Australia Day

Last Monday was the Australia Day public holiday, Australia's national day, commemorating the arrival of the British in 1788.

It makes me feel a bit uncomfortable that so many people seem ok with the suggestion that Australia only became relevant after white people showed up, and that this should be a cause for celebration. If I was an indigenous Australian, it would probably make me want to kick off a bit. Many see the day as "invasion day". So I frowned a bit and stayed at home for the day.

Fortunately other people also feel this way, one of whom being newly appointed 2009 'Australian of the Year' Professor Mick Dodson, a campaigner for Aboriginal rights.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24962558-601,00.html

I find the situation in Australia with regards to indigenous and white australian relations a bit disconcerting at the best of times. Sometimes it seems close to a kind of informal apartheid. I know that sounds a bit extreme but it is odd coming from the UK where although ethnic minority groups can still be at a greater disadvantage, there is much more of a mix-up. Every race can exist at each end of the societal spectrum, and everywhere in between. In Aus there are hardly any black people. It is a noticeable oddity. The shops and restaurants are all white/asian, and the only place you really see indigenous australians in Sydney is drunk outside Redfern station or begging on King St/Glebe Point Road. Such a huge divide.

Oh what else..... oh, blood is the new black!! Blood is the New Black is suddenly so good? I got a shirt off there in 2004, when they only had a couple of artists (mine was a Keren Richter shirt), but now there is so much! I saw a shirt posted on Flying Saucer so pootled over to have a look. The shirts look better quality now than they used to be too.



[Hannah Stouffer]



[Dan Monick]



[Cali Dewitt]

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Also, Russell has Twitter!! - http://twitter.com/rustyrockets !!!

AND, He is COMING to SYDNEY !!!! I have to get tickets SO badly.

The British comedian Russell Brand will bring his bad boy humour to Australia for the first time when he performs two shows in Sydney and Melbourne in March.

lost property

Another weekend is upon us, ahhh a much needed break. The weeks are rushing by so fast at the moment.

This week has been rather calm, not much to do at work, and not really a lot to report from the evenings. On Thursday a slight error occurred: I went and spent $40 after work on a Bodum ice tea jug and some turkish apple tea to make in it, only to leave it on the train on the way home!!! I was so annoyed. I emailed the lost property office at CityRail with all the details so I am now hoping some nice honest person will have handed it in, or at least left it on the train so the train guard could remove it. People in Australia on the whole do seem like quite nice honest folk compared to the average UK citizen.

So I got home all in a bad mood after witnessing my brand new $40 jug pootling off on its own on the train to start its new life in Hornsby. So to cheer me up Mark put me (and himself) back on a train to the city, where we took a trip to Chinatown to eat at Mamak, one of my new favourite malaysian restaurants. After a couple of their lime syrup drinks, some vegetable curry, noodles and a huge roti tisu, I was in a much better mood.

This is popping up on a lot of blogs at the moment, but I love it so: poladroid, a little app to make your photos look like polaroids....faux-laroids if you will.



I love the colours it turns the photos.

The only other things really to add are as follows:

a) Tom Stoppard is a genius;

b) I saw the most brilliant film last Saturday: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It is based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald story about a man who ages backwards - he is born old and gets younger. The idea suggested to Fitzgerald was that it would be great to be young but to have all the knowledge and experience of someone at the end of their life.
The story is so uplifting but also so sad. Benjamin Button falls in love with a young girl while he is an "old man", and after many adventures comes back to find her when they are the same age (their ages 'meet in the middle', so to speak). It becomes so emotional as the reality eventually hits them that they will not be able to grow old together, and she will essentially end up as his 'mother'. The story also really makes you think about the similarities between young children and elderly people. As Benjamin reaches the end of his life, as he becomes a young child, a doctor comments that he is showing signs of dementia. You then see the child Benjamin behaving in a typically childlike way, demanding to do irrational things and becoming unable to relate to adults properly.

It comes out in mid-Feb I think in the UK. You should all go and see it, it's one of the best films I've seen for a long time.

Four....five......fire!

I feel like I am about to go on fire.



Circular Quay, 28th December 2008

The temperature has hit 43 degrees today in Penrith (west of Sydney), and here in Meadowbank we have seen 33. Poor Penrith, 33 is almost too hot to bear so I cannot imagine 43.

I am quite fortunate in that I miss the worst of it - my office has air conditioning currently set at a comfortable 22 and my journey to work takes place before the heat really sets in. Walking home from the train station was like walking in an oven though.

Mark is less fortunate and has no such access to air con. Also less fortunate are those living near bushland - with humidity dropping below 30%, the news on the radio at work is constantly updating on the uncontrollable fires currently burning to Sydney's north, threatening homes, wildlife and national parks.

The one small upside to all this heat is that washing hung out on the line dries in less than 30 minutes.

My friend Fran came to stay a couple of weeks ago! Over the new year. It was fun. She arrived on 29th December at 6am, after 3 (!) flights (Manchester-London-Bangkok-Sydney). We went for tea at the Hilton after I finished work (a nice place for a city-located cup of tea), then pizzas at home and sleep. I worked the next day, and then came New Year's eve!



We headed for Balmain East at around 3pm with beer and wine and peaches and many other exciting treats in our cool bag. I had worked in the morning so I caught the ferry over from Circular Quay, which was absolute chaos as it seemed almost everyone in Sydney was trying to get out to the harbour wharves. People were actually fighting to get onto boats. Fortunately I managed to get onto one before too long and joined Fran and Mark at Balmain. We set up our camp and waited! It was a hot day but fortunately as soon as the sun went down it was quite cool. And it was such a good atmosphere, so many people all along the front, young people, families, everyone, and there was no trouble, everyone was all happy and singing and chatting and sharing beers.







The first fireworks were at 9pm, then the main event at midnight! Photos at Flickr and here's my video of the event:



The original is quite good quality, but I had to squash it loads to get it on youtube so sorry it's a bit fuzzy :(

Happy New Year!

Another fun thing we did with Fran was go to bill's in Darlinghurst for brunch on the saturday. I had a lovely scrambled eggs on sourdough (oh god I love sourdough, why does UK not have more sourdough??) with avocado salsa and a lovely pot of earl grey. Fran and I are both big Bill fans from watching him on Saturday Kitchen so it was quite exciting and definitely somewhere to revisit.

Christmas

So, Christmas is over for another year. Our cards are in a pile on the table, no longer filling the mantelpiece, and the tinsel and our little baby tree are both back in the box marked "Christmas" for another year. Here is how we spent the last couple of weeks. I was so very spoilt I might now just hire a butler to do the blog for me.

[& I wish that was our Christmas tree, lol. But it's just the one in the Queen Victoria Building shopping arcade thing in Sydney.]

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On Christmas eve I had to work until about 4pm. Then I wandered home on the train. Mark had been to the fish market that afternoon so I ate my weight in raw tuna for dinner. Mmmmm raw tuna....

We watched Love Actually on the laptop and drank sparkling wine. After that we watched some episodes of House and went to bed around 1.30am.



The living room on Christmas morning. We woke up early and talked on Skype with Mark's mum (UK was still on Christmas Eve).

Then we "unwrapped" our present from my parents - TV!!! We'd been to pick it up the day before and hidden it in a cupboard. It's a 32" Panasonic thing.



We got it set up and looked at the TV channels (rubbish), then plugged in our DVD player and watched Fight Club before cracking on with more presents...





Mark was excited by my mum sending him Harry Potter in Ancient Greek.

Some things I/we got:

- Two cardigans from Topshop;
- 3 pairs of earrings + 1 necklace from Accessorize;
- 'Liver' by Will Self;
- The Mighty Book of Boosh;
- La Vie en Rose DVD;
- Downfall DVD;
- SATC movie DVD (lol);
- MAC liquid eyeliner in a bright blue colour;
- Harry Potter in Ancient Greek;
- Skins series 2 DVD;
- Mighty Boosh radio series CD;
- Allure Sensuelle by Chanel;
- Jewelry box

Mark got me a Canon EOS 10D DSLR camera beast. I was very overexcited and we went to the park to play with it and also the throwy thing.







The park was busy. Xmas Day is really weird here because you actually see people all over doing stuff, and public transport works and stuff is open for business. Totally different to the UK where you basically go into a cocoon inside for several days and just...eat.

Oh hang on, more presents! I told you I was the most spoilt ever didn't I? Well, Mark also got me a Singer sewing machine....



Apparently it does work. I'll probably still buy a modern one at some point though. This one is more for looking nice, and Mark says he got it really cheap off someone on Gumtree.

And then I got a PIANO.



A BLOODY PIANO!!!!

In the evening, we watched Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on DVD and ate oysters and drank too much champagne and I don't remember going to bed but it was a lot of fun.