Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 89 - When I Am 45?

Yes I am 45 but I don't feel, or look apparently (thank you to everyone who thinks I look like I am in my 30s.... I love you all!) OLD.

Well that was till I got chatting with the young gay guy who acts as the bus marshall for the buses that tame me to and from work. I mentioned to him that I'd been in HUM the night before with my gorgeous guy and that we'd seen a rack of LPs which are making a come back, and becoming quite popular among current artists who release, and the audiophiles who listen to them because the sound is, it seems, better than CDs or MP3s or MP4s. (I had jokingly remakred to my guy that one day I'll likely have to explain what an LP is to a 20 year old. Who knew it would be the very next day?! LOL)

His first reaction was 'what's an LP?' So I, recovering from shock, said it was a record. Still no flash of recognition. 'Like a CD but black and bigger and played with a needle.' That received some sort of recognition, but it reminded me more of when you ask a Japanese person if they have understood your English, and being the delightfully polite people they are, they smile and say 'Yes', while you know the look in their eyes scream "WTF did you just say?"

My lord, as I got on the bus I felt like I was 3 million years old, and added to hearing a Sheena Easton a few days earlier on 2CH (played on the bus by a 60+ bus driver, not listened to voluntarily I should add!), which is a station for Baby Boomer onwards, I began to wander just how old I really was. Yes my tastes are current, and up to date because I love and adore anything new and interesting creatively, but that doesn't mean the younger generation are going to any effort to educate themselves on the stuff I lived through.

I think I need a Bex and a good lie down.

What's a Bex? Oh dear lord.....

Things To Do In The Office

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 88 - Zara Grows Up

Here's my darling niece Zara on holiday in Cairns this month and man does she look her mother when she was a very cute child! Gorgeous photos....

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 87 - Who Won What When

So here's the wash up from the election on Saturday for the two electorates that either my friends, beautiful guy and I are in - Heffron (Waz and I represented by Kristine Kenneally) and Marrickville (my beautiful guy and Fahmi, represented by, most likely, Carmel Tebbutt). The dividing line between Heffron and Marrickville is the railway line which means that though I live just 3 minutes walk, if that, from Fahmi, we are in completely different electorates.

No, we haven't decided who lives on the wrong side of the tracks. Is there such a thing in Erskineville?

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 86 (Sunday 27 March) - More Chilling...Yes more....

I kept chilling today.

Nice relaxed morning sleeping in with my gorgeous guy, raisin toast and then he went off to work while I wenty off to do the grocery shopping, nap, watch episodes of Fringe season 3 with my house mate, and do as little as possible.

I love these kinds of days. So good for the Outlook-ravaged soul!

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 85 (Saturday 26 March) - Bye Bye Labor Bye Bye

I voted today.

To get rid of the Labor government.

I succeeded in that but I didn't get rid of my local member Kristina Kenneally the Premier, who stubbornly held on. I voted Greens since I couldn't vote Liberal - apparently for many people if you don't vote Labor, you vote Liberal, which is a tad simplistic and shows no evidence of any poltical convictions at all; in my world, if you can bring yourself to vote Labor, then at least still vote left wing - after waiting in a ridiculously long line at Erskineville Public School, where I didn't buy a sausage sizzle sausage sandwich (it was 9 a.m. and a tad early in the day). I did however stump up for brunch with fellow voters, Waz, Fahmi and my gorgeous guy at Cafe Sofia nearby before my gorgeous guy and I jumped on the train at Erskineville with our friend John and his twins, Ben (who displayed an interesting tatste in reading matter when his dad John stopped to grab drinks at the newsagency at St James station - see below) and Sophie, for their weekly swimming lessons.

As with the week before, I had a ball. They make the lessons fun for the kids, and the parents, and afterwards we swam for an hour, with the kids experimenting with going backwards down the slippery slide. Surprisingly the more conservative of the two kids, Sophie, was by far the more adventurous when it came to going backwards down the slide, copying another girl her age who has, according to her mother, has picked up bad habits from her older siblings. It is so much fun to see how much fun the kids have and their sheer delight in splashing threw the water. It just makes you feel delighted and happy.

After lunch at the pool - a surprisingly yummy tandoori chicken wrap - my gorgeous guy and I headed home for a nice big nap before Waz, his bf Jonathan and and Fahmi came over for pizza, wine, lollies and dips (not together thank you!) for our election coverage/Earth Hour night in, interspersed with episodes of Big Bang Theory when we'd had enough of Antony Green. We cheated a little with Earth Hour, keeping the TV on throughout, but the candles looked awesome (although the photos only rendered them as pinpricks of colourful light) and we at least reduced our carbon footprint somewhat.

....and then we totally reduced our carbon footprint by sleeping.... lovely!

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 84 - Chilled with a capital C

The lovely strata people who run the complex I live in decreed that the intercoms must be upgraded, and so lo' needed either my housemate or I to be home today between 10.30 and 12 so the good installers of some anonymous company or another could do their handiwork. I fell on my sword, selfless soul that I am, and took a badly needed day off, during which I had planned to swim 1.5km, go shopping, eat lunch out etc; however, I fell into an exhausted heap, and sleep for 2 hours during the day, ate less than healthy food and didn't swim at all - the closest I got to all over wet was a shower but that hardly counts as exercise - and watched episodes of Stargate Universe, Sanctuary (I had somehow missed the final 4 episodes of season 2) and Brothers & Sisters season 5.... then I welcomed my gorgeous guy (his hand features in the pic below, eating his spring roll) back from Bathurst with a relaxed outdoor dinner at Stir Crazy Thai in Erskineville...

What a blissful day.

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 83 - Goodbye Ms Taylor

It is amazing when someone who has been present your entire life shuffles off this mortal coil, especially someone larger than life like Elizabeth Taylor. I will be honest and say that I wasn't a massive fan of her or her movies, or her fractured personal life, but she was one of the most committed people I know when it came to gay acceptance and the fight to de-stigmatise HIV/AIDS and for that alone, she has my undying admiration.

RIP Elizabeth.... and THANK YOU.

Her obituary....

The film star Elizabeth Taylor, who has died of heart failure aged 79, was in the public eye from the age of 11 and remained there even decades after her last hit movie. She managed to keep people fascinated, by her incandescent beauty, her courage, her open-natured character, her self-deprecating humour, her eight marriages (two of them to the actor Richard Burton), her many brushes with death, her seesawing weight, her diamonds and her humanitarian causes, all of which often obscured the reason why she was famous in the first place – she had a tantalising screen presence, in films including A Place in the Sun (1951), Giant (1956), Cat On a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Butterfield 8 (1961), Cleopatra (1963) and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966).



Taylor was born in Hampstead, north London, of American parents. Her mother, Sara, was a former stage actor and her father, Francis, an art dealer. As soon as she could walk she was given ballet lessons, and at the age of three she danced with her class in front of the royal family. In 1939, a few months before the outbreak of war, the family moved to Hollywood, where her father opened an art gallery much patronised by the film colony. The beauty of the owner's dark-haired, violet-eyed young daughter won almost as much praise as the paintings on the walls, and she was soon making her screen debut, at the age of 10, in There's One Born Every Minute (1942), at Universal.


But it was MGM who launched her career proper with Lassie Come Home (1943), and for whom most of her films were made. When Sara Taylor heard that the studio was looking for a young girl to play Velvet Brown, who wins the Grand National disguised as a boy in National Velvet (1945), she brought her daughter to see the producer Pandro S Berman. He thought her too thin and fragile for the part, although she could ride well. But three months later, after rigid training from her mother, she was able to change Berman's mind. Her performance, in which she radiates youth, is enjoyed perennially.


Meanwhile, she was struggling to get an education at the Hollywood school, where she developed a crush on an older pupil, John Derek, the first recorded instance of her interest in the opposite sex. At 17, she was despairing about getting much schoolwork done while making Conspirator (1949), in her first "adult" role. "How can I when Robert Taylor keeps sticking his tongue down my throat?" When the eccentric RKO boss Howard Hughes became interested in her, he sent his lawyer to Mrs Taylor with an offer of $1m to arrange a marriage with her daughter. At being told of the offer, Elizabeth laughed out loud.


Her debut marriage was to Nicky Hilton, the 23-year-old playboy son of the hotel magnate Conrad Hilton, in 1950. It seemed a fairytale romance, ideal fodder for the glossy fan magazines, as both were young, attractive, rich and pampered. MGM took advantage of Hollywood's biggest wedding of the year by releasing Vincente Minnelli's delightful comedy Father of the Bride (1950), in which Taylor played the bride and Spencer Tracy was the father, at around the same time.


After the genuine marriage ceremony, Taylor whispered to her mother, "Oh, mother! Nick and I are one now, for ever and ever." "For ever and ever" turned out to be eight months. According to her testimony at the divorce proceedings, Hilton had ignored her during their long European honeymoon, drank heavily and abused her in public. He complained, "I didn't marry a girl. I married an institution."


The "institution", still in her teens, in ravishing close-ups, was now driving Montgomery Clift to murder his pregnant girlfriend in George Stevens's A Place in the Sun. "Liz is the only woman I have ever met who turns me on," remarked the gay Clift. They were to become close friends and, during the making of Raintree County in 1957, she was the first on the scene of Clift's car crash, pulling a dislodged tooth out of his throat to stop him choking. Two years later, she insisted that the scarred and drug-addicted Clift be cast with her in Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), an adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play.


In due course, she met the sophisticated British actor Michael Wilding, 20 years her senior. She was playing Rebecca in Ivanhoe (1952) in England when she proposed to him. Ironically, MGM had given her the role abroad as a means of breaking up her affair with the director Stanley Donen. Taylor and Wilding were married in 1952, at a London registry office. Her sons, Michael and Christopher, were both born by caesarean section, in 1953 and 1955 respectively. By 1956 the marriage began to totter.


She was 24, and becoming one of the most sought-after stars in Hollywood, especially after her performance in Stevens's Giant, during which she formed warm relationships with her co-stars, Rock Hudson and James Dean. Wilding was middle-aged and his career was fading, although she got him an MGM contract. Clearly the age gap, which Taylor had insisted was unimportant at the outset, played an important part in the break-up of the marriage, and they agreed to an amicable divorce.


Ironically, the man she was to marry next was five years older than Wilding. But the flamboyant impresario Mike Todd (real name Avrom Goldbogen), the begetter of Around the World in 80 Days (1956), was noted for his youthful spirit and his abundant energy. At their wedding in Acapulco in 1957, Mike's lifelong friend, the crooner Eddie Fisher, was best man, and Eddie's wife, Debbie Reynolds, was the matron of honour. In the same year, a daughter, Liza, was born, also by caesarean, and both mother and child nearly died. Taylor was advised never to have another baby.


A mere seven months later, Todd's private plane, Lucky Liz, in which he was flying to New York, crashed in a storm near Albuquerque leaving no survivors. Taylor had wanted to accompany her husband on the flight but she was persuaded to stay at home because of a flu virus. On hearing of the crash, she screamed so loudly that neighbours a few doors away could hear her, and she had to be drugged to prevent her from taking her own life.


Gradually, Taylor came out of seclusion and completed Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, another Williams adaptation, which she had already been filming when Todd was killed. Despite, or because of, her state of mind, she gave one of her most finely wrought performances as the sexually frustrated Maggie. Her voice, never her strong point, seemed to have gained in power, and she matched Paul Newman and Burl Ives blow for blow.


The film's box-office potential was increased further by the gossip surrounding Taylor and Fisher. Taylor, who had been cast as the grieving widow, now found herself in the role of the vamp who wrecked the Fishers' apparently idyllic marriage. The outraged moralistic public was unaware that the Fisher-Reynolds marriage was already in tatters. In 1959, Taylor, who had converted to Judaism when she married Todd, married Fisher at a synagogue in Las Vegas.


Taylor was in London where she was completing Suddenly, Last Summer (in which she brilliantly played Katharine Hepburn's mentally-disturbed niece), when the producer Walter Wanger offered her the title role in Cleopatra. The star half-jokingly told him that she would do it for $1m against 10% of the gross. To everyone's astonishment, 20th Century-Fox agreed to her terms, making her the highest-paid performer for a single film in the history of Hollywood to that date. As she said, "If someone's dumb enough to offer me a million dollars to make a picture, I'm certainly not dumb enough to turn it down."


When filming on Cleopatra started at Pinewood studios, Peter Finch was Julius Caesar and Stephen Boyd was Mark Antony, although neither of them was to see their leading lady for more than a month. Taylor was first stricken with a cold, then a fever, then an infected tooth. In March 1961, she was rushed to a London clinic with lung congestion. She was given a tracheotomy that helped her breathing, but for days she was on the danger list. After some time in a coma, she began to rally. Her physicians announced, "She has made a very rare recovery. Miss Taylor is a woman of great courage. She put up a wonderful fight."


In the spring, Taylor won her first Oscar, after three consecutive nominations for best actress in a leading role (in Raintree County, Cat On a Hot Tin Roof and Suddenly, Last Summer), for her role as a high-class hooker in the 1960 film Butterfield 8, an adaptation of John O'Hara's novel. Overnight, she had regained the affection of the fickle industry and public. Taylor herself thought the Oscar was a consolation prize for not dying and that the film "was a piece of shit".


As for Cleopatra, the whole project was shipped to Rome, and Finch and Boyd were replaced by Rex Harrison and Burton. Taylor arrived in Rome with a large entourage consisting of one husband, three children, five dogs, two cats, various secretaries and dozens of servants, and settled at the Villa Pappa, a 14-roomed mansion off the Via Appia.


"There comes a time during the making of a movie when the actors become the characters they play," Wanger noted in his diary. "The cameras turned and the current was literally turned on. It was quiet and you could almost feel the electricity between Elizabeth Taylor and Burton."


After the first "electric scene" they performed together, Burton, who was married, frequented the villa in the evenings. On one particular occasion, while Burton was regaling the guests with stories, Fisher went to the piano and started playing and singing loudly. Finally, Taylor yelled, "Shut up, Eddie! We can't talk!", whereupon the jealous crooner slammed down the lid of the piano and strode into the next room. A few moments later, Fisher's records were blasting through the house. Taylor covered her ears while the guests departed, diplomatically.


"I'm afraid at first it was lust, and then I got to know her and it was love," Burton recalled. Throughout the shooting, to avoid the constant prying of the paparazzi, the celebrated couple would escape to a cheap one-room apartment on the beach. Finally, weary of subterfuge, they decided to be seen publicly in the Via Veneto. The Vatican talked of "this insult to the nobility of the hearth", and Ed Sullivan on his TV show said, "You can only trust that youngsters will not be persuaded that the sanctity of marriage has been invalidated by the appalling example of Mrs Taylor-Fisher and married man Burton."


After Cleopatra, Burton and Taylor announced that they would make another film together, originally to be called International Affair. The title was changed to The VIPs. During the filming in London, Cleopatra opened to mixed reviews. Audiences were disappointed that the love scenes between Taylor and Burton that had been the talk of modern Rome were not repeated with so much passion in those of ancient Rome. But public interest in the couple's private lives still made the film a top earner of 1963.


The affair continued in the public eye, while both Fisher and Sybil Burton held out for the best possible divorce deals. Finally, Sybil Burton gave in, claiming cruelty and that her husband was "in the constant company of another woman," which Newsweek called "the throwaway line of the decade".


Burton and Taylor were married in March 1964 by a Unitarian minister at the Ritz-Carlton in Montreal. She wore a pale yellow Irene Sharaff gown, and a $150,000 emerald and diamond brooch that Burton had bought her at Bulgari in Rome. The bride and groom gave their respective religions as Jewish and Presbyterian.


The scandal over, public interest in them only seemed to increase. The world's most famous couple had become celebrities rather than actors. "I want to be known as an actress," Taylor told the New York Times in 1964. Unfortunately, their reputations as serious actors were not much enhanced by the next film they made together, the limp soap opera The Sandpiper (1965). After their three less than convincing films together, it was fortunate that their credibility as performers was soon brilliantly restored by Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for which Taylor won her second Oscar, playing the bitter, 52-year-old, vulgar wife of a self-loathing professor (Burton). It was Taylor's ability to get into the skin of the character, more than the padding and a tousled salt-and-pepper wig, which transformed the legendary beauty into a blowsy virago.


Following the film, the couple appeared on stage, without payment, at Oxford University, for five sold-out performances of Christopher Marlowe's tragedy Dr Faustus, the proceeds of which were to go to build an Oxford University Theatre Centre. Burton played the title role, while Taylor was the four-minute wordless apparition of Helen of Troy.


Burton continually claimed that Taylor had taught him how to act on film: "That girl has true glamour. If I retired tomorrow, I'd be forgotten in five years, but she would go on forever." Despite their genuine affection for one another, their open quarrels earned them the nickname of "the Battling Burtons" throughout the 1960s. This was cleverly exploited when they fought lustily – she as Katherina, he as Petruchio – through Franco Zeffirelli's bustling, colourful version of The Taming of the Shrew (1967). They also co-starred in The Comedians (1967, from Graham Greene's novel) and Boom (1968, another Williams adaptation) which allowed them to work in West Africa (standing in for Haiti in the former film) and Sardinia.


As the Taylor-Burton circus moved from country to country, their way of life, which the New York Times likened to the court of Louis XIV, became ever more lavish. In the consciousness-raising late 1960s, younger people especially began to find them vulgar and frivolous, and their films irrelevant. Taylor's elder son, Michael, would become a hippie and live in a commune in Wales "in order to get away from all those diamonds", according to the Daily Mirror.


"Those diamonds" included the 33.19-carat Krupp diamond that Burton bought Taylor for more than $300,000 in 1968; a $1.5m Cartier diamond set in a necklace of smaller diamonds, and the much-publicised heart-shaped diamond pendant Burton gave her for her 40th birthday. It had first been given by the Emperor Shah Jehan (the builder of the Taj Mahal) to his young bride in 1621, engraved with the message "Eternal Love Til Death". In fairness, the Burtons were equally generous in giving vast sums to worthy causes. In 1966, Taylor established a heart disease research foundation in memory of Clift and endowed it with $1m.


While Taylor's looks and spunky performances still gathered praise in films such as John Huston's Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), Burton, who was now drinking heavily, became an object of derision. The marriage broke down and, in June 1974, Taylor divorced Burton in Switzerland. "There were too many differences. I have tried everything," she told the court.


Yet they were reconciled in August 1975, attracting as much attention as ever. On a visit to South Africa in the autumn, an X-ray of Taylor's chest showed two spots on her lungs. Terrified, Burton and Taylor clung to each other all night, she gave him valium, and he whispered poetry in her ear. In the morning, she was told she did not have cancer. In his joy, Burton proposed remarriage. The ceremony took place on the banks of a river in Botswana. A few months later, they were again filing for divorce.


Taylor soon met John Warner, former secretary of the navy to President Gerald Ford, and they married in 1976. She became a political wife, campaigning hard to get her husband elected to the Senate by attending endless charity benefits, shaking hundreds of hands, and speaking at public functions. "It was so boring. That's why I put on so much weight," she confessed.


She therefore decided to return to acting, on Broadway, as the vixen Regina Giddens in Lillian Hellman's drama The Little Foxes, which she also played at the Victoria Palace theatre, London, in 1982 to mixed reviews. But, with her career in full swing again – and solo – she was not content to be kept down on the farm in Virginia. She and Warner divorced in 1982.


After creating a minor sensation by appearing in several episodes of a daytime TV soap opera called General Hospital, opposite a new beau, Tony Geary, the unsinkable double act of Burton and Taylor resurfaced again. They starred together in Noël Coward's Private Lives in New York at a fee of $7,000 a week each, making the ticket prices the most expensive in Broadway history for a non-musical.


The long-running romance ended at Burton's death in August 1984. Taylor stayed away from his funeral so as not to turn it into a media circus. But a few days later, she stood stricken with grief at the graveside of the man with whom she had shared the limelight for more than two decades. In 2010 she allowed love letters between them to be published and said: "Richard was magnificent in every sense of the word. We were always madly and powerfully in love."


How different was her marriage in 1991 to Larry Fortensky, a construction worker 20 years her junior whom she met while being treated at the Betty Ford clinic. The vast differences between them doomed the marriage from the start, but Taylor always claimed that, with very few exceptions, she could not have sex with a man unless she was married to him.


Five years later, she was a single woman again and threw herself into charitable work, especially her campaign for Aids awareness, motivated by her affection for Hudson, who died of an Aids-related illness in 1985. In 1997, Taylor's health again hit the headlines when she had an operation for a brain tumour, and had to shave off her hair. She survived because of "her will to live, and her millions of fans willing her to do so", according to her friend Michael Jackson, who was at her bedside. In 2005 she was a vocal supporter of Jackson during his trial on charges of sexually abusing a child, of which he was acquitted, and after his sudden death in 2009, she said, "My life feels so empty. I don't think anyone knew how much we loved each other."


Although there were recurring rumours that she was to marry her constant companion Jason Winters, she dismissed them, saying she would never marry again.


Taylor, who was made a dame in 2000, is survived by her brother, Howard; two sons, Michael and Christopher, from her marriage to Wilding; her daughter, Liza, from her marriage to Todd; her and Burton's adopted daughter, Maria; and 10 grandchildren.


• Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, actor, born 27 February 1932; died 23 March 2011


(THE GUARDIAN)

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 82 (Wednesday 23 March) - Mid Week Blahs

Really I cannot recall for the life of me a single memorable thing that happened today.

Yes I went to work. Not memorable. Well it was but for all the wrong reasons...

I swam. Been there, done that, got the chlorine soaked Tshirt....

Ate food.... you did not?! I did!

So since not much happened, here is a ninja cat in aciton with the tagline:

"Everybody was kung-fu fighting. those cats were fast as lightning.."

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 81 (Tuesday 22 March) - Happy Birthday Beves!

Well technically it was yesterday, and yes, unlike the last three years when I rang him a few days late, this year I called him on the day itself. But in honour of the fact that I forget Steve's birthday (Beves is the nickname I gave him years ago, derived from Stevie Bevie, which in true Aussie fashion got shortened a lot!) more often that I remember, by virtue of the fact he's the first immediate family member to have a birthday in a year (not withstanding my Nanna's in January), I am recording his birthday a day late.

Some traditions should always be honoured don't you think?

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 80 - Bodhi Yeah!

Here's the latest photo of my beautiful nephew, Bodhi, in full partiotic mode and smiling from ear to ear as he always does. Love him to bits!

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 79 (Sunday 20 March) - Oozzzzzze.........

I love lazy days.

So much of my lfie proceeds at a frantic rate of knots, impressive really since I don't even sail, nor do I want to watch anything sailing, that when you can stop dead in your tracks, and meander to no particular rhythm or timetable, it's such a gift.

No, this dog has nothing to do with anything really. I just typed 'gift with bow' into Google and this photo came up. very cute and I'm not even a dog person really!

Today was one of those gift days wrapped up in a pretty bow with metallic paper the colour of neon.

I liked it.

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 78 (Saturday 19 March) - Brunch, Splash, Party

Big action packed day!

First up, we drove Fahmi to Parramatta to collect his car at 7.30 a.m. (yes on a Saturday!).....

Then we had brunch at Cafe Perci in Stanmore - the most divingely delicious soft brioche-based French toast..... YUMMMM...

Then caught the 10.05 train from St Peters, joining our friend John and his twins, Ben and Sophie for swimming lessons at Cook & Phillip pool... each child had to have an adult in the pool with them and so I joined John while my gorgeous guy watched supportively from the side. Then we all joined the kids for a fun swim in the pool before.....

Lunch at MYER foodcourt after watching the Hare Krishna parade down Elizabeth and Market streets...colourful and fun.... the kids loved their KFC food (so did I enjoying a guilty couple of pieces of popcorn chicken which I haven't had in years!), their babycinnos, and I suspect on the way home a good nap...

My beautiful guy and I bade them farewell and went and bought a 60th birthday gift for our other friend John who's party.....

We went to that night at Vamps in Paddington. Great food, lots of fun people to talk to, and quite possibly a little too much wine...home later than expected and very happy to hit the bed at 1 a.m....

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 77 - Current Affairs Ranting

Today, and I am sure you aren't aware of this is Current Affairs Rant Friday, a day greatly treasured by those of us who watch current events and then ponder then deeply and far too often. It's a legacy of years spent reading the Sydney Morning Herald as a child, and studying current affairs, especially pertaining to Asia, at university.

So what's the subject of today's rant you ask eagerly? (You may not eagerly want to know, but please do your best to fake it if you can).

Well, it's Libya and the world's shameful, lagging response to doing anything meaningful about it. It's almost as if they hoped that by dragging it out that Gaddafi would fight back (which he has done) and crush the rebels, thus saving them from doing anything meaningful to assist the rebels, apart from uttering platitudes about how these people are fighting for their freedom, truth, justice and democracy. Oddly though it's not like Gaddafi has been a favourite of the West, although in the last few years he has made the sort of concerted efforts to woo the US and it's allies that would make Julia's recent sucking up to the Americans look like a cold shoulder, but for some reason, the US especially, has chosen to sit back and fiddle while a people shackled for 42 years under an impressive dictatorship find their fight for the sorts of rights the West says they champion being lost.

This is how I imagine the conversations between the USA and it's shamefully gutless allies:

"You know, we should totally do something about Libya."
"Yeah, totally, maybe in like a week or two?"
"Hmm sounds doabale. Maybe we can hold a 'Help Libya Stay Free' conference at St Moritz...."
"....or the south of France? It is nice this time of year and Sarkozy says the croissants in St Tropez are to die for."
"Hmm an unfortunate choice of words don't you think?"
"Oh well, they're going to die anyway."
"Yes but if we do something they won't."
'But we are doing something, in, like a week or two or three which is like totally bitchin' fast in diplomatic circles."
"Please don't say 'bitchin' fast' again. You're like, a 60 year old man for god's sake."
"Right, sorry. Now what are we publicly furious about it but privately complacent?"
"Croissants?"
"Yeah that sounds right....wait, why are we unhappy about croissants?"

....and that my friends is how freedom in the world is supported and upheld by the good people of Europe and the USA! Pity the poor souls of Libya who will be condemned to fear, death and repression for god knows how long again because that beacon of democracy, the West, sees more value in playing power games, and observing diplomatic niceties, that it does in helping real people, facing real life and death situations, to achieve the right to be free and live lives free from fear.

For shame all of you for failing to do the right thing, and yes I think you know what that is! You just choose to ignore right, and real people die....

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 76 - Sugary Goodness of Water

What the?! How, you ask in shock and surprise (yet not awe since that didn't work so well for you, or George Bush, in Iraq), can sugar be good for you, and what on earth is it doing in water?


Well the second question, at least, is one you need to reserve for the good folk at Pumped Water aka Coca-Cola, who in their wisdom have added sugary yumminess to good old water so now you can enjoy lime,or lemon, or Berry Storm or mandarin whenever you feel the urge to quench your thirst.

Yes I know that bottled water is hardly the sort of thing a recycling obsessive like me should be consuming, but now I am heavily committed to eating as healthily as I can most of the time, and exercising, which has meant cutting out Pepsi Max and all sorts of fun food, I am trying to gather the little morsels of fun left to me food and beverage-wise so there is still some fun, however muted to be had when everyone else is comsuming chips and pasta and.....


OK Pumped Water is no cheesecake but it's the best I have got right now....

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 75 - View to a Groundhog

Today, in my continuing effort to share the fabulous minutaie of my life with you, leaving aside bowel movements and laundry, neither of which are pleasant, I decided to show you all the view I get to take in each day as my spot on the railway platform.

As you will agree, it is simply stunning......no, no, it isn't....

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 74 (Tuesday 15 March) - Awww Pur-ty....

I love the 'new' apartment - we have been here 8 months now! - but I do miss the vivid sunsets we used to see at the old place.

But tonight, while I ate my dinner of dahl, chicken tenders and pumkins and watched 3 x  Fringe season 2 episodes with my house mate, I glanced out and saw the most beautiful colours sweeping across the sky.


What a wonderful way to end the day!

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 73 - Kulcha 3

Off to the opera tonight for yet more Kulcha.

My gorgeous guy and I had free tickets to see The Barber of Seville, and so after a dinner at Chez Andre (my place - I went all out with chicken skewers, mashed pumpkin and broccolini, all washed down with fabulous Sydney H2O), we raced into the Opera House, even though I was still recovering from my cold, and on a cold overcast night, would have preferred snuggling under the doona with a good book.... or my guy! Ohh lala!! Yes I did just type that..... and we had a ball!

It was so much bright technicolour fun and was quite possibly the funniest piece of entertainment I have seen in years! I absolutely loved it, and it had us both in fine spirits heading home.

..and thus ends this current batch of Kulcha. Now back to the thrills and spills of pop culture.....

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 72 (Sunday 13 March) Kulcha 2

Yum Cha kicked off the day at Palace Restaurant, during which we began planning this year's Eurovision party in May, and after dropping Kerry off at the Capital Theatre for her third and final performance, Steve and I took the train to Circular Quay and hightailed it across to the Opera House for a performance by the Australian Chamber Orchestra, which my gorgeous guy sees roughly bi-monthly with his good friend, Alan.

I usually love their concerts, and desperately wanted to really love this one since it consisted entirely of 20th Century pieces curated by a man called Alex Ross who says people are too conservative and don't give the new 'classical' music enough time to fully appreciate it. Unfortunately much as I wanted to adore the pieces, disliking as I do, anyone who is so conservative they reject things out of hand before even trying to see what they're like, I really only liked the pieces by Britten (Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge) and Strauss (Metamorphosen). The rest were atonal and slow - my attention dimmed considerably by feeling ridiculously tired from the cold I was battling all weekend - and not to my taste, much as I wanted them to be! But I still really enjoyed the afternoon, mainly because it gave me a chance to share something that my guy loves, and experience it with him. Those moments are always special.

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 71 (Saturday 12 March) - Kulcha 1

I love my friend Kerry (see above). She is fun, optimistic, a fabulous force of nature, over the top in the best possible way, and my dearest friend in the world, that I clicked with instantly back in 1984 when we both started uni together, and with whom I have remained, and will always remain, firm close friends.

She arrived into Sydney this morning - I collected her at the QANTAS Terminal, which I don't usually venture into being a Virgin Blue traveller usually (although after recent delays, that may yet change), and found ir roomy, modern and a delight to browse in, which I ahd to do when Kerry's flight was delayed - and after checking in at my place to drop bags and freshen up, we headed out to Glebe for a yummy brunch at Roxanne's (opposite my Glebe fave eatery, Badde Manors) before I dropped her into the City, after an insane traffic jam, for the first of 3 viewings of The Boy From Oz.

Why three times? If you knew Kerry you wouldn't even think to ask because it's just something my lovely friend does regualrly, but since you asked (yeah, yeah, I know you didn't but let's just pretend you did since it makes the blog flow far more smoothly), she wanted to support her friend, Alex Bryan, who is one of the main dancers in the show, and another close friend of hers.

My gorgeous guy and I decided to join her for just one performance - yeah I know we have no staying power! - that night (Kerry's second performance in a day) with tapas at cafe Asturiana , and a free slushy-type cocktail beforehand (see below), and big smiles from a bright, effusive show that astounded me with it's colour, fun and Todd McKenney's unexpected singing and comic skills. We had a ball!

Hands Full of Glitter and Tofu : 2011 Day 70 (Friday 11 March) - Drinks & Puffs

Drinks and some hot chips at Bar 333 with Warren, Peter and Jonathan before dinner at Thai Paragon in Marrickville with my lovely sweet man.

A perfect end to a frantically busy week.