Euro Holiday

Just over a week ago, a friend here told me it would cost the same amount to fly to LA as it would to Paris for thanksgiving. On Monday we booked our tickets, and today I fly to Paris.

It's been a long long dream of mind to go to Europe - especially Paris, and I'd always been waiting to do it properly - as in for a long period of time. But stuff it. 4 days will have to do.

Sooooo excited!

Brunch for One

This morning I hastened to leave Anya's as I picked up my bag that I'd left there the night before. While I love her company, and her sun soaked apartment with potatoes boiling on the stove, and gossip girl playing in the background, I still yearned to be somewhere... dining by myself.

Ten minutes later, in a wooded restaurant around the corner, I sit at the bar awash with Miles Davis. A lady beside me spreads her paper and ordered eggs, a lady behind me takes out her novel and sips her coffee. Brunch for one all round please.

Outside the crisp cool air reminds me of those sunny but cold Toowoomba days. My coat is on the back of my chair, my scarf still around my neck. I feel very lucky. The change of season can only truly be embraced once you stop and observe it -  preferably quietly, over a cup of tea and a plate of eggs benedict.

Photo credit: My Cup of Tea

Dad Joke

When talking to my father about Ada's incontinence problem, he said "Well, I guess shit happens."
Long pause while he laughs at his own joke.

I Love You (An Awkward Family Moment)

The first time I recall my father ever saying the words “I love you” to us kids was when I was 14 and my brother was J-Rad 12. We were driving back from a Church on a Sunday night (our family liked to "dabble" in Christianity for curiosity’s sake) and were discussing weather we agreed with tonight’s service or not. After a comfortable silence, Dad glanced back at us and said matter-of-factly: “Kids, I love you.” This segued nicely into a very uncomfortable silence. So he continued - “I know we never say it to each other, but we should be able to, and I’d like to hear you say it back.”

J-Rad and I had frozen - stupefied in the back seat. It’s not that we didn’t know he loved us it’s just, as he said, we had never been in the habit of expressing it this way. Maybe you come from a family like that. Or maybe your family is not very affectionate or has other quirks and rituals. Each to their own really. Love is more about actions than it is about words, so saying them out loud felt unnecessary. Like being hit over the head with a giant fish. 

I remember in that moment feeling a mixture of both pleasant surprise and severe nausea. The same feelings one gets when watching an episode Seventh Heaven. Finally I made the first move, and muttered quickly: “I love you too.” It was weird, and I was relieved to have it over and done with. J-Rad just sat there refusing to say it - likely contemplating a jump and roll from our moving vehicle. “No I’m not saying it!” he said.

In the years that followed that awkward conversation, both my Dad and my Step-Mum continued to say it every now and again. We noticed the ease with which our step-siblings would return the words – even initiating it at the end of their phone conversations. 

Gradually it became a more natural way to articulate the love we felt, without needing to gag. I even tried it out on Mum and her side of the family, who would freeze, not knowing what to say back. “Rito, yes, bye – uh, you too,” Nanny would say - taken by surprise if I used it on the phone.

A few months ago, I received a letter from Nanny in the mail telling me about J-Rad’s new job offer in Sydney:

The last thing J-Rad said to me when he brought his things here from his unit … [he was going traveling]. He kissed me and gave me a hug and said he loved me. How lucky I am to have a grandson like him and a granddaughter like you. We are so blessed.

It made my eyes water reading it. For a family who rarely knew how to verbalize love so freely, we are all doing a grand job of it now. I’m grateful to Dad for his courageousness in opening that door to us as teens, and the persistence it took to change our families habits. We certainly don't over use it. But we can say it when we want to, without feeling too weird.

So there it is dearest fam. I love you.

photo credits:Aurigid meterorite #2 Ice cased Adelie Pengins The future is bright

Fashion's Night Out #2

Is it too late to blog about Fashion’s Night Out?... Good.

It was pretty rad - and not because of the fashion, but because there was a man in the Louis Vitton store window licking a LV handbag - slowly and sensually.

It was 10pm when I got there, and I watched him for a good ten minutes. Had he been licking the handbag since 7pm? I wish I’d arrived there earlier!

The rest of the night was really just an insane battling of crowds. EXCEPT for Sarah Silverman's performance at the Mac Makeup store in Soho at 8pm. It was worth the wait (I lined up for over an hour). She signed a free copy of her awesome book The Bedwetter, and also sang a song where the only lyric in the refrain was ‘cunt.’ Bless her!

Here's some more pics:

 Manic crowds outside Bergdorf Goodman

Dolls of designers at Barney's

If you could get inside the LV store, men were dancing on the staircase. 

Desert!

It was a good night, but a little overwhelming to try and plan. With a gazillion celebrities and at least an hours wait to see just one, you really have to chose your favorite and be satisfied with that. By 9:30pm most of the free drinks have dried up and the crowds on the streets are a nightmare. But it's kind of awesome to have this kind of crazed atmosphere that doesn't revolve around a sporting event. Go fashion!

Poor Harry

My mum’s a vegan. She’s turned my step-dad vegan and more recently his adorable collie-dog, Harry vegan as well.

I remember when she told me over the phone one day “Harry’s a vegan now.” She was thrilled. I thought about this for a moment, and wanted to say - “Well is Harry really a vegan? Or is he being forced into it? Like did you convince him to turn or was it like - eat vegetables and rice, or starve.” The ironic thing is, when I ask mum why she’s a vegan, (apart from the environmental impact) it’s mainly because she doesn’t like to be cruel to animals. 

Cocktails and Suicide

Last month I caught up with an old friend (Pat) at a rooftop bar over cocktails and… a suicide.

(new rooftop bar in Hell's Kitchen)

Pat and I had met eight years ago in our early twenties, teaching English in China. She was mourning the death of a close friend in a drowning accident, and I was mourning the completion of a three year business degree that I had no desire to use. There we found ourselves working for a dodgy Chinaman, eating boiled chicken’s feet and being treated like celebrities, all because of the colour of our skin. When we try and tell other about the craziness that goes on in China, they don't seem to care.

“I forget I can talk to you about this stuff,” Pat said. I sipped my martini staring out at the lights of Manhattan and thinking about skinned goats, when a large dark object fell from above and over the edge of the deck. It was about the size of a miniature grand piano, which I vainly hoped it was, but when people rushed over to the edge of the glass, they confirmed it was a person.

We were too short to see over the ledge, but the tall guy next to us said they had landed on the road in front of a cab – that had stopped just in time.  People across the road were frozen in their tracks. Most got on their phones to call 911, and within two minutes we could hear and see sirens heading towards the hotel. On the rooftop, we all became instant buddies bonded by tragedy. We talked to one another about what we’d seen, and made facial expressions that read “eeek” and “how sad.”

The horrible thing was, when we looked up, we could clearly see where they would have jumped from. The penthouse was only one floor above, and set about 5 meters back, overlooking all the action in the bar. How long had they stood up there? How terrible that no one had seen them. Also, how did they propel them selves far enough to clear the bar area?

After a while my morbid curiosity won out against my fear of gore, and I asked one of the staff members near me if I could stand on the chair to have a  look at the body.

“No. You’re not allowed,” he said, moving the chair away. Fair enough.

We waited before going downstairs, where staff ushered us out the side door. Police tape now surrounded the hotel, and in the distance flashing lights reflected off the white sheet that covered the body.

***

Later that night, in a different borough and after many a bar / much saki / vodka from teacups and random acts of dancing, we remembered the roof-top.

“You know 16 floors is not very high,” said Pat. “If  you’re going to go, why not go skydiving and just not pull the shoot. That’s what I’d do.” 

That was not a lie. Pat is a living poster child for a Pepsi-max commercial. As long as I’ve known her, she has always lived life "to the max." She's practically a full-time snowboarder, and since China she’s: studied film, been married, divorced, lived in Canada, NewZealand and Paris, and she’s younger than me. Currently she has a crush on her tattoo artist who designed a giant quill feather dripping in ink that spans her right rib cage and ends at her pelvic bone. (It actually looks rather elegant.)

Even that night, in the sushi restaurant which was empty and dead, she’d pointed to every single picture on the menu page and ordered one of each.

“I love picture menus!” she exclaimed, pointing to a picture of a saki flask. 

It seems kind-of ironic that I took a someone so full of life to bar where another person decided to end theirs.  But I'm glad I was with her, as we were able to turn the night around. Next year she plans to move  here to study again. This time - jewellery design.