Things never go to plan. Ever. You plan on doing something on the weekend a couple of days beforehand, and it’s always messed up by something absolutely retarded. You plan on telling someone something? You completely forget about it until you leave. It’s ridiculous how much plans suck. I’ll go over my week or so before I get into the juicy parts. For the past couple of weeks or so, we’ve had a new store manager, Ted. Going from our failed previous store manager, Rod, it’s a little bit of a change. Ok, fair enough he stays until at least 8 every night, and he’s always doing work and shit, but it’s a little too creepy for my liking. He’s in the road, and he managed to get me confused with Troy only 5 minutes after meeting me. Troy-bags and I look semi alike, in that we’re both skinny, hair auburn hair (both fairly long at this stage too) and Troy is slightly tall. The only thing that differs between him and I? My fuckin’ beard. He met me in the tea room and I wasn’t really paying attention to anything other than my failed attempt at the crossword sitting in front of me. It wasn’t long before I realised he was standing behind me talking. I quickly introduced myself and went back to my crossword (and for the record, I hate crosswords.) I finished up and headed back onto the floor when Troy come up to me.

Troy-bags: “You’ll never guess what just happened.”
Me: “Someone died in a fire?”
TB: “Ha! Ted just thought that you were me.”
Me:
TB: “Yeah! He come up to me as I was walking in and and said, ‘Ah, and you’re.. Jarryd I take it?’”
Me: “…”

How could get the two of us confused? Why would he get the two of us confused if he had already met Troy earlier in the day.. and me five minutes ago. Uh oh. The rest of the week was uneventful, slightly. Apparently he doesn’t like swearing. Swearing. The cornerstone of most of our nights at work. If you record one night, or a day out the back, you’ll hear the f-bomb dropped more times then anything else. There are so many different variants that occur, and the generally increase the more pissed off we get. That, and I’ll generally sing the swear words louder than anything else. Meanwhile, whenever I was wandering past Ted (where I didn’t know he was standing around doing work) I managed to either swear, or sound ridiculous humming. But who cares. Like I said, I still think it’s a little weird that he’s doing something, but most of the time he’s in the road (mine at least.) I’ll give it another couple of weeks before I decide he’s as useless as Rod, or equally as annoying.

The rest of the week was slightly boring, I don’t think I did too much. Unfortunately I had an incredible run of bad luck though. It started off with me ordering a new lens. I planned on ordering this lens from down in Sydney, and have it shipped up here before the weekend so I could practice and play with depth of field and aperture settings, stuff like that. It wasn’t until monday afternoon that the original place I had ordered from decided they weren’t going to have any in stock. Fuckers. Instead of telling me right after I had ordered it, they waited until monday afternoon. I quickly placed an order at a different store and that shipped out an hour after I ordered it. Fuck yeah! Tuesday rolls around and I wake up and just browse what I missed on the internet while I slept. Halfway into a windows update, my computer froze and I was forced to reboot. Except, it did not want to reboot, instead, it started and stopped. Started and froze. Started, and did not collect $200. Fuck no. Not now. Eventually, I spent the next couple of hours finding out that my torrent drive has died. Ok you say, it’s only stuff you’ve downloaded, just re-download it. I normally wouldn’t have a problem doing this, except it was a completely full 250GB drive (in terms of movies, it’s about 190 movie; music? ~35,000 songs.) In other words. I was fucked. I cried. I stuck the drive in the freezer and tried my best to recover the drive. Unfortunately nothing worked, which sucked major balls. The rest of the week I spent mostly trying to recover data with no hope.

It wasn’t until Friday afternoon I realised I wasn’t getting my lens. They had sent it through normal, registered post, which takes at least a week to get wherever the hell you are. My plans are falling apart! Saturday was nothing to be excited about, it was just a normal day at work. Saturday night I went out for Tanya’s 20th. I remember being told a while ago that she was having a party cruise for her birthday, and I planned on wandering in wearing my party cruise shirt that I got from Michael’s 18th. I don’t know how it happened, but Terry convinced me that it was a party bus, and instead of wearing my party cruise shirt (or even bringing it along like I would just in case) I wore my party bus shirt. Driving in through the city I saw people wearing the party cruise shirt. Uh oh. Ok, pay no attention to them, it’s for someone else.. but why would they be on the same night? I parked and wandered down the Globetrotters and my heart sank when I saw Tyson, Michael, Clinton and Terry wearing the party cruise shirt. Oh god. I stick out like a sore thumb, and I’m going to have to pay for something I’m not going to drink on. My plan. Ruined. I’m getting the hang of my plans failing gracefully, it’s quite a sight. I had to suck it up, and I bought my way onto the thing. It wasn’t a complete wasted night, we started at Globetrotters and stayed there for a bit before it was time to get into the bus and head to the cruise. It was completely different the way they had it set up, but it wasn’t too bad. We were out in the harbour for a couple of hours, drove around on the water for a while and headed back into civilisation. By this time, everyone on the boat was drunk. Horribly, horribly drunk. Unlike Michael’s cruise, there weren’t any falling speakers, or drunken-swaying-dancing on the roof of the boat, but it was fun none-the-less. It was around 11:30, and I decided it was time for me to go home, still unsure whether I was going to be taking photos of models on sunday, I wandered towards my car and got a call from Kirsty letting me know what time and whereabouts I needed to go. Awesome, I needed to get up before 11 on mothers day and completely avoid my parents to head out.

I’ve never really liked mothers day, I’ve always thought it was slightly commercialised and all that other crap, and I try to avoid spending money on pointless shit. I got mum a mother’s day card during my lunch on saturday. My plan was, get up semi early do mother’s day type stuff with the family and then leave to the Holiday Inn before 11. To begin with, it started alright, I found myself rolling over and looking at my clock to see 9:30. Awesome. What felt like moments later, I again rolled over and found it was now 10:55. Fuck. I’m late for everything. What the christ are wrong with my plans? Why do they continue to fail so miserably. I get up and scramble together my gear and shower up good and proper. I write in the card and do everything else. Meanwhile, my mum and dad are downstairs who have been informed by my sister that I was leaving. I’ll leave the soppy-cry shit out of it, but needless to say they tried to guilt trip me as per why I was leaving on mother’s day (no less!) I eventually make my way into where everyone was and was introduced to the people from the salon (Hair Art, if you want to google them) and I begun setting up. You may not notice, but I looked slightly out of place there. Everyone in this room were either female, or hot (or the few male models there, but they don’t count.) Then there was me. I couldn’t even divert my attention to outside the doors, because there were more hot models walking through there aswell. I think I made some friends with the manager of the hotel, whom we had a laugh whenever he come in to let us know things, but that was about it.

  Â

I spent the next few hours or so taking photos of the models that Melissa, Jodie, Kirsty, Sonia, Bonnie and Alex (correct me if I’ve spelt someone’s name wrong) all did up. I was having so much fun at this point, and it wasn’t until I met another guy that was taking photos aswell. Steven (again, spelling) was a brother of one of the models there. Much like with the hotel manager, we were again the odd ones out in a room full of prettied up ladies. Eventually, we got around to talking about camera lenses and Steven off to lend me one of his lens for shooting. Fuck yeah! I shit you not, it was this lens right here and it was the best thing I’ve ever used. I was having so much fun taking photos of the models and walking around upstairs at the catwalk. Ok, fair enough I wasn’t lugging around professional equipment, but who cares. Steven’s generosity lead me to using this lens for the rest of the day. Things like that make me wish had the money to buy whatever I wanted. I digress. Eventually, while most of the models were upstairs on the catwalk and stuff like that, I wandered upstairs and followed Steven to where the actual catwalk was. Well. There were a lot more attractive ladies walking around, and two talk guys wielding cameras stuck out like sore thumbs. Meanwhile, there was some kind of semi stand setup for where people had to “pay” to watch the models. Pay? What! I have a camera, I must be important. Look! It has a large lens, I’m more important that you first thought! And that’s how I played for the majority of the time I was upstairs. It was brilliant. I walked in, past the ladies at this stand thing and onto the catwalk. If I thought I stuck out walking up the stairs before? I stuck out even more this time. Skimpy clothing (I think it’s called fashion), hair cuts here, hair cuts there (no signs of other bearded men.) It was so awesome. I further walked the important role while trying to find a place to photograph the catwalk (unfortunately I didn’t get close enough to get some good photos.) I spent the rest of the day humouring myself on the small things. Like I said earlier, I was having so much fun. Eventually I stopped being so nervous around the models and I continued on my way. By this time, it was around 2 in the afternoon and I was like a child in a candy store. After all of the models and stuff had finished, it would have been around 4 and the final awards were soon to be handed out. We make our way upstairs and I plant myself somewhere and slowly take photos. Much like before, I was close enough this time, but I got everyone’s back! Damnit. You live and you learn. An hour and a bit flies by, and most of the awards go to Kirsty, Jodie, and Bonnie, with Bonnie winning the Senior of the Year, and Kirsty winning Junior of the Year. Yay! Now all that was left is for them to party.

The few days afterwards were mostly filled with me editing photos and getting ready to burn copies to disc and stuff like that. Eventually, I get everything burnt and I head over to get a couple of tests shots printed on wednesday. I drop off a copy to Hayley and head out to find the salon. Oh god, I hate Palmerston’s layout. That, and since when have they had a “city centre”. But anyway, I find it and hand out things and show the photos I got printed. On my plate right then I had two tasks. One was to get these two pictures framed, and second, I had a date for thursday at 11. With Jodie. For a week or so I had been thinking about this, and it wasn’t until the other day that I had decided it was time. Five months for one, seven for the other. It’s been too long. I went home wednesday night and I was feeling all nervous, I woke up thursday morning and got myself ready and it was the same deal. I was feeling nervous. I got ready and left home. It wasn’t very long, I was home a little after lunch time, but I felt lightheaded.

Oh god. It’s started. Amid reactions of regret from Kirsty, and shock from me, I got my head slightly shaved. Indeed, I had given up quickly. I had planned to go until at least June sometime, or at least christmas, but neither happened. I suddenly found myself bored when everyone was used to seeing me with my beard. I found that the beard was something that people got used to seeing. I had to change that. I left the salon feeling like an escaped convict, it was a weird feeling, and I looked like an arab terrorist walking to my car aswell. Only a day away. Friday come, and I got up with pure intentions to shave the rest of my face off. I made sure I had the essentials ready, my camera on the tripod, my remote. Next the non-essentials: Razor, electric shaver (which I want to throw at a wall), shaving cream and some scissors. I think I’ll let the pictures do the talking. I’m not sure what my next trick will be, but I’m open to suggestions. Grow side burns? Grow my hair long for 12 months (I’m leaning more towards this one.) I dunno. Out of the past week or so, I’ve had numerous plans, and I’ve attempted to act on all of them. None of them have even gone.. to plan. This was my only successful plan, and it involved just me. Brilliant.

For ease of those who read the top part of my post, and the end of my post, I’ve uploaded my originals to my gallery (and my attempt at some kind of artistic photography) and I’ve also stuck the edited photos I plan on getting printed on my flickr account. Does anyone one a print of something? Let me know.