Since we don’t live by politix alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!
On Friday night, I met some friends for a cocktail @ The Bowery (and I recommend a Southside as a good summer drink…) before sauntering down to the always excellent Jugglers Art Space on Brunswick Street for their last opening of the year – The X Show – a compendium of some of their most popular artists of 2008. Jugglers is an excellent space – with the beer garden like space at the back surrounded by graffiti covered walls being a much more pleasant venue for a drink (and the wines were $4.50 a glass) than in some smaller and more conventional galleries. I also particularly enjoyed Abigael Whittaker’s artwork, and I’m looking forward to her solo exhibition next year. We then retired to Pho Kim Lan on the Chinatown mall for a vego feast and a few bottles of white from the bottlo at the Elephant and Wheelbarrow which has unaccountably gone minimalist in terms of selection. Perhaps they’re concentrating on shovelling out beer and alcopops to the partying masses. But a thoroughly enjoyable dinner with very pleasant company!
Today, of course, is the LP Christmas Drinks in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney – so I shall see some of you there and let me raise a metaphorical glass in festive spirit to all LPers everywhere! No doubt there’ll be a separate thread or threads on the drinks at a later point. Details of venues, etc, are here.
If you’d like to see a higher res version of any of the images, click through and then click on ‘full view’ once you’re inside the gallery.
Valley nights IV by *phenomenologist on deviantART
The X Show I by *phenomenologist on deviantART
The X Show II by *phenomenologist on deviantART
The X Show III by *phenomenologist on deviantART
The X Show IV by *phenomenologist on deviantART
The Artist and her work I by *phenomenologist on deviantART
The Artist and her work II by *phenomenologist on deviantART
I see from X Show I that they let you smoke in the Jugglers’ “beer garden”. Probably something that the gallery should not draw the attention of the Liquor Licencing people to.
Spent more money on stuff to go into the garden. Too lazy to do anything with that stuff!
Phiitt! and that’s the top off one and here’s lookin’ up ya kilt as I get ready loading the truck for the next week in Macci, Currency Ck, Goolwa and Glenelg. The big dog get’s to see his girlfriend and his little sister will have her nose out of joint but the up side for her is sleeping on the foot of my swag.
Hope you all have a great holiday.
Went to a dear friend’s surprise birthday yum cha. Made a speech. Ate cake. Came home and cleaned all the junk, dust, dead leaves and cobwebs out of the small shed. V. productive day, and will be even more so if I can get through 150 pages of the new Miles Franklin biography, taking good notes for a review, before I go to bed.
Friday: bought new netbook computer after the faithful old laptop had me seriously contemplating the fine art of defenestration.
Saturday: started macheteing the back lawn (two-stroke brushcutters and me are not compatible) and played with the new computer.
Sunday: LP drinks (Fortitude Valley pubs are very expensive — $8.00 for a stubby) and hunting in antique shops for a grass-scythe.
Read a bit of “Anathem” by Neal Stephenson, author of “Cryptonomicon”
Saturday: on-line a bit. Ordered some books from Amazon. Spent most of day reading Keay’s China: A History. Interesting to get up to date on all the new research, which he covers in the book. Its very weak on 20th century, but most excellent on Imperial China, though a bit thin on the Manchu Dynasty I thought.
Watched TV at night, then part 3 of Pirates of the Caribbean on DVD.
Sunday: Started reading Keay’s India: A History. Apart from 18c haven’t studied much Indian history. Like it much more than his book on China.Ordered some more books on line. All up have ordered 22 books, most due to arrive early next year. Kids from next door in using the computer a bit. Watched Margaret& David at the Movies summer special, News. SBS doc. on Pompeii, etc. Spent most of the night reading.
I built a TV channel.
Well, not really. In the interests of chopping down our power consumption a bit, I’ve been slowly commissioning a small network attached storage unit (an old Linksys NSLU2) as a media server, with a little network media box that attaches to the stereo/TV to serve up movies, our music collection and lots of old music videos. There are scary instructions on the net for making your NSLU2 faster (pull a resistor off the little circuit board), installing linux and installing all kinds of interesting little bits of software (including whole web servers, although it hasn’t really got enough memory to do it properly). Most interesting application is a torrent client that can chug away silently without a whole computer being turned on, which can be controlled from work.
Hit “shuffle” on the music videos and voila – four hours of the worst excesses of the 1980s horrifying the children. Comments like “is that his real hair?” warming the cockles of my old heart.
Drove out to the annual Christmas party thrown by my lovely sister-outlaw*, who runs a very successful OH&S and ergonomics consultancy from her country property near Ballarat. I picked up a friend for her in Newport, an East Timorese philosopher called Balthasar (but he has not lived in ET for quite a long time, having spent a lot of time in the US then 10 years here) and we had interesting talks on the way. Besides having such an interesting life, he had things to say about sessional teaching and the humanities that would have Mark, Mercurius and others in furious agreement, I think.
The BBQ/garden party was the usual, lovely people I don’t see often enough, good conversation, good food and far too much cake. It was grouse to see the place with rain for a change, too.
Sadly, this made me miss the LP Christmas drinks in East Brunswick, as by the time I’d dropped Balthasar back it was nearly 7 pm and I had a hungry child to feed.
*”Sister-Outlaw”, this descriptive phrase is Zoe’s. In my case it’s because she’s my brother’s ex.
I know the very same Balthasar, Helen. Nice guy, and v interesting.
Heh, I don’t know Balthasar very well, but I’ve met him a couple of times. Is he Melbourne’s Kevin Bacon?
Yes, very nice guy!
Sorry, Balthasar Kehi is his full name. He’s taught all over the world.
I’m so used to being closer to the right-wing side of the family it’s a bit of a holiday to mingle with the leftier side and their friends. Looooooxury!