Cold rain down on my face, buses hurry on... Work's out, here comes the race... People heading home...

So we are now officially past the halfway mark of winter but this is absolutely no guarantee of warmer happier weather in approximately 45 days.

I miss the warm sun... it feels like forever since she went away...

I even miss the 16 degree days and the 12 degree evenings... we are barely making it to double digits these days

This week we celebrated (or rather, commiserated) the coldest week in years... it rained and it hailed and it snowed (nearby) and the wind, oh dear god, the wind... such a cruel, bone numbing, brain freezing wind.

Waaaaaaaaaaaah... I feel awful... after weeks of subjecting my poor body to its usual rituals of cold drinks and harsh smokes, the added inevitable exposure to the elements courtesy mother nature in all her winter glory, has made my body screech to a grinding halt and scream enough is enough... you are now going to pay in slow, excruciating pain for what you put me through on a weekly basis and which I normally take with nary a complaint!!

The worst part is, this is like the calm before the storm... so I'm rather concerned about what's going to happen after this weekend... since Sunday night, I've had this severe pain in my sinus area and some desultory sniffling from the nose but no disgusting yellow phlegm or horrible pain in the throat which is always the harbinger of that most dreaded of winter afflictions, the mighty throat infection and flu requiring trips to the bathroom every 2 minutes to spit out all the phlegmy mucous and self-prescribed antibiotic tablets all the way from India every 6 hours. But anyway, all that I can deal with... it's awful and it sucks for about 4 days but then I'm always well on the road to recovery. This time, I feel like crap, I'm nowhere near 100% and yet, I have none of the usual cold, flu symptoms except for the heavy head and occasional drippy nose. But if I like do something, like walk from the couch to the kitchen or from work to home, it totally exhausts me which is why I know I am not 100%. So anyway, I am not medicating myself and have been waiting for improvements hopefully the whole week but absolutely nothing has changed since Sunday night and I am almost looking forward to the excesses of the weekend to act as the catalyst to bring on the storm... this false lull I just cannot handle anymore!

What a full weekend I have in store for me also... I have a work cocktail thing tonight and it's very unnecessarily black tie so I have to wear one skimpy cocktail dress now in the middle of winter... if I am not drowning in my own phlegm by Monday, but still feeling sick, I will be very very concerned. Tomorrow night, two housewarming parties to hop between and both are at some opposite corners of the world but such logistical issues will never deter such a hard core part"ier" as me... in the middle of all this recovering from tonight's hangover, getting wasted and party hopping, I must absolutely make it to Borders sometime tomorrow to pick up my new Harry Potter book. I pre-ordered of course but I fear if I go too late, I will miss out on the complimentary stuffed owl Hedwig... hehe! And also, I must make some time to read the damn book this weekend although I will fully savour the book and not read as fast as I can just to get to the end so by Monday, I will probably be the only one who has no idea who is going to die and will have to avoid all media like the plague because already the spoilers are spilling out in the thousands! I do not expect a non-Harry Potter person to get why this is a big deal at all. As much as I will miss the magical Harry Potter world, I read a rumour that next she is going to start writing mystery novels... sniff... my favouritest genre ever... good god, she will kick ass! And to round off this Harry Potter week of mine, I went to the movie last weekend at IMAX because the last 20 minutes had some 3D action... the movie was ok, couldn't come close to the book, but who really cares, Harry Potter is Harry Potter. The 3D was pretty lame.

Then, I'm trying to think if anything of great import happened to me since the last time I posted... I don't really think so... just the usual weekend shenanigans... ooh, one Sat night, we played poker and I kicked ass... we played with money for a change and I doubled my initial $10 kitty. Then, last Sat night, we went clubbing... just the weekend before I had noted that it had been a while since I had gotten to one of my total wasted stages where I am heaps of fun to be around but chances are I will not remember a thing the next day. So that was last Sat night... it could account for my feeling ill this week too!

Add to that, the weather is totally getting me down and there ain't no silver lining in sight... severe case of the winter blues... the fun weekend will hopefully drive them away temporarily!

Cold rain out on the street, I am all alone
With cold rain down on my face
I am heading home

Happy Anniversary to Me... Happy Anniversary dear So Called Life... Happy Anniversary to Me

I would now like to congratulate myself on one continous year of blogging... even if I have been averaging only about 2 posts per month, at least I have every single month since June last year on record. I look at my 2005 archive and it shows 65 posts... how on earth?! I must've been super freakin' jobless... especially considering the average length of my posts and it was only over a period of 6-7 months. This last year, I haven't even reached half that. Anyway, we have reached the end of one month of winter and it has been horrific... I am ready to kill myself... really... it hasn't been this cold in June the last few years... too depressing!

On the work front, I moved to a different client and project 2.5 weeks ago and that has accounted to my slackness in updating but it has been great working here compared to my old project. Probably another 2.5 weeks here before I move on to the next client.

On the personal front, last time I touched briefly on the citizenship thing so to elaborate, yeah, after two years and some of being permanent residents we were eligible to take up citizenship so we did! I still have to apply for my Australian passport and then I have to get one of them Overseas Citizens of India cards and I believe I have basically lost my right to vote in India which I never gave a shit about anyway but now have to vote here or you get fined and stuff so that'll be rather annoying although I think they have online ballots and all which should be convenient. The ceremony was ok... we took a pledge of committment and then our names were individually called out to receive our certificates and I was on the edge of my seat waiting for my name and of course when it was called, I almost tripped and fell because my heel had gotten tangled in my handbag strap but made it to the stage and off without incident. Then we all sang the National Anthem which is not that hot an anthem and we were given native plants which I have promptly killed with neglect as always. The citizenship interview that we went for before all this ceremony jazz was actually funnier because they just look over your application and you have to mug up these rights and duties of being an Australian citizen and we mugged and mugged on our way there and since we both went in together, we were competing with each other to give the right answers when the officer asked us for them. Anyway, I really don't like at it as a betrayal of the motherland because the motherland will always be home but at the same time, this country in all it's 'bogan'ness (Australian slang for red neck type people) and 1980's atmosphere has taken me into it's warm embrace and for that I will always love it.

Then what else has happened... a good friend has left to work in the UK and travel around Europe for 2 years so that was a bit of a bummer... he's been our friend since our first day in Australia and we've had some fun times. It's not fair that I should bid goodbye to people and move to another country and start from scratch to build something similar to what exists at home and then people should go and ruin it by bidding goodbye themselves. Ah well... we now have accomodation in the UK!

So there were a couple of smashed as farewell parties... at one of them, we booked a karaoke room for 2 hours and they said we could hang out longer since no one else had booked it so we hung out for 4.5 hours in total and sang for all that time. It was really insane... I've never karaoked like that in my life. At the end, the departing couple (she's actually still here for another couple of months) gave prizes to best female and male singers. I won female which if I hadn't, deep down I would've been most upset... haha... but the prizes were these awful naked men and women playing cards. The naked men are sitting on my coffee table... they look super freakin' fake though!

Then, I've been for a couple of shows in the last week... last Sat night, we went to Cirque du Soleil - Varekai... it was unbelievable. Cirque du Soleil is this global company of human circus performing artists and they perform crazy as acrobatic stunts on ground and in the air and tell a story at the same time... some great music too. It was very unique and breathtaking. Then on Tue night, I went to watch a production of the musical Miss Saigon. It's about an American GI who falls in love with a Vietnamese 'woman of the night' just before the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War. It was tragically beautiful... some great songs!!

My gig calendar for 2007 has been pretty good so far and I've still got a few shows to go. At the beginning of the year, watched Roger Waters live in concert and Snoop Dogg, Beastie Boys and various other artists and DJs at a music festival. This month was these two shows. In August, I've got Bob Dylan... I hope he plays the songs I know and love. And in September I've got Steely Dan whose music I've got to get more familiar with and a production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera which is my favouritest Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.

So that's been it pretty much... weekend ahead to look forward to. Oh, also went wedding dress shopping and that was pretty overwhelming. Most are Cinderella type with these fairytale stiff skirts with hundreds of layers and we were joking how my fiance could hide under there at the wedding and light up a spliff and hotbox it... it would also create this fantastic smoke effect of me walking down the aisle! Anyway, I don't think I'm going down that path so will have to keep looking.

Until next time and the next year of blogging, adios!

You’ll say we got nothing in common, no common ground to start from and we’re falling apart. Then I said what about Breakfast at Tiffanys...

Gee whiz… when things happen, they happen all at once. And sometimes nothing happens at all… like I think I was bemoaning nothing happening in like Feb and then suddenly life became hectic in March and we’re already at the end of April? Did time fly so when I was a child? I don’t think so really… what was life after all but a school timetable and weekends… so now its work and weekends but somehow it flies… I guess, cos there is no timetable. Well whatever, I have lots of updating to do on this blog. The real reason I continue to maintain this blog at all (with everyone on the blogroll being so slack at updating) is so I have a record of my life to look back on in one, two, five, ten, thirty years… it’s amazing the little things one forgets that one never expected to forget but forgot anyway, so the blog helps greatly. I wish I’d had a blog before I left India… I mean, I used to write stuff in a journal before I left India but it’s not the same as recording life events on a blog because a blog is public and a journal is private and I got over ‘Dear Diary, I did this and this and that between 3:00 and 5:00 pm today’ by age 12. So this blog is more like a dear diary in the sense of ‘Dear Diary, I went to x parties this weekend and got wasted at x of them…’ and then I can read these entries at some later point in my life when my life isn’t all that happening and then I can feel nostalgic for the good times and may want to kill myself at being reminded of a better time, but who knows… it may indeed only ever get better (but I doubt it).

So if you’re still reading, I left off at the long weekend holiday? The weekend that followed was meant to be really quiet because of the wild holiday weekend but it ended up that a friend and I met for a quiet drink or two at 5:30 pm on a Friday evening at this delightful bar along my one-and-only-close-to-my-heart Yarra river… by 8:00 pm, we had grown to 12 people and maybe 5 rounds down. And of course, that’s when we should’ve stopped and just GONE HOME. But of course we didn’t and of course we partied on and eventually I think we got home at 3:00 am. This is the trouble with Fridays – you always start off so early because it’s straight after work and sometimes it gets out of freaking control. It was an awesome night though – lots of laughs and tram and China Bar incidents! China Bar deserves a post of its own – it’s a mildly dodgy Chinese fast food place that doesn’t have a liquor licence but serves you Victoria Bitter beer anyway and I’m not a fan of Asian food but I don’t mind going to China Bar once in a while and eating the roti channai, which is like roti and chicken curry but I really couldn’t handle the place in my soberness and so most times we go there when we’re smashed and do crazy things like sing the Indian National Anthem. The rest of the weekend should’ve been quiet, but again, it wasn’t! I think I ate off our friend’s bbq for all meals beginning on Sat afternoon until Sun evening because Sat night he brought it over to our place and I actually spent a pleasant quiet evening by myself watching a Poirot whodunit on TV and then Sun afternoon, we had a tiny bbq partaay to watch the Australian Grand Prix on TV. The race was great, except for Ferrari winning of course. But how awesome is that young little Lewis Hamilton??!! So sweetly and talentedly he’s made it to the podium also every race since.

Then there was a week of work as usual but I do believe a few of us went out to dinner to a fancy schmancy Sri Lankan place that Thursday night and I finished almost an entire bottle of wine so was decidedly seedy the next morning at work. I was meant to go lawn bowling that evening with work but decided to give it a miss and went home to rest and I think slept for 12 hours+ that night. The next day I woke up well refreshed to find out India was pretty much out of the World Cup… Mr. Moonlight had stayed up most of the night to watch the match so was decidedly seedy that day and I convinced him to have an afternoon nap since we were going out that evening although at the time I was clueless about the things in store for me later that night. So then I did many household chores being in a domestic mood and expecting houseguests on the Monday and so forgot to wake him up and he was fully panicked about being late to this thing we were going to which was apparently some work friend of his party type thing. I of course never panic because I am never on time to anything ever! So I was done with my shower and hanging out in the bedroom and cutting my nails I think when I hear him on the phone outside trying to make a dinner reservation??!! So when he comes in I’m like, what’s the deal with the dinner reservation, I thought we were going to a party and he’s all, oh what are you talking about… very lame attempt at covering. But so anyway, I sorta fully guessed then that he was going to propose to me that night because well, I don’t know, I just knew. And then we sat in the car and he played a CD he’d burnt that day and the first song was Penny Lane and that was sooo funny and sweet and typical of him and just confirmed it. The rest of the songs were all the other songs we’ve considered our own over the years… there was Sweet Child of Mine, Can’t Help Falling in Love, She, Annie’s Song, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Strangers in the Night, and then he drove us to this stretch of road along the Williamstown beach where the waves dash against the embankment and there’s a lighthouse and everything and then on the way he pretended he was making up this poem and would give me two new lines every two minutes but really he’d composed it earlier and had to improvise anyway since he forgot half of it and it was just really funny and sweet because by now I was fully certain of what was coming. The reason for the beach was because we first met at the beach all those years ago (7 years and some months to be precise) at that wonderful rendezvous of our youth, EC-41… Then once we’d parked he proposed and got out of the car and got down on his knees and put the ring on my finger! Ah, the ring… the most fabulous exciting bit to any engagement and mine is absofuckinglutely stunning… I love it… it’s a half carat diamond in a platinum setting and it’s from Tiffanys cos Audrey Hepburn style, I’m just craaaazay about Tiffanaaays! Tiffanys has a special significance in our relationship because right from the beginning we never had anything in common except partying and drinking and smoking, and then we had a fight in the early days and I think this song just happened to play and it made us smile so since then he only has to play this song when we’re fighting and it makes us laugh. So when we discussed getting married and stuff in recent years, my only wish (well, by only wish, I don’t really mean only wish – I’m a woman, I’m allowed to have million wishes and dreams for my engagement and wedding) was that the ring be from Tiffanys! Here’s a picture for you but it really needs to be seen in the flesh.

So there we were, engaged after all this time and it was a wonderful exciting feeling. We went to dinner and called all our friends in Melbourne and met a few of them after dinner and I finished a whole bottle of wine in excitement/celebration. The next morning we called up our families and spoke to a few friends in India and basked in the glow of moving on to the next step, scary as it may be. We also had shitloads of cleaning to do that day because the next day a friend from Brisbane and a few members of his family arrived in Melbourne to stay with us and there was barely any time to think for all the people around us and overseas phone calls to make and receive! That week was a total blur with friend getting wasted every night and me having to work so only got wasted one night mid-week. Laughed a lot that week but I think one of my favourite nights that week was just a random week night… I wasn’t drinking, friend was already down something like 6 beers, haha, we went to dinner and it was pouring that night and freezing cold but still lovely because it was raining because as you may or may not know, I love a rainy night. Then we took a drive and picked up a couple of other friends and there were 5 of us in this car on this rainy night with nowhere to go but aimlessly drive and it was just a total Madras flashback! So we ended up in some random outer suburb and parked in some random shopping centre parking lot to have a smoke and a spliff in the freezing cold (cos we do not smoke in the car, some things have changed from when we were juvenile, mildly delinquent teenagers) and then drove back into the city :-) Was so simple and fun and non-alcoholic and reminiscent of MADras!

So that weekend was my “fiancé’s” pre-birthday bash… it was at the rooftop bar I mentioned a couple of posts ago and was another crazy, drunken night that ended at 4:00 in the morning. That Saturday night was someone else’s birthday party so couldn’t recover from hangover and went out that night too but didn’t drink on this occasion so got home fairly early. Sunday was a day of relative rest I think but don’t fully remember and then Monday night we had to stay up till midnight to bring in his birthday and give him presents although there was nothing major cos he only wanted cash and then the next day was a stressful day at work and that evening went to Guitarman’s house to celebrate Mr. Moonlight’s birthday and also Big City Dude’s birthday the day after so quiet bbq and drinks AND a boob cake :-) I will have to find and post the pictures of that cake… was unbelievably delicious even! The next day, had another stressful work day and hurriedly packed and flew to Fiji that night, but that’s a whole other tale!

There’s something wrong with the world today, I don’t know what it is. Something’s wrong with our eyes. We’re seeing things in a different light, and

Bushfires are a way of life in Australia particularly in the dry summer months. So normally you hear about it in the news and you feel sorry for the loss of wildlife and property and sometimes human life but mostly it’s as remote as the monsoon floods in Bombay or the hurricanes in the US. But not this year… this year is looking to be the biggest bushfire season in I’m not sure how many years and they are predicting these fires will go on for the next three months and a few millions of hectares of lands will be destroyed in the process. But what is really really frightening is how the smoke from these fires burning a couple of hundred of kilometres away has been consistently making it to the city at least once a week until the wind changes again. I am looking out my window and literally not able to see beyond a couple of blocks... the smoke has been getting into the ventilation systems of all the buildings and there’s this constant burning smell in the air and sometimes our eyes water… and this is us, sitting here safe and sound in the urban jungle… I can’t even begin to imagine what the fire fighters and other rescue workers are going through on the front lines and all the other affected communities and towns. And everything goes back to climate change and global warming… I remember in class 8 or 9 I wrote a critical composition on global warming and my teacher said it was damn good… I don’t think I chose that topic, it was just given to us but I can’t even remember what I wrote. What on earth could I have known about global warming then? I vaguely remember something about the ozone layer and now at 25, that’s still all I know. And that the big giant hole in it is right above Australia! So as distant as the effects of global warming and climate change are predicted to be, they’re already here. And let me tell you, walking on the streets when its 35 degrees, with the sun being blocked by a grey ash smelling canopy of haze is incredibly eerie. Almost like a ghost town…

But on to cheerier topics… like Christmas… what an incredibly cheery time it is… they call it the silly season and we have been having the silliest times with Christmas and birthday parties galore. At my work one which was an all day thing at the Yarra Valley which is a premier wine district close to Melbourne, we had like a mini Olympics thing all afternoon and me, little ol’ unfit me, managed to scale a 12 metre rock climbing wall. It was insane… like getting off the ground was hard and then I just kept going and suddenly I’d get stuck not knowing where to move my hands or legs next and I’d just hug that freaking wall and say, fuck, what now??!! But eventually I made it to the top and abseiled down and it was just awesome. So…never say never! Then they tried to convince me to join the company’s girl’s team for a triathlon next year which includes a 400m swim, 4km run and 10km bike ride and in the rush of all that adrenalin I said yes. But having had time to reflect and return to my lazy unfit lifestyle, I have completely changed my mind. But anyway, my team which was Team White won pretty much all the activities and so we won the whole thing and we all got little Christmas hamper thingies as presents… they have some awesome presents/events at this new workplace of mine. We got overnight type bags as our Christmas presents and had like two Christmas parties and then we’re constantly being invited to smaller team bbq’s, coffees and lunches. Like today, we had a coffee catch up as part of one team and then I went to a team lunch as part of another team. Good fun it is and tomorrow is my last day before heading off to Christmas break so even better.

Outside of work, attended various other sessions… went to a Christmas party like no other complete with Bad Santa and dirty as Christmas carols… was so funny. I got a lovely Santa hat with lights all around it so with batteries, I was lit up like a Christmas tree. Oh my god, I have so had it with shopping… shopping for people, shopping for the house, even grocery freaking shopping, when will it all end? I have been to the stupid shops pretty much every day in the last two weeks and I am so over it. I hope I don’t have to shop until June next year at least (although we all know I’ll be back at it long before then…)

So aunt and uncle have made it to New Zealand and will be arriving here tomorrow evening. Tomorrow is my last day of work before 10 sweet days of unbridled relaxation and entertainment. The four of us are heading up to Port Douglas on Dec 26 for some sun and sand and a long awaited glimpse of the Great Barrier Reef – so I can cross at least one of the natural wonders of the world off my list then. And then we’ll be back here for New Years… last year Goa, this year Melbourne. Different, but should be good still.

Last year this time I was in Madras and fully revelling in all the food, fun and attention. This year, I feel more remote from Madras than I’ve felt in a long time. There are always periods where I lose complete touch with what’s happening and feel disinclined to make an effort to find out because it’s nice for someone else to make the effort for a change.

The thing is though that home is where the heart is and my heart is still firmly ensconced in the house I grew up in and the room my sister now inhabits, with my parents and my baby sister and the can’t-live-without-‘em four legged friends. I posted a Christmas card to my parents today and when I was picking it, this one said something about thanking them for making Christmas so magical when I was a child and it’s amazing how thoughtful they continue to be even now and oh my god, it was all I could do to fight the tears back being in the crowded store and all (well, a few escaped) because every word was true and I feel guilty sometimes that I just don’t let them know how much they mean to me and take them for granted and even get really annoyed with them when spending long periods of time with them in the same house. So if they read this blog, they would know but of course they don’t so I hope the card will suffice.

Merry Merry Christmas and see you on the other side of 2007.

Spinning away, like the night sky On a hill, under a raven sky I have no idea exactly where I've been Some kind of change, some kind of spinning away

My last wild weekend in pictures (seems like eons ago now)… my first theme party in Australia I might add… Some kudos to myself (yeah, bring on the self congratulatory wishes) and fellow organiser Flowerchild.

The invite (designed by yours truly)


The banner (also me)


The party favours (some crappy $1 nail polish inside each takeaway box… it was really just for effect. How we attempted to draw martini glasses on the side with glitter glue and we found the most adorable martini glass stickers… but it was madness as we tried to finish all this at the 11th hour. Oh, lets not forget the thank you tags (thanks to Rat and sister Rat) and me maliciously mutilating it with a fork until Shutterbug came to the rescue with hole punch, blue tac and various other amenities.)

The video of NYC and Melbourne city images in the background (by Flowerchild… to set the mood)


The light bathroom reading


The food (yeah I apologise… you can’t really see it… but believe me when I say it was all very New York and hors d’oeveish. It was really cheap and easy too except driving what seemed like miles and miles to the little Middle Eastern bakery in the middle of nowhere for the mini quiches. How some people find these spots I don’t know but I nearly killed a few people turning into it. Yeah, goes against middle of nowhere if there were people to be killed but it’s complicated.)

The cocktails (of course, the best part… we had Apple Martinis and the signature Sex & the City drink, the Cosmopolitan. I know in my last post I said something about the tequila high… well the cocktail high is similar and much much better… I was floating… all night… brilliance… don’t miss the name tags so people didn’t lose their martini glass)

The bride


The hostesses


The girls (well, some…)


The dog (awwww…)


The boys (they had a stripper but from the pictures she looked old and boring… of course, they will beg to differ… in this pic, they’re pretending to be pirates, I don’t know why)





The merge (like on Survivor, but funner (I don’t believe that’s a word)… total chaos ensued… we ran out of all our booze and took to swigging straight from the Baileys bottle and some boys mixed tequila into the rest of the cocktails and boy was it foul… it completely messed some people up too)

The club (we went to this place called Marakesh which played the most awesome house and there were some incidents along the way as usual… let’s just say henceforth I will maintain a safe distance between my head and all things metal (cab doors, for example)… the club was a real blur… I was later told I consumed a shot or two of tequila which some people thoughtfully bought for everyone… this may or may not be true. I’m not even entirely sure how so many of us made it there cos it was in some alleyway and I guess there must have 1 or 2 less drunk people coordinating… I know that I will never be able to find the place again… I only remember dancing… and jumping up and down in happiness… and walking home in the freezing cold with the rain pouring down around us and ruining our fabulous dresses and high heels… and I also remember looking up at the heavens in wonder and delight… and laughing… and laughing…)

It was a perfect high and a perfect night. How come they all don’t turn out this way? I shouldn’t ask such silly complaining type questions… the truth is, I have nothing to complain about… except for a few dry spells here and there, the majority of my life has been pretty damn awesome.

On a completely unrelated note, I just walked through Myer which I tend to do when I need to go anywhere because once you get inside Myer, you can walk about 3 city blocks without having to be outdoors and on days like today that have a mild wind chill factor (ha, Melbourne weather does not understand the meaning of the word ‘mild’… it is either blistering heat or bone chilling winds) Myer is a most handy indoor route. So anyway, in Myer, they have already set up their 100 or so Christmas trees much in advance for the Christmas season. I’m sorry, but October? That is way too early even for me.

If I leave here tomorrow... Would you still remember me... For I must be travelling on now... Cos there’s too many places I’ve gotta see

So the weekend before, we had a house leaving party (a lot of people insist on calling it a house cooling party as opposed to a house warming party but I think house cooling sounds horribly uncool)… Anyway, I had a really awesome time and all… in fact, I didn’t stop drinking until 7 in the morning… and a lot of people showed up… and I laughed a lot… and we sang a lot… and my photographer friend took a few hundred photos…



But in the midst of all the madness, whenever I remembered what the party was about, the melancholy took over and it was all I could do not to tear up and start lamenting the loss of this oh-so-warm home of mine… of course, I did end the night in tears but that’s a whole other story and quite irrelevant to this post.



It’s hard to explain my peculiar attachment to this house of mine… it’s just an average two bedroom apartment off the block… it must be about six years old which isn’t too old but quite old for my demanding modernity standards… we leased it in quite a hurry… after all, it was a lot bigger than the old one and the master bedroom actually had an ensuite bathroom which I thought was a luxury I’d involuntarily given up forever the day I left my home in Madras… but on the evening we started moving in two years ago (almost to the day), I noticed a lot of things I hadn’t noticed before… the carpets were moderately stained (and to which, stains have since been generously added by the number of parties we’ve had)… some of the wood was chipping… a few of the lights didn’t work… the guy who’d vacated hadn’t put too much into cleaning it for the new tenants… it was high ceilinged, so that was just begging for cold draughts of air... even the water tasted funny (and it still does… and its impossible to get cold water out of the freaking tap… and I’m addicted to ice cold water… tepid water I can’t even swallow)… and worst of all, it was located in a completely alien suburb and I felt quite sure I’d never enjoy living here…

You see, before this, my entire universe was centred on the Melbourne CBD… my first awful apartment on Swanston Street and my university not even 3 minutes away walking… that apartment was truly dreadful… it was the size of my finger… but the convenience of living next door to city life was incomparable… not that I had any money to enjoy city life… but still, the bright shiny lights were right outside my doorstep…

After six months of living like sardines though we moved just up the street and right to good ol' Lygon Street. Compared to Swanston, the Lygon Street apartment was like a mansion... and it was all sparkly and shiny and brand new and I thought I'd never want to live anywhere ever again... I quickly grew to love the area... it wasn't the poshest or even the nicest of areas... Carlton is notorious for mob activity and theft in general and we've witnessed our share of car chases... not the actual cars, but choppers flying all over the place and us having an illegal smoke on our balcony with the light shining down on us and wondering if our number was finally up... good times :)... paranoid times, but good... our car was broken into twice in our alleged secure basement carpark... but still, it was all quite safe and we walked home late at night from the restaurant/shopping part of Lygon Street many many times... my university was now a 10 minute tram ride away but 10 minutes in the life of a student is negligable... of course, paying for the tickets was a huge unwarranted expense and that's when I started that whole deal with God thing about fare evasion :)

But the most important thing of all was I absolutely loved heading home... walking up to the entrance and through the front door always made me feel welcome... it was clean so we tried our best to keep it clean... there are some aspects to my personality that are rather Monica Geller like in terms of getting mildly obsessive compulsive with cleaning... but in the old place I shocked myself at my complacency with collecting dirty dishes in the sink, not wiping the counters after cooking, never dusting or vaccuming... but all that changed and housemates of mine surely regret how I reverted to my natural ways... I became mildly obsessive compulsive again about the kitchen and my wrath at dirty kitchen counters and undisposed of garbage was not easy to deal with...

You see, this was the first time I felt like I had a home again after leaving my real home... and it was important to me to have the kind of home that made me want to go back to it... what else do you have to look forward to in a strange foreign country if not some place to call your own and make your own... we were always strange that way... other Indian students thought we were nuts when they saw the "fancy" place we lived in... most of them lived in disgusting little holes or an hour away from civilization... because of the rent, of course... as a struggling student, I had a strict stipend per month from home... this strict stipend was suggested by IDP as being more than enough and I know now who they spoke to to come up with this figure... the ones living in the dirty little holes... so here we were, shelling out half our monthly allowance on rent of all things... that left very little leftover for food/expenses/books/entertainment... but I never regretted it once... there was my beautiful apartment, a shining beacon of hope in the midst of all my homesickness and coursework and meagre social life... So until now we were still very focussed on Lygon Street and the CBD and I really had no clue what was outside these boundaries... on rare occassions I went down to Chapel Street or Smith Street or Sydney Road or St. Kilda Road and these were all slightly frightening adventures outside my comfort zone... they were also outside my "hood" so I always bought a tram ticket... and always, I breathed a sigh of relief as soon as I returned to familiar territory.

Then the unthinkable happened... I finished studying and was lucky to get a job almost immediately but this job was all the way down St. Kilda Road, past the CBD, on the other side of the Yarra River (you could almost call it the wrong side of the tracks for me). After almost two years of waking up whenever I felt like it I had to discipline myself to going to bed on time and waking up at 7:30 am so I could leave by 8:15 or so to get to work by 9:15. Yes, it took me the better part of an hour which just shows you what cruel tricks life can play on you… because distance wise, and if I was driving there, it would be all of 20 minutes. But thanks to the wonderfully slow trams that absolutely insist on stopping at every tram stop (which is at every block) and because I had to cross the city on the way and since of course the city is full of thoughtful drivers who are always driving in the tram lane and slowing things down even more, it used to take me that long… And did I mention the sardine theme again every single morning and evening because I was travelling at peak hour? There was simply no relief until I was 3 blocks away from work or home by which point it didn’t matter… I did this for about 2 months before deciding I just couldn’t go on and absolutely had to take the drastic decision of leaving Lygon Street and my beloved hood Carlton and moving to the other side of the city, the names of which suburbs I didn’t even know yet.

By the time we did move, it was something like six months… August 2004… Dandenong Road, Prahran… as I said, at first, I was miserable to move in… but in the first week of arriving at work/home within 12 minutes by tram including waiting time, it was quite easy to forget about Lygon Street (shame on my fickleness) J There were still annoyances such the tepid water and Dandenong Road being the busiest road leading to some few outer suburbs and being busy 24/7 so there was never any respite from traffic noise, but even this worked out in our favour because we could scream our heads off and sing our lungs out and have 20 people simultaneously talking on the balcony and there wouldn’t even be a polite knock from a neighbour asking us to keep it down… we took full advantage of this over two years and hosted a number of loud and rowdy events.

So you see, slowly but surely my universe shifted to this side of the city… I still went to the city for drinks and dinner and what not, on occasion, but I also started visiting more shops/restaurants/bars in my area… since my work was also in the area, we spent many a lunch hour roaming the streets of Chapel and High and Commercial (we shouldn’t leave St Kilda Road out of it too… remember the beautiful bay views)… it’s hard to explain exactly why it is so special… I guess everywhere else is just pretty boring and average… what you see is possibly the same thing you’ll see in other cities around Australia… but Prahran and South Yarra and especially Chapel Street are so eclectic and surprising, you just never know what you’re gonna get… and its my absolute favourite area to drive around looking at all the beautiful houses… at least 30 of my dream houses are located on Orrong Road and Toorak in general… this area is the playground of the very rich and even though I didn’t live in a multimillion dollar house, it still felt pretty good to tell people I lived in Prahran…

And this was the truest test of my love for this side of town… my new job is in the city… yet another cruel life trick… so now I sit (if ever I do get a seat) on the tram for 50 long minutes one way as I travel to work and back… and yes, it bothers me but not once have I ever felt like just escaping… well maybe, some mornings… but every evening, as soon I cross the Yarra, I don’t regret for a minute that my home is still half an hour away… after all, my home is in Prahran… my home is right next door to Chapel Street…
Do I visit Chapel Street every night or weekend? No…
Does that make a difference? No…
Is it enough just knowing its there? Yes…
Just like the beach in Madras, I suppose…
Could we ever get by in a non-coastal city even though we swam in the sea maybe thrice a year? No!

So anyway, our time together is almost up… Sep 1 is when I move… I’m moving to high-rise, non-unique, commercialised personified – Southbank! Why, after all this, am I leaving Prahran you ask? Because it wasn’t affordable in Prahran to buy the kind of place I could see myself living in… Yes, dear reader… I am now a first home owner – a fact that fills me with immense pride and intense dread, all at the same time. And even though Prahran was not really affordable, there were a couple in my old hood Carlton that might’ve worked but I just couldn’t bear the thought of moving to that side of the city again after having lived on this side… this side rocks… that side is seemingly dark and depressing now even though I didn’t know any better then… so anyway, I had to compromise somewhere and Southbank it is… the best thing about Southbank is that work will be a 7 minute tram ride or a 20 minute walk… I see plenty of exercise potential… but anyway, the new place is a whole other story that I’ll save for later.

I think I forced everyone at the party to have a shot of some killer fruit punch (concocted by yours truly) as a tribute to the Dandenong Road house… now the apartment seems to know that I’m moving on and is reacting with uncharacteristic coldness and emptiness… Not to worry… it will always one of the dearest places I’ve lived in… I’m quite sure when its time for me to move on from Southbank I will feel a similar sadness and write about how I regretted leaving Prahran but finally ended up madly in love with Southbank, but that’s just the way I am J I get peculiarly attached to places which after all are just wood and carpet… I think it’s because I am at heart a most intransient being… I get comfortable someplace and never want to leave… I’ve lived in the same house in Madras my whole life and when I had to move out once for six months while renovating I thought my parents were being most unfair to me by kicking me out of my room… as it turned out it worked out well that I lived in Nungambakkam and Adyar for half that time because at least I got to have a very fun summer without having to deal with the annoying logistics issues that are part and parcel of living in Annanagar…

So whatever it is, it’s always hard for me to move on… but eventually I adapt and mostly it works out better than I expected… this is true of any change in my life… so what’s the lesson learned here… nothing… because even though I know I will adapt, it doesn’t stop me from feeling sad at leaving.

So whatever… goodbye Prahran… hello Southbank!

So much for the city Tell me that you'll dance to the end So much for the street lights They're never gonna guide you home

It’s been a while since I’ve written one of them ‘and this weekend I did blah blah…’ so, here it is. So, this weekend I had a very random girls night on Friday where the most of the other girls proceeded to get very drunk and I tried to get to the same level but it didn’t really happen. I had lots of fun though watching the other girls being very drunk. When I got home I hung out with boys being very drunk and laughed for many hours.

On Saturday we packed up and headed to the big city… haha… the big city is this town called Geelong about an hour away from Melbourne and our friend has been living there for about six months because of his workplace and now he’s returning to civilization at the end of the month so we kinda forced ourselves on his house for one big slumber party. And every time he heads back there on a Sunday night after spending the whole weekend in Melbourne, he says, “See you later… it’s time I was heading back to the big city”… hahaha, it amuses me no end. A billboard on the freeway proclaimed the big city as the most liveable place in Australia and that also amuses me no end…!!

So we engaged in many fun activities whilst there… we played the world’s most moronic board game – Battle of the Sexes, if you please. According to that game, it seems that the only subject women are well-versed in is wine (and a few books) and the only subject men are well-versed in is beer (and a few TV shows)!! Anyhow, we played it and there were also many stupid dares involved such as dancing for ONE WHOLE MINUTE… very daring, I know! But towards the end we reached a stalemate because the stupid dares wouldn’t let us move on and kept moving us backwards so I think people lost interest and stopped playing. But by this time I was toasted and very upset that we ended the game without a winner. Well, that’s not entirely true… I think we all agreed that the women were the smarter/cooler/better sex! Haha… who can refute that with my commenting turned off!

So we also sang many songs very loudly and I’m sure the other inhabitants of the big city will not be too keen to receive us again. And then someone suggested the awesome plan of driving to the beach which is about 20 minutes away. I was most upset that other people’s common sense prevailed about driving drunk! I ended the night on my dear little blue sleeping bag that has seen much better days. What fun tales my sleeping bag also could tell… But it is kind to me no longer… I had a very sore hip the next morning, although, to be fair, I bruise like a peach.

We ended up our trip to the big city at where else but a classic icon of suburbia – MacDonald’s (with three other fast food places in the same lot). I walked in playing the part of trailer trash to perfection in my sweats, sweatshirt (which is some 100 years old and belonged to my DAD), and heeled footwear (from the night before)… haha!

All in all, it was a very fun trip to the big city and though I will quite possibly never return, I will forever keep with me the fond memories of my one night in the big city.

Drinking happened last night. A friend from Madras is visiting Melbourne on work and it was his first night out on the town so we couldn’t disappoint… we had to go out and paint the town red. Red was exactly what one of the bars we went to felt like – its called Polly and as the review says, its all red velvet and dim lighting and gilt mirrors and spittoons for ashtrays. We then moved on to Bimbos and with a name like that why their logo is a baby and why they had a baby doll strung up over the bar dressed in S & M attire and sporting a penis was a mystery that provoked much discussion.

S & I realised that we’ve actually been to Bimbos ages ago with a friend and Bimbos has this really cool circular dome covered room and we were just sitting there and some other people came in and sat there and then some other people came in and sat there and we all just sat around in one big semi-circle and some of them started rolling and shared the joints with us and it was just all a very “random and share the love” night!

The toilet stalls in Bimbos had these Indian picture sheets that we used to buy if we had to stick pictures of fruits, vegetables, animals, etc. in our school scrapbooks. And these were those weird ass picture sheets that tell you what a good boy should do (wake up early, brush “up” teeth “salute” his parents, pray, etc. etc.) and another one was pictures of school boys from different cultures or religions. So there were pictures of Sikh boy, Hindu boy, Muslim boy, Christian boy, Bengali boy and there was even Mallu boy. So funny it was. And there were like tons of these things plastered in every stall (I checked). So bizarre the whole thing was.

Anyway, was quite wasted by the end of it all last night and I think I will kill someone if I don’t get to sleep well tonight because I slept horribly on Sunday night too.

************************

Aforementioned friend from Madras also brought CDs (as part of Mint’s CD Tree venture) from Rat & Lavi so been listening to that all morning. Thanks girls – my CDs you will get to listen to in approximately two weeks when friend returns to Madras.

************************

This one’s for you Jay. Was going through online TV guide the other day and came across an animated show playing in the middle of the night called Stripperella starring Pamela Anderson. You’ve probably heard of it already and for those who haven’t, show heroine is Erotica and she is and I quote “Stripper by night. Crimefighter by later night. Erotica is the sexiest stripper ever to touch a pole. With a heart of gold, a passion for animal rights, and a weakness for fashion, Erotica is always helping the other dancers at The Tender Loins with their problems. When her belly ring vibrates, Erotica snaps into action as Stripperella, the superhero/secret agent.”

Tender Loins just cracked me up.

Stripperella also battles such villains as The Bridesmaid, who as her name suggests is dying to get married and goes around kidnapping grooms.

Jay, surely Boyfriendman and Miss Thing will be a bigger hit than stripper crime fighters so please get started and your blogger buddies will be behind you all the way ;)

************************

Logged out of hotmail today and got redirected to MSN India and there was a link on the homepage to Aamir Khan’s new blog for his upcoming movie Mangal Pandey. Of course the word blog caught my attention and I went and checked it out and there are lame pictures of him pretending to blog on his laptop. And what is with that new hairstyle of his? He looks like a wet dog. Also, he was replying to comments on the previous post and said something along the lines of, ‘So I’ve picked some “blogs” at random to reply to’. These guys are so not with blogging terminology. And these pissy MSN thingies are more than blogs… they are SPACES. Anyway, I haven’t watched a Hindi movie in years but this Mangal Pandey thing looks quite interesting and I hope they have limited it to merely one song-and-dance sequence.

************************

Finally finished Shantaram on Sunday. Apparently he lives down the road from me or something. Ages ago we went to a Goan restaurant nearby and the owner is a very friendly and funny man and he’s best friends with the author, Gregory David Roberts and showed me a preview of the book and I came across it the other day in my Spend $75 at Borders experience and went ahead and bought it. Basic synopsis of the story is that he escaped from prison in Melbourne and somehow made it to India and spent almost ten years living like a local and working for the mafia and everything. He was finally captured in 1990 and served out his prison term and wrote this book based on his experiences in India.

I wish I could talk about India with half as much eloquence as he does. What an amazing story and what an interesting insight through the white man’s eyes into our peculiar Indian ways. Its all about the heart man, in India. We think with our minds and are sometimes motivated by money and power and what not but ultimately us Indians are so ruled by our hearts is what he says and what I totally agree with. So anyway, please go read it fellow bookworms if you haven’t already.

Taking Stock of Last Night

Last night our department attended an end of financial year dinner and drinks thing. Before anyone asks what is this cool job and what is this cool company, please let me say it is not all that cool. We work our asses off (well, sometimes) and they’re definitely not paying us as much as they should, so the least they can do is give us a fucking dinner and a few drinks once in a while.

Venue: Picture a glass-fronted room on the banks of a quiet lake. The lights are bright enough for you to get a good view of beautiful Albert Park (this is where the Australian Formula 1 race happens every year) but dim enough to not be intrusive. There is a tall spiral tower that you can climb for lack of better things to do but I didn’t waste my energy on such pursuits. And the black swans in the lake are fairly friendly until they start fighting amongst themselves. Anyway, here’s a picture so you don’t have to think too hard about how it might look.



The only non-blurred one in this photo is my back!!



Food: Absolutely brilliant! This restaurant is one of those “Modern Australian” cuisine places and such cuisine is always really suspect, to me at least. Most times when I dine at one of those places (which is not often because as I already mentioned, I think the food is rather suspect), at least three words in the description of the meal will be unfamiliar to me and I just cross my fingers and hope I get something edible (I am a super fussy eater so I don’t leave much room for what “edible” can be)!! Anyway, this meal turned out to be quite normal and not all that “modern”. True, the calamari entrée was rather small but the folks who got the potato gnocchi seemed to enjoy it. And with the mains, the menu said Roast Porterhouse with pommes purees and root veg jus and it turned out to be just good ol’ steak and mash and some rather bitter tasting sauce which I totally avoided – I assumed that was the root veg jus part which literally translates to root vegetable juice I think! Of course the chocolate silk tart was just a tad too rich considering I was drinking alcohol. If I had just smoked a big fat joint though, the chocolate silk tart experience would have been almost orgasmic!

Alcohol: It was a beer and wine thing because that’s all the budget would allow. Here’s where we had some major dramas. There was this one table that was being slightly rowdy and drinking too fast and the maitre d just decided to stop serving them alcohol until they had some more food in their system. This did not sit very well with them and they just got rowdier than before. However, their glasses were topped up during the main course and this placated them somewhat. At dessert time, one of them specifically requested the sticky date pudding over the chocolate silk tart and as this was an alternate serving thing, each table gets half of each choice and either you eat what you get or try and swap with someone else. So he didn’t get the sticky date pudding and didn’t try and swap with anyone and this totally pissed one of the other guys off. He got up and started talking really loudly about the restaurant staff and how this was like a Nazi camp and hello, hadn’t they heard that the Holocaust was over. We tried to calm him down although we were all laughing too hard because he was being really funny and obnoxious at the same time. My biggest worry was he was going to jump up on the table like he has done at our neighbourhood beer garden on a previous occasion but he refrained.

Anyway, I had about four glasses of wine but it didn’t do a thing to me. I was just kinda floating along and also that chocolate silk tart messed up my drinking ability big time.

Drugs: I got home and forced S to smoke with me even though I knew it was just going to make the whole chocolate tart + white wine melting pot much much worse! I can tell you I had a time falling asleep. My stomach kept making strange noises and kept threatening to send me running to the loo and the joint ensured I couldn’t lay my head down for a while because of all the spinning that happened when I did!

This Morning: Eyes all sore, head still spinning, stomach growling, limbs extra lazy. God, I’m getting old – thank goodness its time for lunch!!