I live in Australia and grew up with the knowledge that Halloween was a holiday celebrated elsewhere, experienced by Australians only through (generally American) movies, TV shows and cartoons. We didn’t have trick-or-treaters, we didn’t have Halloween parties, we didn’t dress up – frankly nobody really cared that much. But somehow, this has changed over the last few years – in 2006 there was a rise in Halloween costumes sales and suddenly we were getting five or six trick-or-treaters knocking at the door in half-hearted costumes and caring huge lolly-bags. Shops started breaking out the spooky decorations as early as September to try to make the most of this “new” holiday. I think Australian children have finally figured out the fact that Halloween equals free lollies and of course, shopping centres love any excuse to latch onto a new fad to increase sales. This is the first year I’ve seen whole pumpkins for carving for $25 each(!!).

If I’d been born and raised in a country that celebrated Halloween, I’d probably love it, but I wasn’t – I was born and raised in Australia, and until a few years ago, Australia didn’t do Halloween. I can’t just flick a switch and suddenly love Halloween like we’re being expected to do and yes, we are being expected to at least participate every time someone knocks on our door by handing out lollies. Turning off the light at the front door often helps, but it’s not foolproof, since last year we had some eager kids banging out there until I had to get up from dinner and tell them to go away. Ironically, they said most people had been telling them they don’t celebrate Halloween and that it was okay, they understood. Then why did they bang out there for ten minutes?! Trick-or-treaters are just as annoying and persistant as telemarketers!

Phill and I don’t give out lollies and we don’t dress up, but this year two of our friends are holding a joint birthday party on Halloween and, of course, it’s a Halloween-themed costume party. We’re torn. We don’t want to turn up in plain clothes but for the life of me I don’t want to go out and hire a costume, so we’re going to be those annoying attendees who turn up in half-hearted costumes, like a pirate (stripy shirt, skull-and-crossbones chain, big hoop earring, eyepatch and bandana) or a tourist (Hawaiian T-shirt, khaki pants, joggers, sunnies and a camera around the neck). I can guarantee we won’t be the only ones.

So… what are you going to be doing this Saturday night?

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There was a beat of silence, then I huffed: “Well that’s not very nice!”

Duuuude. I was doing the speed limit, driving safely as the designated driver, but the guys in that car, who were most likely extremely drunk, simply saw my P-plates and made up their minds about me. I am so sick of the stereotype we get lumped with. I remember when I had to drive on the highway into the city to go to university. The majority of drivers speeding were men in business suits in fancy cars – and some of them were chatting away on mobile phones! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not calling P-platers angels – some of them are terrible drivers I am sure, but seriously – there are terrible drivers throughout all the different stages of licencing, not just at the P-plate level.

Even though I knew I should shrug off the incident, it still put a downer on the night for me. I had a sudden urge to prove to them that I was a good driver, prove them wrong – how ridiculous is that?! Who gives a crap what they think? I find it ironic that they were the ones speeding and driving extremely dangerously, not me, the – how did they so eliquently put it – f*#&ing P-plater.

I don’t want this to turn into a debate on whether or not P-platers suck. I just wanted to get it off my chest that not all P-platers are drunk maniacs determined to cause mayhem on the roads – some of us just want to get our (very drunk) boyfriend home safely after a good night out.

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I went to sign in and was refused. Confused, I clicked the ‘lost password’ button only to be told that my credentials were invalid. Invalid? Oh oh…

I phoned the help desk and was told that your email account only remains active for six months after you graduate. That makes sense, I guess, but what annoyed me was that there was no warning at all that they were about to wipe my account. I was never told about this six months’ rule and I swear some of my friends still have theirs active and they’ve been non-students for longer than me! On a daily basis, I get three or four spammy emails from the university, telling me about guest lecturers and programs and university updates that I don’t remember subscribing to - yet they couldn’t send me one quick email saying “get your emails off because we’re going to delete your account”.

WTF. Not happy.

The (very helpful) guy at the help desk said it might be possible to reopen my account for a week so I could get all of my emails off, but he said there’s a chance they won’t do it. That means I have lost the last five years’ worth of emails. I never thought to have a back-up because I was at least expecting some sort of warning if they were going to delete it, so I could get my butt into gear and sort through what I wanted to keep.

Sigh. I guess I’m just waiting on an email to see if they’ll reopen the account.

So yeah, to my university: A nice little heads up would have been nice. Thanks.

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He, of course, moved forward with me.

By this point, I was so focused on the man piggy-backing me that I had not realised that we had actually been queueing now for 10 minutes. It seems that the bank also figured it would be quiet at this time in the morning, so decided to only put on two employees. As if this wasn’t bad enough, the new layout of the bank means that those employees not only do transactions, but also do everything else you’d visit a bank for. Things that often take a long time to do, which means that people like me, who would literally take minutes at the desk, are forced to wait in queues for a long time too, while people hog the desk asking long and difficult questions about credit ratings, home loans and mortgages.

The doors slid open and a young woman walked in. She started a new queue to the left of us and obviously appeared to be in prime position to be called next because, well, the woman in front of me nearly had a heart attack. She spun around and glared at the woman, eyes furious and growled, “There’s a queue here, you know!”

The woman simply pointed to the sign she was queueing behind. “This is business banking, you’re in the personal banking. It’s a different queue.”

That made total sense actually, but I figure the woman in front of me had been queueing for a lot longer than I had, and thought that she should be next, regardless of whether she’s here for business or personal reasons, since she nearly went ape. She was standing there shaking her head, tapping her foot, her mouth opening and shutting like she wanted to scream obscenities. It was rather mesmirising, like watching a bomb, not sure if it’ll go off or not, and if it does go off, you don’t know what sort of BOOM it’ll make. We were now fifteen minutes into the queue and I must admit, even I was starting to get a little impatient. My legs were sore, since I’d been at work since 4am and I was a bit annoyed that my plan to duck in and out of a bank (YEAH RIGHT, LIKE THAT’S AT ALL POSSIBLE!!) had very quickly (very slowly??) gone up in smoke.

The man behind me was still breathing in my ear and had now added the frustrating sound of packaging paper crinkling to his symphony, which was then followed by wet, lip-smacking noises. I figured he had started sucking a lolly. It reminded me of that episode of Family Guy where Mayor Adam West is enjoying a taffy, whatever the heck a taffy is. All I can figure is it’s some sort of lolly and it takes a long time to chew it down.  Normally, eating noises wouldn’t bother people, but the noise of saliva squelching around in someone’s mouth just makes me want to strangle them.

I started concentrating on the second-hand on the clock on the wall.

I was just trying to figure out if what I needed to do could be done through an ATM or the internet or the phone (nope, I needed to speak in person with a teller), when finally another employee came in, sat at a vacant desk and called the woman in front of me over. HOORAY. Less than three minutes later, she was done and it was my turn. I did what I came to do and left quickly, tossing a sympathetic smile to the last person standing in the queue, which was now more than ten people long.

It seems that 9 o’clock in the morning is the new lunchtime rush.

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Well, my jaw dropped. How on earth can you feed your dog that much food and not feel guilty?! The dog was obviously very overweight and in a hell of a lot of pain, so it’s not like she wouldn’t have noticed something was wrong. Dr Harry took 1/3 of the can of wet food and a handful of the dry food, dumped them in a separate bowl and explained that that amount was appropriate for one days’ food.

Watching this reminded me of a New Zealand-made program Phill and I found on television when we were in Japan in which a vet and animal trainer help owners who have overweight pets to change the way they feed them and to add exercise into their pet’s daily routine. The sheer amount of food the owners fed their animals was gobsmacking. In addition to dry and wet pet food, some of these animals were getting, on a daily basis, bacon and eggs, pies and other human food that was not appropriate to feed animals.

The biggest shock to me was the fact that the majority of owners didn’t seem to realise it was their fault and that they were doing something wrong! One owner protested that she couldn’t feed her dog dog food because he didn’t like it, which is ridiculous because, as many vets have said, your dog will eat if it is hungry! Of course the animal is going to sulk and beg because they know you will give in and give it bacon or whatever you’ve been feeding it!

I was really quite frustrated when watching these shows because to me, I feel this constitutes animal cruelty. How difficult is it to ask a vet, or even google online, what is and isn’t appropriate to feed your pet, and the correct amounts to give them? Surely you can figure out that giving your dog a human breakfast is not a good idea? And isn’t it obvious that cats and dogs, just like humans, need exercise to remain healthy? Some of the owners weren’t even taking 10 minutes out of their days to throw a ball around, or dangle some string to encourage their animals to move, when the recommended minimum daily exercise amount is 30 minutes.

When someone takes on an animal, they take on responsibility. Responsibility to care for and protect that pet. Of course I know that some animals may have a medical condition which makes them gain weight, but the animals on these programs began to lose weight simply after their diet was altered and they began to exercise, which means  it was not caused by that (can you tell I watch Animal Precinct?). And even if their weight was caused by a medical condition, it’s the owners responsibility to take their pet to the vet for medical treatment and none of them were doing that. In fact, they’d rather write to a television show and get what I assume is free treatment, compared to forking out a vet’s fees.

I realise that they are only human and everyone makes mistakes, but to me, this is more than a simple mistake. This would have been going on for a long time for their animal to get to obesity and I don’t understand how you could possibly ignore it and continue to feed it ridiculous amounts of food.

This post is a bit of a rant and I’m sorry for that, but it’s just something that’s been on my mind and, since most of the people who read my blog are animal lovers and this blog is a medium for my personal thoughts, this is probably the best place for me to talk about this. I love Puddy and could not imagine doing anything to harm her and to watch those poor animals struggling to even roll over is so sad.

If an animal is relying on you for food, water and care … rise to the challenge. If you feel your pet is obese, or heading there, go see your vet who will be able to give you advice. It’s your responsibility.

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