A Difficult Night, the STAT Test and Retail Frustration.

Last night I woke up at 1.30am, went down stairs, warmed up a mug of milk and seriously considered putting on some pants and wandering the night in search of the alarm that has been going non-stop for 3 days… Several options occurred to me as to what to do to said alarm once I had tracked the persistent high-pitched wailing to its source. Some involved large rocks and spray paint, others rather less destructive involved nasty notes threatening to sue them if I did badly in the STAT test today. In the end, the hassle of putting pants on out weighed the annoyance of the siren and I stumbled back up the stairs with my too hot mug of milk, turned my fan on a higher setting, turned the A/C on, and put my ear plugs in my ears. After drinking my still fairly hot milk, falling asleep, and half an hour later waking up cause I needed the toilet, I finally fell into a deep sleep at around 3. Which was nice.

I woke up this morning at about 7.30, called for a taxi at about 8.30, and was at the Show grounds for the STAT by 9. The taxi driver on the way over was good. Young Indian guy who was very friendly and told me that the best time for a taxi driver to drive is Sundays. Not many cars on the road, which makes perfect sense. The worst time however is between 4 and 7 on a Friday night. Which also makes sense. So now we all know what the best and worst times are for taxi drivers to drive in, I’m sure it will come in handy at some point… I’m just disappointed that information didn’t make up any part of the questions in the test. I would have blitzed it. There were however questions on bird habitation in re-growth forests, blind dates, historians, maps, poetry and, amongst others, peanut butter. 70 questions in all and about 2 hours to complete it. I finished with about 10 minutes to spare which gave me time to go back and re-check a couple of questions I’d found a little bit iffy… found a few glaring mistakes, and start to breathe again. I’m sure I stopped breathing as soon as I hit the first difficult question… All up I think I figured there was a little over 450 people in my sitting of the exam, with another 2 tests later in the day. Pretty good number of people wanting to go back to Uni, I’m actually quite impressed. And with ages ranging from early 20s thru to late 50’s there was a good mix of people too. Over all I think I did quite well. Fingers crossed!

Afterwards I decided to walk home back thru the city, treat myself to lunch and maybe look around for some bathers. I have bathers at home, but none of them fit me anymore. I mean, it’s a good thing I’ve lost weight, but its also expensive. I went to every surf shop in the CBD, some of them twice, and one of them three times, in search of a nice pair of boardies… Now here’s the thing… if someone had come up to me and offered me some help or suggestions, I probably would have spent a lot more than I had planned on spending. Not because I… no… that’s wrong… *rolls eyes* I do tend to spend more than I intend to initially anyway but that’s not the point…. If I think I need a new pair of board shorts, I will go looking for a new pair of board shorts. I found several pairs that I quite liked, but didn’t have the guidance to make me make the decision to buy them. So I went from one shop to the next looking at shorts, and waiting for someone to ask me if I needed help. If someone had asked me I would have probably ended up also buying a beach towel and a hat…and maybe a pair of thongs. All things that I will need – maybe not right now, but my justification is that I’m not sure what’s available in Europe, and at what cost… So I figure I’d just get them now and save the uncertainty *shrugs*. Don’t worry, it doesn’t make much sense to me either, but that’s how I work.

Anyway, I ended up walking home slightly annoyed (and fairly sweaty, it was a humid 30 something degrees today) before remembering that there is a surf shop up the street on the Parade. So… off I went up there, really not expecting to find anything different in stock or service. It is a small shop, but I was greeted straight away by an older guy I presumed to be the owner. Then a girl came up to me and found all the shorts I could carry into the change rooms and kept looking for more. She was super friendly, really nice, and joked with me about what a pain I was (I am going to believe she was joking – shut up). She commented on each pair I tried on, and in the end helped me decide on a pair. She did what every other sales assistant at the other shops should have done, and got herself a sale. Probably a good thing the shop didn’t have any towels or hats, cause I would have bought them off her too. In-fact I still might.

Maybe being in retail so long has spoiled me as far as my expectations of other sales people… It’s a shame. And I feel a little bit like I’m an old man writing into the news paper complaining… but I’m just glad that there are some sales people around that are at least good at pretending that they enjoy what they are doing, even if they don’t. And if they do; good for them… but it will pass…

I think that’s enough ranting for now; my next rant will be probably Thursday night from Whyalla. Talk to you then.

Ciao.



How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct. - Benjamin Disraeli