On holidays, past the holidays.

I feel unemployed. I'm not, not techincally anyway. I'm back in Melbourne and yet to secure a full-time job so I'm doing CRT work (Casual Teaching). No shame in it, it pays alright and keeps me afloat financially. It's just painful, everyday I have to get up 6:30, shower, breakfast, make a pack-lunch, coffee, poop and then... wait. 

Wait for the phone to ring, and I'm thankful if it does because it means money. But it also means driving to some school I've never been to before, being overly nice to administrators and teachers I've never met before, and teaching kids I'll never see again. 

The actual teaching part I don't mind, you're only there a day, I try to make it vaguely fun and step on any child who wants to have too much of a good time. But the being nice to everybody part, that is starting to wear, and wear fast.

I'm not a complete grump, don't get me wrong, but nicing (It's a word) everybody takes energy which I don't get back. Smile and the world smiles back at you? In a school this is not really the case. Teachers don't want you to waste their time and administrators in schools are either awesome and really helpful (20%) or poorly trained, badly dressed sock puppets that can't even work their email (80%), so there's bugger all chance of them helping you.

Fingers crossed I get permanent job soon, then I can bitch, moan, have no time and rag on any CRT that comes my way. I might even be sick and leave no planning or advice that one student likes to get bitey. That'll be the day.

Loathing in London with a sore head.

Firstly, FUCK!!! Sorry, just had to get that one out. I’m sick. Nothing but a bad head cold, but I hate being sick. It’s my worst nightmare. (Actually being attacked by the living dead yielding rusty syringes as weapons to a background of Coldplay is my worst nightmare, that and any movie involving Meg Ryan). It’s not so much the being sick that angers me, it’s how being sick prevents me from doing anything. Kiss your girlfriend, no you’re sick. Work out, no you’re sick. Walk any distance greater than 100 metres, no that’ll hinder your recovery. Plus you’re subjected to every idiotic new-age bastard cure developed in the last fifty years. My girlfriend swears by Echinacea, being the skeptical cantankerous old bastard I am, I just swear. The only way Echinacea could alter your health would be if while trying to purchase a bottle, the shelf containing all the Echinacea in the world fell on top of you, crushing you into a fine mush in a wonderfully ironic event.


While I’m skeptical about many things in life, health treatment and food are very high on my list. This is probably the result of having a GP as a father. While I have no medical training whatsoever, over the years of my childhood I had the world’s greatest medical encyclopedia sitting on the coach, ready to answer any misguided question I was willing to develop. I would now like to share with you two of the glorious tid-bits which pervade my life, and fuel my perpetual mistrust of pharmacists, hippies and natural therapies.


Vitamin C, does nothing. Well it does something, but it’s pretty much in any piece of fruit so eating copious amounts of tablets isn’t going to save you. Once you’ve got your fill, the remaining goodness flies right out your behind along with last night’s chicken tikka. Honestly, when was the last time you or one of your close family members was cut down with a nasty case of scurvy? Never. Sadly it went the way of the Hyper-Colour t-shirt a long time ago.


Secondly, brand name medications. Read the box, they’re all the same thing! Panadol, Nurofen and all the other creatively named, prettily packaged drug therapies work the same as the bland, accurately named versions. Nurofen £1.99, Ugly-Brand-exactly-the-same-drug-with-same-effect-Ibuprofen £0.36! The brand name costing almost 6 times as much, that’s insane, it’s more than that, it’s delusional. If you had the choice between petrol that cost 6 times what normal petrol cost, you wouldn’t buy it, you’d point, laugh and scoff at any tool stupid enough to spend a retarded amount of money on such a lavish and pointless commodity. If you have any name brand medication in the house I’m sorry but you are this tool, and given the opportunity I’d punch you right in your stupid tool face with my manky phlegm encrusted fist. Sorry, have sympathy. I’m sick.