How’s this for speed and desperation…a friend encouraged me to go to Friendster (briefly) to check out profile etc of person we both despise for a bit of a laugh. This fleeting source of amusement involved signing in myself – however, what I believed were survey details (which I entered pretty sparsely – i.e, sex, country and age) ended up as my ‘profile’ (and my name seems to have been taken from my email address). I didn’t post photos, hobbies or any other incriminating details. But within hours, I was cyberhit on by ‘my friend Henry’, a 50 yo British journalist living in Australia – pretty much on the basis of my age and sex. He lists ‘Jane Ayre [sic], Wuthering Heights and Harry Potter’ as his favourite books and ‘Sleepless in Seattle’, ‘Shirley Valentine’ and ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ as his favourite movies. He claims to be ‘a hopeless romantic, still looking for my soul mate, if there is such a thing,’ wanting to meet a ‘lady who will take me as I am; and not want to change me.’ Seems like he’s trying to appeal to the chick factor, but I took one look at his photo and thought, ‘It’s never going to happen without change.’ As a (lesbian) friend of mine once said, A woman’s first thought is always change. It was the Ken-Done-style jumper that did it for me...
On further inspection, I found that whenever you update your profile, this gets posted in a ‘gallery’ which people can cruise. I guess this is why people get into these cybermeatmarkets – the turnaround on the meeting and weeding processes must be pretty quick.
In other news: I finally got the air conditioning fixed. It took me some time to work out that there was actually something wrong with it: I thought the fact that it blew hot air through the house, making the house even hotter, might be something to do with the Territory. But then M said to me that the pump had probably calcified, so the air conditioner couldn’t blow air across cool water to make the house cool down, or whatever it does. The air conditioning people came round pretty promptly (this is more of that Territorian hospitality, people are pretty good that way here), even though they’re greatly in demand at the moment, saying ‘you can’t put up with that in this heat.’ So after some men had climbed up on top of my house in 40 degree heat and removed a calcified pump which they replaced (really, the person who did the original air-conditioner inspection should have done this, I reckon), my air conditioner started blowing cool air through the house (and the smell of stale water). Quel miracle! Now I’m worried about the massive amount of cool water run off from the roof…is this ever going to come to an end or is this a sign that there is yet something else more fundamentally wrong with the air conditioner (the previous tenant told me that it flooded inside the roof at one stage). But just as well I didn't start looking into putting in fridge air-conditioning...
And – my new bike finally arrived! Yeah, I lashed out and ordered a new bike. I had a look at the secondhand market, but everything was too small in the type of roadbike I wanted. I thought of looking in the Xmas sales in Sydney and Melbourne, but I could run into the size problem again and I’d have to organise to transport it back. Buying a bike wasn’t as bad as I thought – I bought a ‘recreational’ roadbike (i.e. a racer), pretty much down the bottom of the cycling family tree though it’s ‘feature rich’ (with lots of carbon in its frame), as the large round enthusiastic American boy in the bike shop kept on telling me. Anyway, it cost me a third of what people at the Cycling Club estimated … American boy told me that people are making bikes now for half the price they used to, as in other areas of technological advancement, I guess.
It’s taken me about 3-4 years to make a decision about buying a new bike. This is what I mean about the lifestyle of equivocation. Originally, a friend in the Blue Mountains pressured me to buy a mountain bike, so I could go off road with her. I did go off road on my other bike, a chunky hybrid I bought for dealing with the Melbourne traffic and cobblestones, but…it was very hard work, grinding away with a heavy bike and narrow tyres. Now I have a very light bike (must weigh about a twelfth of the other one) with even narrower tyres. Don’t know how I’ve ended up on the roadbike rather than the mountainbike trajectory, esp in one of the mountainbiking capitals of Australia; perhaps it’s because I’ve only been doing roads. Anyway, it seems like I’m destined to ride about on roads, mainly social-riding but with the occasional road race perhaps. Perhaps I prefer speed or something, though there is a tourism element with roadbiking.
So, this new bike is very cool – it’s powder blue. Very fortunately, the young American boy ordered two bikes in large and extra large sizing…as it seems I’m not quite the orang-utan I thought I was, and the extra large that I suggested they order in had me stretching for miles. American boy was pleased about this, as he wanted one of these bikes for himself, tho I reckon it’ll probably be too big for him, too. American boy seemed surprised that I didn’t come across to the bike shop as soon as the bike arrived…didn’t really understand about work, air conditioners and other pressing commitments. Ah, the enthusiasms of youth, when nothing’s bigger than getting a new bike! The people who run the bike shop are nice – it seems to be a family business, run by an American woman and her sons. Which means they’re quite possibly ‘Gappies’, and that the missing family patriarch is out at Pine Gap.
Now -- have to find some time when it’s not 40 C to practise riding bike – still completely zonked after yoga last night in 40 C heat. And I really have to prove I can make the speed and last the distance on long rides, and not blame it on my bike. There's no excuses now!
>A woman’s first thought is always change. It was the Ken-Done-style jumper that did it for me...
Elsewhere, if you don't want to end up on the shelf like me, being passed over by seputagenarians in favour of fifty-something BBers who've had work done, then perhaps you should take a tip from Rachel Greenwald, M.B.A., author of The New York Times Best Selling book Find a Husband After 35 Using What I Learned at Harvard Business School:
‘Bad breath, bad clothing, bad mustache: all these types of things can be changed under the influence of the right woman combined with a man motivated by love.’
Posted by: Great Aunt Do-Do | December 02, 2004 at 03:26 PM