Our freezer is spilling out at the seams at the moment. Unfortunately, this means that whenever you open the door, something is bound to fall onto your foot. And my catching skills are about par with Philip Tufnell's. Which means my poor toes take a bit of punishment whenever I feel the urge for some ice cubes.
Ice cubes are needed today in Sydney - it's fantastic outside - sunny, 21C, no clouds...
I was thinking about buying an iPod, since I got rather attached to my MD player in Japan - walking around just isn't the same without some cool song rocking around your head. But gee whiz, is that thing expensive, or what? Everything on it seems to be an optional extra. A replacement battery costs almost the price of a new iPod, and considering the battery is slated to run for about 12-15 months without replacing, essentially you're almost buying a new iPod every year! Talk about built-in obsolescence. This article on News.com sums up my feelings.
Speaking of the iPod, it's being advertised in Australia (and the US, I hear) with Aussie band Jet. Only problem is, in Australia, recording your CDs to MP3 is illegal. And you can't download the song for a fee a la iStore. And the album is copy-protected anyway (I woulda bought it but for that). Nice one!
I've noticed since we've been living in Sydney an amazing upsurge in telemarketing or survey calls. The person at the other end is invariable Irish, probably on a working holiday visa and desperate enough for short-term cash to override the self-hatred that must come with the territory.
The best telemarketing calls are for Dickson. He gets all the Chinese calls (since his surname is Yan). When I answer the phone, a short burst of Mandarin comes down the line. Then the click and a dial-tone. I feel hurt they don't want to speak with me.
It's scary how much Japanese I've forgotten. Even the basics, like reading hiragana, is starting to fade. I can still recognise most characters, but I find I have to think more and more before I can confidently move on to the next character. In the Old Days, you were surrounded with hiragana, katakana, and kanji, so everywhere was like a little mini-exam. The proficiency test is less than a month away! I figure if I get half an hour to an hour in a day, I should be fine.
I teamed up with Harley, a mate of mine from PwC days, for this month's pool comp. Actually, I should say I rode on his coattails, since he's a bit more of a pool shark than I am. I'm more of a pool minnow. Maybe a pool nurse shark on a good day.
Unemployed, not working, between positions, taking 'me' time, fart-arsing about.
I've got a big stack of things on the TODO list around here, things that I haven't had the time to sit down with and spend a few hours nutting out. Unfortunately, any moment not spent in the quest to become Gainfully Employed is a moment spent guiltily, thinking "I should really be looking for a job right now."
It's a gorgeous day outside, I should be sitting under a tree or something. If I had a job, I'd be inside an office, gazing wistfully out the window; now that I can take advantage of daylight hours, I still feel tethered by responsibility.
OK, here's a conundrum for you. After hearing myriad reports of Matrix Revolutions sucking quite badly, I'm not too keen anymore on going to see it, particularly when movie tickets these days are $15 (even tight-arse Tuesdays are over $10). I'm even less inclined since Reloaded was awful. The big, bombastic speeches were stupid, the rave scene was just dumb, and the action was nothing really special after the first one.
I don't want to reward mediocrity in movies by dutifully handing over my hard-earned; Hollywood takes the movie audience too much for granted - you only need to look at the formulaic crap that gets churned out for evidence.
On the other hand, do I want to subscribe to the idea that since others have said it was crap, then I should think that, too? Surely I'd want to be able to make up my own mind about it's crapness. But I don't want to pay $15 just to determine that, yes, it's a pretty ordinary movie.
From the Japan Times:
Kanagawa Gov. Shigefumi Matsuzawa qualified his assertion Sunday that "all" foreigners are "sneaky thieves," stating instead that only "some" are.
Even if he was only talking about Chinese nationals, it doesn't make it right to pander to this sort of xenophobia. Japan is a shining example of a country that wants to be perceived as multicultural and worldly, but without the bother of having to deal with all those weird foreigners.
Australian Formula One driver Mark Webber was in the papers with a bit of a sober warning about road rage, after an ironic incident:
"There's some very, very aggressive drivers out there. The Aussies wind themselves up a treat on the roads for no reason," Webber said. "We just need more education and more patience, really."
Poor guy wasn't even on the road at the time - he was getting out of a cab, and got the sharp end of someone else's car horn.
I think part of the problem is that people are just so stressed out and short-tempered these days, driving around like mad fools - it's no wonder there are so many close shaves. But when you think about it, it's not worth saving 5 seconds off your journey if you arrive there angry and annoyed. My trick is that I try and drive like the other people are unpredictable idiots who think they're driving dodgem cars.
My mate Troy organised tickets to see Paul Kelly last night at The Metro. A pretty good concert - decent mix of the old crowd favourites and the newer material. It's certainly a fantastic experience to be in the same room as probably the most lyrical of Australian musicians. Ticket prices also included a copy of the new EP, too.
An article in yesterday's Age:
"I don't feel confident in voting, I don't feel confident my votes will count anymore - I just feel sick," Emmy Burns, 25, of Malvern, said yesterday ... Ms Burns said she was still likely to tune in next Sunday.
I love that last line. No matter what Channel 10 do to hurt her personally, she still rises above it, dutifully tuning in.
The upbeat letter I got today from Westpac urged me to take out a home loan with them. It contrasted a little with this less-than-rosy outlook, from their CEO.
Didn't watch it. Didn't go in any office sweeps. Avoided all talk of some insignificant horse race allegedly being run in Melbourne by steering conversation to football. Did you know it's only 153 days until footy starts again?
Race that stops a nation? It didn't stop me.
Take THAT, you tired, over-used cliche!
David Jones have already got their Christmas decorations up in the windows. That's got to be some kind of record.
Ah, Christmas, the spirit of trying to flog stuff off is filling the air already!
We hate Coles. No, we really, really hate Coles. We hate their shithouse trolleys that are always broken and made out of ugly metal that screams cheap metal offcut, we hate their long queues that are never alleviated by more staff, we hate the deli staff that are cleaning up, rather than serving customers because management stop paying them on the hour exactly and cleaning the equipment is part of their job description, we hate the lack of range, the poor quality fruit and vegetables and most of all we hate the cynical attempt to saturate your mind with advertising goodspeak, rather than fixing any of the problems. Hey, Coles, you suck, and all the money you spend on advertising is having no effect on convincing me otherwise.
Each and every Sunday morning, we run the trolley up and down the aisles of Coles in Surry Hills, all the while complaining about how they don't stock this, how expensive that is, that there's never enough deli staff on duty, how long the queues are, and how we should be going elsewhere.
This Sunday, we decided to try something a little different. Since Paddy's Markets are down the road, and we since we were so inspired by yesterday's expedition, we thought we'd go there instead.
We probably will never buy anything perishable at Coles again.
Amazingly cheap (actual competition between stallholders!), great range of top-quality fresh vegies, fish that's cheaper than the fish markets (don't get me started on THAT place) - Paddy's Markets should be paying me to advertise. Another reason why living close to town is worth it.
After a few weeks' of shopping at Coles for fruit and veg, you need a change from the expensive, nutritionless, pesticided-to-within-a-quality-controlled-inch-of-it's-life food. Where better to go for fresh eats in Sydney than the Flemington markets? On Saturday, we made the epic journey to Flemington, western Sydney.
Our friend Sam invited us to the movies last night; Cinema Paris at Fox Studios were showing a Bollywood production.
Can I just say at the outset that I have never, in my life, seen such a melodramatic movie. Although I read the review, nothing prepared us for the action, the excitement, the tears, the jeers, the heroes and the villains.
If you're like us and have never checked out a movie from the world's most prolific movie-making centre, Bollywood movies are renowned for their bombastic musical productions and over-the-top emotive performances. And Baghban didn't disappoint.
How white were the actors? I never knew Indians could be so white. "They're northern Indians," said Sam.
I have never seen so many crying scenes in my life. The acting was so over the top even Sam, who's Indian, was embarrassed. Heck, the rest of the audience, which was 99% Indian, were starting to laugh at the cheesiness. After the intermission (believe it or not, the movie went for THREE HOURS), things started to pick up a little. But by the end, we were starting to get restless. A movie doesn't need to have the main character make a 5 minute speech at the finale for the audience to get the point. Selfish kids bad, devoted son good, selfless parents god-like, OK, WE GET IT!!
The final word should go to Sam: "Indians don't talk like that!"
andrewandkathleen was meant to be a place to chuck our photos and diaries of our time in Japan. Since then it's transformed into a way of letting our friends and family know what we've been up to!
We've been together since high school, married since 2005. We've travelled and lived in different cities and different countries and are now trying to work out whether we're settling down or having a rest!
