We moved house to City Beach last week.
I thought it would be fun to see our progress over time. This happened every 60 seconds and I chopped out the boring bits like sleep and work etc. The room goes from neat-ish to messy several times.
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.
(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
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. 
Life certainly has its way of instructing.
At some point in life you’ll learn to control your anger, and perhaps not bust out over road-rage. Or overcome low self esteem and view youself for the true potential that you are.
To find your perfect match in a partner is one of my life’s lessons.
And when I say perfect match I do mean it.
Perfectly complimentary.
She’s got personality, she’s got quirk, and she’s got the radiant aura and eyes that glow like miniature galaxies.
We get along like a house on fire that’s made of pure magnesium.
We both ‘get’ each other in shameless humanity. But as always things are never so easy. Life will instruct. Things are never this easy.
The lesson? Patience.
She’s 6000 kilometres away in Brisbane. She was over here to see me for just 12 days.
They flittered by. Days melted into the next which were dissected with rolls of film.
And it’s that which I rely on to get through the next 6 months before seeing her again.
Till then. It’s one day at a time.
So, I was hit by a car today.
One and a half tonnes of metal verses sixty three kilogram me on a ten kilo bike. And I walked away from it.
In my effort to “find thirty” and do my bit for the environment I ride the ten kilometres to work. It’s a puffy little hike, most of which is uphill and usually in the smug face of a strong headwind. Home, it’s a gradual decline, so I can pick up some speed, but it’s dark.
Today, as I was exiting the round-a-bout on Hepburn Ave, I was struck by a car. I had right of way – like any vehicle on the road would. But then again I’m not surrounded by one and a half tonnes of metal.
I ‘m used to the angle of headlights of cars on the road – it’s a safe buffer zone when I see the angle shrink. That way I know they are bypassing me.
But there isn’t much you can do when you see a set of headlights directly behind and hear the rumble of an engine. You kind of cringe and brace yourself. And hope for the best.
Of course I didn’t think about all these things when I was struck.
I saw lights behind me.
There was an impact.
My field of view went tumbling around and you see snippets of things:
My bike twisting free.
Seeing a spinning black tyre that fills your eyeball.
The sparkly texture bitumen has at night.
The ‘under car view’ mechanics dream about, but are the nightmares of cyclists.
I rolled and skidded to a halt on the side of the road leaving a deal of skin on the bitumen. Silence. I was panting. No pain yet. My elbows are numb.
She stops the car and my bike is ten meters down the road. Her little boy jumps out first yelling “I can fix your bike mister” I cannot process this thought. She follows him starting what will be a fifteen minute manta of “I’m so sorry”. Yeah. Sorry could have killed me.
I get up. “Didn’t you see me?” I’m trying to process my feelings of anger but I can’t. I’m not sure what to feel – I’m probably in shock.
“Are you OK?” [Well no I’m not you just fucking hit me.]
“Yeah I’m fine, I’m just grazed but everything is OK. No broken bones or anything.”
I look at my elbows. It’s funny sometimes how a visual indicator of injury spurs the body to complete the pain realisation. Ouch FARK. They’re nicely grazed and dripping with blood.
I see cars stop – I tell her to move her car to clear traffic.
“I’ll pay for everything – here is my mobile number, my name is __________”
Trying to enter a new contact in Windows Mobile 6.0 after being stuck by a car is like having someone pull a card trick on you – when you were sure of the answer. It’s a vanishing, frustrating affair. And try holding a stylus to enter it all. Needless to say, she just called me and I saved the number.
She says she was distracted by her screaming/crying kids in the car. I don’t really care. I could have been seriously injured or killed.
She’s just happy I’m OK. And I am too. I’m not broken. Just bruised, grazed and sore. She offers to pay for everything and so she should – I had right of way.
She leaves and I’m there standing on the side of the road processing this all. I call my Dad and tell him what happened – my Mum will be there in a minute.
Upon hanging up a police car appears. Apparently someone reported a cyclist struck by a car. They are here for me. I tell them what happened. They go over a few legalities of my options. The police woman maintains sharp eye contact possibly to asses a state of shock. I’m more lucid now. They offer me a lift.
On the way home, I’m filled with the kind of thanks when you realise how close you come to serious injury or death – my bike ended up under one and a half tonnes of metal and I didn’t. I grin like an idiot. I just cheated death. And now I’m in the back of a paddy wagon.
I had recently purchased a new camera. The Canon 5D Mark II and I have made it a habit to shoot in RAW format. RAW are files which are not compressed by the camera thus they contain all the colour information that other programs like Photoshop and Lightroom use to manipulate the images. RAW files also take up lots of space because they are, well, larger files. And I mean BIG. 22 mega bytes per photo, times that by, say, 200 per photo shoot and you have a few GB of material. So it was only a matter of time before my current 250GB harddrive became digitally obese.
Thus I bought a nice new 1 TB external.
I had just successfully transferred all my files over to the 1 TB. <Transfer Complete> it read on my monitor – after the 7hrs that it took, and me hoping the storm raging around me didn’t cut the power. Kind of like one of those bastard power surges that fuck up all your electronics. There was one. I did it myself.
See. Laptop cables and this particular make of external harddrive both share identical cables. Well they look identical when they’re just hooked on the top of the table as you busying yourself with ‘room cleanup-to-make-way-for-the-new-harddrive duties’. And there you have it. It put the wrong chord in and in less than a second all my photos of were gone. To add insult to injury, I had just deleted the previous copy from the old 250GB harddive saying to myself “why on earth would I need two separate copies?”
I now know why.
