Curse you, Mr. Moneybags!

I just walked two miles (slightly uphill! In the humidity!) to get to a café with free wireless so I could post this. Sadly that’s not just an exaggeration and modern twist on the classic grandparents ‘In my day’ story, it’s because I’m too damn thrifty for my own good. I just moved to a new place for the summer (winter to all you not in this strange opposite land) where the cost of Internet use rivals the actual rent, so I guess this is the way it will have to be for a few months. It’s alright though, I get some exercise and then cancel out said exercise with a brownie in the café. Win-win!

The grand total of the five of you who read this will be excited to hear your wait was not in vain. Many interesting things have happened in the course of these two weeks, but I should probably start with the most recent. Yesterday I played the most pointless game of Monopoly of my life. Normally I love it, the thrill of buying up all the utilities and railroads, then laughing evilly when my uncle lands on one of them, maybe pretending to make my dog game piece pee on his race car game piece in a moment of gloating. I may be sarcastic in my writing, but I’m generally very polite in person and board games are the one time I get to be bitchy without feeling bad about it.

In my new flat, I share the upstairs with a Chinese education major that enjoys cleaning, while downstairs is a girl from Spain who is pretty much the sassy older sister from ‘Ugly Betty’ and a British girl I still haven’t seen despite living here for about six days. The two flatmates who actually show their faces were playing cards with an Indian girl when I got in and invited me to join. Let the language barrier fun commence! Fortunately I speak Spanish well and was able to ask mi amiga the rules. Unfortunately, I’m used to Spanish with a central American accent and it took me way too long to realize that in this particular game, threes were higher than aces for some stupid reason. But at least now I know how the Chinese girl felt when she told me my accent is a lot easier to understand than the Australians because I don’t speak as fast and pronounce my words clearer. My flatmates had to leave after a few rounds and I was left with the Indian girl. Whom I had no idea who she was or why she was in our flat. Clearly she wasn’t a guest of the others since they left and she didn’t go with them. I was about to sneak away up to my room and hope she’d leave on her own, but she decided we should play Monopoly.

I’ve never played it with only two people before and now know it’s especially not fun, but at the time I had nothing better to do and agreed. The game went on for three hours even though I had clearly won a little over an hour into it. But she refused to give up even though she had about forty dollars and everything she owned mortgaged. At first it was a bit pathetic and I felt bad so I let her stay at one of my three incredibly nice houses on Trafalgar Square (oddly, this version was all London streets instead of the usual Atlantic City) free of charge. But after a while, I wanted to throw the little wheelbarrow at her head and demand she declare bankruptcy as well as who she was. Right before she admitted defeat at my ‘Donald Trump but with way better hair’ skills, she asked if I enjoyed being in her old room. Her identity revealed at last! Who goes back to their old residence to pay a visit and ends up painfully drawing out a board game with someone they’d never met before?! I may just have to hide Monopoly and put out Uno in its place because if this somehow happens again, at least Uno is quicker and there are no excuses to try staying in the game. Plus, I have a very special X-Men Uno deck that is clearly one of my greatest possessions.

I’m going to keep this entry at that wonderfully Seinfeld-esque tale of nothingness, but will make the voyage again tomorrow to post a concert story. And of course, concert + me = something incredibly stupid bound to happen! Plus, it ties in with the X-Men Uno cards! CONTINUITYZ, I HAS THEM.

Oh, and P.S. My pictures and The Awkward American were totally featured in the Nylon Blog. Take a looksy! (You have to search 'Brisbane')