Je suis anglais

Je suis anglais, et quand les Brittaniques ont d'ennui, nous nous calmon avec beaucoup de thé.

Polly, put the kettle on.

The One with the Deflated Ego

I wandered into a clothing store that I have spent rather a lot of money in since I moved to Melbourne. Normally there is a very attentive guy there who is very keen to try a number of outfits on me like his personal Barbie Doll.

Today was a sales girl I haven't met before, and from the dressing down she was receiving from her boss. During the fitting process she told me that their store effectively sets out to dress anorexic males and jockeys. I wasn't sure I really fit into either of those categories, I didn't really take much notice of it though, I'm not youre 6 foot plus security guard type. Her next comment was the one that really skewered me through the ego "guys who work out just don't fit into our clothes."

I like my shape when I look in the mirror, I work out.. but I still fit their clothes..

Korben.... Korben my man...

I have no fire.

Fear not!

Whenever I meet a really nice guy and then find out he's attached (no doubt to an equally nice fellow) the phrase "all the nice ones are taken" springs to mind. It takes me a moment to realise that that's not actually true, I've cornered the market on "nice" to the point where you can take me home to meet mother and I'll be a hit! Rob, we'll note, is single.

Fear not people, nice guy who works at the same hospital.. has a partner... but I did have a nice long chat to him today, so, I think that's a win.

The one with the nest

Of late my life has been quite full - which has been quite pleasing. I've been starting the long process of looking for a flat to buy (though I think I'm just always nipping at the heels of the market.) travelling to Brisbane to celebrate a birthday and I've found a gym buddy as well it seems. There have even been some new people I've met and I've been very lucky with the calibre of the new people I've been meeting.

As usual in my life there are two people I have a high level of interest in.. one of them is my standard crush, air force guy. The other is one of the diagnostic radiographers in the hospital I work in. My big question is... (assuming he's single and interested) do you date someone you're going to stumble across reasonably frequently in your day to day work? If it all goes sour, there's no escape. Of course, it may go swimmingly well...

the random rambling stops here.

There are....

I've always enjoyed the geeky humour of "There are 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't."

It should also be noted that there are 2 types of people in the world, those who can assemble furniture, and those who can't. Fortunately I find myself in the former group, I can see it all as a system of joins and functions. Systems are very much my thing, I love to navigate within them, test the rules they seem to follow, find the loopholes and exploit whenever possible.

No real point to this post, I'm tired, it's taken me 5 hours to get home from Brisbane and I'm turning into a full on Crankerella. Bed and sleep is required to get me back to my perky, rident self.

Penguins

In the winds of Antartica, one penguin (who was affectionately known as Sprocket) turned to his neighbour (Charlie) and said "That's a really odd place for a third foot isn't it? And is that second beak at all functional."

Charlie looked at Sprocket, looked at his own body, looked out to sea before turning back to give Sprocket a look of defiance and said "Yes, but I like them."

Rob says "Kudos to Charlie."

The one with the hiatus

Long time, no post. This is mostly because I've often thought about things to post while I'm pounding the pavement - often with my beloved iPod cranking out the tunes. When I make it back to my abode, the post has left me, without a keyboard to commit it to text.

In the main, the posts that haven't made it online have been about belonging, about a sense of community and why I feel I have neither. I am, in laymans terms, a freak. Please don't misunderstand, I'm a freak that some people love, it is possible that some people love me *because* I am a freak. There is no community that I feel at one with, there exsists a seperate dimension of "Rob." I'm reasonably at peace with that.

The DJ at the greyhound tonight played one of my favourite songs, he often plays this number, but today it took on an entirely new meaning for me... "Total eclipse of the heart." My heart, I suspect, has eclipsed and is merely the organ I use to pump blood around my pudgy, scarred body. Any emotions I do have, are stored somewhere inside me I'm sure, but, as Buffy sang about in "Once more with feeling." ... "I touch the fire and it freezes me, I look into it and it's black." Buffy, however, goes on to say that she wants the fire back, and, quite frankly, I'm not sure that I have the same desire. There *are* things that can penetrate my "wall" there are levels of connection I can form with people but it has to be said, in the main, my life is run with reason and logic.

So at this point I'm going to put it out there (instead of keeping it in my head) that I see myself as alone for the future I can imagine. (note a careful choice of words - even in my drunken state.) and also point out that this doesn't actually bother me that much... just occasionally.

For those of you who are wondering, the dimension of Rob contains rather a lot of penguins.

Guess who else is coming to dinner....

So I've made the mistake of inviting people from work over for drinks on the balcony and told them I'd give them food. I have no idea how many people are coming, what time people will leave etc. My biggest fear is not that I'll run out of food... or even that no one will bring a chair to sit on. My biggest fear, no make that fears, is that I will a) run out of toilet paper and b) that people won't respect the unwritten toilet door rule.

Today I Choose

Today I choose to be strong in who I am, strong of will, strong of body and strong of mind. To the "nay sayers" I say "f*** off."

Today I will appreciate what the last 30 years have taught me, value my journey and the person I have become because of it.

Today I am Rob the Brave, Rob the Courageous. Master of his domain and servant to nobody.

Today I am will remember that I am Keeper of the Strength.

The one with the "Like"

More effort must be made to lie to people about my employ - they must be told that I spend my day arranging corporate travel - something about buying clothes makes people want to tell me about their cysts and/or precancerous lesions when I tell them I'm in cancer care.

To her credit though, she was a very good sales person, and could really pick the stuff I was more likely to wear, when I'd been through the shop and decided nothing suited. A number of things need mentioning here:

• Change Rooms - I understand that curtains are cool, personally I prefer a good door, but I will change quickly behind a curtain. Change rooms however should perhaps not be visible by those people on the stairs, or through the crack in the curtain to the changeroom they are using as a store room, with someone working in. On a side note, even if you're not intending to try on clothes, for goodness sake wear underwear you don't mind being seen in!
  
  
• Don't like pretend everything I say is like the funniest thing you've ever heard. - As I said before, the sales girl was very good, found a lot of clothes that took my fancy. One of her colleagues also took my fancy, her *other* colleague was taken by me. When I went back to pick up my freshly altered trousers he was overenthused to hear about my lunch, and used the word "like" frequently. Now, the use of "like" doesn't bother me that much and normally I would not have noticed.... had I not just read an article detailing how it came into daily usage. And for the record, if you don't know what a BLT is - it isn't likely you're someone I want to get to know.
  
  
• Life is funny, I think had BLT-unaware not been around - his colleague and I would have had a lot more interaction
  
  
• I have two jeans, one dressy jean, one functional jean. Turns out I'm seriously under-jeaned. One sales staff couldn't get by without his 15 jeans, the girl has over 30 and can't imagine life with any less. We can add that to the list of things I'm "Undered"
  

Pivotal Moments

Head demons are enjoying 2007 and my own are refusing to be silent. Foolishly I went back and read a couple of journal articles that I know better than to read and have made me shed more than a few tears. Combined with guilt over not calling my ex my thoughts strayed to how and when we grew apart. One of the defining moments was during 2004 - life had been good, busy and I was battling a dark space in my head - and I found a lump. My entire mind went into overdrive about re-entering chemotherapy and planning on how to combine my life, my work and my treatment. The lump turned out to be nothing, in fact given a couple more weeks it resolved itself completely even though it had apparently been noticed a few months prior - being a practical kind of person I was planning the practical side of treatment, the transportation and the post-chemo care. It was during this time that I had to do some serious evaluation of my partner and rightly or wrongly, I decided that he wasn't someone I could rely on for such an occasion. I feel that from then on I started to retreat from him. I did love him, I still love him. I'm not sure we're right for each other, the growing apart has been done. I'm not sure there is any way to tell him this, or indeed if I even should.

Ce Soir

Earlier this evening the indecision in my life was whether or not to go out for pizza, this was quickly resolved by looking in my wallet - a lack of cash would have required going for cash, then for pizza and clearly a two stage process was beyond me. Problem solved, eat something else.

Now I find myself with a dilema over what to do with trousers and jeans. I can hang them in my wardrobe, but due to limitations in space they need to be folded back over the hanger, or I can fold them and put them on a shelf. I solicited advice from three friends.. "Hang or fold?" Two responses back so far, 1 for hang, 1 for fold (or if I hang, don't fold.)

I wonder what fresh hell Kofi Annan is facing right now?