Funny dad

I was thinking of my dad and a conversation we had last night. Most of the time he has a very dry sense of humour and unfortunately his children sometimes find him a source of amusement. Unfortunate because we really shouldnt be laughing at him. But its hard not to sometimes. My brother and I have been the biggest culprits since we were little. We would look at each other over the dinner table and try not to laugh when he makes some obscure but funny comment. Lately, as my parents edge closer to qualifying for a pensioner card, this twosome of my brother and I has extended to include my mom, who will also catch our eye behind my dad’s back and make funny faces at us. I think she is also loosening up a little in her old age. Some funny moments of my dad over the past years that stand out in my mind..

There was a time when both my dad and myself worked in the city so I would catch a lift with him to the train station. My dad gets very anxious when he is driving to meet a deadline, so catching the train was no exception. We were running late so had to park the car and rush to catch the train. I made my way past the ticket machines when I heard a loud “HAIIIIYAH!”. It was my dad, all flustered from rushing, looking for his train ticket amongst his pockets. I wanted to laugh because Haiyah is so chinaman. Anyway, he found his ticket and we caught our train. The looks on people’s faces when he screamed out “Haiyah” at the barriers. Priceless.

Dad to KFC Chick: Can I get some tissues please?
KFC Chick: Some serviettes?
Dad to KFC Chick: No, Tissues

McD’s Chick: Is that to dine in?
Dad: No, eat here.

Dad driving while mom plays the nagivator.
Mom: Turn left, then left again, then first right.
Dad: OK, so do I turn right here?
Mom: No! Turn left first before you turn right.
Dad: Right here?
Mom: NO! Left here, look we just missed it, now you might have to turn back.
Dad: Haiyah
Mom: Don’t haiyah me!

I never knew my dad could be such a clown. In saying that, he is someone that I give my full respect to. When I was younger we used to have a rocky relationship, I think mainly because we are both very much alike. We are both stubborn and hate to admit that we are wrong. Now that I am older and hopefully a little more wiser, we get along quite well.

Breathe

Reminder to oneself.
You are not going nuts. You are right eventhough you have not asserted yourself as much this time round. Silent and deadly. You are not about to blow your top. Through life you must know that God will sometimes put obstacles and retarded people in your way to test your patience and teach you tolerance. Do not react unneccesarily, you are just going to add new wrinkles to your face and deepen existing lines. Then you might as well not buy those great skin care products and instead spend your hard earned dosh on bling bling instead. Just imagine how much bling bling you would have by now. Just let it go.

Excited

I’m excited
Today I received this email from the people that run the obedience training that my little doggie attends:

"DOGGIE BRAND has asked me to provide some dogs as head-shots for their new product range. Photos were taken a few weeks back & I forwarded these to DOGGIE BRAND which has short-listed the dogs below. If you are interested please reply to this e-mail with a contact phone number.

S- Australian Shepherd
R- Sheltie
B- (not sure of name) White & Tan Pomeranian
L- Brown Spoodle
S - Black & Tan Retriever
S - Westie <========THAT'S US!!
G - Bearded Collie
O - Cream Cocker Spaniel"

I have seen this DOGGIE BRAND on shelves at the supermarkets, at Safeway and at Coles, although I must confess that I buy another brand of dog food.

A few weeks ago I took the bear to his obedience class and a lady asked if she could take a photo of him. I didn’t think anything of it at the time but it must have been for this. As this is totally unexpected I am quite excited about it. Now I think I know how moms feel when entering their babies in competitions. I am not going to expect much from this as there is another label (My dog) that uses a west highland terrier in all their marketing and advertising material. So we will just turn up and get a free hamper for bear. BTW if they do end up slapping your dog on the label you get some more freebies. Just like most people out there, I love freebies!! So I will be looking forward to this. Am just deluded by the idea that my little bear could be the next Imelda (from my dog). My mom always tell me I have an active imagination. Fingers crossed! We are aiming for more freebies than not.

Double Dumb

So, I was up at Ballarat for the weekend at a friend’s farm. The other half likes to speed, a very bad and careless habit, and has racked up a number of speeding fines on his license. It normally takes about 1 and a half hours to drive up to Ballarat from Melbourne, and I think we did this journey in 1 hour. No matter how many times I tell him to slow down, he still puts that foot down. I am beginning to sound like a broken record. There is a stretch of road which everyone seems to like speeding on, so we were barreling down this hilly and bumpy road at 160kms. Afterward he turns to me and says, hey I think the car just bottomed out, I had the pedal all the way to the floor and it just didn’t move anymore. Well, yeah if you hit a cow crossing the road I don’t think YOU’D be moving anymore either!!! And besides what do you expect from a car that’s 14 years young with its life lowered out of it so that every bump on the road feels like a jab up your bum.
Apart from that it was relaxing, nothing much to do except laze around, walk to the dam, catch yabbies, sidestepping goat shit on the ground, gossip with the chicks, eat eat and more eat. The guys built a campfire at night and we had toasted marshmellows. It was only after we left the farm and I was checking out the photos from my camera that I realized how dumb I was. Took photos of a friend’s dog, dog and more dog. There was none of the actual farm itself. D’oh.


Please stop stalking me.

I need to stop being fixated on just one thing. The dog was just too cute. Was trying to take some panoramic shots of the city skyline while driving over the Westgate bridge on the way home but that didnt work either. Double d’oh.

The I-love-myself

Today I had lunch with a colleague. While we were happily chatting away a male "I-love-myself" sat on the table next to us.

Observations on this particular specimen of "I-love'myself":

- Tell the whole word loudly that you are gunning for a job that pays "two and a half k more than what i'm currently on"

- Loudly answer to a question about how you met your new gf "Well, you'd be surprised but we actually met through our personal trainer". D'oh. You mean you actually stopped checking yourself out in the mirror while working out at the gym to say hello to someone other than yourself?

- Making a scene when your gf arrives by greeting her, making it a point to introduce "Susie" to everyone on your table AND THEN, telling Susie, look you go sit over next to James at the end of the table because there's a spare seat there. And the seat wasn't even next to the I-Lurrrveee-Myself!!! Hello, I thought she was your gf.

- Constantly looking towards our table BEFORE your chick arrives hoping that we are able to hear what you are saying and hoping to catch our eye. What a loser.

- Bitchily telling someone who is trying to sit at your table because every other table at the joint is occupied that "sorry we've reserved this table, and yes! all the chairs are taken". What with the attitude?

Finally, dead giveaway of an I-Love-Myself = wearing a polo top with the collar turned up under your designer denim jacket.

Usually I dont care either way if you wish to turn the collar up on your polo top, hey whatever you are comfy with, and I do like a well cut denim jacket. But this guy...sure sign of a I-Love-myself. For some reason, this person really irritated me today. I was just trying to enjoy a nice quiet lunch.

First ebay experience

When I first discovered ebay it took me sometime to get my head around their bidding system. My brother is an ebay fanatic and would tell me and the other half about the wonderful things he found on ebay at cheap prices. I can be a bit of a tight ass so this idea of getting a bargain sounded good. So the other half set up an ebay account and would hog the computer each time, hence I never got an opportunity to use it myself. Of course now we both are prone to the occasional purchase from ebay..within reason of course.

The first time I received an opportunity to log on by myself I thought well, I’ll just look around. Within minutes of surfing ebay BAM! I found IT. I didn’t need IT, wasn’t really looking for IT, but I WANTED IT. IT was also going for much cheaper than I would have paid retail. Plus, bidding was finishing in about 45 mins. So after coming up with my strategy for bidding, ie. stop when it gets to $XX amount, I put my bid in. CRAP! I had been outbidded straightaway. Never mind, still got a while to go. So put in another bid. DOUBLE CRAP! Still outbidded. Another 3 bids later I was starting to get annoyed. Who would want IT so much that they’d put in a higher bid than me? And how much did they bid for IT anyway? Not only was I annoyed that my bids were not being accepted I was fustrated because this was my virgin ebay bid and I HAD TO WIN. So, 7 bids later I found myself as the HIGHEST BIDDER. Yippee! So now I knew - $XX was the other bidder’s maximum bid. Well, hopefully someone else will now put in a bid and I will be on my way. 10 minutes to bidding end I was still the HIGHEST BIDDER. That’s ok, there’s still 10 minutes left, surely someone else will bid for this item. 5 minutes to go and I AM STILL THE HIGHEST BIDDER. By this stage I was starting to get worried. So I called the brother.

RING RING
Brother: Hello?
Me: Errr…You know this ebay thing, well I was just trying it out to see how it worked and I saw IT and thought I’d bid for IT and now I am the highest bidder with 2 mins to go. Do you think someone else will put in another bid and beat me so I don’t have to buy IT? *Thinks of excuse* I was only bidding to see how much this other person’s limit was.
Brother: Okkkaaayyyyy....How many other bidders were there?
Me: Well, someone else put in a bid 2 days ago but now its just me and the other person that I outbidded.
Brother: And how much time left?
Me: About 1 min now.
Brother: And how much is your highest bid?
Me: ……….$XX
Brother: $XX!!!!!!!!!!!! HAHAHAHA….$XX for IT!!! You are going to be the new owner of IT…hahahaha
Me: Hangup the phone.

30 secs..20 secs…refresh page, refresh page, come on! Someone else bid for this thing dammit…refresh page 10 secs.. refresh page…CONGRATULATIONS, YOU ARE THE WINNING BID.
Me: Oh shit!

RING RING
Me: Hello?
Brother: HAhahaha…did you win it?
Me: YES!....its not funny. What am I going to tell the other half?
Brother: I dunno…that’s your problem, you can tell him you were trying to figure out how ebay works.
Me: !!!!!

So…lessons learnt = Ebay can be addictive which is a BAD BAD thing. It promotes consumerism and encourages you to waste your hard earned $$. However once you have your competitive nature under control and realise its NOT ALL ABOUT WINNING, it’s a great place to find good bargains.

Now I m happy to say I am a regular ebay and have my competitive nature under control...most times anyway.

My teddy bear

Was steaming yesterday ready to write an entry but decided to hold off until today. And feel much better for it. Sometimes its best to just let things cool down for a bit before reacting. Fortunately this post will be a happy one, not a sour one that it was going to be.

Went over to the sister’s house last night – the teddy bear is being housed there while our back fence is getting fixed. I wish they would hurry up and fix the fence so that we can have him back. Miss him a lot. As usual he does his little jump jump cheer hip hip hooray when he sees me. Kinda like raise your hands up in the air, yeah yeah. Guess he loves me as much as I love him. Put him on his cushion so that we could play with him. Have tried to set the boundaries so that his cushion is what he stays on when he is in the house. But being the little child that he is, he tried to sneak off when our backs are turned. And tries to RUN away. I say TRY because my sister’s floor is tiled, so he ends up slipping all over the place while trying to get some traction. If you can imagine a doggy version of the running man, well that’s what he does. Yes, my dog is in to 80’s dance moves.

Another funny thing he does is when he confuses pissing and shitting. Being the dog that he is, he likes to sniff around and when he smells something he likes, he pisses on it. Sometimes whatever he smells makes him so high that he has to piss and do a shit at the same time. So I crack up because he is trying to lift one leg to hang a piss, but then also moving to the squat position to do a shit. Usually he doesn’t get there in time, and still has one leg up when his poop starts dropping. Maybe I should call him Mr. Peepoo given his talent of doing 2 things at once.

There are many other cute and funny things he does but I should stop otherwise this will turn in to a looong post.

Ready...set...GO!

Moving on

Met with with a friend who has decided to pack up and move to the UK with her other half. It was good to spend a good few hours catching up on what she hopes to achieve and what she thinks is in store for her. Exciting times ahead. Although we dont see each other every other weekend, whenever we do, its like we continue from where we left off and there is always lots of talk about. She has put ideas in my head to go visit her once she is settled down. BUT there is the wedding in January 07 in M'sia. The planned trip in April 07 to the Philippines. PLUS the significant other's plans to travel to Hawaii and USA. Too many things to do and too little thing to do them. Will have figure out another strategy on how to win tattslotto...

Other things that made the weekend enjoyable:
1. Seeing the significant other's technique of trying to bowl while intoxicated, or for that matter, seeing 8 other males try to bowl while all are under the influence. Lots of gutter balls, unda unda and ova ova. Very funny.
2. Not being recognised at the bar this weekend for being the person who drunk too much and fainted in front of the bar last weekend. This means that I can continue to frequent this watering hole.
3. Realising that my brother bears striking similiarities to my dad, he is not going to like this.
4. Waking up at 9am after a big night out to get some vietnamese spring rolls and scoffing 2 rolls while waiting for the significant other to regain consciousness.
5. Realising that although the sister can get on my nerves at times, she has good intentions and I should just let it go.
6. Obedience class for the little teddy bear actually does work when you practise it every day.