“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.
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.
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? :)