Trinny & Susannah are in town! They are going to the shopping centre just around the corner from my house, and I am wondering if I should go along to learn how to Dress Proper, and not look so frumpy and dishevelled all the time. Maybe I could even have my own personal fashion analysis, which I fear would go like this:

Trinny: Your arse looks terribly fat in those pants.
Me: Oh. Um.
Susannah: And that top! Your tits look like two lumpy potatoes.
Me: Uh.
Trinny: You look like a prostitute.
Me: I thought I was dressed quite modestly...
Susannah: HOOKER!
Trinny: SLAG!

Etc.

Maybe I won't go along, after all.

In brief:

• I finally bought what I needed to start playing with my dodgy Thailand video on my PC, only to discover that my video camera (which is apparently a dinosaur at the ripe old age of 2) is now being an utter bitch and is incompatible with everything. So now I have to get a new camera.
• I am taking this week off The Piano as I've finished all the lessons that I have paid for and need to commit to another 10-week term. Before handing out large wads of cash, I've decided to check out a place which is closer to home this week, to see if I can get the same thing without the long drive.
  
• I think that the Chrimbo gut is pretty much gone, revealing the long-standing Beer Gut I have had for so long. Getting rid of something which has been so firmly attached to my body since my teens is not going to be easy, but I've got 7 weeks left to try.
• My manual driving test is booked for the 28th of April, hoorah! Sometimes I forget I have a clutch, and stall the car, and accelerate wildly towards red lights, but hey. I'm sure I've got a shot.
  

I hope you have had a spectacular week. Full of rainbows and lollipops, etc.

Life update:

Two weeks into the ten-week fitness thingo and my Bangkok bulge has pretty much gone. Hoorah! I expect that the sudden shock of going from HUGE meals and an abundance of ice cream to my usual stressed self who runs around and forgets to eat has done the trick. Now to work on my Chrimbo gut for the remaining eight weeks, which I am thinking won't be as easy. I've started taking tennis lessons (despite being incredibly uncoordinated) and have had my arse kicked at the gym a few times, too. I am even being careful with what I eat and resisting the temptation to jam chocolate in my mouth when my energy is feeling low, or when people piss me off. "Just eight weeks to go" is my internal mantra as I eye off the blocks of white chocolate Kit Kat in the supermarket.

Meanwhile, Beardie has decided he also wants to lose some weight, and has started the Tony "Creepy" Ferguson diet like the big cheater that he is.



Would you trust this man?

I am powering through books at the moment, and have actually started reading on the bus again after a long stint of listening to music and staring wistfully out the window. I have just started Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, which has made me laugh out loud several times so far and therefore I love it, and just finished reading Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami. If you have read this book, can you please explain what the frick the end of it means, because I was confused as hell. I think I was distracted by the drawn-out beginning and wasn't expecting it to turn all crazy.

Today I have had a productive day off, as I have had my car serviced and been to visit my mum for lunch. In today's episode of The Sordid Lives of the Mountain Dwellers!!!!:

[In David Jones, my mother, brother and I walk around the menswear section, looking for t-shirts for my brother.]

Mum: A lot of the clothes here are very gay, aren't they.
Me: MUM.
Mum: Well they are. [Mum checks the price on a shirt nearby, splutters loudly]
Me: Hmm?
Mum: THIS SHIRT IS $60 [several DJ staff glance in our direction]
Me: [ushering Mum away] they've got a mix here, some expensive clothes and some cheaper clothes too.
Mum: Hmph.

[a moment passes]

Mum: Our nextdoor neighbour's house was struck by lightning during the storm the other day. All of his chickens died.
Me: Oh, really?
Mum: Mm.

Never a dull moment. I am off to re-learn how to drive a manual car so that I can eventually upgrade from my Little Green Shitbox. I am going to count how many times I stall it, and crunch the gears. I expect it will be many.

My boobs are shrinking.

Am I sure? Well, I wore a top today which normally is quite booby, and it wasn't anywhere near as booby. And when questioning Beardie, he performed his Grope Test (the official test of the Boob Shrinkage Committee) and he agreed with me.

You see, I have stopped taking the No Babies Pill. This is because after taking it for about a year and a half, I have finally realised that what it does to my body is not just an adjustment phase I'm going through. What it does to me is what it's going to do to me, forever and ever, if I stay on it. And what it does to me is make me feel like a barren old hag, and give me crappy skin (plus some other things, but this post is a little TMI already), so I quit.

Apparently, what the NBP also did was inflate my boobs.

Who knew! I didn't, and I'm part of the girlfolk. Google knew.

I am just hoping that the bastard pill doesn't wreak its bitter revenge upon me by shrinking them smaller than they ever have been before. Because I would like to keep my boobs, please.

You hear that, hormones? Boobs = yes.

Sigh.

(For the life of me I could not find or draw a picture to attach to this post. Though searching Google for suitable pictures has definitely exceeded my porn quota for the day.)

So my ten week fitness thingy starts tomorrow. As I know myself quite well, I am predicting that I will be full of enthusiasm for the first week, and that it will slowly decrease from there. Though I am quite determined to at least get somewhere with it, so that my work clothes fit me properly again. I am giving myself an incentive, which is that I am not allowed to purchase any new item of clothing until I have lost my pad thai pudge. Which works well because a) it makes no sense to buy clothes if I am trying to lose weight, b) it hurts me deeply, because of my addiction to wandering around and buying random clothes (most of which I never wear), c) it saves me money, and makes me feel like a sensible grown-up person.

Whether I have the willpower, time will tell.

The trip away had me thinking about a lot of things, aside from my gut:

• Work. I was constantly thinking about the two jobs I had applied for (which both came to nothing, bah), but more than ever, having three weeks away made me really dread coming back. I guess this is a normal feeling, and there's not many people who love their jobs, etc. etc., but I am thinking that I should at least be trying to find a job which makes me happy. I suspect I have dug myself into a bit of a hole with the career path I have been following, as I'm just racking up more and more experience in people management/team leading when I have no desire to do it, whatsoever. I hate that with each day that passes, I am losing more of the technical/system knowledge that I need to go where I want to go. But what to do? Keep looking on Seek, I guess.

• Achieving something. I was dreading my piano lesson yesterday. Not only because I hadn't played for three weeks, but because I thought I was doing My Usual and getting to the point of quitting, because I'm a lazy cow. But I went along, and ended up coming home all inspired to keep trying. My piano teacher is in love with music, and I don't mean following the Top 40 or what's new; she lives and breathes the sounds and the feelings and gets so excited over new pieces. I know that I have the capability, I just need to keep the lazy at bay. Perhaps one day I can add "can play piano" to my list of talents, which currently contains "can spell reasonably well" and "can type fast".

• Other people. I am constantly analysing both myself and others. People with incredibly active social lives, who are constantly replying to phone calls/text messages from friends, who have every evening and their entire weekend planned from start to finish with non-stop excitement. I look at myself, who may go to drinks/dinner/etc. maybe once in a fortnight, and whose main contact with another person is Beardie, sometimes virtually through an MMORPG, and I wonder if I'm missing out on something? I've done personality tests, Myers-Briggs and all that jazz, and they all tell me that I'm an introvert (no shit, eh?), and I am pretty accepting of this. Yet I still feel inadequate, that I need to make more effort to interact with others, join a club or something, I don't know.

Yes, today is Introspective Sunday.

I hope that yours has been tip top.

So I was expecting a horrendous first week back at work, but in all honesty, it hasn't been that bad. This is because after one day of being back, I felt as though I had never left. So because my work is all-consuming and sucks the life and memories out of me, I didn't have too much trouble settling back in. Hooray!

Also, I think I can finally say that both jobs that I applied for have brutally rejected me. The first has only sent me an e-mail to say "you will be contacted by phone if you have been successful in gaining an interview" (and this was last week), and there has been no contact whatsoever, which is a wee bit shitty given that this is the job in my own department, and I would expect that given I am one of their own I would receive a phone call, an explanation at least, and woah, what an incredibly long sentence, yes? My friend at the second job sent me an e-mail to say it had been filled, and that apparently they had had somebody in mind for it all along. He apologised for wasting my time. That one I am more disappointed about, as it was system development/project work, and that floats my boat.

Alas!

I shall continue on my merry way and keep an eye out.

Whilst I was at work, wearing uncomfortably tight work pants with an overhang of holiday pudge and a waistband so tight my circulation was beginning to fail, I picked up a flyer for a 10 week fitness challenge, starting next week. I immediately joined. I am actually quite enthusiastic about it, figuring that 10 weeks is a good block of time (long enough to make a difference, short enough to see the light at the end of the tunnel), and that I can get in tip top shape and parade about in front of everyone in hot pants and bikini tops in no time! Good plan? Chance of success = shaky. But if I can at least lose my Thai green curry jiggle then I will be happy.

Lovely Lucy recently posted about her Lady Maintenance regime and I was left feeling woefully inadequate. I thought about my own beauty routine, and realised that it consisted of the following:

• Haircuts, when I have too many split ends and it looks too ratty.
• Showering, daily.
• Brushing of teeth, morning and night.
• Waxing of the sacred lady area, at home, when I have too many split ends monthly.
• Shaving of the underarms/legs, when I am going to wear an outfit that will reveal these areas (for real. In winter, they might not see the light of day for a couple of weeks).
• Eyebrow plucking, when needed (well, when I notice).
• Chapstick, when my lips are dry.
  

And that's it. No make-up (though every time I look at the dark lines under my eyes, I consider it), no skin care routine (besides shower gel which smells like mangoes, or some type of fruit), and no visits to the beautician to speak of (I have been professionally waxed once, had a reaction to whatever they put Down There and spent the following week scratching my crotch like a frenzied whore with crabs). And as Lucy is low maintenance, this can only mean that I am a hairy truckie named Barry with questionable personal hygiene.

Sexy indeed.

So, I am getting the travel post out of the way. Apologies for a billion pictures and RIDICULOUS length, I figured I'd just do it all in one hit and then it's done, and I can go back to blogging about the smelly person on my bus and that one time that somebody laughed at one of my jokes.


This is Buddha. Buddha is everywhere. He is normally gold and shiny.


This is Buddha's head, which was cut off its body a long time ago, was kicked under a tree, and then the tree grew around it. I expect I could find a story about this place that is much more impressive than this. Either way, it is very famous indeed.


Also in Ayutthaya (which is where Buddha's head is) you can find lots and lots of ruined buildings, as the place was trashed by the Burmese 250 years ago. They have semi-restored some, and light them up at night, and they look lovely.


Here is a large market, where you can buy amulets and jumpers and dried fruit and live eels. This market was small compared to some of the ridiculously large markets we lost ourselves in along the way.


Obligatory baby elephant photo!


Here is a man being stomped by an elephant in a wild rampage! Actually, no, it was all part of a show where elephants kicked footballs and threw darts (but not at the crowd) and the like.


Phi Phi Don, with the limestone cliffs and the tourists and the prettiness and all that.

And randomly:


There are BNE stickers alllll over Thailand. It was very puzzling.


Thailand has some incredibly colourful buses!

So in short (yeah, right), Bangkok is incredibly dense, thick with pollution and scantily-clad tourists, and touts who will try and scam your money at every opportunity. We indulged in standard tourist behaviour, and ate a great deal, drank quite a bit, and bought t-shirts/jewellery/rubbish for ridiculously low prices.

Kanchanaburi, and the Bridge over the River Kwai were fascinating, and incredibly sad. We visited the Death Railway museum and were amazed at the things we didn't know and the stories we had never heard. If we visit Thailand again, we will visit Kanchanaburi again for much longer.

Ayutthaya was beautiful and full of history. I was interviewed by Thai students as part of their English studies. I am not sure that a red-faced, sweaty girl, giggling like a git, is the best tutor in the English language. But the ladyboy student said I was pretty.

Chiang Mai was by far the best place we visited, with elephants, and white water rafting, and an incredible temple on top of a mountain at Doi Suthep (very, very tall stairs in new profile photo to the right), and a really great vibe.

Phuket was where we gave in to our Western indulgences and scoffed McDonald's, KFC, pizza and donuts. Beardie was trying to recover from his gut trouble by eating at the places he recognised, and I joined him because, well, because I guess I was just feeling like a gigantic lardarse. In fact, on top of my Christmas gut expansion I am now sporting a major Thailand gut, which means I am packing one hell of an expansion pack right now. My loose work pants were considerably tighter this morning. I am expecting to make some major life changes and start some type of diet/exercise regime. Soon.

Oh, and following on from that little tangent, we went to Maya Bay, home of The Beach, and there were so many tourist boats there that I couldn't actually see The Beach, unfortunately. Alas!

And....... breathe.

Back to the usual boring shit.