Speaking of…●10

… morning routines:

I live in a building constructed in maybe the 1930-40s, as many of the houses in my part of town. I love my apartment, with it’s roomy feel and big kitchen.
It has one big flaw though. The door. It’s thin, which makes it sort of a sounding-board out into the stairwell, and many sounds grow loud and resounding, which gives you a more private relationship with your neighbours than you might wish for.

My next door neighbour is an interesting existence. Looks sort of scary, but is very giving and considerate in a way. He was hospitalised this summer for double-sided pneumonia and came home rather worried. He’s a heavy smoker, and the doctor had given him some sort of verdict that he wouldn’t share, he just told me that it’s serious.

Since then, his smokers’ morning coughs have transformed into vomit. With screams. He knows we can hear him, and he apologised with “I assume you’ve heard me in the mornings”… I asked him what the doctors say about it, and he tells me they say its psychological.

My only guess then is that its fear of death that makes him howl in the bathroom on the other side of my bedroom wall, every morning at 06:15.

It can never be a good way to start a day.

ps ...

...we blogged into the new year!

Cheers to the new year!

The new year view in Sydney, 1 Jan '09

Speaking of … ☼9

... pulling out good surprises

The other morning in the bathroom, I surprised myself! :-) I suddenly remembered bathing in Calcutta. And then I remembered that I'd kept it in my back pocket for a time like right now - when I've woken up tired almost every morning from the end of last year and so far into this one. I've had nightmares almost every night, one after the other, I'm sort of impressed with the variety and sheer numbers, but also just very tired. So this morning, I got out a small bucket, made a note to buy a large cup with a handle, stepped into the shower and remembered waking up in Calcutta...

Last year in our hotel in Calcutta, we called for a bucket of hot water once but it never came. So we looked out the window. Four floors down on the roadside is a popular public tap. It was winter but still from maybe 5 in the morning people gathered outside and it becomes a bathing and car-washing pitstop. Men of all sizes, wearing either just undershorts or longhis (like a sarong) bathe. People squat or stand, there are many techniques.

S adopted the soap all over then sharp, quick, cold rinse under running water. I went for the soap one bit then splash, pour and rub vigorously with both hands until shiny and slightly warmed. At home I leave the shower feeling warm and relaxed. Here I jumped out ready to scrub down a taxi.

...and it worked! I don't know if it was the squatting, the scrubbing piece-by-piece, the shiny skin or the weight of a full bucket of water crashing on my head at the end – but a quick holiday in my bathroom one morning worked wonders.

Speaking of…●8

… a strong finish to the year

I just finished my temp this week.
November has been pure death, so stressful my ears have literally been ringing… (see, that’s what you get for playing Santa’s little fairtrade helper…) - actually to the degree where I was almost glad that there won’t be any chances to continue there next year.

However, the last 2 weeks have been generally nice. We caught up with the workload, stress decreased and there were a lot of christmas parties both for the whole office and the separate departments. Friday was the day where we rounded everything up, with a xmas party at the warehouse (where I’ve been spending most of my time the last months). The salesdep arranged ‘pick’n'pack’-games for the colleagues from fundraising & communication, had pizza and wine and a lot of good conversations and giggeling.

In the middle of this, T - one of my closest colleagues, a guy in his 50’s, looks up this classic Swedish song with my name in it - The dream of E - on youtube and hands out the alternative lyrics he had written the night before, and makes everybody join in in my serenade… I was blushing but truly touched!

A pretty good way to say goodbye, huh!

Speaking of … ☼7

…turning remnants into Good Stuff!

I got my annual report…?

I was sitting at our intimate xmas party sipping on some tea, having just watched a couple of works in progress from the year. I don’t know if I told you but M, N and I meet every few weeks or so in M’s living room. Over tea and biscuits we read each other’s drafts, watch rough cuts and other story things. The bigger the pile of bikkies, the more we need to pat someone on the shoulder. This year there were lots and lots of biscuits, fresh strawberries sometimes too, for when collaborators refused to hand over footage and when computers crashed and swallowed near-finished things whole.

We were an odd bunch that night. There were even a couple of the random but nice young men that always seem to appear out of nowhere in M’s hallways or in the kitchen asking for food - friends of her son, that seem to have just settled into one of the many rooms in the house indefinitely. We were all sitting together in the lounge room when M walked over to N and I with a couple of print-outs.
She smiled as she gave them to us. I scanned the heading suspiciously: “Annual Report 2008, Executive Summary.”

Following instructions, M’s daughter read the report out loud.

She read it rat-a-tat-a-tat-news-reporter style, and suddenly all the scrappy odds and ends of my year took shape and seemed like, well, progress of some kind. It was sort of thrilling to hear it all laid out in front of everyone. And it wasn’t laid out how I saw it, as a bit of a slow, stop-start year. Instead it was all very dramatic, ‘major downfalls’, ‘restive investors threatening to remove all stock’, ‘recent rallying due to support from team members’, ‘investor confidence taking awhile to return to former levels’. We even got portfolio summaries for each of us, I’m glad to say that mine had a “very strong finish to the year,” although “major commitments were slow to develop.” Too true.

Speaking of…●6

… close looks around gardens:

A few weeks ago, I went to visit my brother and his family.

In the garden, I finally got to see what had only been described to me over the phone: the playhouse/climbing frame/(sub)tree house H and my brother built from my grandmother’s old loom.

After my grandmother passed away, the poor old loom had been stored in my parent’s garage for more than 15 years, in hope that maybe one of us would magically move into a really big house and take up weaving. After a very long time, my father gave up hope, and started burning pieces of it in the fireplace during winter. I know it saddend him, because my grandmother was a very crafty woman, who cherished her loom a lot.

My godmother the textile teacher thinks its blasphemy, both putting it in the fireplace and building a playhouse out of the remnants. It might. But I hope my grandmother and the loom likes the new life that has been created for it.

Speaking of … ☼5

… finding things a bit later

From an interview with Chikabo Kumada (what a cool name), “97 year old botanical art maestro” in Pingmag Make. (Image above also from Pingmag Make)

… “I hit the renaissance of my life when I turned seventy. That was when I really bloomed. Up until then it was like I had been like living in muddy water. (laughs) When I turned seventy, my works received recognition at an international picture book exhibition in Bologna, I got a lot of press and requests to speak publicly, and I got more work. When Italians and French people see my work, they say, “Mr. Kumada’s pictures are alive. The esprit is like that of Fabre.” Isn’t that nice? So my 80s were really like the bloom of youth for me. But when you reach such an age, you could really die at any moment. So I felt that it was important that I didn’t miss anything, and I took another close look around my garden. And that was when I realized I was able to see things in flowers and leaves that I hadn’t been able to see before, and my work got more detailed. Now when I look at the work I did when I was younger, it’s so amateurish that it embarrasses me. Most people rest on their laurels once they get into their seventies, but that was when life really started for me. (laughs)” …

p.s I hope this isn’t considered cheating! It’s been too long, my pockets are still empty, I felt like I must bring something quickly, and then I met this extraordinary man on my afternoon internet travels!