RIP Mainy

So I got a text message from Adam this morning saying "Chris Mainwaring died last night".

Most of you at this stage have a clueless look on your face, or you're thinking of the many ways you could take the piss outta me right now.

Ok, so I wasn't one of those tragics who cried when they found out. I was more of the 'surely, you're kidding' school.

For people who have grown up or lived in Perth, Chris Mainwaring is one of those people who was just there, creating part of the Perth experience in the 1990s. Footage of him leaping off the bench at the end of a victorious grandfinal is synonymous with the West Coast Eagles of that era.

Once he left football, we still got to catch up with Mainy on the TV where he was a sports reporter and reader. The weekend will seem that little bit more empty without Mainy to tell us who won what and how much by.

Rumours are already flying about the cause of Mainy's death. It's kind of irrelevant. He's dead and he was a good bloke, he was practically a Perth icon. It's gonna be a different place without him.

RIP Mainy, hope you're wearing the #3 with pride somewhere.

new rules for bagging perth

I've been stuck in a bit a quagmire. I think quagmire is the right word. I can't be bothered looking it up on dictionary.com

I'm doing the share-house flatmate thing. I don't mind it. My housemate is great. My rent is cheap.

But like most of the other people in the office, she's a Sydneysider. By that fact alone nothing exists or makes sense outside of the Sydney bubble.

But she thinks Perth is weird. She's never been there, she probably wouldn't know anything about Perth, had it not been for Triple J singing the praises of many Perth bands over the past few years.

She thinks it's weird to the point of bagging it out.

She's so much of a Sydneysider that no-one's let her in on the rules about bagging Perth.

So just for the record, the rules are:

1. You can bag Perth if you live there or have grown up there
2. You can't bag Perth if you've never lived there. You can smile and nod and proceed to drag out an excuse as to why you haven't bothered to make it to the other side of the country, yet you've made it to Europe/Asia/America and loved it so much.
3. You can't bag Perth if you're not currently living there. You must relay fond and nostalgic memories of it and act like the WA Tourism Board.

So there you go, I just thought I'd put it out there. You can't expect everyone to know the rules. But now everyone does. No excuses now.

who don't people say things like they're written here?

Yesterday I was driving to Cowra with big Bruiser the rural reporter and Mum (miss ya already!) to do a story on a Japanese garden (watch my work site - it'll be a corker with a corresponding radio story).

Well I wasn't driving. I was in the passenger seat, but you'll be pleased to know I drove later that day.

I've gotten to the point where I feel I may mispronounce something that I resort to situations like so:

*insert pointing at road sign here*
"Hey Bruiser, how do pronounce that place there? The one 45 kilometres away."

Turns out it was different to how I'd pronounce it. But Bruiser gave me points for trying.

I noticed it again when I was watching the local news and a place that shares its name with a WA town was in the news. I was waiting with baited breath to see how they'd pronounce this one.

Different again. Yuckily different.

So just for the Perthites and other hangers-on I've compiled a list of NSW places names for you to think about how they'd be pronounced. You'll be surprised at how they're actually said.

• Canowindra
• Collie
• Mandurama
• Kenna
• Canobolas
• Cudal

If you squint, you may be able to read how they're said.

* Ca-noun-dra
* Coe-lie
* Man-DUE-rah-mah
* Ca-knob-lass
* Kew-dull

it's been a while but my internet's been broken...

and I've moved and a week later I was uprooted to go to training, and then I had to actually do my job and find somewhere to live.

So now I've completed all of the above and given them a hearty tick, I can now add blogging back to the list of things I can do on a normal because now I have normal(ish) days again.

Work is good. I Like my job, office politics (as in real office politics) are a strange new beast to me.


Skype is a godsend. So is actually having an address to that Perthites who feel sorry for me can send me copies of The West with bottle of Bright Ale so I can drown my New South Welshsorrows whilst reading Inside Cover.

No really. Life here is good. Just different.

And colder. Markedly colder.

citric nuances

Dear Perthites (for that is what you are, or you are named as of... now!),

Orange is a strange place. There are definitely no citrus fruits. Anywhere. Really, I checked.

There are lots of other crazy facts that will spin your crazy little heads out (I love your collective crazy little heads, by the way). I will dispense these facts in point form:

• It is colder here than in Iceland. Yesterday it got up to 12 degrees. In Reyjavik, it was 13. I guess this fits in with the pseudo-conspiracy theory that I am Bjork.
• Street parking is strange. You need to park backwards at a 45 degree angle in some places. I am yet to try this. I am scared.
• People really have no awareness of AFL. I wore my Eagles scarf on two consecutive days this week. Number of comments: 0. I guess it's better than Sydney Swans comments.
  
• There are self-service checkouts at Big W! It's fun except for the annoying British voice that tells you to do everything. But the novelty factor is very high. If you ever visit Orange, it's on the top of the to-do list.
  
• All of the pubs advertise either XXXX or Tooheys. For that reason, I haven't set foot in a pub yet.
• Local TV news is just like WIN or GWN news. But much, much worse.
• The Myer store here is bigger than the one in Freo - that's no mean feat.
• The little green man takes so long at intersections that jaywalking is inevitable.
• The Daily Telegraph is Sydney's answer to The West Australian minus the two best bits - Inside Cover and Today.
• People don't seem to die or give birth much over here - or at least they don't tend to announce it in the newspaper. That's the third best bit of the newspaper!
• Nothing is pronounced phoenetically. It makes me afraid to say stuff.
  

new beginnings, trying not to freak out

Ok. So this is the tearful "I wanna go home post". It had to happen soon enough.

I don't mind Orange. It's a nice place. Very pretty with the nice old buildings and whatnot.

People here are friendly. I've already made four - count them four friends.

I've had the shocked "You came here from Perth" expression used a million times today.

I've lost count of the times that tears have welled up in my eyes over the past 48 hours. As much as it wasn't as scary an experience as Karratha, this isn't easy by any stretch of the imagination.

I'm in an apartment (read: motel room with a kitchen) by myself and I'm driving myself completely insane.

When I'm not crying, I'm trembling and when that's not happening, I'm scared of the crying and trembling that's to come.

Orange will be my home for at least the next six months, but Perth is running through my veins. I can't and don't want to let go of that for fear that I may lose friends, memories and important milestones. My past is there and I'm scared that my future isn't.

I miss you all so much. If I could split myself in two and be in Perth and Orange and not feel any sort of discombobulation, I would do it in an instant. The opportunity is right here, right now but the homeliness, the friends and the dependability hasn't arrived yet.

One of the things with anxiety attacks is that your flight or fight reflex goes into overdrive. I'm not a fighter so I feel like I have to escape. I know it's just a primal urge (minds out of the gutter, please) and that it's really not going to help to be so edgy - nothing's going to leap out and attack me.

But the fact remains - I'm here, I'm alone; to me that's the scariest thing ever.

If you're the praying type, please pray for me. If that's not your bag, keep me in your thoughts - I need both of them.

dear new south welshpeople...

Hi! My name is Jess and in just a few short days, I will be joining your ranks as a new resident of your state. I come from a wee little town a long way away called Perth. I'm not sure if you're aware of it, after all, Sydney is the centre of the universe (although Melbourne would like to think that they are).

Here are some handy things you should know before my arrival:

1. In Perth, when we go to the pub, we ask for a pint or a middie. I hear you crazy kids have a strange medium called a schooner. Perhaps this is because:
a) you are too cadbury to drink half a litre of beer at a time;
b) you named the glass a schooner in the hope of making funny puns like 'schooner diving'; or
c) you want to confuse West Australians.

2. In WA, we are fanatic about AFL. We like to call it football This means that:
a) When I say football, I mean football , not rubgy.
b) I will talk about the Eagles and mean the West Coast Eagles, not the Manly Sea Eagles.
c) I will always say a good game is a fast game, and that's why football is better than rugby everytime.
d) I have no idea what the difference between Union and League is.

3. I'm used to sunsets over the beach and the ocean being Indian. Considering, I will be living in an inland city, it won't really bother me.

4. Because I'm from WA, I will bring with me a strange habit of abbraviating names and adding 'o' to the end of it. Such examples are:
a) Freo
b) Rotto
c) Busso
d) Gero

Please enjoy this cultural lesson and remember, be alert, but not alarmed - I only come from the other side of the country.

love,

Jess.

change of address

It would appear that I'm moving, relocating if you will.

This time for real.

Once you've made a stuff up as big as the one I made back in April, you rarely get a second chance.

And when you do get a second chance, you're a bit of a moogie if you turn it down, especially considering the craziness of my current job.

So I'm off to Orange, NSW, where I'm assured it's freezing cold all the time. I think they were trying to deter me.

There will be a party organised soon so prepare your glad rags and citrus fruits.

what everyone in perth is talking about today

Ben Cousins is back. And he's tanked.

Perth is one of those strange places, where it's a big city but people still gossip like it's a country town. If something slightly salacious happens to a 'perthonality', you don't hear the end of it. Ben Cousins is the perfect example of this. Long story short, Ben was a great footy player, part of 2006 premiership team, had his drug addiction brought to light, went to rehab, came back, spent a lot of time training by himself.

Last night was his first time back since the hoo-ha. He came back with massive arms* and 38 possessions. The Eagles have been playing well while he was away (except the last two or three games) but having Cousins back gave them that bit extra.

I think the Eagles will give everyone a run for their money for the rest of the season.

*Disclaimer: I don't have a thing for muscular arms. But you couldn't help but notice his arms.

oh yeah and another thing...

... that weirds me out.

• Children that lick windows. Come on, admit that you seen a child lick a window. I saw a kid licking a window this afternoon and it brought back memories of when I first started working at the big evil corporation and I'd spent the morning cleaning the glass cabinets that held all of the digital cameras. A man and his four-year-oldish daughter came up to the cabinet, he was asking questions and his daughter was just wandering around, tongue to the glass. I wasn't concerned that the little girl had just slagged all over the cabinets, but more that she's probably ingested a massive amount of cleaning chemicals.