Posted at 26 Oct 5:12 pm. 0 comments
So recently on one of those eternal email threads with Adam and Ross the topic of friends came up, and it got me thinking how it was getting harder and harder to make close friends. Meeting people is easy, the sunshine and rainbows kind where everyone is all smiles, but to me a real friend is a friend who trusts you enough to let you share their secret heart, their woes, their inner voices, to hold them when they are alone and lift them up when they sink down. There is no deep loyalty anymore, that’s far harder to win.
It made me think that some bygones should be left bygones, and close friends cherished for what they are, instead of being taken for granted.
This process is far less extreme than what Den went through to come to a similar realization: lying stiff as a board at night in negative temperatures while hiking up an ice mountain. Perhaps I’m not that masochistic after all.
Posted at 15 Oct 4:08 pm. 0 comments
I never expected to be so aware of the fragility of the human body at this age. Perhaps when I’m 40, 50 maybe. Not at 23.
Posted at 10 Oct 1:19 pm. 0 comments
The same way your average teen tries to fake street cred with a gang by wearing chains and metal studs, I fake street cred with my creative friends by holding a pen.
Posted at 29 Sep 3:25 am. 0 comments
From the start, there was only one act I really wanted to see. I was there mostly because of Sexybum. “We’ve never been to a local concert together, baby,” he crooned, and turned on the pleading puppy-dog eyes. I never stood a chance.
So I got tickets for Catz and her beau and we all trotted off together. We lost them early on in the crowd so we circled round to the back where it was less crowded and sweaty, where we could cuddle without missing too much of the action. Of the entire lineup I have a soft spot only for Reshmonuu, but he was just finishing up as we reached the surf beach.
It must be said that MC Hotdog was a very pleasant surprise – his first few songs, though in Mandarin, had awfully catchy, engaging tunes to them. We cheered him until for some ungodly reason he started rapping about two tigers (?) to a nursery rhyme tune.
Why, indeed.
DJ HaZe must have royally pissed off the backstage crew pre-show. I couldn’t tell you if he was good or not because the sound was so soft, it was more like background music than a full-on rave set. It also had floodlights on full blast all throughout the entire set. You couldn’t look at him. You couldn’t hear him. If a DJ plays a set in a theme park and is invisible and inaudible, did he really play?
The main event came on at 10.30pm. We cheered loudly and wildly until we realized we couldn’t see a thing over the frantically waving hands and so made our way round to where we could at least stare at the camera’s projections on large white cloth screens.
And yes, they were pretty good even if they seemed exhausted after their punishing flight schedule. They seemed accustomed to a more engaged audience – so sorrylah, we all very shy-shy one. Will.i.am barely sang. Taboo was in tune, on the beat, sharp moves, but Sexybum dismissed him as eye candy, probably because the girls were going wild for him. Fergie looked good, but seemed unable to master the technical aspects of singing into a microphone, at least for the first third of it. She was briefly off key too but got her act together before the halfway point. Apl.de.ap carried the show. He sang most of it, DJed brilliantly for a spell, and was generally the show’s main man.
The sound people needed a seeing-to. I’d bet good money Fergie’s mike issues weren’t all her fault. The sound quality was so bad that once they stopped to ask if everyone at the back could hear them. And the cameraman seemed unable to grasp the basic guideline of “Focus on the singer.” As a result, for half of Big Girls Don’t Cry we were treated to a closeup of the guitarist’s guitar, and throughout the concert he continued to focus on everybody else walking about the stage BUT the person who happened to be singing. Highly infuriating.
And oh, yeah, it was Arthur’s Day after all so I should mention Guinness, but the line for the alcohol was so long, and the drinking area so tiny, we didn’t bother even though we could have done with a refreshing draught.
Posted at 25 Sep 2:56 am. 0 comments
Crazystrat linked me to pretweeting, an app where you can buy words and earn virtual money if the price of your words go up. It was vaguely reminiscent of a stock market board until I had a look at the graphs, and here is the key to the entire thing:
All are absolutely regular.
This is most likely related to the fact that only US tweets are taken into account, and there are a few hours when almost everyone’s asleep. So it’s really easy to buy at the low points and sell at the high, quite unlike your average stock graph which is all over the place and liable to go anywhere the next minute.
The first 12 hours I experimented with buying a few different words. Lol. Wtf. Why. I sank to the bottom of the top 40 and was booted off a couple of times.
Then I sold them off and bought morning, kept that for over 14 hours (a little too long, but I hadn’t access to the net to sell), then bought goodnight. There’s another hour or two to go until that peaks, and I’m already #8 on the leaderboard. A timely sale and less time experimenting with words could easily have brought me into the top 5.
Now, if only they allowed us to take home our winnings in real money.
Posted at 22 Sep 2:48 am. 0 comments
Sexybum’s meant to have a blog post up about Delectable already, but I thought I’d write a bit about it too. He was typing with such fervor as I went through the KFC dinner plates we were having at 11.30pm courtesy of my mum (oh hi, morbid obesity, we’ll be with you in a moment), it was kind of sweet.
Now I’m not going to go into elaborate detail because he already has. I’ll sum it up in one word: disappointing.
The pristine creations in the window are so pretty! The fondant bunnies are so cute, and the little flowers so delicate! It’s pure eye candy – which has a strange taste of iron when eaten. (”Blood?” I asked in surprise as a fondant ribbon melted on my tongue.)
We got home and took delighted pictures of our costly prize – $28 for three small cupcakes, thankyouverymuch – poured two glasses of milk and oh-so-carefully lifted the first bites to our mouths in blissful anticipation.
And…
…
…
… nothing.
No fireworks of flavor on our tongues. No tantalizing mix of textures, no half-guilty shivers of bliss running down our spines.
We get real happy when fed good food, and this experience was like the beginnings of a really promising orgasm which fell flat.
Carefully we peeled off the fondant layer. Without them, the cupcakes sat small, naked and ugly in their liners. I almost felt sorry for them.
“How much would you pay for them?” Sexybum asked.
“Sixty cents?” I hazarded, staring at the shrunken, denuded confections. The flavor was nothing to shout about. The texture was too fine and far too soft. Freshness varied greatly – our vanilla cupcake was clearly older than the chocolate, and the ginger somewhere in between.
We moved on quickly to the brownie, which was thin, dry, far too crumbly and more like a soft, airy biscuit than a proper brownie, and the Seven Sins of Chocolate which wouldn’t have tempted a hedonist.
The total damage? $46. Taking into account the ridiculous inflation of the City’s food prices I’d have considered $20 to be a more reasonable price, which I’d pay once only in any case. Never again.
Delectable has positioned itself in precisely the right niche: the girl behind the counter said their main business was in wedding cakes. They create one-time works of art which should never see the inside of a human stomach.
Posted at 21 Sep 1:13 am. 0 comments
We’ve just swaggered in, laughing, arms around each other in a casual gesture that signifies solidarity and protectiveness and just so happens to keep everyone else out. We have the energy of children, the strength and grace of animals, the careless pride of royalty. Even the erratically lit darkness cannot conceal the predatory eyes that swivel to watch, but they don’t concern us. They can’t touch us if we don’t want them to. We’re about to own this place.
That’s what it used to feel like.
These days – I don’t know. Maybe it’s the music. Maybe it’s the people. Maybe it’s the atmosphere. Here my friends and I walk into Zouk (or worse, Ruumz when it was still open) and it’s packed wall-to-wall with skinny emo teenagers with their flailing limbs, baggy jeans and chains and over-gelled hair made extra spiky for the occasion, trying to look fashionably unimpressed with the world. Hello, it’s a club. It means a party, fun times, you know? I didn’t sign up for Wangst and Depression Day at the kindergarten.
(But back to their hair. Is spiky hair the equivalent of a bright red breast on a robin in today’s teenage mating rituals? Do teen girls nowadays get turned on only if their fingertips bleed when they finger their man’s up-swept fringe? Am I the only one with visions of boys settling a fight over a girl by lowering their heads and running at each other like bulls?)
But people in the City seem to equate clubbing with standing around and looking aloof while pouring drinks down their throats. This is not my idea of fun. I can’t even hold a decent conversation because one can’t hear anything over the music and I get tired of bellowing into peoples’ ears. Added to the fact that I’m naturally soft-spoken, I might as well give up from the start. I do.
My friends tend to be mostly male, and single. They spend the entire night checking out the girls around the place, which I have no issue with, but they take Sexybum with them, the bastards. Which is usually fine by me except it leaves me without a similar partner in crime, and the local males are not at all worth checking out; in the City, the men in clubs make me feel vaguely soiled. In Melbourne, we never left each other’s side. I can’t recall being left alone for even ten seconds when I went out with my boys. Even if we were all dancing with different people, we were always within reach. Entire conversations were communicated with a touch, a glance, a tilt of the head. In a night we wrote a novel’s worth of dialogue with our body language.
(And most importantly, it was all about us! The night, the dancing, the jokes, everything was about us! We were too busy having our own fun to stand around watching other people have their fun!)
But here I am in the City leaning against the table sipping at my extra-strong drink and wishing I got drunk more easily. I’m bored out of my skull, tormented with a godawful track put on by some DJ who was grievously deluded in thinking he could spin, deprived of amusing chatter and even a companionable silence – hell, even companions, since more than half of them are prowling the club sniffing desperately for short skirts. What, you really think I enjoy that sort of thing? I’d have more fun at home getting drunk alone, which is essentially what I’m doing.
Back to that electronic cacophony of yowling cats they call music – why? Just… why? I listen to anything. I find pleasure in the raw super-rhythm of breakbeat hardcore. I don’t actually disdain remixed R&B as much as my elitist pretensions insist I do. But who the hell went to such pains to drag out the worst DJs from the cesspool of music fail, put them in the best clubs in the City and told them to play?
You just can’t dance to music like that. You can’t close your eyes and lose yourself in it – in another country I have walked into clubs stone sober and danced til dawn without touching a drop of alcohol. You just have to stand there and endure, as I do: no baby, good dancing will not be happening tonight. Most of the people whose company I enjoy don’t dance. A few who do favor grinding on me, for crying out loud, I’m not single anymore. I can’t walk out onto the floor and pick any partner as I used to do. Quite likely, my every move would be followed by accusing eyes, the owners of which just whisked Sexybum away to gawk at various other girls and their assets.
Which part of the above sounds good to you? How much fun do you think I’m having? What-
-what? Oh, I’m sorry, I just got carried away for a moment there. No, I don’t think I’ll be able to make it to the club tonight, but thanks for asking. I’m just feeling a little tired.
Posted at 18 Sep 12:59 pm. 1 comment
This week I’ve been spending some time with my oven. It’s a cantankerous, occasionally imprecise thing, much like its owner, but it’s capable of baking things, which is more than said owner can accomplish without traumatizing a baby dragon for thirty minutes.
A tray of muffins has been birthed from its steamy depths, with another soon to follow. Two batches of brownies have also made their debut, the second a sweet success thanks to a recipe Sexybum had his heart set on trying. We’ve settled down into a rhythm working together, which makes things go much faster and allows for the happy peacefulness I used to feel while baking in Melbourne. Which I did a lot. Mostly at midnight.
Back then my muffins were as dense as a collapsed star, and density was actually something to strive for. They were perfect for a budget-conscious student who would rather have spent time snuggling with a rabid dog than in the kitchen. I’d eat a muffin in the morning, drink a glass of milk, and pray no one pushed me into the Yarra until mid-afternoon or I’d sink without a trace.
As for the brownies, I made one almost every week before graduating on to other desserts. Whatever I inevitably couldn’t finish, I pushed on my housemates or my boys. Many were the evenings we fortified ourselves with brownies and whisky before charging the town for a night in the clubs. Perhaps people would have commented less on our boundless energy had they been aware of our blood sugar levels.
Healthy eating? I was a passionate disbeliever.
There were inevitably times I had to make real food, but sometimes cooking was fun. When I was in Vermont, Charlisse used to sit by the bar and chat to me, occasionally helping out. In Frankson Pat taught me how to make a kickass instant parma. And cooking with the boys was always a blast.
One of our favorite recipes involved tipping a large bag of Doritos (cheese flavored, preferably) on a big plate, scooping copious amounts of salsa on and emptying a third of a bag of cheese over. The plate was shoved in the microwave and gloated over until the cheese melted, at which point it was served with gummy worms. No matter what anyone said, we refused to believe this wasn’t a balanced meal.
Wraps were the second best thing to eat the morning after a drinking session. Anything edible went in a wrap except tomatoes. Ham, bacon, fresh greens, cheese, strips of sauteed meat, whatever was in the fridge. Our creations went into the microwave too, and considered done in one universal time unit of “when the cheese melts”.
And there was only one really acceptable kind of cinema food when we were tired of gummy worms and Cheezles: pizza buns, torn into halves like a hamburger bun and filled with so many Lays chips we could barely fit it them in our mouths for bites. There was no way to consume them in a civilized manner. We’d come out of the cinema sheepishly brushing crushed chips off our clothes but looking satisfied. Really the only place we could have eaten them was somewhere dark.
Ah, food: I don’t make it like I used to.
Posted at 15 Sep 12:59 pm. 0 comments
A long time ago I was as addicted to online games as the rest of my guy friends were: Archspace and Magewar, Parallel Universe and Mechwars. Then I realized what an utter waste of time they were and quit, roundly denouncing every new online game to come along for the next ten years, Mafia Wars included, which Tiger was an avid player of and which I’d successfully ignored until one fateful day not long ago.
Tiger’s reaction: Haha. You’re finally playing this game !!! Hahahahahaha ! HA IN YOUR FACE HA !
So I’m rising two or three levels a day, because Adam and Ross are playing too and Ross has challenged us to a race to 100. He’s got an energy account. We’re Moguls, though with a headstart of a few days. We’re gonna lose.
But the focus of the game is meant to be fighting, not just leveling. I have some personal rules about that, because nothing’s fun if you’re free to go berserk all the time.
- I pick my victims according to the highest mafia total I can defeat. If I can handle anyone under 100 family members, for example, I’ll go for the one with 97 family members over the poor SOB with 12. Everyone’s going to be hating on the smaller guy. I give him a break and hate on his haters.
** Unless the smaller guy has a name that includes any of the following words: killer, Corleone, King, Lady, Princess, or any number at all. Then I attack because he’s got a lame name. What’s the point of power if you can’t abuse it every now and then?
- I don’t hit anyone more than once unless they’re giving me great money, which I need in Cuba. Then I hit two or three times, but three is exceedingly rare.
But the girls here, they are crazy. They take it so personally. One tried to fight me, failed, and sucker-punched me 20 times. I took home 50xp in the 21 times I retaliated.
Another tried to rob me, failed, sucker-punched me. She got iced, albeit accidentally. She hitlisted me; I handed her her ass on a platter – a pretty platter, because I’m nice. She hitlisted me for 800k; I wondered aloud if her Daddy did not buy her the pony she wanted as a child, and iced her again. She seems to have learnt her lesson.
Then there’s the other who’s put a total of 1.7million on my head in the hitlist thus far. I’m quite flattered, seeing as you can hitlist someone for 8000. I must have annoyed her quite badly. Perhaps by icing her every time she hitlisted me.
Relax, people. It’s just a game.
Posted at 13 Sep 2:58 pm. 0 comments
Ways to enjoy butterscotch liqueur:
- On the rocks.
- With Baileys/Tia Maria and milk.
- Over vanilla and chocolate fudge ice cream.
- After the port wine and cheese consumed at the end of a lovely dinner.
