Sunday was not only the birthday of my brother (the auspicious 21) and my partner’s brother (25).
But it was also the wedding day of my cousin.
Although I was not the offical photographer, I simply couldn’t resist taking a few candid pics of the day.
To capture the energy, as my gift to them.
Congratulations guys. You’re a beautiful couple. May you have many joyous years ahead.
More photos here.
As life would have it, when I want to ramp up more of the fun things, I get the things that I’d rather not have. A roster crammed with work, more consulting roles, more tastings, and less time to do it all in.
So you could say this is a form of apology for all the readers seeking small bar information. I’ll endeavour to visit more in the next few weeks.
But as for now, I’m a little anxious over a wedding that a friend of mine has shanghaied me into photographing. She ’strongly insisted’ that I do the photography for her, this being the first ever paid gig.
Ah well, she loved the pre-wedding shoot, and I’m sure it can’t be that bad. They’re an electric couple and capturing that energy won’t be hard.
And to the bride and groom, I wish you the best of what life has to offer.
Fingers crossed.
I was in the city the other day and saw colourful hand prints on the wall in Forrest Chase.
These were hand prints of supporters. Supporters against the abhorrent industry of human sex trafficking.
Of all the maligned things humans inflect upon each other, child/young person sex trafficking is the most diabolically horrific. Here are a few facts taken from The Body Shop’s site.
To show your support against atrociousness inflected upon the world’s innocent, click on the above link to The Body Shop.
(Warning – shameless self-promotion ahead)
It was quite some time ago that Steve [now editor of DDD] and I talked about starting a literary magazine for Perth. It was at Alda’s on a later summer day. It was a casual conversation born at a writing-meet held by myself to help writers publish their work. From small things, big things grow. Even magazines.
Dotdotdash came into being by a collaboration of artists, writers and a platoon of tireless helpers. All staff are volunteers with not a penny to be made. Its topics cover creative non-fiction, travel, poetry, short story. It’s textured with art throughout. The first topic – quicksand.Steve has done a fantastic job creating a magazine showcasing some of Perth’s up-and-coming writers and artists.
Definitely watch this space.
(Quarterly)
Issue 01 (Quicksand)
Out now
So I was supposed to have a get-away down South.
1 week of floundering around wineries of Margaret River, tasting wines and seasonal produce.
But Mr Murphy’s Law was rightfully instructing. We got sick.
3 days savagely bed ridden with a bout of gastro-intestinal dysfunction. Hoary! for Gastrolyte or I’d probably be dead.
Consolation prize: you get to discover the eateries 15 min drive from your hotel. Meal-up was one of those places.
It’s a kinda shop, open kitchen, tapas, light eatery thingy that is approachable at random hours of the day. Well random for the dysfunctional intestines we seemed to be suffering from.
The ‘take’ is: fresh, organic, wholesome and holistic. You will eat off biodegradable plates with biodegradable cutlery. The food is mindfully crafted by Chef Adam Lane. Nicolette helps with front of house with her gorgeous demeanour and stunning heterochromatic eyes (different eye colour). Husband and wife team helped by Lisa Tayolr. The food is nothing short of amazing. End of story.
Warming food. Warming philosophy. Love it. It helped healed my wretched belly
Meal-up
Dunsborough
P 9755 34 11
…and nobody gets hurt.
For this is my manta in the morning.
Okay. I may have a slight caffeine addiction, but I like the feeling caffeine gives to my brain – that tingly masseuse reinvigorating my neural pathways. And it tastes freaking good too, that is, if you have the right beans.
If you are a coffee buff in Perth then you would know 5 Senses. If you don’t know the brand, then I urge you to try them.
Essentially it started out as a PNG coffee grown by a small village in Papua New Guinea called Simbu. The local government funded a project to assist in sustainability and diversification. The coffee is grown on mixed use land so the growers are not reliant on coffee as an income per se.
This has three fold advantage:
I won’t explore the flavour and aroma characteristics of this coffee because I don’t understand enough about coffee to do so.
All I know is, it’s very palatable for the tongue and the conscience.
In the era of silicon chips, where e-mails are the currency of distant dialogue, the humble hand written letter has become a thing of the past. Let’s face it, our world has become and global village spun from fibre optics. Communication is woven into immediacy. We value the instantaneousness that has become a communicative standard. So what becomes of the fate of something that takes days to reach its destination? What becomes for something that doesn’t have spellcheck, grammar check, auto correct and save for later? Things are accelerating. After all it isn’t called snail mail for no reason.
Real letters require effort to execute. And if you’re anything like me and can type much faster than you can hand write it also requires you to slow down your thinking to snail’s pace. You’ll probably have to keep your writing neat too. How many friends would you be able to distinguish by their handwriting alone?
Despite being able to communicate with the family via phone and video link, troops still send mail home.Why? It’s written by the hand that’s reluctantly been on a gun and scrambled for fire cover. There is something intangible about the exchange of ink on paper and by the hand that signs it. Something that strikes a chord in all of us, that unblinking, open wound. The frailty of what it is to be human – and to crave a meaningful exchange.
So now I send real letters as well as emails, tweets, instant messenger and phone texts etcetera.
It may not be as fast.
But I love it.
“Of course, letters by their nature document periods of separation.”
[Fiona Capp, In the Garden, The Montly, June 2009]
A feature of all lunch bars in any industrial area, the plastic tasselled entry curtain suggests one of two things: the presence of flies and other winged insects are not wanted; and at some point during the year, a desire to keep the cold in, or the cold out. Today it was keeping the cold out. But only barely.
I’m standing in one here, in Wangara Industrial area. A market garden-cum-industrial precinct, which in the early 2000s, the greedy demand to service the mining boom, spread its tentacles in Perth.
Graced with only five dollars in my wallet squinting at the chalk board menu, my wet Vollyes squeak on the tiled floor announcing my presence. The moaning drone of an extractor fan from the open planned kitchen provides an auditory cover assuring an otherwise awkward entrance. I smell toasted sandwiches hissing on a hot plate. That kind of caramalised fried bread character, reminiscent of school tuck-shops—but these tuck-shops now are servicing bigger, hungrier kids.
My lift to pick me up (from dropping off my car for servicing) shan’t be long away. Ten minutes max. Long enough perhaps for a quick redeeming coffee from next door – the banana and almonds that formed a slapdash breakfast behind the wheel, failed to shoosh my groaning stomach.
An Asian man with a round face and piercing eyes greets me in his own take of an Australian welcome.
‘Goo-dae Mayte’. He smiles as he ferries fried goods to the bain-marie. His accent is thick Vietnamese.
He glistens under glistening foods under glistening lights. The fried wares include potato scallops, Chiko rolls and those ubiquitous beef cheese sausages that always look desiccated – the skin shrunk around a filling turned stubborn in the spotlight of cookery failure. I cringe at the thought of their complexion at the end of a day’s trade. Vomit rises in my mind.
‘G’day’, I casually say. I shiver from the cold and the radiant heat from the heat lamps is an odd but welcome comfort. I espy a coffee machine. It’s an automatic. A one button no-brainer. The kind you always find in delis and quasi ‘café’s’ less able to handle a proper extraction with a reasonably skilled barista.
I figure asking for an espresso would be too exotic, wankerish and probably lost in translation. After all this is a disparate lunch bar. English-as-a-second-language lunch bar owners, in a gruff industrial area like Wangara. Most of the customers are ‘true blue’ it makes Vegemite look like an import. I make no apologies for my assumption that the maxim for coffee around here is probably two, maybe three coffees. Cappuccino, Flat White and Long Black. ‘Can I please get a long black?’
The man gives me a cow eyed backwards stare towards the direction of a woman busying herself arranging patisseries wrapped in clingflim. Dusted with icing sugar, they too will glisten into a syrupy slime and soggy pastry at the end of the day. I imagine their clientele are not as fussy as me. She says something to him in Vietnamese.
‘Loan Blat?’ He says in hope and validation.
Yes, Long Black.
‘Wee Mil?’ She says.
No thanks.
‘Wee shoo-gar?’
No thanks.
‘Velly stlong Cob-bei’. The woman smiles. Her teeth are stained brown and wrinkles make deltas around her eyes.
Yeah, I smile.
I stand there rubbing the back of my neck as if it were stiff from bad posture. I need something to lurch my half slumbered brain from the memory of sleep.
The man stands there feigning to work the machine. I suspect this is a husband and wife team. Their business card I see later on the counter attests to this. She, in typical Asian wife fashion, elbows him off a kitchen apparatus ushering him to busy himself with something he can’t fuck up. A foam cup is placed under the double spout black with patina for one that is used as oft. It makes a hollow ‘tock’ sound. SHORT BLACK button is pressed.
Those automatic coffee machines always make a cascade of ricketing and clanging. It reminds me of an old five CD changer I once had. The cup fills by a steamy third.
Like most lunch bars in industrial areas feeding men with bottomless stomachs, more is ALWAYS better. The generosity of the woman in her smile and demeanour was not going to let me leave with a half filled cup. It will be another five minutes and two more buttons and a whole lot more clanging before the cup brims. I made a few more observations whilst waiting.
–I always feel impelled to make small talk about something, anything. But when there is a language barrier, I stand there and sense the other party wants to talk too, but can’t. I just smile like an idiot and feel my shortcomings of only knowing English.
–There is a tiny ATM in the corner. By tiny I mean tiny. If you were to put an existing ATM in a cardboard compactor and it had implosive joints this would be the result.
–Today’s paper is on sale. Another near air-disaster.
–There is a sinister looking marble budda on the counter covered in loose change. He has a one dollar in his mouth which looks like a gold chocolate coin.
–In the bain-marie there is something called ‘Wing Dings’. I’m slightly confused as to what part of what animal it has come from.
–There are some REALLY fresh fair dinkum Vietnamese spring-rolls. I’m almost tempted but remembering my caveman diet—Bugger.
–I love the way immigrants bring something from the old country to the new. The shrine in the corner , the ‘prosperity cat’ and above all a desire to own these little shops and eke out a living in fair go Australia. Lots of them work the jobs many Australians ‘can’t be arsed’, then we wonder why we’re not the ones driving around in a new Mercedes.
She over fills the last automatic pour and the crema is lost into the drip tray. Dam, the best part. The husband is out the back flipping the toasted cheese sandwiches which I must admit look appetising. She levels out the coffee and places a firm lid. I pick it up with both hands from hers. It feels like a hot water bottle. The foam is disconcertingly thin.
‘Tree dolla’. Bargain.
I stand outside. The sun has risen behind heavy cloud to the east and thinner bands rise from the south. It gives an otherworldly aura about this place in the light drizzle that I’m cowering to avoid. It’s eerily still and cold as a morgue. I inspect my cup of inspiration. Steam licks my face, whispering my eyelashes in warmth. I take a sip preparing myself for a Coffea draconica.
I’m reasonably impressed.
Unless you have lived your life in a cave chances are you would have danced to a Michael Jackson song in your youth. Like him or not, but Micheal Jackson was the undisputed King of Pop. He was a great entertainer, music producer and trail blazer of the 1980s.
Now I’m not an 80s revivalist, but his music (which I believed peaked in the 80s) was a defining moment of the last century. It’s sad to hear of the sudden passing of this great star.
Michael (although you dangled infants out of hotel room windows, did questionable things with young boys, spent ridiculous amounts of money on facial surgery, changed your skin colour, lived in a theme park, had a chimp as a pet and did questionable things to it, married the King of Rock’s daughter, named your children ‘Princes’, wore a particulate mask in public, pretend to sleep in a hyperbaric chamber and grabbed your crotch mid-dance), you will be missed. 
