Analyse this: Crazy dodgem-style car reversing dream

Welcome to the first in a series where I offer you my dreams for analysis, as suggested in my last post. Please submit your analyses by comment or email. Thank you for your anticipated help with this. You're saving me a fortune in therapist fees.

Some things had been going on within the dream leading up to the bit I'm going to tell you about. I can't remember what they were. They weren't very memorable. There were probably a load of us girls going out for drinks or something. But the bit I'm going to tell you about starts in the ground floor of a building, possibly a shop or something. It had the impression of a car show room but it was empty. It was on the spot where my best friend's parents' house is, in the street I grew up in but I don't think that's relevant. I dream about that street a lot because I spent so much time there.

There were about four of us, all girls. Only one girl is relevant and she is someone I was friends with at school but haven't really been in touch with since. I did randomly bump into her at the theatre once about seven years ago but other than that I haven't seen her for about fifteen years.

This girl was complaining that she'd somehow let her driving license expire and failed when she went to take her test again. Another of the girls suggested that it's to do with how she changes gear and gave her some advice which I was not privy too. The advising girl left, and the rest of us got into the car with the driving girl. Driving girl put the car into reverse to pull out of the parking space she was in and then kept going and entirely took her foot off the clutch like you have to do in the "reverse" maneuvre of your driving test (in Australia). Then she continued to move up through the gears, all the while in reverse (yes, I know that's impossible, bear with me here) but seemingly paying no attention to where she was going, apparently more intent on practising her gear changes. She was ricocheting from one parked car to another causing lots of damage. We were all yelling at her to stop and pay attention and eventually she did, freaked out and somehow drove her car into the shop we'd just come from.

So there we all were in the shop and at this point it became obvious that I knew the owner, who I actually think was Ron Dixon from Brookside. She decided to run away and I tried to persuade her not to. Then all the other girls ran away and tried to drag me with them. I explained that the car was registered in her name so she wouldn't get away with it but they pulled me outside and shut the door anyway. I then had to ring on the door bell to get the owner to let me back in. Obviously he wasn't very impressed to see a car in his building and I then had to explain what had happened, hoping to provoke some sympathy for my friend but he was having none of it, saying she still owed his partner (not sure if that was life partner or business partner but it was a female) money for the car.

Then I woke up.

Analyse that!

One Degree of Separation

The Gist: I keep bumping into people I know and I went to a comedy show. I've no idea where all the other words came from.

You know you've been living on the Sunshine Coast too long when you start bumping into the same person more than once. Or you go out for dinner and one of the other guests happens to know someone you do. Really well. In Australia there are only about three or four degrees of separation. Pin-point it down to south-east Queensland or the Sunshine Coast and it's more like one or two. It's spooky. That's started happening to me so I'll be moving to Melbourne next month.

I went to a comedy show last night. This was quite an exciting event as such things rarely occur on the Sunshine Coast (unlike bumping into people you know) and it's fair to say that in the three years I've been living here I haven't been to one. Not one! Somewhat different to living in London where there was a world-class comedy club (Jongleurs) just down the road from me (that's London-speak for "it's five minutes that way on the number 77"). It was the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (which was on when we were down in Melbourne but we weren't organised enough to get tickets) Roadshow and it was pretty good. Unfortunately, Ross Noble wasn't there, which is good because my friend informed me that she hates him. (What? Sacrilege! She obviously doesn't know the meaning of the word "funny" or "f***ing hilarious" or "oooh... he went a bit far there, don't you think?") However, we bumped into someone we knew (it happens more often at "cultural" events such as these because they occur so rarely that everyone on the coast goes. In fact, it's strange if you don't bump into everyone you know. And yes, they really do class a comedy show as a cultural event.) So we bumped into someone we knew (again) but that's not the point. The point is that these people told us that Ross Noble will be being funny at Nambour Civic Centre on June 1st. Guess what I'll be googling today.

The point of today's post was originally to share with you that I drank too much beer last night, went to bed feeling sick and have woken up with a sore head, after having weird dreams where Toby, me, my sister (possibly my mother but I really can't remember) and a couple of random infants and a hamster all lived in one tiny house that seemed to consist of only one room. The hamster was psycho and spent the entire time running around and around the house squeezing its little self amongst wires that seemed to be all around the skirting boards for some reason. It really went too far when it tried to squeeze through a hole the size of a five pence piece (or five cents if you'd prefer) in the front door, which I'd been telling Toby we should fix before the weather gets much colder. But again, I digress. That really wasn't the point. But it has given me an interesting idea for future blog topics. Dream analysis! Oh don't get me started. I had a great airport dream the other night. Scary but anyway, I'll share that another time.

The two stars (in my opinion) of last night's show were Mark Watson, a funny, almost hyper welsh dude, and Fiona O'Something, an Irish-Australian alcholic with anorexic sisters and a really scary mother. She left her baby in Liquorland once. It was like a horrible view of my own future when she told that story. I've asked people to remind me, should it ever become relevant, not to let me have more than two children because I will start forgetting them. Every day this week I've managed to forget something. Yesterday was a classic example. I had a meeting with the salary sacrifice lady (how scary does that sound? I don't want to sacrifice my salary, thanks. I quite like it) and I'd emailed her to ask what I needed to take with me. She didn't really ask for much. Just my payslip really. So what did I do? I took my payslip home with me on Tuesday. And then left it there.

Actually salary sacrificing works out quite nicely. I'll be getting about 30% of the cost of my laptop back. Yes! I finally bought a laptop and I'm most pleased because I'm blogging on it right now. It's still not quite set up the way I want it because it only arrived on Monday and I've been very busy drinking and laughing and stuff. So unfortunately I am forced to use Internet Explorer and as such my blog looks s**t, as per my previous blog. If you use IE and you can't see the posts, here's a tip: scroll right down. It's down there somewhere. But then if you're reading this you've probably already figured that out. Sorry about all the swearing by the way; that's the hangover. For those of you that are interested I bought a Dell Latitude D820. It's super fast and has wi-fi so I'm quite happy. It looks cool when it's open because the inside is black. But the outside is a naff silver. I also have a super duper wireless keyboard and mouse. I could write a geeky post about why I chose this laptop (it was cheap!) but I'm not really in the mood today. Another time, maybe.

One of the guys at the comedy show last night was really odd, not very funny and I don't think I'd recommend him. His name was Sam Simmons. Avoid him. Do not pay money to see him.

Oh, just before I go, guess what?! We booked our flights to the UK! WE'RE COMING HOME FOR CHRISTMAS - YAY!!!!!! Looks like we're going via Dubai (send your travel tips!) and we should be in London around 9th December. We're trying to arrange it so we'll get there in time for the weekend. So who's hosting the party for us?

I really have no idea why I woke up this morning with a hangover and thought it would be a good idea to blog so I'm going to stop now.

Just give me the gist

For all you busy people out there who, like my good pals Brent and Praj, only have time for the gist I have for you this week a) a short post, and b) a link to a website that gives you the gist of books. How fantastic an idea is that? No longer to you have to sift through boring old industry or professional development books. Now you can cut to the chase and go straight for the jugular, leaving much more time for fun stuff such as reading novels, windsurfing, making jewellery, watching TV (ohmigod the final of Dancing with the Stars is on tonight! How exciting) or movies, gardening, bowling, socialising, whatever takes your fancy really because I know you all spend far too much time reading business books.

So, in order to prevent this short post becoming a long post, here's the link: Get the gist (A.K.A Get Abstract)

Weekend In Melbourne

Finally, our long awaited weekend to Melbourne happened last week and it was so much fun. We originally had flights booked for February but had to cancel because Toby couldn't take time off work. Fortunately for us the airline made a change to our schedule which made it really easy for us to get our money back as we just told them we couldn't make the new times. And even though these flights were a bit more expensive we got some extra time down in Melbourne thanks to the Anzac Day public holiday on Tuesday 25th April.

The CIS Old Boys Club Reunion. L-R: Toby Clewett (March 2003), Praj Basnet (October 2005), Lindsey Buckle (still suffering), Brent Dacre (bad influence, started the whole thing, May 2005), Shuwana Shiraze (contractor, went to Lithuania for a cold spell, the mad monkey, between USC and RMIT), Stephen Fenner (contractor, unassuming yet surprisingly good at blowing smoke rings after a few cocktails apparently, approximately November 2005)

When we got there we dropped our bags off at some RMIT offices where friends who used to live on the Sunshine Coast now work. It ended up being something of a team reunion as we all used to work together in the team I currently work in at the University of the Sunshine Coast. I am currently not thinking of joining them down there but mainly because they work on the student system and I don't and have no desire to either. It has been something of a sick joke in the office over the past few months that those people coming to work in a tie will soon defect to RMIT. The IT Director didn't seem to think it was funny though and her blood turns cold at the mere mention of the word RMIT, and the names of some former employees (you know who you are, Brent). Fortunately I don't think she bothers to read this so hopefully the photograph won't freak her out too much. Maybe I'll make it my screen saver just to tease her. Just kidding (you never know she might read it and I don't want to be one of those people who gets sacked for writing stupid things on their blog).

I do miss those guys, especially Brent and Praj whom I worked closely with for quite a while and whom some of you may remember used to have a blog I linked to, which I removed when they started getting lazy. For old times sake we went for a few drinks along with Praj's girlfriend Tracy and it was just like old times only different. For a start it was in Melbourne, secondly it was cold and thirdly there was a decent choice of bars. Much fun was had.

Unfortunately too much fun was had and too much drink consumed for us to think about bothering to go see the people we'd actually travelled down to stay with, Jon and Kristina, good friends from Brisbane. Shame on us! We'd been hoping they'd join us and keep us in check but after a week at work they were tired and wanted to chill out at home. We finally loaded our sorry selves onto a tram (actually, the others did it for us because we were confused small-town folk) and Jon good-naturedly picked us up from the tram stop and drove us home when really he probably just wanted to punch us. By the time we got home Jon was chilled out and started cracking open the beers. It was really good to see them again and I'm so glad they forgive us for turning up so late.

On Saturday J&K took us to the Victoria Markets which are huge and impressive and full of pretty much anything you might want to buy grocery-wise. The deli section was phenomenal. Every sort of bread, cheese, cold meet, nuts, olives, nibbles, dried or smoked fish, just everything. I was gobsmacked. And the fruit and vegetable section looked much fresher and more inviting than the supermarket. I'd love to have somewhere like this to do my weekly shopping even if it was a bit crazy and busy with people moving around all over the place and getting in your way and huffing and puffing at me just because I wanted to stand in the middle of the aisle and take photographs.

Jon and Kristina live in a nice suburb on Port Philip Bay, called Elwood, not too far from St. Kilda. They live about a minute's walk from the beach which is perfect for Jon who's a keen windsurfer and can just carry his rig over the road and through the park. They've made lots of nice friends locally and whilst Jon and Toby went for a sail on the windsurfers, Kristina and I went for a civilised drink at a local bar with a couple of Kristina's friends. I have to admit that despite the cold I was tempted to windsurf. I even took my wetsuit with me but having not seen Kristina since June last year I was keen to spend some time with her.

That evening Jon & Kristina invited Luke and Kate around for dinner. Luke and Kate are yet more friends of ours who decided to move to Melbourne. What is it with Melbourne that has made everyone suddenly want to go live there? I mean it's nice and everything but it's not that great. I liked it because it was cold and city-like, with older buildings and a bit of character. But I wonder if I lived there if the novelty of that would wear off and I'd start thinking it would be really nice to live somewhere a bit quieter and warmer and with a nice beach, like the Sunshine Coast. Anyway, it was nice to catch up with Kate and Luke too and the dinner was scrumptious: morrocan chicken with figs or dates or something. Or were the figs and dates in the ice cream Kristina made? It was all yummy anyway.

L-R: Kristina, Kate, Luke (and me - kind of looks like his head is directly on top of mine), Toby and Jon, wearing an oven glove in case you were wondering what that weird white thing is.

Kate got very excited when I told her that I was taking a photograph to put on my website and made me promise to email her the link. Unfortunately I can't for the life of me remember where I put her email address. Although, I imagine if it really was a case of doing it to save my life I'd remember. Sorry, Kate, I hope I get this to you somehow.

The next day Jon very kindly offered to drive us around some wineries. We headed out towards Mornington Peninsula, stopping on the way to check out the famous brightly coloured Brighton Beach huts, which are very cool. I pondered the pressure that must be upon the owners to have the grooviest beach huts and I wonder if there are guidelines as to how they have to be maintained. One of them even had the Australian flag painted onto it.

Brighton Beach Huts: brightly coloured!

Mornington Peninsula was beautiful. I was very excited by all the autumn leaves as I haven't experienced proper seasons for such a long time. In Queensland the leaves fall off the trees all year round and they seem to go from green to yellow to brown, completely missing out the red bit which is the prettiest. We spent some time enjoying the coastline and the countryside but mainly just the wine. It was really good, and brave, of Jon to offer to chaffeur us around. Thanks to our yummy meal and lots of wine the night before no one could actually taste any wines in the first place, which is a shame as apparently it's really nice. We knocked them back anyway and after lunch we really got into it and started actually making purchases. Here's a lovely photo of us outside one particularly nice winery, our arms full of bottles of wine.

Nice leaves, nice friends, nice wine.

After dinner that evening Toby and I had one more friend to catch up with. Pete's in a band and so lives the life of a night-owl which is considerably different to how Toby and I live. Nevertheless, despite a day on the booze, another big scrummy dinner courtesy of Jon and Kristina (asparagus pasta this time....mmmmm), and just being generally knackered, we dragged ourselves out with Pete. We didn't regret it. He took us to The Espy in St. Kilda where we watched a band called The Nudist Funk Orchestra or something. Thankfully, they weren't nude but they were funky.

Our last day in Melbourne was spent just chilling and wandering around J&K's neighbourhood. Someone had suggested we go to see the penguins on some island in the bay but that seemed like a long way to go so we went to see March of the Penguins instead. It was lovely.

That's all for now folks. Sorry for another long post. As usual, there are more photos at http://snapper.cvsdude.com/gallery/linsb/v/20060425_MelbourneAnzacDayWeekend