Working at altitude

Last week, I moved to the Melbourne office and I’m now sitting on the 17th floor of my new building. In my old building, I used to climb up the stairs to the 5th floor. Now, I take the lift.

Usually, there are at least two stops on the way up and down. However, I got peckish today and took the lift down at 10:30am. This is an off peak period; I was the only person in the lift.

There were no stops so as the lift accelerated down, I felt my ears pop.

The Roxy

After an evening of pub and bar hopping, my team at work often ends up at The Roxy. Somehow, I’ve managed to miss out on all these excursions. The next day, I hear the stories of my boss’s wild dancing, the who-pashed-who, etc.

I began thinking that I couldn’t leave London without experiencing the team night club. So I sent a meeting invitation to my work friends.

‘I would like to go to Roxys on Friday. Is it crazy to plan such a thing? Please join me.’

On Friday night, remarkably four attractive bachelorettes and I hit the town together.

First we went to the pub. I had pear cider. Then we had some filling and tasty burritos. I paid extra for guacamole, yum.

At a Scandinavian bar where my friends spun a wheel and made me drink whatever the arrow landed on. The drink was called ‘Chilly Willy’ and it turned out to be a spicy blackcurrant-flavoured vodka shot.

Finally, at the grand hour of 9:30pm, we arrived at The Roxy. We paid the discounted early bird entry fee and found ourselves alone on the dance floor.

I had the most enormous fun, leaping around the floor like a gazelle, shaking like a buffeted strand of seaweed, striding backwards. My mates had fun too. Some danced barefoot.

By 11:30pm, a crowd had joined us on the floor. It was a distinctively young crowd. I read that The Roxy is a hang out for University College London kids.

The ground got sticky with spilled drinks. By midnight, I had declined two invitations to dance with expressionless boys, and had shaken off another overly expressive one (who pointed at me, then pointed to himself, then I shook my head, then he pointed at me, then pointed to himself, then I shook my head, then realised he was acting out the song lyrics).

I love dancing but have never been clubbing. I never realised how much time is spent fending boys off.

It wasn’t one way traffic, though. Some of my eligible friends made their own successful approaches to their quarry.

My final words on Roxy: Value for money early in the night if you want space to be silly. Music was patchy at best. Male patrons tend to be young and assertive. Fruitful hunting grounds for pumas and cougars.

Heartburn

A pair of teenagers were loitering on the ground floor balcony of a Council estate. As I walked past, I heard, ‘WHOOOA! HEARTBURN!’

His friend said, ‘What do heartburn feels like?’

‘Feels like my heart is on FIRE!’

Urban fox

It was 8pm. I was walking home when I met a fox coming towards me on the footpath. We stopped and looked at each other.

He was long and red, pointy ears, pointy nose. His tail was very long.

We looked at each other for about thirty seconds. Then the fox casually, confidently left the footpath and climbed up the steps to one of the neighbouring Council flats.

The line between cosmetic surgery and everything else

I was listening to this talkback show on ABC Radio National’s Life Matters — Fixing Your Face. It was an informative programme about the practicalities of going through medical cosmetic procedures for the face, like Botox, fillers and lifts.

This reminded me of a discussion I had with Damjan. I have a gut reaction against what I consider to be invasive procedures to make people look better. In this, I include teeth straightening through braces, skin lasering/abrasion and even some of the teeth whitening with heavy duty UV.

I can’t explain why I don’t approve of these procedures. Part of it is that I’m judging people for being so concerned about their appearance.

Yet, I too like to look nice. While some people spend thousands on orthodontics, Botox, upper face lifts, liposuction, I will over my lifetime spend thousands on gym memberships, make up, nice clothes, hair cuts.

For some reason, I would be more critical of someone spending hundreds on Botox than I would of someone spending hundreds on a miracle cream. I think, perhaps, my understanding of risk my be affecting my perception.

I expect, though, that Botox is very safe now. Would my feelings on this be different when it gets to the point that you can buy Botox in the department store and inject it yourself, the way you can with teeth whitening kits?

I think I need to re-evaluate my views on surgical cosmetic enhancements and orthodontics that are relatively safe and inexpensive. Either that or come down harder on make up and weight loss programmes.

Smashing

My boss and I were on our way to an interview, walking the 15 minutes from the station to the meeting offices. We were crossing the street, about to slip behind a car stopping at the stop line when the car exploded in a shower of glass.

With one more step, we would have been rained with glass. Shocked, we saw a metal railing pushing out of the newly destroyed back window of the car. It looked like a lawnmower push handle. The mower must have reversed into the the window with the sudden stop of the car at the intersection.

‘What’s that madwoman doing?’ Jonathan exclaimed as the car drove off. It left behind mass of glass on the road.

After the next block, we saw that the woman had pulled into the side street. She was trying and failing to break off protruding shards of window glass.

Nosebuds

I heard a funny thing on TV. It was an ad for an air freshener. It said, ‘Aren’t you disappointed when you stop noticing your air freshener? Introducing our new product, which releases a new scent every twenty minutes. Awaken your nosebuds!’

Nosebuds. What a mental image.

As Vera pointed out, it should be smellbuds.