Water Park? More Like Slaughter Park.

Do you know what’s a really cool place? Vietnam. Vietnam is hilarious and delicious and wonderful. While there I saw a woman pooing in a river, I also saw a man fall off his fast moving motorbike as he tried to eat a cob of corn. Oh, and best of all - water puppets. Water puppets are pretty much the best, worst things you’ll ever see. They are screeching and nightmarish and comical and wet (check them out here, they are AMAZING). But one thing that I suggest you never, ever, EVER do in Vietnam is go to a waterpark. Namely, Vin Pearl water park in Nha Trang.

This water park was definitely not constructed in line with any sort of OH&S standards. After a very long, very high, ride over the ocean, in a gondola run on only a nine-volt battery (mmm… safe) I arrive in a creepily deserted fun park.

“How strange,” I thought, “this place is so awesome. Why is no one else here?” And like any good Stephen King novel (not Rose Madder, because that is a terrible Stephen King novel) I would find out soon enough.

The first water slide I came across was about fifty metres tall, supported by only one pole. Standing beneath it, you could see it sway violently as the rider was rocketed through its length. Probably due to having lived in such a safe country my whole life, I assumed that surely these waterslides were safe – the government would shut them down otherwise… wouldn’t they?! So I mounted the giant metal staircase and scaled the heights of the brightly coloured tube. Once at the top, I stopped to catch breath, and noticed that it was only upon my arrival at the summit that the operator turned the water on to lubricate the slide. The attendant quickly ushered me into the entrance and shoved me on my way.

It immediately became apparent how poorly built this structure was – I could feel the joins between each piece of tubing (I would soon discover that these joins were actually cutting me) once inside, the swaying of the poorly supported tube was no longer whimsical, but terrifying, and when I reached the bottom – of a fifty metre descent, having worked up some serious speed – I was dropped into a body of water, no larger than a three foot deep bath tub. How I wasn’t paralyzed, I really don’t know. I pulled myself out of the tub – slightly disoriented but alive – and wandered off only a little shaken and bloody.

For the rest of the day I stuck to the safer rides. You know, the chip stand, the gift shop, that one where you lie in a tube and float down a stream… And I should have continued to listen to the little voice of reason inside my head that told me how lucky I was to have escaped (relatively) unharmed from my first brush with those vicious waterslides. But of course I didn’t, and I was punished in probably the worst way I have ever been punished for anything before or since my trip to Vietnam.

Right by the exit to the waterpark were some pretty pedestrian looking slides. They were similar to slides at the Easter show – not too high, open to the air and with a pretty shallow gradient.

“One more before I go....” I thought. I didn’t realize it would be the last water slide I would ever go on. Because after the experience which ensued, I have a certified phobia of waterslides.

So again, I climbed to the top, sat down and launched myself down the slope. Now, upon initial inspection I didn’t realize that this slide was missing one thing crucial to all waterslides. While speed and velocity are directly proportionate to the amount of joy of a waterslide provides, the rate of deceleration is equally as important for, you know, not dying. Unfortunately for me this waterslide, while fun and zippy, did not provide enough room to slow down before you went straight into a solid wall. As I rapidly approached said wall, it became apparent that perhaps I was about to shatter my legs. Just as I opened my mouth to scream I discovered that a safe guard had been built into the waterslide to stop such an occurrence– in the form of two supercharged water jets spraying back towards the rider to slow them down rapidly.  

And this is how I came to be raped by a waterslide. It turns out that the mechanism which worked very effectively to stop me injuring myself, doubled as a very effective enema. So I found myself running as fast as my legs would carry me, to the bathroom. I didn’t make it. You don’t know shame until you poo yourself, in swimmers, in the middle of a water park. I declared defeat and went home, with a little bit more empathy for the water puppets. Perhaps I had judged them too harshly. Now it seems, I knew why they screamed so much while they were being whooshed around in the water – and they were certainly not screams of joy.

How To Succeed In Molestation Without Really Trying

A friend once told me a story about when she was backpacking in Europe. She met a girl whose boyfriend had been murdered. When my friend was told the story of the devastating incident, she burst into peals of laughter. This may sound horrendous, but I can totally relate, as I have NO IDEA how to act in awkward situations. Generally, I cast aside all simple, sensible and obvious reactions and respond in the worst way possible – as was the case one day on the way home from university.

I hopped onto the bus, eager to get home and not do any of my assignments. I sat in my favourite seat, immediately behind the back door of the bus. I like this seat because it has a Perspex partition directly in front of it in which I can admire myself and I am also able to check out the people behind me. Sometimes this is directly above the motor of the bus which means there is a warm little platform on the floor –a total coup for me, because my feet never reach the ground. When I am in my favourite bus seat they do, and I feel like a normal sized person. So on this fateful day I sat down, rested my head on the window with my hand, palm up, on the seat beside me. This was peak hour and at the very next stop a large group of people boarded the bus. A business woman came to sit beside me in the empty seat. Before I knew what had happened she had plonked herself down.

Onto my hand.

I am that incredibly awkward that I said nothing. I was so paralysed by the feeling of her arse being cupped by my hand that I didn’t immediately pull it away either. I sat there unsure what to do for a whole minute. Meanwhile, she was completely oblivious to the whole “me-molesting-her” situation. And you know once a minute has passed, you change from being an innocent girl with your hand on the spare seat to some incredibly creepy letch who has let this woman sit on your hand for a minute without saying anything. Because it’s not like you’ve been sitting there completely unaware that you are feeling up a stranger. In my mind’s eye I could see her recoiling in horror as I withdrew my hand from below her derriere. So I made no movement at all and remained in the same position with my head against the window, hoping my eyes would not betray me to my new companion.

As the bus made its way along the 470 route, dropping off passengers, I began to hope she would move into one of the newly empty seats and this problem would be solved; no harm, no foul. Even in the depths of my dilemma though, this was conflicting for me. I never know if it is rude to leave the person you have been sharing a seat with. I usually feel a little offended when people launch themselves at the nearest free seat as soon as it becomes available, suggesting that sitting beside me was anything less than a pleasure. But on this day I silently told Business Lady that I would not be offended at all if she wanted to stretch out, sit nearer the front or just have room for her bag to sit beside her. But alas, she didn’t move.

As my stop approached, my concern grew. What if she went all the way to the end of the line? Would I forever be captive to her bottom? Or worse, what if I was discovered and she told the bus driver? Would I be banned from the bus forever? I watched with bated breath as we pulled into my stop. No movement. Four stops later she finally relinquished her hold on my hand and alighted. She was never aware of what had transpired between us. I waited until the next stop before I finally got off (I didn’t want to look like I was following her) and walked the kilometre or so home. My hand felt weirdly warm for most of that walk and I washed it for a good ten minutes when I got in. Trying to cleanse myself of the whole incident more than anything else.

When People Say Foxes Are Cunning, It's Not Just A Figurative Thing.

Oh lord, I am thoroughly Gen Y! Apart from my all-encompassing LOVE of all things Real Housewives and Dr Phil and the fact that I always have at least three devices running, I’d have to say my worst generation Y trait is my constant need to find the quickest way to do something.

It started out innocently, probably about three or four years ago, when I began saying ‘LOL’. I swear I meant it in an ironic way (I know, that’s what they all say), it was mocking – witty even. But you know how these things are, it all starts as a joke and before you know it you’re watching Everybody Loves Raymond, he calls Deborah “smelly tramp” and you look at the person you’re with and exclaim “OMG LOL!” And actually mean it. Oh, dear.

So now, logically, I am going to discuss my love of audio books.

I thought I was a genius when I downloaded Tina Fey’s book ‘Bossy Pants’ and put it onto my iPhone. I listened to it every day on the way to work, had a good chuckle and then told everyone that I had read it. I’m still unsure whether or not this is a lie, although given my history (see here and here) I’m going to go ahead and say that it is probably some sort of untruth. Anyway, on the back of my one-whole-book-read-in-a-single-week-while-driving, I thought “let’s branch out and try some serious literature”. So I went ahead and downloaded all thirty of the little six minute chapters of Cormac McCarthy’s ‘No Country For Old Men’. I love violence and I love good prose, so this book had been on my list for ages. And so began the most confusing few days of driving to work I have ever experienced.

I need to preface this anecdote with the fact that at this point in my life I was leaving home at 5.09am to drive 25 kilometres from my house in the inner city to Sydney’s north shore. This was a dark and quiet drive to work which could sometimes be a little strange. Once I got literally every one of the red lights between my house and Hunters Hill (probably about thirty sets in all) and was punching my steering wheel in fury when I arrived at one of those sets of lights which can only be triggered by someone pressing the cross walk button. Of course the lights went red, and as I looked around for a culprit whom I could silently hate for the rest of my drive to work, a fox walked across the road. How he pressed the button I never found out, but it was a weird moment in my life none the less. Anyway, I digress.

It was on this long and quiet drive to work that I began to listen to McCarthy’s tale of Llewelyn and his accidental involvement in an illicit drug deal gone wrong. The setting and people were painted beautifully in my mind, but I couldn’t get past how little regard McCarthy had for an even remotely linear story line. Just when I would start to understand what was happening, the whole story would be shaken up and I would be utterly lost again. One moment a character would be dead, the next he was walking and talking, he’d be crossing a plane and suddenly he was in a motel. After five days of listening to this almost nonsensical story as I drove through the silent streets of Sydney (which were thankfully sans-fox) I started to wonder if I was going mad. Why couldn’t I understand this acclaimed novel? Had I lost my smarts? Had I sustained some sort of head injury? NONE of the reviews spoke of difficulty simply understanding the transition between scenes and situations. Finally the novel came to an end. I picked up my phone (slightly relieved at the silence) and went to play a song. It was then that I realised my iPhone had been set to SHUFFLE the whole time.  

So now I’m back to reading books like a normal person – with my eyes. Yep, totes a Gen Y epic fail. LOL.

The Biggest Lie I Ever Told

I used to have this cat called Jeffrey. I know this is an abnormal cat name but I feel it is important to give cats names that have dignity; they are elegant creatures and should be labelled as such. Jeffrey was however, neither elegant nor dignified. He was actually, for lack of a better word, a total retard of a cat. He would sit nose to nose with the fridge for hours hoping it would feed him, was completely afraid of the wind and he once went missing for a few days only to be found sitting at the bottom of the garden, completely unharmed, with some type of moss growing on his back. He was also thoroughly unpleasant, so of course I loved the shit out of him.

You know when you have a pet, you often feel like it has certain things it wants to say to you? Jeffrey had a permanently angry look on his face, like he was dying to yell abuse at us, and so my family would voice his inner monologue; giving words to his misgivings about his food, his surroundings and his dislike of the world in general. The dialogue we had on his behalf revealed him to be a well-spoken but cranky old man of a cat. I still worry about the times when people would walk in on us talking from the cat’s perspective, but that’s ok because my family wasn’t particularly normal and I guess no one expected any better from us.

For a few years when I was quite young I had this concern that I may be possessed, like the main character from The Exorcism of Emily Rose, as I would often get up of a morning covered in scratches with no idea where they had come from. One night I woke up to discover that it had been Jeffrey all along; he had been sneaking into my room after I was asleep and settling on my bed; whenever I moved he would attack my legs leaving them bloody and battered. Another time he pooed on my history text book and I had to explain it to my teacher. Yes, Jeffrey was not a pleasant cat at all, but he had character and to me that is the most important thing any animal or object can have.

The following story is about the day that Jeffrey died. I am aware that this anecdote paints me as a liar and I guess I was a bit of a liar in this situation, but you will come to see that I only told one lie. Except it was a massive lie. Probably the biggest lie I have ever told actually. So if you have a problem with fibbing it is best that you stop reading now.

One hot January day I was on a train on the way home from the city. My phone rang and when I answered it, I heard my very concerned mother on the other end – I immediately knew someone had died. Upon realising I was on the train my mum told me she would call me later, but as they say – curiosity killed the cat (har har har) – and I pushed her to tell me what was wrong. She informed me that Jeffrey had been found in the neighbour’s yard where he had died after his kidneys gave out. To say I was inconsolable was an understatement. I hung up the phone and burst into tears. Now, I am by no means a pretty crier. I am frowny, blotchy, and above all, a snotty crier. I cry hard and loud until big slimy ropes of snot pour from my nose. So I sat there, in the most crowded carriage of the train, forty minutes away from home and sobbed. And so OF COURSE this was one of those rare train journeys when the State Rail guards boarded and checked that everyone had paid for their journeys. I handed over my ticket, still whimpering and covered in snot, which they checked and walked away. Relieved, I returned my face to the nook between the window and the seat and recommenced my howling.

BUT OF COURSE THEY CAME BACK. Because nothing is ever that simple in my life.

When they returned they silently escorted me to that small portion of the train which you initially step onto, the part which is neither up nor down. They had cleared this section specifically for me. Oh, the shame. So, they sat me down and asked me what had happened. I didn’t feel quite like I was able to say that my cat had died (how embarrassing to be wailing at that decibel level about a cat) and so I told them that I had lost a family member. I silently congratulated myself on something which wasn’t really a lie and continued to hiccup. Oh, how I wish they were your run-of-the-mill uncaring, bastards and left it at that. But they didn’t.

“Who was it, darling?” the extremely concerned, fatherly, train guard asked me.

This was really the moment that it all fell apart. Flanked by two burly men in uniform, devastated and embarrassed that I had been removed from the main population of the train I looked him in the eye and said “it was my brother.”

Just like that. Earnestly and honestly (except for the fact that it was an utter fabrication), and then shocked by this whopper of a lie I had just told, I burst into fresh tears.

He gently patted me on the back and continued to ask me questions, like any kind stranger would. Ugh.

“What was his name?”

“Jeffrey” I stuttered, my voice thick with tears. Thank god we hadn’t called him Mittens.

“How old was he, love?”

“He was fourteen.” He was. But he was a cat.

“How did he die?”

“Kidney failure.” It was kidney failure, but he was a fourteen year old cat.

“Where was he?”

“In the neighbour’s yard.” WHICH IS NOT THAT STRANGE WHEN YOU CONSIDER HE WAS A CAT.

The guard looked absolutely stricken and I swear to god, he wiped a tear from his eye. At this point, I was so shocked by the enormity of my lie that I stopped crying altogether and just sat silently, praying for time to speed up and my stop to arrive.

“I’m sorry to take up your time” I ventured. “I’m sure you come across things like this all the time.”

“It’s never anything this bad.” He told me, his voice shaking ever so slightly.

I am the worst person alive.

When we got to Hornsby (where I lived at the time) they escorted me off the train, into the lift and waited with me until someone came to collect me. I had to quickly call a friend to come get me, telling them through gritted teeth that “Jeffrey has died, please meet me at the station.” You’d better believe I high-tailed it right out of there – before any conversation between the guards-who-were-comforting-me-about-the-death-of-my-brother and my friend-who-was-there-to-comfort-me-about-the-death-of-my-cat could transpire.

Oh boy. If I wasn’t sure about it before this, I was after – I am definitely going to hell.

Hopefully I’ll see Jeffrey there.

Starburst Sucks Are Aptly Named

I had a fiery debate recently with some friends regarding veganism, the day before this there was a spat between two kids at work about whether coke or juice was a healthier option and finally I had a scare at a restaurant when a buddy with a nut allergy ingested some nuts. These three food related incidents got me thinking about the things we put into our bodies.

I like my body. I feel like we are fast friends. My body gets me through all sorts of situations and is yet to complain, no matter what I do to it. For example; last week I was rejoicing that I was only five minutes from the end of my shift and decided to let out a celebratory “woohoo” accompanied by a double fisted ‘yes’ gesture. You know the one, kind of like you’re doing a chin up without a bar, grasping at the air with both fists and pulling down hard and fast while ‘yes’ becomes ‘yesssssssssssssssss’. The only problem was, I had just been washing all of the steak knives and had placed them, blade side up, in a cutlery basket. This meant that instead of the celebratory gesture I intended it to be, I actually ended up stabbing myself in the elbow. The wound was a good centimetre deep. And no complaint from my body. It just puts up with the stupid shit I do, ah, my constant friend.

As was the case a little while ago when I accidentally ate something a little iffy.

A few months ago I stopped for petrol on the drive home and was offered a too-good-to-be-true offer of two Starburst Sucks lollipops for just forty cents which, of course, I snapped up immediately. Now, I love to eat in my car. It doesn’t have a cd player, any working windows, an interior light, an aerial, air conditioning and leaks when it rains, meaning it constantly smells like wet dog. So eating has to be the main form of entertainment on the forty minute drive home from work. I tucked right into the first of my two strawberry flavoured sweets and put the other in the centre console for the next return journey from work (or drive TO work at 5am if I was feeling crazy) and promptly forgot all about it.

Jump forward two weeks and on a hot, sticky afternoon I uncovered the remaining lollipop while crawling along in heavy traffic. What a coup. I said a silent thank you to past Maz for leaving it there for me and as we started moving I unwrapped it whacked it straight into my mouth. A few minutes later, it began to taste strange. I went to look at it just as traffic began to move again and noticed that it was flecked with black. I assumed I had simply bought one strawberry and one watermelon flavoured Starburst. That would explain the slightly more acrid taste of this second candy and the strange colouration. So I continued to happily suck away as I slowly made ground in the traffic. At the next lights I went to check the progress I was making on my lolly in order to ascertain how close I was to that point when it’s ok to chew the rest of it. Upon pulling the lollipop from my mouth I discovered that there were a few little black bits exposed and poking out of the walls of the lollipop. On even closer inspection they were ants. They had crawled up the hollow stick of the confection and had become entombed in the hard candy. Much like Han Solo frozen in his carbonite prison, their little legs reached forward lamenting their untimely deaths. So I decided the only way to honour the little suckers (you’re welcome for that delightful pun) was to finish eating that creepy crawly candy. And so I did just that. Whilst stopped amongst a hundred cars, I sat quietly and ate my lollipop of ants. I must have been the only person in at least a ten kilometre radius doing that exact thing.

I felt fine, not a trace of sickness was to be noted and I hadn’t even wasted my forty cents. Yep, that car ride home was a definite success.

How To Be The Coolest Kid On The Bus

I got my driver’s licence the day that I turned seventeen. Not for the usual reasons that people get their licence; I gained enough independence from catching the bus and trains on weekends and later had a boyfriend/chauffer to get me from A to B. I rushed to get my licence because the children on the bus genuinely hated me.

I do not intend this to be a sob story in any way, their torture was retrospectively hilarious and clever and I turned out fine in the end. Plus, I would have hated me if I were them. By all accounts I was a pretentious child who entered kindergarten telling everyone who would listen what a monotreme was. I am pretty sure I didn’t improve as I got older either. This tendency to be a smart ass, coupled with my extremely tiny stature – being only about four and half feet until I was sixteen – meant that I was a perfect target. I might just have gone un-noticed had my first bus trip home from my new school in year five not been such a debacle.

Back when I was ten you used to walk up steps onto the bus (nothing was as convenient as it is these days) and on this first day home from my new school I was the last person in the bus queue. The line grew shorter and shorter until everybody, except about two people, were seated waiting for the bus to depart. Due to my aforementioned height disadvantage, the bus driver couldn’t see past these last two people to tiny little Maz at the bottom of the steps. So unfortunately, while still waiting patiently to show the bus driver my bus pass, he shut the door and began to drive away. This meant I was wedged – one arm and leg in and one arm, leg and school bag out – of the door of the bus that was making its way rapidly down the road. I was literally half in and half out of the bus as it departed the curb. All the cool kids from their back seat bandit vantage point could see me flailing and yelling and were consequently flailing and yelling themselves – with uncontrollable laughter. The driver eventually noticed me, what felt like a kilometre (but was probably only twenty meters) down the road, and let me completely onto the bus. I was all red, sobbing with fear and sporting a grimy line right down the centre of my uniform from the bus doors. It was from this day forward that the cool kids from the local catholic school hated me. And to their credit, their hatred lasted for a good six years, right up until I got my driver’s licence and stopped getting that bus.                

One of the bullies I grew to have quite a crush on, he looked like Zac Hanson with dreadlocks and piercing blue eyes. One day I offered him five dollars to be my boyfriend and he spat on me. Properly spat on me, mind you. He hocked up a big loogie and spat it right onto my winter jumper. I took it off and washed it as soon as I got home, probably more heartbroken that he spat on my jumper and not in my mouth, than anything.

Another time, the ring leader; a chubby, pretty, blonde girl, threw my wallet out the window of the bus when we were about a kilometre from my house. I had to get off the bus, walk back and gather all of my coins and cards off the road and then walk the rest of the way home because my bus pass didn’t allow me to catch the bus from where I got off. That girl was an evil genius. I looked her up on Facebook hoping to find that she had become an ugly crone with a difficult life. She was stunning and seemed to be extremely successful. Go figure.

So I got my driver’s licence at 8.30am the day I turned seventeen, and wouldn’t you know, each one of those horrible children’s houses received a drive-by egging within the month. Call it vigilante justice.