interjection/hlib!

Hello.

That's an interjection. An interjection is a word expressing emotion. Like this:

uh, eh....

or the aforementioned

Hello.

Grammar is fun. Back to this: a new word that is interjection-worthy because it's got an exclamation mark.

Take note: If you are talking to your chef about making a summer berry pie, chatting to you cat while tending blackberry hedges, having a fight at a family barbecue, giving out to the poor checkout girl for giving you $100 instead of two $50s (Jeez, it's all money, lady, calm down), being given out to for crocheting a sock wrong, muttering abuse while cleaning up after a concert, playing a tree in a play, or addressing parliament (that's for all my politician readers out there), let me Interject momentarily.

Thing is, I've been thinking about my current non-student existence, and I have realised something momentous. I have therefore decided to Interject on your life by declaring it to you.

You're welcome.

This is it:

Hlib!

(it means, Holiday Life Is Boring, condensed for your convenience into an interjection. Now that's what I call something.)

To back up this interjection, look at this. I watched Bridget Jones last night for the 400th time, ate my way through an entire packet of biscuits (almost), and drank like, a bottomless cup of tea. And then I went to bed before 12 because I had an early start. How drab. Also, am reading a book I've already read. Hlib indeed.

That's all. Have a bon something.

(Hey, interjections are meant to be short. I'm also in the middle of a delicious mint-hued sort of caramel confection. I'm a very busy person.)

bored? well, obviously

Really, what is so interesting about weather? And what weird things are going on now?

I've decided that it's That Time Of Year again - that time of year when the sun shines like a big bowling ball and it's finally warm and picnicky and happy tree weather.
I don't know why I've decided this, because:

1. It is never warm in Ireland. Ever. In June it rains and in July there is usually one day when you can go without a jacket. Maybe.
2. It is winter here. In fact, yesterday was the 2-degree-cold Winter Solstice. It was dark by five.

this is meant to be the winter solstice.
Come on, it's kind of cool.

So, I'm not exactly sure where I was going with the whole Summer thing. Maybe because, strangely enough, it looks like summer outside. And if you wake up at eleven and walk down to the shops, you can wear sunglasses and a shirt and you really don't need a jacket.

And, because of this Winter/Summer weather (wummer? sinter?), weird stuff's been GOING ON.
(Well, it's got something to do with it)
Like this:

1. have started watching reality TV (people who are housewives and like, love it, darling, people who live on Shores, people who date footballers, people who don't date footballers, people who live on farms, people who don't live on farms...)

2. am so confused about the (cold/not cold) weather situation that I've been wearing a conglomeration of weird long-sleeved layers and grandfather jumpers and Christmas socks. Then I heard that this winter only lasts, like, a month. A month! What! What am I going to do with all the ribbed socks I've bought? Throw them away? Save them for real winter?

superfluous socks...
the worst kind of sock

3. I'm drinking Lemsip. In June. I'm drinking Lemsip in June. That is something that is just wrong.

4. I've started running. No, wait, I've started waking up and going I Think I'd Like A Run Today. I'm becoming one of those exercise people I hate.

Maybe it's time to read a self-help book or something. Maybe all this is just me with nothing to do. Or maybe I've actually crossed over into a parallel universe where the weather is weathery, the TV is real, and it looks like summer when, goddammit, it just isn't.

Bon Blog!

And here are some Things That Might Be A Little Bit Interesting:

this cutesy homemade indie mag from Australia called Frankie - there are far worse ways of spending your time than reading about Benedict Cumberbatch and people who draw for a living!

annnndd... because I have been watching so much Australian telly, and because I have realised that said Australian telly is brimmed-full with ads, I have become friendly with some of these ads, such as the ones for Kia (now I can say iPod Connectivity and Big Boot Space and Seats Eight Comfortably in a pretty authentic accent) and the one for South Australia which has this song from Into The Wild called Rise by Eddie Vedder in it. Check it out, it's like going out to the beach and, I don't know, drawing your name in the sand or something.

ufos, veggies, and getting told off by 14-year-olds

since when was not knowing your vegetables a crime? 

stupid evil pear... I'll know your code someday and then YOU WILL BE SORRY

I know lots of things. I know how many times Roger Federer has won the French Open (once). I know what a mohair jumper looks like. I know how to cook a killer carbonara and I know how to order five slices of ham from a deli in German. I know what to do with a long division sum (barely), I know a Robert Frost poem off by heart, and I know what happened in the 2006 World Cup final.

What I don't know, however, is anything about vegetables. Or fruit. Or herbs, for that matter.

this is more like my kind of checkout

And why am I telling you this? Why am I admitting my deep, dark secret? Because it has been cruelly exposed in my current job as a supermarket cashier. Little old ladies with huge bags of some unidentified leafy thing smile at me and ask me how I am. I smile back and say EH, WHAT IS THIS? Their faces fall. What am I, a cave-dweller? A philistine? Or - worse - an American? No, I'm just someone who doesn't know the difference between a head of cabbage and a head of lettuce. Or between a turnip and a swede (that's a hard one, but there's no excuse for mixing up cabbages and lettuces, no excuse AT ALL). 

What all these people don't want to realise/don't actually realise is that they have help when they buy their vegetables. They have little digital signs that say Psst! Pink Ladies!, and I'm A Broccolini, and No, Not Over There, I'm The Fennel Root You Want, and even I'm A Sweetcorn Even Though I Look Like A Leek.
I don't get help like that. When it comes to veggies, I'm all alone. 

The other day I had a particularly vile experience. Two girls came to pay for their basket of Sweets and Other Crap 14-Year-Olds Buy When They're Left In The House For The Weekend. No problem. 14-year-olds aren't going to be buying herbs are they? Or difficult-looking asparagus/bean shoot cross-breeds? Not a bit of it. 14-year-olds like twizzlers (whatever they are), sugar, gum, and coke.

Safe in this knowledge, I was happily scanning through boiled sweets and rubbery dolphins and sugared fish and ready-made pizzas when I saw the unthinkable. I saw the UFOS.

Unidentifiable Fruity Objects. 

WHAT'S THIS? I ask, about a squashed, dry purple thing. 

The girls looked at one another before one said, in a, may I say, utterly disparaging tone, A PASSIONFRUIT?, barely hastening to add YOU IDIOT after it.
Then there were the weird-shaped lemons.
WHAT ARE THESE? I asked again, hoping for a somewhat warmer response.
Are you serious? IT'S A YELLOW SQUASH. Pan-faces. Expressionless, like little middle-school judges. For the record, I have NO IDEA what they were planning on doing to that 'yellow squash' (probably just some made-up Australian thing), but I fear for the poor thing.

is this the lettuce?

.... or is this? Not so easy now, eh?

 By the time they left, with their incorrectly scanned watermelon (stupid thing comes under WATERMELON and not, as I previously believed, MELON, WATER), the only thing going through their heads was, undoubtably, Who is this kid?

I was wondering the same thing. Who is this kid? Who am I? Well, before today, I was someone who thought they knew their parsnips from their peppers, their passionfruits from their beetroot (look the same! No kidding!), their star fruits from their yellow squashes.
Not anymore. Now I was just some rookie checkout girl. And it didn't feel good. It didn't feel good at all.

As if not recognising fruit and veg and herbs wasn't bad enough (smelling a bag to check that it really was basil raised more than a few eyebrows), I also don't know the codes. You know, the ones the suave checkout chick types in with her perfectly manicured finger when you plonk down a load of carrots (carrots: 24), bananas (17), or pears (66 or loads of other unknown numbers. I thought there was only one kind of pear. Wrong again, Shona). Endless sets of 57, 103 (broccoli? God I'm getting good!), 60, 218... (No! Broccoli 107! God DAMN IT! What's 103 then? Leeks?)

I think I should get back to enjoying my time off, to be honest. Next week I'll be back on till, failing to recognise coriander, mixing up ironbarks and butternuts, desperately looking for MELON, WATER, and charging someone $12 for two carrots just out of spite.

I have power too, you know.

OTHER MADE-UP NAMES FOR FRUIT-RELATED ITEMS
zucchini - what the hell happened to a good old courgette?
eggplant - this has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with eggs, or indeed plants. At least aubergine is a colour
capsicum - ? pepper not good enough for you?
rock melon - why does a regular melon deserve a stupid name? Because it looks like a rock? Not buying it, Australia, not buying it
lebanese cucumber - otherwise known as a smallish cucumber
50 types of apple - can't they just all be the same price? No? Unfair world

Bon Blog! (non appetite!)

summer days: accomplishments (part one)

what I've actually been doing in these wintry-sunny climes

not so sunny June: it rained here yesterday... all day 

Since I've been here (a week and a half, now that you ask), I've discovered many things about myself. Not in an Eat, Pray, Love way, or even a Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants way (don't have shared pants/sisterhood, unless you count the pyjama bottoms my friend left in my other friend's flat that everyone wears. Especially me. Why bring pants when you can use pants FOR FREE?).

who doesn't want them?

Anyway. Here's a little bit of what I call What I Did For The First Time On My Working Holiday (bad title)
Behold!

1. went on a plane on my own! (twice)

2. cooked my first fried egg! (and it was good, too)

3. ate dinner with a fork and spoon! (Australians love their spoons, they do)

no room for knives at this table

5. worked at a till! (NOT my best work, dare I say. Turns out I'm not-so-adept at remembering codes for potatoes and runner beans, or packing bags with milk and sugar. But I am good at remembering the banana code: 17, and don't you forget it)

6. used Skype! ('used' = overstatement)

7. bought something in sports shop that wasn't for school! (it was for work)

8. blogged twice in one day! (sorry)

9. went to a Food and Wine festival where there wasn't any food! (but there was plenty of wine)

More updates on WIDFTFTOMWH (definitely need to rethink that) next week/whenever

Bon Blog!

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the return of the boring and somewhere new

New city, new season, new blog post! And it's been a long time, too.

Ok, this is a bit of a scandal. I haven't written in almost two months.

Shock.

Surely that's not how a blogger is meant to roll? A proper blogger is meant to update once a week with witty and/or brilliant observations about life and all its etceteras. A blogger isn't meant to let exams or other trivial pursuits get in the way of a good post. Right? Right. I am now a prime example of a Lazy Blogger.

So, after all this time, what have I got for you today? Mostly nothing, because I do live Somewhere Boring, as you will doubtless remember.

Hah. That's where we're both wrong. I may live somewhere boring for 80% of the year, but for the next two and a half months I am living in the sun-buttered and wholly magnificent city of Perth, Western Australia. I'm working. I'm typing on my new Apple Mac (shiny). And I'm not living up to my blog name because Perth may be quiet and it may be in its own blissful winter, but it is certainly not boring, this shimmering patch thousands of miles away from the crummy reserves of Ireland's east coast. Oh, yes. Australia is so far away from all that boring college nonsense.

where I live now... well, for the next 2 months

However. Before I lose the run of myself in these perpetually sunlit flatlands. I have to remind myself that I have a great, fire-like capacity for being bored. I can be bored almost anywhere. So while I am sitting here watching highlights of the French Open (it's on too late here, I can't deal with that) and skimming away on my new comp, I'm starting to realise that boredom could possibly creep in one of these days.

I am thousands of miles away from the original Boring Somewhere.

I am staring out a winter that averages at around 24 degrees centigrade. But at half three in the afternoon there's still not much on television, there's still much comfort food to be found in the fridge, and nothing can quite cover up the fact that I've finished the only book I brought with me (not such a great idea, in hindsight).

So, yes, boredom will knock at the door and be let in, inevitably. Must find ways to fight it off. Until then, don't despair, readers of the Boring blog. I'll still get bored, especially now that my exams are over, things that prove you can be both bored and bogged down all at the same time. Next post (I'm planning already!), seeing as this one was just a welcome-back update (you're welcome) will be All About Exams and their finicky ins and outs. It's summer, it's Australia, it's damn warm and jumper-cold at night. It's new, it's different, and it's still time to discuss examinations even though the clouds aren't quite filling the skies even in the misty fields of Ireland.

goodnight Dublin

Update over! Here's to not waiting another two months for another Boring blog post.

Here comes a list of ...

What I've Discovered About Winter Summers

1. Always have an electric blanket handy

2. It can be warm during the day AND cold at night! Who knew? Probably my old geography teacher, actually

3. iwastesomuchtime.com can be a real lifesaver for those cold winter nights when the only thing on TV is some tennis chap ranked 500 in the world

4. It gets dark at a quarter to six. Boo

5. ... Note to self, do not wear knitted jumper while sitting on electric blanket.


Bon Blog! No, really.