10.09.08 - Ah-Choo

Thank you faux-spring, you've fooled me once again. Around this time every year when the temperatures move a little higher up the teens, we don our gay apparel by shedding fleece layers and leather jackets in exchange for skimpy cotton and linen outfits still unripe for the season. You're a true Sydney-sider when you brave the beach even if the chill wind of winter still blows.

"It's crisp", a friend said - heading to dinner in just a t-shirt. As much as winter weight keeps us warm in this transition period, our blubber doesn't work like other animals - bears in particular. He got sick the next day, fool.

As for me, a wind breaker clearly didn't keep me as warm as it should have ("It's from Uniqlo", I reasoned, "no one else has it here!"). I wanted so much to celebrate Spring fashion (Fashion Week in NY and "30 days of fashion" in Sydney) in brighter, lighter gear it all back fired when hay fever and a bad cold struck me down causing self-pity, puffy eyes and multiple layers of thick clothes, just when more faux-Spring weather came around - I didn't even dress this warm in winter. Urgh. I feel like a marshmallow man.

The Hit: (Listen): Night Fever - The Bee Gees

09.09.08 - Apartment #26

Apartment number 26 has been listed for sale. The local real estate agent's snail mail proudly pimped its "district views", "secure block" and "close location to cafes, transport and amenities". Hey you don't have to tell me, I live in the building - and on the same floor. Except I enjoy street views and in the winter time when the tree outside my window is bare - views of Rushcutters Bay. Or in realtor-speak, "water glimpses".

I know the apartment, or at least its former tenants. They were a rascally bunch - two women and a man - three siblings (?) maybe in their mid-to-late-4os, living in a 36 sq m studio apartment. While we exchange curt smiles in the confined space of the elevator, I don't think I would be as polite when I'd spot one of them in Kings Cross huddled under one of the bare trees. Or the other in a wig, fishnet stockings and a mid-riff top. Or on one occasion, the two women were screaming at each other from across Darlinghurst Rd. So I figure, without judging people by their appearances - that they comprised of a pimp, a drug dealer and a crack whore. I wonder which of them earned the most.

One weekend, I saw clothes, sundries, crap and a beat up microwave all in the hall, spilling out of their apartment - as if someone took a shovel and pushed everything out of the apartment. I figured they moved out. Or was kicked out. (They were.)

The Hit: (Watch) Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves - Cher

08.09.09 - The Return of Brenda and Kelly

While everyone fussed about the MTV VMAs, Gen-X never felt older until last night's resurrection of the Peach Pit and (most of?) its patrons on TV via the new 90210 series simultaneously reviving Brenda's fringe, West Beverly High Cali-cool and the longevity of Aaron Spelling's evergreen handle on cheese.

Rather than start clean, the Kansas to Cali storyline milks every last drop of The Beverly Hillbillies with a more modern day Clampett Walsh clan clambering over Rodeo's super-social-set. This dramedy now runs separate plot lines for the paternals, AND grand-paternals (thank you for picking up Jessica Walter from the hell of Arrested Development's under-development). They're of course rolling with this to bizarrely integrate the original 90210 cast (who are all now related to each other) work in the plotlines. Clever, kind of.

Thankfully, double duties and screen time goes to paterfamilis and school principal played by Rob Estes (Melrose Place and uuuh, Silk Stalkings if you can remember that) and boy does Daddy age well, woof is he hot!

The only downside to all of this is that we're not only watching a large set of teen students, we're watching the lives of their teachers and their parents (or as it were parent-cum-principal) unfold in cringe-lite dialogue and sassy other-worldly opulence. One that only the true Gossip Girl set can appreciate (or relate to).

Now if only Hobie from BayWatch got his own show back, I bet he's hot. Oh wait - he already did make a cum-back. Well, kinda. But he's not as hot as I thought.

07.09.08 - Big Poppa

My dad is somewhere in California. The last time I spoke to him he said he was "maybe leaving for the States", I find out the next day he did fly over there. I haven't spoken to him since. But, it's Father's Day in Australia - the US and the Philippines celebrate it around June - so really, there's no need to worry about gifts or greetings - the latter being the only thing he's received for such an occasion since I lived here - which really points to his non-materialism rather than my stinginess.

He's wise my Pop. And ever so sunny when I talk to him.

06.09.08 - Fag Hag

I thought of you when I saw this.

A few "you"'s actually: sister, cousin, friend, mother, Aunt, stranger on YouTube, neighbor, colleague, ex-colleague.

I'm glad you can hag for me with no hesitation. Or taking all that out, just for being a friend. Thanks.

This was apropos to a Saturday night when a friend and I had been eagerly recruiting for a hag when the one we had left us. Because really, we could use you if either of us picked up so no one would ever be alone. Later that evening after drinking GTs at home, we played pool while drinking what tasted like Cosmos from plastic cups and "Groove Is In the Heart" was playing. Classss.

Oh and just so it's known. Neither of us picked up.

05.09.08 - Trapped Inside an Emotionless Emoticon

This is the most emotionless emoticon I've seen.

And so trapped inside it, what else would you do when the only visible parts of you are your hands? Yeah, I knew you were thinking what I was.

This is my place of work. We were packing that day to move two floors up to "improve corporate communication" with our fellow emotionless co-horts who we would be pod-ed with so that we can more easily harass each others' personal space for the sake of not-getting-more-work-done. Or if all goes well, as planned by our crafty Human Resources Department - we would be "one" in the spirit of professional culture advancement, a step closer to office Utopia, by submitting to the false pretenses of forced polite workplace togetherness in back-patting, self-congratulations, hurried verbal masturbation and sweaty boardroom Powerpoint orgies.

Or as a colleague said it "it's a workplace circle jerk". This slight cynicism combined with sharp observation earns her r-e-s-p-e-c-t.

04.09.08 - #1 on the Sides, #4 Car

A summer look in early spring. I almost got a head cold because of the false-Spring that half-sprung early in the month, happens every year yet I never learn. Now half my head is cold, dang. I'm glad I got myself freshened up - half the fun was sitting in a chair catching up with my trusted hair stylist who we worked out I'd been seeing for 5 years. That's about half the time I've lived in this city and almost twice as long as any boyfriend I've had.

Is it weird to think of her as part of the "network" that make up the familiarity of Sydney for me? Mind you, hair in itself is SO personal, it grows out of you - so you better be damn sure someone treats it right. I know someone who would drive an hour to have hers done - and yo, I relate.

03.09.08 - Ken's At Kensington

Two doors down from Peter's of Kensington is the discreet Ken's At Kensington.

But let me say it now: I did not go in. (It's a gay bathhouse.)

In fact, I just passed it on the way home from my accountant on a sick day that found me cabbing it for comfort food at Ayam Goreng 99 in Kingsford. My timing was off and instead of the no-nonsense public transport I came to expect (sarcasm, please), the nearby girls schools unleashed giddy, screaming pre-pubescent young lasses volleying for a bus position on their respective ways home to gab about their schoolyard crushes while listening to the Jonas Brothers (because Joe is SOOO hawt! OMG!). So I walked instead, and as if leading me directly away from the Inner East's Sodom (so I hear) - the bus stop closest to it was going my way and had space for just another.

Needless to say I know where it is now, in case I ever - I hope I never - have to get there.

02.09.08 - Wonderful Chicken

Waiting for a friend before seeing Hellboy, I killed time by checking out the mega-massive Asian supermarche called "Maxim" at the basement of the Lumiere Apartments on George St. This thing was massive, and just as Town Hall seems to transition the city from CBD to Chinatown - Maxim sat solidly in the middle - a mod, minimal open plan market stuffed solid with Oriental delicacies - and by that I mean Gyoza flavored potato chips, Milky Soy Green Tea, and any Asian kid's childhood staple Yan Yan.

01.09.08 - Back to the Apple Isle

Barely has Miss Em settled back to her home that I've already planned to invade her little island down under Down Under.

This time I'm off with another friend. Unbeknown to us - we planned it the weekend that this Bacchanalian feast hits Hobart, so curtly called the The Hobart Beer Festival

Says it all don't it.

Prepare for me Hobart.