February 28, 2002
Metal conversations

Our carriage on the train was full of children on their way to school - it was that time of the morning - the aisle and seats were randomly splashed with brown-red, dark blue, burgundy or garish green uniforms and enormous bags. Lost amongst the students was a segment of the working population, most of whom were dressed in more conservative colours.

All of them talked. Last night's dinner, last night's episode of whatever, who's she going out with this week, why the hell is he running this project like that.

A metal box on metal wheels, running on metal tracks hurtling at metal speed, transporting idle conversation.

The sky beyond the windows was an eternal, serene grey. For some reason, it occurred to me how lonely it was that all this noise was confined only here, and out there somewhere was a silent world.

Posted by sniffles at 11:08 PM | Comments (0)

February 26, 2002
Beautiful things

The guy at the handicraft shop was obviously tired after a long day. His glasses were smudged with dust and fingerprints that I wondered how well he could actually see through them. Still, he smiled at me as if he could see me just fine when I walked up to the counter.

"You like beautiful things, don't you," he said, ringing my purchases through on a green iMac.

I struggled for a moment. I didn't think I was buying anything special ... a collage kit, some paper and a couple of shells. Don't all people who come to a shop like this like beautiful things? Why was he saying that to me?

"Unfortunately, yes ..." said I.

Words hung at the edge of my tongue. That all this raw material is but a kind of potential beauty - from which beauty of another kind can be created.

Posted by sniffles at 10:38 PM | Comments (2)

February 24, 2002
Breathe

New Antipasto entry: The art of. We saw Songs:Ohia and Art of Fighting on Friday night.

At the Midnight Oil gig last night, I ran into David. I seem to end up with a sore back after every MO gig ... all the bopping.

Most of today was taken up at a wedding - such a beautiful day for it. It was all very lovely, except for the organist who played the fastest Pachelbel's Canon I've ever heard - and the fastest "Amazing Grace", and the fastest Mendelssohn's "Wedding March" for the recessional - you could almost expect the newlyweds to jig down the aisle! It's not the first time I have felt like throttling the organist at a wedding.

Oh yes, and I'm quite a lot better, flu-wise.

Posted by sniffles at 10:43 PM | Comments (0)

February 22, 2002
Floo

Guess who's sick again? Though I suppose this time I can blame it on any of jetlag, change in climate, the flu bug that I must have caught from my grandmother, the very bad air in the office that made me nauseous the very day I returned to work.

I'm better today, at least. This time yesterday, I could barely sit up, let alone type. :)

Posted by sniffles at 02:27 PM | Comments (1)

February 20, 2002
Petals for a cold summer

A brief lunchtime trip into the CBD. When I was overseas, I had the urge to photograph everything, and it's wonderous and nice to feel the same way about the city in which I live. You want to remember everything, how it looks, how it smells, how it sounds, how it feels, and in the end you take no pictures because it is not possible to capture everything and breathe it all at the same time. Whilst in Montreal though, the firmware of my camera was continually confused by the cold - I gave up in the end.

The familiar whirr of the tram, the particular clicking noise the indicators make when we pause at stops. The trees - whose names I don't know - sway their branches in time to the wind in a collective dance - a storm is approaching.

I think of the friendly immigration officer who was diverting people to different queues at the airport when I arrived in Melbourne. I can't seem to remember exactly what he said, but I had wondered if he read anything in my expression as he pointed me to the shortest queue. His was the first truly Australian accent I'd heard in two weeks - it was surprising, warm and pleasant, though it took a little while for his words to make sense.

Posted by sniffles at 07:33 PM | Comments (0)

February 18, 2002
Unpacking

The suitcase has been emptied and stored away in the cupboard - on a shelf I can barely reach without the aid of a chair - to be taken out when travel next beckons. Clean clothes put away into the wardrobe that contains even more clothes - I really need to go through these to sort out what I never wear anymore.

Some garments still smell of Montreal, of warmth indoors and cold outdoors, some hint of the smoky cafes of Paris.

I listened to Rachmaninov, lacking in sleep and the ability to sleep. Slowly, my physical senses re-align with the realities my mind holds, my heart in front of a fireplace, basking in the friendliness of its flames.

Posted by sniffles at 06:54 PM | Comments (1)

February 16, 2002
Flying high

Kuching, Malaysia.

Day 5 in Normandy.

I had my first bubble tea experience today - it's a drink that seems frighteningly popular in some parts of Asia. It's okay, I guess. The novelty seems to lie in having almost marble-sized tapioca "pearls" popping up in your mouth unexpectedly as you sip the tea through a straw.

I'm cheating, posting the Day 5 image a couple of hours before truly day five - I've kept the blog timestamp on Melbourne time - given that I had to fly all around the nothern hemisphere, it was as good a timestamp as any. So ... I will be offline again for some time whilst making my way back down south, towards the bottom of the world.

In a day or two, it should be back to your irregularly scheduled babble.

Posted by sniffles at 01:19 AM | Comments (2)

February 15, 2002
Roses

Kuching, Malaysia.

Day 4 in Normandy.

I have less than a day left in Kuching. Finally, some shops have gingerly opened their doors for business, and I am indulging in some last-minute shopping. Not as much as I would have liked, unfortunately.

Yesterday, and also the day before, small stalls cropped up by roadsides everywhere, selling pink heart-shaped balloons and overpriced long-stemmed roses. The eager sellers stood under big golf umbrellas, waving their precious flowers at drivers who were probably more concerned with keeping their cars on the roads in the heavy, unrelenting rain.

Posted by sniffles at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

February 14, 2002
Green rain

Kuching, Malaysia.

Day 3 in Normandy.

The humidity dampens the desire to move, motivation of any kind thoroughly drenched by the onslaught of heavy tropical rain. Water floods all consciousness, soaks memory's skin, and erodes all sense of time.

My mother has a marvellous garden. It is from here that I grew a love for non-flowering, leafy greens and dainty flowers.

Coffees and conversations about nothing in particular, grateful to be under a roof on wet, rainy afternoons.

Posted by sniffles at 05:52 PM | Comments (1)

February 13, 2002
Closed

Kuching, Malaysia.

Day 2 in Normandy.

Closed, closed, closed.

Everything is closed - shops, schools, businesses, doors, windows. Being public holidays and Chinese New Year festivities. Festivities? The streets are deserted and the streetlamps shine on no one. The trees hesitate to whisper even when the wind coaxes. The air is stifling, thick like featherdown, but without true comfort.

Posted by sniffles at 02:25 PM | Comments (1)

February 12, 2002
Day by day

Kuching, Malaysia.

A hand and an object, a pair every day. Day 1 in Normandy.

The tropical rain plays its own particular rhythm on the roof, lulling rivulets into song, persuading the greenery to join in its symphony.

Posted by sniffles at 04:06 PM | Comments (0)

Cat city

Kuching, Malaysia.

I'm actually going to be in the same location for some five days. Woo. This might mean a few things, like being able to catch up with blogs and emails - the network here is sometimes a little dodge, but overall I should be able to manage time online. Apologies to the cool people who have been lovingly filling up my mailbox and not hearing very much at all from me. :) (I don't mean spammers, they hardly do it out of love.)

Oh yeah, and I should sleep. When I did manage to sleep, I hardly seemed to be able to do so for more than a stretch of three hours at a time in the previous days ...

Being back in your hometown with people you've spent a part of your life growing up with is a halfway trek between nostalgia and alienation. So many things remind me that I don't truly belong here anymore.

Posted by sniffles at 01:55 AM | Comments (0)

February 11, 2002
Airport

Changi Airport, Singapore.

It's been many, many years since I've been to the international terminal in Singapore, and I'm so giddy-headed from 12 hours in the air that I can't really say whether it's familiar or not.

It's strange seeing everything in English again. Boarding on another plane in about 15 minutes.

Posted by sniffles at 11:38 AM | Comments (1)

February 07, 2002
Traverse

Montreal, Canada.

We were making our way through the crowded aisles of the supermarket, pausing at the most inconvenient times for other shoppers around us, stopping and staring at the shelves. I apologised to the same lady three times; she was traversing the store in the same direction, and we kept running into her, aisle after aisle.

Karl was laughing at me - my only concrete touristy request was to visit a supermarket here. Apparently it is something that he also does - visiting foreign supermarkets. It seemed vaguely amusing that we should spend half an hour or more slowly making our way through the shop and walking out empty-handed.

The confectionery section was surprisingly short, and there didn't seem to be as many types of biscuits as there ought to be. I built recipes in my head as we walked. Odd that I was thinking so much about culinary pleasures when airplane food had successfully robbed me of a healthy appetite.

And then it was back out into the snow and the cold, but there was plenty of warmth in the early neon evening and the wispy breaths of happy-sad-preoccupied faces in the street.

Posted by sniffles at 07:13 AM | Comments (8)

February 04, 2002
Winter

Montreal, Canada.

Today it is mild grey, as if the snow on the ground has somehow made it back heavenward and the world is a reflection of itself.

Unfamiliar roads, unfamiliar buildings. Crunching through snow like fresh biscuits, wading through gravel-flavoured slush. I don't know which way is up, and I get left and right confused. It is cold, but it is a refreshing change after some twenty-eight hours between airports and planes at 33,000 feet, chasing yesterday.

The sky showers pure fine flour, and it makes me think of baking a cake. Buildings like decorative confectionery, and I devour, devour, devour.

It is beautiful here.

Posted by sniffles at 05:08 AM | Comments (0)

February 01, 2002
The TicTac Difference

Helen found me at a little past midday and we trotted around the corner and up past the next main street for lunch. The day was a morbid grey, and tending towards chilly. I took a punt and left the umbrella behind.

Amidst computer work prospects in San Francisco, dogs, and American slang, we discussed the strange phenomenon of TicTac packaging. In Australia, all TicTacs are white, regardless of whether they are orange, spearmint or peppermint flavoured. The packaging, however, would be coloured accordingly: orange for orange, and clear for both types of mints - the difference (I think!) is on the colour of the labels. In America, it seems the colouring is on the mints themselves, and all the cases are clear.

Weird, but cool. Oh and by the way, don't try cinnamon TicTacs unless you're brave.

Posted by sniffles at 12:58 AM | Comments (1)