Katy Klein Has a Chat

Every once in a while I like to hit a proper runway fashion show to feel like I still have a chance at being fashionable and Melbourne’s Spring Fashion Week always has a good vibe to it. Whilst being quite stylish, everyone is still welcome, from 16-year old wannabee models to 50- year old wannabee fashionistas.   

There is something so bemusing about catwalk shows.  Twiggy little models, with boobies I would have been disappointed with as a 12-year old, do that weird runway walk. It sort of looks like they are being dragged down the runway by their pelvis whilst simultaneously falling backwards off their high high heels. The boys get to walk fairly normally since non-surprisingly there is no high-heel male shoe to cause them to lope along like newly born foals.  So they just stride on down like they are late for the pub. The boys do seem to fall prey to a little known muscular problem however, which may result from their super big hair. Some of their necks struggle to support the weight of product required for big hair which leads to a hunched look. One of the male models also looked exactly like a pig-faced bat which is very cute on bats, less so on boys.

In some ways attending fashion shows is kind of like car racing, you go because you might see a crash.  I am always expecting one of the super skinny lasses to snap a fetlock .  To date none have, which hasn’t stopped me believing that it’s possible.  We did see a fall last night, there was a collective gasp from the crowd but the model pulled through without any knickers being displayed at all.

The highlight of the night for me was of course the goodie-bag.  We even paid extra for the ‘good’ setas to get one.  Goodie-bags are the adult version of show bags, full of stuff you didn’t really need but is still really cool to have.  The bags had a good range of product sachets which I absolutely love.  There’s something about nice products in teeny tiny containers that just pleases me.

Anyway, I didn’t see any clothes that were for me but since most of the items are unlikely to feature at Target, that’s not surprising. I also think that designing clothes for walking clothes hangers shows very little imagination.  It’s sort of like sticking cut out clothes on paper dolls, it’s two dimensional. Designing clothes that enhance regular women and camouflage their life-trophy flaws on the other hand strikes me as a much better challenge.  And with obesity on the rise, the size 6 figure may be becoming extinct and then what will the designers do?

The next time you are passing through Wesburn (and who doesn’t) I highly recommend that you take your foot off the accelerator, brake sharply and swing into Jillian’s Cafe.  This is the way Road Houses are meant to be; posters on the wall, a good range of classic lollies, Formica tables and most importantly, super-awesome burgers.

 We had been bike riding along the Lilydale-Warbuton Rail Trail so we’d worked up a bit of an appetite. So I thought the Famous Wesi Whoppa burger was an ideal remedy for a calorie deficit. Turns out your Wesi Whoppa is two (count them, two) burgers enclosed in one bun.  Fantastic value at $9 – take that crappy meal deals!

I would have taken one on but then I saw that there was also a ‘Bloke’s Burger’ and a ‘Girly Burger’ (both a value added $8.50).  I was super impressed with the options.  I really like it when food proprietors take the time to put tasty combinations together so that I don’t have to, it shows real pride in what they do.

The Girly Burger did sound fine with chicken, coleslaw, beetroot, pineapple and salad.  But I couldn’t go past the Bloke’s Burger with two patties, two pieces of bacon, two slices of oozy cheese, onion, BBQ sauce and NO SALAD. It took me to the upper limit of pleasantly full (which is one bite short of darn I’ve gone too far).

It’s a good idea to keep the burger carefully encased in it’s wrapping as you’re eating as there is a nice amount of burger juice. Several times when eating the burger I was surprised to find that despite having eaten away steadily I still had a huge handful of burger action, it just kept going. These are not burgers you would eat whilst driving for instance. You need to take the time to appreciate the burger magic.

The place was humming with locals when we were there with the burger cook (could it have been Jillian herself?) keeping us updated with burger progression (Haven’t forgotten ya loves). By the picture on the bag it does appear that Jillian is a bit of a goer so it comes as no surprise that she has produced such fine burgers.

For those of you wondering what the must have item for Spring is, it’s chickens, according to the chicken man of Macclesfield.  That’s right he can’t keep up with the demand. Not keeping up with demand with hand sculpted items is impressive but this chappie is on his fourth batch of 1200 fertilised eggs and he’s selling them like hot cakes.  He seemed quite concerned that he was selling out even before they hatched, let alone raising them to point-of-lay.

The first time we went to Abundant Layers in Macclesfield (the place to shop for chickens for those in the know) was to get Parma, to keep our first chicken, Clucksy, company. We didn’t know the appropriate chicken buying etiquette (we buy our chickens one at a time rather than in bulk).  We went down to the big chicken shed which contains all the breeding chickens (if you get the chance check out the Australorp rooster which is possibly the biggest chicken in the world) and before we knew it we had a chicken in our box and were sent back up the hill.

The first time we went we got lucky and bought a matching Australorp.  We’d found out that Clucksy is a bit of a chicken racist when she was chicken-sat.  When we’d dropped her into a cage full of Isa Brown’s I was really worried that she would be hen pecked by the resident chickens.  So I was somewhat horrified (and secretly quite proud) when she promptly started jumping on top of the locals and pecking them in the head if they approached their food. By the time we left, the Isa Brown’s were huddled in the corner and Clucksy was queen of the roost.  It ended up that she was queen of her own roost when we returned to pick her up.  She had acted so badly that she’d been quarantined.

So when we bought Parma home we were expecting some fireworks. It was a complete fizzer, they got along fine, a little bit of head pecking but nothing requiring seperating them into their own corners.  Which is when we realised that chickens can be a bit colour-ist if you will. Black chicken = friend, brown chicken = chicken demolition derby.

When we headed back to Macclesfield we obviously didn’t realise there was a chicken shortage and were tossing up between another Australorp or one of those pretty white fluffy chickens. I rather fancied myself with a lap chicken or one you could poke into your handbag when you went to a cafe. We only got one choice though.  We could have a 14-week old Isa Brown or an 18-week old Isa Brown.  As for a pretty white fluffy chicken, forget it.  You have to order the eggs in advance (there’s a waiting list) and then raise them yourself.  And I just don’t have the time to be a chicken mother. Since we didn’t need the eggs we went the teenager hoping that she would learn chicken skills from Clucksy at an impressionable age. 

Chicken shopping has a touch of the Christmas present intrigue to it. The chicken man goes into the cage, grabs whatever chicken he can and stuffs it in the box you’ve bought along (FYI it’s bring your own box, free range chcikens do not apply to the back seat). In this way you have less picking opportunities than you do when say you choose a puppy, or a goldfish for that matter.  So it’s fairly exciting to get home and see what you’ve actually got. Just don’t do what my partner did, and open the box in the car, chickens can be spring loaded.

So we got our box-of-chicken home and called the girls over to meet their new best friend and shook the new chicken out.  She was just gorgeous and so very tiny. Parma immediately started chasing her around trying to peck her.  Clucksy wandered around looking for treats.  Both of them started chicken chattering (they do this when they are unsure of something and they have a huge range of vocalisations, by the next day I was fairly sure I could train them to sing opera (and retire on my famous chicken proceeds)).

Anyway, black chickens hung out on one side of the garden, poor little brown chicken tried to fly through the garage window. Not only is she just so young and without chicken life skills but the other chickens are shunning her. They popped themselves to bed that night leaving her to cuddle up in the cold floor in the corner, just like a Cinder-chickerella in the ashes.  I had to pop her onto some straw.

The next day, my two little misses were still acting like Grade-6 girls, pointedly ignoring the new arrival who was trying to hide behind a bush – Australorp ostracism at it’s finest.  I have to say that I am really disappointed with my girls, I thought that I had raised them better than that. I even gave them a stern talking to. They chattered back to me, and from what I remember from Grade-6 it was something along the lines of ‘But she’s different and we don’t want to play with her and she smells and she dresses funny’.

The whole reason that we’d got the third chicken in the first place is that Clucksy has gotten older and has taken to chicken naps in the morning and afternoon. Which leaves Parma by herself which she doesn’t like. Obviously there was a bit of a chicken friend vacuum to fill.

I’m hoping that things don’t continue on like primary school though.  If it does the best friends might have a fight and then one of them will hang with the new girl, leaving the other in the cold. Or they might start gossiping a lot about each other to the third chicken.  It could really get ugly. And if they don’t all learn to get along soon I am going to have to apply that old adage “birds of a feather, stick together” and figure out how to either glue chickens together or dye one of them black.

Before you say anything, of course this question makes sense. What I am talking about is those dreams where someone you know has done something to you in a dream. For instance, this morning I woke up to a persistent, annoying and exasperating dream in which my partner not only explained my toilet habits to his co-workers but then refused to apologise for doing it. He then went on to act very rudely indeed and even when I threatened dis-engagement, he didn’t care! At that stage of the dream some tropical fruit cake arrived which was delicious.  But that didn’t make me feel any better when I woke up. I still feel cross that he didn’t say sorry. Unfortunately redress cannot always be pursued in the dream state.

But it’s not their fault I hear you say, it’s happening in your head. But I would suggest there is a reason that it’s happening in your head.  There is obviously a reason why your sub-concious is so annoyed as to make up convoluted stories about the person in question. In reality, most of the times when we are offended by others when awake, it’s not how a comment was given but how we perceived it.

So in a word, Yes, dream offenders should apologise in the morning, preferably with a slice of delicious tropical cake.

That’s right I’m a winner! Go me. When the count came in at the end of July I had racked up drinks on a total of 5 days with a grand total of 6 drinks – that’s right I was two drinks under the eight drink maximum. I wish I could say that I had seen the error of my ways and I didn’t feel like I needed a drink anymore but that would be a big fat fib.  We toasted the end of the challenge with a bevie and it was good!

So luckily my partner is a computer geek because otherwise I never would have mustered the technical know-how to set up a blog page.  Of course once computer geeks start showing you stuff on the computer they get all excited and babble away not realising they lost you about 14 screens ago. But I’m slowly catching up and the last time we checked my blog page activity I was super excited to find out that people had actually got to my site.  In fact it was coming up pretty high in certain Google searches which made me feel really popular. And I had gone international (i.e four counties outside of Australia).

The interesting part for me was that Google Analytics shows how people get to your site.  You definitely learn a lot from this.  Apparently the Klein spirit level is a type of spitit level and the term ‘crocs avilable in katy’ refers to finding footwear in a place called Katy (who knew that existed). 

I was fairly intrigued by the person who ran a search on Mandytory punishment #25 to life.  Now I’m assuming that they had spelling issues but the question is why would someone be looking up mandatory sentencing periods specifically for over 25 years. I can only guess but this person may have come up with the perfect retirement strategy. Firstly you get to spend everything you earn whilst you’re young and can enjoy it.  Then when you hit about 50, you perform one of the appropriate crimes and off to prison you go, free board and lodging for the rest of your life.  You don’t even need to wait until your retirement age. There’s some minuses of course, you don’t get to buy a caravan and travel around Australia with the rest of the retirees.  But my grandma can tell you (and does every single time I visit) that her retirement home is like being in prison anyway. So you might not lose out too much.

Anyway, definitely something to think about and the way super is performing it’s definitely good to have a back-up plan. In case you are wondering the big three for over 25 year sentences appear to be murder(s), aggravated sexual assauts in company(s) (not sure if this relates to places of work or in social situations) and certain offences under the drug act.  Especially if you have spent some time planning them out (winging it seems to be fine in comparison).

It turns out that like horses and skinny dogs you probably shouldn’t bet on the outcome of  job interviews. You may recall that just before we set sail for Darwin I had racked up two interviews, one of which I thought had gone quite well and the second one I thought had gone remarkably crap.

So it has come as a pleasant surprise to be offered the position from my ‘crap’ interview.  I haven’t heard anything back from the ‘good’ interview so maybe I’m just a bad judge of interview success. In the mean time I had been contacted for a third interview but since they gave me only 24 hours notice and we were in the middle of Kakadu that was never going to happen.  Strangely they called me back a week later to see if I might still be interested in an interview which seems to indicate that the people they had interviewed were fairly dodgey. I’m fairly sure that you wouldn’t go to the effort of lining up an interview panel of four people again unless you had too.  I am also fairly sure that the number of interview panellists does not in any way correspond to making a better choice of candidate.  I was once asked to attend a final interview for a new manager as a courtesy and apparently I was the only person to see that anyone who turns up for an interview wearing a purple velvet jacket is not your winner. I was also the only person not on the panel (another panel of 4). Purple-Velvet-Jacket man turned out to be a terrible manager. It appeared that he may have read a guide to good management somewhere along the line but possibly hadn’t got around to finishing it. He was ‘made redundant’ a year later.

Anyway, it is fairly interesting that I can stuff up an interview but still appear to be the best candidate.  Which makes me wonder what the other candidates were like……..

So we’re back from Darwin having achieved life-long dream #2784 – Crocosaurus’s Cage of Death.  It was more like Cage of Photos in our case since the crocodiles weren’t that interested in working with us. Hence we now have a lot of underwater photos of us doing thumbs up action and riding each other like cowboys.

It was a pretty cool set-up though.  You climb into a plexi-glass tube which is large enough for two and you then moved along sort of like those claw games where you try to win the soft toy.  We were dropped into two of the pools and were wiggled around enticingly but well fed crocodiles really don’t want to know you even when you made appropriate crocodile attracting splashy sounds. What you may have needed was a poking stick to  liven them up a bit.  Being lowered into the pools though, gave you an idea of just how large the big boys are, they could swallow you whole and you wouldn’t even be a bulge in their stomachs.

The little crocs were a lot more keen on tourist action.  You can swim beside the tank of little crocs and they come on over in droves. If they could get through the glass I am fairly sure you’d stagger out with about 14 of the little blighters attached to you trying desperately to do mini-death rolls. On a side note there was more than one tasting platter on offer featuring crocodile spring rolls, can’t get more Australian than that!

Our final stop of the trip was to see the Jumping Crocodiles on the Adelaide River.  This was just amazing and I highly recommend NT Safaris.  We hadn’t even left the dock before ‘Godfrey’ popped up off the port side waiting for his treats.  Godfrey was huge and for a 100-year-old he still had quite a few teeth.  He wasn’t taking any prisoners, when he attacked the bait there was this ‘WHUMP” sound as his mouth closed with 3000kg of pressure.  A human has about 24kg of jaw pressure which is why we’d never win a biting contest against a croc. I was busy taking photos and at one stage Godfrey passed below me, seeing his golden eyes focused on you definitely makes you take a step back.  I’ve never felt more like takeaway.  We were on the only boat on the river which wasn’t double storey and when you see crocodiles that close you realise just how scary they are. I’m currently reading ‘Crocodile Attack in Australia’ (with a foreword by none other than Paul Hogan) and it makes for scary bedtime reading.

Now I like my animals to perform a bit but seeing the little crocs jump over a metre out of the water to get themselves a slice of buffalo was sensational. Then the birds decided to join in.  One recalcitrant croc wasn’t even taking a bite at the bait when it was laid on it’s nose which is when a brown kite swooped in for a quick feed.  The Whistling Kite also got in on the action and whistled continuously until our boat captain threw some meat up for him as well. No matter where the meat was thrown the kite grabbed it with a claw and then stuffed it into his mouth before the next bit was thrown.  I tell you if that kite ever figures out that alfresco cafe tables are a goldmine for treats, that’ll be the end to outdoor dining.

We completed our crocodile experience by channeling our ‘inner-Godfrey’ and taking on Sky City’s seafood buffet. Now if you are anything like me you take buffet as a serious challenge.  I was starving so we had got in early, along with the seniors, who tend to slow you down a bit in the queue.  Pausing too long between platefuls can be fatal as it gives your body time to register it is actually full. I thought I was doing pretty well when a guy sitting by the door laughed when he saw me go back for my fourth haul. And that was before dessert. My partner turned out to be a bit of a buffet-girl’s blouse and rolled around in pain from his bellyful afterwards but I was feeling good – as someone I knew once said, sometimes you just need to get a big plate of food!

Anyway, the NT turned out to be a fantastic holiday spot, even better than what I thought it would be.  The weather is awesome and the people relaxed and friendly.  Icy cold beers are advertised everywhere and the Barra Burgers are so good. But you do need to remember that the only things hungrier than the crocs in Kakadu are the mozzies – don’t forget the Aeroguard.

So after weeks of sending out half-arsed application letters to which ever job took my fancy at that particular moment (several applications went in on the strength of 0.6EFT and one went in to a company that sounded nice), I actually got a call for an interview.  The very first thought that popped into my head was ‘I might actually have to go to work darn it!’. Then I got another call for another interview.  Was this the end of unemployment?

It’s always really hard to know whether you’ve nailed the interview. You always think of the perfect answer well after you’ve left the building and you can’t phone them to update your responses (this could be considered a little strange and you need to appear normal until the end of probation).

Addressing why I left my previous role does make me quite nervous.  I am going with the honest ‘I was bullied’ since pretty much anything else will invariably lead to me appearing shifty as I try to answer further questions.  On the bright side I no longer appear bitter and twisted but there is always that urge to blurt out ‘Oh my lord she was a crazy bitch’! I’ve tried to wrap it up in positives such as ‘It was a great learning experience’ (on how to run from a building when I next meet a crazy lady),’Quite surprising when all my other working relationships were so positive’ (AKA It’s not me it was her – she was CRAZY!) and ‘I tried to improve the situation but her behavior was just inappropriate’ (AKA She was an absolute nutter). Of course you want to give them all the gory details but succinctness is the key at this point.

The first interview actually went quite well and they appeared quite understanding. One of the things that I have learned since the Crazy Lady is that the number of people who have been bullied, harassed or worked with a loony is surprisingly high.  The number of people who discussed it openly however is surprisingly low. They didn’t ask me why I had left my previous role in the second interview and I feel that it may have worked against me but I was very open about leaving the role.

Even now when I think about the Crazy Lady I just can’t understand how anyone could act like that.  Even worse is when you read about bullying and you understand the reasons why it happens, you wonder why  it happened to you. The short answer is that you were simply unlucky enough to come in contact with one of these crazy people. My only regrets after two months of umployment is that I didn’t leave sooner than I did and I didn’t line up a job before I left.

Katy Klein was born two months ago to help a friend out. This friend had serious doubts about a real estate agent he was trying to deal with. He asked me if I could go to an Open For Inspection to check it out.  Of course you can’t go to an OFI and give them your real name and number (unless you are actually interested in the property).  As a wet-behind-the-gills young thing I had initially done that when I commenced my house search.  Getting legions of calls about insurance products I didn’t want quickly led to me becoming a Sharon, Vanessa or something a little more outlandish like Myrtle.  I like to spell them out with interesting spelling variations for a little more authenticity.

I also enjoy signing visitors books around the world with names of famous Australians, it just makes me laugh every single time.  Overhearing a family discuss whether Nicole Kidman had indeed visited a small museum in the back end of Mexico was just hilarious.

So on the way to the OFI I came up with my Nom de Guerre to add a little spice to my undercover work.  Unfortunately the agent was well versed in the duplicitous arts herself and I suspect she was on to me.  I’ve never seen an agent provide so little information before, despite fairly active questioning.  What was interesting is that she did provide a lot of information to another chappie who I guessed was the other party interested in the property.  She even went so far as to disclose my friend’s offer to him.  Something I am fairly sure is completely unethical if not illegal. Luckily Katy Klein has very big ears and my friend got the heads up (if not the property).

I’m not sure if it helped my friend out very much but it did make for a fun afternoon.  And when I decided that I wanted to have a bit of a chat blog-wise, naming it was easy.