A Date with Destiny

December 16, 2012December 16, 20129 Comments

DEPENDING on your point of view, we’re facing either the end of the world, or the end of the year sometime in the next two weeks. For the record, I’m going with the latter, but in any case, I thought it might be timely to provide a little festy…I mean festive, update on my dating success.

At this point I should warn you, you could stop reading now and be just as wise as those who make it to the end. Or, if you’re really bored and trying to kill those last few days at work before Christmas, please read on.

In recent weeks, and in no particular order, there’s been a host of potential new suitors, via my dating site. Let me introduce you to some of the men who’ve been contacting me. I don’t want to brag, but they’ve been practically lining up to meet me (or, in the case of the photo below which I took in Laos some years back, are much more enlightened souls than those on my dating site).

My most recent admirer has been a bloke who calls himself Rough Diamond (obviously, he doesn’t work in PR). Rough, 42, doesn’t believe in apostrophes, but does like fishing, camping and 4×4’s. He apparently cooks “a mean muffin”, has a dog called “Bundy” and listens to Guns and Roses. The real treat was Rough’s answer to the kinds of sport he liked: “If you can class drinking as a sport, I guess I play that.”

The next fella calls himself Caloundra Bloke. Caloundra reckons we have “a lot in common” but exactly what that is remains a mystery to me, for despite asking him to actually fill out some of his profile or perhaps email me with a few highlights, he refuses. I can’t help but wonder whether Calounda’s wife knows he’s on a dating site.

Andy P, also from the Sunshine Coast (ladies, there appears to be a pandemic of single men on the Sunny at the moment), actually engaged in a one-hour internet chat with me, in which he revealed he had retired at 37 and owned a yacht called Chardonnay. Andy asked me how I’d feel about a sunset sail, some seafood and some good conversation, to which I replied: “That sounds great!”. At that point, I never heard from Andy again. Now, I’m either doing something wrong, or Andy’s yacht is actually a tinnie.

Finally, there’s Tantric, who, as his name suggests is Indian. The problem with Tantric is that he also lives in India and has asked me to come and visit him which is a little outside the 50km radius I’ve stipulated on my profile. Apparently his name means “Shiva” in Sanskrit and he is looking for his “Shakthi”. I’m not entirely sure what a Shakthi is, and despite doing a bit of yoga and meditation lately, I don’t think I’m the girl for Tantric.

Which leaves me with the same old question, what to do about dating? According to a recent report in the Fraser Coast Chronicle, you now download a Virtual Boyfriend App, tailor him to meet your needs, and dump him when he doesn’t make the grade. You can even download a Wingman App, when you’re lost for the perfect pick-up line which also comes with a pep talk for when you’re feeling a bit blue in the dating department.

I guess it’s all food for thought this silly season as we entertain the prospect of exactly who, if anyone, we’ll be kissing under the mistletoe. As for me, and knowing my luck, I will finally find a boyfriend…just as the world ends.

Serenity in seven minutes

December 4, 2012December 4, 20125 Comments

SHE wore a smile of smug serenity, the kind borne from hours and hours of meditation and, I suspect, being a gentle soul. I’m in country New South Wales for a three-day yoga treat and Basia, who calls herself a “tea advocate”, is performing a modern-day version of a Japanese tea ceremony to welcome us to Billabong Retreat.

My journey to enlightenment begins several hours earlier when my friend Jess picks me up at SydneyAirport in her clapped-out car which lacks air-conditioning in the middle of an Australian heat wave. It’s such a scorcher, I expect to see Satan himself behind the steering wheel.

Jess and I have a history of colourful trips which share an unwittingly similar theme. It’s always hot, there’s limited alcohol and we swim in interesting watering holes. In June it was Jordan’s Dead Sea, this time it’s an Australian Billabong the colour of black tea.

I’m in the fittingly name Harmony Cottage on this 5000 hectare property replete with lotus pond. Jess is in a tent. Yoga takes place in a central yurt. I fall in love with the word yurt. Billabong is an eco-retreat where each guest is allocated 50 litres of water each day which are broken down as such:

3 minute shower = 30L
1 x full loo flush = 4.5L
3 x half loo flushes = 3 L
Spare = 3.5 L

Guests are advised to save water and “shower with a friend”. If only. I perform a crude mathematical calculation in my head. If I don’t have a bowel movement for six days, I can afford another shower. Jess reminds me we aren’t here for six days, so my maths, as always, is flawed. In my spare time, I take to trading shower minutes with the other guests.

Paul and Tory von Bergen own Billabong Retreat near Richmond, about an hour’s drive north-west of Sydney. Paul, a former high-flying Londoner who made millions of pounds, lived in a penthouse and had a photo of a yacht on his desk, lost all his money in a bad business decision. He headed to Thailand where he discovered yoga, but instead of a lightening bolt, it was a gradual transformation on his path to serenity.

Rather than teaching guests the kind of power yoga that has crept into chic city studios, Paul believes yoga is about the mind. A kind of meditation yoga which dates back to 300 BC. Jess calls it Moga.

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“The fact you are twisting one way or the other way is almost here nor there, it is about peace of mind and health and happiness,” Paul says.

“Yoga was always about the mind for thousands and thousands of years. It was only really when it came to the West in the last 60 years that is has become dominated by the physical.

“For 4000 to 5000 years yoga was not about postures. It is about developing the mind. It is about neuroplasticity – the ability to retrain out minds.

“Whoever came up with that phrase ‘you can’t teach an old dog new tricks’….that’s bullshit. It is about feeling better, living longer, happier and more contented lives.

“As long as we’re heading in roughly the right direction, it is OK.”

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On a scorching Saturday afternoon we perform a Hindu chant 108 times – the number 108 believed to be the figure required to achieve enlightenment. I arrive at roughly the 38^th Om and my mind starts to play a nasty trick. It reminds me it’s the weekend, my throat is parched from chanting, and I need an ice-cold Sav Blanc. It takes everything in my power to sit still and return to the next 70 chants by which time I forget Sav Blanc, let alone the sacred Marlborough region, exists.

Paul teaches us a simple seven minute practice that we can take home. Seven minutes to serenity. On the drive home and after a weekend of gorgeous vegetarian fare, I implore Jess to stop at the first coffee shop she can find before she drops me at the airport. I’m in the middle of a long check-in line when my tummy starts to grumble. I break into a cold sweat. Fuelled by caffeine and possibly the fact I can flush the loo all I wish, my bowels have decided upon the most inconvenient time all weekend to do what they are designed to.

I barely make it through check-in and rush to the toilet. Afterwards, I celebrate with a large carton of greasy chips and a New Zealand pinot noir. My enlightenment is tested three times on the way home. The first time, when the passenger next to me decides to shake a tin of breath mints all the way home; the second when we hit severe turbulence; and the third, when a maniac cabbie picks me up at the airport, road-raging his way to my front door. I practice breathing in and out slowly and saying “I am” over and over in my mind.

I think back to what Paul has to say about this modern, frazzled world in which we exist.

“There is too much masculine energy in the world. We can be both, soft and strong. Women are better at that,” he says.

“I’d like to see more men at this retreat. It is the story of my life at the moment. I haven’t spoken to a bloke in three months.”

Welcome to my world Paul. Welcome to my world.

The Global Goddess travelled as a guest of Billabong Retreat. To find out how you can achieve serenity in seven minutes, go to www.billabongretreat.com.au or better still, book yourself in for an enlightening adventure.

Keep your Vegemite in the fridge

November 26, 2012November 26, 20128 Comments

THERE were frogs in the pond, pigs in a blanket, a gaggle of geese and a gargle of girlfriends. White cockatoos sat at arm’s length over the back fence and Joe the dog slouched under the table, barely able to conceal his bemusement.

We arrived in the one-horse, one-pub Queensland country town in the height of the noon-day sun. The girl we like to call Jodi (who has insisted her friends stop naming her in blogs, so for the sake of this story let’s call her Clarky) had packed ice blocks for the 45 minute drive west of Brisbane. Things were going swimmingly, until I drove the wrong way into the town’s drive thru bottle-o. Clarky swore she heard a banjo play somewhere in the distance and I thought I saw a tumbleweed blow past, until I realised it was just Corina stumbling out of the bottle-o with some lemonade. We kept the engine running…just in case.

It was Retro Sunday lunch at Dame Alison’s where a mob of top sheilas, six of us in all aged between 39 and 72, gathered on the verandah for a good old chinwag and some fine food. Except this year the food wasn’t so much fine but funky. We harked back to the 70s, clutching at the recipes of our mothers and grandmothers. I pulled out old faithful: my spinach cob loaf and some sausage rolls. Mr Lee brought cheer and cheerios. Clarky baked some chooks, Heaney tossed a salad, and Alison, a Shepherd’s pie which mysteriously contained no lamb.

But the piece-de-resistance was Corina’s nana’s jelly salad. Imagine, if you possibly can, yellow jelly, carrot shreds and, wait for it… mustard, and you’ve got the salad. Unfortunately for me, who’d spent the week suffering from a gastro virus, it too closely resembled what I’d been trying to keep down and from the looks of the others, they were about to join me as fellow passengers on the proverbial porcelain bus. Nana would have be turning in her grave if she could have heard our comments, that is, if she wasn’t so preserved from all the mustard she used to consume.

But it wasn’t so much about the food, as friendship. Feisty femme fatales dining on the deck to swap stories and secrets, swatting flies and egos. There’s no bullshit with Brisbane women – they’ll slap you down if you get too big for your boots, but are the first to pick you up when you break a heel. That’s what I love.

As the perfect Pimms afternoon wore on, we braved the gamut of conversations. Should Vegemite be kept in the fridge? Would you look after your cheating ex-husband if he was dying of a terminal illness? We spoke of death and dating (sometimes, for me, in the same sentence). Three of us had boyfriends, three of us didn’t. Those of you who remember the Joh Bjelke-Petersen era will enjoy the irony of a group of journalists and PRs standing, side-by-side in the back yard, feeding the chooks. We collected fresh eggs from the chook pen to take home.

We spoke of sex, travel and work. That’s another thing I love. In a town like Brisbane where you have to compete furiously for the work, our foes are our friends. There’s no room in this river city for small-minded competitiveness. What goes around, comes around. And so it is with these girls.

They keep me honest, they rough me up, but they are the first to be there when I need it. A group of us were recently up in Lombok for our annual travel writer’s conference. Someone from Sydney paid us one of the nicest compliments we’d ever heard. “You Brisbane girls are just so friendly and fun. You’re down-to-earth. You’re earthy.”

And she hadn’t even seen Nana’s jelly salad.

Boobs, buffalo and Bali

October 31, 2012October 31, 2012Leave a comment

EVERYONE keeps telling me I’ll meet a man when I least expect it, and so it was that I stumbled across Driftwood. On this particular evening I wasn’t looking to meet someone, I was on my way to the toilet after an especially hedonistic night with mates, on the beach, at Lombok.

He resembled some flotsam that had washed up on the beach at high tide. Picture Shaggy from Scooby Doo (both in name and nature) a sarong worn commando (he offered to show me his Mystery Machine), and a suspected lifetime of illegal, green, leafy material, and you’ve pretty much met Driftwood. My girlfriends swear I was swooshing my hair as I spoke to him at the bar, enroute to the dunny. I maintain it was the tropical heat making my hair stick to the nape of my neck that was causing what looked like a primitive sexual overture on my part. Suffice to say, I continued on towards the toilet – replete with coconut door handles not unlike boobs – and Driftwood stayed at the bar, except for the end of the evening when he sauntered past and kissed my head with his whiskey breath.

It had already been a bit of a colourful day on this remote Indonesian island which many liken to Bali “20 years ago”. We’d visited a traditional village that morning for a cooking demonstration, but I had failed to read the bit which stated we’d be eating what we cooked. Which would have been OK, had it not been for the flies, the heat, and what appeared to be rancid buffalo. What to do? Risk offending the village people, or risk becoming sick?

And so I came up with the only plausible solution at the time. I told my guide I had “women’s issues” and I needed to go back to the hotel…and I needed to take not one, but three of my friends with me. In my defence, I am a woman and I have plenty of issues, so it wasn’t exactly a lie. And here’s where it became even more interesting. For the brave souls who stayed on, not only was there buffalo on the menu, but one of the village grandmothers was breastfeeding her grandson. She wouldn’t have been a day younger than 80. Given the choice between the buffalo and grandma, I am not ashamed to say I would have taken Option B.

Back at the hotel, the party continues. One of my friends – for the sake of this story let’s call her Jodi – gets up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom in her room. She walks out the front door instead and locks herself out into the humid night. There’s cocktails on the beach at sunset, limbo competitions and a slew of satay. Nick’s private pool party is all bean bags and bonhomie.

But there’s a serious side to this trip as well. It’s shortly after the tenth anniversary of the Bali bombing and we’re in Indonesia for the Australian Society of Travel Writers annual conference. Guest speaker Australian Janet De Neefe is talking about how she conceived the Ubud Writers Festival following the act of terrorism which claimed the lives of 88 Australians.

Janet, who went to Bali on a holiday 25 years ago and met her husband on the second day, describes the long weeks and months after the bombing and its effect on Indonesia and its much-needed tourism.

“Suddenly, everything stops. It is like the end of the party. The place is deserted and everyone is gone,” she says.

“I had to do something. It was my turn to make a contribution. Bali had been very good to me…we’ve got terrorism on our toes, let’s think of an event that is really meaningful.

“I suddenly thought ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’. Bring in the people who are fearless. Bring in the writers.”

The first Ubud Writers Festival Through Darkness to Light attracted an audience of 300. This year, more than 25,000 people were drawn to Ubud which Janet describes as “the exotic tropics in its most native sense…exquisite.”

Next year, she hopes to attract Colin Firth, yes, Mr Darcy, to the festival.

I am swept up in the romance of her words, her festival and her adopted country. Days later, I arrive in Bali itself and am humbled by a conversation I have with a Balinese man who works at the resort pool.

“You from Australia? We love Australians. After the Bali bombings, everyone stopped coming, except the Australians. You kept coming.”

I think about what I sometimes call the “ugly Australian tourist” in Bali who drinks too much, is way too loud, and is flat out finding some bare skin for yet another tattoo. So I am surprised and delighted at how the Balinese still view most Australians.

And perhaps it’s as simple as that. Maybe Australian travellers to Bali are as crucially predictable as the tide. We sweep in and we sweep out.

Just ask Driftwood.

The Global Goddess would like to thank the ASTW for a terrific conference and the Novotel Lombok and Garuda Indonesia for their outstanding hospitality, patience and assistance. For more information go to www.accorhotels.com; www.garuda-indonesia.com And a special shout out to Novotel Lombok General Manager Brian – the Vasse Felix was worth every drop!

You’re naughty, Ketut

October 20, 20129 Comments

There’d hardly be an Australian who, by now, didn’t know of that clever car insurance advertisement featuring Rhonda and her Indonesian waiter, Ketut. For those overseas readers, it’s one of the most popular ads on television, as the hapless holidaying Rhonda flirts shamelessly with Ketut on a Balinese beach. Lobster red with sunburn, apart from her white rimmed eyes which have been hidden by her sunnies, Ketut tells Rhonda: “You look so hot today, like a sunrise.”

Now, I don’t want to brag, but before this ad was even aired, six months ago I was in a similar situation to Rhonda in Bali. And given I’m going back there next week, it seems timely to share my good fortune.

It was Easter and my mate Trish and I had flown down to escape the clutches of oppressive Singapore, where we’d both been working. Trish, a typical POM, promptly plonked herself on the nearest lounge chair overlooking the ocean, and proceeded to fry her lily white body for the next four days. I think I saw her go in the water once. She was a handy holiday companion, however, rising before dawn to beat the Germans to the sun lounges, bagging us two of the best, and then meeting me for breakfast. Only a European knows how to play that dangerous little game.

Each day Trish would frazzle up a storm, come to sunset drinks all glowing and glowering with sunburn, and proceed to do it all over again the next day. I, on the other hand, am a typical Australian who experienced a lifetime of sunshine in my youth, and now sits under a tree wearing something akin to a Burqa. That is, if I’m not in the water, which is often. But each to their own, it worked for us, and we had a fabulous time.

In between dips one day, Trish and I had a boozy beachside lunch, and it was at that point I met my own Ketut. A Balinese waiter approached our table, and once he established from where I had hailed, he replied: “Ah, Australia, kangaroo, sexy.” At this point Trish and I both looked at it each other in bemusement. Not sure if Trish had ever seen a kangaroo in the wild before, but I certainly had, and I’m not entirely certain “sexy” is how you would describe Skippy.

“Sexy?” I asked the waiter, a little incredulously.

He, in turn, looked confused, and replied: “Not kangaroo, I meant Coca Cola. Coca Cola very sexy.” And then, as if to explain, he looked at my body, and in thin air, traced the curves as one would an old-fashioned glass Coke bottle.

And then he promptly departed.

For the rest of the trip, whenever Trish was looking for me in the ocean or the pool, she simply needed to think of a bottle of Coke, and up I’d pop. Since my time as a Coke bottle in Bali, I have returned to Australia to live, and as we speak Trish is packing her belongings to return to the UK.

Meanwhile, Rhonda and Ketut have become such celebrities Down Under, that they will be joining the likes of Nicole Kidman and Prince Charles on the Melbourne Cup racing social circuit. For those who don’t know, Rhonda is Western Australian actress Mandy McElhinney and Ketut is Melbourne forklift driver Kadek Mahardika. I suspect neither will ever have to work again.

I won’t be in Melbourne for the Cup this year, but I will certainly be in Bali next week, unfortunately without Trish. So save me an umbrella Rhonda and Ketut. The Coke bottle is arriving and she’s ready to hit the beach. Like a sunrise.

That nasty “F” word

October 13, 20125 Comments

MY 12-year-old niece broke it off with her “boyfriend” this week, telling me yesterday: “He acts one way around me, and another around his friends.” “Ah, mixed messages,” I told Miss Twelve, who didn’t quite understand the concept, despite deeply feeling the hurt. “He was shocked,” she added. And who said feminism was dead?

If we needed any convincing that feminism wasn’t dead it was this week’s outstanding performance by Prime Minister Julia Gillard who stood up for herself, and the women of Australia, to Opposition Leader Tony Abbott. In her 15-minute speech in Federal Parliament during which Gillard never once stumbled, she did what was a long-time coming. She told the man who has taunted her with cruel jibes among which have included standing in front of a banner which labelled her a “witch” and a “bitch”, that she would “not be lectured about sexisim by this man”. Regardless of your politics, I implore anyone who hasn’t seen it to go to YouTube and see exactly the kind of mettle of which a woman scorned is made.

The best Abbott could do this week was trot out his wife and three daughters as a poor example of how this somehow made him a feminist. The mere fact he did this was a sexist act in itself. It’s a bit like telling someone “my neighbour is gay/indigenous/disabled”. Worst of all for Abbott, even if this did score him a couple of cheap political points, with possibly another year to run before the Federal Election, he’s potentially pulled out his trump card a little prematurely. So now he has to rely on his character.

Let me be very clear. This is not a political post. I, like many other Australians, have been deeply disappointed by the argy bargy and broken promises of both sides of the Parliament in recent times. Yet, sometime in the next 12 months, I will have the opportunity (a result of feminism) to choose one side. This is a blog about feminism. It’s a blog about basic human rights.

We live in interesting times. Despite the fact 60% of university undergraduates are women, in 2012, Australian women earn approximately 17.5% less than men. We’ve all been privy to the recent abhorrent behaviour of a certain football club’s end-of-year antics and their lewd comments towards a female television reporter who was simply doing her job. And then there’s a certain male radio announcer who decried Australian women as “destroying the joint.”

Globally, things are far worse. This week in Indonesia, a 14-year-old school girl victim of child trafficking was expelled from her school because she had “tarnished the school’s reputation.” In Pakistan, a 14-year-old girl is fighting for her life after being shot in the head by the Taliban. Her crime? She believed women should be allowed an education.

I’ve always been proud to call myself a feminist and for anyone who wonders what this means to me, it means I think women should be receive the same pay as men for the same work; that they should be able to walk down the street in whatever they choose without fear or favour; and they should be afforded the same opportunities as men. Women should be treated with the same respect as men.

And yet, in recent times, even I’ve been led to believe there is something wrong with me. This week, when a male friend sent me a private email making a lewd comment about my breasts, I was deeply offended. I told him so, and he apologised, yet it didn’t stop me choosing the baggiest blouses to wear all week and slouching my shoulders, something I haven’t done since I was a teenager. Through his comments, I felt that I should somehow be ashamed and embarrassed of my womanhood.

This weekend I’ve found myself waiting for a phone call from a man I’ve never met, who enticed me with the promise of a coffee date. That phone call never came. In the scheme of world events, and how women are treated, it’s nothing. It’s a very First-World problem and possibly even a luxury to have such a light-weight worry. But it still hurts, as did my mate’s comments. As these blokes would never denigrate their male friends like that. And doesn’t it simply come down to that? It’s not whether you are male or female. It’s how you would treat another human being.

This week, through Prime Minister Gillard, and people like my 12-year-old niece who wouldn’t have a clue what a feminist was, we saw a glimmer of hope. A spark.

Maybe feminism isn’t dead after all. Like myself, after 40 odd years fighting the good fight, perhaps she’s just been having a long-deserved beauty sleep. And there is nothing wrong with that.

Nice day for a white wedding

October 7, 2012October 7, 20122 Comments

HE shared the same name as a major Italian city and was a journalist, which ticked two boxes: he had an interesting moniker and could spell. So, it was without hesitation that I decided to go on a date with a friend of one of my male mates. Unfortunately, he also looked like a garden gnome, replete with round belly, long, sharp nose, pointy ears and glasses. Twenty minutes into the date, during which the gnome spent twenty minutes looking at my breasts (in his defence he was also short so was eye level with my cleavage) the gnome decided I wasn’t up to standard and promptly left. The gnome later told my male mate that I wasn’t “like a supermodel”.

Imagine my delight yesterday, three years later, when my male mate got married and, along with the obligatory pervy uncle with the wife 30 years his junior on the guest list, appeared the gnome. Now, I knew the gnome was going to be at the wedding, and would like to say I deliberately chose to wear my sexiest off-the-shoulder red number, but truth-be-told, it was the only decent wedding attire I had. What I didn’t know was that two of my girlfriends, one I hadn’t seen in months, and another in a decade, would also turn up at the wedding in similar red dresses. So, rather than looking single and sexy, I looked like one third of the Pointer Sisters and I’m pretty sure everyone was wondering what our first act would be.

The gnome turned up in an ill-fitting suit where the pants and sleeves were too long and his pants had faded prematurely in relation to his suit jacket. I would be lying if I said when he lit up a cigarette just as a petrol tanker drove past that I didn’t harbour a brief fantasy of a random explosion, but I figured that might put a dampener on the wedding celebrations.

Also on the guest list were a bunch of rather dowdy wives who all looked like they’d been to the same hairdresser and there had been a special on mousy brown hair colour, a horrible fringe, and a perpetual frown.

I, on the other hand, love weddings, and adopt the all-Australian attitude that you take the cost of what you spend on the gift, multiply this by a factor of five, and then proceed to redeem your gift cost by drinking as much alcohol as possible. This is also possibly why the groom put my girlfriends and I on the table up the back of the room, behind a post. Which suited me fine, as we were also the closest to the dance floor.

During the evening the gnome, who is still single – clearly Brisbane has a dearth of supermodels looking to date gnomes – spent several hours looking longingly in my direction, according to my girlfriends. Either that, or he had never seen an Australian woman drink so much Sav Blanc and still be standing.

It was all going so well, and I was out front, in the middle of the dance floor teaching the relatives from country South Australia how to do Nutbush City Limits (it’s kick, kick, clap and THEN turn people!), when the gnome decided to grab his jacket and depart. It was only 8.30pm so I can only assume he had double booked his night and was off to entertain at a children’s party. Again, either that, or he had caught a glimpse of my beige control underwear which was doing a mighty fine job keeping my tummy, bum and thighs in check, thus confirming his suspicions that I am not a supermodel.

The night continued and the mousy brown brigade continued to sit with their cat’s bum faces. They were less-than-impressed when I accidently broke a glass while alternatively playing the drums on the table and a glass with a spoon. And even less impressed when that crazy Korean Psy’s Gangnam Style came on and I busted out some moves (and possibly my dress).

By the end of the night it was just me and one of my Pointer Sisters left on the dance floor, all cat’s bums and gnomes long-since departed.

I limped home with bleeding feet, reeking of sweat, and hair all mussed up which in my opinion, are all the hallmarks of a splendid evening. I had quite simply, had a ball and realise it’s moments like these it can be great fun being single.

I imagine the mousy browns have probably awoken this morning without a hair out of place, their faces fixed firmly in a line of disappointment, arranging to meet each other for a cappuccino and discuss that outrageous lady in red.

As for the gnome, I checked in my garden this morning just to be sure and there was no trace of him. Given it’s just over two months to Christmas, I guess he’s busy getting ready to be Santa’s little helper.

Surfers Shenanigans

September 24, 2012September 26, 20122 Comments

I’VE awoken in a Surfers Paradise hotel room and I have a swollen eye. The Surfers Paradise part I can explain, even to myself who takes a few minutes to remember what I’m doing on Australia’s Gold Coast. But I have no idea how I’ve acquired the swollen eye. I check my hotel bathroom for a baby, a tiger and Bradley Cooper.

The last thing I remember was playing Putt Putt golf with some friends before having a few drinks. Unless things have changed in the past 20 years, Putt Putt, from memory, is a pretty tame affair which doesn’t result in swollen organs.

I decide to take Quasimodo out to breakfast, acutely aware this shall not the morning I will be meeting the man of my dreams. When I head back to the 22^nd floor my room key is no longer working. Which would not be such a problem were it not for the strange grumble my stomach has just made. Just when I think my morning can’t get much worse, it does. The cause of my swollen eye suddenly becomes apparent. I’ve overindulged in oysters at the seafood buffet the previous evening, I’m having an allergic reaction, and now my gut is about to explode. In the lift. Full of women attending a beauty conference.

I break into a cold sweat. By now, I’m frantic. It occurs to me that I’m about to resemble an Australian footballer, and crouch on the carpeted hotel hallway with my swollen eye and do the unspeakable. I telephone my friend whose room number I can’t remember. “Open your door,” I scream down the line, “O-p-e-n. Y-o-u-r. D-o-o-r!” A door swings open down the hall by which stage, I am crawling like one of the crabs which is causing all the commotion inside me. I burst into what I hope is her hotel room, and not that of some poor Japanese tourist, and dash to the toilet.

My retro weekend in Surfers Paradise has begun with a blast. My friend, Corina, has decided our next adventure should be cycling along the beachfront to the Southport Spit. It’s going to be so simple, bikes are even delivered to our hotel room. Corina is wearing her trademark high heels, tighty whitey pants, and a koala backpack we’ve nicknamed “fluffy”. I am having visions of my own loveliness, dressed in a long white skirt, hair blowing in the sea breeze, riding along the oceanfront like something out of a feminine hygiene ad. Dame Alison, our other friend, has wisely decided to take a limo transfer to meet us for lunch. I take off and make it to the first corner when my skirt becomes entangled in the bike chain. Corina falls off her bike. We are covered in grease when we limp in to lunch at the old Southport Bathing Pavilion which is now a café. A bloke called Chico offers us a Chicko roll. Things are looking up.

That evening, Corina has planned a special surprise. A trip to the Wax Museum. The operators resemble the Adams family which is more than we can say for the actual wax exhibits. Barack Obama is white. Michael Jackson is black. Whitney Houston looks like Bobby Brown. The whole display is creepy and just little bit scary. We leave abruptly. We need a drink.

We decide our trip to the glitter strip isn’t complete without a Chinese banquet and head to the Focus Chinese Seafood Restaurant with our new-found friends, Cade, Caitlin, Shae, Grant and Maggie. Full of Peking duck, we decide to eschew a trip to the old haunts – Melba’s and Cocktails and Dreams – in favour of an early night. I go to sleep smug in the knowledge we’ve had a pretty tame night. Even my eye has almost returned to normal.

On Sunday morning I awake to find a game of Two-Up in last night’s handbag, a Meter Maid’s business card and bum muscles I didn’t know I had, courtesy of our bike ride. I ponder this as we board the Aquaduck for an amphibious adventure on the Broadwater. There’s no suspension on the vehicle and we bounce along the Esplanade, as do our boobs. Corina tells me to “get ducked”. I tell her to “duck off”. Back at Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Dame Alison sits near a farting man exhibit while the museum owner catches me stroking a male fertility statue. “Be careful, you’ll get pregnant,” he warns, before adding, “but of course you have to have sex to do that.” Just my luck to be the second woman in history to conceive by immaculate conception.

By the end of the weekend, I realise something I’d long forgotten. Surfers Paradise is tawdry, tacky and terrific, just like my friends. It will pick you up, twist you around, dance with you and gently put you back down. But dull? Never, ever.

The Global Goddess travelled as a guest of The Outrigger, Surfers Paradise, whose carpet, she is pleased to report, remains intact and whose bathrooms are to be commended, in whichever room you may find yourself in a panic. To experience your own retro weekend, go to www.outrigger.com.au

Women and their Lovers

September 11, 2012September 11, 20123 Comments

IT’S a Goldilocks afternoon in the Queensland capital. Not too hot, not too cold. Ferries glide across the Brisbane River like ballerinas, traffic crawls along the Riverside Expressway as an army of ants, and Spring is being one, gigantic flirt.

It’s perfect then, that I’ve gathered in the Queensland Library’s ‘Red Box’ for a Brisbane Writers’ Festival talk about ‘women and their lovers’. Like a passionate paramour itself, the title of the session is too irresistible to pass up. My first fear, however, is that they will ask the gathering of women (and a few good men) to confess, Alcoholics Anonymous style, how long it has been since their last lover and how many they’ve had. Does one need to have experienced a recent lover to be admitted to this saucy session, I wonder amid a moment of pure panic.

Our convivial host, a bloke, announces it’s a ‘clothing optional’ session, as the two guest authors dive headfirst into the subject at hand. What transpires on this wouldn’t-be-dead-for-quids type of afternoon, is an interesting conversation about whether humans are, in fact, meant to be monogamous. Are you always married to the one you love? Is it possible to have a marriage, and a lover, and for all three parties to be sated in every sense of the word?

At this point of the conversation my mind starts to wander, as it is prone to do. The prospect of finding one fella at the moment is hard enough, let alone two. But heck, I’d give it a go if it was on offer. As one of the authors muses “love is an individual thing”.

The host confesses about his own individual experience of first-time love. He was 15 and wanted to take a girl to the movies for the first time. His father’s advice was this: “You’ve got a penis, women have a vagina, don’t play with yourself too much as it’s not good for you, now let’s go back to the car.”

One of the authors muses that in the English language, we possess a ‘shrunken’ vocabulary when it comes to the topics of physical pain and love. There are not enough words to express the many kinds of human love possible. It’s a bit like death. We’re hopeless at articulating it. To say that someone has ‘passed on or away’ sounds ridiculous, like they’ve taken a holiday to Myanmar or something; ‘passed’ raises its own set of silly questions: “passed where, exactly?”; and to come flat out and say someone ‘died’ is a bit blunt. But it’s true. Real. Honest.

Death and love, it emerges during this lusty afternoon, have much in common. One of the authors reveals research in which it is claimed it takes exactly 2 years, 6 months and 25 days into a marriage for romance between a couple to die.

So is there such a thing as living happily ever after? Does the fairytale, like my Goldilocks afternoon, really exist?

Outside, pondering this in the late afternoon spring sunshine which is still being such a fabulous flirt, I stumble across a lone musician, dressed all in red.

Love, as we understand it, may not exist after all, but I think I’ve just stumbled across Little Red Riding Hood. And for now, that’s fairytale enough for me.

The sex goddess returns

September 5, 2012September 5, 20124 Comments

I ARRIVED late, in the midst of a ferocious tropical storm. I was the only person on the bus which was carrying me deeper into the jungle. My friendly Malaysian driver dropped me off in the dark, the torrential rain soaking me to the skin, with the warning: “watch out for snakes, as they are always watching you.” Great, I thought, he could have said “men” instead of “snakes” but it was not to be on this particular evening.

I took my first tentative steps towards the dim light somewhere in the distance…and promptly broke my sandals. Now I was drenched, barefoot, and in the midst of a potential snake pit in a tropical thunderstorm in the dark and rather alone.

Sliding on the slippery path, I eventually made my way to the light which turned out to be a cafe where I grabbed a beer, and sat out the storm. Upon leaving, I saw what looked like a lovely little green tree snake. “Don’t move,” one of the Malaysian cafe owners called out. “It’s a deadly viper, and it can kill you in seconds.”

I was reminded today of my trip to Kuching last November when I found the first evidence of Spring on my back deck. A snake skin. Now, I have a bit of an Indiana Jones relationship with snakes. They scare me, and always have. It goes right back to when we were kids in country Queensland and come summer, our backyard was full of poisonous king browns. My parents, being tough-love 1970s types, offered us little comfort: “If you see a snake, you freeze like a statute and you call out ‘mum’ and then you keep watching it so we know where it’s gone.” And then dad, who is a bit of a Steve Irwin, would march up to the deadly serpent, grab it, bag it and dump it on the farm to eat the rats. Lizards, on the other hand, I love. They’ve got legs.

So, it came as quite a shock one night a few years back when I was having a barbecue on my beloved back deck to feel all the hackles on my neck rise, in that really creepy fashion jsut before something bad’s about to happen. I turned around and there she was, slithering down the railings. I decided it was time to conquer my fear and named my snake Anastascia, deciding she was my sex goddess, meaning whenever she made an appearance, things would improve in my bedroom, so to speak. And, miraculously they did.

I won’t go into details but suffice to say, we both had a wonderful summer. For the record, I’m not alone in my thinking. Just this week, a Townsville couple went to the media with their story about two pythons copulating in their ceiling. According to Ron Degenhart: “You and your missus could be going hammer and tongs in the bedroom, while the snakes are going at it upstairs as well.”

Yes, things were going great guns for me, until the night Anastascia died. It was a scorching February night and I was laying in bed, clad only in undies and a singlet, drinking wine (yes, I know how to party). I heard what I thought were two possums fighting right outside my bedroom window. And then “boom!”, my neighbour Dave – a bit of a bogan – burst through my front gates and leapt down in front on my bedroom windows, grabbing a massive python which was in the process of eating his cat. I stood there, a little tipsy if I have to admit it, in my undies and singlet, glass of wine still firmly in hand, watching in slow-motion as Dave wrestled the cat from the snake’s mouth. It was Anastascia having dinner. Dave screamed “it bit me, it bit me”, the cat went flying into the night, and Dave stood before me, snake dangling from his hands. For the record the cat, not the snake, had bitten Dave.

The only words I could mutter were “you’re not leaving that snake here” and thus, Anastascia met an untimely death. (Which, for the record, is a great shame as Anastascia was the Indigenous species in this scenario, not the cat, but circumstances had already spiralled beyond my control).

Around the same time, my summer of sex abruptly stopped. So, it was with pure delight that I found my new snake skin this week. I’ve called her Sylvia. I haven’t see her yet, and Dave and his cat have since moved on. But I’m certainly looking forward to a long, hot, summer.

The Global Goddess

A single woman's journey

Category: dating