Thursday, November 13, 2008

Tour G-eyed

I went on a guided tour of The Big Pointy Building a couple of days ago. I did a 14 hour day previously finishing at about 11pm and had to be at the tour at 7am after a night of merciless insomnia, place of tour also being the same place I go to work each day.

I was Grumpy.

Look, really a very interesting tour of behind the scenes of TPB. It was great to stand on the stages of the theatres I've been seated in in the past, amazing to see the conditions the orchestra has to work under, great to just in there and, you know, poke about a bit.

But guided tours... oh fuck me. Oh fuck me they are awful. Why does every fucker feel the need to show off to the tour guide? The tour guide who clearly knows most of their stuff but who still breaks out the same boom-tish one liners they've been doing for years as though this is the first time. Why are all the questions so obviously designed to say to the tour guide and others in the group, "Ooh look - how intelligent and attentive I am!"

And the smarmy fucker with the waistline of his shorts pulled so far up his tucked-in T-shirt... cunt! Shuddup!

Horrible. Fuck off.

Think this is the third guided tour I've been on in my life. Never, never, never again.

(The tour guide was sweet and I did appreciate it all quite a lot. And mostly people are clumsy rather than arseholes. Also I have had lots of notsleep lately and increasing darkness in my eye, which I think is making me less tolerant of stuff. Guy today, he showed me his bruised ankle, getting the right amount of sympathy he might expect. His condition is obvious. My eye... you can look at it and it might look like a pretty nice eye, but you can't tell how bad this is getting.)

4 comments:

Kathryn said...

Haha, I went on that same tour a few years ago. Can't remember it that well, though.

So true about show-offy arsehole tourists. Ugh. The worst. I can imagine you had less tolerance during this particular tour because you work there. But tours in general are weird.

P.S. Sorry about the eye.

Dina Roberts said...

Okay. I'm glad to find someone else who doesn't like guided tours.

Lee Bemrose said...

Kat -The tour was really interesting in spite of it being a tour of the office. I went to places I haven't been to before, some of them places I'd only glimpsed from the audience seating.

But yeah, tours are weird. I don't know whether normal people regress to a school excursion state of mind or if tours attract people who are naturally in that regressive state of mind, but either way, guided tours are a bit wrong.

Dina - yeah, don't like 'em. The guides usually have interesting stuff to share (I went on one on Frazer Island years ago and it was fascinating) but it's all delivered in such a cheesy way.

And on this tour of The Big Pointy Building... the guy with his shorts pulled up so high, oh God. He was so annoyingly neat in a 50yr old former phys-ed teacher way and he kept getting the door. Every door the bastard would lunge at to hold it open for us, then hang back and call out, "Do you want this door closed?"

What the fuck was his thing about asking to close the doors? Close the doors. Leave the doors open. Who made you the door monitor anyway?

Over at High-Waist-Band-Door-Monitor-Guy's Blog: "Yes well it was a very interesting tour of the Sydney Opera House. My gosh there are some doors in that place. Really, so many doors. It was very nice to open the doors to let my fellow tour-friends through, and I thought it was the right and proper thing to do to ask the tour guide (she's Babs, my new pen pal) if she wanted me to close the doors. "Yes, okay, sure" was the recurring reply but because I'm a neat fucker craving the approval of others, I just like to check on these things to make sure everyone understands that I am neat and proper. Especially when it come to the opening and closing of doors. Note to self: There was that one guy on the guide who bothered me a little. Quiet guy. Had this sexy sadness about him. Debonair Viking kind of guy. I think he was taking mental notes about me and my high-waistline pants and my obsession with closing doors... dashing fucker he was."

Kathryn said...

Haha, um, Yeah. Where can I find that blog? ;)