EstherVonJohnson

Exciting news!

2007-04-17T18:06:00.001+10:00

The Private Press are going to publish one of my poems in an anthology of David Lynch inspired work. See, an Honours Degree in Creative Arts was good for something after all.

And thank you to Julia, for the heads-up about submitting to this thing in the first place. You rock.

My brain is useless

2007-04-11T13:35:00.000+10:00

Please help. I know I should be the one to remember this but I can't. For the life of me, I can't recall the name of a girl who was once my housemate for 3 months back in, oh, it must have been the end of 2003. And now that I realise I can't remember her name, it's bugging me. She was a geologist and was very sweet and had a tall boyfriend with curly hair named Dave (see, I remember his name). Then she got a 'proper' job and moved to Canberra. What was her name? Andrea? Renee? Jesus Christ, what?!

In other news. Chocolate. Yum. The end.

I love this little cat so much...

2007-03-27T22:35:00.000+10:00

This one was taken a few months back. In fact, last year. He's bigger now. But the point was: he's crazy...

...he likes water! Do you think he knows he's a cat?

(Drought? What drought? Tra la la. ... The photo was taken last year - before the water restrictions, I tells ya.)

What's not to love?

I blame the David Bowie Demons...

2007-03-21T12:52:00.000+11:00

Oh dude, it really is true that each year you are out of uni more of your brain cells desert you or die or relocate into grey hair. Not that I've noticed any grey hairs on myself yet, but I notice the lack of working brain cells.

Either that, or the David Bowie Demons (who live in the ceiling) had actually borrowed my copy of Perfume - which you recall I was seeking in my last entry - and had only recently returned it to my bookshelf. Because I swear I searched the bookshelf for it before I posted that, and now, only now, can see it there, nestled up against Isabel Allende's The Stories of Eva Luna. Buggerations. But at least I found my book!

In other news, thinking about the David Bowie Demons makes me recall that just such a phenomenon was mentioned in that thing I fondly, indulgently refer to as "my novel". Even my mother has now taken up saying that I'm "pretending" to be a writer while also being a slave to cheese. Of course, if I would actually write something, then maybe it would be different. Maybe I should make the last so-far-unwritten chunk of the "novel" a Supernatural-style hunt for David Bowie Demons by the main characters (you will recall the dwarf Sam and the train-wreck Lola, who make up the band The Satanic Mechanics). Whoever said plots have to make sense? Also, why don't the boys on Supernatural ever hunt David Bowie Demons? It's almost like such a thing only exists inside my brain-cell-reduced head.

an update, of sorts

2007-03-07T16:01:00.000+11:00

Geez, it's been a while since I updated here, hasn't it. Oops. Was never meant to be that long. I blame... ah, the cheese?

Anyway, first up, a question (or four): Did I lend my copy of the book Perfume by Patrick Süskind to you? Or was it to your partner? Or was it to my mum? Is that even how you spell Süskind? I don't know the answer to any of these questions. Please help.

Secondly, you need to know that t-shirts of awesomeness, Threadless are having a sale until March 12th. You may know them from such classics as Meat is Murder, Tasty tasty murder and Shakespeare hates your emo poems. My bank balance, of course, doesn't benefit at all from this knowledge. I have a new rule for myself: No black t-shirts (don't wear 'em) and no pale blue t-shirts (too many already). That should restrain me a little, eh? Damn that pretty 'Sea Foam' green one, now only $US10 plus shipping...

Thirdly, a picture of my darling Toby.

It's our one year 'anniversary' on Sunday. One year since I paid some money over and took him home in a cardboard box on the tram. I can't imagine life without him now. (No, that is not the cardboard box.)

He likes to keep his real identity a bit of a secret on the interwebs.

Coming soon, a picture of Toby, as Dalek.

Yay! A novel!

2006-11-30T17:00:00.000+11:00

Eep! I did it! I got to 50,000 words! In 30 insane days! I won! And it's also only a couple of chapters from the end of the damn thing. That is, depending on how neatly I was to wrap it all up or if I want to go with the idea I came up with today, which was: an alien spacecraft crashlands and kills all the characters. The End. No, it's not a scifi novel. Yes, I was watching Dr Who yesterday after I got to the 50K mark.

Right now I am so tired I want to gauge my eyes out with a spoon. And tomorrow I have to work my delightful 11 hour day at the shop, so no sleep marathons for me yet.

But it feels good to have written it. I've never written anything so big before, never stuck with characters for quite so long, never enjoyed them quite so much. I want to finish it, then print it out and start editing. Or at least, read it through to see how it reads. Because that's what I've not done much of: re-reading and editing. Slows down the writing process. And in Nanowrimo, it's all about speeeeeeed. So, no editing-as-you-go, which was my previous writing style. Damn slow, it was. Now I just write and move on. And when I happen to go back to check a name or a fact or something, I'm sometimes pleasantly surprised to read over bits of it. Did I write that? I think, I don't remember.

So I urge any of you who think you might one day like to write a novel, then do nanowrimo, next year, with me! It's such a rush. It's awesome. It really just makes you write. And isn't that what writing is all about? Who would have thought?!

Plus, I already have an idea for next year's novel: a group of survivors after a zombie apocalypse, a saviour figure rising from the dust: the Great Zombie Jesus! But is he (or she?) a zombie or a human bean? Half-half? And what if he (or she?) shags the Judas figure? Am I saying Jesus was a Great Big Man Loving Man Lover?

Yes, I think I am.

The Satanic Mechanics Will Rock You (if they ever exist)

2006-11-08T16:16:00.000+11:00

Yep, you caught me - I'm procrastinating. I should be novel writing, but instead I'm blog writing. These be words that do not count.

But that's ok, because I'm well on track with my 50,000 word target. In fact, it's going surprisingly, almost alarmingly well. I'm expecting it all to derail at some point, the delicate fictional world I've built up to come crashing down. Someone will say, "But aren't dwarves genetically predisposed not to be musical?" and that will be it. No more novel about a White-Stripes-ish band called The Satanic Mechanics, drummer/keyboard/songwriter: Sam (a Kiwi dwarf), singer/audience-seducer: Lola (a trainwreck). Mind you, Sam and Lola haven't even met yet, let alone formed the band. So who know? It could still go off in another direction entirely. I could still write that zombie novel that's in my heart! Or Sam and Mohammed could fall in love? I know there's something there - what dwarf just admires another man's eyelashes without it meaning something? Better try and keep them apart.

So, NaNoWriMo aside, nothing much to report. It's gone cold again, while in Mt Beauty where the parentals were for the weekend, it was 30+ºC. Ah, global warming. Thank you, Mr Howard.

News from the Tobster is this: He's become a bit of a burrower. Under carpets that is. To chase corks. Or to just get from one side of the rug to the other in the more difficult route possible. So now the big fugly brown rug that covers most of the floor in my room has a cork roughly somewhere near the middle that I can't get out. I keep sending Toby under there to get it, but he only ends up pushing it further in. I will have to pull the whole thing up in order to stop stubbing my toe on it. But I was thinking about doing that anyway - ripping it up and banishing it to under the house or in the garage - because it seriously is a FUGLY rug. And we all know what the word 'fugly' means. Yes, fucking ugly!

So, back to my other procrastinatey activities, like perusing the NaNoWriMo forums. Apparently some people have already written 50,000+ words. In 7 days. How? I don't understand. Is it called cheating?

NaNoWriMo

2006-10-29T14:05:00.000+11:00

I am now nanowrimoing - or going to be in November. That is: National Novel Writing Month. Which begins on Wednesday. It's scary. It's 50,000 words in 30 days. I can do it, I can, I can.

I've been planning. I have characters. I have possible-structures and maybe-plots. I have ways to break my 50K down into managable chunks, lumps I can chew off, bit by bit. I have potential tangents for if I run out of things to write. I have Roy Orbison wrapped in cling film.

I also have a "To Do Before November" list which is only getting longer and I still haven't crossed anything off it. It includes: Haircut, Clean desks (2), Buy Roo for Toby, Watch Velvet Goldmine (essential, obviously), Pay Bills. I just added: Buy chocolate and writing snacks. So I may come out of November 50K and 20kgs heavier!

And if I am an anti-social beast in November, please forgive me. *mutter, mutter, suffering-artist, etc, mutter...* But I will accept deliveries of food, alcohol and anything caffeine related. I am right now lurking in a Nanowrimo forum entitled: The "All My Filler Will Probably Be Porn" Thread.

So if anyone wants to join me in this madness-? Apart from the 50,000 or so already signed up on the website. Ah, it's nice to think of so many people going mad at the same time. Here's to collective insanity.

How I love you in ways I cannot express. Or: Please excuse my tardiness, I was washing my hair.

2006-10-20T18:28:00.000+10:00

Dear Friends, Enemies and Passing Ladybug Fanciers,

I haven't posted recently because my kitchen cupboard was on fire.

I am also engineering the downfall of the government and didn't want to alert suspicion. You see, I just can't help but talk/write about it, it's so damn exciting. Dang!

I burnt all my fingerprints off in a freak wetsuit-removing accident and now have to type with a toothpick held between my teeth. It is difficult and/or painful.

Slasher McTook gnawed the ends of all the leads and cords and wires and dooverwackies needed for the computer-internet thing to work and thus I was left only with my carrier pigeon, Freckles, as a means of communication. Freckles is an octogenarian in pigeon years, is colour blind and has very poor directional skills for a carrier pigeon.

During this time, my sweet Toby also became Radioactive Cat, via a small mishap with a pair of radioactive tweezers and thus I have had to spend many days sewing little lycra suits, but no capes. I am also attempting to compose a jingle and opening catch-cry. But nothing beats: "When Eric eats a banana..." I am at am impasse. Please send suggestions if not already copyrighted.

Please pass my regards onto your mother and tell her I think the apron looks lovely regardless of what Flora says. I can arrange a "little accident" if need be, tell her that.

As to your own question, I did not know you then and certainly had nothing to do with putting that hair in your mouth while you slept. Have you tried electrolysis?

Yours,

Bianca Jagger

The Mission

2006-08-16T15:01:00.000+10:00

The sweltering air conditioning pressed in on us. We were the lads and we were on the mission. There was Nix, DeeBee and me. Agent Nix as the Mormon, Agent DeeBee the scruffy Street Tom and me as the Dandy. We swaggered in, the convention centre already itching with people eager for cheese. We made our way to the first table, reverse-alphabetical-order-wise. We blended in like a bunch of Queensland’s finest, post-Larry, $20-a-kilo bananas in a box of last week’s grapes.

‘Start us off,’ said Nix to the lady behind the stall. She eyed us off for a second before smiling and offering us cheese on a small wafer of poppy seed crispbread. Here one called Le Jack stood out. It seemed significant to me: the name. Le Jack.

‘Mmm, goats cheese,’ Nix mused, ‘Is there anything I wouldn’t do for goats cheese?’

‘Would you do this?’ I asked him.

‘Ah, no. I wouldn’t do that for goats cheese. For Roquefort maybe. If my life depended on it.’

‘Ok, well, glad we got that settle then.’

DeeBee had edged off to get a glass of water. The next table we approached was empty of people. Here, knives were pointed at us, slivers of cheese attached to the end of them. Some nice, some ashed, some blue. As we were drifting away, the woman from behind the stall grabbed me by the arm and leaned in, whispering, urgent, into my ear: ‘Keet ist tot! Keet ist tot!’

I tried to fix her with my iciest green stare, to see through her, to understand what she meant by such a cryptic message. But suddenly she was away, serving a table full of people the Fibonacci sequence on crispbread. ‘A Shepherds’ Cheese,’ she was saying, not a trace of the German accent in her voice.

I caught up with Nix and DeeBee.

‘Did you see that? Did you see that lady?’ I was breathless; they were disinterested. They were eating Triple Cream Brie.

‘Here, try this,’ said DeeBee. The man behind this stall raised his head to look at me, then took a knife and fixed me a wafer of Triple Cream, handing it to me with great ceremony. When I brought it to my nose to smell it, I noticed something unusual. In the runny, creamy centre of the cheese was knifed a scrawling letter D. I glance up at the man, but, strangely, he was gone.

‘It’s surprisingly salty, don’t you think?’ Nix was saying. Triple Cream Brie never lasts long in my presence, so despite the presence of perhaps a significant clue in the form of the D, I ate it anyway. And yes, it was surprisingly salty, but creamy and rich.

The next table we went to contained no cheese, which was suspect in itself (this, of course, being a cheese show). Here I was given a piece of glacé fig with the letter A engraved in it. Which I ate.

By then, Nix, DeeBee and I had glasses of wine in our hands. The noise of the room was growing. A clump of function musicians were strangling jazz standards off to one side, as more and more people streamed in through the sea of pokies outside the door. I was unsure about the state of the mission. Everyone I looked at could potentially be a spy, aware of our status, following our every move. The clues were coming thick and fast and strange. By then I had collected and eaten a letter E, another D, an N, a U and an S. I was beginning to suspect that Nix and DeeBee were falling into a cheese trance. This was all part of the plot – the danger. We knew it. We had known it all along.

We came to a table were I found myself swooning over a goats camembert called Misty Valley (with an I scraped into it), while Nix was swooning over something called Merricks Mist. I could feel the cheese trance taking hold of my brain. The whole mission could be in danger. I made the covert signal to DeeBee and Nix that we needed to regroup and we withdrew to a quiet vestibule. We lay our cheese-filled bodies onto some luxurious couches and supped at our wine. As far as missions go, this surely was an enjoyable one, but would it be a successful one? Using our coded language in case we were being monitored, we discussed the progress of the mission.

‘One of us needs to get a car,’ (meaning: we need to snap out of it, keep our heads cool).

‘Yeah, then we could go away for a weekend somewhere. Visit cheeseries, wineries, go for walks,’ (meaning: when we go back in we need to keep our eyes and ears open and watch each other’s backs).

‘If I got out of work on a Monday, we could leave on Saturday and stay for two nights somewhere,’ (meaning: remember what HQ said, remember our instructions, remember our mission).

We re-entered the Palladium re-invigorated and focussed. Between the three of us, we collected an H in a piece of fresh goats curd, a T in a soft washed rind, another I in a piece of Spiced Pear Paste, a difficult found E in the most delicious Discovery Ashed Blue (a cheese so runny, the E almost slipped away), and, after much searching, a K in a shaving of Heidi Farm Gruyere. Then the trailed dried up and so had our glasses. We refilled them and made our way back to the quiet vestibule, just in time to escape a drunk woman dancing – probably one of our enemy’s spies. Again we spoke in code.

‘Why do you think people go to the casino?’ (meaning: is that it? Do you think we should report back to HQ?).

‘I bet that sound of someone winning the pokies is just a recording to make people keep playing so that they think they’ll win,’ (meaning: what can all these letters mean? They don’t make any sense to me: D-A-E-D-N-U-S-I-H-T-I-E-K?’).

‘Isn’t that someone we went to uni with?’ (meaning: maybe it’s a code. Maybe we need to unscramble it).

‘Yeah, it is. But what’s her name? What is her name?’ (meaning: oh my god. It’s backwards! K-E-I-T-H-I-S-U-N-D-E-A-D! Keith-is-undead! That’s what it’s telling us!).

‘Yeah, what is her name?’ (meaning: oh my god, you’re right. Keith is undead. That’s freaky).

And so ends our specialist cheese show mission. We got the code, unscramble the message, completed the mission and escaped unharmed into the bright winter sunlight. The cheese trance was itching its way back up our spines. We walked down the river, away from the house of sin, away from dancing drunk spies and the cheese and the wine and the nameless eaters. But the clue, the strange message, was pulsing around our brains:

Keith is undead! Keith is undead! Keith is undead!

2006-08-01T21:19:00.000+10:00

Hiya all,

No fiction this time. Just me playing around. And a picture I found on one of my favourite websites, Found Magazine.

Kate's band are rehearsing right now in the basement downstairs (as opposed to that basement upstairs!). Toby is curled up asleep in my lap. The heater is on. My belly is full. All very, well, the word is 'nice'.

Would like to tell you another [hopefully] bizarre bit of fiction is on the way, but as yet, it isn't. I like writing for here. Gives me a reason to be doing it. Somewhere for it to go once it's finished. Which gives me motivation - which is surely what I lack the rest of the time. Got to work on that. Hmmm. Any suggestions?

[An afterthought: Should I be 'publishing'/posting a picture from another website without getting their permission first? But I have credited their website. Also, is it like double-copyright-infringement when they are publishing something without the original author/creator's permission, then I am re-publishing it without their permission??!]

A Clue and Some Strange or Sage Advice

2006-07-30T16:24:00.000+10:00

I was dreaming – at a park in Berlin and Milan Kundera walked up to me, kneeling in a ray of sunshine and said:

“Von Esther, Use Your Powers for Good – not Evil!”

I said, “But I don’t understand–”

He said, “What you write is little bits of fluff floating on the surface of water. And not grand oceans or mighty rivers. Puddles and washbasins of water.”

“You mean my writing is like, ah, fluff? Belly-button fluff or–?”

“Not like fluff,” he reprimanded me, “It is fluff. Floating on the surface of puddles.” He fixed me with a stern stare. “This is wrong. Use your powers for Good.”

I was at a loss for words. This was the last thing I expected in a park in Berlin. Maybe Lou Reed in a drug haze. Maybe Marlene on a good day. But Milan Kundera telling me off for crimes against – what? – literature? He was now frowning at me with his forehead.

“Your fluff is Roy Orbison Wrapped in Clingfilm. Billy Boyd, and any derivative of him, paired with any other man – or beast – who takes your fancy. You are worth more than this. You could use your powers for so much more!”

Right at that moment, when Milan was getting all worked up, Eugene Hütz, who had been leaning casually against a tree, eavesdropping, plopped himself down next to me. “Don’t listen to him,” he whispered to me. “There’s nothing wrong with writing the Billy Boyd love.”

Milan shot him a toxic glance, but Eugene continued unafraid, “Lots of people want to be carnal with me and Billy Boyd happens to be one of them. Of course, it is because I am such a premium lover, but someone has to write it, otherwise it will burn a hole in your head.”

Milan’s forehead scowled and Eugene pouted in his general direction.

I pondered, “But Eugene, how do I know that this you-and-Billy-Boyd thing you talk of isn’t just a product of my own imagination? That I imagined you up here because I don’t want to hear what Mr Kundera has to say?”

“Firstly, one,” said Eugene, “Why is he ‘Mr Kundera’, and I only ‘Eugene’? He has the respect because he is all severe and displaced ex-Czech living in Paris with that forehead, and I am but a Ukrainian New York gypsy punk? Eh?” He blew air out of his mouth upwards so that his strange black hair flipped away from his face.

He sighed, “But no matter. Secondly, two,” he counted on his fingers, “Two, ‘A’, to be more precise. If I were just a product of this head of yours,” he tapped a finger against my forehead, “Don’t you think you would conjure up a Billy Boyd too? Me, and not him? Not likely. Both of us maybe. But I am here in just as much right as he is,” He shot Milan a look.

“Two, ‘B’, my dear little lady, is proof that you could not have just conjured me. If you conjured me, would I not be eating something you eat, some cheese you sell at that cheese-selling job of yours, something that has seeped into your unconscious? And what is it you see me eating, eh?”

“Actually,” I said, “What is that?”

“This,” he said triumphantly, “Is beef jerky!”

I looked at Milan, whose face reflected the same bewilderment I felt.

“Ok,” I said, “Right.”

Eugene obviously felt he had proved his point and fell silent, gnawing at strips of his beef jerky and looking at me with big dark eyes. This sure was one weird park. What suburb was this anyway, Friedrichstein? I don’t remember how I navigated here or where it was I had come from.

A small Japanese-looking man approached our little party, glancing between the three of us. “May I?” he said, indicating at the patch of sunlight we were seating in.

“Of course, please.” I said. I thought that maybe he would turn out to be a bit more normal and a bit less quarrelsome than Milan and Eugene.

“If you don’t mind my saying, I couldn’t help but overhear what you were discussing.”

“Beef jerky,” Eugene nodded sagely, “Yes, it is a premium food group.”

“No. I mean Billy Boyd and Roy Orbison Wrapped in Cling Film.”

He knelt down on a patch of sunlight between Milan and Eugene. “Before I go on, please let me introduce myself,” he said. “My name is Haruki Murakami. Pleased to make your acquaintance Miss Von Johnson, Mr Kundera, Mr Hütz.” He nodded at each of us in turn.

“How does he know all our names?” Eugene murmured to me under his breath. I tried to shrug without Haruki noticing.

“I don’t know about this Billy Boyd you speak of,” Haruki said, smiling pleasantly, “But I just wanted to say that I think the points made by both Mr Kundera and Mr Hütz have value. You shouldn’t dismiss one because it disagrees with the other.” He looked at me earnestly and paused before continuing. “I think Roy Orbison Wrapped in Cling Film has a place in your writing. If not Roy and Cling Film, then someone else and something else. Wrapped or not. Do you see what I’m saying?”

I looked into Haruki’s encouraging eyes, which flitted with hazel sparks in the sunlight. I looked from him to Eugene, who was sucking on a piece of jerky and gazing at me with surprising seriousness. Then I turned to Milan who appeared slightly put-out but at the same time curious with what Haruki was saying.

“Your writing is leaning towards what it could be. You can feel it. You can almost touch it, almost taste it to write it.”

Milan shifted his legs. “And my point?” he piped up, “It doesn’t sound much like you agree with my point?”

“No,” said Haruki, turning to look at Milan. “I do agree with your point. Powers of any kind should be used for good and not evil. I would only disagree with your use of capital letters – I don’t believe in an ‘Evil’, capital ‘E’, any more than I believe in some universal force of ‘Good’, capital ‘G’.”

From the look on Milan’s face, I guessed he wasn’t quite sure how to take Haruki’s statement. It was like an editorial suggestion he knew he should adopt but which tasted sour in his mouth.

“And the Billy Boyd luuurve?” Eugene chimed in, snapping a piece of beef jerky as he did so. “There is nothing finer in this world, so what better thing to write about?”

“Yes and no.” Haruki said (to which Eugene rolled his eyes), “Love and sex are perhaps some of the best things in this life, and so of course she should write about them.”

“Ha-raar! Points to us!” Eugene exclaimed, slapping me on the leg as he did so.

“Mr Kundera, here, himself writes about love and sex. In fact, most of his books seemed to be preoccupied with the subject.” Eugene looked crestfallen and Milan suddenly more interested.

“It is not the subjects she should let go, but Billy Boyd.” Haruki was now looking straight at me. “I know you can do it,” he said quietly. He took my hands and in them he placed an object. I was vaguely aware of Eugene hitting his own head with the piece of jerky, and Milan looking at Haruki and me with something akin to – was it? – respect. I held Haruki’s gaze while he gently closed my fingers over the object. As I looked down towards my hands I felt the scene, the sunlight, the park in Berlin, all of them fading away. The last thing I remember was opening my hands to look at the object I held. It was a double adaptor.

In my own bed, Toby was snuggled up to me, deep in his own cat-dreams, a gentle Melbourne winter light filtering in through the cotton blind over my window.

“You know, he was wrong about the Billy Boyd,” a voice said next to me. I looked over to where the voice had come from and Eugene winked at me. “Don’t believe everything those writers tell you,” he said, tossing something onto the bed. “I’ve got to take a piss. I know you’re a lady, but I got to say – I’m going to piss like there’s no tomorrow.” He left the room and I looked at what it was he had thrown on the bed, what is was Toby had got up to investigate.

Of course. You guessed it.

A piece of beef jerky.

Roy and The Split Personality Cat

2006-07-24T14:53:00.000+10:00

It was a clear winter Monday, the sky a faraway blue, the sun a teasing promise. I had spent the morning enjoying friands and the fashionable addiction of the time, caffeine. It was twelve o’clock noon exactly when there was a knock at the door and I opened it to find Roy Orbison standing on my threshold. Bedecked in his trademark all black, black sunnies on his nose, he greeted me with a nod, saying, “I don’t go in for these newfangled technologies. Doorbells! What use be them to me?”

“Roy!” I said, “Do please come in!” And he did.

I was surprised, as you may be too, to find Roy Orbison a sudden visitor to my house. But from five months of living so close to Moonee Ponds, Zombie capital of Victoria, I was, by this time, used to all sorts of things rising from the grave and making surprise turns among the living. And Roy looked pretty spritely, I must say. There was no odour of rotting flesh, nor paleness of the pallor – in fact he didn’t look a day over 52, which, strangely enough, was the age he was when he died. Or so I thought.

We had seated ourselves in the living room and I had offered him a cup of tea and was just about to suggest the eating of some cheese. He was admiring the screen that covers our fireplace. I was hoping he wouldn’t notice the gaping hole in one side of it and point out the potential fire hazard. But I was prepared to counter with the newness of our smoke detectors, though I was not sure if Roy would know what smoke detectors were, if they had been around in ‘his time’ and even if it was insensitive to mention them at all. At the time I thought it was lucky that The Cat chose this moment to come bounding in – though, in precious hindsight, perhaps luck had nothing to do with it.

For The Cat who had come hurtling into the room was not Sweet Toby Johnson, as he is eighty-two-to-ninety percent of the time, but instead was his alter ego, the dangerous and deranged Slasher McTook. Roy could not even draw breath before Slasher started doing what his name dictated he does – he took one look at Roy and attacked him with a whirl of claws, yowling his Xena-warrior-cry and ripping shreds into the poor timeless crooner. Where there was flesh there became bloody flesh-strips, where there was black clothing there became shredded, bloodied black clothing, exposing yet more bloody and shredded flesh underneath. Roy’s glasses became askew and all he could say was “Oh!” as the tornado of stripes and claws wreaked its havoc.

It all happened so fast, that I could hardly call my own usually-dear animal off him, before it was over and Roy was left standing, bleeding by the fireplace. Slasher McTook withdrew to wherever it is he goes to think up his schemes of mayhem and violence, all the while listening to Beethoven, The Best of. Again Roy said “Oh!” and I was worried he was going to bleed on the carpet and we wouldn’t get our bond back. Then the more pressing concern came to mind that Roy Orbison would bleed to death and I would be responsible for the second death of a beloved icon. With that, I rushed into the kitchen and grabbed an industrial sized roll of cling wrap that I had been hiding under the sink, not quite sure why I had been treasuring it so, but knowing that one day my life would depend on it. And the day had come! It was today!

I hurried back into the lounge room and set to work on Roy, carefully wrapping layer after layer of cling wrap around him to stop the bleeding. I started at the feet and worked my way up. I stretched the cling wrap tight; as I was practised at doing at work when wrapping cheese, though never in my wildest cheese-dreams had I imagined I would one day do the same to Roy Orbison. The cling wrap formed a silky cocoon over the man in black and I could see the colour returning to his face – that is, before I wrapped his entire head in the life-saving plastic film. Of course, I left an airhole so that he could breathe! What do you take me for?

After a time, my work was done. Roy Orbison was completely wrapped in cling wrap. Crisis diverted! “You are now completely wrapped in cling wrap,” I told him. His black sunglasses gleamed at me from under all the cling wrap. I knew that now he felt safe.

He looked slightly unstable, so very carefully I lowered him into an armchair. Not that the cling-wrap cocoon allowed him to bend enough to be seated, he was more propped diagonally over the chair. But I think he appreciated my efforts. I then went into the kitchen to fetch some Prima Donna I had in the fridge, an aged Swiss-style cheese, with a delicious, slightly sweet, nutty flavour. I broke small pieces off and fed them to Roy through his mouth hole. I found my breathing and heart rate increasing, and it seemed like both Roy and I fell into some kind of cheese-trance and drifted away onto a higher plane of pure bliss.

I don’t know how much time had passed when I felt a small furry creature nuzzling my hand. The sky was now a twilit purple, Roy still in his cling wrap, and Sweet Toby Johnson looking up at me as though to tell me those approaching sirens had some mysterious thing to do with me.

“Ok, Roy,” I said, “It’s time.” I didn’t wait for his response. I quickly got him back onto his feet and spun him round and round to free him of his silken wrap. When all the cling wrap was just a sad pile of glittering silver on the floor, a slightly tottering Roy stood before me, looking down in alarm at the small tabby that was circling our feet.

“Don’t worry, Roy,” I told him, “That’s Sweet Toby Johnson. Slasher McTook, your attacker, is gone now. For the time being, at least. You have nothing to fear.” I smiled. I was amazed to discover that his slashed black clothing had mended itself under cling wrap, his terrorised skin also now perfectly healed.

But I didn’t let Roy show me his appreciation, or even admire my record collection – which included a number of his own albums. Instead I hurried him out the backdoor, down the back ramp and over the back fence. No point in ceremony, I thought.

“I’ll always remember you, Roy,” I whispered, as Toby and I watched his receding black figure disappear over the hockey grounds and into the creek. “What a day!” Toby blinked at me in agreement.

What a day indeed!

Too many good things, not enough rant space

2006-07-09T16:50:00.000+10:00

Good things:

1. Haruki Murakami. Why has it taken me so long to read any of his stuff? I now have to make up for lost time and read everything he has ever written. 'Jagger Unauthorized' will just have to wait.

2. Doctor Who. Of course, to me, a self-confessed Whovian, Doctor Who is always good. But the first episode of the new season, which aired last night, was *gooooooooooood*. Now I am all conflicted as to where my loyalties lie: with the 'scrawny-but-sexy' (as my mother put it) previous Doctor, Christopher Eccelston, or with the new Doc, David Tennant, who could be anything at this stage, but most of the things he promises to be are gooooood.

3. 4-cheese pizza. Or pizza de la fromage quatre, as we know it in more civilized circles. The cheeses in question were: English Applewood (that is, a delicious smoked cheese), Caprakaas Goat's Gouda (a mild, firm goat's cheese), Grana Padano (the younger, more mild of the 2 Italian parmesans we have at the shop) and Roquefort (and yes, eating it again made me travel back in time to the 60's, but that's another story for another time). So delicious. So good. So cheese.

4. Getting out of the shower or a bath and wrapping oneself in a warm towel that has been hanging over the heater for the duration of the shower/bath - anything from 7 minutes up to 1 hour, if the bath be hot and the reading be all talking cats and strange libraries (thank you, Murakami). I find, the longer the better the warmer the towel. Ah, to be wrinkly like a prune always.

5. Red Square. Sorry, this is another cheese one, but it is good and this is a list a good things. A light washed-rind, soft, ripe, just reading for eating. Slightly stronger flavour than a regular brie, as I tell my customers. This on a biscuit with a bit of quince paste and a nice cup of tea. This is good.

6. Talking to Erin on the phone, calling from Thailand. Crackly but good to hear her voice, possibly the least depressed she's sounded since the breakup with Julia - which might not sounds like much, but it is good.

7. Writing a list of good things, putting good things into words, black on white, squiggly little characters with dots and lines and funny things. There, solid, in existence. To remind oneself of these things. And that it doesn't matter that one's boss leaves a bit to be desired, that one hasn't even really begun the so-called novel one is meant to be writing this year, that the look of one's bank account means no serious travelling for me when most of my friends seem to be jetting off to exotic places - even housemate Kate is this weekend in Adelaide (yes, 'exotic', ha!) Because you don't have to go far to find good things and when you have them, you should notice them. You should say 'If this isn't nice, what is?' And sometimes that's enough.

8. Realising that should the novel one had planned to write this year take longer to lift off the ground than one had hoped, there's always National Novel Writing Month. Which is November. Why write something over 12 months, when you can cram it into 30 days!? And anyone can do it! So get thee to a nunnery. And go to their website on the way. This is my back-up plan. Nun, novel, November. Nun, novel, November. Good, no? I think so.

9. Eugene Hutz. Gogol Bordello. Gypsy Punks Underdog World Strike. I know most of you won't get the pure joy that this refers to. But it had to be said. Nothing rocks like crazy Eastern European drunk gypsy punks rock. As he puts it: In the old time, it was not a crime.

What does the fireman wear red brace? Or: A condition known as Red Braces Fever, a sufferer's account

2006-06-29T13:03:00.000+10:00

Internet Explorer could not cope with my search of the ABC website for 'Doctor Who'. I think it's trying to hide something and that thing I will bring out into the open in all his time-travelling glory. Speaking of which, during a fevered half-sleep the other night, I dreamt that by eating Roquefort, the previously illegal raw-milk cheese from France, one could travel back in time to the 60s. Then the bed was too hot and only cooled down to a sleepful temperature by Panamax, Panamax Co. and a small stripey cat.

Nix sent me this wonderful link, which I thus send onto all of you:
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2006/1/25budd.html
There! Go! Read!

I had another birthday, roughly 12 months since I had the last one. It was quite nice, despite doing what I never thought I'd do on a birthday, especially not my own, which is get up at 5:00 AM. But one must earn ones Roquefort somehow. Other birthday joys included: finishing work at 2:30 PM, eating spiced prawns and mahalabia at Zum Zum, sleeping, eating gorgonzola pizza at Bimbo, seeing film 'Wah-Wah', eating Tiramisu at Miller St, being given what may become "a companion in times of great joy and great sorrow" that is: a hip flask, also: much Murakami, socks and the DVD of the film with the best title ever, 'Faster Pussycat Kill Kill'. Thank you all for participating and lavishing me with love and presents! The birthday extends over many days and yet still promises Spanish donuts with chocolate dipping sauce. It's almost like I'm obsessed with food and/or eating. Almost. Did I mention Lychee Vodka? Yes, Lychee Vodka. Oh yes.

Yesterday, thought of a dark haired Finnish lass I know who goes by the name of Suski. I think now I understand. Went to the protest against our esteemed fuckarse prime minister's IR laws, along with to 80,000 to 150,000 others - how 70,000 people could be misplaced, I do not know. But the firemen! Suski had a mild obsession with firemen and this, now, I can totally see. All the primary colours! Their bright yellow pants and jackets, their dark blue shirts, and best of all, their red red braces. And all so tall! Like some children's performer crossed with a Village People person, it's that camp. But all the better because it's real, a ligitimised use of just primary colours in a serious workplace uniform on men who do a life saving job. Love! Is it wrong to start a fire just to see more of them?

Meanwhile, the ABC website has provided me with the information I crave and so far Internet Explorer has let me get away with it. So, as of Saturday, the 8th of July, no one invite me out on a Saturday night - at least not until after 8:30 PM. I will be in a state of nerd-bliss and geek-trance. 'Doctor Who' returns to our screens! The joy! The tardis! The Billie Piper! Only hitch in my never-go-out-on-a-Sat’day-night plan is that our ABC reception is so shite as to be non-existent. And snow will not do. Will have to fix that before 8th of July or may just die. I wonder, is that something a fireman could do something about?

Of cheese, fires & Satan, Or: One of those eternal dilemmas - what do I call my band?

2006-06-12T14:20:00.000+10:00

I should not be writing here, but instead writing fiction. The whole reason I became a lowly cheese-seller was so that I could be a-writing the fiction inbetween all the cheese. I did in fact finish a story last week, which made me happy for a good day and a half. But now all I can think of is English Applewood, Swedish Ambrosia, Boursin, Caprakaas, Strzelecki and Seal Bay triple cream. The contents of the cheese compartment in my fridge. Plus jimjams quince paste. And my aunty's quince brick. The Seal Bay won't see out the day.

My room is finally at a livable temperature. Damn delightful old-fashioned timber houses and their inability to hold warmth in winter or to stay cool in summer. Though my housemate's solution last summer, when the house was too hot to be in, was to take the TV out onto the balcony and watch films there at night. That I am looking forward to. But these days it is a matter of navigating the eddies of cold air as you move from one heat source to another. Toby agrees that the open fires in the evenings are lovely. I’ve started calling the fire Calcifer - after the fire demon in 'Howl's Moving Castle', which I just finished reading - which explains its sometimes moodiness and reluctance to catch. Though, of course, the real Calcifer does not go out, but instead feeds himself with logs and keeps the moving castle moving. If we were a moving castle, we could move away from the hockey field when the hockey players are getting too rowdy. We could move up the hill closer to the tram stop when I’m running late for work. We could move into a warmer part of the world while the rest of ascot vale freezes. We need to get us one of thems fire demons.

Kate’s band is looking for a new name. They are currently called 'Left of Crazy’, not 'Left of Catzy' as I just mistyped. They are a melancholy rock band comprising of a redheaded bassist and lead-singer, a longhaired Sri Lankan rockponce lead guitarist, a gay farm-boy drummer and a real cute vampire rhythm guitarist and backing vocalist (also, incidentally, a Doctor Who fan). The names they have so far rejected include:
Little Cat Z (‘too funk’)
Bruise Wheel, and/or Bruise Wheel of Death (‘too metal’)
Smit, Snot and Shpadoinkle (‘we're not like your band [read: we're a *serious* band]’ - bah!)
Sire Whipped (‘no one's no one's sire and none of us are sire whipped')
They are too picky, I say. But please, any suggestions you have, throw them my way and I’ll voice them to the manager. I’ll also add the 'of death' or 'of doom' on the end of them to make them that bit more classy.
Unfortunately for them, the most awesomist, best band name ever, Satan's Bunnies, has been taken. We bunnies of beelzebub should have done something to celebrate on June 6th = 6/06/06 = 666 = our dark lord (voldy)'s day! Do you have to like, rehearse and stuff to still be considered a band?

No mention of the Da Vinci Code here

2006-06-02T19:26:00.000+10:00

Damn. Why oh why must Hampstead Heath and its crepes be so far away?! Marnie has gone and reminded me - her going to London for a weekend in a bit. As you do. When you are in Europe. And she is going to seek out crepes on my rant-ahem-recommendation and now I am all jealous, I want crepes and I want them NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! (Yes, that was a Xena war cry you heard!) I will have to live vicariously...

Also, you might like to hear that me and nix/rachel/jonathan are still friends and we have the smiles to prove it. So don't you worry your pretty little head about all the cyber-shite that has gone down in the last week or so. I mean, not shite, but deep intellectual dialogue. no one threw chairs. it was not Jerry Springer. (alas).

And so, because I have not really all that much to say, I thought I'd share with you some more shite in the form of a couple of poems wot I writ semi-recently. Not about cheese (sorry). The first is kind-of half a response to a poem wot Grant Caldwell (remember him?) had in the Sat'day Age recently, and the second is my response to the first poem. You are missing some formatting, italics etc, so just squint a bit when you read 'em and imagine it in there. Skip or enjoy, whatever is your predilection when it comes to pottery, i mean, poetry. So, here goes:

Your News

I see you do (this
in a poem in the paper
and (I wonder what it means
an endless opening (perhaps
something almost (vaginal
—shuddering unsatisfied, I was
these sudden downpours
these days (I used to
—and you were surprised
the news made me (this sudden nightfall
and the downpour (perfect for this
—well, you didn’t know
so, so—(I wonder how
this can ever close (and yet,
you—

And the afterimage

—made it, closed it, finished it) these things I wonder)—that surprised me, or maybe you were just talking—this, this mood, around us all, dark, sodden, you know? You know. You must know) it was all too—) The word was ‘sad’, I can’t pretend to use any other,) are dark, they say, these days are—) that one I didn’t need to open. Or almost there) chinese boxes, babushka dolls, a mirror and a mirror, facing each other across the—) I wouldn’t usually call you ‘you’, others yes, but not you, and then, please understand, the ‘you’ changes, all the time, well once here. Once. Does this close it? this? —this? —this?) This?

A many-splintered thing

2006-05-31T12:47:00.000+10:00

Could this internet connection be any slower? Quite possibly, yes. All I'm asking for is pictures of my latest, newest, maybe one of my weirdest celebrity crushes: Jim Schembri. Have you seen what he looks like? He's cute! Not that I agree with his film reviews, but I do find his column piss-funny. So, time to initiate Operation Stalk Schembri.

Unrelated to OSS, I feel a quote is in order:

'To write or speak is almost inevitably to lie a little. It is an attempt to clothe an intangible in a tangible form; to compress an immeasurable into a mold. And in the act of compression, how Truth is mangles and torn!'
—Anne Morrow Lindberg, American writer.

Not that I believe in the concept of one truth, let alone truth with a capital 'T'. I'm far too postmodern, too much a creative arts student for that. But I feel it's relevant to my last post and nix's reaction to it – a reaction which I was quite hurt by. Part of it was that s/he made me feel like I'd inflicted some great amount of pain and damage, however unintentionally; that I was a bad friend, stupid, blundering, thoughtless. Another part of it made me feel like I was not trusted, not given the benefit of the doubt, that I was being misread in the worst possible way. That I was only writing the post because finally I had *seen*; that – to quote nix – '‘belief’ becomes tangible, visible, ‘real’ [and thus] comment-upon-able'. Rather than the real reason, which was that I thought you'd all like a change from Toby stories. (cue canned laughter).

Maybe nix just gave me a theoretical going-over, which I should have very well expected (damn post-graduate students!). In my defence, I would like to say that I wrote it as I saw it and as I had heard it and as nix had told it to me. Not even that: but as I saw it – on that one day. I was not saying this is all there is to the issue or to nix. I was not positing some Truth, or even truth, small 't'. Identity is a many-splintered thing. And doesn't being trans and all the inherent problems with language (most particularly pronouns), with how you come across to other people versus how you see yourself, etc; doesn't all this just make evident what are fissures in the very nature of identity itself? That most of us put a label on ourselves – at the most basic level: 'he' or 'she' or even just our names – and this label comes to stand for something/someone as though that thing is a unified whole, one single, easily definable thing, an inner truth. Oh whoa, flashbacks to writing essay on 'Orlando'!

Anyway, nix has apologised and I have apologised, so maybe I shouldn't even be posting this. I guess I just want to say what's on my mind, even though now I'm more wary of this whole blog thing and, well, of writing about nix, which makes me sad. Next time: less angst, less theoretical ramblings and more stories about cheese and Toby. Or reader interaction: vote as to whether I should: a.) take OSS to a whole new level, b.) shut down this blog and/or c.) become a hermit and only communicate via carrier pigeon...
“Dear Mr. Schembri, Meet Speckles, my feathery messenger friend who is kind enough to convey my highest regards to your good self...”

Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

2006-05-24T12:46:00.000+10:00

Paid rent today. Feel poor. But not 'poo' as I just mistyped. Feel like having a cup of tea. Earl Grey or English Breakfast? Have you heard the news: I seem to be becoming an English Breakfast drinker. After years of just Earl Grey. Weird or weird?

But it seems to be the year of changes: E & J breaking up. R & D buying an apartment. R discovering she's transgendered. RB changing her hair from the standard black bob - no, hold on, that was last year. Me moving here, swapping jobs, getting Toby and drinking English Breakfast. All major life changing things.

I don't think I've ever talked here about nix/rachel/jonathan and her realising some months back that she is transgendered, that is, that she identifies as neither female nor male. I guess it's a kinda big thing - I wanted to do it and her justice. And yes, it is big, but at the same time, when she told me, I was not exactly surprised - it makes sense with her. And since discovering this, she seems to be more at peace within herself; so I am happy. Though at the same time it does open up a whole new kettle of fish: which toilets/pronoun/name to use, etc, not to mention 'coming out'. And in an effort to be less-gender-specific on the outside, so as to reflect who she identifies with internally, she is becoming more 'manly' in appearance, mannerism, laugh, etc. (Yes, 'manly'. As in, 'Men men men men, MANLY men, men meeeeeeeeeeeeeeennnnnnnnnnnnnnn!' - the classic theme song for that clARSEy sitcom 'Three and a half Men'. Yes, she is now more Charlie Sheen!) Her man-laugh is a good, joyless, deep, slow 'ho ho ho'. Very convincing. Her man-dance makes up both giggle like 12 year old girls. It's all in the pelvic thrust. But her latest man-hair is what I like the most. A bit hippy, a bit hare-Krishna: shaved (nothing new there) but shaved real short except for a tuft (that is, man-tuft) sticking up on the crown of her head. And seeing her with this hairdo, in her new man-clothes: shirt, vest, jeans, runners - all in sober man-colours (gone are the days of orange), I can now really *see* it. I mean, her. The her I think she wants us to see. Not that I didn't 'believe' it before, I did; I believed it and I knew she meant it. But now I can *see* it. Her and Dan looked like a couple of blokes, and that made me the only girl/lass/woman/chick/sheila of our little group as we went into the cinema, as we are wont to do on a Monday. And so forgive me using all these female pronouns. We refer to her as Rachel and/or Jonathan now, but still seem to use the female pronouns more than male - she says she doesn't mind and it would be nice to occasionally use male pronouns, but it's not like 'Rachel' is gone and entirely replaced by Jonathan. She is still the same person; man-laugh, man-dance, man-clothes, man-hair and all. And terrible movie suggestions: because of her, we saw The Da Vinci Code!

So click on the Bowie lyrics (entry title) to go to her excellent blog which deals with the subject. Of being trans, not of making terrible movie suggestions. That's an entirely different blog. Or at least, it should be.

Being messenger

2006-05-15T13:11:00.000+10:00

On the weekend I had some sad news which I then had to impart onto some of our friends. Ah, the blessed joys of being messenger. I think we all gave the same response of 'oh my god'. The news was that two of our friends have broken up after 5 something years together. It is very sad and makes me want to just curl up in a chair watching season 4 of Buffy (the ones where Willow and Tara get together) with a cat in my lap. Or that could be my head cold talking. They are very far away at the moment, which makes it all the more difficult to digest. But if you are reading, guys, then know you are in my heart and thoughts, and I miss you both.

Now, where's my chocolate?

Toby & his rock'n'roll lifestyle: fights, bites, other cats & drugs

2006-05-11T12:35:00.000+10:00

Bit of drama here at Ronemeda on Monday: Toby got himself into what I imagine was a one-sided fight with another cat, a big meanie-poo who picks on little 4 month old moggies. So I come home from the cinema and discover the previously playful kitty in a fit of what could almost be teenage angst, but was probably just miserable pain. When I patted him along the back he yelped like I'd poked him with a red-hot poker and then ran and hid under the bed. So I called on my kind-of-local cat courier service (also, strangely enough, my mother - it's a small world) and gots us to the vet. Who fixed him up good and proper - shaved a bit of fur off his side, where there was a puncture wound from that nasty cat's tooth. Gave him a shot of something in his leg. Fixed us up with some green pills. He also ran his hands repeatedly over the poor cat's sore back to try and find if there was another puncture wound that would need shaving and closer investigation. This Toby did not like one bit, and me neither - he was crying something terrible and I felt so guilty, having been at the cinema enjoying a life of leisure while my baby was getting mugged and molested by some bully-cat equivalent of Phillip Ruddock. Just because Toby is a delicate flower/future-librarian/David-Bowie-loving-nerd! But he's fighting the good fight against the armies of corks which are invading our house - slightly less scary than orcs but still after the one true feathered mouse to rule them all. (Ok, so maybe I need to get out of the house a little more...)

But don't fret, he's back in form now and proved it by purring lots and also pouncing on my face while I tried to sleep. At least it was not as bad as Martin's diagnosis: that he'd been bitten by a zombie duck from down the creek/drain and was going to turn into undead poultry and you know, 28-Days-Later us all to death. Because he did keep making these quaking-type noises when we tried to touch him on the back. But the vet said we'd all be dead by now if that had been the case. Dead or undead. And can the undead write blogs? This be proof to the contrary or incriminating evidence.

Today's crisis is how I can make the less than 1cm of milk left in the carton last for the day's worth of cups of tea. Because of course I can't just go out and buy more. That would involve leaving the house.

Me, productive?

2006-05-04T17:32:00.000+10:00

Somehow not having to get up at 5am (as I do 3 days a week in order to get to the Market for work by 6:30) means that I instead sleep uptil 9:45am or until Toby bites my hand/s off (like Face/Off: Nick Cage style) and I have to get up and feed him with my bloody stumps. Don't worry, they grow back by 11 or so. Then I eat my brekkie of yummyyummyyumyum blueberry bagels that make me think of Marnie stocking up on them in London before going back to the edible-food-free-zone that was Finland (Hi, Marnie, are you ever here?). Then I have a bath and read my book. So good. Damn Ali Smith. She's gone and written it. What am I meant to write now? (Said book is Hotel World, btw. Thanks Erin&Jules for the rec! I loved it!) Meanwhile, Toby fell in the bath while trying to catch one of those ever elusive corks, which at that point was floating in the water, however did it get there? It was bound to happen sooner or later - poor little soaking wet cat. But has he learnt? Probably not. Cheese for brains.

I did decipher a Tom Waits lyric which had always passed me by: "The large print giveth, the small print taketh away."

Then I did some painting, which SUCKED. Well, most of it. I don't think any of it will make it out of the studio, but I guess making it out of the paint tubes is a step up in the world for the paint itself. Maybe I should stick to little bits of ripped paper stuck together in a pretty fashion? Also international travel tickets. Hmm...

THEN lunch happened and with lunch, some all-important Buffy viewing. Which included an episode with some palpable chemistry between Oz and Xander. I love Oz - but not Xander so much. So therefore know that I AM NOT projecting. If I were projecting, I would project chemistry onto Oz and Spike, would I not?! But anyway, in said ep (from Season 4), Buffy knocks Oz and Xander unconscious and they end up lying in each other's arms! So sweet. Then later, Xander's hand is protectively on Oz's shoulder. Well, who wouldn't want to fondle cute little Seth Green?! Etc. And more. Off-screen stuff. You know how these boys are. *ahem*

So, all in all, a well used day off. At this rate I will ... ah ... achieve something ... create something ... you know?

Blue Orchid

2006-04-23T18:14:00.000+10:00

I have a new love in my life. Met and tasted only yesterday and already a fixation in my dreams last night. That is, Blue Orchid - the most exquisite creamy blue cheese I have ever tasted. In fact, my new favourite cheese. Nay, my new favourite food stuff. Nay, my new favourite - love. Oh my.

So I started my new job at the cheese shop on Tuesday and by Saturday was starting to enjoy it. Working with another Esther is fun (one more for the collection!). But it's busy and kinda full on and I've never done the food-handling-being-on-your-feet-all-day thing. Well, let's just say it took me a while to feel the love.

I started with the Havati. Danish, creamy, quite nice. Kate (housemate) loved it. Then I tried some tasties/cheddars: Victorian Vintage (nice and sharp) and a club cheddar, Tilba (nuttier flavour, I prefered the Vic Vintage). Then before my shift on Saturday, Martin (other housemate) put in a request in for some blue cheeses, gave me $10 to go blue crazy. And all day long all I heard was people raving about the Blue Orchid. I even gave a couple of customers a sample of it (this being before I myself had tried some) and they swooned, the man saying all he needed was this cheese and a bottle of shiraz and he'd be set. So it's blue; I had Martin's money burning a hole in, well, my wallet; so I think, ok, Blue Orchid - I'll try some. And to 'compare and contrast': some King Island Roaring Fourties Blue. Plus staff discount. Nicey nicey, all set to rock, as they say, n'roll.

Some of you may have heard me speak of the pillar of my existance, the things that hold me up, keep me going when times are rough, shine light on the darkness of being young and free in Australia in the 21st century. You might have heard me say brie was one pillar, cheese (in general) another pillar, tiramisu a third... But all these are null and void now. I have only one pillar and it is Blue Orchid. Only one addiction. Only one vice. Only one obsession (sorry, Mr Bowie). Can I survive until my next shift on the small piece I got yesterday? Can I spend all my money on just this one cheese? Can the colour blue ever mean anything else? I tell you, I am a changed woman.

So, youse'all should come down to the Vic Market, shop's called Curds and Whey, and I'll fix you up with some too.

last night, I dreamed I was dreaming of you...

2006-04-16T16:22:00.000+10:00

...or say Tom Waits tells me. I love Tom Waits.

I also love Martha Wainwright, who I saw perform on Thursday night. Her competition was only The Rolling Stones who were performing across the road that same night. I love the Rolling Stones, but their tickets were something like $250 a pop, so I think I made the right choice on the night (or so my bank balance tells me). Plus Martha has a number of things going for her that the Stones do not: she is young and HOT (though Mick IS a sex god), her music is fresh and unsentimental, she is female, and she had merchandise including undies with the words "Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole" written on the bum of them (after her classic song which she teased us she would not sing, but then sung it all the same). At least, as far as I know, the Stones were not selling something similar - correct me if I'm wrong. She sure knows how to sing. Oh wow, I love her voice. If only I could sing a fraction as well as she does. She even did a Stones song: Street Fighting Man. I'm sure no one can prance and pout like Mick Jagger, and I do have a slight Mick-and-Keith inspired shrine in the kitchen and sure, as far as I know Martha is not a Time Lord (like Mick is), nor is she an undead immortal vampire-type (like Keith), but she is GREAT! *sigh* So, who wants to come with me to see her at Manchester Lane on 24th April?!?

So, what else? Toby has discovered the great outdoors. Or rather, he has been allowed to discover it and he enjoys it very much. All that space! All those new smells! All that stuff to explore! But right now he is sleeping in my lap - too much of a good thing can be quite tiring for a small cat.

Speaking of Time Lords (Mick, not Toby), I saw 28 Days Later last night, while drinking wine and toasting marshmallows on an open fire. My favourite Time Lord (sorry Mick), Christopher Eccleston (the Doctor - as in - Who) was in it, as an evvvvvvvvvvvil army man. No sonic screwdriver here. They had dyed his hair a kind of gingerish-red colour to signify his evvvvvvvilness. I could tell he was secretly missing Billie Piper. Ah, Billie... Anyway *cough* where was I? Oh yes - I want me a Cillian Murphy for the house. And not just because I fear for a zombie attack here in Ascot Vale. But I tell you, the other day I went to Puckle St, Moonee Ponds - which is the local 'strip' - and it was scary. Bogans galore. And zombies too, no doubt. AND I had no luck trying to source me some Ali Smith to read. There needs to be a Readings there, and a Cinema Nova, and a Vina Bar, and a Brunettis, and a King and Godfreys, and you might as well chuck in a Tiamo 2 while you're there. Or just move all the best bits of Lygon St, so that they're 5 mins away from me again. Not that I'm missing being so close to all of that, no, nothing of the sort...

So, go forth and listen to Tom Waits. And Martha Wainwright. And eat chocolate. Happy Egg Day, everyone!

A new season, a new beginning

2006-04-05T16:35:00.000+10:00

It's raining and just starting to be cold - well, colder than summer, but not cold compared with Europe winter or even autumn. But luckily I have a number of warming things: freshly baked hot cross buns, chicken soup (cure for the common cold), dressing gown, a furry lap warmer who gets bigger day by day, and the music of Draco and the Malfoys (warms the cockles of my heart). So all in all, not too bad. But I'm still cold!

ALSO - I quit my job! Yay, no more unhappiness there! No more abusive callers! Hopefully no more call centres for me! I see out the week (most of which has been spent in bed or on the couch watching Buffy, drinking chicken soup and trying to get over said common cold). Then I have one week holiday/unemployment (however you choose to see it). Then I start my new job at a cheese/deli shop, Curds and Whey, at the Vic Market. Which will give me better hours (ie. less - more conducive to being, as they say, 'artistic') and less money (but does that make you - ie. me - happy? Answer: no.) So no more trips to Europe for me in the near future, but hopefully less depression/job-related-dissatisfaction with life in general/being an alcoholic (ha ha). Also probably less boot and/or shoe buying and I may have to put off buying box set of the new series of Doctor Who (hint: birthday/June). But I hope my life can be more what I want it to be, and me more the person I want to be - which, in general, is a happier one.

Toby would like to report that his research into the kitchen sink and the properties of water are going well, as is his exploration of new and exciting cupboards of the house. His obsession with food continues to grow as does his belly and body in general. My neck and shoulders are becoming more scratched as his sharp little claws have to hold up more weight when he settles himself on my shoulders. Mental note to self: wear cat-protective clothing any time when in the house.

Launched (like a rocket) new band with four sevenths of the original members of the Northcote Military Tatu of Death. New band, until we decide otherwise, is called Satan's Bunnies. Hopefully we will rock. On a regular basis. In the music room or basement of my house. Maybe not always with a kitten on my shoulder, pouncing on my fingers as I try to play the cello. Amusing, but not very practical.

Ronemeda, Toby and me

2006-03-19T16:52:00.000+11:00

Oh the news! Where to start, where to start?

First: I moved! To Ascot Vale, a rambling old house on a hill overlooking the valley formed by the optimistically-named Moonee Ponds Creek (‘drain’ would be more appropriate), the other side of which is Brunswick. I feel I have moved to the country, a quiet, green, tree-filled area, a house with strange cupboards, many doorbells (including one, randomly, on the bath), an overabundance of hooks and a rock band sometimes in the basement. It also has a sewing room which I am converting into a studio. It is small but light-filled and once day I will produce some masterwork or another in there. Or just attempt to paint David Bowie a la Man Who Fell to Earth and sigh about not having a live model. All these things are great but the two (or is it three?) best things are my excellent new housemates who are so easy going and relaxed that there was none of the customary ‘adjusting period’ of new share-houses/new housemates. The other best thing is ….

Toby! My new, four-legged, furry, purry baby. Who is currently asleep in my lap. Finally, after an eternity of four years (yes, sometimes eternity doesn’t last forever) of not having a cat to call my own, I now have one. Mr Tobias Took Johnson – the explanation for his continual hunger being that he’s part hobbit, part tabby. He has little white socks and over-sized ears and is one day going to grow up to be a librarian (according to Rachel – it’s the white socks) or a star soccer player for Manchester United or Real Madrid (you should see him with that little ball with the bell in it). He’s also a climber. And he is developing quite a fan-club, which we (me and him) are thinking about charging, per pat, extra if he purrs. Should I stop doting now? Just a little bit more… He’s very gorgeous and has made the family cats, Diesel and Morris, look like ginormous lions.

Oh yes, also: this: the house is - hilariously - called Ronemeda. I like to think Hermione built it for her beloved. And Draco and Harry have set up shop down the road in Travancore.

All you need is...

2006-02-17T11:17:00.000+11:00

Customers are funny. I won't eat for a week and I'll take you to court, says one. I'm masturbating right now, are you going to hang up? says another. Listen here lady, I'm going to the Ombudsman and you're going down, says my favourite customer of the week. And the funniest one: I've recorded this conversation and I'm calling Channel 9. Lovely balanced friendly people, all. Which is why I love working in customer service. Love it. Love, love, love. Love. .... Love.

And just because my love for the service of customers is so great (servicing them with a knife, suggests Rachel), I worked extra shifts this week at my previous place of employment, a leading flower delivery service, recently renamed The Pits of Burning Hell. Catchy, huh? I'm there because, as you no doubt know, it was my favouritest of days on the calendar on Tuesday: Spend-Money-On-Your-Loved-One-Or-Else-He/She/It-Will-Know-You're-Having-An-Affair Day. Most people know it by it's shortened name: Valentine's Day. Working two jobs is fun. Oh yes. I love it. Love. Love, love, love. ... Love.

The day after SMOYLOOEHSIWKYHAA Day, I got a call at my regular, usual, oh-so-fun-I-have-to-keep-reminding-myself-it-pays-the-rent job, and the caller, a human male, said I had a lovely voice. I asked him if he had a mobile phone query I could help him with. And he asked me if I'm single, which is not usually something that comes up in this line of work. But it is called customer 'care', after all. He then proceeded to tell me he was looking for a girlfriend - and lucky me: through the random process of call allocation, that the call should come to my phone! But apparently he called back a few times and tried these successful lines on other call centre employees. I wonder if he tried them only when one of us lassies answered the phone - and what he did when a bloke answered. Shouldn't be too picky I say. And there are some very attractive lads at work, if I do say so myself. And some of them, too, have lovely voices. And we all love customers. Love them. Love. Love, love... you get the picture.

So be nice to people who work in customer service. Because we can buy knives and more often than not, we know where you live.

Voyeurism, verbal abuse and Lars von Trier

2006-02-03T09:57:00.000+11:00

Ok ok, I modify my last entry. I don't *hate* working. I just don't particularly enjoy it, but that's probably because I haven't yet found or been able to get a job I actually like/care about/am interested in. But I'm planning to try and fix that. One day. I hope.

I am truly becoming an office nerd. Have taken to sitting at a desk by the window, opening the blinds and getting some natural light in through the dusty dirty windows. The office is on the ground level when you walk in the front door, but by the time you get to my desk at the back of the building, it's sunk to a metre or so below ground level. The floor of the office doesn't actually slope or anything. Weird, huh? Anyway, through the dust and grime of the never-cleaned windows, I get to see people walking past, all from a nice angle of below ground level, looking up. Not that I can see up skirts or anything. Well, not without a mirror. *Ahem* I mean, nothing. And the excitement of yesterday - this is where the office nerd part comes in - was seeing someone get a parking ticket. My life has new meaning. Next I'll be telling you about matching stationery.

Actually, more exciting than the parking ticket was having a charming gentleman customer swear his head off at me because his direct debit didn't go through because he didn't have the money in his bank account and hence couldn't use his mobile phone because he had no credit. And it was all my fault! Of course.

But maybe more exciting than that was my discovery of a chap who works there who looks so uncannily like Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier that I think perhaps he IS Lars von Trier and I am actually a cast member in a Dogme film, I just don't know it yet. This does give my working life a whole new meaning. I wonder will Emily Watson or Björk turn up one day? Or Nicole Kidman? Or Catherine Deneuve? Can I fool myself into actually looking forward to work? Can I now pretend I work in the filmmaking world?

Have I told you yet that the 'von' in the title of this blog is my homage to Lars von Trier? And the 'von' in his name was apparently acquired because when he went to film school, as a humble Lars Trier, he found the other students so wanky and pretentious that he added the 'von' to his name to take the piss.

Dreams and cowboys

2006-01-28T11:24:00.000+11:00

In news just to hand: I hate working. I look back on my 6 months of unemployment, 3.5 of them spent travelling, with such fondness. Thems were the days.

One night this week I had what I like to call The Best Dream of My Life. The following night I had another dream which totally challenged the previous night's dream for said title. If you don't like hearing about other people's dreams, skip the next two paragraphs.

Dream Number 1 was a rambling, adventurous, frolicking saga filled with rock stars, time travel and trucks. The main characters (excluding I) were a posse of four, sitting in a truck. Their leader, a young Mick Jagger. Heath Ledger. Peter Serafinowicz (British comedian who is in Hardware and Spaced, was in one episode of Black Books, and also Shawn of the Dead) - normally brunette but here blonde. And a fourth chap - possibly Paul Bettany or Alan Tudyk (both of whom appeared with darling Mr. Heath in A Knight's Tale, which we watched recently, the latter also in Firefly and Serenity, the former we thought was Bingley in the latest Pride and Prejudice, but it turns out that's a totally different chap altogether, Simon Woods, perhaps his long lost identical twin?). Anyway, these four formed quite a posse, as you can imagine. Well, maybe you can't. Maybe that's just me. And their leader, young sexy rock god Mick, was a time traveller. Perhaps even, by my reckoning, a Time Lord, a la Doctor Who. There were two Rachels there too - one from the past, busy snogging Dan, the other from the present, talking to me in the back of the truck. At one point I says to Mick Jagger Hadn't you better be getting back to the 1960s and forming a band called The Rolling Stones, otherwise you'll be depriving millions of people of some of the best rock music ever. He seemed nonplussed. Which I guess, as a Time Lord, you have all the time in the world to do those sorts of things. Maybe also he didn't like being told what to do. Rock.

Dream Number 2 was set in some sort of bayside town/city, a small city, a bit like Hobart. At some point there was a noxious gas blanketing the main waterside street. At one point I was playing with a new mobile phone I had recently bought (in the dream, not in real life, but I am thinking of getting one for outside of dreams too). But the main selling point of this dream was that I spent the most part of it seducing Peter Dinklage. My favourite dwarf. I even took him to a studio to see Patricia Arquette - I thought he'd like to catch up with her. I was playing it cool. We held hands. The gas didn't get us.

I can't decide which dream I liked more, which dream gets the title.

Meanwhile, my tear ducts got a good workout in Brokeback Mountain on Thursday night. I used to be not so enthralled by Heath Ledger, but these days he could sneeze and I'd be impressed. And Jack Gyllenhaal is a dish. Y'all gots to see it. Wonderful, moving, real life stuff.

But it all happened so fast—!

2006-01-18T21:41:00.000+11:00

Hola people! Guess what? I'm employed. Damn and blast I say. Apart from the money/security/being-able-to-pay-rent-and-buy-stuff thing, it is rotten. What is with all this getting up at 7am? My body is not made for that kind of treatment. I'm a delicate flower. At least the 9am-5pm part of things only lasts for the 7 days of training, then I'm onto regular 1-6pm shifts, Mon-Fri, leaving mornings and weekends free to endulge my creative-writing/painting/David-Bowie-and-Devil-worshipping/drinking/film-watching practices. Simultaneously. Ah yes, 'multi-tasking'. That's me.

Hilariously, I'm now working for a mobile phone company - am I allowed to say who it is on a blog? - it's Vodafone. Hilarious, because as some or most of you might know, I have never owned a mobile phone. I didn't say that at the interview though. Oh, the joys. I have yet to voice my own personal mobile phone related enquiry, which is: can you get Gary Newman's hit song 'Cars' as a ringtone? Because THAT is what it would take for me to get a mobile. "Here in my car, I feel safe as can be..." (Strangely enough, I have also never driven.)

I found some pretty fucked ads for jobs while I was searching (searching for jobs, that is, not for fucked-up ads for jobs!) Such as:
"MARTENIKG IS ALL AOUBT MKAENIG A BLOD STMEATENT THAT CTAHCES POELPS ANTETITION!!" Hmm, yes. And: "Ambitious and wanting to earn. BIG Ca$h? ... Looking for part-time work ? Want a fun, vibrant, buzzy environment?" Buzzy? Do you have to be a bee to apply? Also some with some pretty frikkin' awful typos, and I quote: "Fun & exceptional retail! Right now we`re looking for exceptional retail sales gurus to be apart of an unreal culture." ... 'Apart of'? Well, I certainly want to be apart from any sort of culture- or cheesmaking process. Except for the eating part of it. And they expect people to actually apply for these jobs? Needless to say, I didn't.

My critera for applying was: do the job writers know how to use the English language good and proper like? And if they did, then off I sent my Cover Letter of Death. Which, if rejected, emitted a poisonous gas which killed anyone within 100 meters. Good-O.

Pirates!

2006-01-08T13:15:00.000+11:00

I know, I know. I'm meant to be looking for work. But at least allow me some joy in my life, please.

Today's main source of joy came from (apart from the usual purring cat on my bed to wake me up, coffee for that post-waking wake-up and Anthony and The Johnsons for that relaxing put-me-back-to-sleep mood) the teaser-trailer for the new Pirates of the Carribean filum! Find it here:
http://www.moviecentre.net//upcomingmovies/trailer/movie_id_549.htm
Go! Watch! Now!

As well as the usual hot gay pirate tension between the delicious Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow and the sword-wielding Orlando Bloom as earnest Will Turner, it also has Bill Nighy in it. I love Bill Nighy, particularly as Slartibartfast in Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, but him as a pirate can't do no harm neither. There is also more Mackenzie Crook action, who was in the first one (you know, Gareth from The Office).

And my favourite line from the trailer, from Will/Orlando Bloom is:

"What about Jack? I can't leave without him!"

Hee! That AND gay cowboys (Brokeback Mountain), both in one year! We are lucky.

Two things

2006-01-04T14:31:00.000+11:00

There are two things I hate the most. More than I hate Eddie Maguire and Shane Warne, as difficult as that might be to believe. The first thing I hate the most is worrying about money. The second thing I hate the most (and possibly hate more than the first one because one can't block it out quite so easily) is: looking and applying for jobs. The two are inextricably linked.

So I have applied for one job today. That's good, huh? Now I need a drink.

I hate self-promotion and all that employment related jargon. I'm no good at it. Isn't it enough to say I'm a fast learner, I'm friendly and I have a pretty face - employ me! Please! And I realise more and more that I don't want a "proper job" - not that anyone seems to want to give me one. I just want to write my book, paint some pictures, play some music and maybe, one day, make a film. These things seem easy enough to do (well, except the film part), but very hard to actually "DO" - ie. make a living out of. I am endlessly facinated by how other artists actually do it. How they survive. How they make enough money to eat and pay rent and do what it is they really want to do. I haven't yet worked out a way to do it myself, but I want to - and this year hopefully. I guess a lot of them teach - something I can't exactly see myself doing, but maybe I should think about it. Damnit.

I guess the other thing that makes this all rather hard is that I have actually found my dream job, the job I'd love to do part time and spend the rest of the time in my garret with my cat and what I like to call my tragic writerly disposition. In Prague, there are people who drive around the city in soft-top vintage cars, showing tourists the sights and generally disobeying the road rules - like driving down by the river where cars, I'm sure, are not meant to be. This is the job I want! Ever since I was about 6 years old I've loved vintage cars and used to collect them, the matchbox model ones that is. And I love Prague and I'm sure I could be selective and try and avoid the obnoxious rich American tourists. And I will no doubt, one day, get my driving licence, which I think might help in this position.

My other dream job is to travel round the world going to film festivals to pick out films to show at the festivals back home. How does one get this job? Would it be a proverbial foot-in-the-door if I started working at a video store? Has the fact that I was so enthusiastic about the film 'Tiptoes' in my previous entry ruined all my chances?

Other than that ... I don't know. I'm all out of ideas. Any one out there want to employ me?! Just leave a comment. Please. And remember, I've got a pretty face...! (I think. Or so my mother tells me. But I never believe her.)

All things small and wonderful

2005-12-29T14:27:00.000+11:00

I hope everyone had a fun and happy Christmas. The food at ours was top notch. I ate to the point just before explosion. And then I ate some more. The days that followed also included much eating, the highlights of which were some wonderful barbecues. I particularly enjoyed eating pavlova. The mozzies particularly enjoyed eating me and my cat Morris particularly enjoyed eating bits of sausages and rissoles and cream (not altogether, though I'm sure he would eat that combo altogether if he could). My cousin's dog Koko did not eat the cats, which was good. Morris also ate roasted sweet potato, which adds further evidence to the theory that he is part dog.

Last night, by accident, I watched the film 'Human Nature' on the telly. By accident, because I meant instead to go to bed and read more Kurt Vonnegut which I got for Christmas. Instead Patricia Arquette’s incisors pulled me in - they do it for me every time. I can't resist. It was not a bad film - a bit patchy, but quite funny in places. Not as good as writer Charlie Kauffman's other efforts ('Being John Malkovich', 'Adaptation', 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'). Miranda Otto putting on a French accent was quite amusing. But of course, she's no Patricia Arquette. But the best thing, for me, was the appearance of Peter Dinklage.

Peter Dinklage is the hottest dwarf in filmmaking today, rivalled only by David Lynch's favourite creepy little man Michael J. Anderson, who was also in the spectacular TV series 'Carnivàle'. Yes, this is a claim I have just made up on the spot, but anyone who has seen 'The Station Agent' will no doubt agree with me and those of you who haven't should do so immediately. But life must be hard being a dwarf actor. It's not like you can audition for fun roles like Spiderman or Voldemort. This is probably one thing that drove Peter Dinklage to appear in 'Elf' with Will Ferrell. But apparently he stole the show from Ferrell - not that I'll go particularly out of my way to see it and verify.

So anyway, there I am, writing an email and pondering the great Patricia Arquette-Peter Dinklage combo in 'Human Nature' and, by the by, I wonder if perhaps are they in another film together and hey, wouldn't that be great?! So I turn to my trusty purveyor of all film knowledge, the Internet Movie Database, and do a search that combines these two favourite actors of mine, both so weird and wonderful I can't help loving them. And what comes up, but a 2003 film called 'Tiptoes' - which, lo and behold, includes not just the afore mentioned incisor queen and dwarf extraordinaire but also another of my all-time favourite actors, Gary Oldman! Next yet, I'll discover it includes David Bowie as well and Jude Law playing someone deliciously bratty who later on cries uncontrollably and also Ralph Fiennes eating plums, and thus will have everyone I could ever want altogether in the one film! It will be the filmic equivalent of Morris's ultimate sausage-and-rissole-and-sweet-potato-and-cream combo!

The imbd has this to say about 'Tiptoes':

"Gary Oldman plays as a dwarf brother to a normal-sized Matthew McConaughey. When McConaughey's girlfriend (played by Kate Beckinsale) becomes pregnant, the pair are fearful that the baby will inherit the Oldman gene. Matters are complicated still further when Beckinsale finds herself falling in love with Oldman's character."

Ok, so it doesn't sound great. How the last-time-I-checked full-sized Gary Oldman plays a dwarf, I do not know. But the "Oldman gene" - that sounds interesting! Peter Dinklage plays Gary's bad influence best friend, a drug addict Frenchman who rides a motorbike. And Michael J. Anderson is in it too! So I know what I'll be looking for when next I visit the video store. Harrah for dwarves! I can't get enough!

If only all blood-suckers were sexy like Spike...

2005-12-20T17:00:00.000+11:00

I know last entry I said we should wage war against flies, but I change my mind. Flies AND mosquitoes - and if I have to pick just one, then it's the mosquitoes: they should all go and DIE. I was just hanging out my washing - which will probably dry in about 5 mins it's so hot here - and I got bitten 4 times. Those bastards! Now I want to rip my legs off with my nails. I killed two of them but two is not enough - they have armies. I blame the neighbours. As well as neglecting their two whippets, Valley and Ziggy, they neglect their so-called fish pond, which is really just a green-water filled bath and mosquito breeding ground. Hence all the mozzies in our back garden. So I think my washing is staying there - I'm not going back into that war zone until I'm armed with something - insect spray, machete, bazooka, anything! Meanwhile, my cat is lounging out there in the sun, looking oh-so-smug. It's not fair, just because my blood is nice and tasty ...

Meanwhile, to quote Chairman Kaga from Iron Chef, "If my memory serves me correctly, Christmas is just around the corner." But of course, pretty much everyone on this planet knows that and my guess is those lucky ones who do not know it are getting smaller and smaller in number every day. One of the highlights of my week so far has been reading Kurt Vonnegut's 'Slapstick or Lonesome No More!' at something close to the speed of light. And from that I would like to take today's reading:

Perhaps some people are born unhappy. I surely hope not.

Speaking for my sister and myself: We were born with the capacity and the determination to be utterly happy all the time.

Perhaps even in this we were freaks.

Hi ho.

(1991, p. 35) (Harvard system dies hard!)

... Come on everyone, be a freak and have a happy Christmas!

Home again, home again, jiggity jig

2005-12-08T15:12:00.000+11:00

Hello all,

I am writing this, not from the freezing heart of wintery Europe, but from the warm recesses of north-east Victoria. It is windy. The parrots and wattle birds are making their parroty and wattle birdy noises respectively. The Cure is playing on my laptop. All is well with the world!

I am now in a little town called Mount Beauty, which is where my mum grew up and my grandma lives. The town is located in the Kiewa Valley at the foot of Mt Bogong, the highest mountain in Victoria (1986m, as Mr Google informs me). The aboriginals who used to live in the area called the mountain "Bogong", meaning "big fella," and it's nice to see the big old fella again.

I went for a walk around the lake yesterday - sorry, not lake, regulating pondage - and saw: 2 lots of 4 baby ducks and their mothers (wow, this is sounding like a primary school maths lesson! Now, how many baby ducks, or ducklings, in total, children?), 2 rabbits who ran off as fast as they could when they saw me (I'm pretty scary I know, what with my pistol and t-shirt that reads "I go where myxomatosis doesn't" - but who knew rabbits could FLY across the ground?!), a small tribe of magpies which luckily didn't try to stick their pointy beaks into my head, plus about half a million flies. Fuck, they're annoying! Enough with this war-on-terror shit, our government should be putting all its money and resources into the war on flies. I'm sure it would make many an Aussie feel happier and, more importantly, safer at all those BBQs this summer if there weren't all those frikkin' flies buzzing around and threatening the security of our sausages, rissoles and potato salads. Who's with me in starting a letter writing campaign?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I've opened all the windows to let the wind in. The current temperature is a sublime 21.8ºC, according to the informative website: www.visitmtbeauty.com.au - check it out if you want a visual as to where I am. Though now that I'm back in Oz, I may just get around to working out how to create some sort of photo album on this here blog, so yous'all can see some pictures from my trip (especially ye not-in-Melbourne ones). But no promises, because, you know, technology has this habit of getting the better of me. I'll try and whip it into submission though.

Ooh, better go. There's a wasabi-pea-on-the-floor emergency going on.

Goodbye Europe, goodbye Spain, goodbye mullets!

2005-11-30T07:14:00.000+11:00

Hola!

I am now in Madrid but as I only got here today I can't report much about it. It seems busy, crowded; it has a metro. But Barcelona! Wow, a new rival for my heart where previously there was only Berlin. And Venice. Heck!

Anyway, Barcelona was great - I loved it! I had to leave Home Hostel on Monday because they were closing for a week. And so I moved to another hostel - this one in town, rather than the train ride out of town where Home is. And this other Hostel, Backpackers BCN, was pretty good too - almost as good as Home I'd say. Not as good as home though. (Oh, I am looking forward to being home).

On Sunday, I went to the Fundacio Joan Miro - an art gallery which I thought I'd have to catch a fun funicular railway to get to, but alas, it was broken, so there was a funicular substitute: a bus funicular. Not as fun! The gallery was great - lots of Miro (obviously) and also a special exhibition on collages which was great - more Picasso!

Then on Monday, I went to La Sagrada Familia - the Gaudi cathedral that is still being built. They estimate 25-30 years more and it'll be done! It's quite amazing: neo-gothic, a lot of Gaudi's inspiration came from nature so lots of the shapes in it imitate nature. Also instead of the usual ugly gargoyles, there are animals: snails, chameleons, turtles, lizards, etc (more I'm sure but I can't remember). And in the facade that depicts the Nativity, it shows turkeys - because people eat turkeys at Christmas! Hilarious.

All that is well and good, but what I really want to tell you about is something I saw that has given my life a whole new meaning. In fact, I don't know how life now can have any meaning. What I'm talking about is the mullet to end all mullets. I realised early on when I arrived in Spain that here they take the mullet seriously. None of this namby-pamby "fashionable mullet" business. No, these are serious mullets on serious men, the kind of mulleted men you would probably never want to make eye contact with. And then I see The Mullet. Words cannot describe it. All I can say is that it was amazing. It flowed. It was greasy. It was dark, the man attached to the mullet was swarthy (because, you know, the mullet wears the man, not the other way around). It was ... wow. I am breathless just thinking about it.

And there I will leave it, ladies and gentlemen. On that lovely thought - perhaps what I came to Europe to find! - I will sign off. This will be my last Europe entry, but maybe I will keep posting once I am back in Melbourne, I don't know.

May the spirit of the mullet be with you.

xxxx

Is 7 mins enough time to write a blog?

2005-11-27T07:45:00.000+11:00

Hello all,

Ah, ah, ah, ah, aaah! The world provides! Barcelona is - well, to quote Napoleon Dynamite - awesome. Incredible. ... I love it! Eep! (That was me. I´m sure Napoleon is about as likely to say "eep" as Snape is!)

Things I´ve loved so far (har har):

Parc Güell and its stray cats (I counted 6 today) and it´s views of the city and the sea. Oh the sea, I´ve missed you!
Picasso Museum - a lot of people have said it´s crap, but if you love Picasso as I do, then you won´t find it crap. (And if you don´t like Picasso, then why go to a Museum called "Museo Picasso"?!!) Yes, it has some of his more boring early stuff, but I found it really interesting because it shows the progression of his work and also some naked people, and then it gets to some really cool later stuff like a whole room devoted to his study of Las Meninas, by Velazquez, including his most famous version (go here for a squiz: http://www.abcgallery.com/P/picasso/picasso211.html). It´s great. Also there´s a picture of his friend/secretary Jaime Sabartes, as a faun! I want someone to paint a picture of me as a faun! (I do like fauns!)
Gaudi. All I can do it put on an English accent and say "Brilliant". Brilliant, utterly brilliant. Only been to La Pedrera (an apartment building with a famous wavy roof) and Parc Güell so far, but to quote Kath from Kath and Kim, I like what I see. (That is, "I loike what I see")
Finding a cinema that showed Harry Potter and what´s more, it wasn´t dubbed in Spanish - bonus! I´ll limit my comments on this subject to two, maybe three. 1: Ralph Fiennes as Lord Uncle Voldy is damn scary. Scary as hell. 2: I think I enjoyed watching this film more that reading the book. I mean, the fourth book is not so great, eh? But the film! It´s good! 3: The three Spanish teenagers (at a guess, 15 year olds or so) sitting next to me in the sold out session were swooning in the scene where Harry takes a bath. So hilarious.
The sunshine. Not really convincingly warm, but sunny enough to get me in the mood for summer. Which is where I´ll be in one week´s time (the season of course also being a place, yeh? You always take the weather, etc). Yes, this is my last Saturday in Europe for the time being. I´ll be back in Melbourne before you can say Sunday-Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday-Friday-Saturday. Well, maybe a bit after you´ve said that.

And guess what? That took longer that 7 mins to write - I had to put more money in. (No need for an exclamation mark there, Esther. Settle - settle.) But now I will go to bed. Mmm, I like my single room as well. On the top floor - the view out the window in the morning is tops!

xxxx

I've made it Hôme at last!

2005-11-25T02:18:00.000+11:00

Heloo, as the keyboard seems to want for me to say. I am in Barcelona - the night train left me in one piece, one tired piece, but I am here and all is well with the world! I have had my earl grey tea, I have had a shower, and the DVD room of Hôme Hostel seems to be beckoning me tonight. I even washed my hair!

The crapness of Milano didn't end at the last post! It ended today, when I discovered that while on the Milano Metro someone nicked, pilfered, robbed, stole from me a small pencil case type thing - which they obviously, stupidly and wrongly thought was of value and say, a wallet - but which instead contained tampons, anti-menstrual-pain drugs (my friends! my sadly missed friends!) and some not-currently-in-use-but-not-retired-either badges! That bastard! Or a desperate menstrual woman who likes badges of strange cartoon characters - I thought that was only me and Rachel and Rachel (when menstrual and minus the desperate part I think)! At least most of my best badges are in use, safely attached to my bags and clothing. But the drugs, today of all days, I miss! Aah, the pain. And Rachel, Furry Bowels, this means more badges must be made once I am back in Melbourne, to replace the ones the cruel Milano Menstrual Metro Robber stole from me! Including the Harry-Ron-looking-at-Draco-in-crystal-ball one - which would have been damn appropriate for me to wear tomorrow night when I chase down some Harry-Ron-Draco tension at the cinema, hopefully not dubbed in Spanish!! For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, never mind.

Anyway, not much more to report, as I have done little here so far. Became acquainted with the hammock in the garden of the hostel, while I drank a nice and well-needed cup of earl grey tea and wrote in my journal. (The most important thing I wrote is: Avoid Milan at all costs, especially its Metro!) Found the Lidl supermarket via a funny park that had a bit of water - pondage, lake-type thing - that had triangles of wooden islands in it and a stone bridge going over it. Crazy! But probably not so crazy as Gaudi. I will report back on that one. I am looking forward to exploring this gorgeous sun-filled place and all its Gaudi and Picasso and Miro. Hopefully also there will be some new cheap summer-ish clothes for me to buy and take back for my Aussie summer. Also I want another book as I sadly finished the last Kurt Vonnegut last night on the train. I feel silly buying another book to carry around with me (especially as I can't bear to part with the others - I loved them too much! I now am growing a bit of a Travelling Kurt Vonnegut Library!). But one week without reading - I don't think I can do it! Especially not the killer plane ride back home - and with Lufthansa rather than the delightful Singapore airlines and their individual screens! ... ,-) (That´s a one eyed wink!)

xxxx

Hold your jealousy for one more day ...

2005-11-24T02:01:00.000+11:00

Italy doesn't seem to want to let me go! Either that, or my own incompetency is finally catching up with me. Heartbrokenly, I left Venice and took a nice mostly-empty train to Milano, eating a picnic of cheese, tomato and bread, and mini chocolate filled coissants while I read The Guardian. Went up to Counter A at Milano Centrale, only to discover that my planned night train was not so well planned after all: did not leave that day, only the day before and the day after. So, here I am, having a night and a day in Milano where previously I thought I'd be on a train and then in Barcelona. Oh well, I thought! It's all an adventure, eh? So then I have to go up to a different counter at Milano Centrale to get my ticket for the night train, let's call this counter Bitch Counter of Death. The woman at BCoD is unfriendly and follows what seems to be a "tried and true" method with foreigners who don't speak the language: you speak louder and slower like that will somehow help them overcome their "little problem" with understanding what you say. This goes really well for Bitch Counter Lady and I. But we progress to the part were I pay for ticket reservation, only to discover their credit card facilities don't work at this particular special counter, so I have to scamber off and find a "Bankomat" to get out cash. By the time I get back I'm laughing at how stupid the whole situation is, which I think puts Bitch Lady out a bit. Anyway... All well and good in the end. I have my ticket, I found a hostel where I met a nice redhead Dutchie, I have filled up on a big pasta lunch, I have managed for the most part to avoid getting freezing cold, despite it being freezing cold outside. And tonight I get on my night train and wake up in Barcelona! For that, I can't wait.

I feel like a freak here in Milan for the following reasons: a. I'm not blonde, b. I haven't had something unnatural injected into my face, c. I don't really care what I look like, well, not enough to actually do my hair. I just put on a hat (my "Paris" hat for any of those who are familiar with my Travelling Hat Collection). In fact, I can't remember when I last washed my hair... Hmmm, there's something for me to ponder. Well, I'll definitely do it in Spain though! Reason d. for my feeling like a freak here is that a pigeon nearly landed on my face. My face! Not my head - my face!

I quote the following which made me at least rather excited: "Spain 25 November 2005" which is from www.imdb.com, under a heading: "Release dates for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)" Heh heh heh! I know what I'll be doing on Friday!

Well, I will be sad to say goodbye to Italy, but not to Milan. But I am looking forward to summer! Australia! The Nova! My cats! My own bed! Oh my ...! I am actually counting down: this is my 9th last day in Europe. But hopefully I won't be counting in Barcelona. I'll be too busy taking in all the Gaudi and the awkward teen wizards!
xxxx

To quote my new god, Kurt Vonnegut: If this isn't nice, what is?

2005-11-21T20:55:00.000+11:00

I am in Venice and am so happy to be here I could cry. (Or that could be because the price of Internet useage here? It's so hard to tell in these high emotion situations.) Everything is good: the food, the Peggy Guggenheim, the Grand Canal, the hostel (yes, even the hostel), the Italian wine, the coffee (especially the coffee). What is also good it my putting away of my map, so that: a. I am not technically lost, and b. I can avoid all the tourists (yes, I know I am also a tourist!). The weather is fine and sunny, though frikkin' freezing.

I love Venice! I want to live here and make like I'm Jeanette Winterson writing The Passion.
xxxx

ps. I have totalled the poll results and ... actually I'm too lazy to find another way to Barcelona, so the night train it is. But don't worry, everything will be locked to everything else, and Erin, I'm sure I will be ok without a shower in the morning! And then I go to Home Hostel, which better live up to everything youse guys, E&J, R&D, have said about it!!

A Poll! Reader interaction! Your vote will change my travels! Woo!

2005-11-17T07:49:00.000+11:00

Hello all,

I come to you from Firenze - Florence as it's known to ye plebes. And if you keep your eyeballs peeled on the website of my damn-it's-not-sir-toby's-in-prague-why-can't-every-hostel-be-as-good-as-sir-toby's-in-prague hostel: www.ostelloarchirossi.it - then you might catch a glimpse of me on their webcam, running through the foyer to avoid the Greek (?) guy behind the desk who I think just asked me while I was waiting for my washing to wash. Now I'm waiting for my washing to dry and writing to you! Lucky you. Lucky me: clean clothes! Wow, so novel.

I had a day of trains today - read the Guardian, did the Guardian's sudoku, napped - all the usual joy of trains. I also, incidentally, got from Roma to Firenze, dumbed my luggage at this here lov-er-lee establishment, then jumped on another train to Pisa, hung out there for the arvo before the final train back here at the end of the day. Pisa was, well, the leaning tower was funny. It leans! And it's a tower! A leaning tower! ... That's about as exciting as it gets people. But I liked it. It's a cute little town where not much happens and there's nothing to do. Which is exactly what I needed after the craziarity of Roma. I looked at the tower and laughed. I had lunch and was harrassed by a busker. I watched the tourists take photos of the tower and drew a picture of them and it - them with cameras grafted to their heads where their faces should be. I call it: "Can you see anything through that thing?" I was mistook for a "genuine" artist - people looked over my shoulder to assess my work! No offers though. To buy it, that is. The tower didn't fall down, much to my disappointment. I met an Irish lass, who was also travelling alone, and very nice. I think she wants to live in Italy and it's really not hard to see why. Despite the tourists and the tower not falling down!

So, here we come to the interactive part of the blog. .... You get to vote! ... In a poll! ... Wow, it's just like Big Brother only less, ah, TV.

I am debating - Esther, indecisive? I hear you say, How is this be!? - whether or not I should take the night train from Venice to Barcelona.

To vote, leave a comment with either a "Yea" or a "Nay". And everyone who reads this should vote, you hear me!

Now, you want to hear the pros and cons before you make your vote, don't you?! Well, here they are:

The Pros (that's the good stuff):
-More time in the good places - Venice and Barcelona - and less time in the bad places - riotous France (and not the goooood riotous).
-Price is covered by my Eurail pass except for the reservation/suppliment which would be pretty much equal to the price of a night in a hostel were I not on the night train. Ie. no extra cost.
-Saves time in my book: one must sleep and one must travel, thus killing two birds with one train. So to speak. And I can actually sleep on night trains, despite Mexicans (on the last one) and with the help of my most prized possession: my ear plugs!
-Leaving and arriving in what I like to think are decent hours of the day. Ie. in daylight. Instead of cheapo flights that arrive in some obscure airport in the middle of the night and then you have to find your hostel.

The Cons (the less good stuff):
-Italian night trains are meant to be dodgy, ie. you'll have your stuff stolen, etc. I caught one from Munich to Roma and had my beanie, scarf and gloved nicked (or I lost them at the station?), all from my backpack, but not my wallet, which was in my backpack as well, with it's 6 Euros in it! So, robbers - yes! But they're stupid! ... Another guy from the next room had his camera stolen on the same train, but I am sensible with my valuables. Ie. I wear my money belt with all the important stuff in it (passport, tickets, credit card, any notes, etc) and I put other valuables, eg. my camera, in my big heavy case which is too big and heavy for someone to really "run" off with, plus it's locked shut and perhaps on the night train in question I will also lock it to some bit of the train.
-Possible horror situation of being gassed and the not-so-stupid robbers searching your body, stealing your documents and taking your soul to do with what they will. Hopefully feel it gummi bears, but I suspect they are not that nice.
-If I don't catch the night train, I have to work out another way to get there - which will most likely cost a. money and b. time. Eg. I could go half way by day, stay the night somewhere (like Nice, for instance), then go the rest of the way the next day, thus losing TWO whole days to travelling and paying for the extra night. Or flying at some ridiculous hour, from, say Milan, thus having to get to Milan during the day, catch the flight at night, then find the hostel in Barcelona at night as well. All in all, equalling, hassel and money, but only one day lost to travel. Or something... I don't know what. Please feel free to do this research for me and email me the itinerary details! I am to leave Venice on Tues 22nd. My email address is: esthergjohnson@gmail.com
-Bed hair in full public view when one wakes up on the night train.

So now VOTE! Go, scamper! Leave a comment! Leave a "yea" or a "nay"! I am in your hands. Well, cyber hands. I can't decided. Decide for me people! You have less than a week.

Other then that, life is coffee flavoured and my clothes are probably by now dry or stolen or both! In which case, I will just have to go to H&M and buy new stuff! Do they have H&M in Italy?!

xxxx
...............................................VOTE!

Another questions: ... is it wrong to stalk nuns?

2005-11-14T22:28:00.000+11:00

...But they're just so cute!

I am in Roma, Italy, and enjoying the nun and mullet spotting. So far haven't seen the two combined but if only I could get under those habits...! Don't have much time because the coffee beckons. Italy is great. Boy, do they know how to eat! Especially after all the stodge of Germany. No, that's not entirely true - I ate very well in Berlin, thanks to Mich and Charlie's wonderful cooking and taking me to all sorts of great restaurants. Monsieur Vuong comes to mind - surely Berlin's own Iron Chef!

Berlin was great, as per usual. I really love that city - I don't even have to be doing anything special and I'm happy to be there. Finally got to the Jewish Museum which was well worth it (when I was in Berlin in August, me and Marnie planned to go pretty much every day we were there and never got there!). I also saw a special Picasso exhibition, which was amazing. So much Picasso - room after room after room, of drawings, prints, paintings, sculptures, photographs, even a film he made later on in life which showed him drawing, ie. the process he goes through in creating a drawing. Very inspiring.

After Berlin, Dresden - which I think I liked because bits of it are like a mini Berlin: scungey and arty and with the cute East pedestrian traffic lights which I love so much. Also, as a bonus, I didn't kill myself while riding around on a slightly too-big bike and without a helmet and totally unsure of which direction the traffic would be coming from!

Then onto Munich, which was ok - but not my favourite. While there, Genna channelled the spirit of Lydia Bennett and ran off, not with a soldier, but with a yank. Makes me wonder where, if anywhere, my Mr Darcy is? I'd even settle for Matthew McFayden, if he was available, (Sorry, Colin). Or even his wife(?) Keeley Hawes... Hmmm... So I am back to travelling my by onesy again, which is really quite not-bad at all (especially given Genna turned out to be such a - how shall I put it? - crappo friend). Also now no one to frown on my nun stalking habits or on going back to the cat shelter here in Rome every day!

I found this great cat shelter on my first day here. There are ancient ruins all over the place here and I stumbled across another lot right in the centre of town - a big block sunken below ground level as a result of the excavation of the ruins of 4 temples, dating from 4 to 2 thousand years ago (as in the info sheet told me). And the place is being used as a shelter for abandoned cats! They have a bit where they treat the sick ones and there are healthy ones wondering around left right and centre. You can go in and pat them and play with them. There are apparently 150 cats there! So it makes me happy as I'm missing my kitties back in Melbourne so much. And there are some really beautiful moggies as well and most of them fairly friendly. And hopefully I won't get rabies by the time I leave!

So here I sign off for now.
E.
xxx

A Question - one of those eternal questions

2005-11-03T07:40:00.000+11:00

I pose a question: if travelling is a seemingly never-ending quest for the perfect cafe, what happens when you find it? And I´m not just talking about a pretty nice cafe with decent - or even very good - coffee, and friendly, physically appealing staff ... but The perfect cafe. Why, then, travel?

So somehow, unexpectedly, I ended up in Estonia, in the lovely medieval capital Tallinn (double L, double N). Me and Marnie caught an overnight night from Oulu to Helsinki - ah, the Finnish trains: so so nice. And clean. Relaxing even. Safe. ... Ok, enough of me whistful about a train! I catch a flying glimpse of Helsinki before we jump on the Ferry of Joy - full of drunken Finns (even though it was 9am) and the best of all bands ever - three moustachioed Finnish chaps and a keyboard (a keyboard to rival even your keyboard Julia!). They did a nice selection of western, English-language hits: 'Save the Last Dance For Me' (I did, but they never asked me), 'Imagine', what else? I can´t remember; but all you need to know is that it was quali-tar (with a capital QUOLL). Especially the verses in Finnish and the choruses in English (a method I think the Northcote Military TATU of Death should consider, especially if they want to break into the cross-cultural ferry band scene). So, some hours of musical joy later, we arrive in sunny Tallinn - which was indeed sunny. That day. And beautiful.

So beautiful, in fact (sorry, was that a random paragraph break or what?), that instead of just spending one short afternoon, one short night, one short morning there and then leaving the next day; we decided to spend another day there and another night. Like a lots of old towns here in Europe, Tallinn was a maze of little cobbled streets constructed in the days when town planning was nothing more than a puff of smoke in the future and much more important was finding the nearest cat to chuck down a well in order to keep the water supply plentiful - not to mention, ah, hygienic (something they apparently used to do in Tallinn - and there was only one well!). Great place to get lost, which is what we did a fair bit of. Also great place for little cafes, bars, restuarants and other cosy nooks ideal for drinking coffee or mulled wine and eating yummy sorts of things like pancakes. "Absurdly cosy" was the phrase I think the guide book used. Or "ridiculously cosy". Or "obscenely cosy"-??! One such place is the one I refer to in my opening question. And I won`t tell you where it is or what it´s called, because then what will you have to travel for, or even live for?

Day 2 in Estonia we awoke to white white everywhere. And it was cold! So not talcum powder or crack cocaine all over the streets and houses (not even very cold talcum powder and crack cocaine!), but SNOW! More snow! Great! Still so novel to me at this point. And still so cold. Hence the cosiness of all the cosy cafes became even more important to us and we spent even more hours in The Perfect Cafe, doing little more than drink coffee, write postcards, and covertly drink Estonian-Scottish whiskey to keep our insides warm. Ah! Delightful. Why am I still travelling again?

So we cosy-hop through Tallinn for the day, I buy my new favourite hat, thus bringing my travelling hat collection up to an inappropriate but still manageable five. And covered in white stuff, Tallinn really is more obscenely beautiful than before. And made me want to explore Eastern Europe even more. So y'all, listen to me: go to Tallinn!

Then shall I fast forward through time, give you a brief rundown on the Finland, non-Tallinn part of the week... We jumped back on another ferry, this time not the Ferry of Joy, but the Ferry of Rough Seas, Sleeping Esther, Knitting Marnie, Subliminal Messages Telling you to Eat Finnish Lollies and Duets between Mick Jagger and Jude Law. I kid you not. On the TV that is - not like those two are now in the "cross-cultural ferry band scene" as well! Wow, that really would be something!... "Laaaaaaaaaaadiees and gentlm'n, Tallink and Viking Line Baltic Seas Entertainment are pleeeeeased to present to you, straight from the set of Alfie, just for you, just for tonight, well, just for this morning and for the rest of the week and for however long we can keep them, singing ALL the words in English, maybe even pashing, let me hear it for, will you give it up for JUDE LAW AND THE ROLLING STONES!"

So, anyway, where was I? We arrive back in Finland, which is icey white and covered in cold cold icing sugar. Mm, tasty. We then jump on another delightful Finnish train, following a small tour of Finnish railway doors (very interesting if you like that sort of thing. Doors, that is), and find our snowy way to Tampere, a Finnish city which appallingly lacks in cute cosy cafes and in not being Tallinn. Though we did find what is possibly the only cute cosy cafe there and frequented it for a bit. And it did amazing Pulla (Finnish wheat bun) so I should cut it some slack. Also in Tampere was our buddy Karien - over from London to avoid the English heatwave and get some of that icing sugar action. Also H&M therapy. Good fun times for everyone but our wallets.

Then I caught yet another divine, clean Finnish train and headed south to Helsinki, while Marnie headed north to Oulu and Karien caught a large flying bird back to England. By this stage the white stuff had gone where white stuff goes to die (should I try a pun about Kate Moss at this point?!) and the weather heated up to acceptable 8 or 9 degrees. And I found I still had all my toes - bonus!

This time I checked out Helsinki for a bit longer and found it nice, but it´s no Stockholm. This post is already rather long so I´ll tell you just the highlight. Which, for me, was a chap working at the Helsinki Library who looked so much like Gary Oldman that if I hadn´t talked to him and found that he spoke English with a Finnish accent and thus probably was Finnish, then I would have thought he was Gary Oldman! Working in Helsinki Library! Crazy shit! ... Though now I think about it, Gary Oldman is an actor, right? ... So, maybe, he can do accents?! ... Do you think I talked to Gary Oldman without even realising it!?! ... So, like he was a man in tartan troosers, I stalked this may-or-may-not-be-Gary-Oldman-chap for a bit. Joy to be had by all, namely me.

Now I am in Berlin with Michelle and Charlie and young Genna. Flew here today, back in time, and am somewhat tired, so hence the possible craziness of this post! Shoulda warned you at the start, right?! Hope life is sweet for y'all and you know what y'all should do? Apart from joining a ferry band or visiting Tallinn or stalking some random member of the public. You should leave me comments and tell me what you're up to!

xxxx

Snow! ... The adventure in Scandinavia continues

2005-10-24T00:09:00.000+10:00

I come to you from sunny Oulu, Finland. By "sunny" I mean occasionally blue and sunny, but mostly overcast with grey-white clouds that produce this white fluffy stuff that lands on the ground and is cold. That's right: snow! Snow in October! And snow that even lands on the ground and stays there, not melting, for some time - the parking lot outside the window was white when we woke up and has slowly been revealing its true colour (grey) over the course of the day. We are on the fourth floor though, so we get a nice show from the large flocks of birds(migrating apparently) and squirrels playing in the trees. And snow! Still novel enough for me to ignore the fact that outside it's kinda cold: a balmy -2.2 degrees C. But inside it's toasty warm. And I have been enjoying many a cup of hot tea or coffee.

I am staying in Oulu with my long-time good friend Marnie, who is doing an exchange at the uni here. It's very nice to be staying at someone's place, after so many hostels! No more snoring roommates or communal kitchens or revolting toilets or door slamming in the middle of the night - less of that and more of leisurely sleep-ins, balanced meals, the afore-mentioned cups of tea/coffee, listening to music (oh, how I've missed listening to the Cure! Nice, also, to reacquaint myself with Missy Higgins and The Cat Empire for a bit of a Melbourne fix!) ALSO, Johnny Depp. He's her flatmate! ... ! ... Ok, that's a lie. But he was here last night. In 'Sleepy Hollow'. Which we watched while eating Czech Oplatky (wafer thin wafers) and 85% Lindt dark chocolate. Now there's a combination for you ...

[I pick up this post after some time has passed since writing the above.] We just had a traditional Finnish dinner with Marnie's friend Hanna and her family. Delicious: home-smoked salmon, karjalan piirakka (yummy little pie things: made with rye flour with a "salty rice porridge" filling - yummier than that makes them sound!), salad and cheese and Finnish rye bread, and then Arctic Cloud Berries - which are these incredible yellow-orangey sweet Finnish berries. Delicious! All of it. I am now so full. Then we came back here and had to eat the lemon tart that Marnie made during the day, so we enjoyed that while chatting with two of her Italian friends here - I now have contacts in Florence!

Ok, I should tell you about Stockholm, eh? Just briefly, before I fall asleep. Stockholm itself is made up of a whole series of islands - 14 I think, but I could be pulling that number from the air. I was staying on the island of Skeppsolmen which is right in the centre - so quite conveniently close to everything, but you still have to cross bridges and walk round bits of water (sometimes biggish bits of water too!) to get to places. Well, namely the place I wanted to get to was an incredible vegetarian restaurant called Herman's. If ANY of you get to Stockholm, you really must go to this restaurant; carnivore, herbivore or whatever you are! It has an amazing buffet of vegetarian dished: curries, rice, salads, all yummy yummy yum stuff. Oh baby, I'm doing a Pavlov's dogs just thinking about it! And they have a great selection of scrumptious looking cakes, but I was too full after my vegetarian feast to try any of these. But next time I'm in Stockholm. (Tell me if all the italics are annoying - I've only just worked out how to do them!!)

Aside from eating, I also checked out the Moderna Museet (Museum of Modern Art) which made me happy with it's massive Matisse cut-out picture called 'Apollo' (the size of a wall and gorgeously colourful - I thought about buying a postcard of it but the postcard does not do it justice). And also some Picassos, always enough to make me happy, which included some giant Picasso sculptures in the gardens - great slabs of stone with sketches of the giant figures on them: my favourite one was the giant woman with great pendulous breasts. On the grounds there were also some Tinguely sculptures (the machines that do things, remember my post from Basel way back in August?) and also many colourful ones by Niki De Saint Phalle. And all these surrounded by beautiful Stockholm Autumn trees with their leaves turning yellow and orange and red and then defenestrating themselves in the most graceful, poetic way possible.

I also went to the Historiska Museet (Historical Museum) and saw a whole lot of Viking stuff, like runes and skeletons (human and horse) and gold. In fact, they have a whole room called The Gold Roooom - not just Viking stuff but lots and lots and lots of gold from all over. Though I didn't get gold fever like I've heard some people get in such museums (...Rachel!?). Also there was no mention of Viking cats, so I have no new information to report to one Norwegian Skogkat back in Melbourne about his Swedish ancestors. I also bought myself a Picasso poster (of a faun!) which, in hindsight, will go very nicely - because it's blue and yellow - with the Rolling Stones poster I got in Paris (which is blue). Because, did you know, I'm being followed by the Rolling Stones.

Being followed. Or following. It's a fine line ...

;-)
xxx

(PS. I took a sauna! A first in my life. And so relaxing ... and then a glass of Aussie wine ... Ah!)

Three trains, four countries later ...

2005-10-21T01:22:00.000+10:00

Hello all,

I write from the land of beautiful people and asymmetrical haircuts. That´s right: Sweden. Stockholm is beautiful in Autumn. Utterly gorgeous. And I´m staying on a boat! (well, I was last night, but had to move rooms tonight and am on land again now). So I could imagine I was a pirate for a bit, or at least some sort of seafaring folk (a Viking maybe?) Now, where has my cabin boy got to...?

Before that I was in Prague, which I guess is what I really should be telling you about. Prague, also, is beautiful, and like Stockholm, I really want to return. Best of all perhaps, is that I made a friend, a travelling buddy (hello Jo, if you´re reading!) so it was great to hang out with someone and chat - especially someone I had so much in common with (from a love of cats & Don DeLillo, to Middlesex, to Lynch & Lars von Trier...) So for a couple of days we wandered Prague and went to museums. We eventually found the modern section of the National Gallery, but only had 2 hours to take it in - not long enough for all 4 floors. We also took in the Sex Machines Museum, which was, ah, fun. And funny. Spanish porn films from the 1920s come to mind - naked women but the fat hairy men fully clothed just with their "bits" out.

Ok, will have to wrap it up here because internet could disconnect me at any moment. Also some more stalking of the pretty Swedish people becons me. I mean, not *stalking*... The title of this blog refers to my journey from Prague to Stockholm, via Berlin - in case you´re interested.

xxxx

Slightly mysterious bruises ...

2005-10-15T04:18:00.000+10:00

Hello all,
I'll try and write a less crazy gummi bear obsessed blog this time. ("Try" being the operative word!) I am right now in Prague and kind of exhausted after 6 hours travelling and 4 trains! What is with travelling and mysterious bruises? I can't explain it but my right thigh (only the right, mind you) looks like some sort of impressionist painting if you squint at it in the right light. As I said, mysterious. (... or it could just be the way my case hits my leg when I lug it up stairs.)

I will now try to give you more of a picture of Salzburg that my last entry, even though I was only there for 2 nights so I can't really claim to be an authority (or even remember how to spell authrotihy.) Parts of Salzburg of really cheesy and kitsch and touristy - all Sound of Music-this, Mozart-that. It is where the former was filmed and the latter was born. I did go to the Mozart museums at his birthplace and where he lived for the first 24 years of his life (to think, someone will do that for Nth Fitzroy and Carlton for me one day! Maybe...) and I saw the little violin he played he was a kiddie and his concert violin - so that was rather cool.

I also spent some time hanging out at the Mirabell gardens which are beautiful and no doubt feature in the Sound of Music somewhere, if you want to look. The gardens and nearby palace were built by some prince-archbishop for his mistress (Wold Dietrich=price-archibishop, year=1606, the Lonely Planet helpfully informs me. Mistress=no name given=Mirabell perhaps? ... I still wish the Lonely Plant was, in fact, the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, a la Douglas Adams, and it would talk to me in Stephen Fry's voice!). I want someone to build me a palace and gardens! Do you think I'll have to be someone's mistress first? Or would just changing my name to Mirabell be enough?

I also partook of a very nice stoll around the old part of town and then walked up the 400-something steps to the fortress on a hill above the town, then walked across the hill, though some rather delightful woodland and quite by accident navigated myself a nice round trip, ending up back in the old town where I picked up a studel for my lunch. Which I ate by the river while reading Pride and Prejudice. Did I mention it was lovely and sunny and perfect temperature - not too warm, not too cold. Very very nice.

And now I am in Prague, at a a hostel called Sir Toby's which so far seems to be utterly wonderful (thank you Julia & Erin for recommending it!). Hopefully it will provide me with the most important thing: a good night's sleep. So then I'll have the energy to explore Prague over the next few days. Tons of Aussies and Americans here - but so far that's not a bad thing. Also a Pom, and an Irish lass who I had difficulty understanding when she spoke.

Take care my pretties. Email me, leave comments. I miss Melbourne, home, friends, family, my cats, fresh veggies, my own bed. But apart from that, I'm happy. ;-)
xxx

Austria - No Kangaroos

2005-10-14T01:22:00.000+10:00

´elloo. Tis I, in Austria, which keeps informing me "no kangaroos in Austria" - but only in English, so I think it`s meant to be appealing only to Aussie tourists (like me - it was funny the first time, but after about 200 times...) and to bitter Austrians sick of being mistaken for the tanned, bogan, beer drinking piss-heads who make it here from Down Under. Or something. Am I missing the point? I don`t know.

As I was wandering the streets of Salzburg today, alternately composing a blog and trying to get the song "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" out of my head (they played it at the hostel last night and I think it even featured in the soundtrack to my dreams in which I was organising trains and booking hostels!), I thought I would mention a mental note to myself which I had been trying to put into practise. Which is: Lay Off the Gummi Bears. Since my week of crepes (last week), I have left the land of crepes behind (the land extending from London, via Paris, to Basel where I made some crepes with my sis), and have since taken up to eating gummi bears left, right and centre. Oh the joy that is the gummi. I blame Marnie! Anyway, so in the spirit of advice such as Lay Off the Adverbs, I thought, Lay of the Gummi Bears. And then I walked past a gummi bear devoted shop, which could have been all well and good, except they had posters out the front of gummi bears in so-called amusing situations, one - or maybe even more than one - of gummi bears, ah, "getting it on". Doing "the sex". As much as gummi bears can - the picture, thankfully, didn`t go into that much detail. Or else that was on the back - I don`t know, I didn`t look. It`s one thing to reenact an abridge version of David Lynch`s Lost Highway using gummi bears (red one for Patricia Arquette`s brunette, white one for Patricia Arquette`s white-hot, hypersexual-ganster-mole blonde, orange I think for Bill Pullman and and yellow for Balthazar Getty, green for The Mystery Man. Then red one with a green head for when Patricia Arquette appears to Bill Pullman in bed with the Mystery Man`s freaky face instead of her own.... you get the picture. And if you don`t, ask Marnie about it, as it was all for her benefit!) That`s all well and good and part of the normal course of events should one be in Berlin in August drinking beer and eating gummi bears on a sunny day. But POSTERS of gummi bears having sex! That`s too far - it`s not on. It´s just not cricket. As they say...

So I think that rant in itself has cured me of my gummi bear obsession. And/or put people off reading the ravings of a gummi-overdosed mind. So I will endeavor to be more coherent and even informative next time. I am off to Prague tomorrow - very excited about that. I anticipate, whether rightly or wrongly, cats! And maybe less gummi bears, but I should really eat the packet in my bag otherwise it would be a waste...

"This is not a blog"

2005-10-08T21:39:00.000+10:00

Hey chaps,

Thought I`d update again - because I can! But now in Switzerland again, with my sis, and hence the crazy keyboards are making it more difficult to type than expected. Hmm...

Anyway, Julia, further to the "forwardness" (if such a word exists) of French men, I have figured out it`s because the French women are such ice queens - most of them could very easily fall into a Hitchcock film and look totally in place - hence the men have to be extra-extra opportunistic to even get a word out of them, let alone a smile and a conversation, or more. I want to be a French woman! No, that`s a lie. I want to meet a French woman! Like, say, Juliette Binoche. Or Emmanuel Beart. Or Johnny Depp. No, hold on - he`s not...

So, where was I? Or in fact, where am I? Oh that`s right, Basel. I went to a gallery yesterday: The Beyeler Foundation. Basically modern art, to fit with the theme of the week: Tate Modern in London, Pompidou in Paris, Beyeler in Basel. And I have decided that I love Picasso. Can`t get enough of it at the moment. I think particularly it`s the playful, colourful ones that I love the most. Also, Mirò. Love him too. There was a Rene Magritte exhibition which was cool. If you like Magritte. Which I do. "This is not a blog." (I would write it in French, but you know, my French is - just - well - too - ah - hm.)

Anyway, the sun is shining and I should push off - make the most of it. Drink coffee. I`ve become an expresso drinker - mainly because it`s cheaper! Funny thing though, I introduced Nadia (my sis) to Sudoku and she keeps saying how stupid it is, but she can`t stop playing it! Ooh, lunch! What should I have for lunch?
xxx

Paris

2005-10-06T02:08:00.000+10:00

Bonjour! What's this, I hear you mutter, 2 updates in the space of one week, she really is pushing it. Ok... well, maybe not - seeing as Julia appears to be the only person reading this - Hello Julia!!

Anyway, yes, I am now in Paris which is lovely and, well, Paris. But I've got to say, before I say anything else, that the air quality here is SHIT. Total crap. Even London's was better and isn't London the one with the reputation? Today I was sitting on second-to-top level of the Pompidou Centre, having my picnic lunch of brie and baguette and it took me 10 minutes to realise that I was actually facing the Eiffel Tower! Not that you could see much of it - only the base really and the faintest outline of the some of the tower itself. So that is disappointing. Is it like this always or just autumn? It was never like this when I dreamt I was in Paris - in fact, in my dreams, the distinguishing features were a.) the wide streets (check) and b.) the blinding sunlight (ahh...) Oh well. It's still Paris, isn't it? Yes.

So I went to the Pompidou Centre today (museum of modern art) which was utterly wonderful. Matisse, Picasso, Basquait, Pollock... etc etc. Loved it. The picnic was good too (despite the lack of views!).

I felt quite naked here yesterday, not wearing a scarf. All the French women wear scarves. All. of. them. So I had to wear my scarf today, but I think they could still tell I was an imposter. The French are funny in their rudeness. Most people I have said 'Parlez-vous anglais?' to have either been nice and spoken English to me, or said a flat 'non' and then understood everything I have said in my combination of English and very broken French, and then replied in English! ... Though I find the French men really, ah, forward. I have had at least half a dozen (and a baker's dozen at that!) men just start talking to me on the street, in parks, on the metro, wherever; continue the conversation in Frenglish after my now standard 'parlez-vous anglais' and invite me to sit, join him, walk somewhere, drink something. Eek! Is it just because I am a sheila, alone, in a big city and I look like I need a protective hairy French arm around me? And they are all OLD-ish men. None of the young hotties I have seen around. Like the chap on the metro today who was wearing trying to be a French woman by wearing a scarf, and then he took out his knitting! (another scraf I think!)

Ok, well, should push off. Got to find a crepe that somewhere has my name on it. Have had no vegies since... pizza in London? No, the spinach in the Camden crepe in London on Sun night. Who needs vegies anyway? Not I! I can live on a diet of dairy (brie mainly) and crepes alone! Oh, I should also pain au chocolat it up before I leave tomorrow. Leaving tomorrow! So sad. I will be back though... in November maybe.

Au revoir.
xxx

Rain, crepes and more kitten action!

2005-10-03T11:15:00.000+10:00

Hello chaps, Tom "the scab" says hi! I am right now in London, but not for very much longer as I'm off to gay Paris tomorrow. Enough of this English-speaking bizzo and there are way too many Aussies in the UK, London especially. It's like they're shaken Queensland upsidedown like a salt shaker and all the 18-30 year old idiots/yobbos/bogans have fallen out and landed here. And now, since Rachel left about a week ago, and Marnie (who was over here from Finland just for the weekend) left tonight, and -dare I say?- once I leave tomorrow, the Average Collective Intelligence of Aussies in London will drop dramatically. I'm surprised the Poms can stand it, but I guess it gives them something more to whine about! (Hee hee! Xenophobic AND un-patriotic me!)

So anyway, where was I? Oh yes. Since last I wrote, I been completely, utterly and pointlessly drenched in Glasgow. Which was kind of fitting, seeing as it was my last day in Scotland. It didn't help that in an attempt to avoid a small lake of a puddle in getting back to my youth hostel, I took a different route and ended up getting lost. I wandered round for a while, cursing my pathetic and increasingly failing sense of direction, the wind giving my previously trusty H&M umbrella a beating, and my jeans getting a free wash. Oh, did I mention it was raining? Eventually, I startled a kind Scottish postie who, once having realised I wasn't a walking drowned person, pointed me in the right direction - a new rival for my affections against the Scottish ferryman perhaps!? I got back to the hostel and within the hour it had stopped raining. If only I had stayed in the cafe/library at the bottom of the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art for another 3 hours on top of the 4 I'd already spent there and done even more Sudoko! Ah well, that's the price one will pay for lack of weather forcasts and forward planning. And for being in Scotland. And for not wearing one's trusty flasher-esque plastic Mack. *sigh* If only I had been planning some flashing that day...

Anyway, from Glasgow I went to Manchester to visit Rossage the Sausage who lives in a very nice terrace house where I felt right at home. His housemates are cool but cooler still was that while I was there, they got a kitten - a tiny, little, black, slightly fluffy kitten who they called Audrey, after Audrey Horn in Twin Peaks! She was so utterly tiny and cute and first timid and then playful... Perhaps this trip is a tour de kittens, rather than the tour de crepes I originally predicted?! No, I had crepes today and I will have nothing but crepes in Paris! Crepes AND kittens perhaps? Anyway, then in Manchester we all went out for Ross' housemate's birthday after having downed roughly a bottle of red wine each, then danced (to at least one Cure song!) and drank lager and then stumbled home in the rain, and then I woke up with a massive hangover and vowed never to drink again... which I sustained for roughly 48 hours when here in London we had some Baileys. And also beer. So a sad and sorry hungover me caught my superfast swish Virgin train to London - catching it with only 5 mins to spare! - gradually recovered enough to digest solids and got to London, where I have been staying with my buddy Karien who lives in Wimbledon. Marnie made a flying surprise visit on us and we went to the Tate Modern (which I loved), Borough Market (where we ate so many yummy cheese samples), and today I had a repeat performance of the famouse Hampstead crepes. Which were well worth the 50 min trip on the tube there (then 50 mins back), and the 50 min queue for the crepes themselves. Parisian crepes have a lot to live up to!

I should really leave it here because it is kind of the middle of the night and I have to catch a plane tomorrow and want a little more than 5 mins to spare this time! Plus I reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally need to sleep.

Hope everyone is bonza. Please write me and tell me what you're up to.
Love, E.
xxx

Scotland!

2005-09-25T19:59:00.000+10:00

Hello everyone! Sorry it's been so long - I am in Scotland and since we have been travelling around the place/countryside/islands etc, internet has been scarce and when I have been on it, I've been organising things like buses/trains. Blah blah... How is everyone?! And how is life in your respective parts of the globe?

I am right now in Glasgow with young Ross, after a week on an island called Lismore (near Oban, on the west coast) where me, Rachel, Dan, Ross and Jen rented a cottage. It was beautiful and peaceful and we spent many a long hour musing over the ferryman (the island was only reachable by ferry and the Scottish ferryman very cute!) and eating chocolate tart. And drinking tequila. And playing celebrity heads. And serenading the sheep.

Before that me and Rachel and Dan were travelling around Scotland for a few weeks and I've got to say, I love this country. It's beautiful and the people are friendly and what's more, they speak with these cute Scottish accents! What more could you want?! I'll backtrack... We started off in Edinburgh (which I have finally learnt how to spell!), which was a beautiful old city - well, we stayed in the beautiful old part of it. We went to the Elephant House (not Elephant Hose!) which is the cafe where a certain JK Rowling started a certain cult, I mean, started writing a certain book, you may have heard of it, Hale Bote or something? Anyway I thought I'd start writing My Novel there, but instead I just started doing Sudoku and now spend more time doing that than writing! But I'm sure there's just as much money in Sudoku as in writing!!

Then we made our way up into the highlands and stayed in a little town called Kingussie. The hostel there had no hot water and then we were invaded by a group of what I can only assume were German 19 year olds, though they may have been Austrian 20 year olds or Swiss 18 year olds - I don't know! We went on a lovely walk (Rachel and Dan having become walking fiends since they have been in the UK) and had our first whiskey. Ah, those days before I became a whiskey drinker ... they seem like a distant memory!

After Kingussie we had a joyous day of travelling north to get to the Orkney Islands. That day includes the fond memories of driving into a ditch and me falling over and skinning my knee and feeling like a 5 year old all over again. My wounds are still healing and that was over 2 weeks ago now! But emotional scars... Anyway, we finally got to Orkney, after much driving and ditch-seeing and via car ferry (but no cute ferryman), and found our hostel which has been my favourite hostel on my trip so far and also the cheapest! It was on an organic farm and the hostel itself was basically just one room, open plan, sleeps 8, with a kitchen bit, table, etc... the usual. PLUS KITTENS!! The kittens belonged to the people who owned/ran the farm and hostel, and we were allowed to have them visit us whenever they mewed pitifully at our door. They were both tabbies (but there was also a reclusive black one we never saw), the one who loved - I mean visited - us the most was called Scarla, and her brother, Percy. Both a tad on the wild/playful side and took to attacking anything that moved, particularly Rachel's feet which Scarla seemed to decide were evil and must die. Fair enough really.

Also in Orkney, aside from the kittens, we saw a number of prehistoric sights that were amazing. It really is quite incredible to go into a 5 thousand year old tomb - quite difficult to comprehend life that long ago and to be standing inside something that was so old. ... Difficult to put into words and give it justice. All in all, Orkney was beautiful and bleak - the landscape so well suited to the typical Scottish weather: mist, rain, fog. A very haunting place. I want to return someday...

Then onto Skye, the Isle of. Again it was beautiful but in a totally different way - much more dramatic landscape compared to Orkney. Much more New Zealand. Here we drank more whiskey and went on a tour of a distillery. We also went on more walks as my poorly knee slowly healed (the scabs by this stage had been named: Tom (the favourite) and Greg (old Greg and little Greg) - named after characters in a board game me and Rachel playing in Kingussie: Heartthrob, "the dating game for girls"!) We also visited a place called Orbost, as Rachel comes from Orbost in Victoria. Went on a walk there and in a bay we saw a large pod of dolphins playing. We watched them for ages as they jumped out of the water and generally showed off. Who needs Dream World or Sea World or whatever it is?!

Then we went onto Lismore and thus I think I have completed the cyclical narrative of my Scotland travels. I now spend a couple of days in Glasgow, then onto Manchester to stay with Ross in his home town, then back to London for more incredible crepes, then back to Europe for less of that English-speaking thing. I will try and update a bit more regularly - might be a bit easier as I'll be in cities more than towns.
Hope everyone is well and life is good. Email me! Leave comments! I miss you all.
Love, E.
xxx

All the goths of Berlin and Esther go out to play

2005-08-30T06:50:00.000+10:00

Hello all,

I am loving being here in Berlin - it's such an amazing city, not sure how the rest of Europe will live up to it. And I've only been here for, what, 4 days ... heh heh !

I'm kinda tired now, so will not write much. Have just been to dinner with Michelle and Charlie at a thing called Black Girls Coalition which is basically a crazy kind of squat house, really alternative and grungy, and on Mondays it serves full vegan meals for only €2. Bargain! It had heaps of stuff/pictures pasted on the walls and music playing - including one White Stripes song which made me feel right at home. It was nice and relaxed - which really is how I've found Berlin as a whole so far. Very relaxed feeling throughout most of the city at the same time as all this crazy, artistic stuff is going on. It's ... well, great.

Have done heaps these last 4 days (including getting sunburnt today. bugger.) that i don`t think i'll be able to tell you about it all, at least not right now, so I'll tell you about the highlight so far which I am still excited about and can't quite believe it happened. So unexpected! Made me so happy! All just a matter of being in the right place (Berlin) at the right time (now)! Can you guess?! No? ... I saw The Cure! Only, like, my favouritest band in the whole world, whose music makes me the most happy and suits any mood I could be in! And you know, I never actually thought I`d see them play live. Because they NEVER come to Australia. Ok, they have done, long ago in the past. Probably when I was in Primary School or something. And it never occurred to me to see them play elsewhere - I guess I'`m not used to this whole travel thing yet. So I jumped at the chance! And they were *so* great. It was at this big outdoor music venue, totally packed with people - all of whome were very interesting to watch, lots of goths and odd looki' folks and much dyed black hair (surprise surprise) and a couple of Robert Smith look-alikes. But none were as cuddly as the real thing! (not that I cuddled him, mind). They played for ages and were utterly fantastic. Just when I thought well maybe they won't play one of my favouritest Cure songs (*one* of...), Boys Don't Cry, they played it. And then I was even more happy than I was before! They did 4 really long encores, ok, well, 3 really long encores, then one final song with Robert Smith saying "we just don't know when to stop!" ... what else can I say? I never expected to be able to do this and in Berlin of all places. This city rocks!

The way home (home for this week being Marnie's friend Anne´s father`s flat in the former East Berlin - a tiny place full of musical instruments as he`s a music teacher), where was i? oh yes, the way home on the train was interesting. I was busy walking among all the other Cure fans, trying to hear if anyone was speaking English and also for a brief moment trying to stalk a couple of cute looking girls in drag (me being all Marlene Dietrich inspired after the excellent Film Museum the day before), then at the station the train came and the whole platform load of us got on, packed in like cliches in a Mills and Boon novel. And what's a little frotting between complete strangers? Nothing, I say. All in the name of adventure! Or maybe it's a cultural tradition here, like pretzels (of which I've had lots) and bratwurst (which I´ve had one which hit the spot at the time). Except not food-related and on a train. Hm?

Ok, here I sign off for now. Had best go tend to my sunburn. Take care, my amigos.
xxx

Münster, Tinguely and Depp.

2005-08-26T22:08:00.000+10:00

Now at Michelle and Charlie's lovely flat in Berlin... but have only been here since midday so don't have much Berlin/German news to tell. So, last days in Basel...

Michelle is giving me German lessons: "Das ist geil!" Meaning "that is cool" but literally meaning horny or randy!

Ok, sorry, got distracted. That wasn't about Basel. But this is: On Thursday me and Nadia went to the Münster (cathedral?) which had some beautiful stained glass windows... including one we thought depicted Satan - only i always imagine him/her in a spiffy straight-leg red suit or looking more like a rock god Mick Jagger style ... but I guess that image wasn't around when this church was being built! So anyway, the chap in the long flowing red robes and kind of horn-type things sticking out of his head, grumpy and surly lookin' turned out to be Moses, not Satan. How disappointment.

I was able to talk the hight-phobic Nadia into climbing up one of the two tall towers that stick out the top of the Münster. Quite unnerving in some places: narrow old spiral stone stair cases, only lit by the small windows so some bits were kind of dark and nothing but a robe to hold onto by way of support. But the views from the top were amazing, could see the whole town laid out, full of churches and its lego-like window shutters on every second building.

Then we went to the Tinguely Museum, which was the art work of this (i think French) bloke who made a whole lot of mechanical type sculptures which do stuff, move around, make sounds, some playing musical instruments (mainly purcussion), quite a few with skulls and bits of dead animal (including one with a hippo skull), lots with cogs and wheels and once you could climb all over. And my favourite one was one where you press a button and then slowly, slowly, then all of a sudden a fluffy toy is hit on the head with a hammer! Ha! ... Then we went home exhausted, a little bit rained on, and didn't get to the main supermarket in time and had to restock my chocolate stash from the late-night shops at the station. Ah well, swiss chocolate is swiss chocolate, is it not?

Das ist geil! Geil, mate, geil. ... oh yeah, we also done went and saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - which i LOVED - then extended that into a Festival Of Johnny Depp (is there any other kind?!) by watching Pirates of the BoySeaSluts on Nadia's upstairs neighbour's laptop - everyone cheering when Captain Jack first appeared! BUT if any of my Berlin or UK buddies want to see Charlie and the pedophile that is Johnny Depp dipped in Chocolate (is there any other kind!) again, then I`d be up for it!!

Ok, well, I shall stop being rude to Mich and Charlie and go and talk rather then type! Tschüss!

Basel - home of the basilisk

2005-08-24T07:33:00.000+10:00

Hello everyone,

firstly, eruopean keyboards are really confusing me, so i will not be using capital letters as that will give me a headache. secondly, brie. thirdly, swiss chocolate. Mmmmmm.... (*that* warrants a capital letter!)

I am now in Basel, Switzerland, hanging out with my sister at her very cute cosy flat which has the shared bathroom in the basement. also, we leave the flat to go out. we went to the zoo yesterday, which was most excellent but exhausting walking around all day and there were lots of noisy yelling sprogs which was not so fun. the novelty of cute little swiss children has worn off.

on my first day in europe (first proper day, as my "technical" day was half spent in frankfurt airport reading douglas adams and sleeping badly on the airport seats and wishing i was back on the lovely singapore airlines plane watching hitch hikers guide - hold on, there`s a theme here - and doctor who - what more could i want? oh yes, british film Millions (nice, feelgood but not too slushy), and an ep. of the show Coupling.) so anyway where was i? oh yes, first full none-exhausted day in europe, i went with nadia (my sis) to watch her do Kyudo (japanese archery) in a place called Bülach, then we went to Zürich and were given a guided tour by N`s friend Brigitte. i like Zürich muchly... one afternoon is not enough. All the little cobblestoned lanes .... Brigitte treated us to coffee (i have yet to have a decent swiss coffee) and cake at a place that is almost exactly how i imagine the coffee shop that Harry takes Cho Chang in Hogsmede in, is it the 4th Harry Potter book? for Valentines day. except that this one is in Zürich and the other one is in Scotland and fictional. it was covered in multicoloured fake flowers, pretty much, everywhere, lots of small tables packed in together, not so many couples kissing (as in HP) but a nice (er, yeah) swiss man serenading a couple of other Aussie sheilas (not us) with a version of Skippy the bush kangaroo. Not what i expected of switzerland, but amusing nonetheless. Cakes were very rich and very yummy.

Summer is touch and go here at the moment. Here today, but we have had a bit of rain and it`s not really all that warm. ah well, can^t have everzthing. let alone keyboards that make sense to me (rachel and dan, what is the secret magic trick to turning the keyboards into aussie ones??!) What else? I have been eating chocolate - so that i can make an informed decision about what chocolate i should bring with me to Berlin (next stop!) and, if there`s any left by then, Scotland and the UK. To share with you lovely folks I will be meeting up with at those places.

Nadia took me to her favourite bookshop, like a Basel-version of Book Affair for you Carltonites. They had an english section - luckily not too large or else i would have spent all day in there. And i bought "Fingersmith" for 1 swiss franc! (julia, are you proud of me?)

And Basel is home to many fountains with basilisks on them - i have drunk out of a number of them (the one^s youre meant to drink out of) but i have yet to meet a real basilisk so i can^t confirm if JK Rowling has got them right. But hopefully i will not be turned to stone.

I feel like i am writing in broken english (i wonder if that means my german is improving?) ... this keyboard ... anyway, sorry about that! I will try and be more witty and sparkling next time. Hope everyone is well. Take care.
xxx

Almost gone!

2005-08-17T16:44:00.000+10:00

I leave tomorrow - all very exciting. Melbourne is putting on a fabulous display of its most charming weather. I think it's trying to guilt trip me. But I won't have it! I'm sure the weather must be better in Basel, Switzerland, which is my first stop. Warmer at least. More Swiss. Perhaps chocolate is raining from the skies. Swiss chocolate of course. I'll let you know once I get there.

Have just finished reading 'Middlesex' by Jeffrey Eugenides, which I recommend to everyone if you haven't already read it. I found a little bit in there that I want to quote, it seems relevant to this whole blog thing:

"...real life doesn't live up to writing about it."

The neighbour's dog Valley is having some sort of fit outside the window. Luckily the cats are inside, so it's nothing cat-related. Or at least, not *our*-cat-related. Should go and extract some purrs out of them while I still can...

welcome

2005-08-11T10:13:00.000+10:00

Hello and welcome to my brand new blog. It's so far rather random really, as I'm somewhat computer illiterate so I'm just typing in stuff and pressing buttons and hoping it all works out for the best!

The main purpose of this weird "writing into nothing" (I feel like I'm writing to myself, sealing it in a pretty coloured capsule and sending it off into space) is that I hate hate HATE the genre of emails which is known as "group travel emails", sometimes called "travel group emails". Can't stand 'em. And now that I will be a traveller myself (could there be a more pretentious term?), I thought I'd give people the option of reading what I was up to, rather than just invading your in-boxes with stories of far-flung places, miscommunication and how I'm missing watching Doctor Who.

So, hi! I'll try and keep my posts not too long. Have a wander round. Enjoy. Leave a message.

(By the way, I have just discovered the wonderful: postsecret.blogspot.com - you should check it out. Reminds me of another favourite site of mine: www.foundmagazine.com - a magazine all too rare here in Melbourne)