Here are my resolutions for the new year:
1. To lose some weight. Yes, this is top of my list EVERY YEAR and miraculously, I am still not skinny! Still, I haven't started on a bad note - well, not as bad as some years. If I can get below 60 kg as my average weight, I will be a happy bunny.
2. To save lots of money. To this end I have been spending a lot recently. Because, of course, I'm going to need clothes, jewellery and perfume to see me through the dark days of saving. And maybe handbags. I'm thinking of starting a handbag collection - every other woman in the western world seems to have one. So why shouldn't I! Anyway...saving. Also on this topic I intend to bring my lunch to work most days so I don't have to eat the disgusting, overpriced slop they sell in the outlets here. I used to be really good about bringing lunch, and then I got slack.
3. Ballet resolution of the year: Yes, I have one. Don't you? I have one every year! This year, I want to significantly increase my flexibility. So lots of stretching sessions at the gym, and in front of the TV with a glass of wine. Well why not? It helps my tendons relax!
In other news, I went to lunch with some workmates today. On the way into the restaurant, someone spotted a redback (spider) crawling up one of of the guys' back! No harm done (loosely speaking - the spider was harmed).
Monday, 5 January 2009
Wednesday, 5 November 2008
Go-bama
I can't believe I used to find current affairs uninteresting. What was I thinking? As I write, Americans are (hopefully) voting in their first ever BLACK PRESIDENT. I can hardly contain myself. Well, I'd hardly be able to contain myself if I wasn't:
- Crazy busy at work;
- So hungover from emotional crying session last night that I look like a hideous, 50-year-old alcoholic;
- Umm, that's it.
Anyway, EXCITING! Go Obama!
Friday, 31 October 2008
Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
I thought I might fill this post with platitudes and have a big wallow in misery and self-hatred, but I've decided to be strict with myself. May as well not write the damn thing then.
Monday, 27 October 2008
Bad Food Experiences
'Faeces in Gelato' - this is one headline which pertains to the charming news story that broke yesterday, on the grisly allegation by a family that they were served ICE CREAM WITH HUMAN FAECES SMEARED ON IT at the Coogee Bay Hotel. The funny thing is, I was at the Coogee Bay Hotel yesterday and saw the news crew. I didn't know what the story was about, but luckily I didn't have any shitty ice cream (I was there to use their ever lovely toilets - thanks, CBH.) Anyway, this story is CONSTANTLY on the news, and the news is always on in our house, and I feel a bit disgusted every time I hear it.
And talking of disgusting...I blearily thudded my way into the kitchen first thing this morning, and as usual, blindly grabbed the nearest vessel of water which had been proving nicely since the night before. As I was greedily gulping it down, my peripheral vision caught a glimpse of all this black detritus at the bottom of the glass. I sprayed water everywhere as I realised the water was full of ants. Eeeeeuwwww!!!
So anyway, that's enough yuck for one 24 hours.
And talking of disgusting...I blearily thudded my way into the kitchen first thing this morning, and as usual, blindly grabbed the nearest vessel of water which had been proving nicely since the night before. As I was greedily gulping it down, my peripheral vision caught a glimpse of all this black detritus at the bottom of the glass. I sprayed water everywhere as I realised the water was full of ants. Eeeeeuwwww!!!
So anyway, that's enough yuck for one 24 hours.
Monday, 13 October 2008
A Day Out in Minto
Yesterday the Man I had the exciting good fortune of being out and about in the NSW town of Minto, some hour and a half's drive (if you include the time I was pulled over by the cops for L-plate related crime) from Sydney. We had just turned the car around for the journey home when joy of joys, we spotted the Minto Festival!
Now I'm no small fan of bucolic revelry, reminding me as it does of my childhood, so when the Man suggested we stop, I was all, "Hell, yes!"
We found a parking spot that was sort of in the shade and got out of the car, me at a quick trot because I suspected a sausage sizzle couldn't be too far away. I was enthusiastically (ok desperately) scanning the stalls for signs of a barbecue when the Man pointed out that there was some local dance school performing on the stage. Now, I get a rather morbid enjoyment out of seeing my favourite art form mangled, and I was pretty sure this one-horse town was going to serve up a real treat, so to speak, so I temporarily abandoned my gastronomic plans and dragged the Man over to the stage where 'Rhondelle's School of Dance' was entertaining a huge crowd squashed under an awning.
Imagine my surprise, they were actually pretty good! It was all hip hop and tap, at least when we showed up, and they're not my favourite dance forms by a long way, but yes, they were pretty good. To the point where, if some unspeakable disaster caused me to be washed up in Minto with a husband and kids, I'd actually consider enrolling them (only if they really, really wanted me to, of course. Let's not go too far.) I'm a veteran of a couple of backwater 'dance schools' myself, and I'm frankly astonished at what this Rhondelle has managed to achieve. Even the small kids were really dancing, all sharply choreograped, and all spot on in time to the music. Wow.
Anyway, to get back to the most important part of the story, we located a sausage sizzle. There was a long queue so the Man inspected the halal meat stand next to it. There was a visible Muslim presence at the festival, and apparently eating in Minto is ethnically segregated. The halal stall couldn't beat sausages and white bread, so he gave me the thumbs up and I paid the lady who was collecting money and issuing tickets. They were only $1 each. It was for charity, so being the cashed up Sydney city slickers that we are, we donated extra coins, and the lady swooned at our generosity. I guess they don't see big spending like that out there very often.
We were still waiting, me salivating, when Rhondelle's kids finished and a lady led a train of very obviously Islamic schoolkids (little girls in head scarves, trousers and skirts) to the stage. It was pretty obvious they weren't there to dance! I said to the Man they were probably going to recite from the Koran, and bugger me if that isn't exactly what they did. (Actually, I'm not so up-to-scratch with my medieval Arabic, but I'm pretty sure that's what it was.) Predictably, the Man couldn't stop giggling and making lame jokes. You'll be pleased to know I reprimanded him severely, then suggested they might be going to blow themselves up as an encore, so we'd better not get too close. As it happened, they kept up the chanting for 2 or 3 minutes and then launched into a truly appalling rendition of the national anthem. I think it says a lot about community relations in Minto that a) the school thought it was appropriate to have the kids preach religion at a fun, multi-cultural, secular festival, b) the school felt it necessary to have the national anthem sung/butchered at the end, presumably as a sort of "please don't lynch us at the end" kind of gesture, and c) that everyone took the national anthem butchering so well! Come on, school! Couldn't we have had some rockin' Arab tunes instead?
After that, we re-joined the audience at the stage. Most of my onions slithered out from my sandwich, which was disappointing, and some girls and young women did an Aboriginal dance, and then the Man and I hit the road.
Now I'm no small fan of bucolic revelry, reminding me as it does of my childhood, so when the Man suggested we stop, I was all, "Hell, yes!"
We found a parking spot that was sort of in the shade and got out of the car, me at a quick trot because I suspected a sausage sizzle couldn't be too far away. I was enthusiastically (ok desperately) scanning the stalls for signs of a barbecue when the Man pointed out that there was some local dance school performing on the stage. Now, I get a rather morbid enjoyment out of seeing my favourite art form mangled, and I was pretty sure this one-horse town was going to serve up a real treat, so to speak, so I temporarily abandoned my gastronomic plans and dragged the Man over to the stage where 'Rhondelle's School of Dance' was entertaining a huge crowd squashed under an awning.
Imagine my surprise, they were actually pretty good! It was all hip hop and tap, at least when we showed up, and they're not my favourite dance forms by a long way, but yes, they were pretty good. To the point where, if some unspeakable disaster caused me to be washed up in Minto with a husband and kids, I'd actually consider enrolling them (only if they really, really wanted me to, of course. Let's not go too far.) I'm a veteran of a couple of backwater 'dance schools' myself, and I'm frankly astonished at what this Rhondelle has managed to achieve. Even the small kids were really dancing, all sharply choreograped, and all spot on in time to the music. Wow.
Anyway, to get back to the most important part of the story, we located a sausage sizzle. There was a long queue so the Man inspected the halal meat stand next to it. There was a visible Muslim presence at the festival, and apparently eating in Minto is ethnically segregated. The halal stall couldn't beat sausages and white bread, so he gave me the thumbs up and I paid the lady who was collecting money and issuing tickets. They were only $1 each. It was for charity, so being the cashed up Sydney city slickers that we are, we donated extra coins, and the lady swooned at our generosity. I guess they don't see big spending like that out there very often.
We were still waiting, me salivating, when Rhondelle's kids finished and a lady led a train of very obviously Islamic schoolkids (little girls in head scarves, trousers and skirts) to the stage. It was pretty obvious they weren't there to dance! I said to the Man they were probably going to recite from the Koran, and bugger me if that isn't exactly what they did. (Actually, I'm not so up-to-scratch with my medieval Arabic, but I'm pretty sure that's what it was.) Predictably, the Man couldn't stop giggling and making lame jokes. You'll be pleased to know I reprimanded him severely, then suggested they might be going to blow themselves up as an encore, so we'd better not get too close. As it happened, they kept up the chanting for 2 or 3 minutes and then launched into a truly appalling rendition of the national anthem. I think it says a lot about community relations in Minto that a) the school thought it was appropriate to have the kids preach religion at a fun, multi-cultural, secular festival, b) the school felt it necessary to have the national anthem sung/butchered at the end, presumably as a sort of "please don't lynch us at the end" kind of gesture, and c) that everyone took the national anthem butchering so well! Come on, school! Couldn't we have had some rockin' Arab tunes instead?
After that, we re-joined the audience at the stage. Most of my onions slithered out from my sandwich, which was disappointing, and some girls and young women did an Aboriginal dance, and then the Man and I hit the road.
Monday, 28 July 2008
Another Thing My Mouth Can't Do
Another thing I can no longer do now I have braces...whistle. I had the urge to trill a little tune last night, puckered up and was shocked when nothing but 'pfft' came out.
I'm not a big whistler, but it's nice to have the option, you know?
I'm not a big whistler, but it's nice to have the option, you know?
Tuesday, 22 July 2008
My Golden Book of Bible Stories
$86 million! That is what World Youth Day cost us NSW tax payers, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. And that doesn’t include another $42 million for use of the Randwick Racecourse. Ouch, ouch, ouch! Why don’t they just give the money to ME?
Do they think that the benefits of having these visitors here will outweigh the $128 million spent? I heard they hardly spent anything here at all. I wonder what the thinking was behind that.
Still, there’s been lots of fuzziness and good spirits around. As soon as you got into the city last week you saw clusters and brightly dressed youth, waving flags, and singing and squeaking excitedly. You’d have had to have been a massive jerk not to be happy for them, really. It was kind of heart warming.
So now the Pope has gone, the Press is slowly discontinuing its fawning coverage, and the young geeks of the world – instantly recognizable by the orange backpacks and the obligatory acoustic guitar player issued to each group of pedestrians – are going home. I mean seriously, what is wrong with these kids?
My own religious education was confined to a lone Jehovah’s Witnesses’ publication. (I know, it could have ended really badly). When I was around four years old, my parents hired a builder called Barry to do some work on their lovely London home. As they told me some years later, after he’d finished his last day of work on the house, he told them he was a Jehovah’s witness, and asked he could give their daughter (me) a book of Bible stories. They said “All right then”, and so little Sprite was presented with a gold coloured hard-back book, with the words ‘My Book of Bible Stories’ etched on the front in shiny red letters.
I don’t remember really reading the book until I was several years older and living in Saudi Arabia. Due to its size, it sat on the lowest level of my bookshelf with the other hardback books, mostly fairy tales, Care Bear stories and illustrated ballet books. Now, I didn’t get it out very often, but every now and then I’d scan my big selection of books, looking for something a bit different that I hadn’t already read three times in the last year, and maybe I’d be in the mood for something a bit different, a bit off the wall so to speak, and I’d reach for the golden book of Bible stories.
This book held a bit of fascination for me. It started with the cover, plain and tasteful, with no pictures or hints of what was inside. It seemed so adult and mysterious, not aimed at children at all, or at least, aimed at children of another age. So many things were weird about this book. The forbidding, adult tone. The drawings, the good guys in pastel colours and the bad ladies who all looked like the original Charlie’s Angels, perpetually laughing drunkenly, flashing tiny white teeth. I had so many questions. Why were they all Arabs, and yet so different from the Arabs I knew? There wasn’t a mosque in sight! And why did the Paradise on Earth that God promised look like a Safari Park? I didn’t know anyone who’d like to spend eternity in small nuclear family groups, crouching behind bushes and pointing at lions. (I still don’t).
Even at seven or so, I could tell from the tone of the book that it was somehow meant to convey a moral message. But the God in these tales was angry, spiteful and capricious; the messages went against much that I had been raised to believe was right. I also sensed that whoever had written it meant it to be a historical record. Yet I had never heard a whisper of these stories in history class at school. Surely historians conferred occasionally??!
But I was willing to suspend disbelief. It was, after all, shelved with my fairy tales.
Perhaps the most fascinating thing about the book was the mysteries it held. I just didn’t understand a lot of it. One story stands out in my memory, though I don’t remember the details. (Folks, I really don’t know my Bible). A 70’s looking couple were lying together on a sofa, asleep in smug abandon. Jehovah, tirelessly interfering bastard that he was, got enraged (again) and smote them, or something like that, or condemned them to perpetual crop failure, or something, I really don’t remember. The point was, God had forbidden people to lie together unless they were married. (The whole thing was so deliciously unsuitable for innocent children!)
Boy, did I ponder that one. I would look at the picture of the sofa, and remember the many times I had spotted my mother catching an afternoon lap in the living room, and quietly curled up beside her. I assumed that the author was getting at stuff like that. But what in the world were they talking about? I thought and thought and thought!
God – ‘Jehovah’ – seemed so vindictive and evil. He only liked incredibly obedient people, who farmed a lot and stood around gazing adoringly at young children and animals; men with salt and pepper beards and women with big eyes. He really hated shorter bearded men and brassy haired women, who sprawled around in large crowds in Roman-style villas, waving goblets in the air and flashing tiny teeth in slack smiles. I couldn’t imagine wanting to be in either group, but I reasoned that if I had ‘Jehovah’ breathing fire down my neck, I’d surely join group #1 out of self-protection. For me, group #2’s only real wrongdoing was their criminal stupidity!
Who wrote it? Where did it come from? Was it old or modern? Did someone somehow actually still believe in it? (My mother taught me basically that Christianity was something people used to believe in Olden Times, but it was now only relevant as a shared cultural background). But it seemed like somebody did, because it was always asking questions like, "Wouldn't it have been better if so-and-so had listened to Jehovah?" (Me: "It would be even better if Jehovah didn't have anger control issues") and "Wouldn't you like to stand around for eternity stroking a sheep?" ("No"), etc. And what did it mean when it said people shouldn't 'lie together'? Baffled, I’d think and think and think.
Then I’d put the book away and forget about it for another year or so, when I’d tackle it again with the benefit of a little more age, with a slightly different take, and the whole process would begin again.
P.S. After writing this, I did a quick search of the Internet, and guess what, the book’s on Wikipedia. You can check it out here. Go ahead. You know you want to.
Do they think that the benefits of having these visitors here will outweigh the $128 million spent? I heard they hardly spent anything here at all. I wonder what the thinking was behind that.
Still, there’s been lots of fuzziness and good spirits around. As soon as you got into the city last week you saw clusters and brightly dressed youth, waving flags, and singing and squeaking excitedly. You’d have had to have been a massive jerk not to be happy for them, really. It was kind of heart warming.
So now the Pope has gone, the Press is slowly discontinuing its fawning coverage, and the young geeks of the world – instantly recognizable by the orange backpacks and the obligatory acoustic guitar player issued to each group of pedestrians – are going home. I mean seriously, what is wrong with these kids?
My own religious education was confined to a lone Jehovah’s Witnesses’ publication. (I know, it could have ended really badly). When I was around four years old, my parents hired a builder called Barry to do some work on their lovely London home. As they told me some years later, after he’d finished his last day of work on the house, he told them he was a Jehovah’s witness, and asked he could give their daughter (me) a book of Bible stories. They said “All right then”, and so little Sprite was presented with a gold coloured hard-back book, with the words ‘My Book of Bible Stories’ etched on the front in shiny red letters.
I don’t remember really reading the book until I was several years older and living in Saudi Arabia. Due to its size, it sat on the lowest level of my bookshelf with the other hardback books, mostly fairy tales, Care Bear stories and illustrated ballet books. Now, I didn’t get it out very often, but every now and then I’d scan my big selection of books, looking for something a bit different that I hadn’t already read three times in the last year, and maybe I’d be in the mood for something a bit different, a bit off the wall so to speak, and I’d reach for the golden book of Bible stories.
This book held a bit of fascination for me. It started with the cover, plain and tasteful, with no pictures or hints of what was inside. It seemed so adult and mysterious, not aimed at children at all, or at least, aimed at children of another age. So many things were weird about this book. The forbidding, adult tone. The drawings, the good guys in pastel colours and the bad ladies who all looked like the original Charlie’s Angels, perpetually laughing drunkenly, flashing tiny white teeth. I had so many questions. Why were they all Arabs, and yet so different from the Arabs I knew? There wasn’t a mosque in sight! And why did the Paradise on Earth that God promised look like a Safari Park? I didn’t know anyone who’d like to spend eternity in small nuclear family groups, crouching behind bushes and pointing at lions. (I still don’t).
Even at seven or so, I could tell from the tone of the book that it was somehow meant to convey a moral message. But the God in these tales was angry, spiteful and capricious; the messages went against much that I had been raised to believe was right. I also sensed that whoever had written it meant it to be a historical record. Yet I had never heard a whisper of these stories in history class at school. Surely historians conferred occasionally??!
But I was willing to suspend disbelief. It was, after all, shelved with my fairy tales.
Perhaps the most fascinating thing about the book was the mysteries it held. I just didn’t understand a lot of it. One story stands out in my memory, though I don’t remember the details. (Folks, I really don’t know my Bible). A 70’s looking couple were lying together on a sofa, asleep in smug abandon. Jehovah, tirelessly interfering bastard that he was, got enraged (again) and smote them, or something like that, or condemned them to perpetual crop failure, or something, I really don’t remember. The point was, God had forbidden people to lie together unless they were married. (The whole thing was so deliciously unsuitable for innocent children!)
Boy, did I ponder that one. I would look at the picture of the sofa, and remember the many times I had spotted my mother catching an afternoon lap in the living room, and quietly curled up beside her. I assumed that the author was getting at stuff like that. But what in the world were they talking about? I thought and thought and thought!
God – ‘Jehovah’ – seemed so vindictive and evil. He only liked incredibly obedient people, who farmed a lot and stood around gazing adoringly at young children and animals; men with salt and pepper beards and women with big eyes. He really hated shorter bearded men and brassy haired women, who sprawled around in large crowds in Roman-style villas, waving goblets in the air and flashing tiny teeth in slack smiles. I couldn’t imagine wanting to be in either group, but I reasoned that if I had ‘Jehovah’ breathing fire down my neck, I’d surely join group #1 out of self-protection. For me, group #2’s only real wrongdoing was their criminal stupidity!
Who wrote it? Where did it come from? Was it old or modern? Did someone somehow actually still believe in it? (My mother taught me basically that Christianity was something people used to believe in Olden Times, but it was now only relevant as a shared cultural background). But it seemed like somebody did, because it was always asking questions like, "Wouldn't it have been better if so-and-so had listened to Jehovah?" (Me: "It would be even better if Jehovah didn't have anger control issues") and "Wouldn't you like to stand around for eternity stroking a sheep?" ("No"), etc. And what did it mean when it said people shouldn't 'lie together'? Baffled, I’d think and think and think.
Then I’d put the book away and forget about it for another year or so, when I’d tackle it again with the benefit of a little more age, with a slightly different take, and the whole process would begin again.
P.S. After writing this, I did a quick search of the Internet, and guess what, the book’s on Wikipedia. You can check it out here. Go ahead. You know you want to.
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