Memed

Thanks Kath for fulfilling my unspoken desire to be memed. I'm starting to feel like a real blogger now.

Apparently, there are rules to adhere to:
1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. At the end of the post, the player tags 5 people and posts their name, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they've been tagged and asking them to read your blog.


What Was I doing Ten Years Ago?

Quite a few periods of my life when I could have answered 'not much', but luckily I was living in London 10 years ago. Lucky for making me sound more interesting, not lucky for my life to be rapidly slipping through my fingers.
I was sleeping on the lounge room floor of 99 Tooting Bec Road, Tooting Bec. I'd just moved there from Jabiru and was discovering, after 5 years of life in remote mining towns, that it was possible to go out for a drink without a) getting into a fight with a bearded fuckwit, and b) hearing Status Quo's Rocking All Over the World.
And girls. Girls with their own teeth; girls on trains and buses; girls in cafes and clubs. Girls! Girls approaching me on the common on a slightly hangover Sunday morning while I walked about marveling at squirrels and at fathers screaming at their 5 year old sons that they'd never play for England if they kept kicking like fairies.

Girl: Hiya
Myninjacockle: G'day
G: Do you want the business?
M: Pardon?
G: The business.
M: What? Oh, right...um...no thanks. Sorry.

And there I had been thinking about Wombles.

Five Snacks I Enjoy in a Perfect, Non-Weight-Gaining World

1. Cheese
2. Tim Tams
3. The Noodle's leftover custard (waste not etc...)
4. Peanut butter and jam sandwiches. White bread, and butter.
5. Gingernut biscuits

Five Snacks I Enjoy in the Real World

Pretty much exactly the same.


Five Things I Would Do if I were a Billionaire

Have you seen the film The Game with Michael Douglas? That's what I'd do. But not with a happy ending. I'd recruit a team of top operatives and have them locate everyone on my hit list. Including 'man with beard who refused to turn loud stereo down in forgotten Queensland caravan park' and 'kid who badged my car sometime in early naughties'.
Then I'd have exhaustive dossiers prepared on each (all good espionage undertakings require dossiers), containing their dirty little secrets, and begin a long campaign of psychological warfare. This would culminate in my enemies being abandoned by all their loved ones and being committed, completely and utterly broken, to an insane asylum.
I would get little video updates on a weekly basis, detailing my operatives breaking into the slumbering victims' bedrooms and thinning their hair, injecting them with lard, moving their car keys and stealing one sock from every pair and replacing it with a slightly different coloured one.

(Note: if you are putting on weight, losing hair and can never find your keys; chances are you've made an enemy of a vindictive billionaire.)

Four more? I dunno, the first one would keep me pretty busy. It's a long list and there's only one way off it.


Five Jobs That I Have Had

1. Customer Service Manager - WBC Jabiru (the pinnacle of my banking career)
   
2. Removalist
3. Debt Collector (in a call centre, so not as cool/evil as it sounds)
4. Administration Officer for a charity (giving food to junkies, marketing, arguing with government departments, collecting furniture from dead people, saying 'sorry, can't help with that' to desperate people, fixing ageing photocopier)
5. Labourer for expo company

Three of my Habits

1. Whenever I'm sitting still, I count things. I count corners, windows, cars, birds, bricks. It's compulsive. Furthermore, if the total doesn't come to an even number, I experience a mild unease and have to expand or contract my selection criteria to round the number off. Yes, I cheat.
   
2. When I'm driving by myself I play a game where I challenge myself to hold my breath for a certain distance, say the next two sets of traffic lights. I also cheat at this.
3. Picking my nose. I hope that by outing myself I will move society towards a more tolerant, less ridiculing, attitude towards those of us who are digitally inclined towards our nasal passages.

Five Places I Have Lived

1. Sydney - West Pennant Hills. My parents were living in Castle Hill when I was born but moved when I was 3 months old. So I don't think that counts.
2. Orange - I started school there, and saw snow for the first time.
3. Henty - Sladen Street. Henty is the home of the header. I remember we used to ride our bikes 'round the silos, catching hold of the back of wheat trucks and getting towed along. I don't ever recall an adult telling us that this was not a clever thing to do.
   
4. Port Lincoln - cnr of Gloucester and Abeona Tce. Here we used to climb for hours through the storm drains. Ditto for parental cautioning.
5. Darwin - 4 Giles St, Fannie Bay. The Missionaries of Charity were located up the road from us. I was given my instruction for my first communion there and also performed the role of Joseph in a nativity play. Among the audience of about 10 was Mother Teresa. I thought this unremarkable at the time.
   

People I Would Like to Know Better (okay, I already know most of you far too well. I just don't know that many people)

• Mark
• Meredi
• Franzy
• Kym
• R.E.M