I got up at five in the morning to get ready for the start of a 25-day overland trip across Southern Africa. This early rising was no mean feat considering I had only stumbled back into the hostel hours earlier from a night out with Mr Butterfly, a friend from high school who was working in Johannesburg for a few months, and his friend, Drama, who I inadvertently upset and left in a crying heap at the end of the night.

The night was not a complete write-off; we met a short bald man of Afghan-Swiss-Egyptian extraction who kept on buying us rounds of shots because he was tired of hanging out with his "coloured lesbian friends". It took me a while to get used to using the term "coloured" without feeling like I have become Pauline Hanson. But it's okay in South Africa; all the cool kids do it.


By six-thirty, my backpack and camera were on the truck. I never let my camera out of my sight since the airport incident. The Lowepro bag was glued to my hip.

The overland tour group was made of eight people for the leg from Johannesburg to Livingstone in Zambia. This made for very comfortable travel as the truck has a capacity for 24. After three hours together on the truck named "Kavango", our most frequently uttered phrase became "did you get any ice?". Can you possibly expect anything less when half of the group was made up of Australians thirsty for a cold can of Castel beer or Savannah cider?

That initial awkwardness and trepidation about spending 25 days on a truck with strangers was short-lived. Much of it thanks to beers that cost less than $1 a bottle and bladders that couldn't hold six bottles over the three hours between toilet stops. Nothing bonds people more than peeing together on the highway.

We arrived at the game lodge just outside of Kruger by three in the afternoon. No tents for us the first two nights! We were to stay in the luxury of cabins and sleep on real beds! It wasn't until five days later that I really began to appreciate doors that were not opened and closed by zips.


A night game drive in the Thornybush Private Game Reserve that borders Kruger was organised for us in the evening. It was there that my drama with the camera continued. In my very-mildly-professional eyes, I deemed the shots I took to be far too dark.

"Let's crank up the exposure! This is why you have an SLR! Manipulate the lighting!"

And here is an example of the result, as a result of not realising that I had my sunglasses on the entire time. The ostriches looked like they were walking through a nuclear test site.

The game reserve gave me my first taste in seeing all the nature that Africa has to offer. And it was delicious. On a short three hour game drive, I had already ticked off three of the big five games - white rhinos, elephants and buffalos. Surely, lions and leopards were to come the next day inside Kruger.

Top sights of the day

Road-blocked by a family of white rhinos. 

A mere five metres away from a family of cheetahs.

I arrived in Johannesburg in a daze. After a 20-hour long flight from Sydney, I managed to (a) not find my airport pickup, and (b) leave my new camera on a seat at the airport after the excitement of finally finding my airport pickup took hold of me.

"Willy! I left my camera inside the airport!!" I said to Willy, the driver, as we left the terminal building and walked towards the car. He was a small skinny man, and the few teeth he had were as black as his skin.

"You have all bags here," he tried to convince me, obviously not pleased with the fact that I was going to take up more of this time.

"NO! Camera. Bag. Inside. Airport!"

I sprinted back toward the airport again. I sprinted like I never sprinted before. I secretly thought to myself, my legs must look really long right now because I was moving so fast. When I got inside, the airport security guys had just taken my new camera in its new camera bag from where I had left it. I flagged them down and screamed that it was mine. A crowd gathered to watch the commotion.

"Check if everything is in there!" A rugby-sized white man told me.

"Make sure you check!" His wife reaffirmed.

"把包检查一下！不能相信这些黑人警察!" [Check the bag! You can't trust these black cops!]

Out of nowhere came this voice in Chinese. In my daze, I thought my always sensible dad had appeared in an apparition. The voice introduced himself as Frank Cheng, a fifty-something Chinese-South-African who lived in Johannesburg and a prominent member of the local Chinese community. Here we go, I thought to myself, another one of my people fitting the stereotype of feeling superior to anyone darker than them. Little did I realise then that in South Africa, this wasn't a stereotype afflicting just my people. To say that "race" is an interesting issue in South Africa is an understatement. It is a topic that pretends to be above itself and moved on from the Apartheid era but yet still permeates everyday life.

Back to the situation at hand. I was surrounded by black cops who wanted to take a statement from me, white South Africans who yelled for me to check my bag, and a Chinese-South-African who was by then asking where in China my family hailed from. I did my part for international race relations by thanking the black cops for finding my camera bag with everything still inside it, appeased the white South Africans by going through every pocket of the bag, and went through most of the family history with Frank Cheng. It was a happy moment. People of all colours were pleased that this socially-conscious young woman got her camera back, ready for all the happy snapping in Africa. Except for Willy-Few-Teeth, who was impatiently tapping his watch at me.

Text to parents: "Arrived safe. No dramas at all."

It was a cold stormy night. Almost Dickensian; poor working lass of almost-twenty-eight, toiled away late into the night alone in a fluorescent office on the 20th floor of the Rather-Large-Bank.

"I need to get the fuck out of here," I said to myself. It is completely sane to talk to oneself when no one is around.

"I need to have something to look forward to, " I elaborated.

"What did you want to do when you were a little girl?" I asked myself.

"Be a train conductor," myself said to I.

"What else?" I asked again, slightly disappointed at my first response.

"Go to Africa. That's it! I will go to AFRICA!!" And suddenly all was clear. I can shove the spreadsheet I was working on up someone else's arse (I mean, share drive) for a month and escape to the jungles.

Saturday night. Scene: shite cocktails at the local RSL that has recently decided to vamp it up to entice the young crowd. Cast: four ladies who survived high school together.

Ms. Brains: Smart, articulate, and the first one of us to get married. Other memorable traits include the infamous incident on the first day of high school when she stood up in front of the whole maths class to tell the rest of us buffoons to shut up and "show some respect".

Ms. Simpatico: Lovely, quiet, and rational. She is the best of us - the first person I think of when I feel a rage attack to calm me down.

Ms. Boobs: Hot, cleavage, and it wasn't a surprise when she became the first one of us to get a boyfriend.

And me.

There was always this quiet rivalry between Ms. Boobs and I, as was usually the case between girls who were best friends. The only thing was, she always seemed to beat me in the things that mattered - boys, boys and boys. And it irked me.

The first boy I ever liked, for example. Ms. Brains cornered him in Grade 8 one day.

"You know, Polly likes you, " she said with the subtlety that could only be found in an eighth grader.

"Yeh. But I like Ms. Boobs."

Friggin moron. Although some satisfaction came in Grade 11 when the friggin moron asked me to be his girlfriend. Pretend girlfriend, so that he could throw off the scent on this girl who was stalking him. High school was tough.

So. Saturday night. Ten years later. Cheap cocktails. Four young ladies who survived high school together.

"How's the new guy?" I asked Ms. Boobs.

"I don't know. I think we're not going to last. I plan on breaking it off next week," Ms. Boobs replied. I shook my head; it was like back in high school again, I thought. Ms. Boobs - too many boys chasing after her, and her not realising how good she has with her ridiculously small and unfair waist to boobs ratio.

"So what happened with the old one?" Ms. Brains asked.

"It just didn't work. He wouldn't touch me."

"What? You were doing it right?" I was amazed.

"I could lie there naked next to him and he wouldn't touch me," said Ms. Boobs.

"What?" We exclaimed in disbelief. I mean, she has a ridiculously small and unfair waist to boobs ratio.

"Yeah. He was great at everything. But in the four years we went out, I can count the number of times we did it and the number of times he stuck his tongue down my throat." Ms Boobs recalled, "Ten and ten."

"Are you serious?" we asked.

"Yeah." Ms. Boobs confirmed.

"Oh. That's just fucked. If I was that motherfucker, I'd totally tap that. I mean, you. Like, more than ten times in fucking four years. Bang!" I said, under the influence of alcohol and total disbelief at any hot blooded male's inability to tap that.

I also spent a whole day earlier fueled up on two whole seasons of "Entourage". I thought I was Ari Gold and maybe I could talk sense into the situation if this frigid boy of Ms. Boob's was in front of me.

When I got home tonight, with some quiet satisfaction, I realised that it isn't all about the waist to boob ratio. And I couldn't wait to tell the Boy about how good we have it, despite the tyranny of distance.

Not that it is something to be smug about.

FLB, the rotten egg smell that we just can't get rid of in my otherwise semi-harmonious team, has been with us for close to a year now. She is the bane of everyone's existence; the itch that we want to scratch till it bleeds, the psycho dog that we want to put down, the cancerous tumour on which we want to double the dosage of chemo...

I can keep the metaphor going all day. She is a bitch. A very lazy one. Hence the acronym she is now known as amongst the team. No prizes for guessing what the F stands for. Lets just say that the F helps with the venting of anger.

Her understanding of the word "assistant" in "personal assistant" is very limited. Not a day goes by without our requests being bounced back from her with a terse "can you sort this out for yourselves." We forward those emails around the team; we lament and console each other over our shared misfortune of having to work with her.

Very Tall New Guy: "I got locked out in the fire escape last night. She somehow got rid of the after hours access on my security pass. Instead of putting it back on today, she emailed me the security operations number and walked out of the door to go shopping."

Chubby Pom [screams over email]: "Fire escape? At least you managed to get out. I'm stuck 800km away because she fucked up my flight."

Very Tall New Guy [not ready to be outdone]: "No wait. I think I can top that. I just got 1000 business cards printed. Very nice of her to get that done. Very useful. If only she had put the address on.

As she annoys us all day with her lack of "assistance" as part of her role as a "personal assistant", sometimes, I like to hit the ball back into her court.

For example, right after Chinese New Year.

Me: "How was your Chinese New Year?"
FLB [rather chirpily for an FLB]: "Yeah, it was fantastic! I got a few of red packets."
Me: "You? Red packets? Aren't you a bit old at 37??!"
FLB [with less enthusiasm]: "Well, yes, maybe..."
Me: "I guess there's ALWAYS an upside to still being a spinster eh?"

Me 1 - FLB 0.

"So Polly, when is it your turn?" the Delightful Young Man asked while we were out at dinner. He had just flown into Melbourne for work and we caught up on the woes gone by in the past year.

Which, namely, for me was my disastrous debut as a bridesmaid in April. My friendship with Bridezilla still hangs by a thread.

"I think after that episode, I am off weddings in general." I said bluntly.

"How long has it been now? Two years? Surely you think about it?" DYM fired off a series of questions, "Even daydream about a diamond here and there?"

"Yes, but only in terms of how much I can haggle with that Israeli jeweller on Swanston Street. " I said, referring to the jeweller who Miss Unsubtle had gotten her bling from. This guy can get you any cut of diamond you want, at any size. Sometimes, he even flies to Antwerp himself to pick it up. Visiting him is like a scene out of a Guy Ritchie film.

"See. You do think about it."

"But not in some pink vomit way," I hastily defended myself.

We ate our entrees in silence as I thought about "it" a bit more.

"You know what I do think about a lot?" I started to confess. "The music. Bridezilla paid something like five grand for the three piece jazz band at her wedding. I could save that and do it myself!"

"What? You're going to sing at your own wedding?"

"No. Don't be stupid. That would leave no time to drink," I scoffed and started again at the subject I had been thinking a lot about. "I know music. And I know good music. And what's more, le Garçon knows even more than me about music. I will have the best music at my wedding. It won't cost me anything because it's all in my CD collection and iTunes. It'll be Polly's wedding collection full of the most romantic yet not so cheesy tunes. It'll be the best mixed tape ever! My definitive version of the best mix tape!"

"So it will be like being trapped in car with you and being made to listen to all your CDs during a very long road trip," DYM wasn't convinced.

"No! Not all CDs! Just a mix tape! And what better time to show case it than at my wedding because people will be made to listen to it! We'll start off with Al Green's 'Let's Stay Together' and then throw in a bit of Ella, Billie and Frank - the originals - none of this Michael Bublé bullshit. A bit of Rufus and Queen for laughs. You know, songs that ticks in peoples' head with 'wow, that really captures the two of them.' Oh and there's this one I heard recently..."

Like a mix tape, I think DYM stopped listening by track four. But come my wedding, he'll oblige.

Miss Unsubtle quit with five weeks to go. A drawn out process following over a year of "It's my wedding! It's my life!"

I remain. Reluctantly.

December 2006. "I'm engaged! Look at the ring! Groom-to-be-of-Bridezilla got it from Charles Rose! Will you be my bridesmaid? My chief bridesmaid?" Screams and hugs followed.

February 2007. At a bridal expo, "This is my chief bridesmaid, Polly."

May 2007. Through tears in a busy cafe, "I'm trying to make everyone happy! I'm trying to please everyone! It's going to be a pink dress!"

July 2007. "Oh Polly! Thank you for finding my wedding dress with me!"

August 2007. "I don't care about the starving kids in Africa! The photographer is $6000 and he's GOOD!"

December 2007. To Miss Unsubtle, "Sometimes, I think Polly only wanted to be my bridesmaid because she's in competition with Tuck Shop Lady Arms (TSLA)."

January 2008. "If I was the bridesmaid, I would have all weekends in the two months leading up to the wedding free for the bride. Polly should have told me that she has a wedding to attend on the day I want to have my Hens."

February 2008. "Miss Unsubtle, I am not unreasonable, I am selfless. It's not like I have been a bridezilla. Just get along with my lovely friend who called you and Polly manipulative. It's my wedding. Just be happy for me. It should be about me."

February 2008. "I can't believe Miss Unsubtle just quit."

February 2008. "I never wanted Polly to be my chief bridesmaid. If I had a choice, it would have been Arse Crawler."

February 2008. "Polly, TSLA is going to be Miss Unsubtle's replacement. I always wanted her to be the bridesmaid but you were uncomfortable about it because she used to go out with The Boy. I'm just selfless like that."

March 2008. "Polly, I've paired Arse Crawler with the Best Man because she is the only one who is married. All my bridesmaids are the same to me. There's no chief bridesmaid. What? Oh that ceremony program just says Arse Crawler is the Matron of Honour, but all my bridesmaids are the same to me."

A rather good summary of events. So come Sunday next week, as the Wedding March plays and TSLA waddles down the aisle...

The Boy thinks to himself, "I tapped that."

And as I gracefully glide toward the alter...

The Boy thinks smugly to himself, "I'm tapping that."

It is like rain on your wedding day. A black fly in your chardonnay.

"So what are you?"

I have always envied those who can answer this in a long-winded way to include every continent on earth and throw in various mix of spices in quarters or eighths, or even sixteenths. My friend, Ms Pants Advocate, can list over half of the UN Security Council in her blood stream.

Being just full-blooded anything seems so...dull.

On a recent trip to China with my parents, a revelation came one night out at dinner in Chengdu.

"Dad! Let's do the family tree when we get home!" I excitedly said. Earlier, we had visited an elderly relative who revealed all the glory of the old family. Oxford scholars, renowned surgeons and crazed artists abound in the thick volume of my paternal grandmother's family tree.

"Pfft!" My fat cousin scoffed at the idea.

"We're not doing YOUR family tree. We're doing OURS!" I scoffed back. He's on my mother's side of the family and thus we don't share the same surname.

"Sometimes, you find things things you don't want to know, " he retorted quietly.

Given my limited mastery of the Chinese language, all I could come up with was very loudly, "I DON'T CARE!" and a pout.

My outburst was met by silence around the dinner table. Momma and Pappa looked embarrassed. We don't know what drugs she's been taking while on her own in Melbourne, we might need to have a quiet chat with her later, the look on their faces revealed.

And then the silence was broken by my cousin.

"You want to find out about how your grandfather's mother was not even his mother? The old man was illegitimate! The woman was a sing-song girl who became a concubine!"

"What?!" This was obviously news to my mother as well. At that point I couldn't tell if she was upset or confused.

"See, you don't want to play with history," fat cousin emphasised again.

Silence ensued while plates of Szechuan delicacies were brought to our table. I picked at the green peppercorns and stole looks at my mother in between. I wondered, what was the psyche of a woman who just found out her much admired father was a bastard?

"Well. That could explain why he was an outrageously good-looking man." She finally said, with a hint of smugness.

"The old man was still a bastard." Fat cousin insisted.

"Shut it!" I said defensively of the man who caught a tortoise for me the first time we met. "He was still your grandfather."

The uncomfortable silence continued.

"Guess who I saw at the polling booth today??!" Pixie excitedly asked.

"No? Who?" I was not going to venture to guess. Pixie lives on the edge of the illustrious seat of Wentworth, where the rich and famous frolic.

"Delta Goodrem!"

"Wonder if she voted for K-Rudd."

Election day 2007.

I woke this morning hopefully sensing a change in the air. I considered carefully in the attire that I was to wear on such a momentous day.

Eleven years! I was not yet fifteen when J W Howard took office! Red! It has to be red; the colour of K-Rudd and the working class, the rouge in that strip bar he visited in New York, the shade of Julia Gillard's hair, and the colour of those bar graphs on every channel tonight dissecting the results of the election.

So it came to this long sleeved jumper that I picked up on a recent trip to Shanghai:
It was enough to deflect the Liberal pamphlets as I made my way to my celebrity-less polling booth.

I have been amusingly engrossed in the election this year. Mildly entertained by the pamphlet-overboard incident this past week and the little bit of bitch-slapping that went down this afternoon. Not forgetting the coersion, flirtation and intimidation by the same bitch-slapper that provided the prologue to today's showdown.

Notwithstanding my own amusement and hyper bias for the red team, the politics has divided the Boy and I.

"I can't believe you think they're better economic managers!" We both cried at various times of the last few weeks.

How do you turn someone long decided to be a blue (bleh!) to bat for the red team? After some screaming, some mild coaxing ("If you love me, you'd vote for K-Rudd!"), and threats ("That's it! NO CUPCAKES FOR YOU!"), I have come to reluctant acceptance and will just be smug while the so very obviously better team wins the day.

Two weeks ago, I turned 26. The momentous occasion this year was all the more special when I received a Graf von Faber-Castell mechanical pencil from Le Garçon.Though it is not jewellery or handbag, it is more than enough bling to last me for a very very long time.
[1989. Shanghai, China.]

I saw my first mechanical pencil at a stationery store on Huaihai Road with my Mama. It was shiny silver with a handsome black grip. I thought it was the classiest thing I had ever seen in my life and bound to make me have the best handwriting in the whole school. Unfortunately, this was back in the old country - fine things were rare and expensive.

"You can have that pencil if you get full marks in your test next week," my Mama bribed. It took a bold statement like that to move me away from the glass cabinet that the mechanical pencil was encased in.

I studied my times table and Chinese poetry like crazy that week. But as fate would have it, I didn't get full marks. I got 89% in Chinese and 97% in Maths. I stared at the numbers in the report card with bitterness as I thought about how the mechanical pencil was going to be encased in that glass cabinet forever. I was seven-years-old and had already started to develop a tendency for the melodramatic.

Slowly, I began to change the numbers on the report card. I was seven-years-old and had not yet learned that there was no possible way of making either "89" or "97" look like "100".

On the way home, the guilt of it all started to weigh down on me. I was also aware that the two 100's did not really look that legitimate. It all got too much that when I handed my passive Papa the report card, I burst out crying and fessed up.

Like how they were for the rest of my childhood, they didn't lose their temper or yell. They simply said they were disappointed and it was enough for the water works to overflow the dam again.

A few days later, while shopping with my Mama, I saw the mechanical pencil again in the same store. I stared at it again and quickly walked away. But this time, Mama pulled me back to the glass cabinet.

"You changed your marks so you could have this, didn't you?" she asked.

I sheepishly agreed.

"I was going to buy it for you anyway. But if I buy it for you today, you will have to never lie again."

I nodded but I felt awful. It was a prize I shouldn't have won. It was also 3RMB and I knew that Mama only took home 20RMB a week. When I finally held the pencil in my hand, I got no satfisfaction in knowing that it was mine. It was tainted goods. I put it in my desk drawer when I got home and never used it.
"So that's the worst thing you've ever done in your whole life?" Le Garçon asked when we were trading childhood stories about a year ago. "You fibbed your way into getting some pencil and that's the worst you've got?"

"It was a mechanical pencil! And I lied to get it and mum still bought it for me even though it cost 15% of her weekly wage! I was a horrible child!"

"That's still the worst thing you've ever done?" He asked in disbelief.
On my birthday, I tore through the wrapping and shook the box slightly to hear if it sounded like the pair of earrings I had been hinting for all week. When I finally opened the white oblong box, I was seven-years-old again, staring at the classiest thing ever.

"So you can have one legitimately now," he said.

But what was I supposed to tell my parents? I have not spoken about my downfall of 1989 since the event.

A day later, my passive Papa called.

"What did the Boy get you for your birthday?" he asked.

"He got me a mechanical pencil."

"A what?"

"Remember that time in second grade when I changed my mark so I could get a mechanical pencil?" It was inevitable to relive the shame all over again.

"No? When did that happen?" Passive Papa was clueless.

"In second grade! Mum said I could only have it if I aced my tests that term." I was starting to get exasperated that he couldn't remember the worst thing I have ever done in my life.

"So you changed marks?" Passive Papa started to laugh.

"Yes. I felt awful."

"Why your mother not buy it for you? It couldn't be that much!" He said sympathetically.

"But she did! And it was 3RMB when you guys only made 20RMB a week!"

"How you still remember that?" he asked.

"How do you not remember that??" I asked, "You mean I've been carrying the guilt of this horrible thing I did for almost twenty years and you guys don't even remember?"

"No. Can't remember."

Whenever I am home, my mama likes to show me the various things she has bought in the time I have been away. Her ever-changing taste never ceases to amaze me.

"I got new jeans," she said, proudly showing off a pair of pale blue jeans.

They looked innocent enough. Until I noticed the zippers that ran along each side from the waist down to the bottom of the legs.

Essentially, my mama bought stripper jeans.

"Look at the zippers!" She said excitedly when she noticed me staring at them in shock, "they are the best part!"

I am spending this weekend with my parents in Sydney. I've not seen them since Easter and that equals almost four months without their eccentricities and salivating home cooking.

As soon as we got home from the airport last night, my mother put the kettle on. As I stood there waiting for the water to boil, she informed me that the water in the kettle was off limits but there was enough hot water in the thermos for me to make tea.

"What are you doing?" I asked, as she started to concoct a strange mix of green herbs with Indian henna dye.

"I take sick days for the next three days you here," she said while beating an egg into the mixture. "I need to dye my ankle to look like a bruise. Tomorrow I go doctors, look real and I get medical certificate."

"Why can't you pretend to have a cold? Or a migraine?"

"Not severe enough," she said with an air of experience. "Here, help me bind my ankle. Make the strapping tight."

When my parents got their passports renewed recently, I was their "in case of emergency". Such a role came with heavy responsibility, which to be frank, I overlooked initially until one chilly morning I received a phone call as I was on my way into work.

Serious person on phone: "I understand from Father of Swell Mademoiselle's passport application that you are his in case of emergency contact."

Oh no, I thought. What kind of hot water has my passive papa got himself into? A phone call like that about my mama is not unexpected, but the solid paternal figure of my life never gets into any trouble.

Serious person on phone: "We have just received his passport application and there appears to be a bit of problem."

Me: "Okay."

Serious person on phone: "He's smiling."

Me: "And that's a problem?"

Serious person on phone: "Yes, he can't smile on passport photos. It's a problem for the facial recognition program used for machine readable passports. He should have a neutral expression showing no teeth or gum."

Me [finding this all too funny]: "Right. I guess none of those terrorists ever smile eh? Not a hint of gum there."

Serious person on phone: "This is a serious matter, can you please just pass on the message to your father please.

Me: "Sure, no problem."

After several months of persuading by those incessant emails screaming "I've added you as a friend on facebook", I have finally relented. And it is an amazing world of facebook I have discovered. 19 friends and counting.

During the course of the day at work, Pants Wearing PA and I hop on at our respective desks and moan to each about how bored we are:
Swell Mademoiselle [current status] is wishing she had called in sick today.
Pants Wearing PA [status] is also wishing she had chucked a sickie.

At times the connection at Rather Large Bank fails us. Then a spate of
"I can't LOG ON!"
"Phew! Thought it was just me!"
"Crap! We have to resort to Lotus Notes!"
bounce back and forth.

During my lunch break at the pilates studio the other day (a recently ventured activity in an attempt to make a stunning entrance as a bridesmaid next year), my face was booked by the receptionist. He is one of those spunky new age types that smelled of ylang ylang. A mass of politically correct organically knitted green sweater that took down my details as I got sucked in for a ten session pass.

"Can I get your email? You know, just in case we have to change class schedules."

"Yep. It's ___@gmail.com."

"Gmail? That's the way to go. Isn't it the best?" Green ylang ylang man approved in his Brunswick Street cool manner. "Wait. Have you got facebook as well?!"

I rushed back to the office, logged onto facebook for the umpteenth time that day and changed the security settings on my account.

I have never been good at getting haircuts. One of my famous outbursts from childhood was at the hairdressers. I was probably five at the time and my mother always let me grow my hair long. But after way too much Tang one morning, I begged her to take me to the hairdressers to cut my hair short for the first time ever. As my locks were snipped off - and as the buzz from Tang wore off - I realised I looked like a boy. I jumped off the seat, grabbed the long locks of hair that were once on my head and mourned their loss in howls and sobs.

Twenty years on, nothing much has changed. Although I do exercise a fraction more decorum now.

Recently, le Garçon and I got our hair cut together. He was scooted off to a woman named Stella who had very bad teeth, in addition to some flirtatious apprentices who cooed over him. Meanwhile, I was sent to a skeletal Asian man with blonde spiky hair (aside: I do not trust Asians with peroxide hair).

"Aiya,your head...your head smell bad," he said as he combed my just-washed hair to figure out a suitable style.

"Oh." Really how does one respond to the claim that one's head smells bad? "It's just been washed by that girl over there," I nodded to the direction of the apprentice who was running her fingers through le Garçon's hair. "And I washed it earlier in the day too."

"No. Hair no smell. Head smell. Scalp smell." He was adamant.

He walked briskly away and came back with a tub of something. "Use this. You need this."

I balked at the 25-dollar price tag. And also smelled something rotten. On him.

"Oh, I have this at home." I lied.

"Then you use it. You should buy, you need a lot."

"I think I will just finish the one I have at home first," I said. Pfft, I ain't giving him an extra 25 bucks that day. I was adamant too.

"Whatever."

As he snipped away locks of my hair, he started sighing again.

"Wavy. Hair too wavy. Natural wave no good. You should get it properly permed. More structure." He started up again.

"I read in Vogue the other day that naturally wavy hair is all the rage at the moment. Straight hair, last season. Permed hair, five years ago." I argued.

"Your hair is a mess. No structure. You perm, still look natural."

"I just wanted it cut today. NO PERM."

He quietens down for a while, though still sighing as he snips.

"Wavy hair. Hard to cut. Next time don't come to me to cut."

"Bitch," I muttered under my breath. He still had the scissors to make a mess of my head.

I thought the blow drying part would be better with the noise to drown out his sighing. It was good for a while, until -

"PPEW! YOUR SCALP SMELL BAD! ALL THE BAD SMELL FLOW UP FROM THE BLOW DRY. PPEEW!" He screamed.

I stared back at him in horror. I have great hair. I am known for great wavy hair that does not smell. I wanted to grab that pair of scissors and snip him into shreds. Alas, I have more decorum now, I'm not five and I don't cry over spilt hair anymore. I walked away from that chair without another word with my fabulous good-smelling head held high.

"What happened? You looked like you were about to cry on that seat," le Garçon asked as we were walking out.

"He hurt my hair's feelings."

I think I may have written something to this effect back in late 2004, amidst exams and thesis:

"Grr...have to stop wasting time mucking about on computer writing stupid stuff. Have a thesis to write. Have another 100 pages of thesis to write. Have to present thesis in TWO DAYS!"

So here I am again. The CFA exam is in 75 days, there are probably 75,000 pages yet to be read and I am happily typing away.

I suppose an absence of over a year warrants an update on all the old favourite characters, and possibly introduction to some new ones.

My hot momma took a long time to adjust to her little duckling moving out of home. While visiting me in Melbourne at Easter last year, she gave me another ten months of freedom before moving back home. That did not eventuate. I stood my ground and am still happily enjoying freedom with intermittent trips home every few months. I think she is back to her former happy self now with some new friends - new wild friends with tattoos, I might add.

My lovely poppa is like the constant in a regression equation (apologies, I just read up on regression analysis yesterday). He has not changed. I enjoy the conversations we have, especially while he fixes the heels of my shoes whenever I am up in Sydney (and saving myself $8 per shoe in the process).

Every night, at just after eight without fail, they call me on my mobile because that's when Optus free time kicks in.

"Have you had dinner?" mum usually begins.

"Yep, just had dinner," I answer, sometimes begrudgingly because it seems there is never a new topic of conversation.

"What you have?"

"A potato and spinach salad," I said today.

"What??! Just salad for dinner? Any bread?" she said with alarm.

"I didn't want bread," I explained, not really wanting to go into my aversion to carbohydrates late at night.

"What about rice? What about soup?"

"No rice! NO SOUP!"

"Aiya. If you were at home, you could have had soup." She always made four dishes and a soup every night.

Some nights, I make up dishes and soups to tell her, things that would not be possible for me to make in the little time I have after coming home from work. Grilled salmon, mama! With some chicken broth to start! And quiche too!

Bah! The books are staring me down! Looks like I will have to introduce the new characters next time. Stay tuned.

Sometimes, circumstances are just funnier in hindsight.

Having not written anything besides credit memorandums, presentation slides and other work related materials in almost three months, I was rather excited with my scribblings last week.

‘What did you think?’ I asked Pixie. ‘Did you like it?’

‘Yes, but it was very sad. I had no idea things went that bad with Captain Haddock,’ Pixied sympathized.

‘Well…’ I said, not really wanting to dwell on it.

‘It’s like things can go wrong without you realizing, and you keep on clinging onto the good parts that made you happy even though they don’t last very long,’ she wisely reflected.

‘Yes, well, like Mr Miyagi has proven, sometimes shit happens,’ I concluded.

Mr. Miyagi

Roomie #1 took home a stray cat from the veterinary clinic last week. A skinny grey thing who we’ve taken to call Mr. Miyagi. I liked him immediately, despite my fears of being bitten and clawed.

I have never had a pet in my life. The closest thing that came to a four-legged creature within the vicinity of our house was a stray cat Mum and I used to feed. But it was hardly ours; it was fed by practically every other house in the neighbourhood.

We cooed and fretted over Mr. Miyagi. Despite being officially Roomie #1’s pet, Roomie #2 and I showered him with love and material goods – a scratching post and loads of toys.

“He is the cutest thing ever!” I told Mum over the phone.

“Mr. Miyagi is very smart too. He knows which cupboard holds his food.” I told Pixie over the phone.

“Why would you get a cat? Cats never love you back,” Pixie asked. “It’s all taking with them.”

“Cats are gross. They lick themselves all the time.” Miss Unsubtle was on the same page as Pixie.

But Mr. Miyagi had my heart; though my fear of being scratched still kept me from picking him up to properly cuddle him. As days passed, I watched him grow closer to Roomie #2 as he purred in her arms.

My fondness for Mr. Miyagi froze on the fourth night. While both Roomies were at work, I found myself alone facing Mr. Miyagi and his poo underneath the Christmas tree.

There is something about cleaning someone’s poo off the carpet that makes them seem less perfect.

After the poo-on-carpet incident, I took to a sterner tone when dealing with Mr. Miyagi. I ignored his presence in the house.

Mr. Miyagi ran away two nights ago. Roomie #1 was devastated. I was, in contrast, secretly happy. I hoped he would stay away forever, though I insincerely consoled Roomie #1 with a lot of “maybe he’ll find his way home”s.

Roomie #1’s tears were stopped midstream last night when the front door buzzed, announcing the return of Mr. Miyagi.

Roomies were both ecstatic at Mr. Miyagi’s triumphant and safe return. More love and food were thrown at him than ever before.

“We’re never letting you out again, Mr. Miyagi!!”

“We’re going to overfeed you so that you’ll be too fat to run away!”

Though I was happy that he was back, my enthusiasm was at a level somewhat below those of Roomies’ – I still remembered vividly the smell and texture of Mr. Miyagi’s number 2’s in a thin plastic bag against my hand.

Can Mr. Miyagi and I go back to the way we were? Can I even take a step further and start cuddling him?

At least I fed him tonight without saying in a reproachful tone, “now, Mr. Miyagi, you poo this in the kitty litter, okay?”


Captain Haddock

I first met Captain Haddock earlier this year. His beard reminded me of the Herge comic book character from Tintin. I was immediately attracted to his honesty and sense of humour. I don’t remember ever laughing that much while on a date. I liked him, despite my fears of being scratched by his beard.

It is a point of worthy debate that I have ever had a proper boyfriend. The closest person to have come to that role was another bearded fellow who had several other girlfriends.

I gave Captain Haddock rave reviews. I was equally well received one night when I met his friends. While Polly of the old would have been guarded with her feelings, Polly of the new was recklessly forward following what she deemed the best first date ever.

“I had a fantastic time. I would love to see you again very soon,” was communicated to Captain Haddock when I would have usually waited for the Captains to drop by when they are next at my port.

It was a fantastic second date too.

“Captain Haddock is hilarious! And smart!” I told Pixie and Miss Unsubtle, sheepishly admitting that I fancy Captain Haddock.

But I still had my fears. I still held a deep irrational fear of being scratched by his beard (feel free to interpret this metaphorically). Our good night kisses were awkward. The first time we tried it, he accidentally let go of his break and rolled the car down the hill outside my house. The second time we tried to accomplish the task, I pulled away too soon.

At the end of our third date, by which point we were both slightly drunk, I felt the prickly bits of whiskers rub slowly up my neck, around my cheek and towards my lips. I pulled away again.

How I curse that moment now!

The fourth date was disaster.

“You know when I walked out of the bookshop for a while just then?” he asked. We had been shopping on Brunswick St.

“Yeah…”

“I had to step outside because I farted next to the erotic origami books. Smelled bad.”

Oh lord, I thought. Have we fallen into such a level of comfort that flatulence is a topic of regular discussion? Or did he mistakenly think I pulled away from snogging him because I wanted to be just friends?

Captain Haddock’s flatulence and (now) brutal honesty cast a dark cloud over my perception of him. I still cringe when I think about events of the fourth date.

“How’s Captain Haddock?” many would still ask even though it has been weeks since I last saw him. He has, in effect, run away too.

The parallel between Captain Haddock and Mr. Miyagi occurred to me today. I secretly hope that he will return too. I may even overlook his troubles with gaseous discharge.

* Names have been changed to protect the privacy of both Captain Haddock and Mr. Miyagi

‘Do you have to be the best in everything you do?’ Farm Boy asked me a couple of months ago on a trip along the Great Ocean Road with Sparkles.

‘What do you mean “have to be the best”? I know I am the best,’ I said in earnest, with just a hint of arrogance.

But tonight, I write with a bruised ego. I admit defeat; that I am not the best at everything, that I am rather appalling in certain arenas.

Choreographed dance, per example.

I know, for a fact, that I am the hottest little pocket rocket when it comes to free form dancing at clubs. I am the disco queen. My antics on the Gold Coast a couple of weeks ago provide ample evidence that I am the disco queen.

But choreographed dance such as salsa classes are my Achilles heel. I went to one tonight at the Copa Cabana with Ms Perfect. I was crap-o-la. Dog’s breakfast. I was no better than the class I went to for High School Rival’s wedding late last year. There was no lovely Emery to call me “muffins”, but there were plenty ugly balding men, most of whom were named “Adam”.

‘You’ve gotta loosen up. Bend your knees,’ said Adam #1, who refused to hold my hand.

‘Don’t lead. You follow. You follow?’ demanded Adam#2, who was my least favourite.

‘Stop trying to lead,’ explained Adam #3, a munchkin-sized man with bigger boobs than me.

‘You’re doing great, but I’m the one who leads, okay?’ said Adam #4, a gorgeous man/boy of unspecified extraction and undetermined age. He had an afro that I wanted to run my fingers through.

‘You’re the worst person I’ve ever danced with,’ said Adam #5, whose brutal honesty cut me into pieces. I could only take in comfort that I will always have better and more hair than him.

I watched with pure envy as Ms Perfect ignited the dance floor with her partner. She twisted, she turned, she loosened, she followed, without ever losing balance or forgetting the “one-two-three, four-five-six” beats. Oh, how I wished to have a body that twisted in such a way! Why, oh, why are there bones in my body??

Many Adams asked Ms Perfect to dance with them after the class finished and the real dancing began. I, the poor little wallflower, stood bravely near a wall until a tiny man (another Adam) asked me to salsa with him.

Tiny Adam was worse than me. He also did not make a good conversationalist.

‘It’s good music, this.’ He said, when we did the basic salsa steps.

I nodded.

‘It’s good music, this.’ He said again, when we cuccaracha’d.

I nodded again.

‘It’s very good music, this.’ He said, in a slightly different way. He had tried to spin me, only he found himself spinning around instead, ‘You know you’re not supposed to lead, right?’