Chab Gassie

After playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, I grew a liking to the phrase ’stay frosty’. In the game you’ll be walking along the streets of Nepal or wherever the game is set and somebody will tell you to ’stay frosty’ because there’s a chance somebody’s about to shoot you and if you die, you’ll suffer the minor inconvenience of having to restart from where you died, but with full health. So I’ve been searching for a way to bring this phrase into my work place and claim it as mine.

I was in the back of a military helicopter on Friday, flying to a communications tower we have on an oil rig, when I noticed storm clouds on the horizon.

“Stay frosty!” I yelled to my colleague, competing with the sound of the thudding blades above while pointing at the approaching front.

“What!?”

“Stay frosty! The storm! It’s coming! Stay alert! Stay frosty!”

“The storm? It’s miles away! I don’t think we’ll need to stay there!”

Then I gave up because the moment was well and truly gone.

On Sunday I was walking through a Victorian forest that was hit by the bushfires at the start of the year. The fire had taken out one of our antennas, so we were there to put it back up now the investigations had died down.

“There’s still a lot of dry vegetation,” I said to the tech girl who was lugging the parts for the antenna in the 32-degree heat. “Fires could still be a problem because of this heat, so stay frosty.”

“How? How can I stay cool in this heat?”

“No… I mean…,” but the moment had gone.

Then on Monday I was in a briefing with eight of my colleagues and I was presenting on the dangers of a terrorist cell in Western Australia.

“We don’t know why they’re training so many donkeys at once, but if the terrorists make a move, we’ll need to move quicker than them. So tell your people to stay frosty.”

“Chab, can I talk to you privately in my office right now?” said my boss.

I’m still trying to draw Joe Hockey (pictured below), but it’s quite hard. There’s something about the subtle features of his face and the changing hues of his olive skin that means if you just get something a little off tone or not quite the right shape, he’ll look like somebody else. You can see in this latest attempt, I got the hair a little wrong and his lips aren’t pursed enough and if you squint and look at it from an angle, he kind of looks like a Chinese actress.