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  • James 8:43 pm on February 8, 2010 Permalink | Reply
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    Blue Skies (Smiling at me) 

    Sydney Sky

    Sydney Sky

    As I walked through the streets of Paddington tonight I looked up at the sky in awe.

    It wasn’t one of those spectacular red, orange, pink sunsets you would normally describe as stunning.

    Instead, the clouds in the sky were whispy, almost powdery.

    It was a sight to behold.

    I was in Paddington to help a friend install his new phone.

    After a long day at work, I caught the bus late this afternoon.

    I love catching the bus. Unlike the train where people are always a little conversational, people on buses seem to love a chat. And they love chatting on their phones, in particular.

    The woman behind me tonight was obviously trying to organise a meeting with a friend.

    “Where are you?”, the friend must have asked.

    “I’m just passing the um…. the ahhhh…. the…. I’m about five minutes away”, she replied as she struggled to name Victoria Barracks, the home of the Australian Army in Sydney.

    Her point of reference?

    “I could get off at the Paddington Inn or the…. ” (as she recalled the names of the different pub stops along the way).

    After fixing my friend’s phone, I came home via Oxford Street and stopped in for a bite to eat at Churra’s Brazilian Barbecue.

    Located the near The Balkan and the new Greek BBQ restaurant, it’s located in what is emerging as a bit of a BBQ strip on Oxford Street.

    I had a tasting plate which consisted of sausage, chicken, potato salad, various vegetable chips and some rice. It was very yummy and quite good value, I thought at $15.

    It was almost eight o’clock by the time I got home. Sticky, humid. It was one of those walk in the door and get your gear off kinda nights.

    Jumping online I was confronted with an absolutely stunning photograph of Stockholm on the blog of Sandra in Sweden.

    As she describes it…

    The sun is shining at last. Both yesterday and today, we are having amazingly sunny days, the kind that make you feel good to be alive. It’s been a while since we had this kind of weather, so yesterday we bundled up in our winter gear and headed out for a long walk. I don’t think I was alone in needing the sun – there were a lot of people out walking and also just basking in the rays.

    And to think, I’ll be there in just over three weeks.

    “Sometimes I wish that I could freeze the picture….” (gratuitous ABBA lyric)

     

    • sandra in sweden 12:51 am on February 9, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Why thanks for the plug. I will let Robert know you liked the photo. And I am sorry to say that it is now back to grey here….

  • James 8:44 pm on February 7, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:   

    Do Nothing Sunday 

    Hope Street

    Hope Street

    Not much to report from Sunday except it’s still raining.

    And I took a nice photograph of a street with a nice name… Hope Street in Darlinghurst.

    Oh, and if my mum was alive, she would have been 88 today.

     

  • James 11:59 pm on February 6, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Somewhere Over The Rain (bow) 

    Rain on the leaves - the view from my window

    Rain on the leaves - the view from my window

    “Isn’t the overnight rain great at the moment?”, I’ve heard several people note over the last few days.

    I’ve been doing it myself.

    In fact, over lunch today I waxed lyrical about the late night rain in Sydney.

    “It sounds gentle. It freshens up the air. It defeats the humidity. And when you wake up in the morning, the place feels clean”, I said to my luncheon companion.

    But several hours – and a significant afternoon downpour – later I’m a bit “over it” to be honest.

    I had lunch today upstairs at the Woollahra Hotel on Queen Street.

    Although the service was a bit ropey today – we actually had to ask for our wine twice – the meals were good. Colin had the beef and mushroom pie and I had the chicken.

    Queen Street is such a lovely street. Well, of course it is, with all of the money that goes into housing and shopping there.

    And the best shop I discovered today was the butcher.

    As you walk into the shop you see the butchers behind glass/perspex chopping up the meet.

    Further down you see carcases twirling around on hooks, again behind glass/perspex.

    “You wouldn’t want to be a vegetarian in here”, I commented.

    And on the shelves, they have everything from pate and other deli items to large pieces of very fine wagyu beef.

    It was a pleasure to behold.

    After lunch I came home, had a nap, did some grocery shopping.

    And then late tonight I watched a Swedish film, Jalla Jalla on SBS Two.

    At first I wasn’t sure if I was going to enjoy it.

    The opening scenes concern a couple of blokes who work in gardens, mostly picking up dog shit. Both seem pretty unhappy with their lives. One is in a relationship but is also committed to an arranged marriage. The other faces erection problems, perhaps symblomatic of his own unhappy relationship. At 11.20 on a Saturday night, it wasn’t the kind of film I thought I wanted to watch.

    But I stuck with it. And although the plotline remains fairly simplstic, and there are moments of slaptstic comedy, it turned out to be quite a good film.

    “A romantic comedy for blokes”, is how I’d best describe it.

     

    • roger 11:11 pm on February 8, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      See that you saw the movie Jalla Jalla, its made by Josef Fares, he has made another funny movie, KOPPS (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0339230/), if you have not see in, you should. its great. He has also made a more serious film about his parents home country of Lebanon called Zozo (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0448267/). We tend not to have as high quality of film as we have on music, but from time to time it shows up some pretty good ones.
      The latest success is of course the trilogy of the Millennium books.

      • James 11:34 pm on February 8, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        Thanks for the info and suggestion Roger. Wow, he’s doing the Trilogy series. I’ve seen Män som hatar kvinnor and look forward to the others. We’re quite lucky in Australia for the amount of Swedish cinema we get either through SBS or World Movies on pay-tv. We had a Scandinavian film festival a few months ago, and this week we have an EU film festival which features The Swimsuit Issue http://ecdel.org.au/news&events/Cultural/FilmFestival2010/Sweden.htm And the longest running film in Australian history is Så som i himmeln which ran for over 2 years at a cinema in Sydney. And this week, we have Frida Hyvönen playing in Sydney. I don’t need to go to Sweden, do I, since it comes to me? :)

  • James 6:46 pm on February 5, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Feelings 

    In my back lane way, just as I am preparing to walk the stairs home.

    In my back lane way, just as I am preparing to walk the stairs home.

    Although I’ve been known to walk from the bathroom to the bedroom in the nuddy, I’m not one of those crazy home nudists.

    That said, there’s nothing quite like the feeling of coming home from work, walking through the door, and gettin’ your gear off.

    For me, gettin’ my gear off means stripping down to underwear.

    And on a warm, and slightly humid summer evening in Sydney, that’s quite a good feeling.

    It’s up there with sneezing after a significant build up, going to the bathroom after an extended period of trying to locate one, and the taste of a beer on a warm summer’s day.

    It’s one of the more “base” feelings we have, which reminds us all of our animal origins.

    Today was a good day at work, one which I enjoyed very much, but by late this afternoon, I was anxious to simply come home, get my gear off, have a glass of wine, and catch up on some personal emails I should have responded to several days ago, but which didn’t quite get around to.

    “What have you got planned for the weekend?’, a colleague asked me this afternoon.

    Virtually nothing, I told her. “I’m in serious savings mode with less than four weeks until I’m in Sweden”.

    I’m off to a friend’s place for lunch tomorrow, but aside from that, it’s a quiet weekend for me.

    Don’t get me wrong. I’m not turning into a hermit until I leave. I’ve got Swedish class resuming on Tuesday, I’m planning to see Swedish singer, Frida Hyvönen play next week, I’m off to some plays and films as part of Mardi Gras, and I’ve got an O’Brien Family Reunion to attend.

    And then, bang, I’m in Sweden where it won’t be hot, it won’t be humid, and I doubt I’ll have a desire to get my gear off as soon as I walk in the front door.

    There again, you never know your luck…

     

    • mscherrylane 11:35 pm on February 5, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      haha…wishing you the best of luck ;)

      interesting your remark on our animal origins…i like being able to walk around in the nud (of course I close all my blinds first)…being able to do so makes me feel freeeee…and sheesh, this humid sticky weather we keep having totally warrants stripping off for sheer comfort!

      • mscherrylane 11:36 pm on February 5, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        p.s i am looking into heading into stockholm at year end so yeah…I still haven’t given up on finding you a hot young swede, lol

        • James 9:28 pm on February 7, 2010 Permalink | Reply

          I did go looking on Sweden’s equivalent to RSVP and actually registered a profile, which is either really fantastic or really very, very sad.

    • sandra in sweden 2:49 am on February 6, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Hi James, It is still cold here in Stockholm. But you will be happy to know that thanks to good insulation and double-paned windows, you can get your gear off in comfort. In fact, we have a number of naked neighbors who enjoy doing this year round….

  • James 8:48 pm on February 4, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Thursday Night Drinks 

    Having missed last night’s drinks invitations, I accepted one tonight.

    But only a brief one. Serious saving mode…

     

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