Wednesday, March 31, 2010

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 90 : DUCK!!

Nah you're cool - there's nothing incoming....
But here where I work, we have a beautifully landscaped campus, which just happens to have a couple of large ponds. One of them has become home to a family of ducks who return periodically to feed, wander around, and generally make themselves at home.
The neatest part of their appearance today is that it's almost Easter and as they are inextricably linked to the new life idea of Easter - a theme evoked by the life and death of Jesus from which the Easter tradition springs - the poetic symbolism wasn't lost on me and I loved having them appear almost on cue.
It got me into a right flap of excitement it did.... sorry I felt the need for a pun... it won't happen again.... OK it probably will....
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Oh, and my friend Waz and I went walking last night in the Park, did two very full-on laps that included running up the Hill of Twinks (so very Kate Bush of us I know!), and while catching my friend at the top of the hill, I took this shot with my iPhone. Not the clearest or cleanest photo, admittedly but it does capture in some small way how lovely the view is from the 'summit' (oh how fabulously overstated!) at dusk.
I must do it for real one night with a camera and a tripod and a...... oh hell like that will ever happen! Enjoy the grainy pic, its all you are going to get! LOL

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 89 : Oceans Under a Bridge

Today's highlight, after another busy dat in the saltmines, was meeting up with my friend Doug who I hadn't seen in 13 Years!

I know what you're thinking - in the fast paced pell mell world of the 21st Century, catching up with anyone, let alone friends is fraught with all sorts of complications and obstacles, but surely it can't take 13 years to schedule a get together? And my patient answer, after an involuntary rolling of my eyes (in the nicest possible way naturally) would be that it had less to do with the means of communication, and far more to do with life getting in the way. Regardless of what had kept us apart, the lovely part was seeing him again, talking through old times, and finding out what he and his kids have got up to since I saw them. Time does fly by like a manic duck hellbent on completing its migration in days, not weeks, but it still left me feeling hideously old to find out his kids are now 21 and 17! They are up to all sorts of cool things, from starting websites to finishing the fianl years of school, and Doug, as a great dad, is very proud of them. He's also been up to lots, running a successful business, blogging like there's no tomorrow, buying a farm that he'll run on eco friendly principles and.... well lots of stuff!

It was a wonderful night that started at The Bank Hotel with drinks, moved on to sushi at Sushi Train, Newtown before finishing on the corner of Linthorpe Road and Erskineville Road where Doug and I were saying goodbye when a poor femal motorcyclist ran headlong into the back of a parked car without braking (thankfully at low speed). I quickly dialled 000 while Doug and some others lifted the bike off her leg and made sure she was conscious. To everyone's immense relief, she was talking and moving her legs - we didn't move her and waited for the ambulance to turn up - and the ambo's said she was likely to be OK. What a relief. Witnessing something like is incredibly unsettling and to know she wasn't horribly injured was wonderful. It took till 10.30 to give our statements to the police so a relatively early night ended up being quite late.

I finished off the night debriefing with my wonderful guy who was concerned I'd seen the accident and wanting to hug to wish all the bad vision aside. It was so sweet of him to call - especially since I woke him up in the first place poor baby! - but truthfully once I knew the motorcyclist was OK, I relaxed, and hearing my beloved's voice was just the tonic I needed to drift off to dreamland.

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Time for another Zara update!

Here she is in her brand new special chair watching her favourite show In the Night Garden on ABC2 every day at 5.30. She is a gal after my own heart taking the media with the sort of alacrity I did (once I discovered what a TV was at about age 4.... they didn't have TVs in Bangladesh where I frist grew up so TV was a late discovery!)

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 88 (Monday 29 Mrch 2010) : Thai Me Kangaroo Down... or Is That Chilli Chicken and Beef?

Today was a very good day.

Yes I know I am saying this about a Monday. When I was at work. Furiously busy. But somehow even as Things To Do built up like the numbers of women Tiger Woods has slept with - hmm not even I was that busy I guess! - I managed to stay in a good frame of mind, and finished the day feeling great, as if I had actually accomplished something.

Yeah I know, don't get used to it....

Then to make the day even better, I was picked up by my beautiful guy, and whisked off to a delightfully romantic dinner at our favourite restaurant, Stir Crazy Thai in Erskineville. Being a Monday night it wasn't that busy and so we sat outside under one of their ginormous red umbrellas while a gentle rain fell around us, and we gazed into each other's eyes and caught up on life. I love being with him and tonight was no exception, and it was hard to let go when we kissed and cuddled at his car as he dropped me off.

Ah well only 3 sleeps and I get to see him again.....

Sunday, March 28, 2010

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 87 : Jus For the Yum Cha of It

No, the subject line is not missing a 't' at the end of 'Jus'....

It's a play on words which only makes sense if you know that the Yum Cha catch up in question was with oneof my closest and dearest friends, Justin...get it now? See it's a marvellously inspired, clever play on words that will resonate down through the ages and...oh, never mind..... well I laughed at least...
Anyway, narrowly focused humourous plays on good friends' names aside, it had been a while since we'd been able to catch up - Justin is besieged by work demands, study schedule for his Masters and the limited social schedule left over after the first two parts of his life are accommodated - and so it was just delightful to sit back over Yum Cha at Kam Fook's Bondi Junction and catch up on all the comings and goings in our lives. I even managed to sneak in a quick trip to Borders to stock up pm my much loved Entertainment Weekly magazines from the USA.
After my big outing I returned home to do washing and CD ripping - or 'tearing' as my darling guy calls jokingly - before my guy came over and we had an impromptu fish n chips and L & P (New Zealand soft drink) in Sydney Park. In contrast to last Sunday night's picnic, the sunset didn't amount to much at all, there was a wind screaming across the top of the hill, and it got dark way earlier (we arrived because the fish n chips shop guy took 25 minutes to process our order!), but this very cute dog scampered up to us (see above) and more importnatly, it was so incredibly romantic sitting almost all alone with the man I love, gazing into his eyes, talking about all sorts of stuff, and snuggling close to stay warm, even as darkness closed in. It was a truly romantic, magical night.

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ZARA Update
Here's the latest shot of the cutest niece a man could ever ask for, grinning mischievously from under mum's work desk having wreaked goodness knows what havoc! She followed this up with pulling all the toilet paper off a roll till she was covered by it! Too cute!!

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 86 (Saturday 27 March 2010) : King Street shopping, Erskineville Road Eating and George St Flix

Today was another one of those Make-It-Up-As-We-Along days, so beloved of me thanks to my soul-searing exposure thanks to the unforgiving exacting nature of Outlook during the week days at work. Admittedly it did include one scheduled stop off to pick up my car, which was still at the car service place for its registration service check but even this didn't happen as scheduled as they were running late so we had used the time wel and headed to nearby Marrickville Metro so I could get my hair cut (well buzz-cutted off really) and we could grab some groceries.

But the rest of the day lived up to the Make-It-Up theme as I moseyed along King Street shopping  (above shot shows one of my fave shops, Octopus) while my gorgeous guy got his hair cut, we had an impromptu nap on his bed, before heading into the City to see a movie, The Blind Side, with a close friend of ours, Stephen.
The movie was heartwarming and life-affirming, and while in a few isolated places it veered into Hallmark Weepie of the Week territory, it was mostly very inspiring as Sandra Bullock's character, Lee Anne Tuohy (a real life woman and wonderfully gutsy!) took on every racist, small-minded person who stood in her way to transform a young man's life. I really enjoyed it (and the lollies I had with it too!).
We left the cinema in the middle of Earth Hour, which I usually observe by switching off all the lights and sitting in the dark for an hour, and to get a small feel for how the City looked, we headed to Darling Harbour, took some shots against an unusually dark skyline before heading to one of my favourite restaurants, Chinta Ria for dinner. The food was, as always delicious, although our conversation did have to compete with a loud 21st birthday party next to us, and the company lovely. The home to collapse after a wonderfully full but blissfully unstressful day.

Friday, March 26, 2010

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 85 : Like a Blood Sucking Metallic Leach

No this is the title of the new Slayer album.....

It is rather my less than flattering description of once again going through the whole renewing the registration of my car process. It is never usually a pleasant process for anyone, especially a non-car lover like myself (I do care about my car but purely as a beast of burden to get me from A to Z.... yes my car, Fido, no doubt has self-esteem issues..hmm odd that I am anthropomorphising my car when I treat it so glibly) but today has been an abolsute automotive horror story even though everyone has been lovely, and at the last minute managed to staunch the financial bleeding somewhat.
First up, my car went in for its Pink Slip check today. While the Pink Slip is now virtual, the act of dropping off the car and having it checked by a mechanic is very real, and welded to, in this case, a very early stone cold reality. I had the car at the mechanics by 6.50 a.m. - not so bad when I am up at 4.45 for my exercise regime - and I was on a train to work by 7.10. The mechanics have since called me twice today and they have been thoroughly professional and articulate; alas their articulateness centred around the high amounts of money needed to fix bare oil-soaked rear brake pads, something called a 'bush' on the suspension and a few other sundry thingies (note my indepth grasp of automtoive lingo, forged through years of not giving a f**k about the ins and outs of car maintenance). Still, poor though I will be, at least I understand (I think) what they've done and the mechanics have been polite and great to deal with from the word go.

My Green Slip (third party insurance) was the corker of the day. My incumbent insurer decided to jack up my rates by about $300 year on year and alternately laughing at, or furious about it, I decided to get quotes from the official government site, and other insurers. After checking the government webt site, which draws off the quote systems of the insurers themselves, I called my existing insurer to see if they could lower my rate to what the government site said it should be. Unfortunately for me, and ultimately my existing insurer, the customer service agent I got was belittling, rude and spent his time brusquely ridiculing every suggestion I made to the point where I hung up in fury and called one of their competitors, who in contrast were friendly, courteous and knowledgable and who managed to save me $230 on my Green Slip premium! It's likely they'll also get my Comprehensive insurance too so impressed was I with the service agent.
Still, all this talk of saving money does ignore the fact that I will have handed over close to $2000 by the time I am done to insure a car that leaves the garage about once a week for a few hours at a time, and so while I value the freedom a car on tap gives me, I am seriously considering selling it, pocketing whatever I earn from it, and signing up to a car collective like Go Get. Yes I will have to plan ahead a lot more but I will save heaps of money, and not have this insane drain on my finances.
Not sure how I will break to Fido though.....

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Eggstremely Graphic

It could reasonably be asserted that the person who created the following eggs pictures has waaaaay too much time on their hands, but thank god they do because these bizarre homages to one of daily dietary staples made me laugh and laugh hard (but not in a fat-belly-chortling kind of way since I am ridiculously slim and....now where was I?)


365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 84 : Not Happy Jan

There are days when I wake up, and my sunny halo of blinding yellow happiness and joy slips ever so slightly, or like a clumsy rock climber slipping off the face of a mountain and plunging to the valley below, plummets mercilessly till it hits emotional rock bottom, and I slide from bed, not really thrilled with the state of my life. It is an entirely irrational state of mind, given the fact that I have the love of a beautiful man (whom I love back just as deeply), a plethora of close, wonderful friends who I value greatly, a wonderful housemate and life in Erskineville.

Where I think my emotional train goes off the rails is when I suddenly feel dissatisified with some aspect of my life, and at the moment, that would have to be my job. It isn't even that the job is bad though - I like my boss, my colleagues and the company I work for - it's just that I want so badly to be doing creative with my life that the current job pales in comparison with what I could be doing. Add to that the fact that my current job long ago ceased to be a real challenge or fun, and I am left with this horrible sense that I am walking the same tired steps day after day, achieving nothing of any real merit.

I do what I can to ameliorate this sense of Groundhog Day-ness with this blog, which is an amazing creative outlet that I love greatly, but for me to feel any sense of real satisfaction with my life, I need to do something and fast to remedy this sense of futility in my job..... and given that I, like everyone else, spends so much time at work, if it's not satisfying, it exacts a heavy toll - yes, even on someone as glass-half-full as me.

Thankfully I am seeing my career counsellor next week to chart a plan of action, and I am trying to think of ways to give my current job new meaning by contributing to the division's in house newsletter and also helping out with the Internal Communications team in the Corporate division. There's no silver bullet, granted, but I need to start doing something smartly so I can avoid more days like today when everything seems irrational dark and gloomy when in fact, it isn't. It's not ideal true, and my career needs a definite kick up the proverbial, and soon, but life isn't as bad as I felt it was this morning.

Having said that, I think I still need some chocolate.....

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 83 : Pretty as a Truck

This is very cool graffiti.

It sits on a wall on the Erskineville end of King Street just near where I meet my friend Fahmi for our morning full-speed-ahead power walks. I have no idea why a graffiti artist decided that Tonka Trucks would make for a great theme - especially on the wall of a shop selling furniture! - but I am glad that they went with their gut instinct because it's bright, colourful, and recalls all sorts of childhood memories.

For one thing I was, like most little boys, into cars and trucks - I was also into playing with Barbie dolls etc but that's a whole other story and entirely consistent with me being a screaming queen! - and foremost among all the brands, apart from Mattel, was Tonka. My great aunt Buzzie gave me an enormous car carrier Tonka Truck onto which rolled 3 large cars, all of which were made of metal, and not the plastic of today. I loved her, loved the truck, and it was one of the most special gifts I ever got, and one of my favourite toys.

I have no idea what happened to the truck or it's cars - odd since so much else of my childhood survived intact, largely because I made sure it did being the sentimental guy that I am - but this mural invoked a fuzzy sense of well being from the days when my greatest concern was running cars up and down the metal ramp of a Tonka Truck.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 82 : 500 Ways to Say "C'est Moi"

Wow so I have made it. 500 posts. (I co-opted my friends Sandra, Sammi and Fahmi, and my gorgeous guy to join me to represent 500 in 2 photos - 5 then 00 which are sprinkled through this post.)

Way back in 2005 when this quirkily-named blog slowly shuddered into existence on the back of a suggestion by my career counsellor that a blog would be a good calling card for a writing career - it likely is but I have yet to leverage that; I hope to start doing so today when I catch up with the head of the Internal Communications area at the company I work at, to see what my future career path may be - I really didn't conceive that it would become what it is and go as far as it has. It may not have exactly set the blogging world on fire, but that was never really the point.
What I wanted to do, apart from landing a kick-ass writing career on the strength of my (hopefully) sizzling wit and wry observations, was find a creative outlet where I could express all the quirky, silly, authentically me stuff that never really got a voice in CubicleLand. I don't hate my job, but while the people and company I work for are lovely, the job is not exactly setting the creative world on fire, and to stop myself going slowly mad - or madder - I needed somewhere to channel all that of unspent creative energy.....
..... and it's been a hoot. Yes, a hoot I say! I love that word, along with 'plethora' and 'soporific' and 'quintessential' and in this, my 500th post, I have found a way to throw them all into one paragraph. Not terribly eloquently but then that was never the point either. Write well yes, but above all, the key was to find my voice, express who I was, try to say something without descending into a pointless vanity exercise (I think that's hard to avoid when you are writing your own blog but I'd like to think it's hasn't been a totally me-centric endeavour), and have some fun along the way.
It's been all that and more, and while today is likely to be just another day at the corporate coal face, it will be a great day because I have stuck to my creative guns and made a very cool milestone, which even if it doesn't lead to a Pulitzer Prize for OMG blogging, at least allowed me to be totally who I am when so much of my life edited out bits along the way.

It's been a wonderful ride....

Monday, March 22, 2010

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 81 : Flick'd!

Off to the movies tonight! Yes on a Monday night no less when there is nary a hint of Tight Assness pervading the media entertainment gigaplex.
Luckily I bought up 6  x $7.50 e-vouchers two months back and redeeming two of them last night, my yummy guy and I went off to see a romantic comedy (rom-com) called "The Rebound", even though it will never be considered the world's greatest film, or veen the world's greatest rom-com. But that's not the point. I was simply looking for something light, frothy and relaxing after a frantically busy day at work, and this fitted the bill nicely. Yes I did feel a few twinges of guilt that I wasn't seeing a 'worthy' movie, like "The Hurt Locker" or "Brothers" but they can wait till the weekend when I am recharged from a hectic week and ready to face a searing, probing indictment of society's blackened soul. For now, lighten up baby!
The night itself was just lovely. I had the company of my beautiful guy and great friend from work, Sammi (and her house mate, Tui), we had deliciously cheap $8 steaks at Star Bar on George Street, and Taro Tea and pearls from Easyway, and I held the hand of my beloved all trhough the movie, which was delightful, de-lovely and de-fabulous all in one! He even stared lovingly at me at one point and declared that I looked so "lovely". Well what's a boy to do with that but swoon and snuggle close in the dark of the cinema?

So I did.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 80 : Toasted, then Chilled and then Pickled With Fish and Friends

Today was not a busy day.

Which is entirely as it should be on a weekend day when you may want to have fun, but not feel like you're racing around like an ADHD chook with your ever-swivelling head chopped off.
There was a nice long sleep in, toast for breakfast before my beautiful guy left for an afternoon of kul-cha taking in a concert with the Australian Chamber Orchestra (he has a subscription and loves his orchestral music) and I indulged in some reading, napping, and general random slothful and indolent behaviour. We finished off this blissfully chilled day by meeting up with good friends Fahmi, Warren and Ingo for a very low key fish and chips and wine picnic at nearby Sydney Park.
When Warren and I devised this picnic rendezvous on a cool Autumn day a week before Picnic Day, the idea was that it would be a farewell to Summer, as well as a way of having the outdoor picnics we missed out on when we didn't go to Symphony or Jazz in the Domain this year. However Summer had other ideas, and came roaring back with temperatures in the early 30s Celsius, and at one point I wondered if we shouldn't just retreat to the air conditiioned loveliness of the Union Hotel and kiss our romantic notions of farewelling Summer goodbye.
But we persevered, and by 5.30 the searing temperatures of the day has subsided enough that sitting on a picnic out in public began to seem like a sane idea rather than the romantic delusions of crazy people. By the time we reached the fish and chips shop on King Street, and my gorgeous guy made it back from the ACO (or Aco Daco as I term it!) via train, there was a wind blowing and we pressed ahead with fish and chips buying, chit chat on the way to the park (with a brief stop over for Steve to get changed into tshirt and shorts next to his car at the side of the road!) and the spreading of the picnic blanket on what we either the Hill of Death or the Hill of Twinks, depending on our frame of mind at the time!
The picnic was glorious. Cooling breezes, wonderful company, delicious fish & chips (sadly not low fat, which was tad guilt-inducing when wave after wave of joggers and dog walkers perambulated past our blanket), and near the end, one of the most insanely goregous sunsets I have ever seen in my life with the richest oranges, reds and yellows imaginable. What I expected to be 2-3 photos to use in the blog, became an orgy of photo taking that resulted in 30-40 photos.
The rest of the night was wonderfully relaxed as Steve & I went back to his place, and I stayed the night before a mad dash back to my place the next morning to catch the train....

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