So take the photographs and still frames in your mind, Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time

I just ate about 10 strawberries and was musing on the fact that as a child I was obsessed with strawberry ice cream. And then I remember the day the local ice cream parlour started selling fresh strawberry ice cream i.e. there were little bits of fresh strawberry (but now I wonder, were they really fresh? They must’ve been like dehydrated and frozen and then added to the ice cream like they do with fruit in cereals these days, but anyway) in the strawberry ice cream and my parents got more excited for me than me but it never tasted the same to me again. So now I eat vanilla… it might sound boring but I think vanilla is the most exciting flavour there is… it’s so creamy and milky and tasty… mmm… I also like chocolate and I looooove cookies and cream. I never ever eat strawberry ice cream anymore. But I have become so obsessed with ice cream in the last couple of months… that’s all I want for dessert, ever. Even chocolate doesn’t have the ability to melt my tastebuds anymore… I heart ice cream. I’m not a huge fan of bars and I hate those fruity ice concoctions… what I love is smooth creamy vanilla ice cream (and 97% fat free I might add, the one that I buy from the supermarket) I can scoop into a bowl and add chocolate sauce and rainbow sprinkles too… that’s what I’d do when I’d have the munchies at home and nothing to wake up for the next morning… I would snack and snack and sometimes it’d be savoury potato chips and ketchup or muruku, but a lot of the times it was sweet sweet vanilla ice cream, Hershey’s chocolate sauce and rainbow sprinkles… oh god, it was to die for. Australia, being somewhat anti-America does not sell Hershey’s… can you imagine (don’t really know if it’s related to anti-Americanism in any way but the point is they don’t)? At least they sell Heinz ketchup… I dislike Australia’s version of tomato sauce most definitely… so their version of chocolate sauce is also most disgusting so I just make do with the plain vanilla ice cream and occasionally add rainbow sprinkles… but believe you me, it is never plain vanilla ice cream to me. Sigh… I want to be home raiding my freezer right about now…

So a quick rundown on the crazy trip to Lorne two weekends ago… it was a great trip… I laughed non-stop and pretty much drank non-stop except for the 6 hours of sleep every night.

Word of the trip – Homo… (not in a prejudiced against gay people manner but simply an innocent Eric Cartman manner… oh darling Cartman, one day I will devote an entire post to the hilarity of you)

Drink of the trip – Mojito… (we’d make like 1 or 2 pitchers of cocktails and then get very tired of muddling the ingredients (I own a very awesome cocktail muddle now) so I’d switch back to Bacardi & Coke)

Joke of the trip – JosA and JosB

View of the trip - The view of the Indian/Southern Ocean in all her glory from the convenience of our terrace


Semi-scariest moment of the trip – Oh my god, what is that orange steadily rising up from the horizon??!! It’s an explosion, run for cover… haha (turned out to be a very orange moon… the amazing thing was we found a pair of binoculars in the house and you could actually see the craters on the top half of the moon… intense… imagine a telescope)


Outdoor moment of the trip – Boogie boarding at the beach

Chick flick moment of the trip – curling each other’s eyelashes (I had no clue about the aesthetic effects of eyelash curling – I need to buy myself an eyelash curler pronto), straightening each other’s hair and eye shadowing each other’s eyes… some of the boys were unwilling participants also


Bird of the trip - Kookaburra sitting on the old gum tree... bird with a very discerning palette... ignored all the bread and wasted no time attacking all the ham we gave him


Pictionary moment of the trip – writing down “air” and whispering “peacock”

Randomest moment of the trip – Having randoms buy us drinks at the “club” on Sat night (I use the word “club” very loosely… it was really just one hell of a dodgy as dive), having our Lorne neighbours recognise us and introduce themselves to us (naturally this “club”, the Lorne Hotel, was the only place any self respecting person in Lorne would go to, so everyone and his uncle who wanted to partaaay that Sat night in Lorne, was there… kinda like Madras in some respects, in the G2, EC-41 days), collectively picking up random Kiwi dude and taking him home with us to dice him up and bury him in the backyard (I jest of course… but we did take him home)

Charade of the trip –

Where are you all from?
Uruguay. Where are you from?
New Zealand
Rubbish, you sound Dutch and/or German and/or Norwegian. Tell us really, where are you from?
New Zealand
Fine, be that way. We are of course super hot chicas from Uruguay in South America. Say, let’s talk soccer, patriotic fans that we are…
So how come Uruguayans are not held in the highest regard by the rest of South America?
What? Nonsense… we are wonderful people. It’s the rest of South America that sucks ass
So you all live in Melbourne?
Yeah, you?
Yeah me too (very disappointedly)
Is there something wrong? Would you prefer it if we were all from Lorne?
Yes… haha… I want you to all have been born in Lorne (hahaha, it made me laugh so much at the time)
--half an hour later—
Ok, so we lied. We’re from India.
What? All of you?
Yeah, all of us (sheepish laughter)
Why would you lie?
Why would you lie about being from New Zealand? Come on now, tell us the truth, where are you really from?
New Zealand (in a “why the hell won’t you believe me” tone)

Still don’t believe him, but we’ll see what happens if we ever run into him again. Why Uruguay? Didn’t know, didn’t ask… I was drunk enough to simply go with the flow.

Exercise of the trip – 1km trek down to the lower Erskine Falls and back… God protected me from having to confront any snakes. Thank you God… let’s keep that trend going for all future bushwalking adventures


Picturesque moment of the trip – automatic timer group pictures… 3 in a row and all so it looks like moving pictures… technology, the wonders…

Fiiiiine dining moment of the trip – seafood restaurant on the pier for dinner after 5 straight meals of bread and meat (and eggs for breakfast) on the BBQ… not that I’m complaining mind… it was just a pleasant change.

Laugh out loud moment of the trip – folder or scruncher survey… ahhh, such burning as(s) issues (pun intended)!


Venue of the trip - 38 Great Ocean Road, Lorne... bye bye house


Hungoverest moment of the trip – Saturday morning, Sunday morning, Monday morning and even Tuesday morning ( I dragged myself to work at 11 am on Tuesday after being alcohol free for almost 36 hours)

I feel there are many moments I have missed out, like singing on the balcony and trying to dance backward up steps… and as always, the scintillatingly funny conversations… although scintillating is quite possible misleading… a lot of the most hilarious conversations always seem to begin and end in the gutter. Good times, good times… can’t wait for the next weekend (summer) holiday whenever it may be!

It's something unpredictable
But in the end it's right
I hope you had the time of your life.

We’re all going on a summer holiday, no more working for a week or two, fun and laughter on a summer holiday, no more worries for me and you

So what if summer has officially ended and a week or two is more like three nights… anytime spent in a rented beach house on the spectacular Great Ocean Road that one has visited way too many times in one’s lifetime although very surprisingly one hasn’t had to make the trip down there in over two years… woohoo… so now absence has made the heart grow fonder… counts as a “summer” holiday. So hello to three days of drinking, partying, eating and chilling… only the drugs are missing… what is this clean me? Well, not strictly, but still… cleaner me!

Do you remember those Cliff Richard movies? This one in particular, Summer Holiday, and the song, I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. I mean, I knew it was an incredible lame, feel-good movie but I still watched it a number of times. The other song of his I remember so well which I think is also from either this movie or another soppy feel-good one is big news, big news, have you heard the headline story, I’m so happy, she’s in love with me. Haha!

Since my last post, I have managed to dodge the boredom slightly by attending Turkish birthday dinners with lethal belly dancers, watching a beer can being shoved up a chicken’s ass and then eating the same chicken once the beer had done its job of spreading flavour and warmth throughout the poor chicken, finishing a bottle of wine by myself at various BBQs as my drink of choice to avoid coke, drinking Mojitos at a delightful new rooftop bar discovery, making my Mom’s signature lemon cheesecake after many years, going to the gym on a regular basis believe it or not to proactively rid myself of the beer gut once and for all and tone those arms and legs, being the subject of a customer "incident" report after a sliver of glass somehow wedged itself into my foot at the supermarket, alas, thoughts of million dollar mental and physical trauma settlements have faded away since the cut healed itself in all of 2 hours, watching the final two episodes ever of the OC on television and almost pissing myself at the Bullit’s sons being named San Antonio, El Paso and Hanoi among various other amusing final moments, getting our row boat caught in a litter trap in the Yarra river and then promptly deciding to swim in it myself, just for a bit of Sunday morning fun… who needs to sleep in on a Sunday morning when really, you could be swimming with the fish and slime and litter and all the various other unidentified objects floating about in that beautiful Yarra. So yes dear friends… our boat got caught and we lost balance briefly and the next thing I know, I’m in the cold, disgusting water. We pulled a huge crowd and some passer-by actually blogged about it, although he obviously arrived on the scene only after the wonderful spectacle of me falling in. Can you believe I had to get back into the boat after falling in? I’m floating about, dog paddling, trying so hard not to touch the mossy slime a couple of metres below me and waiting for someone to give me a hand to pull me out of the water and onto sweet safe land and I’m just being fully ignored… people just continue discussing how to get us out of there and then tell me to haul my ass back into the boat… it was a supreme effort I tell you… I was shell shocked for the rest of the ride. Happy to report though that I have since been back twice and no untoward incidents have occurred. It’s always the question in my mind though… so, will I make it back to the boat shed today dry or soaking wet? Details AND PIX of our incident at the link below…

http://highriser.blogspot.com/2007/02/caught-in-trap.html

So anyway, now I’m off to Lorne so Happy Labour Day to everyone in Victoria… haha, who gives a crap… we have a holiday and that’s all that matters!

Update: How could I forget... I suddenly looked at the date and realised I was blogging on my best friend's birthday and not shouting out a special mention. Dear Sista T finally joins us 25 year olds today as her baby T turned the oh so big and important 1 yesterday! You're always on my mind (at the risk of sounding very Elvis soppy and senti) :-) Have a great one! Love ya.