tales from an ordinary world
1999-01-02
The first real day of the year, as everybody knows. On the tram on the way into town, I was wondering what my first CD purchase of the year ought to be, but ended up feeling silly for thinking that it mattered in the first place. I ended up with -
- The Far Out Corporation, Grant McLennan's new band. It's one of those things I bought mostly out of loyalty, although the single had sounded ok the two half-times I heard it on the radio.
- Bend Sinister, being my 15th CD by The Fall now (so I might almost have half of their stuff now - frightening !). This one's got their ever-popular cover of Mr Pharmacist on it...
All my usual cafes and eateries are still shut for the festive season, so I had to improvise. Today, this involved heading down to the Blue Train Cafe (I was short on ideas...), one of those industrial-sized establishments-with-a-reputation down by the river. It attracts all sorts -
A young twentysomething couple arrived and sat down nearby, to have their fashionable midday breakfast. He lit up a rolly, while she wandered off and came back with Harper's Bazaar, or somesuch.
A nice elderly couple were shunted off into the corner next to me (perhaps they didn't look hip enough ?). I watched them for a while, wishing I could just walk up and ask "please tell me about your LIFE ?". I like stories. I like hearing my girlfriend tell me random bits and pieces about growing up in Croatia and Bosnia, or Mum telling me about growing up in England, or Dad growing up here, or whatever. It's always such a different world. But I digress...
A snatch of conversation wafted out from indoors, with a posh-sounding voice asking for "another glass of Chardonnay, if you don't mind ?"
...but I don't mean to dis the place - it's fairly enjoyable, the food's good, and the waiters aren't too far away when you want another Stella. There's a nice view of the river, and all the goings-on, but you still manage to feel somewhat removed from reality, being up on the first floor - you can pretend that all the noise and shuffling feet downstairs is somebody else's problem.
It was hot today - around mid-30s - so rather than stay outside any longer, I headed home to the air conditioning, and loafed about all afternoon. Whilst a G&T in the lounge isn't quite as, uh, hip and groovy as one on the porch, I don't have a porch to speak of at this place, so I'm reduced to fondly dreaming of the porch at my previous flat, which was one of the few things it had going for it in summer, what with no air conditioning and all.
1999-01-03
Breakfast at Big Mouth's in St Kilda. I maintained my dagginess, though, by having mere scrambled eggs (so sue me. I don't remember the last time I had them !). I started (re-)reading an old Frank Moorhouse book, Futility and Other Animals, in the hope that I'd pick up stuff I missed the first time, when I read it a year or two ago. I've always tried to avoid doing this sort of thing (seeing films multiple times, or reading books again), at least without a reasonable period of time in between - I figure I'll get more out of the whole experience that way.
From St Kilda I made my way over to meet a few friends at the Malvern town hall, which was hosting this week's computer swap meet - the bargain basement of computer bits and pieces. I'd promised my housemate Lee that I'd get his Playstation, uh, "circumcized" (for want of a better word) for Christmas, and so while some kid (under the watchful eye of his mother) soldered away at Lee's little grey box, we waded through the crowd (there were a lot of people there this time) and priced a few random hardware bits. By the end of it, I was drenched with sweat from all the crowd dodging, and glad to leave it all behind...
1999-01-04
I'd been putting on a brave face about going back to work today - I could have easily let it ruin my last few days of holidays thinking about what I'd be going back to. So I mentally slapped myself around the head for a while, and tried to think about all the things I was going to get done on Monday, dammit. Surprisingly, it kinda worked - I got in perilously early, as usual (after all, you can get so much more done in the mornings, before 9am when everybody else arrives), and managed to get a useful amount of stuff done.
I should, of course, shovel the previous year's worth of Post-It notes off my desk and into a drawer - I'm a Post-It note fiend. Most people would just ask me "you use a computer, what are you using paper for ?" But they just don't understand the Zen of Post-It notes - especially the teensy-sized ones, which seem to be Just Right for capturing those ever-so-important nuggets of information. Here in education-land, though, we only get the standard yellow Post-It notes, as opposed to the nifty fluorescent coloured ones I used to have back in corporate-land during my previous job. But one just soldiers on...
Being the first day back at work, it was imperative that we had lunch at the pub, even though we had to leave one of our brethren behind - he'd caught some gastro thing over new year's eve, and wasn't up to eating anything beyond Saladas. The Christmas decorations were still up, but the Jovial Grey-Haired BartenderTM wasn't around. This probably explained why the younger (and slightly more hip) bartenders had tuned the radio to JJJ rather than Fox-FM or whatever crap's usually playing. The rest of the pub experience, though, was the same as usual - the beer, the food, the people, etc.
1999-01-09
I was sitting at home listening to the radio, feeling kinda bored, when the guy mentioned that the Underground Lovers were going to be playing at Revolver. "Cool !", I thought. I couldn't find anyone to come along with me (they were either uncontactable, not interested, or weren't able to drive...) so I ended up wandering along by myself. That was fine, though. I got there around 11pm, which was apparently when they'd be starting, but one of the support acts were still playing. They weren't half bad, and I wished I'd known who they were (they didn't say at the end, as far as I could tell) - the two women (one playing bass, the other keyboards) were centre stage, both singing, whilst two male guitarists stood off to either side looking suitably moody and introspective, especially the one who started taking a screwdriver to his guitar (for extra effect), during one song. All the while, there were nifty video effects going on on a big screen behind the band - someone was interspersing live shots of individual band members with US Film Archival footage of moon landings and such. It worked really well, but I suppose I'm easily amused at times like these.
The as yet unnamed band cleared off stage, and I was expecting the Underground Lovers to be starting, but it turned out there was another support band to go - Augie March, who I'd heard of, but never actually heard (or seen). They were better than I expected - kinda whiny almost-but-not-quite shoe-gazy guitary stuff, that confused the audience a bit 'cause they were never quite sure when each track finished. The video effects went on as before. I managed to avoid the crowd a bit by squeezing into a corner up the back, next to the steps that went up to the mixing desks - this proved handy later on, 'cause I could stand on the steps and actually see the band !
Finally, around 12:30 or so, the Underground Lovers came on. And they were fan-bloody-tastic, starting off with a few tracks from their soon-to-be-released album Cold Feeling, which I find an intriguing name, given that the last track on their previous album Ways T'Burn was called I Feel So Cold. I guess Vincent just has a fetish for the words "cold" and "feeling" ? They seemed to be having a fair amount of fun on stage, the crowd loved them, and their new bass player did a fine job at keeping those yummy bass lines going. Their old stuff was a good pick of each of their old albums, and they weren't just note-perfect renditions of the album versions either - one song (I forget which) bridged nicely into a completely different take on Losin' It, which worked really well - It's the sign of a great band that they're always able to find new ways to rework their old songs - Having only seen the Underground Lovers two-and-a-half times, I don't know how much they do this, but Ed Kuepper's one of my favourite examples - he's put out two live albums in the last year or two, but they're better than your average live albums, because he's done all the tracks completely differently (even between the two live albums themselves - one being just him with some weird guitar effects, the other being with a back-up band, and so on).
So at around 2am, after their blistering encore with their fantastic old song Promenade, I ducked out into Chapel St, and grabbed a taxi home.
1999-01-16
Last week was fairly busy - My grandfather died on Monday night, after being bed-ridden for at least four years in a home. The funeral was on Friday, so I helped out by scanning an old photo of him in his air-force uniform, that we put on the front page of the service (which I also printed out and made copies off for people).
On Tuesday (when I got told about it in the morning), I just walked around in a bit of a daze, letting it all sink in. We'd all known it was going to happen eventually, so it made it slightly less distressing than some freak accident, say. But all the same, it occurred to me that I'd run out of grandfathers. My mother's father, back in England, had had a few strokes in the early 1980's. When I last went back there for 1984 Christmas, at the somewhat tender age of eleven, he couldn't speak properly. I didn't think it'd be the last I'd see of him. A few years later, whilst walking along the beach at Weston Super-Mare (as he did quite often), he had another stroke and died. I could think of worse ways to go.
In my father's father's case, I last saw him on Christmas Day 1999 - my dad, my grandmother and I went to visit him that morning. He looked so withered away I could hardly bear to look. His legs had almost entirely shrivelled away, and his face looked so strained and tired. Nana fed him a drink from a Prima. Occasionally he'd cough, and for a moment there, his face almost looked like it used to. We sat around, chatted to him a bit, even though he couldn't talk back. I wondered if he could really see or hear us at all. Eventually it was time to go, and we took turns saying goodbye to him, holding his hand. I was last, and as I said goodbye, a solitary tear fell from his right eye. He knew we were there, and, what's worse, that we were leaving. I should have said something to the others, to say "can we stay a little longer ?" or something, but my throat froze up, and I couldn't do anything. I stumbled back to the car with the others, thoroughly spooked for the day. I didn't want to tell the rest of the family - it was Christmas Day, and I didn't want them feeling as down as I was feeling...
It was my first funeral, believe it or not. I put on my good trousers, and a shirt - it was going to be 37 degrees, too hot for a jacket or a tie. We drove to the church, the one just around the corner from my grandparent's house in Burwood, where my parents (and I assume my two aunts) had got married. The service went fairly well - I even did a reading (I figured it was the least I could do, even if I don't really believe in Catholicism). I helped carry the coffin out to the hearse. It was heavier than I expected. From there, we had a cup of tea next door, and I met some old workmates of my grandfather's (he'd worked for Commericial Union insurance, from 1926 until 1970 - I can't imagine working that long at one place !).
After the tea, it was time to drive to the cemetery, so we drove down to it, just past Waverley Gardens. We carried the coffin out to the burial site, and two men took it from our hands, and laid it over the grave. The priest did his thing, the coffin was lowered into the grave, and we threw flowers in as we said our final goodbyes.
The cemetery is big. I swear I'd get lost if I ever tried to go there, but I figure I'll try one of these days, just to see the name "John Kennett Cosgriff" on the little rectangular piece of metal, in the middle of a field of grass...
1999-01-17
For some reason, I was invited to five things yesterday. Being Saturday, that's kind of ok, except for the fact that I had absolutely nothing to do the previous Saturday night. I just don't get it. I managed to make it to two of them, since one was in the early evening - a sort of birthday gathering in the Botanical Gardens for two old workmates from a previous job. I hung around for a while before I had to head off to Richmond for a friend's birthday dinner at a nice Indonesian restaurant by the name of Djakarta, which I'd been to a couple of times a few years back. The food was still pretty good, much as I remembered it, but I'd forgotten how much stuff they had decorating the place - every nook and cranny had something stuck in it, there were old books all along the window sill, along with some flashing lights around the window. The Cheap Eats guide described this as "1950's retro." Maybe they were right, I wouldn't really know. My journey home is described below - I'll embellish it later on, but for now I just wanted to dump it all out of my head...
It was just past 10pm on a saturday night. I'd just finished dinner in Bridge Road for a friend's birthday, and as I walked up to Church St to get a tram, I cursed as it sped across the intersection in front of me...
Reaching the tram stop on the corner, I checked the timetable. Ten minutes until the next one. No big deal. I sat on a fire hydrant, biding my time. There was another person, a girl maybe my age(ish), white blouse and dark blue pants - probably on her way back from work somewhere ? She sat on the bench watching for the tram, and, after a while, lit up a cigarette. The smoke curled off into the night, northwards up Church St, from where our tram would be coming.
A young kid came around the corner, mobile phone to the ear. "Yeah, I'm going to Chaser's tonight. I'll see you there ? Ok, bye...". He sat down on the pavement, leaning against the wall of the hairdressers. They had lots of advertising material on their windows, proclaiming cheap haircuts, although someone had been picking letters off the ads, making it hard to work out exactly what was going to cost you $9.95 anyway. They even had a web page on citysearch (which I couldn't find today...).
Next, a runner of some sort appeared. He had the t-shirt mentioning some fun-run or other he'd been in, and a brand-new-looking pair of runners. He asked me how long I'd been waiting. "Not long, only ten minutes," I replied. "Not that it matters anyway", he sighed. "They're never on time anyway. I can see the tram sitting up there," he said, peering up towards Victoria St. "It should have left by now."
An Indian woman arrived, being seen off by another woman and her two little kids, who wandered off fairly quickly. A drunk or drugged young guy then wandered past. He seemed to be waiting for the tram, but couldn't keep still. He disappered for a minute, then came back holding a stick. "Where'd you find that ?" asked the runner. "Dunno mate, it just, like, fell out of the sky. Must be aliens or somethin'."
After another few minutes, the runner was getting restless. The tram was about ten minutes late by now. "How far are you going ?" he asked me. "Carlisle St", I said. He asked the girl, and the indian woman too. "Wanna share a taxi ? I'm sick of waiting, and it doesn't look like the tram's going to come in a hurry." I flagged down a taxi, and we hopped in - I sat in the front, the others in the back. Just as we were driving off, we heard a tapping on the window - the stoned guy was tapping on the car with his stick. Perhaps he wanted to come with us, but there was no room. We drove off. "We don't want to go down Chapel St," someone said. "It'll be way too slow." "It's not too bad this time of night," said another. "Maybe a bit later on, but not now."
Freed from the tram-stop nervousness, they all began to chat. Being in the front seat, I was a little left out of things, so I just listened. Since I'm generally better at listening than talking, I wasn't too disappointed. "I've only just been back in the country a month, so I haven't got a car yet. I can't stand public transport, it's just so unreliable." "Where've you been ?" asked the runner. "Oh, all over the place. Europe, the Middle East. I'd been working for a bit, then holidaying, then working..." "Did you go to Spain ?" "Yeah, it was wonderful." "I wanna go there one day...I just got back a few months ago from Africa...I spent time in working in hospitals for [I forgot the name of the welfare organization] and finishing my sports science degree. South Africa, Zimbabwe...I spent a year in Kenya." "I'm planning to go to South East Asia next,' said the girl. "India would be nice". "I'm from India," the woman piped up. She explained how she'd come over here as part of an arranged marriage. She had 5 kids (the eldest being 23), and had now separated from her husband. This surprised us all, as she certainly didn't look her age (I'd picked her to be in her early thirties).
While all this went on, we'd driven over the river, and come onto Chapel St. It was, unfortunately, very crowded, taking least 5 minutes to move about 150 metres. "There's a street that runs parallel to Chapel - we can turn right up here, and go to it." Off we went down the side street, until we got to Commercial Road - it had been fenced off, for some festival (the Midsumma festival, we later worked out.) Since it was going to be a hassle to get out of there and around it, we paid the taxi driver and started walking.
Conversation somehow got on to cricket. The Indian woman had been to the match the other day, when the Australian fans had gone completely beserk. "I was afraid for my life," she said. "One young man called me a 'black bitch'. I had to ask this businessman sitting next to me if I could leave with him just so I could look like I was with somebody..." "Didn't you go with anyone ?" asked the runner. "No, nobody." "What about your kids ?" "They were off with their father. They don't like the cricket," she said sadly. It was her "stop" (so to speak), so she bade us farewell.
The rest of us kept walking. The girl said "I'm meant to be going out tonight, and I have to go home and change. I have to see a friend's band tonight. She was some old schoolfriend I hadn't seen in ten years, and then, one day, I was in a bar in Israel, and I turned around to see her standing right in front of me !" "Bizarre. What's the name of the band ?" I asked, wondering if it was one I'd heard of. "I dunno, Bishop-something ? I forget. They're playing at Revolver, she plays 'alternative' sort of music." We walked past the Windsor telephone exchange, back on to Chapel St. She headed home, leaving the runner and myself at the tram stop. I could have walked to Dandenong Road and caught another tram all the way home, but I felt a bit guilty leaving the guy here by himself - after all we'd been through. Or something. Mostly, I was just curious.
Standing on the road, straining his eyes to look for a tram, the runner said "I haven't had any dinner yet. I've got a 25km run to do in the morning...Bugger it, let's just get another taxi." "Fine by me," I said. He flagged one down. By some amazing coincidence, it was the same taxi we'd had 20 minutes previously. He looked at me with my dyed-blue hair and I couldn't help but grin insanely back at him. The runner didn't notice though, and started telling the driver about the night we'd had. We went on to Carlisle St, dropping the runner off, and I ended up home at about 11:30.
1999-01-20
After an angstful afternoon of recompiling webserver stuff, to discover that it wasn't my fault after all, and it just plain didn't work anyway, I got it all going and escaped into the sunshine. I listened to some Pizzicato Five (one of those happy-sounding Japanese band - I really ought to learn Japanese one day...) to try and lift my spirits, and it all kinda helped - by the time I got home, I was fairly relaxed.
I've just finished rereading all my Frank Moorhouse books. There's a few I don't have yet, but in the meantime, I'll live. I remember reading about him saying something like 'the current younger generation are so angstful because they missed out on the '60s, which was the most exciting time to live". While I can't say I agree with that, I still love his work. Among many qualities, he (or some his characters, at least) seems to be one of many people who have trouble coping with the fact that they're expected to behave like adults. I share this problem :)
I also just read a new Hunter S. Thompson book called The Rum Diary, which is about a guy who goes to work as a journalist in Puerto Rico. Apparently Thompson wrote it at a fairly youngish age, before Gonzo Journalism and all that. It was fairly enjoyable, even without the rampant lunacy that one expects from him after reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or his account of the Kentucky Derby (with the help of Ralph Steadman...). Speaking of Fear and Loathing..., I saw the film a week ago at the Moonlight Cinema, aka. "come to some nice gardens, sit on the grass, and screw your back by trying to sit comfortably and see the screen at the same time". But I digress. The film was...well...I guess they did a fairly good job of making a film out of a book that's just such...utter chaos. It didn't work entirely - sometimes it seemed to get a bit lost in the mess, but there were some high points (the beginning road trip wasn't too bad, for instance).
1999-01-22
Angst-wise, my week at work got steadily worse. It's been sorely tempting to give up hope all together, but a friend and I promised a long time ago that we'd make a reasonable effort to "make a difference"TM, and...well...I guess I ought to keep at it.. Or maybe I've just got a perverse fascination in watching it all fall apart and saying "I told you so" to management. But hopefully it won't come to that, if things start coming together like they've promised us for...ooh...at least the 2 years I've been working there, if not longer.
Earlier tonight, I caught up with an old friend who'd gone back home to Malaysia after finishing uni. A year later, she's come back out for 2 weeks to help her brother get started in year 11 at high school. It was great to see her again, but she was fairly preoccupied with a personal crisis, and with my week being what it was, it was fairly difficult for me to provide much in the way of upbeat happy vibes...
1999-01-24
In a fit of enthusiasm last night/this morning, I went geeking about with my XEmacs. I really don't use Emacs as much as I used to. Some people go so far as to control their jukebox with it. Maybe some day...
I was in Readings this arvo, and the staff were talking about all the Midsumma festival stuff going on - one of the guys lamented that, since the straights came and took over the festival's gay & lesbian dance party, stuff like bashings and rapes occur during the event, which never used to happen. I found that pretty depressing.
1999-01-26
Australia Day. Woo. Everyone's going to the Big Day Out, which is one of those lots-of-bands-at-once festivals. "Perhaps it'll be the defining moment of my generation," mused a friend. I'm not quite sure I agree - I know too many others to whom the 100th episode of a TV show like "Friends" would be infinitely more important. I'd take the Big Day Out over TV, but there's never quite been enough bands I liked enough to want to go. "Maybe next year..."TM.
I still can't find a new book to read. I nearly bought a Camus, but didn't feel up to looking quite that pretentious today. I half-heartedly bought a compilation of contemporary Chinese fiction, but I'm not sure I really feel like reading it just now. When all else fails, I usually manage to find a book by just wandering about in a bookshop - eventually something catches my eye. I've found most of my favourite books that way, instead of the usual word of mouth thing. But then, of my book-reading friends, they're mostly either sci-fi/fantasy heads (I grew out of most of that ages ago), or they think that people like John Grisham walk on water. Only a small handful of them have slightly more adventurous reading habits, and I never really see them often enough to let their reading habits infect me.
I wandered down to St Kilda beach and went to sit on the end of the small pier. Two guys were there, one of whom seemed stuck in a rather long monologue, while the other just sat there listening. After a few minutes of hearing bits and pieces of this, I worked out that the guy was praying. I knew what would happen next, of course. I'm the only other person on the pier, and I'm by myself. Easy prey. The guy finishes, and his friend comes over to introduce himself, ask me if I believe in God, and all that sort of stuff. I answer civilly, chat to them for a minute or two, but draw the line when they ask for my phone number. Sorry, guys, but no. I guess it's because I spend a lot of time walking around on my own, but I've always been a magnet for these evangelists - at uni, in the city, on the beach, and so on. Perhaps they can tell that I'm too nice to say something offensive and walk off straight away.
In a fit of narcissism this afternoon, I listened to a tape my sister's fiancee had made for me - my grandmother in England wanted to hear me when I was on the radio last December, so he taped my second show, then made a tape of just me talking (and a few bits of song before and after). I'm still not comfortable hearing my own voice. And I said "um" a hell of a lot, too.
1999-01-31
Did the usual round of nothing, apart from going to Malvern and, determined to come out of Readings with a book to read - just about any book - I ended up with About a boy, by Nick Hornby - I'd enjoyed High Fidelity a few years back, so I thought I'd give this one a whirl - as the person behind the counter at Readings told me, it wasn't as funny as High Fidelity, but was still pretty enjoyable nonetheless. I somehow can't see myself pretending to be a single parent in order to meet other women, but I liked the idea of a guy who'd been living off the royalties from a Christmas song his father had written, but never had a job. I mean, what did he do all day ? How did he avoid going insane ? I'd love to try it, but every time I take a week off, I end up getting bored. Of course, I'm probably not thinking hard enough.
Sunday dinner at Sue's place again, with Christian and Fiona. I enjoy it for the relaxation it provides just before a Monday...
