My August Thus Far

It's been a great month for me. August was about starting to get back into work and I started focusing on being a casual fill in for other instructors at my local gym - just a 5 minute walk from my place. My instructor friend - who is the group fitness coordinator at the gym - was going on a working vacation for 2 weeks (going to the international fitness conference in the US - not sure where. Possibly Los Angeles) so I am covering the majority of her classes while she is gone. She left last Monday and has one more week to go. So I've been a busy little bee filling in these classes and getting my fitness back at the same time. But while all of this was going on, I had some more news about work and other prospects. At the beginning of the month - August 3 - I received a phone call from the Australian Institute of Fitness. This is the place to get your qualifications to become a Personal Trainer. It's the place I got my qualifications from. Back in the middle of July they had advertised positions for course presenters (people to 'teach' and 'present' these qualifications to. I hadn't heard from them after I applied, so I assumed they had filled the vacant positions. Not so, because on Aug 3 they called to see if I was still interested in the position. I excitedly said yes and they booked me in for an interview 4 days later. So I spent those 4 days practicing my job interview skills (I really wasn't that worried. I always nail interviews! And especially if they are in the field that I am passionate about - like fitness!)

4 days later - on a Friday - I went for the interview, and just as I thought I would, I nailed it!! I was talking about my 2 favourite topics (me and the fitness industry!!). Lisa, the lady conducting the interview. told me the head trainer would give me a call on Monday or Tuesday to arrange for a second interview, where I was to prepare a small presentation about any aspect of the fitness industry, just to see my style of teaching and presenting information. She told me explicitly to expect the phone call.

So I went along my merry way, nice and happy knowing that I had made it past the first stage (I knew I would, as I applied for the same position 2 and a half years ago. But I turned them down when I found out it was a full time position. I only wanted part time back then. Now I'm ready for a full time career move!) I kept myself busy on the weekend with friends and teaching classes. That weekend flew by. Monday came along and it was just a matter of me sitting by the phone and waiting for that call. It was one of the slowest days ever. Even though I did have a class to teach on Monday morning - and that was a welcome distraction - the day could not have gone by any slower, even if it tried to. No phone call. I wasn't concerned, as Lisa had told me Monday or Tuesday would be the day I got the call.

Tuesday comes along and I knew I would be getting that call. This day was even slower than Monday, because I knew it was the last possible day they could call. Once again, I had a class in the evening to teach to distract me. Before I taught that class, I gave them a call to see what was happening. It turns out that Lisa had taken 2 sick days from work - Monday and Tuesday. So she was unable to pass on my details to the head trainer. They told me to expect a call on Wednesday and to call back if I hadn't heard from them. It was a bit of a relief, but it was still a long process to try and get that call for the second interview.

Wednesday morning. My sleeping habits had altered since I've been sitting around waiting for that phone to ring. I woke up at 8am. I was homebound once more, but confident that I knew what the deal was. At 10.30am, I got the call from Mark, the head trainer. He asked me to prepare a 5 minute presentation (I only thought it was 2 minutes, so I was getting a little panicky, but still thrilled to have finally got that phone call 5 days after I had one of the best interviews ever). I spent the next few hours trying to formulate what I would talk about. It could be anything in fitness, so I decided to talk about what I know a lot of and what I am passionate about: group fitness classes. I originally was going to talk about the 8 common styles. I practiced and it was 15 minutes long - and it was then that I had wished I had a longer time to talk about this! I dropped it down to 4 classes to discuss. 10 minutes. Cut it down to 3. 8 minutes. Finally I got down to the 5 minute mark by talking about 2 classes (and incidentally, the 2 classes I am currently teaching at gyms). I practiced that, as well as practicing for my new class I would be teaching on Saturday morning. So I was juggling 2 things at once (and that's my strength - successfully multi-tasking. If it's just one thing I have to do, I stall. But when it's more than 1, I'm in my element).

Friday. I'm all prepared and I arrive 15 minutes early. They bring me in straight away and I am presenting to Mark and another guy who both haven't met me. So they started asking me questions that I got from my first interview (tell me about yourself, why do you want this position, etc). I hadn't practiced any of that because I was just focused on that presentation. But we're talking about me, I can't get anything wrong there! Shortly after, I'm asked to present. I got up there, kept them engaged and got their full attention for the whole 5 minutes and once again, I really excelled and presented wonderfully. I got some great feedback too. Mark asked, "Have you had any teaching experience?", and that's where I told him about Japan. He said, "I love you, when can you start?" I said, 'As soon as you need me". The only thing I needed to do was provide 4 referees. That posed a bit of a problem. The last 2 places I worked was while overseas in Argentina. They said, "If you have their numbers, we'll call them" and I had to remind them that they don't speak English. So I gave them 2 referees from Melbourne. My old boss from the cake shop and my friend the club manager! I hadn't told them I would give them their details, so as soon as I walked out of the interview, I ran to look for the first public phone I could find and call them up. I called my club manager mate and couldn't get a hold of her, so I left an urgent message on her mobile. I had told my old boss I would be visiting the cake shop this week, so I decided to tell her in person that I used her name as a reference.

I arrived at the cake shop and told my old boss and she was fine with it. 10 minutes after I told her, AIF called - while I was sitting there next to the phone! My boss was on the phone with her for 10 minutes, and afterwards she said, "Those were the strangest 10 minutes ever". She had asked my old boss fitness related questions about me, but my old boss didn't know me as a personal trainer, only from the cake shop. So she told them the other important bits: me being punctual, responsible, bla bla bla. Straight afterwards, AIF called my friend and they spent 20 minutes on the phone with her asking 10 questions about me (do I take criticism well, was there any animosity after I left the gym to go overseas, what are my strengths and weaknesses, am I suitable for a career in the fitness industry or would I be better suited to another field, etc). My friend gave me a glowing reference (and all true, she did work with me and knows me well and has seen me working in the fitness industry). The lady told my friend "That was the best reference call I have ever had. Thank you for being so open and honest". So in other words: I am now employed!!! I was told that I would get a call back after they call my references. I was hoping they would call me later that day, but possibly on Monday. I know I have this - the head trainer loves me and wants me to start soon and I want this because it is a full time career in the fitness industry - not just some random job. It's hard to get a full time job in fitness because hours are varied. But because I am teaching people, it is in normal school hours, plus some weekends. Add my gym work to the mix and I'm working 6 days a week again in an industry I love. Everything is perfect this time around and I am so thrilled about this.

So that's why I haven't blogged for the last fortnight - either the days have been going really slowly or super quickly. Plus the uncertainty of it all was just bugging me. But not anymore.

Today I had a fantastic day too. My friend and I had been learning the new Pump release to teach to my class. We taught together at my local club. Some members at this club used to be members at another location, which closed down. This was the location that my friend and I used to work in together, so the members know us. When we both got up on stage today at the new located club, all the oldies remembered us!! She and I had fun on stage and we provided an educational and fun hour with Pump. This was possibly the best class I've ever taught. She had a good time too and we're planning on doing this every fortnight. She is a recent Pump instructor so she wants as much practice as she can before she branches out on her own next year. So it serves the both of us as well, not to mention all the old members who remembered us and loved as and the new members who fell in love with us today too!!!

Tomorrow I'm teaching again, but on my lonesome. I inherited Sunday morning Pump classes when the regular instructor broke her arm 2 weeks ago in a car accident. She's quite accident prone and is unlucky with injury and health. Only 4 weeks prior to that she was in hospital with pneumonia. Weeks before that she was in hospital for an injury to her leg. She may give up Pump, so it's mine. I may have blogged this last time, but I can't remember. I'll edit this out if I did mention it.

It's been a long and wonderful fortnight - let the good and abundance continue to flow.

My life according to INXS

I saw this on Amanda's page and it was something I can picture myself doing. So here it is: what you do: Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. You cannot use the band that I used. Re-post as 'My life according to (band name)'

Pick your Artist: INXS

Male or Female: Beautiful Girl
Describe yourself: What You Need
How do you feel: The Loved One
Describe where you currently live: Not Enough Time
If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Searching
Your favourite form of transportation: The Stairs
Your best friend: Devil Inside
You and your best friends are: The Gift
What's the weather like?: Mediate
Favourite time of the day: This Time
If your life was a TV show, what would it be called?: Kiss The Dirt (NB - The life of a PT! hehe!)
What is life to you?: New Sensation
Your relationship: Heaven Sent
Your fear: Falling Down The Mountain
What is the best advice you have to give?: Don't Lose Your Head
Thought for the day: Never Tear Us Apart
How I would like to die: Disappear
My soul's present condition: Shining Star
My motto: Taste It

THAT was pretty cool! I had over 30 years' worth of songs to choose from, but I decided to stay with the INXS stuff with Michael Hutchence as lead singer. Pretty cool, ay?

Thanks Amanda, it was quite fun!

Long week

In a good way. I haven't blogged because it has been quite a busy time. Not something I was expecting to hear myself say at this point in time, especially as I have been looking for work. But I do have my trusty diary and am able to back-blog from last Thursday. So here it goes!

LAST THURSDAY:
I was meant to be helping out my friend for her Body Pump instructor training (even though she hasn't started yet, she's commencing on Saturday!). I told her we didn't need to do anything, as most of the things that she needs to know for the first weekend will be covered when she starts. So I had the day to myself while Mum was at work. I continued on my job hunting ways and applied for a position in a vintage shop which is run by a charity and who are willing to pay big bucks! I know it may seem erroneous to only look at the money side of things, but I really do want to help my Mum out (she doesn't need it and she hasn't asked, but I would still like to help out). Plus, I know me. I get bored easily. While it's been great having time to myself and recovering from my 9 month trip, I know that I will want to sink my teeth into a new challenge. That's why it didn't concern me when I left my job last year at the cake shop. My time had come and I was getting bored and frustrated (even though I do want to get back to the cake shop, purely for the financial security. Can you tell I'm getting older?!)

I was looking for the kind of work that is being offered and it's the same as always (which is good). I had assumed there was a huge lack of jobs available (although last Saturday when I got the employment section from the newspaper, it was significantly smaller than it was at this time last year - about a third of the size. But at the end of the day, jobs are out there. And if you aren't fussy with the kind of work - within reason - then there won't be a problem with finding work). I had shortlisted possible places to apply for and it came up to quite a list, so I was very confident with finding something.

FRIDAY
Not much on during the day - spent time with Mum, as she doesn't work Fridays during the day.

At night I had a mini reunion with the people I worked with at the cake shop. It was a combined 'welcome back' for me (I never had a farewell party and they were kind of miffed about it, so I said I'd have a 'welcome back' shindig). As well as my welcome back, it was a bon voyage for my friend Robert who also works at the shop and who is going to Europe for 6 weeks. I had presents for him, which I had conveniently left at my house (nice to know that some things don't change with me!)

It was an interesting night, as I had met up with almost all the people from the cake shop that I used to work with. It started out with me going into the shop to see one of my favourites (aside from Robert) and catch up with her. Everybody was encouraging me to get my job back. It was at this time that I found out an interesting fact, which I may have to backtrack further...

On the day I arrived, I went home, dropped off my suitcase and went out with my best friend to talk about her pending wedding and my bridesmaid duties. We ended up going to the cake shop to talk to Robert, who is very knowledgable in the wedding business. So I popped into the shop and saw the girls, Robert and my old manager. She was asking me what I was doing work wise and what my plans were. I told her I'd be getting my job back at the gym slowly and looking for something else while I set up my own personal training business. Apparently, when she asked me that, she was 'dropping hints' for me to ask for my old job back. I never picked up on them. (I will add now that I do not handle hints well. Quite simply, I just don't do hints. If you want to ask or tell me something, be direct and just ask/tell me. If I don't tolerate 'hint dropping' from my boyfriend, I'm hardly going to tolerate it from my old boss!) I had a few quibbles with this:
a) The manager does this all the time - if she needs to be direct, she will. But you can tell she doesn't like it. Even one of the staff said, 'You know what she's like, she wants you to take initiative. She knows how you work and she knows you're good - and she doesn't have to go through the whole training process with you, which she hates!', to which I said, 'If she desperately needed someone, she would ask me'. It's logical. If you need someone, you're going to tell people. That kinda leads me to point b
b) Dropping hints isn't going to do anybody any good. If you need someone, you need someone, period. You're not going to be subtle about it. I am direct - what can I say? You may have seen me or realised from a while back (from me taking on the psycho housemate in Madrid, remember her?!) At least with me being direct, you know what I'm thinking and you know where I stand. There's no 'ifs' or 'buts' - all cards are on the table. Being indirect like this is childish. It may simply be fear of rejection, but you need to embrace rejection. That's what I think anyway.
c) This just reiterated the fact that nothing in the work dynamics of the shop has changed. It's all the same politics and crap as before. I'm not even back working there and I'm still being sucked into that vortex of bullshit.

These were a few things on my mind. Robert finished work at 6 but we booked a Thai restaurnt for 7pm. We hung out and were catching up before joining the others at 7pm. It was a big turnout for a last minute gathering. I sat next to my manager and had told her I'd be asking for my job back (in a jokey way though, so I believe she took it as a joke and didn't take me seriously). She didn't bring it up again, so neither did I. She got drunk and was telling me that I have a fear of commitment because all of my past relationships (and my current one) have been long distance and she was giving me shit for it. I knew she was drunk, but not excessively to the point that she didn't know what she was saying. She knew exactly what she said and it pissed me off. I ignored her for the rest of the night and realised that I do not want to go back to the cake shop. Exective decision: I'll be looking for something else. For someone who complains there is not enough intimacy in her long marriage, I think it was a bit thick of her to offer advice and cast judgement on my situation, considering I've been out of the country for so long.

It wasn't just her being negative, it was everybody else too. I had mentioned that I was thinking of buying a second hand car from a friend of mine. I had done my research and knew I was getting a good deal, but as soon as I brought that up, everybody was being a downer about it and just saying, 'never buy a used car from a friend' and giving me the worst of horror stories. They have always been negative fucks because their lives suck and they want to make everybody else's life as sucky as theirs. I worked there for nearly 3 years and I was getting as negative as them. It was hard, as I had made a conscious decision to surround myself only with positive people, only to have to work with the most depressive, angry and bitter people I have known in my life. I voluntarily stayed out of negative people's way, but what happens when you work with them? It's about 7 people I work with who fit that description - and on Fridays I worked with ALL of them on the same day. It's there that I thought: is the money really worth it? Do I want to go back to all of that negative crap for $150 a day? At that moment I was clear in my mind. I had been toing and froing with whether I could go back to the cake shop, but I made a final decision. No. And I was happy. No amount of money could justify me going back to a place where I have to deal with such utter crap from people who are in their 50's who are acting like kids who are 4 (and I'm guessing those kids would be better behaved than these so called adults)

SATURDAY
Set my alarm for 8.20am to go to the 8.50 Combat class at the gym. My alarm didn't go off and I had opened my eyes at 8.36am. Still enough time to get changed and half jog half walk to the gym. I made it and had such a roll that I ended up staying for 2 additional classes: a 1 hour studio cycle class (which is nuts! usually they go for 45 minutes - it was my first ever hour long spin class!) and then followed it up with yoga. It was the last yoga class before the timetable change kicked in, and 16 people rocked up to yoga - the highest ever. The reason it was taken off the timetable was because nobody was coming to them! So everyone signed a 'petition' to get the managers to change the timetable back again to include yoga. Don't think it's going to work. I hope it does, but if things will change, it's going to take some time.

Got home, had a shower and then received a phone call from my friend who was selling the car. I was going to go to her house for a test drive. She lives near the cake shop, so I had to make my way over again to that side of town. I passed the cake shop and had seen 3 girls that I had yet to catch up with, so that was nice. Proceeded to my friend's place. She is Japanese, so as soon as she invited me in I took my shoes off. Force of habit! She gave me the car for the whole weekend, which I wasn't expecting! For a 1990 hatchback, it looked like it was in really good condition. The only problem was there was no power steering and I was struggling with parallel parking. I ended up driving back to my house, then out to my best friend's place, then her fiancee's, then into the city, then back again to the 3 houses above. So I got a good indication of what it would be like to drive the car. The lack of power steering did it for me and was way too much.

The reason why I went to my best friend's place was because we had planned on taking a tour of Old Melbourne Gaol, which is one of the oldest jails in town and the last one to have enforced capital punishment. A friend of a friend was the one who organised it, but we had to pick up the rest of the crew from her fiancee's place, have dinner and then find parking in the city. On a Saturday night. We got lucky - we found 3 free spaces! Parallel parking was a pain with no power steering. OUCH!

We got to the meeting place, but it was cold and rainy. I wasn't cold, but everybody was complaining about it. They need to spend a winter in Canada, then they can try and tell me what cold weather is! We got to the tour to discover that it was not the Old Melbourne Gaol night tours (those tours are great - the gaol is scary in the daytime, imagine in the dark!). This particular tour was a 'ghost tour' of Melbourne. And it wasn't even that - it was more of a history of Melbourne tour. It wasn't that interesting. If you're a history buff, then maybe it would have been entertaining. But it was a 2 hour long walk around the city, pointing up to places that have reported sightings of ghosts. It sounds more interesting when you write it down and read it. But it wasn't worth it. My best mate was pissed off, her future sister in law complaining of the cold, her fiancee laughing at her and me enjoying the walk, but not the content. It was a great night!!!!

I was the designated driver - it was the first time my friend's fiancee and his sister saw me drive. I don't think they want to see me do it again!

SUNDAY
As I had the car, Mum and I decided to go to a family friend's house for lunch. To be more specific, I stayed with this lady's sister when I stayed in Chile. We've been close family friends. She's the closest thing I have to a grandmother, so it was nice to see her.

I decided not to buy the car, so I returned it back to my friend's house, then had to go home by public transport. On a good day, it takes 40 minutes. This day, it took 90 minutes because the trains tracks were being repaired. I had to take a replacement bus to South Yarra, then catch a train for 1 stop to get off at Richmond to connect to my local train. It was a 20 minute wait for the train. But it was one of my few times I was in the city at night. I was looking over the skyline and was truly happy to be back home. I couldn't get the smile off my face - and I didn't want to either.

MONDAY
The job search continues. I narrowed down quite a list of places I'd like to work in. I was fond of one place - a cafe - because it was in my suburb. I've always had to catch public transport to work, so I fancied the idea of just walking to my workplace. I gave them a call and left a message saying if the position was still available to give me a call. I wasn't hopeful of this one, as this position had been advertised for a while and I believed they may have already hired someone. Still, it didn't hurt my chances just to double check!

Caught up with a friend of mine who I met in Japan. She's from Sendai, where I used to live and is now living and working in Melbourne. It was good to see her as well. It was just a short meeting, as she's quite a busy girl now.

TUESDAY
Spent the day editing 2 of my friend's works. Mainly spelling and grammar - as I've never edited professionally. But it was a lot of fun! In the editing process I managed to cheer up one of my friends and was able to give some constructive feedback to the other.

WEDNESDAY
Job searching. Narrowed the field and was preparing resumes and such. Had to cal my old workplace (the gym) to get my tax forms so I can do my tax. Spoke to the manager, who is keen on me going back to do classes (but not personal training, it's not worth my time. Classes are). I said yes, so they have put me back on the 'fill-in' list. Plus, Chris, the coordinator, knows me and needs instructors because 2 of her main ones have gone overseas as well. One for 6 months, one for 3 months. So it'll be good to get back to classes.

While I was doing my job stuff, I got a phone call from the employer that I called on Monday. It turns out she called me because I'm a local, and also because she had someone on trial for the job, but it wasn't going to work out. She asked what kind of hours I was looking for, but then was telling me all the tough things about the job - how hard it is, labour intensive, how ppl who have had experience have struggled, how it's 'their way or the highway', as it's a family run business. So I wasn't getting a good vibe, but I did agree to pop in the following day to have a chat to Gail the owner. A nice little surprise!

TODAY
It's been exactly 2 weeks since my return from Japan and my world trip, and I have celebrated by going to a trial/interview at a cafe that is in my suburb. It turns out that it's a leisurely 30 minute walk to get there - or 5 minutes in the bus. But Andy the Walker likes walks! So it was a no brainer for me. I arrived 10 minutes early - thinking it would be a mini trial. And it was, so I was dressed for it. They mainly do catering for offices in the area as well as make fresh sandwiches, rolls, focaccias, pies, coffees - a regular cafe. But they need someone who preferably has a fresh slate and can be moulded to doing things their way (done, I haven't worked at the cake shop for 9 months - so I have promptly forgotten stuff!) I practiced making sandwiches, but obviously I was quite slow at it. They all seem like a nice family. Gail and her husband take care of the catering side, whereas the daughter and son stay and focus on the shop/cafe side. While I was making the sandwiches, Gail told me to imagine I was making a sandwich for myself. Little does she know how stingy I am with the fillings, so I was doing the same. It turns out these guys are generous with their servings, so I can stack a whole lot of stuff in there, which is lovely!!! It's just the prices of stuff I'll have to learn, which is fine. And making stuff in front of customers. But it's all practice. Gail seemed impressed when I told her I was a personal trainer and that I walked to the cafe from my place. It all seems to be going well. They asked me to return tomorrow for a full day's trial during lunch, their busiest time! Wish me luck - I'm sure it will be like the cake shop!

I'm still applying for another fitness related position that is full time and requires a bit of travelling interstate (WOO HOO BABY!) But we'll see!

So there you go - this week in Andy's life. Tune in next week to find out if she gets the position and other interesting tidbits of her life :)

Galvanize

Here's a little game that Oisin did last year with a music player on shuffle and a list of questions. What to do: after you put your music player on shuffle mode, press 'next' and write the name of the song as the answer to each question. I'm doing this now, as today I have found that my iPod that I got for my birthday nearly 2 years ago is working again and I found the shuffle feature. Bear in mind that I am doing this on the spot and will be just as surprised as you are now reading this with the answers. OK, I'm ready:

1. If someone says, "Is this okay?" You say...?
Where are you?
2. How would you describe yourself?
Get down
3. What do you like in a guy/girl?
Cielo rojo (which means 'Red sky')
4. How do you feel today?
I need to know (hehe!)
5. What is your life's purpose?
Jamas (which means 'Never'. I didn't realise I had so many Spanish songs on my iPod!)
6. What is your motto?
Si nos dejan (If they let us', literal translation. If they allow us would be more appropriate.
But I think that's a good motto anyway!)
7. What do your friends think of you?
Politik (By Coldplay. If it helps, Chris Martin warbles 'Open up your eyes' a lot. Maybe
that's a better answer!)
8. What do your parents think of you?
Simply Irresistable!!! (Go Robert Palmer!!)
9. What do you think about very often?
Somos novios (Translated properly, 'We are dating' LOL!)
10. What is 2+2?
Devuelveme el amor ('Give me my love back'!)
11. What do you think of your best friends?
Hot girls!!! (Of all the bloody INXS songs I have, it comes up with this! Too funny!)
12. What do you think of the person you like?
Cuando calienta el sol ('When the sun gets hot'. Open for interpretation!)
13. What is your life story?
In love with you!
14. What do you want to be when you grow up?
Us
15. What do you think of when you see the person you like?
Patience (Hardly! I'm more patient then he is!)
16. What will you dance to at your wedding?
Don't want to be left out (By Powderfinger. Have you heard the opening riff to this track?
It's more head-bangy than dancey!)
17. What will they play at your funeral?
Motivos (Just as it sounds like, 'Motives' or 'Reasons'. It's a love song, believe it or not!)
18. What is your hobby/interest?
Never let you go.
19. What is your biggest fear?
I don't want to be in love (LMAO!!!)
20. What is your biggest secret?
Too much too young too fast (not bad!)
21. What do you think of your friends?
Run to the hills!!!! ("Run for your life!" Good old Iron Maiden - I'm still laughing!)
22. What do you want right now?
Here comes the hotstepper.
23. What Will You post this as?
Galvanize
24. Last words?
Think about the way.

That was a good laugh - and pretty fun. I might do this every month!

Back in the game

Last night I decided to go to my local gym for the first time in months. I'm able to go to this gym for free because I use my old staff card. It's always saved me from paying for a gym membership, which is so cool. However, at reception when I handed in my card, she swiped it (it usually doesn't work anyway, it only works at the club where you work in - and I never worked in this particular club). She then warned that I would need a brand new staff card. I agreed and quickly moved away from the area, hopeful that everything would be OK and they wouldn't do something drastic - like call this gym and find out if I was on payroll. But it was just my mind playing weird tricks.

I had gone back to the gym to do a Body Combat class which I hadn't done since February back in Argentina, when I was teaching the class. I promptly was reminded of the major differences between group fitness classes in Australia and Argentina. There is more 'personality' and 'life' in Arg. Instructors will ask a fun question and will usually get a smart assed funny answer from the participants, which makes everyone laugh and lightens the mood. There is a lot of coldness and distance with the classes in Australia. In Argentina, it feels like you're in a concert - people yelling and cheering and just being plain happy to be there. They go more for the social aspect of a class - meeting up with your friends, having fun etc. It's a bit more hardcore here in Oz. You have members taking it all so seriously and have a lack of banter and communication between the instructor and the participants. If only I was able to tape the classes I taught in Argentina to show you all. They were outstanding. I would like my classes in Oz to be like that. For the moment, I don't have any classes, so it's not something I have to worry about anytime soon. Maybe.

I entered the group fitness room and it was great to be back. You still had the same hardcore participants as always in their preferred spots. Last year I had 'stolen' this woman's spot in every Pump class I did. She was there. But when she found out I was an instructor, she backed off! The instructor, Megan, came up on stage - she's the one I used to teach with in the good old days - and she remembered me by name, re-introduced me to the class and said I could join her on stage for a few tracks. However, as stated above, this was my first class since February. I had done my first Pump class on Sunday and I struggled getting through that whole class. If I struggled through a weights based class with little movement involved, it's only going to be worse with Combat, a cardio based martial arts class. Or so I thought. I decided to play the role of participant, staying down below and not joining Megan. While she introduced me to the class, she had mentioned that she tried calling me last year and this year to cover some classes for her (but as you know, I was overseas for 9 months) and I had disconnected my phone - only telling my close friends that I had done this. Mental note for next time: tell prospective employer's of number changing!

I went well with this class. Pretty well for someone who hasn't done it for 4 and a bit months. Being the competitive person I am, I was comparing with the other participants and my technique is still brill. It's just my endurance - naturally. But with cardio fitness, this is quick to regain. Quicker than muscle tone. So I was very happy to have had such a successful comeback to Combat. After the class I spoke to Megan, who told me that she had been promoted to Group Fitness Co-ordinator (the person who allocates classes to instructors, who finds covers in emergencies - and there are a fair few emergencies when it comes to instructors and their ability to rock up). She was happy that I was back because it means she has another instructor she can rely on for covers. Combat instructors are still hard to find. She had called in the past to see if I was interested in taking on a permanent class - as she knows me, she knows how I teach (as we have taught together), plus the members know me and know how I teach - and have given Megan good feedback about me. The group fitness timetable has just changed, so it's too late for me to have a permanent class, but she said she was going away next month and needed covers - and with me living just around the corner from the gym, I was only too happy to put my name down. So I'm back in the game! Just 5 days after arriving, I'm still on a roll :) Very happy!

Today I woke up with not as much soreness as I did after my Pump class on Sunday. Must have been the stretching, or the fact I'm getting used to the DOMS. Both are good reasons. I felt really great. I went to meet up with a high school friend in the city, my first time going into the city and catching a train since I've arrived. Still busy, the main shopping centre is still confusing (but they are opening up a cupcake shop soon!) that I got lost in there! The train announcers are still the same, the people are the same - and I wouldn't change any of it - except maybe the cleanliness of the trains, but it's all changing soon. On my first day, Mum told me that the company running the train network has been given the royal ass. There have been too many delays and cancellations. A company that takes care of the train network in Japan has won a contract to help improve Melbourne's train system. So I'm hoping we'll get cleaner transport, punctual services and Japanese sales ladies walking up and down the carriages offering food and drinks - and then bowing as they go from one carriage to the other! It's great - I love Melbourne! But I heard today that the main problem is with the tracks and their quality, so no amount of clean trains will help account for the delays. But I guess this company will cross that bridge when they get to it.

We had dinner at a place that looks like a bar, which I thought I had never been to. Turns out I have - last year when my best friend told me she was going to ask her boyfriend to marry her. She showed me the ring she got him at this restaurant/bar place. It was nice to go back. I had forgotten though how big their bloody servings are. I just got an entree soup and it was a huge bowl with bread on the side. It took me around an hour to finish it. Service is slow though, but it's not like we were hungry. It was nice to catch up with this girl who I have always randomly bumped into in and around the city.

Got home early and am realising how cold it gets in Melbourne, particularly in my apartment. But the good news is that in Summer time it's an absolute dream. There is no air con, but according to my Mum, you don't need one in this place. So I am looking forward to the end of the year!

I still have more catch up plans with people. Tomorrow I am supposedly helping my friend out. She is going to do her Pump training to become a Body Pump Instructor. I did this training 3 years ago and she wanted my help with teaching tracks, which is part of your 'make or break' assessment. These are tentative plans, but if they don't come to fruition, I am planning on going to the gym I used to work at (the one I grew to hate) in Carlton to a) try and get my group certificate so I can do my tax and get money to buy a Mac and b) do a Combat class with Chris, the instructor who has helped me out so much with giving me classes and being cool. She was the one that had a brain tumour re-surface, yet she was still way fitter than me and still teaching classes. It would be nice to see her, although I didn't leave things in the best of ways. I was just sick of working there and had to leave and I ended up resigning a month earlier than expected. Hopefully things are still fine. I'll look up the group fitness timetable to see if she is still teaching, but from memory she always took Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday's Combat classes. We'll see if things have changed.

It really is great to be blogging again! I'll soon be blogging the Spinach and Lamb Cobbler recipe I made yesterday. Delish!

The Domestic Goddess is back

...and so is the TV watching goddess. Last night I saw 2 eps of Flight of the Conchords on 2 different channels on the same day. First one was great - they dissed nightclubs and Australians and I thought it was hilarious! I have heard others talk about this series and it wasn't until I caught my flight last week from Tokyo to Sydney that I saw about half an episode on the in-flight entertainment. QANTAS shut down the entertainment system 20 minutes before landing, so I missed half of it. I was happy to see it and am quickly becoming a fan. Maybe enough of a fan to raid JB HIFI and getting the series on DVD (I was thinking of going to get some MJ music anyway - they have a 2 CD's for $15 deal. All my MJ music is on tape. I've got the Dangerous album on cassette! As well as Roxette's 'Look Sharp'. Both of those albums are classics and I want to keep them. But for a better sound, it's better to get them on disc. May as well get my FOTC fix as well!)

Yesterday I also made a delicious vegetable soup - I've always made chicken and it was nice to know I have the knack for making vegetables - as well as chicken - so tasty. It's the same process I use for making chicken soup and there's a very useful tip that I use to make sure there is not such an overpowering vegetable or chicken flavour. I'll divulge it later, when I blog the recipe, even though some of you know it already! Maybe this will be my new thing. Blog about recipes that I would like to make, post the ones that I am going to make during the week, make them and have a review. Now that I have some more time on my hands and am wanting to expand my kitchen repertoire. My Mum wants to do the same as well and has an infinite supply of cookbooks and magazines with a huge list of recipes she has always wanted to make. With my newly keen interest in cooking, it will help me to plan out menus and be more organised in the kitchen instead of going straight for the junk food for lunch or dinner. What do you think?

Today I helped Mum with a recipe called Spinach and Lamb Cobbler, which is similar to a casserole with spinach fritters on a bed of minced lamb and red kidney beans. It's in the oven as I type this and we are hoping it comes out. I'd like to post the recipe a bit later after I've taste tested it. But I have a feeling I will like this one. It incorporates ingredients that I like - so it's nothing new, just a different take on lamb. I'm looking forward to eating this one.

Later in the day my Mum and I will be going up to the central Post Office in my area to pick up the last box I had sent from Spain 3 weeks ago. I wasn't expecting it until September, but it was a lovely surprise. I hadn't picked up the box earlier because the PO requires identification with my current address. The only photo ID with my home address would be my driver's licence, but when I moved to this place last May, I had delayed going up to the DMV (VicRoads is what they call it here in Victoria) to change the address, so it had my old one on there (it was a little bit of denial, as I didn't want to move). But it's been 14 months since the move and I've spent 9 of those months overseas. I have definitely accepted the move now! So yesterday I went to VicRoads to change my address. I was in and out in 5 minutes. Now I have the ID to take to the PO (Speaking in abbreviations is fun, btw!) So after having this lamb cobbler for lunch, we'll be on our way to getting my box. And I am still in the unpacking stage. My suitcase hasn't left the living room. Plus my first box from Spain and today my second box, also my loads of clean laundry which is piling up quickly. But before I start putting laundry away, there are plenty of clothes that I want to give away. Being away for 9 months has accustomed me to wearing and owning very little clothes and now that I have my wardrobe back, there's just way too much in there. So I am going to be giving away a lot of clothes. If I don't plan on wearing them, if I don't like them and if they don't fit, they are going.

Everytime I return from a big trip, there is always the feeling of renewal. You've just come back from vacation and you want to bring that renewed feeling you got on holidays into your everyday life. I managed to enrol for my PT course on the day I arrived from Japan, started classes 9 days later, moved out to my other place 3 weeks after getting back from Japan and found a job 3 weeks later. I'm on a roll now and I'm loving it. I've even managed to apply for some work and will be going into my previous workplace later this week to see the 'vibe'. The staff want me back but the manager seems to be a bit uncertain about it. She's a lovely woman, but I'm not sure she would want me back, or perhaps is looking for a full timer and knows fully well my long term career objective of opening up my own PT business. Perhaps I'm just making too much out of nothing, but I am on a roll and I want to see where it takes me.

The cobbler is almost done. Will post a recipe blog later :)

Back in Australia

I returned home last week and was surprised at my energy levels. After spending such a wonderful time in Europe, I knew the moment I stepped foot in Japan, it was the beginning of my homecoming. That's because I lived in Japan and consider it my home. I knew how to navigate from Narita so well - I had done it so many times in the past. And as soon as I landed in Japan - albeit Tokyo - where I didn't live, it was home. Honestly it was a nice way for me to get the body used to being in a familiar environment again - all part of the homecoming process I guess!

I had 3 great days in Tokyo, even though I was sick with cold symptoms that I had got in Paris - after wandering the streets and admiring this city for 13 and a half hours on foot with only a flimsy Summery jacket, despite the temperature dramatically reducing to about 8 degrees centigrade at night. The cold symptoms had hit me hard on my first day in Japan. At Narita airport the officials were giving out slips of paper, urging people to come forward if they have any symptoms of a cold - and they had a list. Sore throat (check). Runny nose (check). Cough (check). Fever (check). As I didn't have any medication at all and was aware that Japanese medication is not all that strong, I was tempted to go up and say, "Hi, my name is Andrea and I have symptoms of the cold outlined in your most informative slip of paper". But I knew that I was going to be quarantined (perhaps at the Hilton!) and that was quite tempting. If I didn't get quarantined, then I would have at least had access to some medication. While all of this was starting to become a good idea in my feverish state, I still decided against it, as I knew it wasn't swine flu related - it was 'foreigner-wearing-summer-clothes-in-cold-temperatures' related. I knew I'd be fine and I was willing to naturally heal without any meds. However I did spend the first night shivering in my sleep and coughing quite a fair bit - and I was in a dorm style accommodation sharing with 15 others (everybody still had their privacy - I may upload pics of my room, as it was one of the great hostel experiences I have ever had). As I was coughing and feeling icky, I had not slept much and by the time my symptoms subsided a bit and I had fallen asleep, I woke up at 1pm to find that someone had left me an 8 tablet pack of Nurofen on my suitcase. I was SO grateful and was keen to find out who this beautiful soul was to thank them in person. I saw the meds and had 2 straight away. After having 'breakfast' I was feeling 10 times better and knew I would enjoy my stay in Japan a lot more now that I had some decent medication.

I spent time in Tokyo doing the things and going to the places I didn't have time for on my last visit - the very busy business end of Tokyo - Shinjuku, one of the museums. Met some more lovely Japanese people at the museum who were helping me out with translating the all Japanese exhibits, so I was very humbled and very grateful throughout my whole stay in Japan. I can only say good things about Japan - and not only as a resident, but as a tourist as well. Going to Japan straight after the fru-fru arrogance of the Frenchies in Paris was a fantastic idea (I did get some great politeness and positive experiences in France, but it was nowhere near as consistent as it was in Japan).

After my 3 days in Tokyo, I made my way to visit an old friend who lived in the same Japanese city as me in the good ol days. She now lives in Omiya, a 45 minute train ride from downtown Tokyo. It was such a buzz to see yet another familiar face on my round the world travels (I will be backtracking, but not yet!) After a quick lunch with her, I made my way to Sendai, the city I used to live in and on the bullet train ride up there, I was getting goosebumps, especially as we were coming up to Sendai station. I'd taken this ride so many times and it was a bit odd not having my old apartment to go home to, but instead a hotel. The good thing is I know Sendai so well that I didn't even need a map. I arrived at the station and knew EXACTLY where to go - a nice change after all my travels to new destinations, where a map is mandatory. Found my hotel easily and without a rest, I explored my old neighbourhood and my former workplace. Such great memories.

The next day I met up with a new friend who lives in Sendai - a friend of a friend of mine - who I met through the lovely Chris and Olympia - and we went exploring Sendai together. Of course, a visit to Sendai is only complete when you go to Namaskar, the BEST Indian restaurant in Japan. When I lived here, every Sunday this restaurant had an all-you-can-eat buffet for AUD$15. They still had it - and now it's AUD$12 for the same quality and it was really a gastronomic trip down memory lane. I took photos and the chefs were laughing!
On the Monday I went to Matsushima Island, which is apparently one of the 3 places in Japan where you can get great views of the oceans and mountains. I'd been there twice before, but it was still lovely to go back.

Tuesday was a nothing day, but at night I met up with one of my new friends I made in Sendai courtesy of my Japanese friend I had only met on Sunday at Namaskar. We did a night tour of the city and it still felt as comfortable and beautiful as it was when I lived there. Almost brought a tear to my eye.

Wednesday was my last day before having to leave to Narita. I managed to catch up with another friend - I had tried to arrange a meeting but didn't have her correct email address or phone number (Thanks Chris!) But thanks to my friend in Australia, I managed to get her correct details (Thanks Stu!) and squeezed in one last minute catch up with her before leaving Sendai. Being back - like I said - was the beginning of the whole homecoming process and I guess it helped when I got back to Melbourne - my first home. In Sendai I had time to myself and time with my old and new friends. By the time I got to Melbourne I was rested - and on the day I actually arrived in Melbs, I dropped off my suitcase at home and went out with my best friend, went to my former workplace to check in with my old boss and friends, and then caught up with my best mate's fiancee and his family. If I hadn't stayed in Sendai - a familiar place that I call my 3rd home (2nd being Argentina), I assure you I would have stayed at home and done nothing!

This weekend that has gone past I caught up with 2 of my good friends who got engaged while I was away. I have spent lots of time catching up with old friends and discovering how happy I am with Melbourne. It's true that you do not realise how great the city you live in is until you leave it - even on holiday. I got back and was thrilled to see that shops are open on Sundays - something that is impossible to see in Europe (unless you go to the shops owned by the Chinese - they are the only ones open!)

I am settling back and looking for work, which has always been easy for me. There is an opening at my old job, where all my former colleagues (they ALL want me back!) have told me to speak to the manager to get my old job back. My long term plans for work: I plan to set up my own personal training business. But I do need a car. That is my major expense. And I do need start up capital. So I want to do a part time or casual gig just so I can get that money and then focus on my PT business. So I am considering going back. I am leaving my options wide open and am open to everything that comes my way. I'm popping into my old work this week and seeing how things are.

Great to be blogging again :)

Comunicación Interculturales de Irlanda a España

MIÉRCOLES 27 DE MAYO EN DUBLÍN - LLAMADAS EXTRAÑAS

Mi novio recibió una llamada de Madrid cuando estabamos cenando. Era Miriam, la compañera de casa quien nos ignoró el día anterior. No me dí cuenta que era ella hasta después que pasaron unos minutos, cuando yo escuché gritos rápidos en Español - y la única persona que conosco con tanta locura que podría haber sido era ella. Miriam empezó a decir a Oisín que estaba enojada con él por el motivo de sus blogs (¡Por fin, ella le dice algo - justamente cuando estamos de vacaciones!) y también ella se enculó con la nota que yo le dejé al otro compañero de casa sobre nuestra amiga Magda que se iba a quedar en la casa por una semana. (Aquí te cuento: nuestra amiga necesitaba una habitación por una semana para estudiar por sus últimos exámenes antes de regresar a su casa. Hay una habitación disponible en nuestra casa - la casera quiere que alguien ocupe ésta habitación. Oisín le preguntó a todos los compañeros de casa si ella se podía quedar en la habitación y TODOS estuvieron de acuerdo. Él le dió la llave a Magda porque nosotros no ibamos a estar en Madrid el día que Magda se mudaba a la casa).

Regresamos a la llamada telefónica. Yo no hablé con ella, fue mi novio. Entonces tenemos una chica Española gritando por telefono MUY RÁPIDAMENTE a alguien que por primero, NO ES un Español y segundo, que su comprensión de la lengua no es de nivel nativo, y tenemos un problema con la comunicación porque ella está hablando y él simplemente dice ´si.....si.....si....´ con el idea que él puede entender todo lo que Miriam le ha dicho (y eso no era la verdad). Entonces cuando me di cuenta que ella llamó solamente para gritar basura a mi novio, agarré el celular y corté la conversación. Oisín me dijo que la llamada podría haber sido muy importante porque empezó a hablar de Magda. (Después Oisín me había dicho que si no hubiese dicho nada de Magda, que él no se preocupará por cortar la llamada. Y también si yo hubiese escuchado Miriam nombrar a Magda, yo no hubiera cortado la llamada).

Oisín la llamó de vuelta. Los gritos continuaron y no pude escuchar bien lo que ella estaba diciendo, aparte del tema de Magda y algunos otros boludeces y cosas taradas como, ¨Ésta es la última vez que haces ésto, ya has hecho muchas cosas, y ahora basta¨ (puras mentiras de su parte). Siguió así por un buen rato hasta que ella le preguntó, ¨¿Está claro?¨, y él respondió con un ¨sí¨. Luego ella cortó el telefono. La conversación duró unos 15 minutos con ella dominando sin dejarlo hablar. Cuando le pregunté a Oisín que era lo que la loca estaba gritando, me empezó a decir que su problema era que le dimos la llave a Magda sin avisar a nadie – y Miriam se enculó porque según ella, Miriam no la conoce a Magda y estaba enojada que una persona que ella no conocía está permitida usar la casa (aunque ella SABÍA que Magda venía porque Oisín le avisó). Al final ella dijo, ¨No la quiero (a Magda) en la casa, NO LA QUIERO. Ya sé que nos preguntaste si se podía quedar y estuvimos de acuerdo pero ahora las cosas han cambiado. Me preguntaste eso cuando las cosas estaban bien entre nosotros pero ahora no. Si tu amiga viene el domingo, voy a llamar a la policía porque nosotros NO LA CONOCEMOS y ella no tiene un contrato. La casera no sabe que ella viene. Voy a llamar a la policía. Tu avisale a tu amiga y decile que ella no se puede quedar aquí y que nos devuelva la llave porque ella NO SE QUEDA EN MI CASA. ¿Vale?¨ Hay tantas mentiras en éste discurso que no sé por donde empezar. No puedes imaginar lo que yo estaba pensando en ese momento y lo que le quería decir a ésta guacha de mierda. (pero lamentablemente, no era mi pelea y tengo la dignidad para no meterme en las peleas de los demás). No....cambié de idea....ahora sí comenzaré a fragmentar su versión de la verdad:

a) Con el tema de la llave: ¿Me puedes decir de cuál otra manera Magda iba a entrar en la casa? Y si ella se queda en la casa, ella necesita una llave. ¿Tú quieres que ella te pide prestado tu llave cada vez que ella entra y sale de la casa?

b) Tu ya dijiste que Oisín le pregunto a todos si Magda se podía quedar – y todos dijeron que sí. Es un CONTRATO VERBAL. Y ya le dijiste que el único motivo que tu cambiaste de idea fue porque ahora tu tienes un problema con Oisín por las cosas que él ha escrito en SUS blogs. Eso no vale. Tu y todos los demás se pusieron de acuerdo – no castigues a una persona inocente. De tu punto de vista, la única cosa que Magda hizo mal fue ser una buena amiga de Oisín y eso NO ES una razón para cambiar de idea – porque TU estás enojada con mi novio. El problema es entre tu y Oisín – y así debe quedar. Llamá a la policía si quieres, pero al fin de todo, Magda tiene una llave y – lo más importante – tiene el permiso para quedarse en la casa.

c) Y al final, lo más importante de todo: ¡NO ES TU CASA! TU no eres la dueña, TU no eres la casera (Sole tiene ese trabajo). Si realmente TU FUERAS la dueña de la casa, TU no pagarías la renta cada mes. ¿No es cierto? ¡ENTONCES NO DIGAS QUE ES TU CASA, PORQUE ES MENTIRA! HACE MUCHO TIEMPO QUE ESTÁS VIVIENDO AHÍ, PERO NO QUIERE DECIR QUE LA CASA ES TUYA. ASEGURÁTE QUE TIENES ÉSTE IDEA MUY CLARO EN TU CABEZITA PEQUEÑA, Y LAS COSAS MEJORARÁN DE AQUÍ EN ADELANTE. ¿VALE?

Yo me enojé porque Oisín permitió la guacha dominar toda la conversación, a pesar de él asegurándome que no siempre fue así. Pero Miriam está muy acostumbrada a las cosas resultando a su favor porque ella piensa que es la Reina de las Avejas – ella le pisotea encima de su novio y piensa que puede hacer lo mismo con mi novio. Ella tiene mucha suerte que no ha probado hacer lo mismo conmigo, porque AHÍ SI que la freno.
Pero la persona principal que estabamos pensando en fue Magda y lo que nosotros queríamos es que ella tenga la oportunidad de quedarse en la casa para que ella pueda estudiar para sus exámenes. Nosotros dos pasamos 2 horas formulando el diálogo para poder hablar bien con Miriam (porque Oisín quería defenderse, pero se dió cuenta que era muy difícil enfrentarse con alguien de hablahispana que también es una loca muy grave. Entonces ahí es donde yo le ayudé. Gracias a mi familia en Argentina, yo estoy acostumbrada a hablar y pelear con locos incurables que se confunden la cabeza y el culo, entonces para mí, ésto no iba a ser ningún problema). Oisín me dijo las cosas que él le quería decir en inglés y yo las traducí en español. Aquí tenemos las notas y algunos de los argumentos que juntamos en 2 horas – que realmente fue una oportunidadd para sacar el enojo de nuestros sistemas. Es lo que tenemos que hacer cuando no tenemos el internet y cuando no podemos publicar los blogs :
. Tuvimos de acuerdo con todo y el único motivo que cambiaste de idea era por lo que TU LEÍSTE y lo que TU ENTENDISTE, que son 2 cosas distintas.
. Después de la manera tan adulta que te portaste – de ignorarme y después enfrentándome escondiendo por teléfono cuando estoy en otro país – voy a volver a poner mi blog al público para que todo el mundo vea SIN SACAR los blogs que te ofendieron tanto.
. Yo te pregunté si Magda se podía quedar, tu dijiste que sí. POR ESO le dí la llave a Magda.
. Si las cosas han cambiado entre nosotros, fueron por los blogs. No creo que entendiste lo que estaba escribiendo. Ni siquiera me preguntaste si entendiste bien, solamente me ignoraste. Podrías haber sido el adulto de 23 años que pienso que sos y podrías haber venido a hablar conmigo DIRECTAMENTE en vez de ser infantíl e ignorarme sin saber lo que está pasando. Podrías haber mostrado el mismo respeto que tu amigo me dió y hablar conmigo.
. Lo que yo publiqué fue un momento que no era justo. Cuando terminé de escribir el blog y cuando lo publiqué, ya se me pasó y estaba preparado para seguir para adelante.
. La casera quiere la habitación ocupada porque es más dinero para ella. Si la casera no la quiere a Magda en la casa, ella misma me puede llamar para decirmelo.
. Si vas a estar buscando información de ti en el internet, la gran mayoría de veces ENCONTRARÁS algo que no te va a gustar y tienes que estar preparada para esto. Si tu ego es tan frágil para poder comprender esto, NO LA BUSQUES.
. En 2 semanas esto no va a importar porque todos nos vamos y tendrás la casa vacía. En 9 días jamás nos verás, entonces aguantátela y calláte la boca.

Esto fue casi todo, pero habíamos olvidado 2 de nuestros argumentos principales para usar hasta el final. Pero planeamos bien lo que él iba a decir y en que órden, lo arreglamos para que suena bien (acuerdensen que nuestra prioridad era Magda, entonces yo tuve que contener mi rabia contra ésta yegua hija de puta). Ésto fue como empezó la conversación:

1. Hay una barrera de idiomas. A veces necesito más tiempo para pensar lo que he escuchado, lo que he entendido, y más tiempo aún para contestar en español. Si entiendes lo suficiente inglés para leer mis blogs y estar segura que entendiste TODO (sin entender mal), podemos hablar de ésto en inglés.

2. Si tienes un problema conmigo, está bien. Pero esto no tiene nada que ver con Magda. Tuvimos de acuerdo que ella se quedaba en la casa y los demás también estuvieron de acuerdo con esto.

Lo que planeamos era que Miriam deje de hablar de los blogs – el motivo en que ella se enculó tanto – y que empieze a hablar del tema de Magda. Después de planer todo, Oisín la volvió a llamar. Fue una espera nerviosa, pero tuvimos todo planeado y él no quería que la loca domina la conversación. Lo que planeamos para que él diga si Miriam empieza a hablar de nuevo es, ¨Por favor, te dí tu tiempo para hablar. Ahora te pido que me escuches¨. (No era lo que yo diría, pero estuvimos pensando en Magda y no de mí)

Oisín empezó tan bien, que cuando él le dijo, ¨Podemos hablar de esto en inglés¨, ella se puso nerviosa porque ahora ella tenía que escuchar. Él se dió cuenta que Miriam estaba más nerviosa que nosotros (tuvimos 2 horas para pensar como responder a su locura). Ella habló en español y Oisín siguió en inglés con argumento número 2. Miriam empezó a decir cosas de nuevo hasta que le dijo que le escuche. Oisín dijo que no era justo castigarla a Magda todo por los blogs, diciendo que ella no entendió todo. Aquí la loca siguió con sus llantos. Empezó a dominar de nuevo mientras que yo le decía que siga con nuestro plan. Oisín me ignoró y le dejó hablar por 10 minutos sin parar. Yo me enojé con él y tuve que salir de la habitación porque pensé que él se permitió a ser engañado por esa boluda, y yo no la podía soportar. De lo que yo escuché, ella se enloqueció y empezó a decir, ¨Yo entendí todo perfectamente, no me digas que no entiendo. Yo sé lo que es OCD. OCD es una condición en que una persona está obsesionada con algo y está contínuamente pensando de limpieza y están siempre limpiando y limpiando y limpiando....yo no tengo OCD¨ y ella continuó a leer el significado de OCD del diccionario mientras Oisín interrumpía con ¨Miriam.....Miriam.....Miriam.....yo ya sé lo que es OCD¨ (y lo que es tan gracioso de esto, es simplemente con el esfuerzo que ella hizo por buscar el significado en el diccionario y leerlo, y también con la velocidad con que ella hablaba, con eso solo cualquier persona se dará cuenta que son síntomas de OCD. Y también cualquier persona que llama para negar esta condición a otra persona que no la conoce bien para diagnosticarla – ESO me dice más en vez de sus gritos y llantos de negación). Miriam empezó a hablar de las cosas que la ofendieron en los blogs (era el tema del OCD y también una frase que dijo que ella tiene un tipo de ´poder de fantásma´ sobre él – y yo me cagué de risa – porque eso fue una frase positiva para ella y algo que insultaba más a mi novio que ella. Pronto pondré el link al blog que la ofendió tanto para que ustedes pueden leerlo y reír conmigo). Miriam estaba tratando de buscar el significado de ésta frase y tratando de entenderlo...Yo me reía más porque en ese blog, esas 2 cosas fueron lo menos ofensivos de todo. Si no lo han leído todavía, el blog es más desagradable y habla mal de mí y de mi novio – no solamente ella, aunque hay algunas cosas de ella que no son muy buenas, pero son observaciones reales de lo poco que hemos visto de ella. Se ofendió de las partes menos ofensivas – ella fácilmente se podría haber ofendido más con lo que yo he dicho de ella – que ella estaba en el medio de su ataque mensual de la casa. Eso para mí me dice que ella no entendió bien el blog, como ella decía. El blog de Oisín está escrito con un gran toque de humor inglés, donde él insulta más a sí mismo, y solamente un nativo del idioma de inglés podrá entenderlo totalmente. Los que no son nativos pueden entender bastante, pero no al nivel del nativo.

Oisín le dejó con sus gritos mientras me empujó fuera de la habitación (Según Oisín, yo estaba enojada, entraba y salía de la pieza diciendo ¨NO LA DEJES HABLAR A ESA HIJA DE PUTA¨ y ¨DECÍ ÉSTO¨, entonces era muy difícil tener una conversación donde 2 mujeres le estaban hablando en 2 idiomas diversos). Miriam empezó a salir del tema de los blogs y le dijo porque ella y su amigo estaban enojados por la llave que Magda tuvo – y por fin Oisín le escuchó a Miriam decir algo razonable (Yo estaba pensando que teníamos que esperar hasta el próximo milenio para que ella empieze a decir cosas que tenían sentido). Ellos estaban enojados – y con razón – que nosotros tuvimos la llave cuando ellos pensaron que el compañero anterior de la casa la llevó con él. También la casera les estaban hinchando las pelotas a ellos 2 para hacer algo para que el compañero anterior devuelva la llave (algo que nosotros no supimos, sino se la hubiesemos dado). Pero cuando la casera viene a cobrar cada mes, ella nunca habla con Oisín porque ella no le entiende – tampoco él no la entiende nada – y los otros compañeros de casa no le decía a Oisín mucho de lo que la casera decía (porque no pensaron que Oisín necesitaba saber todo), entonces no es su culpa porque Oisín no sabía que la casera se enojó con el tema de la llave.

Aquí es cuando el otro compañero de casa se enojó – algo que nos arrepentió porque él es un hombre muy bueno. Si no fuera por él avisandole a Oisín del enojamiento de Miriam, nosotros estaríamos perdidos de lo que le picaba con la loca y su comportamiento juveníl. Y también él es muy amistoso y justo que nos trató muy bien a los 2 (es por él que nosotros podemos viajar tanto por Europa) y estabamos sintiendo mal que se tenía que meter en todo esto (eso te muestra lo tanto que lo respetamos a él como persona y de lo poco que pensamos de la psicótica que, lamentablemente, es una amiga de él). Oisín dijo que hace mucho tiempo la casera quería la habitación ocupada, aunque sea por poco tiempo. Miriam dijo más cosas válidas (¡Qué horror – Por fin!), que la habitación no estaba preparada adecuadamente para estar ocupada todavía, porque el compañero de casa anterior quebró la única luz en la pieza cuando se fue y no está arreglada. Oisín empezó a relajarse más porque Miriam habló de la posibilidad de Magda quedándose en la casa. Él se estaba confundiendo hasta que por fin le preguntó, ¨¿Y Magda? ¿Se puede quedar en la casa?¨. Ella dijo que sí. DIÓS MIO, DESPUÉS DE TODO ESO, Miriam dió la media vuelta y se puso de acuerdo de nuevo. Oisín estaba tan sorprendido como yo – mientras la loca daba vueltas con sus gritos de locura yo estaba buscando otros lugares para Magda, pensando que esto no se resulterá como queríamos.

Miriam dijo que ella y su amigo estaban de acuerdo, pero según Miriam, había un compañero de casa que no sabía de Magda (todo mentira porque Oisín ya le había preguntado y estuvo de acuerdo. El también es una persona que le da lo mismo y no se mete mucho en la política de la casa), entonces Miriam quería que Oisín llamé al tercer compañero de casa para avisar de Magda (él ya sabía) y también que él llame a la casera, aunque nosotros pensabamos que la casera ya sabía. Nosotros pensabamos que no era necesario llamarlo al tercer compañero de casa porque él ya sabía de Magda, pero no queríamos que la idiota haga más problemas cuando ya se calmó un poco (y yo me tenía que acordar que Magda era nuestra prioridad). Además pensabamos que el tercer compañero de casa no debería llamar la casera porque, si no te diste cuenta, te aviso ahora que esta boluda piensa que es la jefa. Y aparte de eso, es siempre su amigo (el bueno) que siempre llama a la casera, no el otro. Y también el tercer compañero habla MUY RÁPIDO y Oisín tarda más para comprenderlo. Entonces Oisín me dió el telefono para preguntar al tercer compañero de casa algo que ya sabíamos la respuesta. Hablé con él y estuvo de acuerdo de nuevo, diciendome que Oisín ya le preguntó. Le dije, ¨Ya sé, pero no sé porque, pero Miriam quería que Oisín te llamara para preguntarte otra vez¨. No le dije nada de la casera porque ya sabía que era fuera de su lugar – y además todos en la casa no tienen una muy buena relación con Sole, y por eso Miriam no la quería llamar (y aparte de esto, si Miriam realmente piensa que la casa es SUYA – aunque ya sabemos que no lo es – entonces sabemos que es SU responsabilidad de avisar a la dueña. Es todo ilógico, ya se. Pero Miriam es así también).

Oisín la llamó a Miriam después que yo hablé con el otro compañero de casa. La única cosa que quería saber era si él iba a hacer el gran sacrificio de llamar la casera. Estuvimos muy felices de decirle que no, entonces ella mismo tenía que avisar. Yo estaba sorprendida todavía que la rara cambió de idea después de ser tan hija de puta con nosotros – especialmente a Oisín – y con su actitud tan juveníl de, primero, esperando que Oisín se vaya del país para enfrentarlo de algo que ella podría haber dicho 2 días antes (y en mi opinión, ella no se tendría que haber enculado. Lea mis 2 blogs anteriores y sabrás cual es mi postura en todo esto) y segundo, por dejar sus sentimientos personales manejarla tanto que ella rompió un contrato que ya estaba hecho y que todos ya habían estado de acuerdo – solamente porque no entendió los blogs, y tercero, no puedo creer la manía que tuvo para castigar nuestra amiga, quien es inocente en todo esto – y que ni sabía lo que era un blog – y aún este era el motivo que no se podía quedar en la casa por 9 días. Yo estaba tan contenta para Magda y que Oisín pudo hacer todo esto, pero estaba todavía tan sorprendida por la media vuelta que Miriam tuvo porque la mayoría del tiempo ella estaba puteando y gritando de los blogs. Era una situación que pensabamos que no iba a solucionarse a nuestro favor. Estamos tan aliviados que se solucionó bien.

Perdimos mucho tiempo por telefono en nuestra primera noche en Dublín – y Oisín gastó todo su crédito de celular – para escuchar la severidad de una mente tan psicótica y ser testigo a las media vueltas que dan para cambiar de idea. Yo mismo estaba tratando de leer su mente para ver como esta loca piensa para convencerla de cambiar de opinión (como el detective Rober Goren en Law & Order, Criminal Intent), pero no quería acercarme de sus pensamientos obsesivos y compulsivos, y yo estaba agradecida que no tenía que acercarme a sus pensamientos. Estuvimos muy contentos de haber solucionado todo, sin saber completamente come se hizo todo. Y también estabamos aliviados de resolver esto al principio de nuestras vacaciones para poder disfrutar un poco en Dublín. Le avisamos a Magda lo que estaba pasando (aunque no le pudimos explicar todos los detalles, le dijimos que ella es una mujer muy afortunada) y al día siguiente Magda nos dijo algo muy interesante...

JUEVES 28 DE MAYO – UN DESCUBRIMIENTO MUY INTERESANTE

Bueno, todos sabemos que esta locura empezó después que la idiota se hizo amiga de Oisín en Facebook. Miriam tenía aceso a todos los amigos de él y era muy obvio que ella estudió bien su página (los amigos, las fotos, de todo. Me imagino que ella estaba buscando información de mí. No encontró nada – mi perfíl de Facebook está a super privado. Es algo muy gracioso que mi blog es fácilmente disponible a todo el mundo. Cuando este blog está publicado, ella tendrá la dirección del blog, porque eso será mi regalo de despedida para ella).

Le mandé un mensaje a Magda la noche anterior para avisarla de la locura de las conversaciones telefónicas con Miriam. Magda me dijo que Miriam le había mandado un mensaje en Facebook (entonces ahora la Señorita OCD tiene un interés en buscando e hinchando las pelotas a los amigos de Oisín – no me puedes decir que ese compartamiento NO ES ni obsesivo ni compulsivo). Magda no sabía como manejar la situación. Hasta ahora, no sé exactamente lo que el mensaje decía – solamente una cosa breve. Miriam estaba siendo amistosa con Magda – y eso era un alivio para todos. En el mensaje, Miriam mencionó el blog de Oisín a Magda y le dijo que si quería más información de ella, que lea el blog de Oisín. QUE BOLUDEZ TAN IMPRESIONANTE – NO LA PUEDO CREER ÉSTA HIJA DE PUTA. Entonces ahora si podemos decir sin ninguna duda que ella está OBSESIONADA con el blog de Oisín, entonces llamándola OCD no es mentira (Ella en su primera llamada telefónica gritó que Oisín escribió puras mentiras de ella. Si fueran mentiras al principio, te aseguro que ahora todo es la verdad. Con todo que discutió anoche, pensé que Miriam ya había avanzado. Te digo ahora que ella está empeorando las cosas para ella si sigue con el tema del blog, especialmente a Magda quien, me repito para estar clara, NO TENÍA NADA QUE VER con los blogs. Es algo que estoy tratando de comprender. Como dije antes, es mejor no analizar su mente psicótica.

Lo más importante de todo es que Magda se queda en la casa, pero no por mucho tiempo. Oisín y yo regresamos a la casa el 3 de junio. El 6 de junio nos vamos de la casa y 2 días después Magda regresa a Polonia. Cuando pase ésta fecha, todo esto no va a importar más (es posible que a Miriam le va a seguir importando, porque ella el el tipo de persona que le importa lo que los demás piensan de ella – aunque no las conoce. Por suerte, hace mucho tiempo que he sobrepasado ésta etapa, e igualmente mis amigos).

Entonces, ¿Qué podemos aprender de todo esto? Y, ¿Por qué he decidido compartir ésta información con ustedes? Bueno, hay muchos motivos. Por primero: No te lo agarres conmigo (o con mi novio, porque con nuestras reacciones a cualquier conflicto, vas a obtener resultados y comportamientos distintos. Yo saldré disparando con todo lo que tengo, mientras él tiene un método bien calculado y calmado. ¡Tendrás un conflicto completo si te metes con nosotros dos!
Segundo: Parece que lo que le calienta más a ésta chica es lo que los demás piensan de ella – especialmente los que no la conoce. Solamente 3 personas que leen mi blog la conoce (me incluyo y también la incluyo a ella. Sea agradecida que ustedes no la conocen – es una loca incurable). Como he dicho antes, mi regalo de despedida para ella es dejarla mi blog – para que ella y todo el mundo pueda leer de un caso real de una mente tan pasada de vuelta. Este blog será un recuerdo de un tiempo inolvidable, pero también será una lección para aprender a relajarse – no tiene sentido tener un palo metido en tu culo Miriam.
Tercero: Si vas a buscar información de ti en el internet, tienes que tener la mente abierta y darte cuenta que todo que encuentres no va a ser bueno – y lo más importante es tener la sabiduría para saber como comportarse cuando encuentres esa información desagradable. Si no eres tan inteligente para poder controlarte, no la busques.
Cuarto: Miriam, tu no eres completamente inocente en todo esto. Te hemos escuchado putear y quejar contínuamente de los demás. Has puteado de Sole la casera casi todos los meses, de Jorge, de todos tus compañeros de casa, y aún de tu propio novio. Seguramente que nos has puteado muchas veces también. ¿Qué harás si tu novio o tus compañeros de casa te escucharan hablar de ellos de esa manera? Porque escuchame bien: un día ellos TE ESCUCHARÁN porque hablas tan fuerte que todos en Francia te escucha cuando estás a los gritos. Sea inteligente para saber que si tu sacás el cuero a todo el mundo, el mundo te sacará el cuero a ti. ¿No aprendiste ésto en el colegio?
Y para terminar, todo esto ha sido una lección de vida de dejar pasar adelante lo negativo (ya se que es un poco contradictorio a lo que he dicho en el número 3, pero si ella sigue hablando de los blogs, yo seguiré haciéndole burla a ella y me disfrutaré de eso). He aprendido de pensar en los demás (Las cantidades de veces que me he callado la boca porque no era mi pelea) y me ha enseñado a dejar la negatividad e ignorar a las personas que representan la negatividad fuertemente. Después que publico este blog, estaré preparada a avanzar para adelante.

Como siempre, agradesco sus comentarios :)

Intercultural Communications from Ireland to Spain

I´m back to blogging!

OK, so what I´ll be posting about in these next few blogs is all about that stupid cow Miriam, the one I used to live with (I´ve told most of you about her already and you have all concluded that she is a total nutter). I´m blogging about this partly for posterity purposes, so I will be backtracking from our trip to Dublin to the fallout from the bitch that followed:

WEDNESDAY MAY 27 - DUBLIN

O and I depart for Dublin! We got our stuff prepared, left the house and managed to get lots of luck with catching all our trains and metros, so we made it to the airport in 55 minutes, the quickest time yet.
We arrived at the airport and we got separated in the queues – with EU passengers and Non EU passengers. The same thing happened when we went to London and the line for the EU side was longer and slower than mine, so I was confident I´d come out first this time around. No such luck – my queue was MASSIVE and there were only 3 customs officials. So O was waiting around for me and got worried when I wasn´t appearing, thinking I´d been arrested or detained (He´s such a positive dude, isn´t he?) He didn´t see how huge my line was, as it had been split into 2 and there was a ´Disneyland´ queue which was visible to everyone. What wasn´t visible was the other line outside of the customs area, which is where I was when O was trying to look for me in the Disney queue. Being the chivalrous bloke he is, O suggested beforehand we swap backpacks so he could carry my heavy one with his laptop in it, while I had his virtually empty one. I wanted to call him to let him know I was alright, but my phone was in my backpack that he was in possession of at the time! 15 or 20 minutes later I appeared and he promptly hung up on the Australian Embassy in Ireland :)
My friend from Perth, Caroline, was flying into Dublin on the same day as us. Her flight was to have landed 15 minutes after ours. However, our flight was around 10-15 minutes late in flying out from Madrid, so I imagined we would cross paths, if not find each other at the airport – seeing as we would have landed at the same time. I decided to wait around for a bit, hoping to bump into her and catch up even for a little bit before seeing her later in the week as we had planned. No such luck, so O and I left the terminal. (It turns out that she was in the first part of the queue when I arrived and she was looking out for me too. And she walked past O a few times as he was waiting for me, but as they hadn´t met before - and Caro was judging just by photos she has seen of him, she didn´t ask him if he was waiting for me. But I met up with Caro later in the week and it was all good :) )
We were to have called O´s great uncle once we had cleared customs so we can get picked up promptly with very little waiting around by our chauffeur. What happened instead was that he was there waiting for us! Something we weren´t expecting! We were driven to O´s grandma´s place and I met some of his family, which was just grand :)
O and I have been pretty much been left to our own devices, which suits us just fine. After eating and setting our bags down, we went for a walk around the neighbourhood, to the shops trying to listen out for the Irish accent and wondering exactly how long it´s going to take for O to start talking Oirish! Up to now he is starting to perfect the Irish twang, but there is still plenty of time to go, epecially when we go out and meet the rest of the family!
When we got back to the house we were enjoying our chicken and chips dinner when O got a curious phone call from back in Madrid. I´m going to blog separately about this in Spanish so that Miriam the bitch can read it without misunderstanding - one of her many failings. See you in a bit :)

EVENING OF WEDNESDAY MAY 27 – WEIRD PHONECALLS AND THEIR AFTERMATH

To pick up where we left off, O got a call from Madrid as we were having dinner. It was Miriam, the roommate who had ignored us the day before we left. O was on the phone with her and I didn´t realise it was her until a couple of minutes in, when all I hear are speedy Spanish mumbles, and the only person I know crazy enough to speak in that speed is her. She started to mention about how upset she was with him about the blogs (finally she speaks up about it – right when we´re on holiday!) and also mentions how pissy she was in relation to the note I left about our friend Magda staying in the house for a week. (Here´s the crust of it: our friend Magda needed a place to stay for a week to study for her last exams before heading home. There´s a spare room at our place that the landlady wants filled. O asked all the roommates if it was OK for her to stay. They ALL said yes and asked O to check with everyone before the landlady is advised. He did, everybody was on board. So we gave Magda the spare house key because we would have been in Dublin and unable to greet her upon her arrival).

Back to the phone conversation. I wasn´t on the phone with Miriam – it was O. So we have a native Spanish girl screaming and rambling VERY quickly on the phone to a guy whose a) NOT a native Spanish speaker, and b) whose listening comprehension of Spanish was not that great at the time of this conversation (it got better after this whole night went by, trust me!) and we have a huge miscommunication because she is rambling away and he is just saying ´yes.....yes......yes....´, feigning to understand – and because she is under the impression that he understood what she said, she just kept going on and on. So when I soon realised it was her calling to crack the shits, I took the phone off O and hung up. O was a bit taken aback by it and said, ¨That could have been important¨ and mentioned how she brought up Magda (Later on he had said that if Magda wasn´t brought up in the conversation, he would have been happy with my hanging up on her and him not calling back. Inversely, if I had heard her bring up Magda, I wouldn´t have hung up in the first place).
O called her back. The rambling continued on and I still couldn´t hear what was going on,except something to do with Magda now not being able to stay in the house and some other silly things like, ¨This is the last straw, you´ve done too many things like this already¨ (Absolute bullshit, by the way!). It kept going on and on until she asked, ¨Is that clear?¨, to which O said yes. She then hung up on him. This had been around a 15 minute conversation with her dominating and not letting him speak. So when I asked him what it was all about, he just gave me the main points, which is the only part he got. Her problem was how O gave Magda the house key without telling anyone about it because as far as she was concerned, she doesn´t know Magda and she was pissed that someone she doesn´t know has access to the house (mind you, she KNEW that Magda was coming because O told her!) At the end she said, ¨I don´t want her in the house, I DO NOT WANT HER HERE. I know that you already asked us all if it was OK for her to stay and we agreed, but things have now changed. Things were fine between us when you asked us, but now they are not. If your friend comes on Sunday I´m going to call the police because we don´t know who she is and she is not on the lease and doesn´t have a contract – the landlady doesn´t know she´s coming so she´s a trespasser. I will call the police. You better call her and tell her she´s not welcome and arrange to get the key back from her because she is NOT staying in MY house. Is that clear?¨ (And silly O says yes. DAMN IT, WHAT A FUCKING TOOL!) I cannot begin to tell you all the myths that are in that rant, what I was thinking at the time and what I wanted to say to her fucking face (unfortunately it wasn´t my fight and I have enough class to not get involved in other people´s fights, unless they involve me either directly or indirectly. Wish I could say the same for the other roommate who got involved when he didn´t need to). Actually, I WILL begin to tell you and I´ll now start dissecting her version of the truth:
a) How else was Magda going to get into the house? And if she´s going to be living there, she needs a key. Do you want her to ask you for your key everytime she leaves the house?
b) You have acknowledged that O asked everyone – and everybody said yes. It´s a VERBAL CONTRACT. And you have admitted the only reason you have rescinded on this deal is because you now have a problem with O because of things he wrote about you in HIS blogs. You have already agreed to having Magda stay. Don´t take this out on an innocent person who is not involved. In your eyes, the only crime she has committed is being O´s good friend and that is NOT a reason to go back on your word, just because you are angry with him. The problem is between you and O – and it should stay between the two of you. Call the police if you want, but at the end of the day, she has a key and was given permission to stay.
c) Most importantly this final point, IT IS NOT YOUR HOUSE! YOU are not the owner, YOU are not the landlady – Sole is. If YOU WERE the owner of the house, YOU wouldn´t be charged and paying rent every single month, would you? SO DON´T CALL IT YOUR HOUSE! YOU MAY HAVE LIVED THERE THE LONGEST, BUT IT DOESN´T MEAN YOU OWN THE HOUSE. GET THIS FACT INGRAINED INTO YOUR WEE BRAIN, AND THINGS WILL BE DIFFERENT FROM NOW ON. IS THAT CLEAR?

I was livid by this point, mainly because O allowed her to walk all over him despite him saying in the past that this was not the case. But Miriam is used to getting her way and being the Queen Bee – she walks all over her boyfriend and expects to do the same with mine. And at that time, it looked like she was winning too. She´s just lucky she hasn´t tried any of that shit on me, because THEN I will pounce.
But the main person we were both concerned about was Magda and our main goal was to get her to stay in the house. We spent the next 2 hours formulating his comeback (in all honesty O wanted to fight back and defend himself, but even he admittend that it was difficult going up against a native speaker who just so happens to also be a whack job. So that´s where I came in. Thanks to my Argie family, I´m used to dealing with uncurable headcases who don´t know their head from their ass, so this for me wasn´t going to be a problem!) and he told me the things he wanted to say in English and I translated them into Spanish. These are the brainstorming notes we came up with – which honestly was a 2 hour venting session between the 2 of us. It´s what you do when you don´t have internet access and cannot blog! :)

. We had an agreement and the only reason you´re backing away from it is because of what YOU READ and what YOU UNDERSTOOD, which are 2 different things.
. After the adult way you have conducted yourself – by ignoring me and then confronting me by hiding behind a phone when I´m in another country - I´ll put my blog back on public for all the world to see WITHOUT deleting my posts that you were so offended by.
. I asked you all if she could stay, you all agreed. THAT is why I gave Magda the key.
. If things have changed between us, it was because of the blogs. I don´t think you understood what I was talking about. You didn´t even ask me if you understood correctly, you just ignored me. You could have been the so called 23 year old adult you are and come to me directly about it instead of being juvenile and ignore me without knowing what´s going on. You could have showed the same respect our other roommate did by coming up to me to discuss it.
. What I published was a moment that I believed was unfair. By the time I finish blogging, I don´t care anymore and I am over it.
. The landlady wants the room to be occupied because it´s more money for her. If she doesn´t want Magda in the house, she can ring me personally and let me know herself.
. If you´re going to be hunting for information about you on the internet, chances are very high that you WILL find something that you don´t like and you have to be prepared for that. If your ego is too fragile to handle it, DON´T LOOK!
. In 2 weeks this won´t even matter anymore because all of us will be gone and you´ll have the precious house to yourself. In 9 days, you´ll NEVER see us again, so put up with it and shut the fuck up.

This was most of it, but we had neglected 2 of our main arguments that we were going to use right up until the end. But we formulated what was going to be said in what order, tweeked it to make it sound less judgemental (remember, our number 1 goal was to change her mind to let Magda stay in the house so I had to curb my anger towards the bitch). This is what we planned as our opener:

. There is a language barrier between us. Sometimes I need more time to think about what has been said to me, what I have understood and even more time to reply in Spanish. If you understand English enough to have read my blog and be confident that you have not misunderstood what I wrote, then we can talk about this in English.

. If you have a problem with me, that´s fine. But this has nothing to do with Magda. We had an agreement that she could stay in the house, everybody was on board with the idea.

The whole thing was that we had to bring Miriam away from the blogs – what she was pissed about in the first place – to Magda. That was the plan. After the 2 hour brainstorming session, O called back. It was a nervous wait, but O had everything planned out and was eager to not allow her to dominate the conversation. I had a polite way to tell her to be quiet, which was ¨Please, I gave you your time to speak. Now I just ask for you to listen¨ (Not my style, but we were thinking of Magda, not me!)

He started off very well and by the time he said, ´we can talk about this in English´, she nervously laughed, as the tables had been suddenly turned on her. He could tell she was just as nervous as we were – he had 2 hours to think about what she said and come back strongly. Instead she stuck to Spanish, so O continued in English with point 2. She started to come back with stuff, he told her politely to let him speak (she was taken aback and said, ´go on´). He went on saying it was unfair to punish Magda all because of the misunderstanding of his blog, telling her she didn´t quite understand the meaning. She went off here. She then dominated again, whilst I was gesturing quite animatedly to get him BACK to our plan. He ignored me and just let her continue talking for another 10 minutes straight!! I felt pissed and had to leave the room because I thought he was allowing himself to be walked all over yet again and couldn´t handle it.

From what I heard, she was completely going off at him about ¨I understood everything in that blog, I understood perfectly clear. I know what OCD is, OCD is a condition that people are obsessed with things and are continually thinking about and are constanly cleaning and cleaning and cleaning......I do not have OCD´ and continued to give him a dictionary definition of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder whilst O interrupted with ¨Miriam.......Miriam........Miriam.....I know what OCD is¨ (And funnily enough, that alone would make anyone think she has OCD – the fact she is calling to vehemently deny to a person who doesn´t even know her well enough to come to that conclusion speaks volumes). She started talking about herself again and what she found offensive in his blogs (turns out it was the OCD thing and also he described her as having some sort of ´phantom power´ over him – which I thought was hilarious – as that was more of a compliment to her and an insult to him! If you haven´t read O´s blog that offended Miriam The Cow, read it here). She was dissecting ´phantom power´ over the phone trying to tell him what she thought it meant bla bla bla. I was laughing even more because in that blog, those were the 2 least offensive things written about her. The post in question is also insulting my bf and myself – not just her, though it does say things about her which are not exactly the nicest, but they are true observations from what little we have seen of her. She got offended at the least offensive parts – she could have easily got pissed at my inference over her having her monthly pre-menstrual attack of the household – which just goes to show she didn´t understand the blog completely as she claimed. His blog is written with a very English sense of wit and self-depracating humour that only a native speaker of English will fully comprehend.

O let her rant away while I was being constantly pushed out of the room (Edit (by Oisin) Andrea was pissed, kept coming in and saying “STOP LETTING THAT BITCH TALK” and “SAY THIS”, so it’s difficult having a conversation when two women are talking to you in two different languages. Andy, sorry, you got the boot). She then was starting to get off the topic of the blog and was saying why she and the other roomie were pissed about Magda having the key – and we finally get to hear some common sense coming out of her (I was beginning to believe we´d have to wait until the next millenium for her to start making sense). They were understandably pissed that we had the spare key all along when they had thought the ex-roomy had it – and were concerned that this ex-roomy had access to the house. They were also getting hassled by the landlady about getting this spare key back (something we didn´t know about, otherwise we would have given it to them). But when it came to matters with the landlady and the roomies, the landlady wouldn´t talk to O because she didn´t understand him when he spoke in Spanish – he couldn´t understand her either – and the other roomies wouldn´t even bother telling O what was going on (believing it was nothing concerning O), so it´s not his fault he didn´t know that the landlady was getting narky over the missing spare key.

At this point the other roommate was getting pissed off as well – something that was regrettable because he is a really great guy. If it wasn´t for him telling O about Miriam´s pissiness over the blog in the first place, we´d be completely left in the dark about what was up with her and her infantile behaviour. And he´s a very friendly and fair guy who has been really great to the both of us (it´s because of him we´re able to travel a lot around Europe on the cheap) and we were both feeling bad that he was angry and that he had to get involved in this (that just shows you how much we respect him as a person and how little we think of the psycho bitch who just happens to be his close friend). O´s main argument was that the landlady has wanted the spare room to be filled for quite some time, no matter how little time Magda will be staying. Miriam was continuing to make other valid points (shock, horror! ABOUT BLOODY TIME, I SAY!) how the spare room Magda was to stay in was not ready to be lived in yet, as the ex-roomy broke the one and only light bulb in the room when he left and it is yet to be fixed – something that has been on the back-burner. O was starting to relax more because Miriam brought up the topic of Magda staying in the house. He was getting a little confused until he finally asked, ¨Can Magda stay in the house?¨ Miriam said yes. OMG AFTER ALL THAT, Miriam did a 180 degree turnaround and agreed again to have Magda stay. O was in as much shock as I was – while Miriam was having her long-winded rants I was thinking of alternative accommodation for Magda, thinking this would not resolve itself the way we wanted.

Miriam had said that she and her friend were on board, but according to Miriam, there was one roomy who was still undecided about it all (which was bullshit because O asked the 3rd roomy and he agreed. He´s the kind of guy who doesn´t care. He doesn´t get involved much in the politics of the household) so she wanted O to call the 3rd roomy to ask him if he was OK with it (he was!) and to get this 3rd roomy to call the landlady to let her know what was happening – as the landlady did not know what was going on and had not been informed about Magda, despite being told that she already knew. We didn´t think it was necessary to call the 3rd roomy because he was already on board to begin with, but we didn´t want the bitch to cause any more trouble when we finally got her on our side (which meant I had to constantly remind myself that Magda was our first priority!). Plus we thought it was unfair to get the 3rd roomy to call the landlady, because, if you can´t tell by this stage, I´ll let you know now that this bitch thinks she is the boss. As an aside, it´s usually her or the 2nd roomy (the good guy) who calls and is in regular contact with the landlady, not the 3rd roomy. Also, the 3rd roomy speaks REALLY fast Spanish and it takes O longer to understand what he is saying. So O got me to speak to the 3rd roomy to ask him something we already knew the answer to. I spoke to the 3rd roomy and he agreed again, telling me that O already asked him about it. I said, ¨I know, but for some reason that I am not aware of, Miriam wanted O to ask you again¨. I didn´t bother telling him to contact the landlady because I knew it wasn´t his place – and everybody in the house has a love-hate relationship with Sole the landlady, which is why Miriam didn´t want to call her in the first place, so she tried to pass the buck off to someone else (and if Miriam has claimed that the house is HERS – even though we all know it´s not – then we all know that it is HER responsibility to let the owner know. Weird logic, but so is she)!

O called Miriam back after I spoke to the 3rd roomy. The only thing she wanted to know was if the 3rd roomy would make the grand sacrifice and speak to the landlady. We happily burst her bubble and told her he wasn´t going to call her, so she had to let Sole know herself. I was still coming to grips with the fact that the weirdo changed her mind after being such a cow to the both of us – but especially O - and acting so immaturely by firstly, waiting for O to leave the country to confront him over something she was upset about 2 days beforehand (and wrongly upset about, in my opinion. Read my previous 2 blog entries and you´ll know where I stand on this issue) and secondly, to let her personal feelings get in the way of an agreement that was already made between all the parties concerned, not just her – just because she misunderstood something and thirdly, I cannot believe the nerve she had to take it out on our friend who is innocent in all of this – and wasn´t even aware of what a blog was – and yet this was the reason she was no longer allowed to move into the house for 9 days. I was absolutely thrilled for Magda and that O was able to do this, but the complete 180 degree turnaround that took place when the majority of the time she was bitching and moaning about the blogs, it was just a situation we thought wasn´t going to work out in our favour. We are so relieved and glad that it did.

So on our first night in Dublin, we wasted a lot of time on the phone – and used up all of O´s prepaid mobile credit – to listen and be witness to the severity of a psychotic mind and how quickly it changes. I was trying to get into her mind and see what and how she was thinking so I could try and change her mind (ala Detective Robert Goren on Law & Order – Criminal Intent – my fave detective in the whole L&O franchise!), but I didn´t want to get anywhere near her obsessive and compulsive thoughts and was quite grateful that I didn´t have to delve deep. We were incredibly relieved that it all worked out at the end, despite not knowing exactly HOW it worked out! It was great to resolve all this at the beginning of the holiday though so we could focus on having a great time in Dublin. We let Magda know what was happening (although we couldn´t go into great detail, we just let her know that she was one incredibly lucky woman!) and the next day she told us something very interesting....

THURSDAY MAY 28 – AN INTERESTING DISCOVERY

OK, so we all know that this madness started happening VERY shortly after the bitch friend requested O on Facebook. She had access to all of his friends and it was quite obvious that she had gone through his Facebook page with a fine tooth comb (other friends, photos, the works. Although I imagine she was looking for stuff about me. She didn´t find anything – my Facebook profile is set to uber private. Funny thing that my blog, however, is set to uber public and by the time this is posted, she will have the url to this blog because that is what I´ll be leaving her as my parting gift!)

I sent Magda a text message the night before letting her know some of the drama that took place with Miriam. Magda replied and told me that Miriam had sent her a friend request and a message on Facebook (so now Miss OCD has taken an interest in stalking O´s FB friends – you cannot tell me that is NOT obsessive OR compulsive)! Magda didn´t know how to take it. Up to now, I don´t know exactly what the message said – only what was talked about - but Miriam was being nice to Magda – which was a relief to all of us. From what I gather, in the message Miriam mentioned O´s blog to Magda and said if she wanted more background information about her, she could read O´s blog. FUCKING WEIRD! So now we can safely say that she is OBSESSED with O´s blog, so calling her OCD is no lie (Her main argument was that O had written lies about her. If they were lies to begin with, I can assure you now that they are NOT lies anymore)! After last night we thought we moved past the blogs. Let me tell you now, she´s only making things worse for herself by bringing it up again, especially to Magda, who, I will repeat myself again, had NOTHING to do with those blogs. It´s something we still can´t get our heads around. Like I said before, it´s probably not wise to delve deep into a psychotic mind.

The most important thing is that Magda is staying in the house. She doesn´t stay for long. O and I return to the house on June 3. On June 6 we´re gone and on June 8 Magda leaves for Poland. After this date, it´s not going to be an issue for any of us (possibly it will be for Miriam, as she seems to be the type of person who gives a shit of what people think of her – even people who don´t know her. Thankfully I passed that stage years ago – and all of my friends have passed this stage too.

So what´s the moral of the story and why have I decided to share this with you? Well, there are plenty! Firstly: Don´t get on my bad side (or my bf´s bad side either, as we tend to complement each other. I will come out all guns blazing, while he has a more calculated, cool, calm and methodical approach to getting even. You will get the best of both worlds if you ever get on our bad sides)!
Secondly: it seems that this girl´s major issue is what people will think of her – especially those who haven´t met her. Including myself – and including her too - only 3 readers of my blog have met her (and be relieved that you are one of the lucky ones that haven´t met her, folks!) But as I said before, leaving her my blog address is my parting gift to her – so that she and the whole world can read about a real-life case study on the absolute nonsensical mind that is Miriam´s. It will be kept in the archives as a momento and a memoir of a memorable period of time, but mostly it will be used as a reminder to lighten up – there´s no point in having a pole shoved up your ass.
Thirdly: If you are seeking out information about yourself over the internet, you have to have an open mind and be wise enough to realise that it´s not all going to be good – and most importantly be adult enough to handle it. If that´s not the case, don´t look!
Fourthly: Miriam, you are not completely innocent in all of this. We have heard you endlessly bitch, moan and complain about others openly. You´ve bitched about Sole the landlady on numerous occasions, about Jorge the ex-roomy, the current roomies, even your own boyfriend. No doubt you have bitched and moaned about countless others, myself included. What would you do if your boyfriend or your roommates heard you talk about them? Because trust me, one day they WILL overhear you because you are so damn loud. Just be aware that if you talk about other people behind their backs, expect them to speak badly of you. Didn´t you learn that in school?
And lastly, this has been another lesson for me about letting go (and yes, I am aware of the irony in this despite my 3rd point above. But if she keeps bringing it up, I´m going to do the same and enjoy it). It´s honestly taught me to think of others (I was biting my tongue so hard because it wasn´t my fight) and it taught me – and still is teaching me – to let go of negativity and of people who represent and epitomise negativity so damn well! After I post this, I´m going to be feeling so much better and I will be ready to let all this go.

As always, I welcome your feedback.