Pilgrims are everywhere

Pilgrims are everywhere!

For the past 2 weeks while walking through the city streets, my path is confronted by swarms of foreign speaking youth, proudly waving their country’s flags, singing, dancing and cheering through the streets.

Isn’t it a little too early just yet for the world cup? Since when does Melbourne even hold international soccer events let alone have frenzied young fans going berserk through the streets?

As you can see, I am not one for keeping up with current affairs and what’s going on in the immediate world at hand. I have enough activities and things going on in my daily life to create my own reality of the world I view myself in.

It wasn’t until I tuned on the news that it clicked, these kids were here for World Youth Day 2008 and the big papal honcho of the Christian world is here in person to bless the masses in person, through TV and believe it or not, through SMS for the more tech savvy amongst us plebs.

Quoted from 'The Age':

On Friday morning, the gaggles of tech savvy pilgrims were excited to receive the latest SMS from Pope Benedict XVI.
The pontiff has sent daily messages to World Youth Day pilgrims all this week, complete with modern abbreviations - referring to himself as "BXVI".
Friday morning's message read: "The spirit impels us 4ward 2wards others; the fire of his love makes us missionaries of Gods charity. See u tomorrow nite - BXVI."

I bet even the holy spirit couldn’t have that far a reach back in Babylonian days.

As I went came back from lunch yesterday, I was confounded by the sight of a group of teens surrounding a street light. Posters depicting Christian themes were pasted up on the pole and everyone was merrily holding hands, dancing and clapping around the pole with such fervour that it would put the Mormons to shame.

Meanwhile, up the street, a group of Hari Krishnas are making their daily noon walk through the centre of the city, beating their drums and singing about (God) Krishna. The paths of these 2 groups would inevitably cross and I secretly prayed for an ensuing fist fight between the 2 groups.

I’ve got my bets on the Hari Krishnas, they look like they’ll fight dirty.

The Witching Hour

'2.37am'

reads the little blue screen as I squinted with one eye and brought my phone a little close to my face in the cold darkness of my room.

Fuck. I can't sleep.

Its been 5 nights in a row now that I've been awoken by my overactive mind racing with too many thoughts.
Like clockwork, I'll awaken somewhere around the 3am mark. The witching hour.

Work has started for me on Tuesday. New role, new project, new industry. This looks promising, it'll be a role that will benefit me. More on that later as things becomes more apparent. I'm somewhat relieved that at least there's one less aspect of my life to worry about as mentioned in a previous post.

No.
I know exactly what's keeping me awake tonight.

Miss Sam is making the permanent move from Sydney to Melbourne this weekend. I'm flying up on Saturday night and we'll be making the arduous 800km+ drive to Melbourne in her tiny white Daihatsu Charade.

The plan was in the works for the future and this was supposed to take a long time to fruition over a few more months. However, she was made redundant in her job a month ago and this threw a spanner in the works and accelerated the whole process before you can even say 'I can't breathe'!

Nothing will change. Or will it?

What happens when you take the 'distance' out of a 'long distance romance'? The yearning, longing and simmering lust that builds up to a frenzied climax in between visits; melt away into a lesser degree of normality as both parties exist within each other's life and space on a more frequent everyday basis.

I certainly don't know.

What I do know.... is that the tiny white, slim rectangular tablet of Stilnox I'm popping into my mouth, will blissfully kick-in in 10minutes and effectively knock me out for the count, giving me some desperately needed sleep and quieten down the voices in my head. Before the witching over is over.

Andy,
Zzz

The blue of Sydney

Having a week's worth of time off owing to me from work, I escaped Melbourne for some R&R up in Sydney, with Miss Sam's lovely company.


I love the sea.


There is something special about the beaches in Sydney.


Driving down lush green hills, you suddenly see the tree line break and a deep blue colour captures your gaze in the distance.


The view clams me as we weave down the road and reach the bottom of the hill to see the vast expanse of ocean fighting to get to the shore.


Islets of rock jut out into the sea, forming a natural cove.

So... what next?

I hate this feeling of not having any direction. It's been gnawing at the back of my mind even though I know I ought to be relaxed and happy, however, it is in my nature to be happiest when I'm focused or fixated with a goal in mind.

One weekend ago, the 18month project I've been working on in my short career at Accenture came to its official conclusion at 1pm on a Sunday afternoon. The role wasn't something that I wanted in the first place, but I bit the bullet and got the job done nonetheless. I'm glad to get it out of my system.

So what's been bugging me now is the uncertainty of my next role. The make or break deal. If I can't get into another generic role for another year, it just wouldn't help me the slightest. I need something that will give me specialised experience that I could market myself with in the future. So, fingers crossed for now.

And the washing powder goes in here!

I think one of my house mates has been adding washing machine powder the incorrect way.

Came home slightly drunk last night and put a finished load into the dryer, only to have a whiff of stale sweaty socks waft through the laundry area. I almost dry retched and thought, what the hell? I just took a clean load out! Upon closer inspection, there was a big chunk of laundry powder in the fabric softener dispenser.

This has happened a few times before, so what better way to send the message across than for Andy to draw up an educational clip on our fridge whiteboard.

MUTO

This takes graffiti and animation to a whole new dimension and level.

This artist- Blu is pure genius !!!


MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Acne woes

I've been sick. Thanks to my flatmates passing their filthy germs around the house the past month, I inevitably caught a whiff of it and had a sore throat / flu hybrid bug that put me down for a week. Poor Miss Sam was staying over the weekend before so she had to endure the better half of it observing me transform into a sick puppy.

Sick week was a productive week though, I took 3 days off work and indulged myself watching all the episodes of Underbelly. For something that was produced locally in Melbourne, it was surprisingly slick and well polished for a Australian TV Series!

Life's been pretty good of late. No more crazy hours at work ever since our project went live. Now I leave work at 6pm or earlier, take a longer lunch break (because I know I deserve it) and have time to fit in all my other essential activities during the week like gym, salsa and cooking dinner for the house.

On Thursday, I paid a visit to a Dermatologist. Last year, due to work stress, I had a bout of adult acne blow up on my chest of all places! It was ugly enough to warrant a visit to my GP to get prescribed a course of antibiotics which over the course of months, eventually cleared up any new instances of acne occurring. However, that initial outbreak has left a few nasty lumpy scars across my chest.


The Dermatologist injected the scars on my chest with an ampule of a corticosteroid to break up the scar tissue.

All I can say is: "Ouch! Motherf**king Ow Ow Ow !!!"



Imagine having a fine needle pushed under the skin of a scar, then a bubble of liquid injected in between the skin and scar tissue.

The dermatologist assured me that this will break up the scar tissue and gave me some Retin-A cream to apply every night until we have a follow up session in 6 weeks.

:o(