Date: 21 August 2003 Adventures of Gamblegirl: Reflections There is a postcard going around that amuses me greatly. It reads as follows: Office Timetable: 09:00 Starting Time 09:30 Arrive At Work 09:45 Coffee Break 11:00 Check E-Mail 11:15 Prepare For Lunch 12:00 Lunch 02:45 Browse The Internet 03:00 Tea Break 04:00 Prepare To Go Home 04:30 Go Home 05:00 Finishing Time The frightening thing is - in some offices this is true - well not to that extent but to a degree. Even my friend Nadia has made a similar observation about it in one of her emails. Which had me thinking - I've been here 5 months now, I have a few observations of my own. (Oh by the way this is a long email so you might find it easier to print off and read later!) WORK: And what a more obvious place to start. At home normal starting hours might be 08:30 - 05:00 / 05:30ish (which normally might mean you actually leave about 06:00pm). Lunch is an hour and usual a strict hour because someone in the office is clockwatching you. Over here (see above mentioned) it's 09:00 - 05:00 and not a second more. Now if you didn't turn up until 09:30 - yeah well not a problem. Hey it's all happy days. Heavy work loads consist of hmm do I go for tea or coffee this time? Lunch hour - whoops is now 2 - oh who's gonna care. Currently where I am working, my manager gets in 'round about 09:30sih, works on his website about a fictious town, copies his bands cd's and print off the cover labels. The other day he got in same time as normal, switched on his computer and then promptly fell asleep until he stirred around 02:00ish for "a ciggie, a slash and a cuppa" and then went straight back to sleep. I am absolutely serious about this, no bulls***ting. At first I was concerned, I'd thought he'd gone into a coma! But I have been told that this occurs on a regular basis. My co-workers either a) shop on ebay, b) download porn (I am the only girl in my area and I must say, I have learnt a while new lot of terms for masturbation / sex / genitalia / swear words) or download Dr Who merchandise. Heck Phil ever had us all creating paper Daleks for him one afternoon. Thanks to the amount of time we spend on the net and the boys in pornland, we have been banned from using the net for personal sites. Yet I can still play drug wars. For the record I made £36m on Friday by selling heroin and cocaine (proud of me mum?) - yet I can't check my email account - go figure huh? SUPERMARKETS: Before I came over Steph (my sister - love you hon) mentioned about the supermarkets. At the time it meant - well b***** all!!! Now it means oh so much. At home you run into Coles / Woolies / Safeway, etc, etc and grab what you need and get out. Over here, you have (in order to ££££ value) Marks and Spencer, Waitrose, Sainsburys, Tesco's, Sommerfield / Woolies / Safeway, Iceland (or Iceberg and I call it) and the offie or smaller quickie marts. And they aren't small babies either. One safeway I went to was a big as a Myer Mega mart. Heck I could have bought both my frozen goods and oh say THE FREEZER TO PUT THEM IN! Another thing that bemuses me is that in a store that sells food, it's main purpose is to sell food, they always have a tendency to have a café in them. What? So the food that they are selling, which you have just purchased isn't good enough that you have to consume some dodgy pastry that's been sitting there for god knows how long with the cuppa? Ohh and you have to pack your own shoppings bags. Here I was la la laring away in my own little world at the checkout before I realized oh crikey, oh heck, oh b***** I have to pack my own shopping bags. ALEX YOU COULD HAVE WARNED ME ABOUT THIS!!!! Which brings me on to my next topic... CUSTOMER SERVICE: Say what? Um huh? In London there is no such thing as customer service - and from what I am hearing in most parts of England as well. Your "friendly" checkout chicks just look bored instead of sullen, your shop assistants care more about their lives then say SERVING YOU. At least we get a bored "hi, how are you?" but don't bother giving me details because I don't care and I have to ask it at home. If you get a grunt over here then consider yourselves blessed. STAND TO THE RIGHT: When riding on the escalators, you MUST stand to the right. Don't even think about standing to the left. I've seen someone nearly pushed down the escalator because they stood to the left. So how come, for a country which drives on the left, you have to stand to the right? I've done a little poll on this (oh good the English need to polling everything has effected me!) and to this very day, I have not got an explanation on this. Anyone who knows, please let me know. It's beginning to bug the )$£)*"£)$*"£$** out of me! THE TUBE: When I first saw the tube map, I nearly keeled over. It looked like a horrible nightmare. Maybe if I closed my eyes it would go away and magically make sense. You see my train lines go straight. You catch the Epping line and stick to it until you get to the city. You had a choice of zones 1 - 3 and your biggest concern was catching the wrong line because you weren't paying attention or that you didn't time leaving right and had to wait the 20 mins or so for the next train. This isn't the case over here. You need to line jump and trust me there are plenty of lines to catch. There's all the underground lines and the overlands and urghh you can catch about 3 lines to get where you want to get. A few things that have this girl wondering are: a) on average there is a train following 4-5 minutes later (oh how I will miss this oh so much), so why do people run for the train and then get pissed off when they miss it? The second thing is, if there is a train coming, why do people force themselves into a an already packed train? This I don't understand. Also AC would be nice and here's a suggestion when it's hot - TURN OFF THE HEATERS!!!! DO WE HAVE A DEAL FOR U! They love a deal over here. Buy 1 and get 1 free - I'm sure that's the English motto. All the supermarkets offer it or buy 1 and get 50p off a second. You can get 5 DVD's for £30's (do the conversions - BARGIN!), 3 cd's for £30's. It's bargin city, the thing is you get so caught up with that that you find yourself with more stuff then needed. Somewhere along the line a bargin stops becoming a bargin and becomes a sport. Oh and speaking of sport.... FOOTBALL: Nope ain't a convert. STARBUCKS: I have a conspiracy theory. In London if there is a Starbucks, a Macca's is not far away. Just keep an eye out and you tell me otherwise! THE OFFIE! Karma bless the Sunday paper and the offie. Also known as the off-licence, it is brilliant, bloody brilliant. Especially when it's a 2 min walk away and stocks the necessities ie an Archers raspberry snaps when a girl is thirsty late at night. Brilliant I say. POSH, BECK AND LIZ: Dunno if you have spotted a theme in my emails but Becks is a big deal over here. When he moved to Real Madrid, you would have thought that the country had had it's heart ripped out. Their god is gone. Oh no! Mildly obessessed - NOT! Not by a lot! If you read the tabloids, there are 3 patron saints over here - Posh (a mag even dedicated a whole issue to her summer wardrobe and then because she went shopping in New York!!!), Becks (see point above) and Liz Hurley. Liz Hurley is famous for wearing a dress that barely covered the essentials and for having a baby out of wedlock and splashing it around the tabloids. Going by what I see - the only difference between her and the other under age walking trollop's here is that she gets a little more publicity. Oh and then there's the battle between the two page 3 girls, Jordon and Jodie - both are battling it out to slapper of the year. All class here. THE PEOPLE ARE... UM... UM...UM!!! Yes well... okay here's how I categorise them: The Scottish - speak incredibly fast with thick brogues. Sometimes freaking hard to understand but nice people. Love calling me pet English - Bizzare majority who will complain just about anything. Prone to burning, excessive drinking and wearing trousers half way down their backside to reveal their "pants" (whether it is their g string or their Calvins) Londoners - see above but 10x's worse French - rude prats yet always look so cool and stylish Irish - woahhhhh the accent!! It's sexy!! Welsh - yeah the less said the better. Intellect - dense, common sense - non existant. Tasmanians you are Stephen Hawkings in comparison I AM NOT FROM... I am not from any of the following: New Zealand, Canada, Wales, South Africa, America. I am an Australian. I know that I don't have a real nasal Australian accent but I am one. Although I was called a posh Australian and I kinda liked that. But I am an Australian OKAY PEOPLES!!! As in Australian's all let us rejoice - tra la la la!!! I also want to point out that I am not from Sydney and nor do I know your friend that lives in Melbourne. It is a little bigger then a post stamp. Jeez, it's not a one horse town (although there is a law in Melbourne that says that one must give way to any donkey carrying merchandise which still exist from the golden oldies day!!!) Australia does have other major cities - Brisbane, Adelaide, MELBOURNE. For the the sake of not looking like a total nob pick up an atlas and learn other cities. And no your cousins in Brisbane live no where near Melbourne and I don't know them!!! And I am insulted to be called an American (sorry Di darling - you still there though? haven't heard from you in AGES) So that's about it really, my thoughts. Oh and we can all release our breaths, the lager crises has been averted as according to the Sun who's main headline when there is bombing in Jakarta was - SUMMER HEAT, LARGER CRISIS - ONLY 10 MORE DAYS LEFT!!! Yes as Rove says - crisis averted!! Hey can anyone remember when the movie THE MAN THAT SUED GOD was released? Because that is just being released now. Oh yeah, England so up with everything. Love yas all Love and kisses from your neighbourhood freak!!!!