Apparently I Woke Up in the Middle East This Morning aka Facebook Fail

After escaping the constant "not yets" in Qatar (i.e. Stranger/Colleague: Do you have children?  Me: No.  Stranger/Colleague: Oh, not yet.  Soon inshallah.), it seems that they have caught up to me in the UK.  Logging into Facebook this morning, my first targeted ad was for IVF in Norway.  Really? 

Dear Facebook,

I am married but I am 28 years old.  It is ok not to have children.

Thanks and regards,
Anonymous Expat

Dirty PPE, Dirty Minds

Guys who spend the majority of their time around guys, or women who look like guys, really can’t get their minds out of the gutter.

I told Anonymous Friend that I got a new harness and that we really needed to go try it out one night.

His jaw dropped and his eyes lit up while his brand new girlfriend gave me a huge stink eye.

Seriously Anonymous Friend?  Do you not remember H, the guy twice your size with whom you spend a huge amount of your waking hours?  You know, the guy who I’m very happily married to?

Obviously next time I need to specify that my new harness is one of these:

for rock climbing.  You know, the activity that H and I do with Anonymous Friend on a weekly basis. 

Not one of these:

 

Maybe Anonymous Friend can try that kind of harness out with his new girlfriend.  But please leave me out of it.

Anonymous Officemate Strikes Again

Friday afternoon, my office phone rang with a number I didn’t recognize.  I picked up to hear the all too familiar voice of Anonymous Officemate.

AO:  “Anonymous Expat?  It’s Anonymous Officemate, I was hoping you could do me a favour.”

AE:  “Sure, what do you need?”

AO:  “Well, I locked myself in the stairwell.  I was hoping you could come let me out?”

It seemed that Anonymous Officemate had decided to burn off some calories by doing a few minute jog up and down the stairwell at the office.  While he brought along his cell phone for his impromptu exercise session, he forgot his ID card which he needed to swipe on the door lock to get back into the office.  I briefly contemplated bringing his chair and laptop to the stairwell to make it his new office.  After all, he is way beyond his three strikes and has already been imaginarily banished.  Instead I took the long way to the stairwell.  I may have also stopped for a fresh cup of coffee along the way.  Hey, I let him out and I let him back into the office.  And in reward for my efforts I was treated to the daily rundown of his food diary for the past 24 hours on the walk back to our office.  Wow, I briefly forgot how not fun he is during the few minutes of peace I had while he was locked in the stairwell.  I’m currently accepting applications for new officemates.

Carbohydrates are the Devil

For lunch today, H graciously packed me a container of leftover ziti, tomato sauce, cannellini beans, bread crumbs and a generous grating of mozzarella cheese.  I took it to the kitchen at work to heat up and returned with the steaming container of carbohydrate goodness to my desk to eat.  My Anonymous Officemate, who I have been unable to banish despite his three strikes, looked up from his desk with huge eyes to identify the source of the intoxicating smell.  Seeing it was a hearty container full of pasta, he took the time to tell me about his severely limited carbohydrate intake since the first of the year.  I was fortunate enough to learn that since January 1^st, 2011, my properly sized, not fat officemate has:

• Eaten pasta for dinner once, as his Friday night ‘treat.’
• Not eaten any bread whatsoever.
• Eaten an eighth of a cup of bran with a large serving of nectarines, apricots and other fruit for breakfast everyday.
• Eaten a salad for lunch everyday; I big-heartedly refrained from warning him about the copious amounts of fat that might be lurking in his salad dressing.
• Eaten a baseball sized piece of protein for dinner every night and filled the rest of his plate with vegetables.

Thanks to this, he has lost two full kilos since the start of 2011, off of his already fit frame.  I refrained from pointing out that he neglected to include his alcohol intake, the amount of full fat milk he consumes in his 3+ coffees per work day, or his consumption of an entire homemade Pavlova on Australia Day from his meticulously relayed food diary.  I’m so nice, I know.  I did however tell him that I had already eaten pasta twice this week and that one of those meals was homemade baked ziti pizza with sausage.  I then proceeded to pull out my homemade chocolate chip cookie to await its last minutes before entering my mouth on my desk, in full tantalizing view of Anonymous Officemate.  I’m sorry Anonymous Officemate, I have no imaginary extraneous weight to lose and I ♥ bread, pasta and chocolate.

How Was Your Weekend?

After almost a year in Perth, I’m starting to notice a trend in typical responses to the recurring Monday morning question of “how was your weekend?”  Please tell me if there is anywhere else in the world (apart from college campuses) where the responses would be as aligned towards over imbibing and hangovers as today’s responses were to my polite queries about my colleagues’ weekends.  Keep in mind that the average age of my colleagues is closer to 40 than 30…

• “Well, I had a few too many beers on Friday so I spent the rest of the weekend recovering, but you know, it was all in good fun.”

• “I got totally pissed on Saturday and boy was Sunday tough.  It was worth it though, Saturday was great!”

• “Saturday afternoon we had a barbi in the park and you know, after a few beers, I really couldn’t be bothered watching the kids for the rest of the weekend.  You know it’s tough keeping up with them all day when you’ve had a few too many.”

• “I hit the Coronas a bit too hard but what else are you going to do on a hot day?”

• “I was planning on going to Rotto (a local island) for the weekend but after Friday night’s happy hour, I couldn’t make the Saturday morning ferry.”

One of the few exceptions to the above was the head of my group who declared that she had, “found an amazing sounding diet pill from an infomercial over the weekend but then felt a bit like a drug dealer when she went out and bought mass amounts of it to share with all of her friends.”

Oh Anonymous Colleagues, I could overlook your fondness for carrying and using pocket breathalysers, your penchant for wearing heavy wool coats and thick scarves in 20 degree Celsius winters, your love of abbreviating words and adding “o” and “y” endings, and perhaps even your love of meat pies at morning tea, but I’m starting to think that you all have a few roos loose in the top paddock.

And on a sidenote, how can my one other Anonymous American Colleague think I’m Canadian, especially almost a year of working with me?  Perhaps she needs to lay off the alcohol as well, eht?

Hello My Name is Anonymous Expat and I Am Not an Alcoholic

Today I met with my manager (M) for my full-year review.  It was going well, with good feedback, high ratings, and great ideas for next year when to wrap up the discussion, M asked how I’m doing in Australia as a ‘work widow.’  He asked if I have a good support network here and wanted to make sure that I’m not keeping company with a bottle of gin?!?

Maybe this is a weird Aussie way to show interest in employees’ personal lives?  Maybe I should have said yes, but it’s not my husband’s work / life balance that drives me to drink, but my own poor work / life balance due to the ridiculous hours my group is demanded to work.  Perhaps that would have gotten me some time off?

I’m just trying to figure out why M would ever think that unless it was just him being awkward talking about something not work related.  Especially as I:

• Didn’t put forth as a safety share what a good idea pocket breathalyzers are to check whether or not you should be driving home from after work drinks (as another manager in my group actually suggested).
• Didn’t attend the group holiday party where I was told that all of my colleagues drank near their body weights in cheap tequila and danced on the pool table by the bar en masse, in front of the company CFO.
•  Have never come to work hung over or smelling of alcohol (per some Australian colleagues).  Actually, I have never even been hung over in Australia.
• Haven’t come back pissed (aka drunk) from a work lunch with external participants (per some Australian managers).
• Never have more than one or two beers at work happy hours.  Clearly if I don't drink in excess with my coworkers on a weekly basis, it must mean that I drink in excess by myself because no one in WA can drink in moderation.

Maybe you’ve been watching too many episodes of Packed to the Rafters M but my name is Anonymous Expat and I am not an alcoholic.  And if I was, my drink of choice certainly wouldn’t be gin.