Project 289 - Day 126 : Terrible Tuesday Rears its Many Statistics-Tentacled Head Again

I am not a fan of Tuesdays.

They are weird in between days that don't really serve much of a purpose - Monday is the day we dread, Wednesday is the happy half way point, Thursday is almost Friday, and Friday is the blessed end of the week! But Tuesday? - and it's also the day the Management Team of my Division have their major weekly meeting, the centrepiece of which is Trading, a discussion of well the business is doing.

It involves a lot of work, and stress, and while I have collating it down to a fine art, it is still something I am glad to be done with, and I always look forward to the end of Tuesday.

Project 289 - Day 125 : Outback with Sammi!

Tonight I went out to dinner with my lovely gal pal from work, Sammi to that bastion of fine eating, Outback Steakhouse.

It's pretense to be a chain of authentically Aussie cuisine is amusing in the USA (where buffalo wings are known as 'kookaburra wings', and 'Bloomin Onion' is a favourite dish), but damn near hilarious in Australia. But bizarre market positioning aside, the service is great, the food is yummy (my pork spare ribs were to die for! But thankfully I didn't, which saved Sammi the bother of dragging my body into the boot of her car), and it gives us a good chance to catch up on everything and anything in a relaxed fun atmosphere.

Just please stop pretending that real Aussies eat this stuff in their homes!

Project 289 - Day 124 : Fire!!! Or My Possible Could-Have-Been-Life-Threatening Brush with a Fiery Death

The day had been delightfully uneventful - a leisurely Yum Cha brunch with my good friend Peter, shopping with my beautiful guy and Peter, followed by a nap - when suddenly all hell broke loose!

My beautiful guy had no sooner stepped into the apartment that the fire alarm went off in the building and we were forced to run for our lives, flames licking at our heels, the screams of our neighbours echoing in the packed stairwell as we leapt two stairs at a time, desperate to escape the inferno threatening to consume us.... we barely escaped with our lives, and as the sounds of "We May Never Love Like This Again" ran around and through us like a demented sonic puppy, we paused to consider how close we had come to dying, and gave thanks for this wonderful second chance at life when we would never take anything for granted again and...

Oh all right.... the fire alarm went off, I changed from my tracky daks from my jeans (as if I was going to flee for my life, well potentially, in tracky daks!), we walked down the stairs, stood outside in the cold till the firemen said we could go back in....

See that wasn't nearly as dramatic as the bit was it?

Now as I was saying..... debris were raining down upon us as we ran for our lives, wondering if we would .......

Project 289 - Day 123 : Yum Cha Cha Cha : Dumplings with Ellen & Tracy

By some bizarre happenstance - OK not so bizarre really but I love using that word and all it implies - I ended up eating lots of Yum Cha this weekend and today was the first serving...

..... with my wonderful friends, Ellen & Tracy, and my beautiful guy at The Marigold on George Street... we ate truckloads of dumplings, sticky rice, mango pancakes and fried rice noodles, all the time catching up on 8 months worth of news.... yes it had been that long! How did I remember that since I can barely remember what I had for breakfast yesterday (well, most days anyway)?

Well every time I see Ellen I give her my old "Empire" magazines and I had 8 months worth to hand over this time! Oops! It kind of shamed us into catching up more regularly and so the next catch up is a mere 3 months away!

It should make for a lighter bag for Ellen next time!

Project 289 - Day 122 : St Peters Parade

Every morning, an eclectic group of commuters move with great speed and purpose up to St Peters station, racing to catch the next in Cityrail's long line of trains that may or may not turn up on time. 

Every weekday evening, the same commuters walk back down the same hill, one after another, back to the apartment blocks that crowd the streets of Erskineville and Alexandria.

This delightful rite, which would no doubt keep an army of social anthropologists in orgasms of delight for decades as they decoded it's significance ("Um, I owe VISA and Mastercard lots of money?"), is affectionately known by those who participate in it as the "St Peters Parade", and tonight I captured the Parade in all it's glory, all blurry, colourful and full-on, as I walkws, without stopping.....

Project 289 - Day 121 (Thursday 16 July 2009) : I am the King of the Medical Clinics!

I hurt my back on Sunday.

It didn't get better so I went to the doctor in Newtown and the physio in Bondi Junction (BJ) on Monday.

Some improvement but back to the physio in BJ on Tuesday.

The stabbing pain ebbed but back to the physio in BJ on Wednesday.

Back at work on Thursday but off to the physio in Chatswood for more heatpacks and poking and prodding.

I am now a citizen of medical clinics.....

God help me....

Project 289 - Day 120 : In Bed All Day with Ellen, Whoopi and Barbara...

No I haven't turned straight! Although what gay man worth his Dolce and Gabbana wouldn't want to spend quality time with the delightful Ellen DeGeneres, Whoopis Goldberg or Barbara Walters?

Yes I became a slave to day time TV although I didn't watch those execrable infomercial shows in during the morning which frankly are like watching one very badly produced commercial, and feature products I have no desire to buy at all....

The usual culprits featured today - stiff sore back (stiffer than yesterday alas), Zoltaren, Deep Heat, lots of bed rest, heat packs and my back exercises..... I think I am beginning to reach the point where work is looking mighty attractive....I must be sick!!!

Project 289 - Day 119 (Tuesday 14 July 2009) : More Zoltaren That You Can't Poke a Stick At (Thanks to Your Sore Back)

Tonight was French National Day and in honour of the French storming the Bastille, I ate some petits fours. I meant to eat a croissant too but forgot.....

.... that's largely because I spent my day trying to get comfortable. So the day, in thrilling fashion, consisted largely of me applying heat packs, Deep Heat to my own back (fun when you have limited movement - thank god no one was around with a video camera otherwise I'd have been on YouTube in a flash!), lying in bed, and going to the physio again (a journey in itself thanks to the drive in a non-ergonomic car seat)...

The day was finished in the loveliest way possible by dear beloved man coming over and cooking me a delicious stir fry from scratch (he's so clever!) and applying the Deep Heat again while we watched the first episode of the new Torchwood series, "Children of Earth"....

Project 289 - Day 118 (Monday 13 July 2009) : Paging Nurse Beautiful Guy

Yesterday if you recall I threw my back into less than pleasurable spasms (that's assuming there are pleasurable ones!) when I tried to dry my left foot with a towel (just for the record I had successfully dried the rest of my body before that!)....

... I thought I was OK going to bed, with just a small amount of pain as I turned in bed. But as the night wore on, my back got tighter and tighter, and more and more sore, and every movement became a massive effort, resulting at one stage in a cry of pain that amazingly did not wake my house mate. So my plans to go to work, and tough it out (yep I am the original He-Man! But without the toy action figure) went out the window (not thrown by me as that would have hurt too much!) and I spent the day seeing the doctor (and acquiring a script for heavy duty Zoltaren, a pain killer, that became a very good friend indeed; alas I haven't become addicted to it which completely crushes any idea of a 'Andrew Beats Pain Killer Addiction' telemovie! Damn it!) and my friend, Justin's physio who did all sorts of warming and oil-related things to my back which was so soothing.

Then that night my darling man came around, cooked me a delicious pasta dinner (refusing to let me help, which was so hard to observe as I am so used to looking after others) and then put some Deep Heat on me before leaving me with a hot pack to warm my pack as I drifted off to sleep....

Project 289 - Day 117 : Tragedy! When You Around and Your Greek Pants Fall Down, Its a Tragedy.....

Today I saw "Phedre" at the Dendy Opera Quays, which is a play written by a Frenchman in 1677 full of ancient Greeks infighting, committing real or imagined incest, and indulging in an orgy of violence and death.... just another day at the Oedipal office for the ancient Greeks really. It's a wonder they had the time to create civilisation as we know it with all that going on.....

Diary entries must have been like :

10.00 Philosophise on nature of being

11.00 Murder step sister who is sleeping with my son's best friend

12.00 Lunch

13.30 Calculate Pi to 1000 places

15.00 Bring curse onto my adulterous wife - death at sea by Neptune's hand or crushed by a thunderbolt from Zeus?

Just exhausting! ..... thing is the play was brilliant, starred Helen Mirren and the delectable Dominic Cooper ('Mamma Mia'), and is part of a strategy by the National Theatre in UK to film their plays and broadcast them around the world. Great to get some Kulcha.

Only downside was throwing out my back which occurred when I was drying myself off after a shower. I didn't really feel the effects till that evening (although sitting in the cinema proved uncomfortable) when I was lying in bed......

It began a very painful life.....thank goodness the play was really good....

Project 289 - Day 116 (Saturday 11 July 2009) : Hugs, Disney, and a Late Night Curry

This is Day 3 of the week My Body Became Freaking Ungrateful.

After mostly filling it with healthy foods, fairly bursting with nutrients, and vitamins and minerals (but not heavy metals like mercury which are, I'm reasonably sure, not good for you unless you want to mutate into a three armed, blind monster... not a career choice of mine), and making sure I got enough sleep, walked and swam, and slathered it in moisturisers and youth-sustaining cosmetics, what does my body do? How does it repay all that hard work to keep it....um...not dead?

It swells up a gel sac in my right heel to the point where walking is very painful (OK to be fair the swelling was the result of too tight very funky black leather shoes that I persisted in wearing too work for too long but still....); so painful in fact, that I have to cancel all my activities on Saturday bar lunch with beautiful guy and my friend Fahmi, and spent the day curled up on my bed.... alas no trips to Oxford Street to farewell my friend Jason as he leaves for a year in East Timor, or to see my beautiful guy's friend, Sam, as he leaves for Melbourne....

The one BIG compensating factor, and this is HUGE, is I got to spend the day curled up in bed WITh my beautiful guy eating yummy curries (see above), and watching family movies like "Princess Diairies 2".... yep hard living was had by, um, not us!!! So I guess I can at least thank my body for some unscheduled quiet couple time so maybe it doesn't hate as much as I thought.....

Project 289 - Day 115 : My Right Heel Demanded To be Taken Home....

....with or without the rest of my body.....

After my visit to the doctor yesterday, when I eschewed the vile sausage factory that is the US-like medical practice I was going to, and went to a real surgery instead where the doctors smile and greet you (!!), I discovered that the cause of all the pain in my right heel was an inflamed gel sac behind the achilles tendon. The doctor went to a lot of trouble to diagnose and work out treatments for me (see the picture), which I appreciated, since my achilles tendons, operated on at the age of 8 and never very strong, need lots of TLC to make sure they keep holding my legs up. 

I followed up the visit to the doctor, with an afternoon of sloth and indolence in my bed, and kept out of my shoes, and by this morning, my heel seemed much happier. It didn't last. Lots of walking to the train station, to the bus, through the campus etc and my heel was throbbing and demanding to rest again. I stuck it out till 1pm but then hobbled home to rest my foot and work out what I can and can't do this weekend, with my heel not in a good place, and very much calling the shots.

Yes, folks, my life, is currently being ruled by a ligament.... aren't I the lucky one?

Project 289 - Day 114 : All Zara, All the Time

Yes I am in grave danger of turning into the proud uncle who keeps showing pics of his gorgeously adorable niece at each and every opportunity......

.....wait a second....yep I have already turned into that annoying person and I am officially going to annoying the living hell out of all of you with photo and anecdote - she moves her hands so cutely! Did you see her squint her eyes then? What tiny hands! - of my lovely sweet cute niece. So since I have morphed into that person overnight, let me regale you with more shots of my niece with various family members.....

(1) Zara with her doting mum and dad

(2) Zara with my Dad

(3) Zara with my Mum

(4) Zara with my brother Steve

(5) Zara with my sister Rachel

(6) Zara and her great-grandmother (my Nanna)

That's it for now but you know there will be more photos! Of course there will be!!

Project 289 - Day 113 : For Unto Us Is Born a Daughter, a Grandchild....and a Niece

Today Zara Chantilly Fergus was born!!

I am still awaiting all the length and weight details, but here is the first picture of my darling new niece, taken by her proud father on his mobile phone and sent through with all the speed an adoring new dad can muster. He gushed to my mum that Zara is "beautiful" (and she is), and Helen, my sister and delighted new mum, said she is "very cute" (and yes she definitely is!). I always knew I'd be excited but just how excited I am has been a revelation!

It's a big deal to have the first new addition to the family in 31 years, since the youngest of my siblings, Rachel, was adopted from South Korea, and everyone is excited. Having a child at Christmas will change the vibe completely, and I am looking forward to being doting Unka Andrew. (The photo below shows lovely congratulatory messages from my Facebook friends).

Woohoo!!! What a fabulous day!!!

***********************************************

That evening, my beautiful guy and I went out with my friend, Fahmi to the local pub, The Union to celebrate Zara's arrival. We had some champagne, toasted my darling new niece, and had a delicious dinner (this is one pub with excellent food!). 

It was the perfect ending to what was a wonderfully happy day.

(1) My beautiful guy and I toast Zara

(2) My friend, Fahmi

Project 289 - Day 112 : They Call Him Sushi! Sushi! Faster Than Lightning...

I love sushi.

It's delicious, healthy, and here on campus, the Sushi Roll place is staffed by the friendliest Japanese people so that buying lunch, even on a busy day (and with 6000 people on campus, every lunch time is busy!), becomes an enjoyable experience.

So as part of my "This is my life" series on the blog, and who doesn't enjoy a series examining the banal aspects of someone's life (next week I watch paint dry - it's fun! Wheee!), I give you one of my favourite choices for lunch.....

...or dinner..... but not breakfast.... I tried pouring milk on sushi one day and frankly.... not so much....

Project 289 - Day 111 : Oh the Fantasies of Train-Moving Bureaucrats

Oh to live in the magical gilded world of CityRail!

If I lived there, I wouldn't actually need to:

(1) Get to my job on time and I could potentially wait as long as necessary for the next train, assuming I even bothered to go to work at all.

(2) Cancel parts of my job at will, with no consequences to me (although those depending on me would be massively impacted. My care factor? Sub-zero and counting downwards, ever downwards!)

(3) Ask the people affected by my blithe attitude to my job, and addiction to doing as little as possible, to inconvenience themselves to work around my on-a-whim announcements

.... and if you were a citizen of RailCorp land too, you could ride the gravy train to Corruption Land, all the while not lifting a finger to doing anything meaningful. What a happy world that would be, not to mention corpulent and affluent as hell!!

>>>> all this sarcastic ranting and raving springs from my delightful commute to work this morning where CityRail in short order:

(a) cancelled a train but never announced they had. The train simply never showed up!

(b) Kindly sent along the next train which with two trains worth of people on it was so full that I daresay there are sardines with more personal space than we had! To top that off, the CityRail driver then had the audacity to request that "this train is really full. Please catch the next one." Which may or may not turn up, and after you've waited 15 minutes longer than necessary for your non-arriving usual train!

(c) They then sent the train the wrong way around the City Circle, delaying me even further.

Now I am not in the best of moods on Monday generally, and this really didn't help! Thank goodness for my iPod, the novel I was reading and "The Sydney Morning Herald", all of which saved my sanity on a very trying morning.

Project 289 - Day 110 (Sunday 5 July, 2009) : Yum.. Yum ..Yum Yum Yum Yum Yum Yum Yum Yum...Cha!

Here I am at the Palace Restaurant in Piccadilly Arcade, City with my very good friend, Jason (brown vest) and my gorgeous guy.

Jason works advising on HIV/AIDS health policy and is about to leave for a year in that tropical idyll East Timor.... well, when it isn't in political, economic or social flux that is!! It can be an emotionally taxing place to be since the infrastructure is limited, social diversions few (unless you're on the U.N. gravy train! Then it's wine, women, and cheaps groceries!!), and unless you develop some good friendships, which thankfully Jason has, a lonely place to be. The upshot for Jason is the chance to be on the ground floor shaping policy and the challenge of assisting a newly emerging country to craft it's social policy.

I will miss him being in Sydney though - we are very much on the same wavelength and it's one of those friendships where the sharing is deep and often. But thanks to Facebook, Twitter, email and roaming, and maybe Skype (if I ever get it uploaded!!), the distances aren't that vast....

.... and in the meantime, there's Yum Cha.....

Project 289 - Day 109 (Saturday 4 July, 2009): File When Your Heart Is Breaking

I have a highly sophisticated filing system. No, I really do....

It begins with opening my mail or returning from shopping. The bills, statements and credit card slips are carefully tossed like an ingredient into an unruly garden salad, into the Daly Male bag above. It may look like a recipe for unmitigated chaos, but is in fact a highly honed system of barely controlled chaos, from which I manage to extract credit card slips, when necessary, with miraculous ease. Yes it takes hours to find a required statement or credit card slip, but my dogged persistence usually pays off, and I emerge triumphant vowing to file with far greater efficiency in the future.

But what usually happens is that any paperwork I need easier access to ends up in a jumbled pile under the cane stands that support my stereo speakers, yearning to be placed into the carefully labelled, and chronically underused manila folders in the plastic tubs in my walk in wardrobe..... point in my my favour is that the folders are very nicely labelled. Not used well, but labelled, and really that what you want in a filing system..... I mean who actually uses it? Please....... when there are perfectly good shopping bags to stuff paperwork into, never to be seen again....

THEY SAID WHAT?!!

12 of the finest (unintentional) double-entendres ever aired on British TV and radio

1. Ted Walsh - Horse Racing Commentator - 'This is really a lovely horse. I once rode her mother.'

2. New Zealand Rugby Commentator - 'Andrew Mehrtens loves it when Daryl Gibson comes inside of him.'

3. Pat Glenn, weightlifting commentator - 'And this is Gregoriava from Bulgaria . I saw her snatch this morning and it was amazing!'

4. Harry Carpenter at the Oxford-Cambridge boat race 1977 - 'Ah, isn't that nice. The wife of the Cambridge President is kissing the Cox of the Oxford crew.'

5. US PGA Commentator - 'One of the reasons Arnie ( Arnold Palmer) is playing so well is that, before each tee shot, his wife takes out his balls and kisses them . Oh my god !! What have I just said??'

6. Carenza Lewis about finding food in the Middle Ages on 'Time Team Live' said: 'You'd eat beaver if you could get it.'

7. A female news anchor who, the day after it was supposed to have snowed and didn't, turned to the weatherman and asked, 'So Bob, where's that eight inches you promised me last night?' Not only did HE have to leave the set, but half the crew did too, because they were laughing so hard!

8. Steve Ryder covering the US Masters: 'Ballesteros felt much better today after a 69 yesterday.'

9. Clair Frisby talking about a jumbo hot dog on 'Look North' said: 'There's nothing like a big hot sausage inside you on a cold night like this. '

10 Mike Hallett discussing missed snooker shots on 'Sky Sports': 'Stephen Hendry jumps on Steve Davis's misses every chance he gets.'

11. Michael Buerk on watching Philippa Forrester cuddle up to a male astronomer for warmth during BBC1's UK eclipse coverage remarked: 'They seem cold out there. They're rubbing each other and he's only come in his shorts.'

12. Ken Brown commentating on golfer Nick Faldo and his caddie Fanny Sunneson lining-up shots at the Scottish Open: 'Some weeks Nick likes to use Fanny; other weeks he prefers to do it by himself.'

Project 289 - Day 108 : I'm On the Bus to Somewhere

Do the wheels of the bus go round and round?

I pondered that deeply existential question as my commuter bus crossed the Harbour Bridge today, and concluded that, in the absence of a bone-jarring shuddering halt, followed by a sickening plunge into the harbour below, that the wheels did indeed go round and round. Happy with my resolution of this philosophical query, I sat back and admired the stellar view I get each morning as the bus crosses the Bridge and I take in the City skyline, Circular Quay (which, let's face it, looks more like a squashed donut that was put at the bottom of the shopping bag under the bulk tin of canned tomatoes), the Opera House (seen in the picture below through the charming anti-suicide fencing along the Bridge's length), and Fort Dennison, all set against the sunshine-dappled beauty of Sydney's greatest asset - the Harbour.

It is easy to take this gorgeous view for granted, and truth be told many mornings I do what my fellow commuters in the photo below do, and either stare straight ahead (snug in my iPod buttressed sonic world of my own), or read the latest fabulous must-read tome in my bag, but every so often I glance up, and rediscover the fact that though my commute takes it an awful lot of less than attractive freeway (to those members of the Freeway Lovers Society of Australia, I say - for god's sake it a piece of ugly bitumen! Get a new hobby NOW!), that it starts in a beautiful, iconic place, and I should be grateful for that.....