It’s 9am and I’m feeling a little tired, which is not a great place to be when you haven’t started work yet. Thankfully coffee seems to have been invented for this sort of thing. However,. I’m a traditional Irishman, reared on eight cups of strong tea a day. So coffee is an alien concoction to me, as foreign as Tiramisu and Falafel. I was sixteen years old before I tasted a cup of Brazil’s finest. My brother, who liked to think of himself as a debonair peacock among the dull grey pigeons of 1980’s Ireland, had purchased a jar of Maxwell House (which I later discovered is the Old Spice of the coffee world) and laid down an instruction to my poor beleaguered Mother that she was to deliver a cup of the said product with a dash of milk and two spoons of sugar to him each morning.
My Mother, as was her way, told him to take a very long walk off a very short pier and so the jar stayed in our cupboard for eternity, alongside the other unused products such as curry powder and soda stream concentrate.
I came in late one night from my high paying job collecting glasses in the local pub and decided to test out the strange elixir in the cupboard. All my TV heroes, for example, were coffee drinkers and even the posh kids at school would come in with stories about whipped cream extravagances that went on in their big houses on the hill. The result was the worst thing I had tasted since I mistook our Dog’s abolitions for a Mars Bar when I was four. Then I remembered that I’d had the same reaction when I first drank beer and that perseverance paid off in that regard.
So I have been an occasional coffee drinker ever since, although I still struggle to tell the difference between a flat white and a skinny latte (except that the latte is clearly made with milk extracted from skinny cows) and the much maligned Maxwell House tastes the same to me as freshly ground premium blend.
Melbourne thinks it has the best coffee in the world so it would be remiss of me not to try it out. I’ve started cycling to work a few days each week and when I do so; I reward myself with a latte and muffin from the little cafe at the base of our building. Li works the coffee machine there like a steam locomotive driver in the19th Century and knows me by name now which suggests that I eat a lot more muffins than I’d care to admit.
She has taken to leaving a little slice of cake on the lid of my cup, which I’ve noticed she only does for special customers and people who by their shape suggest that they really, really like cake. I’m not sure which category I fall into but I like to think that I’m in the special customer club. Some shops do loyalty cards. This one does little cakes and I know which I prefer.
My muffin choice is dependent on my healthy food intake for that week. I like to comply with Victorian State Government recommendations and consume 5 portions of fruit and veg each day. If I’m struggling, I supplement my diet with an apple or blueberry muffin. If I’ve done well, by perhaps consuming some pear cider or strawberry ice-cream, I’ll reward myself with a chocolate muffin, safe in the knowledge that I have dodged the food police for another week.
When I leave Li’s café, I have a choice of turning left or right. The distance back to my desk is the same both ways, but the right hand side is busier and you are more likely to bump into someone than if you turn left.
Normally at this point, both hands are busy with carrying duties, so I nibble the small slice of cake on the top of the cup like an oversized mouse. It’s not a sight I am keen to share with the general public, so I normally take the quiet route.
This morning however, I was a little sleepy and turned right without thinking. I had hardly walked two meters before I was stopped by a recruitment consultant of limited acquaintance. During the boom years, these people were matched only by Estate Agents and Bank Executives in the ease with which they made money. Now they sweep the streets where broken dreams are thrown. It’s humbling to watch them working for a living for a change. But I work in a bank, so perhaps I shouldn’t throw stones.
Their sales technique is overwhelming however. They want to be your best friend, which is an uncomfortable feeling for us accountants, who take years to trust somebody enough to look up from our shoes. She spent ten minutes telling me how well I looked, how business was booming and how she had a fantastic candidate that she was saving just for me.
The cup was slowly burning into the palm of my hand to the point where I felt that skin was about to come off. So I mumbled my excuses and left. As I ascended in the lift I thought about all those options we are faced with in life. All those figurative forks in yellow woods that we come across. How different would our lives be now if we’d turned right out of the disco toilets back in 1985 and not left? Turning left meant bumping into that girl who ended up breaking your heart, who made you leave town and move abroad where you ended up winning the local lottery and being hit by a bus as you crossed the road to collect the cheque.
Life is all about choices. As a Woody Allen character once said “We define ourselves by the choices we have made”. But I don’t think there is any point getting caught up in it. That’s just the way life is. But I will give you some advice. Always choose the busier path; there are more interesting things to be found there. But choose the quieter path if you want your coffee to be warm when you get back to your desk.
Monday 28 September 2009
Tuesday 15 September 2009
Thursday Morning Coming Down
To paraphrase Johnny Cash, "I woke up Thursday morning with no way to hold my head that didn't hurt". Drinking on school nights is a practice that should be restricted to students and the unemployed. They have the energy to keep going and the opportunity to sleep in the next day. Bankers of a certain age have no such advantage and I'm paying the sorry price for that now. Twenty four hours ago, the beer was flowing and the craic was mighty. I gave no thought to getting up for work the next day and neither did my drinking buddies. We were just intent on proving that the Global Financial Crisis wasn't going to stop us from partying.
We were entertaining a visitor from Singapore and trying to prove that Melbourne has a midweek nightlife. In practice, that proved tougher than finding a bacon buttie in Tel Aviv on Yon Kippur.
But there were ten of us and that tends to create its own dynamic. All boys are competitive, except at different things. Some like to show their alpha maleness by reaching the pinnacle of their profession. Others prove themselves through sport or by hooking up with supermodels. God decided that my killer instinct is invoked whenever I’m drinking beer in company.
People who know me are aware that I like a beer. In fact some have commented that I am one of the few people in life who consider beer more important than oxygen and one ex girlfriend cruelly described me as a not particularly complicated biological machine for turning beer into urine. It may come as a shock to these people that I can happily go weeks without touching the amber nectar. But put me in a situation where other men are drinking and I turn into Michael Schumacher. I can’t help myself; I have to drink faster and longer than anyone else in a desperate attempt to prove my manliness.
That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. I didn’t get hammered on Wednesday night because I’m immature and reckless. My DNA made me do it.
I have my alarm set up to turn on the radio each morning and I'm usually met by the soothing tones of Red Symons on ABC, who jokes his way through the news and eases listeners into the day. As luck would have it, when the alarm kicked off this morning, Red had moved to a story about the Italian Film festival and I was woken to the sounds of machine gun fire and piercing screams.
I groped manically for the snooze button and desperately tried to get a grip on reality. My mouth was as dry as a Quaker’s wake and my tongue felt like it had been ripped out in the middle of the night and replaced with one that didn’t quite fit.
The act of showering and dressing took longer than normal and I knew something was really up when I sat down for my daily bowl of cornflakes and found that I was eating them individually.
It was 9am before I was ready to meet the day and I stumbled down the road to the tram stop. The 96 tram goes through a metamorphosis at 9am. Before that point, it is full of sleepy commuters heading into their office jobs in the City. It’s usually packed and dominated by Ipod wearing, Aravind Adiga readers.
They are safely tucked up at their desks by 9am and at that point the tram is taken over by a bohemian mix that wouldn’t look out of place on the set of Trainspotting. The first to board are the tramps who sleep rough around Acland Street and have just been rudely woken by shopkeepers who take exception to them kipping in their doorways. A comfortable seat on the tram is clearly the best way they can find to ease themselves into the day. Unfortunately, they have a fairly random acquaintance with hygiene and trams are a pretty enclosed space. So my liberal sympathies are very quickly overtaken by a need to protect the volatile contents of my stomach.
So I make my way to the front of the tram and bury myself in a book. Two stops later and we’re on Fitzroy Street, home to fast food restaurants and hostels that cater for drug addicts and the generally bewildered. The wind was strong and several emaciated figures were huddled in the small shelter. That was exactly where the front door of the tram stopped and pretty quickly I was surrounded by six twitching junkies with dark sunken eyes hidden behind sunglasses and skin like old boot leather.
I was feeling pretty judgmental, particularly as none of them bothered to buy a ticket. I’m guessing that they were on their way to the City to engage in financial transactions involving illegal drugs and shop lifting. Strange how you become a right wing scare monger when you have a hangover!
The only other passengers on the tram were a motley crew who had boarded at St Kilda Junction. They were dressed in similar fashion to the junkies but looked healthy and out of place in their clothes. I had seen groups like this before but in my hungover state, it took me a few moments to place them. They were plain clothes ticket inspectors sent in swarms to catch the 90% of passengers who don’t buy a ticket. The tramps and junkies had beaten me to it however. In the few seconds it took my addled brain to work all this out, they had jumped off the tram like ghostly pirates and disappeared into the nearby park.
I flashed my ticket at the inspectors and huddled more tightly in the seat. The click clackety click of the metal wheels rebounded in my head as though somebody was smacking my eyeballs with a hammer from the inside. A smell of stale body odour and year old chewing gum hung round the tram and attacked my senses with every intake of breath. I got off three stops early to breathe in some air and to find a café selling oversized sausage rolls.
Johnny Cash had the right idea. If you’re going to wake up feeling like this, it’s best to do it on a Sunday morning when you can crawl back into bed and at least be comfortable when you lie to yourself about how you are never, ever, ever drinking again.
We were entertaining a visitor from Singapore and trying to prove that Melbourne has a midweek nightlife. In practice, that proved tougher than finding a bacon buttie in Tel Aviv on Yon Kippur.
But there were ten of us and that tends to create its own dynamic. All boys are competitive, except at different things. Some like to show their alpha maleness by reaching the pinnacle of their profession. Others prove themselves through sport or by hooking up with supermodels. God decided that my killer instinct is invoked whenever I’m drinking beer in company.
People who know me are aware that I like a beer. In fact some have commented that I am one of the few people in life who consider beer more important than oxygen and one ex girlfriend cruelly described me as a not particularly complicated biological machine for turning beer into urine. It may come as a shock to these people that I can happily go weeks without touching the amber nectar. But put me in a situation where other men are drinking and I turn into Michael Schumacher. I can’t help myself; I have to drink faster and longer than anyone else in a desperate attempt to prove my manliness.
That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. I didn’t get hammered on Wednesday night because I’m immature and reckless. My DNA made me do it.
I have my alarm set up to turn on the radio each morning and I'm usually met by the soothing tones of Red Symons on ABC, who jokes his way through the news and eases listeners into the day. As luck would have it, when the alarm kicked off this morning, Red had moved to a story about the Italian Film festival and I was woken to the sounds of machine gun fire and piercing screams.
I groped manically for the snooze button and desperately tried to get a grip on reality. My mouth was as dry as a Quaker’s wake and my tongue felt like it had been ripped out in the middle of the night and replaced with one that didn’t quite fit.
The act of showering and dressing took longer than normal and I knew something was really up when I sat down for my daily bowl of cornflakes and found that I was eating them individually.
It was 9am before I was ready to meet the day and I stumbled down the road to the tram stop. The 96 tram goes through a metamorphosis at 9am. Before that point, it is full of sleepy commuters heading into their office jobs in the City. It’s usually packed and dominated by Ipod wearing, Aravind Adiga readers.
They are safely tucked up at their desks by 9am and at that point the tram is taken over by a bohemian mix that wouldn’t look out of place on the set of Trainspotting. The first to board are the tramps who sleep rough around Acland Street and have just been rudely woken by shopkeepers who take exception to them kipping in their doorways. A comfortable seat on the tram is clearly the best way they can find to ease themselves into the day. Unfortunately, they have a fairly random acquaintance with hygiene and trams are a pretty enclosed space. So my liberal sympathies are very quickly overtaken by a need to protect the volatile contents of my stomach.
So I make my way to the front of the tram and bury myself in a book. Two stops later and we’re on Fitzroy Street, home to fast food restaurants and hostels that cater for drug addicts and the generally bewildered. The wind was strong and several emaciated figures were huddled in the small shelter. That was exactly where the front door of the tram stopped and pretty quickly I was surrounded by six twitching junkies with dark sunken eyes hidden behind sunglasses and skin like old boot leather.
I was feeling pretty judgmental, particularly as none of them bothered to buy a ticket. I’m guessing that they were on their way to the City to engage in financial transactions involving illegal drugs and shop lifting. Strange how you become a right wing scare monger when you have a hangover!
The only other passengers on the tram were a motley crew who had boarded at St Kilda Junction. They were dressed in similar fashion to the junkies but looked healthy and out of place in their clothes. I had seen groups like this before but in my hungover state, it took me a few moments to place them. They were plain clothes ticket inspectors sent in swarms to catch the 90% of passengers who don’t buy a ticket. The tramps and junkies had beaten me to it however. In the few seconds it took my addled brain to work all this out, they had jumped off the tram like ghostly pirates and disappeared into the nearby park.
I flashed my ticket at the inspectors and huddled more tightly in the seat. The click clackety click of the metal wheels rebounded in my head as though somebody was smacking my eyeballs with a hammer from the inside. A smell of stale body odour and year old chewing gum hung round the tram and attacked my senses with every intake of breath. I got off three stops early to breathe in some air and to find a café selling oversized sausage rolls.
Johnny Cash had the right idea. If you’re going to wake up feeling like this, it’s best to do it on a Sunday morning when you can crawl back into bed and at least be comfortable when you lie to yourself about how you are never, ever, ever drinking again.
Thursday 3 September 2009
The Written Test
It’s 8.30am on a Saturday morning and I’m sitting in the plaza ballroom of the Brisbane Exhibition Centre. And I’m bored. They took our mobile phones and IPods from us at reception and the test I’m here for doesn’t start until 9am. So I’m alone with my thoughts and about 300 Chinese and Indian people. Like me, they are here to sit a written English exam for residency purposes and to judge by their expressions they are equally at a loss to know what to do without electronic gadgets.
It wasn’t like that when I last sat an exam, which was back in the long hot summer of 1987. That was held in the Industrial Hall of the Royal Dublin Society which was like an oven on the day I sat my Financial Accounting test. At 1pm that day, I finished eighteen years of education and did what any Irishman would do in that situation. I went to the pub. This wasn’t necessarily a good idea. The exams came at the end of six weeks study leave during which time, I had hardly eaten, slept or washed. So after two pints in the Horseshoe Inn in Ballsbridge, I was floating on air. Ten hours and many pints later, I stumbled into Wanderers Rugby Club which held a disco on Friday nights, for the purposes of introducing nurses to young trainee accountants like me.
Unfortunately, on that Friday night, I was in more need of medical care from those nurses than loving. Somewhere around midnight, I stumbled into the toilets for a quick evacuation of my stomach and somehow managed to lose my glasses. Luckily, through the benefit of alcohol, I didn’t notice I was blind until the middle of the following day. I have only one other memory of that weekend. On the Saturday night, I went to see Elton John in an outdoor concert and couldn’t see a thing. Which was quite an achievement considering the clothes he was wearing.
I’m all grown up now of course and as I sat waiting for the exam to start in Brisbane, all I was dreaming of was a nice latte at the end of the test. I glanced around the hall and marvelled at the geographic spread of the students. For some reason it brought me back to a geography exam I sat in school. I sat beside a particular idiot who stared mournfully at his paper for an hour before nudging me.
“Why did Copenhagen become the biggest City in Denmark?” he asked. I was deep in contemplation at the time on the weightier matter of South American weather systems but I felt sorry for the poor guy as he looked like he lacked the geographical knowledge to find the toilet during the break.
“Because it’s a Port” I said, feeling that this was a suitable titbit to offer and would shut him up.
He gave me a conspirator’s wink and wrote in barely legible type, “Because it’s imported”.
I felt a mixture of annoyance and guilt, so I leant across and repeated my instruction. He nodded and put a line through his first attempt before writing “Because it’s exported”.
I sighed and decided to leave him to his ignorance. He’s probably an economic advisor to one of the Irish Banks now.
Finally the Brisbane test was about to start. The question and answer booklets were handed out but a rather angry English woman stood at the top of the hall and warned us under pain of death that we weren’t allowed to turn the papers over until she said so. She was paranoid about cheating and seemed to be under the impression that students had hidden answers in the toilet cisterns because she issued a severe warning that after the exam started anyone feeling a call of nature would have to cross their legs for three hours.
She spent the next ten minutes explaining how to complete the personal information section at the front of the answer sheet. One of the questions was “Male or female” which left her slightly flummoxed. Her headmistress persona was temporarily dented as she searched for the correct instruction. In the end she said “You can choose either one”. Everyone in the room laughed which was enough proof for me that they understood English and we should have just packed up and gone for a coffee. But it just made her angrier. She slammed her hand on the lectern and stared menacingly. I don’t know about the Chinese and Indians, but I was reminded of a particularly nasty Mother Superior and had the good sense to shut up and get back to my paper.
The exam itself was tougher than I expected. Having to write with a pen was a challenge. We have become so used to typing and texting that very few of us use pens any more apart from completing Sudoku puzzles. Spell check has also made me lazy and I found myself not using particular words because I lacked the confidence to spell them.
The first part of the test was about listening, a subject that all my ex girlfriends would grade me as an F. You had to interpret what was being said and answer questions on the hoof. This meant doing two things at once, which being a man, presented problems. After that, we had an hour of comprehension, which is harder to spell than it is to sit. We finished by having to write an essay on the subject of “Success in later life is determined by your parents. Discuss”.
I could see the finishing post and let fly with gusto. Nature versus nurture got a mention before I felt the need to lighten things up a little. So I mentioned my mother and how she bought me my first pair of glasses. That allowed me to study and to land the big jobs that have taken me all over the world. Those glasses not sit somewhere within the sewage system of Wanderers Rugby Club in Dublin. But they did their job Mam. Thanks for that and for teaching me how to speak English in the first place.
It wasn’t like that when I last sat an exam, which was back in the long hot summer of 1987. That was held in the Industrial Hall of the Royal Dublin Society which was like an oven on the day I sat my Financial Accounting test. At 1pm that day, I finished eighteen years of education and did what any Irishman would do in that situation. I went to the pub. This wasn’t necessarily a good idea. The exams came at the end of six weeks study leave during which time, I had hardly eaten, slept or washed. So after two pints in the Horseshoe Inn in Ballsbridge, I was floating on air. Ten hours and many pints later, I stumbled into Wanderers Rugby Club which held a disco on Friday nights, for the purposes of introducing nurses to young trainee accountants like me.
Unfortunately, on that Friday night, I was in more need of medical care from those nurses than loving. Somewhere around midnight, I stumbled into the toilets for a quick evacuation of my stomach and somehow managed to lose my glasses. Luckily, through the benefit of alcohol, I didn’t notice I was blind until the middle of the following day. I have only one other memory of that weekend. On the Saturday night, I went to see Elton John in an outdoor concert and couldn’t see a thing. Which was quite an achievement considering the clothes he was wearing.
I’m all grown up now of course and as I sat waiting for the exam to start in Brisbane, all I was dreaming of was a nice latte at the end of the test. I glanced around the hall and marvelled at the geographic spread of the students. For some reason it brought me back to a geography exam I sat in school. I sat beside a particular idiot who stared mournfully at his paper for an hour before nudging me.
“Why did Copenhagen become the biggest City in Denmark?” he asked. I was deep in contemplation at the time on the weightier matter of South American weather systems but I felt sorry for the poor guy as he looked like he lacked the geographical knowledge to find the toilet during the break.
“Because it’s a Port” I said, feeling that this was a suitable titbit to offer and would shut him up.
He gave me a conspirator’s wink and wrote in barely legible type, “Because it’s imported”.
I felt a mixture of annoyance and guilt, so I leant across and repeated my instruction. He nodded and put a line through his first attempt before writing “Because it’s exported”.
I sighed and decided to leave him to his ignorance. He’s probably an economic advisor to one of the Irish Banks now.
Finally the Brisbane test was about to start. The question and answer booklets were handed out but a rather angry English woman stood at the top of the hall and warned us under pain of death that we weren’t allowed to turn the papers over until she said so. She was paranoid about cheating and seemed to be under the impression that students had hidden answers in the toilet cisterns because she issued a severe warning that after the exam started anyone feeling a call of nature would have to cross their legs for three hours.
She spent the next ten minutes explaining how to complete the personal information section at the front of the answer sheet. One of the questions was “Male or female” which left her slightly flummoxed. Her headmistress persona was temporarily dented as she searched for the correct instruction. In the end she said “You can choose either one”. Everyone in the room laughed which was enough proof for me that they understood English and we should have just packed up and gone for a coffee. But it just made her angrier. She slammed her hand on the lectern and stared menacingly. I don’t know about the Chinese and Indians, but I was reminded of a particularly nasty Mother Superior and had the good sense to shut up and get back to my paper.
The exam itself was tougher than I expected. Having to write with a pen was a challenge. We have become so used to typing and texting that very few of us use pens any more apart from completing Sudoku puzzles. Spell check has also made me lazy and I found myself not using particular words because I lacked the confidence to spell them.
The first part of the test was about listening, a subject that all my ex girlfriends would grade me as an F. You had to interpret what was being said and answer questions on the hoof. This meant doing two things at once, which being a man, presented problems. After that, we had an hour of comprehension, which is harder to spell than it is to sit. We finished by having to write an essay on the subject of “Success in later life is determined by your parents. Discuss”.
I could see the finishing post and let fly with gusto. Nature versus nurture got a mention before I felt the need to lighten things up a little. So I mentioned my mother and how she bought me my first pair of glasses. That allowed me to study and to land the big jobs that have taken me all over the world. Those glasses not sit somewhere within the sewage system of Wanderers Rugby Club in Dublin. But they did their job Mam. Thanks for that and for teaching me how to speak English in the first place.
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