My favourite new experience in Cambodia and Vietnam was seeing how many people can fit on a moto (motorbike).
In that part of the world, people don’t really ride motorbikes, rather a local kind of scooter or “step-through”. Katie says there’s no age limit to riding them in Cambodia, as long as your feet reach the footrest.
And yes, the whole family will fit on a moto. Very usual to see babies and children sitting in front holding the handlebars. i love it. In Vietnam the children wear helmets .. in Cambodia not.
Traffic here is something else entirely. The one rule appears to be “Give way to bigger vehicles”. Lauli said it was like schools of fish in the sea; you swim with the group, go with the flow.
So far i have seen on the back of a moto:
Desperately seeking comments: Please share your “back of a moto” experience.
i went with annie to a film festival in Northcote .. to see a film we heard about on 3RRR the other day.
There were a few short films made for this competition, and “Hamish” was the winner for many good reasons. Really enjoyable film, great character, gentle humour.
Claire Moon has Asperger Syndrom and her sister Hannah wanted to make a documentary about her .. partly to learn how to make movies. Well Hannah learned pretty well, because this film has won more than one
Sam Downing as Agent Smog was delighted when she heard that one audience member had asked, “Who was on the door? She was such a bitch!”
Job well done Sam!!
Tim gave us the brief to be casual and dismissive in our authority as customs agents, interrogating and searching immigrants to the Wealth of Nations Nut Economy by Sanctum Theatre.
Of course Tim has the expertise as Sergeant Blank from the Watch-house. He knows all about tormenting people who refuse to acknowledge his authority or try to play funny games.
Nice to be directed by a master of his craft.
i’ve never been a big fan of Clint Eastwood, but i must now admit he is a genius. Went to see Gran Torino with michael on the weekend, and i was in floods of tears.
Can’t write too much about it here because i don’t have any way to conceal the spoiler effect .. but the grumpy old man character arc i found astonishing, refreshing, touching!
And yes, when i thought the movie would be about a car, because i kept mispronouncing it Torana .. turns out i was right about that.
So i’m off to the Movie Reel in Westgarth to stock up on Clint’s back stories.
Have you seen the movie, and did it make you cry?
How much delight can a melbourne music goer bear?
On a night when the rest of the world was huddled around the s/MCG watching everyone from Kylie to Wolfmother and Split Enz, Annie and i headed for Northcote’s Wesley Anne to see the ethereally magnificent Flying Scribble with Pikelet playing solo.
Louise and gray are in very fine form; their new magic shines wonderfully just like the old numbers. gray’s drumming always astonishes and Louisie somehow manages to play 15 instruments at once, pumping out eg bass, organ, accordion and macbook samples.
Yes i was transported again by their beautiful rhythmic genius.
Here they are caught on video back in ’07:
Great News: they’ve finished recording the new album! Bad news: Shame the wesley still shuts down sound at 11pm.
Who’s Flying Scribble?
Lou and gray are one amazing melbourne duo. Find out more:
Some days are just brilliant. The Melbourne theatre scene is alive and well.
i was lucky enough to have a sneak preview of Roundangle‘s latest – “in the dark” – which promises to be very enjoyable and innovative. (Part of the Art of Difference festival.)
It was an early dress rehearsal, so Jodie would say things like, “You have to imagine a long screen here. You can’t see those people.” .. and “Okay now it’s a complete blackout, so close your eyes please.”
Later that night Zeena and i headed to the recently rescued La Mama in Carlton for a fabulous evening with Moira and Yumi’s “Salon de Dance“.
Gritty, sexy, horrific in places .. as you’d expect from those hellish dancers; and romantic in an old-school kind of way.
This show opened with a priest stripping down to his red-crucifixed knickers. Hilarious! and raunchy.
Yumi wrestling with her jacket, a couple of young Town Bikes apprentices dancing out an actual wrestling match, Moira slow-dancing with a cigarette on Highway 66. All fun.
The centre-piece was Moira and Yumi playing out a Gothic feast, beginning with the tall one eerily peering through the window .. and ending with an outrageous red wine splash-o-rama.
Gorgeous.
My beautiful old iRiver died while i was travelling in Cambodia. It disappeared from my luggage on a bus. Device death by disappearance.
i was sad, i was disappointed. But sooner or later i had to have another music player**.
So i chomped on the ammunition and stole an iPod classic from JB hifi. They took $325 from me but it felt like a steal anyway.
Heaven.
Glamor-tech.
Charming.
and no i don’t have to run iTunes. So Relieved About That!!
Yes, Winamp manages an iPod just fine.
Just drag the files across and there they are.
Yay Winamp.
PS: not perfect, this device.
**Yes i have the iRiver e100, but that’s a kind of joke really. When you put the micro SD card in, all the screen writing reverses to mirror image. Fortunately i can read mirror writing just like da Vinci.
photo credit: Themis Chapsis
xkcd is funny.
A Masquerade Ball is always the way to feel fabulous. This was fun.
Melbourne’s Underground folk turned out in their finest dress-ups to celebrate the powerful mystique of our local music scene. What could be better than dancing to the Barons of Tang and then Spoonbill.
Hobo Piano in the foyer .. tattooed glamour from wall to wall.
Zeena and Cam and i danced the night away, revelling in everything. i just wish i’d taken me camera ;-[
One day i went to drop off some of my ex-boxes, and discovered the Reservoir Tip computer recycling facility. Masses of old rubbishy broken machines, and one smashed up MacBook Pro!!
i thought maybe Tim could use the parts so i surreptitiously grabbed it and drove off. Sure enough, later on that night we took it to pieces, and found the hard drive and the battery were still in working order.
Working enough to find out that somebody had left all their data on the drive. So Tim gets all the data off and then does the decent thing, contacting this person and asking if they need the backup.
Turns out this person, whose identity shall remain secret, had taken the laptop to the shop. The mechanics had said, “Can’t do anything love, it’s broken. Can’t get your data off, but don’t worry we’ll make sure noone else does either.”
What kind of computer shop doesn’t know how to get the information off a working hard drive??
The moral of this story? Don’t trust a computer shop with your data.
And don’t sit on your macbook pro.
