Apologies

Man, if I knew that people were reading this thing, I would have kept on writing! It wasn't until I have started to see people that they have been asking me why the posts stopped so suddenly. Well, the reality is a mixture of the last 3 weeks in New York being more hectic than Obama's press campaign, and the fact that I wasn't aware that these little chapters were getting out to so many people.

I have now arrived back safely in the land of Oz, which is hardly full on munchkins. No longer do I feel like the pygmy giant. But I do feel a little out of place. In a good way however.

Coming back home after this experience is trying to learn how to land a plane after you were once so scared to fly it. The trip started with a crash landing, but this arrival has been much more smooth. I guess that I have been able to see the ground for a long time now. That's not to say that I'm not planning to take off again sometime soon! July, July, July, Jul-l-l-l-l-y never seemed so strange.

Due to the success and readership of this blog, and my new found interest in integrated media, I am planning to start up another popular-culture minded blog featuring the Melbourne music/theatre scene. It's all in the workings in my head, but I will keep you informed for when it translates onto my keyboard.

Thanks for reading. Aloha guys Xx

Chinese Laundry

I needed some new socks. So I bought some for a fiver from a roadside vendor.

Q: What's worse than realising only once you're on the train, that 'SIZE 6-8' means for 6 to 8 year olds?
A: When you get home and they still fit anyway.

Correction

DISCLAIMER: 2 little points to correct about my foray into the upstate world of New York - Patty is a sassy DIVORCED creative type who has more attitude and personality than a billion Oprahs; and her people mover is silver, not black. My bad.

Morning constitutional

Oh, and the weirdest thing I've seen the past few days?

Walking to work Tuesday morning: 3 unguarded tanks of liquid nitrogen sitting on the corner of Fulton and Broadway in the Financial District. 2 blocks from Ground Zero.

Go figure, America.

Up-state mental-state

I was lucky enough on the weekend to travel upstate to Patty’s little house on the proverbial prairie. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting her (she DOES like in America…), she’s one of my international mamas – a lot of Mum’s closest friends live overseas. Thus, I have what feels like family all over the world. Maria Teresa in Milan; Beatrice in Paris; Dee used to live in London but has now moved to a vineyard in outer Sydney; and Patty, my Manhattan dwelling mama. She currently shares the title with Sharon, my godmother’s old best friend from when she did her stint in the New York fashion world in the 80s. How I envy her. So she’s my adoptive godmother.

Back to Patty and ‘upstate’. Oh, the elusive ‘upstate’.

“Upstate? Where?”
“I don’t know, just ‘upstate’.”

I had no idea where I was going when I was bundled into her big black people-mover (ironic as she’s one of those sassy never-married New York creative types). As usual, I was running late as I got caught up
a) taking leftover cinnamon raisin bagels to Spiro, my favourite homeless man at Strawberry Fields. I had to go to midtown to meet Patty anyway, and Strawberries is only about a 20 block walk, and I had bagels. And I hadn’t visited him in a fortnight. It seemed logical! But we ended up talking for 2 hours. He’s what the beggars like to call “snowbirds” because they ‘migrate’ to the warmer areas in the Winter. The homeless community on the East coast head to the West coast for winter because it’s too cold to live on a church stoop when it’s negative 15. And then we started talking about karma, and he started to cry. I looked over at him and he had tears rolling down his face and into his toothless crevice. “I’m so lucky I have people like you here for me. I deserve this”. How can you leave after a comment like that?

I’m going to miss Spiro. I hope he’s still around and alive when I come back and live here eventually.

Hmm…

And b) –second reason why I was late if you’ve lost track- When I was speed walking back through Central Park to get to Patty’s apartment, I noticed that the leaves were nearly all turned. This was the last chance that I would get to see Central Park in the height of Fall. And I just so happened to have my SLR with me, so I took a little liberty in living a little and slowed down and photographed my memories of this period of my life. The leaves were glossy and auburn.

I get flustered when I’m late, and as a result, I didn’t even notice that we’d already crossed the water into the Bronx (first foray, and from the looks of the industrial surrounds and numerous baseball stadiums, my last). And even then, I didn’t slow down. My leg jitter is back for a start. I trained myself out of it when I was about 16 because I annoyed myself, but Manhattan life has done it to me again. And I like it – I like seeing that I’m having a physical reaction to the city!

Anyway, suddenly you turn off the overpass, and you’re in the woods. And we’re passing signs that say “Sleepy Hollow” and “Pleasantville”. Patty keeps on apologizing for the state of the leaves, saying ‘You should’ve seen it 2 weeks ago. It was magnificent. It’s just gone to the shit now’.

But I was looking around feeling the exact opposite. I have never seen such beauty in a dying thing. The surrounds are like nothing I have ever visually experienced. It is beyond the dotted traffic-light coloured trees of Central Park; or the huge yellow something that sheds heart-shaped petals on me on my way to work. The entire skyline is a mix of reddened hues.

You know that expression ‘salt and pepper hair’. Well this wasn’t salt and pepper trees – they were spiced. Spiced with cumin and paprika.

Yet a lot of the trees were bare too, leaving these eerie glows of grey amongst the stimulation. It almost acted like some sort of low clouding. Or as if you’d drawn an amazing coloured charcoal landscape, then got a rubber and just scrubbed and smudged portions of it out. Truly eerie.

The house itself turns out to be in the Hudson Valley, and more specifically Stanfordville. The houses in Stanfordville can be up to 800ms apart, and have their own horse tracks. There’s a deli, a post office, somewhere to buy beer, a church and an antique store. And I loved it. Towns around it (like Schlutzville. Yes, it was called Schlutzville) didn’t even have that. It was lovely and secluded and simple and exactly what I needed to escape. To think that this is a little over an hour out of Manhattan?

Over the course of the weekend, I slept 15 hours straight (I don’t think I have EVER done that. But it shows you how much I’m running myself into the ground), read a book and 3 magazines, went for a huge walk, took a bunch of photos, watched Patty cook up the most scrumptious meals (that I didn’t need to myself for once! I enjoyed being lazy…), ate them and watched 3 movies in a row. No mobile, no laptop, no work.

Now THAT’S a weekend.

Mama who bore me for Broadway: No sleep in Heaven or Bethlehem

And now our bodies are the guilty ones. Wo-oa-oa-oah…

My Spring has definitely Awoken. I just cried (by myself mind you) the entire way through Spring Awakening. I haven’t done that since Rent. And if you know me, you know how much I love Rent.

Australia, just you wait til this makes it down under. I’ll be there opening night.

Oh, and when I was running for my subway home, the playbill fell out of my coat pocket. I guess I’ll just have to go back for another one. If you get my gist J That and Silas from Weeds normally plays the lead role of Melchior, and he was being understudied tonight. (I can’t give you his real name as the playbill is being trampled underfoot on the C/E Brooklyn bound line). And equally if you know me again, you know how much I love Weeds. And by that I most definitely mean the TV show, not the plant. I actually don’t like Weeds in that sense. I’d rather be awake and watching it than asleep and smoking it.

I saw Mary-Louise Parker on 5th Ave about a fortnight ago. I just about choked on my bagel.

Northern European Experience #28397493021084

More Danes just turned up on my doorstep. Am I eternally doomed to be followed around the world by Scandinavians? Well… Not DOOMED per se. That’s a tad harsh. Perhaps ‘granted’ is more apt.

Mette and her boyfriend Andreas rang my intercom at 7am two mornings ago, telling me that they were outside with their bags. Now, if you remember, Mette was one third of the Danes that I met in Scotland, and hung out with in Edinburgh playing cards. Then when I returned to Denmark (again), Nicolas and I with Lottie in tow went out drinking Tuborg with them again.

And now, they are nomads on my couch; with me – the ‘oh-shitty-tour-guide-because-I work too much-one’ – dragging my arse out of the warmth of my bed while it’s still dark, and returning droopy eyed from Wall Street when it’s dark again. That said, it gets dark here at about 4.30pm nowadays, so that’s no feat!

But the most interesting situation happened on Tuesday night. On Tuesdays, I get up at 7, walk to work at 8, get there at 9, work til 6, walk to school, and start class at 7, and finish class at 10. So I’m pretty buggered! I’ve made buddies with two fellow gingers from class, Therese and Carrie, and we decided to go out to one of my favourite little Aussie pads for a beer (Ruby’s on Mulberry for those NYCers). Aside from the fact that they were playing Computer Camp Love by Datarock, which is a schoolies nostalgia trip, they didn’t ID despite the fact that the girl that was waiting that night KNEW I was underage (I had breakfast here before my tattoo on my 19th and we chatted for an hour). So it made a good night.

I had given the Danes my keys because I knew that they would be in-and-out during the day. I told them to be home by 10.30 so that I wouldn’t be locked out. Come 10.45, they still weren’t there. So I called up Therese, and joined them for a late night gyro. Well, they ate meat shaved from a stick, I just drank green tea. I hoped that when I returned a half hour later, they would be there.

Wrong.

So I sat on my stoop until just before midnight, when they tripped up my 5 flights of stairs, their slowed-vinyl accents trembling up the stair shaft.

They’re lucky that I’m not so New-Yorker that I can still keep my relative cool and just shrug it off. But I’m not giving my keys away again!

They left this morning though, so I have the place to myself again! The up about having people pop in to stay all the time is that it forces me to clean the place. Because despite being a neat freak, I sicken myself with how messy I let the place get every now and then… Mostly tea bags and already read magazines and tear outs and such… And four billion scarves. Scarf sellers are more common than pretzels sellers here, and it’s freezing (34 degrees in the morning. I’ve gotten used to talking in Fahrenheit now, so I can’t convert that! About 2 degrees?) And so if you forget a much needed scarf when you run out the door, you just buy a $5 one! I have amassed quite a rainbow by now.

I’m enjoying the cold though. It’s different to what we’re used to in Melbourne. This one chills you to the bone. It’s off still, and you can feel the marrow within you freezing and cracking when you try to nimble yourself. And you know what my circulation is like – I’m liking purple at the moment; so much so that I like to colour coordinate my skin to it.

Apparently it’s 35 Celsius back home. I can’t wait. Only a month now! But now is not the time for nostalgia. Now is the time for living.

Yes we can.

Yes we can, Obama. Yes. We. CAN.

Election TV Watch

Obama: "Bring yourselves! Bring your son! Bring your daughter! Bring your dog! Bring your cat!"

Hell, Michael, if Bubbles wants to come along to vote BRING HIM TOO! I'm sure that there are bigger banana-heads than him...

Election updates from bemused Aussie Eyes #1

• Apparently if you go into Starbucks and say that you have voted, you get a free coffee today... I'm not half bad on the Yankee accent now, so I'll let you know how my -venti-light-soy-double-shot-caramel-java-chip-frappachino-with-whipped-cream-and-cinammon goes :)
• Some people have been lining up since 4am. 4AM!!!

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Sarah Palin

(my take on Stevens' 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird')

I.
Amoung fifty states,
The only unintelligent thing
was the mind of Sarah Palin.

II.
I was of three minds
like a Whitehouse
in which there are three Sarah Palins.

III.
Sarah Palin whirled in the interviewers' winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV.
Obama and Biden
are one.
McCain and Palin and America
are not one.

V.
I do not know which to prefer-
The beauty of red skirt-suits,
The beauty of coiffed hair.
Sarah Palin flailing
Or just after.

VI.
Voters filled the poll booths
with barbaric haste.
The shadow of Sarah Palin
crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
traced in the shadow.
An undecipherable fear.

VII.
O Hockey mums of the midwest.
Why do you imagine Republicans?
Do you not see how Sarah Palin
tramps around the feet
of the classes around you.

VIII.
I know redneck accents
and lucid, inescapable ignorance.
But I know, too,
that Sarah Palin is involved
in what I know.

IX.
When Sarah Palin moved out of sight
it marked the cry
of one of many rejoices.

X.
At the sight of Sarah Palin
leaning over a dead moose,
even the most liberal carnivore
would cry out sharply.

XI.
She rode over Alaska
in a private jet.
Once, a fear pierced her
in that she mistook
that bulldog with lipstick
for Sarah Palin.

XII.
The room is sleeping.
Sarah Palin must be talking.

XIII.
It was November 4th all campaign.
They were loosing.
They were going to loose.
Sarah Palin sat
in the Northern evergreens.

Happy Election Day!

The weather report this morning reads 'DRY VOTERS'.

I think that that just about summarises the crazy-town feeling here today... THE WORLD IS ABOUT TO CHANGE. AND I'M HERE TO SEE IT!!!!

Go Obama, go!

Seussical The Crucible

(note: THIS IS A PERSONA PIECE AND DOESN'T NECESSARILY REFLECT MY OWN OPINIONS!)

When I was around all my nonsense rang true
And nonsense still rules, it does through and through.
Except those who speak speaking words they don’t mean
And world leaders make mistakes like I’ve not seen.
They’re like foxes in soxes in boxes with locks;
But what shocks are the knocks when society mocks.

Homeland security is now less fertile
We need another spokesman like Yertle the Turtle.
Perhaps poor old Dubya’s snitch, not a Sneech-
Public acceptance was never in reach.
His breeches pulled high give him a major wedgie-
I think that Ms Rice was a little more edgy.

But hell and goshdarnit: JUST GO BOMB ISRAEL!
Perhaps then the Grinch who stole Hanukah won’t fail.
And while you’re at it, do the same to Sudan,
We have enough niggers to make a whole Who farm.
I may be Horton, but I don’t hear a sound
(except of redemption if blacks weren’t around).

Environment matters, as Al Gore would say.
But that was my idea!! He wrenched it away!!
I think that my Lorax’s message spoke far
‘cause now there’s less petrol emitting from our cars.
That was me, and not Al, who started all that
With simplicity speaking like Cat in the Hat.

And I hope that McCain ends up butter side down
With Republicans frowning Republican frowns.
And Democrats hooting their high honking hoots
Like Horton the Elephant, or Perez’s fruits.
And I don’t like green eggs and ham
I really don’t like them Uncle Sam.

Oh, the places we’d go if I ran the show:
The thinks I would think and the knows I would know!
We are floundering and drowning in McElligot’s pool.
We need new direction following fool after fool.
Yet what I want more than to be born anew
Is a world where there is our own Solla Sollew.

Monsoon

My lungs compressed against the confines of my ribcage
with each intake of thick, dusty air.
The ominous clouds lay stagnating overhead.
My hips rocked harshly against the cracked leather of my horses’ saddle
as I clenched tighter to her raggedly furrowed reigns.
She stamped the ochre earth,
sending a dull echo between the stony underpasses.
She halted and reared before I even heard the first clap of thunder.

In seconds,
it was applause.

With every fresh cry, the sky would shake out another bed sheet,
sending tiny unknown particles into my sight.

It did not take me long to abandon horse.
With a kick and a grunt I dismantled,
landing on the silky pebbles with a jarring scrape
as my feet struggled to remain firm.

The sting of salt in my eye matched that of my tongue;
Every office full of the sea-sky.

I was only vaguely aware
of the snap of the tree boughs under the whirring hiss of the wind.
I could not tell
if I could feel the shrill cold
or if I could smell it.
My body was so heavily saturated with grainy dankness
that the magenta ink was running off my trousers
and making great puddles of reddened drool at my feet.

My skin was bleeding.

I laughed.
My lungs filled with water.
I cried,
my tears and the water becoming one,
pouring into my agape mouth and leaving an unfamiliar residue on my teeth

(this one's mine)

Tonight

Come around and say you love me
Hang your heart in lights above me
Is that too much to ask for?
When the night descends upon us
Take a shower, dry your hair by the furnace
I'll watch you from the corner
I've tried telephones and old typewriters
Words of love along the wires
But nothing is working tonight
Telegraphs and birds that fly
Through air so still you hear me sigh
Nothing is working tonight.

('Stars' - not me)

Pippi Longstockings came into your world and conquered

Halloween.

For those reading from abroad - oh. my. GOD. You honestly have absolutely NO idea what this is like in America. NONE. I don't think I have ever been as visually stimulated my entire life. Yes, yes, there are pumpkins everywhere and all of the cafes have cobwebs and spiders as their window displays (albeit, some are more humorous like lines of McCain heads mocked up as skulls), but last night went one step further.

I have Marielle staying with me at the moment because she was kicked out of her apartment (another story) - she's the girl who I'm mini-me-ing. She was the intern before me at ACP and she's being teaching me the ins-and-outs of the job. And there are a LOT of them! (I don't want to talk about it too much because I'm not sure how much I'm legally allowed to be saying and such. But it IS insane. I was handling $300,000 worth of paparazzi photo cheques on Thursday) So Marielle and I really clicked quite quickly, as she's in the same place where I will be in a month! And she's a Sydney-sider, so even more reason to be going up there every few weekends!

I had an idea for my Halloween costume about 4 days ago. I didn't have enough time to go out and buy a costume, nay, the money either (thanks economy!). So I was thinking what I could whip up with the resources I had... And I turned myself into a friggin awesome Pippi Longstockings! Mismatching knee high stripey socks with sewn on stars, bright blue tights, crazy skirt, layered fluro jumpers, red pirate boots, and of course - the freckled faced, red haired do... It took half an hour, but I braided my hair around an old coathanger so that it stood up a half meter away from my head! Add some huge eyeliner freckles, and a monkey puppet that I bought, and you had me... And I KNOW it worked because I was getting pointed at and laughed and and asked for photos and 'HEY PIPPI!!!' or 'FUCK THAT HAIR IS COOL' or 'OH MY GOD SHE HAS A MONKEY' etc etc etc. I'll definitely use the idea again back home where I can display it to a different crowd.

But the crowd last night... Jesus Christ I really can't put this into words properly. And that's saying something for me! Georgia Frances King is lost for words for once!

The New York Halloween parade started 2 blocks from my apartment and went all the way up to 28th. And I think that everyone in New York and the surrounding boroughs, and Jersey were there. And EVERYONE was dressed up. But not just a wig, or devil horns, or a mask or anything. I mean FULL THROTTLE costumes - cardboard box men, Stewies, parrots, too many Jokers (RIP Heath), lots of cross dressers, bumble-bees, pieces of toast... Everything.

Marielle and I had been invited to what was called 'The Danger'. It is a guerilla-party. If you don't know what that is, it's like a guerilla-gig. If you don't know what that is, it's essentially an impromtu party where you meet at a designated place, and then get told where the party is going to be, and everyone mass transits there! Half the party is in the actual process of getting to the party place.

And a process it was.

There were too many people to try and meet at the meeting place, so we decided to get to the second designated point (that was emailed out to us a day beforehand in secrecy) which was in mid-Brooklyn. The subway ride was a hoot! I sat next to a zombie.

But when we got there, we were actually too EARLY because the police had tried to shut down the mass gathering or something. So a small group of us formed, and we literally wandered around the backstreets of industrial Brooklyn until the gathering started. And when it started, hell, it started.

2,000-3,000 people dressed up to RIDICULOUS degrees. One of the more original was a Mia Wallace from Pulp fiction, complete with Uma Therman's black bob, a white shirt and black pant combination, blood trickling out of her nose and a huge needle sticking out of her breastbone!

So it was essentially a huge gathering. And then the fun really started on the streets. Men on stilts, acrobats, fire twirlers... Giant gongs and drum processions... We went on exoduses around Brooklyn just WANDERING and picking up people... There were opera singing demonstrations, giant sharks with boom-boxes...

It was just insane.

Eventually, at about midnight, we ended up at the actual warehouse. By this stage we had been wandering since 9ish, and just wanted to be at the party! And a party it was. 4,000 in an abandoned warehouse that had video art installations on the walls and giant interactive sculptures and 5 bars and 4 dance spaces and DJs in every corner and people still wandering around on stilts and everything... And I reiterate, EVERYONE is in crazy costume... Super Marios dance with girls in pikachu get-ups, Gesishas with parasols dual with Chewbaccas with lightsabers, a man in a blue lycra jump suit that covers his head fights with a girl in a bikini that has painted a skeleton on her blackened body. It was INSANE. INSANE INSANE INSANE!!!

We hung out there for a little while, but Marielle was getting claustrophobic (very easy in the space), and so we ended up heading back to Manhattan. She went home, but I decided to kick on to another friend's party in the upper East Village. I got there by about 1.30am and spent the rest of the night learning how to tango with a Mexican, talking politics with a mail order bride, and eating candy corn with Mario Lopez...

Marielle, who had my keys, couldn't work out the trick to opening the door (it's a bitch), and so was locked outside on my stoop! Luckily, she'd picked up a cute boy on the train, and could use his phone to call me so that I could come home to let her in! But naturally, by the time I had got back down to Soho, someone else in the block had walked past and let her in anyway :)

But it was a nice end to the night! I'll definitely be experiencing this one again in the near future. It was one of the craziest nights I've had, without being crazy myself. I didn't need to. the town did it for me.

A Wally on Wall Street

If only you knew. For the first 2 weeks of my stay in New York, I didn’t really get what this whole ‘Manhattan Rush’ thing was. Sure, people worked hard. Sure, it’s pretty crowded. Sure, the traffic has more yellow cab spots than Keith Richards’ teeth. Not to mention everyone in coke. You only need to watch Leno and Conan when you’re in insomniac mode to see that.

But now I do. You tell that I’m busy when I’m not finding enough time to write for my won amusement. And it’s been more than a week since I’ve even CONSIDERED updating my blog. And even now, I’m tapping away from a bonsai-type table in a little Japanese place as I take my lunch break. At 3o’clock.

I’m working 18 hour days. AND I’M LOVING IT!

I can totally see why so many people would crack under this New York pressure… And seriously, it’s simply insane. I don’t even have the energy to think of a witty metaphor. But not me. I thrive off chaos. I work to deadlines, everything in my workplace is anally organized, and I can kick and bite and scream mentally while keeping a blank face. I’m heartless and unemotional when it comes to getting something done, and getting something done RIGHT. And that’s the only way you could ever live in this business world – you have to be as tough and as harsh acidic tanbark; the syringe in the kid’s playground. It’s not a concrete jungle. Hell, it’s not even a Lipstick Jungle. It’s a jungle gym. I have blisters from the monkey bars, but I’m too determined to make it to the other side.

Oh God, I should take this back awhile first… I’ve only got 10 minutes of lunch left though, so I’m going to just make a checklist to keep this updated. I’ll fill you in once I find an air pocket to breathe in. That was wi-fi.


1. Nicolas turned up on my doorstep. From Denmark. HE FLEW FROM COPENHAGEN TO SURPIRSE ME!!!! I’m not going to get overly sappy and sentimental on the public domain of the internet, but this reads like a movie. Seriously. Gorgeous half Argentine, half Danish boy meets ambitious Aussie girl volunteering in a tribal community in India. They have a bit of fun, and then he leaves to travel. He then comes back to India for unspecified, but very suspicious reasons. He leaves to go back to Denmark, leaving the girl alone in India. Very sad, but a fun fling. 2 months later, the girl is traveling through Europe by herself, and has been thinking about said boy a little too much. She realises Denmark is only across a little sea from Germany, and so decides to go visit him for a few days. She lives with him for a week. She doesn’t see The Little Mermaid, because she didn’t really leave his house all that much. But eventually, she leaves the country, and cries the entire ferry ride back. She never cries. She spends the next month thinking about only him, and he spends the next month not doing Law essays and talking to her instead. She decides to follow her heart and changes her plane tickets and flies to Denmark. Another week later, she has to fly to New York to ‘begin her real life’. He gives her a gold bracelet. They think that they will never see each other again. She settles down in New York, and has just started to rebuild her life back up on sturdy platforms, when the doorbell rings. It’s him. From Denmark.


2. The next day, unbeknownst to Nicolas, I had 3 other boys coming to stay with me – Miles, Antony and John. I couldn’t kick them out at such short notice. So for 4 days, I had 4 messy boys and 3 guitars staying in my one-person tissue-box of an apartment. You couldn’t walk. Suitcases became our floorboards.


3. I had 3 classes worth of homework that I hadn’t done due to Nicolas’ arrival to do. I sat down to start, but decided to check my emails first. There was one from Antipodeans. They want to publish my Indian blogs as a feature article in The Age. Cue freak-out, and spending the next 6 hours and god knows how many coffees rewriting my Indian trip for the newspaper. And not doing homework.


4. I had my first day interning at ACP. Oh my god. I love it. But my hands are swollen form writing and typing. I wouldn’t want it any other way! I have learnt so much more in 16 hours than I did the entire VCE. I can’t talk about details due to privacy issues and such, but just know that you have NO IDEA what goes on behind the scenes of the magazine world…

Speaking of which, I’ve gotta get back to work! The Star is waiting for me upstairs…

Jersey boys and girls

Oh, and I went to Jersey today. Things that I can tell you about Jersey
- they have funny accents
- it's surburbia to the extreme. I was half expecting to see the Desperate Housewives van
- Bon Jovi was born in Rutherford (the suburb I hung out in)
- William Carlos Williams, the poet, was too and there's a theatre in the main street in his name
- Joey Ramone is burried here
- they leave their front doors unlocked
- they consider a graduating class of 200 a 'small' school
- they hang out in Dunkin' Donuts
- they have a giant stadium that the Giants play in that's called the Giant. It's giant, really
- they have good bagels

That's about it.

The antithesis of tattoos and cupcakes

Imagine waking up a year older, but actually feeling 2 years younger. That was a little of my first impression on 19. It wasn't 21.

When I woke up on my birthday, I had already felt like I had celebrated. The festivities of the night before had felt like a party, and I thus had the opportunity to re live my day again. Not to mention we receiving birthday well wishes over the course of nearly 2 days due to time differences around the world.

The day began slowly with a phone call from dearest Blair (the only friend who called) and opening my fedex parcel that had arrived on my stoop a few days earlier. In it weren't the typical birthday presents. In the place of bath bombs, there were frankie, Yen and Russh. Instead of Borders vouchers, there was the A2. And in lieu of incense holders, there was vegemite.

I rolled out of the house and headed towards little Australia, where I had a 'long black' (yes!!! Finally understood!!! When a Yankee asked the Aussie waitress for 'just a normal coffee', the customer got pissed off when the waitress came back with a latte. "But that's not a normal coffee!!" she cried. To which she was met sharply with "Sweetie, you're in Australia now. That's normal"). I dwelled over the Sunday magazines from The Age, Australian and Herald Sun for as long as I could to deter the nerves of what I knew was coming once I saw the bottom of my endless bowl of granola.

A tattoo.

The 10 minute walk from Mulberry to the start of 2nd Avenue was exhilarating. My feet propelled me forwards, yet my left wrist seemed to be wanting to head back to the known confines of Little Australia. But I got to the tattoo parlour without any amputations.

And surprisingly, the tat didn't feel like an amputation either! People go ON and ON about how much they hurt. And yes, it did hurt. I will say that it smarted considerably. For the first 2 or 3 minutes, I felt like someone was dragging a shard of jaggered glass across my skin. Then it just turned into something more akin to scratching your lover's name in the sandstone.

And in 6 minutes it was done. It was over. I was permanently inked.

But! You can't see the results of something that you have waited so long for for 3 hours due to the bandage. And this bandage was most suspiciously placed over my wrist. I felt like a self-abuser, wandering around with a whopping great white pad wrapped around my left wrist. I wanted to write on it with texta 'THIS IS A TATTOO' but I couldn't put any pressure on it - coincidentally, I think that it began to hurt more AFTER than before!

I was meeting Danii (the girl I met at the Death Cab For Cutie concert) for cupcakes on Rivington, but not for 2 hours. So I did what I would normally do on a spare Saturday. Vintage shopping! But I didn't buy anything. In fact, instead of buying a houndstooth coat, I met Jerry - an obesely fat and obesely camp man with hair so red that I was surprised planes weren't landing on his head. He was certainly big enough to be a beacon!

So who would have known that he taught me how to swing dance?? MAN that guy could move! I couldn't hold his shoulder because of the proximity due to his belly, but by the end we had gathered a little audience in the store!

Cupcakes with Danii were perfect. When you have a bakery called 'Super Sweet Sunshine Cupcakes', you can normally guarantee a super sweet sunshine experience... We went classic with vanilla cupcakes with multicoloured frosting and matching candles. However, I could have had flavours like 'Red Sex Vixen' or 'Pumpkin Squirrel'. The cupcake store itself was were Animal Collective used to film too! Fact!

We were wandering around after cupcakes, needing a toilet. That and I was desperate to take off my bandage and have a gander at my new ink. So I walked into a dive bar. If you don't know what the NYC definition of a dive bar is, imagine hell. That is, if hell wasn't flooded by the number if dripping, graffitied pipes. Maybe they were punctured by the lady behind the counter, who is not only so pierced that I'm surprised she doesn't disarm magnets, but also seems to rubbing the grim further into the glasses with the hem of her tartan skirt. Not have I feared so much for my health since India. 2 and a half minutes in that confinement was enough to make me consider a Hep C test. Naturally, I didn't take the bandage off then.

In a serious of random, serendipitous events, I found myself being pushed onto a train bound for Brooklyn. I thought it would take and hour. It took less than 10 minutes. And hey! Miranda lies of Sex and the City - Brooklyn's cool! It's like a more laid-out version of Manhattan. The streets are wider, you can see trees, hell, the people even smile (sometimes. This is still New York).

A bowl of chilli-fries later, and I'm underground in a venue called 'Sputnik'. It's adorned with communistic style symbols and giant wall murals of Lenin. Suitable for a few high-school bands to play! I won't lie. They weren't very good. I hadn't realised until this night how lucky I was to live in Melbourne. The level of our unsigned music scene is floating somewhere above the Empire State Building compared to NY. They have some huge big names, yes. But they all start in their garage, are shit, and then appear to 'suddenly' learn how to play their instruments and read a crowd, and start playing in Terminal 5 or Radio City... Vampire Weekend is the prime example of this.

But I amused myself more by watching everyone dance. Imagine this. Mid 80s punk style of dancing.If they were fairies. On crack. And they'd just come out of the spin cycle in the dryer.

After wandering the burbs of Brook for awhile, a group of us ended back in the East Village. More wandering, and then Danii and I found ourselves back at my apartment drinking wine, introducing her to vegemite, and watching SNL. A little bit of a bathotic anticlimax, but I felt like I had lived and partied enough the night before! I had done what I had set out to do to celebrate my birthday in New York, and has thus happy:

Tattoos and cupcakes.

By the way, the tattoo looks RAD.

Nazis, Fishnets and Dead People. Happy Birthday!

I know that it may be 3am in the morning, and I know that I normally classify the day as starting from either when I wake up (no matter the time) or from when the first trains start running; but I HAD to come online to wish myself a HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

I may have only been 19 for the past few hours, but it has already been quite eventful! I managed to mangle my way into nabbing myself a ticket to tonight's performance of NYU's 'Cabaret', in which Sam (from repeat appearances in 3 countries now) was starring as The Emcee. And FABULOUSLY I may add. I sat through possibly the most THRILLING exhibition of non-professional theatre I have ever viewed. St. Michael's - eat your heart out. It was simply SPLENDID. And edgy to boot! Where else would Sally Bowles be topless by the 3rd number?

Anyway, I hung around and met Sam afterwards to say congrats and give him a massive kiss and hug. I was chatting to the other cast members (I really cannot stress how good this show was. This is pre-Off-Broadway!) and ended up grabbing some beers and going back to someone's house. 4 hours later, I was still there.

I've found my New York element. Everyone at this party was somehow a part of what is called 'Tisch' - the NYU drama school. It's separated into what feels like a thousand different parts, but I think that it's eight sub-schools... We all ended up on the roof of their apartment in the East Village, and didn't leave until the cops came and found us at 3ish. The Cabaret cast is closing tomorrow (technically today) and had two shows, so my core group left earlier and missed all of the law-breaking fun. But I've really branched out now past my 4-solid mate group, so now hopefully things will start to spark up!

Still IDless... Darn...

Must sleep now so that I can wake up and it really feels like my birth-day!

Oh. And Hayley Joel Osment was there. He's taking courses as NYU too, and apparently he smokes a lot of pot. I guess you'd have to to see dead people.

Time Warner Waster. TiVo can get TiBoned.

I just fixed my own cable. Me. Georgia Frances King. The technology retard. Somehow outwitting the technical guy on the phone for the past hour. It took my superintendent 3 days to report it, it took the owner 2 days to do anything about it, and it took the company 3 days to ring me! And then they ring me on the most beautiful day I've had so far (having lunch at what is going to become my 'local' - a little cafe on O'Sullivan between Prince and West Houston) to bring me home. And have someone ask me if I could 'replug my adaptor portal' or something for an hour.

In one of her many 10 minute silences, I was just looking at the actual TV screen, and not the 4 remotes and 4 boxes that accompany it, and I hit a little button that said 'Source'. I don't know why, I just did. And

BAM! 40 thousand American sitcoms that I have no urge to watch, but know that I will inevitably become addicted to. That or stay up til 1.30am every night to watch Conan.

Maybe I should be the Cable Whisperer? I'm sure that that's a marketable concept...

You say it's your birthday- well it's my birthday too, yeah! (Nearly... 2 days)

Happy Birthday, John.

I got back from my job interview with ACP (more about this later!! I'm an intern!!), and was fully intending to spend a day at home, resting the wooden peg-leg that I feel as if my thigh has become. That and doing my work for my classes, and getting a start on my Mum's business proposal.

But the first email that I opened was from a guy in my poetry class inviting me down to Strawberry Fields that day... John Lennon's 68th birthday. So I thought, what the hell, I'll take my books down there and study in the park while listening to a couple of guys strum out Sexy Sadie.

That's not what happened at all. I very successfully managed to negotiate the local/5/6 subway route to my advantage! But then walked the wrong way to the park... When I was one block over... HOW do I always do this?? I really am completely and utterly HOPELESS.

Anyway, I walked in to the little section marked 'STRAWBERRY FIELDS'. After Lennon's assassination around the corner on Dec 8th 1980, Yoko put in some money and they dedicated this part for him, between 71st and 74th on the West Side. I know that Strawberry Fields really alludes to Liverpool, but this WAS where he died people!

As soon as you rounded the path, I could hear She Loves You being played by a few different guitars. And once you actually get to the main area, this is what you see.

You can't see the 'Imagine' mosaic to start with. This is due to two things:
1. There are too many people in the music circle to be able to see it
2. There are too many flowers and letters to be able to see it!

When I first arrived at 1pm, there were maybe 50 people around the monument, including 3 acoustic guitars and a bass with an amp. I could move my way to the front pretty easily, and nabbed myself a sitting inner circle spot in about 10 minutes. And that's where I stayed until about 3. I literally didn't move. And my leg wasn't aggravated because I wasn't moving for so long that it went numb anyway!! (however, pins and needles in a torn muscle is NOT nice.)

As the day wore on, more people came. I a lot of people would stay on the outskirts for a few songs then move on, but there were about 20 of us from the original lot who stayed out the entire day. But the most amazing part was not the people coming to add to the mound of flowers and candles; it was the musicians. By the time I left at 8pm, there were at LEAST 20 acoustic guitars, a dozen electric ones with amps, 3 or 4 basses, someone brought a DRUM KIT (???), a flute, and countless tambourines and maracas. Not to mention up to 300 people belting out Hey Jude... And there were so many of us, that enough people would take the harmony or the background parts, so at some stages it actually SOUNDED like the tracks... Well. Kind of. At some stages I would look behind me and not be able to see the trees. We were at least 6 or 7 people deep around this circle.

I swapped seats to get a different angle at about 3pm, and ended up chatting to 2 girls that I'd been taking photos of! We spent the rest of the day together, and we also picked up a musician who'd come from Staten Island to pay his respects. He goes by the name Joe Boots. (He thinks this was original. I just wanted to bring him to Melbourne to show him tat he's not the first muso who's wearing boots). But everyone was picking EVERYONE up... Seriously, free love was flowing!

Needing some air from the wonderfully claustrophobic circle, the 3 of us girls moved out to the edge. This is when we met Garry, the infamous Mayor of Strawberry Fields. Google him! He's been looking after the site everyday for the past 16 years. He's a homeless bloke with one SERIOUS love of Lennon. He does impromptu speeches and gets tips from that - which he uses partly on himself, but also to buy a plethora of flowers that he decorates the site with everyday. All of the photos you see of the roses making the peace signs over the IMAGINE? That's him!

When we return back to the circle, he steps in and announces that someone 'very special' was here. Sid-fucking-Bernstein! THE man who brought The Beatles to the USofA. He acted all abashed and such, but he got serenaded for the next few songs, and was bought to the front of the circle of luuuuuuurve.

I also got my journal out so that the girls could write down their facebook names so that they could see the photos I was taking. Well. People kept on asking if they could get them too, and before I knew it, my journal was getting passed around the circle!! It came back about 45 minutes later (I don't know how they knew it was mine), and I guess people thought it was a place to dedicate memories to John or something, because it came back with 6 pages of Birthday messages! Some from New York, some from Hong Kong, some from Sweden, even one from Sydney! And the most wonderful thing is that I have no idea who wrote them all :) Are we getting this collective community feel down now? Imagine it when the sun set and everyone was handing out candles... Oh! And this is Central Park in Fall by the way! THE TREES!!!!

I was standing out the front talking to The Mayor when a bicycle taxi guy came up and asked us if we wanted a ride. This followed:
BIKE: "You guys wanna ride round the area?"
GARRY: "... Do you know who I am?"
BIKE: "... no, Sir"
GARRY: "I'm the fucking Mayor of these parts man. Don't tell me to peace out on my own ground."
COP(walking by casually): "Yeah man, you gotta know who you're talking to if you're hangin round Strawberry Fields. Now getchya ass outta here."
(Bike guy rides off while people stare at him with distgusted looks)
GARRY: "Thanks man. Love."
COP: "Anytime, Mayor."

Next thing I know he says "I wanna introduce you to a good friend of mine, and a good friend to the world". And he pulls me over to the bench where there's an old guy sitting with a cane. "Now Georgie, this is-"
ME: Sid Bernstein. Wow. I'm shaking your hand! I'm Georgia.
SID: Well Georgia's definitely on My Mind (starts to sing)
ME: (drooling)
A little conversation follows about the site and me just generally being abnormally quiet and respectful. By this time I've done the embarrassing fan photo thing, and he's referenced me as his 'Step-sister'... Eventually he says something like
SID: You've got a good man in this fellow here (patting Garry on the shoulder). Without him, this park wouldn't be raining love.
GARRY: Well it's sure not rainin today, Sid! I think that Lennon's up there right now talking to ol' Mother Nature and making sure that she's not gonna piss on our parade. We should seriously thank John for giving us this day. That's what he'd want up there.
ME: What do you think he's thinking right now? What would he say?
SID: ... He'd probably be looking down on us three and saying 'Damn, how did Sid land that bird?'. He'd love you for being here.
ME: (long pause) Did you just say that you think that John would be saying that he loves me?
SID: Well, yeah, really. He loved all of us at some point. And now he probably loves you too.
ME: (drowning in my own drool) So I can say that, according to the words of Sid Bernstein, John Lennon loves me??
SID: Whatever you want, sweetie.
ME: (paraplegic pool of pap) ..........

And then his nephew ushered him into a taxi and off they went! When I rejoined the little group that I'd become part of, 'Joe Boots' just about shat himself when he found out that Sid was there. And that was BEFORE I told him that I'd sat on a bench with him the past 20 minutes! I was finally one up on him. He may have been a talented New Yorker, but hey-

John Lennon loves me!

Give peace a chance. Strawberry Fields forever.

Britt Lapthorne - that could have been me...

Not to freak anybody out, especially the parents of travelling children right now who I know are reading this, but I've got to voice this to someone aside from my pot plant, Fido. (He's very good by the way, he sits and stays and everything. He hasn't got the hang of fetch yet though...)

I've vaguely known about the case back in Melbourne at the moment of the 21 y.o. RMIT student Britt Lapthorne. Rather, my mum called me in quite a flurry when it broke news about 2 weeks ago. If you don't know, she went missing in Dubrovnik on September 18th. She was backpacking around by herself, but had met a couple of friends in the hostel that she was staying at just outside the walled city (Dubrovnik is in the southern most tip of Croatia, by the way). She was last seen at a club called Club Fuego.

2 months to the day of her disappearance, I was also in Dubrovnik. An aspiring RMIT student travelling through the city by myself. I even know the club that she was last seen it. It was a dirty Latin Club that had themed nights during the week. It was just on the outskirts of the wall, and was a 'before place' that you went before you went inside the wall city where all the cooler, albeit more expensive, clubs and bars were. It was the Lonely Planet hangout if you get what I mean.

Well, I thought that that was scary enough.

Curiosity got the best of me today. I googled the story.

She was staying at my hostel. The Dubrovnik Backpacker's Club. She slept in the same room as me on the bottom floor!! The son that they pulled in for questioning I went on not one, but TWO excursions with to Bosnia. I went snorkeling with him! I rode shotgun next to him for 4 hours while we talked about ex-Yugoslavian politics! He took us all out for nights on the town. The mother was the nicest woman I have met at a hostel - she would wake up at 6am every morning to make French Toast for the early risers. The father is apparently one of Croatia's best chess players, and he SMASHED me at games numerous times. There's another younger brother (not the one being questioned) who has learning difficulties but is a sweetie. Then there's a sister that chain smokes like hell and seems to eat nothing but pistachios; a sardonic, funny girl who I got along with VERY well.

Look back on all of my posts. In the first European one, I think there's even an email sent from that hostel! I remember saying it was the best one I've stayed in, and I MAINTAIN that The Dubrovnik Backpacker's Club is the best hostel that I stayed in. That family is gorgeous and I'm so upset that this has come upon them.

They have nothing to do with it, believe me. I lived with them for a week! Ivica even offered to send my vest that I left there to me in Denmark...

The whole phone number thing - it was a nice comfort thing. If we got stuck in town and the buses weren't running or something, we could call them and they'd come and pick us up at odd hours!! And the reporters keep on misspelling their names from the articles I've been reading... Plus, I can tell that they're relying on hearsay, because the way they describe the building, it's clear they're putting photos they've seen into words, as they are just guessing which rooms are which.

And the shit about Ivica (we called him 'Ibizia' coz we couldn't get the emphasis right) being suspicious for being in the surrounding countries at the time - THAT'S WHAT HE DOES. HE'S A TOUR GUIDE!!!

Ahh.... It's a little scary, isn't it? But I just wanted to put my two cents out there. The Dubrovnik Backpacker's Club and the family who runs it just happen to be place where Britt stayed. I reckon, from what I've read the past hour, that the police should be looking at the backpackers who abandoned her there instead. Not placing blame, but I think that the people that were with her that night will have a lot more information that the people that give her tea in the morning.

Those guys were the closest I came to family in a hostel. Don't lay the blame!

Crippled

Well ladles and jellyspoons, you may be hearing a lot more from me over the next two days, as I have suddenly found myself house ridden. In a bizarre splits-related accident last night, I have re-torn my hamstring...

'But how?!' I hear them cry, 'How does one achieve this feat without being in New York yet a week?'

Well my friends, it happens a little something like this.

I attended the first night of my Feature Writing class last night, which is the last of the 3 classes that I am taking with Gotham City Writers. I'm also taking a general fiction writing class, and a poetry class, both of which the end of the lesson was met with hushed voices and silent elevator rides (I refuse to call them lifts. Nor will I abolish the 'u' from words like colour, or change my 's' to a 'z' in words like realising). However. Last night was a little different!

I'm not sure if it's that I seem to attract Danish people now like moths to light or knives to toasters, but I sure do seem to keep on running into them! I got chatting in our break to a lovely, well travelled great Dane (seriously, that joke's been made a billion and four times now). Her name is Therese, and like most Scandinavians when paired with myself, we didn't shut up! She's a little like what we imagine that I'll be like in 5 years time... Except Danish...

Anywho, we walk out of class, and she invites me to come for drinks at a bar that her boyfriend works at in the Meat Packing district (very trendy, high brow-ish area at the moment apparently). But we were in the Eastern end of Soho, and it took as a good 2 hours to make our way their by foot. We were gladly interrupted by caffeination, and a pizza slice stop as neither of us had eaten much that day.

Aside, I met a guy in the coffee shop - well, I split my coffee over him first before I MET him - who recognised my accent as Australian. Turns out that he's an Aussie too. From Melbourne. FROM ST KILDA. FROM DUKE STREET!! Go figure, right? So you might hear more about this one later on down the track if we catch up...

We turned up at this raw, uncemented brick wall, wooden, iron and steel style bar at about midnight. 3 pots, 2 glasses of red and the leftover champagne when they close the bar and kicked everyone else ensued. At one point, all three beverages were being played like a chess board at the same time. I spent the night talking to a bunch of Puerto Rican guys, which sounds so exotic to an Australian, but is like what Kiwis are to us. So I found them fascinating, and they found me fascinating because I was so fascinated in them! Weird, huh?

Anyway, we got onto the subject of traditional dance, then modern dance, and that led into me mentioning that I could do the splits.

Bad. Idea. Not only did I amass a small crowd (we were sitting outside the bar at 2.30am on a Tuesday as the owner was closing up) but I also hadn't stretched. I got my applause, and even got asked to do a repeat performance, but of course I was a little numbed from the alcohol so I didn't feel sore at the time.

I lied through my teeth to get into a party at a club next door (2 points Georgia), but only really stayed to use their bathroom before heading off towards the subway with Therese and her boyfriend (henceforth referred to as Geoffery). I caught the wrong subway. Twice. To a station that I hadn't got out at before on the other side of Houston... But I made it home, feeling very safe the entire way, as much to your surprise as my own, I assure you!

I had enough sober sense by the time I got home to decide to stretch a little before I went to bad, as not to be sore in the morning.

And the next thing I heard... RRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPPP and the next thing I heard after that was FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUyou get the point...

Have any of your ever torn your hammy? It's the second time that I've done this, the first being a second degree tear that I got from doing, wait for it, YOGA. And the second time I'm stretching after doing the splits (other leg though). To give you an idea of what it sounds like (yes, it makes a sickening sounds), imagine ripping a large strip of velcro off your inner thigh. And that's probably what it feels like too, if that velcro was dripping with hot wax.

And so NOW I can hardly walk! I'm quite a sight hobbling around... I use the walls to move around the house. I've got a few creams and such, but what I REALLY need is a physio and some ultrasound therapy like last time. But hey, with the state of the American political and economic system at the moment, I doubt I'm gonna get it.

That said, they're technically socialists now... Does that mean my health care is free? ;)

First star sighting

When I went for a run last night, I jogged all the way from Houston down to Battery Park along the West shore... And as I was nearing Broadway again, I was pooped so I slowed down and caught my breath on the corner.

And who rounds the corner but a tall buff white guy and an absolutely STUNNING equally tall, slim woman. With long brown hair. And lips bigger than Ben Hur.

It looked just like Angelina Jolie.

Now I remember thinking "that's not her. It can't be. She's just had twins and is living in the south of France last time I heard". Which promoted me to start dwelling on how many people must be getting plastic surgery in this town to look like celebrities. But nose jobs are one thing, full face lifts and cheek implants to get a likeness like that were another. I pitied the poor woman.

And I kept running.

This morning, I walked down to the local Mexican 'milkbar' (they don't call them that here. In fact you get weird looks whenever you use the term) to get the Sunday papers. Aside from the byline "Death Cab Kills 2" which amused me greatly in a somewhat horrid way, there was also a picture of... ya huh... Angelina Jolie.
In New York.
At her latest movie premier.

Mhm!!

I'M NOT MAD!!!! And she really is STUNNING. She didn't have a scrap of makeup on and was wearing loose jeans and she was STILL stunning. A hundred people must have walked past in that minute I stood on the corner. And she was the only one who commanded my attention.

Tell that to Cath, Mum!

There's a reason why there's a state named after me

You've all just lost me to this city. I am completely and utterly wrapped up in its not-so-welcoming arms. And it's because those arms are so large, so harsh, so hairy and all encompassing that I love it. I'm being strangled. I'm calling out to the people around me; but not to be saved. To be joined.

Manhattan is more than just a city. And it's more than just an island. There is not a square inch (nor centimetre for that matter) of space that is not being occupied by someone or something. Or a story. This place is a bacterial breeding ground for one liners that you hear walking past the 1,500,000 people who live here. To give you an idea, Melbourne has about 20,000 people. Check out www.overheardinnewyork.com for examples. This just further adds to the reasons that I feel like I will be back here someday. And I'll be working in one of these unnatural constructions, for one of those social constructions. The buildings quite simply never end. Not even when you reach the shore. And then you can see the gulf that engulfs your sense of perception even more.
Because across those shores you can see the dimmed glow of Brooklyn - reflected in Downtown's late afternoon haze, but at a somewhat smudged degree.
Further up you find yourself looking across at Queens, seemingly most well known outside Queens itself as the birthday place of Nanny Fine. Again, it is so close that you can hear that nasal assault on the eardrums from 1st Avenue.
The Bronx is the next peninsula north again, although all I know about it is that my subway line is somehow more there than here. Although I have ideals of their inhabitants having those deep, vibrating voices that scare dogs and mimic the subwoofer cars that always seem to be coming down from Harlem.
Staten Island remains illusive. Not even the name has connotations yet.
And the only knowledge I have of Jersey is that I have my first winter purchase coming from a store on their shores.

This all said, when I refer to being in love with New York, I refer to the isle of Manhattan. Here, it is not a city, but many diverse cultural hubs that intermingle with each other between the wary gaze of the million eyed buildings. No matter where you are, you can always look up and feel like you are being looked down. The concept of a townhouse is foreign here. The lowest building I've seen is 5 stories. And no, I'm NOT exaggerating.
As a result, the buildings seem to lean in on you. You're so curious about all of these little worlds, and yet they seem equally curious about you. If you close your eyes and stop, sometimes I swear that you can hear them whispering.

...

No that was a complete lie. Number 1, if you closed your eyes you would be run over. Number 2, if you closed your eyes and stopped you'd be robbed. Number 3, if you closed your eyes and stopped and thought you could hear whispering voices, well, you'd probably still be saner than about 2/3rds of the population here.
Ie-
"PITTED DATES* Ingredients: Dates. *May contain pits"
"Organic Dry Cleaners"
(sign held by homeless man) "Obama isn't the only one who wants change"
(overheard in a clothes store) "Yeah, listen, I'm just at the dentist right now"
(overheard on the corner of 3rd and St Marks) "But wha do yah wanna fahkin eat fah fahkin tea mah mathafahkin nigga"

Yes he said all of that and then used the word 'tea'.

And then there was my first subway ride. I was going from Spring to 59th, and on the second stop, 5 very large, jolly, overall wearing black guys walked in. One of them began to hum, while another spoke in a voice that bubbled like champagne.
"And ah hope tha ya'll havin a lov-ah-lay mornin this here mornin. Today we's gonna give ya'll some traditional gah-sple singin. Ah hope ya'll enjoy, an give generously people".
And they started to sing in 5 part harmony. They walked up the carriage slowly, with some of the most heart-evoking smiles emitting from their faces as the melodies and the 'OH LORD'ies cascaded over their full lips, with their white teeth acting as the crest of the wave.
I was completely at their mercy mercy me. The soloist took me by the hand, pulled me out of my sticky seat and spun me around. They jiggled paper bags of coins in time to their steps and their respective beats, adding another dimension to their story. They began to clap on the off beats with their heavy fingers. The largest man reached the end of the path and twirled himself around on of the poles with cat-like elegance. And then all too quickly, the train came to a thudding halt, the doors sounded, they hummed one last resonate note, and they were gone. All they left was a carriage full of angry, caffeine-hungry business men,
and one grinning newbie.

Welcome to New York.

Wrapping up the Loose Threads - Denmark. Again...

Sigh. No really I'm actually sighing. I don't want to write this. Because then it's going to mean that it's over. And I mean that in multifarious ways. Europe is over. Backpacking is over. Copenhagen (euphemistic use of the word) is over.

Actually, I'm going to be incredibly vague on this one. Because anyone who has been reading between the lines knows what's been going on in Denmark; and anyone who has seen or heard a Georgia rant about this subject knows TOO MUCH of what's been going on in Denmark. And also because I'm gonna draw the line between public and private here. If everyone knows everything, then the world looses its mysticism. Life shouldn't be celebrated by the things that we know, but by the things that we don't yet know.

So essentially this is what happened.

I went back to Copenhagen. To live with Nicolas.

Lottie and the Betts-Dean crew family we going to be there too, so all the less need to justify my return I guess! And I couldn't have envisaged another way to spend my last week and a half in Europe. I may not have been partying in Berlin, or sunbathing in Croatia, or gigging in Budapest, or getting lost in Glasgow. But I was surrounded by people I love.

And one that I may never see again.

And I'm sure that this will all come up again in other forms over the next two months. But I don't want to explicitly state the obvious right now! I'm quite aware that I'm an emotional writer, and I put a little bit of me into everything that I pen (or type in this case). People seem to be able to tell when I'm down, even if I don't mention the shitty times. People seem to be able to tell when I'm bursting with excitement over something, even if I think that I'm being pretty blase about it. So maybe you can all sense what I'm feeling right now.

No more words needed.

...

SO!!! Subject change!!!

This is my last post on the old times. A stage in my life has come to an end, and I'm sorry that it must happen so abruptly. It felt pretty abrupt to me too! One moment I was sobbing, alone in a foreign airport terminal; and then 24 hours later I was in a cab, driving up 5th Avenue, listening to Death Cab For Cutie's Marching Bands of Manhattan. And crying some more. But for different reasons this time. This time for excitement. This time for fear. This time for life.

And if I was crying
it was for freedom
from myself
and from the land

Wrapping up the Loose Threads - Benelux

Namaste/Bonjour/Hello/Ciao/G'day/Gutentag/Hai,

I would like to simultaneously say both goodbye to my epic epitaphs, and also to my new method of communication with the outside world - the blog! Instead of submitting you to reading my updates in large, fortnight long chunks, I thought it would be suitable for me to simply update this daily and you can clue in whenever you're curious to see what I'm getting up to in the world... And New York is really going to be its own bubble.

I'm sitting writing this from BAT5 (British Airways Terminal 5 in the non-backpacker speak that I have become so accustomed to) where I have a 6 hour stop over. Normally 6 hours in an airport would sound just as fun as repeatedly stabbing yourself in the eye with a broken biro, or watching Dancing with the Stars in Swedish; but T5 is a wonderland in itself. Just an expensive wonderland... £1 for 10 minutes... This is how much you know I love you!

Now my last more-whale-than-word email ended in Scotland, land of the now infamous 'Hairy Coo'. That was on the 9th of September. Has it really been that long? The past few weeks have been PACKED so forgive me if I alternate between giving too much information and not enough. I will inevitably pick and choose between whatever suits my diverse tastes at the time of writing.

So.

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND to LONDON, BRITIAN 9th: The free haircut that I mentioned in Scotland went just dandy, but also just a bit boring for my eclectic tastes... 4 inches later, it's nice, but I'm going to get something edgy done when I hit to NY shores. I got in pretty late and don't think I even ate dinner and just fell asleep in my clothes on Asha's couch.

LONDON 10th: The next day I remember going back to the same heavenly scone place (sans Shakespearean actors this time), back to the same gob dropping TATE to see an exhibition I missed, and yet again, somehow managed to miss seeing the Globe... Despite the fact that I walked past it. Twice. I met up with the beautiful creature that is Tiffany (remember her from emails ago? Choreographer cum record label manager that I met in Croatia?) and we went to one of the strangest night clubs I have ever set foot in. It was part art gallery, part live dramatic art installation, part one-man-shows, part dance floor and part bar. With pinball machines. And all of this was underground beneath London Bridge station. I wasn't feeling too peachy-keen though, so we called it a night as the last trains were leaving.

LONDON to PARIS, FRANCE 11th: I caught one of the last Eurostars this day before the fire in the tunnel that I'm sure that you would have all heard about. Lucky me! (Separate lucky incident - I have heard about the RMIT student who was traveling in Dubrovnik, Croatia by herself and has gone missing. I know the club that she was last seen at and it's quite scary seeing someone else who just must have been in the wrong place and the wrong time... I thought that Dubrovnik was honestly one of the safest cities I had been too. I was obviously wrong). I made my way to Beatrice's house in a succession of French metro stops that I can neither pronounce nor find on a map, and surprisingly, for once, did NOT get hideously lost! I was greeted by Ceser with kisses on both cheeks. This is the boy that I met when I was 8 and he was 9 and naturally feel in love with purely for the fact that he was a French boy who kisses on both cheeks! And he was just the same - except about a foot taller. Then Baptiste walked in (Jack's age just about) and it was the same. Then Marie (21 y.o. journalism student who was traveling India at the same time as me) and that was EXACTLLY the same. Including the jealously. But it was when I saw Beatrice that I flipped out just a little bit. She's just like my mother, except Dutch/French, so the next few days were like a little slice of home. I slept in Baptiste's room, ate the most magnificent baguettes with salted butter that I may as well have just slathered on my thighs in the first place. Except it wouldn't have tasted quite as nice there.

PARIS 12th-15th: The next couple of days are a little hazy of which was on what day, so I'll group them all. Things that I can tick off my 'I've seen Paris' list:
- Eiffel Tower (climbed the 800 plus steps to the second tower. Sweating would be an understatement)
- Arc du Triumphe (spelt wrong of course. It was going to cost €9 to get to the top. No way, Jose)
- Notre Dame (Really stunning now that it's been restored. I have lots of fond 2005 Euro Choir memories of singing there; although I found myself looking more at the reflections of the stained glass windows on the ground than the glass itself)
- Pompidou (I was way too tired to appreciate this centre for all it was worth. I spent 4 hours there, but I have seen SO many galleries that it just seems unfortunate that when you get to the one that's supposedly one of the best in the world, all the Francis Bacons and Jason Pollocks start to look the same. Cool exterior though)
- The Lourve (I met Beatrice on her lunch break here, and she showed me her favourite areas and gave me a little history lesson. She's an AMAZING artist herself, so it was nice have a personlised tour! I continued wandering around for about 4 hours after that too. Mona Lisa's looking good considering her age. I wonder if she uses L'Oreal?)
- That park outside the Lourve (I'm not even going to try and spell it. You know the one. It was really nice, but cold and raining. But you know that I love that)
- Mussee du O'rsay (you can continue to laugh while I massacre the French language. Again, I really regretted now that I've arted myself out! I have a few memories of being there with Dad back when I was a Bubba - remembering not to sneeze on Whistler's mother a la Mr Bean for an example)

That's about it for the big tourist attractions. I really spent a lot of my time simple wandering around the streets. I had my own set of keys, so I would generally wake up in the morning once everyone had gone to uni/school/work and watch French MTV and eat baguette and butter and jam; then go walkabout and whatever I came across, I saw! Paris doesn't quite 'speak' to me in the same multitude that Berlin does, albeit it really is a beautiful city to get lost in. And lost I certainly got.

By night, this city turns into a playground. I was lucky enough to have 2 fantabulous bigger siblings who were more than happy to take me out and try to get me wasted as every responsible older brother or sister does to their kin. Cesar succeeded on the first night, as Beatrice loves to remind me.

We started off drinking at dinner; then free wine at one of his friend's restaurants that she was bored of working in; then we went to one of his friend's house where about 8 of his other friends(stunning. I am yet to meet an non-attractive, well dressed French man. Touch proverbial wood) were watching a rugby game. I fobbed my way through knowing what I was talking about as they kept refilling my glass of some lucid green liqueur that tasted like a thousand liquid extra-strength breath mints. Then we all went out to a bar where it was one of their friend's 21sts... I kind of remember ordering 20 shots for €20 with one of the girls, but I'm not quite sure where they all went... Surely I would have given some away? I also remember conga lines on the dancefloor, and EVERYONE knowing my name. Even if no one else even knew who they were. It was like being a local celebrity, sans paparazzi (even THERE I think that there was one person taking photos all night...). Anyway, the responsible kids we are, we knew that we couldn't vespa home, so instead they proposed that we ride some of the free bikes.

I hate bikes. HATE them. Psychological fear of them. And trying to ride one when I'm drunk and have even little sense of balance that what I normally do? Uh uh. Not. Good. I got home dinkying with Cesar, but not before a couple of bumps and bruises.

The next night out with the boys was a lot calmer - sitting around drinking a cocktail of Riesling, vodka, that mint stuff and beer. They were going out afterwards to a similar shindig, but I couldn't bring myself for a repeat adventure. So I went home and had a girl’s night in with tea and Garden State with Beatrice and Marie on the couch.

PARIS 16th: Warning: The next week or so is epic. I will not go into a ridiculous amount of details, purely due to the fact that I will most definitely write about this 48 hours in some sort of strange real-time short to medium length story. That's how much went on.Essentially, today was the day that I met Anna. And on top of this, today was THE day. The Wombats day. The one secure date that I had for the whole of my 3 months in Europe. And I spent the entire day trying to make sure that I didn't give myself a heart attack in anticipation, and miss the gig. (For those oldies who don't know, The Wombats are not some sort of weird marsupial troupe. They are a really funky, somewhat crazy band from Liverpool who all wear red raybans and sing songs like "let's dance to Joy Divison and celebrate the irony that everything is going wrong but we're so happy" or "I can see your interests wane my Dear. She wanted Mary Poppins but I took her to King Lear".) I met Anna for the first time since Croatia outside the Elysee MontMarte as the sun was going down over the Moulin Rouge. I was busy pretending that I was Ukrainian to a bunch of pushy French dickheads when I ensconced her in my arms (probably confusing them even more...). Her Indian happy jacket was ripped, so we shared a bottle of rose while I felt very cool sitting cross-legged in the middle of Monte Marte sewing it back up for her.

And then the concert. My god the concert. What I didn't realise when I bought the tickets 5 months ago, was that it was their opening night of their European tour. And. They. Went. CRAZY. Anna and I both had bruised hip bones the next day.

I also happened to stumble upon the details to their afterparty (don't ask me how); so we wound up a few metro stops down the line at a really grungy medium sized club in East Paris. Anna was joking about how cool it would be to meet them. And I told her that's easy - it just takes a bit of sass. Guaranteed, give me 2 or 3 minutes of my thing and I had us both up behind the decks! Murph, the lead singer, was on a bit of an ego trip and didn't really give anyone, not even his bandmates, much attention. Dan was pretty cool and reeeeally relaxed (too relaxed? Ahem?) but it was Tord, the quiet Norwegian bassist that I really got talking to. He's Scandinavian, I spent India with 9 Scandinavians, of course we were going to be peas in a pod! Speaking of pods, I wanted them to play a song, so I found it and highlighted it on my ipod to show them. Instead of putting it on, they TOOK my ipod and put it on! That was the first time that I caught Murph's attention. He had a flick through it, and then said "can we use this for awhile?". Yes you may, sir! What a privilege to have my ipod be the primary source of music for them to mix... Don't worry, I saved the playlist that they made... At about 3ish they all rolled into their tour bus, promised to see us when they come down to Melbourne (empty, I know) and off they went to Lille.

But the butter in the sandwich was this: there was a guy in a scarf Anna and I were dancing with for quite a chunk of the night. He turns out to be the bassist of the band that was doing the opening slot. Georgia's sweet talking ways and Anna's endearing presence earnt us an invite to Backstage for their gig the next night...

PARIS 17th: Lottie day!!!!!! LOLA! L. O. L. A. LOLA! I got a phone call waking me up from my groggy serious lack of sleep informing me that my best St. Kilda buddy was within walking distance from my house... And I'll avoid all the sentimental bullshit about seeing her for the first time in 6 months, because she's already heard it all and that's all that really needs to be heard. It was like stepping back into one of my favourite coffee shops (minus the good coffee. Parisians need to take some serious barista courses) and yabbing away. Which we did over crepes as so-so espressos for about 2 hours. Then it was walking and talking about everything aside from what we'd both been doing the past half year! I think that that is the sign of true friendship - when you don't need to ask 'so, what have you been doing' and you launch back into huge philosophical conversations; like Melbourne fashion style and Frankie :). We walked to Notre Dame and sat talking about our futures in the pews perhaps a little too loudly (I wanted to stick a post-it on my forehead that read I HAVEN'T SEEN THIS GIRL IN TOO LONG SO DEAL but I thought that would be insensitive so I decided against it.). Then we went wandering around the huge cemetery on the Eastern boundary for about 2 or 3 hours. This provided us with plenty of ironic quotes such as Lottie's "this is totally where you go when you die". It took us an hour to find Jimmy Morrison’s grave, and then we had the ingenious idea of taking a photo of the map and using the zoom to find our way around - of technology! How I (VERY occasionally) love you! We also saw Oscar Wilde's, which was covered with equally ironic, but somewhat more famous, quotes. My favourite was "the only this that you can't resist is temptation".

It was 3o'clock by now which is baguette o'clock. So we went and sat underneath the Eiffel Tower and had a late lunch. Just beautiful! In direct contrast to the situation that I found myself in a few hours later. I was told at the train station that not only could I not get out of Paris to Brussels the next day as promised, I couldn't get from Denmark to Paris OR Paris back to London. So I was essentially simultaneously stranded in 3 separate areas of Europe at once.

Putting this behind me and hoping for the best the next day, we went and met Anna (very late) for some drinks before meeting the band.It her time moseying around the area, Anna found the most gorgeous little shop full of everything you could never want nor need. Like individual glass googly eyes taken out of doll's heads. Or ice-skates on strings. Or a comb that looks like a miniature umbrella. And what were they playing in this 10metre square store in the back streets of Paris? The Cat Empire...

After this little slice of heaven, a fabulously messy night ensued. We met the rest of the band, and alternated from going to the bathroom to take swigs out of Anna's vodka flask and half falling asleep to get through the first band. Hopeless. I was getting worried.But then with a BANG and NOT a whimper, The Lanskies started. This band was so good that Lottie, Anna and I all have their CDs and are planning to pull our respective strings to get them distributed in Australia. They are really THAT good! We shook our bonbons until our scarves came untied and our heels began to blister and our lipstick began to smudge. Then the closing band came on and it was a repeat event. We fell out of the gig space at 2ish and followed the bands around on a bar crawl through tiny laneways and over cobblestones, venturing further and further away from home. Once last drinks had been called and I couldn't stand to hear Lottie and Anna both speak in fluent French to the boys all night (rendering me uncharacteristically silent in this situation) we attempted to stumble our way back home. It took nearly 2 hours, but Lottie and I made it. About an hour in, Anna realised that she was way too far away and instead caught a taxi. This left Lottie and I to literally skip down the deserted streets of Paris, listening to Sigur Ros and reflecting on the good old days...

I need to go check-in now, so I'll continue with Anna and I's Benelux adventure possibly through the big silver gates!

Wrapping up the Loose Threads - France

I would like to simultaneously say both goodbye to my epic epitahs, and also to my new method of communication with the outside world - the blog! Instead of submitting you to reading my updates in large, fortnight long chunks, I thought it would be suitable for me to simply update this daily and you can clue in whenever you're curious to see what I'm getting up to in the world... And New York is really going to be it's own bubble.

I'm sitting writing this from BAT5 (British Airways Terminal 5 in the non-backpacker speak that I have become so accoustomed to) where I have a 6 hour stop over. Normally 6 hours in an airport would sound just as fun as repeatedly stabbing yourself in the eye with a broken biro, or watching Dancing with the Stars in Swedish; but T5 is a wonderland in itself. Just an expensive wonderland... £1 fo 10 minutes... This is how much you know I love you!

Now my last more-whale-than-word email ended in Scotland, land of the now infamous 'Hairy Coo'. That was on the 9th of September. Has it really been that long? The past few weeks have been PACKED so forgive me if I alterante between giving too much information and not enough. I will inevitably pick and choose between whatever suits my diverse tastes at the time of writing.

So.

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND to LONDON, BRITIAN 9th: The free haircut that I mentioned in Scotland went just dandy, but also just a bit boring for my ecclectic tastes... 4 inches later, it's nice, but I'm going to get something edgy done when I hit to NY shores. I got in pretty late and don't think I even ate dinner and just fell asleep in my clothes on Asha's couch.

LONDON 10th: The next day I remember going back to the same heavenly scone place (sans Shakespearean actors this time), back to the same gob dropping TATE to see an exhibtion I missed, and yet again, somehow managed to miss seeing the Globe... Despite the fact that I walked past it. Twice. I met up with the beautiful creature that is Tiffany (remember her from emails ago? Choreographer cum record label manager that I met in Croatia?) and we went to one of the strangest night clubs I have ever set foot in. It was part art gallery, part live dramatic art istalation, part one-man-shows, part dancefloor and part bar. With pinball machines. And all of this was underground beneath London Bridge station. I wasn't feeling too peachy-keen though, so we called it a night as the last trains were leaving.

LONDON to PARIS, FRANCE 11th: I caught one of the last Eurostars this day before the fire in the tunnel that I'm sure that you would have all heard about. Lucky me! (Seperate lucky incidenet - I have heard about the RMIT student who was travelling in Dubrovnik, Croatia by herself and has gone missing. I know the club that she was last seen at and it's quite scary seeing someone else who just must have been in the wrong place and the wrong time... I thought that Dubrovnik was honestly one of the safest cities I had been too. I was obviously wrong). I made my way to Beatrice's house in a succession of French metro stops that I can niether pronounce nor find on a map, and surprisingly, for once, did NOT get hideously lost! I was greeted by Ceser with kisses on both cheeks. This is the boy that I met when I was 8 and he was 9 and naturally feel in love with purely for the fact that he was a French boy who kisses on both cheeks! And he was just the same - except about a foot taller. Then Baptiste walked in (Jack's age just about) and it was the same. Then Marie (21 y.o. journalism student who was travelling India at the same time as me) and that was EXACTLLY the same. Including the jealously. But it was when I saw Beatrice that I flipped out just a little bit. She's just like my mother, except Dutch/French, so the next few days were like a little slice of home. I slept in Baptiste's room, ate the most magnificent baguettes with salted butter that I may as well have just slathered on my thighs in the first place. Except it wouldn't have tasted quite as nice there.

PARIS 12th-15th: The next couple of days are a little hazy of which was on what day, so I'll group them all. Things that I can tick off my 'I've seen Paris' list:
- Eiffel Tower (climbed the 800 plus steps to the second tower. Sweating would be an understatement)
- Arc du Triumphe (spelt wrong of course. It was going to cost €9 to get to the top. No way, Jose)
- Notre Dame (Really stunning now that it's been restored. I have lots of fond 2005 Euro Choir memories of singing there; althought I found myself looking more at the reflections of the stained glass windows on the ground than the glass itself)
- Pompidou (I was way too tired to appreciate this centre for all it was worth. I spent 4 hours there, but I have seen SO many galleries that it just seems unfortunate that when you get to the one that's supposedly one of the best in the world, all the Francis Bacons and Jason Pollocks start to look the same. Cool exterior though)
- The Lourve (I met Beatrice on her lunch break here, and she showed me her favourite areas and gave me a little history lesson. She's an AMAZING artist herself, so it was nice have a personlised tour! I continued wandering around for about 4 hours after that too. Mona Lisa's looking good considering her age. I wonder if she uses L'Oreal?)
- That park outside the Lourve (I'm not even going to try and spell it. You know the one. It was really nice, but cold and raining. But you know that I love that)
- Mussee du O'rsay (you can continue to laugh while I massacre the French language. Again, I really regretted now that I've arted myself out! I have a few memories of being there with Dad back when I was a Bubba - remembering not to sneeze on Whistler's mother a la Mr Bean for an example)

That's about it for the big touritst attractions. I really spent a lot of my time simple wandering around the streets. I had my own set of keys, so I would generally wake up in the morning once everyone had gone to uni/school/work and watch French MTV and eat baguette and butter and jam; then go walkabout and whatever I came across, I saw! Paris doesn't quite 'speak' to me in the same multitude that Berlin does, albeit it really is a beautiful city to get lost in. And lost I certainly got.

By night, this city turns into a playground. I was lucky enough to have 2 fantabulous bigger siblings who were more than happy to take me out and try to get me wasted as every responsible older brother or sister does to their kin. Cesar succeeded on the first night, as Beatrice loves to remind me.

We started off drinking at dinner; then free wine at one of his friend's restraunts that she was bored of working in; then we went to one of his friend's house where about 8 of his other friends(stunning. I am yet to meet an non-attractuve, well dressed French man. Touch proverbial wood) were watching a rugby game. I fobbed my way through knowing what I was talking about as they kept refilling my glass of some lucid green liquer that tasted like a thousand liquid extra-strength breath mints. Then we all went out to a bar where it was one of their friend's 21sts... I kind of remember ordering 20 shots for €20 with one of the girls, but I'm not quite sure where they all went... Surely I would have given some away? I also remember conga lines on the dancefloor, and EVERYONE knowing my name. Even if no one else even knew who they were. It was like being a local celebrity, sans paparezi (even THERE I think that there was one person taking photos all night...). Anyway, the resposible kids we are, we knew that we couldn't vespa home, so instead they proposed that we ride some of the free bikes.

I hate bikes. HATE them. Psycological fear of them. And trying to ride one when I'm drunk and have even little sense of balance that what I normally do? Uh uh. Not. Good. I got home dinkying with Cesar, but not before a couple of bumps and bruises.

The next night out with the boys was a lot more calm - sitting around drinking a cocktail of reisling, vodka, that mint stuff and beer. They were going out afterwards to a similar shindig, but I couldn't bring myself for a repeat adventure. So I went home and had a girls night in with tea and Garden State with Beatrice and Marie on the couch.

PARIS 16th: Warning: The next week or so is epic. I will not go into a ridiculous amount of details, purely due to the fact that I will most defintely write about this 48 hours in some sort of strange real-time short to medium length story. That's how much went on.Essentially, today was the day that I met Anna. And on top of this, today was THE day. The Wombats day. The one secure date that I had for the whole of my 3 months in Europe. And I spent the entire day trying to make sure that I didn't give myself a heart attack in anticipation, and miss the gig. (For those oldies who don't know, The Wombats are not some sort of weird marsupial troupe. They are a really funky, somewhat crazy band from Liverpool who all wear red raybans and sing songs like "let's dance to Joy Divison and celebrate the irony that everything is going wrong but we're so happy" or "I can see your interests wane my Dear. She wanted Mary Poppins but I took her to King Lear".) I met Anna for the first time since Croatia outside the Elysee MontMarte as the sun was going down over the Moulin Rouge. I was busy pretending that I was Ukrainian to a bunch of pushy French dickheads when I ensconced her in my arms (probably confusing them even more...). Her Indian happy jacket was ripped, so we shared a bottle of rose while I felt very cool sitting crosslegged in the middle of Monte Marte sewing it back up for her.

And then the concert. My god the concert. What I didn't realise when I bought the tickets 5 months ago, was that it was their opening night of their European tour. And. They. Went. CRAZY. Anna and I both had bruised hip bones the next day.

I also happened to stumble upon the deatils to their afterparty (don't ask me how); so we wound up a few metro stops down the line at a really grungy medium sized club in East Paris. Anna was joking about how cool it would be to meet them. And I told her that's easy - it just takes a bit of sass. Gaurunteed, give me 2 or 3 minutes of my thing and I had us both up behind the decks! Murph, the lead singer, was on a bit of an ego trip and didn't really give anyone, not even his bandmates, much attention. Dan was pretty cool and reeeeally relaxed (too relaxed? Ahem?) but it was Tord, the quiet Norwegian bassist that I really got talking to. He's Scandanavian, I spent India with 9 Scandanavians, of course we were going to be peas in a pod! Speaking of pods, I wanted them to play a song, so I found it and highlighted it on my ipod to show them. Instead of putting it on, they TOOK my ipod and put it on! That was the first time that I caught Murph's attetnion. He had a flick through it, and then said "can we use this for awhile?". Yes you may, sir! What a privelge to have my ipod be the primary source of music for them to mix... Don't worry, I saved the playlist that they made... At about 3ish they all rolled into their tourbus, promised to see us when they come down to Melbourne (empty, I know) and off they went to Lille.

But the butter in the sandwich was this: there was a guy in a scarf Anna and I were dancing with for quite a chunk of the night. He turns out to be the bassist of the band that was doing the opening slot. Georgia's sweet talking ways and Anna's endearing presence earnt us an invite to Backstage for their gig the next night...

PARIS 17th: Lottie day!!!!!! LOLA! L. O. L. A. LOLA! I got a phonecall waking me up from my groggy serious lack of sleep informing me that my best St. Kilda buddy was within walking distance from my house... And I'll avoid all the sentimental bullshit about seeing her for the frist time in 6 months, because she's already heard it all and that's all that really needs to be heard. It was like stepping back into one of my favourite coffee shops (minus the good coffee. Parisans need to take some serious barrista courses) and yabbing away. Which we did over crepes as so-so essperssos for about 2 hours. Then it was walking and talking about everything aside from what we'd both been doing the past half year! I think that that is the sign of true friendship - when you don't need to ask 'so, what have you been doing' and you launch back into huge philosophical conversations; like Melbourne fashion style and Frankie :). We walked to Notre Dame and sat talking about our futures in the pews perhaps a little too loudly (I wanted to stick a post-it on my forehead that read I HAVEN'T SEEN THIS GIRL IN TOO LONG SO DEAL but I thought that would be insenstiive so I deccided against it.). Then we went wandering around the huge cemetry on the Eastern boundary for about 2 or 3 hours. This provided us with plenty of ironic quotes such as Lottie's "this is totally where you go when you die". It took us an hour to find Jimmy Morrisons's grave, and then we had the engenoius idea of taking a photo of the map and using the zoom to find our way around - of technology! How I (VERY occasionaly) love you! We also saw Oscare Wilde's, which was covered with equally ironic, but somewhat more famous, quotes. My favourite was "the only this that you can't resist is temptation"

It was 3o'clock by now which is baguette o'clock. So we went and sat underneath the Eiffel Tower and had a late lunch. Just beautiful! In direct contrast to the situation that I found myself in a few hours later. I was told at the train station that not only could I not get out of Paris to Bruseels the next day as promised, I couldn't get from Denmark to Paris OR Paris back to London. So I was essentially simultaneously stranded in 3 sepereate areas of Europe at once.

Putting this behind me and hoping for the best the next day, we went and met Anna (very late) for some drinks before meeting the band.It her time moseying around the area, Anna found the most gorgeous little shop full of everything you could never want nor need. Like individual glass googly eyes taken out of doll's heads. Or iceskates on strings. Or a comb that looks like a minuature umbrella. And what were they playing in this 10metre square store in the back streets of Paris? The Cat Empire...

After this little slice of heaven, a fabourlously messy night ensued. We met the rest of the band, and alternated from going to the bathroom to take swigs out of Anna's vodka flask and half falling asleep to get through the first band. Hopless. I was getting worried.But then with a BANG and NOT a whimper, The Lanskies started. This band was so good that Lottie, Anna and I all have their CDs and are planning to pull our respective strings to get them distributed in Australia. They are really THAT good! We shook our bonbons until our scarves came untied and our heels began to blister and our lipstick began to smudge. Then the closing band came on and it was a repeat event. We fell out of the gig space at 2ish and followed the bands around on a bar crawl through tiny laneways and over cobblestones, venturing further and further away from home. Once last drinks had been called and I couldn't stand to hear Lottie and Anna both speak in fluent French to the boys all night (rendering me uncharacteristically silent in this situation) we attempted to stumble our way back home. It took nearly 2 hours, but Lottie and I made it. About an hour in, Anna realised that she was way too far away and instead caught a taxi. This left Lottie and I to literally skip down the deserted streets of Paris, listening to Sigur Ros and reflecting on the good old days...

I need to go check-in now, so I'll continue with Anna and I's Bennelux adventure possibly through the big silver gates!