The not at all accidental tourist

I can't undo the lid. It's stuck. Has it really been that long ? Finally with an exerted twist the lid comes of the deodorant and with a determined push on the roller I can finally use it.

The holiday is over.

Just like that as soon as it started it seemed to end.

And instead of just posting pictures and comments on activities completed, this time we will critically examine "the Tourist"

image courtesy of  shake-speares-bible.com

Lets start with the driving tourist, their behavior during the holiday is incredible. Why people drive stupidly and do things that during the working week they would never contemplate is beyond me.

- speeding up in the overtaking sections so no one over takes them and then slow back down to 85kph once its back to single lanes
- overtaking in a zone that is beyond dangerous on roads they are not familiar with

You can see the driving holiday tourists everywhere, they are the ones that regardless of the weather their determination to do as much as possible is matched only by their determination to push you out of the way to get then best photo.

Some other more amusing things we noted :

- You should not get your son to go for a run if you are only going to follow him in the car with the dog hanging out the window

- I still don’t know how you can run and chew gum at the same time without choking to death on the first hill

- The attitude of small business owners in small towns ranging from the over friendly to the” I prefer it when there are no people around “

and yes I will charge $1.77 for a litre of petrol because you actually need it.

I was however delighted to see that the speed which kids form new relationships hasn't waned as they grow older. That's one thing I hope the guys never grow out of.

I did note after arriving home from a Farmers market one Sunday morning that once again I had fallen for the "try this it's great - you'll love it" and bought another unusual sauce which will spend the the next 3 years in the cupboard right next to the exotic stir fry oil.

I also realised I was not going to get as much of that stick peperoni  I bought as I discover the kids hacking off large chunks 10 minutes after it arrived home. But at least their palates are going to be expanded.

So as the holiday drew to an end and we all shared our favorite moments, we did discover an interesting fact - that you can deliver bad news to anyone if straight after you burst into the Benny Hill theme.

Go on try it....

Sorry sir you have Hydrophobia - da da da dadada na nana etc......

Don't try this at home - lessons from some one who knows

Apparently there are eight  principles of learning as set down by Educational Psychologists and Pedagogues, these are (in no set order) :

readiness, exercise, effect, primacy, recency, intensity, freedom and requirement.

As a side note here something I didn't know - Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction. 


But I digress.

I sit quietly as the tears stream down my cheeks and I reflect on my inability to learn. How did it happen again ?I fit all of the eight principles so what went wrong ? How did I get here yet again ? I replay the steps in my mind  and realise that these are amateur mistakes that just shouldn't be made.

The first time was back when I was trying to impress my wife to be whilst we were at our favourite restaurant for a nice noodle soup and conversation not only did I manage to get chili in my eyes but I followed it up with a good dose of lemon juice. My eyes puffed up, went red and I looked like Twilight saga fan who has just been told Taylor Lautner is now married.
So the entire time was spent trying to clean out my eye and suffice to say not much conversation other than "Are you sure you're OK ?" went on.

At least this time it was just onion. And I had taken precautions - I had washed the onions under running water which supposedly stops the vapours that cause you to cry be released. But once again like before I had taken my finger - all coated and primed and jabbed it in my eye to relive a perceived itch.

Image courtesy of slashfood.com

As I wait and gently wash my eye with cool water I cast my mind back to all the other "Don't do this" moments in my life.

- Get on a rowing machine after a hot dog and a beer at "O" week at University, turns out your vomit reflex is really close to the diaphragm, so after exertion the body just empties itself. I didn't make the rowing team either......

- Pull apart secateurs while holding them in front of your face. Seems they have a few safety precautions built and as I rotated them and kept up my attempts to pull them apart one half neatly sprung off and pierced my lip and embedded itself into my gum. So off to hospital we went. My wife still claims to this day I'll do anything to get out of gardening.

- Pull mussels off the pier with bare hands. It seems that even if you grab them gently they are designed to defend them selves by being razor sharp all the way around. The tiny yet prolific cuts they leave behind really only become apparent the next day. When you can't clench a fist any more or hold your cutlery......

Image courtesy of blog.smalladventures.net

- Attempt to saw rubber water pipes with a hacksaw when they apparently have steel wire re-enforcing inside them. This will cause the hacksaw to catch and then bounce out and come down on your finger you were using to guide the blade and sever a good chunk of you finger nail and slice into the finger. The sheer shock of this one (surprise and then searing pain) was enough to convince me to use an angle grinder on everything for about a month afterwards.

- If you take hot trays out of the oven with a wet cloth it turns out the heat from the tray turns the water in to steam vapour which will leave some marks behind. It just goes to show that rushing in a kitchen isn't a good strategy.
For all of you who know that I cook regularly - contain your howls of dismay, this one is not  recent experience. I use it to illustrate a point.

My eye feels a little better and my nose seems to have stopped resembling Victoria Falls, so I guess I'm good to go. Until I have another learning experience of course.

I wonder which of the eight principles I'm at right now ?

Entertaining. It's like flying a plane you know

My earliest memories of dinner parties that my parents held are my sister and I getting up early  the morning after when the sophistication has gone and all that's left is some  Carrs Water crackers with a slice off egg and a small teaspoon of fish roe on top. The "caviar" has stained the egg slightly black but it's still a mouthful of adulthood - snuck while they are still asleep. The remnants are cleaned up quietly and the room is done.

The next room holds a a treasure trove of half finished deserts, dirty coffee cups with their rims gently marked with lipstick of all shades and in the center of the table - the ultimate prize - Tulip After dinner mints. The rectangle white box and the mint - in a small brown envelope - was what we were here for. You could sit up in the big chairs around the table and slide the mint out of the envelope and then put the envelope back in the box. The perfect crime.

After all how were they going to remember how many had been eaten ?

The rooms still smelt faintly of cigarette smoke and stale perfume. All of which to us was just another example of complete sophistication.

The diner parties were strictly off limits whilst they were in full swing. If you were going to interrupt it you better have either Ebola or have been the victim of a shark attack. Children were to be not seen and certainly not heard

My parents were the masters of entertaining, everything was perfect, from the gold rimed Noritake dinner set to the individually polished silver cutlery. The guests would arrive and champagne corks and polite laughter would pepper the evening, and then after a while they would all move from the lounge room to the dining room to consume delights prepared earlier.

Image courtesy of http://3.bp.blogspot.com

Well that was the 70's and 80's. Fast forward to today and the pressure to entertain well is akin to being a pilot of a 747. One wrong move and lives are at stake.

I'm blessed to be married to a woman whose attention to detail makes OCD look like a common cold so I'm ahead of the crowd from the start. But don't think that makes it any easier, nowadays Masterchef and every other TV chef proclaim to be able to make even The Incredible Hulk able to cook up a five course meal in 30 minutes or less. So the expectation is already set.

And to make matters worse the meals have to good for you as well, because the minute you re-create Adrian Richardson's Crackling Wrapped Pork Roast  with mash and tarragon salad, some one pipes up with the calorie count and the next thing you know the forks start going down on the table.

Now days portion control is a major point of contention. Serve up an American portion and you'll be howled down, serve a big plate with the food as a desert island swimming in an ocean of sauce and people will look to you for assurances that there a  lot more courses to come. You simply can't win.

There's now even a movement of people who only use ingredients that are transported  less than 100 kms away from where they are, which is fine but that would mean I would have to start keeping cows and banana trees in the park around the corner. Which would be pretty hilarious watching all the people walking their dogs in the park trying to stop them from eating cow pats.

image courtesy of gorenm.com

Anyway entertaining has certainly changed and if the people you are inviting over have even the remotest interest in food and you don't want them to get  Social Commitment Phobia when you invite them over, you can't just slap some Coles sausages on plates and hope for the best.

No,  you are going to have to do research, preparation and planning. Which means you have to get all those cookbooks down from the shelf and read them.

Again I'm luckily ahead of most people as we have been given a plethora of cookbooks over the years from which to research from. I often wonder with all the millions of cook books purchased/gifted if anybody actually makes dishes out of them (besides us) or are they simply used as a conspicuous display of knowledge.

So next time your better half says " Hey we should have our friends /family over for [insert occasion here] " I'd think twice especially if they don't like Coles sausages....

The Art of the Practical Joke - A Dads perspective

Tormenting
                  Practical Jokes
                                         Gags
                                               Pranks
                                                        Trolling

Call it what you want. From a very young age we learn that there is humor to be found in seeing others confused by what they thought should be - but isn't.

It started when I was very young, my Dad would look behind me and exclaim that he had seen parrots out the window and when we turned around to look, vital parts of our dinner went missing. He still does it and now with the kids he has had an new audience. They catch on quick so you gotta stay sharp.

Mind you he once said to the Bride to Be, there was no way she could carry two bales of hay up to the cows in a paddock, the bales were grabbed belligerently and off she marched. Boy did we laugh watching her struggle away with a bale in each hand up the lane(they weigh about 15kgs each). She still married me.

Anyway, I took to this new found wonder like a duck to water. Practical jokes appealed especially to me as I love to laugh and the jokes often have an element of engineering and physics to them. Buckets of water balanced on doors, buckets of water thrown out windows the spiders swinging down on fishing lines, the fake amputated finger in a matchbox, the list is endless.

I was always open to new ideas and would search for jokes in everyday situations. I went to magic stores and I saved my pocket money to buy all sorts of gags. Paper that went into a tooth brush to stain your teeth, joke soft drinks, fake gum - they all went into my bag of tricks.

Its important to note that you should under no circumstances use fake cola on your mother who is trying to sleep after a night shift at the hospital.

On I went trying everything and anything. It got to the point where in order to keep my edge, I took a Mars bar that my sister was saving, removed the chocolate bar, then filled the pack with sand so it resembled the mars bar in weight and feel. But the look on her face when it was opened was priceless.

All these were done in front of an audience, because with out that there was no point.. There needs to be viewers to your grand mastery. That is where the satisfaction comes from.

As the loyal readers know it all ended abruptly one day for my sister during this incident so I had to find a new audience.

Where better than your workplace. It's a whole new world of potential victims and not to mention the audience reach. I can remember at one office, we organised a DVD copy of a movie that one of the managers really wanted, but the video on it was the behind the scenes footage from the "Men of NRL Calendar".

The same workplace once waited for the manager to ride his bike home so we could replace his suit and clothes for the next day with a dress. So when he rode back the next day that was all he had to wear.....
Being the good sort he was he put it on.

See how easy it is ?    Now days I select my targets based on the joke.

I do it to The Organised One when I'm  feeling dangerous.
I once got a jug of water and stood on the toilet and then poured the water in to the toilet from a height while pretending to groan in pain.

I do it to the kids when I can.
Picture this - Junior is complaining about a bad smell and I tell him that he can get his nostrils to close by sticking his fingers in his ears and breathing in quickly. My delivery was so good Mr Elder who claims to be an expert at detecting when I'm fooling, put his fingers in his ears and started breathing heavily.

Mind you it kinda back fired once when I pretended to see something interesting in a drain hole and I was going to say "boo" to Mr Elder when he looked in. Trouble was he lent over so far that he fell in head first.
Luckily there was sand at the bottom of the drain so there was no damage, but his little legs were waiving out the top furiously and it made me laugh out loud.
When I pulled him out of the hole - he absolutely gave it to me.

I secretly still laugh at this one.

I've lost count at the number of times they come to me with a bump or scrape and I proclaim it to be Ebola or that we need to go to the hospital to amputate straightaway.

I know that these are minor compared to movies such as Jackass and shows like Punk'd that take it to a whole new level, but I'm a Dad and I know I'm expected to always think about the outcomes. I spend 99% of my day reminding the minions that everything they do has ramifications and think carefully before you do something stupid, so I have to live by the same rules.

And on the flip side I also am absolutely a great victim of jokes. I encourage the minions to practice on me on any occasion.
And it is true that recently The Organised one slide a plastic coat hanger along the ground causing me to jump in the air and squeal like a girl who has just seen her first cockroach.

So I will continue to tell terrible jokes in front of their friends, I will continue to try and prank them whenever I can.

I'd like to say I do it to teach them that people will always try to get the better of you and you should watch out in the world, but the reality is I just like to laugh

Admit it dearest , you love {TV show I don't want to watch}

I got caught laughing whilst not watching Offspring* and it reminded me of how often when I sit down to not watch a television show that I don't want to watch, I wind up; well kind of enjoying it.


On a weekend the TV will be going in the background whilst the family catches up on the stuff that didn't get done during the week and the kids will often have Scooby Doo or some other cartoon on. 


And before I know it we are having a discussion about the show along the lines of :


"how come Fred doesn't notice how Daphne feels about him "

and 


"why doesn't Shaggy just tell Scooby Doo about Velma and him ?

It's not that I dislike Scooby Doo , I just don't deliberately set aside time to watch it, yet when it's on I stop and watch and chuckle at every "and I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you meddling kids"


The same goes for all the RomComs that are on such as Winners and Losers and the rest of them. I grumble and groan about the mere suggestion of them being watched , because I want to watch something else (even though I don't know what that is.) But once they're on I find myself watching. 


As a keen amateur psychologist, I have decided I do this because I am comparing my life with these peoples lives and ensuring mine is perfect compared to theirs.

Case closed.






*For all my overseas readers = Offspring is a TV serial about an female obstetrician who has completely dysfunctional relationships with men and a family who rely on her completely to fix all their problems and communicate with each other. 


Its just like me except she has a brother and I don't.