Buzz and Words

Ear Worms

2011-09-25T12:26:00.000+10:00

Hi bloggers, Do you get phrases, lyrics and snippts of conversation stuck in your brain going round and round like a record while you process your actual experiences? I do. Here's some - all from memory and playing the CD so apologies for any misquoting.

Now the world can be an unfair place at times
But your lows will have their complement of highs
And if anyone should cheat you, take advantage of you or beat you
Raise your hand and wear your wounds with pride

You must stick up for yourself son, never mind what anybody else done

Yeasayer, "Ambling Alp" - first heard played at Splendour in the Grass, on a Sunny mid-afternoon. Takes me back there every time I hear it

"For every pot, there is a lid"
Russian Proverb, quoted by my hairdresser Natasha.

My therapist said/ not to see you no more
She said you're like a disease/ without any cure
She said I'm so obsessed that I'm becoming a bore, oh no
I think you're so pretty - oh - eh- oh

Moved out the house/ saw you moved next door
I locked you out/ you cut a hole in the wall
I found you sleeping next to me/ I thought I was alone
You're driving me crazy / when are you coming home

James, mid nineties indie band in their song "Laid"

When you're laying on your death bed and everyone's gathered around to say goodbye, you're never going to think "I wish I spent more time at work."

My Dad, from his life experience, I gather.

We talk about it all night long
We define our moral ground
And when I fall into your arms
Everything; it comes tumbling down.

Nick Cave, "The Ship Song" - I have had this one on repeat ever since I was about 17 and bought the Good Son album after seeing hime play live at the first national, touring Big Day Out (199-cough-3)

Merching for my snooze, part 3

2011-09-11T22:01:00.004+10:00

It's other people really, isn't it? That's where stories come from. Vistas, nature, monkeys and all aside. Unless the monkey sits up on his hind legs and recites from the Rubyiat there's not a huge amount you can say about him is there?

What I learned today - I don't really *like* bargaining. Probably just cultural upbringing. One is supposed to remain chilled and smiley, but I just don't care about objects and gewgaws enough to try to get 30% off some crumpled old lady.

Searching for my muse, Part 2

2011-09-10T15:04:00.003+10:00

It’s impossible not to be a cliché right now. Sitting, as I am, in a beautiful garden, veritably neck-deep in frangipanis, my room overlooks the terrace where a steady stream of variously grey-haired, be-saronged solo women tippity tap away on lap tops in the early evening. We are a vertible hoard I swear: in the café over the road there were no less than three this morning - one even had an ipad with an eco-organic-recycled slip cover.

Yesterday I went looking for that slippery siren on a push bike. Much like the tour experience in many parts of the world, the brochure promised to experience the REAL *insert place name here* which we can of course we can all see past as Marketing can’t we – as we are picked up by one of I think about four mini buses operating that day, eating in large barns, getting told how coffee is made (let me guess, picked, shelled then roasted, right?) and being given the low-down on rice farming.

But eventually, coast downhill we did, serene it was, and a porthole view of other people’s lives, we saw. Just quietly, I quite like having a nosy into hundreds of front yards and fields as you can do on bike and having practiced this in Nord-Holland. In this case though I can’t even say at least we were quiet, because the van following downhill was probably rumbling enough to annoy the locals with tinnitus from their motor-scooters.

I’m grateful to have seen it actually, especially to someone who has taken it upon himself to explain bits and pieces of family life here, the ancestor shrines, the ritual of a new birth, where the placenta goes and how the main forces in life are a kind of triumvirate of hindu deities representing creation, destruction, and um, crumbs, what was that other one.. growth…? (Enlighten me in comments, blog buddies if you are out there). The concept of regular tooth filing, to help control our bad karmic forces was something I didn't know; its is for keeping an upper hand on anger, jealousy, lust (darn) and confusion (interesting), and probably a few others.

It was a bit post-modern when we were all stopped to walk into a rice field where three men were planting, bent backs, like all the pictures, and our guide explained how the Balinese rice farmers typically have quite bad back problems pointing out the oldest one with an almost lower back hump. As a group of Dutch, Danish, French and Australian I suspect none of us would know a manual job if it ran up and kicked us in the shins - yet we were being openly invited to photograph those who do. I had an image of bent-over shearers at home or perhaps labourers being treated like exhibits, would they be cool with that? I suppose they’d just find it wryly amusing – probably the riggers on the Harbour Bridge get photographed by all the bridge climbers ... except they wouldn't experience such a massive disparity in salary so much I would imagine.

So I also read in a local rag amidst ads for massage and yoga a short piece querying whether it is right that a rice farming family, with increasing frequency will sell their paddies for a villa development, to make a wad of upfront cash in place of the rice harvest which typically is grown just to feed the family. I don’t pretend to know what this means for the economics of the Bali, or how it effects people’s lives. But I can only ponder how common it is for visitors to contribute to destroying the very thing they come to a place to enjoy (or discover, if you don’t mind the use of the verb even after 500 million people have done it before you). We love looking out over those paddies, but we need nice buildings to sleep in, so people build on top of those very vistas and their kids become tour guides and their grandmas sell sarongs instead.

Koyaanistquatsi, huh, life out of balance. Little bit too much destruction and only creation of a bricky, housey kind. I really hope those daily offerings to the shrines and statues are helping to put something back into the ‘credit’ side of the ledger.

And as a post-script, I recall that the ID of this computer is “Durga II” (named for the original Durga, the Toshiba that all Amsterdam blogging was done on). So when I connect to the Wi-fi to post then anyone looking at the router could see the name of the Destroyer – the feminine energy of rage and vengeance, if I recall correctly. Eat your heart out, Elizabeth Gilbert. I hope one of the staff here who follows his or her Hindu pantheon gets a laugh out of that one.

Searching for my muse, day 1

2011-09-07T20:40:00.007+10:00

Greetings from Ubud Monkey Forest. For some reason I have decided to stay on the street of the primates. It's rather like a whole lot of small, grey hairy people walking round a dirt track. I have so far failed to find enlightenment. In fact, I've failed to even find a yoga class. Which, if you know this part of the world, is like saying I have not yet found my backside with both hands. This town is renowned for its veritable king's banquet of every kind of spiritual, yogic, karmic service you can imagine. In fact after a rather hot and sweaty trek up the main street it is clearly full to overflowing with the fulfillment to be found in material possessions. Yes, Bali-files, I did find "Yoga Barn" on the main street but for some perverse reason decided to stay in a little satellite town-ette which is a taxi ride away from the all day-drop in centres. I actually intended to stay at "Swasti Eco-retreat" a bamboo-dominated, green and luscious, be-pooled and somewhat self-righteous compound with its own massage centre, only to find 'no room at the inn' - so am next door at the less glamorous pad which appears to have some kind of building work going on. Ah the serenity.

After this truly most western of disappointments, I was then chuffed to be directed immediately over the road and down an enchanting little footpath to the ashtanga yoga teachers. Bingo, I thought. Om shanti. I was serenely greeted by a lithe blond American clad only in cotton hotpants and a bandeau who asked how long I was staying. Turns out a few nights isn't enough to learn anything at this particular spot - minimum two weeks for this particular discipline. (Ashtangaworld dot com I am informed if I wish to look at the website). Yes, "we require somewhat of a commitment here, you can go to drop in classes all day at Yoga Barn in town", she kindly explains. Since I had just caught a glimpse of hubby's retreating figure wearing little but a white loincloth and a long grey beard, I wasn't too fussed to be honest.

So judging from the dearth of blogging, I lost track of my muse somewhere between the Zeedyke and Tamarama Surf Club. I'm not sure what she'd be doing here in Bali, but if I can find some asanas then she may be tempted into returning to me. I fear however she may be distracted by the shiny things and be trapped in some endless gauntlet run beset on both sides by people calling out for transport/ taksi/ sunglasses/ and offering random wood carvings of harley davidsons and interlocked elephants.

Speaking of which, the run from this internet cafe back to the pad will be a monkey-laden night time stroll. I hope they all remain calm and don't turn into some b-grade swarm that has decided it likes the taste of human flesh.

Namaste from cyberspace.

Washington post: why acting on climate change is conservative

2010-11-10T11:25:00.003+11:00

Good article, from Washington Post, which gets to its point about halfway down.

In fact, far from being conservative, the Republican stance on global warming shows a stunning appetite for risk. When faced with uncertainty and the possibility of costly outcomes, smart businessmen buy insurance, reduce their downside exposure and protect their assets. When confronted with a disease outbreak of unknown proportions, front-line public health workers get busy producing vaccines, pre-positioning supplies and tracking pathogens. And when military planners assess an enemy, they get ready for a worst-case encounter.

When it comes to climate change, conservatives are doing none of this. Instead, they are recklessly betting the farm on a single, best-case scenario: That the scientific consensus about global warming will turn out to be wrong. This is bad risk management and an irresponsible way to run anything, whether a business, an economy or a planet.

The great irony is that, should their high-stakes bet prove wrong, adapting to a destabilized climate would mean a far bigger, more intrusive government than would most of the "big government" solutions to our energy problems that have been discussed so far.

I'm done with 2010

2010-11-09T11:43:00.004+11:00

Really, it's been a year with no point. I mean, I guess there was an election and all wasn't there. We did get our first lady PM, but it was like a giant grudge match to get any kind of government at all. Now she's there hanging on by her lovely manicured nails, it seems a bit like old' Julia's been dished some instant karma of the "you like consultation so much, here, consult on everything with everyone just to get the basics of your job done" variety.

Oh, and that climate change thing that I've been working on for nearly a decade? Apperently not so much of an issue now. Its a big conspiracy cooked up by the same people that made tonnes of money out of Y2K or something. Not sure how that happened, the IPCC being discredited, and all, but oh well, guess I can move on and do something different.

Anyway this wasn't going to be about national or global politics. Just I'm fed up with 2010 and would like to put in application for 2011 to start now thanks. I think maybe there's nicer times waiting in that year. It looks better in print too (post code for Surry Hills by the way, which is a nice part of town).

Spring Clean

2010-11-06T15:32:00.002+11:00

Well, even though spring this year seems to be made up of torrential rain, wind and thunderstorms, there must be something in the circadian rythyms that says its time for a freshen up. I want to write and blog more, you see and this space seems a bit daggy. I like the wood background because it reminds me of hand-made things. This mustard colour template is still a bit drab, so more changes may be underway.

Note the delicious link list on the left, also need to update this a bit, but its quite a neat little bit of rss there I thought. I think there might be some posts coming up on the internet itself, social media, isolation and connection. Also grass rootsy marketing stuff, or possibilty just a list of links to cool facebook pages I like. Or maybe just random blather. Anway, how are you ladies? Anyone there is blog land? I'm working in parallel to update my work website and link up my other social media presence there, so perhaps a whole new professional blog will be born soon. I guess there's more than one type of conception, too.

Infidelity

2010-09-27T21:38:00.004+10:00

Last night I copied a downloaded version of the new Grinderman album (Grinderman 2) from a friend. Now, I've been to about 5, maybe 6 Bad Seeds concerts since 1993 when I first went to a Big Day Out and snogged a stranger when Deanna played live. I've paid cash money for about a dozen Nick Cave CDs including spoken word and a live and rare triple CD. I've been to the exhibition at the National Library (paid) and I've bought the lyrics book. Heck, I even bought tickets to the ballet Underworld which should have generated some royalties. I've probably played my part in keeping Australia's National Treasure in black hair-dye. I haven't listened to the new album yet, only because its not very housemate friendly, and *still* have a little pang of guilt that I've obtained it without rewarding the man's Muse. I think that might be the lamest example of oldest-child-over-adherence-to-authority-and-moralism that I know of.

I think I kinda hate bars

2010-09-25T14:12:00.008+10:00

Well, no doubt I'll be in one again inside of 72 hours. But I just had a realisation that even while fetishising the best kind of bar, my long love affair might be souring. Sydney is supposed to be undergoing a much-vaunted 'renaissance' of its drinking culture. Clover Moore has made it easier to get a licence, and entrepreneurial groovers have responded by setting up these Melbourne style "small bars" - complete with hard-to-find unmarked entrances. Apparently, the grown up approach to sharing a bevvy with friends is supposed to make us more responsible drinkers too. That, or the prices. So I've been to Pocket Bar, Shady Pines Saloon, the recently re-furbed Flinders Hotel, LL bar in the Cross, Libertines, Grasshopper Bar where they serve cocktails in jars which is frankly GROSS and reminds me of a disfunctional student sharehouse, The Falconer, Madame Fling Flongs and probably some others.

I thought I really liked them at the time. I did. The warm glow of the candles/bordello lamps/ironic chandelier, the retro-funky stuffed animals, the background chatter, paying the best part of $20 for a martini and sucking up the meaninglessness of existence while talking about how great it is that they have all these small bars in Sydney. It just hit me like a brick, that they are all just rooms with tables, stools, glasses, some form of paint on the walls (or wallpaper if you are in the so-groovy-it-hurts ones), women with their best makeup and shiny frocks, and guys who are spending more on drinks that than they can afford. A limited number of permutations to the above. But I guess we keep going because these dens are usually central, the ritual of getting a bottle and some glasses is known, and you can generally catch your friends for a couple of hours and get back on a major public transport route.

Maybe I'm inspired to write this post by seeing a minor trend amongst women with small children, who may feel a bit like they are missing frocking up and going out. I think perhaps I have been racking up the hours in these places on your behalf. I've hit the limit. I'm experiencing low-level rage at the people in these bars. I can't really hear the person I'm talking to so I tend to tell stories and monologue too much. I spend money I'd rather go on holiday with. Mums: you can have some hours back - I'll take a couple of shifts with the ankle-biters. (Especially if we can go see Despicable Me, or the Dinosaur Gallery. Yeh).

As the well known poets regurgitator put it - right now, I'd rather dance in daggy pants to the funky music playing on your stereo. Oh. Oh. oh-oh.

In the meantime, see you at the next awesome new place. You know, the one with the wood panelling taken from a vintage Holden Station Wagon. The one with the stencils and the egg cartons on the walls, the one with the rooftop sculpture. The cactuses. Yeah, that one.

Fitting in

2010-06-22T16:37:00.002+10:00

From this week's astrobarry

Do you really give a rat's-ass how 'other people' (in quotes because, at its base, it's an abstraction) are apt to judge you? Seriously, Pisces, this whole notion of fitting in—or, its identical twin, purposely not fitting in (so you'll, of course, fit into a different sort of reactionary niche)—is terribly junior-high. And yet, at the same time, I want you to acknowledge how profoundly your psyche has been impacted by past experiences of rejection or incompatibility… if only so that you may understand why your adult self may still censor its distinctive individuality at certain moments, in order to gain supposed favor from that same cool older-sibling or trendy schoolyard clique reimagined with today's cast of characters. We've all hit up against our protrusive oddness through such exclusions. The difference in your case? You're so sensitive, they might've felt like mortal wounds. Before you automatically assume the role of outsider, pause to consider whether you have now become the preemptive judger (of yourself, of others, of others' judgments of you)… instead of leaving open the possibility you actually do belong somewhere, based on who you really are.

Wow he's really convinced Pisces are the true outsiders.

I got a little golden oldie tip for living from a date, of all the things, the other night (no laughing in the back). AScribed to the Dalai Lama, but probably off the back of a conflake packet: "Happiness comes when what we think, what we do, and what we say are the same".

Yeah baby, missy b# is on an integrity jag.

Rat rat ratty

2010-06-02T21:21:00.002+10:00

I appear to be playing chicken with a rat in the kitchen.

Unbeknownst to me, I appear to have a primal fear of the little fucker. He ran out when I went in, then when I went out he ran back into the kitchen and under the fridge. I am absolutely goddam starving because I just got home at 9pm and am trying to heat up some curry I cooked last night, but the thought of mr ratty underfoot while reheating is making my stomach turn.

But I live on the 2nd floor, so I don't know how to encourage him out. Too late go and buy rat traps and the thought of emptying one tomorrow is disgusting too.

This is a moment when I could really do with a goddam husband. And I don't say that too often.

Emerald City

2010-05-26T22:07:00.004+10:00

I have a hate-love relationship with Sydney sometimes. On a rainy windy day last week I exited Central station via the tunnel on the Devonshire street side. I'll be the first to admit I have a habit of checking out the general populace probably more than I should. It's not a sexy thing it's just that I like to visually register interesting things, tall people with their trousers too short, neat little asian couples looking like they just stepped of the plane from Harijuku district Tokyo, buskers doing steel-string guitar. So on this morning I glanced at a really obese lady in a bright floral smock probably for about half a second too long - she swerved diagonally across the steps to specifically say "SHIIT!" right in my ear, then carried on walking behind me. Sigh, whoops, making the unstable feel threatened.

Cross the street, unfold the massive golf umbrealla I got last time we had a week of non-stop rain in Sydney. Arrived in the cafe for one of my regular "what can we do next" meeting with friend and fellow entrepreneurial colleague, shaking out the brolly and the rain out of my hair and coat. After our meeting I went to leave the cafe and yep, my special, giant, keep the monson rains off brolly was missing. Bastard inner city yuppies.

Got in a cab and scooted up to the big end of town, where I slipped into a silent lift where the doors snicked shut. Slid up to the top of a tower of steel and glass to talk about a genuinely interesting attempt by a wealthy company to do something that takes a step forward in making lots of people use less resources, every day, without even knowing it. Nice. Inspiring.

Sometimes my work is dissonant

2010-04-28T21:45:00.004+10:00

So I've been exchanging emails with a marketing coordinator for the United Nations High Comission for Refugees (UNHCR). Looks like I got the gig of doing some newsletter writing for them.

When you work for yourself, project to project, this kind of news is very good news indeed. Something that comes in once a month, reliably, and with a client that seems very systematic and clear about what she wants. Based in Europe, too, so she just sends a package of material, I work with it and send it back. Excellent regular incomce, and for a highly reputable and worthy organisation.

It's like "yay, I got the job". Then, the realisation, oh I'm writing about really terrible stuff. The first line of their last newsletter reads:

Thousands of people have fled across the Oubangui River to escape intertribal violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Equateur province.

Nasty, meaningless violence is the reason this organisation exists. Well that and floods, earthquake, poltical turmoil, etc. But mostly the kind of crap I've never even seen, let alone had any experience of. And because I can (mostly) string a sentence together, I can do something for them for some of the folding stuff. Sigh.

Oh well, the rest of my clients are trying to stop the world turning into Mars in about the same time as since the Doomsday book was written. I can suck it up and deal with the reports coming in from Sudan.

I often wish Lord Monckton and Ayn Rand were right you know. Charity is evil, no global warming. Then I could just work in advertising. I'd enjoy doing ads.

Things I see in the city

2010-04-12T19:49:00.003+10:00

Today, when entering the Devonshire tunnel from Railway square, I saw a guy who was about 21 with a Guns and Roses tee-shirt where Axl Rose was mid-high-note and looked like a baby-faced angel with wax-like skin and an an ecstatic expression.

A few weeks ago on a sultry day, I saw a middle-aged woman stop on the main concourse of Town Hall station and put her face right up to the big industrial fan they had parked there. She shut her eyes, and was lost in a moment's relief from the overheated an suffocating underground air.

Then, I went out to George Street, where I watched a fancy car rev up to the lights. A bogan party girl was in the passenger seat and the driver was a middle-eastern beauty in a hijab, smoking a cigarette and playing the radio loud.

Later, I watched a young sk8tr girl zoom towards me on a down-hill section of Cleveland Street, crouching low on her board, doing slalem-moves while wearing a bowler hat and letting her fingers skim the ashphalt - apparently out of the sheer joy of a body in motion.

I wish I'd..

2010-04-11T12:27:00.002+10:00

... strutted on the Central Park Runway at 1 am
... gone to Oslo that time
... worried less about getting travel sick on those trips
... asked that guy in that cab out for a drink
... been less apologetic in that meeting
... done more Karaoke before everyone had kids
... been a bit more demanding sometimes

Was reminded of a film quote the other day "When opportunity knocks - you don't wanna say Who is it?"

oh look , testing again

2010-03-20T16:07:00.006+11:00

Seems i just use this blogger stuff as a generic platform tester for various embeds and codes and stuff. Sorry readers, will try to get back some actual content soon.

test again

2010-03-11T21:21:00.004+11:00

Passive agressive ? Me?

2010-03-06T15:23:00.002+11:00

Following on from the teeth-grindingly annoying habit of some of my "friends" of having "greener than thou" rants on my facebook page....

Buzz and Words bring you selections from "Modern Hippie Lexicon".. thank you House of Broken Saints, whoever you are.. love, peace and mungbeans...

Bad Vibes - Someone called you on your bullshit or didn’t give you what you wanted.

Burning Man - A huge art installation in the desert that many hippies have mistaken for a model of Utopian society which they attempt to recreate in their hometowns for the next 51 weeks. Ignoring the fact that everything about it is completely unsustainable.

Ecstatic Dance - Flailing around arhythmically.

Gifting - The act of dumping your useless crap on other people.

Higher Purpose - Unemployment.

Massage Therapy - The best option for income without a higher education.

Universal Love - What you feel when you’re always high.

Universal Truths - The narrow set of beliefs held by your circle of friends.

Visionary - Drug-induced.

streams of loving kindness

2010-02-05T12:25:00.001+11:00

I haven't looked at Astrobarry in over a year, but now, in need of some guidance, he tells me..

(2) If given the choice between 'fitting in' via behaviors that may not genuinely represent who you are or 'standing out' by doing what comes naturally… well, do I even need to finish this statement? Screw 'fitting in'.

(4) Tap into Venus's conjunction with Neptune and Chiron in your 12th, and shoot streams of loving-kindness out your psychic transmitters when no one's watching. Like draws like.

Yeah, baby, that's more like it for 2010. I like the "when no-one's looking" e.g. acts of random beauty...

2009 reflections

2010-01-24T10:46:00.003+11:00

Found one of these over on What's new pussyat and ok it's a little late , but now time like the present, right?

1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?
Moved out from living with a partner, attempted to live totally on freelance income, did a screen writing course, went to the States.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next this year?
I resolved to get a cleaner, and yes, I got a cleaner. But the aim of the resolution was to help repair my flailing relationship and it didn't acheive that.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Everyone! Meri Risa had lovely number 2, Angel had a little boy right at the start of 2009. A cousin had a second one, I think, or was that 2008? Big shout out to the lovely mummies.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No. Thankfully.

5. What countries did you visit?
USA (New York!!), UK, France, Belgium (not as impressive as it sounds when you are based in Holland). Wished I visited Norway and gone to Spain again.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
A sense of security and joy de vivre.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Oh I'm very bad at actual dates. But the one where I walked through the passport control to leave Amsterdam wih a very sore and sad heart. July 13, I think. And on a happier note, rocking up in New York YMCA where the lovely Miss J was waiting, after my flight was delayed by an hour and I nearly got the the subway to New Jersey by accident. June sometime?

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Getting back to freelancing in Australia and being booked solid for 3 months.

9. What was your biggest failure?
A broken relationship, that I didn't know how to fix. Oh I sense a theme here.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Not really.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
My Blackberry, I think.

12. Where did most of your money go?
Airfares, rent, new laptop and phone bills.

13. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Very little. But going to New York was a welcome adventure.

14. What song will always remind you of 2009?
Mika "Happy Endings" and Nick Cave "Dig Lazarus Dig" from listening while riding through Vondel Park.

15. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder?
Happier, mostly, I don't feel trapped any more.
b) thinner or fatter?
A little bit thinner, yaay, getting rid of those beer and cheese love handles.
c) richer or poorer?
About the same. Replenshing the savings account, but feeling the lack of those nice Euros.

16. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Visited other European countries. Asking people for a bit of a hand when it was needed.

17. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Clamming up and acting tough.

18. How will you spend Christmas?
Oops, did this already - with family in Radelaide.

19. Did you fall in love in 2009?
Nup. Oh unless you count rekindling the love with Nick Cave via his new novel and exhibition. What *is* it about that man ?

20. What was your favorite TV program?
Hands down, The Wire, even though we watched on dvd.

21. What was the best book you read?
Um.. can't remember them all or what year I read them. Sure there was a few. Looking at the bookshelf, really enjoyed Stephen Fry's autobiography.

22. What was your favorite film of this year?
Probably "Julie and Julia". Also really liked "Where the Wild Things are". Saw "Cheri" when it was just the right type of escapism, but it was a fairly average film.

23. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Went out to dinner at Bazaar on AlbertCuypMarkt then dancing to live Brazilian music at de Badcuyp. Cycled to the red light district with Jess two in the morning when it was probably about 2 degrees. It was fun. I was 33.

24. What kept you sane?
Skype. And the ocean back in Sydney.

25. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I don't think I have to answer that for you regulars.. see #19. Apart from the obvious, Mika and Cate Blanchett (if you substitute fancy for admire).

26. Who did you miss?
Everyone who I don't seem to have in my "crew" any more. Formerly my little sister, Miss J, Amberguity and the Meri crew, plus the whole of Australia. And now Kristin, Kirsten, and Jess, Biz and others in the greenie/Europe contigent. And my Auntie Ruth. Life is crap like that isn't it?

27. Who was the best new person you met?
Um, possibly, my new client, Jenn who is a total live wire and funny. 2009 was less about meeting new people and more about re-connecting with old ones.

Nukes: a bit slow and pricey, too....

2010-01-21T21:54:00.004+11:00

A follow up to a discussion I was having with Merry Risa the other day. Regards nuclear power, John Quiggin speculates intial costs to generate nuclear power would be higher than coal, wind or gas, and when it "settles down" then it would be about the same as wind. "Settled down" meaning 5 nuclear power plants operating in Aus, at a guess, 2025. The IPCC says the world needs to reach peak emissions at 2015. That kind of economics challenges some of the popular chat going around that nukes are cheap and large scale solutions.

human stupidity: nature or nurture Pt 2

2009-12-07T19:38:00.004+11:00

On Saturday I toddled down to my local beach. Sometimes the beach is closed, and this Saturday was one of those days. In this neck of the wood, on days with an onshore current there are several yellow signs on poles with a swimmer icon crossed out, saying:

DANGEROUS CURRENT
BEACH CLOSED

There is also a large volunteer lifeguard tent right in the middle of the beach and paid lifeguards in the the tower. People still surf, using the rip to get out back, and swimmers still get in, because it's not like you can build a fence. If people stray into the waves the guards corral them back in making use of whistles or the loud-hailer or the beach PA system, with regular warnings that the conditions are very dangerous. Oh, and there's no flags up.

On days like this there is a nasty little drop off, just a couple of metres from the water's edge. The waves aren't huge, maybe just one metre at most, and if you're not familiar with the conditions it is hard to see what the issue might be. The problem is when they surge you get pulled off the beach, and can end up further from shore than you intended and if you try to swim against the rip you get tired very quickly and can panic and start to drown.

So on Saturday, I have to admit I watched the other swimmers for a bit, checked out where the lifeguards were getting people out, got in for about 30 seconds without going past the depth of my neck and got out again. And even then I nearly got knocked over by a wave in thigh-deep water.

Then I lay on the sand for a while reading my Margaret Atwood short stories. Presently, the Dad-type next to me exclaimed "oh look they're doing a rescue" - and sure enough the volunteer lifeguards were going in with the tow rope to pull out a girl of about 13 or 14. Her and a friend has been playing in the edge for a while, they weren't any further out than the few body surfers, but one of them must have been struggling. The friend got out on her own, and I watched the two of them walk across the beach towards the clan. The friend was asking the rather shaken-looking rescued girl if she was okay, if she wanted to sit down, etc, generally being pretty cool. As they approached Mum, the excitement of the moment overtook her and she was all "hey did you see what happened?! Katy just got rescued! She got towed out by the lifeguards!"

Mum sat up from her towel like she'd been stuck with a pin. Wasn't a big-gosh-fun-adventure for her, oh no. She'd been reading a magazine the whole time and didn't even know anything had happened. Wouldn't the prowling guards and loudspeaker announcements at least make you look up?

So this post is a twin to the stupid posters one. I was astounded that where the signs and announcements were actually immediately useful and could actually prevent you drowning, there was this total disregard for it. This is not an anti-mother rant - just an anti-human one. Too much information where it is useless noise, and a tendency to completely ignore the signal where it is clear, un-ambivalent and critical to your own safety. I think there as a factory flaw in the human genome, basically.

human stupidity: nature or nurture Pt 1

2009-12-06T20:19:00.010+11:00

Back in winter, some train station advertising made me wonder if there weren't larger forces at work to push us that bit further into complete loss of cognitive function, coupled with total dissatisfaction with our corporeal selves. The first is a series that seem to be showing the consequences of getting too close to trains. The slogans we simply mind-numbingly obvious tinged with totally patronising. Like this gem:

"getting caught in the door will hurt" - accompanying a photo of a guy in a suit with his arm, holding a briefcase, sticking out of the door.

Other ones were about prams on the platform and about crossing the tracks. I mean puhlease. That there is a hundreds of tonnes of metal hurtling into a station on electrified tracks isn't enough to encourage people to be careful? Is the logic in the comms strategy meeting (and I've been to a few, dear readers) that - if people were just to know the consequences of running to the those closing metal doors - then they wouldn't do it? If you can't work that out after the first time to see them actually shut, then you're an idiot and you deserve the bruise to teach you.

And the second one was part of the federal government's "How do you measure up" campaign, runnning with this beautiful bit of creative:

The full caption is, wait for it, "are you on your way towards chronic disease? I was confronted with this poor guy every day when I hit the bottom of the station escalators. Looks like the campaign is encouraging people to measure their waist as a trigger to lose weight to save themselves from SUDDEN DEATH.

It's been a while since I ranted here, but can I just say.. "what the hell?" I mean really, is this actually a real health issue? Or is this social conditioning out of control? Losing weight is so the new religion, Dicko did it, Madga did it, Mikey Robbins did it, it's highly trendy and a public rite of passage for fat celebs in the Emerald City. But, really, are we just compliant in shifting the global marketing coup of making women hate their earthly form - to our men? Is the health department playing into the hands of those big corporates who can shift more product if the general populace feels a little melancholy about those few extra kilos, the love handles and the muffin tops? It's not just diet programs and home gyms and such.. when consumers constantly feel like shit, everyone wins - from chocolate ice-cream to cars to beer to diamond earrings to flat screen TVs - anything to make you feel like you might satiate that longing for a perfect life.

Now, I'm going to come out of the closet on this one.

I reckon that guy in the poster could be eminently shaggable. He's so far from a hideous fatty it's laughable. I, for one, probably wouldn't turn him down, if he was funny, smart, playful, or perhaps had a love of cinema or could teach me a language, or was into body art or any bloody thing that wasn't about his goddam waistline. I bet the actual model has a happy marriage and a couple of kids who he takes to Nippers swim club every Sunday at crack of dawn and remembers to put the bins out every week. Jesus, he could be a Judo champ with that physique. I hope he got a decent pay packet for that ad is all I'm saying. For the humiliation of having to push another cack-handed attempt of the government to tell us we could get a bit crook if we eat junk and don't exercise.

I want to do a new station advertising campaign.

If you read this poster every day you will turn into a complete moron. THINK FOR YOURSELF.
(Authorised by the NSW government.)

Compensation for pollution

2009-10-19T09:39:00.002+11:00

Been a while since I quoted Ross Gittins on these pages, but here he is in today's herald talking about why polluter's shouldn't get compensation under the emissions trading scheme. I couldn't agree more. One thing that constantly irks me about free-market capitalists, is the double standard. How come you can claim the market rules all over some things like electriciy demand, but have your hand out for pay-outs over others, like an attempt to stop the catastrophic effects of your industry.

There's no insurance against loss for capitalists in a capitalist economy. Market-caused change raises or lowers the capital value of businesses every day. No one suggests losers should be compensated by the taxpayer.

Similarly, businesses gain or lose from changes in government policy all the time. No one suggests the losers should be compensated, nor that windfall gains be confiscated. To wish otherwise would be to put elected governments in an intolerable straitjacket, greatly constraining their ability to act in the public interest.

No one compensated the tobacco companies when governments took to discouraging smoking, nor James Hardie when governments acted against asbestos. No one has compensated the smash repair industry for all the things governments have done to reduce road accidents and deaths.

In any case, any investor in power stations who didn't see restrictions on carbon emissions coming was a fool.

If the private owners paid too much for their power stations the capitalist solution is clear: cop the loss and sell to new operators at a more realistic price without the station losing an hour's production.

Underworld

2009-10-05T20:25:00.004+11:00

I went to have a massage last week. The style is called a 'dry massage' (no sniggering in the back please) - which means you are wearing cotton pjs and they don't use oils. They do however, twist and turn you every which way until bones in your lower back and hips that crackle like dry logs in the first fire in the grate for winter.

The lady masseuse was Thai. It was a Thai massage place. She was clearly skilled at her job, she hadn't just been shown a chart of human musculature and a few quick instructions, which is what it can seem like if you go in for these things at your regular Caucasian "beauty" parlours. At one point I was face down, she was kneeling, on well, I could be polite and say backs of my legs, but it was pretty much my bum bones, and doing something that seems to force out all the knots and strife out of my lower back.

And at this point, through the stabs of pain, I started to wonder about these ladies. Her English was pretty slight, but she clearly had a marketable skill. I started to wonder, am I actually an un-thinking supporter of one of these dodgy outfits that brings bonded labour over from under-developed countries, to service stupid rich westerners in the hope of making enough money to make a better life at home? Or bring over their parents, one day to Australia?

I mean, how do these girls live their daily lives with English limited to instructing people to lie face down, and to take their time getting up? Are they being kept upstairs by a kind of therapeutic madam, with their passports confiscated and their upkeep eternally deducted from their earnings? It does happen, didn't a high class Indian restaurant in Adelaide get busted with 10 illegal immigrant chefs living in the basement?

I did ask this fantastic angel of gnarled back muscles where she learnt to massage, and she said college in Thailand, but no more than that. Is massage a respected profession over there, or is it a little bit dubious and associated with servicing foreigners? How much do I not know about the Thai side of Sydney? Maybe she just shares a flat in Sydenham with her effeminate but streetwise brother who works in a Thai restaurant on Oxford street? I mean, there is just a squillion Thai food places, all stocked full of young people working, all dirt cheap, and doing a red-hot trade. And now with the massage. How can that be a good living wage? Don't cheap goods for the the rich come at the cost of the suffering of the masses, as Mr. Marx teaches us? Speculating like this while someone stretches your shoulder and your bent knee in two different directions is probably not good for inducing relaxation, but, I'm a speculatin' kind of a gal.

I am most definitely going back to my slightly eastern-exotic local therapy place, costs far less than a shrink, and they at least seem much more visible and legitimate than some of the garishly-lit shop front outfits that seem to be sprouting all over the beaches districts these days. I can only hope she is no different to the families of the kids I went to school with and that they give her a decent wage package for her hard work. How does one get a sense of the ethics of these things? Where's the fair-trade stamp for domestic businesses? I demand an easily recognisable logo dammit!

Hottest 100 notes

2009-07-12T23:32:00.007+10:00

Hottest 100 song list just played in Australia. This is a radio tradition set up by triple J , the government-funded youth station. The 'jays started up in Sydney in the 80s then went national state by state in the early 90s. They were brats who made it good, kinda thing. In 1989 they did the first national poll of "best 100 songs of all time". Entries strictly on the back of an envelope. Love will tear us apart" came in at #1. In 1998, "Smells like Teen Spirit" took the top spot. Letter entries were still taken and I'm not even sure if the internet worked well enough to take votes, but it was certainly less prevalent than now. I still had one email account that I could only access at the ANU computers, and I can't remember using the internet for anything useful.

Hottest 100 of all time 1998

Anyhoo - the '98 list was very early '90s - quite guitar rock-heavy, lots of Cure, Smiths, a good smattering of Aussie acts, overwhelmingly masculine, (the only girls I can see out of 100 are
B52's, Tori Amos, Dee-lite).

And now they've done it again, with 500,000 votes and the list is...

Hottest 100 of all time 2009

Guitar heavy, full of songs from the 90s, no solo women at all in the list, less Australian with a couple of notable exceptions (Hilltop hoods). Looks like about half the songs are the *exactly the same ones*. Nirvana Smells like Teen Spirit, still at number one. Other tracks that made *both* top 20s: Joy Division (Love Will Tear us Apart), Queen (Bohemian Rhapsody), Rage Against the Machine (Killing in the Name), Jeff Buckley (Last Goodbye), Led Zeppelin (Stairway to Heaven) Metallica, Radiohead.

I'm currently listening online in Amsterdam, last day here after almost exactly two years. Its nice, good to hear the accents, like decompression before re-entry. And to use the blog as note-book, here's my theories about this particlarly Aussie music poll. In an easy-to-follow bulleted list.

1) It's a product of the time JJJ went national. Early nineties. Those of us where were most excited to finally have our own station were about 14 to 20 then, we are 33 to 40 now. It is squarely a mid-30s hits list. Helllo nostalgia.

2) We are pack animals. Part of the appeal is to see if "your" song "made it in". So, if you want one or more of your songs to have any chance of making it, you're gonna pick the ones you know others will go for. I did - my favourite Nick Cave song is actually either the album tracks "The Witness Song"or "Breathless", but I picked "The Ship Song" b/c it was more of a crowd pleaser. Why pick the concert opener by Carter Unstoppable Sex Machine from the 1993 concert, or perhaps a Patsy Cline track when you know they will never get there, even if they really are you favourite songs?

3) Maybe more blokes do things like on-line polls than chicks do? When I voted I had to give age and gender - I'd LOVE to see the basic demographic breakdown they collected. Did blokes out-number girls really? If it was half half, well I guess I'm wrong, then all Australian 30-somethings love guitar-driven, big-concept boy's stories.

4) People who are only casually into music can better remember the big, heavily played, familiar stuff, easier. Singles, of course, not album tracks.

5) Being dead helps. Suicide even better. Buckley, Cobain, and Ian Curtis. Two suicides and one possible. Really, fuck you, you selfish cocks. Of course, death means exposure, lots of airplay, and sticking in people's memories. See point (4) Hello.. Michael Jackson made it in twice. No way would jjj listeners have voted for him otherwise. See also point (2)

6) "Utlimate Top Songs List" are a very Gen X things to do, and reflect the last gasp of the old breed brought up on albums and charts. I suspect the groovy kids today have big music collections mostly stored as MP3, they sample widely, they all have little niches, rather than following a few acts in one giant horde. (The adage of the internet .. eveyone can be famous for 15 people). I don't know whether they even slavishly follow a radio station, instead getting new music from Limewire, FreshFM, Itunes, from their mates' ipods, etc. Is it possile they don't even know the artists names of lots of tracks on their ipods? All those little niche votes aren't going to match the big bulk of the curve sitting firmly on early ninties grunge-rock and dead superstars. As much as I love the form, the album is dead. Perhaps for the real 'youth' (14 to 24) , the artist is dead too, and there's just the giant miasma of 'stuff on my ipod'.

I mean, come on, some of these songs aren't parent tracks, they are grand-parent tracks. If your Dad was listening to Led Zepplin in 1971 when Stairway to Heaven was released , you were born say in 1973, you were 18 in 1992 - triple J's big expansion year. (I was 16, that year dear listeners). So you've been raiding Dad's vinyl and you're also cementing your own tastes. Year of the Chilli Pepper, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Oasis. If you had a kid at 25, that kid is now 12, just listing to your 'top music'. If you let them online, will they not vote for those big boys power-rock, that "cock forest", as one twitterer descibed it? Unsurprisingly, the list has a bulge in the 70s and another bulge in the 90s.

And that's my analysis of the physcho-graphics of the Australian triple J listeners. Sentimental nostalgic types that they are.

Philo- lite

2009-07-06T18:52:00.002+10:00

A coupl e of breadcrumbs from the internets.

AC Grayling does some nice one-liners in the weekend guardian..

A human lifespan is less than a thousand months long. You need to make some time to think how to live it.

Science is the outcome of being prepared to live without certainty and therefore a mark of maturity. It embraces doubt and loose ends.

Life is all about relationships. By all means sit cross-legged on top of a mountain occasionally. But don't do it for very long.

The Athesiest's Guide to Christmas book will be out in time, for, well...

And a ray of hope

2009-06-14T20:20:00.001+10:00

A new Australian book - the Clean Industrial Revolution

John Quiggin says "if you only buy one book on climate change, this should be it" .. I'll take that as high praise indeed and look forward to reading it soon. Good to see someone seeing the opportunity and not just the cost of it.

Australian coasts - rich people are shocked

2009-06-13T04:09:00.006+10:00

"The state's view is that the risk to a property from sea-level rise lies with the property owner, public or private - or, whoever owns the land takes the risk. They gain the benefit of proximity to the ocean and they bear the risk of proximity to the ocean."
. . .

The NSW plan is being developed as scientists and councils warn that sea-level rise from climate change will greatly increase the number of beachfront homes at risk of inundation in coming decades, affecting some of the most expensive property in the country.
. . .

The NSW Government released a draft policy statement on sea-level rise in February but councils and coastal property owners are only now realising its implications for beachfront properties.

The policy is based on scientific advice that sea levels are expected to rise up to 0.4 metres by 2050 and up to 0.9 metres by 2100.

Each centimetre of sea-level rise is expected to cause, on average, a metre of erosion along vulnerable coastlines. Sydney coastal councils were warned this week that the frequency of coastal flooding would increase by a factor of 300 if sea levels rose by half a metre.

Full article.

Shouldn't we talk about the weather?

2009-06-11T17:49:00.004+10:00

Amsterdam: 9.53 am, nearly Summer (official start: June 21)
Sydney: 5.53 pm, approaching Winter solstice.

Quotes from recent New York trip

2009-06-10T20:36:00.004+10:00

"What's going on here? This side is for US citizens only. Are you a US citizen? If not you should be over there in the black lines. Hey! I'm lookin' at you!" - Uniformed security guy at Chicago immigration, you have to imagine the accent.

"Swing it out like your sis-tah" most definitely directed at Miss J, as we emerged from the subway, while we were doing that fake confident I-know-exactly-which-crossing-to-take walk that you do in strange cities.

"For two lovely ladies, of course". When I politely asked if we could pop into a city bar just to use their restrooms at around 1.30 am on a Thursday night.

"Hey! No photos of the shark!" Security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, referring to the Damien Hirst piece in the modern art wing.

"Well I just don't think anyone is truly happy in their relationship" .. overheard at Bryant Park popping out of the general hubbub of chatter on a sunny Friday afternoon.

"Too slow swipe again" - message in LED from the subway gates, perfectly sums up the existential tourist experience. I think being in genteel Netherlands I've lost my big-city finesse with those horrible cattle hearding things.

Things that make more sense now. ..

2009-06-09T19:49:00.006+10:00

.. references in pop culture that kind of click once you've actually been to New York. This is in danger of being a really cheesy dumb tourist post, but then I'm a bit of a cheezy dumb tourist, and it was the subject of conversations while walking around the streets of Manhattan...

Billy Joel - Up town girl (she's been livin' in her uptown world, now's she's playing with a downtown guy... ). Oh so every address comes with "uptown" or "downtown" attached... clearly it was a class thing, but it is also a fundamental part of working out where the hell you are.

Marylin Monroe, late night cop dramas, gritty 80s relationship movies, Madonna in "Desperately seeking Susan" ... yes there really is steam coming out of those fucking subway vents. Ew.

"No soup for you" (Seinfeld)- everywhere sells soup! About the cheapest thing you can get at lunch, that isn't a toxic hotdog - I suppose its an ecomonic way to make a lot of servings.

Coming to America (Eddie Murphy)/ Bright Lights Big City (Michael J Fox)/ Big Business (Bette Midler) - those opening scenes where the newcomers stare goggle eyed out of the window of a yellow cab at the skyscrapers - yeah, that was us too.

Sex and the City exteriors - uniformed doormen and those marquee-like shelters over the front entrance. Definitely an uptown thing.

Woody Allen. Oh is, like everyone in this town an artist/filmaker/performing arts manager or what? The ones I met were.

Sesame street. I don't think this needs an explanation - but my, there is a lot of Spanish spoken in the neighbourhood - even to most major subway advertising campaings, being done bi-lingual.

This post is officially open to additions from recent numty travellers like myself...

.. just don't know what to do with yourself.. ?

2009-04-14T18:09:00.007+10:00

My mate's husband has just launched a new central directory for community-based activities, from painting to bushwalking, language classes and harmonica.

It looks like its got a powerful search engine, and its missions is to stop people being couch potatoes. Hence... no spuds. Miss J. Miss A, looks like right up your alley(s)!

Zine./ art links

2009-04-08T18:40:00.001+10:00

This is for Miss j.

Printed matter. A shop in NY specialising in books by artists, looks like they have an on-line catalogue

Nieves. A swiss artist who exhibits cheaply-made hand drawn zines.

enjoy.

What I've been doing

2009-04-07T18:02:00.002+10:00

Scrabble.
Watching "Che Part 1" in the original Spanish with only Dutch subtitles. Hard core, huh? Picked up less than 50% of the dialogue but it makes you pay attention to body language and cinematography.
Growing seedlings on the window sill. Watch those little babies go, now that day time temp has rocketed from 6 degrees to 16 in the space of 3 weeks.
Taking a new resident to Amsterdam bike riding around town
Seeing Kirsta and 3-month-old Max.
Talking to old mates on skype.
Case study and report writing and other arcane measures to create new work.
Avoiding red wine because apparently it makes tinnitus worse.
Worrying about climate change.
Worrying about the economic down turn and thinking it might be time to get a real job.

some good news

2009-03-30T19:56:00.006+11:00

Todd Stern, US chief negotiator at climate talks in Bonn.

"We are very glad to be back. We want to make up for lost time, and we are seized with the urgency of the task before us," Stern said to loud applause from the 2,600 delegates to the U.N. negotiations.
They clapped again when Stern said the U.S. recognized "our unique responsibility ... as the largest historic emitter of greenhouse gases," which has created a problem threatening the entire world.
---
Stern said no one on his team doubted that climate change is real. "The science is clear, the threat is real, the facts on the ground are outstripping the worst-case scenarios. The cost of inaction or inadequate action are unacceptable," he said — a total change of tone from his predecessors.

Full associated press article here.

And Earth Hour photos looked excellent, too! Much discussion on Earth Hour, at our place. By the way, there were postcards and newspaper ads here in Amsterdam, but I don't know if there were any official switch-offs in the city. I note some commentators are taking it rather literally, like John Quiggin, who does a calculation of the emissions stopped by people taking part for one hour, compared with switching over to a few energy-saver light bulbs for good. I have total respect and admiration for JQ in his persistent use of fact, logic and his outspoken stance on climate change and target setting in the Australian political sphere. But I think that perspective is a bit too literal and doesn't really reflect what the event is about, in terms of mass acceptance.

I personally think WWF are doing a pretty good job trying to shift the symbolism of it towards a statement of "please government take more action". And surely there aren't many Earth Hour participants who think "that's it" - an annual switch-off is enough to stop global warming. Really. It's simply a good way to count how much of the population does actually 'get' this thing - that we, humans, have stuffed the balance of gases in the atmosphere by burning oil and coal. And according to Earth Hour in Aus anyway, that's more than the commentariat like Miranda Divine would have you believe.

Acknowledged, some may say it's about 10 years after this mass awareness would have been really helpful. But anyway, Earth Hour. Not a bad thing at all.

I like the photos because they show people in charge of these landmark buildings do actually believe those fundamental things. That industrialisation has warmed the globe, and that we have to make a different choice on energy use / energy supplies to fix it. Its kind of like the relieved feeling when you go on a march .. "oh, right, its not just me.. lots of people feel this way." Either that or their boss believes it is good enough PR to put the order through to turn out the lights for an hour!

Oh, and there's another thing - I'm now here in Europe spring. Easter in a couple of weeks. With life bursting out all over, birds singing, flowers literally shooting up before your eyes... a spring fertility festival makes so much more sense. In the south, it falls just as everything is in senescence. Dur.

I would love to see these kind of change-of-season rituals adapt in Aus to have a bit more meaning. They are so old that the western world has mostly forgotten the roots, and whoops, changed them to be about Jesus, etc. Perhaps an annual lights out at the onset of Autumn, in Aus, with it's associated candles and parades and outdoor 'light' related festivals could a be perfect new tradition for marking the moment. Nights getting longer, darkness closing in, an embracing of the dark, the uncertain, the dreaming. Earth hour could have the unintentional hallmarks of a seasonal event that is fitting to the rhythm of the earth, that is something the family can do together, that is a bit mystical, and a reminder of how to tread lightly, and just a wee little bit pagan. (Sssh.. don't tell the editor of the Herald who sponsors it!)

Grieving for the climate

2009-03-26T19:48:00.012+11:00

So, right, I've been working on and off in the area of climate change for a while now. (As if you didn't know). Since 2000 to be precise. Lately I've had a niggling feeling that the vast majority of western people are straight-out deniers. This is because of the comments attracted to every major and important article I read in a proper newspaper. I'm talking here about the ones that give space to those who think national governments need to stop weaseling out of real carbon cuts, not the crazy mis-information mafia like The Australian and The Washington Post.

Newspapers obviously are available to the everyone. From someone who has been campaigning on climate change since the 80s, like a colleague of mine, to someone who only just heard the term last week. They might have voted for Obama, but they're like "whaddya mean climactic change? Global warming.. hey-l it was snowing here last week." .. and so on.

My latest take on it is that large chunks of the Australian and US citizenship are going through the classic stages of grieving. Take this quote:

Whenever one's identity and social order face the possibility of destruction, there is a natural tendency to feel angry, frustrated, helpless, and/or hurt. The volatile reactions of terror, hatred, resentment, and jealousy are often experienced as emotional manifestations of these feelings.

from The Grieving Process by Michael R. Leming and George E. Dickinson

And you don't have to check out the links, as it's too depressing dear readers, but recent tell-it-as-it-is articles by NASA scientist James Hansen, and long time environmental commentator George Monbiot have attracted a wail of denial, attack, ridicule and defamation. I don't remember it being this vitriolic when I started on the issue.

Leading Climate Scientist: Democratic process isn't working (Hansen Interview 19 March)

Opportunity for 2 degrees lost (Canberra times, 23 March, reprinted from the Guardian)

The first one in particular attracted every single tired and disproved point from the denial camp that have all been carefully dismantled; some years ago.* (Btw.. it's clear that from about number 50-on the commentors are coming from the US, they talk about "our tax dollars.")

My mate who's been in this game longer says it's reflection of an anti-global warming campaign that has had a long time to work on its strategy and has been successfully selling doubt for about 10 years, and the efforts are now paying off.

Kind of weird for me, though, who worked in a fully government-funded department nine years ago, whose main remit was based entirely on the premise that global warming was real. Oh yeah, and quite bad for the economy. Back then, mind you, the preferred actions were education, PR and voluntary business programs rather than legislation. Maybe the risk of accepting the science wasn't so high.

And another thing - everyone I know personally is convinced to some degree, whether it is just to recycle when they didn't before (I know recycling has very little to do with climate but, hey at least it's acceptance that humans change their environment) to avoiding flying at all costs, to building low-energy homes, organising protests, or generally de-carbonising their whole life.

Since the turn of this century, the real science has gotten scarier, more urgent and some top scientists have broken ranks, going from simply analysts and predictors to urging strong action and even civil disobedience. Goodness.

But these days, it looks like all the cool kids post to blogs, with these angry, hurty and shouty messages. Hopefully it's an illusion. Perhaps web-zines, blogs, Youtube, etc, just attract a shouty minority of people. Perhaps the format lends itself better to flaming than to constructive discussion. Perhaps those who have read a paper more than once in their life and understand the basics of climate change just can't be bothered posting to say that the deniers are mad and bad. They spend that two minutes to sign an online petition for good solar tariffs instead. They are too busy changing the baby's cloth nappy and getting their gear on for the cycle to work to care.

I dunno. I hope so.

- - -

* In case anyone else has the energy to ever patiently talk to someone in real life who really is undecided and has heard about sun-spots, mini-ice-ages, water vapour, etc... without raising your voice ... This website has a long list of answers: http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics

Personally, I don't have the patience, I just screech "well when you are evacuating your million dollar-home due to flash flooding, don't come crying to me!". Because I'll be living in a hemp treehouse eating nothing but squid and lentils, with solar panels, a CB radio and a bike-pedal washing machine. Come the revolution. There's no room for you and your denier ass in my woven pandanus-leaf hammock.

Allochtoon

2009-03-25T00:15:00.004+11:00

Outside my regular cafe, an elderly Indonesian man approaches me and asks a question in Dutch. He has a scrap of paper in his hand and looks like he is looking for an address. As I start to form the sentence I can say most confidently in this country's native language.. Ik spraak Nederlands niet.. he notices the delay in my answer and switches to "oh, Engels? you speak English?" Yes I say, I speak English, but I know this area well if you are looking for something. .. "So you are an outsider then. Like me." he says. Yes, I am. I reply. And then he walks off to find his destination.

Recession-proof jobs ( an occasional series)

2009-03-22T22:55:00.005+11:00

1. Piercer

On Friday I wandered to the main shopping /cinema district in Amsterdam. There, I had a quick chat to the guy in the piercing and tattoo shop. (Don't worry mum - didn't get anything done). He told me he "doesn't know about this recession - they recently renovated the shop and business has been up for the last nine months!". He thinks it's only "affecting all the rich people - the big end of town, not the ordinary people."... "Well, not yet" he added. Maybe piercing would still go well anyway in a real recession, as people without decent jobs form a punk rebel army and go marauding in search of meat, scraps of tin for their urban humpies, and un-diseased women. You would probably have to barter your piercing, lobe-stretching and scarification skills for food and medicines though.

2. Locksmith

A colleague's brother's profession. Apparently in good times, people want locks. In bad times, they also want locks.

Illicit Urban Improvements

2009-03-18T01:43:00.003+11:00

From the lovely link provided by the lovely miss megsy in comments a couple of posts back

A hand-painted bicycle lane in Canada.

A playground made from dead space in Spain

A painted- on soccer pitch in UAE

All forming part of a Canadian exhibition on altering your own urban landscape. Niiiice.

Grow your own drugs

2009-03-18T00:58:00.004+11:00

Is the title of a new show on the BBC. Not a reference to less-than-legal drugs. It's a bit like a cooking show presented by a rather cute ethno-botanist (from Kew Gardens nonetheless), who goes out and picks herbs and flowers, then makes home remedies from them. The one I saw was featured a chamomile pillow for sleeplessness, a fruity face mask that used vegetarian geltine, and a home-made cough syrup. Nice!

Best of all, the recipies are on the BBC site. Here's the link, for the anoracky gardening readers. Sadly you've got to click on each episode then scroll down to where it says recipes. If anyone from bbc is checking their trackbacks, then note it would be a good idea to list all the recipes grouped by type (e.g. beauty, common cold, etc)

Good to see the beeb maintaining its muesli-eating, wartime rationing soul.

2009-03-06T01:06:00.001+11:00

New Booklub post. And thanks Meri Risa, I was just testing posting, because my main page disappeared temporarily.

2009-03-04T20:34:00.001+11:00

testing

Urges

2009-03-04T04:50:00.003+11:00

I have a need to garden at the moment. On the weekend, a great lady called Mel and I walked up and down the flower market in Amsterdam and were inspired to take our first step towards guerrilla gardening. This has been quite a thing amongst trendy post-hippies in the UK for a while now, and fits into a kind of re-claimed ye-olde-crafte-integrated-to-the-nasty-city sub-culture that also spawned knitting bombs and such.

So our attempt started local, in fact the miroscopic strips of dirt right next to my front door. For you lucky house-dwelling aussies, my front door is actually a security door to a block of 8 flats that extends right to the property boundary in a particularly urban part of the densest city in the world. It's like: door. street. No gaps.

Anyway, spring must be approaching as it is now well above zero in the daytime, and the chairs are back in our plein, goodbye icerink. At the flower market Mel got a lemon tree, and I picked up about $6 euros worth of overcrowded daffodils and blue hyacinths (i think). We popped outside to the street in the gloaming and plonked them all in, nearly 2 doz individual plants, in clumps just right where I suspect plenty of men have relieved themselves in the small hours after leaving the nightclub across the street and getting on their bike. Oh well, a bit of extra nitrogen never hurt, right. It's the tiniest addition of plant life, to a tiny strip with just a few scrubby plants, and it took about 10 minutes, but it was a good feeling!

We've both got a taste for it now, and I think I'll move down the end of my street to a long, blank wall, and perhaps do a mix of bulbs and pretty creeprs, and maybe some rosemary for the locals to pick. One thing in this country that is cheap: flowers and bulbs. Mel wants to do the area around the new trees in her street that are currently surrounded by sand, and hence, dog shit. She's even talking about adding soil first, now that's advanced.

Only thing is, it's not particularly guerrilla round here, as loads of Amsterdammers pretty up their front steps onto the street, with as much as they can cram into a space about 30 cm square, including pots and planters. I can't imagine really anyone batting an eyelid, but anyway, nice to add to the riot of colour that is spring and perhaps some tulip bulbs that will continue to pop up and self-propagate long after I've left the area. Hm, maybe a packet of sunflower seeds. I don't like to spend loads on cultivating plants for my own balcony, as they will eventually have to go.. but can easily imagine going berko in the public spaces, radiating out from my front door.

Attack of the car-eating rats!

2009-02-11T20:26:00.014+11:00

This is by far the best mistake email I have got. Reprinted below, in the right order to scroll down. There really is a publication called Foggy Bottom Current. I hope I didn't scoop her story with this. Our ace reporter's first name is changed to protect the innocent.

Subject: Re: Article about car-eating rats

- - -
On 2/6/09, Barbara[surname] wrote:
Hi Luke -
My name is Barbara [surname] and I'm a reporter for the Current Newspapers. I'm working on an article about rat problems in Dupont Circle and my editor forwarded me your note on the Dupont Forum. If you'd be willing to be interviewed about your problems with rats, I'd really appreciate it. Feel free to give me a call today at my office (202) xxx-xxxx or over the weekend on my cell phone at (201) xxx-xxxx.

Thanks,
Barbara [surname]
Reporter, The Current Newspapers
5185 MacArthur Blvd. NW Suite 102
Washington, D.C. 20016

The Northwest Current • The Georgetown Current • The Dupont Current • The Foggy Bottom Current

- - -
On Feb 10, 2009, at 8:01 AM, Luke Peterson wrote:

Hey barbara-- sorry I've been on vacation and still am with inconsistent blackberry service. Did I miss your deadline for this? I'd like to put you in touch with my friend whose car was eaten, if it's still relevant for you.
- - -
From: Barbara [Surname]
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 12:03:40 -0500
- - -

Hi Luke -
It's absolutely still relevant. I plan to write the article for the Feb. 18 issue of the paper. Feel free to give my number to your friend.
Best,
Barbara

- - -
From: Luke Peterson
To: Me, 10 Feb, 2009
- - -

Hey becca-- hope you're well!

Listen, I was talking about rats on a neighborhood listserv and used your passat experience as an anecdote. Want to give comment to this reporter who's working up a story on the dupont rat infestation?

You still in germany? Take care,

Luke

- - -
From: Me
To: Luke Peterson, Tue, 10 Feb

Luke,
While this email exchange is hilarious, and I think it's genuine and not robot-spam, I'm not the becca you are looking for. Try checking that email address and re-sending.

---
From Luke Peterson
To: Me, Tue, 10 Feb
Suject: I'm on vacation Re: Article about car-eating rates

Hi, I'm off the grid until February 15. Leave me a voicemail if you need to get in touch -- I'll have sporadic access to my cell.

Thanks!
-----
Luke Peterson
312-xxx-xxxx(m)

-----

File: under totally random shit. Appears Becca (not me) in Germany (close, only a few hours away) has her passat eaten by rats somewhere in Washington state. It's a similar feeling to the whole debacle with Betty-Sue.. kind of feels like I've got a small army of almost-doppelgangers running around out there who are nearly me, but not quite.

*By the way, these are all totally real titles. This is the reason why I try to never accept any new applications on facebook, no matter how cute they are, I think it adds another 50 spam emails a week to my account.

spammity spam-a-lama-ling-long

2009-02-11T05:26:00.000+11:00

explanation of above: I have had a g*mail address ever since they were created, a somewhat catchy moniker, and I get a mother-load of spam. Approx 500 each week. Minimum.

Aside from the random viagra and russian babes stuff, I get things like Fox and Hound Monthly, Huggies Baby Network, Audi car lovers, Solar Winds, Borders Rewards, Classmates.com, the fucking St Elmo Stakehouse which look like regular e-newsletters.* At frist I thought is was my emails on a massive global database that has been sold to every cheap-ass retailer in the States. And of coures, if I try to click their (legitimate-looking) "unsubscribe" link, I seem to just get another slew of new, odd newsletters. Now I reckon it'actually the sky-net machines trying to locate every real email address on the planet, so they can more effectively track us down when they wage war on the humans.

Also I also get a steady stream of what looks like genuine people just stuffing up. There's definitely a Reverend somewhere in the States with a matching last name to my email, who really needs to update his parishoners, because he's going to be showing up to prayer meetings and they won't be there, after they emailed me to say couldn't make it.

Extremes

2009-02-09T00:14:00.006+11:00

Only just got a look at the awful devestation of those fires. It's on the one hand un-imaginable what it would be like to be trapped in that but all also but all-too-easy to picture those areas going up in flames on such hot days. I was driving in the back roads around Bendigo just 10 or so days ago, through the towns that are now being torn up by fire. I visited an amazing winery in that area, Elgo Estate, they are 100% wind powered and they also fence off natives and re-use their organic wastes to condition the soil. All too rare in Australian industry. I recommend every reader buys their wines off the website, and have fingers and toes crossed they missed the worst of the blaze.

And over this side of the world, Britian is experiencing freakish heavy snow, closed roads, motorways, cancelled school, the lot. In fact, just looking out the window, the thin drizzle in Amsterdam seems to be forming into sparse snow flakes here. Heavy falls currently predicted for Tuesday. Wish I could send some your way, Australia!

Here's a picture I took on Thursday on my morning ride through Vondel Park. Note, the seagulls are standing on top of the pond.

Economic celebration

2009-02-04T05:49:00.006+11:00

On yet another leg of the 6,500 km journey last week, my car compatriots, now stinky and dirty with matted hair are coversing entirely based on in-jokes and references-of-references, as you do after 10 days in a vehicle and shared rooms with the same four people. The collective experience decides we should re-brand the supposed "economic crisis" as an "economic celebration!". The mortgage holders among us (not me, dear readers) have just seen their rates fall to about 2.5 % - saving them hundreds of dollars a month; none of us acutally have an employer as such, but seem to get by from a steady trickle weird and varied freelance jobs, and all of us relish getting to have crazy outback adventures. Fuel is cheaper, savings are still guaranteed.. economic bonanza!

From a culture-blogger in Berlin, momus calls it the "silver lining" in his post about about exactly the same phenomena. He hopes its not going to get him into cosmic, karmic trouble pointing out the good things about a slump in car sales, and a growth in public housing, but these things might just be music to the ears to the occasionaly pinko socialist among us. I wouldn't want to be carrying a lot of debt right now, and I really feel for those who are or those who just got laid off by BHP. Mind you, those miners riding the resources boom in Aus have been pulling in over 150k the last few years, hopefully they put something away for a rainy day.

All in all, how about you - can you see this period as a celebration? A rejection of the compulsion to spend spend spend and instead do some repairing, or just getting off the express train of capitalism?

January 26

2009-02-02T22:43:00.006+11:00

Drove into Melbourne about 6pm on Australia Day eve, cruising past the banks of the yarra, our assorted ratbag activists commenting on how pretty and clean the city is. Quickly followed by 'give me Newtown to look at any day.' They've got a decidedly urban grunge aesthetic those two.

People all down the riverside park setting up for barbeques the next day. The trend in Australia day over the last few years has seen more and more symbolic nationalism with a kind of diffuse and slightly unsettling focus. It seems that lots more people feel it necessary to get decked out in the flag in some way - shorts, tops, thongs, bikinis, draped as a cape (what are you, some kind of ocker super-hero?), flying on car antennas (putting the ass in class, that one), and worn as body paint.

The whole spectacle was dubbed as "morbid jingoism" by my colleagues on this trip. Can't say I diagree personally. I'm only 33, right, and from my relatively short living memory, this business is not some immutable part of Aussie tradition. We never got into flag-flying as kids. Australia day holds no real special memory of any kind of nationalist holiday, perhaps just a barbeque in one of Adelaide's many parks with a smattering of family freinds, but that was a fairly normal kid-friendly activity right through from October to March.

Perhaps Mum can set me straight on this, but I'm sure our lack of jingoistic fervour was not just a product of our suburb's chardonnay socialist leanings - I don't remember any particular fuss about it, even during high school years, where there was a slighly more bogan element. (Click "comments" to leave a note, here, technophobes).

Anyway.. see what I mean below. Early Sydney Big Day Outs always falling on Jan 26 probably sparked a trend of boozy teens trolling the flag, until organiser Ken West spoke out about it in 2007. The subsequent Howard years surely stoked this flag-waving business.

Photo from here: http://www.australiaday.com.au ... wtf?

Photo from wikimedia commons (Cronulla riots)

Get your rocks off

2009-01-26T11:15:00.008+11:00

Hi blog readers, B Sharp is on a job that takes in Brisbane, Innamincka, Adelaide, Portland, Waubra and Canberra. When groups of people travel on a dead straight road, not passing any on-coming traffic for at least an hour at a time, they develop this habit of naming stationary objects as they fly by. Like "bird". (silence) "roo". (silence) "car". (silence) "sign".

On arrival in Innamincka, heart of Australia's burgeoning hot rock electricity industry, we were confronted with a rare desert downpour, 20 millitres that afternoon and night - the most in one year. The publican and helpers were shovelling the torrent of water out from the front door, because over the years the pub has kind of sunk into the clay, creating a natural dam in the car park.

When we finally got out to the site of the new power station the next day, the verdict was "who would have thought we could get so excited over inanimate objects in the middle of nowhere?". For photography and vision its going to be tough to liven up the subject of hot rocks, you see they are 5 km underground. But for clean energy its enough to get you hyperventilating like an American virgin at a Jonas brothers concert. Maybe that's just me.

Photo: Innamincka trading post - more than a thousand clicks north of Adelaide. Sun after the rain.

Riders on the storm

2009-01-26T10:59:00.006+11:00

On the road to Cunamulla. This town is a sliver under 1000 kms from Brisbane. A documentary maker visited there some years ago and made a film that portrayed it as the bleakest most fucked up place in Australia. They have race issues, they have unemployed youth, they have it all.

On the way in, we are approaching a storm dead ahead. We are on one of those outback roads to nowhere, a dead straight line of bitumen, disappearing into the horizon in a perfect study of vanishing point worthy of a high-school art project.

We’re going at about 100 km/ hr and there is a massive black storm cloud hanging right over the hood of the car. Lightning cracks on the horizon. Our stills photographer is driving the landcruiser and picks up the industrial–sized camera from its permanent spot beside the gearstick. He rests it on the top of the steering wheel while dropping speed by about 5 kilometres an hour. “What are you doing?” is the simultaneous cry from the producer in the front seat and the video cameraman in the back passenger seat. “You’ve just got to get the moment before the rain starts, otherwise its no good”, comes the reply. He’s trying to get a shot of the lightning which is now arcing down from the dark clouds ahead to the horizon.

“Dude, if you’re going to use the camera, at least slow down” says our slightly older cameraman. He’s competing with the roar of several tonnes of metal roaring across the desert, plus rain and extra wind. ... “What?”... “I said, use it, but use a slower speed for god’s sake!” shouted now from the back seat. “Yeah, I’m on a one second exposure”. Laughter breaks out in the face of impending death. “Not exposure time – use the break for Chrissakes.” Nothing if not dedicated to the shot.

Its official, we're in the middle of nowhere. The GPS is lost.

The big deal at Christmas

2008-12-25T17:03:00.002+11:00

Arrived in adelaide a bit earlier than normal this year, so I've had the pleasure of shopping at the mall, hanging at the pub with the after work crowd, and a few games of scrabble with Mum. She's beat me both times, as have my interstate/international friends on every single online match, darnit. Got to work more on that end-game strategy.

During 2008 my Nanna went into a residential home. She'll be 95 in March, she's pretty with it but has started the forgetting that seems to come with great age. In her own flat she had lost interest in eating, her insides started to pack in, eventually ending up at a hospital with kidney failure. Now she lives in her own room in a ward that is quite cleverly designed to appear to seem smaller than than it really is. They have dining rooms with four or five tables dotted all over, plus activity rooms, a hairdresser and even a bar (open for seniors happy hour every Thursday 3.45 to 4.45 pm- apparently they all queue up in anticipation). If or when I start to fail on my feet or think that the cleaner is stealing my pens, I wouldn't be too upset to be in a place like it. Hopefully with some mischievous old ladies who could do stitch and bitch, although in another 30 years I probably won't have progressed past plain on the old knitting needles.

Anyhoo, Chrissy day so far has been quiet for us. Great to catch up with Smithy and Reg who both studied with me in Canberra but have washed up on the shores of d'laide, quite independently. Picnic in the park and hopefully a trip to the beach tomorrow.

This post was going to be a round-up of the big deal stories for Christmas. In Adelaide, people got all whiny about the tram line extension interrupting their commuter regime during 2008. I think it extended their cross-city car trip by about 10 minutes. But they ended up with a lovely melby-style main drag, and soon will have nice, clean fast trams scooting between central station and the entertainment centre. Sounds like a good deal to me. Latte-sipping Australia is huffy that the PM could only bring himself to put forward a 5% reduction in CO2 as a target for Australia. (15 % if he rest of the world gets its act together at the big Copenhagen meeting at the end of 2009). Our own on-line activist community is screening an ad comparing him to the climate-change denialist former prime minister, and airing it during the cricket - the highest rating show on tv over summer. Shame really, because they had to come so far in this country to even get climate change recognised politically as really real. And Penny Wong is such a dead-set smart toughie minister, I bet she would have liked to go further, but the mining can pull the strings pretty hard in this country. Based on my quick review of the press is some far-flung WA towns (more on that later), rural Australia doesn't seem too bothered as they're not so worried about climate change anyway.

But aside from all that, I can't really go past president-elect Obama with his shirt off for the top ranking story of the month. My word. It is wrong to have salacious thoughts about the leader of the free world?

Merry Christmas readers, happy Hanukah, happy new year, etc etc. Love, Aunty B.

save santa

2008-12-22T17:54:00.001+11:00

Ho ho ho. Best of the season to you all.

Advantages to living in a cold, calvinist country

2008-12-05T00:53:00.004+11:00

When you go to the shops at 5 pm, and make the 10 minute cycle home, your white wine is nicely chilled.
It gets dark before five and people in canal houses tend to leave their curtains open until about nine. If you rug up and walk around in the early evening you have a very good chance of seeing someone naked.
When it is snowing, and you absolutely have to go out to the bank, there are plently of other locals getting around who don't see anything strange in cycling when it is one degree and ice is gathering on your beanie.
If you ride in this weather for more than 10 minutes your face goes kind of numb so you can't feel the little icy needles hitting anymore.
Getting back inside makes you feel reborn.
You get to see ducks walking around on icy ponds in the park . Haha, skating ducks.
The exchange rate is very good to the dollar.

Disadvantages to living in Netherlands in the winter:

It's cold
It's calvinist

cuddly killer bots

2008-12-02T01:28:00.003+11:00

So, Washington is having a think about how they can make war robots that obey geneva conventions, and don't get "angry or frustated" when going into battle.

Quotes include:

Ronald Arkin, a computer scientist at Georgia Tech university, who is working on software for the army, has written a report that concludes that robots, while not "perfectly ethical in the battlefield" can "perform more ethically than human soldiers".
He said that robots "do not need to protect themselves" and "they can be designed without emotions that cloud their judgment or result in anger and frustration with ongoing battlefield events".

Here's an idea.. how about we try to work out how to, er, like stop wars - rather than building killing machines that won't shoot at ambulances? Call me crazy.

Chooks right to choose

2008-11-26T03:41:00.005+11:00

"We need to ensure each bird has access to an open range, but it's a chicken's freedom of choice"

That goes into the nacsent collection as a gorgeous quotes from a seasoned (natch) PR person. From James Kellaway of Australian Egg Corporation, it was in response to the Shonky Awards by Australia's Choice magazine, reported in the SMH, which asserted:

most consumers were probably unaware that the scheme allowed up to 14 free-range birds to be packed into each square metre of barn - four birds fewer per square metre than that permitted for their caged hen cousins.

But James disagreed, saying:

the free-range scheme's 30 kilogram per square metre rule translated into about 12 slaughter-weight birds, not 14.
As for access to the open range, the corporation was not about to start strong-arming chickens out the barn door each morning.

Sorry Choice, but you were out-spun on that one. Chickens freedom of choice, heheh.

Tips for living

2008-11-25T22:00:00.002+11:00

Extracts from a speech by writer David Foster Wallace, printed in the Guardian in Sept.

..most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her little child in the checkout line - maybe she's not usually like this; maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of her husband who's dying of bone cancer, or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the Motor Vehicles Dept who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a nightmarish red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness.

--

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship - be it JC or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles - is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things - if they are where you tap real meaning in life - then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you.

Gratuitous winter kitsch

2008-11-24T08:55:00.005+11:00

There's really nothing that makes me feel like an excited little kid, quite like snow falling. And an outdoor ice-rink.

New stereotypes to teach your kids

2008-11-20T08:34:00.003+11:00

This site is probably really old, but the format and the pictures are so cute. Hard to pick a favourite - but I like "middle eastern men are compelled to bury every pine cone they see - Of course after WWIII, when they become our new money, the rest of us will regret just letting 'em all go to waste"

Colombian rainforest disappearing up noses

2008-11-20T03:34:00.003+11:00

From today's Guardian online, it seems that the yuppie habit might be as immoral a big mac, when it come to remaining South American rainforest.

Four square metres of rainforest are destroyed for every gram of cocaine snorted in the UK, a conference of senior police officers as told yesterday.
Francisco Santos Calderón, the vice-president of Colombia, appealed to British users of the class A drug to consider the impact on the environment. He said that while the green agenda would not persuade addicts to give up, the middle-class social user who drove a hybrid car and was concerned about the environment might not take the drug if they knew its impact.
Santos said 300,000 hectares of rainforest were destroyed each year in Colombia to clear land for coca plant cultivation, predominantly controlled by illegal groups, including the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as Farc.

Light of my life

2008-11-16T00:49:00.005+11:00

I took this on Thurdsay night at the Max Euweplein, behind Wagamamma's. It's a pretty ugly semi-circular space between buildings but it has a highly convenient bike patth right through the middle. Along with the casino, Hard Rock cafe and Irish bar that I think attract approximately no locals, there is also one of those over-sized out-door chess sets that is in constant use.

The lighting display here is giant pawns! Over the entrances they've hung kings and queens. And this photo just captures a little section of the curtain of lights hung over the top. It makes the space really pretty and sparkly.

I've probably mentioned before, but I forgot from last year how the city seems to make themed light displays on different streets, and they are all different. Mostly repeating shapes hung up on the lamp posts. But some similar horizontal blankets of fairy lights like this. Its nice, like a compensation for the darkness gathering at 4.3o pm. The whole Christmas lights thing makes a lot more sense over in this season. I think the Indian festival of Diwali just passed, also a festival of light at a time when the days get much shorter.

Museumnacht

2008-11-06T22:07:00.004+11:00

As mentioned below, last Satuday night I had an awesome time, biking round Amsterdam, in low-digit temperatures, with some crazy cultcha-huntin' cats from a large-international-ngo-that will remain nameless.

First, we congregated at the Leidseplein, the big, tourist infested square, with a dozen bars, street performers, and now an ice-rink in the centre. Although not so salubrious, this is an established point of reference for people from all over Amsterdam and especially visitors to congregate when they are not confident they can find that little out-of-the-way bar on the Van Harleem Voorboorgswaalstraat, let alone pronounce it.

We had a bit of a group consultation about which museums and events to attend. The way it works is you buy a single ticket for 17 euro, and then you get entry to everything that is open, about 40 venues all up. The Rijks Museum had the star centre piece, Damien Hirst's For the love of God, the most expensive piece of work ever sold by a living artist.

We however, avoided the big show-stoppers because of the queues. Our schedule involved one or several beerjes at each of the following:

9:30 pm Mediamatrix exhibition xxboys - a multimedia and photo exhibition on transgender, specficially female to male, by the look of it. We didn't see the photo room (which was contructed entirely out of black crates inside a bigger room) because the queue was too long. But we did see a performance of a girl with multiple temporary medical piercings right along each arm, on her knees while a man dressed as doctor lifted her arms and moved her torso using two over-sized 'puppeter' contraptions connected to strings that were connected to all the piercings. Some people in the queue for the photos were a bit sqeamish and were turned away from the performance while we were trying to see it live.

11:00 pm Something to do with animiation at some kind of art school facility near the Dam square. They has a night-clubby room with a dj apparently mixing images in some way along with the dj mixing music. But they had two much cooler things .. a guy with a dj rig in the foyer areas, who was mixing aromas to go with the music he was playing, he had a burner and a cooking pot and a bench. At one point he was doing a fragrant meat stew with his balkan gypsy music. Earlier he made an overwhelming and delicious mix of something indian and fragrant - also using a stick blender to good effect. You can't get that on the internet. At that venue our wee group was lubricated enough to take part in interactive art, where someone had rigged up a stop motion camera over a big white carbdboard canvas on the floor. We acheived a none-too-bad hippy canvas, complete with rainbows a host of little stick figures marching over the page. Then we got to watch its creation compressed into about 10 seconds. neat.

12:00 am Replica dutch merchant vessel that is moored in the Ij river. Chillout room on the maindeck, with sailors hammocks strung along, plus caught the end of some African drumming in the hold.

1:00am Nemo interactive science museum. A very strong rival to Questacon, this place was jam PACKED with toys. Fun fun fun for well oiled 30 somethings, but it was impossible to keep the group together as everyone just wandered away to the shiniest spinning thing that they were drawn to. Reminds me now of Johnny Depp saying that having toddlers is like living with drunks. Or hanging with drunks is like marshalling toddlers.

2:00 Ushered out in an orderly (Dutch) fashion, as per the advertised finish time. Cycled home with mr B in the icy chill, wrapped in jackets, scarf, wooly hat (thanks Ali) and gloves, to a lovely cosy bed and a lie -in on Sunday morning.

Go Amsterdam, city of funky wholesome fun.

Inbetween Days

2008-11-04T01:44:00.004+11:00

Currently working on: Energy efficiency and international Aids responses

Reading: Ludmilla's broken English (by DBC Pierre)
Just finished: A Passage to India (EM Forster) - surprised by how it critiqued English colonialism

Watching: nothing - our TV is busted. Saw "Burn after reading" the Coen brothers film last week

Taking part in: Museumnacht, and awesome one-night affair when 40 or so city museums were open until 2 am with activities, music, dancing and bars

Listening; Dig, Lazarus Dig (Nick Cave) bought on the weekend

Feeling: freezing outside, cozy inside.

Looking forwards to: coming home for 5 weeks.. yaaay.

extrovert, introvert, humano-vert

2008-10-25T22:27:00.007+11:00

Miss Risa has posted a funny picture she built, of the introvert's family tree. I liked it, and got a special smile because I know some of the people she is referring to. It's a topic that's caught my imagination, and in the old-skool concept of what blogs are all about, here's a bit of a response, exchange of ideas.

Miss J, another dear friend, blogs a lot about solitude, personality, space, reflection and art. I get the feeling that many artists need and crave space and time and a certain degree of isolation for the ideas to grow and flourish. I also happen to know that on occasion when she gets to a social event with a room full of strangers, feeling replenished from plenty of time alone, she is one of the most effortlessly engaging, warm, funny people I have the pleasure of knowing. She's shit-hot group facilitator too, where you have to make a one-on-one connection with a bunch of people all in a very short period of time, not something everyone can do.

Most people meeting Mr b.sharp would instantly slap on the description "extrovert" (if perhaps not "gregarious" because he is so firm in his convictions he does not always befriend strangers, to put it mildly). But I've seen him hunched over a piece of computer code for hours on end, barely registering the world around him, or completely lost in series of japanese anime cartoons, totally content with his own company - not needing anyone's attention or approval.

Another darling blogging friend has an acerbic wit online, she's razor-sharp and dares to write political stuff I would barely say, let alone write on the net. But in person, she is a little shy with strangers, a little wary and reluctant until you get to know her and she lets rip with a hilarious social observation or tells you what she really thinks about that meeting you were just in.

I sit here with a smile that I get deemed "extrovert" from time to time. Sure, I've learnt how to perform in front of a crowd (in the dim, dark past - and they were kids, and I got training and practice too). Expecially since I turned thirty I give much less of a shit about whether new people like me when we meet, so in turn I am less worried about what I say. But this week I made a mistake of judgement on something work-related and just now I feel like crawling into a hole not speaking to anyone, for at least a week, to be frank.

The extrovert in me loves learning another language, enjoys trying out new words and phrases in a confortable environment with people who won't judge. But after a period of struggling, making mistakes and getting blank looks, the introvert gives up, goes mute and avoids talking, even when I would dearly love to take part in the conversation going on.

And recently, its been common for me to spend several days alone, not seeing anyone, talking on the phone occasionally, writing, reading and living in my head. So I think I'm turning into a complete gabber mouth when I do actually catch up with a real live human. And is this a personality trait, or the result of an economic decision of this last year, based on my skills and the market in this country for english-language professionals?

Oh and how many of you have met my Dad? Some of his peers would place him as a bit reticent, a bit withdrawn, perhaps a classic introvert. Did they see him in the plays he did each year with students back in the 80s? What about that annual quizmaster role in front of a 100 or more people, oh, and the band he now plays and regularly performs with?

The point? There's no point really, this is just a piece that could be called "on introversion". Sure, we all have tendencies, we all have modes that we are more natural in most of the time. Many of us feel more comfortable expressing our real views only with the most trusted and safe friends. (Except my boyfirend, apparently). I think that's a pretty sane choice. Some are exaggerated performers but find it hard to connect one-on-one, others are chronic friend-makers and social butterflies, but don't be fooled, they have their inner lives too. The introvert can crack up a room with a joke, just as the extrovert can dissappear on a silent meditation retreat.

Also, I personally don't think this means that we're all constantly walking around behind personality masks that cover up our "true selves". Those different elements are naturally part of us, they come out in some situations but not others. It's stressful to be forced into one mode too often, I reckon most will start to crave company just as they will crave solitude if they don't get either as needed in the right doses.

I look forward to getting to know "E. introvert" better as he grows up - he's likely to be a brainy little tacker like his folks - maybe he'll be great at maths, but be in the school plays too - maybe he'll be captain of the debating team, and also learn how to do computer programming. Vive la difference.

Buzzz and words

2008-10-06T02:47:00.004+11:00

My wordle word cloud, thanks to Betty Sue.

Eid mubarak

2008-09-30T19:32:00.000+10:00

Today is Eid, blogland. It's the end of the fast period of Ramadan. I have to admit I am very ignorant of the meaning and significance of Eid, but I hear it's a good party. I've heard that you buy new shoes and wear them to the festivities. And also that they don't know exactly when Eid is till the last minute. It has something to do with the lunar calendar. So it was going to be tomorrow (Oct 1) but now it starts today.

The alignment of the moon and the planets seems to be affecting global communicaitons though. International server crash this morning, plus my laptop seems to be completely cactus. Is anyone else experiencing random electronic vibrations of the cosmos?

Energy Efficiency what do it really mean?

2008-09-24T19:15:00.004+10:00

Hey blog-readers. Want to go visit a climate-safe city? Click above. And what do you think? what do you reckon they are trying to do here? like it?

Bsharp is..

2008-09-23T18:30:00.000+10:00

.. busy! Currently doing 3 seperate freelance jobs, with possibly a fourth on the way. All attention currently focussed on writing for clients - so daily posting has gone out the window. Perhaps there was some karmic vibration out to the universe in getting in that practice in..

US Tourism

2008-09-18T17:38:00.003+10:00

Since we lost BBC World from our cable package (thanks bastard UPC, who knew you could just take off the only decent non-hysterical global news channel and just replace it with Animal Planet, then demand we pay more per month for the channel we used to have?) we watch CNN from time to time. I can only really bear it for a few minutes while making dinner - the fever pitch of everything, the constant obsessive-compulsive "what will this mean for the US" line really bugs me after a while.

Anyway, they are wetting their panties over this latest credit crunch/bank bailout. I get the feeling the Europeans are quite smug, with their diversified economy and their groovy currency steadily climbing against the dollar and the pound.

So it got me wondering whether with the Euro doing so well, the trends of tourism will invert a bit. We think just maybe there are fewer American voices in the street in high season, much more Spanish that ever before. And perhaps the new Euro-entrants like Slovakia will flood on over to the US of A to sneer at their food, be rude to their waiters and talk louder than anyone else in any public tranport or outdoor dining areas. Slovaks, Spaniards, Slovenians, Serbians. Lovely.

Pattern recognition

2008-09-16T01:30:00.004+10:00

(credits to Miss J for the title)

Via momus, I've found this fantastic bit on on-line art, exactitudes. Click on each tiny set of nine pics to see a kind of linnean system of classification of street fashions. Momus asks, did you find your own style there? Well, sadly I think I'm "yupstergirls" most of the time. But I say, check out all those little tribes and sub tribes. It goes across ten years, apparently. Each one has its own name. Would there be different classifications in Australia, do you reckon? I think I remember the 'gabberbitches" from high school days. But apparently the "gabber" was a young subculture with racsist overtones in Holland in the 90s.

Film review

2008-09-13T21:24:00.005+10:00

Technically, "daily" writing doesn't include weekends. (fyi / btw).

However, last night I went to see an affecting film called Savage Grace. I don't know if here in Amsterdam we are getting an incredibly far-behind film release, or if we are ahead of you Australian readers on this one. If you have a spare Friday evening, and it hasn't come out, I'd say yes, go, it's an interesting piece of cinema. It's got gorgeous on-location shots in Spain and France and it has Julianne Moore doing a spectacular job of playing a very deranged woman with a lot of screen time. I've liked her ever since she did a whole scene in the movie Short Cuts where she was giving her husband a fierce verbal serve, but she was just wearing her dress shirt for dinner and was naked from the waist down. Classic funny but serious scene.

The humor in last night is that I suggested the film to someone on a kind of "friend date". You know what they are - when you're an adult who's passed their early 20s and you're in a situation where you need to make new friends, but you need a more structured way to do it, as sitting the park drinking cask wine with a dozen other friends and acquaintances just doesn't cut it anymore. So you do this weird awkward thing with people (often of your own gender, but whatever) where you suggest some activity like a gallery visit or a movie, and it's a bit like a date, but kind of worse because you aren't concerned about sleeping with them, you just want to be able to hang out.

Anyway, so I jumped online to see what arty (English language) films are playing in Amsterdam, and only briefly skimmed the description of this one. I saw that is was a period film, the review included something like .. "a look back at the mannered and shallow life of high society in the post-war period". And thought "oh that looks okay, you know, light" and didn't continue reading because I don't like to know too much about a film before sitting down in the dark.

So I'll try not to give away the whole thing. What emerges is a very startling and uncomfortable set of relationships between family members. To the point where the whole of the small heritage cinema was just dead quiet, and I just looked over at my film buddy and just raised my eyebrows, to imply "what the??". There's two scenes in particular that are just excruciating. You know where your eyes want to look away but you've got to keep them pointing at the screen to appear like a grown up. So as the lights went up, for I felt compelled to explain "really, I had no idea that was going to turn out like that, honest". (oh my god what if she thinks I'm a pervy freak). But we went to have a post-movie drink, so the date didn't go totally bad.

Fence palin'

2008-09-12T19:23:00.003+10:00

Sorry couldn't think of a meaningful pun title there. Does basically putting up extracts from a media inteview count as daily 'writing'?

After the lovely media splash about Ms. Palin being nominated as Sen. McCain's vice presidential candidate, it took me a couple of days to realise why this was such a big deal. Sure, she's pretty red-necked, but she's a vice, and who changes their vote based on a deputy? But, ah, the whole thing is that he's 72 at the time of the election, and he's had cancer before, so plenty of folks think he might pop his clogs in office. Now I get it - she could be the first Mrs President, marm. Damn.

She is a bit of a turkey, I think. Quotes from yesterday's ABC (America) interview:

When asked if Georgia joined NATO, whether the United States should go to war if the country was again invaded by Russia, Palin responded:

"Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help."
"And we've got to keep an eye on Russia. For Russia to have exerted such pressure in terms of invading a smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable," she said.

Oh lovely. Watch out for them' Ruskies. And, even better, she got her first passport just last year!

Did you ever travel outside the country prior to your trip to Kuwait and Germany last year?
PALIN: Canada, Mexico, and then, yes, that trip, that was the trip of a lifetime to visit our troops in Kuwait and stop and visit our injured soldiers in Germany. That was the trip of a lifetime and it changed my life.

Canada and Mexico. And you have to get through Canada to get from Alaska to the rest of the US. Excellent.

girl on girl

2008-09-11T20:35:00.011+10:00

There's a pop song annoying me at the moment. I know this isn't an unusual occurrence, lots of pop songs annoy me. But this one annoys me in a vaguely political way.

It's called "I kissed a girl" by Kate Perry. Do you have it over there? You must. It's got a thumpy boring bass line and banal lyrics (big surprise there). When I first saw it while flicking past the music channel I thought it might be a cover of the artful Jill Sobule Song "I kissed a girl". Says Jill:

Genny came over and told me 'bout Fred
"He's such a hairy behemoth, " she said
"Dumb as a box of hammers
But he's such a handsome guy."
And I opened up and told her 'bout Larry
And yesterday how he asked me to marry

I'm not giving him an answer yet
(I think I can do better)

Remember that? It was poppy, sure, but it has a little story condensed into a tight verse-chorus-verse-chorus format. The two ladies chat at home, they're fed up with dead-beat boyfriends, they have a snog. After a moment of guilt, they both express the joy of the private moment.. (And we laughed/ At the world/ They can have their diamonds and we'll have our pearls). The lyrics are clever and funny, and its nice to have girls snogging in the top 10. Yay for all shades of love!

But this Kate bird just seems like a different kettle of fish. Perhaps I'm just being a daggy old prude, but compare the chorus lyrics:

I kissed a girl and I liked it
The taste of her cherry chap stick
I kissed a girl just to try it
I hope my boyfriend don't mind it
It felt so wrong /It felt so right
Don't mean I'm in love tonight

First, who the hell uses "chap stick" in their lyric and expects to be cool? She goes on...

No, I don't even know your name
It doesn't matter/ You're my experimental game
Just human nature / It's not what /Good girls do
Not how they should behave

You're my experimental game? Sounds pretty cold to me.

In the clip, Kate Perry is singing this on a big pink bed, wearing a kind of burlesque-stripper outfit, and after the first refrain she is surrounded by a bevvy of beauties, at one point there's a gir'ls legs splayed out from under the bed. All very debauched and naughty.

So I haven't talked about this little number with any lesbians, or feminist theorists for that matter. Perhaps it's cool for popular culture to allow chicks to be out there sexy and hott in all forms, and if that's wearing a boa and fishnets and talking about how you pashed a bird to get a kick then fine.

And ... If you're going to start on at pop songs and videos for objectifying women, wow there's a rich rich vein there of both grrls and boys doing that. Mostly boys. From Axl Rose screaming turn around bitch I gotta use for you/I ain't got nothin' better to do/ And I'm bored to Ludacris rapping on "Youza ho".. Come on playa once a ho always/And hos never close they open like hallways/An heres a ho cake for you whole ho crew. Women are nameless, treated as a walking collection of orifices, given orders, etc. Charmers, aren't they? And rich, too. So to me there's not much point getting on Kate's tail about that.

But back to these two girly songs. Probably the main difference is that Kate is a product of a "production company" called The Matrix who write and produce songs for pop princesses like Britney and Cristina. Jill was closer to 40 than 20 when her song was a big hit, and she is a real singer/songwriter with five albums out and a diverse, clever and imaginative slew of songs.

Its just that Kate's song and video is all about girl-on-girl in a porn-star way, for attention. Us girls we are so magical/ Soft skin, red lips, so kissable/Hard to resist so touchable /Too good to deny it /Ain't no big deal, it's innocent. Purhlees. Yeh, she gets a kick out of it, but because its naughty, and men are going to dig it too. However, this might be because she didn't actually write the thing, I'd wager some middle-aged song-copy dude in LA did. Is it actually his little disco fantasy, not hers? A bit like Kylie singing "better the devil you know" in the early 90s, I wonder.

At least in Jill's song, all the characters have names. They have feelings too; and there's also something bigger going on. The woman singing the song is telling a story about how she's examining her life and her relationship, and now this exciting new aspect has come into it. The end chorus says "I kissed a girl (and I might do it again)." Aw.

Well of course, in the on-line universe I am not the first to comment on this tacky song. The yanks have been at it for months. The writers at Feminste make the same point, and do it better than me. And the Washington Blade just gets the knives out and calls the lyrics vapid and offensive. I wonder what their benchmark is for Ludacris, then?

And argh - even Jill herself has posted on it... I am so not a hip and up-to-date blogger! After saying she needed extra Novocaine after hearing it at the dentist, she's actually quite nice about the whole thing. She sounds really cool and grown up on her site, if you got this far, check out her fake bio. Funny. Think I'll check out some more of her music, so thanks Katy for the tip-off.

Pome 2

2008-09-10T19:35:00.004+10:00

There once were some men with long beards
In oceans and seas they were fear'd
By saving the whales,
They boosted their sales,
Oh greenpeace, what's happened, my dears?

Poetree

2008-09-10T19:31:00.005+10:00

There once was a girl in the 'dam
Who got herself onto a scam
Worked remotely,
Was paid occasion'ly
And then went to Rome on the lam.

livin' la vida local

2008-09-09T18:17:00.007+10:00

I had lunch with Sophie yesterday, who is from Australia but who lived in Amsterdam for more than five years. She is one of the small army of non-Dutch women who catch themselves Nederlandse heren, marry them, and seem to be rather successful in taking this demographic out of this already small country away overseas somewhere. So far, I know two women from Australia and one from England now in the South of France who have manged it. So, Soph has had a closer look at the Dutch way of life than me, being adopted into her hubby's family, and also learning to speak it proper, like.

We are of course both familiar with the endearing way a died-in-the-wool dutch person will tell you any non-redeeming feature about yourself with no hint of awkwardness, but without malice. "Your hair looks funny." "Your arse is a lot bigger since you got pregnant" (that one was for her, not for me). At the office, I was more inclined to laugh and be pleased they cared enough to make a comment. There's the tendency to end to work day at 5 o'clock sharp, and eat dinner at 6 pm without fail. I actually like this, I think the healthy attitude to work within a set period should be preserved as long as possible here and in France, Spain and Italy. Long live the siesta!

If you drop round to a traditional family around dinner time, be prepared to sit on the couch while they eat dinner. But you really shouldn't have dropped in unannounced anyway. This is the only country either of us have visited where an adult will have a glass of milk with their lunch, and yep, at a business lunch too, instead of a glass of wine. Apparently hobbies are very common, thanks to the crap weather. Kids just grow up learning to do slightly out-there regional things like ice-skate beautifully or stilt-walk or god-only knows what actually.

Oh, and we have a total smoking ban in all restaurants and pubs here (effective 1 july, height of summer). So now as it starts to turn a bit chilly, and we are retreating more inside, its been awesome for me. The locals, bless them, think its a shit idea. Even the non-smokers. Apparently one of the arguments goes "well you don't go to the pub to be healthy do you, so it's stupid to force this on us in the pub, people can make their own choice". Certainly not the cringey "I'm not worthy" attitude of Aussie smokers, who are constantly hiding and saying sorry all the time. I guess here they haven't had 10 years of public education browbeating on the issue. At the moment they are running an add where are middle-aged woman scours the house for her durries and ends up opening up the vacuum cleaner bag and lighting one up. It's pretty skanky. It seems that they when they are going to tackle an issue, they take it head on, with no sensitive touchy-feely support for your foul addiction!

Two -thirty

2008-09-05T20:04:00.004+10:00

Time to go to the dentist. The back corner of my jaw hurts, nature's way of letting me know that an extra redundant tooth that should have been eliminated by gerontomorphosis, is coming up out of my jaw and poking through the gum. Ow.

In other news, we're back from our Adriatic jaunt, and I've got more time on the internet to try to avoid hasty and mis-spelled posts like the last one. On the bsharp work front things have slowed to glacial pace. So while calling myself a "writer" I really ought to practice this writing business a bit more often. Many folks advocate a method of writing something, anything, every morning. Whether they are just frustrated diaryists I don't know.

It's taken me approximately 5 days between thinking of doing a regular warm-up sesion online, till today when I actually fired up the old blog and start putting some attention to it. So daily seems a bit excessive, but anyway, here's to trying. If I resort to poetry, someone, anyone who has the admin codes to this blog, just get in and delete it. No-one needs to see that.

Let them in

2008-08-25T17:06:00.003+10:00

Just a quick one after spending a week in the Croatian "riveriera". Let 'em in to the EU! C'mon guys , they're lovely. Mr B and me and and Agent Orange met up last week in the coastal town of trieste, italy. We hired a dark blue work horse of a station wagon, subsequently dubbed 'Viduka' and proceeded to drive to Dubrovnik over 2 days, passing through Hvar on the way. coming back up the coast to the north we made a side foray into Mostar, Bosnia, and were overwhemled by the beauty of the old mediaevel city and entertained by a 7 piece gypsy fusion band in a cave in the middle of town. It was only the next day in daylight that we saw the bullet holes, shrapnel scaring and the ruined buildings.

driving back up the coast we visited bol on the island of Brac and Slano where we hired a boat and swam int he adriatic. Now we have met up with mr and mrs bizarro senior to show them a bit more of the old world. fotos to follow.

Worlds Biggest Solar Farm

2008-08-12T20:56:00.002+10:00

Bring it on, Australia.

Don't let the Arab states get there first!

Torn

2008-08-09T20:30:00.007+10:00

Hey those with feed readers, sorry if you thought that title might refer to some personal tortured tale of woe and heartache from me. It is actually about Natalie Imbruglia. And earache.

The neighbour downstairs and directly behind us has been playing "Torn" by our Natalie, on repeat for at least 2 hours. She was playing it many times yesterday, too. And on Wednesday when I was working in my bedroom office all afternoon with the balcony door open. When I close the door I can't hear it through the double glazing. But it's quite muggy at the moment and it's nicer to have the breeze. This week, fresh air seems to come accompanied by endless repetition of "I'm all out of faith / This is how I feel / I'm cold and I am shamed / Lying naked on the floor .... " wafting in as well.

She was definitely home this morning, she kept coming into the yard to trim hedges, to empty buckets. etc. Her yard is so close I could spit into it from my first floor balcony. But I couldn't quite work up the courage to talk to her. Kind of a tricky one. See I've got no problem with music, I don't care about the volume, I JUST WANT TO HEAR A DIFFERENT SONG. Currently I've wimped out. But if it goes on another couple of days, maybe I'll have to resort to a passive aggressive note. Perhaps I should give her a new cd.

They're terrible lyrics, really. I've always thought that the word "torn" in the song was just an angsty metaphor for being heartbroken. But for me, it's always conjured up images of what happens in a difficult birth (and now it will for you too...) - just an unfortunate lyric choice by an inexperienced pop star. Now I've seen them written down, she could be singing about a rape, almost.

Anyway, not the kind of thing you want to hear over and over and over. Biz and I have discussed possible explanations of the repetitive sound track:
- she' s left it on to make it seem like someone's home and is actually out, unknowingly creating a neighbour torture device (sadly - no, I've seen her)
- she's had a break up and is wallowing (but like, wouldn't just one night on the red wine with Nat be enough? Come on, three days!? )
- she's learning the song for a karaoke competition (ever heard of the internet?)
- she's deaf and doesn't know it's on repeat. (hmmmm)
- it was the sample song that came with her new ipod, and she just really wants to play it and doesn't know how to get new tracks on there. (a bit far fetched, perhaps)
- she's lonely and just wants some music as company (a. no-one's that lonely, and b. we have a thing called TV and radio for that)
- she just really likes that song, and she's eastern european and doesn't really undertstand the lyric anyway.

Signing off, confused, sharing the joys of high density living. Bee.

Some websites

2008-08-07T22:14:00.004+10:00

I've been having an annoying moment, where I know for certain someone told me a funny story on the the weekend, and I clearly remember saying "that's going on my blog!" but have no clue what the actual story was about. I guess drinking at least a bottle of prosecco before 6 pm will do that. Prosecco? Its a cheap dry fizzy white wine. Also called frizzante. Like what you drank in year 11. The euros love that shit.

It was gay day on Saturday by the way. When the whole of Amsterdam goes out to line the Prinsengracht and camp it up. Yay. I had pancake brunch in one canal-side flat, immediately followed by bbq lunch at another and watched the parade with some boyz from London and some work colleagues from the shall-remain-unnamed NGO I was working for. Then back at ours for more drinks, plus grilled chicken, then a trip to visit a street party at the homomonument in pouring rain, then a very studenty party in the red-light district, hosted by a fellow named Boo. Ah, Amsterdam.

So to compensate for lack of humorous anecdotes, here are some sites I've been visiting recently.

Passive Aggressive Notes Warning - time wasting alert ahead!
Mother Jones Lefty-yankie current affairs that aren't too hysterical
Hollow Men (to watch the shows online, scarily accurate)
Flycheapo (handy index of what airlines fly in and out of what airports)
Via Michelin (put in origin and destination, and voila it spits out directions and travel times)

Imaginary husband corral

2008-08-04T23:01:00.006+10:00

(an occasional series)

Older readers may recall my collection of imaginary husbands. Triple J's Richard Kingmill was in it a few years back. David Tennant is a newer recruit (but he has a very busy schedule of imaginary wives these days), I could probably be tempted to cheat on David and Richard with Russel Brand, though, only because he looks like a cross between David Bowie and my first boyfriend, and he's cheekier than both. But an older, more abiding and somewhat secret passion of mine has been for Brendan Fraser. I can sense the real Mr B slapping his forehead at this, saying "Jesus, not that Fraser again... enough! - It's just brendan-brendan-brendan around here at the moment." But BF is kinda goofy and knowing somehow at the same time, eminently watchable, and I'd even go and see him in the Mummy, and put up with the "fog of special effects" as described in this article and interview with the Guardian. But, having read it just now he now seems, well, kind of nuts, too.

Joss Wheedon rides again

2008-08-04T07:42:00.003+10:00

Been missing the special buffy-eque use of language? That unique Joss Whedon touch of adjectivising a noun (now don't get all piratey on me people...)? Well he did an online musical. Click here:

You might enjoy it, Aussie nerd-grrrls.

Say it like you mean it

2008-07-25T18:46:00.007+10:00

And worst of all. Dumbest, deafest, shittest of all, you have removed the unstressed "a" so that the stress that should have fallen on "nosh" is lost, and my piece ends on an unstressed syllable. When you're winding up a piece of prose, metre is crucial. Can't you hear? Can't you hear that it is wrong? It's not fucking rocket science. It's fucking pre-GCSE scansion. I have written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and i have never ended on an unstressed syllable.

The Guardian newspaper is rather smugly making a meal out of this guy, Giles Coren, who is a restaurant critic rapidly gaining a reputation for firing off self-obsessed, expletive laden emails with a rage totally out of all proportion, regarding the sub-editing of his restuarant reviews - for pity's sake. Here's today's article, they lifted it out of the media gossip column from yesterday and plonked it on the front page of the web edition.

Being both writer and editor for different kinds of jobs, I find this truly hilarious. If I got such a roasting for subbing a piece, I don't think I'd release it to the Guardian but instead print it out at 150% and pin it up in the office, with the choicest bits picked out in yellow highlighter.

Really, if he was writing a peace accord between the Balkans states where one word out of place might mean the deaths of hundreds? Fine. Or perhaps a carbon emissions deal with China's communist government to try to reduce a quarter of the world'd pollution. But a restaurant review? Get your hand off it man!

But then, as an occasional author, when subject matter experts just move sentence elements around for no good reason and make them scan poorly, I get pretty narky too. As the Guardian writer says: "thanks buddy, you've taken one for the team."

(This post is dedicated to Dad, Alison and The_Christian who all know better where to put a comma than I).

welcome to the world

2008-07-18T20:21:00.004+10:00

I just got a facebook friend request from a brand new world citizen. Congratulations to Guitar Boy and Miss Ivy! She's gorgeous, but I'm not sure how little Miss Solitaire managed to use the keyboard, she doesn't look like she can really hold her own head up yet. You may have some kind of prodigy on your hands there.

Why not Rome

2008-07-18T06:42:00.003+10:00

Well, turns out Rome was bombed in ww2. On a couple of days each in 43 and 44. The yanks on behalf of the allies swore black and blue that they were staying right away from the Vatican City, and focussed on a train station and an airport.

According to wikipedia (acknowledged not a fully reliable source, but I'm not in such a reasearch-y mood) On November 5, 1943, a single Nazi plane dropped four bombs on the Vatican, destroying a mosaic studio near the Vatican railway station and breaking the windows of the high cupola of St. Peter's.

While the world, well Sydney, turns to all things Catholic, I just found this little bit of historical documentation. It's an original letter from all the archbishops of Australia writing to PM John Curtin to ask him immediately to refrain from bombing the Vatican City. Apart from the fact that I think the Pope is a real and present danger in today's world*, this is a great letter. Really beautifully expressed, it talks of this "ghastly war" and check this out:

individually, we have in season and out of season, but always in vain, appealed to reason and sanity in this world of madness, in which Christian civilisation seems to be rushing headlong to destruction.

Wish I could write like that. The best part is the cover note, which says bluntly:

"I confidently rely upon you and the Australian government to take any actions that circumstances suggest and permit."
P.S. "Later, I plan to hand the enclosed document to the Press".

Very bolshie Greenpeace-style media strategy there in 1944. Nice one, Archbishop of Melbourne.

*It's to do with not allowing contraception for anyone, even if they have Aids or are very sick from having lots of babies.

Crime and punishment

2008-07-17T00:44:00.003+10:00

Last week, m'learned friend Miss K suggested we go to visit the international criminal court in The Hague. It was the last sitting before summer break, and her being a student of international law, environmental law, human rights, this was a last chance while in the region to get this first hand learning experience. Okay, I said, finding the post-holiday life of a "freelancer" drag a little slowly on these rainy summer days. Maybe I can write something about it.

We went to the trial of Charles Taylor, former president of Liberia and accused of 11 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, rape and recruiting child soldiers.

We got to the courtroom by taking the regular commuter train from Amsterdam and a tram. At the public entrance, we had our handbags x-rayed but we didn't have to leave them in locker. Cameras and tape recorders were banned, but we weren't carrying those. The gallery was like a high-tech lecture theatre. We were separated from the proceedings by a glass wall, judges facing the public, prosecution to the right, and defence the left. Charles Taylor was sitting behind his defence counsel.

The witness had his back to the gallery, the central panels of windows were screened, and he apparently had a sound proof booth. His testimony was relayed through CCTV, his voice altered and image pixcellated. Our headphones had a simultaneous translation to English on Channel 1.

That morning, the defence lawyer went through an administrative matter requesting more time on some aspect of the trial preparation. Then, the prosecution started questioning the witness. Essentially, she was trying to get him to acknowledge that he had previously seen and was aware of the contents of a series of documents relations to specific actions of a militia group. She then wanted him to say whether his memory of actual events verified what was in these documents. At every opportunity the defence tried to discredit the documents themselves, the witnesses' ability to understand them, whether the witness only understood the documents after being read their contents, whether he was literate or able to read the English at the time of the offences,... etc. I guess that's his job.

The prosecution was a North American woman in her 50s, short steely grey hair. She looked exhausted, but she was keeping a poker face. The defence lawyer an British guy, not as senior, with a honey-coated upper crust voice probably from Cambridge, who couldn't help smirking a little as he said things like "if it please the court" when pointing out that his copy of the evidence wasn't copied correctly and had lines missing from the bottom and the sides.

We were only in the room for about an hour of a trial that started in January and will probably go on for several months more. A group of lawers are running a detailed blog, and the special court of Sierra Leone is screening the trial in their local court room to allow greater access.

It was fascinating to see international human rights law in operation like this. You can only imagine how tedious it must be to have to plug away into all the evidence for years, interviewing people over countless horror stories. But for the people sitting on the other side of the glass, this is their day-job. They are full time agents of justice, and they have appropriately impassive faces and a dry manner to go with it.

It was alternately chilling, especially when the witness was being questioned about some associates, namely one called Rambo and one called Van Damme. Who does this document refer to where it says Van Damme? Why was he called that? What was his role that day?

Viva musica

2008-07-14T21:57:00.008+10:00

This last two weeks, there has been a series of concerts - Live @ Westerpark, on the edge of Amsterdam.

On Tuesday, I went to see this year's silly Euro-pop sensations Mika (inside the fence) and then on Saturday, sat outside with a bunch of freeloaders to listen to and watch Leonard Cohen on the big screens which you could see over the fence in you stood in just the right place. I didn't know that Leonard hasn't toured for 15 years. It felt very special to hear "Everybody knows, Marianne, First we take Manhattan, and Hallelujah" sung by their composer who has passed the 70-year mark, still sounding gravelly and grave and warm as ever. And with our picnic on the concrete, including red wine and marvellous Euro-snacks it was a fine social occasion too.

I liked that the Mika gig was set up to make full use of that very big stage, even if it was totally cheeze-a-rama with circus performers, a clown on a harness flying around, a shadow-play with big furry animal costumes, etc. He has a divine voice, floppy brown hair, speaks a handful of languages, and I'd happily carry his love-child. (Mika, in case you're reading). There's a photo of the artist on stage with a giant blow-up "big girl" here. (c/o Erik Luyten - I hope that's within the terms, Erik!).

Both times the it had drizzled rain on and off all day (just like the whole week....) but while clouds hovered ominously over the park, the drops held off for the duration of the music. Sadly I missed an outdoor Radiohead concert while away on holiday, but that sold out back in March I think.

Bizarro is in darkest Africa this week, and I'm looking for more/ new work suitable for the summer months. The days are long at the moment, and the nights are mild. My apartment seems to hold the heat of the narrow cobble streets.

Be-ach

2008-07-06T19:52:00.006+10:00

Well I'm home in Amsterdam now, with some patchy sunburn in that bit on the shoulderblades that is hard to reach with the cream, plus a nice glow-in-the-dark Virgin of Guadaloupe and some olive oil hair shampoo to remember the trip. On route, I got the ferry from Italy to the Greek island of Kefalonia. It looks like this.

It was hot, one day probably close to 40. I hung out with a couple who Biz and I met in Uruguay, and they shared their camp food and good cheer. Cedric from Brittany runs a dive centre there. He provides beginner dives and courses as well. Gets a great mix of business from people who must just see the sign on the port and walk-up, to those that plan a diving holiday to get their master or rescue or open water or whatever. Having decided that there was no way I was ever getting a scuba kit on in my LIFE, of course yours truly was gently persuaded to go for a beginner dive. And what do you know, I didnt' get eaten by a shark. I hear there's not so many great whites in the mediterranean, but you never can be too careful.

No diary extracts to share as it was too hot for much except sleeping and swimming. Except for one occasion while waiting for the dive boat to come back and listening in on a group of middlea-aged package holiday types, from the North of England killing time before their dinner at expensive Porto Fiskardo. Because that smug feeling is the best thing about eavesdropping on other tourists.

"I just think she's wearing herself out these days. She looks tired and old."

Man in group: "Well, I can oonderstand lesbians, because I like the fairer sex, you see:
Woman in group: "But lesbians, really that's just not raight, is it? Its just against naighture"

"I don't mind seeing girls in the most outrageous clothes , provided they have the figure for it".

"Oooh I hope all this isn't making it into her diarey". (Whoops, busted)

Dead centre of town

2008-07-02T23:23:00.004+10:00

Wednesday 25 June

Anyway, I was curious about the Pantheon because yesterday's guide said that it was an example of what the palaces on the Palatine hill would have looked when in use, everything covered in marble, nothing unadorned. The designs in the Imperial Roman buildings would have been pagan though, lots of geometric shapes, not legions of tortured, dying and insipid looking saints.

But then again in those days it was the pagans putting thousands to death by way of starved lion, starved hyena, gladiator, and so forth. The Christians I guess where the sad little peaceniks "the meek shall ingerit the earth, etc..." They made these creepy catacombs with the dead piled in stacks , bricked in to rot in a hole in the wall. Unlike those Roman mutherfckers who just cremated their dead. Ecologically speaking, I used to think that being put in a box and sunk to earth was a good way to return all my living nutrients back into life, through plants, worms, and such. From today, I think I'll request a cremation for my mortal remains. Ashes are a more concentrated fertiliser, right, and the world's need for urban space won't be taken up by my rotting body in a stupid necropolis that serves the dual purpose of showing everyone just how much your family paid for your burial. *

* Mum, hi if you're reading this, that wasn't a dig at our family, just a metaphysical musing on the different cultural approaches to dealing with the issue. You know, like in comparison to medium density housing versus urban sprawl. Glad we got that sorted.

(F) art

2008-06-30T01:00:00.007+10:00

Have got a little behind as internet access on Kefalonia is a bit of a luxury.

24 June, Tuesday.

Calf muscles very fucking tight. A painful reminder that there are no inclines are very few steps in the streets of Amsterdam.

Vatican Museum. Only 40 minutes in the queue! Talked to a couple of gay guys from Washington, older one a doctor and quite funny. Acting reluctant to partake in all this religious stuff. When working out the length of the queue, said to his boyfriend, like all couples around the world, 'so, tell me again, what exactly are we going to see in here?'
Younger guy was a classical Greek scholar.

First, took a spin around the Pinacoteca, one of several godsy picture galleries. Saw a big flashy number of Christ's ascension (Raphael I think), and another Caravaggio to add to the list. (tick)
Dog-collared American priest giving a tour, with a very casual yankee way of telling bible stories, but also giving art commentary. Have discovered a way of sneakily learning more without paying, but sort of pinball-bouncing from tour group to tour group, looking like I'm just appreciating that particular work, and eavesdropping on part of the description. I think I sidled up to four or five different groups today, so I got a rather disjointed appreciated of the galleries and of course the Sistine chapel. For example, Raphael apparently mastered the art of drawing the eye to all and every feature of his crowd scenes, rather than picking out one single focal point with light and shade. Why this is? no idea, I thought it was an appropriate time to sidle off after that.

The art? Well looks to me like those masters packed in every exciting feature to these 'sacred' scenes as they could. Bulging anatomically correct calves on the men, gory piercings with a staff for J.C., ecstatic women, there was a lion jammed into the bottom corner of one indoor scene - what the hey? Nice juicy tabloid-style renditions, but at the same time recreations of venerated and religious stories. Neat huh.

There is a missionary museum in the Vatican with cool pieces from lots of countries in Asia, but accompanied by jarring text on how missionary efforts have gone in past years and the present day in these far flung indigenous populations. A very pointed piece on entry about how missionary work was one of respect, learning, and done in a spirit "brotherly love". Bollocks.

Sistine Chapel. Details and crazy mad shit happening everywhere. Above me is a last supper with a super realistic dog and cat fighting in the foreground. At the altar end, one of the figures on a cloud is holding a man's skin, empty of its body (or soul?) In the famous one with god reaching out to touch fingers with (who?) Adam? I didn't realise god is flanked by a holy host of some sort. Dozens of cherubic types packed in behind him in his floating cloud/ shell thing. Nudity all over the place. To me, all these showy religious works don't seem a jot more holy than any other for all the talent and mastery on display. I don't get a feeling that this chapel might be a more worthy place to worship than any other, just because of technicolour drama playing out on the walls and ceiling. And I get the feeling they didn't really think that at the time either

One room before reaching the chapel (Raphael again) features a piece called something like "triumph of the church". Deliberately featuring representatives of the "militant church" in their marble thrones. This stuff was all about power, magnificence and status. Wrapped up in a cloak of religious stories. And its not pretending particularly hard to be anything else either.

Quo vadis

2008-06-26T05:37:00.007+10:00

I don't actually know what Quo vadis really means, but it is the name of a church that my tour bus hurtled past today, and I think its become famous through some movie or another. Note to self - one to look up some time. If anyone knows, feel free to put in comments.

Along with other notes to self.: 1. Why wasn't Rome bombed to shit in WW2? The whole place is just one massive urban museum, with ancient columns and unlikely looking structures all over the place. So much of Europe lost buildings even from the middle ages, what trick did Mussolini pull here? 2. What is it with all the hott cops in this city? It there some minimal standard for looks for Italian police? Like height requirements in the States? With all respect to Biz, I don't normally look at a man in uniform, but this is getting quite bizarre.

Anyway, back to the travelogue. - June 22, Monday afternoon -

The nice thing about visiting churches to see art is that they are more or less free. Popping a 50 cent devotional in the box easily rids one of the guilt factor for marching around someone's place of worship, guidebook in hand, and wearing a distinctly uncool outfit, in bad shoes to boot. Or, if you're not plagued by concerns for social morés, then a pragmatic reason is that the 50 cents goes towards lighting, cleaning, polish for all those walnut pews, and other random maintenance that allows other people to see the artworks for (nearly) free. Sometimes you seem to need to put a coin in the box to make those crazy spotlights go up on the piece you've come to see. There was a very pronounced slow reveal for Madonna of the Pilgrims that I just saw. Push the button, and a whirring noise started up and then an inoxerable pause while the painting brightens almost imperceptibly, then ta da! A grand master right there in the chapel. Where anyone can just walk in off the street to see it. Neat.

photo credit: ginieland

Actually this one was pretty good, the artistry in it kind of hits you over the head compared with the other sallow saints, pious bishops, angels and rib-poking christs. Apparently it caused a bit of a stir in its day, because the petitioners kneeling in front of Mary and Jesus looked too convincingly dirty and down and out. The man has particulaly realistic grubby feet. Perhaps the artist was having a dig at the social situation of the poor in Rome at the time... ? Anyway, I couldn't help notice that the Madonna was carrying an absolutely enormous christ child. I don't know how old he was supposed to be, but my word, that particlar life model was milk-fed baby for sure. She's also got one foot resting on the toes, just like an elegant Roman lady standing in an ancient doorway next to her vespa and talking on the mobile.

Santa Maria del concezione (immaculate conception)

Another bony church! Yep, as good as Kuta Hora in Czech Republic. Second chapel in the crypt complete with grisly little capuchin monks recreated with skulls and bony little hands. They are about 4 and a half feet tall. One looks a bit of a mummy even. Chapel number three is tricked out in a mass of pelvic bones. I think some of these re-constructed monks are wearing cardboard name tags around their wrists signifying actually who they are. An American student in the slow-moving line next to me says 'We had to do anatomy in college, but I think those ones, made up like that, freak me out more. I can handle the seperate bones, all separated out like that. Those even have vertebrae in there still!'

I'm thinking - are you kidding sister?! This is the coolest thing I've seen in ages. Well, since, the bone church in Czech Republic I guess. I wish I could beam in some of my friends from uni to turn around to and go - whoah man, like, 'bela lugosi's dead .. the bats have left the bell tower, the virgins have been bled bled bled bled'. Etc. Sorry there readers, got carried away on a little Bauhaus jag. I know, the Vampyre legends come about 600 years after all this stuff, my historical time line is all bunk.

At that point, my diary switches to sketches of the layout of these rooms, noting things like a cross motif made of two mummfied arms, a skeleton attached to the ceiling appearing to fly over head, two skeletons perched on a ledge, reaching up to the skull places between them, more wee monky creationg (they had brown robes and all) in repose in wall niches. And not to mention the stars and fleur-de-lys designs made of ribs, jaws, and the other pretty curvy bits too.

I reckon this is where things get down to the nuts and bolts of Christianity. Death. Its all about you dying, and what the hell happens then. These crypts, necropolises, catacombs, etc, are all about making a big focus on the whole spooky dying business. Not surprising really that a couple of monks here and there who were care takers of these ossaries - all the bits left in the 50 to 100 years after your miserable entombment - who took it to the logical conclusion and went bunta with the old bones. Lets jazz the place up a bit, they must have thought. We're not in the habit of paying for drapes or wall paper for the church, no wealthy families making ostentatious donations this year.... hang on.. look at this massive pile of skulls. Hey! Giovanni, I've got an idea..

La dolce vida

2008-06-25T05:12:00.008+10:00

Yeeh, owww, eee, oooh. Hear that? That's my calves and the bones in my feet screaming for mercy. I'm in Rome, and today I went to the Vatican museums, saw the Sistine Chapel and then went to the Colosseum in the afternoon. Something no sane tourist would attempt on a 35 degree + day. But then I'm clearly no sane tourist. But before you hear about that and get to see my feats of digital photography, I'll share some diary extracts with you all.

Sunday, 22 June. Rotterdam. 4pm
Smells of cities.

Paris is easy. It's garlic and exhaust laced with those whiffs of raw sewage you sense must be just centimetres from your sandal-clad feet. Barcelona for me will always be urine and smoked ham. Marid is dust and cigarette butts.

Amsterdam has this foreign/familiar smell. I notice it when I'm inside the trams, its got the cold trapped in it, plus perhaps jonge belgium cheese and some kind of ubiquitous cleaning product. In the streets, of course, it's the blasts of pot smoke coming from the coffee shops and groups of men walking past my front door.

Buenos Aires smelt like a 'lagrima' - a small coffee with a drop of milk (or was that a small cup of warm milk with a drop of coffee?). That, and sugary medialunas, dog poo and poverty at the fringes of things.

Biz said Cuba smelled like Africa, particularly in the local market, I think this is the smell of uncovered meat, flies and humidity. Plus the lime in a mojito.

London smells like stout. And pollution.

I think the smells of Australia are too well embedded in my amalgyda to easily pinpoint them like this. But, Adelaide brings to mind the stale air discharged from air con units, jacaranda and dead grass in summer. A whiff of woodsmoke in winter. Sydney is the unburnt diesel coming from the back of buses. Pide from Topkapi on Enmore road.

Sunday, 22 June. Rome. 8pm

So far, Rome smells like really terrible stinky feet, thanks to the gent who sat next to me on the 'Leonardo Express' - the train from the airport to Termini station.

Monday, June 23.

Rome also smells like my sweat. It's well over 30 today, walking is good but you can tell people who live here seek the shade, like Sydney, like home. Yesterday it struck me on the train how the classic cream brick look from suburban Adelaide that screams Italians built this house! just mirrored the hundreds of medium rise apartment blocks on the fringes of Rome. Even the roll-down blinds all seemed to be in a chromatic rainbow of dark brown to burnt umber. Now, in the centre, this pale orange, tan, cream, that must be the total palette of the renderer gives the whole place that mediteranean look. So, no wonder our immigrants said 'cream, that's the look for me!' when making their selection at the brick shop in 1952. Right now, I'm in the Piazza di Santa Lorenzo in Lucina. It's just a in a warren of streets between some churches with Caravaggios and a museum with Caravaggios. I'm having a Caravaggio morning. The church to my back is a Basilica from oh, I dunno, the 1200s. the guide book says it features a 'kitsch' Crist, but I couldn't pick him out of the various Christs to be honest. They all look kitsch to me.

Euro vision

2008-05-25T19:46:00.004+10:00

Finally .. I could take part in the voting. And live!

But by 36 euro cents didn't go much towards the final outcome. I put in for France, with their eccentric bearded minimalist pop star, who if you are optimistic sounded a bit like Jarvis Cocker/ Serge Gainsbourg, and had funny back-up singers performing the "do do do" refrain wearing cocktail dresses and fake beards.

Other than that Kirsta, Kristen and Cornsie and me had a good girls night in, with some Spanish wine, organic salads and dips and such from the farmers' market, and our own highly complex in-house voting process.

Euro vision, gotta love it, I think the traditional zaniness that you come to know and love were put out there in style by Boznia Herzegovina (spotty dress/washing line/ some strange love story with a man with slicked down hair), Latvia (With a pirate themed song and constumes), Russia (who had a genuine ice skater in their piece, so must have included a mini ice-rink in the stage setting) and Croatia (for one of my favourites, slightly gypsy/ tango-y number with a disco beat) .

Update: Null device has posted a handy cut-and-keep tabulated summary with a star system under "odd", "gloss", "cheese" and useful notes like "live chicken on stage".

Photos c/o BBC here

Oh and possible worst number: Azerbaijan, first time entrants with a god-awful hair metal number, performed in campy angel costumes and including ear-piercing pseudo-vibrato high notes. A travesty.

Koninginnesdag

2008-05-03T18:08:00.006+10:00

Queens Day. April 30. As predicted Amsterdam went completely mental. Boats and Orange are clearly the go. And games like the one where you buy three eggs to ditch them at someone wearing a plastic bin liner. Click the photos to go to flickr page.

Koninginnenacht

2008-04-30T06:01:00.003+10:00

Its queens night tonight.

Its the night before queens day. I just stayed in the office till about 8pm, sipping wine and writing press releases.

Then I had a couple of beers at the homo monument with Mr B and some work pals who were leaving at the same time. At the momument there were drag queens queens doing eurovision take offs, there was the obligitary beer tent with the cups for 1 euro deposit. And many people dressed in orange.

then i cycled back tot the flat to change into jeans and get a waterproof jacket to go out and meet Mr B and the others. I cycled past temporary tents on the canal bridges, houses totally open to the street, stings of orange flags where residents had clearly connected their house to the nearest lamppost, orange balloons put out by the city council, people cruising on boats in the drizzling rain and dark, pumping basslines everywhere, and general amsterdam craziness.

Apparently tomorrow is the queen mum's birthday. It s a holiday and it lines up pretty well with the start of spring. Amsterdammers have been copped up inside since october with rain and shitty cold, less than 10 degrees everyday for 6 months. And now they want to par-tay.
I'm off to see if I can find my friends.

What's in bsharp's bag?

2008-04-07T08:09:00.007+10:00

Following on from the meme started by Betty Sue and Miss J...

- 2 x free postcards for "negen straatjes" (the nine little streets) area - picked up at the amazing brazilian sandwich shop near work. With sincere intentions to write and send to aus.
- saved label with address of funky mexican hand-made shop (in the 9 straatjes)
- wallet from Bondi Market - never really happy with the double fastening mechanism
- only decent lippy I own (from Body Shop in an airport I think) inside carry case with mirror - a gift from little sister who does try to keep me nice
- memory stick (totally full)
- keys on chunky seahorse keyring from Miss J, plus Albert Hein bonuskart, which I get swiped at the supermarket sometimes, but I'm not too sure what that gets me as a "bonus".
- Ikea pencil (the horror)
- Mobile phone
- single bandaid
- 2 types of travel sickness pills (Stugeron and dramamine) one with no packet
- 1 x neurofen left in the bubble pack (apparently I am addicted to off-the shelf medicines, who knew?)
- pen
- Camera case (normally containing the camera used for this photo..)
- 2 x Albert Hein receipts, 1 shoe shop receipt and 1 receipt from todae in glebe (also for shoes)
- 1 x flier for a swing night in Haarlem train station
- 1 x custom moleskine Amsterdam SIY guidebook, a pressie from the glebe vegan household.
- 17 eurocents in loose change

Weather watch

2008-03-26T08:41:00.001+11:00

Hi Australia,

I've done some photos and videos recently. Tell me your news.

Amsterdam update

2008-02-24T22:15:00.009+11:00

Hi everyone - I've been a bit lax in posting about the Euro-experience recently. Because I know that you're all gagging for more about Ollebolen, bitterballen, bicycling and terrible bureaucracy.

Anyway, there was a brief chilly spell, but this week we haven't had any more below-zero temps. Oh yeah and the big news is that I got a real job! For three whole months. As a press officer with an NGO that is having a big international conference here in May. My first time 9 to 5 in a real office in more than two years. And oh yes, office politics, they still exist.

Mostly though it's bags of fun. People talking on the phone in several languages every day (my team consists of Dutch, Italians, a Latvian, a Cherman, couple of brits and me the lone antipodean). And it's in a great location. This is a picture of the buildings across the canal, where I park my bike. Reflected in the ice on the one morning that the canals froze a bit. Only a thin layer on top mind you. Pretty, huh?

In other news, we made a trip out the edge of town to the Amsterdam Ikea. I was sooo excited, being quite concerned with having a gezellig home environment these days.

But it was actually a bit like the seventh dimension of hell. At the buying area they have these towering shelves up to the 20-foot ceilings, numbered from one to 67 where you have to go and find your precious flat pack. And when I finally got to my new office chair, the one that we had chosen after trying all the models for good back support and arms at the right price.... the bloody arms were out of stock. The base chair was there, but I had to switch to a totally different model at the last part of the epic Ikea odyssey in the bowels of the labyrinthine warehouse. A bit like Jason and the argonauts, I thought.

Biz nearly gnawed his own feet off he was so oppressed by the consumerist binge. I'm actually amazed he didn't grab a toddler out of (one of many) bugaboo strollers and yell "I am confiscating this human in the name of sustainability and human rights until you put all of those wretched mass-produced items back THIS INSTANT." At least I think that was the source of his moral outrage, he was a little too mithered to be quite so precise.