Alicia Malone

Hey guys!
I’ve moved my blog over to www.aliciamalone.com
Head over and read all about my adventures living in my new city of LA!
Alicia xx 

Hi, my name is Alicia and I’m a recovering sugarholic.

For as long as I can remember, I have been obsessed with lollies, chocolate, and anything sugary. I have such a sweet tooth; most of them now wear silver hats to commemorate their commitment to the cause.

My workplace doesn’t help my addiction, with endless amounts of choc-chip cookies on offer, the ones with the abnormally high chocolate-to-cookie ratio. I attempted to go cold turkey once, but quickly crumbled, falling off the cookie wagon in such a dramatic fashion, I was seen stumbling about the office, mumbling, “I’m so sorry, Mum” with telltale crumbs lining my mouth.

I eventually managed to shake the evil hold the cookie had over me when I became vegan, after ten years of vegetarian sobriety. Suddenly there was a reason bigger than myself to abstain. But that doesn’t save me from lollies or chocolate, as the latter also comes in deliciously dairy-free form.

After stacking on 3 kilos and becoming increasingly alarmed at how my taste buds were demanding sugar after every single meal, I decided to challenge myself to a month without the evil white powder. I lasted just over a week.

It was chocolate that did me in.

I stared at the square piece of dark chocolate that was sitting in my hands. It was rectangular really, with little jagged edges where I had hastily torn it off the block. So dark, it was almost black, with a small fleck of gold foil packaging still left on it. One little taste couldn’t hurt, right? The bitterness of the cocoa and sweetness of the sugar caused my taste buds to go into meltdown. I couldn’t stop at one small bit, and before I knew it, the entire block was gone.

A little while later, sitting on the couch and consoling myself by vowing to work twice as hard at the gym tomorrow, my heart started beating faster. And faster. And faster. So fast, I had to lie down. High on that first taste of sugar, I had made an amateur mistake and overdosed.

The next day, all was forgotten. Surely that was just a freak accident, a result of eating too much too quickly. As I walked past the office lolly jar I noticed some yellow sugary goodness staring back at me. Banana lollies, my favourite. If it’s shaped like a fruit, then it must be good for you, right? (It’s amazing what my mind can justify when faced with something sweet.)

A few minutes later, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. My heart beat so fast and so loud, I was sure everyone could hear it. I even went as far as to write a mini will, telling my co-worker Renee that she could have my DVD collection, realising how little possessions I actually own. Breathing slowly and trying to calm down, I thought about what would happen if I couldn’t have sugar. Another thing I can’t eat? My food pyramid had already been decimated by not eating meat, dairy, not liking the taste of much fruit, and not being able to stomach many members of the cereal family. Was this what I would be left with?

As I thought about the good memories me and chocolate have had in the past - the happy times in the Lindt cafe, Max Brenner’s melted hot chocolates, those pain au chocolats in Paris, cheeky sessions on the couch watching DVDs - I realised a life without chocolate is simply something I cannot face.

Now, I’m in sugar rehab. Trying to reintroduce sugar safely, trying to live a normal life in a sugary world, temptation at every turn. I’m taking it one day at a time, one piece of chocolate at a time, and only one. Wish me luck.

This story is rated M for mature audiences. It may contain painful memories about a day spent watching porn.

Part of my job as TV presenter/ producer/ editor/ amazing person (ok I added that last one), requires me to classify my own programs. After a couple of years of educated guessing, (“Side-boob? I reckon that’s about an M”) my work decided to err on the side of caution and send us all to a TV rating classification course.

The training room was like any other I’ve been to – groups of desks, water and Mentos lollies on top, a bigger desk at the front for the teacher, and a huge white projector, which would later become the subject of my nightmares.

Name badges on, the day began with each person saying where they worked, and what they would like to learn. The answers were pretty standard, so I decided when my turn came around, I would try to break the ice by making a joke.

I repeated my script in my head, feeling the excitement rising as everyone in the room turned to look at me. I took a deep breath and said, “Hi, I’m Alicia, and basically I’m just here to watch porn.”
The few nervous twitters I received weren’t quite as loud I had imagined, and the trainer looked at me seriously and said, “Well, that’s what we are going to do.”

There are a couple of different categories to consider when you are figuring out what rating a TV show should have: coarse language, drug use, sex, violence; all that good stuff. We kicked things off relatively mildly with coarse language. 

I have to admit; I did get a small kick out of writing the “c” word in my notebook, and I had a small giggle upon hearing one of my colleagues ask quite seriously, “So… one bitch is ok, but a whole lot of them isn’t?”
But, as so often happens, this coarse language was just a gateway to the harder, and more damaging stuff: drug use.

The video examples started with a scene from “Weeds”, and progressively got worse, moving through cocaine to a clip showing a girl shooting heroin into her eyeball.

Before I could pass out, it was time for a break, some cookies and nervous chatter about the next subject. Sex.

I did my best to appear mature when the instructor taught us about the level of thrusting allowed in an MA film, and nodded in what I hoped was a ‘knowing’ way when he explained how any “genital detail” could dramatically affect the rating. Now, I’m no prude, but when the video clips showed the most extreme examples of films that were so bad, they were denied classification; I had to escape for an extended bathroom break. Unfortunately I returned when a particularly graphic moment had been paused on the projection screen. The expression on my fellow trainees faces was akin to a scene out of “A Clockwork Orange”.

By the time lunch rolled around, nobody was speaking, or looking into each other’s eyes. I felt like we should all be wearing raincoats and be huddled around dirty magazines in an adult shop instead of eating sandwiches. And violence was next.

I spent a great portion of the afternoon trying to avoid looking at the screen by pretending to be writing important notes, when in reality I was scribbling ‘oh my god oh my god oh my god’ over and over, and trying to figure out how to sum up this experience in a 140 character tweet.
At the end of the day I found a quiet corner, where I curled up in a ball, rocked myself back and forth, stared at nothing and tried to remember if there was any good in the world. “Rainbows… lollipops… unicorns… butterflies… la la laaa…” was the best I could come up with.

On the good side, I’m no longer shocked at the mild sex and violence in everyday films, and I’m now officially allowed to classify the programs I produce. Until next year, when I have to go back for a refresher course. But this time, I’ll be taking my glasses. The ones with the fake eyes on the front

Looking out to the bustling Rue Oberkampf, I felt the familiar prickle of embarrassment heat up my cheeks. I shut my eyes and tried to force words out of my mouth. Anything would do, as long as it was quick, because the French waitress was beginning to look impatient.

Fresh off the plane, I had practiced my order, and rushed to the nearest café, keen to use what I had learned during my 10-week French course back in Sydney. In my head “Je voudrais un verre de vin blanc et une creme brulee s’il vous plait” (don’t judge) sounded perfect. As chic and as clear as the tapes I had been listening to. But sitting in the cafe, the fear of speaking the language to a native overcame me, and all I could do was stammer “uhhhh…” and “ummmm…” until the words “vin blanc” and “creme brulee” came out in mangled French, and the waitress had vaguely understood what I meant.

I spent the next day trying to avoid speaking at all,determined not to fall back on English, but too scared to try French. Not speaking is harder than you’d think, I had to point at things, ignore people, and generally act like an extremely rude tourist. The exact opposite of what I wanted to be. When I ignored an old homeless man begging me for change, I realized I would have to step up my game and start speaking. And if I was ever going to learn, I would have to throw myself in the deep end, challenge myself to speak French, and nothing but French.

Sitting down in another classic French cafe, mumbling through another menu, I pulled out my trusty notebook, and made a list of rules to save me from further embarrassment, and help me though the next four weeks. Here’s what I came up with:

1) If I don’t understand, I’ll just grin and nod. Sure, they might think I’m an idiot, but at least they’ll know I’m a nice idiot.

2) I will use hand gestures to make myself understood.

(Side-note: I learnt not to do this when explaining my job, as “movies”, followed by the action of pulling my hand towards my mouth as if I were holding a microphone; gave people the wrong idea about the line of work I am in)

3) When in doubt, just say yes. You never know where that might take you!

4) Embrace the fact that you only know how to speak verbs and in the present tense. Think of it as ‘living in the moment’ and ‘knowing exactly what you want’.  ”I take a coffee!”; “I go to the park!” You are a woman in control of her life!

5) Try and add a new sentence to your repertoire every day. Ok, so the baker might not want to know that you are “totally into rap music”, but you learnt that phrase so you are damn well going to use it.

6) Take a guess at what they are saying, and plunge headfirst into an answer. They may be asking for a cigarette, but I will tell them the time. And they will like it.

7) If you make a mistake, say “J’ai un trou de memoire!” This translates to “I have a hole in my memory!” …And explains everything.

8) Add a question mark to the end of every sentence. That way, if you say something wrong you can pretend you didn’t really mean it.

9) Work in the fact that you’re from Australia as soon as you can. Everyone loves Australians! We have a cool accent, we own Cate Blanchett, we’re far enough away to be exotic, and we have scary animals which we can train to attack anyone who messes with us. Note to self: learn how to say “Did I tell you about my pet shark?”

Armed with my rules, I strode confidently into the center of Paris, and began to unleash my badly pronounced French on anyone who would listen. I didn’t care if it made sense; I just wanted to speak what I had learnt. 

Over the next four weeks I told the lady at the grocery store, “I’m tired” (she didn’t care); the man at the laundromat, “welcome to the red carpet” (he was confused); and the guy who approached me in the park heard, “I love you” (that… was an accident).

Arriving back in Sydney, I was so proud of my grasp on the language, that I boasted to all my friends, “I’m totes French now!” …Until one of those friends correctly pointed out that by saying that sentence, it means that I’m not. 

I pulled out my notebook to add one more rule:

10) From now on, only have friends who agree with everything I say.

That should fix things.