Late nights, cereal killing and crazy Japanese people

Just when I thought my life couldn’t get any more interesting I found myself in the middle of a drama right out of the script worthy of Blue Heelers. Well worthy of Blue Heelers if it had been set in a tourist information centre (visitor information centre or VICs for those in the biz (in the bus would have been something quite different there wouldn’t it, english is a funny language (is english in that context a proper noun? I imagine it is, but putting everything in lower case on your blog is cool… moby does it on his myspace (his space) anyway)). I think to do the story justice I need to do it in a film noir first person type narration thing… so here goes.

“So there I was, sitting at my desk, leaning back in my chair, the rickety ceiling fan whirring in the background. It was the morning after the night before, or rather the morning after the morning before. The light from the overhead fluorescents was hurting my eyes. The words on the computer screen in front of me blurred into insignificance. The office phone rang… and rang. The usually reliable receptionist was not at her desk. The lobby area was empty. Empty like the black, vacant sockets of a skull. I picked it up. It was Annette. Annette, Annette? Where had I heard the name, it rang like a bell… like a not very big, but somehow significant bell. Like the bell of an icecream truck driving down distant streets… Annette? Who are you Annette? It clicked when she told me. Annette and Ray are volunteers at our visitor information centre. Annette had a case for me. A case requiring the indelicate touch of a brawny, burly male. She was out of breath with concern. A crazy man, crazy like a fox, crazy like a fox on some sort of trance inducing meds, was terrorising the centre. Could I help? Of course.”

Anyway, to cut an increasingly long story short – I had to go to the visitor information centre to deal with a crazed Japanese tourist. He had this whole silent creepy guy thing going – coupled with an unwillingness to break eye contact, or speak to, his target. I quickly became his target. Rescuing our vols from a rather uncomfortable situation and placing myself in the firing line. That wasn’t in my job description. The four female police officers eventually arrived to find me restraining the guy – preventing him chasing our volunteers into the “employees only” area of the centre. It was weird. That guy was weird. The police took him to the hospital. I hope I haven’t caught some sort of contagious super disease because of the guy’s lack of understanding of the concept of personal space. If you’ve seen Shaun of the Dead (or any of the non parody zombie movies) he was just like the vacant looking zombie people, only slightly more animated.

All this topped off a long weekend (not of the three day variety – but a weekend that took a long time) featuring a 4am bedtime this morning because somebody (me) decided it would be easier to stay up for the FOOTBALL (not soccer, I’m following the Fairfax style guide at this point) than it would be to wake up for it. To borrow a well coined Australian phrase… I’m buggered.

I’ve also rediscovered my love for eating breakfast cereal at all hours of the day. Have you noticed all the wonderful new cereals out there – I remember a time when there were only 3 or 4 options… or maybe that was just in our pantry when I was growing up. Speaking of the good ol’ days – have you noticed the price of bottled water in servos these days… ridiculous, and all you hear is people complaining about the price of petrol.