I am an Indian cleaning product. Who’d’ve thunk it?! Miles took this photo on his travels through the subcontinent last year and only just got around to emailing me this bizarre image. What do Indians think it is exactly about my name that says ‘clean’? Unless it’s just a really bad case of mispelling and mispronouncing it? I thought the yanks calling their former Secretary of State ‘Colon’ Powell was bad enough.
My yoga teacher took this picture of me doing a shoulder stand to try and convince me I might have scoliosis. I’m pretty sure I don’t. Particularly seeing as I wasn’t one of those kids who got peer-pressured into wearing their schoolbag over one shoulder. No, I was a two-strap schoolbag-wearing geek. And possibly a satchel-style manbag-wearing pansy at some point, I can’t really remember. I wonder if manbags give you scoliosis, because I’ve had quite a few of those since I left school. Hmmm, perhaps she’s onto something.
On a completely unrelated note, Miles is having a party next weekend. The theme is ‘Partido de Carnivale’ – think steel drums, pineapples, giant feather head-dresses, caiparinhas, etc, etc. Anyway we went on an excursion to the new giant Spotlight in Innaloo (or ‘Innaroo’ as my friend Lai Tee calls it) to buy streamers and paper cups and general party-related stuff and, lo and behold, discovered that Spotlight also has a massive range of cheap costume and dress-up crap. So if you ever need to add to your collection of feather boas and hawaiian leis, Spotlight Innaroo is the place to go. They also had a humongous bargain bin full of – wait for it – piñatas! I had no idea the piñata was such a sought-after item but, having discovered them in abundance, I am now convinced that no party should be without one!
Q: What do Mah Jong Fridays, Cadbury Creme Eggs and Sarah Brown have in common?
A: They’re all back!
And the latter two don’t appear to have changed a bit during their absence – Creme Eggs are still the source of a sugar-rush which is unparalleled in the realm of chocolatey, fondant-filled, gooey, sticky, delicious treats (sorry, Caramello Koala – you are still a close number 2) and Sarah Brown is still my preferred female member of the Brown family (sorry Elaine – I’m sure you’re very nice, but I don’t know you).
As for Mah Jong Fridays, they now take place on Wednesdays (come to think of it we should possibly consider changing the name) and they are no longer held in Studio 225 at Curtin. And there’s a whole new generation of hip, young Mah Jong players taking to the tiles! Jules and I are training up Naomi, Miles, Maja and Jack to be bona fide ‘Chongs’. Our biggest challenge will be getting around to arranging another evening to play! We have high hopes to make it a bi-weekly thing and our pupils seem keen, but you know how these things go. Kind of like me and blogging (speaking of which, yes, I realise it has been 3 weeks since my last blog post. I knew my blog-commitment-issues would come around to bite me on the arse again and so did all of you, so don’t act surprised!)
Jules and I will also be kept busy over the next 12 weeks as we have both accepted posts as 1st Year Design Tutors at Curtin and, hence, will be adding a good 6 or 7 hrs extra work a week on top of our already full-time jobs! Wahey! I love stress! But there is an upside apart from it ‘looking good on your CV’ (thanks Mum – I know you love that CV as if it were your own). And that is… MOOLAH! Yes, I’ll be getting paid a shitload. So much so that I worked out that for 12 weeks of 6-7 hrs work at Curtin I will earn enough money to fully pay for the Round the World trip I will be partaking in with Miles, his bro Benedict and pal Vic in July. So it’s like a free holiday!
Sort of.
Not really.
Happy Australia Day, one and all. Maja always points out what a lack of imagination Australians must have to have given their national day the same name as their country, but I really can’t think of an appropriate alternative. Perhaps ‘Get Pissed And Sunburnt And Glass Someone In The Face On The South Perth Foreshore Day’? I guess that’s only appropriate in Perth though. Anyway, that Swede has quite a cheek, coming to our country, asking for a permanent visa, and telling us we all have poor imaginations? Well, I never… Anyhow, I don’t see myself glassing anyone in the face this evening but the pissed and sunburnt bit is a possibility.
I have well and truely escaped Doubleview now and am settling nicely into my new inner-city digs. Work is a ridiculous 5 minute walk away, or less than a minute on my bike. So I can wake up 20 minutes before I have to be at work if I want – it’s pretty ideal.
Before I left Doubleview the other day I took one last bike ride through Herdsman Lake to take a picture of this statue which has puzzled me since I saw it for the first time a few months ago. It is in the middle of the lake and is overlooked by an estate full of atrocious project home mansions. I can’t imagine why anyone would have thought this would be a good location for such a statue – and why anyone would put it on that pedestal which looks like it might house a sewage treatment facility or something. Curious and curiouser…
I have to go now and relieve Lai Tee of her last few earthly possessions (an ironing board and some cutlery, I believe?) and say goodbye to her before she leaves on her big trip this evening so I will leave you with this picture of Miles imitating a chipmunk on a recent train journey. Bon voyage, lah!
Operation Escape From Doubleview continues – and the latest is that I took down my oddly arranged clothing rack (it was basically half an actual clothes rack, rigged up between my IKEA wire drawer unit and the wall) and discovered this gigantic gaping hole.
Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit. Does anyone know how to plug up a hole in a plasterboard wall, like this one? It looks a lot bigger in this picture by the way – it’s only roughly 3, maybe 4 cm wide. But still. Shit.
In other exciting cleaning news – our sink is white, not brown. Who’d have thunk it? Man, I really wish I had taken a before and after shot of that one.
What better way to procrastinate about beginning the process of cleaning the Doubleview house than writing a blog post featuring a photo I took of the various cleaning agents I will eventually utilise in doing so? No, seriously – if you can think of a better one, let me know. But this will do for now. I am now the final Doubleview resident and will spend my final week here in solitude before moving in with Madge and Jack next weekend. Strangely, I felt almost compelled to begin cleaning earlier on but now, even after stumbling upon a veritable treasure trove of cleaners, cremes, waxes and polishes in cabinets below the laundry sink, I seem to have lost the motivation. And, thus, this blog post was born.
At this point I am reminded, due to the similarity of the situation, (aswell as a pushy email from a certain D-I-S-C-O daddy!) of the time Jeremy and I rented RugDoctors in Edinburgh and spent a day lovingly hoovering and shampooing the carpets in our respective flats. What fun we had! There are a limited quantity of carpeted surfaces in the Doubleview house, otherwise I would definitely consider seeking out the Australian equivalent of the RugDoctor and take a trip down carpet-shampooing-memory-lane. In the meantime, however, ‘HandyAndy’ and ‘ToiletDuck’ will have to suffice.
Tonight, randomly, and while i was trying to think of something to blog about, someone started letting off fireworks somewhere over Scarborough. So no, that second photo is not bug splatter, but unidentified pyrotechnics captured on my digital camera, with the flash off (a good example of how freaking shaky my hands are – hello, early-onset-Parkinsons!). Perhaps they were the doing of some over-excited Chinese people with innacurate calendars? Well, thanks to Google I now know that Chinese New Year ACTUALLY takes place on February 7th. You’re a whole month early, people! Try and contain yourselves! It’s not the ‘year of the Rat’ just yet. (Ahhh, I love the internet)
Speaking of rats, I saw a dead one today – out the back of the house into which I will be moving with Maja and Jack in the next week or two. However, not even a rotting animal carcass could detract from the house’s charms – a rustic federation-style cottage, it is also a 3 minute walk from my work and probably about a 10 minute walk to both Beatty Park, where I swim a couple of times a week, and also to where I do Yoga, again a couple of times a week. Further to that, it is literally across the road from Hyde Park and, therefore, in comfortable walking distance of Northbridge, Mt Lawley, Leederville and the City. Something tells me I am going to be completely ruined after living in this house – I am literally going to be able to roll out of bed and into my office. Sure beats living in Doubleview – although I can’t deny I am going to miss the occasional impromptu fireworks displays…
P.S. FYI – I am in love with my new Tigers.
Maja gets a special mention in this post for two reasons:
a) It was her birthday on Friday. Amongst the presents she received from the gift-giving trio of Naomi, Jules and myself was the lastest Jens Lekman CD, which I proceeded to import to my iTunes library prior to her receiving it. But don’t worry I told her I had done this in the card. That’s the type of friends we are. Grattis på fodelsedagen, slampa! (Swedish-English translation: ‘Happy birthday, slut!’)
b) She completely blew me out of the water in the ‘Best of 2007’ list stakes by remembering a tonne of things that happened to both of us that year which I had completely neglected to mention. Please refer to her blog for said list.
Congratulations, Maja! Further to this shameless plug you are also the lucky recipient of a photo of you taken at the Buddy Holly impersonator concert we went to over a month ago now AND a photo of Lai Tee and I eating a piece of your birthday cake last night when I went over to her house to check out the free stuff she is going to give me when she leaves for overseas in a few weeks time! I think this counts as the first proper photo to be posted on this blog where I am in the process of devouring a fancy. Well it’s about time! Chances are it shan’t be the last…
Check out those beads of perspiration on Lai Tee’s forehead – and I thought I was a fancy-fiend!
Happy Oh-Eight, everyone! Despite having spent the best part of the day drifting in and out of a sleep-deprivation-induced-haze, I have somehow still managed to attend a New Years Day Dim Sum Luncheon and see ‘The Darjeeling Limited’ – a not too shabby start to the new year, if I do say so myself! My New Years Eve was spent at a BBQ at Miles’ house, followed by drunken cavorting at the Bakery’s New Years Eve gig ‘Going Going Gong’. There were gamelan orchestras and Yoko Ono lookalikes aplenty – not to mention a zip-lock bag full of party poppers attached to a certain New Years reveller’s belt via a carabiner. All in all a rather splendid evening was had by all – despite the back-arse-end of the night involving an exhausting walk home (3 cheers for the Boomtown taxi-crisis!).
So this is probably when I would be expected to rattle off some New Years resolutions, but so far the only one I have come up with is that ’08 is going to be the year I cast off my reputation for being a ‘spewface’. It’s a nasty habit and has caused me many an embarassment over the years – so that’s it! It won’t be an easy feat. But I have almost survived my first spewless day – how hard could it be to make it through another 364?
Having consumed the appropriate dosage of antacids in an attempt to counteract the episode of indigestion that was Christmas Day, Miles and I packed up and headed for Denmark (the one in Western Australia, not the home of Princess Mary) for a couple of days of back-to-basics nature-appreciation in the company of Miles’ mates Jamie and Sam. In other words, we went camping. I can’t remember exactly the last time I went camping but it was definitely well over a decade ago and I wasn’t sure how I’d go with the lack of creature comforts, but I think I coped pretty well. Perhaps there’s a little bit of bogan lurking in all of us?
Things I did on the trip which were out-of-character for me include:
– baiting a fishing hook
– casting a fishing rod
– kicking a soccer ball
– pitching a tent
– sleeping in said tent
– not showering
– being pulled at breakneck speed along the beach on a piece of carpet tied behind a 4wd
I hope my mum doesn’t read this blog because that last one is pretty much a blatant infraciton of her frequent requests that I ‘go canny the noo’ (roughly translates to ‘be careful’ in ye olde Scottish). Anyway, it was a fun-filled couple of days. And we even managed to squeeze in a visit to the Treetop Walk in Walpole – an impressive feat of engineering / architectural design and an awe-inspiring experience, if I do say so myself. Of course, all that impressiveness and awe didn’t stop us from goofing off up there, as these images demonstrate!
confessions of a fancyboy 