So much for wanting to go old school and documenting snippets of my life with the digital camera I asked Jeff if he could give me.

In the midst of yesterday’s school run chaos, I totally forgot to bring it.

So I had to rely on my good old phone instead. Which kind of defeats the purpose because I was excited to do it and I rarely go out to do anything and yesterday would’ve been the perfect time to go shooting with it and here I am whingeing.

In a nutshell, yesterday was the same as all my other Wednesdays, except that instead of brunch at our usual cafe, we drove all the way out of our local and into someplace more fancy. Which was how we ended up at Dandenong, at The Public’s Corner Cafe, lining up for coffee along with men in blue and grey suits looking like they already mean business at 9:30 in the morning.

As usual, I only wanted my usual: a flat white and a hash brown.

Jeff got me my cuppa but my hash brown came buried under his order of Mexican Brekky — fried eggs, bacon, salsa and chilli butter on hash browns and topped with hollandaise sauce. The hash browns boasted of being home-made. It was alright. I mean, yeah, it was thicker and fancier than the commercial one my regular cafe probably served but I found it too dense. It took a while to finish my half of Jeff’s breakfast.

Jeffy with the red lips in one of the selfies that I took. We couldn’t figure out why it turned out to be so. Raven must have played around with my camera settings again. But it made for a good laugh.

We always have a good laugh, Jeff and I. That’s what I like most about us. Through the years, we have perfected our sense of interactive humour to neither take offense nor take any of the random things we say in the lightness of the moment seriously.

I still can’t help but feel like I got scammed yesterday, though. He said he wanted to go for a drive with me. Enjoy the last of the sunny days before winter fully sets in. You know, go for a joyride.

Little did I know it was all under the pretext of driving from one shop to another to buy the 10mm aluminium wheels he was looking for!

That sneaky son of…

An op shop!

“You wanna go check out that op shop while I go find my wheels?” he asked.

Jeez. I can be easily bought. And very cheaply, too! Gave me 10 bucks just in case they only accept cash.

And that was how I found myself at the AAPS Op Shop in Moorabbin. One of the first two customers on the very first day of their reopening after having been closed for a week as they repainted the whole place. I thought it was a tiny little shop but it was actually long as it was narrow. Quite interesting to walk down the hallway and into little rooms with their items segregated accordingly.

Apart from two mirrors, a ring, and a pair of earrings, there was nothing there that I really liked. I found their clothes quite pricey. It doesn’t make sense to me when op shops slap on a $50 price tag on an article of clothing solely on the basis of brand name even though said item isn’t exactly in very good condition.

The turquoise ring I bought was nice, though. I wore it all the way to Springvale in a Cambodian restaurant where I discovered the ancient origin of fish preserved in a plastic squirt bottle.