Disaster.

Today is a very emotional day. I’ve been back in Sydney for the Waitangi Day long weekend and my own birthday, which is today. It has been lovely seeing my boy, my family and my friends, and I’m very sad to leave again.

But my mood is subdued, following the devastation that has occurred in the worst fires and death toll outside of war the country has ever seen. Please give generously to the Emergency Bushfire Relief Fund. Hundreds have lost their families and their homes and need our support.

I hope the suspected arsonists who started this are caught and brought to justice quickly.

Willkommen in Kiwiland.

Okay so it’s been a little while. Since my indignant post early on Xmas morn, I’ve been busy effecting a move to Auckland, New Zealand! It’s a little bit of a backward place, but I think I can be very happy living here for six months! Moving out of home is a very liberating experience and so going back there after my stint here is not seeming attractive at all right now.

I’ve settled into a really cool house near the city and am ready to explore such places as Uretiti (”Ur-a-tittie”) or Whakapapa (”Fuck-a-papa”).  Work is awesome and laid back, much like the city as a whole, unlike back in Sydney, which is a nice change to be honest. And last week, I got to fly to the South Island with work. I should be getting more travel out of my rotation, and since work has given me a butch red commodore to drive I will be mobile as well.

Piha

I expect many of my posts over the next few months will focus on the differences between Australia and Kiwiland. For example, they don’t have The Presets here. They just haven’t heard of them. I don’t understand. They have Sneaky Sound System, why not the Presets?

My housemates have turtles.

That will be all.

Freedoms Curbed.

During my patronage of ARQ night club on Sunday night I was dismayed and livid to discover that the proposed (or so I had thought) NSW anti-violence and drinking laws had already come into effect. I was surprised, given that I thought I was reasonably up with the times – I read the news, I watch Juanita. How did this slip through? And only a few weeks ago? I thought this would never get through, certainly not that quickly. I thought it would have been a much bigger hot-button.

The above link is to the legislation, including the list of 48 venues on “the list” which it applies to, as well as as the requirements for operation after 12pm. These include: no admittance to patrons after 2am, drinks to be served in plastic cups only, restrictions on the strength of alcohol served, and most uselessly, the requirement for a 10 minute no-service of alcohol period in each hour.

The list includes Arq, Stonewall, Oxford Hotel and the Exchange. According to Clover Moore:

“Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore, meanwhile, told SX: “Oxford Street is a vibrant and important gay precinct and I hope this action will create a safer precinct for the GLBT community. Police and the State Government identified premises based on the number of reported violent assaults and the onus is now on venues to ensure patrons can feel safe going out at night. Recent alcohol-related homophobic violence has clearly shown the need to establish a new, civilised, late-night drinking culture.”

It doesn’t take much of a brain to realise that violent assaults are not really going to happen inside a gay venue, rather when they leave and they cross paths with homophobic passersby. I also note that many of the straight venues on the strip have been excluded from the list, such as The Gaff, Havana Bar, and DCM (which has other problems).

I feel like my freedoms have been taken away from me. I may be very unlikely to go out or change venues after 2am, but I still want to be able to have the choice, the choice to go out when I want and the ability to drink at all times at that venue at whatever strength I wish, and to glass who I choose. Okay, so I wouldn’t actually do the last one but plastic is to the detriment of taste!

I suppose I need to realise that the majority of NSW doesn’t wish to go out at 2am, and so if Nathan Rees can claim that alcohol-fuelled violence has decreased by some percentage, it will seem to the majority that they have done one good thing. It will be interesting to see whether it is actually successful in reducing the statistics, but the funny thing about statistics is that you can often use them to prove anything.

La-la-la… La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la…

Last night the boyf and a friend of mine went to see Kylie at Acer Arena. (Foolishly) We decided that we would first drive to her place in Ashfield, have some dinner and drinks before heading over to Olympic Park. Of course, we were quickly delayed by traffic and various other problems, meaning we had to slam down the Thai and alcohol. No longer in a position to drive, we hoped to catch a taxi outside. None came, so we trekked up to the taxi rank at Ashfield Station, where none arrived. We decided that we were just going to have to accept being late and catch the train.

When the train doors opened, a guy stepped out wearing a shirt speckled with red. I said, “Hey guys, I think that guy had blood on his shirt?” The others didn’t observe this, but shortly after sitting down, some excited women came up to us and told us to watch out, because there was blood on the seat. Sure enough, there was smatterings of blood on the seat, the wall, and the ceiling of the carriage. Some innocent worker-type had been beaten up by some thuggish guy who thought he was looking at him. This caused ten minutes of consternation, where the ladies were shrieking at the CityRail staff to chase the guy, with them replying that they can’t do anything if he’s left the train (yet still on the platform?!). Finally we arrived at our destination completely sober and only ten minutes tardy!

Kylie was awesome. Nuff said. I would go again if I had another ticket. Following the intermission she played non-stop hits, and everyone was dancing. Unfortunately Nokia PC Suite is a piece of shit, and so I can’t upload any photos right now. Highlights for me included Better The Devil You Know, Love At First Sight and Kylie tipping her hat to the Freemasons when she performed The One.

The return trip was lamentable as well, though not for one’s personal safety this time. At Olympic Park Station we were presented with a train that would stop Strathfield-Redfern-City. We embarked, thinking we would be able to change at Strathfield, faster than a train doing the Lidcombe sprint. The train sat idle for ten minutes, about when the Lidcombe train appeared. After about five minutes, it left before us. Following another inordinate wait, the train finally departed Olympic Park. It wasn’t long before the intercom informed us, “We will be stopping at Lidcombe, but the doors will not open. Next stop Strathfield.” We did stop at Lidcombe. The doors did open, and we waited there another ten minutes despite assurances that we were just waiting for the signals to change, while five other trains passed us. When we did finally arrive at Strathfield, it was of course too late due to all the crap service we’d already endured. The train services had been cut off. So we finished off the return leg with a taxi, when we finally got one (I feel I need to rant about them too some day).

I agree with Gus. ShittyRail must be privatised. Why stop there? Let’s privatise the State Government!

Tomorrow is my last day at work before the move in January! That means farewell Yum Cha, and I must remember to, um… make sure I have enough stationery for the next year or so.

Tough year.

2008 has not been a great year for my extended family.

My family’s already diminishing size has taken another hit recently, what with one of my uncles dying, and now, my other uncle’s wife walk out.

Is it bad that my initial thought was “Good. He can do better”?

I could never understand why she would completely ignore me on my birthdays. My brother always receives a gift and is wished a Happy Birthday, while I don’t even get acknowledged by her on my birthday. I can understand if my aunt and uncle didn’t much money and can’t afford to give gifts. That’s fine. But it’s the thought that counts, as they say.

She also is one of those “Cool Moms” shown to hilarious effect in the movie Mean Girls, who wants to be best friends with their daughter and acts as if she’s in her early twenties. When she talks to me about places like Candy’s Apartment in The Cross, like she owns the place, I think to myself, “What, you? A nearly forty year-old in Candy’s Apartment? Don’t make me laugh.” Mum reckons I should say it to her face. She goes to the beach as often as possible, bikini-clad no less (no more?), and her skin is starting to assume a leathery quality.

It is awful though. They have been married for a long time and have a daughter in high school. My uncle was apparently unaware that this would happen, leaving him shocked and heartbroken. There was no clear warning. His psychologist said that “often women at that age, in such a situation, can do things quite suddenly and without thought to the consequences”. Besides how sexist that sounds, she is always the self-absorbed type - for example, she recently went on a trip to the US (and other overseas places) with a girlfriend and he was not allowed to come. He, on the other hand, is fairly quiet, and I think the poor guy is being walked all over.

In some happier family news, I think it more or less time to introduce the boyf. However, his extended family is enormous in compasion to mine, so he will be tied up too much at Xmas to partake in that I think.

Banquet with Rents.

So the boyf’s mother and partner of many years came over for dinner with my parents on Saturday night. This was significant because our parents had met before over dinner in Manly, but this was another test because it was in our home! Fortunately conversation flowed well, as did the nice wine, and I even enjoyed myself. *sigh* Just grand, everything. I couldn’t be happier with how our parents get on.

Mum outdid herself with a three course dinner. Ravioli stuffed with mushroom, cheese and onion filling, which I helped prepare, I might add. This was followed by an Italian roast of pancetta-wrapped pork, potatoes and tomatoes, and finsihed off with an apple galette (fancy word for cake) with vanilla Sara Lee ice cream. Yu-um.

The boyf’s parentals were put to shame by the quality of the food. I’m looking forward to parental rivalry when they exercise their right of “reply”, and more awesome free meals in times to come.

In Need of a Name.

According to recent trends, every car must have a name.

Mikes has named his recent acquisition Cameron, and Janek’s for a long time has been Fluffy (why?). A work friend’s old Ford was a Larry and her new Mazda 2 is named Ralph(y).

It is my belief that all manual cars are boys and all automatic cars are girls – mikes should reconsider the name of his car. Giving it a male name means it might be having gender issues, and sex change operations for cars are expensive, and just unheard of. But enough of that arrogant clap-trap.

I have a manual green Astra sedan (year 2000) with a rear spoiler in need of a name.

Brandon, You’re A Star.

Great news!

For their new album Day & Age, Brandon Flowers has ditched that awful bikers’ mo he adopted for their last album. Everyone wanted it gone. Even Elton. And everyone should listen to his fashion advice.

He may have no respect for grammar but we can excuse him that with looks like these:

Dog Tags.

What is it about dog tags that are so hot? Some notion of animalistic possession or belonging? Maybe it’s because everyone who you see wearing them tends to look like Jake:

Obligatory hot guy pic

I used to wear a dog tag, one that my ex-boyfriend gave me. We both wore matching ones for a while. I can’t find it anymore; I haven’t been wearing it since for obvious reasons. On Friday night the Jägermeister girls at the Marly gave me a Jägermeister tag as a “prize”. It’s a shamelessly commercial trinket but it’s just German enough to make me want to wear it: 

"Das ist des Jägers Ehrenschild, daß er beschützt und hegt sein Wild, weidmännisch jagt, wie sich's gehört, den Schöpfer im Geschöpfe ehrt."

Loves it.

Lalala.

What a long day of inactivity it’s been. Work is really winding up and I have little to do. I’m staring out the window at the sky and sunshine, wishing I could drive over to the beach now. But, just as it did last Friday, the clouds are rolling in again to prevent me from heading to the beach, and I have Janek’s birthday tonight to go to. I’m hoping that I get some beach time in the coming month – much to mikes’s* bemusement, because I won’t be getting it when I skip across the Tasman to New Zealand on 3 January.

I have been researching the NZ roads system given that I’d been having issues trying to get a hire car being a P2 driver. I have been told I will be able to get a leased car which will work out a whole lot cheaper and won’t have the problem of silly Hertz rental policies.

Here’s a fun fact: a kiwi is allowed to get their learner licence at 15 years of age, and can progress ”restricted” licence after six months. That means, a pre-pubescent 15-and-a-half year olds can drive a car completely unassisted. They are even allowed to drink a little alcohol before driving. Now I understand why the car rental companies require you to be a full licence holder for at least a year – would you want a 15 year old driving your car?

I wanted to enquire as to how I would be treated with regards to the road rules – would I be treated as a “restricted” licence holder? Strangely, the answer came back that I should drive as if I were driving in Australia, under my Australian licence. Darn - no alcohol for me. I wonder if I still have to adhere to their non-sensical and confusing give way rules?

The car on the opposite side goes first!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The red car goes first!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Your pseudonyms make apostrophes difficult.