800 miles from home

I’m 800 miles away from home and sitting in a café at Brisbane airport’s domestic terminal.

View from my seat at the Virgin Blue terminal.

An interesting shot within a shot, I took these photos on my mobile and sent the pictures via Bluetooth to my laptop. Red Rooster chicken salad and a cup of tea for my afternoon snack.

Actually I’m starving as lunch was hours ago and I’m still feeling sore from a hard gym workout last night at what I fondly nickname “The Dungeon”. The Fitness First branch at 320 Adelaide St in the city has a great windowless weights room in its subterranean basement, filled with big heavy dumbbells and barbells. Blood and guts is the order of the day, and I love working out there whenever I get time away from the office.

The past week has been a daze as I was up at 4.30am on Monday morning to catch a 7am flight. I’m up here again to work with the development team as they fix the defects from the last trial conversion. I’m also the only person currently tasked to work on the reconciliation aspect of the project, which accounts for every single record that we process and tracks that record from start to wherever it ends up. In essence, this is like auditing, except with data instead of cash flows. The business and external auditors will want proof that nothing falls through the cracks when we crunch, transform and spit out this tremendous amount of data.

I think I’m finally used to working as a consultant now. The short notice to fly interstate doesn’t even faze me this time around and I’ve rehearsed the packing of my luggage and toiletries like a marksman disassembles and reassembles his rifle with a map burned into his memory. I can be ready to leave for a week’s trip in under half an hour.

My toiletries bag is always filled with miniature versions of what I’d normally use, packed neatly and stored away in the little compartments. My electric toothbrush is charged and ready to be transferred to its clear blue plastic travel case, the battery good to last for a week.

My mobile has got the numbers of airport pick-up and transfer services in 2 different states which I use to avoid the nightmare that is queuing for a cab and dealing with smelly foreign drivers. Its always nice to have a guy in a suit holding your name on a piece of paper and offering a clean and comfy ride to your destination when you trudge off the plane.

I’ve also learnt the fine art of catching up on sleep during the interstate flights. I always bring a book to read while waiting to board the plane and when in the air, as it serves a dual purpose of feeding the brain and inducing sleep. There’s nothing better than falling asleep shortly after take off and waking up just when the plane touches the ground.

So here I am, the week before Christmas and I have never worked harder in my life before with all the overtime hours I’ve been putting in to make this project run. I’m hoping to go home to Singapore in time for New Years Eve, but all the flights are full at the moment and I’m stuck in limbo on a wait list.

Here’s hoping for the best anyway….

Stereosonic

2 weeks ago I made a last minute decision (while still up working in Brisbane) to go for the Stereosonic festival at the melbourne showgrounds.




My friend had a spare industry ticket so I asked my trusty sidekick - prog girl to drive down during the week to Dan's workplace and front the money to help me buy a spare ticket as she and her friends were going too.


Prog-girl with her friends Kerry and Rita


It was a brilliant day spent in the sun with a venue that was big enough to accommodate the 15,000 strong crowd.


I'd say as with most outdoor raves and parties nowadays, there were still a large percentage of wankers, idiot kids and power muzzas; but not as much as what I experienced earlier this year at a string of events run by Future Entertainment.


The view from the grandstand overlooking the massive main outdoor arena. Notice the panels of 2 storey tall video columns showing trippy visuals.


Bumped into Liz, a party acquaintance I knew from some mutual friends


Big blow up gorilla casting its shadow over the crowd.


Some pretty cool 20yr old kids, Cameron and Spanky whom I struck up a random conversation with. They exclaimed that it was 'way cool' that even at my age I was rocking it hard at these events. Seeing that I'm only 27 and definitely have heaps more partying to do in my lifetime, I cracked up laughing so hard that my sides hurt.....


Mr Stacey Pullen from Detroit city, Michigan. One of the pioneer's of Techno in the early days!


A view of the sun slowy setting in the horizon and a cool breeze wafting into the grounds to replace the heat from the afternoon as people are still dancing


Stacey Pullen performed one of the best sets I've heard in recent times, considering the fact that he was playing outdoors in a pretty small stage in the corner.


Giant pie in the sky towering above the Hardware arena. I don't know why I took this shot but I felt compelled to because it was the best landmark there telling people to "meet me below the giant pie!"

Dinner at Ezard's

Last night I had one of the most extravagant and expensive dinners in recent memory.
My friends and I have always been talking about dressing up, getting together and catching up over a fine dining experience somewhere.

So we did, and made a reservation (1.5 months in advance) for dinner at Ezard's


Ezards is located at 187 Flinders Lane, next to Adelphi Hotel.

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Run by owner, Teage Ezard, this establishment has already won accolades of awards the last 2 years for its innovative representation of Australian free-style cooking with strong influences from Asia.


I ordered a smoked duck salad for a starter, which came with pickled beetroot, pink grapefruit and topped with a hot and sour dressing.


For mains, I ordered the barramundi, served on a bed of roasted eggplants, tomato and lime salad and finished with a thai-style yellow curry dressing.

The service was impeccable, the wait staff always hovered nearby, with slick hair and suits, they were extremely attentive and knowledgeable about all the intricate aspects of the food and drink.

Everybody in our party was very impressed by the food.
I'll have to give it a 10/10 score, every dish was a sensational work of art, pleasing to the eye and bursting with flavour on the palate.

Equally impressive was the bill which came after rounds of coffee and dessert.
Thien took a peek, eyes widening as she gasped and quickly put the bill down. I picked up the book and took a look, never have I seen that many digits towards a dinner party of 6.

The wine alone cost $308..... (we had 2 bottles of merlot and 2 bottles of chardonnay)

The total bill was.... (drumroll please!)......
....
..

$1085 ++

ouch.

We walked out with our stomachs feeling very heavy after all that rich food, and our wallets feeling much lighter.

It was worth it though.

Dinner at Jodie & Dave's

While we're on the topic of housemates, I caught up with my ex housemates Jodie and Dave over dinner the other week.
We lived in South Melbourne for about a year before the apartment got sold and we had to move out.

They recently had to move house again, but within the same property, just different floors and I offered my services and expertise in lifting the heavy stuff. So this was a thank you dinner at their new apartment.



Jodie in one of her more flattering poses


Dave, Jodie, myself and Dave's colleague, Des


Jodie showing us the cheesy side of her persona


Dave showing us the sexy side his persona

A sunday whinge

Its yet another sunny and warm sunday afternoon, its nice to sleep in my own bed the past 2 nights.

Hard to believe a week went by in the blink of an eye. Well to be honest it wasn't really a blink; more like a slow stabbing eyesore of a week.

I didn't get any time to blog while away, Brisbane was a nightmare with crazy 12hour days in a cramped office overseeing a bunch of indian programmers writing the programs to extract and convert the data. It was particularly frustrating because everything was barely holding in at the seams, most of these muppets aren't very experienced programmers and when things aren't working, nobody raises their hand up until the last minute!
Coupled with the fact that there were only a limited number of PCs which I had to share and it was impossible to work with a laptop on my knees, it feels like a futile exercise to go up there, hold their hands and answer the painfully obvious questions all day long.

Enough work talk now, I've got other stuff to whinge about.

As mentioned last week, me and Pat decided to kick our new housemate Samantha out.

We found her through a flatmate finders website which we've all used to get where we are now. Through the site, I found Lisa a year ago and we found Pat a few months later.
We were the perfect happy household that felt like a family.
Then in October, Lisa moved out with her partner Dave and we lost a fantastic housemate and dear friend. We then advertised on the website and did the interview rounds with potential applicants. The top few which we wanted to offer the room to either declined or found someplace else and I was the one who convinced Pat that we should take Sam because she seemed funny and down to earth although a little loud.

Turns out my gut instinct was terribly off the mark as you don't really know someone until you live with them.
In the 3 weeks she lived here, Sam:

• Sat out in the outdoor garden with her friends, got drunk and loud while chain-smoking
  
• Yelled drunken hellos at neighbours walking by
  
• Left a mess of empty wine bottles, glasses and filled ashtrays for us to clean up
• Left the bathroom in an absolute mess of hair, makeup and wet puddles
  
• Fried fish and made the whole house stink of fish for a week
• Left the frying pan full of burnt crap stuck to it soaking for more than a day
• Put a metal scourer to my non-stick frying pan to remove the burnt crap and successfully removed the Teflon as well
• Broken glass on the floor
• Dirt trails on the carpets
• Wet laundry left to dry all over the laundry area
• And finally earning us a warning letter from the body corporate and building manager because of numerous complaints against our unit from the residents in other blocks
  

So enough was enough, Pat called me while at work one day and suggested that we could get rid of her, to which I whole-heartily agreed and we ripped up the rental and bond agreement forms with her name on which we haven't handed in yet; sat her down and told her to start finding somewhere else to live as it wasn't going to work out.
2 weeks later she is gone, the house is nice and clean again and it feels great to come home now.

We ran the ad in the flatmates website again, interviewed some people and 2 days ago we accepted Emily, a soft spoken kindergarten teacher as our new flatmate!

Quick update over a sunny sunday

So its a nice cool and sunny Sunday afternoon here in Melbourne...

Apologies to the dear readers of my blog if you have recently wondered about the 2 week lapse since the last entry. Quite a few things have happened since then and this coupled with the fact that my Internet was down last week thanks to Tel$tra screwing up something as simple as a name change on a phone bill from Lisa to mine.
When the name change on the bill was entered into their system and went through, my ADSL2+ connection blew up and decided to un-sync itself from the modem.

I have to run off to the airport in a while to catch a flight to Bris-Vegas tonight, as early Monday morning, our project is kicking off the second trial conversion to time how long it takes to migrate 800,000 customer details from Queensland. An exciting week lies ahead for me, comprised primary of of late nights and living out of a suitcase which I'm not too thrilled about. On the plus side, this time round I've got myself in a comfy looking 1 bedroom serviced apartment which should contain more creature comforts of home than a tiny hotel room.

In the last 3 weeks, Pat and myself have chosen a new flatemate to replace Lisa, and recently decided to get rid of her as it wasn't working out! More juicy details to follow, I have to start packing my bags now and will try writing while I'm up there.

Andy

What you won't see on TV

I had a random though this morning while walking to work (I get random thoughts all the time but they're sometimes too absurd or naughty to mention in this blog)

Anyway, I was thinking: Why is it that every movie or TV show we see, 99% of the time, it always sends a positive message of hope, right over wrong, karma coming back to bite you, good triumphing over evil and all things pink, fluffy, sugary and nice.

The audience gets handed a cute puppy to cuddle with the take home message.

Now, if I were to write a script about a gloomy story which might very well happen in real life (and I bet my last dollar that it does), I highly doubt any film studio or TV network would endorse it.
We all know that we sit down in front of the telly to get ourselves in a happy state. That happy state is what keeps us wanting to come back for more and keeps the advertising dollars rolling in. Its one of the ultimate drug-free delivery systems of temporary happiness because our brains associate the good feelings from the screen to themselves.

What if we delivered gloom instead of happiness?

For example:

--Start --

Mr nice guy has a hot girlfriend who's absolutely to die for.
She's intelligent, pretty, makes him laugh and adores him.
He plays the part of the perfect gentleman, the perfect sensitive new age guy.
He's kind and sensitive, in touch with his emotions and pays 100percent attention to her every needs.
He eats organic, cooks beautiful meals for them both, recycles their garbage, drives a smart car, sips on skinny soy lattes during coffee breaks and takes up yoga and pilates to find peace with his inner self.

One day while our good chump was busy in his pilates class , his girlfriend runs into a bad boy who charms and seduces her with words and touch.
He was different, he was exciting and had a dark streak.
He walked through this world without apology and took what he wanted whenever he felt like it.
He's essentially a modern day caveman brimming with too much testosterone.
Hot girl falls for the bad guy over the good chump.

Good chump tries to face off with the competition but gets gets beaten up.
His pet puppy and kitten gets stuffed into a bag by bad guy and thrown into the river while bad guy plus new girl point and laugh at good chump while he bawls his eyes out.

Movie cuts to the sex scene right about now where bad guy does all sorts of nasty, kinky things to the girl while she enjoys every moment of it without feeling guilty or sinful.
Frustrated chump sits at home crying for his loss of girl, puppy and kitten and wonder why bad things happen to him.

-- The End --

Was there a point to all this?
Well, not exactly. I did say it was a random thought.

However, this is REAL life and that could happen though. (A little less exaggerated perhaps)

Michael Clayton

I just came back from the movies with Steph & Simon and we saw a film that is better than good.
In fact, it just about restored my faith in major release cinema. It is written for adults, it is mature, understated, intelligent and tautly suspenseful. A tale of morality which far outshines everything else in this genre.


George Clooney plays Michael Clayton, a lawyer in a firm who has a niche area of expertise, he is the specialist who comes in to cleanup in a manner of speak. He is like Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction, the 'cleaner' who comes in do the dirty work and make problems in law disappear.



Clayton cleans up client's messes, handling anything from hit-and-runs, to damaging stories in the press.

A major agrochemical client, U North, is in the verge of a settlement when its top litigator Arthur Edens has an apparent breakdown and tries to sabotage the entire case. Clayton is sent for damage control and what ensues is the most exhilarating 2hrs in the cinema for me as the complex story unfolds.

I won't reveal too much, only to give it my nod of approval and a 10/10 score.


On another food related review, we had dinner at an awesome Korean restaurant in the city before the movie.
It is the Oriental Spoon on 254 LaTrobe St, Melbourne.

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We had sizzling hotplates of Beef, Squid, and Seafood Bulgogi; Hot and Spicy soup; Korean Chicken Ginseng Soup; and all these were accompanied with heaps of lovely side dishes, kimchi and rice. For around $23 per head for 5 of us, it was good food at a fantastic value.

Next time though, I'll be more adventurous and get everyone to order the DIY barbecue sets where I saw people cook mountains of meat and vegetables on a massive hotplate to be shared around the table.

Recovery BBQ at Fawkner Park

Sunday - This delayed entry is part 2 of my big weekend

So after only catching a few fleeting hours of restless sleep after Jimmy van M, I got woken up by my friend Marika asking me to come along for a impromptu BBQ at Fawkner Park with some of her friends.

I mumbled a half arsed reply before falling back to bed for an hour and then decided that it was a sunny 29degree day outside one of the few warmer days this Spring. So I got up, called her to come pick me up and grabbed some food and beer out of the fridge.

Fawkner Park is a lovely place situated in the South Melbourne area where I used to live. My ex-flatmates Jodie and Dave moved not too far off from here but at this point I was pretty scattered and uncertain of which part of the park their apartment overlooked.

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Ruby, the most adorable shih tzu - cavalier king mix puppy!


I was seriously considering stealing this dog because she was just too lovable


Claudette showing us a few tricks her dog picked up at training school


A welcome sight of dead meat sizzling on the public area electric BBQs


Nothing like a tasty steak to hit the spot



We were pretty well prepared for a last minute event, you gotta love girls when they get together to organize something


Marika enjoying the modern invention of wine from a box


A game of cricket going on in the oval near our benches


Despite surviving on 3hours of sleep, I thought this was a perfectly beautiful warm day out in spring and a nice way of winding down in the sun with food, drink and company after a big night out

Jimmy van M !

I've finally recovered enough over yet another massive weekend of clubbing at a Sunny party.

This time, it was none other than the American Progressive House extraordinaire - Jimmy van M!

His rise to fame came from his endless work behind the scenes in the American dance music scene. He was the official warm up DJ for Sasha and Digweed when they toured America and a resident at Twilo from 1996 - 2000.

I've always wanted to catch Jimmy play ever since I first got exposed to his music when he did the second Bedrock album on Digweed's label. Its a long 6 year wait before I did!


My friends from New Zealand; Sarah and Dave who were at my house earlier this evening for a BBQ before we headed out clubbing.



Jimmy van M taking over the decks from my friend Dean Millson who had the warm up set honours.



Van M hard at work



This slogan says it all


Sarah and Me tearing down some serious booty on the dance floor.

On hindsight, I only realised after the first hour of dancing that wearing my long sleeve dress shirt while fashionably spot on in most other social scenarios, clubbing wear it was not.
I was the proverbial frog getting heated up in a slowly boiling pot by the 2nd hour of the night and was sweating buckets under my sleeves by 3am in the morning.
(mental note to self for future reference: do not wear dressy clothes if intention is to dance non-stop for 7hrs)


Random girl in a pretty dress


Erin and Irene, the latter whom which I haven't seen for ages!



Overall, the best part of my night was actually the final set from 3.30am - 5.30am. It was a versus set between Sydney's Kaybee and Melbourne's Ozzie LA.

Words can hardly describe what I witnessed aurally that morning, I can only say that it simply was one of the best tribal house and progressive sets I've heard two great DJ's play back to back this year. By then the club was a seedy sort of environment with barely 20 people on the dance floor, the lights were all dimmed, the speakers were booming and the first slivers of dawn were starting to creep in through the windows of the venue.

That dark and sweaty afterhours moment to me was the ultimate nirvana of clubbing.

I can't get no sleep......

Ok, I thought I'll detract from my regular posts to leave you with a very rare video from 1993.

This is one of the early house music classics from Masters at Work, with the lovely vocals of La India; who IMO has one of the most beautiful voices in the world.

House music and La India were a match made in heaven.

Enjoy!

Saying goodbye to a great housemate

Yesterday marked the end of a great era of shared accommodation; Lisa, one of the best housemates I've ever lived with moved out of our lovely ground floor, 3-bedroom apartment located in the lush, green suburb of East Melbourne. So for the next 2 weeks, its just me and Pat left living here before the new housemate moves in.

I've lived with Lisa for almost a year now, it was around November last year I was making the rounds looking for sharehouses offering a room. This was the last home on my list that I was going to check out. From the moment I walked in the door, Lisa and me just hit it off from the get go and got along like "peas and carrots" (to quote a scene from Forrest Gump).

You see, in my 4.5 odd years of living abroad in Melbourne shared accommodation, I have enough horror stories of bad housemates to hold a candle to the book - "He died with a felafel in his hand".

A list of my bad housemate experiences:
accidentally blew the kitchen up from a pot of burning oil forgotten on the stove;
refuse to clean the house;
refuse to wash any dishes;
move the only TV into their room;
refuse to buy any living room furniture, so we only had one couch in an empty living room;
moving out of the country while we still had 3 months on our lease;
trying to rip me off for money;
crack the shits at me for hugging a cushion;
crack the shits at me for snacking on the couch;
pretend that I'm not there and ignore me;
leave the gas stove on while passed out drunk;
throw up on carpets;
throw up on balcony;
throw up in bathroom;
throw up in garbage bag;
bring weird men home;
finding weird man in our shower taking a bath;


So compared to my previous nightmares, I think that Lisa is simply one of the nicest individuals I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. We have never ever had a single argument in our household and I've been so lucky to live in a warm and family-like environment.


Lisa is moving in with her partner, David; whom we all reckoned is such a fantastic guy that we couldn't help but love him to bits too.


On one hand, I'm really happy for her that she's moving on to the next big step in her life, while the other part of me is left with a pretty empty feeling that comes along with losing someone dear to your heart.

***Deepest sigh***
I think I'm starting to become kinda depressed of late, with my heart getting broken recently and losing a great flatmate shortly after. No wonder I just can't seem to hold my thoughts together the past 2 weeks.

Enough blogging for now, I'm going to turn in for an early Sunday night and sleep this empty feeling away...

Andy

In the blink of an eye

Picture this: two strangers huddled together, feverishly exchanging undercuts and jabs. At the sound of the bell, each disengages.

No, I'm not talking about boxing, and the punches landed aren't of the physical kind. I'm describing speed dating, the latest fad to seduce singles in search of love.

Created by a Los Angeles rabbi as a method for marriage-minded men and women to swiftly evaluate potential partners, speed dating has swiftly spread throughout the free world.

There goes one more item I can check off my mental list of things & experiences to try out before I die.

At the behest of my girlfriends Nicki and Lisa, the 3 of us recently-heartbroken singles attended a speed dating event organized by Blink Dating at the Lustre Lounge last night.
The handsome price of $59 will give you the possibility of meeting that special someone 15 times over, in 4 minute intervals.

We arrived early, the bar was dark and back lit in a deep crimson red. Sara, the ever so cheerful and robust host greeted the 3 of us as we walked in promenade style, arm in arm. Drink cards and Match cards were distributed out like stacks of lotto scratchies from your local newsagent, along with sticky tags with our first names scrawled across with black magic marker.

Observing the pockets of people standing around the venue, I could clearly see some single men standing around awkwardly holding a drink, the women came in groups of 2 or more and stood around giggling amongst themselves.

The rules were clearly explained to us:
You get 4 minutes to talk to each person.
Each person has a number next to their name tag, the women sit at the table which matches their tag number.
The women remain seated in their seats while the men walk up to each table in an ascending order.
You get a sheet of paper to take personal notes and a scorecard to mark a Yes/No response on whether you'd like to see the person again.

I found the experience rather exhausting and at the same time an interesting social experiment as I got to talk to a sample out of the population of women out there.

First impressions rarely count from past experiences in life. However, in this meat market setting with only 4 minutes to let your charm shine through, the rules of the playing field have been re-written to be all about making an impression - fast! If you ever get the chance, have a browse through Malcom Gladwell's - Blink; which explains what goes on in our heads the first 2 seconds of looking at someone.

Out of the 15 women, 5 of them went straight to the "No" category in my scorecard within the first minute of meeting them due to poor grooming, bad breath and excruciatingly boring conversation amongst some of the reasons I mentally gave myself.
Another 4 eventually found their way into my "No" pile while the 6 "Yes" I ticked were interesting people that I wouldn't mind meeting again.

After the event, Lisa and Nicki told me about their experiences with the other men. 2 of them just were plain creepy, a bunch of the others were lacking any decent social or conversational skills while the rest seemed to be decent blokes.

Would I return for an event like this again? Probably not.
This probably could work for really busy individuals or people who just need to short circuit their routine of hanging out with the same social circle and be forced to meet to different people.

However, I personally feel that this takes the thrill out of the chase, the game, the pickup. Whatever you may want to call it, the art of seduction has been around for centuries and for a good reason - it works.

Perhaps I'm just an old fashioned guy in modern world...