November 29, 2001
06:01 AM dublin time
the answers were:
1) which woman opened her first body shop in 1976?
anita roddick [could not think of her. put down someone whittaker i think]
2) where are the plains of abraham [clue: james wolf was a bit of a star]?
canada [i'm with you on this one. eh?]
3) in 1902 mary anderson invented and patented which motor accessory that's still in use today?
windscreen wipers [not readview mirrors as we eventually guessed]
4) what do you call the metal disks on a tambourine?
jingles [i can't believe someone knew this, but i guess if you're a percussionist you should! we said cymbalinas!!]
incase you were wondering about the ones we got right, in commemoration and boredom i put them up here. answers to follow.
[link]12:18 AM dublin time
most wednesday evenings since arriving in melbourne we've been going to a trivia quiz in fitzroy. it's entertainingly hosted by the semi-decrepit apparently alcoholic loud-mouthed 'auntie jack' [a man]. we usually do ok - not coming first, but not last either - mostly due to our star teammate and ex-blackboard jungle [irish school's tv quiz] winner ciarán. one time we came third and got a bottle of wine for our troubles. but we were on top form last night and came FIRST!! scoring a fab twenty seven out of thirty one.
yay for us!! [though we only got one bottle of wine again.]
could you have done any better? have a go at the four we got wrong [no cheating by looking it up on the internet please]:
1) which woman opened her first body shop in 1976?
2) where are the plains of abraham [clue: james wolf was a bit of a star]?
3) in 1902 mary anderson invented and patented which motor accessory that's still in use today?
4) what do you call the metal disks on a tambourine?
November 27, 2001
09:44 PM dublin time
sorry 'bout lack of blog yesterday - i ran out of words. well i had a couple, but i used them up writing about something ickle. which i will show to you when it appears there.
[link]November 26, 2001
04:56 AM dublin time
on a typical sunday we surface fuzzy and dehydrated around noon, throw on some clothes and go in search of a late breakfast. we head for one of melbourne's many little café alleyways, linger over our choice of cafés, finally pick a place to eat and order some food and several drinks - a tap water, an apple juice and a coffee for me - to be devoured within minutes, before our food is even close to arriving.
November 22, 2001
11:15 PM dublin time
selfportrait. [orange filtered to match the page].
02:12 AM dublin time
d'y'know what's amazing? the number of google hits [7] for the exact phrase "one thousand three hundred and twenty six".
what's even more amazing is that there's more than twice that for "one thousand three hundred and twenty seven"
[link]November 21, 2001
03:50 AM dublin time
abcd. five years. who'd have thunk it.
[link]November 20, 2001
07:15 AM dublin time
during the melbourne festival, in a park, down by the river, we visited arcazaar - a magical giant tent-like construction with coloured panels through which the daylight shone red, blue, green, bathing you with saturated light and all the while a soothing tune floating in the background.
its creators - the architects of air have made many of these pretty luminariums [luminaria?] describing them as 'sculptures that people enter to be immersed in radiant light and colour'. they tour the world with them [i've seen them now in australia and ireland] and they're well worth a visit if they appear anywhere near you.
November 19, 2001
06:44 AM dublin time
someone has carried out a survey. and rather than publish the results it in any usual manner, they've painted them on the ground along a lane near our flat.
November 16, 2001
12:54 AM dublin time
prologue to story
i wish everyone would take some time to read 'my family and other animals' by gerald durrell. not just because it's a great book [and it is a great book - funny, well written and wonderfully easy to read] but because i find myself most often uttering the phrase 'that's just like that bit in my family and other animals' and being greeted by blank looks as no one has ever read the thing. so if everyone could please go out and read it, it would save me a lot of tedious explanation - having to then describe the scene in the book in order to validate that what's happened is indeed similar - by which time everyone has stopped listening anyway.
[before you read the following story first acquaint yourself with 'my family and other animals' - go on! it's a bargain - just over eleven u.s. dollars over at amazon.com! and you can get it secondhand there for just under eight dollars. go on, treat yourself!]
story
last sunday we went out to the botanical gardens, passing the war memorial monument on our way. planted in front of the memorial was a large bed of poppies. as that sunday was remembrance day i suspected that they had been planted specially for the occasion, but in any case they were a very pretty display - densely planted and all in full blossom. i kicked myself that i had forgotten my camera because i love poppies and this lot were just asking to be photographed. i decided they were worth another trip - with camera - but it would have to be soon to catch the poppies' short-lived bloom.
between work and weather i didn't manage to head out for the poppies again until thursday night at dusk. excitedly clutching the camera, gauging the remaining light and eagerly anticipating the resulting pictures, i rounded the corner of the war memorial and was faced with a totally replanted bed. all the poppies were gone - probably cut down before they withered - and replaced with anonymous little green seedlings. bastards. my lovely photographs, destroyed before they'd even been taken.
now hands up who can tell me which bit from 'my family and other animals' i subsequently related to aonghus as being 'just like that'!
[link]November 15, 2001
05:40 AM dublin time
which is better, being happy or being content?
[link]November 14, 2001
02:33 AM dublin time
hilda ogden was on my train this morning.
[image blatantly
stolen, edited and
uploaded from here]
it was her exactly - from the synthetic navy house coat and crocheted powder blue scarf to the checkered headscarf [tied at the forehead as the 'gangstas' do these days paying unconscious homage to coronation street]. all that was missing was the curlers and i had a suspicion that these were put away for later in her sturdy leather handbag [the kind that's good for battering cheeky so-and-sos over the head with].
November 13, 2001
04:29 AM dublin time
i had my first run-in with some members of the aussie insect population today.
just after i got out of bed, still half asleep, out of the corner of my eye, i noticed something run across the recently vacated duvet. it was a medium sized cockroach who then succeeded to clamber over the mound of still-sleeping aonghus. rather than risk alarm, duvet scattering and loss of precise knowledge of the roach's location i quickly scooped it into a pint glass and then woke aonghus who was suitably disgusted and will probably attack the flat with insect killing spray today.
about half an hour later, not much more awake, on the train in to work, another burst of movement at the edge of my vision drew my attention to a largish spider making its way across my knee. i started and swiped at him with my book.
it was only after he had disappeared who knew where - possibly up my trouser leg, under my shirt or into my sock - that i wondered if it was one of the notorious antipodean killer spiders.
reassuringly, he re-appeared a few minutes later on the seat in front of me and i kept a close eye on him for the remainder of the train journey. I don’t think he was a fatally poisonous one but I kept my book poised for squashing just incase he went for me again.
[link]November 11, 2001
11:45 PM dublin time
the best way to spend a gloomy hungover sunday? strolling round the botanical gardens [next time i must remember to bring my camera. flowers and ferns and bats oh my!] and tucking in to a divine dinner of beans on buttered toast [with ted's patented dash of cummin. yummin!].
[link]November 09, 2001
02:34 AM dublin time
an evening with abcd
i got home last night at about six twenty instead of my usual six - i wanted to keep reading my book and so stayed on the train to go the wrong way round the city loop rather than change to one going the right way.
when i got in aonghus put on the pasta to cook [he'd already made the sauce - an amatriciana type one] and we ate dinner at around quarter to seven.
after dinner we dossed around, each finishing off a glass of red wine so we could get out of the house for a ramble round the city. i finished off my glass quicker than aonghus and went back for a quick re-fill to wait for him. by the time he'd finished i still had some left, so he got a re-fill to wait for me. this continued for about an hour while we pottered about the apartment - me with my camera on the balcony [stopping when i realised it looked like i was trying to take pictures through other people's apartment windows] - aonghus clearing the table - me reading some more of my book - aonghus on the internet.
at about eight we strolled out of the apartment block, 'left or right?', i said. aonghus was too hesitant with his answer so i picked for him. 'straight on so'.
our magical mystery tour brought us to lygon street - a restaurant filled area of melbourne, with a high italian population. on the air we could hear snippets of italian conversations and smell garlic and olive oil. it was so much more familiar than the smells from the restaurants in china town where we live and for a split second i was homesick for the french, spanish and greek holidays we used to take.
we sat briefly for a glass of red wine in front of a cafe/bottle shop. beside us, debating animatedly in italian was a table of godfathers - well, fathers at least.
we left them at half nine, wandering home in time for aonghus' program du jour 'dark angel'. a relaxing boys-getting-their-butts-kicked-by-volumptious-genetically-modified-chickie two hours later it was brush your teeth, turn out the lights and time for bed. and with that goodnight.
[link]November 08, 2001
04:09 AM dublin time
'he died with a falafel in his hand',
'hedwig and the angry inch',
'the man who sued god'
goodness, we have been going to some strangely titled films lately
[link]November 07, 2001
02:23 AM dublin time
and then it rained. and not like the thunderous just-when-you-thought-it-couldn't-get-any-heavier-it-does rain that we've had a fair bit of since arriving here, which lasts for about half an hour and is followed by clear sunny skies. this was steady constant permenant rain. classic irish here-for-the-week rain, arriving specially for the melbourne cup that i'd been bribed ['but i don't like horses or gambling'] into attending by the promise of a chance to dress up.
i thought of backing out and staying in bed, but i'd already painted my nails [purple to match the feather boa], so i donned my orange ensemble [sandles, trousers, top. even orange knickers!] and braved the rain and by the time we were sipping our first champagne [sparkling wine] and placing our first losing bet, the rain had cleared in a very un-irish manner.
[link]November 04, 2001
11:13 PM dublin time
we had a 'this is why we came to this country' day yesterday, mostly to do with the weather eventually sorting itself out and giving us a bit of heat. the best bit was wandering home from a delicious 'vegie bar' dinner after ten at night wearing flip-flops and a t-shirt and deciding to have a balmy pre-bed dip in the pool on the roof. delicious.
[link]November 02, 2001
07:43 AM dublin time
garlic chicken, garlic courgettes, grilled garlic potatoes and garlic bread. and when i'd done with that, a return trip to the pans for the crunchy leftover garlic scrapings. garlictastic!
[link]07:18 AM dublin time
i requested a 'feast of garlic' for dinner tonight. i think aonghus took me at my word - i could smell the garlicky aroma from the third floor [we're on the sixth] - he says he's used ten cloves. fellow melbourne friday night revellers beware.
[link]November 01, 2001
05:11 AM dublin time
i'm getting worried about this nanowrimo thing. not that i'm writing a novel myself [i have enough trouble thinking up something to write here every day], but that everyone else is going to be so busy creating characters and plots that they won't have time to blog and i'll have nothing to read for a month.
or maybe you'll all be so sick of trying to come up with complicated plots and concrete characters that a bit of light blogging will seem like a break and everyone's blogs will be overflowing.
or maybe nothing will change at all. except that you'll all be bitching that you only did nine hundred words today and you're characters are falling to pieces or gloating that you're steaming along with thirty six thousand words and you're plots are riveting. and i'll feel left out.
see. i'm already feeling so left out that i had to do a bloody nanowrimo entry of my own.
[link]