Daily Prompt – Make It Anywhere

“If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere,” goes the famous song about New York City. Is there a place — a city, a school, a company — about which you think (or thought) the same? Tell us why, and if you ever tried to prove that claim.

I had that thought when I moved to Melbourne when I was 19.

Daily Prompt: Good Fences?

Who are your neighbors? Are you friends with them, barely say hi, or avoid them altogether? Tell us a story — real or invented — about the people on the other side of your wall (or street, or farm, or… you get the point). 

First of all, let’s start by spelling it properly – n-e-i-g-h-b-o-u-r-s… thank you.

I have no idea who our neighbours are.

Well, I know that the people on one side are a bunch of junkies and / or dealers. The people on the other side of us… no idea.

We live in a modern apartment building – there’s about 40+ apartments in here, and surprisingly, the only time I ever see anybody is when we’re driving into the carpark, or we see them in the lift.

The people above us have wooden floorboards. We hear every time they drop something, if somebody is wearing stilettos, or if they’re dragging a chair across the floor. It’s actually pretty loud, so clearly there’s not enough soundproofing in their floor / our ceiling.

It’s not actually like that, but sometimes it may as well be – we hear every footstep and it can be quite annoying.

The junkies next door have always got really dodgy-looking people hanging around their apartment. Sometimes I will come home and see a couple of junkies just hanging out in the hallway, waiting for somebody to either answer the door, or worse, waiting for somebody to come home. Or, instead they’re down in the building foyer, waiting for anybody to exit through the front door, so they can sneak in.

Let’s just say it’s starting to not become so unusual for us to see cops not just in our building, but on our floor. A couple of times we’ve had them knock on the door wanting to know if we’ve seen anybody suspicious.

OF COURSE WE HAVE!! It’s just that but the time you guys turn up, they’re gone.

Just this past weekend, some woman who was clearly barely able to stand, let alone string a sentence together knocked on our door. I, naturally, just assumed it was the police, so was quite startled when I saw this raggedy woman standing in front of me. I think she asked if it was ‘Larry’s place’, and I’m like… hehehehe… no. On your way, crack-whore.

Turns out she was with a guy and Hulk saw them on his way home on the other side of the road. She was trying to talk to him, and he wasn’t having a bar of it.

Sometimes I think about actually getting to know our neighbours, but then I realise that I really just can’t be fucking bothered. Most people in here generally keep to themselves, but to the point where they don’t even say ‘Hello!’ in the lift if there’s somebody in there. As though they don’t even exist. So to me, yes, organising something like a group BBQ or something would be nice, however, I really don’t care if I never meet our neighbours.

I do however really want to name-and-shame the people who let their dogs pee in the lift.

OH. MY. FUCKING. GOD!!

There is nothing worse that going to get in the lift, and discovering a huge puddle of pee. It gets to the point where all I want to do is hijack the security footage, find out who’s dog it is, soak up all the pee, and throw it it in the face of our dear inconsiderate neighbour. But the reality is, if I were to do that, I’d be the one who ends up in the wrong, but the dog owner is totally okay.  What’s worse is that there’s not even a slight attempt to even clean it up, which drives me nuts. And I don’t mean to point the finger (which, let’s face it, is a complete lie) but it’s only a particular race of people who live here… I’d happily name them, but then I think it becomes racial and offensive to people. ugh. If you’re still not sure who I might be talking about, then they’ll probably bundle their dog up into their Toyota before hitting the road and being a terrible driver. …what? Stereotypes don’t come from nowhere!! Remember that!!

It’s worse when the pee doesn’t get cleaned straight away, and instead ends up completely dried and sticky, and it gets tracked all over the floor in the lift and the foyers because people don’t realise they have stepped into it.

Ironically, we found out purely by chance with our real estate agent, that our building is actually the worst of all the buildings they they manage. Awesome. Part of me wants to look into moving now that our lease is ready for renewal, but I’d only want to stay in this immediate vicinity, just in a different, cleaner building. Without the junkies and the constant dog-pee.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/02/08/daily-prompt-neighbors/

Daily Prompt: The Sincerest Form of Flattery

Publish a post in the style of a favorite author/blogger or photographer.

I’ve decided to dedicate this post to one of my favourite types of blog, the (X-Number) of things we (should eat / do / watch / avoid / stop doing etc).

6 Things I Hate About TV in Australia

1. It’s mostly American.

Everything that I like to watch is primarily American, and only a very small percentage of those shows are actually shown here on our free-to-air network.

2. Geo-locators

Living in the arse-end of the world certainly makes a lot of stuff difficult. Many companies don’t ship internationally to our country – like Reebok (Why? WHY DON’T YOU WANT MY MONEY!!?), and even some major marketplaces have limited shipping options – I’m looking right at you, Amazon!!

But what really grinds my gears is that I would rather pay for a Netflix account so that I could watch everything I want to, and pay for it, rather than just download them off the interwebs. But I can’t do that, because apparently nothing exists outside the bubble of the USA’s self-importance.

3. Aussie TV is not that great.

So far the best thing that Australia has produced is probably Offspring, and the very first series of Underbelly. Yet, our biggest export is Home & Away and Neighbours. I compare them to American shows like Bold and the Beautiful etc. Ridiculous drama’s with terrible acting, incredibly predictable story lines and the season finale that always guarantees at least one cast member will die, or leave due to a bomb explosion / murder / boat sinking / car accident etc etc.

However, my favourite send up (spoof) of these shows was on a sketch show called Fast Forward. They did a regular piece of a show called Dumb Street…

4. All the good stuff is on Foxtel

Foxtel is a pay-tv / subscription service with something like 50 channels, but they don’t have the channels or programmes that I would want to watch. Well, not all of them. It is primarily all american content, but a lot of it are shows I already download.

5. Nothing runs on time.

All the shows that we have set to record at the moment eg. The Block, My Kitchen Rules etc are all set to record on our DVR, but they either start too early, or finish later than advertised. Our DVR is set to record 10mins before and 10mins after and we still manage to miss either the beginning / end of episodes. SO FRUSTRATING!! And sometimes, even if it’s set to record a show, the network sometimes airs something different. Then just to add a little more salt to my first-world-problem wound, when we go to watch it online, there’s about 3mins of advertisements between each 7-8min segment of the show which just makes you want to scream.

6. We’re so behind!

So, generally speaking, by the time a season of a show has aired in the US, that’s when we will have it premiere here in ‘Straya. Over the last couple of years, some shows have been advertised as ‘airing straight after it airs in the US’ which has made things a bit more acceptable, but I find that most of the time when that’s the case, I can already be 4 or 5 episodes ahead if I just download it off the interweb. I know it’s wrong. I know I shouldn’t do it. I’d be more than happy to pay for it, but nobody seems to want to take my money in order to do so. Why? WHY DON’T YOU WANT MY MONEY!?!?

So then I’ll find myself hunched over my laptop lining late at night looking for the latest episodes of all the shows I am currently watching…

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/02/03/daily-prompt-copies/