Sometimes nothing is better than ‘better than nothing’.

I used to work for an accounting firm as an administration assistant.

As such, I’m sure you will understand the profound need for a decent amount of caffeine.

The firm was too stingy to by a decent coffee machine so we all had cheap instant stuff which was a bit depressing but it was better than nothing. And by better than nothing I mean that in the same way that getting brown leather school shoes from Santa is better than getting nothing.

As you can imagine, news that we were getting a coffee machine was met with delight office-wide.

We got the coffee machine not because of a stroke of generosity on the part of our bosses but because we did the accounts for this coffee machine company. The company had gone broke and couldn’t pay their bill. So they offered us a coffee machine as a form of payment.

Better than nothing hey.

Or not.

Once the coffee machine arrived it became pretty clear why the company had gone broke. It was a fussy little thing. Also because the company that made it no longer existed, to get it repaired you had to follow a certain formal process. This basically involved going and getting the receptionist and watching her poke and prod it until it started whirring again.

Something this coffee machine was really good at was breaking. More impressively, it seemed to stuff your coffee up in so many different ways. It wasn’t like “Oh from time to time, the printer gets a paper jam in the 4^th tray” sort of malfunctions. The wide varieties of the way in which this coffee machine could crap itself were nothing short of impressive.

One ‘feature’ of the coffee machine was that when you asked it to make a drink, it used some coffee making skills to put something into your mug. At this point, it decided its work was done regardless of how much the final product resembled the drink that you ordered.

It did seem to understand though that different buttons were requesting different products so it actually made an effort to make each drink different. Over time I learnt how to translate the coffee machine’s button labels into what the coffee machine thought that they meant.

So sometimes nothing is probably better than ‘better than nothing’. You know what’s better than both, Shelley... She’s OK.

Xx

Smelle

Why my mother is really good at being Japanese.

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I originally wrote this post just a few days before the Japanese earthquake and tsunami and I thought it would be in poor taste to post it whilst their country was facing its darkest hour. Then about a week ago I was going to write a post about how my best friend dressed up as Amy Winehouse on Halloween so I’ve realised that I am able to foresee death and destruction. As such I am trying to break this cycle by posting about Japan because their disaster has already happened. My hope is the space-time continuum will use this paradox constructively and right itself. In the mean time, subjects on my posts face huge risks, today my mother will probably have something bad happen to her but she’s a forceful woman so I’m fairly confident she’ll cope.

Travelling is a wonderful experience, I’m sure you’d agree. My only real gripe is that the way you imagine yourself experiencing a place never quite measures up to reality.

The photos that you bring home reveal the truth. I’m not a true high maintenance kind of girl really but I have noticed that I do not have the kind of hair that travels well. Limp, greasy, fly-aways, odd curly bits, my hair covers it all.

SPAIN - Imagined

SPAIN - Actual

FRANCE - Imagined

FRANCE - Actual

MOROCCO - Imagined

MOROCCO - Actual

Recently my brother, mother and I made a last minute dash to Japan to ski. A bi-product of the skiing was the spending of time in Japan.

My skis were purchased in France and were originally trained up on French snow. To their total disgust they discovered themselves being put on an aeroplane and taken to a foreign land. They have since been forced to ski in Australian conditions. Skiing in Australia is an extreme sport. Slush, grass, rocks, ice, rain and sunshine combine together to make for a ski season that lasts all of five and a half minutes before it everything melts. As a result of these conditions you have to be extremely accurate when skiing to make sure that your skis stay in contact with actual snow. Occasionally when my French skis have had enough of these appalling conditions, they simply refuse to do as they are told.

They do this to make a point. “We are European skis. We deserve better. Until you get this into your head, we shall make you fall on it”.

It turns out that Franco-Nippon relations are much better. With snow as their only common language, the mountains of Japan and the skis of France danced gracefully together. I came along for the ride purely as a freeloader, a witness to the love making of mankind’s knack for elegant design and Mother Nature’s gift for turning water into white fluffy stuff.

The skis weren’t the only ones who took to Japan.

Our hotel was booked at the last minute so we were staying in one that is pretty much a Japanese hotel with few westerners staying there. This was actually really great because we got a more authentic experience. I slept on a slim Japanese mattress on the floor. The mattress had virtually no padding, I think its soul purpose is to prevent carpet burn. This did wonders for my back, skiing by day and hard core chiropractic work by night.

Our room contained no chairs so we sat on the floor cross legged as if we were about to meditate. Also there was a huge communal bathroom and natural hot springs down in the basement and we were provided with kimono dressing gowns and these little grey Japanese-style collared PJs that mum and I, continuing in the spirit of being culturally insensitive, nicknamed “Mao suits.”

My mother is well travelled but had never been to Japan. As it turns out, she is really good at being Japanese. 

Mum wearing the kimono dressing gown provided by the hotel.

Mum in the natural hot springs (onsen).

Mum conducting a tea ceremony in her Mao suit (English breakfast tea with a dash of milk, no sugar).

One sunny morning, whilst my easily freckled mother applied a thick layer of SPF a billion plus house paint to her face, my brother and I packed up the camera for some happy snaps. Mum decided that if photos were going to be taken she should apply some pink lipstick.

Mum being sunsmart and wearing lipstick = geisha style for the 21^st century (although the red hair brings a certain clown atheistic that the original geisha tend not to display).

She also used my brother’s knock-off iPad. For someone who uses two hands to press the buttons on a remote control, this kind of technology use was entirely out of character but when in Rome, one does as the Romains do. I was half expecting her work blackberry to come home covered in glow-in-the-dark Hello Kitty paraphernalia.

Our camera actually broke while we were skiing so the geisha will have to be remembered via my artistic interpretation of the events. This was pretty shitty but there is no reason to panic because at least Shelley’s OK.

Xx Smelle

 

How horse racing highlights the worst that human kind has to offer

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A few months ago, a few girlfriends and I went to the races. We spent most of the time pointing to girls who had been unsuccessfully negotiated the perils of fake tan application and had emerged all the more orange for their efforts. As enjoyable as this was, it did occur to me that between the five ladies present in our little posse there were a total of seven university degrees either completed or nearly completed. Truthfully, this was not our finest hour.

Horse racing highlight the worst that human kind has to offer

This experience reminded me of last year’s Melbourne Cup. If you are unfamiliar with the Melbourne Cup, I shall explain it to you.

Make no mistake about it the primary function of the Melbourne Cup is to give people an excuse to gamble. If that vice isn’t enough, it was decided that the gambling shall take place whilst overseeing a freak show of animal cruelty. Tiny midget men dressed in brightly coloured satin pyjamas ride horses, cruelling whipping them to go faster. The animal who is whipped the hardest and is distressed the most, wins money for those who backed it by crossing the line first, lungs bleeding, tiny man punching the air with his tiny fist. If a horse is particularly good at its running during its futile attempts to escape being whipped, it becomes a stud and it is forced to mate with other horses to produce a bunch of offspring who in turn will enter a life of slavery and whipping.

To add to animal cruelty and gambling, at the races drinking takes place in proportions that horrify even me, a sister, daughter, compatriot of big drinkers... even me a 7^th generation Australian whose blood is actually part VB. Due to the popularity of the races, people have to wait a long time in a queue to place bets and it’s difficult to get a spot where you can actually see any horses. The solution is to get so drunk that you vomit right near the gate so that when it’s time to leave, over 100,000 people at Flemington have to carefully watch where they step or end up vomit-shoed and disappointed.

In stark contrast to the jockeys who get to wear their pyjamas to the races, all other men have to wear suits. This is to highlight their love of excessive wealth as well as animal cruelty, mocking of tiny men, gambling and drinking. I believe it is also because a man feels uncomfortable being part of a pack of men standing around watching a group of flamboyantly outfitted men sporting whips. So men wear suits to remind them that even though they are taking part in witnessing the spectacle, they aren’t gay because real men where suits.

Largely up until now the pleasures of the races have been mainly the domain of men. Women; however, get in on the act too. As part of the excessive display of wealth, women drink mainly champagne which as we all know, rises straight from the stomach to the head through the bubbles it contains so all the women are pissed of their tits, tits which they are almost certainly going to accidentally reveal at some point during the day. To echo the day’s theme of cruelty, women wear shoes of epic discomfort. This tradition was originally inspired by the fact that the horses actually doing the racing have their shoes nailed to their feet.

Women for the most part are less thrilled by the torturing of horses but they really don’t want to feel left out so they articulate their love of animal cruelty in a different way. It’s pretty much mandatory that all women wear the feathers of a dead bird on their head. Women are also less interested in mocking tiny men, so they mock each other on the basis of whose dead bird matches their the dress the best.

The Melbourne Cup is one the most important events in the Melbournian Calendar:

So what does one do at the Melbourne Cup all day you may ask? Waits in queue for the toilets.

Last November my friend Cat Lady called me to announce that we had tickets to be on the rails at the Melbourne Cup. This happened at 10am on the day. I was on the couch, in my pyjamas, hair a total mess, limbs sprawled, coffee in hand and thinking to myself “OMG, I wonder why you don’t have a boyfriend, you’re so hot right now.”(Note: If you think that using sarcasm is a little immature, look, here’s the thing, I don’t bother being witty when I pay myself out, I don’t value my own opinion much so there’s not need to think up clever insults, they’ll just be wasted on me). I was like “OK... fine... I’ll come.”

Cat Lady was really surprised that I had this attitude, I mean after all this great opportunity had just come up. And then the fact that had occurred to me initially hit her, reaction probably delayed because she had retreated into denial, “OH GOD, WE’LL NEED TO WEAR AN OUTFIT. OF CLOTHES, OF SHOES.... OH GOD AND A HEADPIECE.” You see, the whole point of the races is to go, judge others and be judged. You have to look your best in order to gather the confidence to hold your own in the judging fest that takes place. It’s not so much a competition of who looks the best but rather a competition of who can make fun of who looks the worst whilst looking decent themselves.

Cat Lady and I had no time to buy outfits, no money to buy them with.

What follows is honestly the most miraculous thing that has ever taken place. Two women get ready for the races in a little under an hour with no notice. This is how it was done.

I have an ugly headband which I put on my head post conversation with Cat Lady. It’s itchy and I’m already uncomfortable. Sigh.

And then I have a fashion epiphany that Rachel Zoe would be envious of. In our bathroom, there is an orchid growing, I snip it off, flick of an ant, pin it in my hair, dress change and then I’m at Cat Lady’s house.

Now we must dress her in record speed.

Step 1

Cat Lady finds her most uncomfortable shoes.

Step 2

Cat Lady puts shoes on.

Step 3
Cat Lady takes shoes off and puts on pink Ugg boots because shoes are so uncomfortable that her feet need all the rest that they can get before we get going.

Step 4

Dress is put on. One benefit of being poor students is that decision was a relatively easy one because she didn’t have much to choose from.

Step 5

Cat Lady marches into the garden, dressed in her finest dress and Ugg boots wielding a knife, game face on, a lioness hunting a fascinator. I follow with a specimen bag.

Step 6

Fascinator shopping completed and headpiece secured with half a can of hairspray, Ugg boots switched for high heels, two ladies emerge from Cat Lady’s house, ready to train to the races.

At this point, there is no doubt that Cat Lady and I are fully aware of our legendary accomplishment. Most women shop for weeks, spend hundreds of dollars and a whole morning of preening in order to be presentable all the while whinging about their figure and unsatisfactory body fat distribution. We spent zero dollars and all of about thirty minutes each getting ready which included deciding what to wear and getting a matching head piece. Surely, surely we’ll be nominated for a Nobel laureate. Surely, surely we are the greatest people who have ever lived.

A conversation:

“How awesome are we??”

“So awesome! How awesome is being awesome?”

“So awesome! But I mean... how awesome are we!”

“I know right, so awesome!”

At this point two rock stars are strutting their stuff, walking down the street, feeling like a million dollars wouldn’t even buy you forty seconds of our time. Nothing could ruin this feeling, we are the greatest that greatness has ever seen.

And then our eyes happen to fall upon a gorgeous, brown, long legged super model type creature emerge from a cab.

A secondary conversation:

“I need a drink.”

“Yeah, me too. Champagne upon arrival for sure.”

“For sure. Man these shoes hurt.”

Cat Lady’s feet were OK... although the shoes did cause her to roll her ankle on the way home. She didn’t panic though because as long as Shelley’s OK, Cat Lady is OK.

Xx Elle