everywhere i go in this town i find myself on the goddamn Monopoly board. we'd been here five minutes and we found ourselves on The Strand, then Trafalgar Square. today i wound up on Pall Mall by accident, the walked the length of Piccadilly. i've been to Oxford St, Fleet St and Coventry St. i'm spending my days at the moment applying for jobs around the corner for Leicester Square. Whitehall, Park Lane, i've even wound up on Old Kent Road for no particular reason.
it keeps going, too. i've been out the front of St Paul's where the old lady's feeding the birds in Mary Poppins. sooner or later i'm going to wind up at Abbey Rd because... well, why the hell not?
everywhere we've been going we keep seeing these round blue signs saying that some Prime Minister or whomever lived here from xxxx to xxyy. you'll be walking through Hyde Park (of which i know at least 3 back home, none of them cast a shadow on the original) and there'll be a block of marble inscribed with a message saying that this thing happened in this place. walking past some looted egyptian relics we noticed a little sign saying that the scars on the sphynx were from schrapnel from a bomb dropped on the road nearby during the Blitz.
this town is so incredibly steeped in history and if you just walk from some random place A to other location B you'll likely trip over them. this place has a habit of smacking you in the eyes before you even realised you were somewhere Interesting and there is so very much here that's Interesting...
Friday, October 17, 2008
Thursday, October 16, 2008
WE FOUND A ROOM!!!
after all of 2 days of looking (it was a long and arduous journey), Lou and i have managed to secure ourselves long-term lodgings. at 130Pound/week, it's actually reasonably cheap, especially for the area, and it's about 50 metres from the front of the Oval tube station. this puts us right on the Northern line, which intersects at various points with enough lines and buses to get us... well, pretty much wherever we need to go for work. i'm pretty excited by it all - guaranteed stability, a place of our own, all that sort of thing.
about that - it's actually a room with 2 single beds in it, shared with a chinese couple and one other, but then that's pretty much what this place is like. it's sharehouses for anyone who doesn't have more money than god, or doesn't mind spending most of their income on their accomodation. i have no time for this, and no intention of signing a lease or whatever so renting a room is more than fine with me.
whatever the case, in another couple of weeks (the room won't be empty until the 30th, although we may be able to be in a couple of days earlier) we'll be moving into this little place and of course photos will be forthcoming. there's a likelihood that there'll be a backerpackers stint between now and then, but at least we know that we're secure after that and there are other options in play that i'll discuss if they come about.
in other news, i've spent the last 2 days reworking my CV for the UK market and then comprehensively whoring it out to all and sundry. i've had a couple of decent bites out of it so far - it's been referred to the client twice today (which means i'm in the top 3-6), and i'm in meeting a pimp tomorrow morning to discuss "opportunities in the market". all in all, apart from being tired and passing out at 11:00 each night (yes, scary i know) it's been a good, productive day. oh, and ignoring the whole "stuck in the tube" thing - i'm going to drink away the memory of that later at the pub.
yay! a visit to a real english pub with real english people... ok, an english girl and a scot but who's counting...
about that - it's actually a room with 2 single beds in it, shared with a chinese couple and one other, but then that's pretty much what this place is like. it's sharehouses for anyone who doesn't have more money than god, or doesn't mind spending most of their income on their accomodation. i have no time for this, and no intention of signing a lease or whatever so renting a room is more than fine with me.
whatever the case, in another couple of weeks (the room won't be empty until the 30th, although we may be able to be in a couple of days earlier) we'll be moving into this little place and of course photos will be forthcoming. there's a likelihood that there'll be a backerpackers stint between now and then, but at least we know that we're secure after that and there are other options in play that i'll discuss if they come about.
in other news, i've spent the last 2 days reworking my CV for the UK market and then comprehensively whoring it out to all and sundry. i've had a couple of decent bites out of it so far - it's been referred to the client twice today (which means i'm in the top 3-6), and i'm in meeting a pimp tomorrow morning to discuss "opportunities in the market". all in all, apart from being tired and passing out at 11:00 each night (yes, scary i know) it's been a good, productive day. oh, and ignoring the whole "stuck in the tube" thing - i'm going to drink away the memory of that later at the pub.
yay! a visit to a real english pub with real english people... ok, an english girl and a scot but who's counting...
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
panic attack...
the tube station was full of people when i got there - a hundred, two? the air was still, and it was the next best thing to silent. i've not seen this before - there's always people talking, sounds of trains, something... but now there's nothing. a voice comes over the PA advising of a broken-down train down the line and resulting delays.
the next train is announced by a building breeze down the platform - air rushing ahead of the train coming down the tunnel. at the next station the line branches east-west, and this one's for the west line via London Bridge and Bank, so i wait. it's chockers - people squeezed against the doors. some get off, others get on. the next train arrives and it's the same, but what the hell? i only have 12 minutes to ride so i squeeze on with the rest of the cattle and get crushed in from behind as one or two more people try to crush on.
it's hot and stuffy in here. i'm in contact with at least 5 people that i can count and there's barely room to breathe while i stand there listening to Cog on my mp3 player. next thing i know the train's slowing... slowing... stopped in the dark between the stations. another train's pulled out ahead from a siding and there'll be a short wait. i'm standing, crammed like spam in a tin between stations on a train while i watch the people around me start to sweat and the doors are closed and there's nowhere to go and there's no way out and i can't get out i can't get out i can't i can't get fucking out i can't out out can't FUCK....
a couple of minutes that stretch to days and the train started moving. more people get out at Kennington than get on and there's some room. more get out at Waterloo and after a year's passed we're at Leicester Square. i walk around the wet streets for a couple of minutes to get my nerves back in order. i don't want to think about what i'd have done if there'd been a problem and i'd been stuck there much longer than that. i'm going to be wary of packed trains for the next little while, i think...
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
harden up, princess...
walking walking walking. you know that the bus costs 90p, which is the equivalent of something like $2.50? the Underground (tube in the local vernacular) is 2Pound. as a result, there's been a lot of walking. when you walk into the Money Changer and $2700 in hundreds turns into 945 Pounds (and you had to haggle to get it up from 870) you do start to freak the fuck out.
yesterday was entertaining. we caught the bus up to London Bridge, at which point we realised we were near to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre so we went and found it. we were actually headed for the Tower of London, but what the hell. just near to The Globe was the Millenium Bridge (erm... yeah. about that...) which crosses over right up to St Paul's . being a sunday, it wasn't open for tourists, but we found the steps where the children in Mary Poppins want to feed the birds. onwards now, we managed to find the Tower without too much trouble and did a bog-lap around the outside rather than pay the P18 to get in. we had a quick lunch nearby, and this was the point at which i made Lou walk. we walked along the Thames all along the north bank to Embankment Station (google it), then across, past the London Eye and then further to Vauxhall Cross then back past the Oval to where we're staying (you can also google Crewdson Rd, Lambeth if you're bored.
oh, the whining.... of which there was actually very little. i've been making her walk quite a lot since we got here. my philosophy is that unless we're in a hurry to get from here to the next point then we might as well save a quid and leg it. that, and we've seen some rather entertaining stuff we'd not have seen otherwise if we'd been in the tube, like the eqyptian obelish and sphinx's which were pillaged by some englishman and set along the Thames. regardless, i've taken to telling Lou to "harden up, princess" whenever she starts to speak of hardship, or you know, sore feet. it's amused us both a little, and the laugh usually keeps us going for another kilometre.
in other news, it's now day 5, and it's starting to feel a little less like a holiday. today has been spent either applying for jobs, speaking to agencies or looking at places to stay. we've had one inspection so far (which was on an estate and... well, we'll see how desperate we get before we live on an estate, let's put it that way) and another two to come in an hour or so. with any luck one or the other of these ones (both of which are walking-distance from here... mua ha ha ha!) will be decent and we can consider ourselves sorted. a chunk of the float i exchanged today has been reserved for deposit and rent in advcance, etc. it's not going to last particularly long, but that's what it was for so i'll not complain too much.
i just need to hold onto my accent and i'm sure we'll all be find. a couple of times i've found myself starting to mimic the locals and this has been... unacceptable. i don't know, maybe it'd be nice to be able to put on a genuine english accent when i get back. while i'm here, on the other hand, i'm happy with mine thankyou very much. the other night, out on the town, i uttered "bloody oath" at... something. the enormous screens in Piccadilly Circus or something and Alex remarked that she'd expected a "strewth" out of me which is the ONLY reason why, a couple of hours later, i gave her one at the length of the line outside a club called "TigerTiger". i'll not use it again, i swear... unless the situation calls for it, i suppose.
gotta go now - photos to label, rooms to see. we're biting the bullet and looking at rooms, rather than flats. we COULD get a nice place in the area for 195Pound/week, but... well sod it. not when we can pay 120 and get all bills and internet etc included in the cost. power, i've been told, is EXPENSIVE here. the folks in the place we're staying turn everything off at the wall to save juice so i'm going to assume that it's superfucking expensive.
much to see, much to do... not that it seems like i'll be getting to see or do much of it in the next couple of days with the the work involved in getting a job in this town. still, all part of the adventure...
yesterday was entertaining. we caught the bus up to London Bridge, at which point we realised we were near to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre so we went and found it. we were actually headed for the Tower of London, but what the hell. just near to The Globe was the Millenium Bridge (erm... yeah. about that...) which crosses over right up to St Paul's . being a sunday, it wasn't open for tourists, but we found the steps where the children in Mary Poppins want to feed the birds. onwards now, we managed to find the Tower without too much trouble and did a bog-lap around the outside rather than pay the P18 to get in. we had a quick lunch nearby, and this was the point at which i made Lou walk. we walked along the Thames all along the north bank to Embankment Station (google it), then across, past the London Eye and then further to Vauxhall Cross then back past the Oval to where we're staying (you can also google Crewdson Rd, Lambeth if you're bored.
oh, the whining.... of which there was actually very little. i've been making her walk quite a lot since we got here. my philosophy is that unless we're in a hurry to get from here to the next point then we might as well save a quid and leg it. that, and we've seen some rather entertaining stuff we'd not have seen otherwise if we'd been in the tube, like the eqyptian obelish and sphinx's which were pillaged by some englishman and set along the Thames. regardless, i've taken to telling Lou to "harden up, princess" whenever she starts to speak of hardship, or you know, sore feet. it's amused us both a little, and the laugh usually keeps us going for another kilometre.
in other news, it's now day 5, and it's starting to feel a little less like a holiday. today has been spent either applying for jobs, speaking to agencies or looking at places to stay. we've had one inspection so far (which was on an estate and... well, we'll see how desperate we get before we live on an estate, let's put it that way) and another two to come in an hour or so. with any luck one or the other of these ones (both of which are walking-distance from here... mua ha ha ha!) will be decent and we can consider ourselves sorted. a chunk of the float i exchanged today has been reserved for deposit and rent in advcance, etc. it's not going to last particularly long, but that's what it was for so i'll not complain too much.
i just need to hold onto my accent and i'm sure we'll all be find. a couple of times i've found myself starting to mimic the locals and this has been... unacceptable. i don't know, maybe it'd be nice to be able to put on a genuine english accent when i get back. while i'm here, on the other hand, i'm happy with mine thankyou very much. the other night, out on the town, i uttered "bloody oath" at... something. the enormous screens in Piccadilly Circus or something and Alex remarked that she'd expected a "strewth" out of me which is the ONLY reason why, a couple of hours later, i gave her one at the length of the line outside a club called "TigerTiger". i'll not use it again, i swear... unless the situation calls for it, i suppose.
gotta go now - photos to label, rooms to see. we're biting the bullet and looking at rooms, rather than flats. we COULD get a nice place in the area for 195Pound/week, but... well sod it. not when we can pay 120 and get all bills and internet etc included in the cost. power, i've been told, is EXPENSIVE here. the folks in the place we're staying turn everything off at the wall to save juice so i'm going to assume that it's superfucking expensive.
much to see, much to do... not that it seems like i'll be getting to see or do much of it in the next couple of days with the the work involved in getting a job in this town. still, all part of the adventure...
Saturday, October 11, 2008
never judge a book after 30 hours without sleep...
i was sitting on the bus, riding past Waterloo station and Alex was giving us instructions and directions and pointing out the things we went past. Lou and i were trying to act cool, but i'm glad i had my shades on because i was quietly freaking the fuck out. this i was not handling well at all.
i think it was at about this point that we were both thinking "why did i get off that fucking plane? hell - why did i get ON that fucking plant?? i mean... look at this place!"
London is daunting when you first get here, especially for a young Raven who's never lived anywhere bigger than Perth. i mean, i've been to Melbourne and Sydney, but i've been lucky enough to take each in smaller chunks. land here and take one look at the Tube Map when you haven't had enough coffee and it's like someone threw spaghetti at the page and wrote station-names all over it. the Tube Map is a goddamn Jackson Pollock. a reasonably-sized London map has both surface-rail and Tube lines all over it. for someone who's trying to work out where to meet an old friend this can become... confusing. i was trying to keep track of everything she was saying, and the places i was, and what route the bus was taking, and my brain was icing over and turning into a christmas cake.
the biggest mistake Alex made, i think, was that in being so incredibly helpful she gave us both a case of gobsmack overload. this place is a pill which needs to be attacked in small chunks. try to swallow it all at once and you'll choke.
the next day and we're both feeling a whole lot better about the world. certainly, i know that when we hit the streets Lou and i had a chat where we quietly agreed that failure was certainly an option. right now i'm handling things ok. getting back into job-hunting this morning gave me a degree of normalcy which helped to put my feet back on the ground and make it feel that i wasn't going to burn through my cash in an instant and find myself destitute. we're starting to put together plans for the coming days and this, also, is keeping me calm. i've been finding it hard to relax, but i'm getting there.
i have to say, though, that people here are actually pretty polite. i must have been jostled five or six times in Sydney when Cymun and Yun took me out. just people who refused to move aside for you. here it's happened just once, and i think that guy just zigged when he should have zagged. in Sydney i refuse to dodge people because they seem to expect me to give way. here i don't mind at all because everyone's giving way to everyone else. the vibe is very, very cool. i'm starting to dig it here quite a lot. that doesn't mean that success is assured - Lou's currently looking up information on paid clinical trials as something we can do to make some extra cash - still, we'll know more on that front after next week's job-hunting. i have an address i can put down on forms, regular access to email and a mobile phone that doesn't cost me an arm and a leg to use, which means that i have everything i need to find a job in this town. things are looking up...
i think it was at about this point that we were both thinking "why did i get off that fucking plane? hell - why did i get ON that fucking plant?? i mean... look at this place!"
London is daunting when you first get here, especially for a young Raven who's never lived anywhere bigger than Perth. i mean, i've been to Melbourne and Sydney, but i've been lucky enough to take each in smaller chunks. land here and take one look at the Tube Map when you haven't had enough coffee and it's like someone threw spaghetti at the page and wrote station-names all over it. the Tube Map is a goddamn Jackson Pollock. a reasonably-sized London map has both surface-rail and Tube lines all over it. for someone who's trying to work out where to meet an old friend this can become... confusing. i was trying to keep track of everything she was saying, and the places i was, and what route the bus was taking, and my brain was icing over and turning into a christmas cake.
the biggest mistake Alex made, i think, was that in being so incredibly helpful she gave us both a case of gobsmack overload. this place is a pill which needs to be attacked in small chunks. try to swallow it all at once and you'll choke.
the next day and we're both feeling a whole lot better about the world. certainly, i know that when we hit the streets Lou and i had a chat where we quietly agreed that failure was certainly an option. right now i'm handling things ok. getting back into job-hunting this morning gave me a degree of normalcy which helped to put my feet back on the ground and make it feel that i wasn't going to burn through my cash in an instant and find myself destitute. we're starting to put together plans for the coming days and this, also, is keeping me calm. i've been finding it hard to relax, but i'm getting there.
i have to say, though, that people here are actually pretty polite. i must have been jostled five or six times in Sydney when Cymun and Yun took me out. just people who refused to move aside for you. here it's happened just once, and i think that guy just zigged when he should have zagged. in Sydney i refuse to dodge people because they seem to expect me to give way. here i don't mind at all because everyone's giving way to everyone else. the vibe is very, very cool. i'm starting to dig it here quite a lot. that doesn't mean that success is assured - Lou's currently looking up information on paid clinical trials as something we can do to make some extra cash - still, we'll know more on that front after next week's job-hunting. i have an address i can put down on forms, regular access to email and a mobile phone that doesn't cost me an arm and a leg to use, which means that i have everything i need to find a job in this town. things are looking up...
10554 miles from home...
24 hours of travel sounds like a long time, and it is... except that it didn't really feel all that long at all. i'd like to say that i slept though most of it which is why i didn't notice, but apart from a 3ish hour period before we hit Abu Dhabi i didn't. the inflight movies, my book, and a miserable lebanese man who cried on my shoulder for 15 minutes in the night kept things from getting too dull.
i'd just spent 2 days hanging around Sydney proving to be poor company for Cymun & Yun. the malaise which struck me back in Canberra lingered until my last night in town and only slowly abated while they poured tea and good food into me. my weekend of good food and activity turned into small potions which i picked at and me being croaky and grumpy. the last night had me with Lou and Paul, and Lou's folks. a pleasant dinner out at a little set-course French place in Crow's nest and the next day we were off, trapped in an aluminium can cruising at 39000 feet.
i can say this much from Etihad - they got us here safe, and on time. they might haven't have had the best staff (although i'll not complain much. our main mostie (male hostie) was alright. still, 10 hours into the flight i wasn't going into the toilets without my shoes on is all i'm saying. after 14:40 in the air, we had barely time to scratch ourselves at Abu Dhabi airport (which doesn't look like it's been updated since the 60's) before we were back in the air, then it was another 7:20 across to Heathrow, watching the sun rise over europe with a nice view over the channel before we circled london once or twice and landed on time(!!).
through immigration and customs without any trouble from the sleepy staff and out the door to see a sign with our names on it. Lou's cousin Alex had come to meet us and help get our sleep-deprived arses across London while we quietly freaked the fuck out. after a guided tour of the Tube and busses, we found ourselves in the top flat in a terrace just north of Brixton drinking tea and discussing sleeping arrangements. it's tiny - the living room's about the size of my bedroom back at the flat in Canberra, but it's all bright and airy, the kitchen's nice and the bedrooms are actually quite sizeable and above-all, you can walk into Westminster and Trafalgar Square from here. i know, because today we did it by accident (yeah, yeah, "whoops! i slipped and wound up out the back-end of Buckingham Palace!" - shut up).
since then we've been exploring. the decision was made that we'd go out and a) walk and b) get some sunshine (yes, the sun shines in London. SHUT UP!) so that we could get our circadian rhythms alighed with local, so we headed down to Brixton to pick up local SIM cards, towels (we'd left ours back in Canberra to save weight) and other odds and ends needed to support life before walking back up to the local tube station (Oval). and heading to Tottenham Court Rd to meet up with Moonbug.
i'm finding that somehow i just keep finding places i've been hearing about for forever. for example, we got to Soho an hour and a half early, so we went and found a coffee. we sit down outside a cafe and across the road is Forbidden Planet - a comic store that Shadow went on about at great length. totally random. we're walking through Soho and suddenly Lisa says "oh, and this is Covent Garden!" today we found The Strand (completely randomly - it happened to be the next left). we walk along for a while because it shadowed the river before Lou realised that we'd managed to find Trafalgar Square. next thing we know and there's Westminster Abbey, Dowling St (looks like a demiliterized-zone) and Big Ben.
with TV series and movies ad nauseum based in this place, i guess you're going to see some shit you've heard about, but still...
that's really it so far - not bad for being here something like 35 hours so far. today wound up being a great long walk simply because we didn't have anything else planned. still, we're in the sort of location where you can pull that off. i've started applying for any job that has the word "Server" in the title, but doesn't stipulate "MSCE is essential". we have accomodation here for the next week or so, then there's a likelihood that we'll be heading up to Birmingham for a couple of days. with any luck i'll hear some more from these jobs i've been applying for which will make it much easlier to put some thought into slightly more permanent accomodation.
i'd just spent 2 days hanging around Sydney proving to be poor company for Cymun & Yun. the malaise which struck me back in Canberra lingered until my last night in town and only slowly abated while they poured tea and good food into me. my weekend of good food and activity turned into small potions which i picked at and me being croaky and grumpy. the last night had me with Lou and Paul, and Lou's folks. a pleasant dinner out at a little set-course French place in Crow's nest and the next day we were off, trapped in an aluminium can cruising at 39000 feet.
i can say this much from Etihad - they got us here safe, and on time. they might haven't have had the best staff (although i'll not complain much. our main mostie (male hostie) was alright. still, 10 hours into the flight i wasn't going into the toilets without my shoes on is all i'm saying. after 14:40 in the air, we had barely time to scratch ourselves at Abu Dhabi airport (which doesn't look like it's been updated since the 60's) before we were back in the air, then it was another 7:20 across to Heathrow, watching the sun rise over europe with a nice view over the channel before we circled london once or twice and landed on time(!!).
through immigration and customs without any trouble from the sleepy staff and out the door to see a sign with our names on it. Lou's cousin Alex had come to meet us and help get our sleep-deprived arses across London while we quietly freaked the fuck out. after a guided tour of the Tube and busses, we found ourselves in the top flat in a terrace just north of Brixton drinking tea and discussing sleeping arrangements. it's tiny - the living room's about the size of my bedroom back at the flat in Canberra, but it's all bright and airy, the kitchen's nice and the bedrooms are actually quite sizeable and above-all, you can walk into Westminster and Trafalgar Square from here. i know, because today we did it by accident (yeah, yeah, "whoops! i slipped and wound up out the back-end of Buckingham Palace!" - shut up).
since then we've been exploring. the decision was made that we'd go out and a) walk and b) get some sunshine (yes, the sun shines in London. SHUT UP!) so that we could get our circadian rhythms alighed with local, so we headed down to Brixton to pick up local SIM cards, towels (we'd left ours back in Canberra to save weight) and other odds and ends needed to support life before walking back up to the local tube station (Oval). and heading to Tottenham Court Rd to meet up with Moonbug.
i'm finding that somehow i just keep finding places i've been hearing about for forever. for example, we got to Soho an hour and a half early, so we went and found a coffee. we sit down outside a cafe and across the road is Forbidden Planet - a comic store that Shadow went on about at great length. totally random. we're walking through Soho and suddenly Lisa says "oh, and this is Covent Garden!" today we found The Strand (completely randomly - it happened to be the next left). we walk along for a while because it shadowed the river before Lou realised that we'd managed to find Trafalgar Square. next thing we know and there's Westminster Abbey, Dowling St (looks like a demiliterized-zone) and Big Ben.
with TV series and movies ad nauseum based in this place, i guess you're going to see some shit you've heard about, but still...
that's really it so far - not bad for being here something like 35 hours so far. today wound up being a great long walk simply because we didn't have anything else planned. still, we're in the sort of location where you can pull that off. i've started applying for any job that has the word "Server" in the title, but doesn't stipulate "MSCE is essential". we have accomodation here for the next week or so, then there's a likelihood that we'll be heading up to Birmingham for a couple of days. with any luck i'll hear some more from these jobs i've been applying for which will make it much easlier to put some thought into slightly more permanent accomodation.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
are we there yet?
it's nearly midnight... somewhere, anyway.... Sydney, i think. that means Canberra and Melbourne. Tokyo? Dili? oh, and Hobart. we always forget Hobart. me, i have no fucking clue what the fucking time is wherever it is i'm over. it's dark outside and the exterior cameras on the plane (feed from which is streamed through the inflight entertainment system - very cool at takeoff) are giving me static now. either way, while it's a bit hard to say where i am, what with the inflight GPS seeming to be unplugged, midnight sydney time means we've been in the air for a little less than 7 hours, and so a touch less than half-way through our 14 hour, 40 minute flight. wheeee!
so why the hell am i sitting here bashing drivel into my little Eee and not trying to get some absurdly undervalued sleep? did someone suggest that i might have been having sleeping problems since leaving a pretty little mouse at her doorstep in the cold light of morning? not that i think it's related - i'm sure it's the illness, headaches, coughing, that sort of thing.
brief interlude:
when you fly you can wind up meeting some interesting people. take the guy sobbing across the aisle from me. before he spent 10 minutes irrigating my shoulder he was saying that he's off to Tripoli... so see his mother who's ill. diabetes, maybe some other complications. his breath smells of the booze he's been scrounging up in the first-class cabin (he's been in and out of there all flight). why he told me this i have the feeling i'll never know, but he seemed to really want to tell someone... anyone. now he's sitting across sobbing and the hostie-lads have come by to make sure that he's not causing me any trouble. poor lad. he's going to feel it when he gets to wherever he's going and his hangover shows up on its connecting flight.
:interlude end
either way, what i was talking about before i was interruped was that since i've been sleeping so poorly i can't be bothered spending the next two or three hours trying to sleep in this shitty fucking cattle-class seat and instead get on with completely wearing myself out with the hope that perhaps i'll sleep in the second leg.
since last i had the time to scratch myself, let alone write more than twenty words in a single space, i've been all over the place. back to the flat from the airport on the Shadow & Bosslady Taxi Service, and more or less straight to bed. my visa finally arrived on tuesday, which was a relief, and the event was celebrated by packing. by wednesday about a third of my crap had been packed and deployed. by thursday i was sick as a fucking dog, and remained that way until yesterday. on friday i couldn't put off the duty any further and so the day was spent packing the rest, and the evening moving. by saturday i wasn't feeling any better, but there was still work to do - final cleanup and a repack. Paul & Lou got out the door on time and i went off to see my sweetheart. sunday reared its cold heart way too soon and by 10 i was on the highway with a stomach full of tea and poptarts and a head full of glue, fresh from the only breakup i've ever had that i didn't want to do over.
but who am i trying to fool here? i know i've not gone into any real detail about young Mc.D. i haven't felt it particularly pertinent. i'd prefer to discuss situations personally rather than try to scattergun useful information. it was more important, really, that the general idea of the situation be noted, rather than to go into the details. this means that you'd have missed a lot of my good mood over the last couple of months, and the little brunette who's been behind the larger percentage of it. it was fun, but it had a use-by date and now i'm on an aeroplane somewhere over the indian ocean and it's gone. more or less, anyway. discussions have been had. notices of intent exchanged. an agreement has been made to "see" and so "see" we shall and the rest of it we'll deal with when i make it home... one way or the other.
i spent my time in Sydney wearing a groove into Cymun & Yun's couch. they, wonderful folks that they are, fed me lots of tea and made me get up long enough to take some exercise and get some food into me. i'd have liked to have been more active, but what do you do? i was falling over i was so sick, and there was no way i was going to survive this flight if i was feeling that dead.
as it was, Lou's folks got us to the airport well on time and we didn't even have any problems with being over our luggage allowances. i woke up this morning after sod-all sleep feeling generally ok, even if i did still have a lingering cough.
Some more important stuff than "what"...
i received a message from Matt last monday asking whether i'd left Canberra for good yet. i hadn't - at that point i was waiting for my connecting flight in Sydney. it was good timing on his part though, because i'd wanted to get a chance to sit around, drink some beers and shoot the breeze for a couple of hours.
Sandra cooked dinner to co-incide with my dropping my bed and other assorted odds and ends over at hers. i managed to get through watching half of Wall-E before i had to call the game due to exhaustion.
Shadow had the day off on the wednesday, so dropping my comics, music and movies around meant that i had the chance to hang and crap on for a couple of hours. you see, considerate people organise things in such a way as to give maximum benefit to all parties involved, even when they have to work around someone's particular needs.
everything that needed to get done got done. some of it was a bit more sketchy than would have been ideal, but it got done.
i know there was more to this, but i just got hit by a wave of weary which i think may be a signal from the gods that i may actually be allowed to sleep and as much as i love giving you people something to read, i love sleep way more. in fact, if i were cursed by a witch and told that i could sleep well for the rest of my life, or watch my friends suffer you should know now that you are all destined to burn, and i'd throw my family in the fire as well just to be sure. so with that charming note:
fuck you i'm sleeping.
later, after Abu Dhabi...
i got some sleep, thank the gods. three? maybe 4 hours in the end, interrupted only when the cabin lights turned on and we were advised that we'd soon be beginning our descent into Abu Dhabi International. the airport looks like it was built in the 60's and hasn't changed much since. i've been told that they sell gold bars on the lower floor but i neveer got that far. the first thing we did was to find a toilet that didn't have floors covered in urine, then fought our way around until we found out which departure lounge we needed to be in before slumping into a couple of chairs and reading a newspaper someone had left there. it was 2AM in Abu Dhabi and the place was full of people waiting for connecting flights and neither of us had any interest in shopping for half an hour then being stuck standing when the lounge got too packed so we got through security and chilled out instead.
Ethihad Airline is... an inexpensive way to travel. the staff are reasonably polite and the entertainment system works. ohterwise, i can't say i've been impressed. cattle-class on Singapore Air is more comfortable. even Qantas is quite acceptable. i'm sure i'll have the opportunity to fly with some really shitty 3rd-9th-rate carriers over time, but i can't say that i'll be prioritising these guys unless they're massively cheaper than the competition.
i've another 5 hours to go before Heathrow and i'm not particularly in the mood for anything. it occurs to me that i've been on the move for more than a day now, what with the rush to get to the airport, then the three or so hours we hung around Kingsford Smith before actually getting on the plane. Lou and Paully had a tearful (and private) farewell. it's been an emotional time for her which is probably why the lucky bitch slept for seven or eight hours on the first leg, and is blissfully passed out next to me again now. as a minor consolation she seemed like she hadn't rested a bit when she woke up on approach so i'll not get too jealous. meanwhile, i'm going to read my book and wait for the sun to rise over europe...
so why the hell am i sitting here bashing drivel into my little Eee and not trying to get some absurdly undervalued sleep? did someone suggest that i might have been having sleeping problems since leaving a pretty little mouse at her doorstep in the cold light of morning? not that i think it's related - i'm sure it's the illness, headaches, coughing, that sort of thing.
brief interlude:
when you fly you can wind up meeting some interesting people. take the guy sobbing across the aisle from me. before he spent 10 minutes irrigating my shoulder he was saying that he's off to Tripoli... so see his mother who's ill. diabetes, maybe some other complications. his breath smells of the booze he's been scrounging up in the first-class cabin (he's been in and out of there all flight). why he told me this i have the feeling i'll never know, but he seemed to really want to tell someone... anyone. now he's sitting across sobbing and the hostie-lads have come by to make sure that he's not causing me any trouble. poor lad. he's going to feel it when he gets to wherever he's going and his hangover shows up on its connecting flight.
:interlude end
either way, what i was talking about before i was interruped was that since i've been sleeping so poorly i can't be bothered spending the next two or three hours trying to sleep in this shitty fucking cattle-class seat and instead get on with completely wearing myself out with the hope that perhaps i'll sleep in the second leg.
since last i had the time to scratch myself, let alone write more than twenty words in a single space, i've been all over the place. back to the flat from the airport on the Shadow & Bosslady Taxi Service, and more or less straight to bed. my visa finally arrived on tuesday, which was a relief, and the event was celebrated by packing. by wednesday about a third of my crap had been packed and deployed. by thursday i was sick as a fucking dog, and remained that way until yesterday. on friday i couldn't put off the duty any further and so the day was spent packing the rest, and the evening moving. by saturday i wasn't feeling any better, but there was still work to do - final cleanup and a repack. Paul & Lou got out the door on time and i went off to see my sweetheart. sunday reared its cold heart way too soon and by 10 i was on the highway with a stomach full of tea and poptarts and a head full of glue, fresh from the only breakup i've ever had that i didn't want to do over.
but who am i trying to fool here? i know i've not gone into any real detail about young Mc.D. i haven't felt it particularly pertinent. i'd prefer to discuss situations personally rather than try to scattergun useful information. it was more important, really, that the general idea of the situation be noted, rather than to go into the details. this means that you'd have missed a lot of my good mood over the last couple of months, and the little brunette who's been behind the larger percentage of it. it was fun, but it had a use-by date and now i'm on an aeroplane somewhere over the indian ocean and it's gone. more or less, anyway. discussions have been had. notices of intent exchanged. an agreement has been made to "see" and so "see" we shall and the rest of it we'll deal with when i make it home... one way or the other.
i spent my time in Sydney wearing a groove into Cymun & Yun's couch. they, wonderful folks that they are, fed me lots of tea and made me get up long enough to take some exercise and get some food into me. i'd have liked to have been more active, but what do you do? i was falling over i was so sick, and there was no way i was going to survive this flight if i was feeling that dead.
as it was, Lou's folks got us to the airport well on time and we didn't even have any problems with being over our luggage allowances. i woke up this morning after sod-all sleep feeling generally ok, even if i did still have a lingering cough.
Some more important stuff than "what"...
i received a message from Matt last monday asking whether i'd left Canberra for good yet. i hadn't - at that point i was waiting for my connecting flight in Sydney. it was good timing on his part though, because i'd wanted to get a chance to sit around, drink some beers and shoot the breeze for a couple of hours.
Sandra cooked dinner to co-incide with my dropping my bed and other assorted odds and ends over at hers. i managed to get through watching half of Wall-E before i had to call the game due to exhaustion.
Shadow had the day off on the wednesday, so dropping my comics, music and movies around meant that i had the chance to hang and crap on for a couple of hours. you see, considerate people organise things in such a way as to give maximum benefit to all parties involved, even when they have to work around someone's particular needs.
everything that needed to get done got done. some of it was a bit more sketchy than would have been ideal, but it got done.
i know there was more to this, but i just got hit by a wave of weary which i think may be a signal from the gods that i may actually be allowed to sleep and as much as i love giving you people something to read, i love sleep way more. in fact, if i were cursed by a witch and told that i could sleep well for the rest of my life, or watch my friends suffer you should know now that you are all destined to burn, and i'd throw my family in the fire as well just to be sure. so with that charming note:
fuck you i'm sleeping.
later, after Abu Dhabi...
i got some sleep, thank the gods. three? maybe 4 hours in the end, interrupted only when the cabin lights turned on and we were advised that we'd soon be beginning our descent into Abu Dhabi International. the airport looks like it was built in the 60's and hasn't changed much since. i've been told that they sell gold bars on the lower floor but i neveer got that far. the first thing we did was to find a toilet that didn't have floors covered in urine, then fought our way around until we found out which departure lounge we needed to be in before slumping into a couple of chairs and reading a newspaper someone had left there. it was 2AM in Abu Dhabi and the place was full of people waiting for connecting flights and neither of us had any interest in shopping for half an hour then being stuck standing when the lounge got too packed so we got through security and chilled out instead.
Ethihad Airline is... an inexpensive way to travel. the staff are reasonably polite and the entertainment system works. ohterwise, i can't say i've been impressed. cattle-class on Singapore Air is more comfortable. even Qantas is quite acceptable. i'm sure i'll have the opportunity to fly with some really shitty 3rd-9th-rate carriers over time, but i can't say that i'll be prioritising these guys unless they're massively cheaper than the competition.
i've another 5 hours to go before Heathrow and i'm not particularly in the mood for anything. it occurs to me that i've been on the move for more than a day now, what with the rush to get to the airport, then the three or so hours we hung around Kingsford Smith before actually getting on the plane. Lou and Paully had a tearful (and private) farewell. it's been an emotional time for her which is probably why the lucky bitch slept for seven or eight hours on the first leg, and is blissfully passed out next to me again now. as a minor consolation she seemed like she hadn't rested a bit when she woke up on approach so i'll not get too jealous. meanwhile, i'm going to read my book and wait for the sun to rise over europe...
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Snippets #6: how to make yourself depressed in under 10 minutes...
Step 1: start going through your stuff looking for things to pack or clear out.
Step 2: find the box you've stowed all of your old keepsakes in for the last 20 years or so.
Step 3: start going through it all with a ruthless intensity, reading over all the old essays you wrote, the birthday cards, the faxed greetings, the letters kept from people who's faces you can't remember and context you can no longer recall, the first love letter you ever received, all of the concert tickets and cinema stubs and photos and awards, the stories you wrote, the blog entries handwritten on cards and sick-bags on aeroplanes, the annuals and reminders of exploits and adventures that happened so long ago that you have to think to remember what the relevance or significance of it all was.
Step 4: as you go, throw everything you think you can throw away into a pile and watch it spill and fall across the floor in drifts of off-white paper, faded by age and neglect.
Step 5: get sentimental and go back through the pile and put half of it back in the fucking box.
Step 6: look down at the condensed paper and plastic that represents the years that came before and start despairing as to what you're going to do with it all since you simply can't throw it the hell away.
Step 7: start beating your head against the wall.
Step 8: go back to Step 7...
Step 2: find the box you've stowed all of your old keepsakes in for the last 20 years or so.
Step 3: start going through it all with a ruthless intensity, reading over all the old essays you wrote, the birthday cards, the faxed greetings, the letters kept from people who's faces you can't remember and context you can no longer recall, the first love letter you ever received, all of the concert tickets and cinema stubs and photos and awards, the stories you wrote, the blog entries handwritten on cards and sick-bags on aeroplanes, the annuals and reminders of exploits and adventures that happened so long ago that you have to think to remember what the relevance or significance of it all was.
Step 4: as you go, throw everything you think you can throw away into a pile and watch it spill and fall across the floor in drifts of off-white paper, faded by age and neglect.
Step 5: get sentimental and go back through the pile and put half of it back in the fucking box.
Step 6: look down at the condensed paper and plastic that represents the years that came before and start despairing as to what you're going to do with it all since you simply can't throw it the hell away.
Step 7: start beating your head against the wall.
Step 8: go back to Step 7...
Snippets #5: on disintegration...
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.
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.
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.
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