poise on arrows

The Whisky Diaries - final entry

2012-02-03T20:02:00.000+10:00

Well friends, I have found myself sitting here at the end of a very long journey.

Today is the very last day of this epic journey that began on the 1st of January last year. I'm sitting in the transfers section of the Kuala Lumpur airport and in a few hours I will board the plane that takes me back home. It's big. This is a big thing for me. I've been dreaming of home for so long now that a small part of me is worried that it really is just a dream and somehow it might all be snatched away just before I land. I don't know, it doesn't make a lot of sense, I think I just can't believe I'm finally going home. But my mum is washing my puppy dog as I type this so that he is fluffy and clean for me to see tomorrow morning, so I'm feeling like there is a space for me. I do have a home and it's been waiting for me and I'll be there again in less than 12 hours.

Now that I'm here at the end, I can see that the Phuket time and the Whisky Diaries was an absolutely necessary limbo, and that I might have been totally overwhelmed and just overloaded if I had of gone straight from China back to Brisbane. They were also just 14 lovely wonderful awesome days. Yesterday we hired a scooter again and drove around the island for almost the whole day - we even went cross-country through the dirt tracks and amongst the rubber tree plantations to get to a hidden beach that looked like a postcard. Crazy stuff. Breathtaking, crazy stuff. I was sad to leave Sabai Corner because we'd actually become friends with the two women that run it, and they were just so damn nice. I couldn't be too sad when I was sipping that last coconut though, because I'm just so ready to get home.

So now is the time I really sit down and think about all of the things I've done since January last year, all of the experiences and the things I've learnt, who I am now compared to before. I'm going to re-read the long letter I wrote to myself on my first flight out of Brisbane all those months ago. I feel like it would be impossible to think about these things too much, and that I should try and reflect now as much as I can before I get home into the whirlwind of family and friends and wonderful home life.

Now that I think about it, actually, this is the last entry for poise on arrows as a travel blog. I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do with this thing, but I think creating it and sticking to it was one of the best decisions I made throughout my whole time travelling. Writing everyday made me realise that I actually wanted to be the kind of person who writes everyday, and poise gave me a forum at which I had to really express my experiences and their significance. I don't know if I would understand these past 13 months nearly as well as I do now if I hadn't been blogging and writing the whole time. Putting aside an hour (often more) every single day to manifest your feelings and memories into writing - well, it's a powerful thing for an individual. I'm also pretty sure I want to be a writer now. So that's great too. I feel honoured to have so many people reading about my bumbling experiences and looking at my embarrassing photos of pulling-a-face-like-a-camel. I'm also really grateful that I could keep in touch with friends and family back home so easily.

I have a jam-packed February planned but it begins with a week of quality quiet family time, so you won't see anything posted here for a while. I suppose sometime around the 12th or 13th I will have decided what I'm going to do with poise and I'll let you all know then.

For now, though, this is Bri Lee signing off from the big adventure. It's all done and over. And thanks for coming with me.

The Whisky Diaries - day 13 (just some lovely pictures)

2012-02-02T02:16:00.004+10:00

The Whisky Diaries - day 12

2012-02-01T01:55:00.002+10:00

Well I didn't do a whole lot today apart from finish the third and fourth Alien movies. So, of course, all I can think about with every waking moment now is just how awesome Ellen Ripley is and how much I love Sigourney Weaver and how much I want to get a perm and some white Reeboks. I'm serious. I'm thinking about getting a perm like Ripley and then also have a rat's tail like Anakin. Is that okay? That's okay, right?

I mean, I really didn't like the fourth one and the second was better than the first, but Ripley is just about the most badass entity in the history of film. I'm serious. She's amazing. The best thing ever. Makes me wanna be a better human being. Please watch them again, and if you don't have time for all four then just the first two is enough. Please do it. Do it for me. And then get back to me about the perm/rat's tail idea.

There's a Lego series!?!?!??! SOMEBODY GET ME THIS RIGHT NOW. Also, if you have a tumblr, go to the Ellen Ripley tags page. It's the bestest. Alternatively, go to mine for the highlights.

The Whisky Diaries - day 11

2012-01-31T12:35:00.002+10:00

Okay my apologies about the absence yesterday. I have an excellent reason. Not quite as good as the gigantic snake one, but almost. Here it goes: I ate a whole pizza then we watched the third Aliens movie and fell asleep.

I know! Good excuse, right!

So here's what I wanted to talk about yesterday:

It's our little collection of things! You know, when you're staying by the beach for a long time and you just kind of pick little interesting things up as you see them and then put them on the table on your balcony. Well this is our motley collection so far. There are shells and coral and a big seed thing that fell down in front of us one day, and my personal favourite:

Doesn't it look like a small bone! Like the femur of a child or something. I saw it yesterday while I was running along the beach at dawn and it really struck me. It seems to be some kind of plant matter, but for the rest of the run I couldn't stop thinking about how little we know about the ocean. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle explores this idea a bit too, maybe that's what got me thinking about it. Anyways, I was thinking about how maybe all these things that wash up on the beach are actually the remains of a gigantic civilisation living deep underwater - and they know as little about us as we do about them. And when they get rubbish landing in their cities they all just think it's some kind of baffling but natural bi-product of the strange things that happen up on land. And like we don't realise these shells and coral and unidentifiable things are actually parts of them and their life, they also don't realise that about the tons of crap that humans put into the ocean.

Yeah it sounds crazy, I suppose. But humans know more about space than we do about the depths of the sea. They even reckon maybe there really is a gigantic squid/monster thing down there too. Who's to say this isn't the bone of some kind of sea creature? Not me.

This is my other favourite:

I think if I could get a close/better photo you might be more impressed, but essentially it's just this piece of coral kind of stuff that gives you creepy prickles on the back of your neck when you look at it for too long. It has the appearance of minuscule honeycomb kind of holes in it and then lots of strangely perfect round holes that do and don't go all the way through it. I'm serious when I say it's creepy. Seriously. It really irks me so I never look at it for too long.

And that's all! The pizza was SO TOTALLY ABSOLUTELY AMAZING and later I'll tell you all about the Aliens quadrilogy. This is embarrassing, but for some reason I thought it was a trilogy? But now I see there are four, and it's just because I missed seeing one of them when I was younger that I thought there were only three... The third one that we saw last night was totally new to me. Anyways, more about that later. I'm going to have some jam on toast for breakfast!

The Whisky Diaries - day 10 (on Haruki Murakami & The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)

2012-01-29T21:10:00.000+10:00

Where am Iright now? Sitting on a balcony in the jungle with my nose full of mosquitocoil smoke (perhaps I love it more than any other scent in the world) and asteady windless rain falling all around me onto, then through, the canopy oftrees (isn’t rain just the greatest in summer!) with a steady drip of watercoming from a little hole in the roof, falling down through the air, thenlanding on my shoulder and trickling down my front (like the rain is tapping me,saying: “hello”) and the last flavours of a vanilla Cornetto leaving the deeprivets of my back molars (but in reference to that earlier post, I stillofficially prefer chocolate Cornettos)and thinking about the pesto spaghetti I will soon partake in for early dinner.

About halfan hour ago, though, it was sunny with now rain, and I was somewhere different.I promptly stood up from my swing, dug my feet into the sand and screamed inrage and pain towards the ocean, flinging a heavy book as far as I could andwatching it sail downwards and land awkward and bent with a thud into the softsand. Phuong snapped her attention to me out from her own large book, and I juststared intently out to the water – it rippled and sparkled in the setting sunas if it was laughing at me.

“Hah hah hah, little one. Paper must notrile you so! I’ve seen an eternity that could not even by conceptualised by thisMurakami tormentor.” It spoke to mewith a voice like the Cheshire Cat. Its creeping tide like a big lazy tongue. Mestanding on its great big beard of a beach.

“AAAGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.” I replied.

“I’m guessing you just finished?” Phuonginquired, not really alarmed.

“Yeah. And it fucked me over, man. It fuckedmy brain hardcore. I can’t believe he did it. I can’t believe he would betrayme like this. After all the hours I spent and invested in this book, and I getto the end, and he just kicks me in the face.”

“Hmmm.” Was Phuong’s response.

Hmmm indeed,Phuong, hmmm indeed.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is aone-of-a-kind book. I’m certain of that much, but not a whole lot else. Theentire thing bashes reality and dreams and the subconscious together until eachof the three are so mooshy and broken that they are forced to occupy the samespace. It sounds abstract, but that’s exactly what this book is – constantly forcingyou to remain detached from the characters and from the truth. Not revealingitself until the last ten percent of the pages. Keeping you in the dark bothliterally and metaphorically until it wants to reveal itself. Like a shy bird.Like its dickhead of an author.

But Murakamiis not a dickhead of an author, obviously, I mean, it’s clear that I’m moreannoyed at myself than I am at him. I skulled this book, thirsty for answers,when it’s actually more of a fine wine whose taste needs to be coaxed into themouth and the mind, savoured to be understood. I’m given to understand that it’sa complex and strange book even for the brightest of minds and this does bringme some comfort. He just raises so many thousands of different questions onevery page! Every sentence is so full of possible meaning and yet so vague and unfulfilling!I cannot imagine anyone who could, on their first read, simply stroll throughit. No, I don’t feel guilty really. More just intenself baffled. Yes, that’sit.

I’mintensely baffled by The Wind-Up BirdChronicle.

I haven’tdone any research into since beginning or finishing it, and I only just noweven read the blurb, so you can be sure that I don’t have any kind of special insightthat an non-ordinary reader might have. I’m going to go Google the shit out ofthis bitch as soon as I’m done writing this post. You can be sure of that. Whatyou can also be sure of, is that I want you to read this book. It may seemstrange to notice, but I felt like this book treated me a like a smart adult. Ialso noted on numerous occasions that Murakami’s narration was profound. Like,I’m talking, really profound. I probably even missed a lot of the awesomeness ofit because I was so damn keen to speed to the end of answers. But theawesomeness that I did notice, well, it was really fucking awesome.

Do it, dude.Just read it. Fling your brain off that cliff in an act of trail-by-fireliterary adventure. You’ll get all ripped up in the cortex, but you’ll come outthe other side with all kind of understandings about things you never realisedhad any significance. Do it because if you can even come close to understandingMurakami’s genius, then you yourself will therefore be genius. Do it so thatyou can tell people you haven’t only read IQ84.

(Totally unrelated image, but proof from Phuong's
camera that I can ride a scooter.)

I’m going togo now. On an adventure into the depths of the internet, and I hope I returnjust before dinner time (yum pesto) with the answers to a lot of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle’s questions.Wish me luck, and in the meantime, please read it then scream and try to throwit into the ocean only to be relieved a few moments later that you weren’tstrong enough to fling it that far and then pick it up lovingly and stroke itbecause it trapped you like Stockholm Syndrome. And then you too should alsoeat pesto spaghetti.

The Whisky Diaries - day 9

2012-01-28T17:48:00.005+10:00

I woke up early again today! Even earlier than yesterday! I got up and was out the door at 7 am for a walk then jog, and it happened again! I saw the bestest things!

First, I was along a particularly nice strip of the beachside and there were a few local people out exercising, and one of them was this dude in his forties who was jogging along the sand wearing a Grateful Dead band t-shirt, with these crazy thai pants, he had a bum bag full of jingly things around his waist that shook and jingled with each step, and he was wearing loosely laced converse chucks and had a ponytail of hair down to his lower back and a wolfy face full of sideburns and scratchy bristles! It was the craziest damn thing I ever saw!

And then next, about ten minutes up the road, I saw a pack of dogs, about eight or ten of them, all different sizes and breeds and ages and levels of scruffiness, just all wagging their tails and barking together and trotting around and generally being entirely happy with themselves. As I got closer they took absolutely no notice of me and simply continued on through a jungly path that led to the beach and I swear it was like these were all the dogs on the island, off on their morning no-owners-allowed beach swim and they were chatting and laughing with each other and just totally being the bosses. If I hadn’t seen that strange man just minutes before, I would have sworn that THIS was the darndest thing I’d even seen.

Then I got back to the little restaurant and ordered fruit and yoghurt for breakfast and it was mighty tasty and I saw that ocean eagle again! And then I turned my laptop on and it was just working again! Totally miraculously! I took the opportunity to transfer any important documents to my harddrive and in doing so, came across this mini-essay I had written during my eleven hour stopover at Singapore airport. It’s a little gloomy and awfully self-reflective, but I remember feeling really profound at the time and realising a lot of opinions I had developed about the world around me. I won’t be at all offended if you skip past it, but if you’re interested in relativity of countries and the world around you, then maybe put some minutes aside for it.

I’m sitting at the Starbucks of Singapore airport’s terminal 1 sipping on a mindblowingly good Americano coffee and polishing off the last strawberry in my horrendously overpriced fruit salad. I’ve read the first half of my recently-purchased Vanity Fair February issue, and after I’m finished with the glossy pages I’ll move on to start reading my treasured International Herald Tribune today’s-print newspaper. I got off the from-China plane at about 9:00 am and I won’t get on my connecting to-Phuket flight until 8:00 pm tonight, and for these sweet sweet eleven hours in between I’m just sitting here letting the western world ease itself back into my pores.

I am so fucking happy right now.
The “western world” gets a lot of crap. Most of it is justified in a lot of (read: most) ways, yeah yeah yeah, we all know all of the arguments and I’m not going to try and deny it – but before I go on any more rants to people about how desensitized the “west” is and how materialistic and meaningless it all is, I’m gonna try and stop for a moment to remember how sweet these eleven hours were.
When I paid 17 Singapore dollars for this Vanity Fair and began reading it, I was assaulted by brainwashing advertising and shiny ideals and covetable brands, but you know what else I got? A free fucking media telling me a whole shitload of things I didn’t even know I didn’t goddamn know. Yeah, I hate the fact that ads for Burberry make me feel ugly because I have these things called hips – but what I hate even more is that I just spent a year in a country that doesn’t believe in the truth or in intellectual freedom.
When I went to the pristine, potpourri scented airport bathroom and had some state-of-the-art technology automatically sterilize everything I had to touch both before and after I touched it, I stopped and thought about how this kind of thing has maybe gone too far and that “developing countries” are just too germophobic now, but I also didn’t have to worry about getting Novovirus again! Yeah, I’ll lobby for these expensive soap dispensers if they might save me from another trip to the hostpital’s quarantine ward.

And to get back to my beloved comfy Starbucks chair, I passed the fancy airport shops so of course I stopped to see what pretty new things had been released in my year of absence. Oh boy oh boy this world we live in sure is beautiful… I was thinking about spending a lot of money to buy YSL’s new perfume (read: I’m smelling my wrist now where I sampled some, and it does smell very very good) but I walked back out of the Duty Free shop empty handed. Why? I only left China yesterday. Of course I thinking about what that money could buy for a person back there, and as I was deep in my philosophical thoughts, I almost ran into a woman that was loaded with bags and looked a little like Donatella Versace for all the plastic in her face. I was almost offended by the visual spectacle that she was – with her face and her bags and even her fake nails (read: talons). It took me a moment to regroup and realise that that not everyone in this airport had just arrived in from living in China for a year.
Another short moment after that, I realised what a massive douchebag I was. I looked down at my (grossly overweight) carry-on luggage, and the separate bags for camera and laptop, and the headphones around my neck, and the Dr. Denim jeans and the Moleskine stationary. And it has all led me to the conclusion that, quite possibly, there is no relativity in life.

Relativity (in a social sciences sense of the word, so in this case, the relativity of life between two very different countries) is a difficult concept to come to terms within even the most normal and simple and (ironically) detached of situations. To try and understand it we usually remove ourselves from the picture entirely and therefore almost defeat the purpose of the discussion. Why? I suppose a big reason is that one must think on a fundamentally larger (read: super big-ass) scale when considering international matters of any kind, but I think that’s often just an excuse. The real reason, for me at least, is that when I’m trying to work through a gritty concept, things can get awfully messy and confusing when I try and actually factor myself in. Add any kind of emotional juggling to the mix and I kind of give myself a bit of a mindfuck. Such is humanity, that our emotions and logic so often ram tusks against each other. It is human nature to consider each one of ourselves as exceptions to the rules and this makes honest inquiry within one’s own brain rather difficult. Yes, I buy sneakers made from sweatshops but, like, I mean, you know, it’s totally different for me because of these three reasons. LOL. #lyingtomyself. But I digress.

My point was/is, that for me right now, it’s all muddy. The task of figuring out what I have learned about ‘relativity’ in my year away seems all the more difficult and intensely immense because I’m literally (seriously dude, literally) in the middle-zone between two different worlds. These eleven hours are the limbo of the year in China and the paradise that lies after it - the home shores. To sit at this, one of the most critical junctures of my life to-date, and think about relativity between those two places, is to question everything. And with so much emotion swelling so near to my skin, the conclusions should be elusive as ever, but this sultry YSL scent rising from my wrist has indeed brought me some clarity.

I have been out of China less than a full day and by the five senses plus osmosis, I am already absorbing the comforts of this almost-home life so much, so as to push out the intensity of memories of what I left behind. People talk of globalisation in the 21^st century, but I’m not seeing different countries here, man. I’m seeing different worlds. This is an airport where people hop to opposite equators of geography and GDP and life expectancy in a matter of hours. It is impossible for humans to accurately imagine a life other than their own – we each live a combination if what we’re given and what we make. If that involves perfume and headphones then how can we imagine existence without it? I am no exception to the rule. I’m seeing people who spend thousands of dollars on plastic surgery who, even if they visited other countries, are still essentially in their own world. And it’s not even just about money! I’m seeing that people in different places define ‘truth’ and ‘freedom’ differently and things are so much more complex at every turn than I ever could have imagined. Perhaps I can’t ever even accurately take a stab-in-the-dark at just how deep my ‘depths of ignorance’ are - and it’s so annoying!

A long time of trying to make sense of the world around you - only to finally realise that you don’t know anything. Not a damn thing. A long time spent trying to understand how the ‘other half’ really lives, only to decide that perhaps the concept of relativity itself is totally false.

And so this is where I find myself now. The coffee is finished and there are still eight more hours of limbo to go.

You know what? Honestly. If I really think long and hard and tough. Maybe I don’t actually feel guilty at all for enjoying a relatively luxurious lifestyle here and now, and that I like smelling expensive fragrances and sipping well-brewed coffee and not having to turn on my own tap because it’s JUST SO FUCKING NICE. It might be that simple. I mean, I feel so great right now! With all these great, nice things! I believe the innate human endeavor for general betterness should never be discouraged, but how do we find the balance between that wonderfully constructive want-for-more and the idea of enough. No, the more I think of it, the more it becomes clear that there is no such thing as this ‘relativity’. The decision to buy this perfume or not has turned into some kind of east-meets-west battle for my soul. The east side is relativity – and it’s fighting to make me remember that such frivolity is a waste of hard-earned money and that this kind of dumb materialistic pursuit doesn’t lead to true fulfillment or happiness. The west side is kind of like, well, if you still actually want the perfume then clearly you couldn’t truly comprehend the idea that it is just stupidly excessive and therefore after this entire year you still cannot understand any world other than your own, and therefore there is no such thing as relativity. And this is only the economic side of the argument.

Do you follow? I’m not sure I do. I’m going to take a nap then have a blueberry muffin.

Well folks, I took that nap and when I woke my laptop wouldn’t work. So I read and had that muffin and completely lost this train of thought. And right now I’m sitting here so happy! In such a damn fine mood! Still laughing about that kooky guy and that happy chappy pack of mismatched island mutts. I’m making the choice to not return my consciousness to that limbo place in order to finish the idea in my mind. I’ll get back to it later, once I’m settled in back home and in a comfortable place from which to evaluate the whole thing. Which, in itself, is extremely ironic. Hahahha sometimes I hate me and sometimes I love me. What I love right now, though, is this Pina Colada. Now we’re going swimming, and then I’ll try and figure out what this dude in Murakami’s book is doing down a well. Literally. Anyways, until tomorrow, amigos!!!

The Whisky Diaries - day 8

2012-01-27T23:57:00.000+10:00

I've always been a nighttime person. I wake up late, and I stay up until the wee hours of the morning. Doing things. I like doing things. Lots of different things, to be precise.

But it makes me insecure. I think about all the things that rush past in the early hours and I wonder what I'm missing. That I begin every day a little behind everyone else - it can lead to questions and doubts.

So I set myself the goal of early-to-bed and early-to-rise for these two weeks, and on this, the eighth day, I feel like I'm getting the hang of it. I go to bed at around midnight and wake up at around seven. And I must tell you, this morning my wary suspicions of missing out were fulfilled - I was putting my sneakers on to go for a walk, and I looked up to see a squirrel in the treetops! A squirrel!!! And then another one appeared a few moments later! TWO SQUIRRELS!!!!!!!

So it's true. Great things do happen in the mornings. I wonder how many squirrels I've missed all these years. (That's a metaphor, by the way.)

Then later on, I had returned from the hour-long walk/jog and it felt so good in the strong morning sun. I washed my face in the bungalows shallow basin, sat on our small steps and spent some minutes picking grass seeds from my white socks. It was a consuming task, and I was focused and I was succeeding. The moment I finished I was shocked with a wave of such happiness. That for those moments, the biggest worry in the world to me were some tiny seeds of grass collected on a sock! How far I have come in the past few days, that I am truly happy enough to consider grass seeds a concern.

I saw a large eagle flying over the ocean while I was eating breakfast, too. I read and then napped and then painted for most of the afternoons hours. I'm deciding a lot of pleasant things in these hours.

The Whisky Diaries - day 7

2012-01-27T00:09:00.003+10:00

I hired a scooter/motorbike this morning and taught myself how to ride it. It wasn't a real motorbike, but neither was it an actual scooter - it's just one of those half-half things you find in kooky countries. Nevertheless, I felt pretty badass. I mean, it's really not that hard. But still. Cool.

I practiced by myself for about twenty minutes and then Phuong jumped on the back and I drove us around the entire island. Literally. We did a loop around the whole sandy lump. It was really lovely, passing through the forests of rubber trees, then the flat rice fields, and back to the edges of the bay where men were making boats. Our side of the island easily has the nicest beach, but I didn't realise that Koh Yao Noi had such a large residential population. It isn't just a tourism island, it really is a home for a large community of people.

We spent the afternoon reading, and I'm enjoying a lot of this real Thai food while I can. The Som Tam (green pawpaw salads) are easily my favourite. I learnt how to make them back when I waitressed for a Thai restaurant in my teens, and I know how to make them, but boy oh boy, they taste like heaven here. Of course it could have something to do with the beautiful views and the sea breezes and the general awesomeness of my life here right now. That is also entirely a possibility.

The Whisky Diaries - day 6

2012-01-26T01:24:00.000+10:00

I taught Phuong how to ride a bicycle today. She’d neverbeen on a bike before at all and I thought that was something very embarrassingand silly, and something that needed to be addressed. So we addressed it. Ithink it took about half an hour of guidance until I was happy with herprogress enough (read: she could go for a bit and then stop without smashingher face open) to mosey on over to the grass and read while she did laps alongthe straightest section of road we could find on the island.

As I sat on that grass, in the shade just before the sand ofthe beach began, I thought of the last time I really taught someone to dosomething. It was about two years ago when a twenty-something year old Thaiimmigrant friend of mine confessed to me that she couldn’t swim. She was raisedin a village far from the ocean and had simply never learned. It struck me asquite dangerous, and my family home in Brisbane has a pool, so I agreed to giveher lessons. In return for lamingtons, if my memory serves me correctly. Ittook two weekend sessions until she had all the basics to be able to teachherself the rest in the slow lane of the public pool and she was ecstatic. I’mgiven to understand she’s even an avid swimmer these days.

But anyways, my point is, I began thinking about what youget for yourself when you teach somebody else something. It is occurring to methat there might be some actual reason people have children or become teachersor pursue any profession in which children small monsters are involved. Maybe.Although I do think older pupils (surely?) must make for less painful lessons.And as I sat there looking at the ocean and thinking about how deep it is, I decidedthat I wouldn’t worry about what I left of myself in this world after I died. Iwill not have children in order to remain unforgotten, or to create some kindof extension of myself. It seems equally as absurd as wanting to be buried and have a tombstone, except even more selfish. I will not force myself or my works into any kind of permanenceunless it is requested by someone else. What I see on this planet around me is far more remarkablethan anything I might be able to scar its surface with. This ocean and thesejungles and this shaggy dog. I don’t want to change them at all! I want to teachsomebody how to bike ride around and appreciate it all. I want to help someonebe able to swim in this beautiful ocean. To heighten the human experience inthese ways, that they might be more able to engage in all this remarkableness.I think I might try to just teach people more things more often. Real things.Like how to swim and how to ride a bicycle. These are important things. If I couldteach somebody how to read some day, or even how to write, then perhaps I couldhappily feel like I had made some kind of really great permanent mark on the world.

In other news, this afternoon I really got stuck into The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and I'm on page 111, which is about one sixth of the way through. In my passionate hatred/distrust of blurbs, I did not read the back cover and so far, I still have absolutely no idea what the whole book acutally going to be about. Murakami is so great though - he's gifted me with so many memorable literary experiences that he deserves my trust on this matter. If I still don't know what's going on at page 300 then I'll be a little concerned, but for now I'm just enjoying the writing and the characters and how abstract and kooky it all is. I'm un-learning that reliance on plot we find ourselves stuck in as readers sometimes. It's nice. And a perfect task for hammock times.

The Whisky Diaries - day 5 (on Star Wars)

2012-01-24T23:13:00.001+10:00

Where to begin. I don’t know. I just finished Return of the Jedi for the first time ever and I’m feeling all of the feelings. I’m not ashamed to say that a cried a little when I saw Anakins force ghost at the very end. He was easily my favourite character and I never, not once, looked at Darth Vader without picturing a tortured Anakin inside.

After having watched them all in the proper narrative order I can say withoutadoubt that Star Wars is a masterpiece of both conception and realisation. I am fully aware that this is not a unique or individual opinion in any way, but what I want you to understand is that this saga truly impressed me. The depth of characters, the levels of the plot, the human themes – everything. I am just so stoked by all of the awesomeness.

I had seen all three of the prequel trilogy a fair few years ago, and only one of the original trilogy so many years ago that I couldn’t even remember which one I’d seen. I had this crazy idea in my head that the new prequel trilogy were actually far better than the old sequel trilogy, then after watching IV - A New Hope and V – The Empire Strikes Back straight after each other, I decided they were totally absolutely way better. But now, after having only just finished the final instalment, I can no longer separate the two sets. Honestly. I see them all as one big line in a massive generation-spanning story. I feel lucky to have been able to really watch them all for the first time as an adult in their proper narrative order.

Favourite character is Anakin. Hands down. The more I think about it the more I like him. I had massive soft spots for Ewan McGregors Obi-Wan Kenobi, and I thought Princess Leia was the maddest chick in all the lands – when she strangled Jabba the Hutt!!!???!?! #holyshitsoawesome – she’s officially my new girlcrush/hero. In terms of non-humans, I totally dig R2D2 (and HATE C3PO) and also love, duh, Chewbacca. What a loveable guy – when he hugs Hans... awww just the best. Speaking of Hans, I feel like I should like him more than I do, but when I look at him I just see Indiana Jones and Indy was always too much of a womaniser to do justice to Leia’s love and that’s something I can’t seem to get past. I know, I know, shoot me now.

So why do I love Anakin so much? I think it’s because he was just trying really hard the whole damn time, and his friends let him down, and the Jedis let him down, and even Padme let him down. They must have been able to see he was struggling with his powers and his visions and they all ignored him. His love for Padme drove him crazy and when he thinks he killed her, it was the final straw of him (almost) truly turning to the dark side. I feel like he was just so damn lost all the time and all people told him to do was ‘be patient’ even though he couldn’t sleep because of nightmares of his mother and his lover dying! Jesus christ, people, give the boy a hand. They weren’t even going to train him if not for Qui-Gon Jinn’s dying requests. So what, they were just going to kick a kid out whose father was literally midichlorians (read: the force)? Yeah, go back to being a slave. AGH. Jedi council, I hate you sometimes!

There are a couple of little problems I have with the whole saga, but most of them have already been voiced before. Primarily, I mean, how did nobody see that Padme was massively pregnant that whole time and that Anakin was obviously the father... I also just hated C3PO with a passion that grew and grew with every scene I saw him in. I seriously can’t stand that motherfucker. On the flip side though, I do REALLY want a little braided rat tail of hair on the bottom left side of my head.

I’m not sure what more I can really say, other than how damn awesome these movies are. There is also a special Wikipedia website for it all called Wookieepedia which can answer all your questions and also is extremely humorous.

If you haven’t seen them for a while, do yourself a favour and watch them again, man. Had by all, good times will be.

The Whisky Diaries - day 4

2012-01-24T03:59:00.000+10:00

Today I stumbled upon a rather problematic, and frankly troubling, idea.

Phuong and I were on the long but oh-so-lovely walk back to the bungalows when we decided to stop for an icecream. There was a simple choice between Magnums or Cornettos, and although I would always choose Magnum were I alone, Phuongs Cornetto choice swayed me and so I also bought one. This is where the problems began. Phuong had purchased a vanilla one, and I the chocolate. I sked her how she could possibly make such a horrendous mistake and she responded by saying that when given the choice of either chocolate-on-chocolate or original/plain/vanilla-on-chocolate, that she would always choose the latter.

Now, in the case of cookies and biscuits I am in total agreement. A chocolate chip cookie is almost always better than its overt counterpart - the double choc chip cookie. But is it possible that this paradigm also extends to icecreams? I was shaken. Had I been making the infantile choice that more chocolate must equal better, and thus preventing myself from enjoying a higher plane of icecream enjoyment?

Needless to say, I am deeply troubled by this latest development.

What I'm definitely NOT troubled by, however, is how fucking awesome the fourth and fifth Star Wars are. I must admit I didn't accurately remember them since first seeing them in my distant youth, and I was genuinely under the impression that I preferred the new three movies compared to the old three. Yeah, I know, it's embarrassing. Clearly I have now recognised the error of my ways, and hereby swear that if I ever get a dog that is remotely shaggy, I will name it 'Chewy'. We will finish the last of the six movies tomorrow and I think I'll write about them all shortly after that.

The Whisky Diaries - day 3

2012-01-23T15:09:00.000+10:00

The lateness of this post is due to a gigantic python.

I'm not even kidding. Totally serious.

Let me tell you the story...

Phuong and I were sitting quietly on our bungalow balcony, staring in rapture at the tiny laptop screen playing the third piece of the Star Wars saga (we were only up to the part when Padme tells Anakin she's pregnant, and despite the obvious lack-of-chemistry-or-acting-skills we were already completely absorbed) when I heard a loud rustling in the scrub from the back side of the bungalow. I leaned back on my rattan to inspect, and caught a glimps of a very long, very shiny, very thick tail. It was awkwardly slithering through the dry leaves and roots of the steep slope, but struggling and slipping -
     "Phuong! Look! A gigantic snake!" I said to her, slapping her arm to get her attention, and as soon as she leaned back to follow my gaze we heard a loud kind of thump-slap, and the snake had fallen from the steep hillside and down under the stilts of the house so that it was directly below our feet. In that moment we were frozen - watching this massive thing through the gaps in the bamboo slats of the floor as it was panicking and hissing and crazy slithering. Phuong started panicking and then we realised that it was coming up over the railing, just a couple of meters from us. I pushed Phuong behind me as I watched it heading into the bathroom area and as its tail disappeared through the doorway, I crept forward for a good look at our villain with my heart pounding and when my eyes rounded that corner I really saw it in full for the first time and let me tell you this motherfucker was no joke. Three metres long, give or take a couple of hundred meters, a shiny silver that I-shit-you-not was like the moon, and it's body the thickness of an English breakfast muffin. The moment I saw it there it also saw me and it did that freaky thing snakes do when the breathe really loudly and hiss and say "Fuck of or I'll mess your shit up." So that's when I decided that we should probably fuck off, because there was a good chance that if we stuck around this babe would really mess our shit up. (Read: by 'mess' I mean 'bite / kill' and by 'our shit' I mean 'our faces'.) We made our way down the steps to get to the bottom of the hill where reception was, listening to the thing knocking shit over in its slithery bumbling confusion as we went.

We were laughing by this stage, you must understand. The release of too much adrenaline into the body in not-so-serious situations results in humans feeling wack and so the receptionist was quite alarmed when I declared that there was a "big-ass snake in our bathroom". She took us relatively seriously and yelled out something to the nearby gardener in Thai, then turned back to me and simply asked "how big?" My reply was a little less laughter-filled as I held my arms up as far apart as I could - and that's when things went into action-mode.

Suddenly everyone (read: all the Thai people) were yelling out to one another, and motorbikes were pulling up with dudes carrying long poles. I turned back to the lady and she told me that she had seen one five days ago. "It was black?" She asked me.
     "No, it was a shiny kind of creamy white." I replied.
     "Oh." Her brow furrowed.
We both paused. Silence.

Well this is greeeaaaatttt, I thought to myself. This place is pretty much a big snakey party town.

So Phuong and I stood around and just waited. Occasionally breaking out into nervous giggles, and occasionally laughing at the other, poor, unsuspecting visitors who were walking up the jungle path to get back to their own bungalows - blissfully unaware of the monsters lurking in those deceptive afternoon palm tree shadows.

So about fifteen minutes later we saw the hoard of heroes slumping back down the steps towards us. No snake in their hands. "It is gone now." The lady said to me.
     "Oh yeah. Okay. Well. Um-" I was entirely unsure whether this was supposed to be a good or bad thing.
     "We not see it." She said solemnly, "but we know snake can be problem right now."
     "Yes. Snakes, I suppose big snakes can be a bit of a problem." I replied. More silence followed. "So can we go back now? Do you think it's safe now?" I asked.
     "Yes should be okay now. No snake there now."
     "Alright!" Phuong and I just looked at each other and laughed, and headed fearlessly (read: we were giggling like idiots again) back up the steps. There was a man with a gigantic broom sweeping the forest floor all around our bungalow, banging the butt of the handle on the ground and on the bamboo walls occasionally. He had really gappy teeth and no English, but was intensely cheerful and rambled at us in completely incomprehensible, but surprisingly reassuring Thai. We made a quick sweep of our surroundings, decided for ourselves that we had no reptilian company and then simply sat back down, hit spacebar, and watched the rest of Star Wars whilst the gardener "swept" around the area.

Oh wait - Phuong updated her Facebook status to mention the event, which prompted a frenzied call from her mother about 2 minutes later. Then we finished Star Wars. I mentioned the event in an e-mail to my mother later that evening and received an informative response about the snakes currently residing in our house out in the Australian countryside, and about the kinds of snakes my mum and dad used to encounter all the time when they were younger and lived on an island in Papua New Guinea. Yes I know what you're thinking, and yes I do have the literally the coolest parents in the world.

So now the story moves on to later in the evening.

We had finished the movie, and I decided to go for a run. Phuong and I agreed to meet up at 7:00pm for dinner at the restaurant, which we did, and then we went together to return to our bungalow. The evening was warm and our bellies were full and we were discussing the plausibility of chemistry between Padme and Obi Wan Kenobi. We kicked off our thongs at the edge of the steps, climbed onto the balcony, and Phuong pulled out the key to open the door with me talking about something to do with Anakin's hunger for power, when my ramblings were interrupted by Phuong screaming "SNAKE SNAKE SNAKE!" Then I heard her slam the door, then I heard a loud thump from inside the bungalow, and then I saw a screaming, panicking Phuong run towards me and grab me and say "What do we do!?"
     I looked at her seriously and said "Calm down. Okay focus, Phuong. Are you sure it was a snake?"
     "I think so."
     "You think so, or it was?"
     "I think it was."
I made an angry/serious face at her, "What did you see?"
     "I opened the door and I saw it's body slithering around the corned of the door, then I slammed the door closed."
     "Did you drop anything or did anything fall down?" I asked.
     "No."
     "Because I heard a thump-"
     "You heard a thump?"
     "I heard a thump."
     "Okay."
     "So there is a gigantic snake inside our bungalow?" She paused. She looked at me.
     "Yes there is," she replied - and we both started giggling stupidly again! But then I realised we should probably get going, so we bounded down the steps once more and announced ourselves puffing and laughing at the desk, that "the big snake is back and this time it's inside."

Well, you can imagine the ruckus this time. The owner came to talk to us and explained that the snakes were in mating season and so extremely active, and as men with all manner of poles and bags passed us heading up the steps, we were offered a change of bungalows to something a little more ground-level and seaside and generally less-jungly. There was apparently something special about our particular abode that attracted the damn thing, and so if it wasn't caught we'd have to move, lest we be killed in our sleep. Literally.

Ok. Cool. No worries! They catch it, we go back. They don't catch it, we move to a seaside bungalow. Simple enough. We sat down at the restaurant chatting and bursting out into sporadic laughter at the absurdity of our dilemma. It took a long time until the men came back, I think about half an hour, and when they did they were empty handed. Far from silent, though, as one of them walked back into the kitchen and announced something loudly in Thai to which there was great uproar and response.
     "Who sleep on the bottom?" The lady at the desk asked us,
     "I do," Phuong replied,
     "You are very lucky girl tonight! The snake sleep near your bed!"
I burst out laughing and Phuong quickly joined in. Somehow the whole situation just kept getting funnier.
     "So you saw it this time?" I asked her,
     "Yes," she nodded vigorously, "we have lot of people but it too big. Gone up and away again. It too big."
More laughter from Phuong and I. But then silence. What now?

The owner joined us again after a few minutes and essentially begged for us to move to a different bungalow, and of course we felt obliged to oblige. You know, just because she asked us. A man escorted us back up to the bungalow to get the things we absolutely needed and his level of alertness and wariness gave me a bit of a hint that perhaps we should be taking the situation a little more seriously than we were. Nevertheless, we quickly grabbed pyjamas and toothbrushes and just as we were about to leave, the man shone a light towards a small gap between the wall of the bungalow and where Phuong's mattress and mosquito net were placed. "That is were snake is," he said, "you are very lucky tonight." And so she was. And so goes this story, of Phuong the 'lucky girl' who might have gotten into bed beside a big-ass python.

The seaside bungalow has superior hammocks and a dinstinct lack of reptilian infestation, and unless the moony beast is caught, we'll be moving there for at least a few more nights. I'm struck by the amusing idea that all of this trouble is just because Mr. Snakey can't get a girlfriend and I'm tempted to draw parallels between this saga and that of Star Wars, but I think that would signify a consumption of too many coconuts on my part... if you catch my drift.

So that's what happened on day #3! I'm writing to you having just finished a delicious fruit salad and Americano coffee, and as I'm also just about to order a fresh coconut. Tonight we'll go for a walk to get a wood-fired pizza and then watch the fourth Star Wars - but I'll tell you all about that a little later.

The Whisky Diaries - day 2

2012-01-22T03:00:00.000+10:00

Our morning began with an hour long walk along the island's roads, and then a twenty minute swim in the most beautiful section of ocean we could find. We ambled back to the bungalows for a light breakfast then went up to our balcony and read and napped and chatted until a delicious dinner and the second Star Wars movie. And now I'm in bed. Looking out of my open windows, through the palm fronds, and up into the starry sky.

I've been working on a submission for Stilts and Phuong has been recording her recent trip to Europe. We've also been discussing the nature of feminist criticism in super-pop culture and the effect appearance and presentation have on someone's ideas being taken seriously. Late last night we talked about what a lot of our old highschool class mates were doing now, which isn't something I often think about but turns out to be incredibly interesting and an excellent way to measure your own relative "success". We also worked our way through the difficulties young people (not me personally, THANK GOD) face when raised by really conservative parents. I reminded Phuong about how Stephen Fry used to do cocaine to increase his enjoyment of crosswords, and she informed me about what people actually define as a "hipster" these days - dispelling my concerns that I might be labelled one on my return.

It was an excellent day.

The Whisky Diaries - day 1

2012-01-20T23:29:00.000+10:00

Hello and welcome to Phuket! Koh Yao Noi island, to be precise. It takes a damn long time to get here but it would be worth an even longer trip. Seriously man, this place is like The Jungle Book meets Gilligan's Island meets nirvana. It is fair to say that the mosquitos are the size of small dogs, and that there is more moisture in the air than actual oxygen, but geckos are my friends and I do believe that humans were designed for this climate. At least I know I am. My hair coils itself into a bun, I have perfected the loose-shirt-over-tight-singlet combo, and with all this sun eventually I will have so many freckles that they will connect and (perhaps, if I'm lucky enough) resemble a tan. This is the tropics, dude, and you can't be afraid.

We're staying at one of the coolest places in the universe - Sabai Corner - in our own private hilltop bungalow amongst the forest trees about 300m from the beachfront. We have a hammock on the bamboo balcony, a cold shower with a stone floor, a lit mosquito coil whose scent reminds you of all of your best holidays, and a growing collection of cool things found on the beach sitting on top of the table I'm at right now. I can't see into the dark forest night in front of me, but I can see the lamps from the little bar down below that we'll soon be frequenting, and I can hear the intermittent rumbling of the motorbikes speeding along the narrow island roads with their pinprick headlights flashing through the small gaps in the trees. We're listening to the best kinds of music and we've been eating the best kinds of foods and we're watching the best kinds of movies and we're reading the best kinds of books. Beginning tonight, we're also going to start trying to write our best ever words.

I'm still a little bit woozy from the massive change in locations, not to mention mindset, but what I can honestly say right now is that my bones are beginning to thaw from the long China winter (that's also a metaphor, by the way) and my mind is beginning to recuperate. I have several recent newspapers to delve into and through, a constant and free (both politically and fiscally) internet connection and a location that could heal even Hamlet's wounds. And I have almost two weeks of it all. Yeah I know, I know, it's awesome.

Our general plan for the days ahead is early to bed early to rise - because we want to be healthy wealthy and wise. I hope to write every day and I also have a bit of an overhaul planned for poise that I'll be working through provided my laptop chugs its way through this wet heat. I hope to shed a few of the "dumpling kilos" (thats what I call the weight that expats gain when they live in China) so that I can actually wear the clothes I packed away from back home. I also have to teach my friend and current travel companion Phuong how to ride a bicycle (LOL, PHUONG HOW ARE YOU 20 AND STILL DON'T KNOW HOW TO RIDE A BIKE?!?!?) and I think I'm gonna try and play my clarinet a little more. Big plans, I know, but I'm feeling good.

We have embarked upon a serious Star Wars marathon (going in the story's chronological order instead of order of release, which we know is rather controversial, but bitches that's just how we roll) and we have already drunk from coconuts and already wet our hair in the wide pacific ocean. Phuong is reading 'The Hunger Games' by Suzanne Collins and I'm going to start on 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' by Haruki Murakami while I lay under my mosquito net tonight.

At the risk of sounding like a total douche and once again taking this metaphor too far, I feel like my house is way too open plan right now. Like people are sleeping in the laundry and pissing in the kitchen. I think two weeks is just enought time to sort my head/house out and rebuild the walls to re-define and organise my thoughts. I have absolute faith in the right concentrations of island hibiscus and vanilla cigars and ripe pawpaw and good company.

Feel free to stick around for the next two weeks.

poise on hiatus

2012-01-16T16:24:00.003+10:00

Hey there errrbody sorry about the total absence. My laptop actually died and this blogging interface is illegal in China without the VPN I bought and installed on my laptop so I haven't posted in a hundred million years.

BUT - I'll be in Phuket in two days time and poise will be up and running and back with you from the 20th of January and onwards - broadcasting from the sunniest of skies, to be sure to be sure.

Shanks for ya' pashents.

Peace out.

Also, I still have to post all those 35mm films that I got developed and scanned, I finally finished The Great Shark Hunt and I also just finished 1984 so that's what's coming. Some reflections on finishing my year in China will also be wallowed out in this space, and probably some pictures of me teaching Phuong how to ride a bike. And also some pictures of palm trees and coconuts. Just in case you're into any of those kinds of things.

packing up to leave from Jinan

2012-01-12T02:19:00.001+10:00

I finished exams a few days ago and found out I passed themall about a day after that. Then I hung out with friends for a while. And nowI’m packing up.

I have one of those classic love/hate relationships withthis kind of packing up. Like most people, I like the idea of sorting througheverything because it makes me feel all glossy and spring-clean-ey, and alsolike most people I like the idea of going somewhere different (especiallyPhuket). But I get about an hour through and then I’m always totally confrontedby how many things I seem to have collected and I get worried that I’m a freakybowerbird hoarder – that’s just normal, right? Like, today I threw out my redCons because there were just TOO many holes in them and I have approximately a million morepairs back home, but it hurt me! I walked in those four HOURS to get them thatwonderfully worn - it was like throwing away a child. A CHILD. That’s what itwas like. And having to recycle my old exercise books from the last semester?HUNDREDS OF HOURS WENT INTO THOSE BOOKS. I mean, I flip through the pages andjust look at all that revision, all that hard work, and it just flops onto the‘throw out’ pile. It’s a strange sad thing. A strange sad thing indeed.

This thought process happens for a lot of different things and inthe end I always just keep too much anyway. I like things. I happen to definemyself a lot by the things I own and I’m not exactly sure whether that’s a goodthing or not. I don’t think it’s necessarily materialistic to simply value yourpossessions and the role they play in enriching your life. And half the timehalf of what I pack is books anyways. So yeah. I think it’s okay.

Also, I got the last batch of 35mm film developed too, so over thenext few days I’ll post those photos up. I’m going to be in Beijing for 4 daysbefore I get the plane to Phuket.

on George Orwell - Books v. Cigarettes

2012-01-05T20:24:00.002+10:00

It's pretty embarrassing to say that I still haven't read '1984', but after all that stuff I read and wrote about Hitchens, I decided it was about time to pull my goddamn head out of the sand. Today I did two great things about this. The first, is that I began Books v. Cigarettes. The second, is that I finished it.

Don't be fooled though dude, this thing is so tiny I can't even call it a real book on a clear conscience. So what it is? Penguin have this absolutely wonderful series of little mini paperback book-ish kinds of things called 'Great Ideas'. There are a total of 100 wonderful examples from lots of different writers and thinkers like Orwell and Camus and Freud and Tolstoy and Mr. Awesomeness-etcetera. They are combinations of essays and biographical anecdotes and general writings and I don't think they're supposed to be an introduction to the name behind the words, but rather a chance for some of these peoples' more kooky/cool/awesome/abstract writings to be published. I mean, that's certainly the feel I got from this #57 - Books v. Cigarettes, but #13 - The Communist Manifesto is apparently the actual manifesto by Engels and Marx, so maybe not each one has the quirkiness and loveability of the one I just devoured.

Anyways, once again, go Penguin! (They have a really amazing history and really contributed to the world as we know it now and you should totally read about it here or here.) This is easily the most brilliant collection of its kind that I've come across. Really.

It looks and feels very nice, too. Tick the box for aesthetically pleasing. The jacket and following image (of the first 60 books in the Great Ideas series) come from these people who obviously seriously rock at what they do.

Also, they are physically very conveniently-sized. And actually I think that's the other great things about them - they are so small! And light! Like the Alexa Chung of paperbacks! You don't have to be intimidated by some big old tome that might break your bank and back. So often I gaze at those big things and just exhale loudly and think "Fuck. I'llbedeadbeforeIfinishthisthing. Whydidhehavetowritesomuchwhatadouchebag. Youknowwhat? I'mnotevengoingtostartit. HA! Seewhatyouthinkofthatyoustupidoldman."

Trust Penguin to make the great minds of the world even more accessible to kiddy pleb brains like me (and you). It worries me to consider how much money I might accumulatively spend on them all. But totally worth it of course.

Which, in fact, brings me to what this particular one is about. The blurb reads as follows:

Beginning with a dilemma about whether he spends more money on reading or smoking, George Orwell's entertaining and uncompromising essays go on to explore everything from the perils of second-hand bookshops to the dubious profession of being a critic, from freedom of press to what patriotism really means.

It's a pretty decent description of the first 64 pages, which contain six different short essays and anecdotes. And they are certainly entertaining - don't get worried about this being a boring or dry read, people, he is funny and witty and totally cool in all the right places. I have scribbled notes ALL OVER these pages and for me that's a good sign. The last 60-or-so pages actually contain a nicely long (but obviously not actually very long) bibliographical passage about Orwell's life as a child in boarding school - and it's absolutely fascinating.

My favourite of those first six passages is a tie between 'Bookshop Memories' and 'Confessions of a Book Reviewer' which are the two lighter pieces for sure, but the serious stuff in 'The Prevention of Literature' and 'My Country Right or Left' are both just as readable. This is what he says about stamp collectors in the Bookshop Memories passage which is inspired by the time he spent working in a book shop:

We sold second-hand typewriters, for instance, and also stamps - used stamps, I mean. Stamp-collectors are a strange, silent, fish-like breed, of all ages, but only of the male sex; women, apparently, fail to see the peculiar charm of gumming bits of coloured paper into albums.

What the hell does he mean by "fish-like"?

I feel like this little booky thing is really the most perfect example of Orwell I could have asked for. It's like a delicious bruschetta entree - leaving the eater both satisfied and yet cravingly excited for more. I predict 1984 will be the most delicious kind of spaghetti imaginable. I'm serious. I think this Orwell guy might be the literary equivalent of spaghetti. I'M SO FUCKING EXCITED!!!

But yeah, the last thing I want to say is that this little Books v. Cigarettes thing is really full of incredible insights and lovely humor. It's the perfection introduction and/or companion to a wider appreciation of Orwell and I think you should all read it.

Also I had a bit of a cold but I'm feeling much better now thank you very much.

on Sleeping Beauty (the 2011 movie)

2012-01-01T16:18:00.002+10:00

I have a big internet crush on this guy and I follow his blog religiously even though he only posts short little updates. He's a writer himself, with awesome taste in books and movies and things like that, so it's a great thing to read if you wanna find new stuff to get into.

He kept recommending 'Sleeping Beauty' - the movie made in 2011 by Julia Leigh and starring Emily Browning. This is the trailer, and now that I think about it, I saw the trailer about 6 months ago and got really excited about the movie then just forgot all about it. Such is the internet. You should also know that it's explicit - don't watch it with your parents or your kids. Seriously. Don't believe the name. No kids are allowed to watch this movie. Ever.

Most of the summaries I found on the internet seemed to miss the mark by so many kilometers that I think the people who wrote them didn't even see the film, so this is how I would describe it to someone who hasn't seen it:

This movie is about a young woman in modern Australia who volunteers her body - apparently out of financial necessity - to all manner of uses and the story follows her deeply troubled daily life for several months. She is offered a job which involves complete unconsciousness, secrecy, and submission to clients and she readily accepts, but as the job begin to affect her life, the mystery of what actually happens in the 'Sleeping Beauty Chamber' becomes too much for her to handle and she becomes determined to find out.

I have to say it was exquisite but also a very sad kind of haunting. There was hardly any music throughout the entire film, dialogue was minimal and the scenes themselves often graphic and confronting. Besides a deep sadness, sympathy and perhaps fear were the only emotions I really felt - but this emotional starkness was far from boring. I did not feel particular connection to any of the characters and yet I was totally invested in what might happen next. (An unusual combination considering we usually find ourselves most engrossed in movies which illicit the most emotion, no?) It was totally absorbing.

This might or might not have something to do with the fact that it was also supremely baffling. I'm serious. It's only downfall was that on occasion it was just so pretentious that it was quite unclear. I mean, I feel almost embarrassed to say so because clearly some other people must have understood a lot more about it than I did? I'm trying to be honest here when I say that I have NO IDEA who 'The Bird Man' really was, or who that lady on the bus was or why "how long have you been doing this?" is such a bad question to ask someone in that position? If you haven't seen it, obviously none of those things are going to make any sense, but if you have - did you understand them? And if so, PLEASE TELL ME.

In truth, I do kind of like the idea of this theme - that nothing was ever justified or explained and the audience were never spoken down to, but it just went too far. Too often these mysteries seemed forced and it made the film seem, at times, too tryhard. Too wannabe arthouse.

I do also feel bound to mention how visually beautiful a lot of it was. Beauty is obviously a theme explored (and explored damn well, might I add) and it's a great movie for the aesthetics alone. Lots of well-placed imagery, symbolic colour schemes and clothing, and super realism sometimes then surrealism other times. It's kind of like a work of art a lot of the time. Something to be appreciated with a constant keen eye.

Emily Browning was excellent. I mean seriously really amazing excellent. With so many intense and freaky things happening to her but with such little dialogue it could have easily turned awkward, but she handled it really brilliantly and I think credit here should also go to Julia Leigh for her direction. The vision is carried through the whole film. Top to bottom. There is just such obvious style and mood and feeling that the word 'pure' comes to mind. It's like this woman had a vision and was actually able to capture it perfectly on screen. To say I look forward to her future work is a massive understatement. She is withoutadoubt a name we need to look out for.

I just read (because I'm researching the movie as I write this) that she was first a novelist, having published Disquiet in 2008 and The Hunter in 1999, so I'm obviously going to go check those out next. (Read: you should also do that.) Oh - and apparently there is a film based on The Hunter being released! More googling to come then, I suppose. What is SUPER COOL though, is that the script for Sleeping Beauty was on the 2008 Hollywood blacklist which is a thing you really need to look at right now. There's one list every year so you can read the 2011 one right now too, and the kinds of scripts that get put on these lists are, like, some of the best movies ever. (Examples from that 2008 list being Easy A, Inglorious Bastards and Sherlock Holmes. I know. I told you. So much awesome.) So yeah, I officially have a big crush on this lady.

SO NOW I WANT TO TALK ABOUT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING ABOUT THIS MOVIE.

Which, for me, was it's Australian-ness.

I normally get kind of embarrassed by Australian movies. Dude, come on, I know you do too. They so often seem so unpolished and so often are just boring. There seems to be this trend of-late to deal with bleakness and barrenness which just seems really dumb and boring when it's not done well. The Australian movies you hear about usually have something to do with the outback when in reality most Australians in cities have never seen a kangaroo in the wild, and often I swear the small/independent-made scripts deal with Aboriginal dreamtime stories just to get government grants. Samson and Delilah is just about the only example of those themes done well, and I was genuinely happy to see it successful. But it's the exception to the rule of Australiana films so far.

Then you get Hollywood/Australia medleys like Australia, which is the second highest grossing film to come from our shores - only behind Crocodile Dundee. COME ON PEOPLE.

Sleeping Beauty gives me hope for the future of our industry. It's totally unique and it's brand new and it's all-Australian. It makes me proud and excited.

What's more, is that it's origin was a complete surprise to me! You'll notice that the trailer is spoken by this woman (below, left) from the movie and she has a British accent. So I thought it was a British movie! It wasn't until I actually began watching it that I realised it was entirely Australian.

What's also interesting, is that I think I felt this movie much more deeply than I would have had it been American or even British. I have come to realise that there is a certain automatic distance I feel with a movie that has foreign accents. When a person is crying out in anguish, it means a lot more to hear it from a familiar voice than one with any kind of foreign twangs. Even the outfits and the scenery were familiar, and these make the little glimpses you get into average life within the movie totally believable and realistic - from a uniquely Australian perspective. It's a luxury not usually afforded to us Australian movie-lovers and I want you to know that I'm deeply grateful for it.

I mean, Emily Browning's character is a young, female, Australian uni student. Even her bedroom in her shared house looked vaguely familiar. Would I have liked this movie so much had I not felt so profoundly similar to the lead? I'm not sure, I guess that's for you to decided. Unless you're also a young, female, Australian uni student. In which case - WATCH THIS MOVIE RIGHT NOW. OKAY GO.

It has just occurred to me that the dude whose blog I mentioned at the beginning of this post as being the catalyst for me seeing this movie is not only male, but American and not at university. And I think he's cool/clever and he liked it. So there you go. Don't be disheartened!

All in all, if you're a relatively intelligent person who appreciates mystery and darkness and beauty then I think you should watch this movie. Just make sure you're, you know, alone. And with some pre-planned post-movie-thinking-time scheduled into your day.

on New Years Eve

2011-12-31T13:50:00.002+10:00

The fact that my birthday is in December means I can do thiscool thing where, for me, each year corresponds to how old I was/am. Forexample I think of my first year outside of highschool not so much as 2009, butmore as ‘the year that I was 17’. 17 was a pretty uneventful year, now that Ilook back at it, but 18 was seriously fucking intense. I went on my first bigtrip alone (Africa – which was all kinds of extreme) and it was first year oflaw school and I was finally legal adult age and I also had to prepare for thisyear in China. No wonder I had those dumb meltdowns. Dude, I seriously don’tthink I could do 18 again. Does anybody really actually want to do 18 again?That is the question.

I digress. I actually wanted to talk about this currentphenomenon where I’m officially 20 years old, but still in the year of 19. Iusually kind of like this ‘limbo time’. Normally it provides me with a coupleof golden weeks (conveniently in the holidays) of both retrospective thoughtabout the year-passed and constructive new-year planning. I usually make listsand think about deep shit like; “who I’ve grown into” and “who I want to be”and “was I always this fat”. The best part is, of course, making new resolutionsin the summer sunlight.

The trouble with right now though, is that clearly my “newyear” and the real year of 20 won’t actually start until I get back to Brisbane– and that doesn’t happen until the beginning of February. So not only am I 20years old now, but still in the year of 19, but once it does flip over to 2012,I still won’t really be in the mental space of year 20 until February. Doesthat make any sense at all?!?

I’m going to presume it does and move on. If you don’t getit then maybe just try reading it again slower. (Condescending? #sorry)Alternatively, I’m flattered for your interest so far and will not be toooffended if you just quit while you’re ahead. But I CAN SEE YOU. Jokes I’mtotally kidding I can’t see you.

Or can I?

ANYWAYS.

The good thing about all of this, is that I have those twogolden weeks in Phuket coming up which I think will be the perfect time torevel in that previously-described ‘limbo’. The bad thing, is that I’ve alreadykind of put myself into that ‘limbo’ space and so I’ve just given myself toomuch time for this and my self-reflectiveness and new-years-resolution planninglevels are reaching all-time highs. There is only so many hours one young womanshould put aside to think about herself. A certain (read: healthy) amount isentirely necessary, but I think I’m breaching the limits here, man. The “lookingback” has turned my life-so-far into a movie and the “looking forward” is aworld where I’m themostproductivepersonintheworld and don’t have to sleep… that’snot okay, right?

Another thing to factor in is that I feel like 20 deservesnew-decade resolutions too, not just 365-days ones. And how the hell am Isupposed to think of what I want to get done in between now and 30? THIRTY!?BUT IT FEELS SO CLOSE!?!? I’M PANICKING! IM ALMOST 30! BUT I DON’T EVEN KNOWWHO I AM OR WHAT I WANT TO BE WHEN I GROW UP?! AND IM ALREADY DYING!???!!??!

Okay calm down that’s a little bit silly. But it doesn’tseem so silly when you take a few hours of your allocated limbo time to lookaround the internet and see what all kinds of amazing YOUNG people are doingaround the world to make you look like a vegetative loser. YEAH, I SAID ‘VEGETATIVE’.It should be inspiring but it’s too easy to just let it make you feel sad. Allthose motherfucking hipsters with their ‘best of 2011’ lists that make me feellike I shouldn’t even bother listening to music anymore. All thoseaward-winners who’ve written (literally)A THOUSAND books, and all those hot and fit babes, and all those kids who canactually put their doonas into the doona cover without looking like a totalfreak then falling over and hitting my head. I mean, ‘your’ head. Statement wasabout people in general.

Moving on.

Times like this I’m usually comforted most by Liz Lemon andcopious Christmas leftovers. Having already finished the last of 30 Rock season5, and having no actual Christmas leftovers, I have to look elsewhere. Forexample, I just bought this awesome STYX original concert t-shirt!!! #BECAUSEI’MABADASS

And I signed up (and paid – AGH I’M BLEEDING) for membershipto GoMA in Brisbane! Oooohhh look at me! I’m cultured! And I’m going to wearhigh heels to ALL of their events – just so you know. Because I’m an “adult”like that. (Lol what does that even mean?)

But I decided to try and not make any other impulsespurchases until I had actually got to the source of these feelings ofmild-to-medium inadequacy. I guess it’s just a little bit of classic self-doubting-around-the-new-yearpanic. Right? AmIright? Sooo… The only thing left to do is make plans and listsand goals. Right? I mean, what the hell else can you do when you’re stuck inthis limbo but feel really unproductive? I can’t even go for a run because it’sso damn cold outside. (And if it wasn’t cold I TOTALLY WOULD go running.) Soyeah, let’s make lists and goals and stuff. I’m going to go with that. But I’mDEFINITELY TOTALLY NOT going to write and 20 to 30 decade resolutions. Thatshit is just scary and is going to have to happen later. Maybe Phuket is later.Maybe not. DON’T RUSH ME! Buy a new Rush t-shirt mabye? NO! FOCUS!

Okay.

New Years resolution list for the year of 20, officiallybeginning in February. Draft 1.1:

Be the coolest person in the world.
Be the most awesome person in the world.
Be really attractive all the time.
Get really good marks / be the smartest person in the world.
Always know what the time is even without a watch or othertime-telling device and therefore be awesome.
Be the best friend in the world to my amazing friends.
Be really relaxed all the time / be really funny all the time.
Do other things instead of sleeping so that you get a lot ofthings done and therefore are awesome. Things may include but are not limitedto: writingand reading, listeningand watching, paintingand drawing, runningand sweating.
Do more housework / make sure my mum loves me.
Walk my dog a lot and therefore be awesome.
Learn to ride a motorbike.
Play my goddamn clarinet.
Do that volunteering thing again / don’t be a selfish ass.
Do gigantic puzzles.
Get Ryan Gosling to be my boyfriend. (This is a joke one.LOL.)
Learn how to drink whiskey.
Cook and bake all the time / eat awesome food and thereforebe awesome. (Because we are what we eat, right?)
Find a good job / don’t be poor.
Get enough sleep.

Alright. I think that is sufficient planning for now. I don’twant too many specifics because, you know, gotta keep the outlines loose forupward movement. Or something like that. I know a lot of people pick a few specificthings for their new year resolutions but it just doesn’t fit for me. I don’tlike the idea that in, say, 6 months time I will be a new and improved versionof me and I’m still in the headspace of the old January (or in this case,February) Bri trying to fulfill the goals of the past ghost. Past ghost mightbe wrong! (I know the past ghost of me wearing that halterneck top in the ’04was totally wrong.) I do realise how stupid that reads (the concept, not thehalterneck. But obviously also the halterneck). I’m simply indifferent to yourjudgment on this point.

We must always allow ourselves ample room fordevelopment. If I was to make a hard-and-fast goal then actually fulfill it,well then I might feel like a success – mightn’t I! And we don’t want that, dowe. No! We must always be reaching higher and higher.

Therefore, I intend on being the most awesome person in theworld – because I am entirely sure it will never ever happen. (For proof, see right.)

NOT THAT YOU NEEDED IT!!!

The end.

Oh – and one other thing. I wish you all a very happy newyear. Genuinely. I can’t wait to see what everybody does in this wonderfulcoming 2012. To all my youngen friends - may you create a perfect internetversion of yourself approximately this time tomorrow that had ‘THECOOLESTNEWYEARSEVENIGHTEVER’and may that bring you fulfillment.

Personally, after excusing myself at approximately10pm from the campus festivities, I intend to retire to my room, braid my hair, make the perfect cup of tea and readsome of Orwell’s essays. Not quite shazam, no, but once again I am indifferentto your judgment on this point. Heck - it might be the first year I actually make it awakeuntil midnight!

"You can't connect the dots looking fowards."

2011-12-28T08:22:00.000+10:00

It’s been a while since I have written, and I had a greatChristmas – thanks for asking! I’m in preparation for final exams now and I’mbooking all kinds of accommodation and transfers for the Phuket trip, butprimarily - my mind has essentially been whipped up into a frenziedreflection-mode because a fortnight ago I realised I only had a month left inChina.

And so, more recently (read: two weeks after that first realisation. Also, sorry for this fumbling maths.) I realised that I have just over a fortnight leftin China. After all this time, just two weeks left. As well as this gigantic looming thought-cloud over my head, I’m also acutely aware that I am now 20 and that for some otherreasons (which are presently difficult to precisely identify) I am at a criticaljuncture in my life.

In terms of the leaving-China thing, I have been (and am) experiencingtextbook pre-withdrawal symptoms. Like I said, it started about two weeks ago whenI realised I had a month to go. I mean, the first thing you always findyourself doing at a time like this is thinking of all the things you didn’t getaround to doing and feeling like you didn’t make the most of your time.

In someways, I know that this is totally irrational (reference to the map) and yet no matter how much one human does, thatsame human could always have done more. Especially according to the criticallyself-reflective opinion of that human. The second symptom I am currentlyexperiencing is that panicked feeling you get when you think about certainthings you have to leave behind. I feel like my soul is hyperventilating. I sithere thinking about those particular carrot dumplings on the street corner nearthe markets, and I just can’t conceptualise a snowy afternoon stroll withoutthem burning the sides of my mouth.

God help me! What kind of inhumane world do we live in(read: the world I will be returning to shortly – because China and Australiaare two different worlds. Duh) where an innocent girl can’t walk to her streetcorner and buy a fresh dumpling for under a dollar?

But in all seriousness, it’s strange for me to know that I was(and am) actually kind of sick of dumplings… and the only reason I’m inhalingthem like-there’s-no-tomorrow at the moment, is because soon they won’t be there. Lol. Thatthere actually will be no tomorrow soon. Really.

Moving on though, to something profound that happened to me today.It happened while I was eating at my FAVOURITE street food stall, the one that’srun by the old couple who know me and my order personally. (Really, Bri,another food metaphor? YES.) I mentioned them in that testimonialI wrote for my university. Anyways, the lady gives me extra big servings thesedays, since from about two weeks ago I started to go there almost every singleday for lunch, and it’s my favourite place in all of China. I’m serious. Thatparticular alley where I sit on the little stools and watch the bustle aroundme is the single best place in this whole country. I started frequenting thislocation because I simply wanted to make the most of it before I left itforever and the tomato and egg stir-fry over steamed rice rocks my world. Well,the profound thing that happened, was that as I was happily devouring that latest bowl,I all of a sudden I crunched down on some egg shell.

I KNOW.

EGG SHELL. IN MY FOOD. IN MY MOUTH.

IT WAS SO BAD. LIKE,THE WORST THING EVER. IT SENT A DISGUSTING SHIVER DOWN MY SPINE AND I FUMBLEDMY FINGERS AROUND IN MY MOUTH PANICKING TRYING TO GET IT OUT. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN.

I looked towards the unaffected couple in hurt and disbelief. It was clearly an accident – that kind of accident thatprobably happens much more frequently than any of us care to consider, but that’snot important here. What’s important, is that in that moment of calm, when theoffending piece of shell had been fished out from my mouth and I was flushedwith relief, I had a realisation. It was all over.

My time in China is over.

(In case it isn’t clear, the bowl of food is China, and I amme, and the ugly crunch of that piece of shell is the realisation.)

And you need to stop being confusedRIGHT NOW. You cannot tell me that you have never gleaned a piece of invaluablewisdom from a seemingly unrelated occurrence. Nobody can tell me that they haven’tmade metaphors out of ridiculous things, then been guided by that wisdomdespite the absurdity of the source of the realisation. The only reason thewhole ‘grub-to-cocoon-to-butterfly’ metaphor is alright to use these days isbecause it’s just commonplace now. I’m sure if I told this story again, but themetaphor had something to do with an insect, you would be EVEN MORE unconvincedand confused. So yeah. Whatever.

I’m going to move on talking about this, under the premisethat you accept the metaphor and subsequent realisation. If you don’t, wellthen go for a long walk at dawn tomorrow and think about the rising sun as a pretty metaphorfor this new year for you and then sadly realise that originality is bettereven if it’s sometimes a little strange then get bitten by a dog before you gethome.

I digress.

It’s over, and I’m coming to peace with that. A good friend recentlyquoted to me that “you can’t connect the dots looking forwards”. I had beenworrying about this year coming to a close and how I felt like everything waskind of heavy and scrambled with information and emotion, and yet empty ofmeaning. So I went back to that clipand re-watched Steve Jobs’ speech to Stanford and that quote really does stickto me right now. I realised I just have to have a little more faith that thiswhole year will make more sense once it’s in retrospect. And if there isanything I’ve gained this year it’s a little more self-faith.

I’m SO comfortedjust knowing that in about 6 months I’ll be pondering things over a cold beer,and it will come together. It’s finished here and now and despite the feelingthat my heart is in a hurricane right now, I have faith the one day soon I’llbe able to look back and connect the dots.

I think most of us get these panicky feelings at the end ofevery year. It is a defining characteristic of motivated people - that they arenever truly happy with what they have done. Always striving for more andreaching and pushing and struggling. At our best moments, we have won againstourselves. And in our happiest, most contented moments, we are able to connectthese dots.

my christmas present to me

2011-12-23T02:08:00.002+10:00

HELLZ YEAH!!!!

It's for my new Macbook Air 13'' that is waiting for me at home. I know, I know, it's just too awesome. No seriously, stop drooling. I especially like the way the reproduction is kind of tacky, and how JEDI is a little bit cut off. You too? No way! These days I don't find myself really liking perfect things. This is where I bought it from, so if you really like it then DONT COPY ME. I'm totally kidding it's awesome everybody buy this.

my (quick) "best of" 2011

2011-12-21T07:05:00.000+10:00

I suppose it's this time of year again. Your productivity comes into question and you look back wondering where all the time went. You worry if your list is too hipster or not hipster enough. How much of it is the same as your friends' and how much time you spent listening watching and reading. I decided to make it five of each this year - trying to get more of that 'quality over quantity' vibe into my life.

The only rule of my "best of" lists is that I consumed the item in question for the first time this year. For example, this year was the first I had ever heard Robert Johnson's album 'King of the Delta Blues' despite it being first released in 1997 and recorded much, much earlier. Also, the list is not in order of awesomeness - to pick just five of each was damn hard enough so don't expect me to give them places.

(Links take you to any reviews I have written about the thing.)

Books:

Letters to a Young Contrarian - Christopher Hitchens
China - Lonely Plant
Bossypants - Tina Fey
Superfreakonomics - Levitt & Dubner
What the Dog Saw - Malcolm Gladwell

Albums:

King of the Delta Blues - Robert Johnson
Rip Tide - Beirut
Helplessness Blues - Fleet Foxes
Torches - Foster the People
Peace Love Death Metal - Eagles of Death Metal

Movies:

Bright Star
Pretty Woman
A Single Man
The Adventures of Tintin
Top Gun

I found myself returning to a lot of old favourites instead of finding a whole lot of new things this year. For example, I got right back into Wuthering Heights and watched Sahara (my number one favourite movie of all time) eight more times throughout the year. I watched Ratatouille three more times too, lol. It's so great. I also did a lot more TV shows (30 Rock and Buffy and Supernatural and Game of Thrones) than movies. Not sure why that is.

Safe to say it doesn't really resemble any of the lists from previous years (with the number of times that China Lonely Planet has literally saved my life, I couldn't leave it off the list), but I guess that's what this year has been like for me - totally unlike any other and totally kook. But awesome. Of course!

My last.fm profile and Goodreads profile and etc. can be found on the 'about me' page, I'd love for you to add me and we can dig each other's archives. You know what I mean. Wink.

my "testimonials" and advice on exchanges

2011-12-20T08:22:00.000+10:00

My uni (University of Queensland) asks that its students write them "testimonials" about their time on exhange. Most of the time the students say the usual things which are true like "it's the best time of your life!" so I tried to say things a little different. My testimonial from semester one wasn't anything breathtaking because I realised that it's difficult not to fall into the usual trap for these things. It really will "change your life" and it really is "the experience of a lifetime". At least the photos were cool. I can't believe they even put up that one of me giving the camera a 'thumbs up' in front of that gross skinned thing on the road... kudos to UQ Abroad. Lol.

So the time rolled around to write the testimonial from this (my second) semester, and this is what I submitted:

"This is my second semester here in China and it’s been superdifferent to the first primarily because Jinan and Shanghai are completelydifferent cities.

I mean, life in the mean city streets of Shanghai is fastand hardcore, and the locals are tough and the teachers are tougher. The otherexchange students will all drink you under the table while telling you not-so-talltales of organ theft, and you’ll feel lucky when you wake up with only yourwallet missing. Conversely, Jinan presents you with beautiful lakes and richphilosophical history and friendly local taxi drivers who actually take youwhere you want to go. The teachers and classes here are wonderful and the otherstudents are far more easy-going than their ‘big-city’ counterparts. All inall, I almost feel like I’ve spent the two semesters in two differentcountries. The second one being much more… peaceful than the first.

Of course, this might also be because I learnt a lot of lifelessons during that tumultuous first semester, all of which I brought with mehere to Jinan. I suppose my Mandarin proficiency has also slightly improved andI have come to almost appreciate many little Chinese idiosyncrasies that used tototally freak me out – like loud yelling all the time and people being allowedto smoke everywhere and classes five days a week. My partiality and affectionfor Jinan and Shandong University is also heightened by my increasing awarenessof just how fast the year has gone. Which leads me to a big piece of advice –if you think you’ve got what it takes (and your arts program allows it) thenyou should without-a-doubt apply to do two semesters in China.

The full year will do wonders for your Mandarin and it reallyallows you to actually settle into life here. From a travelling perspectivetoo, the full year allowed me to visit a total of 9 provinces as well as abeginning month in Hong Kong, the semester holidays in Beijing and an insanetrip over to North Korea. Now that it’s December and my time here is coming toan end, I really feel like I have achieved what I set out to and I’m ready tocome home. Most of the kids I talk to who only have one semester end up tryingto extend their exchange because they feel like it just isn’t enough. Althoughmaybe that’s a different kind of good thing… I dunno – maybe Jinan is justgettin’ me all philosophical. Anyways, if you can do two semesters (either intwo different cities or the same city twice) then DO IT!!!

If you do have to choose between either Fudan (Shanghai) orShandong (Jinan) then my personal recommendation would be to go for Jinan.Shanghai as a city can be understood from a short visit, but Jinan is a greatplace to experience Chinese life on a local level for several months. It alsoplaces you within a very fast train ride from both Beijing and Shanghai and isa great vantage point from which to undertake national travel. My teachers hereare all Care Bears and the old couple who do street food outside the universitygates know me by my order. (Tomato and egg stir-fry over steamed rice, in caseyou were wondering.) Apart from being FREEZING right now, Jinan is a nicehome-away-from-home and I really like it here."

This is where I stopped for the university testimonial,because I didn’t want it to be too long or anything, but I didn’t feel like I’dsaid everything I wanted to. Here are a couple of things I wish people hadreally told me. Chances are they did actually tell me, but I didn’t listen. Iknow, I kick myself for something every day, but anyways, here are a few othernotes of recommendation I would make to any student going on exchange:

Things to decide before arriving:

· Find your focus/niche.

Mine was blogging and I’m so glad I did it. NowI have a complete record of the entire year of exchange. I took photoseverywhere and wrote everything down and it forced me to really think abouteverything I was seeing and doing. It also compelled me to try and make myexperiences more awesome. Some people focus on who they meet during exchangeand aim to make new lifetime friends. Other people have a target locked ontravelling to certain places, and many make their exchange about the language. Thinkabout what you want to focus on during your time away, then get pro at it.

· Decide how hardcore you want to be about thelanguage proficiency thing.

I got really uneasy a few months after I hadarrived and my Mandarin wasn’t progressing like I thought it would. I wastravelling a lot and meeting so many new people and doing interesting thingsevery day, and it took me a long time to realise that I valued theseexperiences more so than I did my Mandarin ability. I wish I had of been awareof those priorities before I arrived because it would have saved me a lot ofquestioning and guilt over lack-of-study. I’m not saying that it isn’timportant, I’m saying that you should decide how important it is to youpersonally, before you embark upon your exchange and get swept away ineverything.

· If you want to travel, plan your idealdestinations.

I had a few destinations within China that Idesperately wanted to go to before I went home, and I think the only reason I managedto get to them was because I was sure of them before I even arrived in China. Xinjiangis the perfect example, and it taught me that the kids you meet are usuallyopen to suggestions. If you know of a place you think would be great to visit,then chances are someone will want to go with you when you tell them about it.It’s good to know a bit about these places early on so that you don’t miss outon any travel opportunities.

· Skype is your best friend. It’s also your mum’sbest friend.

I can’t speak for long-distance romanticrelationships (thank god I’ve been spared from that particular hell for allthis time) but keeping in touch with family and friends is super easy and it’swonderful. A good Skype chat makes you a million times less homesick and yourparents love it too. You’re in a crazy country on the other side of the world,for christs’ sake!!! Call your mum!!!

Things to remember whilst on exchange:

· Home is right where you left it, and apparentlyjust as boring as you left it.

I kept worrying about missing out on things backhome, but everyone kept telling me that ‘nothing interesting was happening’ andthat ‘everything will be exactly the same’ when I got back. (Well, apart fromthat time that Brisbane flooded… but that’s unlikely to be repeated.) And let’sface it, nobody actually sees each other in person these days, so if you justkeep your Facebook and Twitter accounts active then you’ll get all the goss. Itwill be like you never left. Don’t worry about it.

· You’re not the only one who thought you’d getterbetter at this language faster.

EVERYBODY thinks they’ll be fluent after acouple of months and they are ALL wrong. I have not met a single person onexchange who wasn’t slightly disappointed in their rate-of-improvement – so trynot to let it get you down. Sometimes you don’t even realise how much you’veprogressed until you get home. You know, until you get home and loose most ofit again…

· No, sweetie, you’re not immune to culture shock.It’s lame but it’s real.

I always thought ‘culture shock’ was somethingthat only lame or wussy douchebags got because they couldn’t handle thespitting. I was wrong, it goes way deeper than that and it affects all peopledifferently. I know happy-go-lucky kids on exchange who seem to be immune toculture shock simply because they don’t think too deeply about what they seearound them. If you’re the kind of person who observes and reflects, though,then brace yourself for impact especially if you’re heading to a developingcountry.
It’s going to hit you in obvious and rather shallow ways during that firstweek, but it creeps in slowly over the months and you’ll find yourself feelingalone and totally confounded. Usually this ‘deeper’ kind of culture shock comeswhen you begin to really understand the differences in attitudes and subtleways-of-life that sit in such stark contrast to your own. I found it help towrite it out, but during these times it’s good to keep in more-regular contactwith home, or people from your country who are also overseas. I have found thatthe only cures for culture shock are perspective and acceptance – neither ofwhich are always easy.
The great thing is that working through culture shock teaches you a lot aboutyourself as well as the world around you. It really is one of thosetrial-by-fire experiences in life and accepting it and working through it isthe best way to get the most out of it.

· Skype can be set to “appear offline”.

The inverse of the awesomeness of Skype andFacebook, is that sometimes you can really gain a lot by just cutting off fromhome for a while and actually immersing yourself in your location. I did this alot whilst on my various trips to other places in China, and it was enough forme. I see a lot of kids who seem to stay too attached to their home lives sothat they treat the exchange like a trip instead of a way-of-life. Of course,everybody has their own approach, but it’s good to try and keep yourselfgrounded in the place where you’re actually living. Make the most of being awayfrom home. Really away.

· This is the trip of a lifetime – but only if youwant it to be.

Exchange is exactly what you make of it. Beawesome and be badass and do the most you can and enjoy everything about it!The fact that you’re planning it at all tells me that you’re a cool kid, and nomatter your destination you can make it intensely great. Make yourself proud.

But feel free to not listen to (read: read) any of this and run into it all and make your own mistakes and have the craziest time ever and come out battered and bruised but a totally improved human being. I think that's kind of what I did. But I guess I won't know for sure until I get back. Which is really very soon.

some classic Chinglish

2011-12-20T07:34:00.000+10:00

I was recently reminded of letter that came into my posession from a trip to Nanjing much earlier this year. A simple, small page full of hand-written reflections from a total stranger which came together to provide my friends and I with pure hilarity.

The short background story is that there were five of us Fudan University students who went to Nanjing together on a little see-the-sights trip. We had booked into a 6-bed dormitory at the hostel, and when we first dropped our stuff in the room we thought we had it to ourselves. When we got back later we found that there was actually a person booked into that sixth bed, and we introduced ourselves. He was a shy Chinese man, in Nanjing for some kind of conference thing and his spoken English was broken, but understandable.

That evening the five of us got greatly drunk in the hostel's bar area and when we finally returned to bed we stayed up talking to each other until the wee hours of the morning. You know, that classic drunken conversation between young people who only recently came to know each other. In other words, we were rambling.

Anyways, we had kind of forgotten that this sixth guy was in the room, and woke up late the next morning with him already gone and the following letter left on the table for us:

The letter, exactly as written:

Nice to meet all of you. And may you be happy everyday.
       In fact, it's the first time I have been with So many I perhaps not so... I foreigners. So I don't know how to express myself. I suddenly find it that my English is rather poor.
         David. You talked to much last night. Perhaps you love a girl, but she can't see you. However, whether she loves you is her business, not your business. Personally, I think it's a wonderful thing to love someone.
         Helen. You are just playing a role, aren't you? However, please don't lose yourself! If the world is a big stage, I am so grateful that we were once in the same stage.
         What's more. Staying up late isn't good for your health! You can call me "kid"! Because my birthday is the children's day!

You ask me whether it is worth loving you, but you know loving someone is no to ask worth or not!

I trust that it was a little more funny for the five of us than it will be for you, but I think it's still objectively hilarious. I mean, we were talking shit for several hours and he was just lying awake listening to these strangers who were the first foreigners he had ever really met, and then he wrote us a letter. I mean, the things he says are a little bit related to some of the things we were discussing, but it still doesn't make a lot of sense. Even to us.

People back home ask me how China is in general, and I find myself replying that it's "just crazy". When they request examples I often find myself at a loss, because everyday something happens that is just a little bit kook. This letter is the perfect example of that silly craziness that comes with spending time in China. I hope you think it's as funny as we did.

on Christopher Hitchens

2011-12-17T04:48:00.000+10:00

I found out Christopher Hitchens died today and I’m sure Iwon’t be able to stop thinking about it for a long time. I don’t usually caretoo much about the deaths of celebrities or those who I don’t know, but I can’tshake this one. There is something, well, it’s not ‘troubling’ as such, but itmakes me uneasy. Perhaps it’s just sadness. I thought I’d write about it tofigure it out.

A healthy(ish) Hitchens.

First of all, his life was a lot about death – as is anyone’swho debates ideas of religion and faith and morality. He spent a lot of timebatting off threats of ‘hell’ and it’s interesting to consider where hisconsciousness is now, if anywhere. Nothing seems to fit. For example, I try topicture him having a conversation (read: intellectual argument) with St. Peterat the pearly gates, but it’s just unreasonable to think of Hitchens in aheaven (you know, if there is one or whatever). I imagine him being reincarnatedas a holy cow in India, but that doesn’t really make sense for him either becauseall that intellectualism would just be torturously trapped if it were to bejailed in the brain of an animal. I think of him being stuck on a tropicalisland with a plane full of strangers and discovering a hatch, but then I rememberthat Lost was a load of crap and Christopher deserves a better afterlife thanthat.

Or perhaps there is actually nothing after death and therereally is no more of Mr. Hitchens. This thought depresses me most of allbecause it just seems like such a waste. For human beings like this one tosimply die and be no more. He was carrying, in that mind of his, so manymemories and ideas and completely unique opinions and so much charisma and energy.And within that flesh that ended up letting him down, there was an incredibleforce. Some might call it a spirit and I don’t claim to understand thedifferences between the physical and the non-physical elements of anindividual, but you cannot deny that whatever that non-physical element is,that it was particularly notable in him in particular.

The only reason I find it difficult to believe that there is nothing afterdeath is because I don’t want to believe it. So many humans die with the mostincredible vaults of information locked away inside of them. As though ourminds are all houses – of course some of us will end up with a shanty and somewith a mansion. The choices we make lead us to experiences and relationshipsand situations that all imprint on who we are, and for all of this informationto be gathered inside a person and then simply destroyed – well it just doesn’tmake sense.

And so I often consider the stories that might be bled fromthe minds of the dying on their deathbeds. If it was somehow a human custom toprovide those close-to-death with a tape recorded or pen and pad, or these daysperhaps a laptop. Imagine what would stream from the minds of those who weresure of their imminent fate. Consider - if you could put all this information,from all of these people, into a library of some sort so that we could all lookat the lives that have been led before us. So that somehow this informationwould not be lost.

Well, Christopher Hitchens pretty much did it. Not only washe actively writing right up until his death, but his autobiography Hitch-22was published in 2010 and a collection of his essays called Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchenswas released just this year. He knew he was dying. And he was a genius. I donot know how anyone could be uninterested in the writings of a genius who knewhe was close to death. Let alone a genius who knew he was going to die who didnot believe in heaven or god. He stood strong to the end, and he wrote until theend. I believe these things make him an exceptional example of the potential ofa human being.

I finished Letters toa Young Contrarian just a month or so ago, and it was the first of Hitchens’books that I’d ever read. I had long been a fan and kept up with his Vanity Fair articles which I originally found simply because I am a fan (as previously written) of the publication itself. I also always tried to keep up-to-date on/with his publicappearances and watched a lot of his YouTube clips. Actually reading this book,though, was an entirely different encounter. It affected me profoundly, and myown hand-written notes cover almost every page. I felt as though he wasspeaking directly to me, injecting itself directly into my mind and everythinghe was saying made complete sense. The book is required reading for any youngperson intent on becoming an autonomous thinker, intellectual or change-makerin the coming times. It’s also fucking hilarious and incredibly fulfilling. Iwould go so far to say that it’s the best non-fiction I’ve ever read. (And youknow it’s true because I said something along these lines in the post I wrote about it when I hadjust finished reading it - well before he died.) I know a lot of people knowand like him, and if that’s you, then I strongly encourage you to read any oneof his books – especially Letters to aYoung Contrarian if you’re a young person. It’s like listening to a lectureby the visionary himself. Actually it’s better than that, it’s like sittingacross from him at a dinner party.

I’m sad that I won’t ever be able to have dinner with him. Imean, I would have to do a hell of a lot of awesome things to be invited to thekind of dinner party Christopher Hitchens would be invited to and even moreawesome things to be invited to one of his own infamous dinner parties, but I haveno doubt it would be one of the highlights of anybody’s life.

A rather more recent photo - he was in the
middle of chemotherapy treatment.

Over at The Lit Pub,Alex Pruteanu (who knew Hitchens) has written a great reflection on what heknew of the man and what Christopher Hitchens means to him. Apart from being anexcellent thing to read, this post also reminded me that I need to get (back)into Orwell. Hitchens was known and “the Orwell of our time” and actually now Iremember that in Letters to a YoungContrarian Hitchens often referred to Orwell. I have both Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and his collectionof essays titled Books vs. Cigarettes herewith me. I am officially determined to read them both. I got through Animal Farm earlier this year and wrotevaguely about it in this postwhen I was still afraid of being deported like my classmates here in China. Nowthat I actually blog about the books I read, I will, of course, let you knowhow both of these go.

Actually now that I think of it, as a writer (albeit a youngand naïve and unaccomplished one) I also feel genuinely sad that he died. Ihave never felt sad about a stranger’s death before. Ever. But I rememberreading his piece on thewriter’s voice and being moved in a way I hadn’t in a long time. Again – it wasas though he was speaking personally to me. Us plebeians (read: baby writerslike me) can only dream of one day approaching his precedence of brilliance andI would never presume to be even in viewing distance of his league ofawesomeness, but as a fellow appreciator of the written and spoken word, thereis something there that puts us on the same page. I know that a lot of you willknow what I mean when I say this.

I feel bound to mention, thought, that one of the greatestthings I get from listening to his debates and reading and appreciating hiswords is that, in general, you don’t have to agree with people to have intenserespect for them. I do not really identify as an atheist in the traditionalsense that Mr. Hitchens does, and unlike him I think that women are extremely funny, and from what I’ve seen andheard he could really be an asshole sometimes – but none of these things doanything to diminish my immense respect for him. For example I know a lot of people don’t likethe fact that he was a great drinker and smoker (I happen to like thesequalities in the right individual) but nobody could really talk any shit aboutthe man himself. He commanded respect and deserved every ounce of it that he received.

I like to think that one of the reasons he gets thatrespect, is that he really fought for what he believed in. And I need tobelieve that people like this really exist. People who spend their lives on thesearch/battle for truth. There are, no doubt, others who came before andperhaps others might follow his example, but I doubt whether any have ever orcould ever do it with his sharp wit, side-aching humor, and massive charisma. Hewas the very definition of an individual. Those who knew him often spoke of hisincredible energy and productiveness and I’m so damn glad that he wrote so much– because I might just be able to consume the contents of his mind until I alsodie.

If you want to read other (read: better and actually real)accounts of his life, then I recommend the several articles currently on the Vanity Fair website, my personalfavourite being this one. (The images in this post are also from their website.)

Or do what I plan on doing, and go and buy and read Hitch-22 as well as those essays.

I guess in closing I'd like to wish that Christopher Hitchens rests in peace - wherever that is or isn't.

Harry Potter in Hanyu?

2011-12-16T20:06:00.000+10:00

So at the same time I bought those Tintin books, I also thought I might put some of my birthday money towards the same thing I ALWAYS put birthday money towards - new books. The only trouble is that right now I'm in a smallish city in China that doesn't stock a lot of English language titles.

The solution?

MAGIC!!!

Well, you know what I mean. Sometimes I just get too excited about stuff like this. On Monday I finally fulfilled the long-term goal of acquiring the entire series of Harry Potter in hanyu (written Mandarin). I have been thinking for a long time about how to maintain my Chinese proficiency once I get back to the sunny Australian skies, and I know myself too well to think that I would just pickup a textbook for the sake of it. There had to be something that would actually keep my interest. Something relatively simple. Something I was already familiar with.

It's the perfect solution, really. I intend to make myself a little glossary of all the proper nouns and I can't wait to see what the government wouldn't allow in their version of the saga.

It's also kind of customary for someone in my generation (Y) to own the Harry Potter books in any/all of the languages they are proficient in. That's just a thing. It really is. It's a rule.

In other news, I just started googling for any potentially already-made glossaries for English speakers reading the Chinese Harry Potter books, and found all kinds of interesting related and unrelated articles. Take a look at these if you're interested in this kind of thing:

The Chinese government's role in censoring films and film releases in China is apparently seriously prolific. They also recently released "The Beginning of the Great Revival" which is essentially a modern-made propaganda film all about the rise of the communist party. The government limits wholly foreign-made films to approximately 20 titles per year which is about the same number as domestically produced films released annually, and they are quite careful about the ones they chooses to allow in at all. I mean, they're pretty infamous for taking a hard-line policy against anything which promotes time travel... The New York Times article on all of this also acknowledges that such government intervention is essentially futile because of the crazy high levels of illegal movie and TV-show pirating in China. There is pretty much no such thing as intellectual property in this country, and there aren't really any laws at all regarding downloading and file-sharing. Any citizen who wants to see the internationally-released-films-that-the-government-doesn't-like still can and will.

Here is a list of HILARIOUS fake Harry Potter books that have been found published in China. Follow this link to see the ridiculous titles and covers alone. Like "Harry Potter and Beaker and Burn" - the cover of which features one of the animated ants from A Bug's Life. It's all so so so very funny.

And this page has a few of the Chinese characters I'll need to read the seven books. Including the translation of "Veela". Hahahahaha. Something tells me this whole thing is going to take a long, long time.

on Hunter S. Thompson - 2.5/3

2011-12-16T00:12:00.000+10:00

Soooooo no. I'm not finished yet - IT'S MASSIVE! OKAY?!???

Seriously this book is bigger than the bible. I'm up to page 360 out of 600 though, and I have SO many pages dog-eared to come back to for EXCELLENT quotes already, that I thought I'd share some of the best with you now. Otherwise I might not be able to put them all in for my final review post.

So without further adieu, here are some of the best quotes from pages 1 through 360 of The Great Shark Hunt:

On jackrabbits and political journalists:

People who claim to know jackrabbits will tell you that theyare primarily motivated by fear, stupidity and craziness. But I have spentenough time in jackrabbit country to know that most of them lead pretty dulllives; they are bored with their daily routines: eat, fuck, sleep, hop around abush now and then… No wonder some of them drift over the line into cheapthrills once in a while; there has to be a powerful adrenalin rush in crouchingby the side of a road, waiting for the next set of headlights to come along,then streaking out of the bushes with split-second timing and making it acrossto the other side just inches in front of the speeding front wheels…
When a jackrabbit gets addicted to road-running, it is onlya matter of time before he gets smashed – and when a journalist turns into apolitics junkie he will sooner or later start raving and babbling in printabout things that only a person who has been there can possibly understand.

On tricks in politics:

This is one of the oldest and most effective tricks inpolitics. Every hack in the business has used it in times of trouble, and ithas even been elevated to the level of political mythology in a story about oneof Lyndon Johnson’s early campaigns in Texas. The race was close and Johnsonwas getting worried. Finally he told his campaign manager to start a massiverumor campaign about his opponent’s lifelong habit of enjoying carnal knowledgeon his own barnyard sows.
‘Christ, we can’t get away with calling him a pig-fucker,’the campaign manager protested. ‘Nobody’s going to believe a thing like that.’
‘I know,’ Johnson replied. ‘But let’s make the sonofabitch deny it.’

On charging expenses to the accounts:

Then fill a hot bath and get something like Memphis Underground on the tape machine.Relax, relax. Enjoy this fine rainy day, and send the bill to Random House. Thebudget boys won’t like it, but to hell with them. Random House still owes me alot of money from that time when the night watchman beat my snake to death onthe white marble steps leading up to the main reception desk.

On Watergate:

The slow-rising central horror of Watergate is not that itmight grind down to the reluctant impeachment of a vengeful thug of a presidentwhose entire political career has been a monument to the same kind of cheapshots and treachery he finally got nailed for, but that we might somehow failto learn something from it.

On the do-nots of politicians:

There is not much doubt, on the numbers question, that atleast twenty of the 100 senators will not vote to convict Nixon under any circumstances… unless he violatesthat old law of Indiana politics about being ‘found in bed with either a liveman or a dead woman’.

On Nixon’s post-presidential meltdown:

So we may as well get braced for a daily dose of extremelygrim news out of San Clemente, once Nixon is formally indicted. We will hearreports that the ex-president frequently bursts into tears for no reason atall, that he utters heart-rending screams every night in his sleep, and the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner will quotean unnamed ‘prominent Beverly Hills psychiatrist’ who will describe Nixon as a ‘pitifulbasket case’ and ‘chronic bedwetter.’ And if Ford still seems reluctant to letNixon go free, we will start seeing font-page ‘exclusive photos’ of Nixon aloneon the beach, staring soulfully at the sunset with tears drooling out of hiseyes.

I hope (and trust) that you enjoyed those as much as I did. So far the book has just totally blown my expectations out of the water and proven that Hunter is way way way cool.

A funny little side note, is that I have been reading this book whilst sitting in the local McDonalds, and if you know Hunter's work then I think you'll appreciate the irony in that - especially because I read as I listen to Jefferson Airoplane. I know, I know, White Rabbit is the best track and it's all too awesome.

But anyways, the story is that a local Chinese guy came and sat at the table beside me, and as he was just finishing eating me he asked me in broken English if he could "have a look at this your book"? Of course I said yes, and asked him if he had heard of Hunter S. Thompson. The man replied that he hadn't, which is when I noticed that he had an iPad with him. I suggested that the man search for Hunter S. Thompson online if he wanted to read "a unique opinion on American politics by a man who was an alcoholic druggo, but absolute genius"? The Chinese man looked slightly alarmed, and as he tapped away at his expensive device, I watched is face turn from confusion to alarm.

Within 60 seconds of reading, he quickly dropped the book back on my table and gave me a pretty filthy look with the comment "I don't think this is of my interests." I laughed out loud and he almost jumped out of his skin. I swear he was looking around for cameras as he scuttled out of the McDonalds. It was just so hilarious - you should have seen how freaked out he was. I wonder what exactly you get when you google Hunter S. Thompson in Chinese?

Now that I'm preparing for more exams (damn the Chinese education system!) I might not even finish this The Great Shark Hunt until I get to Phuket in January... but I have some Rum Diaries-esque plans for that time which shall unfold at a later date.

Thanks for staying tuned!

on Tintin

2011-12-15T23:14:00.000+10:00

On Sunday I went to see the new Tintin movie and it goes without saying that I was sceptical. As many of you know (and I'm sure even more of you are) I was a long-term Tintin fan, so seeing the posters come out for a "new generation" of Tintin made me worried about what was going to happen to the childhood classic. It was going to be in 3D (which automatically made me want to hate it) and was made in that weird new kind of computer animation that us oldschool animation kids love to hate. On top of this, they had combined three different stories (1. The Crab with the Golden Claws 2. The Secret of the Unicorn 3. Red Rackham's Treasure) into the one movie, which just spelled disaster.

You can imagine my surprise when I found that the movie was actually ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT.

I saw it almost a whole week ago and I literally cannot stop thinking about it. I fully intend on seeing it again on the big screen, and then buying a non-pirated copy of the DVD. Seriously.

From an artistic perspective alone, the opening credits are a masterpiece. They somehow manage to capture the original simplistic feel of Herge's masterpiece, and yet inject such excitement and modernity into the whole thing. As well as being a pleasure to watch, the sequence was amusing and clever and truly ingenious. The result is a perfect combination of old and new that actual made me totally excited to see the film. I'll say it again - a masterpiece.

Tintin himself is also a babe of a redhead cutie. Represent. No I don't feel weird saying that about a cartoon. Any film wherein the protagonist is ginger-haired is automatically awesome because people with ginger hair are awesome. We gotta stick together, guys.

Tintin does kind of look a bit like he's only 12. But he totally rocks the jumper-over-collar combo and the blue works really well with his hair. He also knows how to shoot a gun and ride a motorbike, so no, you cannot pay him out. Ever. At all. He also solves tons of myseries all the time - in case you didn't know.

This new animation is so incredibly vivid and life-like that you get the best of both worlds because it looks hyper-realistic but still has the kooky and crazy potential of created cartoons. I'm not sure whether or not this was also a result of the 3D-ness of the film. I mean, I think this is really the first time I've ever felt that the movie experience was greatly improved by the extra dimension (literally). The action sequences were so beautifully constructed and so thrilling that my friends and I were literally jumping in our seats! It was a crazy and exciting ride the whole time, and they really exploited the new technology to their advantage - chopping camera angles and zooming in and out and making you feel like you were actually in the middle of it all. It was really well done!

Also, it was beautiful to behold. Every scene was like artwork with incredible detail and depth. The library is perfect and so are the ship/ocean scenes and all the flashbacks and when they get to north Africa it's a whole new world! Seriously guys, go see this movie just to ogle at how pretty it is.

The best thing of all, I think, is that it was also actually funny. Simon Pegg plays one of the Thompson & Thompson policemen, and all of their scenes are genuinely laugh-out-loud hilarious. I'm not even a fan of slapstick, but the pickpocket scene is wonderful! The drunken Captain Haddock (played by the dude that did Gollum for LOTR - but don't worry he's much more likeable here) makes for excellent adult-level humor, and it's easy to lose yourself in the whole thing. Daniel Craig plays the big baddie Ivan and does it superbly. Make no mistake - big kids will enjoy this just as much, if not more, than the small kids they drag along as an excuse to buy the tickets for.

A screenshot from my favourite scene with Thompson & Thompson and the kleptomaniac pickpocket. SO GOOD.

The combination-plot of the three different books was handled so well that I didn't notice any discrepancies.

Tintin (as a journalist) also uses stationary that looks exactly like the Moleskine brand I surround myself with and have undying loyalty too. This is just another nod to the artistic viewers. Yes, my snobby obsession with fine stationary has been validated. Massive brownie points to whoever is responsible for this small element of the film.

I also just have a MASSIVE soft-spot for any movie with a dog in it, and Snowy is pretty much the best dog/companion character in the history of humankind's fiction. They did him perfectly, too - it warmed my heart to see this loyal companion in 3D and saving Tintin's ass as much as ever.

All in all, I think you should really give this movie a chance. Walk in with a light heart and an open mind, and I really think you'll be surprised and happy with how great it is. This is the trailer, and it's corny and melodramatic, but have a little faith!!!

I loved it. I'll put my name to this movie.

Then I got a little carried away...

And went and bought a whole lot of Tintin - in Chinese!!! The artwork is still the same, and it's wonderful to have hard copies in my hands again. The characters are simple because it's for children and I pretty much know the stories by-heart anyways. Best of all, they're totally affordable because books in China are way cheap.

I've also decided that owning approximately six different Tintin T-shirts just isn't enough for one girl, and I know that I can buy more like these in Beijing (this photo below is from a previous post about that time I went to the markets in Shanghai) so I think I'll just have to pick up a few different titles when I go back to Beijing on my way home in January.

Totally pumped.

Tintin for life.

various awesome things and spaghetti and Albert Kahn

2011-12-13T02:19:00.000+10:00

In my daily Mandarin classes these days I have a classmate who is Romanian but normally studies in England. He's one of the only other "white" people in my class, and for ages I thought he was a bit of a douche who thought he was too cool for me. Turns out he thought the exact same thing about me, but then one day we both rolled our eyes and yawned at how boring the classes were, started discussing the merits of the Western attitude towards education, then started discussing anything and everything that both of us found interesting.

Turns out this dude is a goldmine of awesomeness.

He, like so many awesome people I meet, also has a habit of spending hours on the internet looking up random things and learning about strange but interesting stuff. He has read all kinds of cool books and he is full of recommendations for funny comedians and he knows about all kinds of documentaries that are incredible and he once spoke to me for almost two hours about the history of the Romanian monarchy. (And let me tell you, that stuff is seriously riveting!)

This morning he brought his laptop and I brought my external harddrive and we swapped about 100GB of awesomeness. He grabbed my entire collection of Sailor Moon and I grabbed his entire folder of pirated translation software. I also got these cool pictures which FINALLY tell me what all the different kinds of spaghetti are:

(These are all high-resolution and you can download them by clicking on them to open them in a new window. Doing so will also open a new window of spaghetti and pasta appreciation and understanding into your life. Do it now.)

What else? Tons of stuff.

I told him about TED and he told me about this dude called Albert Kahn. I told him about Black Books and he told me about George Carlin. I told him about Freud's Cocaine Papers and he told me all about pre-war Berlin.

And it got me thinking about how lucky I was to have just met this random guy full of awesome things he was willing to share with me - and I thought to myself "the world needs to see these awesome things" and so from that moment I knew I had to blog about it.

If you want to be awesome, then you just need to follow those links and do some more investigating and listening and watching of your own. But of all our hours of talking and exchanging ideas, the story of Musee Albert Kahn is still my most prized nugget of new information (the spaghetti came in a close second place) - so that's the story I really want you all to look into most of all.

The wikipedia article about him is pretty accurate and really isn't too long, but here's an excerpt from it to give you an idea (with important bits emboldened by me):

In 1909 Kahn travelled with his chauffeur and photographer, Alfred Dutertre to Japan on business and returned with many photographs of the journey. This prompted him to begin a project collecting a photographic record of the entire Earth. He appointed Jean Brunhes as the project director, and sent photographers to every continent to record images of the planet using the first colour photography, autochrome plates, and early cinematography. Between 1909 and 1931 they collected 72,000 colour photographs and 183,000 meters of film. These form a unique historical record of 50 countries, known as "The Archives of the Planet".

This guy was, like, the first ever hardcore photographer/philanthropist. Way ahead of his time. His images are absolutely amazing, and you can see quite a fair few of them on the BBC's website about him and his book which they publish. There is also a documentay called Edwardians in Colour which is easy to download and which I am going to watch tomorrow.

These were the first ever colour photos to be taken, and required exposure times of up to 10 seconds - so the subjects had to stay absolutely still. (Actually that whole 'autochrome' photography method is a remarkable story and article on its own. If you're interested in photography you MUST follow that link and read about it.) The process was extremely expensive and super difficult - it was an absolute art form which now provides us now with images of what almost the whole world was like a whole one hundred years ago.

What a champion. This Kahn guy is made of the right stuff, people. The right stuff. Needless to say, the collection of his most incredible images are bound together in that book and I want it badly.

So I ate my imported spaghetti this evening (finally knowing what to call it), and watching hilarious and intelligent YouTube clips and then thinking about what the beautiful cities of Europe looked like before the war - and would you look at that!?!?!??? - In my part of the world it clicked over to midnight and I just turned 20.

Thank god I'm a little more awesome.

what I learnt from seven seasons of Buffy 2/2

2011-12-12T01:44:00.001+10:00

What I leart about super powers:

We all have varying degrees of super powers. What I'm talking about now is a scene that replays through a lot of sci-fi, mostcommonly recognised as the paradigm/quote:

“With great power comes great responsibility.”

I'm being totally serious. It's true.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer deals with issues of birth andresponsibility and life choices an awful lot. Whole episodes focus on thatblessing/curse of being ‘chosen’ and whole seasons explored what it means ifyou are either ‘special’ or not. Every step of Buffy’s life was apparentlypre-decided and she complained of never being able to control her own destiny.And yet she felt superior to the others because of her birthright.

According to Faith, she and Buffy were born as a “hot chickswith super powers”, and it’s true. The Slayer is a babe who can kick seriousass. Why? Because she was born to be the Slayer and the power is handed down toher. I’m going to be honest and say that for a long time this made me resentBuffy. I don’t like the fact that this girl is a skinny can of awesomeness forno other reason than she happened to be born into it. I acknowledge that shetrains, but I’m pretty sure I would too if I was just automatically super strongand had a watcher and an easily identifiable evil to constantly fight. Buffyhad it easy in a lot of ways – she was born with all the tools she needed. Itreminded me of royalty.

I’m vehemently opposed to the remaining presence of royalfamilies in the 21^st century because there should be no position insociety to which anyone can rise themselves up and achieve. No matter how muchof an excellent person a young woman may grow to be, she can never be a realprincess or queen, and that is fundamentally wrong. I felt the same way aboutBuffy. She was born into her abilities and potential and situation. You can’twork really hard until you turn into the slayer. You either have it or youdon’t.

Anyways, it all got me thinking about what it means to beborn into certain situations in the world and how people act in thosesituations, or improve their situation – in other words, who we are dependingon what we are born into. The more horrible things I see in the vast worldaround me, the more I consider myself just so damn lucky to have been born intothe life I was. And for so many different reasons.

If I ponder it for too long I come to feel guilty abouteverything I’ve been given and how little I’ve done with it. Many of thecrucial elements in my life which I use to define myself as a ‘good human’ arein fact easily predictable consequences of the situation I was born into. I amat law school now not because of any brilliance on my part, but because I wasborn with the kind of average brain required and into a family that valueseducation and sent me to good schools and supported me. The same goes for everysingle human characteristic – a combination of what we were born with (‘nature’)and what situation we are born into (‘nurture’). When I think of it in thisway, I suppose there is no possible ‘good’ or ‘bad’ human. It almost seems likewe each have individual fates to live out. We are, each of us, on pre-destinedpaths. How can any of us be doing anything different? The combination of ournature and nurture could have only ever led us to where we are right now –right?

But first – how do we judge what makes a human good? Arounda year ago after a lot of brain-digging I came to realise that I had a veryintricately organised hierarchy in my mind of all the people I knew. Eachperson had a place on what I think of as an awesomeness-scale, and my opinionof each person’s intelligence and morality and humor and attractiveness andpriorities (and etc etc.) went through some kind of semi-conscious equationthat translated into a place within this awesomeness-scale. I have a habit ofdirectly comparing people to each other and others to myself and vice versa.Each person was both better and worse than another person I knew, and my ownposition on the scale was constantly shifting depending on my recent actions.It was a profound discovery for me, and finally allowed me to understand why Imake the choices in company that I do, and why I’m so darn judgmental all thetime.

In relation to the other characters from Buffy the VampireSlayer, Buffy Summers herself sits kind of low on the awesomeness-scale. Why?Because as the Slayer she was born with awesomeness in her veins, and I don’tsee that she ever does anything particularly special that goes beyond what youwould expect from someone born with those abilities. If we sit down and add itup, her lifetime achievements don’t greatly overpower the brilliant tools thatshe was simply born with from the beginning. This is where I find myself. I wasborn into such a wonderful life in so many ways – I cannot see anything that Ihave done or achieved or even tried for in my life that is particularlyremarkable when you consider the easy start I enjoyed.

I genuinely believe myself to be a good friend –but how could I not be? I was raised in a loving household and always had timeto be a good friend. Life was never so difficult that I had to focus onsomething else first. There is no excuse for me to not be a good friend.
I pride myself on my lack of religiousness –citing it as an example of my superior logic and rational mind, but I was borninto a family that let me choose ‘whatever I wanted to be’. How can I expectthe same from someone born into a religious family with parents that carriedthem to church each Sunday since birth?
I happen to think that I have very clear anddecent priorities. Even if this is true, how could I not be well-adjusted? Forthe first entire 18 years of my life my parents made sure I never had to sufferthrough any real difficulties. I would expect any other person with such acushy start at life to also be a relaxed but determined young individual.
Even the simplicities of being fit and healthy –I was born with a decent body and into a home with a well-stocked pantry andaccess to a nice jogging track.

If I was always going to be all of these things, then how can anyone ever be truly awesome?

Perhaps the only answer lies in those people with thedetermination and blood/sweat/tears to travel so much further than theirposition-at-birth would suggest. I suppose a very literal and extreme exampleof this would be someone born into poverty becoming a millionaire, or someonein a horrible accident who learns to walk again. In a more realistic way, I getsuper happy when I hear stories of people with sub-par or rough starts in lifewho go on to help others. Those people who take on the responsibilities of lifedespite not being born with any real super powers. (For the record, people whotrain seeing-eye dogs also just automatically go to the top of theawesomeness-scale.)

I hope I’m being clear, it’s a difficult topic to talk aboutand explore. Essentially, when I look around I know that I really need toremember that most of what I have now was given to me. I was born with superpowers. I was born with a totally fit and able body – capable of doing anything that humans can. I was born with into a financially comfortable familywho were supportive – I could have chosen absolutely any vocation or field ofexpertise or life track that I wanted. I was born totally equipped witheverything I need to change the world for the better.

In the world we live in, an education and a good start inlife really are super powers.

Just being born into a developed and democratic and affluentcountry is a kind of super power! I went to a top-rate school with hundreds ofother girls who all had the super-power of an incredible education! In the 21^stcentury a stable and unfiltered internet connection is a new kind of superpower with limitless potential. We all live with the idea that we are allhumans, but the truth is that we are all born with varying degrees of power.Varying degrees of super powers.

And what comes with that certain degree of power? A certaindegree of responsibility.

Surely this makes sense. Those that are born with theSlayer’s super powers have the responsibility to fight evil demons. I was bornwith the super powers of education and freedom and health and love, I have theresponsibility to do something good with that. So do you. Sit yourself down andthink about the power that you were born with – are you fulfilling theresponsibility side of this equation?

You may not be able to shoot spider webs out of your wrists,but as a consumer you have power over the choices you make and those choiceshave consequences. You can’t literally fly, but you can get on a plane in theair that takes you to a new place where people are dying and need you to helpthem build wells. So what if you don’t have laser vision? Fred Hollows gavepeople the gift of sight! Every day, all day, for years! SHAZAM, PEOPLE!SHAZAM!

The world is so full of incredible experiences for those ofus born with super powers, and if you’re reading this, then chances are youhave at least some very mild super powers. You know what is a super power?Literacy. You can read? Awesome – that makes you a minority on this earth, andthat means you have a responsibility.

So right about now I’m going to kamikaze off this high horseof mine and admit that I don’t think I’m using my super powers the best I canright now. But I’m honestly not really sure how to. When presented with achoice, I like to think that in general I choose the ‘right’ thing to do (eg. noteating meat) and those choices sometimes get me a higher place on the awesomeness-scale,but it’s not about waiting for other people to present you with the right boxto tick. I need to think about my strengths and weaknesses and think seriouslyabout where my life is headed and what is the best way to put these super powersto use.

That’s another point – you gotta be smart about how you useyour super powers – and this particularly relates to young people these daysand the choices we make about our first few post-highschool years. I’m shit atscience, no kidding and I’m not gonna lie, I really don’t like kids. So – I can’tbe a doctor and I’m not gonna be an awesome mum. It takes a while for some of uswhipper snappers to find where our passions and abilities lie. I do think that’sunderstandable, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling like I’m not doing enough.

I turn 20 in two days time, and only now am I beginning toactually understand myself. Both individually and as a part of the big worldaround me. Part of this coming-of-age/getting-to-know-myself stuff resulted inme finally realising why I have felt such a shadowy sense of guilt all my life.It is absolutely nothing I have the right to complain about, and I for sureshan’t complain about it here, but it was never something I was able to explain.I looked around at my life and just felt terrible for everything I was given.Who was I to take the love of such wonderful parents and not be able to giveanything back? Who am I to study at one of the world’s best universities andignore that others my age were never taught to read. Who am I to flaunt mynumerous freedoms in life, when it was only by some kind of inconceivablecosmic luck that I was born in Australia? It just gets too much! I was bornwith too many super powers! And now I just have too much responsibility! I cannever do enough good do equal this goddamn equation!

I am totally aware of how crazy this may sound. I’m alsoaware that I am, in an inadvertent way, complaining about how awesome my lifeis – but sometimes you cannot escape it. I think the feeling is much strongerhere in China, and I certainly felt crippled by that guilt/responsibility whenI was in- and recently returned from- Africa. I don’t want to be the kind ofperson that doesn’t think about the sadness they see, but where should any ofus draw the line between helping others and enjoying our own lives?

Superman enjoys flying, you can’t tell that when he’s on anothercrime-fighting and life-saving mission, it’s not a perk to be able to speedthrough the air like that and Iron man gets to live in million-dollar mansionsand sleeps with hot chicks in between his time preventing WW3! But BuffySummers was constantly struggling with the normal girl life/slayer girl lifebalance, and I suppose all of us 21^st century kids should expect thesame if we choose to take the responsibility that comes with our super powers.

I’ve done a lot in these last few years to enjoy my life,and I am so genuinely grateful for everything I have – the experiences and thefamily and friends and the opportunities. All of it is just so awesome it makesme smile to think of how lucky and blessed I am. I just hope to one day be ableto feel like I deserved the awesomeness that I seem to have been born into.