Observations from my local Leisure Centre...

Having been visiting the swimming pool at the local Leisure Centre now for a couple of weeks, I've discovered some interesting characters, and seen some interesting phenomena that I felt like sharing...

1. Small boy in the ladies change room...

Despite there being a dedicated changing area for families, mothers seem to insist on bringing their soggy children into the ladies change room to yank them out of their wet cozzies and get them dressed. Generally I don't care, however there was one young boy who has really hit the age where his mother needs to explain why it's rude to stare... As he spent most of the time wondering amongst the women and watcing as they pull off their swimmers... You re-enact a Dianna-esque moment, clutching your towel around you and scowling at the miniature blinking figure - who seems to have no intention of averting his gaze!

2. Old man saggy pants...

An elderly gentleman who wears a pair of 1970s vintage (paisley to boot) swimming trunks, which have become quite 'billowy' shall we say... They seem to trail behind him as he swims, like trawling nets, probably picking up all sorts of debris along the way... I can only imagine the bewilderment his wife feels as she throws them into the washing machine, picking out the bobby pins, band aids and hair bands that have been collected during his swim.

3. The life guards who strictly uphold the circular lap swimming rules!

This includes signage at each lane! Apparently English swimmers are incapable of avoiding a mid-water collision...

4. Probably the best and most mysterious so far... The evaporating granny!

I returned to the change room after my swim to find on the floor a small pair of tan coloured orthopedic shoes and a pair of wrinkled beige stockings, both covered and surrounded by a giant mound of talcum powder... and nothing and no one else!

Settling in, travelling, housemates, unemployment...

Ok, so this is going to be a potted version of what we've been up to for the past two months since arriving in the UK... So hold tight...


spring flowers, notting hill gate


We arrived on 14 March (feels like a life time ago now) and met my uncle and soon to be Aunt at the airport and they scooted us back to Stewartby. It was a very strange feeling to go from the end of summer into the beginning of Spring - lots of bare trees, a chill to the air, and tonnes of daffodils.

Spent about 4 nights in Stewartby, mainly resting and getting over the jet lag. Spent an afternoon in Oxford, wondering around the university and enjoying some sunshine. We had forgotten that in England, when the sun comes out, so do aaaaaaaalllllll the people!! Lunching at cafes, shopping, walking dogs, students punting along the canals... really beautiful. We also visited a brilliant antiques shop in Ampthill, and when the first official pay cheque comes in I might treat myself to an art deco lamp I spied!


Michael, Patsy, Jay and I, in Oxford

Most of you have probably heard my woeful tale about the 'mankle' but I'll repeat for those who missed it... While in Stewartby I managed to 'fall' into a pot hole and sprain my ankle while taking the dog for a walk, and a very kind lady gave us a lift home in her car. Needless to say really, mankle swelled up like a balloon and went a fantastic shade of puce! Spent the rest of the time at Stewartby on the couch with mankle covered in frozen peas, watching re-runs of Scrubs and Frasier (looooooove the comedy channel!!) and feeling very sorry for myself. More so, because we had to don the packs and take ourselves into London for a few nights...

In London we stayed at an OK-ish backpackers near Chiswick, FULL of Aussies and Kiwis, some of these people were long stayers, and basically spent all their free time in the bar at the hostel and only made friends with other long stayers... so not a great place... Also seemed to be a popular hostel for Italian school groups, so it was an interesting mix... We got ourselves set up with the Britbound mob, definitely recommend it for anyone else heading over to UK to work, they get you a bank account and NI number sorted, without all the hassle of interviews, etc... Plus it's a good social network... Spent the time being tourists, won a pub bingo comp and organised our trip to Copenhagen.


Rosenborg Slot (palace)

Arrived in Copenhagen and nearly died from cold exposure!! Have never felt so cold in my life and it was supposedly Spring - not to mention sans snow - it still alludes me!! Had a great week in Copenhagen, and it was really wonderful to catch up with Jo and Stine again. Crashed in Stine's apartment, Jay being the gentleman took the airbed and I got the comfiest couch in the world, woke up every morning to the dulcet tones of the Whitlams thanks to Jo's mobile phone alarm, can't listen to Louis Bidet anymore without smiling! We hired bikes and went about as the locals do, learnt to ride on the wrong side of the road and to signal for a left hand turn (nearly killed myself a couple of times...), not to forget the bruise I obtained from forgetting the rear-wheel brake! Spent the week being tourists... Visited the National Museum and looked at viking treasure, left the EU briefly to visit Christiania (which is a hippy commune in a rather trendy part of town), saw the palace and met the Little Mermaid...


Jay and I looking like cold, shivering mushrooms, Christianshavn.

Danish cuisine was brilliant! Tried Smorrebrod (open sandwiches) at the famous Ida Davidsen cafe, which was delicious - bought the cookbook and she signed it too! Had dinner with Stine's family, again very yummy, and nice to be in a family home again! Went out on the town with Stine's friends, had a bit too much to drink and had an 'interesting' bike ride home... felt rotten the next day, but recovered with pastries and went to see the 'watchmen' (bit disappointing but good sound track).


Ghana food stall, Portabello Rd Markets, Notting Hill

Headed back to London with a lot less money, but having had a brilliant time! Checked into the dive of all dives in Notthing Hill. When looking for a place in London, NEVER stay at Boden Court!! Toilets/showers are feral, the other guests are feral (smoking pot and ciggies inside, loud suspicious noises, soiling the already bad toilets, disdainful), the food they serve wouldn't pass health regulations and heaven forbid you ask for wheat free, no guest kitchen, expensive Internet, expensive laundry!!! Hell!!! Only surpassed by our Kiwi friend, who stayed in a place with an 'E' post code, ie East London, which had rat sack tapped to the top of the bunk!!

We spent two weeks in hell, I mean Notting Hill, and started the stomach churning process of job hunting in London during a recession. Jay had the first interview, which he still hasn't heard back from and I filled out numerous applications and signed up with recruitment agencies. We also decided it would be better to put our money towards rent and started looking for a room in a share flat. Found ourselves a very comfortable room in a share flat in West Hampstead, which we're really enjoying. Really great flat mates, bills included, all in all a good find. Not to mention one of our housemates is training to be a chef, so the group dinners are fantastic!!! Only one bonafide Englishman, who is patiently explaining the complexities of football to us...

The mankle is healing up, Jay hurt is shoulder (we're quite the pair, his involved a trip to a delightful NHS hospital in Whitechapel though...) I've found full time work - details to come when it's all finalised - but I'm very excited. Otherwise I've been temping at a public library in Kensal on Golborn Rd, which is worlds apart from the NLA, but am really enjoying it! It's across the road from a fairly famous housing estate Trelick Towers, which is rather imposing and quite daunting to walk past, but the area is generally safe, and Golborn Road is brilliant! It's a really multicultural area, lots of Morrocan, North African, and Portuguese people, and for 2nd hand markets it beats Portabello, which is just waaaay too pricey. Since drafting this entry Jay has had another interview and got the job, as a projectionist at a cinema in Shephards Bush (west london... full of Australians and Kiwis...) so YAY! Go team!

Have caught up with our old high school mate Gibbs a couple of times and have met his London mates, who are also really friendly, and good fun. Went out to the London Zoo together, and hit a 'white wedding' themed disco in North London (Nat and Griff, I have some music suggestions!!!!) Heading out to a country carnival on Sunday, which should be wholesome I'm sure!! We also head off to the Britbound social events regularly, such as friday drinks, sports days in the park, etc... Looking forward to my uncle's wedding, seeing mum and dad, hopefully catching up with Em in Amsterdam, organising summer holidays, heading up north to visit Tam and Amanda, and off to Oktoberfest with Jo in Autumn!

This covers most of the points I think! Will try to post more regularly! Send news from home and the NLA - we miss everyone soooo very much!!! Congrats again to James and Carolyn, we're really happy for you both - can't wait to meet Blobby!!! Not long to go Leo and you can kiss uni goodbye, hang in there!!! All the best with the new job Maggie May!!! Mum and Dad, book your tickets!!!! All the best with house plans Claire and Pat!!! LA land, how's the new Paper plate cafe at the NLA??? Give the puppies a big hug from us!!!!! xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Lucy and Jay.

London by tuktuk...?

Bangkok

Our plane to Thailand was a BA flight so we were in amongst a large group of lobster-like Brits heading home, having spent the summer roasting themselves silly in the Australian sun. We arrived late into the new Bangkok airport, very impressive, and grabbed a taxi into the city and to the Asia hotel. The hotel is EXACTLY how I remembered it, hadn't changed a bit. It has the same crazy 80's American soap opera charm! Prime location though with it's own skytrain stop, close to the city centre, markets, malls, etc... We were dead on our feet, so dodged the Thai Elvis impersonator and lurid Cosmopolitans in the lobby and headed straight up to our room to hit the sack.


traffic below skytrain station at our hotel

On our first day we dived into the soup that was the Bangkok atmosphere and headed to the palace, wat pra geow and wat pho. The reclining buddha at wat pho was breath taking, the feet in particular were amazing with inlayed mother-of-pearl diagrams depicting the life of buddha on the soles. We were starting to melt, so jumped in a Taxi back to the hotel, where we took advantage of the swimming pool and pool side bar to cool down. We were still pretty beat so stayed at the hotel for dinner, at a Vietnamese restaurant (which Dad, Margie and Sue will remember!) and then headed back to bed.

wat pra geow

By day two we were feeling a bit more adventurous and decided to tackle the monolith that is the Bangkok shopping district. This of course involved an attempted swindling by a sweaty man wearing a T-shirt labelled 'tourist police', who told us that all the shops in the Siam Square, Siam malls and the MBK centre were closed until lunch because it was a national Buddhist holiday. We, rightly, were quite sceptical, and getting a little pissed cos he kept scribbling on our map, so when he offered to hire us a tuktuk for the morning we backed off towards the skytrain pointing at our watches and telling him we'd wait at our hotel instead. The malls of course did open at the normal times and we spent the morning looking through Siam Square, the flashy discovery centre, which has the BEST foodcourt downstairs with all these little kitchen booths with chefs all working away at whatever regional speciality they served, including one that serves the god of all deserts, sweetened condensced milk rotti!

reclining buddha, wat pho

Afterwards we headed off to MBK to check out cheap electronics and knock-off everything else. Jay bought himself a replica 80s calculator watch, and I found myself an elephant charm to add to my bracelette. Having visited MBK in 2004, I remembered it having a brilliant food court upstairs, which was more like a street market, so lots of individual vendors preparing really cheap, very tastey Thai fare. Unfortunately this has since been privatised and now it is a crappy international food court consisting of the usual franchises... so we opted for a place that had a buffet thai curry deal. It was quite good, you kind of assembled noodles, herbs, and other condiments on your bowl and then scooped the desired curry over the top. Jay selected something labelled chicken, which also included strange brown jelly like squares that he assured me was tofu (aha! Yeah right!) After Jay guzzled down quite a few jelly squares and I'd tentavilly nibbled on the corner of another, a friendly young waitress explained to us that it was indeed congealed chicken blood, hmm... not so tofu like... put that one down as a healthy experience and moved on...

Decided to retreat from the consumerism madness and visit the Jim Thompson museum. The museum is quite close to the shopping area and so thought we'd take a tuktuk, as Jay was yet to experience the 2-stroke engine fueled thrill. Of course it required 20 minutes of hard negotiation with the driver, who thought as a woman, I'd be far more interested in massive glittery stones and shiny goldness, finally I assured him that we were serious, so off we hurtled. Jim Thompson was an American ex-pat, who decided to reside in Thailand following WWII, he based himself in Bangkok and became a silk dealer, mainly selling to international markets. For his residence in Bangkok he built a massive property made from small northern Thai houses which he re-located and re-assembled into a larger structure, and the preceded to fill it with beautiful Asian artefacts. It's one of my favourite places in Bangkok precisely for this reason, despite it being a farang's house and a tourist destination, it's also unbelievably tranquil. That evening we headed out to the night bazaar, which is a massive series of covered outdoor markets with food markets, beer stands, and stage in the middle.

Jim Thompson house museum

On our last day we took it pretty easy, I spent the morning enjoying a manicure and pedicure while Jay was oiled up and massaged into a jelly state, then went out for a ferry ride along the river, took lots of photos, etc... Afterwards we grabbed our bags from the hotel and splurged on a hotel car to the airport (which had seatbelts!!) Good ol' BA allow early check in, so we could ditch the big packs and wonder into the duty-free filled departure lounge pergatory to wait for the flight to London. Flight was OKish, arrival in Heathrow much better than expected, as it wasn't peak tourist time the majority of passengers were British passport holders, so our customs line was short and we got through pretty quick. Found Patsy and my uncle Michael who zoomed us off to Stewartby and showers, bacon sarnies, and a waaaaaaarm bed! Bliss!

river boat and restaurants

Will add the Stewartby-London-Copenhagen saga in soon. Laters. Luc.

bangkok

Just a quick note to say we have started our adventure with a quick stop off in Bangkok. All's well - and having fun - we're currently beating the humidity in the tourist office internet joint. Visited wat pra geow, the palace and wat pho yesterday - hadn't seen a reclining buddha before - my goodness it was impressive! Off shopping today in Siam and will take Jay to Jim Thompson's house museum to relax, then onto the night bazaar this evening.
Hope everyone is well back in 'Berra - miss you all!! Lucy.

Women in art morphing video

A friend sent me a link to a morphing video called Women in Art... Worth a look if you have 5 minutes.

The value of a face...

It seems I only post to this blog when the ABC sends me an interesting article, apparently I'm living vicariously through our national broadcaster! This article though pricked my interest as it relates very closely to my thesis and scarily closely to an article I'm currently reading...

The Australian War Memorial is calling for portrait photographs of Australian service men and women, to match with an immense number of names on the honour role, for which the don't currently hold images. Matching names to faces they say, in order to increase research value and create an invaluable record.

I think this is an interesting and incredibly worth while project (given my interest in national collections I'd be a hypocrite to say otherwise!) I will be checking with my parents and Grandma to see whether any of my relatives died during battle and whether we can gather the photographic evidence required to assist the AWM with their project. I urge any wayward reader chancing upon this entry to do likewise...

Although it gets me thinking, in relation to my research and this article, why do we value the photographed face as a way to remember a person?

As infants we look to our parent's and relatives' faces for love, trust, recognition, to know we are valued and also to justify or modify our behaviour. A mother/father smiles at their adorable baby and (when capable) the baby smiles back, a mother/father frowns at their naughty toddler pouring a cup of cordial on the floor and the toddler (hopefully frowning back) knows they're in trouble!

Capturing the faces of our loved ones, so we can preserve them for eternity seems natural given our fondness for (and attachment to) faces and the importance we place in their features: eyes, wrinkles and smiles.

Photographs enable us to capture faces, quickly and easily. They are stuck in albums, hung in frames, crunched into wallets or hidden in lockets or under pillows. We believe in the photograph's precise rendering through it's mechanical and scientific (now digital) nature, making it a 'true' likeness. This accuracy is photography's greatest gift. A portrait photograph, more than any other medium (even the finest sketch) refers so closely to the sitter. Also, the person was once there - sitting in front of the lens - just slightly out of the viewers reach but glued to the paper for ever.

The most amazing thing about portrait photographs though is the way they trigger memories, as Thierry de Duve writes in his article, portrait photographs are funerary items, which we use to memorialise the referent. That person once sitting there, will remain that age for ever and are here with us today (even if long gone). They can filter back and forth through time when needed, as we gaze at the image.

This could be the most important reason to assist the AWM with their project (and what appeals to me) - so the men and women who payed the ultimate sacrifice can revisit us through their photographic portraits and be preserved for eternity in a national collection.

A long pause...

So, I've decided to keep this blog going after our holiday, don't know who'll read it or who cares about my ramblings, but then again it doesn't matter!

Two recent news reports which have captured my interest:

1. They caught the bastard who left his little girl Pumpkin in a Melbourne Rail station (brilliant story about an old fashioned citizens' arrest and a community working together!)

2. Something that rarely happens, a very generous donation of a collection of modern art being donated to a public gallery

Lastly, my partner sent me a link to some brilliant, but disturbing artwork based on consumer statistics from the US by the artist Chris Jordan