| Ghost in the machine |
[18 Feb 2009|09:05am] |
OK, so something has gone wrong with the cross-posting, and it doesn't seem to be working. And I'm too busy/lazy/tired to fix it, so you all just will have to go to http://cloudcontrol.blogspot.com from now on if you still want to read my rantings.
Sorry. :(
|
|
| [cloudcontrol] Gridlock |
[24 Dec 2008|11:53pm] |
So I stupidly got talked into having dinner with a friend in District 1
tonight. I knew traffic would probably be a bit crazy, as it's been for
the past two weeks, with crowds of Vietnamese families taking their
kids to see the astoundingly abundant Christmas decorations and light
shows.What I didn't count on was the fat that tonight was ALSO the
first leg of the Suzuki Cup final. Which Viet Nam won, beating Thailand
2-1 (thanks, in part, to some dubious refereeing).For those of you
from/in Melbourne, picture Lygon St after Italy won the World Cup in
2006. Put every second person on a motorbike. Multiply the four blocks
of one street to a space about the size of the CBD. Absolutely. Packed.
With massive Viet Nam flags, and red headbands galore.The mood is
decidedly festive though, despite the inability to move. People seem
ready to shout and cheer for just about anything. Person A makes a fuss
about Person B else getting in the way of their motorbike. Person C
else points out that Person A has only moved abot a meter in the past
five minutes anyway. Person B laughs, cheers, and the crowd cheers with
him. And then the drumming starts. Banging on anything as a drum -
street signs, car bonnets (they weren't moving anywhere fast),
motorbike seats. Now THIS is a street party.I really must learn to
bring my camera with me everywhere in this country.
|
|
| Moi |
[17 Dec 2008|12:31pm] |
No, not French for me, but rather Vietnamese for new.
There's a lot of new going on in my life right now.
New apartment
I've recently moved into a serviced studio apartment - it's essentially like a big hotel room - which is a three minute walk from my office. Handy. I'm almost thinking of getting rid of my motorbike. One great thing about the new place is the water pressure. So strong. One not so great thing is that there's a big TV at the end of my bed. I can see myself spending way too much time watching TV in the next 3 months.
The other thing I'm liking about my new digs is that they're in a different part of town, which means I've got a whole new little micropolis to explore. Cool things in my new neighbourhood I've found so far:
- I'm about 2 blocks from one of the roast duck/roast pork epicentres of HCMC
- A kung fu school where kids train in formation (a la the opening of Once Upon a Time in China) and the men do amazing stunts and train with spears and nun-chuks
- A traditional drumming group comprised of teenagers, who practice in the evenings by the river
- A lady who runs a wonton noodle stand who makes the wontons fresh hen you order them
- A vietnamese donut stand whose movements are predictable (they tend to move around at different times of the day)
New work stuff
I've finally shifted into gear at work, and I've arrived at the point in the project where I'm needing to learn how to use all these new applications/packages, like jpGraph and MapServer. While I actually like that this project is forcing me to learn new skills, I'm a little worried as to whether what was laid out as the goals of mytime here will actually be achievable. Still, I can but try...
New Year
I'll be spending New Year's in Nha Trang with my cousin, and from what I've been told, it seems a lot of the expat community here are headed that way for NYE too. So it should be a bit of a party, which is probably what I'll need after the next two weeks of h4rdk0r programming (hahaha). Looking forward to visiting Nha Trang, even though I've been warned it's pretty much Viet Nam's answer to Koh Phangan.
New Life
Since I'm now single again, I've had to start thinking more seriously about what I want to do with my life next. I guess previously I was just waiting to see what D was going to do, and I'd plan my life to fit in with that accordingly, but that's no longer a factor. I'm still a little unsure as to whether I want to stay in Melbourne when I get back, or whether I should keep moving. I'm tempted by China and Thailand, but I'm fairly sure i'd have to teach English to make a living in both places, and I'm not sure how great taking time out from web/multimedia would be for my career at this stage.
|
|
| Worst. Month. Ever. |
[08 Dec 2008|09:56pm] |
So the reason I haven't been posting much at all recently is threefold.
1. Dengue
I came down with dengue fever, and thinking it was just bad gastro, and that I would get over it, went to Bangkok as scheduled, on my way to Burma. On my first night in Bangkok, I noticed I had a non-itchy rash on my legs, which is one of the symptoms of dengue which is more distinct from other flu-like diseases.
So the next morning, D takes me to the plush hospital not too far from our hotel, and after a blood test (pathology results in an hour - which is pretty amazing, but not as amazing as the 30 minute results in HCMC!) I was diagnosed with dengue. A repeat test the next morning led the doctor to advise me not to travel on to Burma, in case I got bumped around too much on a bus or something, and started haemorrhaging internally.
Naturally, I convinced D I was ok, and we went to Burma anyway. Though I spent most of the time there lying in hotel beds, and didn't really see much of Rangoon, let alone the rest of the country. After two days, we decided we should just go back to Bangkok, though it wasa public holiday that day, and the internet was down across the whole city, so getting a flight out the next day wasn't easy. Still, the internet came back online, and we managed it.
Back in Bangkok, the city was oddly quiet - Jatujak market on Saturday morning was a relative ghost town - because the country was in mourning for the King's sister, who had died in January, but was only just now in November being officially cremated.
2. Influenza
So I get back to HCMC, and am still rather lethargic, but pretty much over the debilitating effects of dengue. My friend T arrives in town, and despite her breaking her foot on her second day in town and being on crutches, we went out on the weekend, and I rather overtired myself. As a result, my immune system was weak, and I came down with influenza.
I'd like to note here that this was the real influenza, not some virus which knocks you out for a day or two, and is probably just a virulent cold, but which we like to all the 'flu. This was an infection which had me paranoid that I'd come down with a secondary (and much more dangerous) dengue infection. So this knocks me out for about a week.
3. The Breakup
Then just as I'm about recovered from the 'flu, I get a call from D, and I won't go into details, but the net result was that we're no longer in this grey area of a long distance 'on a break' relationship anymore. It's just not going to work.
Needless to say, I'm not really happy about the end of my relationship with D, and I spent most of last week in shock and denial. I'm better now, but there's still a long way to go for me to deal with all of this.
Like I said, "Worst. Month. Ever."
|
|
| Backposting... |
[23 Nov 2008|02:18pm] |
I't s been a long time since I posted, so here are a few are a few memoirs for the blog...
North
I’ve been up in the North of Viet Nam for the past week or so. Enduring the substandard phở (soup noodles); and yet very much enjoying the cooler weather and being together again with D. Hanoi isn’t such a bad place after all. I had very much written it off after my visit in April – it was humid, rainy, and just generally miserable.
This time around, the climate very much seems to match my mood (or perhaps it’s the other way around) – it feels like Spring in Melbourne, even though it’s very much Autumn here. Strolling weather (plus a bit of humidity, but you can’t really escape that). You can sense the anticipation among the ex-pats for the impending winter.
Sapa
On Friday night, we took the overnight train to Sapa. We were a little apprehensive about having to share a train compartment with two randoms, but luckily we ended up sharing with an Aussie mother and daughter combo who were travelling through Viet Nam together, who were remarkably well adjusted to what Viet Nam is about – i.e. they weren’t rueing the fact that Viet Nam wasn’t more accommodating, like Thailand, or harbouring any real resentment for being charged more for being a foreigner (often just a fact of life here).
Interestingly, though we were all chatting for about two hours, they didn’t seem to pick up on the fact that D and I were gay. Not that we’re usually out-and-out flaming queens, by any stretch, but I don’t think I go out of my way to hide the fact. It became evident when the mother was talking about how of the men who work in her office, they all wear pink ties, but only ‘the gay one’ wears pink shirts. With a subsequent chuckle which invited complicity in the amusement at this oddity.
What I found more odd was the fact no other men in her office wore pink shirts. It was a bank, yes, but I thought the scourge of metrosexuality had paved the way for men to wear whatever they want, to an extent, without fear of being singled out for being non-conformist. Actually, I thought it had gotten to the point where if a man didn’t wear a pink shirt, that was the real act of non-conformity. But then my sense of office fashion politics has been dulled by years working in places where no-one cared more or less if I showed up in a suit or wearing jeans and a t-shirt.
But I digress.
The climate in the train car seemed designed to induce some sort of pneumonia, oscillating from cold to hot to icy again, or perhaps that was an intentional manipulation of the passengers’ sleep-wake cycles. Who knows. In any case, it didn’t work very well, because I barely slept. By the time we spilled out onto the platform at Lao Cai at around 5am, I was bleary-eyed and fuzzy-brained.
Thankfully D had his shit together (and he had been there before) so he deftly organised our shuttle bus to Sapa and before I knew it, we were winding our way around mountains spectacularly graded with rice paddies – the stuff National Geographic photos are made of – and an hour later, we arrived in the little town of Sapa itself.
Sapa is very much a one-street mountain town. I would say sleepy, only we were there on the weekend, so despite the gloomy mist and light drizzle, the place was bustling with tourists. Who, like me, were all captivated by the unimpressed bear-dog who seemed to bark at phantom passers-by who weren't there.
The gloom lifted in the early afternoon, so we headed down to nearby Cat Cat village with my friends L and D2, who had been in Sapa for a couple of days already. It was a short, but fun and picturesque. My sort of mountain trek.
There was afternoon napping to be done after that, and then after dinner we went to Tau bar, where I got to play pool with one of the local Hmong girls. Who I’m pretty sure let me win, but that’s ok, because when we watched them play one another, their real skills showed, and just a warning – don’t play for money – they’re total sharks!
The next day was much gloomier, an it pretty much rained all day, so we spent the day at various cafes around town playing Uno, until it cleared enough for us to walk up to the Taoist temple in town (which was… um, a little uninspiring). Walking back to the hotel via the lakewas an interesting, Silent Hill-type experience, though not nearly as eerie, when I stumbld upon a young Hmong boy who appeared to be courting a rather coy Hmong girl.
The transit back to Hanoi was mostly uneventful, but the train journey was markedly more fun travelling with L and D2, and D got adorably (I know, I’m such a sucker) cocky when he had a Uno winning streak.
|
|
| Melbourne Quiz |
[22 Oct 2008|01:40pm] |
I swiped this from evolkween's twitter friend Jurgen who took it from the glossy mag that comes with The Age every month.
1. My first memory of Melbourne is
Going to the Prahran town hall with my cousin to watch The Neverending Story in the library during the school holidays. I have pictures of things pre-dating that, being born in Melbourne, but I don't remember them, really.
2. What would you put on a Melbourne postcard?
Some laneway with graffiti all over it. Maybe City Lights?
3. What do you always show to overseas visitors?
This is lame, but Federation Square.
4. Where do you get your coffee?
I don't drink coffee. Well, actually, I do now, but only the Vietnamese ca phe sua da type, so probably somewhere in Footscray.
5. What’s the worst thing you can say to a Melburnian?
That you're from Sydney, and you miss...
6. Melbourne’s most underrated suburb is
Probably Flemington. This question assumes too much knowledge of any suburbs other than the ones in which I've lived. Box Hill's pretty cool too, I guess, in its own way.
7. Best meal I’ve had in Melbourne
Probably some family feast at my uncle's place in Dandenong North. As for restaurants, it's hard to choose - Cookie, Pearl, Pizza Meine Liebe, Izakaya Chuji are all favourites.
8. Worst meal I’ve had in Melbourne
Not sure if it counts, because we didn't get to eating, but went to David and Camy's Shanghai Dumpling Restaurant in Tattersall's Lane, where a slow drip turned into a flowing torrent from the ceiling, just below wherethe new upstairs toilets had been installed. Thankfully, we moved before it really started gushing. Needless to say, I've never been back.
9. Melbourne’s streets are paved with
Concrete, silly. And quite evenly, too.
10. What’s over-rated about Melbourne?
Lygon St, Brunswick St, St Kilda.
11. If I didn’t live in Melbourne, I’d live in…
Um, I'm living inHo Chi Minh City right now. But I'm thinking Bangkok or Shanghai right about now.
12. Which Melbourne person would you most like to sit next to on the tram?
My boyfriend.
13. Which Melbourne person would you least like to sit next to on the tram?
The smelly guy in the leather trenchcoat with no sleeves and way too many studs, who tries to sell you poetry readings when you're sitting outside the Empress.
14. Who should be Lord Mayor of Melbourne?
Phibs.
15. What do you actually do all day at your job?
Facebook.
16. What makes someone a Melburnian?
Um, a chip on your shoulder about Sydney?
17. Describe Melbourne in three words.
Whatever you want.
|
|
| Still alive |
[09 Oct 2008|10:59am] |
It's been a while since I last posted - apologies.
China
I went to China last month to visit my sister - she's over there studying Chinese medicine, and it was her 30th, so it seemed important to go. It's strange to think of my sister as being 30. I suppose it's not so far away for myself either, but still, the mental barrier of changing digits hovers over the idea. We went out in Nanjing to karaoke (of course) and the following day we had a picnic in the park with her friends. It was sweet, although my lingering memories of Nanjing will always be mosquito bites and yummy mochi.
I also spent a few days in Shanghai on the way to/from Nanjing. It would have been even more amazing had I not been suffering from some sort of strange mucus-y 'flu (at least there was the option to hock a loogie wherever I pleased in China) but Shanghai, even though I was weakened and grumpy, was still pretty awesome. I hear myself getting excited whenever I respond to people asking me how it was. When I'm asked to clarify what's so great about it, I usually respond with "great food, great shopping, cool architecture, awesome public transport, oh, and cute boys".
Shanghai has that vibrating life-buzz which you find in a lot of Asian mega-opolises, but (from what I saw) it lacks the almost claustrophobic cramped-ness of many of those cities. Sure, there are a thousand super skyscrapers, but they don't seem to loom over you the same way they do in Hong Kong or Bangkok. Perhaps it's the light, and the haze of pollution. Perhaps it's just that the streets tend to be wider. I'm not sure. The French concession reminded me of Carlton somewhat, with plane trees lining the streets, only Carlton re-imagined as a high-end shopping district. So not really Carlton, I guess.
I could see myself living quite happily in Shanghai for a while. Who knows where I'll end up after this year in Viet Nam...
|
|
| Kai |
[08 Sep 2008|03:41pm] |
I found this entry in my travel journal from earlier this year, when I was in Thailand. I was stuck at Surat Thani train station for about 3 hours, waiting for my overnight train to Bangkok to come.
Kai is 34, but he doesn't look it. He has a cheeky smile, and readily dispenses it, like all Thai people. Kai's real name is Nopporn, but his parents nicknamed him Kai, or 'chicken', as the youngest of seven children, and their only son.
Kai has been working at the train station in Surat Thani for just over a month, and he tells me that he's been working straight for three days and nights, napping for an hour or two on disused trains a couple of times a day. He can't stop yawning, almost as if he's trying to prove what he's telling me to be true.
We start talking about travel, where I've just been, and where I'm planning on going. Small talk, in a way. Kai seems to be listening intently, though I'm fairly sure he was more interested in practicing his English comprehension than in my itinerary.
When I ask him about where he's travelled, I'm a little surprised to hear he's visited England. Apparently he went there years ago, to visit his girlfriend, who I assume was studying over there. Kai isn't together with her anymore. While she was overseas, he "was a bad man", succumbing to the charms of another woman. His ex-girlfriend found out, and became very angry, shouting and hitting him. Then she left him, and as far as Kai knows, she's living in Bangkok now.
Kai doesn't want to go to Bangkok. The pulsing metropolis doesn't excite him the same way it does me. When he has the time, Kai likes to go to the islands nearby for a holiday. We get to talking about scuba diving, and Kai tells me about the time he and his friends went to Koh Tao, and dropped acid before diving. It sounds like an amazing experience, though I'm pretty sure an altered state of consciousness is not really a safe thing to be mixing with an activity like scuba diving.
Maybe it's his boyish looks, but Kai seems wise beyond his years. He speaks reverently and with genuine personal concern about the future of the Thai kingdom, with the current government being in turmoil, and the aging Thai king experiencing problems with his health. When Kai speaks of the king, he calls him "my king", andI get the sense that this isn't necessarily a peculiar loyalty he feels towards the king, but that perhaps he is right when he fears that the Thai people's love for their king may be what is holding the country together. Because that love is incredibly strong.
Kai plans on becoming a buddhist monk in a year or two, partly because of his mother's wishes, but also because he feels he needs to do some good things to atone for his past.
As we shook hands at the platform as my train pulled in, I couldn't help but feel a little sad that I didn't have an even longer wait at the station. After all, seeing the touristy sights and tasting all the wonderful local food is exciting, but I think it's the people you meet and connect with along the way that truly make travelling worthwhile.
|
|
| Go ahead, make my day... |
[26 Aug 2008|09:57am] |
I was riding to work this morning, and I was coming down Hai Ba Trung (a busy street), when up ahead, there was a lady on a bicycle, riding the other way on the wrong side of the street (a common occurrence here in HCMC) in her powder blue pyjamas (also a common occurrence) and matching baggy cap. She smiled her buck-toothed smile and nodded at me as I veered left a little to avoid her.
Sometimes all it takes is a smile.
|
|
| Fifth time's the charm... |
[22 Aug 2008|12:37pm] |
This morning, after five attempts, I finally got the consulate of a certain country, which shall remain nameless but which is hosting the Olympics, to accept my application for a tourist visa.
Wednesday
I went there for the first time on Wednesday morning. I had everything the website told me to bring:
- my passport
- the application form
- evidence of paid and confirmed flights
- a letter from my sister inviting me to stay with her
I was turned away outside the office (by the security guard who pre-checks your paperwork before the girl who checks your paperwork, before they accept it to check it again and then issue your visa. The security guard told me that I needed to provide a photocopy of my passport and vietnamese visa. Ok, I guess that's fair enough.
So I went off to get the photocopies, and come back for attempt number two. The same security guard then says, "Where's your departure card?" My what?!? You couldn't mention that to me last time? Great... I'd been using my departure card as a bookmark, so I had to go home and get it, run off and photocopy it, and then come back to the consulate again...
Attempt three, and I finally get let inside the actual office! I wait in the line, and I'm all excited to hand my forms over. When I finally get there, and hand over my sheaf of photocopies, she looks through them and directs me to the next window. Sweet, I think, because the next window is payments and pickups. I'll just hand over my money, and come back next week and get my visa! The girl at the next window proceeds to tell me that my application is incomplete, and I'm missing a copy of my sister's passport, and since she's there on a study visa, a copy of her visa too.
So my sister, fortunately, had a little time on her hands that day, and went down to a hotel and managed to fax the requisite details across. Phew!
Thursday
I go in, confident, with the additional information. I breeze past the security guard, and hand over my even thicker sheaf to the girl behind the visa counter. She looks through the papers, and staples the papers from my sister together. A good sign, for sure! Stapling = processing, right?
"You need a copy of your sister's lease."
F@$#ing what!? You couldn't tell me this yesterday?
"The girl you spoke to yesterday doesn't handle the processing, she's in payments. She wouldn't have known that you also need proof of your sister's residence."
Then why the hell would you pass my stuff over to her for her to talk to me?
So I leave, and thankfully, again, my sister is on top of it, and manages to fax through the extra documents.
Friday
I walk in, and the security guard smiles. He obviously recognises me. We have a short, jovial chat about how I've got it right for sure today, and he motions me into the office. There's no line today, but I'm almost a little scared to sit down with the girl behind the glass divider, because she's such an expert at the cold detached rejection she doles out in at least four different languages, from what I've seen.
I hand her my application, with a weak smile. She doesn't return the smile, and proceeds to sift through my paperwork. She's methodical, thorough, and quick. She doesn't make any eye contact with me, and it's not until she reaches for the pad of pick-up slips and starts writing that I'm sure I've got it right this time. She looks up and, unexpectedly, gives me a bright, beaming smile. She tells me to come back next Wednesday to pick up my passport, and wishes me a good day.
A good day indeed.
Finally.
|
|
| Wongfest 2008 |
[19 Aug 2008|03:05pm] |
|
This past weekend, I organised a bit of a festival of fun for my friend (henceforth Wongie) who lives in a town in the Mekong Delta. She was up in HCMC for the weekend, possibly for the last time, so we thought it appropriate to make an occasion out of it.
Friday night, we went to Hachiya, a great little Japanese monjayaki restaurant, where they bring the food out (mostly) cooked and serve it on the huge grill which forms the middle of the table. You then play around with it with your chopsticks and little spatula. Tons of fun.
After dinner, we headed on to Cantina, a Mexican restaurant/bar, which was holdinga Northern Soul night that promised to be some funky fun. Unfortunately, it was more of a sit/stand-around-and-drink-while-others-smoke sort of a night, and less of a funk-soul-boogie-your-pants-off sort of night. The fact the DJs were overweight, badly dressed, middle-aged white expats didn't really help the vibe. They were having a great time, though, it seemed. Good for them.
Saturday afternoon shopping expeditions were cancelled due to the torrential rain (always a likelihood in HCMC during the wet season) and we met up again for a fancy dinner at cepage, a slick-looking restaurant (think dark wood, good lighting and marble sinks in the bathroom) where we'd somehow by default been placed in the private dining room. Which was quite schmickity, with leather chesterfields and flocked wallapaer. Anyway, the dinner was impressive, as all those 'fine dining' experiences should be.
I made the unfortunate mistake of ordering the ceviche (raw tuna marinated - and hence par-cooked - in lemon juice), and following it up with salmon with a fermented yuzu crust. I don't say unfortunate because it wasn't stunning and delicious - which it completely was - but rather because I don't know which of these dishes was responsible for the horrendous bout of food poisoning I suffered that night/the following morning.
We went on from there to karaoke, which was a little odd, I must say, because there were some obviously quite divergent musical tastes in the room. And the insistence for keeping the lights off (the dimmer didn't work in this room) made it hard to read through the song selection. Anyway, we were all pretty exhausted by the time we left, close to 1 am.
Despite the food poisoning, I somehow managed to drag myself to yum cha the next morning at the Windsor Plaza hotel. Which for the most part was pleasant, although I wasn't particularly feeling the love for the food, given my stomach's fragile state at that point. Also, it was an a la carte yum cha, rather than an off-the-trolley yum cha, so it wasn't what I'd call the real deal. Still, hilarity ensued when the staff got our order for coffee wrong twice, and again when a small running child face-planted into a waiter's crotch, causing the waiter to spill an ice coffee all over a man sitting at a table nearby.
|
|
| Looking back (already) |
[15 Aug 2008|11:21am] |
This week marks five months in Viet Nam for me. It doesn't seem to have passed that quickly, but at the same time, I'm almost halfway through my time here. So what have I got to show for my time here so far?
- I have learned only enough Vietnamese to order food, bargain at shops, and tell daxi drivers where to go.
- I can quite comfortably handle a motorbike through Saigon traffic, in the rain, and with a passenger.
- I've learned how to use and customise a website using the Joomla CMS.
- Tomorrow will mark my first recording session in a studio - a local high school has enlisted me to read some of their textbooks aloud for their English intensive students.
- I've holidayed in Hong Kong, Macau, Thailand, Ha Noi, Hoi An and Mui Ne. I have a healthy tan.
- My stomach can probably handle eating salmonella off a laboratory petri dish now.
- I've lost six kilos, and I can almost touch my toes. That sounds worse than it really is. I'm just rather inflexible.
|
|
| Standard line of questioning |
[11 Aug 2008|04:48pm] |
This happened to me today, at the gym, in the changeroom, in a towel:
Vietnamese Guy: *Some fast vietnamese babble*
Me: Xin loi, toi khong hieu (I'm sorry, I don't understand).
VG: Where are you from?
Me: Australia.
VG: You look like Vietnamese.
Me: I'm Chinese.
VG: Ah. How old are you?
Me: 28.
VG: Are you married?
Me: No.
VG: Do you have girlfriend.
Me: No.
By this stage, I've managed to get fully dressed.
Me: Nice to meet you. I have to go now.
VG: (hesitates, then says very quietly) Do you like sex?
Me: What? I don't understand. Bye.
|
|
| Stolen meme |
[08 Aug 2008|04:02pm] |
I got this from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) delightt whom I've never met, but is in HCMC it seems...
Instructions:
- Look at the list and bold those you have read
- Italicise the ones you want to read
- Underline the books you really loved and strikethrough the ones really didn't enjoy
- Reprint this list in your own journal if you want to... you know you want to.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (how about incomplete?)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - isn't this the same as Chronicles?
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In A Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
|
|
| Spam haiku? |
[04 Aug 2008|08:44am] |
Now I know it doesn't QUITE fit a haiku form, but it still looks like one. I got this in a piece of spam this morning:
flute codpiece sixfold
steeple farina cameo? enterprise, temporary formate.
egregious serfdom.
Computers are the greatest poets of our time.
|
|
| Objectae Memorandum |
[24 Jul 2008|04:54pm] |
I'm often a little worried about how little of my childhood I can actually remember. I don't think it was so particularly painful that I've repressed any of it; perhaps it was just singularly dull. Which in itself is a little worrisome. However, there are a few memories that I have which are a little confusing in their insignificance, yet they remain strong after so long.
Bubble bath
When I was about five or six, I remember mum and dad used to come and pick my sister and I up after school in the old blue Falcon. One day, we got in the car, and were presented with matching bottles of bubble bath in the shape of a clock. I can't remember whether mine was the yellow bottle, or the green bottle. I do remember the bottles had hands on them which you could move around, I suppose to indicate what time was 'bath time'.
Taubmans
When I was about eight, my sister and I had a habit of collecting paint colour swatches from the local Mitre 10 hardware store. We'd only ever take five or so at a time, so it took a while to build up the complete range of paint colours available. It was a habit like collecting movie-merchandise cards - which we would later become obsessed with after the release of Terminator 2 - only it was free, and involved a lot less chance. We mostly stuck to the Taubmans range, because the cards were a bit smaller, and they were rounded at the top. The Dulux ones were larger and square; we didn't bother with them, because they were boring. I think my sister had the entire range (with some doubles, because it was often hard to remember which colours you had, and which you were missing) at some point, which she stored rather haphazardly in a square bakelite flour canister in the living room. I'm guessing they were thrown out by our parents when we moved to Melbourne.
|
|
| A message from the nerd corner... |
[17 Jul 2008|12:13pm] |
To all you lovely folk who bother to read this blog, I want to say this:
Stop reading right now, and do a complete backup of all your data files, or better yet, your entire system!!
This morning I had a freak out when my computer froze, and then upon turning it off and on again (the oldest IT trick in the book) it wouldn't restart!
Thankfully, I managed to get t up and running again, after about 10 atempts and resorting to using the Recovery disc that came with the laptop, thinking I'd have to abandon all my valuable photos, documents, work files, etc.
So yes, a timely reminder to all of you out there - don't put yourself through the pain! Back it up now.
Baby got back(ups).
|
|
| Neurotic much? |
[13 Jul 2008|10:45am] |
|
My good friend deadpixel has started contributing to a new blog called homo-neurotic. It's all about fashion, style, politics, current events etc., through a queer lens. Check it out.
|
|
| CSI |
[10 Jul 2008|09:02am] |
 I have been mildly fascinated by this case for the past twelve years, especially how it dies away for ages, and then every now and then something happens, and the mystery gets re-ignited in the press. I guess that's not too uncommon for unsolved crimes, but there's something immediately arresting (no pun intended) about the unsolved murder of a child beauty pageant contestant. And her name was JonBenet - I mean, come on!
So today, JonBenet's parents were cleared of any further suspicion after conclusive DNA testing ruled the DNA found on JonBenet's dress was not from anyone in her immediate family.
So her parents didn't do it themselves... I still think they were involved.
|
|
| Can we say intrigued but apprehensive? |
[08 Jul 2008|08:42am] |
|
So I’m sure Evolkween already knows, because he’s the queen of pay TV, but FYI, Australia now has its own Project Runway franchise: http://www.thevine.com.au/fashion/articles/project-runway.aspx I’m intrigued to see how they’re going to put an 'Aussie ' spin on the show - which you know they will try to do - and I'm also intrigued as to the way that Australian personalities will have an effect on how the show unfolds, as in the US version, it's often the large and extreme characters which make the show.
I'm apprehensive about what the show will be without Tim Gunn, Heidi Klum, and also who they will get to be judges.
Now for the random reader who doesn't know me that well, I am disdainful of various forms of reality TV, chief among them Big Brother, which has never managed to attract my attention for more than two minutes, because, frankly, there is just no format - it's like watching a security camera - I find it the lowest form of televisual entertainment. Well, perhaps there are some sitcoms that are worse.
That being said, as soon as you add some sort of competition that involves eliminating people, I'm suddenly inexplicably hooked. Survivor, America's Next Top Model, So You Think You Can Dance, Australian Idol, Top Chef, The Biggest Loser (aka Fat Cracker!) and for half a season, even The Apprentice. I don't know what it is; perhaps it appeals to some sort of innate human need to rank and judge others. In any case, over the years, I've become something of a connoisseur of elimination-based contest reality TV shows. And the one thing that is always true, regardless of what the contest may be, is the show is made or broken based on the personalities of the contestants. Get a good mix, and you'll win me over every time. Even if the show is something as ridiculous as Who Wants to be a Superhero?. A bunch of boring people, even if they are spectacular dancers, as in this season of SYTYCD in the US, and you'll lose me pretty quickly. I recently sat through the last season of Australia's Next Top Model, which has never grabbed me, because the Australian girls all seem to be too nice to one another, and no-one is driven or bitchy enough, unlike in the American version. Oh, and of course the judges all lack the credibility and appeal of Tyra and her gang. But this season in the Australian version there was open bullying, subterfuge and plain bitchiness among the girls. So perhaps the Australian producers have finally figured out why the American show rates so well; that it's not about who wins, who has the best 'look', or has lost the most weight, or sings the best. What matters is the drama and comedy that surrounds the actual competition. Which is ironic, really, seeing as so much of what has been abandoned in television in favour of cheap, easy to produce reality TV is scripted, well written drama, with characters with whom we like to identify, or love or loathe. So in any case, hopefully that took four seasons to figure out what makes good reality TV on Australia's Next Top Model will have that headstart and Project Runway Australia will live up to its American counterpart.
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
|
|
|
|
