Footscray Reprezent

While I grew up in Footers for most of my teens and still only live 7 kms away, I don't frequent the place enough any more.

Today, on a quick work mish into the city, I had my chance to visit the heart and soul (and at times the rectum) of the western suburbs. I parked my car just next to the train station and directly across from a group of junkies, alcoholics and junkie alcoholics.

As I headed into the city it was great to see the Footscray train station being upgraded. I am sure the ecletic mix of first gen Australians, Indian students and Werribee crack heads will all admire the architecture and modern design.

It was on my return to Footscray as I alighted the 4.24 Sydnemham (nee St Albans) and was walking towards the soon to be demolished overpass that I saw the symbolic mis en place that poignantly sums up my love of the west.

Pushing through the crowd was the most sterotypical Aussie tradie you could imagine. He was decked out in the carpenter shorts, a fluro organge work singlet, had two sleeves of tatts and capped it off with Jim Beam hat. He most definetly loves Bathurst and most probably bashes his girlfriend, sister and mother. Oi Oi Oi.

Now that alone does not symbolise my love of the west; it was the food that he was smashing into that really sums it up. What you ask? Olympic Donut? No. Subway? No. Knackers was smashing into a Viet Pork roll, complete with chilli popping out the top and fish sauce staining the bag.

Now I don't have some werid fetish for tradies eating pork rolls, but I do appreciate this reverse form of assimilation where the host culture assimilates from the minority. While I doubt this particularly tradie was attending multicultural rallies in the city, it demonstrates that the malignant red-neck tumor is slowly going into remission(even if it is one pork roll at a time).

MMA

Well there was no vomit, but I did end up feeling very sick and before reaching a state of 'fat boy exercises for first time in years' nausea, I had the pleasure of having to contemplate my sexuality (still hetro) and fantasise of my rapid rise to UFC fame and all the redneck glamour that is associated with it.

For those not in the know, MMA is a combination of ancient martial arts (Judo, Jujitsu, Boxing, Muay Thai and anything other method of inflicting pain) that has recently been popularised by UFC on cable TV. If you've never seen it before, just YouTube ÚFC and you'll quickly understand why it is the redneck sport of choice (think WWF fans on steroids).

While I walk the dog quite regularly, the only time my heart rate is elevated to a level Michelle Bridges would define as acceptable is when I a) scare myself or b) when I run to the shop to get a pack of smokes. Needless to say, after a five minute jog to warm up I was already feeling dizzy.

While the effort of my body returning to homeostasis (elevated heart rates, excessive sweating, and increased breath rate) was a struggle, it actually became the least of my concerns.

The first concern was when I had to question my sexuality. It's really hard not to when you're suddenly in close physical contact with another sweaty male, locked arm in arm, leg in leg, torso on torso, wrestling on the ground. All I could think at the time was 1) 'geez, Freud would have a field day with this one' 2) I am recreating that scene from Borat.

The second, and much larger concern, was when I had to borrow a pair of the gym's boxing gloves. They must have been close to five years old and if you can imagine a pair of crusty bowling shoes packed with one million mini bush ravers who haven't showered in days you may be able to just, and only just, figure out how bad these gloves smelled. It was ok if I kept the gloves away from my face, but unfortunately, I was sweating so badly that every time I wiped my forehead I caught a whiff of these babies.

It was overall a very painful and psychologically traumatic experience.

My next class is on Tuesday.

Preparing to Vomit

I have signed up for a Mixed Martial Arts class tonight. It's a long way away from the Mixed Couch Sitting I've been training in over the past two years. I am expecting a vomit.

Existential Crisis 1

In a mission to reduce my consumption of take away food and increase the amount of cash in my pocket, I made the NY resolution to not buy take away food at work from Monday to Thursday (Friday is the exception because everyone buys lunch on Friday and if you don't you feel like a paedophile at a Mothers Club meeting (or maybe its a Mother at a Paedophile meeting?)). So far so good.

So today (first week of Feb), I was reheating my left over Hokien Noodles in the good ol' wave of micros and using my well refined guestimation skills I punched in a minute and thirty seconds.

The crisis I faced (and this was almost a full blown existential crisis complete with nervous shakes and my heart beating like a Staffy on crack) was what to do for that minute and thirty seconds? It's not long enough to start an important task and it's an awkward amount of time to stand in the kitchen doing sweet FA.

I ended up walking between my desk and the kitchen 9 times trying to figure out what to do. Problem solved.