Stopping Off at the Op Shops
25th May, Melbourne, Australia
Fairly soon we'll be heading for Tasmania, or Tassie as most Aussies seem to prefer calling it. For those not in the know, Tassie is part of Australia (although most Aussies seem to take the piss out of Tassie people for being from some backward, backwater part of the world ... unless of course they're marrying Danish royalty in which case all piss-taking licences are revoked and replaced with adulation licences). Tasmania is not another country, it is in fact another state, just like Victoria (where we currently are) or New South Wales, but it's a bit further south, much more mountainous and, if we are to believe everything we are told, a lot colder than the current (rather cold) temperatures in Melbourne. For this reason, we found ourselves on a shopping trip today with my auntie Chris, on the look-out for some more layers.
Chris seemed to be looking forward to the trip out to town. She had put on some snazzy shoes, a brown body warmer with stitching that hinted at Andean origin (she likes her panpipe music, so maybe that extends to Peruvian clothes, who knows?) and was colour co-ordinated throughout. The dressing up was not for anything posh - today we would be hitting the charity shops that Chris had recommended. First, though, we got stocked up on some lunch at an Italian place on Lygon Street (actually, most of the places on Lygon are Italian) called Tiamo.
We spent some time looking around a couple of charity shops (or, to use the Australian term: 'Op Shops', short for Opportunity). The first one, called Episode, was surprisingly expensive. Sure, there was a quite good selection of warm coats to choose from, but they were all too expensive (I thought) considering that they were all second-hand. Besides, we would only be in Australia for a couple more months and would be leaving for warmer climes, so it would be folly to spend much on something that is likely to be thrown (or handed to another charity shop) in such a short time.
None of us spotted anything that screamed: "Buy Me!", although I saw plenty of shocking jumpers that simply screamed out. Mostly in purple, teal and red. Sometimes all at the same time. Chris pointed to one particular jumper that she thought I might like. "Feel the quality of that wool," she said, checking it between thumb and finger, as did I. "What do you think of that?"
It was soft. It was quite thick. It was a white jumper with a black pattern not unlike a tire tread that I could only truly use for falling asleep in, scaring children with or wearing to Christmas dinner parties in a homage to Darcy from the the film Bridget Jones' Diary.
"Ah, I don't think it's me," I declined, somewhat diplomatically.
We then tried a shop called Savers. Manda and Chris headed off to the women's clothes while I tried once more to find something that fitted these criteria:
- Looks warm
- Is clean, not untidy/threadbare
- Is not almost as expensive as something brand new from K-Mart
- Will not make me look like a freak, to be captured on camera thus shaming me for years to come
I wasn't successful.
I almost bought a purple blanket for the van, though (but the price put me off). And I did get to listen to almost half of The Streets new album A Grand Don't Come For Free while flicking through the hangers of ugly jumpers, so it wasn't all bad.
When I managed to find Manda again, I noticed that she'd picked up a couple of items which looked really rather good. It later transpired that in getting to those two items she'd tried on a number of other items, suggested by a pushy Chris, that could best be described as 'shocking' ("One of them that I tried on was horrible, big flowers on the front, bright gold buttons and shoulder pads - I was so relieved that it didn't fit me!" Manda told me later).
We spent much of the day with Chris, but eventually parted company just after 4pm so that she could get a train home before it got dark. We, on the other hand, had other people to meet. Or person - Steph, a fellow WaSP member who was currently in Melbourne.
Preconceived Ideas
It's amazing just how wrong your ideas about people can be. Back when I first started Accessify, a web site about web accessibility, all-round web guru Jeffrey Zeldman had me down as a ‘40-year-old bearded linux programmer’ (he now knows that was wrong on all counts). These days, it's easy to put a face to my name, as I'm the kind of person who puts pictures of himself holding stupid fat old wombats up on his web site). As for Steph, well I had no idea what she looked like. I cannot remember seeing a picture on her web site - in fact, I couldn't even recall what her site looked like, having not visited it in over 8 months (sorry Steph - it's the travels, I tells yer!). But given her German surname, the sound of her voice on the phone and the geekiness quotient of her emails (quite high, or higher than mine at least) I imagined her as:
- German-born
- Blonde
- In her mid 30s
Looks like I was as wrong about her as Jeffrey was about me:
Ian and Steph: WaSP members in social meet-up shocker (and not a Apple Powerbook
in sight!).
As for the technical/geekiness level? Well, mid-twenties, dark-haired, Malysian-born Steph is a Unix twonk. I was right about that part, at least.
Oh, and sorry for all you non-webby types out there for my straying into the realm of computerdom. It won't happen again (this week).