Something (Not) to Look Forward To

Well, it looks like I'm doomed to be the butt of old-maid jokes again at the annual, inescapable and excruciating Carlos family reunion, which my mother says is scheduled for January 2. I can't think of a worse way to begin the year than to have your unchanged civil status announced over a microphone to eighty of your relatives by a host with all the sensitivity of a circling vulture. If she dares to humiliate me even more this year by reminding everyone of the 22-year old niece who got preggers, married and gave birth (yes, in that order) all within the past 365 days while I was still kneeling on the starting blocks... man, I can't promise I won't come over and strangle her with her own microphone cord.

I'm trying to think of a way to get out of that party, but the only things that come to mind which will not have my mother holding the "guilt card" over my head are to contract an infectious disease or to drop dead all of a sudden. I honestly hate these big reunions; I always have. I'm uncomfortable engaging in stupid chit-chat about what kind of work I'm in or how much I make. I don't want to have to offer any excuses about why I'm still just as single as I was last year. Most of all, I am uncomfortable knowing I am surrounded by couples and their children; painfully aware that I am the odd man out. Damn, can't we all just stay in each of our own homes for a change and privately snarf through the media noche leftovers? Party schmarty. I'd rather run a Zildjian drumstick into my eyeball.

Anata ga suki da, Chiaki-senpai !!!!

There's a Japanese manga-to-anime-based television series from 2006 called "Nodame Cantabile" that I discovered through my almost-otaku, self-proclaimed hentai (not in the perverted sense) cousin Iam (Yami-chan!). It centers on Chiaki Shinichi, a piano student with ambitions of becoming a famous conductor, and Noda Megumi, his next-door neighbor and fellow piano student, who immediately falls in love after a performing a piano duet with him. I love it so much that I won't let a day pass without re-watching my favorite scenes from the dvd or playing Beethoven's symphony no.7 and Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, two orchestra pieces among dozens that make up the soundtrack of the show. I won't pretend to be familiar with classical music -- only recently I could only recognize and name Pachelbel's Canon in D (because it's in such popular demand as a wedding march) and Rossini's William Tell Overture (while still occasionally forgetting the composer's name). I have a "Classical for Beginners" cd that I listen to from time to time, but I have trouble remembering symphony titles and the composers, and all that sticks in my memory is that the Mussorgsky piece sounds like something that was used for the Star Wars films. I still can't tell a Mozart symphony from a Beethoven, but at least now I can recognize S#7 when I hear it, and salute the great Ludwig.

The wonderful thing about this show is that it pumps anime comedy into stodgy classical music, and the result is absolutely brilliant. And then there is Tamaki Hiroshi who's spot-on perfect as Chiaki -- snooty, uptight, gifted and so beautiful that even if he lets fly a dozen anime wallops at poor lovesick Nodame throughout the series, she still won't give up on him. I wouldn't either, if I were next-door neighbors to a kawaii music god who will feed me and clean my apartment while still managing to keep his hair perfectly in place. I love you too, Chiaki-senpai !!!!!

I really, really hate Bayani and the MMDA

THIS IS AN EMAIL I SENT TODAY:

dirty tricks
Sunday, September 13, 2009 1:13:52 AM
From:
Bravo Becky

To: bayanibf_fernando@yahoo.com

On August 27, one of your traffic aides pulled me over for taking a right turn into edsa from ermin garcia. He said I had gone the wrong way on a one-way street and pointed to the post where the "one way" sign was. I had come from Montreal and taken a left into ermin garcia intending to go to edsa; and there were no signs there indicating that Ermin Garcia had suddenly turned into a one-way street. I could have argued my way out of a penalty, but I decided to let him write me a ticket for 2,150 (for 'illegal counterflow' and dts, whatever the hell that means). Your traffic aide took his sweet time writing on a form that any numbskull with half a brain would take twenty seconds to complete, and then when I asked him what took him so long he answered "pinag-aaralan po namin ng mabuti". I don't see anything complicated about writing a ticket for a set of violations he had already anticipated before he even flagged me down; so the dill-dallying couldn't have been anything else but waiting to see whether I would hand him grease money. Which I didn't. I paid for that traffic ticket in full last September 3, only to discover on Friday the 11th that the "one way" sign on the corner of Edsa and Ermin Garcia is no longer there. You have cheated me out of my savings this month. You put your poster all over the place to show how great you are, but to me you're the guy who sends his minions out to screw motorists for their hard-earned money.

-becky bravo
anata wa totemo ijiwaru desu.  

The sentence above translates as "you're really nasty".  I regret that I don't know what the jap word is for "moron".  

I really hate Bayani and the MMDA

I would like to commend the Metro Manila Development Authority for the spectacularly idiotic job it did with the traffic on Commonwealth Avenue during the wake of the INC's Father Manalo. On Sunday evening, just before midnight, it took me more than two hours to travel a distance of less than two kilometers, because those nitwits closed the Quezon Circle-bound lanes to let the mourners take it over as if it were some kind of fairground. They split the Fairview-bound lanes between the two opposite streams of traffic, then allowed people to park their cars along the road AND let pedestrians weave around the morass of moving vehicles like clutches of escaping poultry. Only one car, in that congealed mess of hundreds, could get itself past that gauntlet every ten minutes. The geniuses at the MMDA tried to divide the road with dark-orange traffic cones that you can't clearly see unless you're the Six Million Dollar Man, so whenever a string of vehicles inadvertently crossed over the intended line because they couldn't tell where it was in the first place, a traffic aide came and moved the cones over like a helpless moron, and what ought to have been a straight line of traffic cones became a wavy series of s's. As a result of this Guinness Book-worthy example of boneheaded management by a government institution, I found myself, at one point, directly in the path of a humongous gas truck that was going the opposite direction.

I didn't reach home until after two in the morning. I hadn't had dinner, but I was already too tired to even get myself a glass of milk. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who fell exhaustedly into bed with this thought in his head. I hate Bayani and the MMDA.

I hate Bayani and the MMDA.

Geez, I don't really need to explain, do I?

Choke On It !!!!

You should have already heard about it on the news. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her retinue of reptiles had a $15,000 dinner in New York when she paid a visit to President Barack Obama (notice that I omitted to include Arroyo's title - yes, it is intentional). If you divide that by the 65-member entourage it comes to $230 per person for one freaking meal. That is the most appalling thing I've heard today; even when compared to the rest of the news - the fatal shooting of a pawnshop security guard who was a most devoted husband and father; the newly-unearthed modus operandi of car thieves, policemen and LTO personnel acting in collusion; the early-morning collision on Commonwealth avenue between a truck and a tricycle driven by a drunken idiot; the return of Sandara Park (kidding - she's okay).

Let the palace blather on that somebody else other than the Philippine taxpayer picked up the bill. We know this government well enough to know that they're going to find some way to hide it, if there is evidence that public funds were used. And even if somebody does produce incontrovertible proof that taxpayers' money wasn't used to feed big fat fugly greedy lying grasping Philippine politicians and their hangers-on, what of it? Who paid for the eats really isn't the point. The point is this: while the long-suffering majority of Filipino heads of household have to scrimp and save to provide their families with a dinner made out of the cheapest vegetables and hardly any meat, here are our leaders living it up and each spending, in one sitting, what could have fed a six-person family for a month.

Expect Arroyo and her entourage to shrug and say it's one of the perks of being a member of the government to spend more money than the average citizen. Standard arrogant behavior, really, for a Philippine politician. Makes me ashamed to have to share a nationality with them. Why couldn't the devil come and take them all at the last fiction fiesta of a State of the Nation address?

Yellow Fever

When Cory Aquino took the oath of office as President of the Philippines at Club Filipino, I was a high school freshman left at home alone, sprawled on my mother's bed, listening to the proceedings on radio. I had not been allowed to come with my mother, brother and sister to help man the human barricades on Edsa because they thought I was too young to be involved in a revolution. It must have been the afternoon before the vultures of Malacanang were flown out of the country that I was allowed to sit for half an hour with a phalanx of wet handkerchief-wielding citizens camped somewhere in the Crame area, and then when the news came that we were finally disinfected of the Marcoses, we piled into the car and joined the ecstatic impromptu parade on the city streets.

I could not come in person to pay my respects to the woman who exemplified every quality that has fallen by the wayside in these ambitious, materialistic times - honesty, simplicity, integrity, humility, faith. But I said a prayer and I flew a yellow ribbon from the antenna of my car to mark myself as belonging to her side. I watched on TV as thousands lined up to view her remains, and as they jammed the streets to participate in her funeral. Only presidents who have sincerely served their country get to have a send-off like this. As for the munchkin in the Palace, when it's her turn to kick the bucket, the most she can hope for in the way of a funeral cortege is as many people as are willing to be paid to pretend they're sad to see her go.

Postpartum Pride

Other women bear children; I bear books. This one is my youngest...isn't he kawaii ?
The main character is based on my older brother, who didn't like taking baths when he was a little boy. He's a little sniffy about being immortalized in a children's book as a grubby kid (he and the main character even share the same name), and he denies ever having been bath-phobic, but he knows I have witnesses who can say otherwise. Cheers to Kuya... unsavory childhood habits notwithstanding, he truly is an inspiration :)

Quicklist: July

1. Spent another bundle on a new dermatologist when I started to look like the sort of person who would be flatly refused entrance to a public swimming pool. Am now the impoverished owner of a new set of lotions and creams, but the good news is that three weeks into treatment I started to look more like myself than the creature from the black lagoon.
2. Went bowling with family and friends on my nephew Jakob's fifth birthday party at Paeng's in Eastwood. Showed spectacular form, and even got a strike once, but on the whole I suck at this sport. Mostly I played it like the goal of the game was to get as many gutter balls as possible.
3. Tried to flip a coin into the Eastwood Mall fountain after making a wish ('please send me a man who looks like Daniel Henney'), and it flew in the opposite direction, bounced off the rim of the fountain, and landed on the ground. How's that for an emphatic "hell, no" from the cosmos?
4. On an errand to the bank, found out that some clerk had listed me as "separated" in the client database.
5. Went up on stage during the 26th National Children's Book Day ceremonies to accept my certificate for Honorable Mention in the last PBBY-Salanga writing contest. Was complimented on my 'fashionable' trick with a borrowed malong that I wore over my black dress like a sash. Made Neni Cruz laugh when I said that the friend from whom I borrowed the malong usually uses it to cover her sofa.
6. Got a haircut and let the hairdresser do what she wanted. Mentioned the korean 'Tony and Jacky' salon upstairs to make conversation while she hacked away at my hair. Might have had a subliminal effect on her handiwork, because now I look like Jun Pyo in 'Boys Over Flowers'. He happens to be male.
7. Still studying Japanese. Daniel-san wa watashi no boifurendo desu yo!

Missing Mike

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead. ( W.H. Auden)


My introduction to Michael Jackson was in the time of the Thriller album. An older cousin's cassette tape found its way into our house and I took it hostage for a couple of weeks during which I locked myself in the den and danced to 'P.Y.T.', my hands-down favorite MJ song before I discovered the pre-existing 'Rock With You'. I can't believe he's gone. When he went from tolerably quirky to uncomfortably weird in the last two decades, I stopped listening. I thought he would keep on existing from year to year until we all stopped counting; like Keith Richards, like Mick Jagger. But he has gone and left without giving us a chance to say a proper goodbye. I find myself paying homage to the man by playing his songs and watching his videos and exclaiming to the universe, he really was an amazing performer, wasn't he? Never mind his personal life, never mind the stuff of tabloid headlines. He gave us the music that got us on our feet. He gave me P.Y.T. and the freedom to dance. Thank you, Mike. Bon voyage!

Watashi wa ureshii desu !!!

Why did I choose Japanese? The Daniel is Korean-american. I only know three words in korean, and those are the equivalents of 'yes', 'hello', and 'do you want to die?'. When I know enough jap to speak to an actual human, I suppose I could go look up Mr. Miyagi. Konnichi-wa, Miyagi-san! Byoin wa doko desu ka? I just asked him where the hospital is. Should come in handy when I break my neck after he teaches me karate.

The title above means I'm happy. And why is that? Item one - I may have finally found a product to reduce the scary blotches on my face (kao); a soap (sekken) of apoplexy-inducing cost that is supposed to be composed of various lipids which I presumably lack, hence my tendency to blow up like a mutant strawberry whenever I am exposed to freezing wind (as in the case of the Melbourne sojourn) or saltwater (Boracay 2007: pox monster rises out of the sea and terrorizes villagers of Station 2). Item 2 - I opened my email today and got a lovely new translation job to do. It keeps me busy, exercises my aging brain, and puts a little extra in the kitty. Plus I can do the work in my pajamas. Aaaah daisuki desuyo.

Tokuni Daniel Henney ga daisuki desu.

I don't want the year to continue marching closer to its end without my learning anything new. So I've begun learning a new language. I could have chosen French or Spanish, since I had taken both languages as electives back when I was in college. But I'm a lazy bum when it comes to verb conjugation. Yo me siento, tu te sientas, el se sienta, nosotros nos sentamos, vosotros os sentais, Ustedes se sientan. You don't have to do these verbal gymnastics with Japanese; desu is desu whether it's me doing it, you, he, or they. Besides, I wanted to go Asian for a change. Everyone I know can claim some familiarity with Spanish and French, and some will even engage in spouting off whatever they managed to retain from their college classes. But nobody knows much Nihongo beyond arigato and sayonara. I suppose I'm attracted to the idea of knowing something the average joe probably doesn't.

A friend of mine who used to work for a Japanese company heard about my little language project, and asked if I would like her to ask around about proper classes. Whoa! Am having a cart-before-horse panicky feeling of being expected to see this through until I speak better Nihongo than the Emperor Akihito. Just let me get through all four audio cd's in my basic course, and then we'll see whether I have the proficiency for further study. Hold all the banzais and the kanpais; I'm only doing this for fun for now. As yet, I only have a vocabulary comparable with a Japanese three year-old, and I have only enough confidence to speak Nihongo to my car (it's Japanese, after all), but I would rather not rush things or it will never stick. Slowly but surely, that's the way to go. Dekimasu.

Zero In

I enjoy the X-men movies for the complete package of plot, script, action, acting and special effects. Never had a thing for any of the mutants, not even for Hugh Jackman's Wolverine. But who was this new mutant on the block in "X-men Origins : Wolverine", the tall, lean gunslinger with the Asian face? It was impossible to ignore Agent Zero, even though he was one of the bad guys, and won't ever appear in the X-men franchise again because he got blown to smithereens by Wolverine. The gun-toting, somersaulting mutant with the Asian face was absurdly attractive. Absurdly! Out of his kevlar vest, fatigues, and modernized pompadour, Daniel Henney remains insanely good-looking. Someone get me a glass of water.

Magnificent Manny

Not a boxing fan, and I missed every other past Pacquiao fight, but I watched the Pacquiao-Hatton match today, and let me tell you, that beautiful left-handed knockout hook in round 2 brought me to tears and had me on my knees in front of the television. I caught Ronnie Nathanielsz on tv yesterday predicting that the match would end at round 9 or ten, or if someone 'gets lucky', round three. Hey, Ronnie man, I guess someone got extremely lucky, and we've got people singing "Ricky Hatton's fallen down" to the tune of "London Bridge". Manny's a lean, mean, lightning-fast punching machine! Did you see him making the sign of the cross? Nice to see he knows where it all comes from. Congrats, Manny P, you've done us all proud.

Tongue-tied and Twisted

When you come face to face again with someone you went out with years and years ago, wouldn't your brain fly out of your head too? I couldn't stop the nonsense from cascading out of my mouth, and it's a mystery to me whether he understood anything that I said or was smiling just to be polite. Still a perfectly decent guy. Makes me wish I hadn't blown him off, but I wasn't in the best frame of mind back then. Impossible to believe anyone could genuinely like you if your erstwhile boyfriend had been seeing two other women, and had even used your car on one occasion to take one of them out to dinner. I had the terrible, terrible luck to get the biggest asshole on the planet for a first boyfriend. I have him to thank for filling one whole corner of my mind with extreme doubt about anyone's sincerity; where, previously, I had no such inclination. It's also thanks to my experience with him that I acquired the ability to sabotage every possibility of a relationship before it even springs off the blocks. I didn't just choose to be a spinster, I turned myself into one.

After the short encounter with the guy from the distant past, I kept asking my friend the usual susie-high-school questions like 'was I blushing?', 'did I say something stupid?' and 'did my hair look okay?' -- all right, not suitable behavior for someone pushing forty, but we can't all be wonderfully mature. Well, that particular friend, who I suppose would sit herself right in the 'wonderfully mature' section, succintly replied "I wouldn't think too much about it. He's probably forgotten about you by now." (cue in sound of hissing cat). Perhaps it might have stung a whole lot less if she had said it a day or two after the encounter, but holy mother of god, she gave it to me barely fifteen minutes after the fact. Meow meow, indeed.

Tell you something else has kicked me in the stomach. She turned out to be right after all.

High School Reunion

Our friend Steph came home from the US after an absence of eight years, and we got the old barkada together for dinner at Kalye Juan last month. These were the people I had countless recesses and lunches with, sitting on the pebbled floor of the Maryknoll High School cafeteria. We always ran out of tables because we always meandered on our way to the dining hall. It's a wonderful thing to be grown up and properly seated for every meal. Upper left: Effie. Upper right: Steph. Lower right: Yumi. Lower left: the twisted spinster.

Out, damn spot!

Now that my half-hearted Palanca entry has been shipped off to McKinley Road and crossed off my to-do list, I can refocus my attentions to the pitiful state of my fugly face. Have you ever heard of rosacea? Pretty name for an incurable skin condition that gives you a permanent flush on cheeks, nose and forehead. As it progresses, the flushed areas will begin to bloom with lumps and bumps that look like acne but will react to any standard acne medication by calling on all its friends and relatives to start a bloody revolution. When I went to visit my brother six months ago in November, the weird Melbourne weather triggered one of the worst flare-ups I've ever had, and since coming back home to QC my face has been one scary sight to behold. Some days it looks so bad that I imagine people wonder whether I'm contagious. I wish I could just stay home during the day because I am hideous in broad daylight, but if I don't go to work I'll starve, so I comb my hair over my face, Sadako-style, and avoid looking anybody in the eye at all costs. Never mind if it makes me look like a lunatic.

There is no medication or dermatological procedure that can rid me of it. The best a derma can do is to prescribe an antibiotic to control the inflammation or zap your face with a laser to temporarily shrink the blood vessels. Antibiotics stopped working for me a long time ago, and as for the laser treatments, I'm not too sure about frying my face, and neither am I in a position to drop a few thousand for each session. It takes a long time for a simple scratch to fade on skin like mine. The scar I got under my knee when I fell off a bike in fifth grade is still as nasty as it ever was.

Nobody in the dermatological profession has any idea what causes rosacea. Yet. So people like me can only look to the world wide web for answers, and for the sympathy of fellow-sufferers. Forums abound with remedies for rosacea, the latest of which comes from an e-book being hawked over the net for twenty-nine dollars. Some people bought it out of desperation, and then sprung the info out on the forums to save the others from having to fork out any more money. Here is what we must start taking to rid ourselves of the plague: lysine supplements, yogurt, cider vinegar, omega-3, HCl supplements and Zinc. What we have is an amino acid deficiency and a digestion problem, the book says.

Well, no harm in conducting a two-week experiment. I tracked down pure lysine tablets at the GNC in Trinoma (but not before getting lost in the rabbit warren that is this godawfully large mall), bought a supply of fish for the omega-3, stocked my refrigerator with probiotic/yogurt drinks, and have temporarily stopped drinking coffee in favor of green tea, though it isn't on the list. I hear it's good for the skin. So far I haven't had an adverse reaction to popping lysine tablets before every meal, and though the yogurt drink tastes like soured milk mixed with the juice of an unripe fruit, I drink it anyway. Green tea, without sugar, tastes really green. Like grass.

A Message from Mao

You gotta hand it to the universe. Just when you're an inch away from opening fire with a semiautomatic on your unsuspecting neighbors because you've been stuck all month in the longest April Fools Day of your entire life, the universe will send its unlikeliest messenger to tighten the screw even more. An errand to Shoppersville supermarket to get a harmless dory fillet, orange juice and a few articles of junk food. But first a short trip to the second floor to browse for a trinket or two; palliatives for the blues. I see a nice-looking purse that might have possibilities. Turn it from side to side, wondering whether anyone in his right mind would buy a bag from the second floor of a supermarket for two grand. Walk away, becks, walk away, yelled a tiny voice inside my head, the very same one that sings disco tunes whenever I make a deposit at the bank. Tsk.

So I wandered around the shelves of office supplies. Staplers...erasers...ooh,a battery-operated pencil sharpener...aha, stationery! I've always had a thing for paper. So I flip through a box of letter sets made in Korea. They're cute, in spite of being peppered with english captions that make absolutely no sense at all, even if each word manages to be spelled correctly. Flip flip flip. Here's one with a picture of a log cabin in the snow. Here's one with a cartoon character holding a giant lighted mosquito coil, yelling in Korean at a mosquito at the bottom of the page. Flip flip. Here's one with...what the f...Mao Zedong? But so it is. Chairman Mao's stingy smile and generous forehead on a 100-renminbi bill is the design on the envelope, and it's duplicated on the matching paper, with something extra: these two lines from a very familiar song appears on the upper left hand corner, rendered in a cursive black font just under Mao's chin -

All by myself, don't wanna be all by myself.
All by myself, don't want to live all by myself.


Well, get in line, mister Mao, get in line. You know you're beyond salvation when a dead revolutionary leader sings the anthem.

Binibining Palengke

For the past nine years I've gone to work at the drugstore's main office that's located right next to a public market which I've never bought anything from until, oh, around two weeks ago. I didn't need to do the food shopping when I still lived at my mom's house, but I certainly could have done my shopping at the market when I moved out three years ago, right? I don't know, it didn't seem to be such a good idea whenever I staggered out of my cubicle at somewhere past 10 PM. All I wanted to do was get the hell out of there and fix dinner.

For the longest time, I bought my vegetables in pre-packed plastic bags from the supermarket. 7 times out of ten there would be a fat worm in one of the eggplants, small larvae sleeping in the cabbage, or a hairy green thing in the pechay. I didn't realize what a bad deal I was getting until I wandered into the veggie area of Nepa Qmart to get two eggplants and some beans. I thought the man was joking when he charged me seven pesos. If this were the supermarket in my neighborhood I would have been forking out more than twice as much money. Which means I have been willingly letting myself get fleeced for the past three years. Aaaargh! I'm a stupid broad, that's what I am.

I clocked out of the office at 10 PM this evening and went straight to my usual vegetable dealer for the usual beans, potatoes, eggplants and a chayote. I made friends with a six-year old boy who pretended to be manning the stall; he called a green pepper an eggplant. I went along with it. He charged me twenty-eight pesos for everything, until his father came along, hauled the boy aside and weighed the vegetables. Forty pesos.

It says on my watch that it's 12:18 am, Sunday. Happy Easter!

Deadline Fever

I'm supposed to be working on a story to submit to the 2009 Palancas before the end of the month, but here I am listening to a funk/house version of The Smiths' "Stop Me", nursing a stomach ache from eating too many cheetos with my coffee, blogging. It's the first time in weeks that I haven't been sent a translation job, the perfect opportunity to spend one full day on earnest work for the contest closest to my heart, but for some reason I could only manage to tap out two and a half paragraphs and get as far as page three of what may end up a seven-page manuscript. The rest of my day I spent dawdling over my email, catching up on the news via Yahoo, watching the first half of 50 First Dates while drying my hair, daydreaming about a man in a blue shirt and a white coat, fiddling with the budget (yay! I'm in the black) and defrosting the refrigerator. Who knows, maybe I can muster enough activity in my lump of fungus for a brain to cobble two more paragraphs before I lose consciousness this evening, and thereby hook a finger into page four. It's only 10:58 PM anyway, and there's time yet to spend in front of this machine. But first, dinner (the holy week staple of chicken afritada swimming in tomato broth), and then a small stack of paperwork from the office. And then it's the Palancas all the way till 2AM. I swear. Unless there's something interesting on Youtube.

Sammy: In Memoriam, 1998-2009

REST IN PEACE, SAMMY-SAM.

Somebody Kill Me Now 2

Saturday. Two thirty-four in the morning. Spent nine hours locked in a windowless 5x10 office trying to make sense out of sales reports that seemed to have been made while under the influence of weed, navigating my way through a stack of invoices and checks needing my john hancock, and punching numbers into a geriatric calculator to figure out whether we've got enough money to tide us over through next week. The boss is away on vacation until the end of the month, and so is the second-in-command. Any work that those two couldn't pre deep-six now gets shunted over to me and I am so glad for the extra work that it's perfectly fine that I have to come in for an extra day every week. NOT. I feel like I've just been kicked into the fireplace by the two ugly stepsisters. It gets worse. I'm not even Cinderella, I really am just the scullery maid. If you cleaned me up and stuffed me into a padded ball gown and my feet into glass slippers, I'd still be fugly. Worse yet? The prince is really only interested in the shoes.


Thou shalt love Mark Ronson, if there's nobody else.

Australia: November 16-December 16, 2008

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER. SELECTED PICTURES FROM LAST YEAR'S MONTH-LONG STAY WITH MY BROTHER TOTI AND SISTER-IN-LAW ANA IN MELBOURNE.


SCHWEPPES LEMONADE, CHEEZELS, HOT CHOCOLATE, CAFE SWEETHEARTS, WICKED, LUMBERJACK STACK, MUSCATEL WINE, WILSONS PROM, PHILLIP ISLAND, OSCAR THE KANGAROO, COOINDA COURT, THE CROWN CASINO, $28 AT POKEYS, TWISTIES, VANILLA BEAN ICE CREAM, THE ASIAN GROCERY STORE ACROSS THE ROAD.


THE COVENTRY BOOKSHOP, MOLESKINE DATEBOOK, IKEA, THE GIANT MAC, PEPPERONI PIZZA, PAELLA AT THE MARKET, PEKING DUCK OVERLOAD, OUTLET SHOPPING, REMBRANDTS AT THE GALLERY, TRAM PHOBIA, GPS NAVIGATION, SHARKS AT THE MELBOURNE AQUARIUM, STEAK AND CORN DINNER, STORM OVER WARATAH BAY, 50 FIRST DATES, PEKO PEKO, PIE IN THE SKY.


BRUNO'S GARDEN, PHOTOGRAPHS OF US FLYING IN MID-AIR, JAKOB ON THE NINTENDO, LAUNDRY IN THE BALCONY, THE TOWER OF SMART CARS, SANDCASTLES ON A CHILLY BEACH, PLUMP RED BIRDS ON THE VERANDA, RABBITS IN THE BUSHES, STREET ARTISTS, FEDERATION SQUARE, THE PHOTOGENIC ROYAL VICTORIA E & E STAFFHOUSE, HUNGRY JACK'S, GELATO, METCARDS, TIDAL RIVER, RUNNING TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, FAT WOMBATS, LOLLY SHOPS, IGOR'S CHAIR.