Saturday, December 29, 2001

I have no concept of time right now. What with Xmas, shift work, having Steve here and going out and about and getting ready for New Year I'm kind of at a loss! The next few days are mad. Working until 8m tonight and then straight out for a meal with the lovely Andy Carter and Sue from the UK. Out after that no doubt with Steve, possibly to the Imperial... Sunday probably a bit beachy, with Karen and Melissa arriving at 5pm. Monday is NYE, so no doubt running around before drinks somewhere before heading down to Pride - 10pm until 8am the next day. Frisky starts at 6pm that night... and then working on the 2nd at 7am. Oh lordy. Oh, talking of which, saw Lord of the Rings the other night. Go see it immediately. It beats Harry Potter into a pointy, witches hat!

Wednesday, December 26, 2001

Merry Christmas to one and all. It's Boxing Day and I've been at work. Christmas Day was fantastic fun - 10 waifs and strays up to Bondi for full turkey lunch with all the trimmings! More on Friday as I'm not working then until 2.30pm. Stevie P's here. Yippee!!

Friday, December 21, 2001

Work was fun yesterday - finished at 7am. Out for date with Martin - coffee, then fab thai food at The Three Thai Turtles. Nice. Over to the Oxford for a drink - already present: Craig, Mat, Mikey, Rod, Richard, David Bassett... etc. Martin very kindly dropped me back here and he's now going to join us on Saturday night. Lovely. Quick internet and to bed. Up reasonably early today and just sorted stuff. Phoned Dad, tidied and organised ready for Steve coming. Oh, and I'm now cooking Christmas lunch for 10. Yippee!! Should be fun...

Thursday, December 20, 2001

Running out of time to do things. Not quite sure where all the time's going!! Had a great night out at Darren's on Tuesday night - think me, Garry and Craig were the entertainment for the night! Stayed at Craig's and then dragged myself into early work yesterday. Quiet night in last night - Garry stayed up here and we had pizza with Charlie, watched some trashy telly and a really good documentary about Chuck Jones - the guy behind the Warner Brothers cartoons. Up for work again today, date tonight!

Monday, December 17, 2001

Argh! Blog backlog. Since you've been gone (I'm out of my head, can't take it...) I've done the following:

Worked Wed-Sat inc.
Had a very nice date last Wednesday at the pictures. Saw Hearts in Atlantis. Go see.
Quiet(ish) drink Thursday with Garry.
Went for one drink after finishing work Friday and rolled home steaming at 4.30am.
Straight to a party at David and Jayson's on Sat after work. Minkered. Upstairs at the Shift. Didn't really do it for me. Pheonix. Naughties. Coffee at Adrian and Fred's at 10.30am Sunday...
Walk on the cliffs at Watson's Bay with Garry, Craig and Ant Sunday arvo.
Shift downstairs for Retro Sunday night. So drunk... crashed at Craig's.
Coffee on the roof terrace this morning. Brekky at Una's. Here. Sort out Xmas stuff. Made nice food. Ate it. Chatted Stevie P - he's in Oz. Yippee! Chatted Darren to get details of his drinks do tomorrow. Chatted Martin to arrange date 2 - dinner Thursday.

Now it's time for bed. More updates soon. Some really funny stuff from the weekend, but not sure how well it'll translate!

Thursday, December 13, 2001

Bugger. My comments are down, and will be for the near future. Curses. Otis - if you're reading - please come clean. I can't be bothered to play games and find out who you are! You can mail me... look down the left hand side. Anyone else with comments - please mail me too, and I'll post the best ones...

Tuesday, December 11, 2001

I've not done anything other than diarise for a while, so I thought it was time to put my house in order and do something a bit different. CD review time. This evening: Roger Sanchez - First Contact. I bought this CD about a month ago and I've fallen in love with it, in much the same way as I did Daft Punk earlier in the year. I sometimes get odd feelings that a particular album will become a favourite and most times my instincts are right. I'd loved Another Chance and had been waiting for some cash to buy the album. In the end I just bought it anyway - and a wise move that was! In a lot of ways it's like the Daft Punk album - fantastic French-stylee production with lots of beeps, layers, knob twiddling and lots of noises recorded backwards to help stimulate your little ear drums. First up is Computabank - crossing early Kraftwerk with Stephen Hawking and like a lot of these tracks it builds and fades in a hypnotic, almost tidal way. This runs nicely into the aforementioned Another Chance, a huge single back in the UK not long after I left. This is the long version at some seven minutes... I loved this single for the 'Dumpf Dumpf' bits - where Rog breaks things up with a couple of beats before coming in with synth drums in full effect. A word of warning though - as it's the extended version those 'Dumpf Dumpf' bits come in at different times and you have to unlearn where to join in! Track 3, Contact, could have been lifted straight off Daft Punk's Discovery. It's almost over-produced, with layer upon layer assaulting the listener, and the first time it was on I thought at one point the CD was skipping as there's a clever little effect part way through that I now love. You Can't Change Me is Rog's answer to Armand van Helden's You Don't Even Know Me featuring, er, Armand van Helden! Funky and I think the next single. The Partee (sic) is my least favourite track. The intro is incredibly like, er, Armand van Helden but not featuring him this time! The rest of the track is a latin dance track by numbers with little imagination from Rog. Sounds a bit like Funking for Jamaica by Tom Browne. More like Daft Punking for Jamaica. Ventura brings to mind the funk of Cuba by the Gibson Brothers, but stripped down, re-jigged and unleashed on a new generation. Daft Funk almost, until it turns into an Ibiza chillout track for the last minute or so. I Never Knew starts with a string intro that wouldn't be out of place on a Craig Armstrong track and then steps up the tempo into another piece of commericial 2001 DTPM style funk - this time more Modjo style but none the worse for it. Guest vocalist Sharleen Spiteri (put your hand together ladies and gentlemen, she's all the way from Texas!) adds her velvety tonsils to Nothing2Prove and does a great job - the mix of her voice and Rog's music work well together and good that she's here as the track isn't something I could ever imagine Texas producing by themselves. And finally Esther, track 9 - Leavin'. It starts off slow with a chill out feel but builds into a track that has you dreaming of vodka and tonic on the balcony whilst on holiday in the sun. It would be the track to get your chill out going again!

All in all then, pretty good stuff. Great played loud in your apartment, great played loud on your Discman. Love it. What does anyone else think? Comment away...

If I were a work of art, I would be Pablo Picasso's Three Musicians.

I am colourful and provoking, always looking to break out of the mould and to pioneer new ways of doing things. I have a jaunty outlook and although I am a bit weird, most people have some idea what I'm about.

Which work of art would you be? The Art Test



I'm happy with that. Already most people at work think I'm crazy. Or on something. And I'm not! Unless you count the asthma medication. Thanks to Jonathan for the link (via Sparky)

Monday, December 10, 2001

I started this blog entry yesterday (it's currently 8.30pm Tuesday) but didn't finish it. Here goes nothing:

Well I guess that was the weekend then. I should be outside in the glorious sunshine, but my head hurts and I'm not sure I can face the day - even though it's already 2.30pm. Read on...

Friday worked until 11pm, came home and chatted with Garry (he was staying over) and played on the net. Bed around 1am. The idea was to get up at 5am and go and meet Craig (Garry's best mate from the UK) at the airport but in the end I was too whacked and so Garry went alone. I slept on until gone 9am and then hit work. Finished there at 8pm and went straight to Craig's hotel room to change so we could all hit the town. We had a couple of quickies in the Oxford and then hit Newtown - first the Newtown Hotel and later the Imperial. I know we had a great time. I'd arranged to hook up with Martin, a cute guy I met a while ago in the Shift, and he was there when we arrived. I know we drank way too much. I know a had a very nice time with Martin. I know he put me in a cab because I was so drunk. I don't know much more than that!! Except for the yesterday's hangover. Ouch. Sunday morning didn't amount to too much. Eventually I headed off to Bronte for our 'Welcome Craig' picnic. Shame the weather wasn't better! Lots of people there - Garry, Craig, Mat, Jason, Haydn, Mikey, DJ, Michael, Charlie and little old me! Oh, and Gregg Diddy Daddy arrived later. It was quite a laugh - lots of beer drunk and nibbles nibbled. I came home to change and then met Garry and Craig down at the Shift for our (now) traditional Sunday night singalong to the crazy retro tunes. Oh dear. We drank too much too fast and I don't remember leaving or arriving home or going to bed. Hence feeling so spaced out yesterday!

I did survive Monday by eating my new wonder food - boiled eggs and soldiers. The best thing. Thanks to a brief check up with Delia, I've remastered of getting my eggs just the way I like them - boil for a minute then take the pan off the heat and cover and leave for another 5 - white firm, yolk runny. Magnificent. I finally ventured out of the house at around 5.45pm and headed down to meet Garry and Craig again, and bumped into Ant and Laurie and then Clare on the way. As we were debating where to go for a beer, Darren Shaw rang. I'd met Darren once at Richie's about 3 years ago and he'd been given my number and so on to get in touch as he was going to be here a while. As things turned out, his plans have changed and it was his last night in Sydney (just the long weekend then...!!). So, via a few in the Green Park Hotel, we went to Stonewall and met Darren and Jon and John. It was good fun, but ended with us drinking too much again, having pizza and me getting home around 1am. Not the best plan when you've to be up at 5.40am to get into work at 7am. I did though, and survived the day. Home around 4.30pm and I've done not a lot since. Coffee, toast. That kind of thing. Early night tonight as I'm working early again tomorrow. Though tomorrow night I'm on a date. That's a "date". Proper and all that. The movies no less. Get me!

Friday, December 07, 2001

Last night was fun. Worked until 7pm and then met Garry, who's just got himself a job starting in January which means that we can start and plan our house share. Yippee! Got some cash from the ATM and found $50. Double yippee!! So I paid for the evening - lots of beers and an indian later we came home and fell unconscious after a bottle of wine and a play on the internet. This morning we've done the same but had bacon, eggs, mushrooms, toast and pots of tea. Fantastic!!
Friday morning. Getting into this shift pattern thing (see roster down left hand side). Tuesday was great - finished at 3.30pm and then did all my Christmas shopping in one fell swoop at Borders! Well why not... Met Garry for impromptu beers at the Oxford and a good time was had by all. My dream Tuesday night is a bit vague now, but it involved me playing football for a top flight team, in the return leg of something like a Champion's League match. It was meant to be somewhere hot, but the pitch was waterlogged - but only around the edges. Can't remember much more than that, except for afterwards I was due to get a massage by someone called Beong Bong, which brought to mind tennis and Bjorn Borg! I think there's something in the water...

Those regular Minkered... readers out there might remember me harping on about this some months ago. This has now been well surpassed by my three guys at the Illy coffee shop in the MLC Centre in downtown Sydney. It's a place I used to go sometimes when I lived here before, but now with working at Borders it's the best coffee nearby by a long shot. So in the first week I went a couple of times and got my order and by week two, when I went about 4 times, they knew me, where I worked and what my order was. We like that. Also, one of the guys is very sexy - though he's the least communicative. Until this week, when he was really friendly too. Fantastic. I went the other day and they gave me a Portuguese Tart for nothing. And I do like a good tart... Bless 'em. I know they do it with everybody, but it does make me feel incredibly welcome and local and they'll get my money every day as a consequence!

Wednesday, December 05, 2001

Tired again - two days of 7am starts, though I have finished at 3.30pm both days. Remind me (in the morning, not in until 10.30am) to tell you about the coffee shop, my dream (football! massage! tennis!) and whatever else pops into my head about the last couple of days...

Monday, December 03, 2001

More blushing. Someone named Otis left a comment on Saturday saying I was cute. He thought. I have no idea who Otis is. Can anyone enlighten me?
And now I'm blushing. Thanks David!
After the walk we hit Food Game for coffee with Pete and Paul, Adrian, Fred and Mat. Nice to catch up with everyone. Then it was time for beers in the Oxford followed by more beers in the Shift. Me and Mat adjourned for a quick Indian before going back for more. Ay ay ay! Finally stumbled home around 3am and crashed until 9.30am. Pottered this morning and then Harry Pottered this afternoon. Caught Karen online and had a chat to her. Met Garry and Adrian for dinner and then back here for a couple of glasses of wine and early bed - got to be at work at 7am tomorrow. Yikes.

Sunday, December 02, 2001

Quietish weekend so far... except for the opening of the shop. Mad! Absolutely packed. It's a bookstore! It's madness! It's madness! It's a bookstore! Bookstore madness!! We were fun off our feet from the moment the store opened at 5pm until it closed at 10pm. Good to see everything come together and at 4.55pm the place looked incredible. Never will it do so again...

We finally left the store at 11.35pm and loads of us hit the pub. Drunken and fabulous. DJ was very ill, bless him... I crawled home at about 5.45am (no, really!) and the was up again at 9.30am as I was working 11am-8pm. Work was much more laid back yesterday - I spent a lot of time on information and restocking all the front of store displays. Generally people coming into the store were lovely. Long may that continue! Back here with Garry and we just had a quiet one. Played on the PC, watched The Craft, listened to music and so on and had boiled eggs and soldiers :o)

Crashed until about 10am this morning and haven't done much today. More PC play, more music downloading, a quick minker update. Heading out for a long walk which will culminate in coffee and eventual beers...