Sunday, October 11, 2009

a little tale to hold you over

i know it is impossible to cover the ground between the weeks we've been in this apartment, in our new jobs, in our new lives, and today, my Monday off. So instead, within the next couple of blogs, i will touch on some of the highlights that are sticking out in my memory, peppered with some of the cultural differences we've been clumsily navigating through... 

Let's begin with one of my favorite stories i think i've ever heard from one of my new friends. It will take a little creativity to imagine the story told in context, quite casually, in the accent it was given, as well as a little trust just to believe that it all actually happened. 

So i got off of work around 1:30a Friday morning. If you've worked in a restaurant or a bar you know how much you need a drink when you get done serving drinks to drunk, obnoxious strangers... and this necessity for such a drink was probably one of the worst i could remember. Thursday nights are when the kids come out, apparently. i spent my tipless hours at work serving 18 year-old children drinks while they shook their shameless bodies to the terrible renditions of 90's ballads past (ballads i am fairly certain these kids were infants during... imagine checking an id and looking for a birthday before 1992 before you serve the baby-faced, child prostitute giggling like a goldfish in front of you a vodka, raspberry soda, or worse yet, an RTD like a cola and bourbon already bottled and ready to be served, er Ready To Drink). Needless to say, i felt old and slightly over qualified for such a job. And i needed a drink. Maybe several because the free staffie i was served after work did nothing for my foul mood. 

So i headed to a much sadder establishment of Kiwi youth on display in napkin-clothes, climbing on tables, and drinking their nasty vodka, lemon/lime, and bitter concoctions with a kid called Johnny from Newcastle (places don't really have to close here till like 4a). After discovering the tragic absence of Maker's Mark behind the bar, i asked for what i thought was a simple Jameson, and soda water with a twist of lemon. After being told that they only had lime, i accepted the latest disappointment and said that would be fine. Then the bastard proceeded to put lime cordial in my fucking whiskey drink. Lime cordial is some fun novelty people like to pour into everything they put in their mouthes (including beer). Then the same bastards have the audacity to make fun of us for drinking 3.5%alcoholic beer out of a can! Oh how i wish i could fly my entourage here for two days to haul around to the bars and show people how things should be done...

Anyways, if you've never talked to someone from Newcastle you should know that the English country is very, very close to Scotland and therefore the accent sounds Scottish but sprinkled with some of the most ridiculous phrases you've ever heard a human utter. Johnny lives in a closet (The Harry Potter Closet) of an 11 bedroom house down the street from us with a bunch of kids that i work with... an upgrade from the tent he lived in for a year in Australia. So Johnny casually began a story about when he went on holiday with his mates to Greece...

...The story begins with him absolutely pissed (they just say pissed instead of like piss drunk) at a party with some strangers. Somehow, someone poses the idea of a nighttime skinny-sip in the sea. Sounding like a good idea at the time, the group heads to the beach and hits the water, clothes on the shore... Unfortunately for our new friend, the Grecian police show up shortly to enforce the law. No big deal, right? This isn't a barbaric country where one needs to fear for his life from the police... Well, it turns out that our new friends had decided to dip on the beach of "some eco-friendly turtle beach where they go to lay their eggs" and pedestrians are not allowed to frolic about mindlessly pissed out of their gourds naked in the ocean. After being beaten, yes beaten, by the police Johnny was allowed to put his school-girl mini skirt back on (oh, had i forgotten to mention that the group was at a themed party?) and was quickly taken to prison. In a foreign country. Where he was beaten some more and thrown into a cell with his two new friends, also wearing nothing but mini skirts... sans undies, mind you. After the first night while his new mates had a good cry, the boys thought they were being released. No, no... he was separated from the other teary two and placed in a cell, in his skirt, with three giant men. Luckily they were good-hearted Christians who wanted to convert him and although hungry and thirsty with no food or water for the next two days, he was fairly unharmed. After begging his friends to post his bail and promising to pay them back he was released and although the court interpreter refused to interpret the story of how he was punched in the face and beaten by the police, he was free. Then his mate's mum calls from Newcastle. "Is everything alright? What's been going on?" "Oh everything is fine. No news." "Nothing happened with Johnny?" "No. No." "It's in the National Newspapers. It's everywhere. They're saying he was apprehended for a protest..." You can still google his name and the name of the city he was in and read about it. i can't remember any of those necessary details, of course, but they're there just the same. 

Maybe you have to be here, maybe you have to hear him tell it, but honestly, i thought it was good enough to write down. Still makes me laugh out loud. 

Haha, promise to post at least one more blog before my weekend (Mon-Wed) is over...

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