... and now for something completely different.

ah yes. an absence from blogging of more than a month can mean one of two things. either there is feverishly so much writing happening that there is little time for much else, or that there is none happening at all which makes there seem to be nothing but empty time, all wasted. unfortunately in my case, the situation is the latter. nothing happening apart from a lot of thinking about why, some self-loathing, much housework, and a little bit of baking. no need to worry though - i'm sure it's a temporary ailment. and to prove that point that is hasn't all been red wine, cigarettes and woebegone soliloquies, here is a short highlights package of the past month:
- my birthday, for which mark and i went to have dinner at the delightful tempura hajime - i had put us on the waitlist and fully expected to be going there around march next year, but we got a call early. i will not put pics up because a quick googling will show you other blogs that did it better.
- my birthday part 2, for which mark and i spent a relaxing weekend in a hotel in the city. we went to koko black and savoured their wares, and had dinner alfresco in hardware lane. lovely. yes. it's all about food.
- on that note, finding the easiest, most perfect meatloaf recipe. give it a go - you won't regret it (unless you're a vegetarian in which case, pretend i never said a thing)
- farewelled a dear friend, who is off to have many a new adventure in dubai, with a sharing of stories, wine and a sprinkling of tears.
- flicking on rove for the first time in ages the other night and watching k-rudd do his thing.
- also, am slowly increasing my win-to-loss ratio on scrabulous, which is a welcome change.

pictures: moving and otherwise

recently i took myself to the movies and watched forbidden lie$. if you haven't heard about the film yet, it's a documentary based on the release of norma khouri's novel forbidden love, and her subsequent outing as a bit of a psycho. hailed at the time as one of the biggest literary hoaxes in australia (if not the world), the doco gives a thrilling - at times infuriating - insight into the mind of a conwoman. it was very frustrating to sit there and listen to her try and justify herself when it was becoming more and more obvious that she was just making things up to try and justify things she'd made up earlier. all in all, norma khouri comes across as a very confused, highly intelligent, and very disturbed woman. either way, i wouldn't want to meet her ever. anyway, i had a choc-chilli choctop, so that helped calm my nerves somewhat.

i have also traded my phone in for a blackberry pearl recently and i must admit i have quite fallen for my new bit of gadgetry (i wear my 'queen of the dorks' badge with pride, thanks for asking). following are some piccies i took on the way to and from work recently:

succulent i planted in our garden obviously feels at home:

the walk to the bus stop used to be lined with cherry blossoms, now it's red-filtered sunshine:

hedge near the bus stop reminds me of primary school in sydney:

accidental shot while waiting for the train - i shall call it 'waiting':

green and gold - shrub and paint puddle at the vca buildings in sth melbourne.

oh - did becca's monologue at the end of this week's ep of californication have anyone else on the brink of bawling?

carrots, cheesecakes, martinis and shooting stars

on sunday morning i had a brain-wave and wrote a poem about something that had been floating around in my brain for a while. now i have had some feedback and tweaked it enough to feel it's finished but i have no idea what to do with it now.... anyway. i got a real high after i'd finished it, and it was a great feeling - for that brief window in time after you've finished something you've made and you're really please with how it turned out, you're just totally invincible... well, this feeling happened to coincide with a monday morning at work, and amazingly, it still lifted me up and sent me soaring... for about three hours. then i was dumped back into reality, rolled and rumbled in the harsh sands of reality, totally winded and dislocated and bruised, and i had to literally drag myself through the rest of the day. what kept me going was the promise of today, of the rest of the week, and a concerted, renewed effort to get back on track with the writing. if a poem can deliver such a potent high, imagine how i'll feel when i blast my way through the current scaffolding around my story? imagine.
that, and i have promised myself a martini on friday afternoon if i am a good girl this week.
hey, a girl needs a carrot occasionally, even if that carrot is a martini. get what i'm saying?

also speaking of things you make that result in a feeling of invincibility, i made this on the weekend and highly recommend it to all and sundry. trust me, you will not regret it.

last night while i was walking from the bus to my house, i saw a shooting star. initially i thought it was a very fast-moving plane, but i realised it was a shooting star when it disintegrated and left a brief but sparkly tail. i stopped and couldn't stop smiling, and actually said 'thank you' out loud. i have not seen one since i used to live in fiji, where the sky was huge and dark, and shooting stars were plenty. it so happened that mark was in our driveway at the same time, and saw it too - his first shooting star ever. special.

martinis, mwf and more

once when i was in sydney, i went to a bar near the opera house and asked the bar-keep to make me a cocktail. i didn't want anything on the menu, so asked him to create something for me - soemthing with lemongrass, lime, fresh chillies and lychees in it. he made a valiant effort and seemed pretty pleased with the result himself, though i was left with a cocktail that was all-right, but not really very close to what i'd had in mind when i'd walked in to the place (i guess it's kinda like deciding you want to find the perfect little black dress befroe you leave the house on a shopping mission - doomed from the start, really). anyway, last week i tried again, this time in melbourne at a bar called the beach club in docklands. never been in there befroe that night, but we found it on our wander - mark and i decided we would explore there in the evening. anyway, this time the guy hit the nail on the head, and i loved what he made of it. i asked him to use lychee liquer and green tea liquer, which when taken individually are not that hot, but together... very nice. he put some lime in there, some apple juice too, maybe - it was lovely. i got to name it - so uf you're ever at the beach club at docklands, ask for a shalini's ly-tea-ni, and tell me what you think of it.

thanks to the lovely marieke, friday morning a friend and i went to the taping of the first tuesday book club which usually happens in sydney, but because of the melbourne writers festival, was happening at abc elsternwick. it was so much fun to watch it all come together - i won't say who was on, just that it was a great mix and there were many laughs. it'll be interesting to see how different the what airs is to what we saw live.

haven't been to much yet at the mwf apart from last sunday evening where sonya hartnett talked about writing (great session, loving the fact that it was free), and stayed for the shallow end afterward (also free, and also a corker. they also have martinis which i am yet to try... hmmm). i think it's safe to say i will be lurking at the malthouse for the better part of the end of this week...