Biebermania

Australia seems to have been hit by Biebermania.  

I don’t get it, but I am also not a 15 year old girl. 

But what I find most amusing about the whole show-cancelled-due-to-screaming-fainting-hysterical-teenagers is this guy…

Look at this smug teenage boy obviously pleased as punch.  A lone penis in a crowd fill of females.  

Just remember kiddo.. they’re not screaming for you. 

It’s all a bit silly. But then again.. it’s nothing new.  Flash back to 1964 and The Beatles arriving in Australia.. Flash back to 1996 and Hanson-mania sweeping the globe with their MMM-Bopping. 

It’s a teenage girl thing. And in another 20 years I reckon I’ll be shaking my head at my teenage daughter wondering what its all about all over again.

Senility Set In

I’ve blogged it before and I will blog it again.  I am getting older and sillier with every day.

I had a fantastic weekend away with my wonderful and brutally honest friend from London Miss Bella.  We drank and shopped, drank and shopped, ate chips, shopped, got massages, drank and ate kebabs.

In between the all the shopping, drinking and perving on hot British backpackers, I was FRICKING EXHAUSTED.  I had to keep stopping in the street for a little sit down.  Which Bella disapproved of by yelling down the street “What are you eighty fricking nine?”

I could not help it. I am not as young as I used to be. My body has hit that time when a hangover lingers for a week, and I need a decent sleep to be able to function. 

Not only do I not function so well, I seem to have become even stupider when I am drunk.  On one of our nights out I sent 63 drunk text messages to a variety of people. SIXTY THREE.  Seriously, what the fuck was I thinking?  Obviously one needs to take their phone out for emergency purposes in case you ended up stranded and alone. But I know that the majority of mine were either sexting, texting my friends in the UK to tell them I miss them (at international rates) or random texts to my friends saying things like I’m teleporting you a glass of wine.

Not only that, Bella thinks that at the age of 26 I am already slightly senile. 

But disregarding these comments, sometimes in life you get really lucky to blessed with awesome friends, great weather, nice clothes and good times.

Lest We Forget

Today is Anzac Day. For those of you who are international readers, Anzac day is the day that Australia and New Zealand commemorates all of our countrymen who have served in our armed forces.

Whilst having lunch at work a while ago, someone from my company came out and said that they didn’t think that Anzac Day should be a holiday.  Something to do about how WWI was all about politics and we shouldn’t celebrate it.

To be honest, whilst I like this person a lot, I was slightly disgusted with this comment.  Anzac Day is not about celebrating the politics of war. It is about taking time to reflect that there are people in life with far more guts than I would ever have, that gave up their youth to go and do their bit for their country.

My Great Grandfather was a Captain in WW1, My Grampy, at the age of 16, was in the first wave of troops that landed on Normandy on D-Day.  My Great Uncle George was captured by the Japanese and died in a POW camp (That one from The Bridge on the River Kwai, its name escapes me).  My Uncle Peter was drafted into Vietnam, and spent his service shovelling dead bodies.

Anzac Day (even though my Father’s family all fought for England) is about saying thank you to them.

in 2008 I walked along the beach at Gallipoli, and the tranquillity, beauty and harshness of the landscape moved me to tears.  What moved me even more was seeing a young Turkish man, painstakingly weeding the grass by hand by a grave of an Australian Soldier, aged 18.   

For whatever fucked up or genuine reason a country goes to war. Politics has no business on ANZAC Day.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them.

Lest We Forget.

Losing Your Head

There is a poem by Rudyard Kippling (I believe it is called “If”) that goes something along the lines of..

“If you can keep your head, while those about you are losing theirs”

I have never been a particularly sensible or rationale person.  I am whimsical, I live in my own little world and quite frankly I like it that way.

However, sometimes I think that I’m rather pleased that perhaps things have not worked out the way I initially thought. 

If things had gone the way I initially thought I would have ended up in a destructive relationship with someone that didn’t really love me.  Because today I look around and I see so many people that I know unhappy with their lot in life.

In a way they have lost their heads.  Lost vision of what they really wanted from their life.  I’ve lost my way in life so many times.  But eventually I always get myself back on track.  Usually after much heartbreak and tears.

What would make life even easier is if someone would just tell me where this track is going. 

While I Was Dreaming

As I was lounging in bed last night (brand new sheet set by the way) I was watching one of my all-time favourite movies - ‘While You Were Sleeping’

Another fairytale romance, where a lonely lady just past her prime falls in love with someone she doesn’t even know. Everyday as she sits in her menial job she sees him and conjures up that one day she’ll marry him.

Hilarity ensues and eventually she gets her happily ever after with his brother.. but this however is not my point.

Once again we have a whimsical romantic comedy where I identify with the slightly hopeless leading lady.

From experience I know what its like to fall in love with someone that you don’t know.  To make up a grand love story in your head. Which is easy to do when your lonely. I’ve done it on many any occasion. With people I see on the street to making up a grand illusion that the EX was actually going to propose and we’d live happily ever after.

It’s not healthy.. but then again, sometimes dreaming is better than reality. Because in reality the truth is that I go to bed every night with a banana pillow.  Not that I mind this most of the time.. but everyone needs a little break from reality.

What Would I Do For $5

When Anthill arrived in my in-box this week an article grabbed my attention.

It was an article about a website called www.fiverr.com. Things people would do for $5 (US$5).

What a brilliant idea.. I have become addicted to it, trawling through pages and pages of random things that people will do for $5.  Everything from adding followers to your Twitter to sending you a postcard from Ireland.  Intrigued I decided to give it a go.. after all $5 is not that much to pay for shits and giggles.

So in order to get some more readers to Secret Life I decided to try and increase my Twitter following – paying some dude $5.54 to increase my twitter following by at least 500. 

I am in utter shock that it actually worked.  I gave him my details, and now I have 547 followers.  I think it works on he follows 1000 people with the idea that they will, like sheep, automatically follow you back. 

It’s got me thinking about what I can do for $5.  I’ve always claimed that there’s not a lot I won’t do for money. And I stand by that.  So here is a list of things I would do for $5..

• Send an anonymous photo of my boobs
• Go into the chemist to buy someone Thrush cream or the Morning After Pill
• Wash someone’s clothes
• Alphabetise your DVD’s
• Send you an amusing quote

To be honest.. there isn’t that much that I wouldn’t do for $5. I think I’d draw the line at eating gross things. Hmm… wondering what it says about me that I would willing show my breasts, but I wouldn’t eat a cherry tomato for $5.

Generation Y – Not All Of Us Are Brats

I recently read an article on Australian Anthill’s online newsletter regarding Generation Y  which really made me ponder. 

Gen-Y bashing has been ripe in recent months and quite frankly I am tired of it.

It seems that the Baby Boomers and Gen Xers main complaints are our lack of work ethics and how we are difficult to get on with in the work place with some (quite frankly wanker) employees refusing to interview people in their twenties.

I am a member of Generation Y. Born in 1983 I am now 26 years old.  I worked hard in school.  At university I was either studying, or working.  Graduating at 23 I thought the world was my oyster.

And for the most part, it was. I have had the opportunity to travel and work for some fantastic companies. I relished my time working in London and whilst I did my fair share of partying I soaked up every ounce of knowledge that my co-workers had to give. How dare people say that Gen Y has no courtesy in the workplace? Sure, we may be opinionated but I for one have some manners.

Gen Y bratty and unwilling to work? Jo Nagle of Sydney firm Let’s Launch said that “They think it’s their right to have what they want, they’re brash and naive and they can really be like spoilt kids who say ‘I want a pony now, I’ve got four ponies at home but I want another one and I want it now’.

It now makes more sense to me that when I returned home from London in 2008 and was desperately seeking work, I managed to get 4 interviews out of the 373 positions I applied for.  It mattered not to employers that I had some fantastic experience, was hard working, loyal, honest and talented.  The fact that I was willing to work for less money in jobs that I were well below my experience level because I just wanted a job meant nothing. 

And it’s not just in the workplace that we are frowned on.  My parents have some friends who regularly come round for BBQ’s and the like. One of them actually had the nerve to say to me (or rather slur at me, glass of cabernet sauvignon in hand) – “Your in Generation Y, do you go write yourself off and sleep with people every weekend” (I’m paraphrasing").  Out of respect for my Father (and in fear of my Mother yelling at me) I refrained from asking him what he got up to during the Summer of Love and whether or not he dropped acid whilst listening to Jefferson Airplane.

Just remember Baby-Boomers, in the not so distant future you are going to need your Generation Y offspring to support you and pay for your nursing homes. 

Writer or Imposter?

Well ginger-ites Easter is over and there is now no feasible excuse as to why I have not been writing.

I could say that I have been busy dedicating myself to my studies, writing insightful prose that will make my tutors give me excellent grades.  This however, would be a whopping great big lie, as I have done nothing more than read my first assignment and go “ugh it’s haaarrrddd!”.  

I could use my usual “writers block” excuse though, but I have annoyed my small following by saying this too much in the past.

So I shall just apologise and put it all down to shear laziness. 

I wonder if I will ever have the dedication to be a truly great, entertaining and loved writer.  You have no idea the kick I get when I log onto Google Analytics and see my visitor numbers and the places they have come from.  I feel warm and fuzzy when people praise my work, or say it made them laugh, or if they comment at all.

Self doubt still plagues me.  My spelling and grammar leaves much to be desired and I often get frustrated when I have to write on command, or when I think that what I have produced is not interesting enough.

So my darling readers, I besiege you – keep reading. Keep following. Keep commenting. Because without you I am nothing but a lonely 26 year old with a laptop talking to no-one. 

Changes to Secret Life

Dedicated readers will know that last November I decided to post a blog every day until my 27th birthday.

Unfortunately, I am going to cease doing this from today. 

What this means for you is a BETTER Secret Life, more interesting articles and stories and far less short one paragraph filler blogs. I’ll still be posting 3 times a week (I’m thinking Tuesdays, Thursdays and once on the weekend), so you’ll still get your ginger-fix! I discussed this with my most avid reader and she was ok with it (Thanks Mrs N) so I’m hoping the rest of you will be too.

I’ve recently enrolled in the London School of Journalism, studying freelance and feature writing, so I need more time to dedicate to that. 

Remember you can email me with any of your thoughts, comments or feedback to secretlifeoginger@gmail.com