Here is the news!

In tonight's headlines:

Carol (lady at work) managed to get hold of some Marks and Spencer's PERCY PIGS!!! for me and Karl (another British friend at work) after we expressed our sadness at their absence from these shores. Carol is from Essex originally but has lived in Australia for 20 years and is now an Australian citizen, and I think she was a bit excited to try these revered sweets!



Australians call all sweets "lollies" it seems. Absolutely no distinction made between actual lollies, on sticks, and those that lie stickless. They also seem to delight in calling chewing gum "chewie", which makes it sound more like a child's plaything than a substance nonchalently rolled in the mouths of rockstars and naughty schoolchildren. One night we were on the train and this drunk girl kept going "does anyone have chewwwiiieeee?", as if forlornly calling for a lost puppy.

In tonight's cultural review:

Theatre



We went to see the Sydney Theatre Company's production of The War of the Roses cycle, quite a while ago now actually. The War of the Roses is a modern adaptation of eight of Shakespeare's history plays (see if I get this right: Richard II; Henry IV Parts 1 & 2; Henry V; Henry VI Parts 1-3; Richard III). The total production is 8 hours long and we saw it spread over two nights in a very hot week in January, when it was rather pleasant to spend the evenings in a cool. air-conditioned theatre. It was an impressive production, the set design was amazing (and it rained golden glitter over the whole stage for about an hour in the first part), and Cate Blanchett was brilliant as Richard II. Her voice is so strong, she really suits being on the stage. The guy that played Falstaff was also really good, it must have been fun to play him. I am fond of the Falstaff character.
The intricacies of the plot are quite difficult to follow, especially as it is obviously condensed considerably from 8 plays into effectively 2 and all happens quite fast, but essentially most people either get killed, go mad, or both.

Unrelatedly, we went back to the Sydney Theatre Co. a week or so later for a Sunday afternoon tribute to Harold Pinter. Cate Blanchett, Robert Menzies, and two other actors performed monologues and sketches from his works. It was really good, and made me realise that I am seriously under-read in the Pinter department. This must be rectified promptly.

What with all that and Benjamin Button the week before, and am quite all Cate Blanchett-ed out. She is a great actor though, and it really shows on the stage.

Opera

We saw Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci for 'Opera in the Domain 2009'. I like Italian operas, they are like crazy little episodes of Eastenders, everything happens! It was free, and fun to sit out in the park.



We didn't really know anything about it until we turned up, so we weren't very prepared. Next time we'll organise picnic blankets and wine and nibbles - there were people there with quite posh looking spreads for their supper!



There's the stage once it got dark.

Film

Finally saw Slumdog Millionaire on Tuesday. I won't bother faffing on since you've all seen it by now I'm sure, but it really is so good, really uplifting. After the film we went to Kammandhenu on King Street for some Indian/Sri Lankan/Malaysian delights. I have been training myself to eat spicier food lately (I am a firm believer that you can train yourself to like most tastes) as it was becoming a bit embarrassing being frightened of asian restaurant menus, and am really starting to enjoy it. And we got Mango Lassi to drink....mmmm lassi.

In tonight's weather:

It has pretty much rained since February 10th. There have been a few nice days, but it's been cloudy, drizzles a lot in the morning and hasn't been that warm. Oh well, I'm glad to see it's not just England that gets dodgy summers!

Valentine's Milk

My valentine's flowers. Mark also got me an amazing tweedy waistcoat from Cue that I can't wait to wear to work on Monday!

Battled our way through the rain on Saturday to see a band called The Devoted Few perform at the Apple Store on George Street. I hadn't heard them before, but I was quite impressed. They weren't playing as a full band, just doing an acoustic set of slower songs, but the songs sounded good and the singer has a really good voice.

Following this, we went to see Milk at the cinema. I'd been looking forward to seeing this for a few weeks, and it didn't disappoint. It's a biopic of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, and on a wider scale, it's about the gay rights movement in during the 1960s and 70s.



In my opinion, Gus Van Sant makes better films when he doesn't go too 'art house'. His last couple of films, Last Days and Elephant were a little too self-indulgent in my opinion, although Elephant at least was actually a critical success. Milk is a return to a more conventional narrative. Although it has a similar feel in parts to those other films, it is held together better by the story being told. And Sean Penn is brilliant in it. And I must admit I do love Diego Luna a little bit...it's the accent? I might learn spanish...

It seems crazy that all the events depicted in the film happened so recently. It's distressing that as recently as the 1970s, people genuinely believed that allowing homosexuals civil rights was akin to granting civil rights to criminals. What is more distressing is the number of people still existing now, in 2009, who still believe this. The idea that a 'family unit' (I detest that phrase) made up of anything other than a man, woman and their own, biological children could lead to the downfall of civilized society is laughable. I have met gay couples with far more conventional home lives than Mark and I will probably ever manage and it is disturbing that just 30 years ago their lifestyle itself would have been illegal, and indeed still is in many parts of the world.

*inflammatory view on evolution alert !!!* One day we will all have mid-brown coloured skin, bisexual with the ability to reproduce a-sexually, physically a bit withered with poor eye-sight and hearing. [And if science keeps advancing, an average life-expectancy of about 768 years.] There will be no more need for war, and global warming will have made it too hot so we will all work from 'home' which will consist of specially built cool-boxes.

We are all the same and we are all doomed and everything is transient so in the meantime let's all love each other!

Blue and yellow purple hills

So it's all back to mundane normality this week after the fun of having Mark's parents visit us over the last couple of weeks.

What joy it was to have days off work and outings! These included Manly, the zoo, Darling Harbour, Glebe, Newtown, Leichardt, and so many other various locations, but one of the highlights was definitely our trip to the Blue Mountains last Thursday.

We caught the train to Katoomba, which took a couple of hours. Sydney's western suburbs are so depressing to travel through, although the train did sweep me through two of my most favouritely-named suburbs: "Doonside" and "Rooty Hill".
Katoomba is lovable. It's all a bit old style, with a plethora of little cafés and a tiny proper 1970s shopping arcade (think "Arndale") full of antiques-y shops along the main street. The street leads straight out into the bush if you follow it down, and everywhere is so quiet and spacious. It's obvious why the towns in this area are such popular weekend retreats for Sydneysiders who spend their weekdays stuck in offices and being jostled all over the street and stuck in traffic jams.

We did a walk from Katoomba to Echo Point, from where you can see the Three Sisters. It was a cloudy day, which was actually good, as the lack of direct superstrength australian sunlight made the temperature more bearable for walking.



There is a cable car that does the trip in a slightly more direct way. But we went for the long way round.



The 'Mountains' are more Hills, really. But still, we all like a good sandstone formation, don't we?





Mark looks like a little sprite perched upon this log.

I'm looking forward to going back in Autumn for another walk.

The weather has turned quite dramatically this week. Whilst last week was glorious sunshine and temperatures in the low 30s, I have now just had to turn the TV up to hear it over the heavy rain drumming away on the roof, and am wrapped in a scarf to keep warm. Hopefully this will reach as far as to provide a bit of respite for the poor people of Victoria who have all been so tragically burned away.

Life on Mars is about to start on the TV, and I need to put some new audio books on my iPod to help pass the time during a depressingly uneventful period at work this week. I shall be back soon with some sort of ** Cultural Review ** as there is so very much I could rave on about!

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.