Weirdo

With Fairfax being one of our major clients and we being one of theirs, our company along with Fairfax have a special training tour for all the new people who join Hudson. We begin the day in their beautiful city office at Darling Park and then head out to their print facility out at Chullora.

When I walked into the building my breath was stuck in my chest; it reminded me of Vegas! With the little lights in the roof, the big stairwell and antique furniture; the desire to be back in Vegas was overwhelming. If I can afford it I think I’ll go there again in 2005 and shout mum a trip while I am at it.

The printing plant is massive and noisy! It’s all done by machines and it’s really fascinating watching them refer to the robots as if they were human. To be honest I never really cared or thought about how newspapers were produced, but the tour really opened my eyes and I have a new found respect for the whole process. And as usual they finished off the tour with the most amazing lunch platters! I wanted to be really Asian and take home a piece of cake for Jacky…but that’s rather sad.

……..

It was 4pm and the sky was already dark, the clouds outside looked scary and then the thunder and lightening hit. Great! I didn’t have an umbrella, forgot to bring a change of shoes and had to make it back in time for New Years dinner; all on the day that I didn’t drive to work!

6:30pm – Stood on a crowded platform at Parramatta station with the board showing that the train would be half an hour late. The city rail guy suddenly announces that the train will now depart from platform 3. When things like this happen people suddenly become animals as they push and shove to get there first.

7:00pm – Arrived at Redfern station, there were no trains to Allawah and the next train to Hurstville was running half an hour late…just my luck…the station was rather empty and some big weirdo plonked himself right next to me when there were free seats everywhere! When we finally got on the train he sat next to me again and stared at me for the next half hour, I just thought it was another loser an ignored him.

7:50 – Finally get to Hurstville, have to get off and catch it back home. I walk to the opposite platform and who follows?? But the weirdo…ok starting to get a bit weird now…So my train comes and weirdo gets in the same carriage as me …yikes!

Comes up to me and begins telling me how attractive he finds me …and how at Redfern it wasn’t his train, but he saw me get on and followed me. Asked me what I did and introduced himself as Gabriell. He then pulled out some old business card that looked like it had been sitting in his wallet for the past 20 yrs….wrote his number down and said that we should ‘get together’ *puke* I said that I had a boyfriend and he made some ‘awww’ noise and told me ‘don’t worry forget about him!’.

The freakiest bit was when he put his arm on my shoulder pushed me back and said something like ‘oh your so beautiful..’ I flung his arm off and said ‘oh it’s my stop’ and got off the train….before the doors closed I heard him yelling out for me to call him…what a loser!

This is definitely worse than the Westfield incident 2 weeks ago…I swear I’m driving to work from now on!