Pah

Long Weekend

This evening we’re flying off to Mildura for Easter, where we’ll be staying with Jason, Eve and little Emily, and catching up with Brad. Friday night we’ll be heading out to the Avoca for dinner by Stefano.

On Monday we fly back and then drive off to Rivers End, Kilcunda. I really can’t recommend this place enough: beautiful, tranquil, fully-equipped (inc. deep, intimate, outdoor spa); $450 for a weekend, $1000 for a week, room for two couples; house cleaning done once you leave: a place where you can just let your rhythms adjust to sleeping, reading, and play; Virginia and Tony have done well. I can’t wait to see what the butterfly glade is like in Autumn. (I should note that Venus Bay and Anglesea still have their place though.)

We get back Monday week, for a day of Anzac rest at home, the holiday from our holiday… No blogging till then. See ya!

Sigur Ros

We saw Sigur Ros last night at the Palais, with Rob and Suzie—Mr Lee was there with some friends too. I’ve never been to the Palais before (Pen was there for Kylie in 1999)—it was a lovely venue.

Sigur Ros were incredible, giving probably the third most amazing live performance I’ve ever seen. The four of them stood at the front of the stage: keyboards/effects/xylophone, vocals/guitar with bow, bass guitar, drums/keyboards. Keyboards were synths and organs—and maybe a piano. Everyone got a go on a portable organ at some point. And the band were filled out by Amina, who played strings like witches, but also moving around like mad scientists playing this and that as necessary. (And there was one other guy, too, for bits.) The stage was really like some sort of laboratory.

I’ve never experienced so much bass—not just a little bass, amplified, but a huge range of bass, some of it only perceptible through various inner organs. Early on there was some kind of thing (effects machine?) that sounded/felt like a giant thumping on stage.

I doubt I’ll ever see a more impressive light show. They started and finished the concert with a translucent screen in front of them with images projected onto it; for the rest of the time, images were projected onto the back wall, through thick smoke. There were all kinds of lighting. The projections, smoke, light and shadows created a hallucinatory world on stage that seemed to leak out into the auditorium, perfectly suiting the sound. Sometimes it was hard to know where the players were or what was real, as the illusions were variously subtle and vertiginous.

And god it was great to hear them so loud.

During one song they took a beat, which just drew out and out. Eventually the singer drew a breath. Then the crowd couldn’t take it any more and called out—the band resumed.

Mostly the songs are big and loud and emotional. Lots of Takk and (). Near the end of the concert—the song where the bassist uses a drum stick to play his instrument—things got wild. The singer ended whipping his guitar with broken bow; Amina played so furiously their strings exploded.

At the end of the final song, the drummer heaved his bass drum into the centre of the stage.

During the concert there wasn’t any non-musical crowd interaction, and little time for applause; but at the end we gave an ovation like I’ve never heard before, that became a standing ovation as the band took a bow.

(Set list, anyone? Ideally in album/track format.)

Ardbeg

We took Alex and Astrid to Enoteca on Saturday for lunch.

Lagavulin (Islay) 12 year old Cask Strength

Wine and vodka aromas. Very sharp and bitey in the mouth.

Ardbeg (Islay) 25 year old Lord of the Isles

Floats around your mouth, subtle and ethereal; followed up with wave of incredible heat. Highly recommended.

I really enjoyed these two whiskies, but I’m not sure I got the full experience, having a slightly stuffed-up nose. I also tried the Ardbeg 1994 Connoisseurs Choice, which I found unremarkable, but I wouldn’t want to write it off. The Lord of the Isles was incredible, even with whatever incapacity I had, but you pay for that brilliance.

Afterwards, I bought a belt from Vegan Wares and Pen destroyed a piece of corporate art, a la Fight Club.

Caelan

Pen walked Caelan around the restaurant for something like twenty minutes on Sunday. He said hi to everybody there. He loved everybody, they loved him. Later, he sat on my lap for about an hour. Sophie’s husband Aaron took a picture of Pen and me with their son:

Hey, our colours match! Didn’t realise that on Sunday.

I finished reading Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut last night. I realised that in just under a year I’ll be turning 30 and reading the last Vonnegut novel: Timequake.

Happy Birthday, Soph

My friend Sophie turns 30 today. She’s the first of my peers to do so. Here’s what she had to say about it last Thursday:

You know, 30 doesn’t sound so old once you are there. Even 40–45 doesn’t seem that old. I can remember being 16 and thinking it was way over the hill. Now I look at 16 and think that its sooo young. […] Turning 30 isn’t so bad. For some reason I think that I will be much happier and healthier in my thirties than I ever was in my twenties. […] Bring it on.

My Mum said that her thirties were the best years of her life (so far; she’s almost 48). I started to worry about 30 shortly after my friend Rich achieved it; but somehow I got over it. I couldn’t say exactly what my worry was, or how I got over it. Perhaps at last I am comfortable with my age.

Had lunch with Soph yesterday at Sofia’s. Ate half of one of their giant spaghetti carbonaras. Chatted with friends I’ve had for a decade. Held Caelan for ages. It was wonderful.

New Computer

After almost seven years, I have replaced my home computer. It’s a requirement for my four day week.

Out: Custom built, 19″ Mitsubishi DiamondView CRT, Celeron 300A, 128MB RAM, TNT2 32MB graphics card, 8GB HD, etc.

In: HP system, 19″ LCD, Athlon 64, 1GB RAM, 160GB HD, proper 104 keyboard, etc…

I can’t believe how quiet it is! Quieter than my recent Pentium-M laptop!

Now I just need something like Eastgate Tinderbox for Windows to exercise its power!

(I thought about getting a Mac, but my puny needs, price, and Mac people put me off.)

The old machine was the minimum spec that would play DVDs in software. I’ve got a dual-layer DVD burner now, so the old DVD-ROM went into Pen’s machine. We promptly watched the new dub of My Neighbour Totoro, which was wonderful, except—we can’t believe John Lasseter (Pixar) and Ned Lott (Disney) allowed the “dust bunnies” to be changed into “soot gremlins”—what were they thinking?

Jonathan Apples

It’s that time of the year again. The season seems a little late, and the apples in the Fitzroy Safeway are all bruised and banged, alas. But the juiciness never fails.

Elsewhere

Writing planned for this blog, but Pen and I are busy this week at the Commonwealth Games…

Here’s a photo of us from March 12 to give you something to look at in the mean time:

Writing planned for this blog, but Pen and I are busy this week at the Melbourne Games, watching some of the sports played by the 71 entities generated from 53 countries…

Today we sat in the sun and watched the field hockey. Made me think about perhaps playing hockey again, but Pen currently has me playing indoor beach volleyball. I haven’t written about hockey since it was on at the Sydney Olympics.

I still love the countdown the crowd give to the hockey matches in the final ten seconds. And at the end, I still love each player shaking each other’s hand. After the game, each team does a lap around the field, and the crowd claps and cheers for them, winners and losers, locals and foreigners alike. There’s so much skill on show, they deserve it. We had a little boy sitting next to us who knew all the rules and was really into it. (And I realised today that the off-side rule was no more—apparently it’s been gone since the ’96 Olympics!)

It’s interesting how the game’s most similar to soccer, yet so different. More cerebral than acrobatic, with higher scoring games. If you can hit the ball into your opponent’s foot, you get a free hit, which seems to point out that this isn’t soccer! And, of course, here, the women are better to watch than the men.

The Australian Women won Gold at Sydney. Today we watched them handily beat South Africa, 3–0, in a preliminary game. We were at the wrong end of the field for most of the goals, which made it a little less interesting. Better than watching the Pakistani Men whomp Trinidad & Tobago, 7–1, though. The second game was more exciting, with underdog New Zealand beating England, 4–0.

Astonishingly, general announcements and explanations—of, e.g., what the ball was made of—kept being put over the loudspeakers, while the game was in play. Very rude to the players and the audience!

(PS: can anyone direct me to an authoritative account of the relation of ice to field hockey?)

Another beautiful “scotch”

Eight days ago, we did the Templebar Precinct and Enoteca thing again. When we went to Enoteca last we were told about the Bakery Hill whisky, which in 2005 won Best Small Distillery Whisky of the Year (Jim Murray’s Whisky Bible) and Trophy for Best Australian Single Malt (Malt Whisky Society of Australia)—we had to try it.

I was surprised to find out the whisky is local: Bakery Hill is in North Balwyn. I didn’t know there was anything good in North Balwyn; I thought it was one of those suburbs you drive through to get somewhere else! When Jim Murray visited a year or so back, he asked them about one of their Peated Malt whisky casks, Cask 14, so they opened it up for a tasting. He was so impressed that they bottled it, as the Bakery Hill Peated Malt (Cask 14) Cask Strength whisky (59.8% alcohol).

Now Murray’s rating system has four components (nose, taste, finish and balance), all of which contribute 25 points. 90–93 is brilliant. 94–97 is a whisky that makes life worth living. 98–100 is better than anything Jim’s ever tasted. Laphroaig is 93. Cask 14 is 94.

What did we think? Bloody brilliant.

Cask 14

It has a sharp nose. Scotch-style flavour. It’s fiery in your mouth, burning more than any drink that isn’t rocket fuel. Salty, but there’s fruit and other more complex flavours in there. Highly recommended.

It’s about $13 for a glass, about $180 for a bottle. But the good news is that Murray has tasted other aging casks and thinks there’s lots more great expressions ready to come from Bakery Hill. I look forward to trying more in the future!

And while flipping through the Whisky Bible, I noted that Ardbeg (Islay) had produced a lot of whiskies that are “brilliant” or “make life worth living”. Enoteca has more than a few different expressions, so I also look forward to returning and giving them a try.

Bluestone

Eleven days ago I went to the Belgian Beer Cafe, Bluestone, with Rob. The decor and food aren’t really for me, but they have nice staff and some great drinks. I especially like drinking Leffe Brun on tap. This time I also tried some fruit lambic beers (different to lambic): Belle Vue Kriek (cherry) and Framboise (raspberry). The Framboise was the nicest fruit beer I’ve ever had, reaching a perfect complementarity of beeriness and fruitiness.

I also tried a scotch:

Macallan (Speyside) 12 year old

“One of the greatest names in whisky,” but I thought it was rather boring.

(Apparently there is a new Belgian Beer Cafe, Eureka, at Southbank.)

Rose Street Junkyard Cinema

A cinema in Fitzroy! On our street!—takes like four minutes to walk there.

Here’s an article from The Age with a picture to give you a bit of an idea. Ex-junkyard, cement slab yard, red carpet laid out. Various chairs and cushions spread around. Good-sized screen on the wall. Fully-licensed cafe. DJ.

Doors open at 7pm. We got there about 7.30pm. Not too many people. While we waited for it to get dark enough, they projected Merry Melodies Roadrunner cartoons, which gave you an idea of how long it would be till the main feature (and Chuck Jones’s two tricksters are a great way to warm the audience up). Movies are DVDs run through a projector, with a decent-sized screen hung on a brick wall.

It’s lovely to sit outside watching a movie. And kind of surreal in the hip junkyard setting. Similar rules to the Moonlight Cinema apply: bring warmth and picnic.

I took Pen to see Amelie (which I had seen at the end of 2001 with the two Andrews). It started at 8.30pm. Since I’ve been to Paris I can see how carefully it’s been whitewashed, but it’s magical despite that. I now detect the flavours of Ally McBeal, Being John Malkovich, The Matrix, and Moulin Rouge; but most of all there is the reworking of Three Colours: Red and… Unbreakable! Pen loved it too.

Future films at the Junkyard Cinema.

Salo

I’ve found a video rental store in Richmond that has copies of Salo, both in VHS and DVD: Picture Search Video. The local rag had an article about them that was actually an ad for a localised search engine! Apparently they have a quite extensive range of foreign and hard-to-find videos. I’m going to check them out tonight. (I don’t expect to feed it back into a post on Arcadia now, however.)

Less weighty

It has been five months since I saw the doctor and was diagnosed with metabolic syndrome. Then I weighed 98.5kg. Now I weigh 86.5kg—I haven’t weighed this little in a decade. My liver is functioning normally, my good cholesterol (HDL) is normal, my bad cholesterol (LDL) is down, my waist is greatly reduced.

I achieved this through small but multiplicative changes:

• stopped drinking high joule drinks (e.g. Coke, fruit juice)
• stopped snacking (except fruit/vegetables)
• walked to work more often
• learned to leave food if a meal is too large
• just thought a bit about what I’m eating

It’s amazing how well these little things worked. My doctor says I’m exemplary. He also says I could stand to get my good cholesterol up a bit: eat more fish and walnuts. But I’m healthy now. He’ll see me again in a year.

It’s important to remember that weight is a health issue—even if you’re not actually obese. Getting a checkup from a good GP can tell you what you need to know about this and other areas.