When I caught the bus to work this morning, I noticed everyone at the bus stop had a very grumpy look on their faces.
I catch the bus when it rains, so I can avoid having to worry about an umbrella. Pretty much, I can walk to the bus stop undercover, catch the bus, and then walk the rest of the way to work without getting wet.
But as I say, everyone looked pretty grumpy.
“Cheer up Sydney – the weather’s not that bad”, I tweeted. By mid-afternoon I was beginning to think I was wrong. And then just after five o’clock as it was well and truly dark as I looked out my office window, I realised I was definitely wrong.
We don’t cope so well with the rain in Sydney. It’s something quite foreign to us, and so when it happens, none of us are all that well prepared and we go into hibernation. Tonight, for example, many of the shops and restaurants in Surry Hills have closed early, presumably due to the rain.
Late tonight, it’s still raining heavily. I hate it. About the only cheerful thing on the horizon is my forthcoming trip to Sweden. Roll on summer, roll on…
If you would have asked me yesterday if I was keen to attend a gallery opening in a Kings Cross car park, I would have definitely said no.
For the past week I’ve been pretty crook. I haven’t been sleeping well. I haven’t been eating well. I swear, I have the world’s biggest cold sore on my lip. I left work early on Friday, and spent most of the long weekend in bed sleeping trying to recover from whatever illness this is. “You should take a week off, just stay at home”, a friend said to me earlier today.
I’ve been worrying about friends and family who all seem to be going through really difficult times at the moment. My life is fine, nothing to worry about there. I feel like I’m absorbing part of their trauma, as if it’s my way of helping them. Sharing the load and all. In reality, there’s not a lot I can do from a distance, though I sometimes fantasize I could be/should be, the knight in shining armour who can come in and solve everything. The best I can do is pray.
As is often the case, my retreat from stress and discomfort is for my body to go into my own self-indulgent melt-down and find sleep is the solution.
By today, though I was beginning to feel better in myself, even if the fortunes of family and friend may not be the same. So when Kate asked if I wanted to go to a gallery opening tonight, I jumped at the opportunity.
Betel Leaf – pic Catherine Croll
Even though we had the address, it took us a while to find the pop-up gallery run by the Alaska Art Projects in the Kings Cross Car Park. The streets of The Cross are often difficult to navigate. And yes, as you can see from the photograph, it was quite literally an art gallery on the second level of a carpark.
It was all very cutting edge. All very pop-up. Though we didn’t think all that much of the art works on display, we did enjoy the space, we loved the sense of adventure of doing a gallery in a carpark, and the people we chatted to were genuinely very lovely.
After the gallery, we grabbed a bit to eat at a Kings Cross restaurant, the name of which escapes me. Excellent food, though.
“Can you imagine what it must be like here for the New Years Eve fireworks?”, I asked a colleague earlier tonight. The reality is neither of us could probably afford the view privately, so it was really lovely to be invited to a function earlier tonight, located on the thirty-first floor of Sydney’s Interncontinental Hotel. Only once in my life have I previously attended an event on this level, and it was later at night. The city views were amazing then, and maybe even more so today, later in the afternoon, as we watched the sun go down. Life is good.
One of the things we’ve been doing in Swedish class as an exercise each week is listen to a Swedish pop song with translated lyrics. We’ve done songs by the likes of Peter Joback, Ted Gardestad and for something quite contemporary, Kent.
For a while I’ve been suggesting to Grant we should do a familiar English language song with translated lyrics. And so this week Grant brought along Frida (from ABBA) doing a Swedish language version of “Send In The Clowns”, a song written by Stephen Sondheim from the 1973 musical “A Little Night Music”. Well, that was my cultural reference for the song. The younger bloke sitting next to me also recognised the song. “Hey, it’s that song from The Krusty Comeback Special”, he laughed, referring to a famous episode of “The Simpsons”.
Krusty Ensam
I also laughed in recognition, as I knew exactly what he was talking about, and am still giggling about it now an hour later. All the way through the deep and moving song both he and I were quietly giggling to ourselves about the different cultural references we had to the song. “There’s not a day goes by when I don’t make some reference to The Simpsons”, I told him. I never, thought, however, such a reference would come up in Swedish Class.
But it’s a modern world in which we live, and also tonight we translated an article from Aftonbaldet, the Swedish newspaper, about Facebook. And one of our pieces of homework for next week is to write about our online lives, which I’m doing now in English, but will do next week on this blog in Swedish. It’s all a bit post-modern in a way, isn’t it?
Today’s other highlight: making Matthew Newton a coffee with soy milk.
“This is the best haloumi I’ve ever tasted”, my friend Michaela said to one of the co-owners of Yulli’s, one of my favourite local bars.
And she wasn’t bull-shitting. It was absolutely to-die-for. Not a squeak in sight!
We had just been to see a movie, and without too much persuasion on the part of either one of us, decided we should have a small bite to eat before heading home. And of course, we both love Yulli’s, with their combination of good vegetarian food, good wine list, and a warm and inviting atmosphere.
Haloumi at Yullis
The movie we had been to see was called Stone Bros.
The movie’s plot concerns Charlie and Eddie (Leon Burchill and Luke Carroll) on a road trip from Perth to Kalgoorlie.
Along the way, they smoke far too much marijuana, pick up a crazy hitch-hiker, run over a kangaroo, and experience a rather mad wedding in the middle of nowhere.
In fact there’s also a lovely scene where Mark Bin Bakar (Mary G), playing the role of Aunty Carol, sings a song – slow and sensually – about how she wants to make love to….. “a blaaaaack blaaaack maaaaaan”.
David Page from Bangarra fame also plays an important role in the film as Regina, a cross-dresser holding off having the chop because he’s “not done with (his) dick yet”. The line reminded me of a scene from another movie I saw recently, Stonewall, where a similar line was used, with the follow-up, “…and neither are you”.
The film isn’t perfect. There’s a scene about a dog that goes on far too long, and without much purpose in my view. But it’s pretty good. I laughed a fair bit, enjoyed the ride, and loved the scenery, a fair amount of which I actually recognised from my time in Western Australia back in 2004.
“The film was supposed to be called To Bourke And Bourke” (or words to that effect), one of the actors said at the screening at Fox Studios. “But the money came from Western Australia, so that’s where we filmed it”, he added.
The film got a good round of applause as it ended. Although I don’t think it’s going to be block-buster, I think it has the potential to be a reasonably successful Australian film. It’s also a significant film in terms of Indigenous culture, “It’s nnnnnottttt political”, one of the actors added with a degree of almost-relief in his work.
So after watching the film and chatting with one of the actors at the pub, we headed off to Yulli’s. A perfect Wednesday.
Lately, I’ve been contemplating the significance of the deadlines we set in our lives. Throughout my adult working years, I’ve become adept at meeting deadlines, whether they were monthly, weekly, daily, or even minute by minute. I’ve developed an innate sense of timing that has served me well in my professional life. I can accurately gauge five minutes within a second or two, and I can effortlessly estimate the time without looking at my watch. For instance, during a recent meeting, I confidently predicted it would last until 3 pm (30 minutes) and remarkably concluded right on time without glancing at the clock.
However, this skill is in stark contrast to my earlier days in university when meeting deadlines was a challenge. In my first year, I consistently delivered assignments and essays on time. But once I discovered the possibility of obtaining extensions, meeting deadlines became a struggle for me.
Interestingly, in my personal life, I’ve never been one to adhere strictly to hard and fast deadlines.
Society often imposes common deadlines, like getting a mortgage, entering a relationship, and having a child by the age of thirty. I must admit that I haven’t met any of those deadlines for various reasons, and perhaps, like many in my generation, I am hesitant to fully commit.
Though, deep down, I believe I am capable of committing to specific goals.
Perhaps, setting well-defined deadlines for myself is the key. If I were to establish clear objectives for my life by age 45, such as achieving x, y, and z, I might find the determination to make them a reality. Yet, until now, that drive has been absent in me.
I wonder if maturity will bring about a change, prompting me to meet some of those deadlines. Will the ticking clock eventually push me to accomplish the things I’ve put off? Or maybe it won’t?
Bedside Clock
Recently, during a candid conversation with a colleague, we discussed how much of our identities are tied to our perception in the world. For the longest time, my sense of self was heavily intertwined with my work and its success. However, something shifted in me. I credit much of it to my overseas trip and taking a break from work, which allowed me to recognize that I am more than just my job.
It’s almost humorous to realize these valuable life lessons at a later stage. Perhaps, unconsciously, I’ve lived my life believing I could always obtain an extension, even in life’s matters. Maybe what I need now is to set firm, non-negotiable deadlines, even if I have to impose them upon myself, to break free from the idea that I can always extend things.
So, “is that all there is” to life? Maybe not. There’s still so much potential for growth and achievement, and with the right mindset, I can steer myself towards a fulfilling future.
Over lunch (at The Tilbury) my good friend and I chatted about swimming. She’s quite a serious ocean swimmer whereas I’m more of a casual paddler. As a child, I was actually a little scared of the water, and was never a good swimmer at all. Getting my 50m medal was a major achievement, and the idea of the 1500m was well beyond my dreams. In the last few years, however, I’ve taken up swimming again, though noting it’s more “recreational” “pleasurable” than anything to do with fitness, for example. And it’s all in the “safe” environment of a swimming pool. But as I looked down at the water at Woolloomooloo, I contemplated something more adventurous : swimming in the harbour. The water was looked so clean. Gorgeous weather. Lovely day.
