Sven's life in Oz

Friends are great blah blah blah – no room for slushy stuff in this post: the Sleaze Ball! What a fantastic night, and to think I was going to stay at home and have a quiet night in.  All in all it was a funny weekend, and Sleaze was just one of the highlights.

Friday turned out to be a very different day to the one I had planned.  I went to work imagining I would be hard at it until the end of the day, thanks to a deadline on Tuesday and the Labor Day long weekend in between.  It turned out I was finished by midday, so I skipped along to the Faculty of Science PhD poster presentation with the media team, looking for news-friendly research projects.  Yes. it sounds like it could be dull except that (a) I find that kind of thing quite interesting and (b) there was free booze.  Lots of free booze.  After doing the rounds and making our notes, like true media professionals we hit the bar and schmoozed the crowd with drinks in hand.  When we rolled back into the office at 4:45pm it was time to go home, and just as well since there was no way I could have done any work.  Sadly I had a quiet Friday night planned, so I ended up sitting at home slowly getting more and more sober and wallowing in my own loneliness.  What a waste of free champagne.

When I awoke on Saturday morning, mercifully sans hangover, I received a text with an unexpected invitation to the Sleaze Ball at a heavily discounted price.  I still had the crazy (and unjustifiable) loneliness from Friday resting on me so, despite promising myself I would stay home and save money, I leapt at the chance to get out of the house.  With a new objective in my day, I wasted Saturday laying about in my pyjamas (I had planned to clean the flat, buy groceries; you know, do things) until , properly fed and well-oiled with Sauvignon Blanc, it was time to hit the ball.  I donned my costume – my rugby kit – and headed into the night.

Sleaze Ball, for the uninitiated, is just one big dance party.  Normally I’m not a huge fan of dance music – less still people off their minds on pills throwing themselves about to it – but I was assured by my friends that this was not that kind of party.  It was, but I loved it any way.  The music was not as hardcore as I had feared, and there’s something exciting about being in a room with 15,000 others who are just there for a good time.  There were no lairy crazies, no drunken aggression and nobody pinched my ass in the toilet (unlike the previous Wednesday night, when I nearly dived into the urinal in surprise).  I rolled home at about 6am after a reasonable amount of drink, but not enough to cause any kind of hangover.  Go me!  Oh, and did I mention the fact that practically everyone was wearing as little as possible? Check out the photos on Same Same if you don’t believe me.

I spent the rest of the weekend on the sofa watching The Inbetweeners (you should totally watch it) and staying out of the rain.  No great life lessons learned – well, none that I’m going to share on this occasion – just a good few days of fun and fancy dress.  Summer’s on its way and there’ll be more where they came from – you mark my words.

Generally I’m a pretty laid back guy (insert guffaws here) but every now and then I get my knickers in a knot about something, climb on a very high horse and ride it till the legs fall off. Lately I’ve been reserving this panty-twisting tension for work; there’s plenty to get excited about every day. I should write a post on how communication should be thought about at the very start of your project rather than something you can dump on my desk when you are 90% of the way to completion and expect me to work miracles, but I’ll save it for another time. (By the way, I can work miracles, I just choose not to because, well, you don’t deserve it).

The problem about working in Communications is that you have to objectively assess everything that comes across your desk so you can decide what to highlight and what should be buried deeper than Tom Cruise’s sexuality¹. Generally, this means you can see all the cock ups, fudges, missed opportunities and unrealised potential which, for a control freak like me is agonising. If I’ve said “I could have done a better job than these fuckwits” once today, I’ve said it one hundred times. (My other favourite phrase is “If he thinks he can do a better job, he can come and sit at my desk. I’m more than happy to go home”. Why do people think that writing is just a case of typing out the letters in order? Perhaps I should start interviewing monkeys with RSA II skills for internships.)

To deal with this myriad of crushing disappointments I have adopted a new mantra². It’s not actually ‘new’, but it’s new to me. I’ve learned that there are limits to my responsibility and sometimes you just have to say “That’s not my job. Just let it go”, where ‘sometimes’ means ‘three times a day’. I’m not paid to fix your turd of a project; I’m paid to polish it up, throw glitter on it and present it like a new brand of wonder-doodie, crimped to perfection. That’s a big enough job³ in some cases, without having to point out exactly how you turned a great idea into a total waste of time and money.

I know the ‘it’s not my role’ defence is used by the worst kind of jobsworthy, shoulder-shrugging pedants, but for every person who hears this from me there are two more I offer to help with something that is my job. I am forever e-mailing, phoning and chasing people down in the street waving wildly because I can do something for them. By managing people’s expectations about what I won’t be doing for them, I am freeing up my time to help with the things I can do for you, and to do them well. In short, I’m doing it for your own good. Now get out.

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1. If I turn up in a ditch somewhere, you all know who did it.
2. Just to reiterate, I LOVE my job, but even the best jobs have bad parts.
3. Yes, I saw the pun. No, I don’t care.

The joy of freelance writing is that you can do it more or less on your own time. Writing letters home is the same; however, I’m not freelancing quite so much any more so I should pull my finger out and write to you all like someone is paying me to do it, too.  The trouble is, despite the financial crisis and the swine flu and the Taliban knocking on the door to Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, things are going pretty well here, which means I am far too busy having a good time to sit down and write about it.  Sorry, everyone!

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Tomorrow I start my new job and this week has been filled with self-doubt as I wonder if I have bitten off more than I can chew.  I keep reminding myself that I was convinced I could do the job when I went for the interview, and obviously my new boss thinks I can do it too, but I still can’t shake the nagging voice telling me that I don’t know what the hell I am taking on.  Thankfully, I have had some other things to think about this week: I did some freelancing for Greg, and I discovered that an article I wrote back in January was published this week, which was nice.  Now, as I kill time waiting for tomorrow to come, I need something else to take my mind of things.  How about a list of my celebrity crushes?  Last time I did this I made some pretty shameful confessions, but this time round I think I can do better with a more respectable list of fantasy shags.  Here goes.

Jake Shears. My love for the Scissor Sisters is no big secret and nor, I suspect, is my love for their lead singer.  Last year’s birthday party theme was, in part, an homage to the wonderful Jake Shears and the only reason I ended up in drag was because I couldn’t find a see-through mac to complete my ‘She’s my man’ outfit.  You’d have thought they were everywhere but it turns out they’re harder to get hold of than a no-deposit mortgage these days.  Anyway, back to Jake.  What’s not to fancy about a cute blond who gets his kit off at the drop of a hat?  Who could resist any man with such fabulous and flamboyant taste in wardrobe?  Add to that his membership of one of the best bands ever to grace the airwaves and what’s a boy to do?  That’s right: waste hours and hours hunting him down on youtube.  Well, it beats collecting stamps.

Adam Levine. If my heart belongs to Jake, then the rest belongs to Adam Levine.  Lord, the things I wouldn’t do for that man.  Thankfully you don’t hear that much about him in the charts over here because I would be the least productive person in the country if he had more Australian hits.  Catching sight of Levine on the television is enough to write-off an afternoon as I trawl the google image archive and imagine how great our life will be when I manage to tie him up and keep him in a Kathy Bates-style arrangement where he writes and sings me songs and I dress him up in suits all day because the man looks sharp in good tailoring.  This ended up somewhere quite different to where it started.  Best to move on, I think.

Neil Patrick Harris. NPH is the only reason to watch “How I met your mother“.  I used to really like Alyson Hannigan, but she and the rest of the cast are so godawful in this poorly written excuse for a sitcom that I am quite sure the only justification for renewing this abysmal show is that people like me are watching Neil and keeping the ratings up.  Yes, he’s actually very good, but he’s also very fine.  I never thought I’d be saying that about Doogie Howser, but you can’t fight the facts: he’s hot.  Good news: he’s gay.  Bad news: he has a boyfriend already.  There’s always something, isn’t there?  Guess I’m just going to have to tune in for a few more series and wonder what my life could have been like.  Ho hum.

Scott McGregor. Scott is the newest member to Sven’s fantasy harem, and I discovered him quite by accident.  Thank the powers for television trailers.  If you are every wondering where I am on a Monday night at 9.30pm, look no further than my couch as I tune in for “Blood, sweat and gears” which is at once the most unlikely show I would ever watch AND my new favourite thing on television.  I don’t know a damn thing about the cars, but I can tell you everything you need to know about Scott, his career and his rock hard abs.  Don’t ever say that Sven doesn’t do his research, and when it’s research like this, who wouldn’t want to be thorough, hmm?  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some internet stalking to get on with.  Catch you later.

Let me start with belated Easter wishes for you all, and the usual apology for taking so long to send you news of our adventures.  As you will see, we have been extremely busy of late.  I shall try not to bore you with too much detail, but there’s a lot to cram in so pull up a comfortable chair, a cup of tea and a biscuit, and when you’re comfortable, we’ll begin.

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