We were getting ready for another dreary day at work when we heard an odd whooshing sound outside - couldn't work out if it was a plane, or a car or bike - it had the sound of a motorised vehicle of sorts but we couldn't figure it out. When you reside off the confluence of 2 busy roads and under flight paths, you tend to block out some of the sudden clicks, bumps and pops that form the aural soundtrack of inner city living. But this sounded unusual, so we went outside for a steaky beak, and there it was - a big hot air balloon, so low you could just about reach out and shake the hands of its occupants.
Maybe one day I'll make it up there - well if I can drag myself out of bed early enough and find spare cash lying around!
Ok ... I'm not really one for superstition, but I do appreciate ritual to a certain degree. So I'd like to wish all you netizens out there a Happy New Year .... and to collectively hope that 2015 will be a better and more compassionate year for the world at large.
I am going to try my very best to not take anything for granted and I want to work on teasing out any latent forms of apathy by replacing my I wish I couldas with more I will bes and I am going tos. I've started the year with a new beginning of sorts, but I have taken a number of steps back as a result. New Job and new adjustments are proving difficult to handle. But I have incredible support from an amazing partner and some pretty fantastic friends. So I'm luckier than most I guess. So here's to the year ahead. No more excuses folks! Time is running out! PS - don't block the blessings!
Ok ... please indulge me a little. I started the year with good intentions. It was one of my new year's resolutions to document the European trip we took in 2013. And I was determined to wrestle apathy to the ground and continue to be a contributing and productive member of the blogosphere. But fate had something completely different in mind. Yes it would have been better to have started as soon as we got back, while the memories were still fresh, but shit got very real soon after that!
As a result of having nothing more pressing to do, I'm now trawling through half scribbled notes in old diaries, and barely legible jottings on discarded receipts and about a million photos on flash drives galore to try and capture the essence of what it was like stepping out into the Iberian air at the start of a well deserved break from the routine of old. So perhaps I'll eschew the manic Gaudi grandeur, the crowded streets of Barri Gotic and the tourist traps round L'Rhamblas and start with the sleek, quiet contemplation of the Mies van de Rohe pavilion in Barcelona.
The Pavillion was built in 1929 for the Barcelona International Exhibition and dismantled the following year. It was then reconstructed to exact specifications and re-opened in 1986. All steel, glass and marble, the misleading simplicity of its design and geometry is reflected in much of modern day architecture that we see today. Its almost mind boggling how very contemporary it all looks considering it was developed more than 80 years ago.
Ever the slave to fashion and trends, I was caught up in the brief fascination with designer furniture in the early noughties, but never quite had the financial nous to trully indulge such a passion. So there was a certain anthropological thrill at seeing the Barcelona chair in its original habitat.
There was a time you could walk the grounds and only had to pay an entrance fee if you wanted to enter the building. These days its 5EUR for the lot. So if you're up for some quiet contemplation in amongst the bustle of this busy city, spare a half hour or so and have a wander.
Ok ... I am sat here in an empty office with the lights all turned on even though its just me! Its my last hurrah in the city after a tumultous few months, which also explains the lack of activity on this blog! (Well, it hopefully absolves me in some orthodox catholic way). I have multiple drafts queued to go but I suspect that I will scrap the lot and start again. But to flaunt any form of overt/covert superstition, let me revamp these hallowed/hollowed pages with a precautionary tale - NEVER EVER get involved in accident with a Taxi! It all started with a ratty piece of paper addressed to M with the name of a debt collection agency and a mobile number to call. We ignored this but when a similar piece of paper was stuck in the fly screen door the next day, I decided to call and find out what the deelio was. Needless to say, the man who answered the phone refused to speak to me and only wanted to speak to M. So I said that we would have to leave it at that and refused to give him anymore details. M had no choice but to call. Apparently he was much less professional this time round, but M can be surprisingly immovable and will dig his heels in especially if he senses any undue aggression. Turns out the taxi company associated with the taxi M crashed into awhile ago was collecting on what they perceived as outstanding debt on the repairs that were made as a result of the accident. We of course had done the right thing and made the necessary claim with RACV and forked out $500 excess for our troubles! Although we did think that the list of repairs that the Taxi company sent through amounting to about $10000 was a bit excessive. M's car was pretty much a write off, but there was hardly even a scratch on the Taxi as far as he could tell. Clearly RACV was of the same opinion as they tried to contact the Taxi company several times to verify the repairs and never received any response. So there we were emprisoned at home on a Saturday morning waiting for the debt collector to arrive to hand us our summons in person ... and he was every possible shade of lovely, starting with a thinly veiled threat of not calling from a visible phone line if we didn't want him to know our number, and then subsequently yelling at us from the street calling us bloody idiots and professing to be just a courier. All kinds of shade over here at chez Temasek! At least this time we had the name of the lawyer and his contact details which we passed onto RACV. We were contacted by legal affairs at RACV who subsequently made it all go away. But surely this is not legal? And surely the Lawyer should have known that this was not a legal process? Its all so shoddy and sordid. I feel like I'm an episode on Today Tonight!! Why are there so many scammers out there? Rant over.
Ok ... so I need your help. I want to try and engage more this year so if you are even the tiniest bit interested in this blog can you be my little New Year spark and follow my twitter and instagram pages ... pretty please!
@Temasek68 on Twitter - https://twitter.com/Temasek68 Temasek68 on Instagram - http://instagram.com/temasek68
And
of course there is my Youtube page (Temasekdan) which you can subscribe
to, although this is admittedly a bit of an acquired taste ... http://www.youtube.com/user/temasekdan
Ok ... Melbourne whats up with the weather ... I know us Melbournians love to bitch about the inclemency of the elements ... but surely this is taking the piss. We just got back from 6 wondrous days of a Perth summer in all its moderate glory ...
Blue skies ...
Blue Water ...
Green brush ...
And the cutest western denizens of them all ...
Now I'm sat here in a jumper with the electric blankets turned on ... Ridiculous!
These are the cherries on our Cherry tree. In the 7 or so years we have had this tree, we have eaten the sum total of 3 ripe cherries ... the rest have been thrown to the wind and the birds ... like crumbs from a Grimms fairy tale ... never to find their way home. Futility.
Ok ... well its a new year and lets start it off with a bang ... alright maybe a fizzle ... and a tentative promise to try and keep this site as active as life will allow.
Here's a couple of my New Year's Blogolutions ... (i) Post more often (i.e. get out more often) (ii) Review last year's European trip
Hope you stick with me as I try to revamp things bit by bit. But lets start off from a low point and build upwards. My next extremely short post will be about Futility ...
Ok ... in a world of shrinking resources, you can sometimes find yourself inadvertently owning a piece of high fashion without the associated branding, nor the fiscal implications that accompany findings of exclusivity. Alright yes I'm trying to impress with my ten dollar words and my desolate turn of phrase, so lets just cut to the chase.
Over the last couple of years or so, me and M have gravitated towards the convenience and expediency of the group present. Birthdays are still sacrosanct, but Christmas and Anniversaries are exempt, and its always fun trying to think of things to shop for together, or discovering a "need" that could turn into a congratulatory present to ourselves.
This was definitely a "need" in inverted commas! I mentioned Quazi Designs in a previous post. Well we went back there on a recent weekend and cooed over the very same Dining Table set that they still hadn't been able to shift. To sweeten the deal, Shane knocked a reasonable amount off the going price and then left us alone to stew and simmer. I thought M was going to have a coronary so torn was he between excitement and trepidation.
But, it wasn't too long before shaky hands were pulling out the old plastic fantsastic, and one swipe and a few button pushes later, we were the proud owners of this (photo taken in final situ):
And so to lessen the impact, I suggested that we treat this as our Christmas present, so that's the festive season sorted for the year.
So what has this all got to do with the first paragraph of this post, well at lunch time I did the ho-stroll through DJs, and walked past this Paul Smith bag ... see anything familiar?
Yes they both use that high falluting Swedish fabric that is supposed to be tough and fade proof!! It certainly looks like it would last the distance, and its a pretty, and I think a rather timeless pattern.
Ok ... Winter in Melbourne ... you're not so bad at all ... rug up and head bush ... even in the cold and wet there is a sort of glamour ...
And under Winter's silvery grey cloak, the most prosaic of views strikes a pose of colour and hue ...
Meanwhile in the city, if you are prepared to brave and brace the icy climes, there are urban projections to be savoured ...
Full up on soi38's pop up noodles and accidental conversation, we upcollared and upstakes down to Gertrude to take in the wintry nocturnal sights ... we watched the birth of stars in a shop window ...
We marvelled at geometry in motion on bricks and mortar ...
We gawped as building facades transfigured into altars of illummination and colour ...
And the inevitable audience participation ...
Oh but then there was the EYE ... but that will be another post.
Ok ... I am so fucking mad at life! Barely 2 weeks, 2 fucking weeks of trying to piece my life together and it dumps all over me again. We lost Finney earlier this year and just before our holiday, it was almost touch and go with Sascha, but he pulled through the little trooper. So why did it have to end like this. I want to unsee the X-ray with that impossibly ugly crack, unopen the door to let him limp on forward across hardwood floors, unhold his frail body as I took him out into the cold wet night, uncall him as he struggled to crawl back towards my voice and into the warmth of the house, unfeed him all those years when he started sniffing out company in our backyard, unhand him as I punched walls out of frustration at finding yet another puddle of pee in the corner of the bathroom ... forgive me Sascha ... even then I knew I would have to come to live with the regret.
This is the life
Everyone has to be somewhere
I am here
Testing a dream
The pressure of dreams is the killer
Of dreams
And it only gets harder
This is the life
This is the life
This is my life
Time is the monster
All of us fight the same monster
To win
I scream when I breathe
Fearing that worry will trigger
All my fears
And it only gets harder
(How did I get so serious?)
This is the life
This is the life
This is the life
This is my life
Everyone has to do something
I am here
Doing what I do best
But this is the life
This is the life
This is the life
Ok ... so 2 months into the year and what have we got ... quite a lot actually. M celebrated a milestone with catering from Safari Restauarant. (He draws a bigger crowd than I do ... oh!) Our travel bugs are finally back which means yay! pool! And biggest thing of all, we're off to Europe!! Well Barcelona and then quite a bit of Italy. So as you can imagine, the planning has taken up much of my spare time. So let me quickly break some things down for you:
- I dropped my iphone in water (ok I'm fessing up ... it was the toilet bowl) for the second time!! The Shame prevents me from schlepping out to Donnie to "meet a Genius" at the Genius Bar. Besides which they will probably just offer me the same phone at $180, so I've decided to risk all manner of false economies and order an ex-display iPhone 4 online. Only time will tell how wise a choice this was. Fingers crossed. Meanwhile texting has been an absolute nigtmare on the work crackberry! And I miss my music and phone numbers ... thank god for the cloud is all I can say, despite the inherent privacy risks.
- I'm officially over Food Trucks, after sampling White Guy Cooks Thai for the first time in the cutest little park in Seddon ... to all you Seddonites ... I am soooo jealous of where you live! Once the novelty wears off, the food really isn't up to scratch, and doesn't quite warrant all the associated angst of finding out where the damn thing will be on the day, and getting there early before things run out.
- I still get a kick out of paste-ups ... but I won't pretend to understand what it all means
- Garamerica over in South Melbourne is not bad at all! May need a post all of its own ... but here's a taster:
- The congee at Huu Huu Thanh in Footscray market is so so good! A definite must have:
- So is the Macaroni and Cheese over at Woolly Bully in North Melbourne. Just across the street from 'tude central but a world away as far as service is concerned:
- 80s stalwarts crawling out of retro-anonymity and doing relevant work!! Amazing! 2 of the best so far:
- In May, we will be here!! Entry and exit flights and half of the accomodation have been booked. Next up we need to settle whether its a hotel or apartment in Rome, and which Car rental to use (yes we are attempting to drive in Italy!). So, we fly into Barcelona for a few days, then fly to Venice, train to Milan, car round Lake Como down to Cinque Terra and eventually into Florence. Another few days there, then car through the Tuscan region to Rome which is wear we finish off our Meditarranean sojourn. I can't wait!
- I keep garnering subscribers on my YouTube page, which is fantastic. I have to remember to put another video up soon, or I may lose their interest. This video has the highest number of hits so far:
- And I recently discovered this little gem from, wait for it, SINGAPORE!! Who knew that my little hometown that is all about the 3 R's could produce such musical gems like this??!!
- I recently tweeted! But as I have next to zero followers, and don't really have anything interesting to say, its like a tree falling in a forest, or one hand clapping, oh shit I dunno, insert your own analogy here.
- And I can't really look at our Magnolia Tree anymore, but life, as expected, has moved on. Here's Sascha keeping Finney company:
