It's patently obvious that I can't commit to posting daily. Let's just accept, and move on.

I'd like to embark on a different kind of endeavour, however. One without time constraints or unwieldy obligations. I can't do unwieldy.

This is post number one of a series of posts. A series of posts about a photo I took once.

A photo I took once in far away lands, that now resides in my Aperture archive; unseen, unloved.

A photo I would put in a book, if I had it in me to write a book. Or had enough photos to fill a book.

A photo with good memories and good exposure.

A photo I look at and remember more than what is held in the frame.

Perhaps you didn't believe me when I said my uncle was a highway mango entrepreneur?

I don't know when this was taken. It must've been a while ago because that beat-up red car in the foreground is our old faithful Mazda 626, which was from a time before power-steering...it pre-dates the digital camera era also, and is *gasp* a scanned photo, taken using an ancient equipment called the 35mm film camera. Something to do with lights and flashes and a network of tubes. Don't worry, it amazes me too.


The only thing missing from this picture is a beer, a dog, and a fishing rod.

Allegedly, one of my quirks (I like to think one of my lovable quirks...if indeed it is actually true), is that when I have finished drinking my cup of tea/coffee/other warm beverage, I leave the cup behind.

I have been told, though I believe it's all lies, that I can be tracked, in the manner of a wilderbeast across the plains or some other wildlife analogy, except that my tracks are crockery rather than little piles of poo.

Things could be worse though, right? (Not that such slander against me is true, anyway.) ...At least my cups are pretty.


PS. Obviously my attempt to blog every day in January has failed. To be honest, I'm surprised I lasted as long as I did.

My grandmother cannot eat mangoes. She's deathly allergic to them. I can't imagine such a fate.

When it comes to summer, I am a hot stinkin mess. But mangoes are the respite. Warm. Cold. Juicy. I ate one just now. Sometimes in summer I eat one every day. I would eat more, but people would judge (and I have an irrational fear of the judgement of others).

Some years ago, we had a beach house. The reasons why we no longer have a beach house are many and varied, and don't need to be discussed right now. When we had that house, my uncle had a house too, with a Bowen mango tree in the backyard (note that he still has a house now, but that it is a different house..) That tree would go crazy in summer and mangoes would rain from the sky. They would fall on the ground and ferment and his horses would eat them and get crazy punch drunk on sweet luscious mango moonshine. And my uncle would sit out on the Pacific Highway with his ute and a sign, and he would sell those mangoes by the boot load.

The best way to eat a mango, though I will concede, not the only way to eat a mango, is to first slice off the cheeks. The trick there is to get right up against the seed as you slice down. Despite my impressive mango eating skills, I'm yet to master that particular area of preparation. Then you cut into the cheek to make a grid. But you don't cut too deep or else you break the skin, and that's just asking for trouble. You turn the cheek inside out and you go for it. It does not matter if you get mango on your face, on your hands, everywhere. It's how it's done. The seed will make you work for it, but you can gnaw a mango seed for a long time and be occupied. You just have to go for it with both hands. It's a ritual. It reminds me of other things: different things from different times. Mango mixed with salty beach hands and the smell of summer, and the uncomfortable crunch of a single grain of sand coming between mango and tooth.

I am going to have a mango smoothie for breakfast tomorrow and things will be less bleak because of it.

Jag önskar att jag skulle cykla genom Uppsala på en höstdag. kaffe på storken, ICA pasta med min korridor, pannkakor och ärtsoppa på BMC "nummer tjugo åtta Varsågoda". vantar, halsduk, kanelbulle.  

Finns det någon som vill byta, bara för en eftermiddag?

My brother gave me a rhinoceros for christmas. A little tiny rhinoceros made from stainless steel, on a sterling silver chain. A little tiny awesome super cute rhinoceros from people who make cool and awesome jewellery and sell it at markets in Canberra.

I think Canberra is boring. It's just like a version of Armidale, but with wider streets. I went to a cocktail party there once and everyone there was a public servant, and they all worked for the same government department, and they spoke in acronyms, and so I drank a lot a tequila, and maybe some gin, and caught a cab to the Hyatt and slept with a pilot. It was one of my finer moments.

It's ok, I knew the pilot, and nothing funny happened...

Anyway, I got this rhinoceros for christmas. He's so excellent. From a place called Klei. There are other animals, including a bunny (!) and a blue whale and a squirrel (animals to which I am partial).


But I like my rhinoceros best.

Even though I had to look up in the dictionary how to spell rhinoceros. It's just not a word I use often. Now that I know how to spell it, I'm going to try and use it more often. Just you wait.

I'm crap at resolutions.

I have lots of trouble deciding what to eat for lunch, let alone making serious, binding, life-changing decisions. ..which, of course, my resolutions to eat less butter and walk more surely are..

I'm not sure which is best: resolve to do something, or resolve to not do something. Where does the reverse psychology favour fall?

If it counts, I did walk home from my connection station today instead of waiting 15 minutes for a 3 minute train ride, and I'm pretty sure I did eat less butter.

Not sure where the ice cream I just ate fits in to the bigger picture though.

I went to the movies this afternoon and watched The Lovely Bones. Oh. It's been a while since I read the book, but I know it was much better than the movie. It seemed to go for a while (should have expected that because of past experience with Peter Jackson ay), but nothing really happened.

And to be honest, if heaven's that cheesy, when I die I'd rather stay in the ground.

Jen's purchase of a Hoyts choc-top, which at $5.30 was in itself an enlightening experience, got me thinking. Well, that's not true actually; what really got me thinking was the ice cream I ate just now, which was analogous to a choc-top in that it was ice cream and it was covered in chocolate. Either way..I've been doing some thinking.

As we talked about the price of ice cream these days, I remembered that the most expensive ice cream I've ever eaten was, in essence, a choc-top. It was soft serve dipped in chocolate, and in the Italian riveria town Portofino, where people have helicopters moored to their yachts, it was called a Penguin and it cost 5 euros (and tragically, as I ate it, I was careless in the heat, and a huge chunk of the chocolate, probably 3 euros' worth, fell on the ground).

I wondered, what is so different here between the Penguin and the 2 dollar choc-tops we used to get from the ice cream truck in Wooli? Those ones came with a flake, and the chocolate somehow melded to the ice cream so it didn't break apart. And the truck used to drive right past our house, so there was an added convenience factor that is unequalled.

I also wondered why, in Sweden, the ice cream truck comes in the dead of winter but I never heard it in summer. Then I wondered why every ice cream truck in Australia plays Greensleeves. It really was a day of deep, deep thinking and now I am exhausted and left with a question for you, reader.

Regardless of price, or convenience, location or presence/absence of flake, reader, why is the chocolate itself more fulfilling than the ice cream, in a way that chocolate alone is not? Why is the act of nibbling off the coating of a chocolate-covered ice cream so satisfying?

Answer me that, and I'll die happy. Regardless of how cheesy heaven is in the Lovely Bones.

A few years ago, I braved the crowds and the heat and the drunken bogans, and spent new year with the opera house on my right, the bridge directly in front, and a patch of green grass directly beneath. I like fireworks and all that, but not enough to try and stake a patch of grass in the Botanic Gardens again. I might be clumsy and need jokes explained to me... But I am not stupid...

This time around we didn't even need to be in the city, since our next door neighbour had apparently raided some kind of fireworks stockpile and procured a rocket launcher to match. I would show you a picture, but I am blogging on my phone whilst my Franklin is in the shop getting his new screen, and it's difficult enough just typing without trying to figure out photo posting. Sigh, my life is totally pretty tough...right?... guys??

Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is the new year was low key this (last?) year. I ate some rib eye, I drank some wine. It was all good. Yesterday we went to visit some friends with ocean views on the south coast, which brings me to the best piece of advice I can give to anyone planning to go walking around on a sunny coastal summer day: wear sunscreen.

That is all.

Hi again you guys. I'm undertaking an overly optimistic ah..undertaking..for January. You see, I decided to become a Nablopomo blogger this January. That means that, even though I am lame when it comes to regular blog postage, this month I will post Every Single Day. And if I don't post Every Single Day then, well, I guess bad shit will happen. The sky will fall in or something, I dunno.

There is a theme for January. The theme is "Best." And well...I've got sweet nothin'. Nothin' at all.

I would say the best thing about this year is that it is over, but that is maudlin and makes me sound tragic. And as we all well know, I am anything but tragic... ahem... *tap* *tap* is this thing on??

I would say the best thing about this year is that I got a KitchenAid and a bunny. But that would be a lie, because neither of those things happened. And since our landlord is some kind of evil devil lady, there's not going to be a bunny. Ever. Furthermore, since I spent 700 dollars, which ironically is the same amount, almost exactly, as a KitchenAid, at the Apple store today getting my display replaced because I am a retard and I stood on him, there is not going to be a KitchenAid either for some time. It's all good though, because the longer I go without, the longer I have to change my mind constantly decide which colour I reeeeally want. And also it will limit my butter intake, which is my number 2 New Year resolution. Number 1 is to walk more and I can't remember number 3, so less butter has got to be a good thing.

I suppose one good thing about this year is that I finally finished uni, and I got a real job and now have an income. An income is a truly great things, because it means I can do things like buy shoes, and eat dumplings, and pay 700 dollars to get my MacBook display replaced because I am a retard and I stood on him. And also I wrote my thesis, which was extremely unpleasant, but good once over and was involved in the procurement of the aforementioned real job. 

It's hard to pin-point one best thing about a long and horrible year. It could be that I moved out of my awful house into a different, more nice, house where I can wander around without pants on and the tub is not clogged with suspiciously curly black hairs.

If I think about it though, I mean really think about it, I do have a "best" to close the year with: the best thing about the year is that I went to IKEA twice. Which leads me to suspect that the best thing to open the new year with is a trip to IKEA. The day after tomorrow.

Swedish meatballs, here I come.