A Silver Lining

I couldn't sleep last night. Couldn't and didn't. Seem to have lost the "off switch" for my mind. Still every cloud has a silver lining they say and mine looked a little like this...



Pardon the quality of the picture. My actual camera ran out of battery and it was taken through the bedroom window on my phone. It was a wonderful way to start the day and I wanted to share it. I have a strange suspicion I'll be seeing something similar in a few hours time.

Back in Melbourne

I've been back in Melbourne for a week and a half now. More than enough time to settle into my nocturnal habits once more. Luckily I'll be working nights for the Melbourne Fringe.

While I was in Darwin there were a few changes around my folks place. For one the old CRT tv transformed into a 42" plasma tv. What caught my attention though, once I managed to drag myself away from the new blue-ray DVDs was this...



It would seem that the dogs are enjoying the same fresh water that we are. It's only fair I suppose...

Nothing else to report really. My days have been spent looking for post-Fringe work, reinstating the blue streak in my hair and feeding my Facebook addiction.

It's been great spending time with my family though. Since Mum's cancer diagnosis Dad's been working from home a lot more so we've been lucky enough to have most meals as a family.

Mum's doing well at the moment. We received the latest results from her scans/tests and have been told that the cancer is now largely hard tissue and it's looking like she will only have to go through one more 6 week cycle of chemo before they can remove it. Right now she's having a short break from treatment as her white blood cell count is too low. Overall we're pretty happy with the latest news and I'll be sure to keep any interested parties posted. Many thanks for the well wishes.

Plans over the next week involve reading trashy magazines with Mum, heading to the city to see the Guggenheim exhibition as well as the Pixar showcase and of course the mundane catching up on paperwork and job hunting. I must admit I miss Darwin life, the warm walk-conducive weather and beach just moments away but it's good to be back in Melbourne. The skies may be grey but it's still t-shirt weather for most of the day and the owls nesting outside our house are much less shrill than the birds that shared my garden in Darwin.

Departing Darwin

It's 01:22 and my flight was due to depart in 18 minutes. However the plane servicing this flight has been delayed and as a result I now have an hour to pass before I start the long journey home.

Even though I'm at the airport I can barely believe I'm leaving Darwin. I had a fairly typical Friday today. Rushing about for work culminating in drinks at the Ski Club watching the sunset.

I've really enjoyed my time up here. I can see how Darwin slowly seduces you into staying. It's laid back nature, which is wondering and trying all at once, suits the climate. I've found it to be a friendly city which I'm looking forward to visiting again in the near future. Having spent 12 weeks here I've gotten to know the city and its suburbs and have started to get to know it's locals. I must admit I'm a little sad to be leaving!

There are many things that I've learned/observed/been amused by/generally noted during my stay. Here are a few of them, in no particular order;
- Left Turn Permitted On Red Light After Stopping - it makes sense but doesn't stop me getting nervous when a police car comes up next to you while you're doing it!
- no one drives at the speed limit, you're either well above or well below
- the sunsets are amazing most days of the week
- on a really clear night you can see the "dust" of the Milky Way
- rattling the pipe gently can help to clear the blockage in the block of temporary toilets
- birds sing at all hours of the day
- there are some amazing beaches in Darwin
- it's the only place that I've ever paid $6.60 for yesterday's newspaper
- no curfew time for planes means many crazy flight times
- insect repellent and sunscreen should form part of your daily ritual. Everything seems to bite and sting up here and people get sunburn just thinking about it
- there's always something happening in Darwin

I suppose that's what I love about Darwin. There's always something happening and yet it's still a great place just to chill out and do nothing.

Well my ability to construct meaningful sentences has diminished so I'll quit while I'm not too far behind.

Next stop, Sydney
(unless this delayed plane makes me miss my connection... which I've been told is a possibility)

A Toast

Five, possibly six years ago, in a small theatre in Melbourne I met Nick. As we trimmed trees during the church service next door, hauled dentist chairs and squeezed puppets that barely fit through the doors into the theatre, we didn't really talk much. That was must of the season until we had our final two shows, a matinee and an evening show. We had a couple of hours to kill so we headed to the pub and played a whole lot of pool and from that moment a friendship started to grow.

Over the years Nick's been an amazing friend. He seems to have a sixth sense about when I'm feeling under the weather no matter where I am. A text message will appear or my phone will ring just at the right moment. Just as I'm thinking I need to talk to someone. Most importantly he's honest with me. He's not afraid to tell me I'm being an idiot or that I'm doing okay.

Well, it's Nick's birthday today and I wish I could be there to give him a hug and a beer but there's a festival to close tonight so the beer will have to wait. Well, his beer anyway!

So happy birthday darlin'. To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due.

Four Things

A: FOUR JOBS I HAVE HAD IN MY LIFE:

1. Retail sales in a teddy bear making shop, counting eyes was always fun...

2. Teller at ANZ

3. Tutor - English, Maths, Biology, General Science

4. much theatre



B: FOUR DVD’S I WOULD WATCH OVER AND OVER:

1. Triplets of Belleville

2. Spirited Away

3. Groundhog Day

4. Amélie



C: FOUR PLACES I HAVE LIVED:

1. Singapore

2. Melbourne

3. Ballarat (well I had a house there that I was occasionally at...)

4. Doha



D: FOUR TV SHOWS I LOVE TO WATCH

1. Coupling

2. The Muppet Show

3. Green Wing

4. Deadwood



E: FOUR PLACES I HAVE BEEN ON HOLIDAY

1. New Zealand - Queenstown being a favourite

2. Aireys Inlet

3. Singapore

4. Europe



F: WEBSITES I VISIT DAILY (or regularly)

1. Neil Gaiman's Journal

2. Knitty

3. Wired News

4. The Age



G: FOUR OF MY FAVOURITE FOODS:

1. Roast anything

2. beef tataki

3. kueh lapis (indonesian layer cake)

4. mmmm cookie!



H: FOUR PLACES I WOULD RATHER BE RIGHT NOW:

1. Melbourne - so I could give my family a huge hug and let them know how much I love them

2. Aireys Inlet - with a small group of friends, some wine, cheese, biscuits and a good roast

3. London - for more theatre and museums

4. Tromsø - there's nothing quite like the arctic



I: FOUR FRIENDS I THINK WILL RESPOND:

1. Anyone who's bored and in an office

2. Anyone who's bored and not in an office

3. Anyone who's after something to do an is at a computer

4. I think that covers it



J: FOUR OF MY BEST MOMENTS

1. Sharing meals with my close friends

2. Finally making it to Europe after years of dreaming

3. Watching my first opening ceremony from the control room

4. Swing dancing with Gene in the carport when it was almost 40 degrees in Doha



K: FOUR OF MY WORST MOMENTS

1. Finding out my Mum has cancer

2. Putting down my 16 year old dog who had a stomach tumour on the same day that my grandpa died

3. Most mornings (unless I'm still up from the night before!)

4. Seeing my friends or family troubled



L: FOUR TEAMS/GROUPS I HAVE BELONGED TO

1. Tintern Taggers (school kayaking team)

2. Monash Players

3. Dorien le Gallienne orchestra

4. Swing Patrol (infrequently)

Home Soon

I'm struggling to comprehend the notion that this time next week I'll be in Sydney! We've got three nights left at the Star Shell before it all gets packed away for another year.

The last week or what I think is the last week (days and nights are melding into one) has been quieter on the going out front. However it's SoCo's second last night tonight so I think there will have to be a bit more effort on our parts to get out and enjoy the containers one last time for this festival season.

My laptop is fixed! It's probably the biggest news for me today... it's been out of action for the last couple of weeks as I've been busy running about doing Festival stuff I didn't manage to get it serviced until yesterday and they managed to fix it today! Very excited. So much so I'm going to drop by home and pick up my camera to take all the site photos that I've been meaning to take but didn't because I figured I couldn't get them off my laptop anyhow.

I've had a change of plans for my return to Melbourne. I've decided to cut my Sydney visit shorter so that I can be home to hassle my Mum earlier. So for anyone who cares to catch up with me in the coming weeks...

I'll be in Sydney between 1st and 3rd September and I'll be back in Melbourne on the morning of the 4th September. There are many drinks to be had!

The Star Shell is calling... I'll try and write again soon (no excuse now that the laptop's working!)

Festival Life

Well the Darwin Festival has well and truly opened... so much so that we're into our final week of shows! It's been an amazing time up here and really great to see so many people coming to see the shows.

Photos of the venue would have been posted (along with more regular posts) had my laptop's hard-drive decided to die on me. So as a result there are no pictures and yet another fortnightly update.

The Santos Concert on the Esplanade was our big opening night. We had over 6,000 people attending which is not bad given the population is estimated at 71,900 people (in 2006). Excellent music although I did miss the final act to go and paint a set.

I was lucky enough to operate three performances of Play Play which was a physical theatre show from Singapore. It was quirky, occasionally morbid but balanced with a great sense of humour. I wish that more people could have seen it! It was also great to get to know the company who taught me how to play "paper, scissors, rock" in a group. An excellent way to pass some idle time!

There hasn't been much sleeping since we opened. Partly because we're busy through the day doing the office work. Partly because we're busy at night at shows. Also partly because SoCo Cargo is a two minute walk from my doorstep and as such it seems almost rude not to drop in to say hi to the crew there...

In other news I had a minor accident in a truck and was bitten several times by a spider at the same time. It was a rather boring 5 minutes of my life but all is well!

Today I had a little R&R with the crew from the Star Shell when we spent the morning at Berry Springs have a swim in both the main & lower pools as well as the actual spring. I must say I'm a little sore having spent four solid hours swimming in the water but I'd do it again in a flash.

Tonight I'll be back at the Star Shell to say hello and soak up the atmosphere. Not to mention the great food that's down there... Why cook and create dishes to clean when you can have excellent food on site?

Well, I thought I'd just say a quick hello before I run away to Festival land again.
See you soon!

Two Weeks of Good Intentions

As the lack of blogging in the last few weeks has shown, good intentions sometimes don’t get you very far. This comes from years of finely tuned procrastination skills, recent increased personal letter writing and (I like to think) the Festival opening being next week.

Life has been fairly uneventful in a rather pleasant way. The weather has been consistently warm and sunny. The sunsets are always beautiful and I feel a little spoilt knowing that most of the people I know are going through an actual cold winter.



Since I last wrote I watched 2 seasons of the Gilmore Girls (five and six) until I started dreaming about the show. Season 2 of House was next although my lack of self-discipline saw me watching 4 of 6 discs the night before my senior first aid course. 8 hours of first aid training on 3 hours sleep is less fun than you might think.

I made sure that I had marginally more sleep the next night, after all I only had two more discs to go…

So I now hold a current senior first aid certificate and I rock at bandaging. This is not meant as an encouragement to do something that requires bandaging!

My DVD marathons aside, work has taken up most of my days. The hours have started to get a little erratic with somedays ending at 5:30pm and others at 11:30pm. On the bright side (?) they’re all starting at approx 9am. Right now I’m in tech spec & scheduling land. Especially since I have crew arriving in town this weekend. It’s a little frustrating trying to chase people up in Darwin. It’s almost like they’re on slightly faster timeframe than Doha time, but not by much. Jaia and I also letter dropped over 2% of the population of Darwin. So far we’ve dropped letters to 1300 houses notifying them of our main venue as they live in the area. It’s astounding to think that so many people have our numbers. Luckily they’re not all calling at once. Sadly the big print runs of letters killed our printer… it took over 6 hours to print 1100 pages. I was not a happy camper at the end of that day…



On a brighter note, some of you may have heard of the Triple J Goes AWOL concert that was in Humpty Doo. Well it just so happens that Humpty Doo is about half an hour from Darwin. So we packed a picnic rug and headed out to check out Blue King Brown, Something For Kate and Missy Higgins. It was a great night despite it being the first dry concert that many of us had been to. (The vodka tonics were flowing when we got back into town).

At some point in the next week I’ll be moving from the city, to Nightcliff, which is all of fifteen minutes drive from the city. I had a look at the place today and I feel spoilt to be moving so close to the beach. It’ll be wonderful!

Having had nothing exciting to report in the last couple of weeks, I’ll leave you with some photos from the Darwin Show. While I was updating my first aid skills I was missing out on such highlights as pig racing and pig diving. The unofficial world record for pig diving was broken at the show. Sadly there wasn’t a Guiness Book of Records person to officiate… Miss Piggy (the record breaking pig) will have to wait till the next diving meet. Many thanks to Viv & Rosie for taking the photos.