Grace Notes @ Snarkattack

(yesterday)

I am horrendously broke. No, really.

Got a message from @amoir if I fancied catching up for gelato and granita. If you’ve even seen the weather forecast for Melbourne, anything iced (no, not including the drug) is going to sound fantastic.

So fantastic it actually became dinner. Bad grown-ups, bad! A nice excuse to go to Pellegrini’s – haven’t been there for a while.

I think one of the waiters there is a friend of an old friend who has since moved to Sydney. Wasn’t sure if it was him, he looked so much older. Last I’d heard, he’d gone to the States to study at some amazing jazz school. It’d be sad if that didn’t work out.

Anyway, being broke, the lovely @amoir shouted me chocolate and pistachio gelati. Bliss. I tucked into it with a vigour that was exceedingly impolite. She laughed, took a photo and posted it on Twinkle. I looked silly, but it didn’t matter. It was cool, something Melbourne is not currently. Apparently we’ve an average forecast of 40 C for most of the week.

Afterwards, we strolled leisurely to her place, but not before she visited The Paperback Bookshop. I wisely stayed outdoors. It was painful, but I did it! We then watched the Doctor Who Christmas Special – the old one, when Eccleston leaves and we see lovely David Tennant…sigh. Him in pyjamas. Yum.

(tonight)

I missed the Dropkick Murphys gig because I cycled way past the bloody venue and backtracking in the heat (40+ C) took forever. I did wait a bit for SM but she must’ve already gone in. Sigh. I did see some hot but smelly punk boys. Mmm, pale almost-muscly arms.

Bumped into an old family friend – well, families, really. S is expecting, 5 months along. Her brother B who was in my class at least one year in primary school was out with his wife too.

Summer of gelato is a fantastic idea. I devoured a cup of raspberry gelato, bumping into my old Mill Park family friends. One asked if I was well in a sort of semi-knowing way. It took me by surprise.

A rude person trying to impress his girlfriend tried to give me shit while I was riding my bike. I was riding exactly where I was supposed to while he intoned in a somewhat Neanderthal manner that I had the whole bloody road. Um, yes, that’s for the fucking cars, loser.

I will make it to the bloody supermarket later on. It’ll be like living in the Philippines, where everyone does their stuff at night after siesta, if they’re not working.

Anyway, I better start making my list of gelato flavours tried. And phone my lovely neurochemically challenged friends.

Thanks Rob for updating my blog software. God knows I wouldn’t be able to do it. Yet…

I’d known about Tumblr for a while, but it was really @lluke that got me into it properly – I started using it to post the poems that I usually post here.

I’ve posted lots of poems on mine lately (see here if interested) and also recently subscribed to a few other Tumblrlogs that post some good content. Thought I might share the links.

mmryan posts varied content, but I’ve really been enjoying the poems posted. thatdreamofhorses posts images – I’ve been digging the works of Egon Schiele (German expressionist painter – modernism FTW!) but also some other cool stuff. My pal @lluke posts varied content, and apparently, according to how many posts I’ve marked as “liked” he’s my #1 Tumblr crush, haha. Link to his Tumblr is here. I’ve actually met him in person and he’s a pretty top bloke.

There’s an awful lot of crap on the intertubes, but golly, there’s some awesome stuff too. It’s so bleeding overwhelming sometimes.

Anyway, am going to use this day to catch up on my LJ poetry subscriptions. See if I can get the inbox down to less than 200 poems, eh?

Handwriting is an intensely personal thing.

I remember when I first met Z, he was going to meet with me at Threshermans (some survival food place for Melbourne Uni folk) and I was writing – just a surreal exercise. I asked him to show me his handwriting. A few Twitter folk have been posting photos of handwriting memes and I’ve not been tagged, but decided to volunteer mine here anyway.

For the record, every poem I write starts off handwritten. This is especially useful when one has hardware or software failure of any sort. Needless to say, this has been discovered the hard way…

Pen and paper. Keeping it real. Now if I could just find my pen with the ink bladder, I might start using it again!

That reminds me, I owe my girlfriend in the country a letter. It’s been quite some time.

Wow, my blog heard me complaining about how slow it was to load up and did the opposite. Awesome.

I missed the EMS softcore ride this weekend, sadly. I didn’t have enough money to get my gear and such sorted. Shame. The housemate tells me it was a lovely trip.

However, I was banking on going to see Simian Mobile Disco at the Prince Bandroom as an excellent consolation prize. A few days earlier, SM said she’d acquire a ticket for us both (there was some awesome 2-for-1 thing going) and she delivered the goods.

Melbourne town is bursting at the seams with acts at present, because they’re all here for the Big Day Out festival. Simian Mobile Disco is one of them. The others that sounded interesting were Hot Chip, Boys Noize, and Holy Ghost (yes, a musical act, not actually part of the Holy Trinity).

I didn’t really do a very good job of explaining to softcore-bike-tour housemate what was so good about the gig, particularly when told that he couldn’t really see how an electronic act could be better than they are on the album. The light show was extremely impressive, though I don’t really need that sort of thing to be entertained. The crowd was a good deal less polite than the last gig I went to.

When I did finally get to see the two producers on stage, I saw one fellow with very fluffy hair, and another with very nerdy glasses, furiously running around on stage – SM rightfully noted that it looked like he was manning an old-school telephone exchange. They were expertly faffing about with these massive consoles with lots of knobs and wires.

The best I can manage for a review is they did inventive mixes of the stuff from their album, left you begging for more, and did all sorts of cool pitch bending things. I know, not a very good explanation. The bass was intense and it took me hours to wind down afterwards. Lucky I have ace decaffeinated teas to drink, mmm.

I guess another qualifier for “good gig” is it makes you all excited for music – more music, new music, whatever the hell you’ve not listened to before. Makes you hungrier for experiencing music.

I did really want to go on that bike tour though. Live music is fun, though. I am sore from the retarded dancing my arse off. And very, very happy.

My Political Views
I am a left social libertarian
Left: 5.92, Libertarian: 5.05

Political Spectrum Quiz

My Foreign Policy Views
Score: -8.56

Political Spectrum Quiz

My Culture War Stance
Score: -8.27

Political Spectrum Quiz

It hasn’t changed since I last took the test, and I do believe it’s a little US-centric (you’ll see what I mean if you actually look at the questions). Wow, I’m old and am still a leftie. No wonder I’m not married, hehe. DH, if you read this, you’re not allowed to insult me. I plied your arse with lots of alcohol last time we went out, giggle.

Work proper for the year has begun! It’s still mega-quiet so they’re cancelling shifts lots which is crap, but come summary time, it’ll be nuts.

On Wed, I was just about to finish up when an old ex-workmate and fellow writer sent me a message to catch up. I suggested we both go to Victoria Market’s night market – I was planning to go anyway and thought it might be fun.

We started off by looking at various stalls before I spotted a food stall with Portuguese custard tarts! I insisted upon getting one. We got the first of our glasses of wine and sat down to enjoy our desserts. After that, I got lulled by a tea stall (hardly surprising there…) and ended up purchasing a bag of white tea with roses. This stall was amazing because you got to taste the various teas they had – fruit, green, white – many of which were blissful.

I wanted one last week and I got it: a German sausage roll! Bratwurst, I think.

There was one stall with these old ladies who were apparently waxing lyrical about the magic of mangosteen. Now, I’d never heard about this fruit before and was a bit sceptical. Especially when the lady claimed that it was a Philippine-based thing…

I have to say, for someone who was not just selling a product, but a business, it was to her detriment that she couldn’t even describe in basic terms what the fruit tasted like. At first she insisted that I couldn’t taste the juice because I was eating and drinking something else, but after not being able to say what it tasted like, thrust a cup at me in veiled frustration.

We looked around at lots of other things. SM got some delicious smelling soaps. We tried out some hammock-like chairs and watched a grown-up get told off for rocking like mad in one.

At which point I believe we may have drank more wine. And sparkling. And wine. Then headed to a bar across the road from the market called ‘The Drunken Poet’. I believe SM got charmed by an English chef, whereas I managed to strike up conversation with three Scots.

More drinks later, SM and I are at Stalactites…for the obligatory drunken night kebab. We got back to my place at 3am according to her. I crashed the couch, offered her my bed.

The following morning I could do nowt. And pretty much the rest of the day. Those pesky bubbles!

Ah yes, and we’re both going to Simian Mobile Disco. Woo!

In list form, my current technological woes:

- cannot print out work at current residence. Not sure what happened, but it’s cool, right? I can print out stuff anywhere! *trots off to folks’ place*
- cannot print out work at parents’. Computer too sluggish and takes forever to load…anything. I’ve no idea what the hell my father has done to it
- stupidly, am using Linux/Ubuntu which means I use OpenOffice
- trying to copy and paste existing material into MS Word messed up the appearance of my work on the page. Poet(asters) are very fussy about this sort of thing
- my blog no longer lets me upload images like it used to which is okay, except that:
- TwitPic is upload bollocks at present, and don’t really want to upload my blog-specific images to anything else just yet

- it is a gross luxury, but hacked XBox is a bit stuffed so no listening to music whilst doing the dishes. I don’t really mind that one so much, just thought I’d throw it in
- I can’t update my blog software, or its plugins, which technically means I have no backups of the posts and have not for quite some time
- my browser window keeps making half of the toolbars disappear since I disabled a few addons for blip.fm – stop resizing without my consent damn you!

Nothing really major, just a bit of a bummer really. I think I’m really going to have to admit defeat and go back to Windows as I just don’t have the competence nor the time to learn to use Linux properly.

I should just submit my submission electronically. Except that I want it to be considered for the print edition of the journal rather than the electronic version, hence the snail mail submission.

Note to self: pay off debts and get a printer. Sigh.

Disclaimer: no, this post is not directed towards anyone. I am merely publicising my incompetence and current tech frustrations.

I think often about the Final Fantasy gig I went to see in mid-December. It’s probably one of the happiest moments in what has been to date an unhappy period of my life.

I’m not sure I did a good job of explaining what it is that Owen Pallett really does in his gigs, so I recommend you watch this. You’ll be able to see him record short ‘loops’ which he then plays over, and also changes. It’s pretty non-classical stuff, yet after the harrowing training at the Con, it makes me so happy to be a classically trained musician.

Will try to catch more classical music things this year. Most likely chamber music. I do miss seeing string quartets. The pitch (A = 440 Hz) still fucks with me, haha.

Last night I went to the night market (Victoria Market) which is…ooh, 2 minutes’ walk from where I live?

Wow, there are seriously awesome stalls! Food-wise. I was pretty boring and chose to get Turkish food. I did spot a gourmet sausage stall but of course only after I’d bought some food already. Sausages…mmm. They also had Mauritian, Senegalese, game meat stalls.

My companion wasn’t really keen on the whole crowds thing which was a bit of a shame as I wanted to drink more wine (wine stalls!). I had a joke with one of the servers who said he wanted to ask me for identification but refused to. I began to pull out my licence but he said “No! I don’t want to see it! Put it away!” I guess you had to be there for the full amusement factor. I had a glass of pinot grigio – it was a very, very subtle wine. Even more so than verdelho, which is what it reminded me of.

After only spending an hour at the market, my old schoolfriend and I went to the Dan O’Connell pub, which is again not so far from me. A friend of his was finishing up his DJ residence. Turns out he reads at the poetry afternoon at the Dan, so I said I’d go on Sat. Been a while since I went.

We listened to various electronic tunes for a few hours, drank nice beer and even nicer cider before my schoolmate saw how tired I was and dropped me off home. By this stage I’d been up for two days straight.

I totally pwn anxiety in public places now, by the by. I’m going to go to the night market by myself if I have to next week.

Or, silly westerners, if you prefer.

Once upon a time, I fell in love with a Japanese lad, at a Japanese restaurant we both worked at. In some disgusting fit of maturity, I had decided that the workplace wasn’t to know. It was successful.

Now unbeknowingly, I used to torture the poor nihonjin with my silly westerner questions. As I was sitting alone tonight at Momotaro Rahmen in Richmond, I remembered some of these now quite amusing stories.

One intensely hot summer’s day, Nomura-san is making us a cold noodle salad. Oh my lord – the gustatory bliss that is cold noodle salads. Wow. So Nomura-san is wrapping cold soba around this massive block of ice. I blurt out “Wouldn’t it be faster if you just put it in the fridge?”. Nomura-san looks at me, eyes sparkling and says in his accented English “Ahh, Jam-ma, that is, how we say, very Wes-tarn thinking”

Oops. I really felt like a stupid Westerner then, which is amusing, given that I’m different kinds of Asian. Watashi wa baka gaijin desu…

Employee lunchtime. We all say itadakimasu – I was told that this translated to “thank you for the good meal”. Now being an appalling liar, I was concerned…what if the meal isn’t a good one? Do you still have to say this? I voiced my concern to Yoshi, who quickly became confused and said yes, you still have to say it even if the meal is bad. He looked deeply confused by my question.

Okay, this last incident, I was just being difficult. In Melbourne there is a lovely bar called Ume Nomiya. Apparently in Japan, you can go to a bar, and they put your name on your bottle of alcohol so you can keep going there to drink it rather than downing it in one go. This is a cool system, but one can imagine this being abused in the West. Ume Nomiya is one such place that incorporates this Japanese custom – buy a bottle, and if you don’t finish it, you can return at another time to consume. Sugoi, ne?

“So, Kei-chan, what if you have the same name as someone else?”
“It doesn’t matter – the kanji will be different.”
“But what happens if someone walks into the bar and they have exactly the same kanji as another person? And they cheat and ask for the bottle?”
“It’s not gonna happen, Jam”
“But you never know, it might – ”
“It would never happen in Japan, Jam” (at which point my Japanese boyfriend is getting irate and trying to hide it).

I think for his sanity, I may have abandoned being so insistent that someone theoretically could steal your very expensive bottle of sake or similar such delicious Japanese alcoholic beverage.

These were the thoughts that entered my mind, as I dined at Momotaro Rahmen. I had their cold noodle salad (ramen), and in typical gaijin style, green tea ice cream. I’m currently sado-masochistically on wasabi peas. Oishii desu!

Okay, here we go. Lost the last post with such a title – it was probably due to the fact that my blog has been migrated to an external server. End of an era, lads and ladies: my blog is no longer housed on a server that lives under a sink! At least, this is my understanding.

Villainess fragrances. Got decants, am testing! Not all of them arrived, but I can test what has come to me in the meantime!
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But who cares, right? I have nice books!

On Wed, I got to meet up with an old schoolfriend and had claypots and Peking duck. He took me out because I was broke-arse. He also took me out for coffee and dessert – I had a marzipan log, mmm!

On Thursday, I went to see Mr Scruff do a 5 hour set at the Prince Bandroom. Went with DM’s housemate Soph, and got to meet her ginger kitten! In the end, we were defeated by the stamina of Senor Scruff, and Soph was feeling pretty unwell so we left with about an hour and a half to go. It was really nice to have a gigbuddy, am so used to going to things by myself these days.

Yesterday, woke up at a reasonable hour and paid a visit to the bookshop where @lukeayresryan works. I didn’t see him at first when I walked in, and decided to wander around before asking after him. Eventually, armed with three delicious books (a bilingual volume of twentieth-century French poetry edited by Mary Ann Caws, another French book in translation, and Carol Ann Duffy’s selected poems), I march down the stairs and this bloke spots me and laughs at my arms so full. We talk for a little while about Doctor Who and poetry (I can’t figure out if he’s being polite by asking about poetry).

I later on discover that he gave me a discount which was very nice!

Afterwards, rode up to DM’s place for din-dins at the Standard Hotel, which is just a hop, skip and a jump from her place. I had bangers and mash for dinner. Mmm. They put cheese in their mash, and green peppercorns in their sausages! I wanted to take a photo for big sis, actually. Dammit, why can she not live in Melbourne.

I was supposed to go riding with @LucasS yesterday morning but woke up with a killer headache. I missed a party after some arseshattery directed towards myself and went to DM’s again to be comforted by her and pusses.

Had an awful tummyache and slept in horribly today. Had dinner with the parentals (I had beef and Guinness pie, yum), we all watched a bit of cricket after. Our kettle also caught on fire, but I missed that completely – Frosty told me all about it. This is going to be interesting given that we’re both tea addicts and saucepans of water take forever to boil on electric hotplates.

I just got an e-mail from my former mentor-type person and being the ridiculously insecure person I am, am wondering…

…why didn’t he say anything about the long poem? He probably didn’t like the format is my guess. Sigh. It is most likely my best poem this year.

I sent him four poems, three of which were written this year, one last year. He liked the most polished one (at least, it felt like the most polished one to me). Two of them are apparently publishable, though one could be longer.

But apparently my treatment of Agamemnon’s death was too reductive, as circumstances leading to his demise were complex. Personally, I think know if I started trying to add discussion of these circumstances, I’d kill my own poem. Same with the four-line poem I sent.

Nice week so far, went to the Cornish Arms yesterday. Dinner (beef and lamb kofte) was delicious. It’s so much nicer there than the Corkman. Yes EMS people, I did just diss the Corkman.

Last night I met up with @amoir at one of my favourite places, Momotaro Rahmen. It’s on the other side of the city for me, but not too far from where she lives. We had takoyaki (battered octopus ball-things. Oishii desu!), pork & kimchi (isn’t that Korean?) gyoza to share. I had the cold beef udon salad and she had katsu don.

Totoro approved of the meal as this photo suggests:

Afterwards, we strolled down Bridge Rd and ordered gelati. I chose the flavours blood orange and plum pudding. The latter was dead-on, it was phenomenal. @amoir remarked that you could taste raisins soaked in brandy. She had vanilla and raspberry, and proclaimed it ‘Summer of Gelato’.

Also, I think I may have swallowed my first fly whilst riding, and my arms may have got some sun. Eat that, Colin. Erm, not the fly, the sunned arms.

I’ve got together my first poetry submission for the year. I’m also going to rejoin the Victorian Writers’ Centre, and join the Australian Poetry Centre (I did some volunteer work for the company which eventually joined up with the APC). This will set me back financially, somewhat. Am still bummed Page Seventeen didn’t publish me (note: course I don’t mind that they didn’t but it’s painful being told they were going to, and ran out of space). Will try again in future and see what happens.

Okay, clean room to Final Fantasy EPs and try to take photos of BPAL bottle labels.

Also, Anya and cicconeyouth – sorry I’ve not been commenting on your LJ posts of late. I still haven’t cleaned out my LJ inbox post-incarceration. I promise I have been reading them.

New Year’s Eve was nice. Quiet, and I got crashed somewhat early. It was nice to wake up and be far from the city today (well, technically yesterday). I think it must have done me a lot of good: a particular group of people had managed to get me down and spending New Year’s Eve far away from such sorts was quite welcome.

My friend Clare, who’s just had a baby, sent me a fantastic care package – Jaffa Cake biscuits. If you’re British or an Anglophile, these need no explanation *grin*. The last two weeks have been hell, but this cheered me right up. I hope they last long enough for a Spaced marathon with tAlex or future husband. How on earth does someone who’s just given birth even have time to think of care packages?!

Had dinner with my parents in Chinatown at Westlake. The food was great but the service is horrible. It’s pretty bad form to walk away from the customer when they’re talking to you. Also, my mother’s life is not complete unless she’s worrying about something. Granted I have given both parents cause to worry (unintentionally) but sorry Mum, I’m not going to stop riding my bike because you think I’ll get mashed up on the roads. God knows I need the exercise, and hey, the nervousness…keeps you thin.

I just wanted to say the first day of the year is officially proclaimed excellent. I have a poetry submission ready to go, apparently three of the poems are publishable (said two poets). Alas, I was defeated by Rob’s printer. I’ve been technological fail all week, actually… (USB headphones, digital camera)

What I’d really like to do is get my true self back this year; I still cannot believe how rotten last year was.

Ooh, and I’d also like a catfish friend. That poem always makes me smile.

This is an example of a poem one shouldn’t ever, ever write.

I don’t care that it’s by Bukowski, it’s awful.

Bukowski and Leonard Cohen are starting to piss me off.

Happy new year and all that.