A don't wanna go back to work!!
Sunday December 17, 2006

Don’t you just hate that feeling of “oh no! I have to go to work tomorrow”?

I took two days off last week and had a nice break with Vincent down in Adelaide. He was working, so we only had one full day together, but we hired a car and drove through the Barossa Valley and did some wine tasting and took a bit of a scenic tour around the place. It was so beautiful.

I have got to say that out of the few places I have been interstate in Australia, Adelaide has been the best.

We had a few hiccups with our hotel. For a five star hotel it rated pretty poorly to me – I’ve had better experiences at three star hotels… Housekeeping cleaned our rooms but didn’t replace the towels – they left us towel-less! They downgraded our room and tried to tell Vincent (as he was the one who checked in) that there was “no difference” between the room he was meant to get and the one that he did get and we actually had to ring house keeping to get them to clean our room. Hmm…

But otherwise it was great. On my first day there it was raining (the first time in about six months apparently) so I walked around the city for only a tiny bit (mostly to get oriented) and then went for a swim. I found “China Town” so we had dinner at a Pho restaurant. There was some crazy guy standing at the bus stop outside yelling about how everyone was going to go to hell but it wasn’t too late. He was holding a ladies handbag and wearing a cowboy hat… lol. I kept telling Vincent “don’t stare! He might notice us”.

The second day the weather was so fine. It was around 26 degrees (Celcius) and since Vincent was at work I walked around Rundle Mall, examined the Art Gallery, museum and war memorial, and got bullied by an Oxfam rep.

Now I have got to say, I resent being bullied by a charity for the purpose of them getting me to donate. I already donate $80 a month to charitable causes and if I was able to afford taking that up to $120 a month I would, but I can’t, and it is not the job of the representative to judge me for saying no.

A representative does not know the situation of the person that they are talking to and I don’t think that they have any right to say to you, “it’s only a dollar day day, but it’s ok if you don’t want to donate. Just apologise to the thousands of children who you’re killing”. It is completely inappropriate to me, to guilt trip a person into donating their money.

It made me so angry to be spoken to by the rep like that and to hear so much hypocritical bullshit come out of the mouth of a person who is supposed to be helping a cause. He really made me not want to have anything to do with him, and by way of association, Oxfam.

I really believe that Oxfam does good, and if I get a good pay rise next year I will seriously consider donating regularly, but it’s not up to someone else to judge that I can make that contribution now.

Anyway, moving on… I had a really nice day otherwise and Vincent and I had a really nice dinner at a noodle restaurant in the evening and then a really really yummy “in-room service” desert after.

Then on Saturday it was off to the Barossa, and in the evening off to a highly recommended seafood restaurant in Glenelg.

And then today… home. Aww, I want my holiday to last longer!

I can’t wait until the Christmas break.