AFL Withdrawal

It is 2.15 on a Friday afternoon. The students have left. One of the benefits of working here is that we finish early on Fridays, we can go by 2pm if not sneak out even earlier.  What is not a benefit is that sometimes, like today, we have to do PD on Friday afternoons and SATURDAYS!!!!!

This sucks arse big time, just to lose a Saturday sucks arse but what really sucks arse is that tomorrow is the 29^th September.  The PD starts at 9.30 am, exactly the time that the live coverage of the AfL Grand Final begins.

I’m not a massive footy head. I have friends and family who have followed the whole season with far more dedication than I have. But I really like watching live games and I really like watching the GF.  I really like watching Buddy Franklin (and maaaany other individuals; Harry O’Brien, Eddie Betts, Juddy, all the Joey’s legends….but they’re unfortunately not playing) Who wouldn’t enjoy the spectacle, usually it is a very social event, lots of people, alcohol, food, alcohol, yelling at the TV, more food and alcohol. Sometimes people fall off things, or over things- not necessarily because they’re cheering hard.  And it’s Aussie. It’s our tradition, my tradition, to watch it with drink in hand trying really hard to concentrate despite feeding my very short attention span vodka. To feel a sense of mateship and appreciate big, beautifully shaped men chase a ball and each other displaying athleticism, grace and violence. My favorite place to watch it was at my friends’ house in Jan Juc. The match coincided with Gordo’s birthday, so he generally had a bottle of birthday grog to dispose of.  But he was not always the one to fall over. We’d have great food and great peeps and big discussions, about footy and surf and the holidays and the dread of term 4 and I loved it. In the early days people would continue till they fell off or over things, climbed things, got lost or passed out. Later days involved eating and drinking, women chasing kids around while men developed tunnel vision and pretended they didn’t have partners or kids. One year we all ended up lying around in that curious stage of long term drinking that makes you feel both drunk and hungover at the same time, watching Tele-Tubbies with some of the kids. And eating chips and chocolate and cheese that had been sitting around all day. But always we were together and sharing the experience and loving footy.

And last year I got to go to the Grand Final for the first, and probably the last, time in my life. It’s hard to get tickets so I tried really hard to appreciate it even though it was last minute and ridiculously freezing for September and I had been on a drinking binge in Juc the night before. I had to drive back to Melbourne through hail then try and find as many warm clothes as I could hiding at mum and dad’s and as a result I went to the Collingwood-Cats GF wearing tights, trackie pants, hiking boots, a thermal, a flanny, gloves and a ski jacket. I looked like I had just emerged from hiking trip through the Grampians that involved mad Bunyips dragging me through the bush then getting me drunk. Luckily, my last minute spare ticket was for the corporate section where all the guys were in suits and ties and the women were in designer skinny jeans, sky high heels, perfect hair and makeup and none of them looked like they’d been partying with mad Bunyips.

Once the siren went however and I saw some of my old Joey’s boys running through the banner, and I knocked back three pints of cider, I loved every freezing minute of it and will remember it forever. Especially ‘cause the Cats beat the Pies.

So last Saturday, after having had a pretty hard couple of months (no, that does not include beaching in Lagos..), I got to watch the semi-final with some fellow Aussies while we sat around chopping a thousand kilos of tomatoes, eggplants, onions and garlic to make relish. Earlier I had made the odd FB comment that I started watching the footy in my undies (and that Buddy Franklin was welcome in there anytime..), I’d like to clarify that was before I went visiting these new friends…Once dressed and as respectable as it gets I went to the relish extravaganza and had one of the best mornings I’ve had since I’ve been in Turkey and it alleviated some of my homesickness. Because I am homesick, which has caught me by surprise, I miss Australia and my life there. I miss the island and the random insanity of it. I miss my friends and my clifftop track. I miss the open spaces and the bush and the beach. I miss my volatile Pajero. I miss driving and the Tiwi dinner club and the food and the coffee. I miss gluten free bread and the quiet and the stars. But last Saturday, hanging with some really cool new friends watching the footy and bawling my eyes out form the onions was Aussie awesome. So I was very excited about being able to do something similar tomorrow. Instead, I will be sitting in a conference hall, listening to really loud Turkish being translated into really loud English through headphones telling me all about Learning styles. And by “listening” I mean streaming the footy and checking FB and my emails and maybe writing another blog. I am a Global Learner after all, I learn best by doing more than one at once. So I guess I’ll learn a lot. And you bastards in Oz or watching the GF somewhere in the world better FB me so I don’t feel so homesick! And Go Hawks!

The Necessities.

Well. It has been an interesting “orientation” to my new school and home.

The school campus is a long way from anywhere. It’s on the Asian side of Istanbul which is now the “cool” side because it is very much a less touristy region than the Euro side. Because of the isolation we have to rely on school service buses which go to various places at various times or use the local buses – we haven’t had time to get onto those yet, so I can describe that inevitable getting lost experience at a later time. So sometimes the service buses go to the local shopping centre, it has supermarkets, an “Electro World”, some restaurants and clothes shops, you can get most things you need, although not a lot of things you want.. There are various other shopping centers such as IKEA where everyone buys everything to furnish their homes so they all look the same. They also run to other suburbs and into the Euro side some days. This means of course that:

 a) It’s great that we have our own, free transport system and we should shut the hell up and not complain and

b) We are totally reliant on a bus service in terms of where and when we go and when we return. Which has made a few of us feel very much like caged, restless, ungrateful guinea pigs.

There is always a taxi option but they are notoriously sleezy and not really any more likely to know where you’re going than you are. Which means it can take ages to get anywhere and often involves the driver pulling over 3-4 times to ask other taxi drivers, random pedestrians etc to get directions. Sometimes they even make phone calls – god know who to.

So during this period of orientation we had to work through a week – including our weekend- listening to a baffling amount of information that we will never remember about how we have to pay for phones being registered and for screen doors if we want to keep the monster mozzies out while not getting paid for six weeks and not getting paid for the exhausting orientation period at all. About which buses we could catch to places we can’t remember the name of and also can’t remember why they suggested we go there in the first place. Is there a fresh food market? Is it where we catch a ferry to the Euro side? Is it where we take our phones to be registered? Is there a fucking BAR????

And soooo sleep deprived. Because one of the advantages of living here is that it’s so close to the new airport – we can fly to lots of places if we ever get paid and get to have a weekend where we don’t work. So with this advantage comes the constant, constant, all day and night despite supposed time restrictions noise rushing, buzzing, roar of planes over our heads. The varying degrees of noise and proximity passing over head reminds you of either travel or to duck the fuck under your desk or bed because this mother is about to land immediately on top of you.

Then, after the working days and weeks there was the constant need to go shopping for essentials like sheets, towels, fans, toilet paper, food ( if there was enough time) . Racing around Ikea and huge supermarkets like we were in some kind of demented trolley filling race yelling at each other as we raced passed: Where did you get the clothes horse? Has anyone found peanut butter?  Coathangers? Coathangers? I NEED COATHANGERS!!!!! Scanning passing trollies with fear of the forgotten or jealousy over something someone else found that you know you will not have time to get. In fatigue falling into the Ikea deathtrap of buying crazy shit you don’t need even more readily. Nope, don’t have any sheets or pillows but do have a food screen thing to put over cakes I don’t bake or eat. 

Seriously, I don’t really love shopping at the best of times, but this kind of shopping under time constraints when exhausted and confused and not speaking the language was pretty overwhelming.

But now. I have sheets and towels. I have a phone that works and essentials in the fridge – like 4 types of hot chilli sauce, dried chillies and ginger..I have coffee. I have vodka. I have a heap of Lush products I didn’t really need but smell amazing. And there is a chance, a reasonable chance, that next weekend I don’t have to go shopping at all, the plan is to get shitfaced Friday night, go visit an island and lie around and swim all day Saturday and veg out in front of the new TV drinking wine on Sunday. No shops, no buses, bliss. 

To See or not to See?

In Essaouira, coastal Morocco, there are “wallists”. These are young men who lean on walls or wander laps around the Medina or kick the soccer ball around the beach trying to get the attention of a suitable woman. A not-Moroccan woman, perhaps a little older, perhaps cashed up enough to provide some apartment living in exchange for being half of a couple. There are a few other terms for this type of “career”. These current wallists obviously haven’t been too successful, it’s towards the end of the tourist season here and there and they’re still wandering around apartment/girlfriend-less. I think it’s to do with the stupid hat one dread-locked guy is wearing and his poor wallist friends are suffering from his shit fashion sense. I have not found them particularly appealing, and they, clearly have not found me so, there have been no calls of “bon jour”, “Hola” or “Excuse me” that pepper the street as I walk by and vendors anticipate getting some dirhams out of my wallet. Which is far more likely to happen than me putting them up in an apartment.

I think the general feeling was summed up yesterday on the beach, I was with a few girls watching some women (Aussie and English) do an arty sandy thing on the beach – I can think of a lot better ways to spend a Sunday morning but no one is drinking here so I think that’s why people end up doing sand art. Anyway, a Moroccan guy came up uninvited and looked us – with a total lack of subtlety- up and down. For quite an uncomfortably long time. Then he announced his judgment that the curvy blonde to my left was “The best” and tried to encourage her to consider being his 4^th wife. She politely declined. Then he turned to the girl next to me who had “beautiful milky skin” and tried his fabulous wit and charm on her. Both these girls are already married to Moroccan men. So he turned to me: “You! (pinching me around my stomach) Not much camels for you! Too skinny – you help me get one of these girls”. I less politely declined being his pimp. He was not impressed with me at all. Seriously? At least I’m not cruising strangers on the beach for spouse number 5 (as if one isn’t ever ENOUGH!!). 

So I am not particularly camel-worthy. Which is fine, I am not a curvy blonde with milky skin but I do know I have a few other qualities that might be appreciated. I guess the problem is you might have to get to know me to see them, they might not be evident on an initial meeting – especially while travelling when I look like I have slept in the sand with a stray cat bunked down in my hair. And this is the catch 22. We don’t want to be superficial and make judgments based on looks. We certainly don’t want to be judged on our looks. But we are.

I have just read Cate Moran’s How To Be A Woman (a must read for all women – and most men), a modern feminist’s “rant” (in the word’s of wise Erin). She ponders the fact that it is mainly women booking in for plastic surgery or some sort of re-jigging/re-youthing of their looks. She believes that not only are women doing this because they are so concerned about their looks, or losing their attractiveness, but that most men don’t seem to notice if anything has been done – so it is, in fact, not only scary in what it suggests about a woman’s identity and value being placed on her looks, but also that it is kind of pointless if they’re doing it for the opposite sex. Of course we really know all beauty adjustments are really done for ourselves. Or for the judgment of other women. She also points out that a lot of re-jigging happens post fertility time in a woman’s life, a connection between society’s perception of us as most attractive – and valuable- in our fertile years. Moran also declares her refusal to have anything re-jigged or re-youthed – she will take glory in hard won wrinkles and sags which are the marks of her very interesting life and motherhood. And I applaud her for that.

But.

I wonder if it is indeed an easier declaration made from one’s home with children and a husband who love you with all the sags and scars and wonky bits. For others it is a harder job to dismiss how other people perceive you. Because we are summed up superficially. I do it : She’s a blonde ditz. He’s a meathead. I wish I didn’t. I love that travel and new places mean you get stuck with people you wouldn’t normally choose to spend time with and discover a whole world of amazingly interesting people. But we still give people the once over. We eye them up and down – whether it’s in terms of possible friends, lovers or colleagues. We all judge people on their camel-worthyness. The wallists are relying on their looks for a means of living and that sounds like a shit gig yet to an extent, most of us have to do that at some part in our lives. We have to dress a certain way for work to be taken seriously (very much a necessity for women) or choose to look a particular way so that those with similar interests will recognize us (Ah Ha! Helloooo fellow Emo dude!! Let’s get together and compare the most effective deodorant when wearing black leather in summer). We primp to attract others.  This is why teenagers desperately believe in love at first sight – that someone will immediately see beyond their looks and awkwardness and insecurities and blemishes and see and love all the amazing inner qualities they have.  That dude on the beach did not see mine but that’s OK cause all I saw were his flaws too – and I don’t want to be traded for a camel anyway. But I will try and be less judgmental and hope that means I get to know more people and be a more inner camel-worthy person as a result. Don’t get me wrong, I won’t be giving up eye-liner or lip gloss, the (very) occasional skirt n heels but ultimately I know- we all do- regardless of what you declare or decide, what you nip or tuck, other than being as nice and healthy as you can, running a rake through your hair every now and again, brushing you or teeth and slapping on a big smile, you really can’t do much else about the way you look anyway.  Camels or no camels.