Will Santa's farts rot my brain?

There is an iPhone game called 'Rudolph's Kick n Fly'. A very, very stupid game that is totally, absolutely and undeniably addictive. The sad fact? I completed ALL 50 levels within the space of ONE week.

The aim of the game: fly through the air collecting Christmas decorations.

Means of transport: Rudolph gives Santa a big fat kick up the ass. Santa is then allowed ONE fart that will keep him airborne a little longer. That's right - a FART! 


SEVEN days, FIFTY levels, ONE game; that's all it took me to finish... now that is sad! 


And I'm sure I ain't alone here. If I was to mention the words, 'Angry' 'Birds', I KNOW there will be many people that nod their heads knowingly. Since it's release in December '09, can you believe they have sold over 12 MILLION copies of the game?


Angry birds... A game that is equally addictive and (almost) equally stupid as 'Rudolph's Kick n Fly'. And not a day in Sydney has gone by where I haven't seen someone completely absorbed in this feathered fantasia - oblivious to their surroundings.


Now I'm not here to bitch about how anti-social these games are.
No, that would be mum's rant.
Nor is my issue with the brain cells that'll surely die, under-stimulated by such mind-numbing games.
No, that would be my teachers' rant.


No it's simply the fact that we get so completely enthralled in these games that we are utterly ignorant to everyone and everything around us. How many times have you bumped into someone on the street who's trying to walk and play? Or seen them miss a step walking down the stairs because 'they're on a roll'? Or ignoring their friends at at the lunch table because they're on the last level?


In these games (where time is a huge factor) you can't put the iphone (or iPad) down - even for a moment. These aren't solitaire games; these aren't books you're reading; these aren't things you can glance away from.


While on the train the other Saturday morn, I was whittling away the stations playing some iphone game I can't even remember. About 30 seconds before I'm due to get off, I looked up. Sitting opposite me was a drunken 50-something man about to puke his guts out. Across the aisle from me was a beautiful young lass who's quite blatantly and flatteringly eyeing me up and down. Standing at the top of the stairs is a 70-something old lady who is trying to vainly stay upright because there are no more seats available. Until this point in my trip I had noticed none of these three people because I was so enthralled in my game.


So my question is simple: how many missed opportunities have passed us by because we're too preoccupied with these games?


How many times have we almost been dirtied by some dero alcoholic?
How many times have we not noticed that beautiful girl who could have been 'the one'?
How many times have we missed the chance to be the good Samaritan and offer our seat to some old folk?        


How many, really?     

Tongue Thai(ed)

Walking through the remains of a Cambodian temples, a Thai lady stumbles across a monk strolling through the ruins. Lost and confused, she approaches him.
"Excuse me, but do you speak English?"
"Just little. Me poor English."
"Hmmm." Not satisfied with his answer she considers her options. "Do you speak Thai then?"
"No, sorry, me Cambodian."
There is a momentary pause.
"But... you can't be. You're a monk!"

The Quarter Life Crisis

We hit our late twenties.
We panic.

We may quit our jobs
We may have been made redundant.
We may break up with long term partners.
We may get dumped.
We are all now free.

We move out, leave our personal stuff with the folks, and all that extra furniture with the flatmates.
We buy the latest (and best) XLR cameras and the most compact notebooks (with built-in wifi of course.)
We jump online; check for the cheapest flights, the best deals, the most enticing round-the-world trips.
We have no definite route, but look at which countries are the cheapest, guessing we'll probably end our journeys there.
We stock up on gastrolyte, immodium, and panadol; we buy a stack of anti-malarial tablets knowing we'll stop taking them halfway through the trip - too lazy to keep up the nightly ritual of pill-popping.
We say goodbye to loved ones and promise them we'll take care of ourselves. (As if!)

We are gone for 5, 9, 12 months.

We jump on facebook when we can, update our status (so people know we're still alive),  our location (in the hope someone will tell our family that we've arrived) and add fellow-travellers as 'friends'.

We take plenty of photos, censor them, upload them and make sure all our friends are sufficiently envious.
We tag other travellers in the more embarrassing photos so that we are not alone when everyone starts leaving comments on the pics.

But then our cash starts to run dry.
We finally arrive in those cheaper countries.

Our accommodation gets more budget.
Our drinking gets more moderated.

We prowl through the 'Lonely Planet' more carefully, hunting for those temples that have free entry.
We stroll the streets looking for the travel companies that have the best day tours  - and then try to replicate them ourselves.

And so it goes; 

Our visas expire.

Our passports soon run out of pages.

We are left with no choice.
We return home.
Fuck

(not so) Great Expectations...how about you meditate on this, ladies?

Two Scottish women attend a three-day Buddhist MEDITATION retreat in Northern Thailand. Three hours into the first day, they go missing. The monks divide forces to find them. Some search the monastery, others prowl through the gardens and the remainder hunt through the surrounding forests. The ladies are nowhere to be found.  

The head monk begrudgingly treks to the closest village and calls their hotel. 
"Yes they have returned. They got back an hour or two ago."

When asked why they abandoned the retreat, 
"All we did was sit there and meditate. It was so boring." 

True story.

Risking life and limb

During my teenage years we had an Australian Mist cat; an indoor pedigree (named Saki) who loved to play the part of Houdini. We would have to stand guard by the door as people entered or exited the place. He'd be there, hiding in the shadows, biding his time, waiting for the ideal moment... and then pounce on that opportunity - sprinting through the gap and breathing freedom. 

After about three years of this game we managed to safely introduce Saki to the boundaries of our garden. Much to our surprise, that was delivered with a healthy does of irony, he grew bored with the outdoors very quickly. For the remaining eleven years of his life, we actually had great difficulty in getting him out of the house. The lazy bastard! 

***

Now the other weekend I was walking along Kent Street: a busy six lane road in the heart of Sydney. It was time to cross the street but the closest pedestrian crossing was another hundred metres or so down the road. Now I too am a lazy bastard (maybe that's where Saki picked it up from) so I did a runner . Half way across - with cars less than 25 metres away on either side of me - my hat blows off, landing smack bang in the middle of the six lanes. 

This hat is my favourite by far. I got it in South Africa in 2008 and its one of two that I wear almost daily; not the sort you can simply pick up at Jean's West. I didn't know what to do.

My brother was once faced with a similar dilemma. It was late one night and Saki had done his usual runner; a crazed kitten who was racing down the path like a kid who had overdosed on red cordial. Dressed in nothing but his boxers, my brother takes after him: the race was on! Down the path, along the driveway, up the access path... fortunately a car drove past, the headlights causing Saki to freeze; a new 'animal' that he had never witnessed before.  The chase probably lasted no more than thirty seconds but little brother of mine later told us all he could think was, 

'How far am I willing to go, dressed in nothing but my boxers, just for a cat?"   

Those exact words were bouncing through my head while I stood on the curb of Kent Street. How far was I willing to go to rescue a hat? Unlike my brother, it wasn't my dignity I was risking; it was life and limb for a piece of clothing that had sentimental value. What can I say? I did the dash; I missed cars by a cat's whiskers; I was assaulted with a cacophony of horns and angry drivers. But it was all ok, my hat was saved; I was safe; risking life and limb for love had once again proven to win over such adversities.    

"I knew she was a classy lady because all her tattoos were spelt correctly"

I wish I had said those words but no, they belong to an Irish ex-Eurovision winner. If that's the case, I wonder what he thinks of "Heroe's" Hayden Panettiere. According to some very reliable sources (namely 'New Idea' and 'Entertainment Tonight'), she intended to have “Vivere senza rimpianti” tattooed down her side. This translates as "Live without regrets” in Italian. Unfortunately, the tattooist spelt threw in a few too many i's - resulting in a mispelt"rimipianti"! Poor girl.

But I do believe she still got off lucky. When I was travelling through Africa, I met up with this guy who had been in the navy many, many years ago. While they were touring through Egypt, one of his follow sailors earnt himself the nickname Blossums. (Courtesy of a drunken night out, of course.) After their Egyptian escapade, his friends used this nickname to great advantage whenever he got himself a new girlfriend. If they dropped the name Blossums and got a blank stare from the lady, they knew he had not taken the relationship into the bedroom just yet. If she giggled sheepishly, his mates knew the relationship was serious.

Why?

Well the drunken night in question involved a visit to the local tattoo parlour. Apparently Egypt is a little more relaxed when it comes to tattoos and drunkenness. The poor soul - who can't remember anything from that night - was persuaded by his mates to get one that was a little more risque. The next morning the sailor awoke to find his groin in a great deal of pain, his manhood wrapped in bandages. Now when his soldier stands to attention, five pink petals are revealed on the inside of his foreskin!

Hence, the nickname Blossums!

When I returned home from Africa I noticed my local florist has the motto "a flower for every occasion" scrawled across their front door. Given this florally endowed man is (after 30 more years) still single, I'm tempted to question the validity of their boast.

May I introduce you to my child, Epilepsy

A friend was telling me that her husband makes a terrible wailing noise when he's having a tonic-clonic seizure.

In the past, whenever I've envisaged this type of seizure I've been bombarded with the same plethora of images that I believe most people experience: of neurons declaring war with the body on pretty much every front. And her description of this sound he makes really threw me. I realised that for all these years, my imaginings of a tonic-clonic have been set on mute. 

The conversation popped up after I posted my last epilepsy blog. As she was telling me about this, I realised there was a whole other issue that I'd never fully appreciated... that it's not simply the epileptic who is affected by the epilepsy, not simply the epileptic who suffers when they have a seizure, but also the loved ones who live with them, who also have to cope with that misbehaving child I call 'Epilepsy'.

So I'm dedicating this blog to all those silent Sebastian's out there who stand by and support us when things go askew and Epilepsy throws a temper tantrum.

For me, I guess it's my folks. I don't think I've ever appreciated how much of a nightmare my first seizure must have been for them. I was only eleven at the time and completely ignorant to the full implications of what had happened. Once I'd recovered from the initial after-effects, I was actually having a real ball at the hospital: working my way through all their computer games, toying mischievously with the doctors and nurses while they did innumerable medical tests, and watching more television that my parents ever allowed - all while skipping school. Fun stuff for a pre-pubescent kid!

I was totally ignorant to the adults' fears: that I may have (amongst many other possibilities) a brain tumour.

And for many years after, I still dismissed my mum's frets about 'late nights' and 'too much alcohol' as her just acting the part of a mother. 

But a couple of years ago - when I still lived at home and enjoyed university life more than I should have, I was in the process of recovering from a 'big night out.' A mate had crashed at my place and we were watching a bit of TV when I had my first (and only) tonic-clonic seizure. 

Epilepsy had reared his ugly head. There was no frothing, no loss of bodily functions. There was, however, a whole heap of twitching... and the next thing I remember is regaining consciousness in the ambulance with some over-enthusiastic ambo trying to force an oxygen mask over my face. This little trip to the hospital wasn't quite as fun as the first time; they refused to let me play any computer games. Bastards! That and I pulled most of the muscles in my back. 

I've often asked my mate what thoughts went through his mind while I was having that seizure. His answer was always, 

"Shit, I better get his mum."  

And I could suddenly sympathise with my mother's over-protective instincts. For fourteen years she'd seen me have countless seizures... and finally witnessed the one she'd always feared. And she had been unable to do anything to stop it.

More recently I went through a less severe - though equally intimidating patch. I'd have my usual petit mal and then, after regaining consciousness, I'd start twitching. I'd still be able to talk, to walk, to converse - but it did freak people out. One fit I remember fondly was when there was a colleague who had been giving me a really hard time at work. Later that day he scored a front-row seat to one of these twitching fits. My fellow employee was so thrown by Epilepsy spitting his dummy that he blurted out,

"Was it because of what I said earlier?"

The two events had absolutely no connection whatsoever, but I couldn't resist exercising some poetic justice.

"Yep."

A simple response that proved very effective. We've been best buddies ever since. Well, maybe not quite best buddies.     

Now seizures generally look much worse than they actually are, but I realise that doesn't make them any easier to watch. In the case of my less-than-friendly work-mate, I think his cracking point was the fact that we were having a completely coherent conversation; all while my pupils were darting about - playing a rabid game of hide-and-seek. It's been five years since that seizure and I sometimes think he still looks at me, remembering (with a degree of trepidation) that little encounter we shared. And this is five years later!

So you could imagine how it must be for those loved ones who have to watch us do these things, suffer these involuntary muscle contractions, experience these sensations, make these weird-ass sounds on a regular basis. I sometimes think they endure just as much - if not more - than we do.