a few years ago i started making a bit of a collage on the wall of my bedroom. it started as a couple of photos i'd printed out from a recent trip, then slowly grew as i added odds and ends i'd had lying around, or found along the way. when i moved i took a photo and recreated it in my new room, then promptly forgot about it. now i'm lying back in my room again, after getting back from Perth and it's been falling off the wall - one piece has curled up and lost half its blutack, others are hanging from a corner and others still have fallen completely behind the shelves.
that seems to be an apt metaphor for my life at the moment. i'm shattered. i'm glad to be back in canberra and all, but being back means that i have things to do. lots of them. far too many calls upon my time and energy, far too much to achieve and far too little energy to get it all done. right now is completely not the right time to call me and ask if i'm excited about flying around the world because right now i'd be just about as happy to add a smear of blood and brains to my collage - one final addition to my improv artwork. i'll feel better in the morning, i swear, but i have too much percolating around my brain to make any sense of it all and it's all falling apart.
tomorrow brings packing, after which i hope i'll feel better about it all. solid progress that i can see should make it all look a bit less daunting. the last week has reminded me how much i can cram into a day. knowing that the end is in sight - that all i have to do once i get to sydney is get on a fucking aeroplane, after which i'll have more or less all the time in the world... that's providing me with some peace. i just need to keep it all together until then. meanwhile, tomorrow i'm seeing a pretty little lass who likes to kiss me and i'm sure that'll perk me up no end... as long as i can get plenty done between now and then. one of the things i need to get done is sleep, and since that is the next thing on my Sisyphean task list i'm going to get right on it.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
6 days out of order and in a blur...
standing outside Perth Domestic Terminal on arrival i was just about ready to leave. ten-odd hours of transit from go to woah, standing in a town i recognised but no longer knew, the sense of rightness was completely missing.
walking back into the same airport 140 hours and 5 minutes later and things were... different. a nervous drive down barely-remembered streets, a visit to some old friends and a good night's sleep had put me in a better frame of mind. sepia-toned memories overlaid with the current actuality of the places in which i found myself, seeing people who are all but unchanged on the surface, but with new stories bubbling up from within. the eerie and disconcertingly familiar distilled into a comforting recognition and for once when i walked out of that town it felt like a departure rather than a harried escape.
"OH MY GOD you haven't changed a bit!!"
5 years... it can't have been 5 years... i was thinking. i recognised her instantly from outside the cafe where i stood in the rain, bright pink hair that last i remembered as black, and spiked up in devil horns now falling over her eyes as she sat looking at the newspaper. it's true thought - i hadn't seen Lil' Rach in 5 years, since not long before i first left the old town. every time i'd come through she'd been elsewhere. we hadn't even really spoken much over the years - half an hour's worth of conversation spread over a handfull of phone calls. i knew so little of her life in the meantime that i had no idea what was going to be said when i got there. the hug was instantaneous and i couldn't help but think how well she was looking - slimmer, happier, bright and shining like a star, and without thinking or planning or consideration it was as if we hadn't seen each other in 5 days, not years.
to be told that i was exactly as remembered was rather nice in a way. i looked in the mirror later that day and pondered my visage. less weight, more lines, a readier smile. my hair is more or less the same. i dress the same (although the quality has improved over the years, but the styles remain). but then it made me wonder whether i had actually changed over the years, or have i learned nothing from what has gone before? no, not really. still, i can't complain if i'm starting to look my age, rather than persistently older than advertised.
three hours i spend exchanging stories with Lil Rach. i even drove her to work so that she wouldn't have to waste the 45 minutes on buses and could spend it with me instead. we shared tales of love and loss, travel, time spent and places visited. she's been around the world, met a lad she can't live without and above all, been happy. a can-do attitude and an ability to make do. a refusal to see anything as a roadblock, and a conviction for streaking through New York city. we're both new people and it didn't matter, because we're both still the same in every way that matters. i'd have hung around all day if i'd not had so many places to be that day. i'd been on the go from 8AM, wasn't scheduled to stop until past 2 the next morning and this was my first appointment and it didn't stop coming, not for another 14 hours.
"I believe that if you're going to put something in your mouth it had better be worth it... in more ways than one..."
how on earth am i to describe Must to provide the appropriate amount of detail while at the same time reflecting the emotion of the experience? i could try to describe the food (wagyu beef shank ravioli with mushrooms and black truffle, chicken and lobster sausage with whole wheat and white-wine sauce, hand-made gnocchi with wagyu beef shank, bread flown in from france each day, a south-american slant to this month's wine selection in support of the tapas tasting menu they'd run earlier in the month... you get the idea), or the room (wall to wall wine-bottles, few of which you'd see gracing the shelves of a discount liquor store), or the wait-staff (the junior waiter we spoke to knew far more about wines than i did, and they still had a sommelier on the premises). what i think i'll brush on however, is that i have never in my life eaten food which left me in a post-orgasmic twitch after each bite. Ondine would later describe my response as "an uncertain combination of giggling and sobbing". i do know that at one point, after i'd mopped up my plate with the last of the bread and had started on her rotisseried pork and duck, seasonal vegetables and home-made polenta i hit my head on the wall when i bit into the crackling because i'd lost control of my neck.
in a word, the food was Perfect. everything. twelve inch stalks of asparagus? sweet from tip to tail, not woody in the slightest. each wine perfectly complementary. each ingredient perfectly proportioned. parmesan, rocket, balsamic and olive oil salad? perfect.
Ondine's a jewel, especially when it comes to food. put her in a town for a week or two and she'll be on first name basis with some of the chefs of the best restaurants within 20 kilometres of the city centre. give her a month and she'll have home and mobile numbers. she knows food both from an eating and a cooking perspective and she loves sharing the experience with people who appreciate it. i'm not entirely sure how i keep on her foodie-radar, bearing in mind how lazy i can get when it comes to putting effort into my eating. there have been far too many weeks where i've eaten naught but packet pasta and pizza. still, i DO like food, even if i don't always pursue it to the n'th degree at all times. Ondine does, and i get to enjoy her hard work, and she enjoys my enjoyment so everybody wins.
a couple of days after my first Must experience i was arriving for another breakfast/brunch rendezvous to find her sitting under a makeshift covered area behind a butcher's in Mt Lawley. she and a friend were at a gourmet market, top hat and long-coat, multiple petticoats, tea set and lace tablecloth. the admiring stares and comments had the two of them preening like cats and pleased as punch. a pate and sweetbreads platter, a board of cheeses you have to know exist before anyone will let you buy some, fresh bread and coffee from one of the better roasters in Perth. it almost made me forget the 4-5 hours of sleep i'd had the night before, not to mention the drive i'd undertaken using the best of Zen Navigation (turn when it feels like you should turn). delightful, civilised, and with a sandwich consisting of about a third of a roast lamb squeezed between two slices of slightly stale bread.
now i'm glad that i'm on an uncatered flight because i don't think i'm going to, in all conscience or concern for my waistline, eat again for the next 3 or 4 days. damn you Ondine, for ruining my waist-line. thank you for taking me to Must for the best meal and later the best Scotch i've ever tasted.
"You are correct - she IS ridiculously lonely... but then so am I.."
i'm seeing it more more, but last saturday night was a sledgehammer to the skull. it's occurred to me a number of times over the last few years, but looking around the Engagement Party and seeing all the people i knew who were married, engaged to be married, in long term relationships, children running around the room and the glimmer in people's eyes of more in the planning stages, the small couch-load of singletons felt awfully isolated. my sister got married a couple of years ago, not too long after her son was born (named for our grandfather). The Boy has been seeing the same girl from four years now and if she's put up with his shit with a smile for this long i can't see any particular risk of her leaving any time soon. they're a foregone conclusion as far as i'm concerned.
the same sort of thing is happening in Canberra and i can see how anyone long-term single hanging around the crew would be getting towards "sharpening your razor blades on your wrists" stage. i was starting to get a bit of the blues going myself, but then the pretty little thing i like to hug and kiss a lot was a long long way away. yes, she'll be even further away in a week and a half - thanks for reminding me. arsehole.
either way, i found it interesting to stand there surrounded by happy, smiling couples with a beer in hand, a "fuck you" smile and a big shit-eating grin on my face. it's lovely, though. Kandi and Mav are the couple you wish you and your partner were. they act like they just met and are still exploring the ins and outs of each other's genitalia despite having been going at it unchanged and unabated for six years now. they make single people jealous just by walking into the room and despite my comprehensive understanding that that sort of joined-at-the-hip, life-in-each-other's-pockets behavior would drive me to distraction and speeding fines, i can't help but be effected by it all.
nonetheless, it seems like almost everyone i know i perth is either happily in a long-term relationship, married or soon to be married, or desperately lonely and wishing they could join the club. given another couple of years and i have feeling that i'll be a member of an increasingly diminishing species, standing alone while the rest of them all stand together... that is, unless a certain little geek girl comes to her senses.
i keep referring to this as Canberra... mostly, i think, because i always assume that Perth is wherever i'm not. now i'm leaving Canberra too, and i honestly can't tell whether i'm coming or going anymore...
once again i'm on an aeroplane headed east. every time i've left Perth in the last 5 years i've felt like i was escaping back to the promised land - the land of Anywhere But There. i've always had a good time, but i've also been relieved to be getting out of there. now i'm tired and drained and with no regrets as to the way i spent my time over the last week, but i find myself missing it more the patchwork of rural western australia, then south australia, now victoria pass under my window and i wipe a small child of indiscriminate gender's drool off my arm. the ice glitters in my window, my isolation headphones seclude me from the jets and the hubbub of humanity and my head-space is so geographically disperse that i can't quite put a finger on where anything is. i'm liking the uncertainty of not being able to say where "home" is anymore. when the world around you is less than stable it gives you a chance to find out how good your own balance really is.
a good trip, all told, and for once i wish, in a small way, that it could have been longer. still, i'll be back sooner or later, of that i have no doubt.
walking back into the same airport 140 hours and 5 minutes later and things were... different. a nervous drive down barely-remembered streets, a visit to some old friends and a good night's sleep had put me in a better frame of mind. sepia-toned memories overlaid with the current actuality of the places in which i found myself, seeing people who are all but unchanged on the surface, but with new stories bubbling up from within. the eerie and disconcertingly familiar distilled into a comforting recognition and for once when i walked out of that town it felt like a departure rather than a harried escape.
"OH MY GOD you haven't changed a bit!!"
5 years... it can't have been 5 years... i was thinking. i recognised her instantly from outside the cafe where i stood in the rain, bright pink hair that last i remembered as black, and spiked up in devil horns now falling over her eyes as she sat looking at the newspaper. it's true thought - i hadn't seen Lil' Rach in 5 years, since not long before i first left the old town. every time i'd come through she'd been elsewhere. we hadn't even really spoken much over the years - half an hour's worth of conversation spread over a handfull of phone calls. i knew so little of her life in the meantime that i had no idea what was going to be said when i got there. the hug was instantaneous and i couldn't help but think how well she was looking - slimmer, happier, bright and shining like a star, and without thinking or planning or consideration it was as if we hadn't seen each other in 5 days, not years.
to be told that i was exactly as remembered was rather nice in a way. i looked in the mirror later that day and pondered my visage. less weight, more lines, a readier smile. my hair is more or less the same. i dress the same (although the quality has improved over the years, but the styles remain). but then it made me wonder whether i had actually changed over the years, or have i learned nothing from what has gone before? no, not really. still, i can't complain if i'm starting to look my age, rather than persistently older than advertised.
three hours i spend exchanging stories with Lil Rach. i even drove her to work so that she wouldn't have to waste the 45 minutes on buses and could spend it with me instead. we shared tales of love and loss, travel, time spent and places visited. she's been around the world, met a lad she can't live without and above all, been happy. a can-do attitude and an ability to make do. a refusal to see anything as a roadblock, and a conviction for streaking through New York city. we're both new people and it didn't matter, because we're both still the same in every way that matters. i'd have hung around all day if i'd not had so many places to be that day. i'd been on the go from 8AM, wasn't scheduled to stop until past 2 the next morning and this was my first appointment and it didn't stop coming, not for another 14 hours.
"I believe that if you're going to put something in your mouth it had better be worth it... in more ways than one..."
how on earth am i to describe Must to provide the appropriate amount of detail while at the same time reflecting the emotion of the experience? i could try to describe the food (wagyu beef shank ravioli with mushrooms and black truffle, chicken and lobster sausage with whole wheat and white-wine sauce, hand-made gnocchi with wagyu beef shank, bread flown in from france each day, a south-american slant to this month's wine selection in support of the tapas tasting menu they'd run earlier in the month... you get the idea), or the room (wall to wall wine-bottles, few of which you'd see gracing the shelves of a discount liquor store), or the wait-staff (the junior waiter we spoke to knew far more about wines than i did, and they still had a sommelier on the premises). what i think i'll brush on however, is that i have never in my life eaten food which left me in a post-orgasmic twitch after each bite. Ondine would later describe my response as "an uncertain combination of giggling and sobbing". i do know that at one point, after i'd mopped up my plate with the last of the bread and had started on her rotisseried pork and duck, seasonal vegetables and home-made polenta i hit my head on the wall when i bit into the crackling because i'd lost control of my neck.
in a word, the food was Perfect. everything. twelve inch stalks of asparagus? sweet from tip to tail, not woody in the slightest. each wine perfectly complementary. each ingredient perfectly proportioned. parmesan, rocket, balsamic and olive oil salad? perfect.
Ondine's a jewel, especially when it comes to food. put her in a town for a week or two and she'll be on first name basis with some of the chefs of the best restaurants within 20 kilometres of the city centre. give her a month and she'll have home and mobile numbers. she knows food both from an eating and a cooking perspective and she loves sharing the experience with people who appreciate it. i'm not entirely sure how i keep on her foodie-radar, bearing in mind how lazy i can get when it comes to putting effort into my eating. there have been far too many weeks where i've eaten naught but packet pasta and pizza. still, i DO like food, even if i don't always pursue it to the n'th degree at all times. Ondine does, and i get to enjoy her hard work, and she enjoys my enjoyment so everybody wins.
a couple of days after my first Must experience i was arriving for another breakfast/brunch rendezvous to find her sitting under a makeshift covered area behind a butcher's in Mt Lawley. she and a friend were at a gourmet market, top hat and long-coat, multiple petticoats, tea set and lace tablecloth. the admiring stares and comments had the two of them preening like cats and pleased as punch. a pate and sweetbreads platter, a board of cheeses you have to know exist before anyone will let you buy some, fresh bread and coffee from one of the better roasters in Perth. it almost made me forget the 4-5 hours of sleep i'd had the night before, not to mention the drive i'd undertaken using the best of Zen Navigation (turn when it feels like you should turn). delightful, civilised, and with a sandwich consisting of about a third of a roast lamb squeezed between two slices of slightly stale bread.
now i'm glad that i'm on an uncatered flight because i don't think i'm going to, in all conscience or concern for my waistline, eat again for the next 3 or 4 days. damn you Ondine, for ruining my waist-line. thank you for taking me to Must for the best meal and later the best Scotch i've ever tasted.
"You are correct - she IS ridiculously lonely... but then so am I.."
i'm seeing it more more, but last saturday night was a sledgehammer to the skull. it's occurred to me a number of times over the last few years, but looking around the Engagement Party and seeing all the people i knew who were married, engaged to be married, in long term relationships, children running around the room and the glimmer in people's eyes of more in the planning stages, the small couch-load of singletons felt awfully isolated. my sister got married a couple of years ago, not too long after her son was born (named for our grandfather). The Boy has been seeing the same girl from four years now and if she's put up with his shit with a smile for this long i can't see any particular risk of her leaving any time soon. they're a foregone conclusion as far as i'm concerned.
the same sort of thing is happening in Canberra and i can see how anyone long-term single hanging around the crew would be getting towards "sharpening your razor blades on your wrists" stage. i was starting to get a bit of the blues going myself, but then the pretty little thing i like to hug and kiss a lot was a long long way away. yes, she'll be even further away in a week and a half - thanks for reminding me. arsehole.
either way, i found it interesting to stand there surrounded by happy, smiling couples with a beer in hand, a "fuck you" smile and a big shit-eating grin on my face. it's lovely, though. Kandi and Mav are the couple you wish you and your partner were. they act like they just met and are still exploring the ins and outs of each other's genitalia despite having been going at it unchanged and unabated for six years now. they make single people jealous just by walking into the room and despite my comprehensive understanding that that sort of joined-at-the-hip, life-in-each-other's-pockets behavior would drive me to distraction and speeding fines, i can't help but be effected by it all.
nonetheless, it seems like almost everyone i know i perth is either happily in a long-term relationship, married or soon to be married, or desperately lonely and wishing they could join the club. given another couple of years and i have feeling that i'll be a member of an increasingly diminishing species, standing alone while the rest of them all stand together... that is, unless a certain little geek girl comes to her senses.
i keep referring to this as Canberra... mostly, i think, because i always assume that Perth is wherever i'm not. now i'm leaving Canberra too, and i honestly can't tell whether i'm coming or going anymore...
once again i'm on an aeroplane headed east. every time i've left Perth in the last 5 years i've felt like i was escaping back to the promised land - the land of Anywhere But There. i've always had a good time, but i've also been relieved to be getting out of there. now i'm tired and drained and with no regrets as to the way i spent my time over the last week, but i find myself missing it more the patchwork of rural western australia, then south australia, now victoria pass under my window and i wipe a small child of indiscriminate gender's drool off my arm. the ice glitters in my window, my isolation headphones seclude me from the jets and the hubbub of humanity and my head-space is so geographically disperse that i can't quite put a finger on where anything is. i'm liking the uncertainty of not being able to say where "home" is anymore. when the world around you is less than stable it gives you a chance to find out how good your own balance really is.
a good trip, all told, and for once i wish, in a small way, that it could have been longer. still, i'll be back sooner or later, of that i have no doubt.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
transitory relevations...
i'm in an odd situation right now. it's been slowly dawning on me an unrealised consequence of travel which is that when (as i am right now) you're in transit it's kinda hard to say that you really are where your GPS says that you are. you see, geopraphically i'm currently sitting in the VirginBlue Boarding Lounge 35 (a concrete-floored wasteland of ultra-ruggedised, easy-clean furniture and fittings, industrially designed to be comfortable to sit in for a as much as an hour but simultaneously impossible to sleep in unless you've OD'd on muscle-relaxants). realistically, on the other hand, i'm in the Transit No-Man's Land; a place where people are but no one lives. it's kinda like Tasmania, really. people come and go, but everything's temporary, transient. the people you meet here, they're your friend, your confidant, or maybe just a meat chicane you dodge around when they realise that they desperately needed to use the toilet they just walked past.
the guy sitting across from me at the moment, slicked back hair, sunglasses pushed up on his head, chiselled good looks and fashionable shoes, he's not real. the hairy guy in black sitting on the 1.5x4 metre strip of carpet conveniently located in front of the power point, me, no i'm not real either. everyone here has their coping mechanisms. there's the old lady just getting into her pulp-fiction novel. there's the family sitting on the carpet in Lounge 34 who are play cards with the kids. the Islander lad dawdling on the travellator because he's got nowhere to be for a couple of hours while grannies with zimmer-frames overtake him on the tiles. the opportunist who's plugged his ultra-portable into a handy powerpoint and looks around at the people walking by while he bashes at the keyboard because... well, he can touch-type. can't you? newsagents and book shops running a roaring trade in temporary print. news today, olds tomorrow - sell out today, get the shipment in then sell out to a wholly different bunch of transients tomorrow.
and a thiving ecosystem has sprung up to cater for all these neuvo riche, the grateful recipients of the modern era of inexpensive air-travel. anyone can go anywhere, so everyone does and airports rapidly reach a critical-mass of the number of aeroplanes that can use a runway through a day. efficiency and economy dictate that a seat on the flight unsold is a seat wasted, and so cross-matching databases are written to keep track of it all so that you can tell it that you need to get from Canberra to Perth and it'll suggest stopovers in everywhere from Adelaide to Sydney, discount the under-utilised routes and recommend the chicken so that the airports can move the absolute maximum number of people from where they are to where they need to be while balancing the load so that no one terminal explodes and goes splat.
of course, this means that there's no end of people who've just travelled 300km in the wrong direction so that they could save a buck. people who were happy to accept a 3 hour stopover so that they wouldn't have to fly on the red-eye and endure 5 hours in the air on a discount airline with overpriced stale sandwiches. people who'll seriously consider overcooked 10$ noodles from the foodcourt if it means not being tempted to eat the equally shitty, but even more expensive food on the plane. don't forget here that bored people in our consumerist, throw-away society are prone to shop:
"i'm just going to have a look in Witchery, dear."
you packed enough clothes to last a month and we're only away a fortnight... anyway, didn't you just go shopping on the weekend?
"oh, just go get some coffees. it's not as if we don't have time to kill and maybe i'll find something nice for that dinner out with your parents."
yes sweetie...
and so the cycle of unnecessary commerce continues and thrives, populating what one might consider a hostile environment with more and more plastic and plywood facades with smiling waitrons there to take your order for double-priced cappuchino and cake which you're only eating because it kills some time and inevitably leads to your undiagnosed diabetes causing a hyperglyceamic attack halfway across the Pacific.
oh, it's all entertaining. seriously, don't mind me. i'm just killing time. i have mental images of this place after the bombs hit and tribes of survivors take up residence in the Boarding Lounges. it'd make a great 4 hour Kevin Costner film - he could film it with Mel Gibson - where Grorg unites his tribe after a border-dispute and takes control of the 30-series lounges before waging war against the evil, brutal forces of Kerglit to avenge his girlfriend who was kidnapped to replenish breeding stocks depleted in the great salmonella epidemic of 2053 (result of the discovery of a batch of old fossilised KFC). the battle scene in the Food Court would be epic. and to make it better, it'd be filmed entirely in the re-de-re-de-reconstructed dead language of the Yidrikaanarin and despite being 4 hours where Costner and Gibson jerk each over off in the background while underpaid actors jump around in filthy high-vis clothes it'll still make a fucking mind, and the whole thing would come about because Gibson and Costner got stuck in transit for a couple of hours on their way somewhere equally pointless.
on the plus side, at least the airline hosties are quite attractive.
the guy sitting across from me at the moment, slicked back hair, sunglasses pushed up on his head, chiselled good looks and fashionable shoes, he's not real. the hairy guy in black sitting on the 1.5x4 metre strip of carpet conveniently located in front of the power point, me, no i'm not real either. everyone here has their coping mechanisms. there's the old lady just getting into her pulp-fiction novel. there's the family sitting on the carpet in Lounge 34 who are play cards with the kids. the Islander lad dawdling on the travellator because he's got nowhere to be for a couple of hours while grannies with zimmer-frames overtake him on the tiles. the opportunist who's plugged his ultra-portable into a handy powerpoint and looks around at the people walking by while he bashes at the keyboard because... well, he can touch-type. can't you? newsagents and book shops running a roaring trade in temporary print. news today, olds tomorrow - sell out today, get the shipment in then sell out to a wholly different bunch of transients tomorrow.
and a thiving ecosystem has sprung up to cater for all these neuvo riche, the grateful recipients of the modern era of inexpensive air-travel. anyone can go anywhere, so everyone does and airports rapidly reach a critical-mass of the number of aeroplanes that can use a runway through a day. efficiency and economy dictate that a seat on the flight unsold is a seat wasted, and so cross-matching databases are written to keep track of it all so that you can tell it that you need to get from Canberra to Perth and it'll suggest stopovers in everywhere from Adelaide to Sydney, discount the under-utilised routes and recommend the chicken so that the airports can move the absolute maximum number of people from where they are to where they need to be while balancing the load so that no one terminal explodes and goes splat.
of course, this means that there's no end of people who've just travelled 300km in the wrong direction so that they could save a buck. people who were happy to accept a 3 hour stopover so that they wouldn't have to fly on the red-eye and endure 5 hours in the air on a discount airline with overpriced stale sandwiches. people who'll seriously consider overcooked 10$ noodles from the foodcourt if it means not being tempted to eat the equally shitty, but even more expensive food on the plane. don't forget here that bored people in our consumerist, throw-away society are prone to shop:
"i'm just going to have a look in Witchery, dear."
you packed enough clothes to last a month and we're only away a fortnight... anyway, didn't you just go shopping on the weekend?
"oh, just go get some coffees. it's not as if we don't have time to kill and maybe i'll find something nice for that dinner out with your parents."
yes sweetie...
and so the cycle of unnecessary commerce continues and thrives, populating what one might consider a hostile environment with more and more plastic and plywood facades with smiling waitrons there to take your order for double-priced cappuchino and cake which you're only eating because it kills some time and inevitably leads to your undiagnosed diabetes causing a hyperglyceamic attack halfway across the Pacific.
oh, it's all entertaining. seriously, don't mind me. i'm just killing time. i have mental images of this place after the bombs hit and tribes of survivors take up residence in the Boarding Lounges. it'd make a great 4 hour Kevin Costner film - he could film it with Mel Gibson - where Grorg unites his tribe after a border-dispute and takes control of the 30-series lounges before waging war against the evil, brutal forces of Kerglit to avenge his girlfriend who was kidnapped to replenish breeding stocks depleted in the great salmonella epidemic of 2053 (result of the discovery of a batch of old fossilised KFC). the battle scene in the Food Court would be epic. and to make it better, it'd be filmed entirely in the re-de-re-de-reconstructed dead language of the Yidrikaanarin and despite being 4 hours where Costner and Gibson jerk each over off in the background while underpaid actors jump around in filthy high-vis clothes it'll still make a fucking mind, and the whole thing would come about because Gibson and Costner got stuck in transit for a couple of hours on their way somewhere equally pointless.
on the plus side, at least the airline hosties are quite attractive.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Snippets #4: on photons...
it's occurred to me over the last few months that my flatmates seem to be allergic to the dark. it's a character trait i've noticed here and there - i'll walk into the house and half the lights are on. they leave their bedroom light on despite the light switch being right on the door. hell, they'll even turn on the hall light even though the door to their room and the door to the living room are about a metre apart. maybe it just doesn't occur to them to turn them off? i don't know.
i'm in the opposite habit - i'm forever turning lights off around this place because... well, why have them on? the light i have in my room is a desk lamp with a CFL in it which is pointed directly at the wall. i read my book at night by the diffused light bouncing off the red feature wall and this serves me quite nicely. i rarely want for more than that. on the weekend i spent most of an evening in here with my young lass with just the LEDs in my laptop strobing along to the music playing in Winamp and this was more than we needed. if i need to visit the kitchen in the night there's usually a more than adequate amount of illumination from the LEDs on the various game consoles, or computers or just the moonlight coming in the back door.
i'm thinking that there's generally plenty of light around to get by if you know where to look. i know where everything is in the house and while i occasionally bump my knee into an errant chair, this is pretty rare. it's similarly rare that you'll find yourself in a place where there's no ambient light whatsoever but it seems that people have this need to banish the darkness. me, i think i prefer for it not to be so bright, and enjoy the ambiguity that the darkness brings and the interplay of light and shadow in my world. the idea of learning braille just so that i can read without having to turn on the light actually holds an odd fascination now i think about it...
i guess you could look at this as an allegory of some kind, but i'll leave those connections up to somebody else...
i'm in the opposite habit - i'm forever turning lights off around this place because... well, why have them on? the light i have in my room is a desk lamp with a CFL in it which is pointed directly at the wall. i read my book at night by the diffused light bouncing off the red feature wall and this serves me quite nicely. i rarely want for more than that. on the weekend i spent most of an evening in here with my young lass with just the LEDs in my laptop strobing along to the music playing in Winamp and this was more than we needed. if i need to visit the kitchen in the night there's usually a more than adequate amount of illumination from the LEDs on the various game consoles, or computers or just the moonlight coming in the back door.
i'm thinking that there's generally plenty of light around to get by if you know where to look. i know where everything is in the house and while i occasionally bump my knee into an errant chair, this is pretty rare. it's similarly rare that you'll find yourself in a place where there's no ambient light whatsoever but it seems that people have this need to banish the darkness. me, i think i prefer for it not to be so bright, and enjoy the ambiguity that the darkness brings and the interplay of light and shadow in my world. the idea of learning braille just so that i can read without having to turn on the light actually holds an odd fascination now i think about it...
i guess you could look at this as an allegory of some kind, but i'll leave those connections up to somebody else...
Monday, September 8, 2008
when you remember that you've forgotten to remember not to forget what you needed to remember...
i'd like to say that i've not much to speak of, but that would be a lie. the truth is that i've had far too much to say for me to filter the signal from the noise, leaving me incoherent and if there's one thing i hate it's using a lot of words to say nothing whatsoever.
today marks one month to the day - 30 days - that i have left in this country. it's all getting... a little insane. there's not so much a surplus of activity, just an increased buzz in the back of my head which i've managed to ignore for the most part. give me another two weeks and it'll be "bullet in the brain" levels, but i'll worry about that later. meanwhile, i still have a job to do, and cash to manage, and stuff to distribute. i now have solid homes for the shit i want to keep, and paying customers for the shit i don't. i've cemented my guarantee'd return to the job i've rather enjoyed for the last half a year. i've even managed to really find out who my friends are, and adequately wash my hands of the wastrels and hangers on i really have no time for anymore. of course, it's after all this has been accomplished that i met someone who seems to have emerged whole and fully formed from the pages of "Mr Raven Meets His Perfect Girl At The Worst Possible Time: A Cautionary Tale".
dear gods... this is the point where i curl up into a ball and rock backwards and forwards muttering "thisisn'thappeningthisisn'thappeningthisisn'thappening" over and over again. forget the cliche'd "where have you been all my life?", how about "where have you been this last year?" still, i choose to believe that timing is everything, and it's important for me to remember that the best things in my life have happened because i let go and rode the flow. trying to fight it has tended to get me dashed against jagged rocks, whereas letting the river take me over the waterfall tends to put me in entertaining situations. it helps that, the nearer i get to 30 (erm... i ask you: where the fuck did that come from?) the more i realise that Right The Fuck Now isn't actually as important as i used to think when i was approaching 20.
you know what they say about love being like a butterfly? sure - let it go, but any geek will tell you how cheap and easy it is to GPS tag things these days so unless that butterfly heads to the backwaters of China a resourceful geek can find it again, oh yes.
psycho-stalker instincts aside though, i've been enjoying having someone around who reminds me what it feels like to have energy and optimism and to live in the moment again. this year's been too much long-term plans and strategies, constantly focusing on events weeks and months in advance, so it's been great to exercise my right-here-and-now tactics. i'd forgotten how alive i felt back in the day when long-term meant working out what you were going to do on the weekend, or during semester-break. for nothing to matter past the coming weekend, or next Tuesday.
i'm not going to go into the rest because... well, i'm not in the mood to commit it to words right now. i'll leave it to say that she's been making me insanely happy (so much so that Shadow's been commenting on it whenever he sees me) and that the only thing keeping me from despairing at the thought of leaving is the though of coming back again.
at the day's end, the trajectory i'm on is climbing to a very definite apex and i know that i'll have a much better perspective on things when i can look down on it all and map it all out correctly. when all that i have is reduced to a couple of bags and wallet thick enough to bludgeon a fat man to death with. when, in exactly 30 days from right now, i'm sitting on an aeroplane over the Indian Ocean and Lou and i are rapidly getting drunker and drunker the further away we get from this place and these people. leaving all this is a delicious insanity - departing the party while everyone's still having a great time and throwing up on the back steps is still in someone's future rather than their messy, embarrassing past... and if the house is boarded up and the party's moved on when i get back then... well... fuck the lot of them. these are the risks we take that make life interesting.
today marks one month to the day - 30 days - that i have left in this country. it's all getting... a little insane. there's not so much a surplus of activity, just an increased buzz in the back of my head which i've managed to ignore for the most part. give me another two weeks and it'll be "bullet in the brain" levels, but i'll worry about that later. meanwhile, i still have a job to do, and cash to manage, and stuff to distribute. i now have solid homes for the shit i want to keep, and paying customers for the shit i don't. i've cemented my guarantee'd return to the job i've rather enjoyed for the last half a year. i've even managed to really find out who my friends are, and adequately wash my hands of the wastrels and hangers on i really have no time for anymore. of course, it's after all this has been accomplished that i met someone who seems to have emerged whole and fully formed from the pages of "Mr Raven Meets His Perfect Girl At The Worst Possible Time: A Cautionary Tale".
dear gods... this is the point where i curl up into a ball and rock backwards and forwards muttering "thisisn'thappeningthisisn'thappeningthisisn'thappening" over and over again. forget the cliche'd "where have you been all my life?", how about "where have you been this last year?" still, i choose to believe that timing is everything, and it's important for me to remember that the best things in my life have happened because i let go and rode the flow. trying to fight it has tended to get me dashed against jagged rocks, whereas letting the river take me over the waterfall tends to put me in entertaining situations. it helps that, the nearer i get to 30 (erm... i ask you: where the fuck did that come from?) the more i realise that Right The Fuck Now isn't actually as important as i used to think when i was approaching 20.
you know what they say about love being like a butterfly? sure - let it go, but any geek will tell you how cheap and easy it is to GPS tag things these days so unless that butterfly heads to the backwaters of China a resourceful geek can find it again, oh yes.
psycho-stalker instincts aside though, i've been enjoying having someone around who reminds me what it feels like to have energy and optimism and to live in the moment again. this year's been too much long-term plans and strategies, constantly focusing on events weeks and months in advance, so it's been great to exercise my right-here-and-now tactics. i'd forgotten how alive i felt back in the day when long-term meant working out what you were going to do on the weekend, or during semester-break. for nothing to matter past the coming weekend, or next Tuesday.
i'm not going to go into the rest because... well, i'm not in the mood to commit it to words right now. i'll leave it to say that she's been making me insanely happy (so much so that Shadow's been commenting on it whenever he sees me) and that the only thing keeping me from despairing at the thought of leaving is the though of coming back again.
at the day's end, the trajectory i'm on is climbing to a very definite apex and i know that i'll have a much better perspective on things when i can look down on it all and map it all out correctly. when all that i have is reduced to a couple of bags and wallet thick enough to bludgeon a fat man to death with. when, in exactly 30 days from right now, i'm sitting on an aeroplane over the Indian Ocean and Lou and i are rapidly getting drunker and drunker the further away we get from this place and these people. leaving all this is a delicious insanity - departing the party while everyone's still having a great time and throwing up on the back steps is still in someone's future rather than their messy, embarrassing past... and if the house is boarded up and the party's moved on when i get back then... well... fuck the lot of them. these are the risks we take that make life interesting.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
unexpected use for a shopping centre...
this evening's mission was to go out into the world and find some peace in a chaotic plavce, which is why this is a delayed telecast. lacking the desire to pay for two sets of broadband, i'm not exactly mobile-data enabled. still, the local shopping centre is warm and has a surfeit of available beverage.
it's also a great test of how versatile the Eee is out in the world. i've been carrying it around while i wander the shops for the last hour and i can't say i noticed it overly much.
unfortunately, even with repetitive noise in my ears i'm finding it hard to turn off the situational awareness. if i can type without looking then why not look around at the people wandering back and forth on the other side of my little table? oh well. if i can't focus on that then i guess i'll talk about other things.
this has been a busy week in many ways. not in as much as running around and doing stuff, more in the things that just Happened. i've spent most of my evenings at home, but somehow they didn't seem slow and dull. maybe it's how busy i've been at work - filling in my less frenetic moments with extra-curricular activities until i got to the point today where i just had to get out of there to get some peace. it used to be that i went to work and put my home life away for a while. now, through the joys of task atomisation and multi-threading i'm finding the holes in my activities and filling them with little parts of other activities. an email gets written sentence by sentence over the course of 15 minutes while i wait for scripts to run. i speak with someone on the phone while my coffee cools, or while i wait for my other line to ring, and most of my brain's spare runtime has been taken up by a girl.
another girl - the banes of my existence, the faces of my insanity, the one species that can completely and utterly throw me off my spin. with a mind that i've toiled long and hard to make bulletproof they're my achilles heel. i hate them, and i love them all the same.
another girl - right before i leave the motherfucking country. right when i had everything worked out and sorted.i love my life so much that one day i'm going to have to engrave the phrase down the barrel of a gun and fucking felate it. no, scratch that. it sounds too bitter, and i'm in too good a mood to be bitter about anything much at the moment.
once upon a time, Shaalwyd told me in a moment of depression that "you have a history of meeting beautiful, brilliant women who light up your life for as long as they stay in it," which was exactly what i needed to hear at the time. years later it's always stuck with me and i try to remember that when i'm feeling down and time and again it's come true.
you gotta love Shaalwyd. which reminds me that i really need to call her and say hello.
and with that, i think i'm going to have to pack up my toy and stop attracting stares. things to be, places to do... wait... no, i was right the first time. i'm sure i'll get a chance to upload this at some point. until then you can rest assured that between writing this and posting it i'll have been having fun, even if that fun is enjoyed at license-losing speeds. joy, in whatever form it takes, is something i'm still learning to accept but as with all things it's one step at a time that will lead me to understanding.
it's also a great test of how versatile the Eee is out in the world. i've been carrying it around while i wander the shops for the last hour and i can't say i noticed it overly much.
unfortunately, even with repetitive noise in my ears i'm finding it hard to turn off the situational awareness. if i can type without looking then why not look around at the people wandering back and forth on the other side of my little table? oh well. if i can't focus on that then i guess i'll talk about other things.
this has been a busy week in many ways. not in as much as running around and doing stuff, more in the things that just Happened. i've spent most of my evenings at home, but somehow they didn't seem slow and dull. maybe it's how busy i've been at work - filling in my less frenetic moments with extra-curricular activities until i got to the point today where i just had to get out of there to get some peace. it used to be that i went to work and put my home life away for a while. now, through the joys of task atomisation and multi-threading i'm finding the holes in my activities and filling them with little parts of other activities. an email gets written sentence by sentence over the course of 15 minutes while i wait for scripts to run. i speak with someone on the phone while my coffee cools, or while i wait for my other line to ring, and most of my brain's spare runtime has been taken up by a girl.
another girl - the banes of my existence, the faces of my insanity, the one species that can completely and utterly throw me off my spin. with a mind that i've toiled long and hard to make bulletproof they're my achilles heel. i hate them, and i love them all the same.
another girl - right before i leave the motherfucking country. right when i had everything worked out and sorted.
once upon a time, Shaalwyd told me in a moment of depression that "you have a history of meeting beautiful, brilliant women who light up your life for as long as they stay in it," which was exactly what i needed to hear at the time. years later it's always stuck with me and i try to remember that when i'm feeling down and time and again it's come true.
you gotta love Shaalwyd. which reminds me that i really need to call her and say hello.
and with that, i think i'm going to have to pack up my toy and stop attracting stares. things to be, places to do... wait... no, i was right the first time. i'm sure i'll get a chance to upload this at some point. until then you can rest assured that between writing this and posting it i'll have been having fun, even if that fun is enjoyed at license-losing speeds. joy, in whatever form it takes, is something i'm still learning to accept but as with all things it's one step at a time that will lead me to understanding.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
when what you were going to say has slipped your mind...
i had something planned and i knew from the start that i should have written it down there and then - in the bath or not - but now it's lost and i'll have to wait for the appropriate moment when my brain clicks back into the right gear.
i'm exhausted - four hours of sleep (thereabouts) preceded and followed by busy, active days has left me on the verge of extinction. still, it has been a GREAT couple of days, filled with adversity and achievement, productivity and pleasure, relaxation and relief. it's left me in not just a good, but a fantastic mood and i'm going to sleep soundly tonight for the knowledge that i couldn't have asked for it to have gone any better.
i'm exhausted - four hours of sleep (thereabouts) preceded and followed by busy, active days has left me on the verge of extinction. still, it has been a GREAT couple of days, filled with adversity and achievement, productivity and pleasure, relaxation and relief. it's left me in not just a good, but a fantastic mood and i'm going to sleep soundly tonight for the knowledge that i couldn't have asked for it to have gone any better.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
alpha...
... so it's been a productive day, all told. i woke up early... for some gods-unknown reason and was confronted by a broken laptop. diagnosis and coffee later, i headed off to get my first professional haircut in over 6 years. this failed, alas, because the local hairdresser was massively hungover. no matter - on my bike to head off to pick up a replacement BIOS battery for the Dell only to remember that the oil light had turned itself on yesterday afternoon and would need checking. oil checked (low) and topped up and an hour of hammering the streets between here and Fyshwick and i had a repaired Dell. my hair was fixed up thanks to Hair by Lou and i was sitting pretty.
it's been another big week of fixing things - i can now use my mobile phone to control the media player on my Eee and things at work are ticking over quite nicely, all told. it's nice to know that having a laptop refuse to start, or a bike with a blinking oil light, isn't anything to knock me out of my rhythm. it's good to feel like The Shits every once in a while - to do a bog-lap of the office waving the Three Fingers of Rock in the air screaming "i'm the motherfuckin' KING, biatches!"
tonight i head out for the watching of movies. it's almost a let-down: the one night in forever that Paul and Lou are going to be out of the house and i won't be able to run around the flat in my underwear with heavy metal cranked out of the Media Server. oh well, i guess i'll just have to survive. no idea what we're watching, how i think about it. i'm taking a bundle of DVD's and an external hard driver over a friend's place and i think we're just going to go to town until the wee-hours. should be good, i think. i managed to get through The Day The Earth Stood Still last night which was really quite good. i'm enjoying catching up on my seminal source-material... especially when it's been so brutally ripped off time and again in the (nearly) sixty years since.
otherwise, i just need to focus on not crashing my bike so that i can sell it in another month, and wait for those pedantic Brits to tell me whether i can go and work in their bloody country or not. oh, and Make Noise Be Loud Now! i have another half an hour of In Flames cranked loud that i intend on enjoying before i hammer off into the sunset.
it's been another big week of fixing things - i can now use my mobile phone to control the media player on my Eee and things at work are ticking over quite nicely, all told. it's nice to know that having a laptop refuse to start, or a bike with a blinking oil light, isn't anything to knock me out of my rhythm. it's good to feel like The Shits every once in a while - to do a bog-lap of the office waving the Three Fingers of Rock in the air screaming "i'm the motherfuckin' KING, biatches!"
tonight i head out for the watching of movies. it's almost a let-down: the one night in forever that Paul and Lou are going to be out of the house and i won't be able to run around the flat in my underwear with heavy metal cranked out of the Media Server. oh well, i guess i'll just have to survive. no idea what we're watching, how i think about it. i'm taking a bundle of DVD's and an external hard driver over a friend's place and i think we're just going to go to town until the wee-hours. should be good, i think. i managed to get through The Day The Earth Stood Still last night which was really quite good. i'm enjoying catching up on my seminal source-material... especially when it's been so brutally ripped off time and again in the (nearly) sixty years since.
otherwise, i just need to focus on not crashing my bike so that i can sell it in another month, and wait for those pedantic Brits to tell me whether i can go and work in their bloody country or not. oh, and Make Noise Be Loud Now! i have another half an hour of In Flames cranked loud that i intend on enjoying before i hammer off into the sunset.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
learning to live with it...
after whinging for some time about the lack of available retail therapy, the IT world has once again provided and so it is that i'm now sitting here with a ASUS EeePC 1000h on my lap while i sit in front of the TV. it's not that i have any care for the olympics, mind - it's just more sociable.
this little thing has sapped most of my spare time for the last week since i decided to take the plunge to use linux for this thing. different? check. technical challenge? check. frustrating... yeah, a little. still, i've got it working with the help of google and various forums and wikis and it's generally working pretty well for me.
other than that i've managed to find a lovely level of apathy for travel. things have been going... nicely, really. not that i'm wishing for it all to go to hell in a handbasket again, but if i didn't already have the tickets booked i don't know that i'd be going. that's silly talk, i know. perhaps i left it too late in the year and 6 months of prep was just too much. perhaps i should have stayed miserable. either way, i have something bordering on high-hopes for the coming months and one way or another i think i'll leave secure in the knowledge that when i get back there will be a life here to walk back into which is something i was never quite certian of in Perth.
it really has become a case of desperately trying to not think about how soon i'm leaving so that i can enjoy my days. when things were going poorly i couldn't wait to get out. now things are going well i don't want it to end.
oh well.
in the short term i have amusements planned for the rest of the week, and some rather pleasant company organised for the weekend. realistically that's all i think i can really hope for for the time being, and i'm quite sanguine for all that.
this little thing has sapped most of my spare time for the last week since i decided to take the plunge to use linux for this thing. different? check. technical challenge? check. frustrating... yeah, a little. still, i've got it working with the help of google and various forums and wikis and it's generally working pretty well for me.
other than that i've managed to find a lovely level of apathy for travel. things have been going... nicely, really. not that i'm wishing for it all to go to hell in a handbasket again, but if i didn't already have the tickets booked i don't know that i'd be going. that's silly talk, i know. perhaps i left it too late in the year and 6 months of prep was just too much. perhaps i should have stayed miserable. either way, i have something bordering on high-hopes for the coming months and one way or another i think i'll leave secure in the knowledge that when i get back there will be a life here to walk back into which is something i was never quite certian of in Perth.
it really has become a case of desperately trying to not think about how soon i'm leaving so that i can enjoy my days. when things were going poorly i couldn't wait to get out. now things are going well i don't want it to end.
oh well.
in the short term i have amusements planned for the rest of the week, and some rather pleasant company organised for the weekend. realistically that's all i think i can really hope for for the time being, and i'm quite sanguine for all that.
Friday, July 25, 2008
it's friday, but not enough so to count...
i've managed to get to a point where the information i have processing is so equally balanced in every concieveable direction that it's actually managed to find the perfect state of balance. frankly, it's all a bit fucked. still, in this perfect storm of confusion and misinformation at at least i'm getting a little peace.
i'm rather looking forward to tomrrow (yes, i know that it's officially friday already, but until i sleep and wakeup, or the sun rises it doesn't count as being tomrrow) night, if for no other reason than that i won't have to be at work the next day. meanwhile i'm going to see if i can achieve a decent night's sleep. i may have something interesting to say then...
i'm rather looking forward to tomrrow (yes, i know that it's officially friday already, but until i sleep and wakeup, or the sun rises it doesn't count as being tomrrow) night, if for no other reason than that i won't have to be at work the next day. meanwhile i'm going to see if i can achieve a decent night's sleep. i may have something interesting to say then...
Sunday, July 20, 2008
entropy vs economics...
the question which has increasingly consumed me in the last few weeks - more than climate change, more than speed camera locations on my way to work, more even than when my flatmates will finish having thumping, moaning late night sex and go to sleep, is thus:
"is it going to last?"
fuelled by paranoia and penny-pinching, it's come to haunt me. everywhere i turn it's staring me in the face. everything i look at makes me wonder. i check the front tyre on my (trusty, faithful, but frankly falling to pieces) bike - it's getting near the wear-indicators... is it going to last? my rear lights have blown and i found a second-hand one floating around the garage... is it going to last, or should i get some new bulbs? these pants are fading pretty bad... are they going to last? i'm half-way through this pack of bog-roll... is it going to last? WILL I HAVE TO BUY MORE FUCKING BOG ROLL BEFORE I LEAVE???
FUCK!
the goal here is to only spend what i have to to keep the machine ticking over until i leave, calculating failure rates and life expectancies so that i don't waste my time and cash on things i'll just have to leave behind - time my escape so i blast off just as my life in Canberra disappears beneath the waves. i mean, why turn the lights out on my way out the door if i can time it so that it blows as my footsteps fade from earshot on the path outside?
certainly, its made retail therapy interesting. i'm not unusual in that when i get a bit depressed i tend to go shopping, but when there's nothing i want, and even less that i can justify it becomes... irritating. i know it's consumerist. i understand that it's a misguided attempt to fill a spiritual void with materialism in an exercise in futility designed by the doyens of capitalism to reinforce a self-sustaining ecosystem where the proletariat willingly return the fruits of their labor to the bourgeois in return for meaningless idolisation of an unachievable self-satisfaction but... shiny!?!
unfortunately for the JB Hifi's of this world, i have no room for shiny. hell - i don't have room for most of what i've got cluttering up my bedroom at the moment. the cull has shifted gear again recently while i find secure homes for the crap that i'd rather like to see again (the valuable, the collectible, the sentimental), grateful homes for the crap i don't need but which might be useful to someone else and bin space for the rest. it's a liberation, but it's a chore all the same and like the visa application sitting on my desk at work it's something which has to get done.
at least i can rest assured that i've met my savings goal with 8 working weeks (and 2 weeks of holiday pay) remaining which gives me the luxury of spending a little here and there on luxuries, as well as raising the bar by 12.5% - a fairly painless goal if my forward planning is accurate.
and so does my paranoia reach new heights (or lows). something in the back of my brain has started panicking, desperately looking for tasks and aspects of my planning that i've missed or neglected. last night i decided that i needed to put together an "emergency pouch" so that someone nearby could inform next of kin in case something happened to me. contents: 1 x spare battery for my phone (charged), 1 x prepaid SIM card (loaded with as single number called EMERGENCY), identification (various), printed instructions (in english, french, german and cyrillic). shortly after planning that and spending 10 minutes looking at appropriate waterproof pouches on ebay i realised i was a fucking idiot and got myself another beer out of the fridge.
i've successfully convinced myself that due to a lack of preparedness i'm going to completely fail to find gainful employment, i'll hate the place, spend 3 months wandering continent being shunned and spat upon by the entire European Union before returning to Australia destitute with nought but the clothes on my back and my testicles in a jar. the funny thing is that i know that i'll wake up tomorrow, full of hope and optimism and the satisfaction of knowing that i'm prepared and on track for readiness. i never said that what went on in my head made any sense.
still, it's certainly keeping me occupied...
"is it going to last?"
fuelled by paranoia and penny-pinching, it's come to haunt me. everywhere i turn it's staring me in the face. everything i look at makes me wonder. i check the front tyre on my (trusty, faithful, but frankly falling to pieces) bike - it's getting near the wear-indicators... is it going to last? my rear lights have blown and i found a second-hand one floating around the garage... is it going to last, or should i get some new bulbs? these pants are fading pretty bad... are they going to last? i'm half-way through this pack of bog-roll... is it going to last? WILL I HAVE TO BUY MORE FUCKING BOG ROLL BEFORE I LEAVE???
FUCK!
the goal here is to only spend what i have to to keep the machine ticking over until i leave, calculating failure rates and life expectancies so that i don't waste my time and cash on things i'll just have to leave behind - time my escape so i blast off just as my life in Canberra disappears beneath the waves. i mean, why turn the lights out on my way out the door if i can time it so that it blows as my footsteps fade from earshot on the path outside?
certainly, its made retail therapy interesting. i'm not unusual in that when i get a bit depressed i tend to go shopping, but when there's nothing i want, and even less that i can justify it becomes... irritating. i know it's consumerist. i understand that it's a misguided attempt to fill a spiritual void with materialism in an exercise in futility designed by the doyens of capitalism to reinforce a self-sustaining ecosystem where the proletariat willingly return the fruits of their labor to the bourgeois in return for meaningless idolisation of an unachievable self-satisfaction but... shiny!?!
unfortunately for the JB Hifi's of this world, i have no room for shiny. hell - i don't have room for most of what i've got cluttering up my bedroom at the moment. the cull has shifted gear again recently while i find secure homes for the crap that i'd rather like to see again (the valuable, the collectible, the sentimental), grateful homes for the crap i don't need but which might be useful to someone else and bin space for the rest. it's a liberation, but it's a chore all the same and like the visa application sitting on my desk at work it's something which has to get done.
at least i can rest assured that i've met my savings goal with 8 working weeks (and 2 weeks of holiday pay) remaining which gives me the luxury of spending a little here and there on luxuries, as well as raising the bar by 12.5% - a fairly painless goal if my forward planning is accurate.
and so does my paranoia reach new heights (or lows). something in the back of my brain has started panicking, desperately looking for tasks and aspects of my planning that i've missed or neglected. last night i decided that i needed to put together an "emergency pouch" so that someone nearby could inform next of kin in case something happened to me. contents: 1 x spare battery for my phone (charged), 1 x prepaid SIM card (loaded with as single number called EMERGENCY), identification (various), printed instructions (in english, french, german and cyrillic). shortly after planning that and spending 10 minutes looking at appropriate waterproof pouches on ebay i realised i was a fucking idiot and got myself another beer out of the fridge.
i've successfully convinced myself that due to a lack of preparedness i'm going to completely fail to find gainful employment, i'll hate the place, spend 3 months wandering continent being shunned and spat upon by the entire European Union before returning to Australia destitute with nought but the clothes on my back and my testicles in a jar. the funny thing is that i know that i'll wake up tomorrow, full of hope and optimism and the satisfaction of knowing that i'm prepared and on track for readiness. i never said that what went on in my head made any sense.
still, it's certainly keeping me occupied...
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
... and now in a continuation of my thread of short posts with no real content i present a continuation of the "sawdust bread" of blogging...
unfortunately, an overload of reading material has superseded my blogging time, despite my actually having things bouncing around my head which i should probably say. instead, a dot-point synopsys follows:
- Sxy Greg's in town. this has taken much of my attention.
- working.
- tired.
- mildly depressed.
- learning new and interesting skills.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
if there is any justice in this world, and i'm sure that there isn't, then this title will, in fact, actually be longer than the post below...
as the nifty hip-flask i was recently gifted says so succinctly: meh...
lethargy (caused primarily by poor sleep, average eating and a phase of depression which is quietly chipping at the hardened lump of tar and bile that is my soul) dictates that i have very little of worth to say at present, so i'll leave the shortest piece of cynicism that i think best sums up the experience that is my life at present:
well, fuck.
that is all.
lethargy (caused primarily by poor sleep, average eating and a phase of depression which is quietly chipping at the hardened lump of tar and bile that is my soul) dictates that i have very little of worth to say at present, so i'll leave the shortest piece of cynicism that i think best sums up the experience that is my life at present:
well, fuck.
that is all.
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