Part 2 - YAY! Field trip!

Ohmog! Here it is! The long anticipated 2nd installment of Chikory's Field Trip Adventure™!
Okay, so it's not that great an adventure. But stuff it. I'll build it up to whatever height I see fit! And it sure beats the hell out of staying home.

I wasn't well on Wednesday, so we put it off a day and decided to start the ball rolling bright and early on Thursday. So in a similar layout to last time, here's what went down...


Thursday - The trip down to the train station went okay. There wasn't anything to complain about there. Nor was there anything to make a big song and dance over, either. But come train time, I got my patience thoroughly tested. Hell, even Julien found it hard. And he's a cruisy person; 99.9% tolerance and totally in control. (I'm not kidding, he is!)


I don't know what it is about the teenagers of today, but it seems that not only don't they have any scruples, but they also don't seem to have any consideration for anyone else unfortunate enough to be trapped in the same vicinity as them.
These 3 total chavs boarded about 4 stations after us, dressed in the latest gear, with their mobile phones playing obnoxious tunes, and the chick donning sunnies bigger than her face. The 2 guys she was with were apparently cousins.
Not 5 minutes after they'd sat down, the older boy's phone rings. Older dude passes it to his little cousin (apparently this guy was only 11, but he looked 15 or 16). Then he's leaning over telling his cousin to lie for him on the phone.
"He's not home yet."
"He left his phone behind."
"I don't know when he'll get back."

He sets an excellent example for this impressionable kid. But what would you expect? When the phone conversation came to a close, it was revealed that it was his social worker. He explained the situation rather loudly to his girl, telling her that he'd bought 2 things from Woolworths, and the chick at the register "forgot" to scan one of them. As a result, he got done for shop lifting... *Cough* Whatever *Cough*
There are 2 things wrong with that story.
A) Only one of the 2 items he mentioned was expensive. Seeing as the batteries didn't make it on to the list (total coincidence, huh?), he would've noticed the incredibly low price his shopping came to.
and B) If it really was a misunderstanding, it would be on the security video that he'd actually placed the batteries on the counter to be scanned. Thus proving that he did the right thing, and it was really just a mistake.

Not long after that, he whips out his IPod... with SPEAKERS! His chick was getting cheesed because he kept changing the songs so frequently.
"I'm trying to find a good one." He replies
Heh, right. I could've told him that he wouldn't find anything. But he persisted... The entire train ride. Much to my and probably many other's annoyance.


We arrived a little late at the State Library, but fortunately we had 2 machines booked... One being number 10, which just so happened to be OCD Man's machine. He gave us death stares the entire time he was there. Julien even hid under the desk once when he saw him coming, which must have looked rather suspicious to security should they have been watching it on the camera. I pointed this out to him, so to really run the point home, he searched the roof for the camera, grinned when he saw it and pointed. Heh... I bet we were being watched closely for the rest of the day. Hey, that's probably why the bald security guard smiled and waved at us when we left for lunch.

So despite the fact that our lives were in jeopardy*, we bravely soldiered on. Collecting page after page after page of data and words. As per usual, OCD Man left at around noon time. He seems to come in every morning without fail, wearing the same suit, with the same hat, arriving at the same time. Poor guy. I really feel for him. Just watching his routine before he departs is hard. Especially when he checks the area over a few times, pushes his chair in, takes a few steps away, and then has to go back and repeat the process. You can see it on his face, the complete turmoil when he tries his hardest not to go back. Yet concedes, much to his dismay.
I'm assuming that the machine he uses needs to have a 1 in it. Because seeing as we stole number 10 from him (It's a fast machine, and we wanted 2 side by side away from all the distractions), he seemed to gravitate to number 1 for the remaining days. I'm sure he's happy to have his original machine back now, though.


The library ladies didn't disappoint. They were still as bitchy as ever. It must be in the job description or something. There's no other plausible reason for it.


The train trip back wasn't particularly pleasant. Anyone who knows me is aware that I'm not especially fond of small children (Or other human life). But I guess Julien wasn't as aware, because as we were sitting at the train station, a rather large lady and her 2 small spawn came over and occupied the seats next to us. The girls had junk food (something they shouldn't be eating being such a large size for children of that age and height) and it was covering their faces. This was gross for me. Especially when the youngest dropped some food on the ground, complained to her sister that it went under the seat on the other side, and then happily ate it when her sibling went over to retrieve it a good minute or so later. I almost had heart failure watching this. I literally had to turn away.
Anyway, Julien, not minding talking to small humans, turns to the little girl and smiles saying, "Does that taste good?"
My mouth hit the floor. You don't encourage these things! Once you speak to them and they conclude you're friendly, you become their best friend and there's no shutting them up! No legal way of shutting them up anyway... But we won't go down that road.
Way too long later, the train comes and we go and sit down. Just my luck, the fat lady and her spawn choose the set of 4 seats in front of us. This kid recognises Julien and keeps turning around and yacking to us the entire train ride. Oh joy.

I've never met a fat female that I like yet. For some reason every single fat woman I've ever encountered has been extremely rude and angry. I guess it's understandable, if they hate being fat. By why is it my fault? And why don't fat males have this problem? They're all jolly and stuff. It just seems to be a female thing.
Anyway, this woman was an annoying mother. I wanted to bop her one on the nose. The way she was handling those kids was completely juvenile. Every time the most annoying child didn't hear what was said, she'd ask what. Seemed like a simple enough request.
"I didn't hear you, my vocabulary isn't all that up to scratch, but 'what' should suffice to bring my point home that I'd like you to repeat yourself."
Or so you'd think. The mother just gets mad and tells her to shut up, and stop being stupid. Then the scare tactics start. Ghosts and boogie men will get her if she doesn't behave. The woman was just being a total bleep.

What I found amusing was that the kids had what looked to be a little book wrapped in plastic. I guess they'd only just got them. One of the girls wanted to open hers, and she couldn't break the plastic with her hands. So she did what any child would do; tries to rip it open with her teeth.
The mother takes it off her and berates her for this, saying she'll hurt her teeth.
The irony you ask? She'd bought them both soft drink, which they were happily guzzling down. Idiot of a woman.


Friday - We decided to get an early train. This meant we arrived too early instead of slightly late. That's not so bad, it gave us time to bum around on the grass outside before we had to face the air con and angry librarians.

Julien was tired, so he decided to lie down and have a bit of a rest. I was sitting next to him, watching a magpie getting stalked by a noisy minor. I guess it thought if the magpie found a worm, it might have a chance stealing it. But after a few minutes it gave up, and flew away. Then the magpie seemed to take an interest in Julien. I was rather shocked that it was getting so close, considering I was right there sitting up. But that didn't seem to bother it. Focused solely on Julien, it kept inching its way closer, fixing him with an inquisitive stare. Finally, when it was about a meter or so away, I poked Julien and signaled for him to turn his head. Which he did, and came almost face to face with the magpie. I wonder what it wanted.


We got stared at by the OCD Man again. I guess we made him rather disgruntled. But I don't really blame him. We probably screwed over his routine, and caused him to lose sleep.


On the way out, we collected our bags. You have to hand them in at the desk because you can't take them upstairs. Unless they're smaller than an A4 sheet or something. While we were doing this, a young Asian girl wanted to take gum upstairs. The lady behind the desk said no. It's food, and they don't want gum everywhere. I get that. I don't quite know what was said, but I guess the girl asked if it was okay if she took a piece out and took that upstairs instead of the whole packet. This request was granted. Because hey, gum in a packet just sitting there does more damage than gum in the mouth being chewed and needing to be spat out at some stage. Don't you agree?


On the way home 2 new things happened. One happened to Julien, the other to me. First off, I had to get off the train to throw up in the public toilet. I've never done that before, so it was a total new experience. I can't say I particularly liked it, as losing all of your lunch and possibly your breakfast results in hunger.
After we boarded the next train, the driver made an announcement. And low and behold it was a female train driver.
"I've never had a female driver before." Julien stated, "At least if I have they have never talked on the speaker."
So I wrote it down. Blog worthy. 15:50 - Julien takes a train with a female driver. History has been made, my friends. And I'm not being sarcastic when I say that!


Jesse, Julien's little brother, always has a funny story to tell. Recently he sold his car. It had personalised plates, and he decided to give them to the guy with 6 months rego. However there is a lot of paper work that goes with this, and Jesse failed to sign a small section on the form. So the guy that bought the car rings him up and lets him know.
"Just forge my signature." Jesse tells him, "It doesn't have to be exact. Just make it look like mine."
Now Jesse's signature is his whole name, written in it's own special way. The guy could've easily pulled off something that resembled that. But what does the guy do? He writes Jesse's initials. Two little letters, that's it. Screw the fact that the rest of the form has his full signature on it.
It got rejected. Natch.


Saturday - Unfortunately the final day of our field trip. :o( We arrived early again. I was in an incredibly pissy mood. So it wasn't too fun for either of us. Because we had so little to do, we finished at noon instead of late in the afternoon. That morning I'd decided that I was going to see what it was OCD Man was doing. His computer was near a series of book shelves filled with microfilm. So when he'd settled down, I nonchalantly made way over to "look at the microfilms" and took a squizz at what he was doing. He was going through the old Hobart newspapers and writing down every single tragedy that occurred. I have a few assumptions as to what he's doing, but I'll keep those to myself. As this post is long enough already.

At 12pm or so we left, same time as OCD Man. Worried that he might want to do harm to us, we waited for the next elevator. The poor guy was still repeatively pressing the button as the doors closed. I found it really sad.

So being all moody and stuff, I didn't go to the museum. I figure I'll go back at some point this week or next week. It'll give me something to do, and maybe I can even take a camera and get pictures. So that'd be nice.

Anyway, Julien had some data to collect from a microfilm that was kept at the Uni library. So we went there. Now I can say I've been to uni... I'll just leave out the fact that I didn't study anything when I mention that to people.


On the way home I was pretty pissy still. We had to move 3 times on the train. Once because this creepy guy was sitting behind me. 2nd time because of a group of loud, annoying, fat, cigarette-reeking mung beans. The 3rd time we shifted because of the air con, and the fact that there was an incredibly annoying child near us. Some chick was stupid enough to tell the father that "he was cute". So of course the kid ran with it, and wouldn't shut up. Every 2 seconds the kid was coming out with mundane statements like -
"Do you see that train?"
"Do you see that light?"
"Do you see that line?"
"Do you see that man?"
Stupid kid. When I was that age I sat quietly and kept my mouth shut in public. No talking to strangers for me! If I didn't know you, I didn't talk to you. Come to think of it, I still do that.


So I guess that concludes the field trip. I'll have more delightful tales to tell when I go to the museum.
Toodles!

*May or may not be an exaggeration of circumstances.