Luck

In summary: I went to a wedding and the building next door blew up.

There is something to be said for being in the right place at the right time, and my weekend ended up being full of luck, though mostly through hindsight and great relief.

I went to Melbourne for a wedding. I got to the airport thanks to public transport, which was my first time ever doing it that way, and had completely forgotten about the reliability issues with public transport and how late I like to leave my arrival to the airport. Miraculously, everything was on time. I also got lucky with a seat up the front and got super lucky when I was able to sleep a little.

I then had to find Andrea's work, and luckily got there without getting lost (though really that is down to practice and having printed off the map, but I started off well). The next day we picked up a rental car so that we could use it during the wedding, of which Andrea was one of the bridesmaids. Through some weird twist of fate, the grooms' sister happens to be a beautician, and while the groom was getting his back waxed for the big day, the beautician asked if I would like the same treatment (for free). What the hell! Let's try something new.

Now, like most guys, I have never had the pleasure of being waxed, nor did I understand the pain associated with ripping up a hundred hairs at one go. But I will try anything once and was curious to see if the girl would wax my chest hair into a lightning bolt. But we started on my back, which isn't all that hairy. For the most part it felt like scratching a really bad itch, and was quite interesting. Only two of the rips and pulls felt exactly as everyone expects, and I decided that my precious tummy would not survive a lightning bolt or any other kind of treatment, so I ran as fast as I could to see my girlfriend.

On the day of the wedding, luck prevailed and both the bride and groom showed up. That always helps. It was in a Greek Orthodox church, my first time in such a place, and everyone looked great (especially Andrea, not that I'm biased). Luck was not quite on my side as it took almost twice as long to drive to the church as was expected, and twice as long to drive back after the ceremony. We had to go out again to the reception, which was on a boat, and that was a lot quicker. Free food, free booze, and your humble narrator was satisfied.

Wedding faux pas 1: you should not let kids under the age of 6 attend weddings. For the most part they were running around chasing each other and the parents constantly hissing them, to no avail.

Wedding faux pas 2: never ever EVER wear pink crocs to a wedding. You should never wear pink crocs anyway, but certainly not to a wedding, no matter how comfy they are.

Sunday was really lucky. I wanted a lazy day in with my girlfriend, but we were summoned to the bride and groom's house for the opening of presents, along with other friends and family. At 6 o'clock things got weird. Andrea's mum called, said that there had been an explosion, and to turn on Channel 9 news. We did. What looked like our apartment building was wreathed in flame, surrounded by fire trucks and people being taken to hospital. Andrea's mum was fine, but we went off home straight away.

We were also remarkably calm during the whole thing, knowing that there was nothing we could do with the information that we had, and that Andrea's mum was okay. It turned out that it was the building next door. It's now a smouldering wreck and is unsafe. None of the occupants of the building are allowed to return home, and what appeared to first be a gas explosion now looks as though it was a hydroponics lab explosion. Someone was doing something that they shouldn't have been doing. Such is life.

But if we had the lazy day we would have been affected more directly, would have gone out to see the bloody mess and the screaming neighbours, maybe even have been on the street at the time, though in all likelihood we would have been playing the Wii or watching a DVD.

So, we all got lucky, except for the people next door who've lost almost everything thanks to some stupid wankers in their 20's. And they really are stupid wankers, because we met a couple of them from the apartment that blew up, and they were outside smoking away after telling everyone that it had been a gas explosion. That's brains right there.