crisis

❆ i've had a mini-crisis, which, combined with lots of work, has kept me from my blog.
the crisis was not so mini actually. jerry's visa for australia was denied. i found out at work a few days ago and wanted to run and cry in the toilets but instead had to finish the entire shift, fake-smiling to customers. i fell asleep that night sobbing into my pillow so my housemates wouldn't hear me. jerry feels awful about it and told me that although he'd do anything to keep me, he would understand if i left him.

what am i going to do, you ask? ...stay with the person i love and give up my home and my family... or go home and give up the one i love....?

it feels like a dilemma from some jane austen novel, not my real life situation. of course i choose love... anyone who's ever really been in love would, i think. i can just hope that some day when we're married with kids and his record is further behind him, they'll reconsider...
it just feels so unfair that some person working in the office of a government department over the other side of the world is allowed to judge his character and refuse him without ever meeting him or giving him a chance. whoever stamped that letter has no idea what turmoil they've caused us. we have to make a whole new life plan!

it breaks my heart that i can't go home! i was feeling so ready to move back...
but life is full of these challenges and maybe it's the better for it.
and love will conquer all. :o)

the real christmas day!

'
















































MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!
i hope everyone had a wonderful day!!!!
since christmas is already over for the swedish, i somehow felt that i'd missed the best celebration of the year! after failing to convince my housemates that today is christmas, i decided to google some evidence... but it turns out no one's really sure that jesus was born on the 25th, theres just a few biblical references suggesting he may have been, along with a few other possible dates in january... so he may not have been a capricorn after all! i was pretty pleased thinking i had him on my team...

after having lunch in a cosy cafe, we went out christmas shopping and jerry bought me a gorgeous new hat which i loved so much that i wore it all day around town, then kept it on while hanging around the house and would have worn it at work if i could've...

even though i was working, i found a way to stuff myself with food all night, in accordance with christmas tradition... the chef asked if i was pregnant because of the volume of food i was gorging! he then told me he's pretty sure it would be high treason or some sort of crime against humanity to produce mini jerry's, to which there was unanimous agreement. i think we'd have really sweet and cute kids, but don't worry, it's not the plan for a while yet...!

;o)

merry christmas eve!

✬ jerry woke me up this morning with a wonderful breakfast in bed! and some hand-written vouchers for massages, room-cleaning and dish-washing to be redeemed at any time... what a sweetheart i have for a boyfriend! ♡

the swedish celebrate christmas today (on christmas eve) for some reason...but we're gonna buy each other presents tomorrow when the sales start (and when it's really christmas ;o)
its minus 12 degrees today, the icy ground is extra slippery and of course its snowing! my first white christmas!!! yay!!! we spent the afternoon sitting inside a cafe drinking 'glögg'; a swedish christmas drink which is like a warm spicy wine (really good!!) and then watched the townsfolk dancing around the christmas tree in the town square...
i love the happy vibe at christmas time!!!

meanwhile, far far away in shepparton, australia, my family are doing the christmas eve tradition; dinner out with my uncle, aunty and cousins, where the kids all get smashed on the parents bill and then ditch them to go out partying! ...to you guys, i miss you all and hope that you have a good night, but not quite as good as when i'm there! ;o)

merry christmas to all my readers!... although i don't know who you all are, i love you anyway!

xx

tipping is not a city in china

❉ its interesting how obsessed with tips you become while working in the hospitality industry. rather than being accepted as merely a kind gesture of thanks for good service, the tip is taken very seriously by the hard-working waiter. each donation is weighed up carefully according to the level of energy spent and friendliness shown to the customer and then judged accordingly. guests who don't show their appreciation in monetary form, walk out of the restaurant with no idea of the foul-mouthed back-stabbing they will cop from the offended employees.

its a controversial and much debated issue, but in my opinion waiters and bartenders deserve tips if they do their job well. the salary is never high enough to make up for the fact that the waiter is working shitty hours and weekends, missing their chance for a social life so that they can serve others who are enjoying theirs...
i could be a dull and surly robot of a waitress if i wanted to be, and actually it would require less energy, but if i put in the extra effort of smiling, laughing, having a joke with and pretending to be interested in the guests, then it makes their dining experience even more pleasant and i expect to be rewarded for it.

i remember when i used to work at 'cougar bar' in the telstradome in melbourne, a sports bar at the arena where all the football and rugby games are held. there were about ten of us girls working there, in knee high boots, mini skirts and revealing white 'cougar' singlets. we made pretty good tips from the hoards of male sports fans who enjoyed coming in during half time and after the game for a drink and a perve. but we all knew who the tight-arses were and within minutes the word would spread amongst us so that the offending party received zero to bare-minimum of service.

my good friend and colleague sarah was the best at cracking down on non-tippers. once there were two suited guys standing at the bar continuing to not tip the sweet french bartender, emilie. she complained about them to us and next thing the beautful sarah was sauntering over to them, arms folded arrogantly in front of her cougar boobs...
'not tipping today boys?' she asked, frostily.
the men scoffed at each other. “we’re not in america!”
sarah responded, sharp as a tack; “yeah well we’re not in mcdonalds either. you know, we’re not wearing these outfits for nothing.”
“oh really? we hadn’t noticed” the men snickered.
"well, we might happen to ‘not notice’ next time you need a drink.” ...and bang, she walked away, job done.
the smiles dropped very quickly from the mens faces and a $20 note was sitting on the bar next time emilie served them.

:o)

skiing

yesterday i tried skiing for the first time ever! we hit the easiest of the kids slopes and as i struggled my way down the almost horizontal decline, falling on my arse every two metres, five year old kids whizzed past me in all directions, like mini professionals.

i was close to packing it in a few times and even cried from the frustration, but after a nice cup of hot chocolate with pear cognac, my bones felt a bit warmer and i decided to give it one more shot. the sushi-chef from work took over from jerry as my ski-instructor and next thing you know i was gliding elegantly down the next mountain (the 'difficult' kids slope) with a big smile on my face.

we have such a great working team at beefalo!
the sushi-chef, who they call 'reverend', is a real character and makes me creative vegetarian sushi platters for dinner each night. there are two blonde ken-doll waiters who are both really sweet and then there's the main chef, jonathon, a flirty 20 year old, who keeps me entertained with his continuous flow of double entendres and sexual innuendos. he tells me i look like a german porn-star and i'm pretty sure the germans are the dirtiest of all porn-whores, but he means it as a compliment... i have been the only girl (amongst 9 male employees) at work, which has created an interesting dynamic, but tonight another girl is starting..

i've gotta go get ready, i'm running late!
xx

gotta be in it to win it...

❅ not the winning photo, but same castle...












✬ the highlight of my night at work was serving three flirty 20 year-old dutch boys who spent $600 on dinner and left me a $60 tip! where do these kids get that kind of money??
i also found out at work that there's an Åre photography competition each ski season. you send in your best pics and each week the winner wins a digital camera, with a big SLR as the final grand prize. ... so i've found my new mission! my little old trusty digital camera packed it in while we were in spain so i'm due for a new one...

funnily enough i won the old one in a photography competition too! while i was living in japan, my boss went and got married in australia and brought me back the latest 'cosmopolitan' magazine as a souvenir. there was a little competition in there for the most exotic photo of someone holding a cosmo. so i rode down to the beautiful matsumoto castle with my mag and got someone to capture me posing in front of it. next thing, a brand-spanking-new digital camera arrived in the mail.

...you've gotta be in it to win it!

;o)

the gym

jerry's car-salesman moustache








❆ my first day at work went really well! everyone was super relaxed and friendly and the place had a really nice vibe. it was pretty quiet all night which was a good ease-in. randomly, a group of 15 aussies came in for dinner and drinks and after my fantastic service, they didn't even leave a single crown of tips!... do australians not tip because we're not expected to back home or are we just tight-arses? i remember all the bartenders and spa-girls on the cruise ship used to get really angry at the aussie and english guests for never tipping... it is really irritating!

today it's minus 25 degrees outside!! on my way to the gym this morning my snot froze inside my nostrils! it was too cold to even go skiing, according to jerry. i don't know how the birds don't freeze to death in the trees!

but our gym is so cosy and nice that i could have stayed there stretching all morning! its not like the meat-market gym in marbella which was full of steroid-pumping macho wankers and show-pony strippers in pink leggings who spent more time prancing around in front of the mirrors than actually working out!

this gym is full of ski-junkies with facial hair, the Åre fashion, apparently. jerry has even grown a moustache to fit in for the season! it makes him look about 15 years older, and slightly like a sleazy 1970's car salesman, but i like it!

;o)

steak

❅ we spent the whole day yesterday exploring the town and joining the gym, which is directly across the road from our house! that makes working out so much more appealing!
then we checked out the restaurant and cocktail bar where we'll be working. 'beefalo', the restaurant is a really traditional log-cabin style steak-house with raw wooden benches, leather booths and a big reindeer head on the wall. the menu is pretty much steak, steak and steak. i have to pretend to not be a vegetarian when guests ask for recommendations. ....yes, i am morally lax. ;o)
the cocktail bar, 'nova', still under construction is a really nice lounge bar with low lighting and black and white nude photography all over the walls.
in 20 minutes i start work and i'm so nervous! having had as many jobs as i've had in my life you'd think i'd be over the nerve-factor by now. not the case...
wish me luck!
:o)

åre

❄ åre



















❄ after an entire day of driving yesterday, we finally arrived in Åre. i imagined that the eight-hour road trip was gonna be really fun, in our new cherokee, through the snowy swedish countryside with good music, a stock up of magazines and books and good company...
jerry hadn't slept at all the night before and was in a foul mood, the roads were icy and slippery and it turned pitch dark at three o'clock so for most of the drive we could only see ten metres of road in front of us through the pelting snow! ...scary!!!! i was on the edge of my seat the whole time!

but when we arrived, i was totally gob-smacked. Åre is like a Disney christmas movie! ..a really cute old log cabin village, totally wrapped in christmas lights, set between beautiful snow-capped mountains and a huge frozen lake. its really really pretty!!
jerry's friend daffy, who's also our boss and housemate, greeted us at the new apartment and we unpacked all our stuff into our cosy bedroom. today we have a day of settling in and exploring before we start work tomorrow! it's gonna be a good feeling working and making money again after three whole months of bludging!!

❄

elin

our 'first date'!












meeting at the pub










♡ now that i'm back from fairytale-land marbella, and into the real world again, it seems so hard to find time to blog! some people post 4 blogs a day! how the hell??!

its been snowing every day here and i love it! each time i grin up at the snow-filled sky, jerry laughs at me. snow is about as wonderfully exotic to me as sunshine is for swedes.

last night i met up with my friend elin for dinner at 'va piano' and we caught up on three months of gossip while stuffing ourselves with food, wine, dessert, coffee and candy.... elin's one of those bright sparks who's really positive and full of life and always puts me in a good mood...

i met her in a pub when i first got to sweden. i was actually meeting up with jerry at the pub and elin was sitting next to him at the bar. for some reason i assumed they were friends so i started chatting away to her until we were exchanging phone numbers and organising to meet for coffee. after about an hour of chatting i said, 'so how do you and jerry know each other?' she said 'we don't.. i met him for the first time right now'. i was so embarrassed! i was sure she must have thought i was some psycho lesbian, coming onto her at the bar! but we had a huge laugh about it on our 'first date' as we called it, at 'utekompagniet' where we got ridiculously smashed and clicked like two old friends who've known each other for years.

today i'm meeting her again at the shopping mall where she works for 'winter shopping for anna, take 3'....

;o)

Cherokee

I failed in my mission to find a stylish winter outfit yesterday. To be fair I didn't get to really give it a good crack since jerry's errands took up the whole day. It was pitch dark by 3pm and snowing, I discovered my second hand iPhone is locked and unusable and without any retail therapy to cheer me up I sank into a quiet sulk. Jerry was so excited about his bargain new Cherokee jeep that i tried to snap out of it. We spent the evening at rasmus's eating tacos, drinking wine and trying to jailbreak my iphone (unsuccessfully)... today we're hitting the shops again for shopping for anna take 2. Wish me luck. ;o)

back in sweden!

it's so nice to be back in sweden! even if it is freezing cold and grey. we've totally spread out and taken over rasmus's house, where we're staying while we're in stockholm. today jerry's buying a car for us to take up to åre! and my mission is to find a nice set of thermals, beanie, gloves and uggs. looking good is the key to enjoying winter! ;o)

'the cove'

✰ we just watched 'the cove', a heartbreaking but magnificent documentary, which has won a heap of awards including a sundance and is nominated for an oscar! ...a must watch!!!

the guy who made the doco, ric o'barry, who starred in and trained 'flipper' back in the 70's, was so affected by his experience working with dolphins, that he's been on a mission ever since to free them from captivity and stop the slaughtering of dolphins for meat in japan. in a fantastic 'mission impossible style' operation, he and his team sneak down to the killing site, in the middle of the night through private property and set up a small fortune worth of high-tech hidden cameras and underwater sound recorders. the footage uncovers the horrors, the lies and the corruption of the japanese whaling trade and the government officials who are both supporting and covering it up. the doco also gives you an insight into the amazing intelligence of dolphins and at the end of the doco you feel like just marching down to that japanese port, jumping in to set the poor things free and then killing (or at least cursing, spitting and wishing bad karma on) all the horrible fishermen that are slaughtering them.

i went swimming with dolphins last year in mexico. i wish i'd never done it and i'll never do it again. the small concrete swimming pool they lived in was filthy and old and the poor creatures were all scratched up and bleeding from gashes on their bills and sides. i asked the trainer what happened to them and he said they do it to themselves. there was one female and 2 males and i asked if they ever had babies and he said they were never interested in mating. that's how depressed they were. you could feel it by being near them.

hopefully this documentary will put a stop to dolphin trading as well... they shouldn't be in swimming pools! they should be out in the ocean, surfing waves and being free....

♡

¡adiós españa!

❉ yay! tomorrow is an exciting day.....its the first screening of my tv show in oz and our last day here in marbella....

as for no way san jose, i so wish i was home to watch it! of course ive seen it a million times but it'd be somehow different watching it live on tv...

and as for marbella, we're really looking forward to going back to sweden, but at the same time we're realising how much we'll miss this place; the freedom of unemployment, the warm sunny weather, our cosy apartment and swimming pool and the beautiful green streets and ocean and mountain views... and of course the sleazy car tooting and hissing, the non-existant customer service, the gypsy beggars, the unwalkable sidewalks, the 'mañana' philosophy... ahh, good old spain.
soon we're gonna be surrounded by cold white snow. so today we decided to go for a long walk, to take it all in and appreciate it. i'm sure tomorrow i'll be packing with a tear in my eye.

♡

christmas= presents

☆ ive been doing my christmas shopping online, trying to get into the christmas spirit, but with my bank balance on zero after this two-month non-working holiday, my christmas gift list has been rather un-festively cut down to just mum & dad and jerry. (sorry to anyone else who was expecting anything). jerry doesn't even like christmas and i had to force him to agree to buy me a present! ...what's christmas without presents?!?
i began thinking about the christmas presents i'd give if i was super rich....

jerry: an australian passport, a bentley, a pet monkey, a chocolate factory and an african safari trip (staying in one of those 5-star tents).

dad: 'the duke of bedford' title.
we had lots of royal and aristocratic guests on board the cruise ship, but i remember once there was a duke and duchess who, rumour had it, had bought their titles!! i never knew that was possible... apparently the titles came with the land and estate! my dad's been obsessed with the historical duke of bedford, (also called john russell) for years, after having the most bizarre and awesome recurring dreams about being him. it'd be pretty good brag-material having a dad who's a duke, and he'd make a good one...

mum: life membership to 'golden door 5-star health resort'.
not that she's sick or unhealthy at all. several years ago mum and i went together to do a week retreat at the 'golden door' (hidden away in the forested hills of queensland) and it changed our lives. from tai-chi at sunrise on the mountaintop, each day was filled with amazing detox activities, exercise classes, meditations, yoga, pilates, water aerobics, bushwalking, tango and belly dance classes, and interesting lectures all hosted by the most positive and motivational people, interspersed with delicious gourmet organic unprocessed meals and then heavenly full-body massages in the spa. i'd go back once a year if i could.

brothers:
joe: australian passports for his girlfriend and daughter (with a discount for being such a good customer) so they can move back to Oz, and a beautiful big house to move into.
samuel: shit, what do you give someone who already has everything? ...a ferrari? that'll have to do him. no wait a second. how much is a trip to the moon these days? $100 million? that's pretty cool but might have to be a joint present...

friends and cousins: all inclusive holidays to Åre, sweden....to come visit me of course!!! ok, thats a bit of a selfish present but it's sure to be better than any present they'd give me...

...it might happen one day. but this year peace, love and friendship will have to suffice.

♡

big bang

❊ street market at the bullring























☼ we visited our saturday street market for the last time :o( ... for some reason they'd moved it off the street and into the grounds of the nearby bullring. when i first visited marbella nine years ago, i went to see a bullfight here, for anthropological curiosity, and was thoroughly traumatized. i'm glad it's home to the street market and not bullfights anymore.

i spent sunday on a sun-bed by the pool (yay- nice weather for our last week in marbella!) and began reading a book called 'a short history of nearly everything' which sounds really boring, but is written in such a cool way as to be un-putdownable. the first chapter, about the Big Bang and the creation of earth and the universe, got me so fascinated that i was compelled to do a little oration for jerry, which led to us spending the rest of the afternoon watching Big Bang doco's on youtube. what internet nerds we've become.

caught up in the world of supernova's, time travel, parallel universes, astronomical and cosmological breakthroughs, i marveled at the theory that in the outskirts of our galaxy there may be lurking the sun's polar opposite, 'nemesis', and i learnt that everything in creation has its exact opposite, like matter and anti-matter, which are electrically charged to be attracted to each other but as soon as they meet, they wipe each other out, leaving no trace of either one, just a big blast of energy.

if the same thing happened when people meet their opposites, jerry and i would have obliterated each other and taken the whole ship down.

WHO

yay!!!! im in WHO magazine!!
...even if they did bag the shit out of us, all publicity is good publicity, right?!

remember to watch No Way San Jose
ABC2, wed 9th, 8pm

♡

the tv critic

☆ jerry and i have started watching 'V', the new tv series that's apparently a remake of the 80's original, but i never saw it in the 80's. we got our first television in 1987, a little black and white one, and the only thing we were allowed to watch on it were quality educational programs and star wars.

all my friends at school used to have big conferences about the latest scandal on 'neighbours' and i was so jealous that i couldn't join in. i remember seeing my first madonna music video at a friend's slumber party and being mesmerised! my parents approved of us watching 'play school' but not 'sesame street' because it was american and they were dead against americanisation of the australian culture. the only times i ever ate mcdonalds (or fast food at all i think!) as a kid was at friends birthday parties. our school lunch-boxes were filled with wholemeal salad pita wraps, some nuts and an apple. i was always the only one in my class with a note excusing me from vaccinations and from religious education (when that was still around)... and my little friend's were always shocked that my parents weren't married, that i was born at home and had a 'placenta tree'. i grew up feeling quite different... and special in a novel way.

mum and dad got over the tv thing eventually. they probably got bored of educational programs. anyway their early censorship left me believing myself to be somewhat of a professional tv and movie critic. shows that are below my quality level get ripped to shit. sometimes jerry threatens to turn off a movie midway unless i stop criticizing the b-grade acting and non credible plots and story lines.

i normally never like american tv series (with the exception of sex and the city and maybe some others) and i predicted that 'V' would go into the bag too, but actually its quite good. the 'alien invasion' concept is pretty interesting... and thought-provoking. there has to be some other type of similar life-form out there somewhere- the universe is too big for there not to be. the problem is they'd have to be pretty smart and sneaky to get into our air-space without being shot down, like all the other ones that i found on google, which may or may not be scams and conspiracies and that may have been coming in peace to give us new technology and cure our diseases... or to kill us all and invade our planet... who knows?

;o)

anna the elf

✬ a few years ago, when i happened to be back in my hometown at christmas time, i landed a really good christmas promotion job. for the whole month of december, i was paid to be 'anna the elf'; dress up in christmas 'elf' clothes and be a sort of game-show hostess, alongside 'whiskas', a local tv and radio celebrity.

we had a truck that had been revamped into a christmasy game-show set on wheels, and we drove it around town every morning, parking it in busy shopping spots. my job was to give away free raffle tickets and toys to all the christmas shoppers walking by. then three winners would get to climb up onto the game-show set and whiskas would host a jeopardy game show, while i stood around being a bimbo and handing out the grand prizes to the winners: BMX bikes, dvd players and stuff like that...

it was probably the best job i've ever had.... it was really good money, everybody loved me for giving them free things, and whiskas, who's a born comedian, was heaps of fun to work with. we were on tv commercials to advertise when we'd be in certain locations, so we ended up with groupies who would follow us around every day, mostly kids from the ghettos, hoping to win the big prizes.

as a charitable act, one day we decided to park in a small shopping strip in the actual ghettos to do the game show. that was probably the biggest crowd we ever had; all the poor unemployed pot-smokers came out for the freebies. it was a rough looking crowd, beer-bellied men with no shirts on, covered in tattoos, with long beards drinking from VB cans, women with rotting teeth, wearing moccasins and tracksuit pants, screaming and cursing at their kids who were running riot. whiskas told me to lock my purse in the truck and keep an eye on the prizes. i was pretty nervous even to get out of the truck, let alone approach this shady crowd with tickets.

during the game show, the rival supporting families were nearly throwing bottles at each other and i was scared to announce who the winner was! we handed the kid his new bike and as we drove away i looked back through the window to see a bigger kid snatch it off him and ride away with it...

i loved the job so much that i did it the following year as well. a few times i gave tickets to my old high-school teachers and i could see the disappointment in their faces at my career choice, but for me it was hilarious to be pulled up in the street or in bars with 'hey, you're that elf, aren't you?!'

;o)

No Way San Jose

❖ in a week from today our tv show will be on air!!! its really exciting! my brother posted me the link to the online tv guide today and when i looked it up to read the little story about us, i had a really proud moment...

PLEASE WATCH IT!!! (for those of you in australia)
'No Way San Jose', ABC2, wednesday 9th dec, 8pm.

the first episode is actually pretty embarrassing for me. i seem like a real wanker in it.... and somehow i mustn't have thought it was important to put some make-up on, do my hair, or wear nice clothes in my first tv show ever!!?...
my brother edited the whole show himself and when i saw episode one for the first time, i immediately thought he'd added in all the embarrassing and cringe-worthy bits of me deliberately. so i took it up with him, but he promised me that it was non-deliberate and that he too was pretty embarrassed about the way he came across...
i'm much happier with episode two and actually each episode is better than the next....

ABC wants to distribute the show internationally, so hopefully soon we'll be hitting tv channels all over the world!!

i thought that some magazines might be interested in the real behind-the-scenes story, so i sent out emails to magazine brokers all over the place... but nothing! WTF!! i've read the tackiest stories ever in those women's weekly magazines; 'i stole my twin-sister's husband' and 'i lost my kids because of my shopping addiction' and shit like that.. is that all women want to read about??

anyway, make sure to watch the show!!!... i'm sure you're gonna love it...;o)
♡