Category — Picture This

Day 1: #yourviewtoday

I spend a lot of time at my train station, heading to and from work, or from work to home to Jeff’s, to home, to work so on a day-to-day basis it’s my most consistent view of anything other than the desk I am chained to at work and I just felt this was a more interesting picture than one of all my celebrity crushes sticky-taped to my monitor, next to motivational quotes from The Hitch and Hunter S Thompson.

Sydney’s weather has been depressing the last few weeks, which also makes for a good photo, and I liked the various shades in this picture, from gun metal grey to piercing white.

Day 2: #words

This is a shot of the last essay Christopher Hitchens wrote for Vanity Fair before he passed away.

I was at Sydney Airport when I heard he died. Jeff and I had just missed a plane to Melbourne and had a four hour wait until the next flight, and when I read the news, we went to the airport bar and drank cocktails and went to the Vanity Fair website and read some of his best essays and people’s tributes to him. It turned a really sad moment into something poignant and nice.

I deeply admired The Hitch, and meant to write something after his death, but nothing I could say would do him justice. I haven’t been able to read much of what he wrote during his illness, and one day I’ll read this piece, but for now I’m just happy to know it’s out there, existing.

Day 3: #hands

I’m an 80-year-old man, surprise! No, not really, but this is a fairly good indication of what’s needed to get me going every morning. The horse pill up the top is Omega, the smaller amber one is vitamin D, because like most of the population, I am deficient (see: desk job) and my scary Russian doctor is determined to change that. The tiny white pill is for my Old Man Disease aka high blood pressure and I will take one of those every day for the rest of my life and then for good measure, there are two Panadols for a delightful headache I woke up with that I suspect might have developed from my vigorous backcombing of my stupidly long hair. “Beauty” equals pain, folks.

Day 4: #astranger

Yes it’s creepy to take a photo of a stranger on a train. Is it possible to resist taking a photo of a stranger on a train when he’s wearing a patterned lime-green suit with pointy white shoes and what looked like mismatched retro football socks? No it isn’t. I suspect this George Miller lookalike is used to it though, we share a train line and I think I’ve actually taken a creepy photo of him before, wearing pony-skin boots. Some people didn’t like the idea of taking a photo of a stranger, but some people probably also didn’t spend 20 minutes negotiating with their mother yesterday for the donation of several teeth for jewellery purposes. Taking a photo of a stranger was not the strangest thing I did this week.

Day 5: #10am

I was asleep at 10am, so this is a visual representation of what that looked like, for all of you (fellow) creeps out there who have wondered. Being asleep at 10am is an insane new concept for me. First, I have frequent bad bouts of insomnia and secondly, I used to rarely relax on weekends because I am on-call so frequently. Not anymore, the life changes have started to kick in and now I’m all about only leaving bed on Sundays for brunch and phone calls.

Here ends the first batch, thanks to everyone who told me where they’re posting theirs, it’s been fun seeing what people do with the theme!

Oh lordy did I fail at the 365 (or 366 as it is this year) project. I think I lasted about seven days.

I’ve decided to do this one instead and use only my iPhone camera. Maybe by March I’ll have worked up the motivation to start carrying my DSLR everywhere.

I’ll post the results once a week or so, and please, if you’re doing it to, send me a link to where you’re posting them, because I am a sucker for other people’s photos!

I lucked out when it came to brothers-in-law. They’re both very different men, but they’re both quirky, interesting people who make my sisters happy (respectively, there’s no wife-swapping going on that I know about, but then again, I’m usually the last person to know anything in our family).

This is my little/big brother-in-law, Joel. He’s ‘little’ because he’s shorter than me and married to my younger sister, Steph. He is ‘big’ because he’s older than I am (and yeah that makes him a total cradle-snatcher, gross). He is one of the founders of Umbrella, who manage bands like Cloud Control and he’s part of the Naughty Rappers Collective. We share a love of odd sunglasses, phat beats, touches of urban cowboy (not the touches of urban cowboys, I mean like the fashion concept) and exploding fist bumps.

He is also relentlessly positive and really gets into hobbies, like craft beer making. Sometimes his relentless wit and charm make me feel a little like vomiting on him, just to see what he’d do.

Mostly I don’t because he’s a good boy and nothing gets the smell of vomit out of a 100% cotton plaid button-up urban cowboy shirt.

I am now firmly ensconced in my new place, getting used to having to wear pants again so as not to blind my housemate. I found these really amazing men’s sleep shorts. They’re super soft and roomy, so you can sleep at all kinds of crazy angles without getting your shorts in a knot and waking up with numb nether regions! The cotton feels like a groin hug.

I got these shoes at Nordstrom in Seattle. It was a pretty amazing experience. When you find shoes you want, you take them to a woman who has a microphone and then she calls out your location and a stupidly attractive man comes and finds the size you want, while you sit there wondering why no-one told them you’re not the queen, you’re just a serf. These shoes have a signature on the bottom, which my brain immediately translated to something fancy and European. Turns out they’re Jessica Simpson shoes. I don’t even care that once I had PMS and mentally wrote her husband a letter about how sorry I was that she left him, these shoes are so comfortable that I’m totally Team Jessica now.

One of the best things in the world is the new food court in Pitt Street, which is up a secret escalator Jeff taught me about and we go there and have Charlie & Co. burgers. They are stupidly good burgers and I highly recommend the parmesan and truffle fries too. Then I recommend you go to the gym. Haha! No I don’t, silly! I recommend you go home and drink vanilla Kahlúa …

… WITH A GIANT ICECUBE!

Sydney has been moody recently. We haven’t had a very warm summer for a start, but there have been some days nice enough to wander down to the Quay at lunch and do some reading:

(This was The Marriage Plot which I was initially totally engrossed in, but the ending was, sadly, really weak)

Next thing you know, it’s raining sideways so heavily it’s pretty much impossible to go outside:

Complimentary colours:

1. I buy cheap headphones so I have to replace them all the time. The pink ones are the worst I’ve ever bought and lasted a day. The purple ones are the best. I’m attracted to colourful or sparkling things just like your average friendly neighbourhood unicorn is.
2. A new series of designs for a few well-known books. I love how the designers matched the colours to themes in the book, in this case, the red of the Handmaid’s habits. I think I might have to buy this edition, I love the red-tipped pages.
3. The ceiling of World Square.
4. A strawberry blend juice from Chat Thai. It was pretty amazing, the perfect compliment to a chicken and cashew nut stir-fry *cough*

It’s been a while since I’ve done a general check in, mostly because the end of the year is always so crazy busy, and this holiday period has been crazy, crazy busy for me and things happened, exciting things and most of them I documented with my iPhone (yes, yes, I’ve become an Instagram fan and I know, I know, you own a Holga that does the same thing but requires more skill etc etc), so I thought, why not subject you good folks to pictures of my face and some cat’s faces as a soothing balm to get over my face?

The first big thing that happened was the move. The Wuz and I now reside in a house in the Inner West. We have a backyard and a front porch and we’ve been sitting in the sun with gin & tonics, with a refreshing wedge of lime and reading tomes and tomes of essays, which are our new favourite literary genre. Well I have, The Wuz has been trying to jail break:

Mostly she’s on the run because of this old fellow, Stanley Cat:

What The Wuz didn’t realise is that Stanley Cat is very old and very deaf and generally has no idea The Wuz exists. Eventually she cottoned on and has now relaxed a bit:

It’s fairly safe to say that I love my new ‘hood and have spent a lot of time exploring it, mostly at night. The evening and late night have become my two favourite times of the day. There are so many adventures to be had when the city starts to cool down.

I have also been experimenting with my new seasons look aka I worked over Christmas and hardly anyone was in the office and Michelle found an afro wig and the rest was history:

I have also been experimenting with a nautical theme and bows. Nautical because I like the idea of being swashbuckling, bows because I am a girl, and I’m trying very hard, yet again, to stop dressing like a 15-year-old Limp Bizkit fan. Not even a fan from the ‘Nookie’ era, a fan from the last album they released, the one the guitarist returned for, we can only assume because he had rent to pay and it was agreed that he could wear stage makeup to hide his shame at returning to a band that once bemoaned the injustice of wanting a Pepsi, just one Pepsi.

Also, red. Red because of sin and sexuality. Not really, mostly because I bought a really awesome red lipstick in Vegas and my friend Jadey bought me some giant red hair bows and they happen to go very well together and help add to the whole ‘I am a lay-dee!’ thing I’m going for, just in case, you know, the rather evident lady-bits aren’t a dead giveaway.

This is one of my favourite new things, an iPod watchband. It was a surprise gift from someone familiar with my slight addiction to buying watches. I love this because the band is a slap band and it’s huge and matte black and chunky, which ticks a lot of boxes for me and also because the iPod now has a rad black and gold watch analogue watch face which is so pimp:

Working over the holidays is a funny beast. On one hand, I would have loved to have gone away somewhere and relaxed without a care in the world, on the other, it’s fun to be in the city when hardly anyone is around. When I’m not in the Inner West, I’ve been lurking in Chippendale a lot, another suburb I really like. I haven’t spent much time in the city outside of work hours because come 6:00pm I just want to escape home, but there’s a lot of fun to be had. By fun I mean Mexican and margaritas and really late night pizza deliveries and watching Ab Fab and drinking rich, sweet spirits and cooling down after long weeks.

Here I am either waiting for a pizza boy, or selling drugs, or buying drugs, or working my corner. FIVE-OH!

This is my artistic rendering of one of my favourite new things: lime juice, lemon juice, orange juice and vodka. Turns out this is both delicious and a valid dinner or breakfast choice!

I had an amazing Christmas and New Year’s as well this year and just as soon as I’ve managed to stop drooling every time I look at photos of said events, I’ll post the pictures and make you drool and wish you were me, but without the weird social neuroses and allergy to nickel, requiring you to wear huge underpants.

It’s been ages since I’ve done a general, this is what I’ve been doing when not shaming myself kind of post and ages since I’ve taken my camera out, so I’ve been trying to rectify both in the last few weeks.

Spring has been trying to sprung in Sydney. It keeps faking it though, like when I decided to take the paper to the park a few weekends ago. It looked lovely and sunny from my lounge room window, but I spent the entire hour fighting with my paper in the wind, when I wasn’t watching a father taking staged photos of his kid having “fun” at the park, complete with remote flash. Seriously, there’s not even spontaneity left in childhood photos anymore? It’s all a bit Don DeLillo, The Most Photographed Barn in America if you ask me.

Imagine the pleasant surprise I got when I unwrapped the paper from my face for the millionth time and  came across Bernard Zuel’s article on the legacy of Nirvana, quoting one Joel Connolly. I’m so proud of my big little brother-in-law. Actually both my brothers-in-law are doing really awesome things at the moment. Pity about their choice in wives, but what can you do?

When I’m not attempting to keep up-to-date with current affairs, I have been lounging with my new-ish cushions. They’re pretty awesome and made by a girl in Melbourne. One has Day of the Dead skulls all over it, the other similar religious imagery, but also roses and a random Roman soldier rescuing a busty brunette. The Roman looks a lot like David Beckham. Weird.

When I’m not reading or lounging, I’ve been working. The other day I went to work wearing my ‘odd’ badge, forgetting I had a client meeting. I almost took it off, but then figured it was probably best to just get the obvious out of the way from the get go. This badge came with a bunch of Doseone stuff I bought a while ago. I’m not sure if I bought it from anticon. and if it’s an Odd Nosdam reference? It would seem likely but I like it because I think it’s just so cute, come here, let me pinch your cheeks!

Last Saturday was a gen-u-ine spring day, so I picnicked in the Botanical Gardens and then went for a huge walk around the Harbour and Barangaroo, which was interesting. It was sort of like being on a set of a movie. I also saw a really odd black skyscraper with an ornate gold top. I have no idea what it is, but tell me it wouldn’t make a perfect lair for me? It totally would. 

This is a portrait of my hideous lounge room coffee table. I feel like setting it on fire every time I see it. I’ve been going through a dirty pre-mixed bourbon phase of late, as you can see. It’s not good for mind, body, spirit or tooth. Also featured are my Prada glasses, which I finally bit the bullet and bought after almost a year of dithering. Yeah, I said Prada, so sue me. Before you even think about mocking me, you’ve already been beaten to the punch by one of my sisters:

Also featured is my lawyer’s business card. It says ‘James Gorman: The Worst Lawyer in the World” and on the back, “You’ve Had the Best – Now Try the Rest”. I actually think he tries to pick up ladies with these. He’s single.

Lastly, I’m going through a big low light, burning stuff that smells good phase. Given the amount of time I spend alone, I realise it looks very much like I’m trying to seduce myself (sometimes I’m successful). The silver tin is a L’Occitane Miel candle. It’s my favourite candle ever, but sadly, they no longer make them. This is the last one I had. At the front are my cheap go to scents, Chandan incense and dhoop. You have to burn them at the same time to get the best of both scents. This will also your house smell like you’re living with a 19-year-old stoner. It makes my neighbours look at me suspiciously. Up the back is a caramel candle, made by, weirdly, Kit Cosmetics. I will say this: oh my god, it makes my place smell like crème brûlée, but when I was buying it, they asked for my name, email address and mobile phone number, none of which I gave, all of which made it a bit creepy. As a former PR WHORE, let me give you this advice: don’t make me feel like a meth smurf when I’m just trying to buy a candle.

Things that have been keeping me sane-ish: Smoke Ring For My Halo – Kurt Vile; A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again – David Foster Wallace; Prisoner – The Jezebels; making lists of thing to do before I go overseas and of weird ghost towns and graveyards I need to see while I’m gone; bacon.

And that kids, is the game!

My favourite place.

At some point last week I realised I was feeling a little bit over “short form” social media. In other words, I was a bit over the passive-aggressive Facebook statuses and the armchair politics of Twitter. I thought I’d get rid of both for a week and see what it was like.

I loved it. I didn’t miss reading about people’s lunches at all. I was less angry, I got far more done, and most importantly, my attention span increased dramatically. I went from not being able to sit through an hour of Sopranos, to sitting through The Talented Mr Ripley, which comes in at a little over two hours, including the longest Dolby Digital ad ever, which I accidentally watched twice. I finished two Vanity Fairs that had been sitting beside my bed since last year [featuring some brilliant articles, including this one about the dispute surrounding L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt’s gifts to François-Marie Banier; another  which is a gripping story about the deadly risks of climbing Mont Blanc, and a surprisingly engrossing extract from Lauren Hillenbrand's new book about three men who survived when their World War II bomber crashed in the Pacific].

I had all kinds of weekend plans which I did without spending half my time looking at my phone and no-one was forced to read 11,000 Tweets about anything clumsy I managed to do [until this morning, when I felt it was my duty to inform people that I'd dropped beetroot on my pants, right on the groin region].  

I’m going to go another week and see how I feel about it all then, but in the meantime, if you spend less time on the ‘net, you spend more time doing stuff like:

Rodd Island

Kathy and Luke had their engagement party on Saturday on Rodd Island. I met The Sisters Scott at 2204 for brunch first [I can report that the pancakes with boiled fruit are pretty amazing], then we headed to Leichhardt in the world’s slowest taxi, which almost caused us to miss the last water taxi to the island.

There we found a veritable little paradise. The lawn was strewn with beanbags, there was delicious food and bright buckets of alcohol, lawn Twister and a piñata.

It was a delightful day, made even more delightful by the possible appearance of a shark [maybe].

Dr Pong

Afterwards, I went to Oxford Street to Dr Pong, where I met Joel, Steph, and a selection of Joel’s friends, where we belatedly celebrated his birthday with $10 Caprioskas, and many of them. If you like having drinks served by someone in a huge feather headdress, and I suggest you probably would like that, head to Dr Pong.

Book Club

On Sunday I went, with Steph, to a new book club which her friend Bron is a part of. It’s a rad idea, each meeting they pick a Penguin and decide if it is a classic, or if it sucks. The first one we will read is Notes from Underground by that salty dog, Dostoyevsky, whose name I love. I’m interested in seeing what it’s like, I have had a fraught relationship  with Russian to English translations in the past, I find they make the characters very cold, but I remain hopeful as I’m currently reading The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov and it’s amazing. Maybe there is hope for me and the Russians yet.