Most Embarrasing Moments

The following are the top four winners from a "Most Embarrassing Moments" contest:

1. "While in line at the bank one afternoon, my toddler decided to release some pent-up energy and ran amok. I was finally able to grab hold of her after receiving looks of disgust and annoyance from other patrons. I told her that if she did not start behaving 'right now,'
she would be punished.

To my horror, she looked me in the eye and said in a voice just as threatening, 'If you don't let me go right now, I will tell Grandma that I saw you kissing Daddy's pee-pee last night!'

The silence was deafening after this enlightening exchange. Even the tellers stopped what they were doing! I mustered up the last of my dignity and walked out of the bank with my daughter in tow. The last thing I heard when the door closed behind me were screams of laughter."

_________

2. "It was the day before my eighteenth birthday. I was living at home, but my parents had gone out for the evening, so I invited my girlfriend over for a romantic night alone. As we lay in bed after making love, we heard the telephone ring downstairs. I suggested to my girlfriend that I give her a piggyback ride to the phone. Since we didn't want to miss the call, we didn't have time to get dressed.

When we got to the bottom of the stairs, the lights suddenly came on and a whole crowd of people yelled, 'SURPRISE!' My entire family--aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, and all my friends were standing there! My girlfriend and I were frozen in a state of shock and embarrassment for what seemed like an eternity. Since then, no one in my family has planned a surprise party again."

__________

3. "One of the funniest "most-embarrassing-moment" stories I've come upon in a long time was about a lady who picked up several items at a discount store. When she finally got up to the checker, she learned that one of her items had no price tag.

Imagine her embarrassment when the checker got on the intercom and boomed out for all the store to hear: 'PRICE CHECK ON LANE THIRTEEN. TAMPAX, SUPERSIZE.'

That was bad enough, but somebody at the rear of the store apparently misunderstood the word 'Tampax' for 'THUMBTACKS.'

In a business like tone, a voice boomed back over the intercom: 'DO YOU WANT THE KIND YOU PUSH IN WITH YOUR THUMB OR THE KIND YOU POUND IN WITH A HAMMER?'"

__________

4. "This one actually happened at Harvard University in October of this year in a biology class; the professor was discussing the high glucose levels found in semen.

A young female (freshman) raised her hand and asked, 'If I understand, you're saying there is a lot of glucose in male semen as in sugar?'

'That's correct,' responded the professor, going on to add statistical information.

Raising her hand again, the girl asked, 'Then why doesn't it taste sweet?'

After a stunned silence, the whole class burst out laughing, the poor girl's face turned bright red, and as she realized exactly what she had inadvertently said (or rather implied), she picked up her books with out a word and walked out of class...and never returned.

However, as she was going out the door, the Professor's reply was classic... Totally straight-faced he answered her question, 'It doesn't taste sweet because the taste-buds for sweetness are on the tip of your tongue and not the back of your throat.''

___________

Small World

It has been a real interesting week of sorts. First, the power outage for four days. Then when the power came back on, the phone lines were out which meant of course that there was no internet. Which meant no blogging. After all those promises made to myself to blog at least once every day, this happens and it has pissed me off a bit. But guess theres nothing else to do but start again and keep blogging every day from now on. The phone line started working yesterday.

I met two maldivians newly arrived in melbourne this week. I found out the first guy was here while I was perusing the Police website and they had an announcement about him going to study in melbourne. I knew the guy because he is a cousin of a very good friend of mine and because he had done his undergraduate studies in Canada on a schol which I myself had unsuccessfully applied for. I was a bit peeved at him then but really have to thank him now. Because if it had not been for him, I would never have met my wife. And I would not be here right now.

Anyways met the guy for drinks before and he is staying at my place for a couple of days till he finds a place of his own. The second guy who come with him to melbourne turned out to be someone I knew as well. When the first guy had told me his name I didnt recognize him but when they came to my place yesterday I was really quite surprised. This guy was also a cousin of another friend of mine. The three of us had been in the same class together and were very close. And now their cousins had arrived in Melbourne at the same time and attending the same uni. Really quite amazing.

Power outage

The temperature reached a record 39 degrees on Tuesday and the fires burning in Victorian bushlands got an added boost. The bushfires burnt a major powerline between Victoria and NSW causing a massive power outage across Melbourne, Geelong and northern and eastern Victoria.

I was watching the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and not enjoying it very much when the power went off in our flat. This had happened last week as well and I was not that worried about it as we got it back pretty quickly that time. So i went to bed and fell asleep a bit only to be woken up about an hour later by a friend who had recently arrived to melbourne and wanted to meet up with. The power was still out.

A quick shower and I was on the bus. Only then did I realise that the blackout had affecte not only us but the whole of the suburb. The traffic lights were not working and there were cops directing traffic. I managed to catch up with my friend and went into the city where they had power and we sat in an air conditioned food caught and had some cold drinks. Around 7:30 I left my friend and decide to busy some subway for dinner considering there was no way we can cook any food without power.

When I got to my flat I found that the power had come back on and we were overjoyed and sat down to dinner while watching the Golden Globes on TV. We had finished dinner and were getting into the show when the real excitement of the day started to happend.

I heard this screeching noise and muted the TV to figure out what it was and couldnt but I coudl hear people moving outside so I opened the door and looked out. There were emergency lights in the front of our apartment block! When I went outside I saw the big fire engines parked on our doorstep and the firemen near our switchboard. Most of our neighbours were out there as well.

What had happened was that our main switchboard was very old. And when we got the power back after the main power outage, it had somehow caused and electrical short and had melted out the wiring and the switchboard had caught fire. The nuber 6 flat had lost power first and he came out and saw the flames and roused number 2 who had thrown water over the flames and then they called the fire department. All this was going on, me and my wife we still had power but then the firement had pulled out the main electric cable and all 10 units were left without power.



This being Australia and Melbourne city, you would think that this problem would be solved quickly but no, it took us four days to get the power back. Four days with cold showers, no hot food, no tea or coffee, no washing clothes, no TV and no internet. The electricity people came on Wednesday and started to work on fixing it... What they actually did was stripped off the old, charred switchboard and left. The reason for that was that they could not get the supplies they needed to fix it.

So wednesday passed and we were told that we could expect power by Sunday... Thursday cam some good news. They had got the supplies and they were putting meters up as well as a new swtchboard. We were told we culd get power tha next day. But it was not to be... The body corporate guy told us that we needed to be home so that the electrician would have easy access to our flats so they could test the power. I was working on friday, so was my wife so we gave him a key so that he could let the guys in.

Friday when I came back from work, there was still no power and the guys came into my flat to do their tests and said that everythign was working fine now. All that was left to be done was for the Electricity suppliers to come by and connect our power. So we waited and waited. And then we learnt that the guys who were supposed to come to our apartment block had been called off for some emergency work at a hospital...

We were told that they might veen ome by later that night but that they didnt need to get into our house. so we went to sleep. Around 1 0;clock I heard this loud banging on my door and woke up slowly. It stopped and it took me a while to realise that it could be the electricity suppliers. So i went to my study where our switches are and turned it on. No power... I got dressed and went out. Our neighbours had power!! I quickly ran downstairs only to find that those people had left already adn we spent that night without power as well.

At 4 am we decided to call Citipower and after five minutes of holding and waiting was passed to an operator who ahd no idea what I was talkign about. It seemed that they did not do what I had just seen them do. It was not them. And then she put me on hold. I was still on hold when the credit on the phone ran out. It was a prepaid so...

ANyways I went to work and left the job to my wife who tried valiently to get through again but with no luck. So she went and found the body corporate guy who was very helpful in calling them up and talking to them, quietly insisting that they infact had come last night while the operater vehemently denied having done so... It took most of the morning but when I got home around 12 we had power back on!

Four days living on takeaway has definitely made us decide not to have takeaway for a long time. We also had a mountian of dirty dishes and dirty clothes that needed to be washed and our flat reeked as we could not clean it. No TV and no Internet was probably a good thign even though we were bored out of our minds. I managed to read one of the books I had been meaning to read for quite sometime. It is really scary to see how dependent we are on electricity. I only hope that nothign like this will happen ever again.

The stork is coming...

As the sun dies, birthing the night,

Darkness reigns without the presence of light,
Except for the little beacon high up in the skies,
Flapping his long wings, onward he flies.

He lights up an otherwise dismal night.
He makes all the wrongs into a right.
As we await his impending arrival
With a cargo essential for our survival.

We have been waiting so long for this
Precious cargo, this bundle of bliss.
This answer to our prayers, this light
For which we have and will continue to fight.

There is still sometime till the coming
But the bees have already started humming.
The flowers are already in full bloom
And we know that he will be here soon.

CHILDISH INSIGHT

NUDITY - I was driving with my three young children one warm summer evening when a woman in the convertible ahead of us stood up and waved. She was stark naked! As I was reeling from the shock, I heard my 5-year-old shout from the back seat, "Mom! That lady isn't wearing a seat belt!

MORE NUDITY - A little boy got lost at the YMCA and found himself in the women's locker room. When he was spotted, the room burst into shrieks, with ladies grabbing towels and running for cover. The little boy watched in amazement and then asked, "What's the matter haven't you ever seen a little boy before?"

HONESTY - My son Zachary, 4, came screaming out of the bathroom to tell me he'd dropped his toothbrush in the toilet. So I fished it out and threw it in the garbage. Zachary stood there thinking for a moment, then ran to my bathroom and came out with my toothbrush. He held it up and said with a charming little smile, "We better throw this one out too then, 'cause it fell in the toilet a few days ago.

OPINIONS - On the first day of school, a first grader handed his teacher a note from his mother. The note read, "The opinions expressed by this child are not necessarily those of his parents."

KETCHUP - A woman was trying hard to get the ketchup to come out of the jar. During her struggle the phone rang so she asked her 4-year-old daughter to answer the phone. "It's the minister, Mommy," the child said to her mother. Then she added, "Mommy can't come to the phone to talk to you right now. She's hitting the bottle."

ELDERLY - While working for an organisation that delivers lunches to elderly shut-ins, I used to take my 4-year old daughter on my afternoon rounds. The various appliances of old age, particularly the canes, walkers and wheelchairs, unfailingly intrigued her. One day I found her staring at a pair of false teeth soaking in a glass. As I braced myself for the inevitable barrage of questions, she merely turned and whispered, "The tooth fairy will never believe this!"

DRESS-UP - A little girl was watching her parents dress for a party. When she saw her dad donning his tuxedo, she warned, "Daddy, you shouldn't wear that suit." "And why not, darling?" "You know that it always gives you a headache the next morning"

DEATH - While walking along the sidewalk in front of his church, our minister heard the intoning of a prayer that nearly made his collar wilt. Apparently, his 5-year-old son and his playmates had found a dead robin. Feeling that proper burial should be performed, they had secured a small box and cotton batting, then dug a hole and made ready for the disposal of the deceased. The minister's son was chosen to say the appropriate prayers and with sonorous dignity intoned his version of what he thought his Father always said: "Glory be unto the Faaaather, and unto the Sonnn, and into the hole he gooooes."

SCHOOL - A little girl had just finished her first week of school. "I'm just wasting my time," she said to her mother. "I can't read, I can't write and they won't let me talk!"

BIBLE - A little boy opened the big family bible. He was fascinated as he fingered through the old pages. Suddenly, something fell out of the Bible. He picked up the object and looked at it. What he saw was an old leaf that had been pressed in between the pages. "Mama, look what I found," the boy called out." What have you got there, dear?" With astonishment in the young boy's voice, he answered, "I think it's Adam's underwear!"

Say what?

What she said:

Moreland Leader

What I heard:

more than a litre

Sometimes it is hard to hear what someone is saying and you only catch the gist of it. More often than not you end up with some words that sound the same as the ones that have been said but which does not make any sense at all and you are go "Huh??? what??"

My wife was telling me today how we seemed to have stopped getting the "Moreland Leader" which is a community newspaper that gets delivered to our doorstop every monday. I heard "more than a litre" which of course did not mean anything to me but might have so I had to ask again what she was saying and she very patiently repeated what she had said in a slower and more clear voice so that my water logged ears could identify the actual words that had been said.

Now I am not saying that I have a hearing problem because I most certainly do not. It is everybody else's fault for not speaking coherently enough.

The Creepy Crawlies are here!

Looks like the best part of summer is here. The creepy crawlies have started creeping and crawling out of wherever they had hidden for the last few months. I was getting a drink from the fridge when I heard my wife screaming and shouting. When I rushed into the study she was shaking and stuttering and she just brushed past me into the living room. I followed her asking what was wrong and she finally managed to calm down enough to tell me that a cockroach had been crawling on her arm.

I went back into the study and sure enough, on her laptop was the ugliest bug I have ever seen. It looked as if it had descended directly from Kafka's monster himself. The thing was black in most parts with some silver and grey spots all over. It had wings but it did not look intimidated enough to fly away. We stared each other down, not one of us giving the other an inch. From the living room, I could hear my wife shouting, "Kill it! Kill it!"

I went back and got the bug spray and some paper. As soon as it saw the insecticide it tried to crawl away. I was not going to let it escape that easily though. First I tried to grab it with the paper as I did not want spray on my wife's laptop. But the creature proved more elusive, slipping away everytime I thought I had caught it. I finally managed to wear it down and it dropped onto the carpet where I let shot off a barrage of toxic gas.

The thing struggled but was no match for the might of chemical warfare. A few wrigglings later, it had flown off to creepy crawly hell. I picked it up with some paper and took it off to my wife who was still shaking. She did not want to look at it, instead told me to go flush the thing. So I dropped it into the toilet and pushed the lever.

This was probably a scout or the advance party. We can expect more of their kind in the coming days. Not just the cockroaches. The spiders, ants and flies will all be coming out in droves. The only thing we can do is be prepared and make sure we have enough bugspray.

Spiders on drugs

funniest thing i have ever seen hehehe

In the dark

It has been quite an interesting morning. When I went to work I saw the people who were working on the main electricity cables and realised that there might not be any electricity in the store. Sure enough the whole place was darker than dark when I arrived at the door. Deinse was already there waiting in her car. When she saw me, she got out and sat down on the bench.

"Is that a garbage bag?"

I looked at where she was pointing and there was something dark and plump lying near the door. I got up and went to check on it and imagine my surprise as I heard little snores coming from it. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could make out a pair of boots coming out of the heap. I backe away and told Denise that it was a guy. I was thinking it was some homeless guy just asleep on our doorstep.

As the rest of the guys arrived this guy work up and surprise surprise he was wearing a uniform. Margaret asked him who he was and he replied that he was the security guard!

He was the security guard, guarding the place because the electricity was off and the alarms were not working! And he was asleep on the job! hehehe.

Anyways when we finally went inside, we could not see a damn thing. Which meant we could not do any work. And I was not going to call the boss up. He should have realised that this was going on and called us to let us know so that we could have come later or not at all. We went out the other side and asked the workmen how long it would take and they replied that it might take a couple of hours. What did we do then? We sat down in the dark, on the couches and talked about nothihng for an hour till the department managers arrived. And then we talked for an hour more until she finally decided to call the big boss who told us to go home. He also said that we would be paid for the day. SO that was not quite bad. A day's pay for sitting in the dark telling ghost stories.

More 300 artwork

Empireonline has posted even more 300 posters. There is only 83 days till the movie is released...

Spartan hardass Stelios (Michael Fassbender) as he jumps on some unfortunate Persian.

One of Xerxes’ silver-masked Immortals.

New 300 artwork

Can you tell that I just can't wait for this movie to come out??? I found some new posters for the movie over at Empireonline.

Feast your eyes on three of the main characters –

Gerard Butler’s Leonidas, King of the Spartans, who launches a desperate effort to stop an army of 250,000 with a force of 300.

Lena Headey’s feisty and firey Queen Gorgo, Leonidas’ wife and herself part of the war effort.

Rodrigo Santoro’s chain-attired Xerxes, the Persian Emperor.

And as if that weren’t enough, you also get a glimpse of one of the film’s crazy Persian warriors, the gigantic chained “über-Immortal”, the scariest member of Xerxes’ personal guard, the 10,000 Immortals.

The bracelet - part one

The sun is still asleep when I start on my hourly trip to get to work. It is not easy to get up every morning before 4 am but I have somehow managed to do so for nearly three months now. The day I found the bracelet, started out like any other working day.

I was walking at a well maintained pace that required just enough power to keep from falling asleep but not enough to tire me out (which would lead me to fall asleep too...) I had just stepped on the bridge over the freeway when I notice the sparkling of something on the pavement.

It was a bracelet. You know the type that is sold in most two dollar shops or novelty stores. Cheap imitation jewels set on a stretchy metal band. I picked it up. To this day I am not sure why I did so. It was probably my cat like curiosity which is going to get me killed one day... and on this day it nearly did... But I am getting ahead of myself.

I kept walking while looking over the bracelet. I was wondering who had dropped it and whether there was any way I could figure out who it was so that I could return it to her. Her! Of course it belongs to a girl. No self respecting male would ever own one of those things. There were no initials on the inside of the bracelet. No identifying marks or even a serial number. It was a cheap imitation. They do not come with serial numbers.

So without thinking what I was doing I slipped my left wrist into the bracelet. I was almost at the end of the bridge. On any other day there would still be ten more minutes of walking up to the tram stop. But on that day, when I tried on the bracelet, I suddenly found myself standing at the tram stop.

I do not remember walking those ten minutes from the bridge to the tram stop. Usually I time my walks so that I get to the tram stop just minutes before the tram comes. That day I had to wait ten minutes before the tram came and I hopped on it; the bracelet was still on my left wrist.

Quote for the day

This is a good spin on an "old saying" ...

The glass is neither half-full nor half-empty: it's twice as big as it needs to be.

- Unknown

Blog overhaul for 2007

I had been thinking of changing the look of my blog for sometime now.. I liked the stripey template I have been using for the past few months which I found at eris design. That site has for some reason gone down and I had been trying to change the three column look into a two column one but it didnt work out.

Anyways I picked the minima black template that I used when I first started this blog sometime ago. With the new blogger page elements it is really easy to bring about the changes that I want to make to the template. So for the time being I am going to have a completely minimal black template... It is however going to be improved upon just as soon as I figure out how to add the things that I want to add to it.. Keep watching this blog!