessly key out a note-a-millisecond Russian-influenced cadenza, then returning to the front to finish off the song by singing a note about three octaves higher than what is considered normal, and finally looking at all of us between songs as if to say in a monotonous, hynotic tone, "We are Muse. You bunch up to one another's sweaty bodies and gasp for air because you love us. Here comes another song that will blow your mind away...again"...

*Take deep breath*

To cut to the chase, last night was the best gig I've seen, period! Oh wait, that's American. Let's try that again.

To cut to the chase, last night was the best gig I've seen, full stop! And I know it's hard to compare between, say Missy Higgins for example, because whereas Missy is a smooth, delicate, newly-ripe peach, Muse is a spiky pineapple-type fruit that's come from the planet Neptune and would immediately come to life the moment you touch it and eat your hand off. But still, I make the statement without hesitation. Yeah, call me biased because I only just recently went to the gig. And call me biased because I love every single track on the new album. But believe me, if you didn't know Muse at all, and you came to the concert, you'd be darn impressed...so long as you like music at four times the health and safety recommended decibel levels. But honestly, my satisfaction of the gig went so far as to have all the songs I was hoping they'd play over the span of four entire albums. Seriously, how often does that happen in a gig that needs to cover four albums? I said, "If they only play two tracks from the second album I hope they play Citizen Erased and Plug in Baby" and what happens? They play just Citizen Erased and Plug in Baby off the second album. Telepathic coolness right there :)

Insane night, worth the $82.50 plus postage and handling, and the slight ringing in my left ear.