| Forty Forty Forty Forty Forty etc. |
[22 Nov 2009|11:42am] |
So it happened. Just after midnight in late 1969, Mum was being urged by a maternity nurse not to push yet, because the doctor hadn't made it from Rose Bay to RPA Hospital yet, and Mum was, "I am not waiting." And out I popped. On Friday we had a family dinner to acknowledge the actual day before last night's larger affair. Catering and family and friends from different periods of the last four decades.
I've been somewhat apprehensive about the coming party. For some reason it felt more like a looming exam. Silly of course, but then people have a habit of praising one's entertaining (or bitching behind one's back). That's why having very rare parties and getting them catered is the go. And European Catering Service is (IMO) the best of all the companies I've sampled (of course that's mainly for parties at which I've been a guest). They're friendly and professional. They're not snobs. They know that hosts are often nervous. They were all, "We know where everthing is. You're all set up. Leave everthing to us. Relax, take a shower and get changed for your guests." What a relief.
The judgment of guests: they all think I'm an alcoholic. Presents of bottle after bottle of champagne. Also, all the food was eaten. Lots of booze was drunk. Nobody got too trashed. The party packed up at a civilized hour when the catering was finished. The house was clean and not turned upside down. We got to bed and slept the sleep of the well sated.
So now I'm on the other side of forty. Soon enough, fifty. See you there.
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[01 Nov 2009|02:28pm] |
It's been hard to find the will to write in this live journal. I've been feeling drained and uninteresting, but things are looking much better now. Social life has gone from non-existent hiding inside together to a more active round of hanging with friends, eating out, making the token visits to the poofter bars and so on. More importantly, we've been preparing a family gathering for my (gasp) fortieth birthday party. So there. I said it.
For the longest time I didn't really believe I'd make it. When Dad died so young, a veil came down over the future and it was hardly possible to visualise anything beyond the next year or two. Now I'm wondering what might be for the years ahead with a view that I'm not headed for an early death via heart disease. The heart has been fine, blood pressure good (since losing weight), I don't smoke. Probably could drink less, but it's not ringing any alarm bells. Just makes it hard to keep the weight off!
Today we went down to Tamarama to view Sculptures by the Sea with our friends Joey and Metter. Lovely, if a little underwhelming in parts. The highlight was a whale we spotted off the coast spouting and diving a few times. We headed over to Bronte for breakfast, then back to their flat for a chat and a glass of champers. Tonight we're headed out to the Oxford to meet an old flame of mine, his partner and another of their friends from dinner.
The house plans are dawdling along. A surveyor came Friday before last to measure our land accurately. Then we can get detailed plans made and a DA put before council. It's all going to happen. I'm looking forward to it all coming together. We're in no great rush and determined to be thorough. Karma better be on our side.
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[04 Oct 2009|02:05pm] |
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We had the dust! You've all seen the pics if you didn't see it live. I woke up to a red sky before dawn and assumed it was fog, plus shepherd's warning. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) yuriverse then texted me to say it wasn't side effects of Lexapro but actually a dust storm like nothing we'd ever seen. I headed to work in a taxi so as to be in time for a coach leaving at 9 a.m. for the Hunter Valley. All morning we drove through yellowing air, finally beige then clear enough that night to see the stars once more. Google had our annual offsite in the Hunter this year rather than the ski fields of the last few years. We listened to talks and ate and drank (too much) while still choking on dust that was now invisible.
Back in Sydney the exterior of house and car were caked. Luckily not too much made it inside, but there was still a film on all the furniture. Happily, we have cleaners and even more happily, they did their job well. A light coating of central Australia gave the house an authentic grittiness, but we couldn't live in it.
Finally this weekend we have enough rain to wash the trees and grass and footpaths clean. Great weather for the NRL Grand Final this afternoon, the first day of daylight savings, the day after Sleaze Ball, the Sunday before a public holiday treated as an extra day to be drunk. We're going over to Gary and Robert's to watch the footy and eat meat pies and drink booze. Going in a taxi.
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[13 Sep 2009|06:11pm] |
I likes the harbour.
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| Out of the Woodwork |
[13 Sep 2009|09:01am] |
We got great sketches drawn up of possible extensions to our house. Kris is the architect, a friend who grew up living on the same street in Greenwich, so of course the work has to be kept in the "family". (Scare quotes indicate nepotism, not sexuality!) Then he got some ballpark figures from a builder friend of his for what his sketches might cost to realise and we came thudding back down to Earth. There is debt, and then there's Debt. Also, there's Over-Capitalisation. I think the practical considerations are likely to win out over the general coolness of Option 3 with the upstairs sunroom and access to the back yard. If we win the lottery, we're definitely going to try to build it (pending coucil approval, of course).
Other Greenwich connections converged last night. We went over to Mum's for dinner and also to watch her starring performance on "Today Tonight" shopping at Woolworths, Aldi, Coles and Paddy's Market for the same set of groceries. She's a natural, they said. I was amazed at how professional she seemed, speaking directly to the camera and saying, "These bananas were far too expensive at $3.98/kg. Not good for a family on a budget," with authority and expression. Trundling her shopping wheelie bag and showing Woolworths up for the rip off operation they are.
Then, after a dinner of whiting fillets and spuds and salad, we hit the road at which time the phone rang, so Yuri answered and lo, it was Anthony from the 40th birthday party several weeks ago. We had made a plan to meet for a drink sometime soon, which dragged through several rounds of unavailability and schedule conflict finally to be arranged by text message for this weekend. The text messaging happened late on Wednesday night while I was half asleep. For some weird reason, I went back to sleep convinced we had arranged things for Sunday night, but here was Anthony calling from Monkey Bar asking, "Are you coming here soon?" after waiting an hour for me. Twenty minutes later I was at the bar and apologising profusely for screwing up. Checking the old text messages I saw we had said Saturday night. Strange thing, though, he had it down in his phone calendar for Sunday too.
So we sorted that out pretty quickly and went on to conversation and wine. He brought a work friend (not his girlfriend, but she was pretty good value) and we ranged over all the topics of what we were like as kids in school versus nowadays. What was the deal with the online dating scene and how do some gay guys claim to have sex with ten or more people in a night? (Answer - you don't have orgasms with everyone, and you don't have to do too much for too long for it to count. YMMV) I wonder if he's bi-curious? As a psychiatrist by profession, he has a fairly non-judgmental questioning manner and probably doesn't have the taboos we had as schoolboys.
We talked on until the noise inside Monkey Bar (a DJ spinning chunes for the 20-somethings) got too hard to deal with. Shouting every sentence is tiring. The London Hotel was also crowded and loud - this time just caused by people talking a high volume. So we headed back to our house and sat on the couch drinking one more glass of Giesen, discussing their cat allergies (sorry, Dax) and other casually connected topics: lime trees -> a potted kaffir lime tree in which husband's ashes scattered -> caused and awful moment when house sitting for said widow and overwatering made the ash spill over the side of the pot all over the deck -> ashes were probably mostly coffin and any bone fragments would have stayed in the pot -> cribbed from Jessica Mitford's "The American Way of Death" -> etc. At midnight it was time for them to hit the road and I hit the bed where Yuri had been asleep all this time.
Greenwich. It makes weird stuff happen.
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[30 Aug 2009|10:06am] |
Here it comes. The round of 40th birthdays of my school friends has begun with consecutive weekend parties. My own is only a few months away.
I've been practising for 40 all year. I bought clothes in SF last May and when the sales assistants tried their usual "this is what the young people are wearing," I was all, "I'm turning 40 this year and I want to look 40. What do you have in tweed?"
As older persons, yuriverse and I have been doing stuff like going to the opera (Fidelio last week) and random classical concerts (a performance of Piazzola pieces mixed in with some Baroque sonatas in Balmain on Friday night). There are more to come. Yuri has booked us tickets to a symphony concert next month. Kultured we are, bitches.
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[17 Aug 2009|09:10pm] |
What a struggle it is to get back to work. I think I needed a second week of Turtle Cove (or at least a second consecutive week of not-work).
The house has been full of music these last few weeks. Not a huge change from the usual situation thanks to Apple TV connected to our sound system, but full of music as Yuri has been exploring classical seriously. The routes into classical music are different for everyone. I was studying music at school, and got a good grounding there. For me, the first time I bought a classical CD with my own money marked a turning point. It wasn't a piece that someone else had told me to like. I just fell in love with the Bach D Minor Harpsichord Concerto BWV 1052 after playing it with Lane Cove Orchestra back in the mid 80s. It was so full of brilliant figuration, forward drive and a masculine toughness. I bought the Trevor Pinnock recording on Archiv and began a collection which started with Bach concerti and eventually branched out. I remained an original instruments (Historically Informed Performance) snob.
My mother's tastes were far more romantic, especially Brahms. His chamber music was added to my collection. A friend of mine (Joseph) from Sydney University gave me the Tallis Scholars CD of Josquin's L'homme Arme masses on my twenty first birthday. There started a big collection of Tallis Scholars recordings (later to be augmented by even earlier music - "Cave Music" as Nic McGegan quipped). When I graduated from university, I decided to delve into Handel's oratorios aside from the Messiah. A Stephen Jay Gould essay mentioning Jephtha got me thinking about this. The first one I bought was Solomon. You should see the CD collection now. Even I don't remember everthing that's in it.
It's a slippery slope. There's far more music I would love to know.
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[10 Aug 2009|09:03pm] |
.
We were there in Turtle Cove for one glorious week. I don't care if the weather wasn't always picture perfect, or if there was a bit of rough water on the beach, or if there were fewer guests than before. I love the place. The staff, the slow lazy rhythm of the day (breakfast - beach - lunch - hot tub - nap - beach - dinner - hot tub - sleep), hopefully some intermingled sleaze, but really it doesn't matter. It's the tropics, man. Relax.
We got delayed on our flight in and arrived at the resort an hour later than expected. Nearly missed dinner, but they sat us down and we got fed. Massage was booked in for the next day (perfect, with hot stones and expert attention to my problem hamstrings and shoulders). We met lots of great people. I really regretted leaving, and that's saying something. I'm a bit impatient to leave and complete the ordeal of the return journey on most of my holidays. Not Turtle Cove.
It's been sold! We heard lots of conflicting stories about its future during our stay. The best authority (the current staff) said the place was bought by straight investors, but they intend to keep it going as a gay resort with the current set up.
I hope so. It's too nice a place to lose.
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[31 Jul 2009|06:32pm] |
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Turtle Cove here we come! This time tomorrow night we'll be landing in Cairns. Dinner then hot tubbing.
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[19 Jul 2009|09:23pm] |
My belly is full of roast beef, and my ears are full of Bach. Yuri and I have had a quiet weekend, both suffering from minor colds and recovering somewhat. I was feeling well enough for the gym this morning. We were both well enough for some tidying up of the garden.
Speaking of the garden, our very handy neighbour to the rear of our house came and repaired the fence. He took down the palings, laid them out on the lawn, worked out which ones we could keep, bought replacements for the others then screwed them all in to the beams which were still in good condition. Can't complain about that. I'm pretty useless when it comes to handyman stuff.
yuriverse and I are headed up to Turtle Cove for a week in August. Yay. Yes, it will be our third time there, but it's just our speed and so pretty.
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| Synecdoche Etc. |
[09 Jul 2009|07:02pm] |
Phillip Seymour Hoffman is a tubby goner. Wait? Is he a tranny? No? Oh, this is beginning to make a modicum of sense as a statement about minds and memories and personae. Whatever. Who cares? What was the point, even if the movie dares to say "what was the point anyway?"
It's gibberish, to quote Evelyn Waugh. Any sensible person knows how there's all this weird geography inside minds. So what? We interact with people and infer their internal monologue. We know how fragmentary and confusing it is. And we put it aside. It's not useful for understanding each other or getting things done. This movie was a waste of a statement.
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[09 Jul 2009|03:41pm] |
Synecdoche New York had better be worth the $16.50.
This week off has featured many similar events to the last one in January. Minus the sunshine.
I think I need another week.
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| More than your average cat |
[04 Jul 2009|01:04pm] |
We said our final farewell to Weensie this morning. It's a hard decision but the right one. He went without pain. The last days were quiet times. We gave the house to Weensie to keep him comfortable. Yuri stayed home with him yesterday. He slept downstairs so Weensie could come and go without the inconvenience of the stairs. They were getting to be harder and harder work these last months. The last couple of weeks he got thinner and thinner, more and more disoriented. We kept trying to interest him in food and he would eat some to please us. Just as often he would approach a dish and forget why he was there. I don't think he was absorbing much from what he did eat. The time came this morning. I'm proud of Yuri for being brave enough to take the right decision. We said our goodbyes at the Balmain Veterinary Clinic and eased him into his last sleep.
I'm missing you already, Weensie. You were a great friend.
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[30 Jun 2009|09:26pm] |
I'm still here more than two weeks later. I disappeared from livejournal for too long, feeling guilty each time I came back to browse your blogs, contributing nothing - not even a comment. I'm getting too withdrawn right now. Lots of things are on my mind:
Mum is not in the best shape. Her two decades on medication for hyperthyroidism have bloated her face, bugged her eyes, destroyed her patience and clouded her judgment. She's not the mother I remember living with at home, but that's not to be expected. I've been out of her day to day life for eighteen years and while I'm much closer now in distance, our relationship is an adult one now and worlds away from closeness we had before I left home. In fact, the closeness was evaporating before I reached puberty. Coming out to her was a very scary process in the age of AIDS and the new homophobia. Now she's so visibly changed. I don't know how much longer we'll have her in our lives and I'm fretting about that.
I'm getting older. It's obvious at Google that I'm in the old farts brigade. The clock won't be turned back and I don't want it to, but sometimes I long for a peer group. There are in fact a group of engineers there who are in my age group, but I wish they were gay too. That's not the most common trait shared by men in my field.
What is it? What do I want? I have a great husband, a life in Sydney that I pictured for years with great anticipation, a career at a great company (bad press aside), a group of loving friends.
I want the feeling of endless possiblity that I had as a university student. I know the clock won't turn back. I know just about everybody feels like this at my age. We all get over it and get on with the process of living.
The possiblities aren't endless. They never were. The potential for happiness is whatever I can make of it. The life to live is still in front of me. I won't shut the world out.
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[13 Jun 2009|02:53pm] |
After watching Kill Bill Vols 1 & 2, I would have predicted Quentin Tarantino would be the one who wanked himself to death. David Carradine at least didn't die with a plastic bag over his head and his pants down. That was the way the son of family friends went out in the eigthies. In the nineties and aughties it's all belts an ties and closet rails.
I got back from SF and disappeared a little into "in-office sabbatical" mode. The suggestion of travelling to Mountain View just two weeks later I couldn't face, especially after being stopped at Immigration for more questioning last time. The outcome was brief and positive ("Yes, I had to withdraw my application for admission to the US once in 1999 and flew back to Sydney to get my passport stamp fixed. Thank you, Good Day" but you never know if an official having a bad day will just decide to refuse you entry. Also, the jetlag made me think "Fuck no!" when the trip was suggested. Now that I've gotten over that, I'm wondering if I should have made the trip.
Tonight yuriverse and I are going out to see "Vivid Sydney", then to dinner and a drink or two on Oxford St. It's been so long since we participated in the scene we're about to lose our Gay credentials.
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| San Francisco-ing |
[30 May 2009|11:12am] |
This trip has had its moments, but it really isn't the same without yuriverse. When you are staying in a hotel, going to a conference that only occupies a small percentage of your time, and not really in the mood for loads of tourist attractions, homesickness isn't too far away. I have, of course, had some fun and caught up with friends. I've been out in some of the old haunts and woken up with some hangovers. I've noticed some changes in the Castro and in Golden Gate Park near 9th Ave.
Since last trip the Castro has been remodeling - the Cafe is boarded up, Toad Hall has opened on the site of the Pendulum, Trigger has opened on the site of the old Detour - I remember a place called "Jet" that had a short life there in between. A couple of restaurants have changed over too, but the character of the area remains in its gentrified, yuppified state dotted with recalcitrant naughty shops.
Golden Gate Park has a new Academy of Sciences that I chanced on with a work friend on Thursday night. They have an event called "Night Life" where for the last couple of opening hours it's adults only, booze is served, prices are cut, music is thumping and lots of 20-somethings pretend to be interested in the exhibits while guzzling drinks. We were too late to get in line for the rainforest exhibit and the planetarium, but we saw the rest including the super-cool living roof which looks like the coastal scrub around Cambria.
I have hung out with friends, run into acquaintances and popped once or twice into Eros, but thoughts turn to home especially when the inspiration is lacking, I can't think of an activity and just want comfort.
Still, there have been big events in which I have been peripherally involved. The CA Supreme Court decision letting Proposition 8 stand was announced (not unexpectedly) and of course the protests had to be held. I was eating in Ristorante Capri as a march of about 400 went up Market St to Castro, so I paid my bill and followed to the intersection to listen as best I could to the angry speechifying. Bullhorns pointed up in the air are ineffective when there is no roof. We could barely hear a thing, but the slogans were still taken up and chanted. It'll be interesting to see what happens in Fresno when the fight is taken up there (quite the right place to do it). I fear firearms might be used by the wingnuts. Please prove me wrong.
Back to the mundane, I haven't been to the gym whilst here. Maybe today, or maybe I'll just leave it for Sydney. I'll need a couple of weeks to undo the boozing of this week.
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[22 May 2009|05:53pm] |
So here's the launch announcement of the product I've been working on for over a year (off an on). It's finally out there. Called "Maps Ad Unit", but therein lies a minefield of legal and marketing requirements. I would have called it something much snappier like Map Flakes with Honey. Whatever. It's the technical stuff that I do these days. I can get a few giggles from the marketing and sales folks when I suggest names like Grasping Capitalist Pig-dog Exploitation Rectangles for ads. That will do.
Here's the official announcement: http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/2009/05/earn-revenue-from-your-mashup-with-maps_20.html
Sigh. I'm tired but happy with this one. I'll probably be a zombie in SF next week instead of drumming up developer support, but hopefully it'll sell itself.
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[20 May 2009|08:30am] |
In a few more days I'll be on a plane to San Francisco for Google IO, and hopefully with something to brag about. It's been a very draining year so far. Although I planned to take a decent holiday, it hasn't happened yet. First I hosted an intern who was far more demanding of my time than the last one, then our team got very busy launching a new product, which means lots of yak shaving. (Yak shaving is derived from Ren and Stimpy but to tech geeks it refers to the seemingly unrelated weird little tasks you end up having to do to get your main thing done. We even went further and started referring the the forgotten bits as "tufts".)
So work has chewed up most of my attention, the gym regimen a lot of the rest and events are just passing me by right now. Poor yuriverse starts talking to me and my mind disappears into a fog which is a big indicator of how much I need a break. Turtle Cove for a week!! Recharge and come back to all the real life that's been neglected so badly.
There have, of course, been social events taking place. We went to the Swans game a couple of weeks ago, to Dylan Moran too, we went lawn bowling with Mum, we hung out with friends on Friday nights, had birthday dinners for Robert and Gary. It seems to pass by in a dream. I need to re-engage with my life.
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| Back in SF for a week |
[03 May 2009|12:17am] |
I'm headed back to SF for a Google developer event The dates will be 24th May through 31st May. I'll fly in Sunday a.m and leave Sunday p.m. Hope to catch up with as many of you SF LJers as I can in that time.
It's been a very busy time for Nick and I apologise for the lack of communication with any of you who have wondered what the hell happened to me. It was a combination of 1) office move for work 2) office move at home (shifting a lot or things upstairs) 3) too much to work on during the day 4) exhaustion at night due to 5) being strict about working out with the heart rate monitor etc.
Pleasingly, I reached my goal weight about a fortnight ago for the first time. There have been a couple of bounces since then, but I'm pretty solidly under it now.
My attention to this has been close to obsessive, which hasn't been great for my social life. There have been plenty of days when I didn't feel like I could even look up above the horizon line. Vitamins and so on, I think, although I'm probably long overdue for a Dr appt about depression. Thankfully, yuriverse has been great at keeping us in the loop of dinners with friends, Swans games, DVDs, plays and Dylan Moran's concert next week.
See youse all soon.
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[18 Apr 2009|08:31am] |
Poor LJ must feel neglected. It's been a busy month at work and I've kept busy at the gym too. After working out, work, dinner with the husband and DVD watching, there haven't been too many exciting topics. Last weekend was a far better topic. yuriverse has already mentioned our road trip to Melbourne over Easter weekend, so you'll get a better idea there. Just let it be said that the 900 km journey in a single day on Thursday and the following Monday should be a once in a lifetime thing. Funny thing is I've done it before in a coach. It's far more exhausting behind the wheel, and we did share the driving somewhat. I hogged it, though.
Melbourne and I have a history of quickies. I went three times in high school for a three day "Crawford Shield". In alternating years, Melbourne Boys High would visit North Sydney Boys High and vice versa. We were billeted with students, in my case orchestra/band players because that's why I was chosen. In those visits, I saw Melbourne through the eyes of three families. The first being the immensely fat family of a builder, all fat because they ate similar portions to Dad who was the only one getting real exercise. I remember being served half a chicken, far too many roast potatoes and a mountain of peas. About double what I was used to at home. They were nice to me and took me to Melbourne Luna Park which was an obsession of mine at the time. They lived way out in Dandenong or somewhere near there. It was twenty six years ago, and I don't remember.
Next visit was staying with some arty-farty types much closer to the city. I remember the suburb being like Paddington in Sydney. Maybe it was Carlton? Anyway, that visit was much more fun and the train in to South Yarra was minutes rather than an hour. Third time was out in suburbia again, this time in my final year of high school. I've lost the details of that visit somewhat, although I was the first violin for Bach's Double Violin Concerto.
Then I was a grown up of 25 and visited with a gay friend Jay whose partner had to cancel his weekend trip at the last minute. I went in Keith's place and Jay and I took in some sights based in Drummond St at the recently opened gay bed and breakfast. We did the bars, saunas, shopping, but also ended up with nasty colds. Still, I remembered Drummond St.
Finally, that same year, I went with my new partner Grantley to take leave of his family and friends before our big move to California. It wasn't so much of a Melbourne stay - we stayed in a hotel. We spent far more time out at his family's farm near Benalla.
So that's all I really know about Melbourne historically until last year I had a flying visit for work, and this year Yuri and I finally drove ourselves there. Drummond St was the obvious choice of B&B because of the happy visit fourteen years previous. What to do and see was constrained by the fact that lots of things might not be open on Easter weekend (although this wasn't such a problem after all). We didn't plan to see any plays or musicals. We didn't buy any tickets for the Comedy Festival. We just cruised around cafes and bars, Brunswick St, Smith St, etc. We drove to St Kilda and walked around on the beach, back to see how Luna Park was so small, far smaller than I remember (naturally). We drove out to Healesville Animal Sanctuary for a wildlife fix with Jane and her husband and Mr NaNoWriMo and his mother. We went at night to Sircuit and to Wet (sauna), avoided the Peel, thought about the Laird and couldn't be arsed walking there. We didn't put in the partying hours necessary to meet any new best friends. We're old and tired now.
In summary, I love Melbourne. If I had no roots in Sydney and came to live in Australia from the US, for example, I could easily choose to settle there. I love Sydney too. I'm a city slut.
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