AirPain! : A Tale of Airline Travel & Why (for most of us) it Sucks!

Unless you’re a toddler who’s packed all of their toys to take on a trip, or if the only other option of transport was a Greek ferry, no one enjoys economy.  The only reason you do it is because it’s the quickest way to get from where you are to where you want to be, like standing in a crowded lift or sleeping with your boss.  And much like both of those experiences, it’ll leave you uncomfortable and disappointed.  So before you next take-off, I’ve made a few “frequent flyer points” for you to share with your friends or whichever Uber driver is unlucky enough to be picking you up at your destination.

If my travel experiences were turned into a feature film.

I’ll start by addressing the struggle of all tall people, particularly because I’ve been a member of the ‘2-metre high club’ for several years now.  The struggle being that it seems only in the case of airline travel that tall people are treated like social pariahs.  Like we’re Dorothy rocking-up to Munchkinland and no one’s quite sure how they’re going to deal with us.  At any other point in life it’s an advantage to be tall; you’re the go-to guy for reaching things off high shelves, you’re the first person picked in sports teams at recess, you can date tall girls who like to also wear high heels.  Only airlines seem to think being tall is a lifestyle choice we should have to pay extra to find leg room to cater for.  Then, as I’m considering getting a “Tall Lives Matter” t-shirt printed, the guy next to me who looks like a before photo from Subway has his love handle pouring over my arm rest, still doesn’t have to kick in extra to pay for the portion of my seat he’s occupying.  It’s not like I told my parents to conceive me during an excursion to Chernobyl.  It’s not like I just splurged on good nutrition as a child and let my height get out of hand.  I bet this is why there are so few survivors in plane crashes.  It’s because we’ve got cashed-up members of the ‘Lollipop Guild’ sitting in the exit row with their feet swinging 10cms off the ground, meanwhile I’m stuck back here between ‘Captain Coughs’ and the ‘Michelin Man’ with so little leg room I’m using my ears as noise cancelling ear muffs.

I’m not even comfortable with the fact that to get an exit seat, us “vertically endowed” individuals have to answer “yes” when a flight attendant asks “are you willing & able to assist in the unlikely event of an emergency”?  I feel like, “No!  If I’m paying for leg room, I’d like it without a side serving of overwhelming responsibility, and if having that leg room comes with extra responsibility served standard, then refund my money”.  I’m trying to pay extra to purchase some blood circulation for my legs, not for a portion of the cabin crew’s workload.  Let me put it this way; I’m not tipping a restaurant waiter to seat me at a good table, only to then have him tell me that because I have more room than other diners to slide my chair out quickly, in the event of a fire I’m going to grab a fire extinguisher and unhinge a door so others can flee the inferno.

If I had a lollipop for every time I missed out on exit seats because they were already occupied by hobbits or munchkins, I'd have both types of diabetes.

On the plus side, all this has inspired me to write a book called the “Qatarma Sutra”.  It’s going to be a book with illustrations of uncomfortable seating positions you can somehow sleep in on planes.  It’s going to a real page turner for those who are used to sitting in positions too tight for them to be able to turn the pages of their books.

Turn to page 28 for instructions on the cover art positions: (From left) "The Limbo" when travelling alone with a row to yourself, "The Detention" when travelling alone with a row full of strangers, and "The Centipede" when travelling with very close friends with whom you're sharing a row.

Even if you’re so short that you don’t worry about leg room but you get an altitude nosebleed when you have to stand on the aisle seat to put your items in the overhead locker, the in-flight experience isn’t a great one.  This is because whether your life is constantly in leg room surplus or leg room deficit, I think we can all agree that planes have become ‘high altitude hospitals’.

Now as my Arts degree reminds me constantly, I’m not a doctor.  But as far as I can tell, the main symptom of people suffering from a contagious, coughing-dominated illness is the apparently uncontrollable desire to travel.  ‘Captain Coughs’ is just another member of a select group of sick travellers we’ve all encountered on-board any flight.  A contagious platoon of unhealthy individuals whose sole mission is to make sure the horror of your flight stays with you after you land.  I call them ‘The Really Dirty Dozen’.  You’ve probably also met and flown with ‘Sergeant Sniffles’, ‘Lieutenant Loogie’, ‘Major Malady’ even ‘Deputy Disease’.  On my most recent flight, the lady next to me coughed non-stop through an episode and a half of ‘Game of Thrones’.  She coughed so hard, I’m convinced that the two characters killed off in that space of time died because they caught whatever she had.  I think if we’re confined to a room surrounded by sick people, crying children and oxygen masks where we have to share a toilet, get served bad food on small plastic trays and watch limited entertainment on a small TV screen, we should at least be able to claim it on our healthcare package.  To stop that happening, maybe airports could start replacing the security scanners with anti-bacterial showers so we can stop people bringing viruses and infections onto flights as much as we’re trying to stop them bringing on nail clippers and foreign fruits.

You will never look at another in-flight safety demonstration the same way again, especially if you leave your earphones in and only see the flight attendant's hand gestures and mouth moving while you listen to your iPod.

I think it all started to go wrong for airlines when flying became more affordable.  Remember the old movies where people would be wearing formal wear and smoking on a flight?  Most airlines early on didn’t even have a class system.  It was like every commercial aeroplane was basically a combination of socialism meets Mad Men (an idea I would be all for bringing back by the way).  Sure tickets were more expensive but that just made sure you flew with a better class of passengers.  Tullamarine Airport didn’t look like Dandenong plaza.  “Karley” and “Jaysen” from Frankston’s dream of travelling to Europe wasn’t a chance of becoming a reality and Europe would remain free of Bintang singlets.  If you look at the evolutionary chart of airline passengers, you’ll see that somehow we went from suits and summer dresses to people wearing Pikachu onesies.  Also, if you’re one of those people who seem unaware that their neck cushions can be removed at some point between customs checkpoints at departure and arrival, you are a greater threat to your own safety than any neck cramp or act of terrorism.

A theory of evolution that Darwin himself would admire.

What we need to do is change the name of each of the class sections.  I’m happy to leave 'first class' as 'first class', but 'business class' needs to be changed.  If you’re so interested in business, why do you have a TV screen, lounge chair and a glass of alcohol in your hand at midday on a Tuesday?  What is your business, full-time dole payment collector?  It should be called “leisure” class.  You want to really get some business work done, let’s swap seats.  You’ll have a seat that only reclines to a 95 degree angle, ensuring you won’t fall asleep doing that important work of yours, a toilet with a wetter seat than bowl that’ll ensure you cut down on all of those unproductive toilet breaks.  Oh, you’ve also got completely unhelpful and unfriendly flight attendants at your beck and call to ensure you rely solely on your own abilities to get your work done.

You either have so much room for activities or no room for appendages.  There is no in-between.

After all of this, how do the airlines reward us for the way we somehow muster up the resilience and muffle our dignity to put up with this treatment?  They flick us a few frequent flyer points to keep us quiet for a while like the cheap mistress we are.  “Here, take this, go by yourself something shitty”.  I say “shitty” instead of “pretty” because as we all know, frequent flyer points are brilliant… until you need to use them.  Frequent flyer points are basically the Indonesian Rupiah of airline currency - just because you see a lot of zeros before the decimal point, doesn’t mean you’re wealthy.  When you understand that, you’ll understand why your frequent flyer points are more likely to see you walking away with a key ring and rubber ball than with a flight to the Maldives.

Pretty much the only thing making us look past all of the stuff that sucks about airline travel is the altitude.  For some reason the higher the altitude, the more likely we are to glorify everything that takes place there.  I imagine it’s why everything tends to be more expensive in rooftop bars than in underground pubs, why Heaven is up and Hell is down, why Santa is from the North Pole, why the rest of Australia sits separated above Tasmania.  In the air, a TV in the back of the seat is “in-flight entertainment” but on the ground, it’s just a sign you’re sitting in the backseat of a Toyota Rav4 and neither the driver nor front seat passenger has any interest in engaging you in conversation.  In the air, they’re “flight attendants”, but on the ground they’re just “McDonald’s staff on the nightshift”.  The ‘Mile High Club’ is probably the perfect example though.  In the air, it’s the “Mile High Club”, on the ground it would just be the “Public Toilet Group”.  Think about it, anywhere between the 1960s and 1990s, if you performed a sexual act in a toilet on a plane, you were cool and a lifetime 'Mile High Club' member.  You do the exact same thing on the ground and minus the turbulence, you’re George Michael and you spend 80hrs doing community service.  That’s really the greatest achievement of airline travel; it’s convinced generations of people that the 'Mile High Club' is something they should want to become members of.  Which is brilliant considering the membership application process combines all the relaxation of sex in a public place with all the joy of sharing a small toilet cubicle with another person.

Literally the only difference between these two photos is a few thousand feet, believe it or not.

So this is for those of you who are reading this as you’re thinking about booking your next flight, for those of you using the over-priced economy WiFi on board your current flight or those of you who are up at 2:30am reading this thanks to the jet lag from a flight you just endured.  Or maybe you’re where I would most probably be, somewhere in between all of these scenarios waiting to board a flight.  Every few seconds looking-up intermittently only to see the way dozens of people are pushing through to board first, in what I can only assume is a mass synchronised moment of amnesia, where they all seem to have forgotten that it’s allocated seating!  Wherever you’re reading, hopefully you’ve laughed so much your ears popped and you were hunched over in the brace position.  Most importantly though, I hope that at least some of the CEOs of major airlines are reading this and maybe, just maybe, considering making a few changes on our behalf.  And if they decide not to, I hope they’re somewhere sitting back reading this at an uncomfortable angle, grabbing themselves a thin plastic cup as someone pours them a room temperature undersized can of anything.  Oh, and that the next time they fly, upon landing they happen to share an Uber with a Frenchman named “Peter”.

** For more info, updates and photos, follow me on Twitter & Instagram **

Tall Story: The Biography (Part 3)

2011 

• Start using ‘Twitter’.  It reminds me of Facebook with a word limit or a friend that stops you when you’ve said too much.  Am pleased to see hashtags getting some long overdue recognition.

• Become a presenter for the Seven Network.  Another audition that takes place in front of a lotto machine.  I come to the conclusion that ‘Tattslotto’ clearly brings me better luck than ‘Keno’.

• I travel overseas through Europe visiting countries including Turkey, Hungary and Greece.  For this reason, when talking about my travel, it sounds like I’m just talking about cooking and food. *Fans of dad jokes will get this gag and appreciate its brilliance.

• Create the blog ‘The Daily Male’.  A place for me to share funny articles and stories that I create.  The name is a play on words that I only later realise will also be used by an Instagram account that posts photos of gay males… daily.  *Insert 'awkward teethy emoji face' here.

• Start using ‘Instagram’.  Reminds me that holiday photos, like Frankston tap water, are much better through a filter.  The hashtags continue their world domination.  Can’t help but feel for the asterisk, which has failed to make the same leap from phone keypad to pop-culture.

The top-middle photo is me presenting the lotto on the Seven Network and making someone rich.  The rest of the photos are me travelling the world and sending myself broke.  Both brilliant fun though.

2013

     

• Buy and move into my first home.  Some call it a sign of growing-up.  I call it all the joy of moving into the most expensive cubby house I’ll ever buy, combined with the discovery that I’m now a part-time unpaid cleaner.  The house is also immediately behind my parents’ block.  There’s not a speedometer big enough to measure how quickly I cut a hole between the adjoining fences and establish an ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ dynamic.

• Melbourne Victory FC asks me to be their official ground-announcer.  It means I can combine a couple of my true loves; working on camera and sports.  No Victoria’s Secret Angels agree to come on board as co-hosts to help me complete a trifecta.

Left; Jumping for joy after purchasing my first home.  My back is turned away from it and I can't see how much renovation work needs to be done, hence the joy.  Right; Around the ground and behind the microphone for the mighty Melbourne Victory.

2014

• During a routine visit to my travel agent for a check-up, I discover a large European flight and am told that it’s Terminal… number 3 that I’ll be departing from at Tullamarine airport.  I’m told I have 2 months to travel.  I don’t seek a second opinion.

• In a half-court shoot-out against NBA legend, Vlade Divac, I beat Vlade with a behind the back shot.  It’s a weird moment beating one of your heroes in anything.  Like someone beating Roger Federer in a tennis final or someone else knocking out Mike Tyson in a boxing match.  Unlike those two guys, Vlade neither cries nor bites part of my ear off.

• I become an uncle for the first time and hopefully not the last.  He’s called ‘Aleks’ and he’s already infinitely more mature at his age than I am at my age.  I get to play with him, tire him out and then give him back to his parents so he can wake them up throughout the night.  It’s like a “parenting test drive” really.

• Get a part in a movie called ‘Bićemo Prvaci Sveta’ (We’ll Be World Champions) while in Serbia.  It means I get to claim my trip on tax and get paid to perform, play basketball and meet incredibly talented people.  I’m pretty much a Serbian version of Michael Jordan in the movie ‘Space Jam’.

• After returning to Australia, I write an article about my adventure entitled 'All Aboard the Balkan Express!  10 Reasons to Set off on a Serbian Adventure!' and it becomes a viral hit.  It leads to some great accolades, including being named one of the ‘Top 20 Serbs of 2014’ by Serbian media, alongside faces such as Novak Djoković and Marina Abramović.  It also pleases me that this is the only viral thing I bring back with me after months of travel through Eastern Europe.

The article in question and a couple of articles about the article in question.  Also some stills from my feature film debut in 'We'll Be World Champions'.

2015

• The year starts with me getting the gig as a presenter at the Asian Cup 2015.  I can now include on my resume that I can comfortably and correctly pronounce over 25 Uzbekistani names in under a minute and that I’ve been 50% of an interview with Mel McLaughlin without her coming out of it uncomfortable and without me coming out of it with a $10,000 fine.  Stefan Popovic – 1, Chris Gayle – 0.

• While a part of the Seven Network’s ‘Good Friday Appeal’ coverage, I get to meet Agro.  This might not seem noteworthy to some of you, but there was a generation of us for whom Ranger Stacey was our ‘first lady’, Plucka Duck was a household name and Agro was a funnier puppet/muppet than any of today’s AFL footballers.  For me it’s like meeting a Sesame Street muppet that’s gone on a Gap Year to Australia.

• After several months of research and writing, I complete my first screenplay.  The mission then begins to get it made into a film while at the same time keeping the subject matter secret.  It’s 275 pages long and is one of my proudest moments when I finally finish it.  I ask my parents if they’d like to read it but they say it’s too long and are happy to wait until the movie is released.  It’s a fine line between being concerned about their disinterest and being flattered by their confidence in the project and the script’s potential.

• I buy a new bicycle.  My dad buys a new motorcycle.  In doing so, we come to an unspoken mutual understanding that he is infinitely cooler than me.

• My website stefanpopovic.com.au goes live.  It’s like final step on the evolutionary chart of social media.  I kind of wish that Drake is around to rap something along the lines of “Started off with MySpace now we’re here”.  He isn’t, so I take the opportunity to do it for myself.

Left; meeting Agro.  Right; completed first feature film script.  Both major achievements in their own right.

2016

• I get to interview Novak Djoković live in front of over 20,000 people at AAMI Park ahead of the Australian Open.  It’s like an entire small country town eavesdropping on a conversation between a guy and his man crush.  I’m really excited to interview someone who’s close to my height as well as the chance to show it is possible to both interview Djoković and still correctly pronounce his name.  I will later claim that the quality of the interview inspires Djoković to go on to win his next two Grand Slams.

• I become a wine-drinker.  I hear that consumption of a large glass of fermented grapes is a sign of being a grown-up.  It doesn’t really make sense to me and honestly I’m more comfortable with consuming a small box of dried grapes and being told I’m behaving like a child.

• My track record of disappearing from Australia during the winter in and going into hibernation in Europe during their summer continues.  I’m like a tall, blonde-haired, sort of German-looking bear really.  I meet lots of Serbian Olympians, actors and musicians, hang out with friends, jump across borders, oh and I sneak into many first-class lounges at airports while in transit.  Quite an adventure!

• Most recently though, I turn ‘twenty-ten’.  Yep that’s a number now.  It’s for all of us who have the benefits and wisdom that come with reaching the age of thirty, combined with the immature inner-child (that’s quickly becoming an outer-child) that many people have lost by the time they were ten.  It’s real and it’s totally a thing.  I’m giving you all another year of your twenties.  You’re welcome! 

                    To be continued…

I leave you with this collage of some of my highlights of 2016.  Hopefully you spot yourself in some pics and even more hopefully, you're not annoyed at me for using a photo of you on here.

*Ending a bio can always be awkward and boring.  So to avoid that, here are a couple of pics of me as a child just generally being cute and waving goodbye to all you readers!*

The End of Part Three.

** For more info, updates and photos, follow me on Twitter & Instagram **

Tall Story: The Biography (Part 2)

2000 

• Do work experience at GTV 9 in Melbourne, which sparks my interest in Journalism and working on TV.  It also gives me a chance to get Glenn Ridge, Nicki Buckley and Pete Smith from 'Sale of The Century' to sign headshots for my grandmother.  This might not seem like a big deal to some of you, but anyone with a Serbian, Italian, Spanish, etc grandmother in Australia knows this is huge brownie points.  Like a catholic getting a signed pic from the Pope where he leaves his Pope lipstick stamp on it.

• That work experience gets me quite excited about the workforce... until I get my first job.  It's a paper round that involves me collecting, folding and delivering newspapers and pamphlets to 175 homes.  From start to finish, it takes me around 5 hours and pays a total of $7.60.  Given the distance I'm having to cover on foot and the money I'm earning, I consider exploring the possibility of becoming someone's sponsor child.  World Vision does not answer my phone calls.  Mum and dad aren't open to the idea.

• Relatives come to visit from overseas.  I'm excited because I get to see my cousins. Mum's excited because it's apparently all the reason she needs to organise a long overdue Sovereign Hill day out and our 11th "olden days" photoshoot.  If you don't have even one of these, then your parents must have loved you just the right amount.

• I get to meet the Serbian National Basketball team when they come to Australia for the Sydney Olympics and play a warm-up tournament in Melbourne.  I'm a tall kid already but have this awkward babyface, so it's a great opportunity for me to have evidence years later of me meeting people I really admire, while at the same time looking a bit average.  It all looks very 'Make-A-Wish' Foundation to be quite honest.

• Start swimming for the school swimming team and put my flipper feet to good use.  I have to wear Speedos again… along with the rest of the team.  A fact which is made all the more difficult when one of the other boys on the team spots the dark hairs on either side of the ‘budgie smugglers’ of another team member and says to him one day at training “Woah, you’ve got spider legs!”  The team member is embarrassed, leaves the team and our relay events are thrown into disarray.  Not sure what happened to the douchebag bully that made the comment, but to this day I hope he got a job cleaning bikie clubhouse urinals with no gloves for minimum wage.

• On a family trip to Queensland, I win $4 on each of four consecutive scratchies that I buy from the Mossman local newsagency.  Neither I nor the newsagent can believe my luck.  He’s convinced I’m an 'Ocean's 11' level con-artist and I’m convinced the win is enough to put him out of business.

Clockwise from top-left; Meeting basketball legend Predrag Danilovic, looking chuffed as hell to meet Dejan Tomasevic, what it looked like in 1865 when the common cold took your father's life while panning for gold and you had to assume the role of 'master of the manor'', my sister and I ready to start classes in the new millennium - same uniforms, new hair.

2001

     

• I enter ‘Class Clowns Comedy Competition’ with my friend, James Robertson as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and we reach the National Finals.  Despite winning the audience vote, the judges deem our material too ‘politically incorrect’.

• We then come second in a school talent show to a family of slow motion athletes, spitting ‘Tic-Tacs’ to make it look like they are losing teeth.  We are disappointed.  Then we find out we each get $200, so we’re okay with it.  It's basically a lifetime gift voucher for the high school canteen or a lot of subway footlong meal deals in the real world.

James and I called ourselves "Mus-edy" because we combined music and comedy in our act.  The outfits we're wearing relate to a gag in our act about misinterpreting the dress code "semi-formal".  Champagne comedy.

2003

• Graduate High School.  Despite warnings from teachers and school staff against “joking around” at the graduation ceremony, I ‘bear hug’ the principal and kiss his cheek upon receiving my certificate.  He seems to enjoy it.  His wife glares at me.

• I finally grow into my enormous head.  Still refuse to wear hats though, as I look like I have a terminal illness.  Not sure which of these two points are my biggest achievement of the year.

The 'Bear Hug affair' of 2003.  Sure he's the principal, but I'm the 'big spoon'.

2004

• I start exercising, with the goal of losing weight and getting in shape in time for my 18^th birthday.  I continue exercising even after that, I love it so much... even though it hurts me.  It’s kind of like a dysfunctional long-term relationship.

• Start my university studies at Deakin University in Geelong.  It's like what I imagine many rougher public schools to have always been like; no school uniform, attendance is up to the student and alcohol's available on campus.  Pretty happy time in life I must admit.

• James and I audition for both 'Big Brother' and 'Australian Idol', the latter just for the sake of getting on TV and doing our impersonation of Shaggy's song 'Angel', which is so on point that blind Jamaican members of the Shaggy fan club couldn't tell the difference.  As for 'Big Brother', I make it through to the second round of auditions. Still unsure what that says about me as a human being.

• I turn 18 and can finally drive, drink, go out clubbing and vote.  I do three of those in the same day.  That same year, my cousin does all four in the same day and forever blames himself for John Howard’s re-election.

• Begin performing stand-up comedy solo.  My first ever gig is at the Armadale hotel as a part of ‘Champagne Comedy’.  The comedy room there closes shortly after.  The streak continues.

Clockwise from top-left; My 18th birthday party, meeting James Mathison at Idol auditions, with James and Jase snorkelling in Port Douglas, then with James and Jase about to almost seriously injure ourselves with a golf buggy 'Jackass' style.  What a time for wet-look gel, long denim shorts and chubby faces though!

2005

• Head overseas to Long Beach, California on study exchange through my university.  I meet celebrities, girls like my accent, and guys think I’m cool.  I drop more Aussie slang in my first 6 months there than Steve Irwin in his entire life.  I never want to leave.

Probably the best thing I've done in my life - study abroad 2005.  A tiny collection of only a few moments from a big part of my life and people who are still very important to me.  From Long Beach to San Diego to Halloween in Santa Barbara.

2007

• Graduate University with a ‘Bachelor of Arts’ degree, Majoring in Journalism – with Distinction.  I compare it to an ornately decorated macaroni artwork; I’ve put a lot of work into it and it looks great on the fridge, but I’m not entirely confident it’ll help me get a job.

• Enter a national comedy competition for Nova Radio and after several weeks of public voting, I am announced as the winner.  I am happy and keep getting more involved in writing and performing.

• Former Miss Universe, Jennifer Hawkins attends one of my gigs, laughs loudly at my jokes and chats to me after the show.  I think it’s the best example of complete satisfaction with having prime real estate in the friend zone.

On the left is a photo of university diploma.  On the right is a pic with Jennifer Hawkins after my gig.  Guess which one got posted to social media first.

2008

• Perform my first solo-stand-up comedy show at the Melbourne Town Hall for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.  It sells out multiple nights and is highly successful, except for one bad review from a disgruntled reviewer I will later refer to as “Hitler and Germaine Greer’s love-child”.  Even after my performance, the Town Hall is still in operation… the streak ends!

• Spend six months back-packing and travelling across Europe and America on my own.  The experience is difficult, but I learn a lot and meet some amazing friends.  I also go to Oktoberfest, La Tomatina and Guča Music Festival.  I keep a diary so I never forget the experiences I had drinking beer, throwing tomatoes and listening to trumpets.

Clockwise from left: My Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2008 poster, chatting to Wil Anderson after the show, on-stage overseas while back-packing.

2009

• Write for ‘Rove’ and ‘Good News Week’, thus fulfilling a lifelong dream of writing for TV.  Certainly feel like I've come a long way creatively; today a 22-year old getting experience writing for TV, yet it seems like just yesterday I was a 3-year old getting smacked for drawing on the couch.  Life certainly happened.

• Start writing and performing a segment called ‘Sunday Roast’ for SYN Radio comedy show ‘In Joke’ in Melbourne and I eventually take over as host of the show.  It's awesome fun and great radio training.  There's no stress because it's like a spin on that life philosophy of "dance like nobody's watching", in that sometimes when you're on-air, you feel like you're "talking while no-one's listening."

• Put my Serbian language skills to good use as I start hosting the ‘Serbian Youth Radio Program’ on Pulse 94.7FM.  It’s an excellent opportunity to play the music I like, while feeling like a Eurovision audience member week in, week out.

Clockwise from bottom-left: Backpacking through Denmark, Italy, Greece, and at the radio station behind the microphone.

The End of Part Two.

** For more info, updates and photos, follow me on Twitter & Instagram **

Tall Story: The Biography (Part 1)

I’m going to start this by saying that I generally hate writing a biography for myself.  I’m only doing it now because I was asked to write something about myself for a project I’m working on.  The reason I hate it is because the fundamental problem with writing a bio for yourself is you either end up writing in the first-person and sounding like what the Italians would call a ‘baggadouche’ or you have to write in the third-person and it just seems like you’ve enlisted the services of an imaginary friend most people should stop listening to the voice of during child therapy sessions their terrified parents make them attend.  Or best case scenario, despite your use of the third-person approach, everyone reading it knows you wrote it yourself and you just look stupid, like you sent yourself a Valentine’s Day card from “A Secret Admirer”.

Ideally the way I (or anyone for that matter) would want my bio to come about is for it to actually be written by someone influential who’s met me, just to give it a bit more credibility.  However, Novak Djokovic isn’t replying to my emails and apparently Jennifer Hawkins doesn’t have phone signal in Myer, so here we are.  That’s why I’ve decided to do something a little different.  I’ve done brief re-cap of my life so far, with dot points of the important bits... but I’ve done it in three parts because it seems more digestible that way and, well… let’s face it, we friggin’ love trilogies.  That being said, I plan to live at least another 30 years so this could turn into a ‘Rocky’/’Police Academy’ scenario in years to come.  Nevertheless, have a read, have a laugh and checkout some of my “greatest hits” (that you may never have heard) from the 80s, 90s and today!

1986

• Born in Baxter House, Geelong Hospital on June 29^th at some time in the early hours of the morning.  The entire experience must have been awfully traumatic and difficult because I’ve blocked all memory of it out of my head.

• Photos later confirm that I in fact ‘came out’ butt-first, thus the reason in photos soon after, my rear looks like the face of an intensely sunburnt cyclops.

• Meet my Mum, Dad, Grandma and other family… enjoy their company so much, I continue to live with them for a number of years.

Already getting centrefold poses organised.  Incidentally, this image would appear in the Geelong Advertiser as an 18th birthday greeting from my parents.  True story.

1989 

• Enter ‘Bay City Plaza Geelong’ and upon being asked by an MC hosting a performance event, “What do you want to be when you grow-up?”, in front of 500 parents and children I proudly proclaim, “I want to be the first frog in space!”

• We move out of our unit in Bell Park and into a new house in Highton.  Fortunately, due to my still tiny frame, I am excused from assisting with the moving process.

• My sister is born – I mostly quietly but occasionally vocally, object to the introduction of a new housemate without my authority.

• My godmother buys me my first ‘outfit’ – a crisp white sailor suit, with navy embroidery, shoulder cuffs and gold trim on the sleeves.  A sailor’s hat and navy sandals are also included.  Only years later will I realise just how cute I really am at this moment.

You may need to adjust your screens to deal with all this cuteness.

1990

     

• I Begin Sub-Prep at St. Andrew’s Primary School in Newtown, Geelong.  Play ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ with twins, Evan and James McDonald at recess on my first day.  We become best friends.

• Develop a deep affinity for eating ‘Play-doh’ and ‘Klag’.  Hence the reason I start referring to ‘art time’ as ‘tea time’.

• Like the rest of the boys, and some of the girls, I have a bowl cut hairstyle.  It seems like an incredibly easy time to be a hairdresser.

Bowl cut on point and some pics with the twins throughout primary school.

1991

• Continue to fight the urge to suck my thumb when I sleep.  Parents buy me a product called ‘Ban-suck’, which is rubbed on the thumb and causes burning when put in the mouth.  I continue to suck my thumb and become accustomed to the pain.  This is possibly the first documented example of the term ‘thug life’.

• I learn that we are not all on the same ‘toilet clock’.  I realise that none of my other ‘non-ethnic’ classmates have to go to the toilet as often as me… I'm 4-years old and it is my first encounter with the phrase “when in Rome”.  1 hour later, I poo my pants.  Mum picks me up and drives me home, while I lay face down in the back seat of the car, apologising profusely.

"Shout-out to all the people out there who ain't grow-up to be suckas just because they was little thumb-suckas" - Anonymous rapper.

1992

• Perform my first creative piece at ‘Show & Tell’; a collection of poems and humorous song covers including a rendition of Right Said Fred’s ‘I’m Too Sexy’, which includes the lyrics “I’m too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt…. that’s why I wear a jumper.”

• Give mum a letter to send, with illustrations and stickers, to ‘Agro’s Cartoon Connection’.  She promises she will give it to her “good friend” and host of the show Anne-Maree Biggar.  I win no toys… I meet no puppet.  Years later, I learn that my mother never sent the letter.  Nor does she, nor did she ever, know Miss Biggar.

• During a visit to the Geelong Show, mum and dad tell me that this is ‘Disneyland’.  The first true test of my limitless imagination.

Post-'Show & Tell' class photo: This is what bad-asses look like in the private primary school system.

1993

• I get lost at Canberra Serbian Festival while waiting for mum and sister to come out of the toilets.  I assume that after 15 minutes they must have come out without me seeing them so I go walking to find them.  I am sad, until a nice lady with a floral dress helps me find my “mama”.  My mum finds me and she is happy.  Then she smacks me for walking off alone.  I am sad again.

• Realise I have a knack for maths timetables after winning several timetable competitions in class.  It begins a long run of amusing but mostly useless skills.

• Have first artistic tantrum when my first published piece of work, (a poem called ‘The Follow Dog’) is printed in the school year book, in the bottom corner of the page.  I protest that it should be centre-top.

• Dad lets me get my hair cut ‘number one’ all over.  My mum blames him for years that this is the reason my hair is no longer straight… or blonde.  The bowl cut soon makes a return.

The shaved head look slowly growing through on a trip to Fiji.  Don't know whether to address the fact that my head looks like an egg with three-day growth or that I would've made an awesome addition to the 'Lion King' Broadway show.

1994

• For two months, I’m convinced that ‘finger’ is in fact pronounced ‘thinger’ and proceed to inform and gradually convince my Grade 3 class of this fact.

• Mum enrols me in gymnastics for coordination purposes.  It seems I am walking into too many walls and injuring myself a great deal, and in a variety of ways – possibly due to my head, which at present, is still too large for my body.  She buys me a pair of pink and black spandex shorts for the activity.  I comment that she needs help with her colour-coordination.

• Start playing basketball with the Knicks at Geelong’s ‘Life Be In It Centre’.  In my first season I sprain my ankle and dislocate my little finger.  For the remainder of my life, this will leave me almost completely unable to perform an adequate ‘pinky promise’.

• Start learning to play guitar; mostly Elvis songs, which I proceed to play at every opportunity for my classmates, particularly at ‘Show & Tell’.  Unrequested/unwanted encore performances become a trademark.

• Come runner-up in a school camp ‘talent’ competition by performing an impersonation of Elvis as an elderly woman, along with my Indian friend Sujain.  This, coupled with my ‘Elvis guitar serenades’, lead to me having the nickname ‘Elvis’ for the remainder of primary school.

Girls love a guitarist... except when his guitar has Disney stickers on it and he wears his grandma's vest while playing it. 

1995

• Buy first ever CDs (all singles); ‘Spice Girls – Wannabe’, ‘Los Del Rio – Macarena’, and ‘Seal – Kiss From a Rose’.  The last of which, I’m ashamed to say, I will go on to request at OzSkate Rollerblading Centre, during a weekend visit.  I also get my mum to write on each CD cover ‘Stefan Popovic’ so that (unfortunately) there’s no doubt whatsoever about who they belong too.

• Start learning Taekwondo.  My training includes 2 hours of martial arts training each week, as well as renting every Bruce Lee movie ever made.

When you really want to be Bruce Lee, but instead you're the only kid who forgot his Taekwondo uniform for the photo day.

1996

• Go on a world trip with parents and sister for two and a half months.  See the real Disneyland.  Dad tries to joke that this is the ‘Geelong Show’.

• Perform in my first school play.  There isn’t enough room left in the cast for the main production, so I am left to perform in a separate play to the rest of the class, with the nose-picking, asthmatic British kid, Johnny Joseph.  He plays a giraffe and I’m dressed-up as a bear.

• Later that year, I perform in another class play about ‘Waltzing Maltida’.  I play the ‘Coolabah Tree’, due to my freakishly tall frame.  It literally involves me just standing with one arm outstretched over the rest of the cast holding an empty box of ‘Coolabah’ cask wine… in school uniform.

• Soon after, St Andrew’s Primary School closes down.

Disneyland.  Some have gone so far as to refer to it as "the 'Geelong Show' of the northern hemisphere".

1997

• Finish Primary Schooling, and begin Secondary schooling, at Kardinia International College.  I bring the bowl cut with me.

• I keep playing basketball, and after playing and training 4 times a week, combined with watching ‘NBA Action’ and ‘NBL Highlights’ every Saturday morning, I am convinced I will be the next Michael Jordan… only more pale.

I only realise now that we had essentially the same hairstyle, except my sister's was 'salad bowl' while mine was still at the 'soup bowl' stage.

1998

• I audition for ‘Hey Hey It’s Saturday’ in the same room that the Keno lotto draw is filmed.  The routine consists entirely of me impersonating Scottish, American, Indian and English people.  I don’t make it onto ‘Red Faces’ and the show is cancelled soon after.  I begin to notice a trend with the effect my performances have on the fate of the venues at which I am performing them.

• Decide to stop wearing Speedos, just in time for my first end-of-semester beach trip.  Am happy that certain things have been left to the imagination, out of sight and out of mind.

• Learn how to make highly realistic fart sounds with my hands, providing my classmates with endless amusement during excursions and class movies in the auditorium.  I also become the bane of my teachers’ existence.

1999

• I go to Japan for one month on study exchange.  My Japanese improves significantly while living with my host family and going to a Japanese school, but I seem to get more out of walking around the city kicking buildings whilst shouting, “Aaargh GODZILLA!”

• Start to get the reputation as the ‘class clown’.  Girls think I’m hilarious, but just want to be my friends.  Begin to feel like puberty has been wasted on me.

Japan trip 1999:  No knives and forks, no shoes, no problem.

The End of Part One.

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