My hotel room has a trouser press but not an iron. Very English. Does anyone know how to use a trouser press? And why? Pants look ok a bit scruffed-up; shirts don't.
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I went to the football (real football, in Melbourne) last Monday with a mate. I hardly ever drink these days, but I got a bit carried away and before I knew it I'd had two full-strength beers and started to space out a bit. I tried to describe to him later what happened, and the best I could some up with was a 'beer panic', but that doesn't do it justice. If you take Ketamine you can end up in what they call the 'K-hole' and so by analogy this would be the 'B-hole', which does - now that I look at it - sound a bit indelicate.
On the plane (never again a 777!) on the way over I was reading a thing in the New Yorker by Charles D'Ambrosio, and he seemed to catch it, but in a quite different context. He describes having dinner with the parents of friends when he was an adolescent....
"...The easy bantering flow of conversation baffled me. Typically at our house, during dinner, you arranged a syntactically perfect yet cumbersome sentence in your mouth and then gently, slowly, slowly, set it in its proper place... A trowelful of silence worked like mortar; you patted a scoop of it between every sentence to keep the course straight. But with my friend's parents the conversation flowed so fluently I could hardly get my thoughts into it, and when I did they seemed outdated and had this orotund speechy quality that made a stupid thud, exactly as if I'd heaved a brick on the table."
Anyway, I surreptitiously switched to light beer and managed to regain my composure. As you can guess, I'm a very cheap date. Two drinks and I'm anyone's.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
London
8am, I'm wandering around central london aimlessly as I can't check into my hotel till lunchtime-ish. I went to Bar Italia for a coffee and ran into someone I knew, which has cheered me up and made me feel like I'm a global geezer. He told me he was just in town from Sicily, and he was a little too self-important about it so I said I'd just flown in from Sydney.
Flight was ok-ish. Justin Long, the actor who plays the mac in apple's "I'm a mac.. and I'm a pc" ad was on the flight. He's smaller than you'd expect. I only know his name because I read something about him in one of the sydney papers yesterday. And no, that's not an amazing coincidence, I assume he was in Sydney for some movie or something and his job is to get in the papers. There was a bloke near me who looked like he was - or had been - a famous rugby player. But I'm from Melbourne so I know nothing about the throwing game. But he did give me that look that says "yes, I'm famous, stop looking at me" but of course he could have set himself on fire for all I'd care. Big bloke, too.
Flight was ok-ish. Justin Long, the actor who plays the mac in apple's "I'm a mac.. and I'm a pc" ad was on the flight. He's smaller than you'd expect. I only know his name because I read something about him in one of the sydney papers yesterday. And no, that's not an amazing coincidence, I assume he was in Sydney for some movie or something and his job is to get in the papers. There was a bloke near me who looked like he was - or had been - a famous rugby player. But I'm from Melbourne so I know nothing about the throwing game. But he did give me that look that says "yes, I'm famous, stop looking at me" but of course he could have set himself on fire for all I'd care. Big bloke, too.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Nationality, and faux-bimbos
During the summer I found myself in the coffee place downstairs from my work, watching the cricket on tv while waiting for my latte. I was joined by a colleague. We watched the tv for a couple of minutes without speaking (do women do this? I don't think so) then he turned and said to me "you blokes are taking a bit of a hammering". (England were, as you'd expect, copping a shellacking.)
I was shocked and dismayed, as you can imagine. It took me a while to realise what he meant. But when I finally picked myself up off the floor, I said with all the dignity and hauteur I could muster "I'm more Australian than you, mate. I was born in f&*cking Wonthaggi".
On a related note, someone once asked me if it was my first time in Australia. Arrgh. But at least that time they thought I was an American.
Faux-bimbos have dried up. I got a couple of adds but I've waited too long to write them up so they've been deleted. And they sounded so real too!
I was shocked and dismayed, as you can imagine. It took me a while to realise what he meant. But when I finally picked myself up off the floor, I said with all the dignity and hauteur I could muster "I'm more Australian than you, mate. I was born in f&*cking Wonthaggi".
On a related note, someone once asked me if it was my first time in Australia. Arrgh. But at least that time they thought I was an American.
Faux-bimbos have dried up. I got a couple of adds but I've waited too long to write them up so they've been deleted. And they sounded so real too!
Monday, June 11, 2007
Faux-bimbos on Myspace
Gosh, I'm so excited! I get a couple of add requests a day on my pretty lame myspace setup. And they're always from young women in exotic places who have pictures on other sites - and they want to share them with me! For a week I'm going list them...
9 June, I get an add from Mia. She's 19 and lives in the Maldives, but she's blonde and looks like she comes from a small town in Texas and has runaway to the Valley. She says "I love my life, my family and my friends. I try to have a good time no matter where I am or who I'm with. I'm a low-key chill type of person but am always up for a crazy/fun adventure" and on it goes. There is, or course a button you can click for some (presumably crazy/fun) pictures of her. Her interests are "SHOPPING AND BOYZ!"
10 June I get an add from Leah, a sulty and busty 24yo from United States. Same blurb as Mia. And rhymes with Mia too, how about that?
11 June. Vanessa, 23yo from Wisconsin. Although she's not as sultry and busty as Leah she's certainly no ham sandwich. What she does have in common with Leah, however, the profile. Line for line, as expected.
11 June. Riley, a 22yo from the Solomon Islands with the same washed-out anodyne blonde-but-not-gorgeous aesthetic as Mia. Same profile too.
9 June, I get an add from Mia. She's 19 and lives in the Maldives, but she's blonde and looks like she comes from a small town in Texas and has runaway to the Valley. She says "I love my life, my family and my friends. I try to have a good time no matter where I am or who I'm with. I'm a low-key chill type of person but am always up for a crazy/fun adventure" and on it goes. There is, or course a button you can click for some (presumably crazy/fun) pictures of her. Her interests are "SHOPPING AND BOYZ!"
10 June I get an add from Leah, a sulty and busty 24yo from United States. Same blurb as Mia. And rhymes with Mia too, how about that?
11 June. Vanessa, 23yo from Wisconsin. Although she's not as sultry and busty as Leah she's certainly no ham sandwich. What she does have in common with Leah, however, the profile. Line for line, as expected.
11 June. Riley, a 22yo from the Solomon Islands with the same washed-out anodyne blonde-but-not-gorgeous aesthetic as Mia. Same profile too.
Saturday, June 9, 2007
Nationality..?
I was in a coffee place today in outer suburban Melbourne with my 4 kids, and I struck up a conversation with the women who work there (no, this isn't typical). After we'd exchanged a few pleasantries, one of them asked 'excuse me, but what's your nationality?'
On one hand I was quite chuffed that even though I'm fourth-generation aussie, and went to high school about a mile from this coffee place, they thought I was an exotic foreigner of some sort - I did quiz them, of course. They thought I was german, or possibly swedish, On the other hand I was vaguely worried. I've lived outside Australia for 15 of the last 20 years, am I losing some fundamental Australian-ness? A girlfriend I had in the US (who was barking mad, but that's a different story) thought I looked very Australian indeeed, but that was because of my prominent chin and sticky-outy ears.
I'm going to the footy on Monday, I wonder if that'll help.
On one hand I was quite chuffed that even though I'm fourth-generation aussie, and went to high school about a mile from this coffee place, they thought I was an exotic foreigner of some sort - I did quiz them, of course. They thought I was german, or possibly swedish, On the other hand I was vaguely worried. I've lived outside Australia for 15 of the last 20 years, am I losing some fundamental Australian-ness? A girlfriend I had in the US (who was barking mad, but that's a different story) thought I looked very Australian indeeed, but that was because of my prominent chin and sticky-outy ears.
I'm going to the footy on Monday, I wonder if that'll help.
Friday, June 8, 2007
Rhymes with 'cheese'?
Early start this morning, the 0700 QF409 from Sydney to Melb. They showed the morning news on the plane, and the lead item was about Paris Hilton being released from prison after three days. I'm vaguely appalled that this is leading the news but I've given up - there are some things I'm just going to have to go along with.
But what was really inexcusable was that the segment had been lifted from some british news show (not BBC - I'm guessing ITV or Skynews) and the 'reporter' did that thing that english people often do. She pronounced the last syllable of Los Angeles as though it rhymed with 'cheese'. It's possible she's never been there, and that she's in fact sitting in a studio in, say, Croydon, and just making it up as she goes along. But it's also quite possible that she's been to LA many times and really should know better. Brits always like to make fun of how guileless and ill-adapted the americans are (they don't know that Chalmondsley is pronounced 'Chumley', that sort of thing, but how often do you ever run across Chalmondsley?) ABC radio tonight they had a segment about 'why should we care about Paris Hilton?' done in a vaguey ironic way so that you could get a real troughful of Paris gossip while at the same time feeling a bit above it all. They had some clown on from the BBC and of course he didn't say it right.
A high point of this sort of thing was when Nicole Kidman's sister used to do the showbusiness gossip show thing on Qantas in-flight. You have to guess she's been to LA more times than I've had hot dinners, but she still couldn't say it right.
But what was really inexcusable was that the segment had been lifted from some british news show (not BBC - I'm guessing ITV or Skynews) and the 'reporter' did that thing that english people often do. She pronounced the last syllable of Los Angeles as though it rhymed with 'cheese'. It's possible she's never been there, and that she's in fact sitting in a studio in, say, Croydon, and just making it up as she goes along. But it's also quite possible that she's been to LA many times and really should know better. Brits always like to make fun of how guileless and ill-adapted the americans are (they don't know that Chalmondsley is pronounced 'Chumley', that sort of thing, but how often do you ever run across Chalmondsley?) ABC radio tonight they had a segment about 'why should we care about Paris Hilton?' done in a vaguey ironic way so that you could get a real troughful of Paris gossip while at the same time feeling a bit above it all. They had some clown on from the BBC and of course he didn't say it right.
A high point of this sort of thing was when Nicole Kidman's sister used to do the showbusiness gossip show thing on Qantas in-flight. You have to guess she's been to LA more times than I've had hot dinners, but she still couldn't say it right.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Beggars - and religion
This may just be me over-analyzing everything, but there do seem to be definite patterns and modes within what you'd politely call the begging community here in Sydney. I noticed at the start of the year that the panhandlers in Kings Cross (their MO is to walk up to you and ask for money very matter-of-factly) had all simultaneously adopted the tactic of starting their request with "hey Bro...". Did they all have a meeting to sort this out, some sort of new theme for the New Year? Or was it a fashion thing, maybe one especially successful or cool panhandler started it and they all copied? It died out pretty quickly - which I assume was some empirical thing. They weren't getting results.
The beggars in the city have a quite different schtick, maybe as an evolved response to more aggressive policing. They look as wretched as they can (they probably don't have to try too hard, to be fair), huddled on a blanket with a crudely-drawn cardboard sign. Years ago there would have been a dog, but I assume that doesn't work any more. The sign may or may not have some language acknowledging the public's weariness and scepticism ("no bullshit", "genuine homeless", "no lies" etc.) but what it will have in almost all cases is a reference to God or Jesus. If you don't believe me, have a look.
Now this is in a country with a very low percentage of people who go to church. Even the 50% (I'm guessing) of Australians who say they're a bit religious usually aren't - a fun thing to do at a dinner party is to quiz people who say they're christians about how much christian doctrine they actually believe in - and so as a marketing ploy this doesn't sound smart. So why does it persist?
Maybe homeless people themselves are more religious than the rest of the community? That's a lovely notion. But more likely, they think the appeal to religion will shake the consciences of passers-by, and make them incrementally more likely to give. And of course if hard-core christians happen to walk by, it may indeed help.
Of course it makes me less likely. I find myself thinking 'if God's so munificent he can give you a dollar, not me' but then again, I wouldn't give them any money anyway so there's no loss.
If I was even slightly more ambitious it'd be fun to go around taking photos of the cardboard signs, maybe for a fabulous coffee table book. I expect for $5 they'd be happy to let you take a pic. And it'd certainly be easier and much safer than my other great coffee-table book idea, the collection of really stupid tattoos (which is, I know, a bit of a tautology, but you know what I mean).
Back to my piano....
The beggars in the city have a quite different schtick, maybe as an evolved response to more aggressive policing. They look as wretched as they can (they probably don't have to try too hard, to be fair), huddled on a blanket with a crudely-drawn cardboard sign. Years ago there would have been a dog, but I assume that doesn't work any more. The sign may or may not have some language acknowledging the public's weariness and scepticism ("no bullshit", "genuine homeless", "no lies" etc.) but what it will have in almost all cases is a reference to God or Jesus. If you don't believe me, have a look.
Now this is in a country with a very low percentage of people who go to church. Even the 50% (I'm guessing) of Australians who say they're a bit religious usually aren't - a fun thing to do at a dinner party is to quiz people who say they're christians about how much christian doctrine they actually believe in - and so as a marketing ploy this doesn't sound smart. So why does it persist?
Maybe homeless people themselves are more religious than the rest of the community? That's a lovely notion. But more likely, they think the appeal to religion will shake the consciences of passers-by, and make them incrementally more likely to give. And of course if hard-core christians happen to walk by, it may indeed help.
Of course it makes me less likely. I find myself thinking 'if God's so munificent he can give you a dollar, not me' but then again, I wouldn't give them any money anyway so there's no loss.
If I was even slightly more ambitious it'd be fun to go around taking photos of the cardboard signs, maybe for a fabulous coffee table book. I expect for $5 they'd be happy to let you take a pic. And it'd certainly be easier and much safer than my other great coffee-table book idea, the collection of really stupid tattoos (which is, I know, a bit of a tautology, but you know what I mean).
Back to my piano....
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