Facebook

Ok, so I may have been a little late in joining this latest craze but hey, I'm here now and I must admit, that parts of it are great. I can get back in touch with people who I lost contact with a long time ago (because I'm crap, we all knew this) who are all now on Facebook - see above about being a little late in joining, for 'little late' read 'last'. I've had people invite me to be friends from Uni who I havn't see for years and older friends as well. There have been one or two shocks though, like when someone contacted me from way-back-when who I believed, for the last 10 years or so, hated my guts at the time. Weird. Oh, and all of a sudden my inbox is seeing a volume of traffic I don't believe it's ever seen before, I believe that of the last 30 emails, 26 of them were from Facebook. That may be understating it. p.s. I know my grammar isn't great, but I'm tired, and I'm going to have some food and go to bed in a minute and thinking makes my head hurt. I know what I mean, all you have to do is try and think like me - not too difficult, see?

Uninspired

I have been a little quiet of late, mainly because working as a checkout chick does not exactly give inspiration to deep and meaningful thoughts. I have been known to achieve a trance-like state whilst scanning things, my brain in far off places whilst my arms work on automatic (almost like packing tomatoes really) but the sound of the Noddy machine going off or, as happened today, customer announcements about deals every 15 minutes for 6 hours, tends to disrupt my peaceful state of mind from thinking too much about anything. Or, as is generally the case, I end up singing the theme tune to Noddy without realising - much to the amusement of my customers. There are occasional moments to lift me from my catatonic state though. Last Saturday I had not 1, but 2 people walk in and ask 'Do you do the Lotto?'. I have, so far, resisted the urge to reply 'No, we have a bloody great big machine, a large stand and ooh, let me see, 3 posters that all have Lotto and the fingers crossed logo stamped across them JUST FOR FUN'. I also got rather imperiously ordered to do something about the fact that the other members of staff round the corner on the tills were very busy and needed help. Given that I had an even LONGER queue than they did and was on my own I thought that that was possibly asking a bit much but the customer in question was quite adamant that this girl (still with a 'trainee' badge on) was the one to sort out the problem, not the numerous members of staff down every bloody other aisle doing sod all throughout the rest of the store. The best one of late though was the customer announcements today. Unfortunately the poor girl obviously didn't have much in the way of French and for several annoucements managed to tell customers that we were selling pain au chocolate* until someone told her otherwise. Made me smile anyway :) *This doesn't really work written down, try saying it out loud with English pronunciations...

Cultural differences

I've noticed recently, through other blogs and through recent conversations, that the things we remember even though tiny and meaningless can escalate to meaning lots when other just don't get it. And it's the oddest little things that suddenly have to have a label attached like 'home' or 'British' or 'Good grief I'm getting old' . I'm not writing this very well but you must know what I mean. Adventuring Jen recently wrote about being excited about seeing Ant and Dec on TV and how no-one in NZ could understand quite why she was so excited. That is what I mean.* There was a comment too on Pomgirls most recent post too (the one about sweet shops) about the Club biscuit theme tune (all together now 'If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit...') and it got me thinking a bit. Not really about much, but a bit. I had a conversation not long before I left Bowen with Graham about the fact that it was Baldrick voicing an advert. I was terribly excited - this was a British well known voice in Australia - and it immediately made me want to watch Blackadder. Graham was, quite understandably, confused. Mind you, he got his own back when I didn't know the Vegemite advert which is apparently a classic that every Australian grows up knowing. I refrained from pointing out that I did not, in fact, grow up an Australian but he seemed to think that EVERYONE should know it. Well, I think that everyone should be able to sing the Club biscuit theme :) Anyway, I got to thinking about HOW MANY of these little things there are, things that pin point your age, that stick a little label on you that says 'British' or 'Australian' without you even realising. How many of you out there know all the words to the Ferrero Rocher advert, the one that starts 'The Ambassador's reception...'? How many of you can tell me the phone number to Going Live? Or sing the theme tune to Dogtanian? Or, on the other hand, how many of you know the song all about happy little vegemites? When I'm in Australia, sometimes its these tiny little things, these miniscule events, that make me suddenly come crashing to a halt with a feeling of 'these people speak my language and look the same but Britain this is most definitely NOT. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing but it does take a little getting used to. Especially not only the lack of prawn cocktail crisps but the complete inability to comprehend that there could even BE such a thing. *ok, I've been drinking, please take this into account...oh, and if someone would please help me get the Club biscuit advert out of my head I'd be most grateful... p.s. I know the advert, the number and the theme to Dogtanian, please feel free to test me and/or come up with well known things of your own ;)