Arrivals

Oh, to be a Chanel girl

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Thoughts

Hello everyone,

Something different this week. A little more intimate, if you will. A bit more stream of consciousness of my (mostly) unfiltered thoughts for the week before we jump into the essay and then your sweet recommendation treat at the end. In short; same chaos, different storm.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the content I’m putting out and trying to balance the desire to give you the best that I can and also maintain writing for myself, things that are truly on my heart and mind. I find they are what resonate the most with you but it’s so easy to get sucked into the vortex of the internet’s content cycle and keeping up with what everyone is writing and speaking about. I’m constantly reminding myself to push back, to give myself the space to create what feels good to me. Inevitably, some of that will fall on the current news and pop culture spectrum and some of it will not. I hope you enjoy it all regardless.

For example, I can’t begin to explain how much I have been reeled in by The White Lotus this season despite its slow start. It’s subverting my expectations in a way that is typical for the show and yet not because of how subtle the tension is between the characters this season (more on this in a future newsletter). It’s also because I used to work for a big resort company in Thailand, so everything I watch feels closer to me, bringing up memories of my time working there. It’s on my mind so often that I dreamt about it last night. I was training on the flying trapeze, practising a very simple trick and I just kept slipping off the bar or the board that I was standing on before I jumped off just kept breaking. I’m still unsure if it was a nightmare or not. Can the dream experts please advise? Regardless, there’s a nice little peep behind the curtain for you in the essay below and free to read until you hit the reccs.

In other news, I’m continually horrified and heartbroken by the latest images from Gaza. The sight of shrouded children being held in their grieving and shattered families arms is one of the most unnatural things in this world. A parent should never have to bury their child. Neither should a parent have to find out from a crown prosecutor that their child was abused years ago while in the care of a childcare centre that they trusted with the safety of their children. Or find out during afternoon pick-up, their kid has been sexually abused by one of the employees there. The reports coming out of the ABC this week are something else.

On a more uplifting note, I’d like to celebrate the change in weather (in SA, at least). March has been one hot bitch here in the south but pregnancy has completely ruined it for me. Normally an avid worshipper of the sun and the joy it brings, I have reverted into hermit territory with my expanding gut and throbbing varicose veins (I named a particularly special one Veronica). But today it is raining, the clouds are blanketing the sky and I have never seen a more blissful sight. Am I likely to finally venture outside and enjoy it? Probably not.

Feelings

Arrivals were the worst.

Not for any particular reason other than they were annoying and inconvenient. When you’re already working sixteen hour days, six days a week, the last thing you want to be told is you either have to stay up until 2:00am or get up extra early, put your uniform on, paste a big smile on your face and exude energy. This was the most popular refrain from the managers: energy, energy, more and more energyyyyyyy!

Energy that is ever in short supply when you’re part of the circus team that is constantly training, teaching, performing, surviving. Maintaining relationships in the village and back home, remembering the day and night dress codes, when you need to be on stage, making sure your wraps are washed in time so you don’t rip your feet open on the bar again. How to rehab your ever-straining shoulder with a motley mix of heat and cool packs, haemorrhoid cream, tiger balm and haphazardly applied sports tape to stop it subluxing the next time you’re holding onto a hundred-plus kilo dude shuddering in fear before they jump off the board and swing with all the grace of a slab of concrete on the flying trapeze. All while smiling and with energy!

Arrivals were divided amongst the various teams in the village, with a mix of employees required to attend. Sometimes you were requested if they knew a bunch of Aussie’s were incoming, or if it was a massive group and needed more of us to help. To their credit, the reception team always tried to avoid giving the circus team arrivals on or after show day so we could actually rest (or go out partying).

Sometimes it was a blessing. You can’t predict the timing of an arrival but it could get you out of an awkward dinner with a guest that had the conversational skills of a lump of rock or if it was late enough, it meant you could sneak off to bed early and get some extra rest. Crucial for continued function when you were contracted to stay up until 1:00am every night. It’s all about the energy, remember.

My most memorable arrival was one that I didn’t even have to do. It was the day we witnessed the guys (and the queer gals), collectively lose their horny little minds when the Chanel girls came to town.

Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash

Normally, you didn’t really give a shit who the corporate groups were in the resort. They mostly kept to themselves, busy with their own conferences and training. The most interaction we had with them were with the families they brought along to enjoy the perks of their work trip at an all-inclusive resort. But the Chanel girls were different. Two whole buses of them directly from the beauty arm of the company in South Korea. And for the guys and gays, being present at the arrival was key to making a good first impression.

I had never seen the circus boys so excited to take on extra duties. They were enthusiastic, nay fizzing with energy at the prospect of getting the chance to show off whatever muscles they could in their shorts and rumpled polo shirts. Unfortunately, they were also competing with all the other dudes in the village who suddenly wanted to help out. And in a circus team with just two women, we did require some help to, you know, run the flying trapeze for the other six hundred guests with some degree of safety. We managed to keep one with us but not before he snuck off to just have a look at the horde of impeccably presented and quilted bag-toting beauties that descended elegantly from their coaches to the literal beaming smiles from the boy buffet on offer. Honestly, the desperation would have been leaking from their pores along with the sweat.

I lost count of the eye rolls we threw at them while they prepared for the arrival. And by ‘prepared’, I mean they were all desperately Googling Korean phrases and figuring out if they could contort their bodies into the shape of the Chanel logo because that was definitely going to win them a drink at the bar with one of the ladies. You’d think their frontal lobes would have fully formed to ensure a bit of emotional maturity by then but I guess this is what happens when you have a hundred or so of us living in the same fish bowl every day with limited options to blow off steam in all the time we didn’t have. It felt a lot like a college campus; different dorms, much bed swapping and I’m sure it’s fair share of emergency antibiotics for those unfortunate consequences of such activities (not me, I was an angel).

It was almost excruciating watching them fuss. Trying not to scare the shit out of these poor girls while escorting them to their rooms, bleating at them in their questionable Korean and subtly trying to figure out if they had any free time to mingle at the bar later. I can’t remember if any of them managed to impress the women but they did come back to work with a renewed sense of vigour, a new distraction to occupy them.

At least they made the managers happy with all of their energy.