A CONSUMER, SCORNED PT 2

Ok, so I’m having a bad year with large organisations. Now it’s time to lay the boot into World Vision for an inexcusable bureaucratic fuck-up of massive proportions.

Let me start out by saying that I have always been a huge supporter of World Vision (though conveniently overlooking the religious-brainwashing side of things) and always donated extra money on top of my $40 a month, in support of their regular fundraising drives for famine and natural disasters elsewhere. Many a time I defended their credibility to its critics.

One year, I even did all my Christmas shopping out of their “Smiles” catalogue. For example, my Dad was the happy recipient of a toilet in Papua New Guinea, my Mum got some vaccinations in Senegal and my brother got a goat in Rwanda. Etc. So the money goes to programs overseas and my Dad gets a card with a picture of two tribal chiefs in PNG standing next to a bush toilet, when all he really wanted was a case of Crown Lager!

For the last 3 or 4 years I have been sponsoring a child through World Vision, a little boy from Malawi in Africa called Mabvuto Tambala. In July this year I received my annual Tax Deductible Statement in the post and immediately noticed that my contributions for the previous year were listed as only $40 - the equivalent of one month’s donation.

I immediately phoned to query the amount, guessing that it was the result of clerical or computer error and assumed that a few simple keystrokes would take care of it all. Rather, I am duly informed by a sheepish staff member that my sponsor child HAD BEEN DEAD FOR THE LAST 11 MONTHS and hence the total on my statement was in fact, the correct one.

AND NO ONE FROM WORLD VISION HAD BOTHERED TO INFORM ME OF THIS INTERESTING DEVELOPMENT FOR A WHOLE GODDAMN YEAR!!!!

AND, it was ME who phoned THEM – about an entirely different matter! So when exactly were they planning to break the news?

OK, so anyway, at that point I’m kinda stunned and start babbling something about my credit card being incorrectly debited while I struggle not to start crying as the shock starts to wear off and comprehension sinks in. I kinda miss most of the rest of the conversation except to hear the obviously uncomfortable guy on the other end of the line say that normally they send letters and make phone calls in such cases. Neither of which did I receive.

So I’m still babbling about my credit card when anger kicks in, and I give him a serve before I tell him I will phone back immediately once I have all of my last years credit card statements in front of me.

I went and checked my records, stunned to realise that the call centre guy was right. World Vision hadn’t debited my card since Mabvuto had passed away 11 months ago. So there I was, feeling like a right dickhead for not even noticing that the payments had ceased. But hey, I don’t read my bills, I just pay the fuckers!

Following anger, I moved on to guilt, berating myself for being a totally reprehensible, self-absorbed, clueless person. I mean, how could I have not noticed once in 11 months that the payments had ceased. And I didn’t even ask HOW he passed away - all I could think about was that darn credit card bill…. (Funny the way the mind works when confronted with issues of mortality…)

Soon afterwards, self-pity kicked in and I started to feel sorry for myself. I mean, how many people’s sponsor kids up and die on them? Is it common? Am I cursed? Why do everyone else’s sponsor kids become doctors and vets? Should I sponsor another child straight away, and what happens if this one dies? My altrustic side won out and I decided to sponsor again, despite my reservations.

As I picked up the phone to call World Vision, the question suddenly occurred – WHY THE FUCK WOULD I TRUST THESE PEOPLE WITH MY MONEY EVER AGAIN?????

ANSWER: I wouldn’t.

So I put the phone down…. And shed a few tears for the poor little soul who had died 11 months previously, only to survive as an affront to World Vision’s database integrity.

MABVUTO TAMBALA
Mabvuto Tambala was only 12 years old when he died. He enjoyed playing soccer, his chores included sweeping and - though he wasn’t a keen or brilliant scholar - his favourite subject was creative art. He spent his final Christmas on Earth enjoying a feast of beef and rice.

A CONSUMER, SCORNED

OK, so the story of my break-up with Macleans is a sad one. Let this story stand as a cautionary tale to those of you who still have faith in the honesty of advertising and marketing messages - and I know that’s ALL of you ;)

It was during a Saturday afternoon shopping trip, that I caved in to thousands of dollars worth of saturation advertising and invested $40 in a packet of Macleans Tooth Whitening Strips. I knew that the girl on the box had had her unnaturally white teeth airbrushed in Quark by the graphic designer (plus her crows feet for good measure) but I was seduced by the lure of their “up to 5 shades whiter in 2 weeks” promise. It all seemed so easy….

To cut a long story short – the fucking things did not work for me at all and I was one disgruntled consumer. Throwing off the shackles of a lifetime of inertia, for the first time ever I decided to pen a complaint letter and promptly sent it off to the Orwellian-titled “Feedback Department”, as befitting the rights and responsibilities of vigilant consumers everywhere.

The following is an extract from said letter:

“I might have well just thrown my $40 straight in the bin or have written a cheque and posted it off to you directly, without all the hassle of having to spend an hour a day walking around with those silly strips in my mouth….”

Then, I delivered the killer blow. A kick in the brand.

“Unfortunately I can’t say it inspires the confidence to purchase any future products with your brand on it either….”

To my disgust and dismay, my creatively written complant letter received a generic, form letter reply that failed to respond directly to any of the points I raised, thanked me for my comments and fobbed me off with the promise that they would pass my feedback on to the Marketing Manager,

Don’t give me that freakin’ bullshit. I was a Marketing Manager myself you know! I know exactly what happens to letters like that. They get laughed at, passed around the office (depending on their level of unintentional hilarity or illiteracy) and BINNED! Real and lasting change is NOT ACHIEVED!

And, as Marketing Manager – I ALWAYS SENT OUT FREE STUFF! If Macleans had simply sent me a free stinkin’ tube of toothpaste and maybe a new toothbrush I would have continued to use their shitty products without further complaint, and so would my future kin (Yeah – us Marketing Managers understand the basic principles of brand awareness and loyalty).

Instead, they chose to communicate the message that my continued patronage was NOT WORTH the FEW STINKING DOLLARS it would have cost to send me a placating parcel of cost-price goodies as a rather simple exercise in restoring goodwill.

And so now I exercise my right as an individual consumer NOT to purchase anything under the Macleans brand!

Vive la revolution!

SEE MUM, I AM A LEGITIMATE WRITER

Mum - Make sure you go and buy a copy of the new Nature & Health magazine and display it casually yet deliberately on the coffee table at home. Get rid of that stack of New Idea magazines. I can't compete with those.

The current Nature & Health has New World's free CD on the front and 8 whole pages of feature editorial (paid for with real currency) by your clever little Mellipop. No swearing in that one so you can show it off to all your friends and brag about what genius offspring you gave birth to. Just don't tell them I've been unemployed for the last eight months...

I think you get a mention somewhere in there too. Something about the way you used to lock us kids in the closet for hours every afternoon while you took a three hour bath then entertained a series of "men friends" from the neighbourhood. Ha ha I'M KIDDING DAD - Please don't disown me...

MELLIPOP APOLOGISES TO BRUCE SAMAZAN PT 1

OK, so I'm researching the life of Bruce Samazan for the ground-breaking blog-doco, "From E-Street to Begging-in-the-Street: The Bruce Samazan Story" (coming soon to Mellipop), and I discover that indeed, Our Bruce DID crack the UK Christmas pantomime scene. And not just any damn panto - we're talking the Rolls Royce of pantos, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves....

Apologies to Samazan fans (and Our Bruce himself) for any offence caused. Please don't sue me Bruce. Together you and me, we're gonna make you a star again baby...

P.S. And no, I don't know which dwarf he was.... What do I look like to you? An AUTHORISED biographer who uses actual FACTS and does research other than typing the words BRUCE + SAMAZAN into Google.

TODAY'S TO DO LIST: Brush up on libel law. Call Nana. Buy toothpaste (NOT MACLEANS). Publish on-line the reasons for my Macleans boycott. Make appointment to see best libel lawyer in Australia (or the one with the biggest ad in the Yellow Pages). Cancel internet connection...

HI, MY NAME IS MELLIPOP, LET'S BE FRIENDS FOREVER

OK, so I’m feeling like some essential point of ettiquette has been overlooked as I stampede enthusiastically into bloggerdom and spill my guts for an entire planet of uninterested punters.

So to rectify - nay, celebrate - my awkward entry into the cyber-community I thought I’d take a leaf from my 14 year old diaries and introduce myself in finest teen-style, like a plump debutante in a red taffetta dress and white court shoes.

My adolescent journals document, to an extent worthy of a PhD in Social Anthropology, eveything I ever liked or loathed through my tortured teendom. Hence, seemingly important at the time, we have a list of My Favourite Cricket Players - a tough battle between 13 of Australia’s finest and a token Pom in the form of Darren Gough.

Then there was the all-important Favourite Football Players list (that’s NRL you crazy freakin’ West Australians), featuring - count them - 27 players all vying for the coveted top spot in the fickle hierarchy of my teen-esteem. From lists of names I liked, boys I loved and girls I hated, my diaries testify to the ever-changing landscape of my internal world, and what a crazy darn place it was (is?) to be, let me tell you.

So it is in that spirit that I present to you two of these revealing lists. The first, a selection from an entry dated 1st May 1991, the second completed this day in 2004 (without irony). The real Mellipop falls somewhere in the 15 years between.

May 1991

Fave colour – Black (universal symbol of teenage angst)
Fave band – Guns n Roses (the rebel aka bitch years)
Fave singer – Madonna
Fave guy – Slash from GnR
Fave food – Mexican
Fave show – The Simpsons
Fave magazine – Dolly (duh!)
Fave book – Flowers in the Attic – Virginia Andrews
Fave phrase – “Sad case”
Fave subject – Maths (closet geek)
Favourite planet (?) – Jupiter (must have been the planet I spent all my teenage years on)
Fave movie – Home Alone
Worst person alive – Vanilla Ice
Most photogenic – Bruce Samazan (ha ha ask your older sister)

September 2004

Fave colour – Orange
Fave band – Pavement
Fave singer – Eva Cassidy/Deva Premal
Fave guy – Dr Phil
Fave Food – Sunday Yum Cha
Fave show – The Office
Fave magazine – Adbusters
Fave book – Lonesome Dove – Larry McMurtry
Fave phrase – Anything that substitutes “freakin” instead of “fuck”
Fave subject – Woo woo
Favourite planet – Haven’t given it much thought of late, to be honest
Fave movie – The Breakfast Club
Worst person alive – I dunno, Bruce Samazan?
Most photogenic – Whatever…I’ll go Bruce Samazan again…

Ha ha, I love how in the course of 15 years, my "Fave Guy" makes the quantum leap from Slash to Dr Phil. I'm sure that Phil would be flattered... As to Slash's response, I'm sure he's probably OD'd by now anyway...

Some things, however, never change. From a journal entry dated in 1991, at the top of a list entitled “Mel hates”, the very first cab off the rank reads “People without opinions”. God bless my big, ever-tactless mouth….

P.S. For the trainspotter, circa 1990 (age 14) my Number 1 cricket player at the time was Ian Healy and fave footy player was Laurie “Kelpie Eyes” Daley.

P.P.S. Holy shit...I sure went out on a limb with all those Bruce Samazan jokes… What if I’m the only person who actually remembers who he is? I'll be damned if my pop culture references are gonna go begging for cheap laughs because Australia forgets the heroes that make this country great. I'm gonna darn well do something about this!

SOON TO COME:
“From E-Street to Begging-in-the-Street: The Bruce Samazan Story”
A retrospective tribute to the brilliant career of one of the finest Aussie soap stars never to crack the UK Christmas pantomime scene, exclusive to Mellipop. Dear readers, I am dead serious about this. Keep posted.

WHAT ME, STRESSED?

So it’s late on a Tuesday afternoon (this post posted posthumously - does that mean I'm dead? And speaking Seuss?) and I’m feigning study… Reading about the physiological basis of stress with your hypothalamus and your autonomic nervous system and whatnot, I stumbled on this psychological tool called the Life Change Units Stress Measurement System.

Being a sucker for a pop-psych quiz, I decided to tick off a checklist of my own recent experiences in the last month or two. According to my results, my head should already have exploded from all the stressful events I have experienced recently. Psychologists are such drama queens (spoken like a true psych major drop-out). Us Life Coaches are made of sterner stuff...

Here’s what I’ve recently experienced from their list of 22 major life stressors:

Death of family member 65
Unemployment 65
Financial difficulties 35
Changing job 35
Giving up smoking 20
Changing residence 20
Changing social group 20

TOTAL STRESS COUNT
A WHOPPING 260

As a guideline for comparison, scores of 160 and over are considered to be very high ie in layman’s terms your life is pretty well fucked up at that point. I must admit, I have been sucking down the Rescue Remedy like a demon lately…. (For the benefit of my family and all other non-woo woo audience members I'll post a brief description of Rescue Remedy shortly)

By any standards I’d probably also score highly on the Life Change Units Stupidity Measurement System if they had one. Sure - convince your partner to both quit steady jobs, pack up and move everything we own interstate, to a house we’ve never seen, in a city we’ve never been to, with no money, friends or jobs to greet us on the other side. Genius!

IDIOTS GUIDE TO PERTH

OK, so who would have thought that Perth was going to be so darn wacky? Compared to Sydney, it’s a bizarro world of AFL instead of NRL, pots and pints instead of schooners and midis and courtesy instead of carnage in the realm of human social behaviour.

THE GOOD

FRIENDLY PEOPLE – A sad cliché, but everyone here is so damn polite, it’s like we’re living on the set of the Truman Show. You know, when everyone you pass says “hello” and smiles at you like they genuinely mean it. Weird but nice…Weirder still - Neighbourhood Watch still runs successfully over here...

ROAD FRIENDLY - Road rage is unheard of here, and there is an eerie silence where nary the sound of a horn is ever heard in anger, let alone any choice hand gestures or caustic screams out the windows of passing cars. No tailgating, no cutting you off, no aggro whatsoever. And traffic jams simply don’t exist.

CLEAN OPEN SPACES & FRESH AIR – Lots of green parks and public spaces in the city, a river foreshore and coastline lovingly protected from asshole developers with their 50-storey ghetto monstrosities, pedestrian and cyclist friendly streets and no dull haze of brown smog hanging like a pall over a city in it’s final throes of death.

WA WINE – Like a kid in a candy store, every trip to the local bottlo is an exercise in ecstasy and restraint. WA wines are everywhere and they are cheap and exquisite, many of which are never seen in Sydney. Margaret River premium clearskins are as little as $5.99 a bottle. Then there’s the beer! If I wasn’t so damn broke right now I’d be an alcoholic!

BEACHES – The WA coastline has about 7 or 8 beaches about a thousand times better than any on the east coast. If you don’t mind the frequent White Pointer shark attacks and stay out of the Sniper Range area near the military base in Scarborough, you could have yourself a corker of a day out.

WILDLIFE – Witness Dolphin pods in the river, dodge bird poo from Rainbow Lorikeets in the backyard, protect the dog from Blue Tongue Lizards on walks (two already!), carefully heed “Ducks Crossing” signs in the Perth CBD, kookaburras, pelicans… Wildlife and man live in harmonious bliss. Then there’s the sharks, plus those pesky Brown and Tiger snakes…

FREE ROSEMARY - Another really odd but cool thing is that rosemary is an incredibly common hedge bush, found on highway median strips and along the pavements everywhere. Huge, luscious, abundant rosemary plants ripe for the taking. So if we ever need any fresh rosemary for a recipe, we just go outside to the road out front and pick some.

NO DOOF DOOF CULTURE – Not a pseudo gangsta-rappin’ youth to be seen, nor the pumping baseline of a doof doof car to be heard anywhere. No DOOF DOOF!!!!!


THE BAD

THINGS WE MISS FROM SYDNEY (BESIDES Y’ALL) -

NO Oporto!
NO Merrick & Rosso!
NO good Thai home delivery!
NO Doggie Café!
BUGGER ALL Sunday trading (try getting a loaf of bread)

AFL OBSESSION – Disturbing indeed, the pre-eminent psychosis of the entire state is an unhealthy obsession with AFL. Due to the distinct lack of a B-grade celebrity social scene (think Toni Pearen, Tara Moss and various Packer mistresses) or visiting international celebrities, the citizenry of WA idolise AFL players and the crappy code that supports them.

Not only does the National league get more than its fair share of airtime, local teams like the Cockburn Centipedes not only pull huge crowds (pun only semi-intended), they get broadcast on weekend TV. OK, so there is no actual team called the Centipedes, as such, but there is a suburb called Cockburn, and Anton has already made his first faux pas with that one. Apparently the correct pronunciation is “Co’burn”. How the heck any outsider could ever have guessed that is beyond me…

INCONSISTENT STANDARD DRINK SIZES – I think the thing that infuriates and baffles me most about this crazy town is that there is absolutely NO consistency with regards to beer serving sizes in pubs. Every pub serves differently so you never know what to order, immediately identifying yourself as a dumb tourist, not the cool, self-assured local you are desperately trying to become.

Schooners & Midis, Pots & Pints (a mouthful of spit more than a midi), Pints (about the size of a freakin’ yardglass) & Half pints (about the size of a schooner) and believe it or not one pub sold beers in Small & Large!!! For fuck’s sake Perth – all I want is a freakin’ beer!!! Serve it to me in a dead pensioner's colostomy bag for all I care, just as long as I know it’s the same size freakin’ bag everywhere I go!!!!

Sob…I just want to belong…

OUR BATHROOM – Deserving an entry entirely on its own, our bathroom is a monumental travesty of function and design. The bathroom, sink and tiling is a colour I would describe as “Psychiatric Ward Turquoise”. The shower is over the bathtub, which appears to have been designed for a 3-foot tall midget. On a normal lass such as myself, the water level when reclining in the tub falls frustratingly below the breast line, so that I might as well be bathing in a public urinal for all the coverage I’m getting.

But worst of all, we have a dicky WA water system that is not actually equipped to combine water from both the hot and cold water taps simultaneously, leaving one the option of having a scalding hot shower or a really freakin’ cold one, alternately. Nor can you run both the shower and the hot water tap in the kitchen (or anywhere else) at the same time. Enigmatic - yes. Frustrating as all fuck - hell yes….

WELCOME TO MELLIPOP

HELLO THERE BELOVED EX-PATS!

Welcome, sorely missed compadres, to the first instalment of the ongoing life of Mellipop (& Friends) in Perth. Half travelogue-blog, half excuse to neglect emailing everyone individually, I hope you’ll punch in from time to time and keep the morphic fields lubricated. Or at least so you can shake your head and murmur self-righteously into your crappy Sydney beer, “I knew that moving to WA was but the grandest in that series of dire mistakes constituting that crazy girl’s life” (Hi Mum & Dad!).

A SHORT WORD ON BLOGS FOR THE UNINITIATED

A brief warning before we continue. For those as yet unacquainted with the phenomenon, blogs (abb. web logs) are rambling, self-absorbed and in many cases downright boring.

To cover up for my complete lack of literary talent and imagination, I usually jazz up my writing using obscenity and gratuitous sexual references for cheap laughs and shock value. Sorry to disappoint you folks, but Mellipop’s got her best church shoes on this time around… OK, so my Mum has this web address. In fact, one of the main reasons I established this site was to stop her from phoning me from Sydney all the time…. Love you Mum ;)

P.S. Mum & Dad – Offensive language is used sparingly and only in cases where absolutely necessary…. Please don’t bother with mock-outrage or lectures on manners and proper speech. Just remember - the kind of folk who are reading this anyway are good friends of mine and quite well acquainted with my dirty mouth. I tell them I got it from you guys anyway ;)