Nerd_on_Safari

ha!

2010-05-01T22:08:00.003+10:00

Why, hello there, internet.

It's been awhile. You know what, I just re-read my last post* and realised I actually handed in my thesis early. I said "MARCH" and it was FEBRUARY. Only 'early' by a matter of days. And only according to a schedule that was arguably meaningless, given that it was stated in the blogosphere, poor much maligned and arguably misnomered poppet that it is, as opposed to all previous more formal statements of intent. BUT DAMMIT IT IS SUBMITTED AND IT WAS SUBMITTED TWO WEEKS BEFORE MY SECOND EXTENSION ENDED.

You know something? It is May, 2010. This year is basically half gone. Which comes as a shock every year, so even I am kind of bored of hearing me say it, but this year is going faster THAN ALL THE YEARS. But. HELLO. I am now pretty much free to do what I want.

I can't tell you how good that is.

Actually, I can.

Like, last weekend, right? Long weekend, yes? [insert Last Post** here] How good are THEY when you are being paid to have an extra day? It was almost worth spending that long studying to be able to bounce off the walls in a state of brainless abandoned joy about weekends - and having a Third Day on which Nothing is Required - _well_ HELLO. I got up. I had coffee. I went to the gym. A 20 year old asked me about my current stress levels***, my "goals" for joining the gym.**** AND THEN MEASURED MY THIGH CIRCUMFERENCE. I then exercised. Did not die. Went home. Went and saw a movie. I LOVE YOU TINA FEY.

*no, not _that_ last post, I'm not musical in the slightest, one can't even imagine how I would have transcribed the trumpetty version. I was speaking chronologically, not musical-rembrancy. I'm glad we got _that_ sorted out.

**trumpetty version

*** none, I said, visibly smug

**** "Not dying." is an exact quote of my reply... "ummm, let's just put longevity, shall we?" was the exact response.*****

***** "Fitting into like a wedding dress" was one of the suggested "goals" as to why I would want to lumber forth into a world of stretch pants and HORRIBLE music.

ah, existence

2009-10-04T20:22:00.004+11:00

Right now I'm experiencing that particularly blesséd state of being, the Sunday night of a long weekend. The normal feeling of impending doom is lightened, delayed for a 24 hour period. This is heightened for me this evening, as despite *knowing* the whole time that this is a Long Weekend, I had experientially and thus essentially forgotten said detail. So when, mid-bemoanst that I was not going to be able to continue the fruitful work this weekend was yielding on my thesis, blue-bolt like it struck me that this, *this* is a Long. Weekend. it was like a gift from the very heavens above.

But, ay, there's the rub. You've spotted it dear friend, no? The reason for my deep, and I would certainly claim, profound, and, I can only hope, long-lasting, joy at this celestial revelation is not that it gives me time to swan about in a pair of sequinned mou-mous,* delectable beverage in hand, but, rather, spend another day working on my thesis, daunting beast that it is. Those of you given to such projects will understand the miraculous productivity that is the Third Day however - the snow ball effect after the first and second days, where Knuckle Down is Achieved and Thesis Topic is Remembered. Today, today, oh joy of heavenly joys, I had brief glimpses of the Actual Argument that is the Meat Food upon which the Thesis Feeds.

This is dangerously positive. The end, it is in sight. So much of my present and future happiness is at stake in this sensation not proving delusory that I hardly bear trust myself to think, speak, type it lest it prove a brief transitory insanity that leaves me shell-like and rocking forth and back. For, in the current state, I am currently operating on the One True Deadline: the first thesis deadline that I have actually and totally Believed In. All others have been false deadlines, but knowningly false, the 9/09/09 was poetic and palindromic yes, but never entirely faithfully enacted. And perhaps that was its ultimate vice, its downfall, but this, this, oh March 2010, you are the True Deadline, the one in which all hopes reside.

*admittedly, if one is to take, you know, accepted english definitions for words 'mou-mou' refers to the kind of one-piece robe-like garment beloved of Parliament smokers everywhere. If, however, one is to take the definitions that were determined during a morning tea break at a place I was briefly employed at some years ago, the accepted definition of mou-mou is that the term is taken to refer to those kitten-heeled fluffy-toed 'slipper' often seen on a young lady of the house who is also taken to the wearing of fluffy (ostrich feather?)-edged robe around the house. Naturally, it is this latter to which the present author ascribes.

My life: as told by my iTunes library

2009-04-17T10:37:00.003+10:00

I’d rather waste you than the money on my phone
I’ll be back
I’ll be lightning
I’ll cry instead
I’ll never be the same.

I’m Alive
I’m Alright
I’m Away
I’m different

I’m going back home
I’m gonna leave you
I’m happy just to dance with you
I’m not gonna beg

I’m open
I’m so bored with the U.S.A.
I’m still faithful
(I’m) so sorry now
I’ve been a bad bad boy
I’ve got my love to keep me warm

I can’t see New York
I can see for miles

I cried for you
I don’t feel like Dancin’
I don’t like Mondays

I feel fine
I feel free
I feel it all
I fought the law

I found noise at ATP
I get high
I go to sleep
I hold no grudge
I know we could be so happy baby (if we wanted to be)

I like giants

I love your lovin’ ways
I loves you Porgy
I loves you Porgy (live)

I make hamburgers
I make hamburgers

I may know the word
I offered it up to the stars and the night sky
I put a spell on you
I really should’ve gone out last night

I remember
I see mama
I shall be released
I shall be released (live)
I shall not walk alone

I should have known better
I still miss someone
I think that I would die
I thought about you
I walk the line

I want a little sugar in my bowl
I want to be ready
I want to hold your hand
I want to hold your hand

I was alive
I will
I will
I will explode
I will not go quietly (Duffy’s song)
I will not go quietly (Duffy’s song)

I wish I knew how it would feel to be free
I wish I never saw the sunshine
I wish that I was beautiful for you
I won’t cry

heeheehee

2009-01-24T12:15:00.001+11:00

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

I probably shouldn't laugh, I really struggle remember anything about Star Wars, and I'm probably laughing that the bits that she has right.

gracious

2009-01-23T18:55:00.004+11:00

me, OCTOBER was my last post.

What I do like though, is that every so often I get emails from the blog counter thingy, (lower right), telling me that another thousand people have viewed my blog, but that - according to the stats I so narcissisticly seek out - the only reason that people keep finding my blog is that they are googling "colouring in Jesus" and they find my post about visiting New York because I linked here while ranting about the history of Western Christian painting and it gives me a consistent ponderance as to what they think when it is my blog they find. Well, assuming they discover the link they think "well good, now I have a picture for the kids to colour on Sunday". But personally, I like to think I challenge their whole view of Western art history, the didactic nature of same, and really, everything that's happened, ever.

I hope they get those brass pin things that you can shove through paper and then spread out so that you can make cut out figures of Jesus where the arms and legs move. There are two things I remember from my early days as a Sunday School pupil and they are:
1) the metal chairs. supremely uncomfortable but with an appealing aesthetic that practically made me dance when I discovered the Exact Same Chairs at Tilley's 17 years later and a reasonably loyal - or at least repetitive - attendee of Tilley's ever since, despite hating almost everything about the place.*
2) The brass (maybe?) pins that did the splits so you could colour in and then cut out the torso & head section of Jesus (or other assorted religious figure) and then attach arms and legs, and hey presto, moving Jesus.

* Tilley's is often treated as a bit of a religion in Canberra - not inappropriate, given the stylistic heritage of their outdoor settings - but let me, if you will, rant, because, Oh My Word. The place drives me up the wall. Because yes, they have excellent, if uncomfortable chairs, that I obviously have a very personal connection with, and they have painted their ceiling red, which is always a plus, and they have velvet curtains, also good, and on occasions they have bands playing Canberra which means I don't have to see them at the ANU Bar which always makes me want to smack an undergraduate Because They Are Children And Can't Handle Liquor, and also wifi, even though they don't have enough powerpoints in the place to really make it a generous offer - and I think that's it: they promise so much, but refuse to deliver, right from the teetering brink of the cusp of we were about to single-handedly make Canberra a blissful paradise. Firstly, they set themselves up as a heavenly red roomed cafe where you can loiter for hours and study undisturbed bar for a regularly impeccable classics jazz soundtrack, but then, they can't make coffee. Just to smack you in the face: we have purpose built an ideal habitat for you, but denied you the very crux of the point of doing so: you will wait for longer than you took to gestate, order said beverage, and then we will give you a cup of bitter filth. Which brings me to, secondly, They Charge A Lot, refuse to offer table service, and frequently deliver below the standards of McDonalds. Seriously, I have had better coffee from a franchise that advertises with a clown. You have to queue with everyone in the place for AN INSANE AMOUNT of time, and then they deliver below the very proximity of goodness. Thirdle, okay, that's a typo, that I just corrected, but then had to go back and change because how much should thirdle be a word?, Thirdly, the staff. You order your beverage, knowing how truly awful it is going to be, and the staff give you the "I am doing you SUCH a favour, you should lick between my toes" attitude: if you hate working here so much - and clearly I would, so sympathy, sister (as it invariably is) - Get. Another. Job. At least up until recently, they have been around fairly plentifully. It's not like I think you have a great job and therefore should be enjoying it, but I've done jobs I haven't liked as well, but the point is: you're being paid to serve. So serve. You aren't doing me a favour, you're being paid to do this. In fact, I've just done half your job by standing here wait to ask for my "coffee" and then wait for an inordinate amount of time for you to make the damn thing, so Happy Faces. Fourthly, when you go to see a gig and they make you stand in the rain because they are incapable of managing a system whereby you've paid quite a bit for tickets and you don't have to stand in the street. Fifthly, the staff - bless their arrogant little hearts - don't ever seem to quite know what is going on, so whenever you call them, with those stumbling brainteasers: "What time does the gig start?", "What time do the doors open?", "Can we book a table?" or the brain-exploding "Will you be serving food at this event?" you get a different answer from every member of staff, none of which is conclusive, until you turn up to said event and just discover as you go whatever regime they have installed. Sixly, the imppossibility of keeping the kitchen open for an event. so: a) they are a restaurant. b) they have sold out (because, 6.i, they only put bands on they know are going to sell the venue out, and are still game enough to have that "Keeping music live" banner: long have I wanted to add a subtitle "as long as the musicians have proven their commerical value"), c) they know there is going to be an hour and a half between the doors opening and the band playing. So, in consequence, they offer cheese plates. Which sell out. And then refuse to allow you to bring additional food from the handily located supermarket "because we still have cake". I'VE JUST HAD A BOTTLE OF RED AND A WHEEL OF BRIE I CAN'T HAVE CAKE. I NEED SAVORY CARBS, SAVORY! DAMN YOU."

So whenever someone suggests we have brunch at Tilley's on the weekend I have to make alternative arrangements.

*deep breath*

Pleased to meet you...

2008-10-04T23:30:00.000+10:00

My name is Tape Boise Palin.

an update on my general state of mind...

2008-08-30T15:13:00.000+10:00

more animals

Give us this day our daily cheeseburger

2008-08-08T21:34:00.002+10:00

unknown artist, Armenia
Forty Martyrs of Sebaste
Late 17th century
tempera on wood panel
Queensland Art Gallery

it's the magical leopleurodon that makes it gold

2008-07-16T12:54:00.002+10:00

shun the non-believer

Lego art!

2008-06-27T12:30:00.003+10:00

Jan Vormann, 2007

So cool!

See more

I hereby tender this apology to Todd McKenney.

2008-06-25T16:52:00.003+10:00

When the story broke that Todd McKenney had been found in a Kings Cross park, semi-conscious, and if I recall rightly, bashing his head against a fence, I responded erroneously, jumping on the bandwagon of public mockery and, I believe, inferring that I did not believe his story that his drink had been spiked "because of Tall Poppy Syndrome".

Now, however, that newspaper of great repute, the Sydney Morning Herald, has published his side of the story, I can only stand ashamed, as the full facts are coming to light:

"Later in his record of interview McKenney told police he had been to a party at an apartment in Macleay Street, Potts Point, on Anzac Day eve and had danced so much that he began to overheat and had taken his pants off to continue dancing.

McKenney, who has pleaded not guilty to the charge and has been on police bail, allegedly told arresting officers that it was while his pants were down that someone at the party must have put the drug into his pocket." [full story]

Let s/he who has not removed their pants so that they can keep dancing cast the first stone.

this kills me

2008-06-19T14:15:00.002+10:00

my new bestfriend

2008-06-18T11:48:00.002+10:00

is Book Depository - cheaper than UK Amazon and Free. Worldwide. Shipping.

I have found nirvana.

I ordered books last Wednesday and they arrived yesterday.

[swoons]

rusty

2008-06-17T14:21:00.003+10:00

It's been awhile. Ages in fact. I keep realising that it's June and spluttering expletives. The calendar in my room is still on January, as mentally, that's where I'm at. This thesis writing is a slow business, and I'm the living proof. How can it be two in the afternoon and I've written a sentence? I mean, I've done other things, some of them productive, and even thesis related, but only one sentence has yet resulted. Gah and double gah. I hope my thesis weighs more than the weight that I've put on while writing it. It may need to be printed on vellum and bound in lead.

I have, and as a result of the thesis no less - and hence justifying this posting - become somewhat intrigued by T.S. Eliot. Specifically the Dry Salvages. An excerpt:

It seems, as one becomes older,
That the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence—
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy
Encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.
The moments of happiness—not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination—
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness. I have said before
That the past experience revived in the meaning
Is not the experience of one life only
But of many generations—not forgetting
Something that is probably quite ineffable:
The backward look behind the assurance
Of recorded history, the backward half-look
Over the shoulder, towards the primitive terror.

The whole thing is remarkable writing, and every time I read it there is something else, some other image, that emerges from it. Because I have a gnat-like concentration span, I tend to phase in and out of actually paying attention to what I'm reading, so each time I read that poem I seem to come across a different part of it, which on the previous occasion I had momentarily paused in my absorbtion to ponder some other vital subject, like whether my car registration has expired yet. Speaking of which...

Picasso and Katie Noonan.

2008-06-13T14:48:00.002+10:00

so not fair that this is in Brisbane.

they're stealing my mind...

2008-03-19T10:39:00.001+11:00

huh, I'm fictional afterall. Has anyone read it? Am I good?

rantpost: How art made the world

2008-03-18T21:48:00.004+11:00

I’m a shocking hypocrite when it comes to arts broadcasting, happy to rant and rail that the yarts doesn’t get enough coverage on tv, but scathingly critical whenever anyone attempts it. I was pondering this as I ranted away, watching “How art made the world” this evening, a documentary, about how art made the world. One of my problems with such documentaries is the pace of them. It seems to take an unending length of time to actually get to any point, and you really don’t need to provide any detailed evidence – the occasional reference to an ancient text and a Californian academic, and you’re right as rain to assert how the ancient Greeks felt about realism.

Tonight’s episode discussed the question of why humans distort the body when they depict it.

This practice apparently started with Venus of Willendorf, 25 000 years ago, one of the earliest sculptures ever discovered. It’s strange how things are talked about has having “started” with the earliest example we’ve yet found, the implication being that we found the very first one ever. And it just happened to be in Europe, entrenching the notion that that is where civilsation in any meaningful sense truly took flight. It was entertaining to hear the description of it as a complete figure and then have the reveal and see a figure with no arms, legs that stop below the knee and who seems to have a crocheted beanie pulled down over her head. Of course, he meant complete as in the figure was complete as it was made, hence its interest to the topic of the program: why the omissions of some parts of the figure and the exaggeration of others (breasts, hips, genitals)? Which I thought was stunningly obvious, but that’s where the opportunity arose to bring in seagulls, so who am I to comment?

This required endless footage of seagulls, just in case you spent the past couple of years melding with your toilet, and don't remember what they look like. Why, in a program about art, is so much time devoted to showing us seagulls and imagining a time line of world history by looking at a row of trees? Anyway, because seagulls recognise the red stripe on their mother's beak as the thing to bash for food, and will also bash sticks with a red stripe on them in an attempt to get food, and hence if seagulls were to open an art gallery they would put a stick on the wall with a red stripe and be strangely drawn to contemplate it. I thought that they would be drawn to bash it with their faces, but there you go. It is demonstrated therefore, that the human propensity to exaggerate the physical aspects of female bodies in early sculpture is a fertility thing. Well, just lucky they did that study about seagulls in the 50s or heaven knows when we could have ever figured that out.

I paraphrase: After a 100 000 years or so, of humans being nomads, there was a bit of weather, and sustainability became an issue. No one came up with the idea of Earth Hour, so instead they settled around the Nile, and founded Egypt. By 5000 BC Egypt was one of the first fully settled cities on earth with a stable agricultural and government systems. The first to use images of the body in art. Instead of exaggerating physical features as they did in Willendorf they created a stylised figure that was depicted according to a proportional grid that governed Egyptian art for millenia. To understand what this must have been like, we were asked to imagine that Picasso's works were the only image that we saw of the human figure depicted ever. A strangely irrelevant comparison, and one that seemed to imply that Egyptians were entirely muddled by only seeing people represented in one way, and could not read them as bearing particular meanings. It seemed strange to just discuss the human figure isolated from any other aspect of their art, especially hieroglyphs.

Ancient Greek statues would answer the question of why we depict people, if anything possibly could. Now there’s a shock. I paraphrase again: Ancient Greeks were fixated with the body, and they had very set ideas about what the body should look like. The more physically perfect you were, the more godlike you were seen to be. The Greek artists did something that no one had ever done before: they used their eyes. And came up with a greater realism than anyone ever had before. After going to Egypt and discovering that sculpture could be lifesize, or even larger! Although undoubtedly the Greeks came up with technical innovations and extraordinarily beautiful sculpture, to say that no other artists had ever used their eyes before is just bizarre. Realism perhaps became a goal that it had not been before, thus realism in their work is an expression of that, in the same way that the "Venus" is an expression of its maker's value of fertility. Anyway, they achieved realism, looked at it, and decided it was dull. Polyclitus figured out how to make it more interesting again by moving things around to depict a sense of movement in the figure. Everything had been leading to this! They created something more human than human! And so they went back to exaggeration! A strangely circular argument: earlier "primitive" art used exaggeration, the Greek's took us where we had never been before... and so they went back to exaggeration! Then the 5th century bronze warrior statues were declared the best sculptures ever. Quite a claim. I haven't seen them, so maybe when I do I'll have a bit of a Damascus, but although I can see they're stunning, to say that they are the pinnacle of sculpture seems at a tad hyperbolic.

But, this is why bodies in art look the way they do, because we humans don’t like reality. What we choose to exaggerate is "where the science gets left behind and the magic comes in."

Throw forward to a glimpse of Michelangelo & Henry Moore, and we're done.

Motivating the whole show seemed to be the idea that where art ended up, in say, 1950, was some how inevitable in 25 000 BC, rather than it being based on looking at what was around in 1950 and reading back into history, based on available, surviving examples. That isn't necessarily a bad way to discuss what artists in 1950 were doing, afterall, they were looking at those examples, but sweeping generalisations bug me. Particularly because what artists were doing in Papua New Guinea in 1950 had nothing to do with Ancient Greece, and distorted the body in specific and unique ways, and somehow they were "made" by Egyptian and European art... It's not impossible that I'm slightly overexposed, but the examples to make his case were so Art History 101 I couldn't really understand the point of making another documentary about it.

The ABC then proved me wrong by showing a great documentary about art half an hour later, about a community of Aboriginal people who started painting in 2002. They were forced to leave their traditional land in the 1960s by a drought, and had never returned. Last year a trip was arranged and the community travelled the four days it takes to return to their homeland. It was incredibly moving to see their return to the place they had been yearning for, and I found it fascinating to see how they painted in a contemporary form (ie acrylics on canvas) in their traditional visual language, to respond to this hugely emotive event.

flickr me timbers.

2008-02-23T14:37:00.003+11:00

I woke up this morning and thought "What a beautiful day, I should go take some photos."

Actually, that's a lie, I woke up and thought "gurrrahaughf wine bad water good."

After several coffees and half of the SMH - travel good weekend tres good, except incites travel need, bad - thought I should leave the house and take some photos.

Which reminded me that I've been meaning to sign up to flickr since forever, and now it's three and two thirds hours later and here I sit, the now-owner of flickr page, despite my reservations regarding the stupidity of the name and spelling of 'flickr'.

Anyway, you should visit it, it will make me happy. Here 'tis.

me! me! me!

2007-12-12T14:30:00.000+11:00

Right now I'm sitting in the foyer of the NLA, waiting for a coffee to arrive, nursing one sore ankle caused by my car and I not being ergonomically compatible, and another caused by the uneven paving outside NLA. Wandering in such a state of vaguenss from the carpark to the entrance that I neglected to note the pavers incorporate a drain and my ankle didn't see why it should offer any resistance. Which does make me ponder how nerded I have become that I cannot even exert the physical effort required to get into a library without doing myself an injury.

In happy happy other news I have a pleasing pile of books with details of who taught what in the Technical Colleges of Sydney in the years relevant to my research sitting on a desk inside the library. A certain amount of irony prevails in the detail that I scoured Sydney for this info and ultimately found it in Canberra. But, thems the breaks when you're a dolt.

I spent the last couple of days in Sydney, where, aside from sharing a serious dumplinapalooza and some well-needed hilarity with mine hosts, I went to the AGNSW library and the State Library; reading other accounts of art education in Sydney at the time, which was also useful. The tendency of teachers at ESTC to write extensive memoirs of their time there is really quite a useful one. While I was in the library my phone, all of ten days old, decided that it had had enough and killed itself. While sitting quietly on a desk, all on its own. In a manner that suggested that I had inflicted the damage and voided the warranty. I promptly ranted and moaned to all and sundry and well and truly attired myself in the grumpy pants. My ranting took me to the Optus shop this morning who politely offered me nothing, except the address for the Nokia shop, who happily agreed to fix it under the warranty, despite the screen not normally being covered. So I can start dismantling the mental voodoo dolls of the Nokia people, despite not entirely being in a state of gruntlement that this is the second Nokia phone in two weeks that has started behaving in varied fashions to which I desire to not become accustomed. I know the age of getting a phone with every new contract doesn't inspire the manufacturers to make phones that aren't disposable, but this is getting ridiculous.

I celebrated by going and getting a manicure. And whilst admitting that it was a very cheap one, I still want to know how, when I nodded my head in response to the question "You want square?" I managed to convey the idea that I would just love it if you filed several of my nails on particularly jaunty angles. Wow did she do a crap job. So I don't recommend New York spa and nails in the Canberra Centre.

Back to my desk!

Golden Moments of Procrastination #4

2007-12-06T15:17:00.001+11:00

tops weekend

2007-11-28T15:24:00.001+11:00

On Saturday I drove to Sydney, for the engagement party of some friends of mine [just to clarify that I wasn't just crashing the party of some strangers?]. Unfortunately I couldn't work the dates to have some more time up there, so it was just an overnight visit, which is always a bit of a gamble - sometimes when I do the flying visit I end up being so tired that although it is lovely to see people, I can't quite form intelligible sentences, and so just perform the conversational equivalent of beating someone around the head with a large, dead fish. Happily this time was not like that, it was, in fact, tops. Naturally I started with a spot of research, as is my wont, at the State Library of NSW. I'm currently on a bit of a mission to find out everything that I can about the East Sydney Technical College/National Art School c.1956-1960 (should you have any info.... ) so I was chasing up a few bits and pieces in the collection there. Which, incidentally has some hilarious photos of people at the college in the 1950s, often wearing Buddy Holly glasses and enormous chefs hats. Admittedly that's possibly one of those things that's only truly amusing to someone compelled to research by wading through endless catalogue entries and is thus in search of any diversion. Unfortunately I didn't find anything of any real relevance to what I was looking for, but at least I can tick a few things of the list of what I need to look at. Then we repaired to my friend's house to prepare, via the Neutral Bay PS so she could vote. Which hilariously seems to have the school motto "Be a Player" - rare to find such honesty on the North Shore. Should, quel horreur, Malcolm Turnbull ever end up PM there will be a nice resonance for those casting their vote for him there. Because I know I always like to check the school mottos of whatever polling booth I may be entering... a connection that doesn't really offer any explanation for how the PS I attended had the motto "Learn Wisely Live Proudly" - and yet that electorate keeps sending Phillip Ruddock to parliament with resounding victories. The "Live Proudly" bit is particularly puzzling as they keep sending a member of the undead to parliament. So anyway....

We decided in view of our somewhat all-tuckered-out condition that we needed Redbull to get through the evening, which meant that we needed vodka, and I thought cranberry would also be a good idea. Which meant that we ended up drinking something that recreated the flavour sensation that is raspberry cough syrup. mmm. But did serve it's purpose of gearing us up while chilling us out.

Anyway, we eventually got ourselves off the sofa, and away to the party, where we walked in the door to the news that Howard had lost Bennelong. Much screeching ensued! I had already made the announcement that "I will probably get quite intoxicated tonight. If labor win, there will be champagne, if they lose, then there will be scotch. Lots of scotch." So corks began popping, and kept on popping all night. Despite the fact that channel 9 had called Bennelong about a week earlier than anyone else was prepared to. Nice to be in a crowd of people that seemed uniformly happy about the result (certainly provided a nice buffer zone for my kilowatt-level gloating), and it made for a great night. This was the first election that I've been old enough to vote for in which election night has been a positive experience, normally they've been a galling, horrifying "THREE MORE YEARS... !?" then weakly: "pass the scotch please". I had a profound sense of relief that labor did win, partly because I really didn't want to have to move to New Zealand, but I really would have been desparately sad for the state of this country if John Howard had been re-elected. Now one just hopes that the Labor party keep it together. [tip: try and remember that the opposition is across the aisle, not within the party.] It was great to be sharing such a happy event in the context of another happy event, with great friends.

The following day we went for breakfast in Darlinghurst, then I made my way back to Canberra for a Hen's afternoon, followed by the movies (Death at a funeral: don't rush to see it, but there are some funny bits). It was a great weekend of seeing people.

This week has been so strange; seeing the "Howard Government" in past tense gives me a buzz everytime, and the liberal party being in such a state of collapse is something I just can't find it within myself to be sympathetic towards considering the hubris they have demonstrated for so long. The sense of transformation is remarkable. And although it has obviously been coming for a long time, and the result wasn't a surprise, I was never prepared to let myself believe it, lest the depression of loss be entirely crushing, and so the change does seem quite sudden and fast. I really hope the new government are able to get some legislation up and running quickly so they don't lose that momentum. Not to mention finally, finally, apologising to Indigenous people!

Now all we need is for the liberal party to select Tony Abbott as their next leader and Labor should be guaranteed at least a couple of terms....

a question, gentle reader

2007-11-19T10:53:00.000+11:00

Should I place a bet on the Coalition to win on Saturday, on the premise that that way there will at least be some consolation?

the return leg

2007-11-17T16:31:00.000+11:00

Somehow it seems that no matter what time I schedule flights, it always results in not really doing anything else that day, partly because of my (now well founded and fed) paranoia that I will miss them. I had decided, due to ever expanding baggage, to get a shuttle service to JFK that would pick me up from the hostel, rather than attempt to travel on the subway. Somehow this meant that I had to be ready at 10.50am for a 2.20pm flight however: and then they were 40 minutes late, the scum-tinged bastards, so fortunately they had only offered me such a ridiculously early timeslot or the grumpiness would have been profound and wide-ranging. But this all meant that I ended up with not a lot of time on my final morning, except to slowly absorb breakfast, and as large a quantity of the "coffee" as I could muster, so as to then filter it for any available shred of caffeine that I could eke out of it. And then bring this excess girth to bear on my suitcase, to encourage it to close. And when I was in the middle of this routine, mid-panic that in fact my abilities to reorganise physical properties of objects vis a vis my suitcase dimensions, until now a skill I was considering putting on my cv, had in fact, failed, I then took a small mental step backwards - an actual physical one being prevented by both the dimensions of the room I was staying in and the fact that I was holding said baggage together in an effort to resist its overpowering and exploding over me in a Pompeii-like manner that would fascinate archaeologists in years to come - and realised that if I released the extra storage compartment on my suitcase, I would be, in fact, home and hosed. I know, I really did just write all that to describe a three minute interaction with my suitcase. And who said blogging was self-obsession gone mad?

The flight from JFK to LAX was happily, direct, on-time, and unmarked by incident, apart from a brief vesuvial interlude with a soda bottle that erupted with a drenching over me, my neighbour and a nearby flight attendant. Tip: if you ever want to crack that facade of sociability painted onto flight attendants along with their pancake make up, spray a soda over them. I've never heard such a hollow laugh. Fortunately it was just soda water, so I didn't start of the trip sugared and coloured, because that would have truly worn thin after the next thirty hours of happy travelling fun. I arrived in LA with a four hour wait ahead of me, which did not thrill me to the core, not even a little. I did however mollify that sensation by ordering a Manhattan, which are pleasingly potent are they not? And reflected on the wrongness of drinking my first Manhattan having just left Manhattan, sitting in the LAX terminal (and never was a facility so aptly named). By the time I got on the aircraft, it took off, and all the preliminaries of snacking and announcements were taken care of, it was about 1am in New York time, which was the time I was operating on, so far as I was really aware of time by this point in the trip, and about three hours past my bedtime, in my still lagged state, so I conked into a coma for a number of hours, I'm pleased to recount. I awoke sometime around the international dateline, and pondered one of my favourite 'weird topics to ponder': where did Wednesday go? I left on the 13th, I arrived on the 15th. I'm in the future now, where's my shiny jumpsuit? I'm glad timezones exist, if only because they give me something to be all "oooh, freaky man" about, even though most people just look at me with that same "duh" expression that they get when I express my inner hunch that the only way a detailed digital image can fly through the air to my computer is via magic. Which reminds me: how weird is it the way language morphs? 'Wireless' is so hip and now, rather than Granddad listening to the races. Bring on the Bakelite laptop!

So eventually I arrived in NZ, oddly as far into the future as one could go before retreating to Sydney time, waited around, mounted a new and smaller aircraft, hoping that my baggage was similarly engaged, and discovered I was in a window seat, meaning that I got a beautiful view of Sydney flying in on a gorgeous morning. Of all the places to fly into, Sydney really is stunningly beautiful. On arrival, I got through customs with a speed that suggests the future really is bright, boarded a train and retreated to the Southern Highlands. Where I got out of the car and went, "woah, quiet". It doesn't come entirely as a shock that Bundanoon, not quite the same pace as New York, but the experience of it is like the world going through some cosmic pause before the aliens invade and the cast have some brief interlude to mount some improbable levee that ultimately saves humanity from destruction. And then you realise that the absence of 19 million souls in close proximity does tend to slow down the surrounds and remove the white noise. I was feeling quite lively during the afternoon, managing several loads of washing, various leisure pursuits, some telephone conversation, dinner, and the washing up, before my brain came crashing to a halt and demanded I go to bed, before Kerry O'Brien had even finished his day's work. The evidence would suggest that this brain crashing occurred sometime during the washing up, as I left the tap on and flooded the kitchen cupboards. Lucky Dad.

Friday morning, pre-dawn, I finished my airplane novel (reading, not writing), and then arose to a day of happy nothing-to-do-but-relax-Hurrah! Read my new novel sitting under the trees of the neighbouring state forest, and pondered the sense of dissolute fecundity that this damply humid season seems to bring to these parts. And reflected on how I could communicate to the bug kingdom "My legs, not in fact, smorgasboard." The new novel: "Bowl of Cherries" by Millard Kauffman - how could one resist the buying of a novel introduced with the phrase "the debut novel by 90-year-old Kauffman...." and the endpapers of the hardback edition confirm the choice. It is published by McSweeney's, whose book designs resurrect the appreciation of the book as an object. I nibbled a chocolate digestive and enjoyed the peaceful respite before confronting reality. Holidays should always end with a nice buffer zone. Particularly with one that involves the smells of roast currently emanating from the parental kitchen.

the apple isle

2007-11-17T13:11:00.000+11:00

After another night's rest in the Hostel of the Clanking Pipes (the central heating featured quite the echoing acoustic accompaniment and performed both its aural and thermal duties with excessive enthusiasm. The first night we didn't realise the window could open - yes yes I know, between us we may have attended uni for about twenty years, but that doesn't mean the occasional detail doesn't skip gaily past - and I woke up with the conviction that we could grow papayas in here to the sound of iron-soled clog dancers performing on a tin roof, not the best start) and went in search of breakfast. Which we found, and was okay, at least with somewhat better coffee. But was one of those places that uses disposable everything, and so had a definite moment of understanding what Gore is ranting on about when looking at disposable plate, cups, cutlery - when you are eating in for goodness sake. And the mountain of napkins that you get every single time you order any comestible item. Now, I know that I spill coffee copiously and often, but I don't think my fame actually precedes me on that score (or, for that matter, on any other, being imaginary) so it can't just be me. And anyway, a poncho would surely be more appropriate for my coffee "moments".

So then we headed off to look at more art, again, happily via Central Park. We had to wait at the Whitney to open so I got a truly awful coffee. And someone else spilled it on me, and then after cleaning it up, spilt it again, so somehow my gift is attracting other people to spill coffee on me. Quite strange. The Whitney giftshop is quite good. I then went to look at their exhibitions and after about 45 minutes realised my eyes were still tired from the previous day, so it was a bit of a trudging visit. The current exhibition of Modernism in American art, looking at the different expressions of it - not just photography and Abstract Expressionism but the broader context - was interesting, but I couldn't quite grind my brain up to speed. Then a Kara Walker exhibition - another Kara Walker exhibition - she's currently being exhibited at the Fogg, the Met and the Whitney, so the word overexposed does come to mind, especially seeing as the Fogg and the Met are exhibiting the same series and all three feature the same device (19th century-style black silhouettes). And then an exhibition of the past two years of acquisitions by the Whitney, in which the most interesting thing that I saw was Adrian Grenier. I'm a fan of Entourage, so I was very excited. And proceeded to "coincidentally" have exactly the same path through the exhibition as he did. Managed not to drool forth my enthusiasm for his work, instead keeping my stalkerage to a silent one. He's smaller than I thought.

Then we went shopping in Soho! Yay! New jeans! And enough clothes so that I wouldn't have to do any laundry before I left. We trudged homewards at about 6.30, intending quite an early night, but came across a cosy looking bar, a dumpling house and a movie theatre in immediate proximity to one another so ended up having an excellent night. The best martini that I have ever had [haaaaaaapppppy place], then 'Martian Child', the new John Cusack film, which, possibly as a result of the basin of gin I had just consumed, I did enjoy, and then a pleasing repast of steamed dumplings and grilled salmon.

Monday, after the Clanging Pipes Ensemble performed their nightly routine, our time was limited as my friend had to return to Boston, so we sallied forth to consume further quantities of flimsily constructed coffee and then visit the Natural History Museum. Which truly has an impressive dinosaur in the lobby, and there's so few places about which you can honestly make that comment, isn't there? It's a refreshing change. After the lobby we went to the gift shop, which is fantastic, over two floors, I spent more time in there than in the musuem. Some good christmas shopping was done and a shirt acquired for a Small Person who Enjoys Dinosaurs. After that we looked at stuffed mammals. The American ones were very interesting. Has anyone heard of the 'Fisher'? Kind of weird to come across whole species of mammal that you have never even heard of. Baby skunks! Cute!

Then the return trip to Port Authority, and a sad farewell :(

I consoled myself with an enormous piece of cheesecake. It was vast. And had rasperries, chocolate and hazelnuts in it. So tasty. And a wander around Time Square. I checked out what was playing that night and discovered: very little. Apparently my visit was the time in which the stagehands decided to strike. I'm all in favour of the plight of the worker and all (I mean, of easing the plight of the worker, not that they should be further enplightened), but timing people, timing. Still, at least people can still strike in America, and they aren't only offered the option of "go get another job" if the one you have isn't working out. Because that's always just so easy isn't Tony, you self-satisfied, sharp-faced prig of a man. Not everyone wants to be a miner. [ahem. rant over. well, paused.]

Then I went on a Quest. I wanted on particular toy, from one particular toy shop. Unfortunately I misremember the location of the shop, and spend a long time walking in the wrong part of town, until I eventually get directions from someone who I will maintain a small candle of appreciation for until the day that I die, and then the store is sold out. Gah. Grumpy pants firmly in place, I went ... downtown! Where all the lights are bright! More dumplings. aaaah. Happy. And a shirt with trees on it. Also, more shoes.

and so to New York

2007-11-16T12:20:00.000+11:00

Five or so hours on a bus and we were in NYC, which is, in fact, My Happy Place. No wonder I can't do self-relaxation routines: soho exudes a different kind of peace to that of imagined autumnal forests and babbling brooks. My luggage had expanded by this point to a dimension that forbade subway travel (bad packing the night before I left, compounded by a spree in Philadelphia, sparked by a shoe store, that saw me leave as the semi-ironic owner of a pair of shoes that cost $12 and are constructed out of brown floral netting, that then spiraled out of control, all the way along South St, to incorporate a 3/4 length leather jacket ($99, thus inevitable and I feel excusable...), a pair of polka dot rainshoes and mother-of-pearl earrings emblazoned with cherries) and so required waiting forty five minutes to catch a taxi, and the same to actually drive to our hostel. I don't recommend arriving in NYC during Friday night peak hour on the eve of a long weekend. We made it, dumped our stuff, and turned around and in 15 minutes on the subway returned to where we had started out, to meet up with other painting conservators and an evening of martini, mexican food and an insight into the innards of NYC galleries.

Saturday was Met day! Having fortified ourselves with breakfast, bottomless coffee that resembled coffee in the sense of being a warm brown liquid but little else, and a walk across Central Park (which I do recommend in Fall) and make-up coffees, that this time contained taste and some measure of caffeine, if not that imparted by the happiness of espresso. We arrived at the Met at about 10.30, and left at about 4pm. In between, we examined art, lots of art. I went to the Met twice last time I was in NY and both times got suckered into the abstract expressionist corner, and not much further: the rest of modern, and the post-impressionist and inevitably the impressionist, because you can't really escape them and I felt strangely obliged to look at them, even though I'm quite, quite over the impressionist gaze and all the social and scientific advancement it heralds. So this time I was determined to at least pay a cursory glance beyond this happy corner of the museum. So I promptly got suckered into the abstract expressionists. At the moment they have an exhibition of abstract expressionism from a private collection that has just been donated to the Met, and surely solidifies its claim to have probably the finest collection of American art during this period. It wasn't just that she had bought large works by all of the key artists, but that she had such an eye for excellent examples - even a Phillip Guston that I didn't hate. So then I felt obliged, as I was nearby, to go sit with Jackson for a bit, and then Jasper, and Wassily. After that I summoned my legs to offer me carriage out of that part of the museum, and to contemplate its vastness. We took a look at the exhibition of some of the panels of Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise, which are remarkable, and then I scampered through the museum in a general state of overstimulation. The ancient near east collection for instance, or all of European art, with its endless depictions that jolt you between Jesus' birth, resurrection, babyhood and death every time you turn your head. My favourite are the ones that represent the ascension, because the hovering Jesus in a contrapposto and flowing robes always makes me think "Dancing Jesus". This is my problem with a lot, if not most, of European art, between say 1550 and 1850: it's completely insane. I'm sure when a lot of people talk about "good art", as opposed to "contemporary art", and mean painting that depicts things with as high a degree of verisimilitude as possible, and for an obvious reason (commemoration, adoration and so on), they mean this kind of painting, but when you look at it en masse, it's completely whack. The outstanding artists are all the more incredible for depicting crazy stuff in a way that seems rational. I don't mean crazy stuff as in the depiction of christianity, I just mean the manner in which it is done: entirely still figures in flowing robes of the most glorious hues, gathered around a stricken corpse with the most incredible musculature, a few stray animals, perhaps a still life in one corner, a skull in another, a peacock above, all in an unearthly landscape: the whole scene is a pastiche of symbolic elements that read a coherent narrative to those in the know, and are an effective didactic device to a largely pre-literate age, but when you encounter them now, in a room full of similar works, after eight other rooms thus overbrimming: whack. Hence my interests in the modern, the glued and the abstract.

Exiting the museum, we went in search of martini, followed by an unfortunately fruitless search downtown for "that polish place I ate in last time I was here and I think is on the next block... no the next... maybe over an avenue...". Eventually the quest was abandoned in favour of roast chicken, which was consolingly excellent.

onwards

2007-11-13T13:25:00.001+11:00

Monday was the final day in Philadelphia, in which I had planned originally to visit the PMA, but in a startling moment of clarity, realised that it would be shut and hence why I skipped the conference on Sunday. That meant that Monday was free for some touristy stuff. Reading Terminal markets - some interesting little stalls of Pennsylvania gifts (slightly odd looking calico Amish/Voodoo dolls being a treat that I only just managed to forgo), then lots of fresh food and food stalls. Then to the Fabric workshop (or some similar named institution) which was really interesting. Unfortunately it was located in a temporary building while its original home is being rebuilt, so there wasn't a huge deal to look at, but there were examples of the projects they create with contemporary artists - good contemporary artists (Oldenburg, Kiki Smith, Mona Hatoum) - all sorts of textile related things as well as some beautiful wallpapers. Excellent giftshop.

Then My First Cheesesteak Experience: and can I just say arraghagh, good. White roll, steak slivers, onion, cheese. If you have to induce a heart attack, this is the way to do it.

Followed, to round out the tourist adventure, by a duck tour - one of those amphibious vehicles, that took us around the streets of the old city, and then onto the Delaware River. The bit around the city was really interesting, lots of historical detail that you don't otherwise pick up on - such as the AME church that was both beautiful and one of the key stations on the underground railway, and that the paved stone streets were paved with stones originally brought over as ballast in ships that came over empty to take the products of the New World back to Europe. And some stuff about Ben Franklin, the American flag, and some of the oldest streets in America. And then we did a fairly pointless bit on the Delaware, that seemed more to demonstrate that we are in an amphibious vehicle and isn't that cool? Surely it can't have been necessary to get such a vehicle just to show us where Will Smith's dad lives (which he must certainly appreciate whenever he is out on his deck).

The next day I woke up at 4.30 in the morning again, and had to kill time until I could get breakfast, then wandered around the city, very strange for me to be up and wandering at 6am. Nice to watch a city come to life though. Lunchtime saw me board a train to go to Boston, which was great, it was definitely nice to not have to contemplate getting on another plane, and the views, especially between New York and Boston, were stunning. It was great to see the autumn colours in the landscape, and the coastline of upstate New York. No wonder they bleat on so much about their country houses, they are stunning. 6pm I arrived and was very happy to see my friend who resides in those parts.

The next day I accompanied her to Harvard, and managed to spend most of the day with her by joining in on her work morning tea and the gallery staff seminar, which was a lot of fun and very interesting. Took a look around the Fogg Museum - excellent - and spilt coffee on myself in front of the smart people of Harvard (fortunately this was at a cafe, not my friend's work place). The campus itself is lovely. And with excellent burgers.

That evening I made a truly superb risotto. I don't mean to boast, but, well, no, clearly I do, it truly was very tasty. Mushroom, asparagus and smoked tuna. Quite marvelous, I have discovered that I enjoy smoked tuna.

The following day was the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, which was not dissimilar to the Philadelphia one, but perhaps with more of a focus on ancient art rather than post-1900. My perceptions are possibly skewed by their renovations, which have necessitated the temporary removal of some of the collection. There was an excellent exhibition of contemporary craft, with quite a few Australian wood work pieces that were stunning.

The gift shop is better in the Philly.

After that I left and wandered around central Boston, buying the extra bag that my incessant shopping renders inevitable. Visited the first market in Boston, which now contains very little of interest, but in a very nice building. The next day we caught the greyhound bound for New York Ciddy!

piccatures

2007-11-10T02:01:00.001+11:00

Harvard library

lil' Egyptian dudes, Boston Museum of Art

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Bernini clay sketch, Fogg Museum, Harvard

Interior, Fogg Museum

Ancient Egyptian lion, Boston Museum of Art

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Brancusi, PMA

View from PMA

Main staircase, PMA

new encounters with dawn.

2007-11-09T12:43:00.000+11:00

Well now that I'm more than halfway through the trip, maybe, just maybe, I should take the record of it beyond the airport. Having arrived in the hotel to a crushing sense of "it's two in the morning, I'm alone in a big city, this doona cover is horrible, and I have to speak in public tomorrow", I found it rather difficult to get to sleep. I woke up the next morning to an actually painful sense of exhaustion, somehow gathered myself into what I think was a presentable state and went to confront the breakfast buffet.

Now I know that this was a more expensive hotel than the one in which I stayed in in London, but the breakfast buffet was an interesting cultural exchange: both described as Continental (though not specifying which continent) but London:
White sliced bread, plastic cheese, truly awful jam, cheap tea and instant coffee.
US: doughnuts, bagels, croissants, fruit, yoghurt, waffles, brewed coffee, selection of cereal, breads of various denominations.... and it went on.

The whole doughnut (heh! pun) for breakfast thing: strangely alluring when you've had no sleep, but does inspire the thought: "If I continue to eat this much sugar I will be going home with a candied leg."

So anyway, after the breakfast interlude, I went on my way to the conference. I'm told that I was coherent during my presentation, but couldn't honestly contribute to that debate, as I can't quite remember what I said. I was happy to hear that I was, as I was revising it while I was speaking, which is always an interesting approach to take when you're not completely conscious. It was a deep relief to get it over with fairly early in the conference and then be able to relax. The other speakers in the session were very interesting, and they became my conference buddies for the rest of the weekend, as we bonded over snacks after our papers, which revived me sufficiently to get through another couple of sessions and the drinks reception that followed. I then decided to walk back to the hotel, which was a nice, if bleary, way to finally encounter the streets of Philadelphia (sing it!).

The location was really good, as it meant I got to walk through Philadelphia's old city, the earliest part of Philly, where Independance Hall is, assorted statues wearing frock coats, that kind of thing. Something about signing some sort of declaration. The surrounding blocks have now become overrun with the national constitution centre, national history of this or that etc. The following day was some more presentations, then the conference lunch, which provided me both with a chicken wrap featuring grapes, and a few moments of amusement. I should preface this by saying that the conference was divided into various streams - so I was in Art, Design and Architecture, then there was childhood studies, sci fi, music, fashion, etc, as well as American culture and death: and so when, during the lunchtime announcements which went on interminably and to which not much attention was being paid, I couldn't help finding a certain element of humour to the minute's silence that was called to remember "so and so, the former convenor of the Death studies panel". Finally, some primary research....

And then I went on a tour of a cemetery. Which also had it's moments of hilarity. The cemetery itself, Woodlands, was fascinating, as old cemeteries are, both for their social history aspects, and the melange of styles of sculpture that compete for attention. What was entertaining was our tour guides, who were both older gentlemen, clearly fascinated by the subject, clearly very good at what they did, and clearly hadn't rehearsed how sharing the tour guide role would work - so one would dart off in one direction while the other did in the opposite - and then one would randomly stop in the middle of nowhere, tell a very interesting anecdote about one of the graves but conclude it by saying "I've lost where the grave actually is though". One of my favourites was the following exchange, while looking at the largest headstone in the place (about two stories high):
"Now this isn't a true obelisk"
"Why not?"
"Because a true obelisk is made out of one piece of stone, and as we can see this made out of many stones"
"So what do you call this?"
"An obelisk"

Only followed when we stopped to discuss that a cenotaph is when the body is buried somewhere else and a headstone is place in memory of them, "as we can see this woman was buried in Kansas"..... [as we walked away, sotto voce] ... "with Dorothy."

When we returned to the hotel we went to another couple of sessions, which having woken up at 4.30 am, I have virtually no memory of, and then to the hotel bar, for red wine (and rioja is our friend is it not?) and flatbread pizzas, which I think was all that bar could actually make in any neighbourhood of edibility, but which they did very well. Then, back to my hotel, sleep, coffee, doughnuts....

The Philadelphia Museum of Art {gasp}... excellent! Having woken up at six am, I was there on the dot of opening (which I was very happy about as the queues were out the door by the time I left). Scoffing heartily at the idea that I would want to see the Renoir exhibition, I proceeded into the general collection. The Philly is shaped in a big U, with the ground floor on one side being American art and on the other European impressionism and modern art, so probably the biggest hits of their collection, the impressionism was fairly standard compared to other US collections, though outstanding compared to any Australian one. Cezanne's large bathers was something you travel to see though, one of those art history one-oh-one paintings, as is Renoir's bathers, with the key difference being that one was fascinating and entrancing, and one made me want to gag. I proceed fairly rapidly through the Impressionist/post-Impressionist section and got into the more interesting modern and contemporary arm. Which is really interestingly presented, not strictly divided according to time/location, but brings out themes and parallels. A small chapel is dedicated to Brancusi, with some Mondrian, which is really excellent, and then the Duchamp collection! Nude descending a staircase! {can't verbalise}

Upstairs: European history, excellent medieval pieces, and a lot of installations set up as rooms, so "French sitting room 17th century" "cloisters" etc, that they'd wholesale moved to the museum. Which are both excellent and highlight the different resources of Australian and American galleries/museums: both feel same sense of inadequacy due to distance from European tradition, one bleats and creates nationalistic sheep backlash paintings, one tries to transplant as much of it as possible. Amazing what a slightly different approach to philanthropy can do.

Then, to remind Judas and Thomas of the good ol' days, I decided to walk back to the hotel, to see the other side of central Philadelphia. And found a Gap outlet. Happy $12 pants. Met for final drinks, then we found an Excellent mexican restaurant, oh my the salsa.

The journey continued.

2007-11-06T00:49:00.001+11:00

Travel is a surreal thing, I pondered, repeatedly, throughout my very strange and long journey here. You find yourself sitting 20 000 feet above the earth wondering what's taking them so long with the drinks cart already rather than what hubris it is to attempt hurtling through the air this far above your rightful place. Stop overs are also strange, just spending time in a country for it's airport, wading amongst the New Zealand souvenirs despite not really visiting the country. I did enjoy my reminder of just how good Speights' ale is on tap, and how entertaining the NZ news broadcast. Although not the reminder of how expensive are the carved jade pendants. After these brief wanderings it was back on to an aircraft for the longest
flight of the trip, and I have to say that Air NZ are excellent; I'm sure you get more space on their 747s than you get on QANTAS and they have excellent ice cream and very generous pouring arms.

The trip was the usual tedium and discomfort associated with such a long time in a confined space; the TVs were working though, so that was a nice change from my previous encounter with that journey. I watched 'Once' which is excellent, although I would like to listen to the soundtrack to more fully appreciate the music as the headphones weren't so good. Then I watched "No Reservations" which is a romcom about a chef; and a less realistic presentation of a chef I have never seen - taking off an apron as crisply white at the end of the shift as at the beginning. Leaving the restaurant immaculately made up and wearing heels after twelve hours in kitchen. Apparently able to flounce out of the kitchen in the middle of service for whatever ruffles your emotions. Having hands and forearms unmarked by scars. The romantic comedy bit is fine though, and the dvd will get you through that basket of ironing.

Then we landed in LA, before we had left NZ, and the Thursday that wouldn't end just kept on going. I had to transfer to a domestic flight at LAX and my word if there is an airport more poorly signposted it would be a surprise. If you ever need to do that make sure you need to know which terminal you need to find and where it is because there is nothing that will tell you
that in the airport. Security and customs took awhile, but not ridiculously so, and I was able to check in to my next flight without any further dramas. Which meant that I could fly across the world and then the USA without any problems, but it was getting more than a couple of k away from my home that posed the difficulties of this journey. So I went and found my gate, bought
a copy of the NY Times and a coffee from Starbucks and grinned smugly to myself that I was back in the US of A. Starbucks is definitely better here. And I read an hilarious article in the Times about how New York interior designers have decided that Jewellery for your FURNITURE is the latest thing. Because people want to "personalise" their furniture as they do their appearance they should buy jewellery for their FURNITURE. The picture depicted an enormous CHARM BRACELET draped ever so insouciantly over the back of a chair. Because just buying a chair can't be expressing one's self, other people might have that same chair. So one should buy jewellery to put on it. Or you could just skip a step and wrap a straightjacket around the back of the chair, should indicate your personality just as clearly.

The next flight took me to Atlanta, I got on the plane, sat down and conked into sleep. I came dimly awake to wonder what was taking so long to take off and realised that I'd slept through take-off I was so tired. So I missed that enjoyable "we'reallgoingtodie" moment that my gut sends forth when an aircraft really puts its shoulder into it. The flight to Atlanta took about
four hours, and then there was an hour wandering around the airport there - during which I realised that I had no real idea of where Atlanta actually is, another strange aspect of bouncing across the globe and having odd none-encounters with geography - then the two hour flight to Philadelphia. Airtrans is quite a good airline, should you ever need. They give you lots
of pretzels. While boarding the final flight I had the sudden thought that even despite my extremely lagged state, and the endless tedium of embarking and disembarking aircraft, I still really, really love travelling.

The flight arrived on time at Philadelphia, at one in the morning, I took the longest walk between plane and luggage carousel that I have ever encountered, eventually someone else did that with my bag, so I was able to leave and find my hotel. Which turns out to be ensconced between the Delaware River and a six lane freeway which sends a nice reverberating drone
through the whole building, but is otherwise fine. I had a shower for which I was yearning as though for the promised land. And then I went to bed! 37 hours after leaving my own... ! And couldn't sleep.

a shortcut to a stomach ulcer

2007-11-01T15:28:00.000+11:00

So I’m seriously rethinking how I booked my travel for this trip. Everything was going fine: I got up at five in the morning, and I got the taxi on time, I arrived at the bus terminal super-early. And then, the wheels on the bus did not so much go round and round, as come off the wagon. The Greyhound bus-man responded with mirth to my rather tight schedule, leaving me imagining which rotisserie he will be occupying in the afterlife. I met another fool who had booked the bus for the airport who came up with the idea of hiring a car. Which meant we had to go to Canberra airport to get it. Which meant that we had to deal with “Thrifty”: by which they mean they are thrifty with the number of IQ points you need to work there. An inordinate amount of time later, they handed over the keys to a car other than the one we had hired, and we started driving. And I started calling Air New Zealand, to find out how late I could be before I missed the flight. The goal of 10.30 was set and so we drove, and I palpitated. My stomach slowly came to grips with the reality that I had decided to replace its rightful six other hours of sleep with a cup of coffee and a boatload of stress, and decided to introduce me to how it would feel should it every try to burrow its way out of my body. I’m not good with flight deadlines at the best of times, I panic that I’m going to miss them and turn up hours early, so actually being late was not my ideal start to the trip. Or the best way of conducting normal social chitchat with my travelling companion – as small talk inevitably does, it wormed it’s way around to the ‘what is your phd topic’ question and I think a direct quote of my response is: “Art history. Australian. 1960s.” After which time I got to account for the prices in the art market and the claims to value of Aboriginal art – reasonably complex issues that I would normally struggle to answer in an articulate fashion after only two hours sleep and before nine in the morning, but add a nice haze of stress and I think I start to borrow Yoda’s sentence structure. “Art it is, Aboriginal, yes, unique it is.”
We made it with ten minutes to spare. And the plane was late. It turned up, the tortuous boarding process was completed (oh, and if you are late you get to sit up the back with the kids, joy). And they had lost the food. So we waited another thirty minutes. Finally the food arrived, and we set off for Auckland. Where I now am, making the most of the fact that wifi doesn’t effect navigation systems when you are inside the airport, apparently. It’s now three p.m. Sydney time, and I’ve got another twenty hours of travel to go. Gah. I have, however, noticed that there is some tasty looking NZ beer on tap here in the compound, so after I have read through my paper there will be treats, oh yes.

more about the 'head. And some other stuff because I get distracted midway.

2007-10-24T13:50:00.000+10:00

I started writing a response to my previous post in the comments area, and realised I was, in effect, talking to myself online, which which is surely taking the narcissism of blogging to that level with which I'm not comfortable.

On the prices people are paying for the Radiohead album - I saw something in the SMH website the other day that said about 1/3 of people are paying the adminstration fee of 49p but nothing for the album, and another third at least are paying four pounds or so (about half of the price of an album downloaded from itunes). Cutting out all the middlepersons means that they are absolutely raking it in. So it will be interesting to see record companies response to bands doing this - as it seems that it is those bands that are longterm successes that finance the money that goes into supporting promotion of newer bands, and offsets the ones that don't obtain that kind of success. If bands with the stature of Radiohead, that has been built through the promotion and support of record companies, can move away from those businesses and release an album online and mean that the longterm cashcow relationship is even less certain, I wonder if the companies will change their approach to how they find new talant to promote? They seem to be fairly woeful at catching up with the changing nature of the consumption of music - their obsession with grinding out illegal distribution rather than finding out what people are prepared to pay for music online and letting market forces determine it seems wrongheaded to me.

I really like that Radiohead have found their own way of doing it too. They refuse to let their music be sold through itunes because they don't want people to be able to buy one song at a time, as they see their albums as a unified work, rather than something to pick at. And the alternative they've set up seems to work really well, particularly as you don't have to download any software, as you do with itunes, and particularly any software that then proceeds to annoy the crap out of you. (In itunes case only superseded by the monumental irritation caused by iphoto. Oh the ranting! It annoys me even more than the inappropriate use of brush script fonts, and that has been consistently annoying me since the mid-1990s. I kid you not! Although not as annoying as the Howard government, also consistently annoying since the mid-1990s.) (oh, and you should take out your frustation on that matter here.) (on reflection, that's a really dumb scale of how annoying something is - between font use and political frustrations? Like giving something a rating as somewhere between how much I would enjoy a glass of creme de menthe sitting in an airport terminal versus a fine glass of red sitting in the south of France. ) (must stop stream of consciousness parenthesizing. To coin a verb.) I like that they've stood up for their work as unified albums, and surely anyone would agree who's ever sat back after a couple of shandies and listened to one in the dark.

Regarding the contents of the album, I love it, I've become slightly obsessed. Particularly hearing Thom Yorke sing "I don't want to be your friend, I just want to be your lover" is bizarre, because it harks back to odd Spice Girls memories, that do linger long unwelcome.

My office seems to be slowly filling with moths and spiders; I think nature is trying to take back the ANU.

Or I could just shut the window.

Or even, just shut up...

a bit o'stuff

2007-10-15T12:05:00.000+10:00

So last week when I was watching Oprah - an infrequent event I hasten to add out of a lame sense of elitism - Bill Clinton was on and jointly they were promoting Kiva. This website facilitates loans to businesses in developing countries - something like 98% of them have so far successfully repaid their debts. After the coverage on Oprah and in Clinton's new book they have had to limit the donation limit to $25 because so many people want to give. Such a great idea.

Two and a half weeks before I leave for Philadelphia. Would be heaps good had I finished the paper I have to present - which it turns out is the first morning at the conference, after I arrive at the hotel sometime in the early hours of the morning. Will be interesting to see how much coherence I eke forth after travelling for an incomprehensibly long time, but that is, after all, what adrenaline is for isn't it? Fighting with bears and public speaking. Both clearly vital to the evolutionary advantage.

Thinking of evolution, I bought really, really awful shampoo recently. Purely because it was called 'Natural Selection' and I was taken by the idea of it somehow offering some Darwinian advantage. A thought which I somehow couldn't express to my hairdresser when she was making me feel bad for not buying expensive hair products and attributing my fly-away ends to my poor consumer choices.

I'm listening to the new Radiohead - it's excellent. I want to know what the average price is that people are paying for it (you nominate how much you want to pay, if you had not heard, and it is only available as a download from http://www.radiohead.com/).

2007-08-25T12:03:00.000+10:00

Which famous photographer are you?

Henri Cartier-Bresson: Known for street photography and photojournalism

"We are passive onlookers in a world that moves perpetually. Our only moment of creation is that 1/125th of a second when the shutter clicks, the signal is given, and motion is stopped..."

Click Here to Take This Quiz
Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

bizarrities.

2007-08-23T12:00:00.001+10:00

Last night I was quite excited, because I got to go and see some live music, and regardless of the music, whenever I get to do that it makes me feel that Canberra is not such a desolate hole, void of all interest and possibility of life within its streets of curvéd death. So I try to see some music as often as schedule and the Canberran Desolation (now there's a band name) permit, because, you'll understand, I'm prepared to put a bit of effort to avoid the "desolate hole, void of all interest and possibility of life within its streets of curvéd death" feeling, because that's just not nice. In addition, whenever I see some live music, it makes me feel less of a blanket-dwelling nanna.

I found out that Agnes Kain were playing at the Phoenix via the Half a Cow email list, so I had checked them out and enjoyed the experience, so was extra excited about the prospect. And I did enjoy muchly, because what's not to love about someone who can infuse the phrase "yellow galoshes" with musicality? Not to mention incorporate the glockenspiel. And it rapidly became apparent that the lead singer is someone I went to high school with, which is still spinning me out, finding out that the voice you'd been listening to belongs to someone you know. Not to mention that those year 7 classes where we each had one bit of the glockenspiel to bash may have actually paid off for someone. So their album is really good, you should check them out too, and ensure that one day I get to do the well when I went to school with her... thing that is such an asset at dinner parties.

snicker.

2007-08-17T11:07:00.000+10:00

There's something hilarious about the Government offering a critique of the Rock Eisteddfod. One of the most hilariously lame events to have taken the teenage world by storm and our government, being such upstanding defenders of free speech, criticises students for being political. Because Mr Bush will be in town. A bunch of students dancing might offend the President, and to do so during APEC, well, "it can be embarrassing for us as Australians". I've no doubt that Rock Eisteddfod could be embarrassing for us as Australians, based on some of my alma mater's extravaganzas, and if they did so actually during an APEC meeting it could forge whole new levels of national humiliation. But if the President of the United States chooses to watch a teenage dancing fair, then he gets what he deserves. And if he decides to assess the national position on the war in Iraq from a group of students dressed in lycra, well that's the kind of hilarious turn in international politics for which I long.

Time to give the pith helmet an airing...

2007-08-16T14:46:00.000+10:00

Hurrah! This blog shall once again have a chance to serve its orginal purpose. I have the chance to present a paper to a conference in Philadelphia, and to that I say Yay! The cheesesteaks shall be mine! It shall alas be but a brief excursion, yet still time will be found to visit New York and my friend in Boston.

I'm hyperventilating with excitement about this, although find some level of hilarity that there is an exhibition of Renoir on at this time, what with my previously stated opinion of Renoir.

It's not paranoia if it's true.

2007-06-04T15:30:00.000+10:00

I think there is a ley line that runs down Northbourne Avenue: first the sprinkler, now the ATM. On Saturday night I went to get money out of an ATM and the machine ate my card. Then I went to another ATM and it ate my card because it had expired. Then I realised that I did not know the PIN for my remaining card. Sure, you could blame this occurance on a bit of bad luck combined with lack of organisation and some standard vagueness on my part, rather than a pseudo-mystic conspiracy theory. Sure, you could do that. But that's what they want.

Fortunately this all happened while I was with a good friend who was nice enough to lend me money, so I didn't have to go ask for seventy cents worth of beer. We went and saw The Fuelers play at the Phoenix, which was a lot of fun, I think The Fuelers and the Phoenix are one of those magical combinations in life, like gin and tonic, bagels and cream cheese, that convince you that life can't be a big accident.

A Day in the Life of Boot: A pictorial essay

2007-05-24T19:29:00.001+10:00

The boot in repose.

The boot in the office.

The boot at lunch.

The boot at drinks.

Attempts to rotate these photos failed, because blogger apparently don't see this as something that someone would need to do, ever.

The boot refused photos to be taken of it in the amusing "I just spattered paint on my boot the first day I'm wearing it" moment at work. Boot felt that this would both be demeaning, and the final confirmation of my insanity at my place of work, when I paused from the task at hand to photograph my footwear. The author wishes to acknowledge that the boot has a point.

A funny thing that happened to me

2007-05-04T12:04:00.000+10:00

was when I pressed the button to make the traffic lights change colour and at that moment a sprinkler came on and sprayed my leg. The lights on Northbourne have ever been tardy, but I had not considered them to be booby-trapped.

Let that be a warning to those who cross Northbourne at Alinga.

I hate the word 'cobbler'

2007-04-29T14:25:00.000+10:00

... for the way it flumps out of your mouth like a wad of phlegm, and so particularly unfortunate when used in relation to a peach-based dessert, which otherwise has such delightful connotations.

That has no bearing on any longer musing, but I needed a title for this post, and that was the path my mental wanderings led me on, and so, there it is.

Thanks for the prompting Sim (and for you and KM ensuring that this thing still gets some hits...), when you enquired as to my whereabouts, I had the delight of being in Melbourne. I intended to post while I was down there, relive the glory days of posting from the road, you remember those? But in a faithful recreation of them, didn't have time while I was actually in the place, and so will have to recreate it now. I went down there last Saturday to visit my friend before she flees to Harvard, and stayed until Wednesday, so had a very nice break.

Happily my visit coincided with the Comedy Festival, for which, incidentally, you should book in advance if you want to see the more famous people. Our method of buying tix right before the show limited the options. But opened the field to seeing acts we hadn't otherwise heard of. Peter Berner was funny, but not in a way that want to made you want to quote slabs of it to your friends afterwards (no need to look quite *that* relieved). The other one that we saw was 'Best of the Edinburgh Festival' - one Irish guy (funny), one Irish girl (funny, but her accent was so impenetrable that by the time you had deciphered what she was talking about the jokes weren't really funny enough to make the effort worthwhile), an American guy (very funny) and an Australian who made me laugh so much I hurt. I wish more of you had been there because it would give me other people who I could yell 'SLADE!' to who would know of what I was speaking. Which was a reading from a mills and boon novel from the 1970s. Which I think would be funny whoever did it, but this guy (I do wish I could remember his name) did it spectacularly well. His description of the cover was entertaining enough (a man embracing a woman, poised above her 'as though about to take a bite from a burger-based snack'). He followed up the reading with a performance of Rock Eisteddfod dancing. It makes me laugh just thinking about it. The amusement factor may have been aided by an introduction to my new best friend before the performance: the espresso martini. Oh happy, happy day! Melbourne truly has so many little bars tucked away down obscure alley ways that you would never be able to find on your own. And that if you were being led to by someone you didn't know well would have you gripping your keys between your fingers in case it proved necessary to give them what for. But happily always seems to end in some delightful little corner to ensconce yourself in with a martini. Not actually in the alleyway, obviously.

Monday I spent ensconced in the State Library, ploughing through manuscript material, typing like a possessed-typing-thing trying to get it all done in one day so I could visit the NGV International on Tuesday. Which I did. And only later remembered, when it was explained to me, that the NGVi is shut on Tuesdays, a mistake which I've made before. At least this time I wasn't left outside, pawing at the waterfeature front window. So I went to the Charles Nodrum Gallery instead and had a look at their shows, and took a wander up Bridge Rd, which was unfruitful, as the outlet stores had no love for me this day. The love was all stored up for me at the Alannah Hill outlet on Brunswick St. I had to unzip the extra storage on my suitcase after that. And I bought shoes! Shoes! Happy! Shoes! Which does leave me with a question: why is it that between the $20 and $400 range there is a total lack of any decent shoe in Canberra? Probably a good thing for me overall, but it is strange. But my four-year quest for the Right Boot has been fulfilled. That may not seem to you a fact worth posting on the internet, but that just proves that you are a man.

Since I got back I've been sick with a cold, serving to sharpen my love for the southern city even further by contrast.

Max Barry's Company

2007-03-25T15:07:00.000+10:00

The SMH's Spectrum reviewed this book the other day, or perhaps it was an article, because there was a review in yesterday's Spectrum, so unless the editor was inhaling a little too much and inadvertently published reviews of the same book twice in a fortnight, the first article must have been an interview of sorts. It interested me because the book sounded good and focused on Barry's success in America while remaining virtually unheard of in Australia. Normally there is a ticket parade for any Australian deemed successful overseas, so it seemed quite odd that he is still so unknown. But then there has been two articles/reviews in a fortnight and I bought the book, so perhaps I just did not allow time in which this celebration is to take hold. This is Barry’s third book, the other two I’ve yet to read. It is a parody of corporate culture, which offers meat food for wit to feed on. He does a particularly nice job with the vacuity of corporate-speak, ‘teamwork’, ‘goal oriented’ and so on. The plot centres on a new graduate recruit, Jones, to a large corporation, which seems to produce nothing and revolves around departments meeting other departments’ demands rather than those of any external customers. Unfortunately Jones character never seems to develop that much, there’s vague references to his life outside the office, and to his time before taking up employment at the company, but not enough to really find the book’s claim for his ethical superiority to be that believable. And so the brief appearances of his sister and former housemates just seem unnecessary rather than illuminating. The femme fatale of the piece, Eve, is a much more interesting character and offers some interesting thoughts on moral relativity and ethics in the business world, at least being consistent in the ultimate outworking of absolute ambition. While the plot doesn’t exactly pivot with the precision of a champion-netballer, it is both interesting and funny, and certainly emphasises the soul-destroying hell of corporations determined to make money whatever the cost for staff. Or appear to be making money so that the share prices goes up and senior management actually make money. It’d make a very good film script, in the I heart Huckabees/Being John Malkovich vein. In some ways I think Barry should have written it as a film, a lot of the scenes that take a few pages to cover in the book could have been achieved visually in 20 seconds and would have meant that there weren’t quite so many characters clunking about the plot. This all sounds overly negative though, the book is worth reading, and the thing that makes the book worth a read is the writing, Barry has a nice turn of biting parody that makes for an entertaining afternoon.

Golden Moments of Procrastination #3

2007-03-23T15:14:00.000+11:00

Ah, the virtual world, and its multi-faceted opportunities for the consumption of time. How joyful is the procrastination which not only affords you idle amusement, but provides it for your fellow internet burghers. Not only has Carl gone to the effort of installing a webcam in his office, but now others can watch him chat with the people that go to view it... I'm still not entirely sure that I understand that Phd topic, but at least I can live in hope that one day I'll visit and he'll have pigtails...

Golden Moments of Procrastination #2

2007-03-12T19:20:00.000+11:00

I just blogged about procrastinating in order to procrastinate. It all gets very circular sometimes doesn't it?

Golden Moments of Procrastination #1

2007-03-12T19:18:00.000+11:00

I just went to check the mail downstairs, an activity that becomes strangely vital when I'm attempting to write - normally I go for days without checking - and accidentally walked to the lake.

On things that amuse

2007-03-09T10:30:00.000+11:00

There is something odd about laughing out loud - and I mean loud - when you are alone isn't there? There you are, maintaining a largely internal dialogue with the world around you, and then an ad comes on television, declaring that a one kilo block of cheese is 'Great for School Lunches!'and you fine yourself bleating with laughter. Oh the image of an eight year old opening up their décor lunch box to find a big yellow block inside. Or when I find myself excited at the 'ding' of an arriving email, even though it is an email that I have just sent myself, and forgotten in the two second interval.

There is an oddness to the sudden outburst, where it makes me intensely conscious for a moment of my surroundings in a way that I hadn't been previously, engaged as I was in mindless observation of TV, laughter kind of interrupts that internal world - same thing when I go to the movies alone. I don't usually laugh quite so hard as when I have gone with other people. Hence the extraordinary level of humour in 'Little Miss Sunshine' when I was
doubled over in the cinema. Fortunately everyone around me was, so I wasn't the loser in the corner finding the film way more entertaining than everyone else.

On Before Sunset

2007-03-07T23:12:00.000+11:00

Ethan Hawke is morphing into Tom Cruise. It's very strange, even his mannerisms remind me of Tom. Fortunately he's taller, and seems less likely to jump up and down on sofas ranting about post-natal depression, but the resemblance is there. Happily this does mean that he has encountered a stylist in the past decade, who has taught him the benefits of shorter, clean hair and product. The changes wrought in his character do seem oddly similar to those I've seen in friends - when guys go from the floppy longish hair with the centre part and baggy clothes to more stylish attire and an actual hair style. Ethan even wears belts now. Still, no butt.

Julie has been particularly sartorially blessed, but give it another nine years and I'm sure there'd be a what were they thinking quotient rearing its head. Both of them look a lot better at 32 than 23 which is nice, I think it might be possible to draw blood on Ethan's cheekbones, he's certainly a lot thinner these days. To the point that when the film opened I had the thought 'what, he's been on crack for the past decade?' but I got past that.

I can see why not everyone loved the film (Margaret did, David didn't, for the record), being more of the talking heads for quite some time, but it revisit the characters very well - very much one for the fans of the original film, if you hadn't seen the first one you might be hard pressed to care too much about the sequel, and I'm prepared to think that you might have needed to be an adolescent at the time to truly _connect_ with Ethan's pain, to care at all about his current setting. And the double dvd pack certainly helps those of us that couldn't remember anything other than the basic premise of the film.

Ethan and Julie clearly hadn't left the characters behind them, they helped write the screenplay for this one, and I think they dealt pretty well with the possibility that the theme of 'unfulfilled love that has a second chance' presents, of the film turning into monumental, vast swathes of sentimentality that expand like a salinating desert to eventually encompass us all in a sea of pain and leave us vomiting into our fortuitously large popcorn containers. There's a nice meandering theme of 'what if' that they concentrate on, as well as discussing their lives, and the film is much more located at a specific time and so references particular things - I liked that they included Nina Simone (as a conversation topic I mean). Both characters have a slightly dark sense of humour which is cool, but it is hard to believe that people who hadn't seen each other in a decade would be quite so ready to bag each other out, but then I guess that's true love for you.

What is very cool is that the film is set in Paris - and opens in Shakespeare & Co. - The. Bookstore. That. I've. Been. Too. Fictionally, Ethan slept there, so it's possible that a fictional character has slept in the bed that I have actually read in! Just imagine what Baudrillard would say about that. Admittedly, possibly nothing at all as there is a good chance his theories have no bearing on that.

On Before Sunrise

2007-03-06T10:32:00.000+11:00

Last night I watched Before Sunrise for the first time since I was about sixteen. When this movie came out I remember being in quite the flurry of excitement, as it was in the midst of the Reality Bites-induced 'Ethan Hawke as greasy haired anti-hero of the cynical generation' that so characterised my lank-haired youth. I was quite startled by the film, as apart from the basic premise - Ethan and Julie Delpie wander around a European city for one night, knowing they have to go their respective ways in the morning - it turns out that I remembered nothing, nothing, about this film. It never ceases to astonish me just how little information I can retain about things. It has the advantage of meaning I can read and watch things over and over again and be just as surprised by them every! single! time! but it does have slight drawbacks as far as the 'operating in reality' aspect of life.

The watching of Before Sunrise was because I went into the Land of Temptation again (JB Hi-Fi). They had a double set of the DVDs of Before Sunrise and its sequel, Before Sunset. I haven't seen Before Sunset yet, but its release, with the descriptions of its premise 'Ethan and Julie meet ten years later, this time for a day' created in me one of those 'it's been ten years!' moments. It generally got fairly bad reviews, as did I think the original film, being targeted at the late-adolescent girl who was happy to swoon at Ethan as he uttered his pseudo-profundities for an hour or so. Not a subset which is likely to create broad appeal. I suspect there may have also been a subset of late-adolescent boys who couldn't wait to get to uni and be Ethan, slack-hair and all.

When the movie started I thought they were going to leave Ethan in the rust-coloured skivvy he appears in in the first scene for the whole film. Fortunately he gets changed, into the late-nineties uniform of grey tshirt and leather jacket. Unfortunately he doesn't acquire a belt, which isn't a great look, especially on the buttless. Julie remains in the same outfit for the entire film, that particularly lacking nineties look of black dress over white tshirt look with flannel shirt over the top and bulky shoes. What were we thinking? There's also a random polka-dot skirt underneath the black dress, so she just inhabits the land of clash for the entire film. Obviously my initial reactions to film are lost in a haze of swoon, but I'm pretty sure I thought she looked excellent when I first saw her in this attire. I remember thinking during the nineties, as we all recoiled in horror at the eighties, that there would never be a time when we would feel that way about the nineties, because fashion just wasn't making those kind of mistakes.

I can certainly see why people found this film inordinately irritating, featuring as it does two people wandering around for twelve hours talking about themselves, and then ending. But I still did enjoy it, even with a little bit more of an idea that I would probably smack Ethan repeatedly these days, rather than put up with his meandering narcissism. Yes, that's right, it's perfectly polite to ask someone a deeply personal question, receive a decent answer and then come back with a thought that you had that reincarnation didn't make sense because there are so many more people these days than there used to be and so, what, were they like, fragments of souls now? No, you twit, reincarnation believes in the progression of souls through different forms, so it means that what were single-celled organisms have gradually progressed to their glorious, near-ultimate form of the human male. What really doesn't make sense is how you, oh slack-haired saggy-panted one, could be regarded as the almost-height of the reincarnatory ladder. If that's my next option, I choose labrador.

When I was sixteen I'm pretty sure I would have had more of a 'wow, that's so like, excellent - going round Europe on trains for two weeks, thinking really deep thoughts'. What's so amazing about really deep thoughts... Honey, there's a reason that girl in Madrid dumped you and sent you into that vortex of pain that sent you to the trains of Europe. He didn't seem at all interested in the breads of Europe. I'll keep you posted on my thoughts about the sequel.

Housekeeping

2007-03-05T18:07:00.000+11:00

I have just updated the appearance of this blog. I'm not sure if it works, but the point-and-click colour palette was just so fun that I couldn't stop myself, results be damned.

In the process of my sprucing, I lost the counter, so for future reference, add 1388 to the new counter for the true, glorious, success of this here bloggeral to be revealed. But I don't have the link for some peculiar academy to contend with anymore, and that is a thing of happiness.

It is nice that the blogmasters have made it possible for those of us happier in the GUI environment to make changes, and not have to figure out complicated codes to change things, which always resulted in me thinking 'white is fine as a background anyway' after I had squinted at the text box for awhile.

Update

2007-02-24T20:39:00.000+11:00

It has been awhile. I note, with some appreciation, the trickle of hits this blog continues to receive, even though I have been reduced to posting email forwards.

So, what of me...

I have started a new part-time job, working in one of the commercial galleries [www.helenmaxwell.com] in canberra, which has been great. It is very nice to be working with art, and getting a feel for how a commercial gallery operates. The new shows just opened and are looking quite spectacular, so it is nice to feel good about where one's working hours are spent. Even if the range of skills bear no relation to anything I studied in my "Art History and Curatorship" degree - who knew that I would be spending so much quality time with packing tape and debating the merits of bubble wrap. And that it would be in an art gallery that I realised how profoundly unfit I am, having spent the day lifting and shifting, to collapse in a deadened heap at the end.

The thesis, is, brace yourself, going well! I have a sense of purpose about the direction and work is being done.

Combined with the other part-time job, it amounts to me being quite busy, which is a good thing, as I only truly become productive when there is a certain amount of pressure. Although there is a skill, when busy, to slow down and spend time over things that need reflecting upon, ie, anything to do with the thesis, when time is short and there is a feeling of being rushed.

I'm still digesting all the experiences of travel - it was such a charged, intense time of over stimulation, that only now, as I have flashbacks to different places and sites, do I feel like I'm absorbing it. It is nice to realise that a lot of it has stuck in my mind and I remember it. Having one experience after another in places so different from each other, I was worried that each successive place would overwrite each other and I wouldn't remember much except a lot of gallery cloakrooms and how much I hate renoir. Which would be a truly heartbreaking result. But, thankfully, I still have a firm mental picture of the truly splendid this-is-the-definition-of-kitsch water fountain (with its muzak soundtrack) of the Bellagio in Vegas, and the moment I almost burst into tears in front of the Cezanne in the Musee d'Orsay. AND how much I hate Renoir. And a thousand why-don't-_I_-live-in-New-York moments.

I'm in Bundanoon for the weekend, I came up to surprise my mum for her birthday [there's a certain arrogance in being able to assume that one can be a present for someone - but that is the joy of having parents isn't it? They have to be excited to see you, even when you walk in just as they sit down to lunch, because They Are The Rules.] We have just been out for an Indian meal [v. tasty] and are generally relaxing. It is great to finally see some rain, even Goulburn is looking a teensy bit green. Having some errands to run, I drove via Fyshwick, and then Queenbeyan and Bungendore, and then, semi-accidentally, Goulburn. Fyshwick saw my quest for The Perfect Soup Spoon achieved, which was a relief, as last weekend saw me on a tour of the Endless Mall that now adorns the centre of Canberra (and thus entitled The Canberra Centre - which if they keep expanding will have a certain amusing frisson, not actually having a centre, but being an interconnected series of land grabs with various acknowledgements to the streets that have been swallowed, incorporated into the architecture.) that ended up costing $85 dollars on everything except soup spoons.

The New Lexicon

2007-02-04T18:25:00.000+11:00

I wanted to forward the following email on, but figured half of all people have probably read it by now. And then I remembered I have a blog, and I can put it there. Tricky huh.

Once again, The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to
its yearly neologism contest, in which readers are asked to supply
alternate meanings for common words.

The winners are:
1. Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.
2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
3. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4.Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.
5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.
6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.
7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.
8. Gargoyle (n.), olive-flavored mouthwash.
9.Flatulence (n.) emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.
10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.
12. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.
13. Pokemon (n), a Rastafarian proctologist.
14. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.
15. Frisbeetarianism (n.), (back by popular demand): The belief that when you die, your Soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
16. Circumvent (n.), an opening in the front of boxer shorts

The Washington Post's Style Invitational also asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are this year's winners:
1. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

2. Foreploy (v): Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

3.Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.

4. Giraffiti (n):Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

5. Sarchasm (n): The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

6. Inoculatte (v): To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

7. Hipatitis (n): Terminal coolness.

8. Osteopornosis (n): A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

9. Karmageddon (n): its like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

10 Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

11. Glibido (v): All talk and no action.

12. Dopeler effect (n): The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

13. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

14. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

15. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a grub in the fruit you're eating.

And the pick of the literature:
16. Ignoranus (n): A person who's both stupid and an a--hole

Assorted marginalia

2007-01-21T11:46:00.000+11:00

Just when I find myself whinging about living back in Canberra and the struggle of adjusting to the mundane of the day-to-day I wandered over to http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/ and had a read about life in Baghdad - I think we're all pretty sick of hearing about Iraq, partly due to compassion fatigue, but perhaps mostly due to the endless-beating-of-head-on-wall sensation of what do you mean the American government didn't foresee what was going to happen in Iraq? *I* foresaw what was going to happen in Iraq, *me* - I'm not exactly privy to intelligence briefings, or even a particularly refined understanding of world events, and even I could see that going into Iraq would result in a total disastrous mess. And that was before the Americans decided to be disastrously incompetent on a scale that is unbelievable. If one were to have written a novel about it, it would be read as incredibly anti-American and over-the-top unbelievable, but they have actually done it.

Oops, sorry I keep slipping into rant-mode whenever the topic of Iraq comes up: what I was trying to suggest is that you head over to http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/ and at least read the post about Saddam's execution, it makes some good points about just how offensive the timing was of the execution, and of CNN's misreporting. Both of which are disturbing on numerous levels. The previous posts also give a much more real - and even more disturbing - perspective on life in Iraq at present.

On to other matters.

January seems to be whippeting away from us doesn't it? At this rate, in approximately four minutes I'll be ranting on about Christmas shopping again. It is very strange to ponder that I'm just off two years into this thesis palaver. Also, terrifying.

So moving on.

January has largely been spent settling into my new abode in Canberra, which is working out very nicely. My suitcase is back in the cupboard! I have a wardrobe! Things hang in there! I have regular access to a washing machine! I haven't had to attempt to drag all my possessions through city streets and onto a bus/underground/tube/train/metro! Followed by inadvertently uphending a bag a scattering candy across a floor littered with commuters... for instance. So there are some benefits to not having to constantly uproot myself.

I keep coming across random momentoes of travel - an Oslo bus ticket here, 4000 photos of world museums there, and sighing, slumping and having to remind myself I knew that it was going to come to an end. Ah, the breads of the world, so far away. I have been watching West Wing (just for something startlingly new and different...) and every time they mention bagels I whimper. The hairstyles in season one were truly spectacular. And I don't remember trousers of the late nineteen-nineties, for both men and women, being so ravishingly unflattering at the time.

A lot of time has been spent at my parents' home, celebrating my Grandma's ninetieth birthday with all the family. And when I say with all the family, I mean *all* the family. You haven't lived until you've had a three year old wake you up by subjecting you to the Nemo dvd menu, because you're sleeping in the lounge room. At six in the morning, after a good night's work endeavouring to free up some of your parents' storage space by ploughing through their wine... One of the most annoying dvd menus ever I think. Why do they put those stupid repetitive tracks on dvd menus? Why? Especially when it is the Nemo style voiceover ones, so they can repeat the same jokes over and over again. When they weren't that funny the first time. Bastards.

Beyond such trivial matters, it was wonderful that my Grandma was able to travel from England to share her birthday with us, and to have the chance to spend time with family members, even the smaller ones, who woke us all up at inappropriate moments. But they do photograph well. I went back to Canberra briefly last week to do some study and am now back in the Highlands, but only until tomorrow.

Is anyone else concerned about the Sydney Morning Heralds' opinions columnists? Today they had a whole page devoted to such sterling thoughts as: Domestic violence is bad, the republic really isn't a big issue in Australia, and there is an increasing number of 1-2 person households. Genius! Clearly our best and brightest minds are at work.

Blogging just isn't the same when every day isn't new-and-exciting with travel experience. I've kind of become attached to the process so I don't want to stop - after all, it's about *me* - but I just don't have the same excit-o-meter reading as I did when I was discovering new countries and the galleries and breads therein. But I plan to continue, just not quite with the same frequency... lucky you hey!

back in Cansas

2007-01-05T16:28:00.000+11:00

Have moved back to Canberra, now living on campus. Am trying not to sigh about that too much. If I forgot to send you my new contact details, email me.

The weather has finally warmed up, I have immediately started moaning.

A great Christmas/New Year celebration was held at my parents place, which was a nice way to unwind back into the country and catch up with people. Bundanoon somewhat quieter than New York, being a place where it is not inappropriate to look askance if you have to wait for more than two cars to pass before you can cross the road. Have being trying to sort out photos and create dvds to bore, rather, entertain and delight, my acquaintance - have basically got the hang of doing this, even if it required the sacrifice of numerous discs and a quite substantial period of ranting.

mmm, sun

2006-12-22T19:48:00.000+11:00

Very happily got to see the Martin Sharp exhibition in Sydney on Wednesday, it closes this weekend, quite fortunate as a week shorter and I would have missed it. Still remains something of a mystery that Sharp's work doesn't have a greater presence in Australian galleries, but I think that is starting to change.

It was great to spend a couple of days in Sydney again, catching the ferry across the harbour on an absolutely perfect Sydney day reminded me of why I like the place so much, even despite that background thought of 'damn, I forgot the sunscreen AGAIN'. I found it oddly pleasant to be back in the sweaty embrace of a humid Sydney summer. Excellent to see friends and distribute fridge magnets and catch up over assorted beverages, and remind myself of why Pitt Street mall is the Devil's Arena in the week leading up to Christmas. It didn't seem quite as frantic as it usually is at this time of year, but maybe New York has just shifted my definitions of that? Having finished MY Christms shopping in VEGAS, DAYS ago - that's right, DAYS ago, in VEGAS - I was - I felt - quite generous in accompanying other people on their ventures into the fray, even though I always seem to end up buying me more presents... I've now finished buying all my christmas presents, and am buying my birthday presents. Including, finally, High Fidelity, and the Late Show best of, which is long overdue, as I've been quoting that since about 1994.

Stone fruits are another reason to be happy to be back, stood in the grocery store sniffing them like a beagle scenting cocaine. Also, leaves, it is nice to see them again, and quite startling after getting used to not having them around. Except in LA, on one of the most fabulous things I have ever seen: a mobile phone transmitter tower disguised as a giant pine tree. Taking the tack of plastic flowers to enormous new levels by creating an entire fake tree.

Collected my brother this morning and have returned to the Southern Highlands, have graciously acceded to taste test the fruits of Dad's labours on his rotisserie bbq.... can I just say 'aarruuurgh... mmm, good'

There's no place like home... ?

2006-12-19T12:11:00.000+11:00

After a seriously unamusing 15 hours squished between two people, with the magical seatback entertainment failing to be magical by ceasing to work, I touched down in Sydney. After approximately 48 queues and a slight pause to rearrange my belongings because Qantas baggage handlers are lame, I transferred to the domestic flight to Canberra, inside the rowboat of the aviation world. It is a surprise that aircraft doesn't need a push start. I left Canberra with 22 kg of baggage, I returned with 62 kg.

Walking across the tarmac at Canberra I was greeted with the familiar eucalyptus-summer smell of Australia and as I went through the doors into the terminal, by a very excited toddler leaping upon my person. Fortunately one that I was equally excited to see. Said toddler has now sleeps with an NYC taxi, yellow school bus and a police car. Small toy versions that is. And gave me a similarly excited welcome when I came back from the shops. Very nice to be welcomed home in such a fashion. Canberra, aka The Ghetto, didn't welcome me back quite so nicely, after I spent a night the house of my friends I came out and found a smashed car window. I was fortunate that they were only searching for change and didn't notice that all of Christmas was inside the car, including the duty-free alcohol and perfume on the backseat. At this point I have developed such an aversion to packing - I tend to rock back and forth and ullulate for awhile whenever I have to deal with my suitcase - that I hadn't so much packed the car as moved into it, and there was such a profusion of possessions filling every available crevice that it disguised where the more valuable things were. That and the probability of them being in some state of withdrawal. Having only owned the car for 24 hours at this point I was grumpy and pouty. Fortunately I was still on LA time and so was out early enough that no-one else came along to see what they could obtain. Possibly the only time I will ever arrive at my office before 8am on a Sunday morning.

I'm now enjoying the munificence of the parenal fridge and laundry service before heading up to Sydney, because that's right, there's an exhibition I have to see that's closing this weekend. So the travel isn't quite over, if not on quite the same scale.

It's cold!

In pursuit of all things shiny

2006-12-14T12:46:00.000+11:00

Some thirty-two million people use JFK airport each year, and most of them were there last Friday - the aircraft had to wait for planes to land, then for some to take off, and then for more to land, and then for more to take off... all while we had to sit still, understimulated, and underbeveraged. Finally we took off, the beverage trolley came around, the magical seatback entertainment units were switched on, and happiness ensued. I even had three seats to myself! Happiness! I was met in LA by family friends, who helped me collect the vast mountain of baggage I've accumulated, and took me back to their house and fed me quesadillas. mmmmm, quesadillllla.

Saturday I had an interview to do, which was really helpful, another Australian who lived in London in the '60s. Then to LACMA for the Magritte exhibition - carpet with clouds on it. Driving around LA is crazy, the freeways are endless, and nuts, and the smog is unbelievable - similar to Sydney but five times as large. And with palm trees. Beautiful weather after the east coast though.

Sunday morning we head off to Vegas! Yeah Vegas! I joined in the annual family Christmas shopping trip, so now have my Christmas shopping done, and another swathe to add to my baggage. Driving there was great, across the Nevada desert, with endless rocky hills covered in primordial spiky shrubs. Getting to Vegas is such a contrast to the surrounding landscape - as though they decided to funnel all the available resources for the state into just the one spot. What Paris is to historic elegance, Vegas is to Kitsch. Which I don't mean as an insult, it's excellent, one huge site for replicas of Paris, New York, Egypt, and Pirate ships. Also, lots of lights, shiny glass and water features. The volume of gambling, especially of slot machines, is insane. Excellent buffets. And the only time I've seen sushi and french toast share the one plate. One night we went to Cirque du Soleil's Ka which was great, I'd never seen any of their shows, so that was great, especially to see it in a custom built theatre. And the show has people dressed as a turtle, a crab and a starfish - so cute. And then lots of people doing crazy flippy things at great heights. And fireworks. And little speakers in the seatbacks.

The rest of the time we shopped. And shopped. And then, oh, we shopped. Ah, the American outlet mall, a place of happy, shiny things.

We got back from Vegas last night, today we headed off to Watts in South Central LA to check out the Watts Towers which is one of my favourite things. Then we went to Disney Downtown - the mall outside of Disneyland, which I looked at through the gates and declined to spend the eighty dollars it takes to enter.

I fly home tonight, arriving Friday. I don't get no Thursday.

I'm leaving today...

2006-12-09T06:04:00.000+11:00

Will be heading off for JFK in half an hour, then waiting for the usual extravagant period of time before my flight. This morning I ate a waffle the size of my face. Then I went and bought a hat, because it was subzero at noon and my ears felt like they were going to snap off like, ... like frozen snappy things.

Went for a walk, despite the subzero temps, around Chinatown and Little Italy... sigh.

Will be home in a week!

Archive Madness!

2006-12-08T12:12:00.000+11:00

Yesterday and today have been spent in the archives of the Museum of Modern Art, nicely housed in their new building on 54th Street - the foyer is particularly cool, it has a ferrari mounted on the wall, and one end uses Warhol's cow wallpaper - most excellent. The archives were great, although tinged with the frustration of not having nearly enough time to look through stuff - unbelievable amounts of correspondence with artists about their work and about museum exhibitions and so on.

Yesterday I was so excited that after the Museum shut I went to the NY Public Library to continue looking things up (I resisted the temptation to request Vargas, Paul, 9 Lives for those that share that urge... ). It is the kind of library that if I wasn't already a big nerd, would convert me instantly. Who wouldn't want to sit around reading all day in such surrounds? They have a dedicated Art and Architecture research room that is very good.

Then I went and had pizza, really good pizza, which is always a thing of joy isn't it?

Today saw me ploughing through files at a rate of knots, all to aware that I only had today to do it *ever* - I got through most of what I wanted to, but I would have been happier with at least twice as long to do it in. Afterwards, I thought to myself that I couldn't very well leave New York without eating a pretzel - mmm salty goodness...

Now I am doing my laundry - Hurrah! Coffee-less trousers! Then I will go out in search of snacks. Tomorrow I fly to LA, Sunday I go to Vegas :)

Midtown

MoMA

Brancusi

of art and feet

2006-12-06T15:18:00.000+11:00

Sunday started as more Sundays should: with cinnamon pecan brioche french toast covered with fruit. Good fruit, not just three pieces of banana atop a melon mountain. I didn't know whether to eat it or marry it. I ate it. And coffee, lots of coffee. With the Sunday paper. Strange to have the team-of-Egyptians-to-drag-it-home paper on a Sunday rather than a Saturday - and you really need all weekend to get through those things.

Then, off to the Met again, their permanent collection of nineteenth century stuff mostly - Cezanne, Van Gogh, most excellent. Courbet and Manet are two painters that did so much to kick modern painting into gear, yet their work doesn't do much for me in the pigment - does anyone else feel that way? More Renoirs to heap scorn on. V. good Monet - surely an artist that has truly suffered at the hands of reproduction, so much of what you see its just 'yep, that's Monet' but then something will come at you and swipe your knees out from under you (the massive waterlilies at MoMA, the lilies at the Met). Endless Degas - kind of similar to Monet in that regard - though I very much like the whole room of small Degas bronze figures. But I feel like that Ballerina, the one that's about a metre tall and has clothes on, is stalking me, she's everywhere I go. And speaking of that - Rodin? Does every gallery in the world need to have the same pieces? 'tis very odd. Though he clearly knew what he was doing (or his estate does) - pick a medium that is both reproducible, too big to put back in the cupboard, and can handle being exhibited all the time.

Monday I awoke feeling rather shabby, due to a cold, but also to email giving me the appointment that I have long been wanting at the MoMA archives - which is the one that I was worried I wouldn't be able to get, for those that heard the fretting earlier in the year, which is most of you I think. So that will be tomorrow and Thursday. I went in search of soup. Most galleries are shut on Mondays so that ruled that out, and was probably a good thing as I didn't really want to go anyway. Was attempting to do some reading of a productive nature but my fuzzy head prohibited that. So I went and read Marilynne Robinson's Gilead at Barnes and Noble, and discovered that it is well worth the Pulitzer it was awarded. Read it! (Sim - she's the author of 'Housekeeping', that we had to read for American Accents)

Then I trundled off uptown to hear a panel of speakers discuss book design, which is something that some of you might consider uninteresting, and you know what? You're wrong! The panel was Dave Eggers , one of my favourite authors, and the reason I'd paid attention to the advertisement, along with Milton Glaser, the guy who among other things, designed the 'I heart NY' logo, which for its simplicity and newfound veracity, I love, and the third was Chip Kidd, who designs for Knopf. So they all chatted about book design, the involvements of authors in the designs for the covers, funny stories and so forth. Very engaging. Kidd was incredibly funny which was great, and I'm sure I'll be recycling his anecdotes whenever I'm in a bookshop with someone and see one of the covers he spoke about, but I really enjoyed Eggers stories of how a small publishing company tries to do things that are a bit different - particularly because they work with a printing firm in Iceland.

Today I woke up with a newfound love of cold medicine (I've never really taken it before, normally I just drink a lot of juice, which never works, but makes me feel like I'm trying). After baptising myself with coffee at Breakfast [and its been so long since I last doused myself with coffee, dammit], I headed off to the Frick Collection, dragging J&T behind me, they weren't very enthusiastic, and I wasn't either, as the collection was largely complete by 1919 it doesn't have anything that I was particularly interested in, so I felt that I was going because it was Good For Me. So I was pleasantly surprised when I loved it. It is housed in the Frick's house, so it is largely as it was when the house was lived in, and tries to keep to his arrangement of his collection, so it doesn't have any particular organisation according to chronology or nationality, and mixes paintings with sculpture and the decorative arts. They give you an audio guide , which is done by a number of different people, so you get all sorts of different accents, and lots of background information, I loved that they included some of Frick's instructions to his architect and interior designer, instructing them that the house, that was to cover most of a block on Fifth Avenue, should be 'simple' - which is so often a feature of eighteenth-century European style mansions... but you can see what he meant in that the house is only a couple of stories and has a lot of natural light thorughout. And excellent carpet, I wanted to take a nap on it. That could have just been the cold. I wanted to take a nap on the subway as well. I don't think Frick and I would have totally agreed on what direction his collection should have taken, he installed some unfortunate rooms of Boucher and Fragonard - if you take a particularly large chocolate box and turn it inside out, and stick your head inside, you will get the general idea, lots of cherubs, and people gaily walking through gardens in puffy outfits. But then some of the best Vermeers and Rembrandts that there is. And an excellent Cezanne. And some nice Whistler. He made his money from coke, and clearly a lot of it. [that's the coal kind of coke, not the dealing kind]

Winter is definitely here, with the kind of wind that laughs at your feeble clothes, goes straight through your bones and then rubs up against your soul. Because it is t-shirt weather up here on the fifth floor I hadn't been quite expecting the change, so didn't take the full complement of accessories with me, and so had acquired new gloves and a scarf before many blocks were out... I can't quite comprehend that I'm going to be in wilting-heat before too long.

Then I went to Chelsea to see the private galleries there - such a strange 'hood - all car repair shops, self-storage units, and then gallery after gallery, pretty much matching with their polished concrete floors and white walls. Some amazing stuff up though, the Gagosian Gallery has an exhibition of late Andy Warhols, which made me experience a wave of angst that he got shot when he did, as he was on a roll when he died. Then I saw another Callum Innes exhbition, excellent, and then a Henry Darger, for something a bit different (they guy spent years holed up in his house drawing illustrations for an elaborate childrens book that he created, and was only discovered after he had died). And then Ray Johnson. And then I needed to go find snacks, and reassure my feet that this won't be happening forever.

Still clucking after all these years...

2006-12-05T16:06:00.000+11:00

Taken today, downtown.

Sorry about the upside down factor, but I can't be bothered fixing it. C'est la vie.

G'night.

living in her uptown world, oo-err-ah-err-oo

2006-12-04T14:43:00.000+11:00

So on Friday I headed back up town, to visit the Guggenheim Museum. Another fun place to visit because it is fun to say.

Guggenheim, Guggenheim, Guggenheim.
Guggenheim, Minster.

Malkovich, Malkovich.

Unfortunately the exterior is still swathed in scaffolding as they are trying to restore the original surface, so I didn't get to appreciate Frank Lloyd Wright's work in all its splendour, but the inside is way cool. The main show that they have on the moment is Spanish Painting from El Greco to Picasso, which is an excellent topic for an exhibition, encompassing as it does El Greco, Velazquez, Dali, Miro, Gris, Goya, Picasso and so on. The works were arranged thematically rather than chronologically, as they were trying to bring out similarities in Spanish art from across the centuries, which worked well, highlighting particularly the Spanish artists' love of black and of the grotesque. The downside to this exhibition, taking up the spiral and the level six annexe, was that I didn't get to see much of the permanent collection. There was also a Fontana exhibition, and very cool, and part of the museum's collection of Kandinsky. But as a gallery I'm not a huge of fan of the spiral, although it would be excellent if you had both a sense of balance and those shoes with wheels, the constant slant downwards doesn't encourage lingering, or gaping-mouthed staring.

After that I had some cawfee, spent some time in Central Park (lovely! many undulating hills, and the last remnants of the autumn leaves are clinging on bravely) and then had a wander around a few of the commercial galleries - a v. good Jasper exhibition. Very intimidating galleries, around Madison avenue, lots of shiny surfaces. One was mostly made from marble, which my shoes, exhibiting the proletarian streak they sometimes share to protest such decadance, decided to squeak as though I had in fact strapped unhappy ducks to my feet. I didn't hang around too long there.

Evening was drawing in by then, which it does with startling haste in these parts, at this time of year, and at a loss for what to do, wandered. Shopping uptown makes you realise why people marry for money. I wandered until I was in Time Square again, and ended up with a ticket to High Fidelity, the musical. Which is weird, because I'm not a huge fan of the musical, to the extent that I can't remember the last one I saw in Australia (Phantom of the Opera maybe? About ten years ago? That would explain why I haven't been in so long possibly...) but now I've seen three in three months. Also weird, because, that's right, they've made a musical out of High Fidelity. Being a big fan of both the book and the film (it's the dvd I always hire when I'm lost in the shop amidst endless hollywood pap - I should probably have just bought it about three hires ago) it seemed only appropriate that I go see the musical. It has only just opened, a fact which I think shows, if it ever does come to Australia (ie if it survives this season) I hope it gets a damn good edit and a casting agent who has read the book, not just seen the film. The lead at the moment really isn't Rob, or even John Cusack, and the guy playing the Jack Black character that I can't remember the name of, seems to be playing Jack-Black-playing-the-character-I-can't-remember-the-name-of, but not as well. Laura also not quite right. Ian, Liz and Dick v. good. The entire first act seems to be dedicated to setting the scene, and goes on way too long with songs that need to be about 1/3 as long. Certainly no Rogers and Hammerstein. About halfway through the first act I realised what was bothering me about it - the incongruity about turning a story about characters who would heap scorn on broadway musicals into a broadway musical. Were they to be in NYC on a Friday night, it would seem unlikely that they would be sitting where I was, they would be in a club listening to a band that was little known but very cool. The central plot device of the novel and film - of looking up his exes and going a on a personal discovery tour, was covered in one song, a duet with a faux Bruce Springsteen. Nuff said really.

Barry! That's that character's name.

The weather until this time had been freakishly good, I'd just been wearing a hoody all week - with trousers and so forth, obviously - and had been perfectly toasty - but with the advent of December someone has flicked a large switch somewhere and we have arrived in Jacket weather overnight.

Yesterday was very cold, but beautifully blue and clear which was nice, although with a wind that could slap you around. I drank a bucket of coffee over the Village Voice to start my day. On coffee: the supply was so erratic in the UK that I'd actually cut way back, could start my day without the coffee-absence-salsa in my frontal lobes until like, 2 in the afternoon, very strange - but as soon as I arrived in the US of A the coffee supply lines have been resumed and I'm back in my usual morning focus on Get-me-to-the-coffee-and-then-we'll-figure-out-what-my-name-is-where-I-am-and-what-I'm-supposed-to-be-doing-today thing. I haven't had espresso though, which is very bizarre, because the filter coffee is actually good here, and excellently, served in buckets, so you can read a whole newspaper or the entire internet in the time it takes to get through the coffee. Which is also why this blog is now up to date. And how I've figured out the origins of Irish dance. [i.e. if you sit for an hour or so over bucket of coffee and then stand up, you have about 2 minutes to find a 'restroom' to have a 'rest', if you also have to shut down a mac in this time, you will have a new experience of how time can actually physically slow down, and find yourself needing to dance from foot to foot while trying not to move.... ]

In other matters pertaining to food: all that super size me stuff convinces you that food in America is perpetually awful, which, for Washington and New York at least, is definitely not true. New York especially, because you can get pretty much anything at pretty much any time of day or night (and that's just in the East Village...). I can see why you could end up the size of a small semi-detached though: they do junk food incredibly well. Not as in trashy crap food, but taking good ingredients and transforming them into something wildly unhealthy, and then giving you a lot of it, for a fairly respectable price. Except for root beer. Which is the only soft drink I've every consumed and thought "I wonder if there was a meeting about this product when they had to decide if they were going to sell it as a beverage or a bathroom cleaner." And frankly, they made the wrong choice. But, my goodness, the bagels: surely they prove that the Jewish people do indeed have a special relationship with the Lord. Mightly refreshing to be in a country that if you order a bagel you get a properly boiled bagel, not just any old leavened item with a whole in the centre. In Canberra recently I went to a cafe called 'Bagels' and got a bread roll with a whole in it: I find that unacceptable in a milk bar in say, Dubbo, but in a cafe CALLED 'Bagels'?! Also, they have little containers of cream cheese, in an array of varieties. V. good.

Then I wondered downtown [when you're feeling low, downtown!], and found that shopping downtown creates that feeling you get when all you've consumed all day is starburst and black coffee {which if you haven't done you should, you won't really enjoy it but everything will be very entertaining and requiring your attention simultaneously]: far too many places to look and interesting things to touch. This is one reason why it would be very dangerous for me to live in NYC: going for a simple walk can involve several shoe shops. On an aside, I seem to be thwarted when it comes to boots this week: not the boots made from ponies, nor the rainboots with the kitten heel, nor even the gold faux-snakeskin, which have all been on sale, have they had in my size. Which some of you will no doubt think is a mighty good thing. But others will know the pain of being shoe-thwarted and will join me now in a sigh: *sigh*. Thanks. Then I found myself in a large department store of brand discounts! happiness! Unfortunately a happiness I had to share with most of New York and a good percentage of the mid-west. On your receipt it tells you how much you spent, but also how much you saved: so sure I spent 50, but I saved 110, so that means I made money! Clever huh?

This was, incongruously, across the road from Ground Zero, which was a deeply surreal place to visit. Having now spent a little time in New York, doing my usual things of gibbering at art and drinking coffee and pawing footwear, and developing a hope that I'll spend a lot more time in the future doing those things here, it seems even less comprehensible that something so reprehensibly horrendous as 9/11 could have happened in what for me is a happy place. Also, that morning the main story in the Village Voice was about the growing number of unusual cancers (for healthy working age men) that have been developing in the workers that cleared the site in the months after 9/11. Thousands already have serious respiratory illnesses, but several hundred now also have cancer. There is already a mass lawsuit about his, because, unbelievably, a week after 9/11 the EPA said that it was categorically okay to drink the water and breathe the air in downtown Manhattan. Despite that the testing hadn't been completed. Later, it came out that the White House had a lot to do with this, taking the red pen to more cautious statements and inserting more positive remarks about the air quality - which subsequent tests showed to be ridiculously high in things that will kill you. Because they were concerned about getting Wall Street up and running. The article drew on several stories of individuals effected by this, one of whom recounted how he was working both at Ground Zero and out at the site where they sifted through all the rubble - mostly the contents and structure of the buildings that had been powdered - with all the protection of a face mask. One day when they were taking a break, in came in the FBI, in full hazchem suits, with any possible opening taped up. There were something like 40000 people involved in the operation, let alone all the people in downtown New York on that day and in the subsequent months.

With this all in my mind it made the experience of visiting the site hard to process - it looks like any other huge construction site that hasn't gotten much past the hole-in-the-ground stage, but with a fenced-off viewing area, and a huge photo display of what the finished buildings are projected to look like, what the WTC looked like, and lots of images taken on 9/11 and subsequently. Including a really poignant one of part of a squashed Calder sculpture - I've seen so many of them recently and they hang with that grace that Calder infused into metal, for me that photo sums up so much of what was lost on that day to see something that was just about beauty squashed and wrecked. There are a lot of people there looking around, and a lot of people visibly moved by the experience of being there. I was glad that I had gone on a weekend, when most of the workers in the Wall Street area are not likely to be there, I can't quite imagine how you would deal with seeing all those people checking it out everyday. And I really don't understand the people who take photos of each other standing in front of the site?

I continued my path south, although actually I veered west, because I had turned a corner and forgotten, and walked on down to the Hudson, thinking to myself, "I wonder where the Statue of Liberty actually i-" as I rounded a corner "... ah, there". So took many photos of the distant statue in the sunset, and kept walking along, and came to the Staten Island ferry and caught it and then caught it back and now I have lots of photos of blurry statue of liberty in the sunset and blurry NYC at night. Taking photos at night from a moving ferry is strangely challenging.

New York, New York, issa wonderful town.

2006-12-02T16:40:00.000+11:00

Hey look, the counter is past the 1000 mark! [thanks Mum...]

The Museum of Modern Art: eeeh hee hee hee! Eee! Hee! Hee! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Just to give you an insight into my internal murmurings of excitement as I approached MoMA. Resisting the urge to dance with excitement, as MoMA is home to one of the best collections of Modern art ever – if you put all of the works in Australia by those artists into the one space I think you’d end up with a collection about five percent as good as the fourth floor – lots of works that I would see out of the corner of my eye and turn around and almost say hello! Because I feel like we’re old friends. The constant presence of many security guards fortuitously served as a reminder that I shouldn’t hug any of them. The works I mean, not the guards.

Mondrian, Matisse, Miro, Picasso, Cezanne, Pollock, Rothko.... These are a few of my favourite things. The new building is beautiful [not that I ever saw the old one], the design is a great frame for the works and has a great sense of space, you constantly get glimpses of where you’re about to go or where you’ve just been. Although the central atrium up the centre is a little scary, now that I have my new fear of heights. [Other people get tattoos and shoes when they travel; I get phobias. Excellent.] There’s also a lot of natural light, and views out over the surrounding streets and the sculpture garden. And a really expensive café that serves excellent cookies.

By about halfway through the day I was ready to sit down on the floor, go foetal, and gibber, such was the state of hyper-stimulation of my brain. The only downside to the fabulousness of seeing all this is seeing it in such a short space of time, knowing that I’ll be heading back home and not seeing anything in the same vein for quite some time, and not having much time to mull and muse over things to fully absorb and appreciate them.

Les Demoiselles D’avignon!

My first Saturday night in New York: and I spend it doing my laundry. And running around surrounding streets because I kept needing more quarters. Gorgeously attired in an ensemb from my remaining clean clothes: bright red embroidered skirt, pink and turquoise striped top, lime green flip flops. Excellent. Fortunately it would take more than that for the East Villagers to take a second glance.

Clean socks!

Sunday and it was off to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Having slept in and generally dithered about it took me quite awhile to get there, and once I did get in the general vicinity I had to then find coffee immediately, as several caffeine receptors in my frontal lobe had taken to dancing a samba on my nerves. So by the time I got in there and got looking it was in the afternoon, so I’m definitely going to have go back. But I went through their modern collection (Georgia O’Keefes, a Pollock that will have you drooling down the front of your shirt and leaving a hazardous puddle in front of it) and saw a temporary exhibition – Vollard and the art that went through his hands as a dealer – Cezanne, Picasso, Van Gogh, Vuillard, Bonnard, Renoir, and so on. The guy had an eye, and some very good connections. Deeply strange experience of sitting on a bench, gazing in a state approaching a coma, at a wall of Cezannes (3 still lives and 4 late landscapes) and sharing the bench with 5 or so New Yawkers who were debating the merits of the various CSIs. Insanely loudly. Such a weird experience to be in front of such works and for them to be having the most incredibly mundane conversation. So that half the gallery could hear them. I’m never a stranger to a deep and passionate analysis of the trivial, but in front of Cezanne? And it’s never a debate is it? Everyone just takes turns in saying that the Vegas one is better than all the others, what were they thinking with that guy in the Miami one and then the conversation moves on to how many Law and Orders there are. Apparently Monday night is a particularly bad one for TV in NYC, just so you know. But then, they just had this conversation and then moved on, I’m the one putting it on the web.

So moving along.

Monday: Getting Fricked. I went to the library of the Frick Art Gallery and Reference Library: which is excellent, if only for the fact that it is an old school nineteenth century style library – dark wooden bookcases and desks, lamps, old stone building – very conducive to work. Even over my internal conga line of “I am in New York, yeah! I am in New York!” [repeat, ad infinitum]. They had some cool stuff, lots of catalogues from exhibitions from the ‘50s and ‘60s in New York and surrounds. Happy times.

Tuesday: Out to Queens to visit the MoMA research library – eee hee hee – art nerd joy! - catalogues, artist files and so on – eeeeheeeeheeeeheeee.

Tuesday night: the train back from Queens went to Time Square so I figured it was time to fulfil Tourist Tick Box #1 and look at all the pretty lights. And my, there really is a lot of them. And then I found a cheap ticket to Spamalot: The Monty Python Musical. So I bought it. It was a standing room ticket, so J & T were thrilled – Thrilled! - by my decision. But looking at how much room you got to sit down in, I think I made the right decision. And much better access to the toilets at interval as you get quite the head start when you are at the back of the room. Strange how I’ve never been invited to write theatre reviews isn’t it? The musical is great, I wasn’t sure how it would translate, or if it would just be for the serioius trekkie-level python fans that can ruin an entire evening once they start quoting at you, and heaven forbid you go on a road trip, but it has been really well written, nice mix of the lines they have to include (ni! And so forth) and new material. So go see it if you get the chance.

Wednesday: Whitney Museum – Picasso and American Artists, exploring, wait for it, the influence of Picasso on American artists, surprise! Great excuse to get a whole bunch of Picassos, Lichtensteins, Pollocks, de Koonigs together for a little party. The Pollock room was particularly great, as it had a nice span of his development as a painter.

After that I wandered about, looking at shiny things and trying not to impulse buy. So many pretty frocks!

Thursday: MoMA research library, Manhattan – more great books and catalogues, and in the pleasing surrounds of the new MoMA library which just opened this week. It is in the building on the other side of the sculpture garden from the main museum, so you get a great view over to the other building, the sculptures and 54th street. More internal conga. Thence, to Soho and Chinatown and a wander about, looking at some seriously cool shops and pondering just how much it would cost to send a shipping container home.

I heart NYC

2006-12-01T07:53:00.000+11:00

.... pretty much sums it up really.

My favourite government department ever...

2006-11-29T16:12:00.000+11:00

I like to imagine them, attired in regulation cardigans made from recycled string, supervising government employees to make sure they only take the regulation 3.5 turns when sharpening their pencils.

Although it sounds as though their work might be cut out for them if the newspapers are correct when they report that in the wake of 9/11 the Dept of Homeland Security spent money with abandon, not following official guidelines for contracts, or you know, checking that the product works, before employing it in the nation's security system.

Still no calls.

2006-11-29T16:02:00.000+11:00

Upon realising that my jeans were in a state that one exuberant leap could render extremely embarrassing, I set off to H&M. Which is shut til noon on Sundays in downtown DC. It being 10.00 I decided to head to the National Gallery for awhile. Which is shut til 11 on Sundays. So I decided to head to the bus terminal. Which is quite a long walk when you go the wrong way. But I managed to secure a bus ticket, and the discovery that you really don't need to buy them in advance for Greyhound. Have then secured new
trousers, I was all set to view some art, and so wandered along to the Gallery of American Art, part of the Smithsonian Galleropolis that threatens to engulf all DC. It has only been open for a little while, sharing a building with the National Portrait Gallery. National Portrait Galleries don't interest me (beyond aforementioned Arkley - Cave pairings): just head after head of supposed magnificence for some reason or other. But the American Art collection is excellent. Very good early 20th C exhibition of American artists who had spent time in Paris, very cool William Berryman show, who in turn had curated a great exhibition of American folk art. Upstairs was one of the coolest installations I've ever seen in a gallery - lots of painting racks behind glass with the collection in 'storage' on display - no real space to view them in and some of them are about a foot off the ground, but at least you get some sense of what the broader collection is like. Labelling is sometimes just the accession number or brief details of artist/title, but there are computers scattered about that you can look up a whole host of other information on. There's two floors of this. Cool.

The part of the gallery described thus far is all up one end, and is all pretty much gallery standard-nineteenth century feel, so there is a total contrast with the other end of the building where the later 20th century and
contemporary art is - where our friends from abstract expressionism and pop art, amongst others, get to dwell. Lots of excited internal giggling and bouncing on my part.

I spent so long in there that I entirely missed the second floor where all the graphic art is, so here's hoping there was nothing crucial there.

After that: Mexican! Australia needs more mexican food, it has to be said. When the man offered me a small or a regular and showed me how long the burritos were, which wasn't especially long, it would have been helpful if he'd mentioned that the burritos are as fat as your arm (assuming you have a large arm). Anyway, I settled down with my log of a burrito and happily watched the passersby. And treated them to the spectacle of me attempting to eat something larger than my face.

The next day was photocopying and then the National Gallery, the latter being much more exciting than the former it has to be said. More excellent Cezannes, Van Goghs, more shocking Renoirs, and lots of Old Stuff That I'm Sure is Good For Me But I Don't Care: There are only so many Dutch still lives and portraits that you can see before you start to toss your head and huff. V. good Rembrandts though.

Then next door for the Modern bit - hurrah! Gorgeous Jackson Pollock, excellent pop! And Dubuffet! And Rothko! (installation not nearly as good for Rothko as at the Tate Modern) Great room of Calders. And Neumann's Stations. (of the Cross that is).

And then I run out of time again. More Mexican. And in another episode of Hostel Avoidance, to the fillums, I saw Stranger than Fiction: has that been released in Oz yet? Go see it. V. good. Quirky plot in the Adaptation sense, but works on brainless amusement level and the 'I can see the undergraduate film/lit theory essays about the narrative voice unfolding before me' level. But in a good way. Emma Thompson. Go, you'll like it.

The next day: photocopying. Mexican. Casino Royale (the opening scenes of which have convinced me that I have developed vertigo. I never used to be particularly bothered by heights, apart from the general concern of preserving self, now I am bothered, strange).

Day after that: Corcoran: smaller than I thought it was going to be. V. good twentieth century collection, awesome painting by someone born in 1976 that I can't remember the name of. Great Morris Louis. V. cool Lichtenstein Apples prints. V. interesting exhibition of how Joan of Arc has been imaged through history.

Left there: rain. Strange rain: looks like a light shower but you take three, maybe four steps, and you're soaked through. Basically solid water, but like floaty mist in texture. Naff-butterfly brolly maintaining a tonsure of dryness atop my skull but the rest of me is damp. I repair to a café and sulk at the rain. A block away from a turkey is being pardoned by el presidente. I head across the street to the Renwick, American craft, beautifully finished pieces, yes Dad I took photos of the woodwork.

The next day: Turkey Day! Thankfully the Smithsonian is open, all of them. I go to the Hirschorn, excellently circular gallery of modern and contemporary art. Contemporary sculpture exhibition, v. good, and then on the top floor is their collection, all our favourites are here, yay! Spend much time gazing and drooling. They are also showing 'The Way things Go' by Fischli and Weiss, the video piece of the chain reaction that I told you about, remember? Quite entertaining to compare the English and American responses to this: English: On Best Gallery Behaviour, dead silent. American: v. entertained, much more interactive, laughing, commenting on what was going on. I think the artists would be a lot happier with the latter. Anyway, I bought the dvd, because I was compelled, and now I have this question: does anyone have a multi-region dvd player?

Then, Turkey feast! Yay! Food was very good, although was fairly surprised when my salmon gravlax entrée came with guacamole and corn chips. Corn chips and salmon go together better than I ever expected. Service was bordering on Fawlty towers: when your second course turns up and you're only halfway through the first it should be fairly obvious that you don't want it yet, but still the waiter asked me. And then his friend asked me, ten minutes later, when he brought it back again, and still I was eating. I'm all for prompt service, but not if it means I need a blender and a funnel to keep up with them.

After that: moofies! Bobby - Emilio Estevez has made a film about the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. I think I like it, but I'm not sure if I would see it again. But Martin Sheen, Sharon Stone, Lindsay Lohan, Estevez, Demi Moore, Anthony Hopkins, Ashton Kutcher... And so on and so forth are all in it.

Oh before I go: one small detail I forgot: is it just me or do you find the concept of a big 'Welcome To the USA' banner at the airport visa check, from the Dept of Homeland Security, slightly disturbing?

and so to DC

2006-11-27T11:38:00.000+11:00

Arrived in DC late afternoon, with a startling lack of information. Normally I tend to over-research where I am going and how to get there, but with the flurry of activity before I left the UK I didn't really get my head into gear for my arrival in the US of A. I made my way into the centre of downtown DC, where they have thoughtfully provided people to give you advice on where you are and how to get to where you are going. Unfortunately, the guy who approached me to offer assistance, on looking at the address of where I was going, offered advice which amounted to 'that's far'. Riiiiight. And proceeded in a way that had me wondering if I would need a visa to commute between DC and Canada. So I left him in the wake of my suitcases, and trundled off to find a cab. I found one, he found where I was going, all was good.

Except that the neighbourhood the Hostel is in did not match the description that I had read on the Lonely Planet webverse - which, summarised, was 'a bit of a distance from the centre of town, a bit crap, but surrounded by a really cool 'hood' - this place was 'quite a distance from the centre of town, really quite crap, and not at all in a cool hood'. Turns out that the place they were describing was the original version of this hostel, which burnt down. The thing is though, their review acknowledges the fact that it had burnt down, and writes about it as thought it has been rebuilt, which, clearly, it hasn't, it has moved. Somewhere crap. Anyway. Most of the week I had the room to myself, which is a kind of hostel-dwellers bliss. Unfortunately the previous inhabitant had obviously only stopped by to conduct her seasonal moulting in private, and, after leaving vast swathes of hair, had continued on her way. I thought that was the worst of it, and then I saw the mouse in the kitchen. Joy! [The obvious question is why I stayed, and the reason for that is, beyond my extreme reluctance to have to trundle anywhere with my suitcases more than I have to, is that I had, of course, left it to the last minute to book accom in DC, and the next price bracket up from 'previoustenantsmoultings&rodents' is upwards of 100, so, la crappeee it had to be.]

Heading downtown the next morning I found that DC on the weekend is oddly like Canberra - all the public servants flee and leave a deserted city behind them. Except this city is a lot bigger and a lot more attractive. And a lot easier to get round, as, wait for it, rather than some pseudo-scenic curved road scenario that can have you trapped in our Nation's Finest for years at a time, the Wastingtonians thoughtfully numbered all the north-south streets and lettered the east-west ones, so within a few minutes you've pretty much figured out where you are, where you need to be, and roughly how far that is. Might not have the undoubted poetic bliss of a William Slim Drive, but damn it's useful.

After pondering that delightful aspect of urban design, I headed down to the Mall to wander along to the Capitol, all the way waiting for calls from CJ, Josh, Sam and co. Surely they would realise I was in town soon.... ? Enjoyed that deeply surreal experience of seeing vistas open before me that are almost too iconic to be experienced:

Still no calls.

Discovering that it is only the early bird that gets the ticket to the tour of Capitol, I proceeded on my way, and took myself on a wander around the Library Of Congress: the library responsible for the classification system it took me most of my undergraduate degree to reliably use, and still, on a occasion, gives me reason to pause and earnestly recite the alphabet to myself, before uttering a curse and backtracking, realising that I'm three aisles from where I'm supposed to be. Anyway. Very elaborate decoration, incredibly so when you compare it to any equivalent establishment en Australie, and some excellent exhibitions, nicely encapsulating the development of America and of the library's collection.

Then I went shopping: the Eastern Market. Should you find yourself there, go in the main doors, turn right, go to the far corner, and order the crab cake sandwich. Just a tip. You won't regret it. I followed the recommendation, despite the fact that I don't particularly like crab. Now I do. Nice markets, my christmas shopping has officially commenced, for those who may have been wondering. And indeed, for those who weren't, because you know now, and there's nothing you can do to change that. C'est la vie.

Onto the metro, back to Federal Square. La Maison Blanche! Very, very peculiar to see it in the stucco. Still, they did not call. Alongside me were many many Americans, as one would expect. They take a lot more interest in their history than Australians do, and as much as American patriotism can have some unfortunate consequences for their foreign policy, in the interest they take in their history and their ability to articulate the nation's values, democracy, freedom and such, I really admire it. And quite entertaining when American Dad turns to entire family and begins lecture on the form of government that is bicameral legislature and is cut off by swooning-bored son with 'not another lecture' to the amusement of many.

Washington Monument, avec Water Fountains

Then, to the Lincoln Memorial, via the Vietnam Memorial - the best War Memorial that I've ever seen, I found the simplicity of it far more moving than the Georgian Wedding Cake style that features on so many others.

Pool and Abe Memorial

Abe

Pool and Monument

Then to the movies, where, for being good feet, I took Judas and Thomas to see 'Happy Feet' in the hope that it would inspire them.

Still they did not call. Can the cast of The West Wing really be fictional?

I did but see her passing by...

2006-11-26T13:30:00.000+11:00

A new round of exhibitions called me back to London for a few days before I departed the UK. Monday morning saw me at the Velazquez at the National Gallery, Las Meninas couldn't make it, but many of the other hits were there, and the selection of works built up a great overview of his development and career. Then I went to 'Cezanne in Britain' - an exhibition drawn from collections in, that's right, Britain, of Cezanne's paintings. Excellent! More great still lives, the Bathers, and the Mont Saint Victoire that I had wanted to see when I was in Edinburgh and hadn't been able to. After that I had to go back to my hotel, and sort out what room I was in, because once again, due to my uncanny ability to be drawn to Crap Hotels of the World (aka You Get What You Pay For), that was an issue of some confusion.

I had a nap, which was excellent, thank you, and then back into the West End for some theatre - another Lastminute.com deal - here's a tip, don't go to the restaurant 'Tiger Tiger' unless bad service, capsicum and mayonnaise are the three requirements you have from a meal, if so, then you're in luck, as you'll receive them in abundance. Anyway, was off to see the '39 Steps' stage production. Hadn't actually seen the original film, which would have made it even better, but it was a great production, and the first time I've seen a chase sequence up, down and over a moving train, performed on stage. Very funny, and excellently staged.

Tuesday morning was the morning of the Slides!

Carston Holler, Slides, Tate Modern, London

Now, as some of you are undoubtedly aware, Tate Modern is in an old powerhouse on the bank of the Thames, and they have kept the old turbine hall as The Turbine Hall, a five-story atrium alongside the floors of the gallery in which large temporary installations are installed. Temporarily. The current one, you will have gathered, is Carston Holler's Slides. Which are slides! Actual slides! In the gallery! You get tickets (free!) and then you can slide! Slide! In the gallery! Actually slide! From the fifth floor to the ground! Slide! And then from the fourth floor! And the third! And the Second! And the First! And then the first again! From another angle! First time you've ever experienced grinning so goofily in a gallery. I really wish I could have been at the opening and press viewing to see the Cool People grinning goofily too, heavy-framed glasses askew and black polonecks awry. Berets long gone. No way that you can shoot out the end of a slide at a rate of some knots and look in any way aloof. My favourite was from the fourth floor, as it had a rather terrifying near-vertical drop at the start, so you really built up some speed, and then very tight corners, so you went whirring about before being flung out at the bottom completely disorientated. And giggling. Almost as much fun watching other people coming flying out of them, trying to look cool but the giggling getting the better of them. Also quite excellent is that the rest of the time you are at the gallery, walking along the viewing areas overlooking the Turbine Hall, lost in contemplation over whatever art you had been looking at, or your need for snacks, or a toilet, you would see someone out of the corner of your eye, whizzing down a shute.

I also saw a David Smith retrospective - sculptor of metal, v. good. But better was the Fischli and Weiss retrospecitve, the two have collaborated for decades, a lot of their work is very whimsical, photos, sculpture and some video. My favorite is 'The Way Things Go', an excellent video of a half an hour chain reaction they set up in a disused warehouse - like a giant science project of cause and effect, using reactions between petrol, fire, motion, soap, pendulums etc.

After that I headed off for some aimless wandering, and then was tempted, after a rather bad carbonara, to embrace the student discount offered by the comedy store, and see some stand up, and was rather disappointed - it was a kind of team effort, with comedians responding to members of the audience suggestions of current events for them to be funny about, so a bit like theatre sports, but not in a good way. But some laughs were had, so I shouldn't be too harsh.

So I wandered off to catch my bus, through Leicester Square down to Trafalgar, wondering why there were so many tuxedoed gentlemen, red carpet, and common people hanging over barriers, when I noticed an awful lot of Casino Royale posters and I thought, 'Ah, 'tis the premiere of Casino Royale, and these tuxedoed people have been to the premiere, and these common people are hoping to glimpse Daniel Craig', and I kept walking. Standing in Trafalgar Square, I pondered whether that day's bus strike was effecting the route that I was waiting for, when the police stopped the traffic, and I thought, 'oooh, drama!' 'police! like the bill!' and a black car went past, slightly fancier than a black cab, and inside was the Queen. And her Husband. And then I sms'd a selection of people, and missed seeing who was in the cars following her. The Queen went to the premiere of the latest Bond film. Odd. And then I pondered why she hadn't offered me a lift, as it wouldn't have been that far out of her way.

A very strange experience. She has so many teeth.

Wednesday-Thursday, I did stuff, wnet around more exhibitions in some of the commercial galleries, that sort of thing, saw a cool exhibition of photographs of the Beatles in Japan, went on a massive search for another bag, really should have thought about that earlier than the night before I left, and not when the only shops that I knew would be open were the department stores on Oxford Street. And I should have bought something rather more capacious. But everything was packed, and aeroplaned, and I discovered that the Magical Seat Back Entertainment Units are not as magical on British Airways as they are on Qantas.

Pitchers.

2006-11-23T06:16:00.000+11:00

Tate LiverpoolLiverpool - one of The Beatles first venues.

Glasgow

Glasgow School of Art

Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow

Sculpture of heads, Kelvingrove

Glasgow II

2006-11-23T05:57:00.000+11:00

My second day in Glasgow started similarly to my second in Edinburgh, creating an odd parallel: The rainy walk to the gallery outside of town that turns out to be somewhat further than you thought. Breaking with imminent tradition though, I did not get lost on this occasion. Nevermind that that this was undoubtedly because I only had to walk along one road the entire time. Anyway, this walk took me to the Kelvingrove Gallery and Museum. This gallery has just been refurbished, utilising some millions of dollars, and reopened a few months ago. It of course has a mackingtosh display, very nice, and good to see chairs roped off identical to the ones I had sat on to have my tea the previous day. The gallery also has a very good collection of European, English and Scottish art. It also has more explanatory panels than I have ever seen. It has lots of stuff for kids to play with, which is excellent if you have kids in your party, but frankly quite irritating for those of us that are quite happy to see the kids run through the gallery and keep running. Giving them a reason to stop and slam bricks about may well be good for getting them involved in art from a young age but haven't you people heard about fingerpainting? Somewhere else? Also, putting Picasso's four feet of the ground so that they can be viewed at eye level by five year olds? That's what parents are for, to lift. The text panels were very well written and informative, and would be excellent if you were just getting into art, but not that helpful if you just wanted to look uninterruptedly. Anyway, that's just me being fussy. I had some tea, and was completely bewildered when the waitress offered me a millek. Having repeated it two or three time she looked equally bewildered that I didn't understand her. Her bewilderment is understandable when you consider that she was asking if I wanted milk in my tea.

When I left the rain was continuing, now joined by quite the jaunty breeze, so that when I came around the corner of the building my brolly snapped like so many twigs. I caught the bus back into town, took a bit of a stroll, flapping my brolly about like a dead bat, and thought, 'now is the time to get the train home'. I bought a new brolly before I left. It has butterflies on it, and is quite naff.

Glasgow

2006-11-22T10:54:00.000+11:00

My final trip in the North was to Glasgow, home of excellent, if inexplicable, accents, and excellent Charles Rennie Mackintosh - one of the reasons that Art Nouveau is known as Glasgow Style, in Glasgow, if not anywhere else. I preferred Glasgow to Edinburgh, for the same reason I prefer Melbourne to Sydney - one has the looks but the other has a feeling that there is lots happening culturally, and that it is accessible.

On the train up to Glasgow I opened up the guide book to discover what it was I should see while I was there, and discovered that it mostly revolved around Charles Rennie Mackingtosh. Somewhere, just to the right of my cerebral cortex, there was a tiny 'ding!' of recognition, but I couldn't have said in relation to what - was it paintings of stags atop crags or something else? The latter fortunately. Dumping my stuff, I discovered that the place I stayed was right next door to the Glasgow School of Art, one of Mackingtosh's most completely realised designs - from the building down to the teaspoons. So I checked that out, bought the postcards, took the photos and so forth, and declared myself a fan. Then, and I do love this, I wandered down the road to the Mackingtosh designed Willow Tea Rooms - I could drink tea and have a snack while appreciating his work! I love being edumacational and still getting to have snacks.

Then I went to the Contemporary art gallery, possibly called GOMA, which I really liked, in a traditional stone & columns gallery but they have done a great job of installing pieces of contemporary art into the structure of the building. Including, oddly, a giant wooden womb, and I tell you what, it is strange to stand inside a giant wooden womb. Anyway, they had a cool exhibition of prints, paintings and some sculptures downstairs, including one called 'Blue Dogs' (or was it 'Black dogs'), a reference to Winston Churchill's description of his depression being the Blue (possibly black) dog - and the dogs looked like Churchill!

Underneath the gallery was the public library which was nice, lots of people sitting around drinking tea (see! they understand snacks!), reading books, and making the most of free internet.

Then, To the Lighthouse! Another Rennie Mackingtosh buidling, now a gallery devoted to Glaswegian art and architecture and featuring windows overlooking all Glasgow. Then I trotted off to get a bad haircut. Amazing how if people ask me things in a scottish accent I will always agree with them. Anyway, it looks ok if I style it, but when I can't be bothered, which is a lot, because I've been a student for too long, it looks as thought I've cut myself using hedgeclippers. Hedgeclippers.

She's a Da-ay Tripper...

2006-11-21T10:40:00.000+11:00

Upon my return to the Isles, I realised that I only had five days left up north, and quite a bit of territory to cover, were I to fulfil my inner-list of desired northern locations to visit.

So Tuesday was York trip II. The main purpose of which was to visit the York Castle Museum, most excellent in its reconstruction of everyday life through the centuries. They have recreated a number of rooms from different periods - I particularly enjoyed gazing upon a nineteen fifties living room, which featured a terribly "modern" tv set and then receiving a whole rundown of the different models available at the time and how that one was a particularly expensive one in its day, from the man beside me who had clearly lived through the period. Also fascinating - bizarrely so - was an exhibition about cleaning through the ages - when soap became available, how it was made, access to fresh water, the invention of the toilet etc. Then moved into exhibitions of different styles of wedding and mourning attire, accessories, household furnishing. Along with my winning conversation about Norwegian barns, goes my new knowledge about English kitchens, particularly ovens and hearths. So many inventions you don't think about - the chimney for example. When it was invented it removed the necessity of having the fireplace in the middle of the room, thus lessening the chance of setting yourself on fire when cooking (v. good), and enabled fires in many more rooms, meaning houses could be bigger, more luxurious, and, (and how I love that this was noted), occupants could toast snacks in their bedrooms. A lot to be said for that in any day and age, the ready supply of muffin.

It took numerous hours to get through this museum, but once I eventually tore myself away I went for a wander through the Shambles again (old shopping district - buildings overhang so much you could hold hands with the people across the street out your upstairs windows.)

Wednesday I headed to Liverpool, arrived via train and headed down to the Tate Liverpool. One guess as to the soundtrack I podded along to. Tate Liverpool is another example of How We Use Contemporary Art for Rejuvenation of City Centres. It isn't as large as I thought it was going to be. Which communicates absolutely nothing, as that is as in relation to? Anyway, good exhibiton of small sculptures and drawings by Henry Moore, and of paintings by Patrick Caulfied, whom I only intermittenly love.

The permanent collection exhibition was very good, a nice sweep of twentieth and twenty-first century art - good samples of work by the usual suspects, the one that particularly stood out was by Jake and Dinos Chapman, which a whole display of tiny sculptures, reminiscent of those little figures that a certain type of gent can spend hours, nay months, moving around on replica battlefields, but they were recreations of Goya's liths of the Acts of War.

Then I headed off to the Beatles Story, a pretty cool exhibition of, wait for it, The Beatles Story. Recreated the different clubs and studios that were key, lots of stuff about how they met, Epstein, the early concerts etc. That inspired me to wander off and find the Cavern Club.

Liverpool seems to have gone through a considerable pulling-of-self-up-via-bootstraps, whereas a few years ago (I'm told) it was rather drab, it now has a very lively vibe, and an endless paved shopping area in the centre of town, which featured some very cool looking shops.

Oooh, I have to go.

Oslo pt.2

2006-11-21T09:37:00.000+11:00

Viking Ship

Oslo, from the Gallery on the peninsular that I can't remember the name of.

Vigelund Sculpture Park

Stave Church, 13th century, Folkmuseet

Norwegian Farm building, Folkmuseet

Viking Ship

As I got to the end of writing what formed the previous post a rather terse message came up and warned me my net time was about to expire, so I had to post without finishing, or, obviously, editing.

My favouritest thing at the Folk Museum was the apartment building from Oslo that was removed from its original site and reconstructed in the museum (brick by numbered brick). They have fitted out each apartment in different period styles with material about the people who lived there - including a very cool 1970s one that was created by the designer and architect who lived there and who recreated it for the museum.

Saturday we went to the National Gallery, so I got to see one of the Skriks - this was the one that was stolen in '94 and they got back a few years ago - there is a real thing for stealing art works in Norway - one of the key Vigeland works was sawn off at the ankle and stolen, and then returned/found. Someone seems to want the key works of Norwegian art very badly. Was great to go around the gallery with someone that had studied Norwegian art, and could also provide a running translation service for me. Then we headed off to a gallery founded by someone's private collection, featuring some excellent contemporary art, including Hirst's Mother and Child Divided - nothing like the experience of going 'awwww cute baby calf... oh and look, there's your innards'. The following day was another gallery day, we headed in suburban Oslo, to find a new commercial gallery that had an exhibition of Damian Hirst, bits of which I really liked, other bits I thought were a bit too slick. Then to another gallery (I would never have found these places if I'd been on my own, v. good to have my personal tour guide!) which I really liked - founded by a couple in the 1970s who have created an absolutely massive gallery for their personal collection (and other temporary exhibitions) on a peninsular overlooking the water (see photo above). Excellently, this is also where my friend's partner is the chef, so we had lunch there - best smoked salmon of anywhere, ever. Apparently we arrived only moments after the Crown Prince left. He and his family had turned up, no security, and had lunch with friends, saying hello to whoever approached them to chat - a bit different from how most Royal families live.

Monday was my final day in Oslo, I spent the morning getting a framing lesson at my friend's place of employment, I now know how mount boards are cut so precisely, a fine thing as that gap in my brain was annoying me. Then I began the trek back to the "Oslo" airport and for some more quality time with Ryanair.

Oslo

2006-11-17T00:25:00.000+11:00

SnowSnowSnow!Driving on the Right!Snow!Snow!Snow!Right!Road Sign with a Reindeer on it!Snow!Snow!SnowSnow!Right!Snow!Europey-looking forest!Snow!

Thus ran my thoughts upon arrival in Oslo. Having caught a RyanAir flight to "Oslo" it meant that I had an hour and a half bus trip from "Oslo" into Oslo, so this gave me ample time to appreciate that there was snow on the ground. While I'm thinking about RyanAir - which I have developed a firm belief that one should do as little as possible, lest one absorb too much of their attitude that one is really just an annoying hindrance between an airline reaching its target of perfectly meeting its timetable - the competition between RyanAir and Easy Jet seems particularly fierce on number of fronts, the more obvious being for passengers and securing routes, but oddly seems to be made manifest in the desparate battle to make their staff look completely ridiculous. This could be an extreme-safety measure, on the theory that no terrorist, no matter how committed, would ever pose as one of their staff if it meant wearing a jaunty combination of bright blue and yellow, or flourescent orange. But actually I think it is just an outworking of the contempt in which they hold their staff, and particularly, their passengers. I think they feel that they have to be that obvious because their passengers are too stupid to pick up that six or seven people on a plane wearing matching outfits of any more subtle colour combination are likely to be the crew. That, and that weird approach to sartorial matters that follows the line: 'weeeeeeeeee we're really bright! that means we're hip and fun! yeaaaaah!' in the hope that one doesn't notice the underlying 'if we were dressed in grey it would draw attention to our facial expressions that convey our contempt for you and our fervent wish to be upgraded to carriers which convey packages and live cattle.' Just a theory.

I arrived in Oslo at about 11.30, and my friend kindly came an collected me, very fortunate as I hadn't gotten a guide book and my Norwegian, oddly, is non-existant. She lives in am old part of town, where cobblestone still feature, and beautiful wides streets of apartment buildings. Beautiful wide streets that feature quite a lot of ice at this time of year, as Judas and Thomas demonstrated by skeetering out from under me, sensing their chance for escape, and a truly excellent opportunity to embarrass me. Fortunately no damage was done, to me, or perhaps more significantly, to my camera. It was a good way of learning to pay some attention where I was putting my feet, and proved a constant battle between looking at the ground to make sure I didn't go flailing down a stone staircase, and gaping around touristicly at the scenery. Norway clearly likes me more than Scotland: it had thoughtfully had some freezing weather leading up to my arrival, to provide a nice snowy welcome, but then was unseasonably warm, no worse than Canberra at its worst when you are out in the mddle of the night, inappropriately attired. Thankfully I had a decent jacket (thanks R!) and so was quite cosy. In fact, it was like getting to wear a sleeping bag out and about, which is excellent for naps.

The next day we went to a large sculpture park, featuring works by Vigeland and more snow. The park has an amazing amount of work in it, especially when it is all work by one artist, even if he did have a studio of assistants, he was incredibly productive. Then we headed to the Munch Museet which features both the work of Edvard Munch, and the most incredible museum security. Unsurprising, after someone ran off to a waiting car with two of the Museum's central pieces. Fortunately, and as regular readers will undoubtedly recall, they have since been discovered. Unfortunately they are still in conservation, so I didn't get to see them, but I got to see a lot of others, so I'll have to be happy... the museum had up a lot of stuff beyond the wailing wall of depression that one usually associates with Edvard, who knew that he had so many dogs, or drew them so much?

Then we took a walk around Oslo, got to see the Royal Palace, and the centre of town. I really like Oslo - its small enough that you can cover most of it, at least very briefly in a day, and it has the benefits of being in Europe (old, good bread, and so on) with out the crazy numbers of people. The next day, after extensive directions, I found my way in the 'burbs to check out the Viking Ships Museum - excellent! Vikings were very thoughtful of future archaeologists by burying people in ships, with a sample of everything they owned. Unfortunately most of these burial mounds were raided, so the jewellery and other valuables were taken, but the ships have been preserved very well, and it is incredible to consider how far they sailed in not very large ships. After that I went to the Folk Museum, which is also excellent - they have gathered together a range of buildings from all different periods of Norway's history and reconstructed them in a giant open air museum. The first time I've been able to see my own breath while at an exhibition. And the first time I've enthusiastically examined barns. With my new knowledge of Norwegian farm architecture from the thirteenth century to the present I am going to be a hit on the dinner party circuit when I get back!

Edinburgh

2006-11-15T03:09:00.000+11:00

A day or so after Durham, I headed off for a brief sojurn in Edinburgh, which really is almost exaggeratingly picturesque - there's a similar smugness in Edinburghers writing about their town that Sydney-siders share, that undertone of 'doesn't really matter what else is wrong with us because we're the prettiest'). Which is fair enough because it is gorgeous. I began by heading for the large turrety thing, safe in my assumption that this would prove to be Edinburgh castle. Perhaps going to a castle on a school holiday was not the best laid plan, of either mice or men, but the castle was impressive despite being surrounded by small shrieking hoards. [incidentally when it become actually illegal to be a small girl child not dressed in either pink or that sick mauve colour?] It was incredibly windy, so I kept waiting for one to be caught by a sudden gust and be transformed into a small pink/sick mauve missile and go flying off into New Town.

The castle is impressive in the way that it has been built out of the top of the hillside, making the most of all the defences the landscape provides. And ensuring that Edinburghers will always have great thighs, as such a large part of their lives will be spent climbing up and down some steep hillsides. It has been used over the centuries for a succession of state functions, and still hosts state occasions. It is a great location for the Scottish war memorial - which apart from being in that weird early-20th-C-explosion-of-empire style decor that does seem to characterise memorials built initially for WWI, is incredibly moving. It has books listing each regiment and their losses for each major war they have been involved in, flicking through these I found particularly moving because of the numbers of people with my surname that died in WWI.

After leaving the Castle I went for a stroll down the Royal Mile. Which actually means that I went for a shuffle along what I think should be more accurately known as the Tartan Mile, such is the predominance of souvenir shops along this street. I stopped in to visit the Whisky Heritage Experience [I always thought that that was getting drunk?] and learnt lots about malting barley and so forth, and went on a 'barrel ride' to discover the history of whisky. Then I did a malt whisky tasting (more whisky than I've ever drunk before, and at 2 in the afternoon). And thus I became a malt whisky drinker, a few short hours after arriving in Scotland. For years I've shaken my head at this pursuit, based on my previous experience of all malts tasting like salty dirt, but now I understand that these are just the whiskys that come from the Islands, whereas I prefer highland single malts (just pause on that detail for awhile, 'highland single malts', could be handy to remember if you find yourself in a duty free shop in a spirit of generosity some day... that's highland). It turns out my Dad's been buying the wrong ones all this time! I'm sure he won't mind switching though. We can always sprinkle some salt and dirt in his to ease the transition.

After this I gambolled off to find a scarf in the family tartan, and then went to the Fruitmarket Gallery (exhibition of Callum Innes, excellent, and travelling to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney next year, so abstract art fans should keep an eye out for it.) Found the Scottish Parliament Building, which opened last year (I think) something like 4 years late and 200 million over budget. That's a lot. And I didn't really warm to the building either.

The weather was the coldest that I had yet experienced on the trip, unlike everywhere else Scotland doesn't seem to feel the need to give me the unseasonably warm (relatively speaking) weather that I have had everywhere else. I decided that it wasn't 'cold and rather horrible' but rather 'good weather for drinking whisky', and surely it is the climate that drove the scots to find the perfect way of fermenting malted barley. Well that and the desire to get pissed.

After an average night in a hostel, I pondered that 'good weather for drinking whisky' isn't really appropriate for 7.30am, and went off to find the cafe that the Lonely Planet recommends. Which turns out to be where JK Rowling used to go when she was writing Harry Potter - has an excellent view of the Castle, so kind of an appropriate setting. But either JK Rowling has an acceptance of substandard scrambled eggs or doesn't eat them there. After breakfast I set off on a soggy, misguided walk to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, eventually, damp and circuitously, I found it. Half of it was shut for reinstallation, but they have a very good collection of Eduardo Paolozzi, including a recreation of his studio (looking at people's studios is even more nosily satisfying that going through their pantries... [lucky I didn't miss out that 'r' hey?]). Then I discovered that there is a free shuttle bus into town to the main National Gallery, so I was happy to catch that back and avoid more soggy circuitousness. The older collection is pretty much Euro-Standard, but has some v. nice pieces, incl. a v. good Cezanne.

And then it was home time, and I got the train back to Newcastle.

Durham

2006-11-15T02:54:00.000+11:00

Durham is an easy daytrip from Newcastle, and is a pretty old university town, featuring a very old cathedral. So of course I went there. I like travel that features going to really obvious monuments, makes it so much easier to not get lost when you step out of the station, in that bewildered state of being somewhere new, thinking, 'now where is the cathedral' to respond to self 'maybe I should go ask at that large pointy building on the hill, they might know...'

Anyway, Durham Cathedral is like many others of its kind: large, pointy, stone, old. It features a 'cathedra' (bishop's throne, hence Cathedral being a church where the bishop sits) that is a couple of inches higher than the church at Rome ( a detail I particularly enjoyed, do love it when those who are leading the flock by demonstrating the humility of Christ decide to get petty) and the tomb of the Venerable Bede, a monk who wrote the first history of England (6th or 7th century). Also features a tower that goes 325 steps up, and wow that's a lot isn't it? After going interminably round in circles ever upward I burst forth gasping onto the roof, and, once I recovered, enjoyed getting snap happy with the beautiful views all around while watching other people burst forth gasping from the stairs.

I circled back to the ground, and went for a walk along the river, which is very pretty, just beginning to get a bit autumnal and then ate a scone. Tea is very good in England. You do get some shockers, but in general the standard is much higher than in Aus. I think that is because the people would revolt if it wasn't. Possibly why France has had more revolutions than England: the English might be oppressed and downtrodden, but there's nothing like a nice cup of tea is there?

blog by request...

2006-11-13T07:28:00.000+11:00

... Just to prove the wonder that is this hip interactive groove-thang of the blogosphere, I'm responding near-instantly to a certain elegantly-worded request for images...

Newgrange, outside of Dublin

What's not to love?

Stop me if you've seen this before...

... the reson cliché is a French word?

My favourite sculpture at the Musee D'Orsay, Paris, I canna remember title nor artist, which gives you a bit of a project on the ole 'net doesn't it?

A detail of the painting that almost made me cry it was so beautiful - Cezanne still life.

Favourite sculpture at the Pompidou: Ingo Maurer's 'Tableaux Chinois' mixed media (including live fish)

Excellent juxtaposition at the Pompidou Centre between works by Hans Arp (left) and a video installation by Erwin Wurm.

Interior view, Picasso Museum

Musee du Quai Branly

View upon arrival at the Louvre.

Interior view, Pyramid, Louvre.

Winged Victory, Louvre

Cycladic Head, Louvre

I climbed 325 thigh-crushing steps for this view, so do pause and reflect. Durham Cathedral.

Postscript: Paris

2006-11-10T01:32:00.000+11:00

Dark Chocolate with Pink Peppercorns (Dolphin brand).

Forgot to mention this previously, but it was one of the Big Discoveries of the trip, if not my life.

That's all.

it big, she small

2006-11-08T07:21:00.000+11:00

So it seems a bit ridiculous to determinedly blog about things in the order that they happened, when I'm now three countries behind, but I'm going to anyway, because otherwise *I'll* forget everything that I've done, and we can't have that can we?

But this will be the final post about Paris!

And I could hardly not mention the louvre now, could I?

Arrived just after opening, only a short queue outside. Hurried inside, failed to obtain any concession or love despite having prepared for the last 9 years or so to visit this place.

Followed the crowd: figured it would be best to get Mona out of the way first and hopefully while not too many crowds. Soon discovered this is impossible dream. Started pondering theory that Dan Brown only wrote Da Vinci code in order to get some kind of access to museum to see Mona unhindered. But surely that book wouldn't have had that effect on the French? Anyway, no painting can really be fresh after the hype that She receives, but it is still incredibly beautiful, don't know how Da Vinci got the effects that he did in his work, but he certainly was an amazing painter. [should really rename this blog to nerdstatingtheobvious.blogspot] Having followed the herd up a few staircases and around a few corners, I then had no idea where I was and had to regroup a little to find an approach to the Louvre that meant I could cover the key things in an ordered fashion. So I just wandered around in a kind of hyper-overstimulated way, because everytime I tried to stop go back to some kind of starting point, I would go around a corner and find myself startled by some old friend from art history - Gericault's Raft of the Medusa, (fecking enormous), more Da Vincis, Caravaggios, Cimabue! Giotto! ... and so the excitement continued, for ages, and then I stopped, figuring I'd covered a decent percentage... which of course I hadn't ... the percentage of the Louvre I'd covered would be a broom cupboard at the Nat Gal of Aust. So I had to be brutal, looking at the map, 'Today, I do not care about decorative arts, Greece, Rome, Egypt (except for Coptic Egypt), Asia and so forth.' I could have used those shoes with wheels on the soles though, especially for the french paintings circa Fragonard ("I'm going to paint chocolate boxes, lots of chocolate boxes! Weeeeeeeee a woman on a swing!" Get a grip man.) but went into an interesting dribbling and twitching state of joy in the Spanish section. Didn't really make up for not being able to include Madrid this time around, but at least laid a few planks of restitution. [and we're just going to pretend that that's a metaphor that makes any sense]

Sculpture: stuck to the marble. Winged Victory is one of the best placed works of art anywhere, ever. Michelangelo's Dying Slave. Canova. Borghese Gladiator. Happy Happy times.

Anyway, seven.hours.later. Went on a hunt for Coptic Egypt, and came close to having a panic attack (well, more of a temper tantrum, but one does not have tantrums in the louvre) because I got completely confused and lost in a strange corner of ancient Greek sculpture, and was very tired. But did think to myself 'surely the only time I would get grumpy to be seeing this' but there's only so much it is physically possible to see in a day...

Left Paris the following day, completely exhausted by not getting very much sleep but more art than my feet could bear.

More art than you can poke a stick at. Not that you should poke sticks at art, as it wouldn't be safe.

2006-10-31T06:45:00.000+11:00

A sunny day dawned Friday, and after changing hotels, I set off, with the fairly unclever thought 'well that doesn't look too far' to walk to the Musee Quai Branly. Along the way I got distracted by the Musee du Luxembourg, where a Titian exhibition was on, probably should have considered the poster a little more, with regard to the fact that it was Titian's portraits being exhibited, and perhaps reflected along the lines 'I find portraiture fairly dull, except for Howard Arkley's portrait of Nick Cave, and it would seem unlikely that that is going to be in an exhibition of Titian's portraits for the obvious reason that it was painted by Arkley, not Titian'. But anyway, I went and saw it, along with approximately 14000 French people. So it was both crowded, and fairly uninteresting. There were a couple of jawdroppingly good paintings in there though, so the effort was worthwhile. But it was so crowded I didn't even look in the gift shop. THAT is crowded.

Then I went and had lunch. Potato avec quatre fromages. Happiness was mine.

Then I continued my trek. Note that my cheerful plan to just wander along to the gallery has thus far included another exhibition and a break for a main meal. I was entertained to see a whole bunch of kids apparently running their cross country in the Jardin du Luxembourg; a bit different from Asquith oval that. It must have been the day for small children to be running about Paris because when I got to the Seine there was another bunch of them, running in circles around a lawn, and I got to see the deeply amusing site of a manicured french dog trying to bond with the small children by chasing them, with its equally manicured owner chasing it, shouting at it in an increasingly irate fashion. Ah, entertainment. I'm also happy to report that by the end of the week in Paris I was able to stop thinking to myself, every time I saw french children 'You're so smart! You can speak FRENCH! At your age!'

I finally made it to Quai Branly, which is the latest large museum to open in Paris. Some of you will have seen it in the papers a few months ago when it opened - it is dedicated to displaying collections of 'non-western' art, from former ethnographic collections that were gathered by missionaries, anthropologists, artists etc. So it is a very strange project, as it links together an incredible range of material, largely along the lines of 'stuff that was formerly considered too primitive to be art, or to be exhibited along with 'real' art' - but obviously the effect of exhibiting it all together, apart from western art, leaves a real danger of reinforcing that view. This is addressed in some text panels, along with the museum's purpose of trying to further understanding amongst the world's peoples etc. So it really started to piss me off that the vast range of text labels and wall panels were only in French. Some larger panels that introduced whole sections were in English (and I think Spanish) as well, but the pieces for each object were only in French, which I think really hampers achieving their purpose. In art galleries and most other places it didn't bother me that things were only in French, it's fair enough, what with it being France and all, but considering their intention of being an international collection, and that there is not only one way to understand and interpret the objects on display, it really made it impossible to understand a lot of the exhibits. My other gripe was the bizarre display of Australian indigenous art, where everything was under low lighting - necessary for the bark paintings for conservation, but for contemporary paintings of acrylic on canvas it created this weird aura of faux-antiquity. Of course this could have been explained in the text panels but I wouldn't know. The museum looks better from the outside than the inside I think - all pointy angles and native grasses in a style reminiscent of the National Museum of Australia - inside there is a ramp which takes you from the entrance up to the actual exhibit, which goes for about half a kilometre, and for no obvious purpose. There are a few quotes projected onto the wall, and a couple of different angles where you get to view things from unusual perspectives, but no achievable aim was met. One very cool part of it is that they have a huge collection of African traditional instruments, which can't all be displayed at once, but they have stored them in a huge circular atrium with glass walls, so you can see some of them even while they are in storage. Once you eventually emerge at the top of the enormous white ramp you enter the dimply lit space of the actual gallery, which is fairly odd, featuring as it does five foot walls covered in what appears to be ochre coloured 'leather' - seems to be attempting to create a faux-cave feel, with odd overtones of 'getting back to nature'. The Aboriginal art that is included in the building, to much joy and fanfare by the Australian press, is largely on the ceilings of the gift shop and the office space, so it can be seen from the outside of the gallery, and it does look very good, but mostly as an interior design technique rather than as a particular leap forward in recognition for aboriginal art on the world stage. The actual collection is amazing, incredible pieces from all over the world, from Australia to Native America. But a very mixed experience!

After that I went and had a coke and some frites and was charged 11 euro for the privilege. Note to self: read menus carefully when near the Eiffel Tower!

Then, I decided on more walking - I went to the Arc de Triomphe, sat and marvelled at the crazy driving - six lanes of traffic all following where their hearts lead them - then went for a wander down Les Champs Elysees. I bought a new cardy. Because I am a Nanna.

Paris continued

2006-10-29T20:57:00.000+11:00

When I left the Musee D'Orsay I went for a wander through the Latin Quarter, and reflected on how for years - YEARS - I had assumed the 'Latin' in Latin Quarter was in the South American, Latino, sense, and not the Latin-speaking scholar sense, and on how that makes very little historical sense at all. Really glad I didn't incorporate that into any essays. Visited 'Shakespeare & Co', the legendary English-language bookshop on the banks of the Seine, which, were there to be supplies of bread to nibble on, I could happily have never left. Most of the upstairs level is lined floor-to-ceiling with books that aren't for sale, but that you are 'welcome to refer to' and it has lots of odd corners to sit in and read. Downstairs it is a mix of new and second-hand books, and In English! So very exciting! Paris is full of fabulous-looking bookshops that I kept going to bound into to explore, and then with a sudden slump of the shoulders, would recollect that the vast majority of its contents would be unintelligible to me.
Tearing myself away from my new papery friends, I crossed over to the middle of the Seine and had a wander around Notre Dame - beautiful, lovely glass, not much more to be said.
I headed off to find the nice-looking restaurant I had seen earlier, which of course I didn't, instead, I ambled in extravagantly incorrect directions for a really quite vast amount of time. I stumbled upon the College de France, and the Place de Michel Foucault, and as much as it would have been tempting to sit round questioning the power appropriated through naming such places and so on, plummeting blood sugars drove me on... and into an unfortunately bad chinese restaurant. Such a waste of what otherwise would have been excellent mushrooms.
The next day (that's right! we're only up to Wednesday!) I headed of to the Pompidou Centre. Aaaah. Happy days!
They are currently holding an exhibition of Rauschenberg's combines - Charlene, I saw Charlene!!! The tragedy of this exhibition was only being able to see it once. Having read about Rauschenberg and seen so much of this work in reproduction I was ecstatic to finally see it, and see so much of it. The exhibition was organised chronologically, showing the development of R's use of collage between (I think) 1954-1968. Excellent!
The rest of the Pompidou took most of the remainder of the day - swathes of 20th century art - I go to my happy place just thinking about it...
I headed back to the hostel via la fromagerie, la boulangerie et du vin rouge - c'etait tres bien.
Thursday: Musee du Picasso - I heard mixed reports about this, so my expectations weren't unduly inflated, and so I was most pleasantly elevated by my experience there. I could see how the collection itself could be disappointing if your expectation was that it would contain the most famous works, but I really liked the very early pieces that they have, and a lot of the drawings and his first collages, showing how Picasso constantly changed as an artist. Especially the collages, because they are fascinating to me. And some of the drawings were utterly brilliant. I really do resent him for being so damn good at everything. Freak.
Then I travelled to the other side of the town to the Dubuffet Fondation, via lunch, rain, and a most elaborate detour - I really do create some interesting voyages, based on only wanting to take one metro line between two places. It isn't very sane, but you do get to see quite a bit of Paris ('Nous tu detestons' say J & T (their french isn't very good I'm afraid)). The Fondation is located in Dubuffet's old house, and has a decent number of works from about the mid-70s into the 80s, which were good to see, but as I am mostly interested in his work from the 40s and 50s, not absolutely mindblowing. But for that I would have to travel to Switzerland. After that I performed more circuitous wandering, and found the Eiffel Tower, always makes it easier when what you are looking for is a large pointy landmark. Had a wander around it, got snappy with the lenses, considered climbing up, but based on it being cold at ground level, and me already being tired and misanthropic, I decided to sit down and have an icecream and do the crossword instead. And ponder how I am perhaps a little too in touch with my inner-nanna.

Life sans Tip Top

2006-10-20T06:29:00.000+10:00

So I arrived in Paris on Monday afternoon, checked into my hostel and took a walk around Montmartre - soon realising that Amelie is not as exaggerated a portrait of Paris as I always thought - wandered up to Sacre Couer, atop the entertainingly named La Butte de Montmartre, not, as I had thought a poetique way of referring to the arse-end of town, rather used in a strictly geographique sense - one that results in the thought 'hey, turns out my thighs have muscles after all' - continued my pattern of visiting churches right on evensong time, first time I've seen such operatic nuns. Other than, you know, The Sound of Music.

Stunning view from the top of the Butte [snigger] and then off to find dinner, basically found a brasserie the same as the one in Amelie, and full of a clientele that closely ressembled the cast. Everytime I looked up a different french freak man would be staring at me. Kept expecting them to be whipping out a tape recorder and making a verbal note about their thoughts vis a vis me and the woman behind the tabac counter. French people don't seem to have any qualms about openly staring. Either that, or I am just way more freakish than I ever thought. Admittedly matters sartorial and my coiffure aren't at their best, but...

The first night at the hostel did not bode well - walls the colour of earwax, a bed that swayed like a raft in a storm (damn bunk beds! damn them! no one, NO ONE over the age of 15 should have to sleep in a bunk bed!) and walls paper thin and a party downstairs... this did not bode well for the sleep of peace... the party finally stopped and the snores began. Emanating from the bunk below me, I pondered 'are they snoring, or is that a dying bull?'. At this point the Bunk of Sways became quite useful, as whenever I tossed, the bunk swayed, and the bull ceased moaning.

Thankfully, the hostel has since improved, and proved itself to be an advantage - being an English-speaking zone it is a bit of a relief after flogging my non-french to death all day to come back somewhere that I can speak anglais and not cause offence. Very strange to be in a non-english speaking country at long last, not to have that information that you pick up peripherally throughout the day - street signs, newspaper headlines, overheard conversations, snippets of radio etc - that give you a background sense of what is going on. And not being able to buy a newspaper reliably is a strange torture for someone possessed of an addiction where matters of the daily press are concerned. Anyway, having acclimatised to the hostel I'll be moving tomorrow - an unfortunate result of my disorganisation. Here's a tip, gratis, from me to you: If you are coming to Paris, how's about booking your accommodation more than three days in advance. Just a thought.

In other matters of joy: bread, cheese and wine. All cheaper, all better than their equivalents en australie. J'adore les vins francais. Currently before me, as may not be a surprise to you, considering the rambling form of this post, is a rather fine botteille of le vin rouge that set me back all of 2.90 euro (less than six australienne). Oh happy day! Happy Day! I have something of a temptation to feed a french person tip top just to find out how they would process the thought that this is something that is a. sold as bread, and b. voluntarily consumed. Anyway, I'll now have to devote my remaining days of bread nibbling between Eire and France. Not such a bad fate.

So, beyond matters of bedding and of consumables - I started off my tuesday by participating in a near revolution. It seems that every guide book ever is incorrect in publishing the opening time of the Musee d'Orsay as 9am, when it is 9.30. Not a big deal. I wandered, and then joined the cue that had formed at about 9.20, to join the mutual sigh of disappointment at the notice that the musuem was that day not opening until 10am. When 10am came and went, and the queue numbered at least three hundred (not including pre-sold tickets, and group bookings - there must have been at least 600 people waiting)people started going up and asking what was going on. And brace yourself. The entire Orsay was shut down because of a board meeting. I ask you. Is there any other museum in the entire world that would shut down and then run over because of a board meeting? Anyway, tempers were fizzing as minutes ticked by, some synchronised clapping started, there was grumpiness aplenty, I was starting to think 'hey one of the reasons paris was redesigned in the nineteenth century was revolutions, would be kind of cool to participate in one my first morning here' - and then they opened the doors. So pretty much a non-story really.

Anyway, I then spent four or five hours of joy. Cezanne almost made me cry. I haughtily dismissed Renoir once more, and struggled with the urge to yell at people in the Renoir salles - WHAT are you doing, you fools, this is terrible, go back to Cezanne and then tell me that Renoir is worth your time?! Then remembered vague thoughts about subjective taste blah blah. eh.

Gettin' some craic

2006-10-18T05:05:00.000+10:00

Everything you have heard about Irish hospitality is true (as long as everything you have heard is good). I arrived in Dublin last Thursday; where I was to stay with family friends that I had never met before - I was blown away by their generosity in providing me with places to stay; giving me guided tours; feeding me & ensuring I got to and from the airport - it made for such an excellent trip to Ireland and was so much better than the impression you end up with of places that you visit alone.

I started my visit with a guided walking tour of Dublin, which is different to what I expected, which on reflection was Oxford only with more Guinness and shamrocks. As it was built in more Renaissance/neo-classical, rather than gothic/neo-gothic, it was somewhat different. Having an Irish tour guide made the history more alive - hearing about what family members did in the fighting in 1916, rather trying to resurrect my dim memories of 'Michael Collins' [the film - I have a clearer memory of our friend in Indonesia]. It was fascinating seeing and hearing about all the changes to Ireland, and Dublin especially, since joining the EU - house prices have certainly gone insane; with three bedroom houses in Dublin suburbs at something like a million Aus dollars.

You can walk through most of central Dublin in about three hours; and in this time you will see approximately 4000 pubs. The food there is excellent; lots of great seafood! And the bread! It is so tasty it makes you want to sit in a bakery and nibble bread until you die.

Now, as it was this that made me first incline to include Dublin in this trip, unsurprisingly I headed off to the National Library of Ireland for the Yeats exhibition the following day. The NLI has a huge collection of Yeats' papers, manuscripts, old passports and the like, and so sensibly decided that they should get them on display, and have put together an excelleent exhibition. When you first enter it has audio of poems being read out while the lyrics and related images are projected onto the walls - oddly the reading I liked least was the recording of Yeats reading, which was really strange. A later part of the exhibition describes how Y created a kind of music to be played during readings, so this may have been part of that as it was a sort of singing that seemed to be going on, but if that is the case, and hence that was how he normally read his work, wow would you be hoping not to be invited around for a reading of his latest...

The exhibition also had good images and videos on various aspects of Yeats life, and then heaps of the original manuscripts of his writing - Sailing to Byantium was a completely different poem at one stage before it got rebuilt. They also had Yeats' passport, which I am jealous of, as he travelled in the time when passports got stamped - thus far it looks like I'll be travelling right around the globe and coming home stampless. 's'not fair.

Then I headed off to the National Gallery - I think Irish art is like Australian in that if you don't know anything about it, superficially at least, it just seems like a bunch of people doing whatever is being done in Europe at roundabout the same time, except that you've never heard of them. Except for Jack Yeats, conveniently, as I both really liked his work, and it made for a nicely Yeats-ified day.

The next day I had planned to wander about Dublin some more but got a better offer, in the form of a drive into the mountains around Dublin and lunch at a pub that is a decade younger than the English settlement of Australia. The scenery half an hour out of Dublin is beautiful, feels distinctly 'Irish' rather than the city which minus the green decorations, could be almost anywhere. The pub was amazing - a couple of hundred years of accumulated detritus makes for some interesting décor. And excellent food was also present.

The following day we needed to deliver a merman to Belfast so I got an unexpected, brief, driving tour of Belfast and then returned via Newgrange & Knowth, which are fascinating - sites that have been in use by humans for 6000 years, and c.3000 AD became sites for neolithic burial chambers. Absolutely amazing as these chambers were built with materials that had to be imported from quarries far away, and were constructed so they light up once a year at a seasonal solstice, and they have largely survived completely intact and watertight up until the present.

And the following day I arrived in Paris!

Cows wearing hatracks

2006-10-17T04:52:00.000+10:00

One of the odder things about my time in England so far was becoming hooked on the strangely compelling Autumn Watch - a BBC programme that ran for two weeks with an hour each night of live tv on the seasonal changes that Autumn brings to the UK's wildlife. Not something I can really imagine happening anywhere else. Especially as it was presented by Bill Oddie - ne'er has there been a more appropriate surname.

The show followed the progress of particular animals at this time of year - tracking geese as they fly from Canada, watching squirrels hide nuts and magpies stealing them, all the things that can kill baby seals, and the stars of the show: red deer. They spend this time of year bashing horns together to compete over who gets to mate with who.

The seasons seem to make more dramatic shifts a lot faster here which I guess makes that kind of programming a lot easier, but the English do seem to love animals A LOT. But it is definitely the best use of reality television that I have seen so far.

Bronte-Land

2006-10-14T20:39:00.000+10:00

Something that I still can't get over is how close together all the places are here. It's like you have been shrunken down and are living in one of those miniature villages that people with an excessive amount of time create - if I were to look up and see an enormous, delighted toddler looking down on me, I wouldn't be surprised. Terrified, but not surprised. Obviously it would be more logical to assume that I have been miniaturised than accept that things are just different here.

That is a preamble to explaining my joy in realising that Yorkshire is only an hour or two away from Newcastle, and hence, I was able to visit the home of the Brontes, who, you will recollect, lived in a parsonage in a Yorkshire village. It is a beautiful town, all grey stone buildings and narrow cobbled streets. The house itself was no doubt very nice for the time, but tiny in comparison to what our minimum requirements would be - it has 3.5 bedrooms and the Brontes were a family with six children. All of whom their father outlived. It is furnished largely with the Brontes original possessions, which The Bronte Society has been collecting since 1897, bless them. It's hard to believe that the amount of writing that the three sisters produced all came out of one tiny living room. And for any of you that may be wondering why their brother Bramwell never made a success of being an artist, there is ample evidence on the walls: he was attempting to be an artist despite bypassing learning how to paint, or having any discernible talant. No wonder the pub down the road was the main beneficiary of his munificence.

After that we drove back through the Yorkshire Dales, it was a beautiful sunny day so I missed the experience of Wuthering about on them, but I don't think that is something that I will miss too much... it is a stunningly unique landscape.

The following day I went down to York, and got to gawp at the amazing York Minster: remarkable both for having the largest Medieval stained glass window in England, beautiful architecture and fascinating history, AND because it means you get to say 'Minster' a lot, and Minster is a fun word to say. One of the funnest that the English language is furnished with, I'm sure you'll agree. Then wandered around the narrow cobbled streets in the centre of York, the buildings overhang the streets so that they almost meet in the centre, once all of York was like this. We went to Jorvik, the museum of the Viking settlement of York, which was fascinating, despite being aimed at people 15 years younger than me.

ooh aye, like

2006-10-11T19:47:00.000+10:00

It has been awhile hasn't it? And I will have to keep this fairly short as I am reacquainting myself with the Trills of the Modem so things are taking a bit longer than usual (ie I'm on dial-up not broadband).

Arrived in Newcastle 10 days or so ago, and am staying with my Grandma and Uncle, this is my first visit here so it has been very exciting seeing all the places I've heard about. Although the way my Dad describes it meant that it was a pleasant surprise not to have to shovel my way through six feet of snow every morning while being blown off the ground by a gale... that said, the vista currently before me is proof of Turner's accuracy in his work with mist.

Started getting acquainted with the region by a stroll up the sea front, and being intensely amused by the concept of anyone surfing in the North Sea - sure they wear wetsuits, but you would need to hollow out a dead seal to surf any later in the year in these parts. Do enjoy being able to go for a stroll and incorporate the ruins of a priory and castle (conveniently named Tynemouth Priory and Castle) located up the road. The priory was formally inhabited by an order of coalmining monks - and wouldn't you be thrilled as a young monk to find out you were going to the coalmining priory, nevermind the secluded life concocting liquers and illuminating manuscripts, no, you'll be down the mines.

Have been into Newcastle city a few times, checked out the quayside down there, which reminds me of home, as it is complete with lumpy opera house and a coathanger. Other than, you know, being on a river, and having a slightly different climate, you'd barely notice the difference. Enjoyed visiting the Baltic Centre, which is an old flour mill converted into a contemporary art 'space' - weird how central to any plans to rejuvenate an area is building a contemporary art gallery, despite how few people actually go. I was happy as they had some Takashi Murakami stuff up. Then we went to the New Castle - v. modern, built in the 11 century. Also went to Newcastle University and the gallery there, which has Schwitter's Merzbarn - Scwhitters created a series of sculptural collage constructions in the places he lived in, but none of them were destined for total success - the German one was bombed in WWII, the Norwegian one burnt down and the English one he completed one wall (of the projected four) and then had a heart attack... This latter one was going to be a total environment within an old drystone barn, and after he died the whole side of the barn was reinstalled in the art gallery.

Following day was a family road trip - we went up to Alnwick Castle and had a look around. As long as one had appropriate staffing levels, inheriting a castle wouldn't be too bad. Especially one which comes with Canalettos, a Velasquez and a few del Piombos. And where they shot part of Harry Potter. The castle has been in the family for 700 years, and when they owned the rest of Northumbria, they used to have three castles. I wonder when you start thinking 'is it too much? Oh go on, just one more castle then'. Probably around the time you defeat the Scots who are marauding about.

Will write some more soon, am off to Dublin tomorrow, then Paris on Monday. Tres bien!

Leaving on a jet train...

2006-10-02T18:46:00.000+10:00

At least I hope it's a jet train, that would be cool.

So how did I spend my last day in London, I hear you breathlessly choke out? I've hardly given you any detail so far about my time in London, you must be hard pressed to know how I have spent every single other day since I got here...

Firstly, I would like you to note that I just edited the previous post, which had too many typos even for me to bear - but I blame this keyboard - if you were trying to type using xylophone hammers on the keyboard it would approach the irritation of this fool instrument.

Which reminds me of something, the other day, when I was walking along the Thames, under the many bridges, I had the thought, 'Wow, the accordion is possibly the most irritating instrument ever to perform in a tunnel.' Only to walk into the next tunnel and retract that immediately upon the thought 'No, the xylophone being played to a mariachi casio-keyboard backing track, now THAT is the most annoying instrument to be played in a tunnel.'

Oh, and I while I'm shedding some mental detritus, I meant to share, I saw someone famous! And this time I knew who it was! The woman from Black Books was at the Kandinsky exhibition at the same time I was! Not as exciting as seeing Kandinsky, but still exciting. And I managed not to go up to her and blather on about how much I love her work and try and demonstrate it by naming particular episodes or revealing how many times I've seen them. Well done, me!

Yesterday was rather wet. To the point that it rained even when the sun was out, and there were only a few clouds in the sky, still it steadily rained. I went to the National Gallery, to have a look at a few things again, and confirm that my view of Renoir isn't too harsh, and nope, it's not. It's an odd building - even in the main galleries I can't get any sense of where I am, (not that that means anything, I could lose a sense of location in a supermarket) but there are some weird layout choices, particularly if you go downstairs to the subterranean cafe, and then walk through a doorway on the far side of that that looks like it should lead to an education room or something, you find yourself in further galleries that have The Execution of Lady Jane Grey, a Courbet, Gericault, Ingres, Delacoix etc. Odd. I think the vast majority of visitors would completely miss them.

Anyway, after that I mooched about for a bit, loitering in shops, London when it is raining is kind of lacking in public spaces you don't have to pay to be in - this is where bookshops come in as the capital's loungerooms - and then tottered off to the Institute of Contemporary Art for a film about Derrida. I know, my last afternoon in London and I thought I would spend it watching a film on Derrida. What the hell was I thinking? Especially as I haven't even read that much Derrida. Anyway, it was entertaining if only for the fact that someone made a biopic about the author of the 'Death of the Author'. The film was a little obvious in a lot of its techniques - the opening sequence cut between footage that demonstrated Derrida's public persona (Here's Derrida lecturing! Here's Derrida on TV! Here's someone on TV gushing about Derrida! Here's American college students gauchely introducing themselves to Derrida and apparently referring to his philosophical works as 'novels'!) and footage of the domestic Derrida (Here's Derrida losing his keys! Here's his wife calling him Jacky! Here's Derrida walking down a street!). They made the film by following Derrida around for weeks and talking to him, and it was very entertaining because he refused to comply and just pretend that they weren't there, he kept saying how their being there changed how things would normally be, and whenever they asked a question, kept telling them that he wouldn't give them the full answer, and referring to the process of editing etc. And giving incredibly long preambles - they ask about deconstruction, he spends ten minutes deconstructing the context in which they are asking about deconstruction. And he was funny, and they were very serious about their process of documenting. So he won. Even if only because he kept one eyebrow raised for about a month.

After that intense level of edumication, I needed to do something that required distinctly less brain time, and got me out of the rain, so I went to the movies, I saw The Devil Wears Prada. Funny, and Meryl Streep imbues a character into what would otherwise be a caricature, and I only wanted to slap Anne Hathaway's character a little. From some angles she looks like Audrey Hepburn, that's cool.

So that was my day, and now I'm about to head off and catch a train to Newcastle!

Of medieval dance, and my experiences thereof.

2006-10-01T06:20:00.000+10:00

When I finished last, I was off to interview someone - everything getting there seemed to take forteen times as long as it should - realising I needed to print a consent form sending me scurrying through files, needing to get a blank cassette for the interview, trying to buy 'fast' food etc created a tedious montage of chore. The interview was a really good one though, someone I hadn't expected to meet, so a bonus to my time in London. She ran a gallery in London in the 1960s on the Kings Road: it would be harder to be cooler than that, without, I don't know, knowing John Lennon, but hang on, she did.

Friday I was tired. Not for any particular reason, just tired, and generally grumpy. There was some pouting, and some stern looks directed in various quarters. I went to the National Gallery, where they have opened what is effectively a 'greatest hits' selection of works from the nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries collection. They have moved them into the Sainsbury Wing because of the upcoming Velasquez exhibition and renamed them the 'Manet to Picasso Exhibition' (ie the stuff we can't take off the walls without crushing expectations with abandon). So for me it was another chance to get up close and canvassy with things I've known for a long time. And confirm, once again, that I really do not like Renoir. I really don't. The guy paints the most insipid, wuss-bag, bleary gimps known to canvas. (Well okay, it seems unlikely that they were actually gimps, but I think you probably understand I'm venting right now). Take, for instance, The Umbrellas, now, I think that the painting on the main figure's dress, and the umbrellas, but especially the dress, is stunning, the modulation in the colours is beautiful, and if I could that bit out and keep it, I'd be very happy indeed. Sacrilegious, and in prison, but happy. But the faces are so SO irritating. Possibly I've just read a little too much about theories of the flaneur and apparently how to look at this work is to put ourselves in the position of the gentleman of the street, checking out the ladies and about to be found out as the gentlman accompanying the young lady is bound BOUND! to follow the girl's gaze and SPROING! find us out for checkin' out da laydees. The kind of tension and drama that only a pre-filmic generation could appreciate. Even watching, say, Shakespeare, for example, and, in, say, Antony and Cleopatra, if there was to be a say, gunshot sound, and you weren't quite expecting it but, for example, happened to be drinking a glass of red wine, an amount of it could then be slopped down one's front. Just as a hypothetical example of what could happen as a response to true narrative tension. I can't imagine anyone at the original Impressionist Salon reacting, beverages akimbo, Mon dieu! Le vin rougue est sur mon shirt! Le tension! J'ai regarde la laydee, et le monsieur! He is about to look AT ME!' So startling you would naturally forget how to speak french and start speaking fluent English! Anyway, most of Renoir's women seem to have the same head, and him going down on the record as a misogynist was never going to endear the man to me.

Anyway. Finally! Saw Van Gogh's Sunflowers, which I think have so much press that seeing them is I think in the same category as the Mona Lisa (althought I'll get back to on that... ): it is so mediated by previous imagery that it is hard to actually see it. But the background is a lot lighter than I expected, and that creates the radiance of the image, rather than the actual sunflowers, which are mangier than I expected them to be. I prefer Van Gogh's Chair though, as the colours in that aren't captured in reproductions, and are a lot more subtle.

The Degas were mixed, as ever with Degas I think - if I was to see a whole room of these I think the tetchy flag would be flying along the lines of Enough with naked bathing chicks already! Leave the house! But they are incredible drawings, and the colours in them are remarkable. Also this, which I've also loved, probably because I tend to see several different shades of red with a touch of black as enough of a palette for anyone, and I love how it teeters on abstraction but still reconciles the form. I had always thought of it as being quite a relaxing picture, but looking at it the other day noticed how much pain the combed girl seems to be experiencing.

Unfortunately the Cezannes are going to be in an exhibition 'Cezanne in Britain' opening two days after I leave London, so I won't see them this time around (but I'm going to have to make time to see the Velasquez as I traverse Engerland, so all is not lost). I'll spare you any further discussion of everything else I saw there.

I left the gallery, and wandered about, pouting, because I had done my looking for the day. Found myself to Borders, found an armchair, and read a book for some hours. I do love the modern corporate bookstore: they are enormous so they have great stuff and their staff don't care if you sit there for hours. And being a massive global chain you know that you will be buying many more books from them, so don't feel too bad for reading their merchandise. But no-one by me Bill Bryson's latest for Christmas okay? It's a lovely light read, but it only takes three hours, so I'm done. Is a good book, a memoir of his early years in 1950s Iowa and the times as they were, parts of which reprise a little too much of his earlier books, and there is a little bit too much of the nostalgia shiny-happy-fifties-glow, but there is also a tale of how his mother once sent him to school wearing his sister's capri pants, and Iowa may have been a simple place in the 1950s, but they recognised when a small child is wearing his sister's pants.

After that I wandered up Edgeware Rd and had dinner at one of the many Lebanese restaurants, which are delicious, the Kebabs in aus will never be the same again, and then I wandered home, playing Fruit Lotto along the way - which is when you buy a piece of fruit you are not familiar with in the hope that it will be your New Fruit Sensation, and eat it to find out if it is. The one I chose is not my new Fruit Sensation, and has left me with a question mark about whether everyone else on that street was thinking 'wow, I've never seen anyone eat one of those raw and/or unpeeled before' because it was a strange fruit.

This morning was a day of some excitement, as I have been seeing quite a few pamphlets advertising 'Open Rehearsal' - which is a weekend in which many of the major music and theatre groups open up their doors for the public to witness their rehearsal. Being a philistine when it comes to classical music - I'm not that eager to go and see a symphony play, let alone rehearse, unless you can guarantee me that the conducter will take a step back off the podium and sprawl inelegantly onto the stage - I, of course, headed for the Globe, where I thought *thought* that I would witness actors preparing a play. I probably should have considered the fact that they are two thirds of the way through the current season, so unlikely to be rehearsing, what with performing at least once a day. So perhaps should have expected to be participating in a workshop. But the description made it sound like a discussion on the theme of Love in Shakespeare, by describing as 'a discussion on the theme of Love in Shakespeare'. Rather than workshops on voice (good, if lacking any sense of direction) followed by one learning a medieval circle dance. Some of you have seen me attempt to perform Nutbush City Limits and watched me reliably go in the opposite direction Every.Single.Time so you can imagine the aptitude I displayed. But it was fun, and I can now crap on about when I danced at the Globe...

Then I went and saw 'In Extremis' - a contemporary play about Abelard and Heloise, which has completely erased the unfortunate telling of that tale using puppets in 'Being John Malkovich' and replaced it with a much better version - hooray! Although I suspect that when the first Globe was there, there was a lot less distraction caused by the flight path.

Bard Day

2006-09-28T20:38:00.000+10:00

Bah! Much to my grumpiness, I was 14 min into writing this post when the computer I was on decided that it had had enough and went foetal. hmphk. So, I reprise:

When last I left you I was halfway through decribing the British Museum... Africa was a definite highlight, as was roaming about the Museum saying 'Africa is downstairs, Islam is over in that corner, Asia is through there and England is upstairs' - a kind of hyper-abbreviated world travel experience. Most people would tire of the amusement provided by this, I, however, am not most people, and it made me giggle the whole time I was there. You must be sad you didn't get to go with me!

Unfortunately the bog body display was shut, which, having to sit through the video at school in year 8, I felt I was entitled to actually see, seeing as I still have a dim recollection of what his last meal was... Anyway, we flitted through Asia, and then to the shop! An excellent museum shop! Lots of books, but lots of fun museum crap that is the junk food of the Educational Experience. Then to lunch, and shopping in Covent Garden - mmm so many shoes!

After that, a brief collapse, then, in sterling decision, to the Diana memorial! There were a few glitches of map reading at this point, largely surrounding the size of Hyde Park, and also some of the fine print. So we walked past the Diana memorial fountain, in the belief that it was just the 'memorial fountain' not the 'Memorial', and not feeling like pausing for reflection beside the trickling waters, in consideration of our bladders. We powered on through the park, ending up somewhere quite different to where I thought we were, and able to fully appreciate the size of the Park, which is, technically speaking, feckin' huge. Then, on to what we thought was 'The Memorial' which turned out to be the 'Princess Diana Memorial Playground' - not quite what we had expected. But very elaborate, very fun, and very closed after 6pm. Make sure you go in daylight, if you are seven years old, and in search of diversion in London. We did get to see the elven oak however. Although it is behind bars, which is sad. No wonder the little elves didn't move very much.

Then it was Thai time, then bed time, then up the next morning to move hotels, (well, hostels, I've downgraded :( ). Then to the V&A! Again! And I still haven't seen all of it. The highlights this time were the William Morris exhibition, the Great Exhibition of 1851 exhibition (ghost of essay past), and sharing with someone the amusement at the faux David's wardrobe.

After that, we collapsed again. I saw My friend from Norway off to meet her flight, then headed off to my new abode in Bayswater. Not feeling like hanging around in the delights of a youth hostel, I decided to collapse at the cinema, and staying near Kensington Palace (which has to be one of the most boring looking excuses for a 'palace' ever: if you are going to be a princess you should at least have turrets! Surely.) I decided it was only appropriate that I should see 'Queen' - Helen Mirren is brilliant as the Queen, I thought that the characters of Charles and Philip were a caricature more than a characterisation, and then I realised that Charles and Philip pretty much are charicatures of themselves in real life, so it was entirely fitting. The same went for Tony Blair too. I was amused by a few of the asides in the film - at one point Tony is striding out of a room and 'Gordon' calls - Tony keeps striding and shouts over his shoulder to tell him just to 'hang on' - don't know if you've seen quite as much press over the tumult regarding the leadership of the government in England, but v. amusing.

Tuesday was Tate Library again, Judas and Thomas v. excited to be sitting down. Library was good, tracked down some exhibition catalogues. Tate library has worst photocopying restrictions in the entire world, and don't let you take photos. Grrr. Anyway, I then rewarded J&T for being good feet, by buying them new shoes, they now have the air cushioned comfort provided by our old friend Dr Marten. Shoes that don't leak!

The next morning I demanded that J&T respond to my kindness by going to see the British art exhibition at the Hayward Gallery - this had lots of stuff from the period that I am interested in, but was largely oblivious to the stuff that I am interested in - but v. good for the larger context. And for the opportunity to see two bmw engines dipped in copper sulphate until they were covered in electric blue crystals - excellent! V. Warhol. And they were having a catalogue sale!

Then, to the Globe! Most excellent, went and saw the 'Comedy of Errors', went for the £5 standing ticket, so had the experience of the original cheap-ticket audience of standing right in front of the stage, under the open sky, surrounded by the thatched tiered seating. Was an excellent performance, they played the farcical elements to the hilt and added some histrionics, v. funny. Enjoyed it so much that my idiocy took hold and I bought a ticket for the evening show of 'Antony and Cleopatra'. Killed some time between them by visiting the Tate next door (mmmm Rothko) and then back for more standing in awe of the Bard. Cleopatra was performed very well, and Caesar also excellent- and especially the moment when during a spot of vigorous drunken dancing Agrippa lost his character and shouted 'OH MY GOD' because he almost clouted the front row of the audience with Caesar.

Anyway, my feet feel that the shoes were a bribe.

Am off to interview someone this afternoon.

further wanderings...

2006-09-26T01:57:00.000+10:00

Since last we spoke I have continued my Foot Torture Tour '06 - Thursday saw me arise to move hotels. Fortuitously my interviewee offered to pick me up on Thursday morning, take me to my new hotel and drop my belongings off at my new abode and thence to an interview location - to this offer I said 'yes' - he suggested the members room at Tate Modern - to this I said 'yes' - and aside from being incredibly helpful with my travelling needs, he was also very interesting to speak to about my research and answered many questions for me. And then I got to take on Tate Modern! Hurrah! More paintings than you can poke a stick at... Including the Rothko room _swoon_ then I returned to the new hotel via St Paul's Cathedral and the Millenium Bridge (which I really like, I enjoy the way it appears to have been slung across the Thames)

Returned to the new hotel, thinking the thought: it would have been wise to pay more attention to where I was going when I was driven to the hotel that morning, so as to remember where it was for later solo discovery, fortunately my hunch was correct and I made it there for the agreed rendezvous with My Friend From Norway, who came to London for a few days to visit London and me. Very good to have someone to talk to at long last, meant that I have spent a lot less time in the past few days composing songs from my feet. We did name them however - my feet are now Judas and Thomas. Not sure what the travel insurance people will say when I explain that one of my feet has attempted to sell me to the authorities for thirty pieces of silver and subsequently, made an attempt on its own life when it became overcome with remorse.

Friday we headed back to the Tate Modern for the Kandinsky exhibition, which was excellently, exceptionally, utterly fantastic. Wassily isn't an artist who we see much of in Australia so this was such a great experience - the exhibition traced the development of abstraction in his work from his early impressionistesque work to his later abstract work - which I think would have made it pretty accessible for people that are kind of intimidated by what the point of abstract art is. And it narrated how Wassily arrived in Paris as a lawyer, soon realised that art was his true purpose in life and so converted immediately - so for some, you know, there might be a lesson in that _smirk_

After that we wandered the city, found some cocktails (blessed be the happy hour! It is truly the hour of happiness!), found Chinatown and found the tube back to our hotel.

Saturday was NerdMecca day: Oxford! We caught the train from London to Oxford and had a wander around the town of Spires, even clambering up the CrazySteep stairs inside the tower of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin to take in the view - if you ever need to make friends when you're in Oxford, climb up those stairs, they are so narrow that to pass anyone going in the opposite direction necessitates the kind of bodily contact that would be counted as marriage in some places. The view is beautiful, and photographically documented to the extent that you should be able to reconstruct the town from my records. We then went to the oldest coffee house in Europe, where I had tea. After that, to the Ashmolean Musuem - happy day! - the fruits of earlier nerds and their travels: I buy pencils and postcards, they "bought" sarcophagi and paintings. Half of it is currently being renovated to expand the exhibition space and so is shut down, which was kind of a relief, I had reached my limit.

Being a university town, we felt it our duty to demonstrate cultural sensitivity to the lifestyle of the inhabitants, and so we took ourselves to the pub, where Judas and Thomas felt better after a nice wheat beer. Train back to London, then Sunday was the big challenge: the British Museum. That place is massive! We compiled a shortlist of the things we felt we absolutely had to see and commenced the mission. The Rosetta Stone was a joy to behold, having read about it forever, and especially as you then got to behold the excessive array of souvenirs that the Museum have plastered the image of the RS all over - the mousemat was my personal favourite, although the backpack was also a bit of a winner - the stone was carved well enough to hang about for thousands of years and enable the decoding of hieroglyphs, you'd be lucky if that backpack lasted out the door of the museum. Anyway, onward through Egypt (my new favourite Egyptian deity: the one with the head of a lion and the body of a pregnant hippopotamus - wow did she luck out when the bodily forms of the deities were being attributed). The carvings were stunning, the simplicity of the forms of Egyptian carved granite statues is beautiful, and a great contrast with.... _drumroll_ the Elgin Marbles / Parthenon sculptures - the marble statues from the Parthenon in Athens brought home by Lord Elgin in a remarkably enterprising feat of domestic decoration - takes a keen mind to look at an ancient ruin and think 'yes, they will look just lovely stuck up on my pile of bricks in England' - and create an elegant diplomatic tiptoe between Greece and England centuries later. Ikea can't claim to do that can they?

Leaving aside the politics, the marbles themselves are amazing, seeing them in-the-marble was fantastic, having looked at photos of them countless times, and the incredible detail of the carvings was such a contrast with the Egyptian sculptures next door.

Then it was off to the Easter Island statue - unfortunately the extent of the Easter Island display, at least in the parts of the museum that we covered - then downstairs to Africa. Africa was great, the display is a great balance between material collected a long time ago and contemporary pieces, some ceremonial pieces (ceramics etc) demonstrating the continuity with the older material, and some contemporary art. My favourite was the Tree of Life - constructed out of firearms that were collected in exchange for practical materials that would help people earn a living, and cut into small pieces, then welded by local artists into a giant sculpture.

My internet connection is failing me, so I'll have to leave you here for the minute...

Mastercard Commercial #2*

2006-09-21T01:49:00.000+10:00

Travel to Victoria & Albert Museum Archives: free

Coffee £1.90

Lunch: £5

Discovering that in the 1940s there was a brand of canned tuna called 'Chicken of the Sea': Priceless

*with acknoledgements to Sarah

The Goat in Shoes

2006-09-19T05:01:00.000+10:00

... is my favourite name for a pub thus far, amid some strong contenders.

You know what's cool? Brompton Oratory. It's cool because its a twelfth century church (the oldest Catholic church in London) that has been continually been used up to the present, and continually had decorations added, creating quite the melange of period styles, AND because Nick Cave wrote a song about it, called, wait for it, 'Brompton Oratory', and now I've been there! Geeky fandom joy! When I first saw it it took me a couple of days to place why I knew the name - no, not because of some art historical or just plain historical awareness on my part, but because I'm a Nick Cave tragic (or connoisseur, if you prefer, as I do).

Since I left you last I have visited Portobello Rd Markets, and Notting Hill in general, as I found the long way there - the ability to retain a mental image of the map you've just looked at is one that I'm growing increasingly desirous of - there were no sightings of Hugh Grant, as, sadly it seems that he choses not to inhabit his fictional characters until I visit them - strange, yet true - but the markets were cool, lots of clothes, antiques, (vintage jewellery.... urragagrrrrh... sorry, just choked on my drool, have cleaned myself up now. Wow is no one going to use this computer after me though). I think I also saw someone famous, don't know who, although he had lovely hair, but the people nearby were whispering to each other that they should go ask if they could take a photo. Possibly they just liked his hair too. Then I went and saw Little Miss Sunshine, don't know if that is on in Australia at the moment, but if/when it is, go see it, funniest movie I have seen in I cannot recall how long. And now that I've said that, there'll be NO chance of it being a let down.

On Sunday I went to Tate Britain, and, being an idiot, I thought I would walk there. I did have a lovely walk up the King's Rd and through an extended Pimlico tour (map memory lack again) but by the time I got there my feet had composed a new song for me, it goes to the tune of 'wind beneath my wings' but they call it 'have we ever told you how we loathe you / you are the burden on our soles' - I think they are going to try and get Bette to sing it and use the royalties to divorce themselves from me. Anyway, some excellent shopping on the King's Road, the best vintage clothing store I. Have. Ever. Seen. And had a shop that has green seude boots *sigh*.

Tate Britain redeemed me for missing the Turner exhibition when it was in Australia a decade or so ago, they have an excellent several-rooms dedicated to him so it gives a great sense of his development as an artist and how he became the best-dang painter of fog there ever has been. The rest of the galleries, aside from their temporary exhibition spaces, give a general overview of British art, with, in my completely balance view point, too much with the Pre-Raphelite Brotherhood, and not enough with the 1950s & 60s. In addition, because there are mostly only paintings displayed, it misses a lot. But it was excellent to finally see this, for example.

Then, in another instance of foot-cruelty and map-ineptitude I floundered my way, via the Thames, to Westminster Cathedral, which isn't particularly attractive (comparatively speaking) on the outside, but on the inside I really like it, as the ceiling is blackened, and very high up, you can't really see it, so it just sort of disappears into nothingness, from which a huge painted wooden crucifix emerges. The Cathedral turns out to be Catholic, which I had never absorbed before, but it does explain the Mystery of Why There Are Two Westminster Churches, beyond my assumed explanation of It is To Confuse Me.

After that I had dinner, and promptly set off in the wrong direction to catch the Tube back to Earl's Court. My feet are working on some harmonies for their song.

Today I had to interview someone over in Camden, so caught the Tube to Regent's Park, walked through there, even taking photos so the Gardening People can enjoy them, and afterwards walked back, taking photos of animals through the fence of the zoo. Didn't think I would take photos of emus while I was in England.

Then, to revenge myself upon my feet for getting Wind beneath My Wings stuck in my head, I decided to walk to the Royal Academy of Art, which I did, via New Bow Street (I think) which had the most £££ label shops I have ever seen on one street before. I feel that my temt shirt stood up beside Prada et al. hem. Anyway, what took me to the Royal Academy was the Modigliani exhibition, which was excellent! I drooled so much I got dehydrated. Metaphorically. I hadn't seen more than one Modigliani piece at a time before, so it completely shifted my appreciation of him to see how his work changed over time, and in response to the different people he painted.

Other obsevations:
More people own dogs in England than I would have expected, had I formed an expectation about this.
It is really hard to buy a sandwich in England that does not involve mayonnaise. Who knew an entire country could all agree on one condiment?
It's difficult to buy almost anything from a shop that isn't part of a chain.
I have clean clothes! I found a laundromat, joy of all joys! Although I now have clean near skinny leg jeans, after the enthusiastic reception they received from the industrial dryer.
The weather is still good!

Mastercard commercial*

2006-09-16T19:44:00.000+10:00

Around the world air ticket: $3500
Accommodation in London: $40ish per night
Looking at a display case in the Natural History Museum that contained an animatronic dinosaur, and overhearing an American tourist ask 'Is it real?': Priceless

*with acknowledgements to Sarah

The muffin man?!

2006-09-16T00:15:00.000+10:00

When I left you last, I was off to walk to the National Gallery: it was 9.30 am. I arrived at the National Gallery at 2.30 pm. There is much danger to trying to walk anywhere without stopping, as any way you look there is tourist joy aplenty - Harrods! Fortuitously did not notice the signs saying no photos allowed:

Seriously, this is the kitschest memorial I have ever seen, its beautiful, so appropriately ghastly.
There is a Krispy Kreme in Harrods too, also distinctly wrong. I do give credit to the Harrods staff though, considering that they have flocks of people constantly gawking & roaming throughout the store, they are very polite. It is a very odd place, so many small rooms that connect to one another but give you no sense of where you are in relation to the outside world. I then went and found some coffee, which is almost ok, but someone really needs to get that concept of the long black out there more: that's two shots of coffee + hot water, not one shot, that just tastes like diluted nothingness. I wandered on through Green Park and St James Park - more squirrels! - found myself on The Mall, and amused, because it isn't in fact, a mall (as in a paved, non-car area - I at least knew that it wasn't a giant shopping centre. Which is another thing I like about London, the strips of shops, rather than air-conditioned barns of sensory death). Found the institute of Contemporary Art, also in changeover, and again the site of interesting exhibitions 50 years ago. Wandered up Regent Street, affectionately discovered Pall Mall, which was nice as it has always been one of my favourite properties to own when forced into playing Monopoly. Up to Picadilly Circus (aptly named), along to Leicester Square, then finally down to Trafalgar Square and the Gallery. Which also had various rooms shut off for changeover, but still enough open for some serious art nerd bliss. Pontormo was a particular standout, the colours were so much more than I had always given him credit for. Rubens lived up to very high expectations, and although the linked image does not capture the colours in the original at all, I'm sure you'll agree with me that that is one of the finest backs in art history.
Unfortunately some of the late nineteenth-century collection is currently being moved so I'll have to back when they rehouse some of the key works by Van Gogh and Cezanne and continue drooling and gurning.

When I tore myself away I decided to head home via Bayswater, so caught a bus in that direction and inteded a gentle stroll the rest of the way. Unfortunately, that rain I had been so happy not to have seen came, and I caught the wrong bus, so I ended up having quite the soggy trudge. Turns out my shoes leak.

The next day I decided it was time that I did something, I had a vague memory of, oh that's right, study, so headed off to the Victoria and Albert Museum for some library time. I do like a nineteenth-century built library, they impart a gravitas which your modern library doesn't have. Some work was achieved, in between dashes around to gawp, - elegantly gawp, but gawp none the less - at the collections there. I found some useful things in their collection, which is nice, having come from the other hemisphere. After library time it was Musical Time - I found a website which does some good deals on lastminute theatre deals, so I had dinner and went to see The Producers. Or rather, look down upon the producers, at the Theatre Royal, in Drury Lane, Covent Garden - which achieved numerous life goals, but two notable ones I will mention here:
1. Every time I considered the address I could replay Shrek in my mind: "The muffin man? The muffin man!? Who lives down Drury Lane?"
2. I saw a show in Covent Garden, so not only have I seen a show in Covent Garden, but whenever the conversation about the Producers comes up I can be all like "Well when I saw the London production..."
Anyway, after passing through the nosebleeds, lack of oxygen, and with the assistance of Nepalese attendants, I found my seat, and was able to make a long study of the hats of The Producers... v. good!
Got home quite late, so have taken it a bit easier today, back to the V&A to get a better look at the collections, and they thoughtfully have a couple of exhibitions pertaining to the 1960s on at the moment, one on fashion, and one on graphics, which is fantastic for me as it includes a lot of the pieces I've been speaking about.
One of my favourite areas in the V&A though is the plaster casts of great works of sculpture, and highly entertainingly, in a display case on the back of the plinth that the enormous David stands on, is the plaster leaf that they used to cover Dave's bits when female royalty came to visit:

The V&A has a truly dangerous gift shop. The kind of place you could just upend into a shipping container and send on home. Actually whole areas of London are like that. Dangerous.

Leaving the V&A I went and had a look at the Natural History museum, more because I thought it would be Good for Me rather than out of any particular desire to, but I got to see lots of dino bones and a stuffed dodo, so it was worthwhile. Another excellent gift shop, with every form of dino merchandise known to small boy.

After that I wandered up to Kensington High Street in search of wifi, so I could share all this with you, dear reader. Aren't you glad?

tally ho chaps

2006-09-13T18:19:00.000+10:00

I arrived in London on Monday, found my hotel in Earls Court (why break with tradition ... although so far I haven't seen a single other of my countryfolk) and a new definition of the word 'dinge'. No wonder the English never used to bathe, if this is what their showers are like.

So many people have told me how much they dislike London (about 15 different people I think), that I wasn't sure what to expect, but so far I really like it. The big difference to my mental image of it is that it is a lot shorter than I thought - not really a surprise when I think of it, but I automatically assume 'big city = skyscrapers' and much of London is under ten storeys which gives it a more open feel than I thought it would have. The weather has also been really nice, I think it was 29 degrees when I arrived and both days since have been in the same vicinity. It has only rained at night so I've thus far missed that pleasure - though I'm sure it will come. There are so many different 'hoods to explore it is very exciting choosing what to do next. When I arrived I wandered around Earls Court and Kensington, was pretty exhausted so collapsed in Hyde Park for awhile, contemplating how badly English 'baristas' need to to spend a season in Sydney, and you know what's nice? Sun! Sun that you can sit outside in without sunscreen - or hats, umbrellas, special vests, products from the Cancer Council in general - and not be fried to a crisp. Might only happen for a short time of the year, but it is rather nice. Yesterday I set out for the National Gallery, and got diverted en route (well when am I not diverted? nay, diverting! ) by a successful attempt to contact friends from home who have been living in Germany and were visiting London, Klaus and Jude, so found myself on the tube to Liverpool St to meet up with them before they went to the airport. Was great to see them and their gorgeous son Ollie - who's grown! So much! And now speaks German!
After that I realised I was in the vicinity of markets! Unfortunately the Old Spitalfields markets are being renovated so there was only a small amount of it open, but they had some nice stuff. Then I went to the Petticoat Lane markets, where there is rack upon rack upon rack of cheap clothing, so plugged a couple of holes in my wardrobe, and as long as I don't do any currency conversions, it was all very cheap. I then headed over the Whitechapel Gallery, but much to my disappointment they are in change-over at the moment, so nothing was open. It was good to see the building at least, as an exhibition they had in 1961 is something that I have been reading about. I managed not to tell the staff that. So exhibition desire thwarted, I headed back onto the tube and got out at Westminster, and had a nice session of slack-jawed tourism. Coming out of the station into harsh sunlight it was quite disorientating, and as I slowly pieced together where I was and what I was seeing The parliament! An enormous bicycle wheel! An enormous clock! OH! THAT's why they call it BIG Ben! Westminster Abbey! The Thames! I joined the throng of people, cameras in hand, and I could see why I had been warned about it being a prime spot for pickpockets, there are that many people wandering around, faces tilted skyward, babbling random historical facts. Evensong started soon at Westminster Abbey, so the church was closed to any more disco-flash sessions, but I decided to go along to the service. The Book of Common Prayer really does sound better when it is spoken in an English accent. And the singing helps. The choir perform beautifully, and there is a sense of awe to be participating in something that had been taking place for such a long time in that building.
After that I wandered through St James Park, squirrels I saw squirrels! and sat and read the paper for awhile, then continued through the park, past the Palace, into Knightsbridge, and wandered back to Earls Court, via dinner, and with feet that felt like slabs of squoosh.
Now I'm going to try and make it to the National Gallery again...

Shafted part b: no point getting shafted without images

2006-09-11T08:56:00.000+10:00

Cornish coast

Penzance, sans Depp
Part of the Levant mine site, tower used to burn by-product of mining to produce arsenic - which is the black substance around the rim of the tower. Children were sent inside to scrape the pure arsenic off the inside, with rags over their faces as an OHS consideration.
Remains of an eighteenth century building, the tiles were part of the hallway of the mine's counting house, which was dismantled as payment for the miners when the mine went out of business, still owing the miners their pay.

Getting shafted

2006-09-11T00:33:00.000+10:00

Going on an excursion to a mine was something I had thought I probably would not do between the ages of, ooh, 11 and 65, but nonetheless I found myself on the Levant mine bus trip... from the university to the Levant mine the drive took about an hour, and was worth it on its own as it gave us a chance to see the Cornish scenery - endless mine shafts, hedges, farms, stone walls, villages aplenty, rolling hills.
The conference organiser provided us with commentary, and a short history of Cornwall, along the way - along with torturous asides: the pub on the left is one of the few in England that brews its own beer on the premises, the thirteenth century church on the right is one of the only ones to survive the Reformation with its original wall paintings intact - and the bus would keep on driving right past, as we had a mine to get to...
The Levant mine was operational from Roman times until the 1980s, and is unique for its mine shaft which goes straight down, and then out underneath the sea bed - unfortunately earlier miners did not realise that the sea floor sloped down 100 metres off the coast or so, so that created a few problems for them at one stage. The mine is now maintained by National Trust volunteers who run the tours, and were nigh on devastated that we were only there for an hour, as apparently one can't fully appreciate the mine in all its glory in under two and a half hours. To be honest an hour took me to my limit of clambering about on a hillside in gale force winds and up and down narrow staircases examining mine openings and machinery. In years past miners began work at the age of nine, and were lucky if they lived to forty. It took at least two hours from the top of the mine to the face, which was when they started to be paid - those of you that have to commute a fair way to work might be at least heartened that it doesn't require you to climb 150 ladders en route. Some miners used to stay down in the mine for several days at a time to avoid having to climb in and out and walk home. Pit ponies were taken into the mine by tying their legs together and lowering them into the mine upside down, and they would stay in the mine for the rest of their working life - when they were taken out of the mine and put out to pasture they would be blind.
After our bracing lesson in mining history we were taken to a local pub for a cornish cream tea *note: VERY different to the vastly inferior devonshire tea - or so we were told* I have to say cornish scones are a thing to behold. When we got back on the bus it was discovered that one of our party was missing, and after frightening visions of the first Australian casualty to Cornish mining, it was discovered, via the local fish and chip shop, that someone matching their description had caught the bus to Penzance. So we decided to take the coachload and go in pursuit, and see if we could meet him in Penzance. At which point I deduced the following:
Penzance = Pirates
Pirates = Johnny Depp
Therefore: I am going to see Johnny Depp!
He didn't seem to be around however. Or maybe he was just feeling shy.
Our intrepid traveller had not arrived either, so after enquiries of bus drivers, we returned to the campus, where thankfully, he was awaiting us, having managed to beat us back to the site.
The conference dinner was the night before, another display of how the university catering, while being lovely people, have not encountered advances in catering since about 1975 (one of the lunches featured, brace yourself, cottage cheese and pineapple), they have however discovered the wines of Chile, and for that I thank them. I ended up on a table with the university provost, and much to the delight of me and another delegate, we got to grill him and his wife about the Queen's recent visit - I'm not much of a royalist, but it was bizarrely fascinating hearing all the details about protocol and the experience of the Royal Couple.
This morning I presented my paper, which I think went well, was a relief to get it done!
The conference is over, all bar the drinking, which is my cue to bid you farewell for the moment - I'll be heading to London tomorrow, and probably won't be writing quite so much when I don't have internet in my room... but hey you never know.

Your 'Wall Correspondent

2006-09-10T04:32:00.000+10:00

'tis a strange thing to come halfway around the world to sit in generic conference rooms with your countryfolk, discussing your country, and then to emerge outdoors and be reminded 'I'm in England'. But I do feel that I have been engaged in an intensive Cornwall studies program: the Cornish migration to Australia, Cornish primary industries, Cornish economics, Cornish mining etc and so on, are all things that I've learnt about in the past few days.

And now you get to as well!

With regard to my previous remark that the university seemed unprepared for my arrival, and the supplies of coffee seem barely humane, let a lone adequate, there has been some explanation for this state - this campus has only been open for two years, and this is the first international conference held here. For this latter reason in particular we've had a very warm welcome - both from staff around the campus, as well as the Provost, and even from the local MP.

The conference is being held at the University of Exeter's Cornwall campus, which is part of the Tremough campus of the Combined Cornwall University (or something like that... ). The campus is shared by the university and a range of other higher education bodies in Cornwall. Until this opened there was no university in Cornwall, the only English county not to have one. Because of the collapse of fishing and mining in Cornwall the economy was one of the poorest in Europe. An application was made to the EU to help fund the university, as a project to stem the flow of 19-31 year olds out of Cornwall. In the past two years there has been a net increase of this age group, after twenty years of the reverse. I was very surprised that the EU granted funding to individual counties, not whole countries. Apparently there has not been universal rejoicing from the English government, but as the funding was granted solely for this purpose there was nothing they could do, and so had to accept. The university is now in its second stage of building, having already opened a large block of teaching and resources as well as the student residences.

Tremough is the original name of the estate, and the 17th century house has been adapted into offices for some of the universities faculties. The main building is fairly odd looking, once the comparision with a giant nougat has been made there is no going back. It incorporates stone from the original stables on the site, which were too structurally unsound to keep. The top of the building is covered with plants and grasses, so an from an aerial view the impact of the buildings on the landscape is minimized (http://www.uec.ac.uk/virtualtour/broadband/3.htm). A lot of recycled or renewable material has been used in the buildings, as well as materials and design that seems to be trying to maintain a sympathy with traditional cornish architecture (motto: We Love Slate! Almost as much as We Love Granite!).

Houses, Penryn, Cornwall

Student residences, Tremough

Translated from Cornish, Tremough means pig farm.

The First Photo

2006-09-09T00:57:00.000+10:00

Down by the Mudfront, Penryn, Cornwall

The first photo I've taken on my little venture, and already it isn't the last.

orright luv?

2006-09-07T21:09:00.001+10:00

Lunched with the ladies at noon on Tuesday, who then deposited me at the airport for the flight to Sydney - on an aircraft that inspired the thought 'So this is what it feels like to be inside an insect.' Enjoyably named a 'de Haviland' - evoked images of the 1940s and phrases such as 'just going to pop in the de Haviland for a jaunt to Paris' - and the aircraft evoked the possibility that it may have been doing just that in the 1940s.
Flew out of Sydney at 5pm-ish, 7 hour trip to Singapore, apparently a time frame that requires two meals and numerous snacks. Tiny little softdrink cans - fun! Half an hour off the plane in Singapore, proof that airport terminals are basically identical - except that there are less semi-automatics draped over precision-groomed police officers in Aust and NZ. It was about 1.30 am according to my body clock, leading to an almost incident, but I fortunately quelled my desire to yell 'puppies!' and pet the sniffer dogs. Funny how the most ornamental looking dogs are the ones that have the best sense of smell. Or maybe just the precision-groomed officers wouldn't take anything less.
Back on the plane for another meal - it had been about 2 hours since we'd had a meal after all. Strange how noodles aren't food that can be prepared in advance and retain their appetising features. My new all-time favourite piece of technology is the seat-back entertainment console - have gotten myself up to date on films: Over the Hedge (don't bother, digital animation is not enough of a novelty anymore to justify having no plot. Apparently if it's digital you don't need an editor either.), Thank you for Smoking (enjoyed very much, see it), Jindabyne (v. good, although would have been a lot better on the big screen rather than the 5 inch screen), Friends with Money (a deeply bad film, I didn't make it to the end, one more minute of Jennifer Anniston and her cat's-bum-pout was going to make me attempt strangulation, and I don't think the guy in front of me would have appreciated it), RV (standard family-road-trip comedy, apparently Robin Williams is the new Chevy Chase, amusing moments). There was also a good range of tv and music on the system - arriving in London I was listening to George's polyserena which was launching me into a flashback of Sharehouses past and a strange desire to eat tuna pasta...
My knowledge of geography turns out to still be crap, flying somewhere at night I was peering out the window thinking 'so that's germany' only to consult with the flight path and discover, ah, now, that's Russia. Which really is large, everytime I look at a map I'm always surprised by it. Anyway, touched down at glorious Terminal 4 at Heathrow, which seems to be aiming for a 'East Germany circa 1975' feel to its décor. And succeeding. Had a happy moment of 'now which passport should I choose', - very international, continental even, don't you think? - went for the EU as the line was shorter, managed to get through Heathrow onto a train in about 30 min which was a whole lot better than what I was expecting. Got a train to Piccadilly, at about which time my exciting, high-pitched, and fortunately suppressed, squeals started: 'oooh Picadilly! a Tube station! They really do say 'mind the gap' a lot! a stall selling Paddington bear merchandise! a Bobby! wearing a hat! They actually wear those, not just on the Bill! Actually there seems to be about 75 Bobbies! A marks and spencer!' Had an hour to kill before my train left so wandered around a bit, briefly outside the station, again with more squeals: 'Huh, London, so you do exist, and this is you! Buses, red ones! Black cabs!' Since I arrived I have also been truly appreciating just how many english accents there are, and just how amusing so many of them sound.
Catching the train down to Cornwall ended up taking about 6 hours, which was rather entertaining having not slept for quite sometime, but probably the best way to avoid sleeping and creating the jet lag of death, and it kept me in the right frame of mind to continue my high pitched squealing (internal still): cows! black faced sheep! a duck pond! Oddly, it turns out that those plastic farm animal sets I played with as a child that had cows, sheep, ducks, geese, tufts of grass, stone walls, fences etc turn out not to be an idyllic recreation of farm life past but a highly accurate scientific representation of contemporary farming in the South West of England.
There's was also lots of Green! Very very Green! They weren't kidding about that. And when I told someone later they responded with a shocked But we're having a drought! Ah huh, the kind of drought that doesn't involve loss of Green.
Anyway, it turns out the conference venue is kind of like having a conference in say, suburban Hornsby, and not giving people any directions of how to get there. Anyway, I got a cab from the tiny train station I was directed to, and this led to another of my English discoveries. You know all those shows set somewhere in a small town in the UK or Ireland and feature our two fetching heroes, whose sexual tension motivates the plot, and are surrounded by an array of quirky personalities? Turns out they're documentaries, those poeple exist. My cab driver proved this to me by being exuberantly barking: mouth full of teeth going in festively different directions, driving like a lunatic while loudly abusing other drivers, asking me where I was from and sharing that 'Now of all the places, Australia is one that I've never wanted to go to.' Goood, thanks for sharing. Then we got distracted, because, as he explained, 'OF ALL THE FECKIN EEJIT THINGS TO DO I'VE MISSED THE TURN OFF, WHAT KIND OF FOOL DOES THAT, I KNEW THIS ROAD IS BLOCKED OFF NOW WE'LL HAVE TO DRIVE RIGHT THE WAY 'ROUND, JESUS WHAT A FOOL I AM' Anyway, he gave a discount, amusement, and a short tour of Penryn, so I had no problems. Perhaps if I hadn't been so sleep deprived I would have transcended amusement into some level of fear.
Something like 38 hours after the ladies lunched, I arrived at the university and found a level of disengagement that was quite surprising - there was no one really around other than the staff who gave me my room key, and meal ticket and vague directions - this is where your room is, show the ticket to the poeple at the servery for food' - ah, where's the servery? is there dinner tonight? No. Is there food anywhere nearby? No, you'll need to catch the bus to falmouth. But they did make me come out the back so they could demonstrate close up how the window latch works. Thank goodness. I found my room, which is nice, and had one my most favourite showers ever.
In a feat that was quite spectacular I managed to miss three successive buses into town, which turned out to be a blessing as I ran into someone looking equally lost, and wearing a shirt with wattle on it, which alerted me to her nationality and likely reason for looking lost in Cornwall - so I showed her where she needed to be and then we joined forces for the trip to Falmouth. An entertaining bus ride, as apparently my cab driver from earlier on at some stage taught this bus driver to drive. Nothing like tiny narrow cobble stone streets and a bus driver who apparently drives as though there is a voice in his head saying Be the wind! Fly! Let your spirit free!
Falmouth is a tiny town, and a source of more internal shrieking Cobblestones! Swans! Wooden boats! Old things! Old! Look how old they are! We shortly found ourselves inside an English pub, a real one, you know, where the beams aren't hollow and the builders must have been five feet tall: 'ach no, why would anyone need more than a six feet high ceiling, preposterous.' Dutifully I forewent the tempting prospect of Fosters on tap and somehow convinced myself to try a local ale (v. good), then we went for food, and apparently I'll order anything that has 'Cornwall' in the title, food was nice, over looking the harbour, a very nice redemption of what was looking like a dire evening otherwise.
I am slowly coming to terms with the Cornish accent and refraining from smirking everytime someone speaks.
Discovered where the servery was this morning, and the bad news I have found the only university in the entire world (from my core sample of Aust, NZ and Cornwall) where there is NO espresso, or indeed any non-instantaneous variety of coffee. It's going to be an interesting few days.

I am here.

Munch

2006-09-01T11:50:00.000+10:00

Yeah! The Scream is home in time for me to visit it in Oslo!

New Zealand

2006-08-26T13:56:00.000+10:00

In possibly an obsessive quest to create the full record of my nerd-related ventures, this is the freshly-spruced and edited account of my trip to New Zealand earlier this year, from the emails I sent. But now with pics!
This photo I took while waiting for the bus out of Auckland. And that was the day when the weather was *good*.

Friday 9 June 2006
Auckland

Thanks for all the messages asking how things have been going, especially those of you I forgot to put in my initial email, and was then shamed when you remembered to sms me... the initial email is below, so read backwards if you want my trip to unfold before you in all its glory in chronological order.

I arrived in Auckland last night, having caught the train from Wellington, which was one of the better decisions I have made, the service being set up well for tourists - the carriage was basically a fish tank, so you are able to fully appreciate the scenery unfold before you for the 12 hours it takes, a kind of silent documentary of a changing landscape. Except when it is overlaid by the increasingly amusing commentary; mostly it was of the sort "and to your right you will see the river x, this viaduct [a great word for the NZ accent to surmount] we are crossing was built in 1930, it is 42 metres high and 87 metres across', this was occasionally interrupted by some truly interesting, yet bizarre facts - 'The town of Tahape is famous for its gumboot throwing competition on the Tuesday after Easter, on your left you will a large sculpture of gumboot, commemorating this" - what was odd that I swear there were people beside the track practising - SMALL town. The town of Fielding was one of my favourites, having won NZ's tidiest town competition 12 out of 14 times; their tidy town improvement committee have gone to the effort of painting a large mural beside the railway line, of a steam train, seen from a low point of view to magnify to the glory of the steam age, so we just see the mid-section of the people standing close to the "camera", and then the full figures of people as they get closer to the train. This has the delightful result of meaning that the person closest to the spot from whence our gaze emanates is just an enourmous close-up of a man's buttocks, fortuitously trousered. Does lead one, or at least when is mid-way through 11 hours in the company of one's own thoughts, to ponder the commited members of the tidy town committee painting said mural, and what their thoughts may have been as they assiduously applied tonal modelling to said feature, vis a vis, civic improvement.
Mount Ruapehu
My second favourite commentary moment was when the announcer said in that special commentator's way, of wordsallrushedtogetheratthebeggingofthesentencebefore sliiiiiding to a haaaalt, was when he was once again giving us the vital stats on a viaduct - this high, this long and so forth - and then launched into the story of how due to a mudslide upriverintheyearsuchand
such,theviaductwasweakenedandsowhen
theaucklandservicetravelledontothebridge
itgavewayandsent151peopleplummeting
to their deeeatths.
He footnoted this tale by mentioning there is now a sensor up stream to prevent this from happening again, but my brain was already "too late, uh uh, sorry buddy, can't mention the sensor at the END of the story, I've already visualised the
mad-dash-across-the-river-to-Rivendell-scene-while-
the-enchanted-waters-rise-rise-AND-RISE-ANDIAMNOTRIDINGAMAGICALPONY".
Forunately, internally.

The service came to a surprise halt an hour or so out of Auckland, which turned into a substantial pause, and then a prolonged wait. And then we were told that there was a gas leak further up the line, so that we would be ehre for a sustained, unknown period. Fortunately they cleared up the gasleak, so we avoided the transformation into a burnt-out-husk danger, and were able to proceed, a mere three hours late. 15 hours was a little longer than optimal, but none the less, a fine time was had, and I'm not in Wellington anymore.

Have still not seen hobbits.

Am off in search of archives.

ps. favourite words when used by new zealanders: "mince", "fifty" [they say fuffty! is very amusing! in some parallel life I'm going to get one of those big hairy sheepdogs from the bristol paint commercials and name him fuffty]

Sent: Tue 6/06/2006 5:28 p.m.
Wellington

Wellington is somewhat better today, have spent the day at the archives of Te Papa and I found a good café – that serves Organic Honey Cola – Oh Yes. The youth hostel improved when I realised they give you breakfast, but I'm still not loving my new found talant for picking hostels at the top of hills that I then have to lug my sorry butt up to at the end of each day... and then up to the third floor... Today’s research proved very exciting, I found installation shots of an exhibition in 1966 that I have been researching, and have made a time to someone who knew the artist.

I re-visited Te Papa, and got a much better sense of how it fits together, and the logic of the architecture. The ceiling is sort of like the upturned hull of a wooden ship, with a central spine running from the front of the building to back, the exhibition galleries on each floor are on either side of this with connecting walkways. This results in a central space that is the height of all four floors. Which would be better if it didn’t have random neon signs trying to excite the kiddies about which ever exhibition is aimed at their tiny minds [yep still bitter], but is still a great space to be in. This also means that you can at least glimpse the giant enlargement in glass of the Treaty of Waitangi, the foundation of Anglo and Maori relations in New Zealand. The display about which is great, with different translations of the document’s original Maori version and the English version explain how there were some subtle, but very significant differences, in how the Maori leader’s would have understood the proceedings.

The museum has some excellent displays, largely exactly what you’d expect – Maori culture and traditions, early pioneers, etc. An amusing moment is in the display about the early voyage by ship to New Zealand which quotes from some of the diaries and letters written onboard, one of which delightedly records the sighting of dolphins. And their subsequent capture and frying in butter.

My only lasting gripe about Te Papa is that it is both the National Museum collection and the National Gallery collection, which due to either a conference or the Lord of the Rings exhibition, wasn’t displayed. It is a shame to have a national collection of art that gets displayed at the mercy of other exhibitions. There was a nice overview exhibition, but it was in the context of a museum collection rather than a dedicated art collection, so the aims and results were different to what I would have liked. And on LoTR – can we move on? How long must we pander to the overcoated, becrystalled adolescents and their obsession?

Next stop... noodles! yay for cambodia! [I didn't get the noodles, the restaurant was booked out, leaving me with a lasting yearn]

Sent: 05/06/2006 01:05
Subject: There's nothing scarier....

... than an airline that provides four sickbags to every person. I mean seriously, what message are they trying to send with that? This morning I got up at 4.30am. I watched the sun come up on a plane, and arrived in Wellington at 8am. At this point I began to get grumpy. I don't like Wellington. I'm sure if I wasn't so tired it'd be morepleasant.... no, actually, even if I wasn't so tired my hostel wouldn't bemore pleasant and the architecture of this town would be just as shiny inall its 70s hell glory. Seems that Wellington and Sydney shared some ofthe same city planners.
Extravagantly bad oui?

Today is a public holiday, also a cause for grumpiness, because 70 percentof Wellington apparently needs to sit quietly today and think queenlythoughts, except for the children, all of whom were taken to Te Papa, the NZ national museum, and instructed that this was the place to run aroundscreaming, and to scream especially loudly if they saw a woolly-hatted, baggy-eyed, death-staring Australian trying to appreciate their national heritage whilst wishing ill upon the citizens that inherited it. Despite its patrons, it’s a great museum, that the National Museum of Australia should be but isn't quite. And it manages to use "wacky contemporary museum" architecturewhilst being sympathetic to the landscape, rather than appearing like agiant childcare centre, as does our NMA. Although clearly if it did thenit would be more honest about what it is like inside, wading through 1000sof tiny sprites.Anyway, thanks for letting me vent, not that you have much choice.Dunedin on the other hand, was quite lovely, nice old buildings, many cafesand bars of interest (unlike the cafe that I was in in Wellinton thismorning, which served a girl at the table next to me her smoked salmon andcream cheese on a FRUIT bagel... and she ATE it... so clearly the cafesaren't being in encouraged to behave properly... my coffee was drinkable,but my roast mushrooms arrived in a cream sauce, and that made me sad).And grumpy.Christchurch was nice, although don't eat at Valentinos pizza if you arethere - apparently there's no need to really cook ingredients on a pizza,as it is much nicer if you get to crunch through massive hunks of capsicum. Christchurch art gallery is quite fine. I thought Christchurch had made some architecture mistakes, until I arrived in Wellington.

Am having fun, and so on, is nice to have finally left Australia. Tone ofthis email does not reflect tone of overall experience!

ps they weren't kidding about the number of sheep in this country.

Sent: Friday 2 June 2006
Subject: New Zulland

Words that sound better (or just more amusing) when said by new zealanders:

metamorphosis
suggest
him
dialectic
hoody

and to paraphrase sarah:

bus to Dunedin: $40
conference fee: $89
accom: $120
someone who can use the word coterminous in a sentence but can't pronounce Don Juan: priceless

So, Christchurch is extremely flat, its art gallery is in the style of 'contemporary gallery international' which seems to be emerging from Bilbao, to Melbourne, to well, Christchurch, its collection is good, and thoughtfully presented. The Canterbury Museum was thoroughly entertaining, still making substantial use of the diorama, and dedicating the ‘gallery of the first peoples and the moa bird’, to the first settlers, and yes, the moa bird. Did you ever think you'd encounter something that was dedicated to an extinct species? I did not. But I'm sure the spirits of moa (stumpy, oversized emus) appreciate it.

View from my room in Dunedin....
I heart Dunedin