Ok, on with the list!
12) I loooove a good book. Am a self confessed book-worm, which ties in with point 1 pretty well i suppose. Give me a good book & a quiet spot, I'm gone for hours upon hours.
Well, social media - particularly twitter - has eaten into this somewhat, but still can usually find time for a good read, especially with e-books & my kindle making it easy depending on what I feel like reading.
13) Our whole family went to hell & back between late 1995 & 1997. My older (by around 2 hours) sister Alisha had anarexia. It is 100% true when people say that the whole family has anorexia, not just the person suffering it. I saw a healthy & intelligent high school girl lose so much weight it was scary. I still don't think we all realise just how close we came to losing her to that disease. For around 18-24 months, we went through the system of RCH visits, family meetings, youth centre admssions & terrible nights at home where she threatened to kill herself & didn't want to go on, etc. Rightly or wrongly I really allowed it to affect my uni studies. It remains the only time I've seen my father openly cry in front of me. I can't imagine how it must have been for Jess, our younger twin sister coping all the rumours & name calling at their high school. If it wasn't for Mum's goodwill & strength, we would never have made it through those dark days.
Still the worst 2 years of my life
14) I was in a car accident in 2001 that so easily could have been fatal. Driving home from work with my brother, about 4 or 5 weeks after i had been transferred to
west Footscray from Richmond, a truck overtook us at Little River. Problem was it wanted back in our lane before it had clearly overtaken us. It ripped right into the drivers side of the vehicle & we somehow did a 360 & ended up in the mid-strip of the freeway shaken but unhurt. If there had been a car in that right lane behind the truck, we would have been goners. Yes it is true your life flashes before you in situations like that.
Was pretty scary stuff. Some dickhead rear ended me on my way home from work last July, lucky I was just shaken, car was written off though.
15) I never thought I'd be one for the bar/nightclub scene. It was a good 6 months after i first turned 18 before a few mates talked me into going out. But come a few months later, at the start of '94, we were heading out in G-town every Saturday night - I could count on 1 hand how many Saturday nights in the mid 90's we didn't end up at the good ol Geelong Hotel!!
Sadly the good old GH was torn down a few years ago for the extension of the private hospital next door. Can't even drive past & reminisce anymore!
16) I almost became a groupie for the regular cover band that played the Geelong Hotel there in our glory days, so to speak. Men Of Lesuire - in hindsight they were just your average Saturday night pub cover band. But it was a fun time - met a whole heap of new friends, including some pretty good looking girls, hehehhe. and hey, nothing beat throwing your arms around the nearest girls when the band launched into "Piano Man" at 1.30 in the morning, drunk as!
Good days, good days! Well, good nights, lol
17) In later years, Friday nights at The Lyric - back then Geelong's best known & biggest nightclub - became the norm for us all. Theme was Timewarp 70's/80's. I guess thats where my love of that music era began. Great nights - VIP entry b4 11, $6 shakers before midnight, then we'd hit the dancefloor grooving to all the tunes. You had the timewarp twins up on stage to check out & a guy with a big 70's hair-do wig dancing on the balconies, giving away $$ to the girls who could do the best fake orgasm. Bloody awesome nights, so many hangovers too!
Best nights ever. As much as enjoy the occasional night out at Retro in Melbourne, & even the Retro in Sydney on the odd occasion I'm harborside, I don't think anything will top the TimeWarp nights at the Lyric!
18) I had a MAJOR obsession with all girl Aussie pop band Girlfriend, who were really big in the early 90's. My whole wall was covered in their posters/clippings from newspapers, etc. It reached the point where when their 1993 Geelong concert clashed with our family trip to Central Australia, I was seriously considering flights to meet the folks in Alice Springs so i could still make the concert & meet up with the family later on. Common sense won out.......
Don't worry, my old high school friends never let me forget it!
19) I freely admit that the company I've worked for for the last 11+ years is never going to win awards for the best workplace, & they will never realise their true potential while the current owners/directors remain in charge. However, I wouldn't swap my experiences over the years for anything - I've learnt a hell of a lot about myself, & how the world works. Plus I have met so many quality people, & made a huge group of people I consider valued friends. And that ranks above all else in my book
I could do a whole blog post about my time at Dimmeys. Thankfully I finally got out of that toxic environment in late 2011. Why I stayed as long as I did is a daily thought. I'll save inner thoughts & details for a separate blog I think.
20) My first real bad experience with alcohol was on my 18th birthday party. I had my friends round for a BBQ & drinks etc. I was drinking Strongbow up until a mate showed up later on in the evening, with my birthday present - a big bottle of Jim Beam. So we all started doing shots of that, & I found out the hard way Strongbow, Jim Beam, & sprints around the block at 1am in the morning was NOT a good mix! Boy was i sick!
Ahhh come on, we've all been there before right? :)
21) I still rate "Back To The Future" as my all time favorite movie. A close second, despite me risking my bloke membership card, is Titanic. It's 1 of only 2 times I've ever walked out of a cinema absolutely having being blown away, lost for words. For the record, the only other time was when i went & saw Mulholland Drive.
Still numero uno
22) Yes, I am happy to admit it - I AM A PRO-WRESTLING FAN!! My brother & a school friend of his were into it at a time when it was the in-thing (late 80's) & they ended up dragging me into their interest as well. As luck would have, they grew out of it, while I still followed it, to this day, though not as religiously as I did say at the start of the decade. And yes i know how it works. But its a pet hate of wrestling fans to say its fake. IT IS NOT FAKE! Yes the match results are pre-determined, but the moves they use in the ring are legit!!
I've really dropped off the wrestling bandwagon a lot more in the last year or 2, though I still follow whats happening, & see the occasional show. My niece & nephew are right into it though!
23) I cannot stand 95% of the T.V shows currently screening (ratings or non-ratings time). If you aren't into reality T.V or crime shows, its bad luck you i guess. Big Brother was the sole exception in my dis-like of reality T.V, & that got totally un-watchable in its last 2 years. I'm glad they canned it when they did.
It's only gotten worse! When is it going to end? Seriously, we're gonna look back at our TV viewing habits in 20 years & wonder what the hell we were doing watching all this crap? Certainly haven't gotten back into the revived BB, though I will admit there is one reality show I've found which is pretty decent - The Amazing Race.
24) I am a bit of a sports nut (people who know me well are probably saying well duh right now). Cricket, tennis, soccer/round ball football, Olympic sports, etc.... even a bit of rugby & Grid Iron......though nothing could ever come close to AFL Footy. I was born & bred on the game as a mad Geelong supporter, & take my footy very seriously. To put it in perspective, I've missed a grand total of 2 Geelong home games in the last 15 years - one in April 1999 for a mate's wedding, & one last June when i was overseas on my Barbados trip.
I missed game No. 3 in 2011 when I was in Vegas to be part of my friends' wedding - fair excuse, haha. Be otherwise I'm probably even more sports mad now, especially with plenty of awesome twitter peeps to chat with it about!
25) I believe its pretty much true when they say your high school days are the best days of your life - looking back i had a pretty good time back then. Sure there were the groups, as per any high school/uni movie you've seen. I was part of the "sportie" group i guess - we played cricket, basketball, all-school chasy, badminton, footy, impress the girls, etc. Also, if i had a dollar for every game of downball I played in high school (Corio rules apply of course) I could afford to take the rest of the year off work! Also, being the first group to do the (at the time) brand new VCE was very challenging!
Last 6 years have only solidified that opinion - plus life really seemed to be a lot less stressful back then. That goes with growing up & taking on responsibilities though I guess.
So there you have it - in summary I guess you could say I haven't really changed that much, apart from my employer. Have managed several more interstate/overseas trips/holidays though, which has learnt me quite a lot. So that might make an interesting next blog I think! Thanks for reading! :)
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