Rants about everything, anything and yet nothing at all.

I snap back, Only for a moment. Mostly, I don’t seem to slow down

I had a really ghastly day today, one of the worst so far this year. It’s only the 2nd week back at uni and already I am so stressed out I think I’m going to snap. It’s largely the inter-people problems that have me baffled the most – it’s such a small department you don’t want to piss anyone off, but what happens when someone really pisses you off?!! I’ll cut myself short there before I start an endless rant about everything which will only send me to bed more wound up.

Instead, I’ll recommend something: BookDepository.co.uk. Not only do they ship for free internationally, but they also do a really sweet deal. I managed to get my Real Book within a week of ordering it, and at only a fraction of the price of what other websites or local bookstores can offer me.

Also, I dug up some very old photos from hockey tournament back in 2008. Here are three lovely view from our hotel room at Surfer’s Paradise on the Gold Coast that I wish I could be brought back to…

And that’s just the river side of things.

I’ve realised that I really need to set down a date for sometime in term break, where I will indulge in something awesome… some sort of exciting event that I can look forward to. I think I would be much more motivated during the next 4 remaining weeks of the first half of semester one, if I could find something to work towards and be really excited and enthusiastic about. Also, I’m seeing MGMT in a week’s time; and I know that it sounds awful, but I don’t have a tendency to work myself up and get excited towards gigs, so I am and will be feeling pretty blasé until it actually happens. Is anything life-changingly awesome happening in 4 weeks’ time?

In the meantime, late night scribbles concocted seconds ago:

We’re missing, messing everything
In the moment
nothing can slow us down.
We’re kissing, caressing every
Moment
nothing will draw a frown.

and in those heartbeats
where we sharply inhale
with half held breath
as if pausing could freeze
perfection forever.

We’re young, for now, only
for a moment
until the sun comes round.
We’re reunited, requited,
and in you
my heart was found.

So we hold it close, When we feel the most – Like a love that we could not leave behind

Three photos I took in LACMA a couple of months ago. I don’t know what it is with my obsession – and often OCD – about numbers; especially the number 3.

I have such a great love of art galleries, art museums… and as I mentioned here, I’m often more preoccupied with the space itself, rather than what’s in it. I took those photos in a section of the art museum where the minimalism just got too much and I was far more interested in the floorboards and white walls, than the large canvases featuring large blocks of colours that were on said walls. I know, I know – it sounds terrible – but whilst I’m into countless forms of art, there are just some things I find more fascinating than this “minimalistic” theme in this wing of things.

“Those who are trying to find love will end up with hatred, frustration and insanity. Those who are trying to find wealth will end up totally neurotic, psychotic and totally crab. Because if you are trying to find something, you have basically, intentionally, intuitively, and individually accepted that you do not have it.” – Yogi Bhajan

I read this quote just before, and it’s completely gripped me in the sense that I find it so true. Or at least, the latter part of it. Such a bittersweet declaration that most of us would not think of viewing things this way. Or perhaps, more correctly, we wouldn’t want to.

The good news with me posting this blog entry is that, hurray, I’m still alive and haven’t suffered from any major nerve damages from my wisdom teeth removal surgery on Thursday. The bad news is that all those worries I had about general anesthesia should have been the least of my worries. Shortly after surgery (sometime after 8am), I woke at around 9.15am and the first thing that gripped me was how sore my throat was, from whatever pipes they had shoved down it to help me breathe and suck out saliva, etc. The next thing that I felt was the fact that I couldn’t feel most of the bottom half of my face. All of this so far is pretty standard, thus far, and I was relieved when my surgeon said I should be able to feel in a few hours, and that I would be able to eat rather normally by that evening – fantastic news, really, as I was starving by that point.

However, my paranoia and problems began when I started asking my sister, my friends and friends of friends who had had their wisdom teeth removed as well, to see how long it was before they regained feeling in their mouths. My sister merely said “a few hours”, and the worst I’d heard was “12 hours”, so I was thinking surely, by midnight at the latest, I would be able to feel and move my mouth. I spent much of the day mooching and lounging around, reading, watching TV, falling asleep in the boy’s arms whilst watching TV – that sort of thing – and making a general dick of myself by not being able to talk properly because I couldn’t feel my tongue and my jaw was locked up pretty tightly.

By the midnight, 1am mark, everyone had gone to sleep, and I asked my mother to wake me up in the morning to see whether or not I could feel or not, or if I should ring my surgeon up (apparently she had nightmares about this, oops). I was starting to freak out that I wasn’t even feeling any tingling in my face, you know, signs that the local anesthesia was wearing off – and my bottom lip was cold! I even started having thoughts as to whether I’d rather I had a paralysed leg or a paralysed bottom jaw… my imagination pretty much took off and ran far, far away into the realms of worst case scenarios. After failing to sleep in bed, I ended up on the couch, channel surfing and trying desperately to fall asleep. I ended up making myself a “cup-a-soup”, which I had to keep sticking my finger in, to make sure it wasn’t too hot and that I don’t burn my mouth – because obviously, I couldn’t feel a thing. Luckily, the hot soup seemed to help bring some further tingling and feeling into my tongue, except that it didn’t affect anything else. The last time I glanced at the clock was 3am and my imagination was driving me insane.

The next thing I knew, I woke to my cat prodding my face at 5am. And I thought my face! I can feel! I’ve never been so happy to be woken up at such an hour by my cat before, and the rush of adrenalin resulted in me not being able to sleep for the rest of the day.

Anyway, the point is – yes, I can feel everything now, thankfully, although unfortunately, these painkillers aren’t doing anywhere near enough to help sedate this constant pain I have, even when I’m not moving my mouth. I succeeded in my endeavour to devour an amazing burger from Burger Wisconsin today, but I had to cut it up into tiny pieces with a knife and fork in order to eat it. In the meantime, I keep checking on these stitches of mine, wishing and hoping that they would quickly dissolve and my wounds will heal so that my favourite pastimes (it seems to be) of talking and eating wouldn’t be so painful!

I’ve been listening to Radiohead’s new King of Limbs – does anyone have any thoughts on it yet? It’s on its second play right now, and I’m rather undecided. I guess it will be typical for it to grow on me (as I expect it to), but thus far only one track has really stood out to me.

For love is the breath, For the scariest things are not half as enslaved

Even though I’m not its biggest fan – Happy Valentine’s Day. Even though I’m far from domesticated, I did something sweet and cooked the poor boy dinner last night and even delivered it to him, because he’s been essay writing and studying for an exam that’s on tomorrow.

I think the main thing that I can’t stand about Valentine’s day is all the articles in the newspaper, magazines and on the internet about “tips” or “do’s and don’ts”, etc similar “how-to” guides for males. Sure, it’s nice that the world of consumerism is trying to help males in this world with trying to please their lady-friends – but I just think that even the tiniest romantic gesture would be a thousand times sweeter, if he conceived of the idea himself. Furthermore, I think romantic gestures in general would be way more romantic when not conducted on Valentine’s. It’s the one day of the year where so many girls say “no I don’t want anything for Valentines” or “I’m not expecting anything, it’s okay” – in terms of chocolate, roses and a card – whilst they are secretly teeming with anticipation in the hopes that maybe their boy will do something sweet anyway! Seriously – how many people knows someone like this?!

On the wave of social issues, here’s some food for thought: if someone (with seemingly no reason to lie or shit stir) told you that someone in your circle of friends went around saying something waaay untrue of a veeery private nature about you a couple of years ago – would you ever ask/confront the person in question whether they did or not? Knowing that they will very likely deny it even if it were true?

Also, I always find it funny how much you can tell about a person by the way they deal with money amongst their friends – and how nit-picky people get about owing small change. And in case it wasn’t obvious enough, I wasn’t saying that in a good way either.

Another thing that’s stressing me out this week is that I am getting my three remaining wisdom teeth surgically removed – under general anesthesia – and frankly, I am freaking out about it. In addition to this, it’s three days before the surgery now, and I still haven’t gotten all the paper work sorted yet! My surgeon works at three separate clinics (if not more, unbeknownst to me), and my health insurance needs a fax reply to them to confirm the procedure that I’m getting done, before they will approve paying for it. The trouble is, they faxed it to him main office, which isn’t the one I’m seeing him at (and thus doesn’t have my files), but he only works once a week or once a fortnight at the clinic that I’m seeing him at, so everything is getting lost in translation between fax machines and three different clinics and the health insurance company. ARGH!!!!!!!!

Here are some photos of Yeasayer from Laneway a couple of weeks back:

A reaction starts, when

When I sit down to blog these days, I get really confused as to how to structure the posts. These days, I’ll end up with a couple of dilemmas I can never seem to decide as to how I’d like to tackle: often I’ll likely have something in mind I want to blog about, at length, but then I will also often have a set of photos either from that day or that just got processed that I’d just like to throw in for good measure… the problem is, I can never seem to decide which way round to order it. A huge chunk of writing about whatever the topic of the day is, followed by menial ramblings and some photos; OR, photos and ramblings, then huge riff raff at the end?!

I’m so indecisive with everything. It pisses me off enough as it is, I’m sure people around me must be so sick of it. Maybe that’s why I often form “favourites” at restaurants and such, and I will 99% of the time order the same thing. Boring, you may say, but I tend to go to specific places for a specific dish, etc.

But oh shucks, I had meant to do my whole blog rambly thing and then post photos of my very delicious day, but now that I’ve mentioned food and all, I can’t escape this order. I partied late into the early hours of this morning, and only got three hours of sleep before mum hauled me out of bed to go to the Clevedon Farmer’s Market with her. That sounds like she did a mean thing, but I did promise I’d go with her. We ended up having a scrumptious brunch at Maraetai beach (pics below).

Then later this evening I had a catch up with some friends over an amazing meal at Mezze Bar – the restaurant that I raved about here, and once again ordered the roast chicken with risotto, as well as sharing some Spanish meatballs. It was thanks to that meal at Mezze last month that inspired me to cook risotto twice since, and probably once again, soon!

My solution to aforementioned dilemma – posting a second blog post for today. Why not?! Lots of people post several times a day.

Bottle and mirror art work on the wall of the cafe.


Mum’s brunch order… mmm!


My eggs benedict was amazing.


Mum & I on self-timer & the hood of our car. It wasn’t very well thought out, but we had a lot of laughs taking this photo – we were against the sunlight, and it was fiddly…





Lamb Kebabs – they were very well spiced.


My roast chicken and risotto, again!

SPANISH MEATBALLS FTW!

And, the way, they make, you toe the line. I’ll sever my ties. Oh I’m so clever, You’re so clever, but you’re not very nice

Double exposure. I always forget to try it out when I have my film slr with me, but instead only remember when I have a dslr. I ‘ve never really been into the photoshopped overlays out there that try to create the double exposure effect, nor have I really tried to photoshop one before. It just seems slightly less interesting that the “real thing”. There’s a London photographer who I’ve been inspired by for years and years now, and she does a lot of film work as well as messing with double exposures and good old fashioned filters. Anyway, I took these a year ago one night in my room when I got really bored, and they were on the films from California in the last post that had just gotten developed. Nonsensical, pointless stuff, but it was pretty fun at the time. As you can see, I kinda fucked it up at one point, and whoever processed the film and scanned it didn’t make it any better, haha.

Two nights, three of the same people, aren’t we just such moronic funsters… We found a friend’s car on the side of the road and the other two decided it would be fun to leave the poor bloke a little note. I hope nothing happened to his car though, because he left his amp in plain view in the backseat! Also, last picture on the bottom right – isn’t that just such a cute little door knocker? Evenings with shenanigans that I prefer as memories.

My sleeping is messed up, and I don’t ever want to sleep. Yet once I am sleeping, I don’t ever want to wake. The days are too hot and short, and I need to get more things done. I have this weird obsession of constantly having to express myself either in a musical, photographic or written form… but the problem with that is, those things take time, which equates to less time to live out such things which I then regurgitate creatively. Can time please pause when I practise the bass? Or when I want to sit down to either read or write a book? I keep having to try and shove negative thoughts and emotions out of the way, keep having to try and stop wasting time being upset at things and people who aren’t even aware that I’m upset over. And right now, I am holding off eating dinner until I click “Publish” on this post. My life is an endless battle against the current of fast-flowing time. Don’t even let me make a flooding metaphor right now, it would be globally inappropriate, currently.

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