Smaller.

85.1, and I can fit into my clothes again.

Owen who?

There were stories in the papers a couple of days ago that Owen Wilson (or as one of my colleagues asked, "Owen who?") had attempted suicide. Apparently in a very girly look-at-me sort of way. What really struck me was that later that day two of the top five most-viewed articles in the Sydney Morning Herald online were about Mr Wilson, and three of the top ten. What about dear old Melbourne, The Age? One of the top five, and one of the top ten. Conclusive proof - as if you actually need it - that Melbourne a much more refined city.

And speaking of the kind of rubbish that ends up in Sydney newspapers, there's a slim chance I'll be in the Sun-Herald on Sunday, in the social pages. Whahey!

Metal head

I had a titanium screw inserted into my upper jaw yesterday. No, it wasn't just for fun. I lost a tooth there years ago, and after a bit of drama with a wisdom tooth impacting another molar I ended up earlier this year with one all by itself at the back of my jaw. I wasn't too concerned (even though I did look a bit like a Collingwood supporter) but my dentist sent me to a fancy specialist who took one look (and an x-ray, and a bit of poking around) and said I'd need a very expensive procedure. Well he would, wouldn't he? It's like whenever I've taken a car in to have something done, the car guy looks at the car, looks at me, shakes his head, sucks his breath in through his teeth and says I need to have the whole transmission replaced or something. How can I argue?

So I went in to get it done yesterday. After the anesthetic was in (which isn't fun) it wasn't too bad. I held my head still while he poked and sawed away at the bone, issuing very cryptic instructions to the nurse, then, when a second nurse joined in issuing instructions to both of them in an agreeably crisp manner. I was a bit worried when the second nurse joined in - I hoped it wasn't all becoming some sort of horrible dental emergency. But no, it was fine. It's very disconcerting how, even with the anesthetic, you can feel the grind of metal against bone. Dentists take me pretty seriously because I'm antibody-positive for HepC so they always put on spacesuits to go anywhere near me.

The thing with the two dental nurses reminded me of a dentist I used to go to in New York, when I first had problems with this particular tooth. She was recommended to me by a colleague, and had an office in what was then the Pan Am building. Yes, I'm showing my age. She had a devoted mostly-male clientele. She was a pneumatic blonde woman who used to wear a white dental coat with nothing underneath it. No, the nothing underneath is just my imagination, but the same thought did occur to all of her clients, or at least all the ones I checked with.

Gas

I don't drive that often (I don't have a car in Sydney, so it's really only when I'm down in Melbourne) and I do quite enjoy it. I'm not crazy about traffic and parking but the rest is pretty fun. But I do get stuck in a kind of existential tail-spin when I go to a gas station to buy gas (and yes, I know australians usually say 'service station' and 'petrol', but I got into the habit when I lived in the US. A harmless affectation?).

First, I have to make sure I'm not buying gas from an evil company (Mobil being the prime example), and if I can, I'll go for BP and Shell (although isn't Shell just a bit evil?) I'm not obsessive about it, but unless the car's really running out I'll usually wait until I find a gas station that I'm comfortable with. But there are some where I'm not sure. What about Caltex (I can't remember its moral provenance) or some of the no-name ones? And what about 7-11? Does the fact that they sell slurpees make up for any ideological shortfall in the gas? I suspect so. Any enterprise that makes slurpees can't be all bad.

That's just to start. The gas station near where my ex lives, when you buy gas the guy asks 'do you have coupons?'. I've been asked this before and it always sets me to panicking. Should I have coupons? Am I paying twice as much as everyone else? Or are the coupons themselves evil in some way? Because of my training and my work, I cling to the belief that if you're in something and you can't immediately see who's being played for a sucker, it's you. So I'm very mistrustful of the whole thing, and I wish they'd just the same price for gas no matter what sort of stupid card you have.

At the Coles supermarket near my ex's place (she seems to be in a Bermuda triangle of annoying loyalty schemes) as they're putting your stuff through the checkout they ask whether you have a fly-buys card. I know nothing about this scheme, almost deliberately, but my instincts tell me it's just plain wrong. I feel like standing as tall as I can and saying "do I look like the sort of person who'd have fly-buys?" but I resist the temptation, although I did do something like this recently when someone asked me for a light for a cigarette.

Minibar. Water?

I know I'm easily shocked, but there was an article in the SMH (and the age) that moved me to new heights of righteous disapproval. According to some (not doubt fatuous and non-rigorous) survey, by far the most popular item in hotel minibars is bottled water. That's right, water. Now, I can understand if you're in Mumbai or Mogadishu and not awfully keen on drinking the water, but this 'survey' was in Australia and NZ.

"The biggest change we have seen in the last five years in terms of mini bar usage is the huge increase in guests consuming water from the mini bar. A decade ago this would almost have been unheard of," Gaynor Reid, Media Relations Manager for Accor, says.

Women are more likely to sip the mini bar water, with three quarters of women drinking the water according to the Accor staff survey.

The gender thing was interesting too. Men are still partial to beer and chips, which reassures me.

When I travel on business - which I used to do a lot - I'm famous for being a cheap date. I never get stuff from the minibar, I never have the $50 hotel breakfast, I don't get fleeced by cab drivers. Although I have to say the breafast at the Radisson in Bogota is excellent, especially if you make friends with the guy who does the local specialties (and no, not those ones. I'm just an adventurous eater).

My favorite business travel factoid is the one about how the average length that people watch pay-per-view adult movies in hotels is seven minutes. You only need to think about this for a split-second before you see how funny and sad this is. I once tried to source the statistic and I suspect it was just made up, but has been perpetuated because it's got such truthiness. (By which I mean it sounds like it could or should be true, and therefore shouldn't really be checked. It's a Colbertism, I think.)

Brissie broad

I was on the gentlemen's flight this morning, the 0715. Which is late, but not late enough to be classed as a Chairman's flight (there's a whole language around this stuff). The young woman sitting next to me had chemically-blonde and straightened hair, very tight designer jeans and (as I saw to my horror when she got up) pink flowery stiletto shoes. She was reading the Daily Telegraph and very carefully tore the horoscope page out, then from the horoscope page neatly tore out the forecast for two star signs. I had to restrain myself from grabbing her arm and saying "Love, you know you're going to Melbourne, right...?"

Rudd scores!

I've been following the story about Kevin Rudd going to Scores a few years ago. It's great. For one thing, it does kind of humanise him a bit, it shows he's not the evil dentist we all imagine him to be. I'm impressed and also a little horrified that he called his wife the next morning though.

But why is everyone calling Scores a 'strip club'? I started making this point at work but had to stop because people were concerned I was about to violate one of our HR policies in some way, but what I was saying was that it's a lapdance joint. The women don't strip, in the sense of getting all their clothes off. You can't do that in the US, and my understanding of these matters is that that's one of the things that Canada's for.

I went to Scores once, probably about 10 years ago. I went with my mate Jim, who was an old business school friend. It was February 13th, the night before Valentine's Day, and he suggested we go for a bit of a treat. I remember it as being a fairly depressing and tawdry setup (I'm waaay too sensitive). Jim and I got a lapdance from a grimly-determined blonde woman in her early 30s. At one point I made the mistake of looking into her eyes, and for a split-second we were wallowing in contempt and shame. (Actually, I doubt she felt anything. But like I said, I'm too sensitive for this world.)

Jim and i spilled out of Scores at about 1130, and he reminded me that it was Valentine's Day the next day. We both bought roses for our wives and bid each other goodbye. It was bitterly cold, snow and ice everywhere. I caught the train home to Connecticut and very cleverly (I thought) left the roses outside so she wouldn't find them, that way it'd be more of a surprise.

Next morning I was in a huge amount of trouble for staying out late (and I just said I'd been out for a drink) and, I suspect, for forgetting Valentine's Day, even though we'd agreed not to observe. And the roses? The lovely roses I was planning on producing with a flourish to make everything ok? They'd frozen solid on the back steps.

Facebook

I got a message on facebook from a 21yo woman in Melbourne. She says, "My mum would like you :) ".

I was reading Christopher Hitchens' "God's not great" on the train today, and there are an actual joke in it. I'm a big Hitchens fan, and I love the way he writes (his piece on Mother Theresa was fabulous, for example) but the book's a bit disappointing. Anyway, he tells a joke. I expect I'm the only person in the word who hadn't already heard this. Here we go...

A bhuddist says to a hot-dog vendor "Can you make me one with everything?" Well, that's enough for me. But then it goes on. When the vendor gives the bhuddist the hotdog, the bhuddist gives the vendor $20. And then waits. Nothing happens. Finally the bhuddist says "I'm waiting for my change...". and the vendor shakes his head ruefully and says "Change has to come from within.."

On a vaguely-related topic, I went to yoga again last night, for the first time in months. I didn't end up serene and blissful. Just very stiff and sore.

Travel

I got a call last night from a friend in Melbourne who's planning a trip to London and Rome in a couple of months time and wanted to see what's the best way to do it. I get so excited about planning travel (even someone else's) that I get all twitchy, so as we were chatting - her job, relationships - I was feverishly pricing up various combinations of airfares, working out shadow prices for frequent flier points and trying to work out what were her critical dates. I so get off on this, my ex always thought I could have been a travel agent if the whole international finance thing hadn't got in the way. In some ways it was more fun before the internet, when research was quite a bit trickier. I remember once having an argument with a travel agent about whether there was, in fact, a direct flight between Pyongyang and Beijing, but she'd dealt with me before and knew not to jump to conclusions. (It's Air Koryo, and it's most definitely not recommended if you have a scorching hangover. Now there's a tip.)

England

I got a call last night from my friend J asking if I wanted to come see "This is England" with her and her boyfriend. I loved it, as I knew I would, for variety of reasons. For a start, it was very well-written and exquisitely well-acted. Also, in parts, very funny. But what appealed to me (and this is why J asked me - she knows I lived in the UK for quite a while) was that it correctly portrayed England as a desolate hell-hole full of violent drunks.

And - I can hear you asking - what's with the glamour pic? After the movie, I had a drink with J and her bf, then had to leave at 10pm because I had to 'meet someone', which caused a great deal of speculation. But what it was was that a friend of mine had recommended a photographer who lives near me and I wanted to get some nice shots to I can look back at them when I'm an old(er) man and say "yes, that's what I looked like". Although of course they're so artfully posed and selected that it's debateable whether I do, in fact, look like this....

Temple

The Greek God thing below reminded me of something my ex once said. I was on one of my periodic health kicks, and when I'm on one of those I can get a wee bit self-righteous (but in a semi-ironic way, or course). When I'm offered something, my usual response is a rueful smile, then "I'd love to, but my body is a temple".

She must have heard it one time too many, because she said "yes, and it's one of those ruined temples they find in the jungle, with monkeys swinging in it". Which, you have to admit, is pretty good.

If you insist.

July 25, I made the mistake of writing that my body was like a greek god's, but only from the back. I've been challenged on it. A slight exaggeration.

Bonobos

There's a lovely article in the New Yorker (July 30) which I've been reading in fits and starts over the last few days, about how bonobos might not be the hippy chimps of popular legend, which of course would be interesting anyway in a mean-hearted revisionist way (because bonobos are so often wheeled out as political symbols) but what struck me was how breathtakingly well it was written (by Ian Parker, who I've never noticed before). It's in that great tradition of New Yorker articles about stuff that you really couldn't care much less about but which you read anyway because they're so beautifully-written - the fabled (and apocryphal)16-page article about zinc, for example.

I waded through the first few pages, on the train, in the supermarket checkout, then, later, at the thai place around the corner, having a bowl of plain rice because it was all could keep down, when I came upon this. He's describing going into the jungle with an expedition to camp out for a few months. There's him, the sullen and difficult german scientist who leads the expedition and a few others, including a languid young american man, Matthews, who'd answered an online ad to be the camp's manager. He descibes the things they take with them, and it's all very practical and ascetic (the german has a pennkife and a copy of 'the pillars of wisdom'). Then, he tells us:

"Matthews was carrying more. As we discovered over time, his equipment included a fur hat, a leather-bound photo album, an inflatable sofa, and goggles decorated with glitter."

Is it just me, or is this just great? I especially love the way he's inserted over time, so you can almost imagine over the succeeding weeks and months the expedition members being introduced to this stuff piece by piece, with, one assumes, mounting incredulity. On the same page, this line, after an airborne mishap involving liquid nitrogen "Meanwhile Matthews told his mother, 'the plane seems to be filling with smoke', at which point his phone dropped the call".

It goes on like this - later, he describes a particular male bonobo "... his hair looking as if he'd just taken off Darth Vader's helmet, his expression grave".

I'm a sucker for this sort of stuff.

I so want one.. but no, not in THAT way

At lunchtime I went down to the apple store (no, there's not an Apple Store in Sydney, but it's the best we can do) to check out the new Imacs. Ooooohhh! I'm almost at the point where I can justify upgrading from my current 4 year old G4 powerbook and I'm teasing myself by looking at all the new stuff. The old powerbook's still great, in fact, but it's lost a key and if I run all the iLife07 applications at once (especially garageband!) it gets a bit cranky.

I love the new 20" iMacs, but before I get all hot under the collar I have to remind myself that I do about half of my computer time-wasting while I'm in bed, and much as I love the sleek look and shiny hi-res screen of the iMac, I'm not sure it'd be so great in the sack.

Progress

I managed to eat some rice yesterday and some bread. And when I slept (which was a lot) I didn't have fast-food nightmares. Instead I had travel nightmares - one where I was on a plane to LA, and just as we were landing when I went to get my blue gymbag from the overhead lockers (although in the dream they were at floor level; also the seats were in rows parallel to the fuselage, so they all face outwards) it wasn't there. It was someone else's and so I didn't have my passport or anything. LAX is bad enough at the best of times but arriving as an undocumented alien would be a nightmate (!??!!). I was aware that it was in fact a dream and I managed to snap out of it, woke up shivering and sweating. Then another travel-related one. I took a train to Bendigo (why? Who knows) and when it stopped for a few minutes somewhere I got off the train to take a photo of it (again, why?) and got stuck. I had, of course, left my gym bag with all my guff in the train. I fell in with some vaguely hippie-ish people who said they'd drive me to Bendigo, but they kept dithering. We stopped to sleep, then to eat, one of the hippyish women hit on me (but it wasn't that sort of dream) and eventually I got completely fed up. I can't remember how it panned out, but I remember the lunch we went to. Lovely hillside spot, picnic tables, lots of people. Everyone was blissed-out but I was seething. As you'd expect, there were railroad tracks next to the picnic tables. I don't think any of this is worth mentioning to Peter tomorrow.

I had congee for lunch - or as we used to call it in Singapore, 'porridge'. My sons spent part of their childhoods in Singapore and have fond memories of (rice) porridge, roti prata, chicken rice... I know it gets pilloried as 'the Winnipeg of the Far East' but it's a lot more interesting than that (I won't elaborate much, but heat and boredom make people do very strange things sometimes) and the food's grrrreat.

Crook. And burgers.

I was looking after my kids on the weekend (I have a few of them) and two of them had some gastric virus that's been going around. Great. And now I've got it as well - nausea, aches and pains, extreme tiredness. But luckily, no vomiting or [that's enough detail]. All I had to eat yesterday was 2 weetbix and a banana, and I came home from work at lunchtime and went to bed almost fully clothed (i took my shoes and pants off, that was it). Slept most of the afternoon, and had very strange and vivid dreams, as you often do when you're feverish. One particular dream was that McDonalds were selling a burger called a 'double-pounder', which has, as you'd expect, eight times the meat of a quarter-pounder. This was particularly awful because as I was dreaming up this abomination I was also experiencing waves of nausea. I could visualise it quite clearly, a big stretch quarter-pounder, all greasy too.

It turns out it wasn't just a product of my fevered imagination, I'd read it in that morning's paper. Now, just because it's in the paper doesn't mean it's true - it probably falls into the journalistic category of "too good to check". I was a little disappointed that it was a real thing.

Connoisseur!

There's an article in today's New York Times about how people are starting to feel guilty about drinking bottled water (for environmental reasons, although I'd suggest it's just wrong on many levels. Don't forget, "Evian" is just "Naive" written backwards).

They interviewed a few random people around the country (or possibly made them up, if it was a UK or Australian newspaper). They got one guy, Barry Eskandani, 31, an administrative assistant in San Francisco who considers himself a conniosseur of bottled water.

Internet babes, and learning from experience

There was a lovely sad story in today's papers about a South Australian farmer who had been lured to Mali on an internet dating scam. As you might expect, not only was the charming young lady he'd been emailing not there, he was taken to a makeshift cell and held prisoner for ransom.

This all very sad, and I think also a testament to how hope and loneliness can trump common sense. On his return, he said he'd learnt a lesson. Fair enough.

But what struck me was one report that said he'd had a similar experience 3 years ago in Russia.

Flakey...

A woman sent me a message on a networking website I'm on. New in town, liked my profile and wanted to know if I was interested in meeting up for a coffee. I responded saying that I suspected we were after slightly different things but that I'd be happy to meet up anyway (I have a policy of meeting just about anyone, it's part of my thing about turning up the bizarricality in my life). A fairly measured and straightforward response, I thought.

Anyway, I got this back:
--------------------------

you sound like you know what you do not want more
than what you do want (or need). Is that right?

relationships always exist; some more transitive
than others. power exchange and service go hand
in hand. the 'beyond physical' realm is integral
to my life and play. it requires-demands trust and
consensual communication. Probably way over your
head, but that to me accounts or all the dark
matter in the universe. way more unseen than seen
energy in life...

Take care.

--------------------

Anyway, I read this about six times and still couldn't figure what she meant (she was right, it WAS way over my head), so I wrote back:

"I'm assuming you're not interested, let me know if this isn't the case".

And I get in response: "I have no interest or desire for inconsideration." Which seems a bit unfair, as I'd been pretty clear all along and hadn't been especially inconsiderate. (And, I noticed still didn't actually say whether she was interested or not.) Still, I suspect it's for the best anway.

Farming

I know you all think I'm impossibly glamorous and metropolitan (I've been to the world's northernmost chinese restaurant, I've been on the subway in Pyongyang, I made money from investing in floating hotels etc.) but this afternoon I was on a bitterly cold and windswept farm in Victoria, rounding up sheep on a quadbike. (To clarify: I was on a bike, rounding up sheep. The sheep weren't on quadbikes. Try to stay focused.)

Bizarrely enough, I actually grew up on a sheep farm. But it's so firmly repressed that when I do end up in a rural situation I feel very Elizabeth Bay. My friend Andrew, who owns the farm in question, finds it all very amusing to see me so out of my element. I guess it's all part of my ongoing project to ramp up the bizarricality of my life. And that project's going quite well....

Search me...

I can tell roughly how many people have looked at this blog, and roughly where they are (for a while I was getting a lot from Brazil). More interestingly, I can often tell how they found it - usually it's a result of a google search. If, for example, you were to search for "deborah hutton ruined", you'd find this blog. Today someone found it by googling for "dry cleaner wonthaggi". They must have been very disappointed.

The Brazil ones were interesting. For reasons that I couldn't even begin to understand, there was a link to this blog from a Brazilian soft-core porno site (it was in portuguese, but the pictures were in a fairly universal language). Then it abruptly stopped. I'm a little disappointed.

Sale?

I saw a very confusing sign recently: "Huge laptop sale". Who wants a huge laptop?

Terrible

I was in Saigon a few years ago with a friend for a couple of days, and on one of those days we went on a tour to see the tunnels. We were on a bus full of random strangers (and isn't there something fun about that? there's always upside) and we had a guide, a vietnamese man in his, I guess, late 50s. As we drove out of Saigon I was as always favorably impressed with the sheer busy-ness of the place. In most other southeast asian countries there's a lot of sitting around, doing nothing (someone once told me that there's a word in Thai which means 'Yes, but not yet'. As in "Have you done that thing I asked you to?" "Yes... but not yet") but in Saigon everyone's busy as hell, making stuff, transporting stuff, buying and selling stuff.

Anyway, our guide was telling us something about the history of the Vietnam war (or as they call it, the American war), and his part in it. Which turned out to have been fairly nuanced, as he'd been a translator or something for the US Army, and had then been put in a re-education camp. His narrative trailed off, he looked out the window and said "My life is very terrible...". I was so impressed I wrote it down.

..and this is my lovely 'lady'

From time to time I look at online dating ads, and I've noticed a pattern. Women who have tattoos, who smoke, and describe themselves as being 'ample' or 'voluptuous' and who live in the far reaches of western Sydney are much more likely to say that they're looking for someone who knows how to treat a lady. A lady? That's leaving it a bit late, surely. This applies even more strongly to 'adult' personals.

And all the men are huge fans of Shawshank Redemption. I don't get it.

Concrete..?

The friends who told me their place was only 4 hours from Sydney? I worked out what they meant. It's 4 hours from the very north of Sydney, the greater Sydney metropolitan area. So for them, when they drive into the city, after 4 hours they finally come to the fringes of the city and I guess that's how they measure it. But the problem with Sydney, going north, is that there's no major road. It's the Pacific Highway, and for the first hour you're stuck in traffic, crawling through stripmalls and cursing. I shouldn't be surprised, it took till 2000 to build a proper road to the airport.

But not all was lost. As I was stuck in traffic in some upper north shore suburb (Turramurra? I bought my piano there, now that I think about it) I saw a very arresting sign. I didn't have my damn camera, so you'll have to bear with me. But it said something like "Reward offered: 2 Concrete Helicopters Stolen" then a phone number. For about a tenth of a second I was agreeably amused by this (a concrete helicopter! brilliant!) then I realised that I had in fact seen concrete helicopters in children's playgrounds. So in fact the whole thing was rather tawdry and pathetic. Some bastard had stolen two concrete helicopters out of a playground.

Struggle

"Jihad" has two meanings. It can be either a violent struggle against non-believers (planes into buildings, IEDs, that sort of thing) or, more poetically, an inner jihad, which is a fierce internal moral struggle.

Pretty much every time I go to the gym there's a point where I have to struggle with myself, and pit my conscience (and vanity) against my laziness in a death-struggle. Yesterday, for example, I did some stretches and maintenance stuff, then jumped on the treadmill for 30 mins. But about 3 to 4 minutes in, as usual, I had a very powerful thought: you could stop now... you could do this tomorrow... . I won the moral struggle, my own inner jihad. But I don't always.

There's a more potent version of this. The voice that sometimes springs up a few minutues into a workout and says "why bother with any of this at all? is it worth it? why not just become a fat bastard? at last you'll be happy.."

What sort of manager exactly...?

A friend called me, it sounded urgent. He'd been offered a job with a small chain of music stores as a fill-in store manager for when the other guys were away, training/sickness/vacation, that sort of thing. So far so boring. But what made his ears prick up, and made him so keen to call me, was the job title. What sort of manager? A "relief manager". There are only a small number of people who would think this is funny, and he and I know each other very well. We were hysterical. (See also back in April on here, "relief event". The way I see it, there's almost nothing that can't be turned into something agreeably smutty.)

Coast

After hitting the gym this morning I'm picking up a rental car and driving up the coast to see some friends. They invited me to their beach house, and lured me by saying "it's only a 4-hour drive". I said yes, of course, but then looked at the map. It's so far up the coast it might as well be Brisbane, and I think it's only a 4-hour drive if you drive like a lovesick astronaut. Anyway, it should be fun.

I had a drink last night with a woman who contacted me through my forlorn and feeble myspace page. She's a photgrapher, and had messaged me hinting at a mysterious proposition. We had a drink and she outlined the plan, it involves a deserted carpark, some wet celery and a motorcycle helmet. (No, I made up the last two bits.) I ended up having dinner in a moroccan restaurant with her, her cousin and some of his friends. I rather like being photographed, and she flattered me enough that I'll do it. I did point out to her that if she wanted a couple months I'd be so hot it'd melt the camera lens but she either didn't believe me or didn't care.

Anyway, off to the gym!

Special K

One clue about how I got to be so gigantic and porcine: the boxes of Special K that I buy (breakfast in the office) I discovered, much to alarm, say that they contain 12 servings, based on suggested serving size. For me, a box only lasts 3 breakfasts. I guess that's because the cereal bowl I use at work is actually about the size of a bucket.