I had the best Australia Day that I’ve had for a good many years. Brunch with the closest thing I have to family in Darwin, and then a barbeque and game of cricket at Lee Point, followed by a critical review of the Triple J hottest 100, and a public discussion on how much more awesome than England we are. It wasn’t extravagant, deeply-moving or particularly well organised, but as I stood with my cold coke at deep mid on and watched my friends and compatriots trying to bowl outswingers with a tennis ball, found myself thinking

“Yeah, this is the way it should be.”

It was such a gloriously simple affair that it made me realise how simple it can be to have the absolute time of your life. All we needed was some crude sports equipment and a critical mass of friends around and we were set. To me, it was all the evidence I needed that Australian culture, while unable to be defined by academics or social commentators who think they’re academics or self-opinionated bloggers who think they’re social commentators (Yes, I do include myself in that last category) is actually tangible.

It’s hard to believe that all that was just 24 hours ago as I now sit here at my desk at work. I’ve once again come to the end of my list of things to achieve today (it’s currently 10:00am as I write this) but all my supervisors are too busy and important to set me anything new to do.

The simplest answer would be to just sit here and browse the internet and make myself look just as busy and important as everyone else. Unfortunately my desk is immediately adjacent to the HR manager’s desk. My HR manager (who, by the way, is English; make of that what you will) has been known in the past to make less than subtle observations to me if she hasn’t heard my keyboard making any noise for a while. So now I’m writing a blog post at work, because in order to keep HR off my back, I need to make sure my keyboard is making noise.

“Yeah, this is the opposite of the way it should be”.

I realise that most people don’t like having to work for a living, but I’ve come to the realisation that I really don’t like my job. The idea of what I’m supposed to be employed to do sounds magnificent, but the amount of time I spend actually doing that seems to be minimal.

To top it off, my car is still sitting in the Ford mechanic’s car park waiting to be dealt with. There’s a whole other post coming on that epic and tragic saga, but suffice it to say that despite my grand dreams of a new decade in which I’d be zipping all over the city working on outlandish schemes for whoever needed me, four weeks in I’m still grounded and now spend my weekends whinging about my job to… whoever happens to bother reading this (I’m going to go with… no-one, with the possible exception of my sister who will get a link on her blogger dashboard).

Furthermore, I still haven’t generated a convincing sign-off line, so for this week I’m going to have to borrow someone else’s. I promise I’ll give it back when I’m finished with it.

Thanks for watching Spicks and Specks. My name's Adam Hills. Goodnight Australia.

Garry with 2 Rs

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