365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 273 : Duck Again!

Yes I know the ducks only just featured in the blog but frankly they are just so gosh darn cute that I can't resist showing them off again. There is something magical, and de-stressing about seeing wildlife up close and personal, especially in the middle of one of the most unnatural environments in the world - the corporate office.

Very Funny Posters - Be Motivated and Inspired!

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 272 : Fun Things At Work

The company I work for tries very hard, often successfully to make the campus we're based at, fun and funky... or at least as funky as a corporate park can get, which let's face it, is never going to as much giddy haha fun as say a circus or a carnival. One of the things they have done is base all these quirky, brightly-coloured, made-of-metal-scrap animals all around campus, and I love them. They bring a smile to the face, and while they won't lessen the stress of being imprisoned in a cubicle, they do make things a little more fun, and I'll take all the fun I can get at the corporate saltmines...

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 271 : 5 Things in My Bag

My work bag (pictured), which carries my entire work life in its faux-silk lined interior (and which I got for free when I spent $500 at Marcs clothing one night... so was it really free after all?), has many things in it's hold, but here's 5 things that are regularly carried in it.....

1. My USB stick

It's my personal USB stick - as opposed to my microscopically small work one which disproves the thesis that bigger is better... well as least as far as technology is concerned anyway! - and it carries all my blog photos, a copy of my precious novel, amongst all manner of important documents. I guard it with my life - OK no I don't, and wouldn't since it's one USB stick and Big W has more of them, whereas last time I checked they were all out of life replacements for me (which is good because I'd hate to be discounted!) - since it has a lot of very importnat stuff on it.

2. Blackberry

In my case, it's white. Yeah , go figure but how funky is it? It has been christened the Gayberry since one of the Sales manager's customers, who's straight, was worried it made him look 'gay'. I joked back to the Sales manager, mincing in my best queeny voice, "Well you can assure its vvvvvvvvvery gay honey." Deciding that mincing doesn't work for me, I desisted immediately but the name Gayberry stuck.

One thing I can say is that I am not a Crackberry addict. It's so easy for some people to check their emails and SMSs every second of the day and night, but my Gayberry is ignored outside work hours since I am determined to keep some sort of functioning work life balance.

3. iPod

I have spoken often and long of my love for this wonderful device, and as a music addict of long standing, having it with me on the commute to work is wonderful. It allows me to listen to all my new purchases properly, and turns what could be dead commuting time into well spent time.

As does my next purchase....

4. Newspapers and magazines

I am a voracious consumer of media of all sorts, and I have been reading newspapers and magazines for as long as I can remember since my Dad was, and is, a big reader of both types of media. I love being informed, keeping up with current affairs, and expanding my knowledge, and these are perfect on buses and trains where attnetion spans can be short because of the constant disruptions.

5. Bills and letters

Well not so much letters anymore - the email has emerged victorious in that arena - but bills, and things I need to action and the only way to ensure they get a look in is to bring them to work and act on them there. I am getting better at clearing out my bag but there can be quite a stack of them in my bag at any one time and not all of them actioned. I should add to my To Do list.... where's the iPhone?!

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 270 : A Little Tarnish on the Golden Gay Time

I am delighted to be gay.


After years of fighting it as a 'sin' and an evil stain that must be expunged from my life, I came to see that being gay is a gift, and not even remotely a curse. I have a wonderful group of supportive, caring friends, a rich, varied life, and the undying truly authentically beautiful love of a man who I adore back more than words can express.


All sunshiney and lovely, but lately there have been some bizarre minor gnat-like annoying attacks on this happy sense of self, which have left me non-plussed more than angry or upset. First up was two straight guys muttering, as my guy and I walked past them on King Street holding hands (nothing more), that we should 'get a room'. Odd when a straight couple further down the street were sucking off each other's face with all the fervour of a Dyson vaccum cleaner on a cleaning bender.


I tucked it in the back of my mind as just one of those things, till Saturday night when some guys in a car bearing green P-plates drove past us in Darlinghurst (a heavily gay area) and shouted 'Hey look at The Fags!'. Not so much offensive, as amusing, as it wasn't said with any malice I could detect, but odd that we were singled out in the street surging with gay people.

Finally last night I walking to the pub we had dinner at, The Botany View, when a guy leaned out of a car and yelled 'Go away ya pofters!'. This was especially odd since the four us were walking along much as any group of guys would, dressed in very ungay clothing and not throwing glitter around or anything gay-like. Why they would single us out is a mystery and why their puny, stunted brains thinking they have a right to tell me to go away from where I live and they don't is a one of those things I will never adequately work out.


Does it trouble me? Not really on one level, but having been the victim of a lot of gay-themed teasing at school, it does sting to some extent, and I wonder again why the insecure among us can only bolster their teetering egos by laying into others. 


I am happy and secure in who I am. Pity they can't say the same.

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 269 (Sunday 26 Sept) : Eat All the Live-Long Day

Today, was with most weekend days, was defined by eating.

First up was Yum Cha at Kam Fook's Bondi Junction with my delightful friends, Jeff and Jane - Jane acts as my career coach, running as she does a very successful coaching company called Max Coaching - and as always the food was great, and the conversation flowed easily. Only drawback was trady supply of the chilli sauce and the Chinese tea but they were minor glitches in a lovely catch up.

After a quiet afternoon, when I should have gone swimming but didn't (there's always tomorrow!), my gorgeous guy and I met with friends Fahmi, and Steve for another luscious dinner at Botany View Hotel, where I had kangaroo fillets accompanied by a beetroot risotto and chocolate flavoured jus... divine!

Back to lentils and tofu tomorrow!

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 268 (Saturday 25 Sept 2010) : The Brunch of Gods

Somewhere a deligthfully lazy sleep in with my gorgeous man, and my friend Sammi's birthday dinner much later that day at The Passage tapas & wine bar in Darlinghurst - which was a lot of fun, save for one smart alec waiter - my guy cooked me a delicious brunch of smokehouse bacon, pesto & fetta scrambled eggs, sourdough bread and mushrooms, mostly sourced from the local produce of Bathurst where works during the week.

Delicious doesn't begin to describe it, and the loveliest part was that it was all done with love.

A lovely meal with a wonderful guy.

TGIF Fun! My Ownder is an Idiot - Funny Pet Photos

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 267 : Stark Raving Early-in-the-Morning Mad

My name is Andrew and I am mad.


Tongue-lolling, wild-eyed, crazy, seven-different-flavours-of Lithium.... MAD.


Why am I mad, you ask? (See I am even hearing you ask that in my head so that bolsters my case enormously.)


I went out walking this morning after walking last night with plans swim 1.5km tonight and I have to wonder in the near to dawn but not quite there yet light.... am I mad?

Perhaps, and maybe the graffiti (above, that I saw on King Street this morning) is referring to me (hmm paranoia anyone?), but I am also feeling way fitter than I have in the last couple of years, I have lost weight, I feel alert at work (well, mostly), and I am feeling good.

So, yeah, maybe I am mad, but it's working for me.

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 266 : Music is Soothing for the Cubicle-Dwelling Inmate's Soul

It's been one of those days.

Frantic, crazy, busy with lunch eaten inbetween printing off a major pack for a presentation and running to get lunch for one of my bosses.

In the middle of this angst-causing maelstrom, I put on the earphones, fired up the iPod (how I love thee my little musical friend!) and listened to Coldplay's Viva La Vida CD but specifically the song, Lovers in Japan/Reign of Love, which is just heart-warmingly beautiful and a balm for the stress ravaged soul...

Thank you Chris Martin et al....

365 Pink Feather Boas All in a Row - Day 265 : Get Your Gleek On, Jiffy Shurtuff!

Two things..... One funny and one fabulous....

Funny...

My lovely friend Justin sent me some Ghiradelli chocolates he had bought me when he was in San Francisco recently - couriered all the way from far away North Ryde to my work place - and he sent it in a bag manufactured by Jiffy Shurtuff, a US plastics packaging company. So when I was sent the email by the mailroom saying who the package was from, who's name made it onto the email? Yep Jiffy Shurtuff, my bestest buddy!

Fabulous....


The first episode of the new (second) season of Glee was on TV tonight! Enough said...

OK not really.... the episode was wonderful, fantastically funny and touching all at once, and Jane Lynch as Sue Sylvester had some golden lines including references to hillbillies having sex with the exhaust pipes of 'certain off road vehicles', and some of her students being so eager to join the Cheerios (cheerleading squad) that they lined up all Summer to sign up, getting so deluded in the process that 'several of them started worshipping a possum carcass as their one true god'..... and the music? Gorgeous!

An absolute camp blast of fun, music and heart. Love it! (No, not you McDonalds - man it is not all about you! IN my case, it's never about you!)