Anything You Can Do, I Can Do The Opposite

So now that we were not-so-settled in at Maxx's Den of Debauchery, Yours Truly had to secure another source of income, post-haste. The Boyfriend insisted I didn't take the first job I came across, that I negotiate a wage, that I try to get a position worthy of my time and effort, somewhere I would be happy. I laughed off his lecturing prattle, insisted with an arched eyebrow that I was fully mature enough to do my own job-hunting, thank you very much.
Then, I asked him for a lift to a place miles away where I had secured an interview the following Monday.
He agreed, and as the sun made its slow ascent into the air that foggy January dawn, The Boyfriend and I were on our way to Prahran, a suburb just five kilometres from Melbourne's Central Business District. Prahran is an area primarily dominated by full-time, fake-breasted, 4x4-weilding mothers. Most of the shopfronts displayed are dedicated to high-end fashion brands for toddlers, organic and vegan-friendly cafes, or hand-crafted jewelery and sarongs. Every hand is immaculately manicured, every pair of eyes hidden behind Chanel sunglasses, every cup of coffee is Fair Trade.
Amidst such spectacle, stood Yours Truly attired in my Kmart finest, shoes worn to the sole, pants slumping at the crotch due to over-wear, sweat running down my forehead from the deceptively gentle-looking slope I had to climb to reach the place at which I desperately needed to be hired. Several Glam-Mams shot me disturbed glances. I hadn't time to worry about their haughty opinions - I had an interview to ace.
The cafe looked as out of place on the street as I did - more of a greasy spoon compared to the monochrome stylization of its counterparts. There were about six tables inside, and a small sandwich bar. It was a far cry from Sappy and Boss' set up in the city, and at that moment in time, that suited me to the ground.
No one was around. I was supposed to be meeting a man with a heavy Indian accent; the owner, in fact, of the cafe. Let's call him Mr. Delhi.
 After half an hour of waiting, I decided to ring him to see what was causing the delay. He apologised most profusely, and assured him he was on the way. He told me he would get his "associate" to let me in, so I could sit and wait in comfort. Moments later, a bedraggled looking man in too-tight shorts slowly opened the door, and invited me to wait inside for my interviewer.
I could hear The Boyfriend's voice in my head, shrieking at me to leave right now, to try the job sites again that evening, to forget about this man who couldn't even deign to keep his own appointments.
So I sat inside and waited, staring at the ceiling determinedly, so as not to view the Associate's rather confrontational outfit (it was a cold morning, the poor cratur)
Finally, Mr. Delhi  arrived in a flourish of Hindi and Punjab, shoes polished to the point of blinding, hair swept carefully to the side, chef's coat clearly visible at the collar of his overcoat. He thanked his Associate, who was really just the guy renting the room upstairs over the cafe. He shuffled back upstairs, grumbling and pulling his Speedos out of his arse.
 Mr Delhi bid me sit down ad we talked for exactly four minutes. He asked me all the normal questions and I answered as honestly as I could, considering I could barely understand what he was saying. His accent was insanely strong and I suddenly felt a pang of empathy for the many Aussies who'd responded to The Boyfriend's linguistic idiosyncrasies with mere blank looks of confusion and sometimes, actual pain.
On a completely unrelated note, here's a tip if you're coming to Australia and want a cruisey job - try hospitality. You can't go too far wrong making a sandwich, the money is decent, you don't have to work weekends and an Irish accent accompanied by a relentless smile will get you anywhere. On a related note, don't stay in any hospitality job for too long - it can become absolutely soul destroying if it's not what you love.
Then, all you can do is write blogs to vent your frustration.
Anyway, The Boyfriend picked me up after my meeting with Mr Delhi and listened quietly to my synopsis. He scowled when I was finished. "Where would you be goin'?!" he spluttered "All the way out here, for him not to even show up 'til ten minutes ago? D'bollicks." The Boyfriend is all about punctuality.
I was offered the job and I took it. The Boyfriend shook his head in bafflement, his advice unheeded; Yours Truly simply happy in the knowledge that I could afford cigarettes again.
We're very different really, The Boyfriend and I. Mostly, in that he is almost always right, and I am almost always wrong.

Perspective

Living abroad is hard for many reasons but the one that proverbially cherry-tops the situation in its entirety, is the ever-present fear of someone getting seriously sick back home. The Boyfriend and I both left grandmothers at home, and considered ourselves fairly lucky to count ourselves among the few of our collective friends to have living grandparents as part of our respective families.
When New Years Eve in 2012 rolled around, we were calling Maxx Power's house of horrors our home. Tod and Copper were great housemates and even better drinking comrades. They were still jobless, but had accepted that this would most likely be the case until after the seasonal holidays.

As a result, money was tight. The Boyfriend and I were still pinching pennies, resigned to the fact that we would soon be shelling out thousands for return flights to Ireland and also terrified of the impending impoverishment once we touched back down on Celtic soil. Tod and Copper were flat broke, and avoiding paying Maxx the rent by offering to fix various problematic electronic devices around the house. It seemed to be working in their favour, and so we decided we would indeed celebrate the end of the year - in a fashion. We bought some five litre boxes of wine - you read that correctly - at a cool thirteen dollars each, and made a half-arsed plan to stumble into town once we were suitably inebriated and watch the fireworks.

At five in the afternoon, we were all shitfaced. I had seized control of the music playlist, and was allowing exactly thirty seconds of every song before loudly exclaiming I'd discovered a better one and proceeding to play that instead. To this cacophony, The Boyfriend, Tod and Copper were playing a boisterous game of charades, cigarettes hanging from every corner of every mouth. It wasn't our finest moment, and it wasn't the most sophisticated of soirees. But we carried on the pretense, boldly ignoring every job- and money- and future-related worry that so obviously plagued all of our minds.

Maxx wobbled in to join us for a while, waving a giant black sex toy around while blowing pungent cannabis smoke in my face. I sat there, grinding my molars to dust, painfully aware that this was only our third day in the house, resolving in my temporary, anger-fueled lucidity to get new accommodation as soon as was possible, no matter how short the time we had left.

The Boyfriend and I were having a cigarette when he got the phone call. Initially, we assumed it was his family's expected well-wishing for the new year. I could hear The Boyfriend chattering away from our room. Slowly, his voice got lower and my gut sank.

His grandmother, at an awesome ninety-three years of age, had passed away during the night. We would not be able to make it home for her funeral and that was almost harder than hearing the news of her death. Absence, unfortunately, comes part and parcel of living twenty six hours of a plane journey away from where you grew up.

Granny had had a typical big Irish family, and had been widowed as a young woman. I can only imagine what Ireland was like at the time, I can only guess how hard it would have been to raise a family of eight when a man was the sole bread-bringer and one suddenly found themselves without that man. I can barely fathom how she successfully survived it, and went on to become a grand- and great grand- mother. I'd only met her a couple of times, but remember one thing clearly - her huge, calloused hands. She was clearly a woman unafraid of hard toil, a woman used to graft. Her hands were physical reminders of her achievements. She had lived a life and lived it long and well.

And as The Boyfriend regaled us that afternoon with fondly remembered  stories of his father's mother, half-sad and half-amused as he lost himself in nostalgia, I realised that some things cannot be fixed and that some things cannot be changed. I told myself that night that if Yours Truly can live long and live well, I'd be considered among the greats like Granny. All my worries over visas and jobs and idiotic housemates and smoking and the future would pale in comparison.

 I'd live up to the Irish mantra, and assure myself it would all be feckin' grand.

We toasted Granny that night as the fireworks exploded overhead and for the first time going home didn't seem like the end of the world.

Fifteen days later, we got an email notification that our application for a 457 visa had been accepted and that we officially had the right to work and live in Australia until 2017.

We were sponsored. I like to think The Boyfriend's grandmother got sick of my whinging, and threw us a bone.

Weird to the Maxx

Christmas came.
The Boyfriend and I escaped the bustle of the city to spend the three days he had off over the holidays out in Philip Island , a popular holiday destination off the coast of Victoria. We made our traditional dinner with all the trimmings and took a cruise around the island.
When we arrived back at the Birmy, The Boyfriend was contacted by an acquaintance from home, who had been unlucky in securing work in Brisbane and so had traveled, with his girlfriend, to Melbourne in the hope that he would have more luck down south. We'll call this guy Tod; we'll call his girlfriend Copper.
Tod and Copper were living the other side of the city, in a proper house, with the landlord residing in a granny flat situated behind it. It sounded like a pretty sweet set-up.
Tod explained how they paid their rent weekly - it cost as much as The Birmy, but they were basically getting an entire three bedroom house to themselves. Though the landlord's presence in the background was undeniably a little awkward, Tod assured us it was an infrequent intrusion upon their privacy and rarely, if ever, an issue. For all intents and purposes, they had the house to themselves for a fraction of the usual cost. Tod then proceeded to inform us about the second available room in the house and The Boyfriend and I did something that won't exactly shock anyone who has picked up on the pattern by now - we made a(nother) Really Stupid Decision.
We packed up our stuff and were ready to give the middle finger to The Birmy the next day. We loaded The Boyfriend's truck, and made the precarious journey to Preston from Fitzroy, fervently praying we wouldn't be pulled over by the police for the haphazard mattress placement.
When we arrived at the house, there were gates surrounding it that would put Fort Knox to shame.The house was invisible from the street due to the height of the fence. It was decorated with notices declaring watch dogs on the property and how unwelcome strangers were. I listened for growling while The Boyfriend called Tod. He came to let us in. We waited outside as he slid the copious bolts to the side. We shared a familiar look of dread. Finally, the gate creaked open and Tod immediately helped us bring in our stuff. I grabbed a few pillows - because I'm not above playing the weaker sex card when it suits me - and stepped inside.
My heart fell to my feet. The walls were adorned with pictures of wide-eyed children-of-the-corn-types, complete with black irises and floral-collared paisley dresses. They stared down at us menacingly as we dragged - or in my case, hugged - our possessions through the living room, which  was in itself a veritable obstacle course of carpets, cushions and armchairs. The kitchen was stock piled with teetering towers of mismatched crockery, the bathroom was plastered with helpful signs reminding us to flush and replace the lid after use. We opened the door to what was to be our new room and saw a sofa bed unfolded near the window. There was a stone counter at the opposite end of the room. Another girl with black eyes observed our walk-through from her framed picture at the door.
As we unloaded, we caught a glimpse of a skinny, bald man ducking his head in and out from the back yard. It turned out this was our landlord.
He was bald and hunched, skinny to the point of sickly. One of his eyes swiveled ever-so-slightly to the right and he chewed hungrily at his bottom lip. He was wearing a sarong and a white wife-beater. If one was to judge a person solely on their appearance, one would judge this guy as bat-shit crazy, straight off the mark.
"Maxx Power," he introduced himself as, holding out a shaky hand. "Two x's" he added. He gestured towards a mangled leg, jutting out in a perplexing fashion from his transparent beach skirt."I was attacked in Malaysia, they tried to cut off my leg," he supplied helpfully, providing an explanation where none was requested "I used to play soccer. Had to change my name. Yeah."
Maxx showed us the rooms we'd already seen and then made us reread some of the signs in the bathroom. He showed himself into our room and surveyed the mounds of clothes we had brought with us in boxes. He fingered through some of The Boyfriend's overalls, much to The Boyfriend's chagrin, and held up a scarred hand in epiphany. "I know where we can store your uniforms!" Maxx said, his face alight.
He scrambled back to the living room and started pushing the fifteen-seater modular out from the window. He grunted and groaned, pulling up one of the many rugs. What he exposed beneath appalled me.
There was a trap door hidden beneath the sofa and the carpets. I can't even begin to contemplate what he might have been keeping down there without tasting bile in my throat.
"Can't keep it open too long. Be afraid the girl I have chained up down here would crawl out," he joked.
 I think.
 I hope.
This was all the information I needed. I elbowed The Boyfriend pointedly and we retreated to the bedroom. We sat on the fold-out sofa bed and stared at the tiled floor.
"Why is there a counter-top in here?" I asked, after several prolonged moments of funeral-like silence.
The  Boyfriend shrugged. We exchanged a look.
"We've made a mistake, I think."
The Boyfriend doesn't speak much, but when he does, he generally utters some hard-hitters. "Was he wearin' a fuckin' dress?"
Maxx Power. Don't forget the second 'x'.

Job Cunt

Christmas was coming up and The Boyfriend and I were stoic in our hatred of Australia, the country that had rejected us. In the run up to the festive season, it was easy to shake off such a spurning by reminiscing about the Emerald Isle and all the annual traditions we were missing by wasting time Seeing The Wizard. We immersed ourselves in old photos, loudly exclaimed how weird it was that December's temperature hadn't plunged below zero and indulged in many a Skype call to Da Mudders and Da Fadders and Assorted Siblings.
I spent my days at work insisting to the few that would listen that the inevitable return to Ireland was all that was keeping me smiling. Internally, we were shitting sizable bricks. I checked my pathetic bank balance hourly, willing some windfall to scare away any doubts. The fact was, the plan was crumbling. We had intended to get sponsored and to stay in Australia until things at least picked up somewhat back home. We hadn't prepared for the monumental brush-off, and our confidence had been shattered. It just goes to show that thinking positively is dangerous - and it is for that very reason that I have always remained a distinctly cynical and negative individual.
I'm very health-conscious.
Anyway, I had to approach Boss and let him know about my situation. I would be leaving a month after Christmas and he was closing up shop for three weeks. So I needed any hours he could throw my way to fatten up my moth-eaten purse.
Apparently, I had spent too long building up the courage to speak with him about it because one fateful day, in between squeezing Sappy's generous haunches, he called me over to the coffee machine. He sighed and hummed along to Bob Marley - the musician of choice for the rich, white capitalist partaker, don't you know -  and gently informed Yours Truly that my services wouldn't be needed until the end of January, although everyone else would definitely be back when he re-opened in the first week of 2013.
"But I'm going home at the start of February!" I exclaimed, my heart doing a flip.
Boss scratched his hairless head and I caught a whiff of his herb. "Yeah, well. We don't actually need you until the of January."
A vein bulged in my eye, making it quiver a little in its socket.
"I heard you the first time, Boss," I murmured. "But I cant afford to wait until then. I need a job after Christmas; I need to make some money. I have to go back to Ireland! Haven't you heard about the Recession?! It's been in the papers and everything!"
I wasn't exactly putting forward a very convincing case. What I wanted him to see was that I had been here a year, one of the only five that had lasted that long in his illegally run cafe of hell, the only part-timer. I'd worked on Saturdays, taken minimum wage, helped out in any section that needed it, tactfully ignored his blatant adultery, smiled at his clueless wife, made his snot-nosed children their vegetarian, gluten-free sandwiches. I had served this man's senile bigot of a mother, smiled when she spilled her scalding hot tea down my forearm in her haste to pour. I had crawled into his fridge to scrape the mossy cheese out of the grooves. I had never mentioned his use of the girls bathroom for his frequent and fragrant bowel movements.
I peeled that bald bastard a boiled egg every morning for his breakfast for eleven months.
A.
Boiled.
Feckin'.
Egg.
Every. Morning.
I balled up my fists, the list of my anti-accomplishments from the year flitting miserably through my mind in a tragic slideshow of failure.
I thought I was going to lose it right there. I thought I would just throw my hands up in the air, knee Boss in his over-active gonads and squat to take a shit on one of his god-damned tables. Tables that I had polished, nonetheless.
Instead, I shrugged, and mumbled a sentence I will forever regret.
"Eh... so... I probably shouldn't come back after Christmas then? Eh?"
He smiled, ever-so-condescendingly, and agreed that that was probably the best course of action. I fought back the tears and informed the staff of my "decision", mentally kicking myself for such diffidence.
I clung to The Boyfriend that afternoon, wiping my snotty nose in his cobweb-strewn work shirt, cursing the world and being characteristically dramatic. I had a couple of weeks left working with Boss and Sappy and the crew and vowed I would exact my revenge.
I had been used and abused, I told myself.
It was terribly unfair, I muttered in bed that night, over the sounds of our neighbors'  rambunctious fornication (which he was now indulging in with a French girl, of which there could be no doubt if one was to go by her loud and continuous Gallic appraisals of his copulating skills)
"It's a feckin' gyp!" I assured my reflection the next morning, as I washed my teeth alongside two of the spicy-smelling Nepalese guys.
I strutted back to work, determined to voice my anger.
That afternoon, I was elbow deep in floor cleaner, scrubbing the stairs. My eyes stung and and the chemical was making my fingers swell slightly.
As I scrubbed, Boss came downstairs.
"Just been to the toilet. You can do them next."
I couldn't just smell what he'd just done up there. I could taste it.
Rolling my eyes behind his back was the closest I came to assertiveness. I am a very ridiculous and unfortunate human being, but at least I am aware of it. What's your excuse?

How To Deal With Grown-Up Problems, The Wrong Way.

The Boyfriend and I dealt with rejection the best way we knew how, which led to what we now reluctantly recall as The Great Binge of 2012.

We met up with a friend from home, who was in Melbourne studying at one of the universities. We'll call her April. April is probably the best fun you will ever meet embodied.

Anyway, we arranged to meet up with April one Friday night, post-gut-wrenching-Rejection. Yours Truly was pretty much a settled resident of Oblivion Town by the time she arrived, and almost smashed my overflowing wine glass against her cheek whilst embracing her in a sloppy, tear-stained hug. Beanie Face also put in an appearance and I was loudly slurring predictions of a wedding date between the two by the following year, much to the chagrin of the couple in question.

Now. There is a certain level of drunk that Yours Truly attains that should, by rights, exclude me as a member of the human race for the duration of that inebriation. I express opinions I do not hold; I laugh at things I don't actually find funny; I pretend I enjoy music that I really find painful to endure; I begin arguments with strangers about things I know nothing about, and then, when I am subsequently and inevitably rebutted, I finish said argument with a middle finger and a storm-off into a closed door. That is the level of drunk I was for the entire weekend that made up The Great Binge. And it was in this barely-upright state that I stumbled from The Birmy, on the arm of the equally hammered Boyfriend, determined to have the best night of my life.

Firstly, I played Cilla Black to April and Beanie Face. I cornered April as we queued for a bar and stage-whispered how good I thought they looked together. Beanie Face tapped me on the shoulder, insisting he could hear every word I said. I gave him what I must have thought was a conspiratorial wink, but which was actually a really long, really slow blink. When we finally got in to the bar, Beanie Face was all ready to make his move on April. Paving the road of romance, I bought everyone a round of tequilas - "The traditional ssssshot of LOVERRRRRSsssh!" I informed everyone within a ten mile radius - and rather aggressively pushed April and Beanie Face into each other.

Figuring my job completed, I waddled over to the bouncer at the front door, the very bouncer who had hummed and hawed over whether I would prove a liability if allowed pass through his precious red rope. I pulled on the red rope, laughing manically, and began to express how sober I actually was, how I actually always acted in this fashion, that I actually had a Bachelor degree, if he didn't mind my saying. This conversation, however riveting I may have imagined it, was short-lived, as I went tumbling arse-first through the door on to the pavement outside. I decided I didn't want to get up, either.

I stayed there, defiantly smoking a cigarette, while the bouncers gave me ample warning that they would have to resort to calling the police should I remain on the ground, outside the pub. Eventually, The Boyfriend came out, smiling from ear to ear - which seemed to be the height of his intoxication - and pulled me into a standing position. Like a fawn just expelled from the womb, I shakily found my feet and resolved I would not walk away from these bullying bouncers without imparting some cold, hard truths. "Call the poleesh, then. Sure they're only gobshites. And ye are only gobshites. YOU ARE ALL DIRTY, SMELLY GOBSHITES! So there!"

Sometimes, my wit astounds me in its ability to crop up when it’s most needed.

The next morning, I refused to accept reality. We had Bloody Marys for breakfast. Beanie Face and April were looking very close, and I mentally - and wrongly - took the credit for that union. I reckoned I deserved reward for my skillful set-up. That's how I found myself in the Salvation Army, picking through peasant blouses and floral, ankle-length skirts at one in the afternoon, declaring every garment I laid eyes on the pinnacle of fabulous, stinking of tequila and scaring away even the most hardened street-winos.

That Sunday was the most painful of my life. We'd no visa. We'd a grueling hangover. We'd a sack of clothes from Salvos that didn't even fit.  And I'm pretty sure I earned a life-time ban from every bar in Fitzroy.

That Monday, though, it was a bit easier to get up for work. I began to think about the trip back to Ireland in a positive light. In a few months, I'd be seeing Da Mudder again. I'd see my friends, and the rest of the family. I'd have a night out and my drunken persona would be avoided, but accepted. It wouldn't be so bad. I thought about going back to college, getting a Masters. It wasn't the end of the world.

Halfway through the day, I got a text from The Boyfriend. His company were insisting they needed him to stay on. They'd hired a solicitor.

They were going to try to sponsor us again.

Heartbreak Hotel. Seriously.

There is a place in the hipster-infested suburb of Fitzroy called The Birmingham Hotel. It is a pub-cum-hostel, renown as a temporary residence for the cash-strapped and backpackers alike. From the outside, it resembles the sort of lopsided, looming structure you'd expect to see on the poster of a Stephen King novel. From the inside, it brings to mind a Nepalese spice house run by Nepalese men clad in Nepalese animal skins. 

Anyway, this is where The Boyfriend and I found ourselves unpacking all our belongings three months  before Christmas. Our visa application was still processing and we remained clueless - albeit naively optimistic - as to what direction our future would take. It took us several hours to unload The Boyfriend's truck of our various hoarded possessions, and after the deed was done, we stood in the middle of a room eight feet wide by ten long and stared at our lives, momentarily filed in cardboard boxes.

We sorted the room as best we could, even managing to divide part of the room into a semblance of a living room, complete with TV, sofa and kettle. We surveyed our work, mentally clapping ourselves on our aching backs. We were convinced this was a provisional arrangement, that we would be renting our long-awaited unit-by-the-beach in no time, that we could happily turn our backs on the shoddy, short-term accommodations available to people on an interim stay, that we could finally rid ourselves of the shackles that restrain any Working Holiday Visa holder. It was the only thing that motivated me to haul my arse to work in the mornings and endure the endless stream of snobbery from the apparently cultured clientele that frequented the cafe.

Life in The Birmy was not one I'll remember fondly. Our room was cramped and yet worth over 200 dollars a week. We were situated a floor up from the bar itself and various lives shows featuring faulty amps and badly tuned instruments kept us awake most nights. Sleep was unattainable on a street where revelers, trams and strobe-like street lights habituated. 

A walk to work or to the Woolworths at the end of the street was inevitably coupled with a tirade of abuse from the various drunken and drugged-up. 

The Birmy's other occupants were largely lovely, most notably one of the girls I met while working alongside Boss and Sappy, and her boyfriend - possibly the world's most likable couple. But even their presence was dimmed by the constant companionship of the strange older man who lived upstairs and spent most of his time staring into a computer screen at the top of the fire escape, watching everyone's every move out of the corner of his eye, and the floating fecal matter the Nepalese boys liked to leave as tokens of their existence in the only toilet I was ever brave to chance using. 

The bar downstairs probably didn't help matters, because it became way to easy to get drunk and inform the landlord - who was always keeping a stool warm in front of the taps - that he probably was a bit old for his much better-looking significant other.

However, dreams of our sponsorship kept The Boyfriend and I going. We'd check out real estate websites on our days off, paupering ourselves week in and out to ensure we would have the money necessary for a deposit for a nice place when the time eventually came. We would keep tabs on the job websites, keeping track of any opportunity that might garner me stable employment once my eligibility improved. I kept a watchful eye on rescue centers, reminding The Boyfriend daily that he had promised we could get a dog once we had sorted ourselves out in Australia.

When summer set in, it was almost impossible for me to keep living. I arrived at work with sweat dripping from my armpits, regularly mopping my forehead with my apron, immediately volunteering for any fridge-cleaning work available. 

One evening, as the temperatures touched 33°C and my body physically gave up its fight to stay alert, I fell asleep amid the sounds of my Norwegian neighbors' violent love-making to his most recent conquest. I woke up what seemed like hours later and found The Boyfriend sitting at the end of the bed. His head hung downwards, his shoulders were slouched. It was a most un-Boyfriend-like posture and I said as much.

He wordlessly handed me the piece of paper he'd been clutching and all I remember reading were the words "has been rejected". 

In one sentence, our plans had fallen apart. We now had to decide on another course of action, one without a nice house, or a dog, or security. They sound like small inconveniences to the regular reader but to an Irish couple like The Boyfriend and I, who had their useless degrees under their belts and a lifetime of part-time positions in front of them, it felt like the whole world had banded together to sample the Nepalese boys' dinner and shat on us. 

Sighing, we decided not to make any decisions at that very moment. We refused to dwell on whether we would stay another year in Australia and try again, or whether we would apply for a visa to work in Canada, or whether The Boyfriend would work with his father for the rest of his life, or whether I would go back to college to get my teaching diploma, or whether we would start applying for jobs in Ireland. We simply bought alcoholic beverages from the handy pub downstairs and got a bit drunk by ourselves in the beer garden, with the creepy older guy tutting unabashedly from the top of the fire escape.

How Not To Be A Tourist

The hardest thing about recalling events that occurred over a year ago is the actual recalling itself - it seems I have made a critical chronological error and misplaced some events that I simply cannot leave out should my misadventures be recapped in an accurately Murphy-law-like manner. And so I ask your forgiveness, fair readers (yes - that's you, Mammy), and request that you haul your mind back a few weeks, before we pawned off Dallas to the Estonian, before Beanie Face and Cali Gurrrl went their separate ways, to the day that the Boyfriend's sister and her friend - hereby referred to as Donkey and Fire Crotch, respectively - landed in Melbourne as a stopover in their round-the-world trip.

The girls were the dream of every tourist trap in town. Their first outing into the city saw their return to the house that afternoon in matching tracksuits in blue and red, each with an accompanying jumper emblazoned with a kangaroo silhouette and the word "Australia" in black capitalized calligraphy. 

As we were working during the week, we tried to organise fun things to do for the weekends we had with the girls. The itinerary was as follows.

Weekend One:

Afraid they would end up penniless at the mercy of the market floggers, we decided to visit Mornington Peninsula miles from the city for their first weekend. The Peninsula is renown in Victoria as being home to the wonderful Penguin Parade - where actual baby penguins traipse up the beach to the joy of the human spectator - and spectacular views of over three hundred seals that have made homes of the rocks that jut sporadically a short way from the coast.

We rocked up to the lookout point that Saturday, and the minute we stepped out of the car, black clouds raced over to piss their contents all over our heads. The Boyfriend and I plastered some manic grins on our faces, and soldiered on down the walkway, the wind whipping at our faces, Donkey and Fire Crotch desperately clutching their matching jumpers to keep the cheap fabric from unravelling. It turned out that the infamous penguins wouldn't be making their pilgrimage until dusk, and since it was only just gone nine in the morning, the general consensus was to forego that particular sight and it's outrageous price-tag. We asked the lady at reception about the seals we'd heard so much about - turns out those guys are near impossible to reach in hurricane-like weather in winter and unless we were willing to man a dingy, there was little chance we were going to come face to face with any clapping, barking blubbery mammals any time soon. We took some blurry photos of the grey landscape, and made our way back to Dallas.

Weekend Two:

"We'll go out and get drunk!" I suggested merrily. I'll keep this one short (hold your breath): 

Cali Gurrrl jumped off the tram fourteen stops early from our intended destination. 

Cali Gurrrl - somehow - lost one of her shoes.

Beanie Face jumped off thirteen stops early to find Cali Gurrrl.

I awoke from my peaceful slumber on said tram after much prodding to leap off still-moving tram twelve stops early for no decipherable reason.

We - somehow - reached the city. 

We crossed a bridge in Melbourne city about four times while we steadily got rejected from every pub that has snaked its way into the city's darkest crevices.

Donkey - somehow - discovered one of Cali Gurrrl's disappearing shoes in her handbag.

Donkey subsequently hurled said Shoedini off the bridge as we crossed it the fourth and final time.

We got a taxi.

Donkey got sick in the taxi.

The Boyfriend had to pay for damages and Cali Gurrrl woke up at some ungodly morning hour to knock on everyone's door to ask if they'd seen - of all things - her shoe.

Weekend Three:

"Will we drive to Sydney?"

The Boyfriend was responsible for this inspired suggestion. We all piled into Dallas, and hit the road midday that Friday. Eight hours later, we were spinning in circles in Sydney, the cars undercarriage scraping worryingly off the bumpy Sydney roads, The Boyfriend's eyes about to pop out of his very skull in frustration as he screamed at me to find the hotel. I regarded the printed off Google maps directions, suitably perplexed and pointed in random directions until we eventually arrived, an hour after check-in time. A large, dreadlocked Nigerian woman came to the door after several extended doorbell rings, and led us angrily to our cramped room. We spent the day knocking around the city, visiting the Home and Away set - which was disappointingly devoid of any topless surfers - and taking the typical screen shots of the Opera House. 

We bought tickets for the Sunday to go whale watching, smugly reassured with the company's "whale-guarantee" sales pitch. That very smugness was quickly banished when, after three hours at sea, we had only spotted what could have been a whale's tail from a distance, while other boats crowded around the actual specimens, blocking our view. Our boat slowly disintegrated into chaos, as our mostly Asian counterparts all proceeded to be struck down with an overwhelming sea-sickness.

In saying all that, as we rocked back in forth in our stinking boat, vomit riveting past perilously close to our feet, with the "experts" excuses for the lack of whales coming thick and fast over the intercom, I was actually extremely happy. 

Donkey, Fire Crotch, The Boyfriend and I could not stop laughing the whole way back from Sydney at our sheer bad luck. And as the two girls made their way back to the airport a few nights later, I can admit I shed a tear for the little bit of home they brought with them that rainy July in 2012, just when we needed a bit of Ireland the most.