A month ago my company axed our receptionist, technically because the position is redundant but realistically because she was a spiteful, venomous, incompetent old weevil with a bad facelift. The place is much jollier without her, however this poor little worker drone has been given the privilege of taking over her workload. Granted, it’s not a huge workload, but this week our sales team has been poncing about at some innovations exhibition in Canberra, leaving me to pilot the front desk, field sales queries, and squeeze in my own 45-hour-a-week role somewhere in between. I must’ve performed my Demonic Overworked Harpy act to perfection, because late this afternoon my Managing Director wandered in and said:
“Thanks for putting that information together for me today. I know you have lots to do.”
Woah. Anyone who has an MD will know the significance of that.
So I figure I definitely deserve one of these:
That’s Tequila, dry ginger ale and fresh lime. Or a Jose’s Mule, if you happen to order one at The Pub at Crown Casino. Mmm. Here’s to Friday!
(...and Monday only 60 hours away. Sigh.)
Not sure if everyone knows about this and I’m just an idiot (quiet, up the back), but:
Open Google, type “why won’t” in the search bar, and then laugh hysterically at the first auto-fill option that appears.
What the hell, Google?
I don’t have green thumbs.
My dad has a stunning assemblage of bromeliads in his nursery. Each time I visit he unceremoniously tears off a few pups (or baby brom shoots, for those not down wit’ da lingo) for me to stuff in my baggage and bring to Melbourne to “see if they grow in those conditions”. I’m not sure if he’s referring to Victoria’s woeful weather or my woeful agricultural skills. Probably both.
Anyway I have quite a random assortment of potted plants living around my patio, which sit dejectedly through 40 degree summers, freezing downpours, wind, insects and complete, utter neglect. Usually they look positively mournful, but lately something wierd has been happening:
What the hell, Mother Nature. Crazy old broad.
On day three in Turkeyland, our other two partners in crime, Ems and Susan arrived and completed our little quintet. Ems is a Nottingham girl and confused me immensely for the first day or so by exclaiming “alright?” whenever she greeted me. I later learnt this is Pommish for “how ya going?”, and we got along fine after that. Susan is an Aussie ex-pat who’s been living in the UK for a decade or so, and hence has one of those bizarre Minogue accents.
After our mandatory morning trip to the ‘beach’ and swallowing huge amounts of Mediterranean sea water because inflatable water toys hate me, we did some more exploring through the village. We took the new girls over to meet Creepy Rugman Shonel, who nearly weed himself at the sight of tall, blonde Ems. Mandy and I snuck away and ended up in a cute little trinket shop chatting up the store owners Murat and Mehmet Ali. Turkish blokes are fabulous to flirt with, because unlike Aussie blokes they’re not dickheads.
Allow me to make a sweeping generalisation: Aussie men under 35 are socially inept, conversationally retarded and charismatically stunted. They’re either so tentative and delicate that it makes me want to grab them by the shirt front and scream “dude! What did your Mama do to you?!”, or they’re artless, sleazy hunks of machismo, spitting out lewd comments that make me want to shove their head under the bonnet of their R8 Maloo, slam it shut and set fire to it. There ain’t no middle ground in this town. Turkish lads, on the other hand, will smile at you to get your attention rather than leering down your top. They’re capable of making casual chit chat, and have a knack for letting you know they’re interested without making your skin crawl or setting off your gag reflex. All this, despite the fact they’re all very, very short. Leprechaun short. Tom Cruise short. I’m guessing it all comes down to self esteem, which is something my Melbourne bruvvas appear to be lacking, even though most of them are twice the height of your average Kaş man. Get it together boys – I’m one bad date away from going all Portia de Rossi.
Enough bitter-single-girl ranting, back to Murat and Mehmet. Mehmet Ali was the spitting image of Sylvestor Stallone, if Sly weighed 60 kilograms, was Turkish and had mild homosexual mannerisms. He even spoke with a lisp, which is why Mandy and I probably shouldn’t have been taking Turkish lessons from him – we spent the next few days in the belief we were asking “how much is this please?” in perfect Turkish, when in fact we were saying “how much ith thith pleathe?”
Murat was a deep, artistic kind of guy – he told us his name means ‘Wishes’, and when the tourist season finishes he spends his free time painting images of human emotion for art exhibitions. How’s that for a pick up line. I had a terrible time taking him seriously, and Mandy and I were probably a bit more evil than we should have been with our dry Australian humour:
Murat: I hope you find everything you’re looking for on your holiday!
Mandy: We’re actually looking for rich husbands.
Inga: Do you know anyone with a helicopter?
Whereupon we were treated to stern rant about love and materialism, while Mehmet pottered around in the background mumbling “I with I had a helicopther.”
Bridesmaid gig on the weekend again, my fourth trip down the aisle. I love, love, love being a bridesmaid – being primped, pampered, photographed and drinking champagne until in comes out my ears, then having a big ol’ sook because the bride is beeeyoootiful and I love you soooo much and you desherve to be ha-ha-happy...uh oh, where the hell is my uvver shoe? Hic.
But most of all I loved this:
This is the reason I didn’t wake up on Sunday with a sizzling hangover. I alternated my tequila shots with surreptitious gulps from the chocolate fountain, which is clearly the sensible thing to do on a night out. In fact by the end of the night I found myself sober* enough to be babysitting the other two bridesmaids, the best man, and one random Phillippino guy who introduced himself as Arnie. I shoved everyone into a taxi, directed it to the closest 7-11, fed everyone microwave chicken rolls and convinced Best Man to keep his hands off one of the bridesmaids because dude, she’s REALLY not interested. Plus you’re married and have a child, you jerk. Then bridesmaid vomited out the side of the taxi and Best Man suddenly lost interest. Ah, young love.
I don’t think I’m too keen on being a bride. They’re unfailingly tense, weepy and strung out. Cheer up girls, it’s a husband, not breast cancer. Husbands are a lot easier to dispatch.
*According to the Rye Pub breathalyser, I had a healthy blood alcohol level of 0.07. Another bridesmaid blew 0.18 then cried because she’d wasted $2 on a breathalyser.
Day 2 in Turkeyland began with a trip to the ‘beach’. There was no sand, which I can’t say is an entirely bad thing. I never enjoyed coming home after a trip to Gunnamata and dumping 3 kilos of sand out of my undies and sweeping the sand dunes out of my car. There were also no sharks, stingrays, rip tides, stonefish, poison cone shells or irukandji jellyfish. None of that beachy stuff, just sunbeds and umbrellas and a cute cafe owner who scurries around to serve you chips and beer while you’re sunbaking. Gunnamatta can kiss my Mediterranean suntanned ass, thank you.
Once we’d roasted ourselves to perfection (apologies to 50 year old Inga – I know you’re going to wind up wrinkled and melanoma riddled, but bugger it, this mocha skin is worth it!), we went in search of food and found ourselves at the Bay Bay Cafe Bar.
Let me say this about Melbourne: yes, there is an extraordinary range of bars, clubs, cafes and restaurants in Melbourne. It’s our fair city’s drawcard. There’s something for everyone. Chinese, Japanese, cosy, pumping, jumping, bohemian, singles, swingers, younger, older, decrepit – there’s something for every taste and budget. However, if your something is nice ambience, nice decor and great hospitality, expect to pay an arm and a leg for it. Heaven help you if you want a smile as well. For my entire stay in Kaş, I didn’t walk into a single place that wasn’t oozing with atmosphere, friendliness and amazing customer service – regardless of menu prices. Bay Bay is no exception; it consists of three landscaped levels built into a hill overlooking the marina. Taking the lushness of my surroundings into account, I scanned the menu with my Melbourne brain – pizza toast, 5 Turkish lira. In a place like this, at that price, it must be miniscule, therefore I’ll order two of them. Mistake. Pizza toast in Turkish apparently means massive toasted sandwich the size of my head, overflowing with every kind of smoked meat and grilled vegetable imaginable. I ended up feeding most of them to some random kitties that clearly sensed my distress.
(Apologies in advance for any neck problems, I really don't know how to turn photos around on here)
Feeling a tad bloated, Fi, Mandy and I set off for walkies up the hill. Mandy and I are both suckers for fuzzy creatures, so when we found a herd of cats hanging out under a picnic table we leapt in cooing and stroking - scabies, rabies and fleas notwithstanding. Shortly a very fat, sweaty man came jiggling up to us. “Hello ladies! You like cats, yes? This my cats!” He then grabbed Fi’s wrist and fastened a bracelet to it. “This help feed cat – I look after, you give me ten Turkish lira, I feed this cats!” Before we knew what had happened, we each had a bracelet around our wrist and found ourselves relieved of 10 lira. Luckily Mandy was on the ball:
“This money goes towards feeding these cats, is that right?”
“Yes, yes! See, I give them food, water, they happy cat!” (they did have food and water, and looked inarguably content)
“And you also de-sex them, so they’re not producing more strays?”
“Yes, yes! Why not!” (clearly skirting the language barrier)
“No, do you use the money to have them DE-SEXED?” (here Mandy performed an amazing mime of a cat getting its bits chopped off)
“Ah, of course! No kittens!”
At which point one of the ginger cats turned around to display a stunning set of feline testicles. The Cat Man was unperturbed:
“No no no, I only do lady cats!”
Mandy rolled her eyes and we all stormed up the road. Examining the bracelets later, we realised they were actually quite pretty and decided not to return in the morning to thrash Cat Man into liquid.
It’s been precisely a month since I came back from Turkey, and the memories are fading distressingly fast. Somewhat like my ability to demolish an entire box of Whitman’s Samplers without it going straight to my thighs. Damn you, disappearing youth. Damn you to hell.
Anyway, Day 1 in Turkeyland began with an incessant yodelling at 5.30am. Bloody muslims. Don’t get me wrong, I believe people should be allowed to worship in whatever fashion and to whichever spiritual entity they please - so long as it doesn’t wake me at some ungodly hour when I’m already so confused, jetlagged and hungry that I think I’m a hummingbird. Fortunately my father had the presence of mind to text me shortly afterwards with “TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION YOURE IN TURKEY” (sure, he can fly a plane, build a house and design a hydro-electric generator, but he’s only capable of texting in capital letters. FFS.) After yelling some rather culturally insensitive abuse at the mosque next door, I dragged myself up to the terrace for a buffet breakfast.
‘Breakfast’ was fruit, cheese, olives, tomato, cucumber, boiled eggs, yoghurt, honeycomb and big hunks of bread. Now I like most of these items, just usually not prior to 10am and certainly not mixed together in one meal. Neither my brain nor my stomach could really fathom any sort of game plan for attacking the buffet, so I went back to my room and ate the Snakatas I’d smuggled in for emergencies.
A bit later on, two of the other five ‘Budgies’ arrived. We called ourselves Budgies because about three days into our stay someone referred to us as baçi, and explained it means ‘sister’ in the colloquial sense. It’s pronounced somewhat like budgie, so we adopted it and used it ad hoc, ad nauseum and ad misericordiam. We were overjoyed when we found out the Turkish for ‘five’ is beş, prounounced “besh”. Five Sistas = Beş Baçi’s...which sounds like Best Buddies! Check us out with our totally awesome multilingual play on words! Don’t worry, none of the Turks thought it was particularly spectacular either.
So Fi, Mandy and I hit the town. Kaş is a gorgeous little cobblestoned village – bear in mind I’ve never been anywhere near the European continent before, so I was fairly gobsmacked by the culture, the cute little houses and the general atmosphere. Inevitably, we wound up in a rug shop, owned by a bizarre fellow called Shonel – “Is like Chanel, but not Number 5 ok? Hahaha!” He completely fell in love with Fi, and proceeded to dress her up like a Turkish bride.
We got his entire life story, which included his short stint in Melbourne after marrying an Aussie girl purely for a visa. He gave us apple tea, chatted with us for a good hour, and became inordinately excited when we told him we had two more friends joining us later in the week, one of whom is blonde. It was immensely surreal for me, and it was the first time a sleazy wanker has filled me with such goodwill.
Feeling a bit hungry after the rug shop experience, we wandered into a quiet restaurant after the chef beckoned us in with a smile and some garbled English. This turned out to be the best thing that’s ever happened to me in my life. Not only was the food brilliant and the chef gorgeous, they served us several dishes on the house. (Partly because Fi ordered dolmades, and landed us with domates instead – that is, an entire platter of sliced tomato. Travel tip: if you’re ever in Turkey wanting dolmades, ask for dolma). This was also where I discovered helva – a dessert which is basically just raw cookie dough. I must have visibly peed myself, because every time we returned the chef brought us several kilos to devour. The swooning, hugging and cleavage probably encouraged him too.
God I miss the days when I had time to blog at work. Or at home. Or even just in my head. Ever feel like somebody’s just pressed a NOS button in your brain and you’re rocketing through each day in a whorl of blue flame, burning rubber and bad movie cliches? Then you blow the welds on your intake manifold, fry your piston rings and realise you’ve seen Fast and the Furious waaaaay too many times. Mmm, Vin Diesel in an RX7.
Anyway, today I snuck out of work early and skipped the gym in order to cook myself a proper meal and sit down and do sweet, sweeeet FA. Check me out with my fully mad culinary skilllz:
That’s mushrooms, prawns, chilli, garlic, bok choy, corn and some other random vegetation.
Please don’t tell my mother or my best mate that I can cook. For years, both of these wonderful ladies have taken every opportunity to cook me the most delicious, nourishing meals in the belief that I’m on the verge of dying from beriberi. Which I probably am, but the culprit is bone laziness rather than any real deficiency in the kitchen. I hate cooking from scratch, but sometimes the occasion calls for it – like when you’ve had a f***er of a week and need some antioxidants. But more on that another time.
Well I’m back from Turkeyland.
The stay was amaaaaaaazing, I can’t rave enough about how amaaaaaaazing Turkey is. There just aren’t enough aaaaa’s on my keyboard. But more on that later.
The actual travel part, however, was f***ing awful. Excruciating. People who carry on about how much they love to travel are FRICKEN LUNATICS. It was 36 hours from Melbourne airport to the hotel in Turkey, and in that period I went from homicidal to suicidal to xenocidal about thirty times over.
The first mistake I made was straightening my hair. My curly haired sistas out there will understand precisely why I did this prior to a long haul flight, but apparently airport security do not. I was eyed up and down and greeted with “new hairstlyle?” at check-in, at the international terminal entry, at immigration, and finally as I boarded the bloody plane itself. No, my hair is not curly like my passport photo - get over it, shut the hell up and let me on the damn plane. Once I and my aberrant hair had boarded, I discovered I had the middle seat in a middle row. Joy. Eight hours to Kuala Lumpur with two people on either side of me and not a window in sight. I was scared to drink anything for eight hours in case it made me want to pee, and subsequently I had a stonking dehydration headache by the time I got to KL. With another 4 hours to kill before the next flight, I drank a litre of water, downed four Panadol, checked my ticket for my boarding gate number, found the boarding gate, then curled up in a nearby corner like a derelict and managed to nap for all of 15 minutes. I’m not sure what I did for the next 3 hours, but I assume I blacked out from chronic crankiness. About 10 minutes before departure time I realised no one was congregating near the departure gate. Hmm. I wandered over to the info monitor and found the departure gate had changed. To a different building. SHIT. I found a map and located the new departure gate, which had a cute little train icon next to it. Double shit. I bolted halfway through the building, found the ‘Air Train’, leapt on board and hurtled off again at what I hoped was the right stop. I threw my passport at the gate security guard, who gave me a cute smile and said “oh, new hair style?” - whereupon I clobbered him into a pulpy, oozing mess with my hand luggage. Safely on the plane, I found a Malaysian woman sitting in my window seat. “Sorry, I think you’re in my seat” I said. She feigned surprise. “Oh I’m sorry, I just wanted to sit next to my son”, and she gestured to a glowering, hirsute, obese slab of teenage angst slumped next to her. “But you can sit next to my daughter!” The said daughter smiled brightly and pointed to the aisle seat next to her. I looked at hairy-fat-angry-boy, looked at the aisle seat, thought about peeing anytime I wanted, then took the aisle seat. KL to Dubai was spectacularly uneventful due to the complete lack of in flight entertainment, unless you count the upholstery. Each seat was wrapped in what looked like a sarong, each seat in a different colour, with no discernible pattern. I felt like they should’ve been handing out joints instead of peanuts.
We had a brief stop in Dubai, but no one appeared to have forewarned Dubai. It was about 2.00am and everyone piled off the plane, only to find the gates were shut. You’ve all heard that joke about the blonde getting stuck on an escalator – well I actually saw it happen in Dubai. Picture an entire Airbus A330 worth of people unloading themselves onto an escalator, only to find the people in front of them aren’t going anywhere...the whole crowd had to walk backwards while the escalator kept running underneath them. I was able to have a smug chuckle, because I’m one of those people who take the stairs whenever they’re available. Of course I was stuck too, but at least I didn’t have to walk backwards on the spot like a twit. Eventually, a pretty young thing in an official looking outfit came trotting into the crowd. At least, she was a pretty young thing until she opened her mouth, after which I realised she was a drill sergeant. “Du-BAI!!” she hollered, “Everyone leaving at Du-BAI! Please step forward! Passengers for Istanbul, step BACK! BAACK! Du-BAI, FORWARD! FORWAAARD!” About ten passengers shuffled meekly forward, while she glared at the rest of us like we were communists. “Anyone else for Du-BAI?” she roared. No one moved a muscle, whereupon her shoulders slumped and she gazed around with hurt amazement “but, but...why not?”
After landing at Istanbul, I had a three hour layover until my domestic Turkish Airlines flight. I bought something which I thought was chocolate, but it turned out to be figs. I couldn’t understand a single thing anyone said, even when it was in English. The paper towel holders in the toilet were motion activated, which took me an inordinately long time to figure out. I glared at everything that moved, and even stuff that didn’t.
The hour flight from Istanbul to Antalya was brightened considerably by the best tzaziki I’ve ever eaten. Also there was an elderly Muslim man next to me who couldn’t figure out how to do up his seat belt, so I fastened it for him, all the while expecting him to suddenly declare me a harlot and stone me to death (yes, like most Australians I’m completely ignorant about Muslim culture). Once in Antalya, I found a huge hairy Turk in a pink shirt holding a sign saying ‘Hello, Inga!”. He introduced himself as Mustafa, which appeared to be the entire extent of his English. Nonetheless, we had several Turglish conversations on the three hour drive to Kaş – at no point were we discussing the same thing, but it mattered not. Mustafa appeared to be a graduate of Snoop Dogg’s ‘drive it like it’s hot’ school – I’ve never experienced so much dodging, weaving, tailgating, and blatant disrespect for road markings and traffic lights. In Australia, red means stop. In Turkey, it means stop if you feel like it. The scenery from Antalya to Kaş is breathtaking; pointed rocky peaks lurching straight out of the ocean, and the highway lacing itself through them, stitching tunnels and then shouldering back onto the glittering blue sea. The majesty was marginally diminished by Mustafa’s hammering the Renault at 140km/hr round the bends, overtaking on blind corners and generally doing his best to kill the Aussie tourist. Fortunately he lost that little game, and I ended up safe, sound and slightly delirious at the hotel around 4.30pm – at which point I tucked myself into bed, pulled the cover up over my head and vowed never to leave Australia ever, EVER again.
This is me today.
I’m so yayful I had to jump on the treadmill for an hour to squash a demonic urge to bounce around the house to Guy Sebastian’s new song. Shudder.
So, my raison d’yây?
Yay #1 – In 3 sleeps I’ll be on a big scary plane on my way to sunny, happy Turkey. Work has been so shitty this week that against all my usual instincts, I’m actually embracing the concept of flying halfway around the world to wreak havoc in a conservative Muslim republic. It’s going to be balmy, culturally rich, and crawling with hordes of greased up Mediterranean spunks that totally dig my Aussie accent.
Yay #2 – I forgot I lodged an expense claim at work a couple of weeks ago, and suddenly found another $1500 in my account today. Fricken YAY.
Yay #3 – I’m going speed dating tomorrow night (italics added to highlight velocity), with a couple of girlfriends. I haven’t dated in about 7 months, as I’ve been going through a mild men-are-superfluous-to-my-existence-but-I’m-not-a-leso phase which appears to be lasting most of my adult life. However, with this trip to Turkey and the aforementioned greasy hordes, I’ve decided it’s time get back on the wagon. Also, I’m not getting any younger and my fabulous rack is starting to wilt. So tomorrow, at some trendy bar in the city, I’ll meet twelve men aged 24 – 32 from which to choose the next dickhead to add to Inga’s Almanac of Knobjockeys.
Yay #4 – I’ll be coming straight back from holidays and headfirst into my cousin’s Hen’s Night. It will involve a river cruise, limitless champagne, flight attendant outfits, a limo and strippers. Yep, I’m definitely back on the wagon.
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