The week*, in feelings...
Sean G rolled into town, down the escalator at Shoreditch High Street, well-cut navy suit, louche––no tie. His laugh singed with an infectious Aussie twang, he brought the last of the balmy evenings and an easy familiarity. The following week, in front of an open fire, Caitlin…
You say potato, I say atopotatos
Not a philosophical joke (that may end up being me), but there you have it, my very first philosophy joke. Once I dream of Nietzsche (please let it be Nietzsche and not the horse*) I’ll don a black skivvy and officially launch my London Philosophy Club…
Stop, science time
Yes boys and girls, MC Science, a.k.a Ma Rudder is in town, so it's science week––except it's three weeks––and let me tell you, it's been said, and I can verify, science is everywhere. We're talking orreries, astrolabes, theodolites, miniatures, models and moulds, faience, glass and porcelain…
To rage against…
There I was in London one minute distilling my very essence into online forms and financial data, when I was told definitively that despite all advances in modern technology, the bifurcations, hooks, whorls and spurs of my fingerprints must be measured in Melbourne and only Melbourne…
Expensive bosh
Leafing through Philosophy Now in the Swiss Cottage library. Someone has added comments in biro; a spindly hand I associate with an elder member of society. Derrida is ‘clownish’. An article on ‘Ecstasy Through Self-Destruction’, is ‘bosh’ and Noam Chomsky ‘pillock’ has his name defaced so it reads Chimpsky, which frankly, I thought a bit childish…
The foreign lady with yellow hair
But if thongs are called ‘slippers’ then what do you call slippers? Slippers? You know, shoes you wear at night, inside, when it’s cold... On average 33 degrees, I didn’t once stop sweating, so RR suggested a facial––booking me in, not for the relaxing kind mind, rather one where they attack your face…
One metre above sea level
So if it’s an orange––it looks like an orange, it tastes like an orange––but it’s green... is it an orange? Dodunduwa, the small town on the South West coast, which translates in a way to orange-island, or green-orange-island, gave us plenty of time to debate the terms…
A type of hyphen
There have been other departures, but none probably quite like this. There have been other arrivals too, but here, squinting at 8ish in the a.m. alighting directly onto sunbaked tarmac, it was amazing how quickly ridiculous my all black everything seemed…
Melbourne, may we meet again
In ‘98, I knew. Then in 2006, I left Sydney behind and made the move South of the border. I was younger, fitter, blonder and my teeth were most definitely whiter. Nine years later, with a respectable dependence on coffee and red wine, I'm leaving as a true, wintery-city convert…
Up a ladder, buzzed, with a stanley knife
Think of something you could do or make or sell in Asia, now. Hong Kong is hardly Asia proper, and I'm certainly no analyst, but I know enough to know that this is the future, and if you're prone to surprise––say you were shocked by anything leaked à la Assange and Snowden…
First ask ‘are you choking?’
There are icebergs floating down the Hudson, the city’s a giant slushy. It’s been snowing in the Tri-state for a record number of weeks and the news out of Jersey is that ‘salt supplies are critically low’. The sanitation department is under armoured guard…
Another trip, c'est fin
Taman Jaya LRT, sweating like crazy, towering over the school kids waiting to be picked up. In zooms Mrs R with a very pregnant RR in the passenger seat of their Proton (Malaysia's car of the masses). I was whisked off to Shah Alam for more courses of food than I could bear saying no to…
Then across the pond to Paris
Weeks seven and eight got weird - kicking off in Paris, winding up in Hong Kong and bidding farewell to the babes in Kensal Rise in between. I still haven’t met a Russian and am no clearer whether lip balm is a cream or a liquid or at what point a cream becomes a liquid or when served scones which should technically be spread first…
And a dip into Stockholm
Who was that tennis player? Not Bjorn Borg, the other one. The question came to mind on the Arlanda Express and no I couldn't let it go. So our weekend in Stockholm began by exercising the old grey matter... I managed to extract an 'S' but was beaten to it by Al…
Wax on, wax off
So I've settled in and even developed a fondness for the Kilburn High Street with its scarcity of teeth and its profligacy of third-rate British chains like Poundland, Iceland and Cashino (there is a second Poundland…
London, late March, 2014
After planning, delaying and planning the trip again, I couldn't quite believe I was taking off from Melbourne Airport, then KLIA, then being quizzed at Heathrow at 5am, I fumbled through my explanation…
Jamon. No es carne!
Pre-trip trauma, like a fugly passport photo, unhelpful consular staff, incompetent customer service from my bank/superfund/insurer and ludicrous exchange rates had me thinking I might have tired of this…
Incommunicado
‘Uff, thank goodness the key has stopped'. Key/rain, llave/lluvia, an easy mistake to make. Thankfully my barista is gracious and patient with my early morning small-talk…
Movimiento Okupa
Lunch at 4pm is common, dinner at 10pm the norm. Clubs list 3am and 5am DJ sets, so exceptional stamina or siesta is a necessity. But seriously – the whole siesta thing – I did it twice and felt worse for it both times…
A por ello
There’s a joke about the Andalusian accent… that the alphabet in Southern Spain has five letters: A, B, TH, D, E, E, E, E… It definitely doesn’t get anywhere near S, and with Euro Cup football fever at full pitch…