Down in Willi'town

Nickyliou lives out in Willi'town, near the yachts, beach, and crepe shop. Dancinghula and I decided to take advantage of this weekend's supposed *nice* weather to take a road trip down there, visit Nicky and eat crepes. We also brought Gnoudesavanes with us because what else do you do with French people but French things? Also, he once told me he wanted to see the ocean while he was in Aus. I took that to mean he'd never been to the beach. It turns out I was wrong - he has seen a beach before.

So here are some happy snaps of us and crepes.

Nicky and Dancy.

Awful pic of me and Gnou.

Petyaliou and cider that he as an underaged boy did not drink.

My goat's cheese and mushroom galette, Dancy's super complete.

Gnoudesavanes' flambe crepe - I think it was banana and rhum?

My meringue + ice cream for dessert.

So after we were done eating, it was much to our disgust that the wind had turned really cold and the clouds started rolling in. But we still made the effort to go down there, play on the playground, and see all the washed up jellyfish and relish in the *fraiche* air.

Big clouds over the bay

The wind however, was not *fraiche* it was downright *froid* so we hopped back to Nickyliou's for tea, which turned out to be the best decision because it started to pour down with rain. And the world was content.

I'm boring

Scientific research is not an unfulfilling occupation. Everyday is different, there's a high level of satisfaction that you're not part of an evil empire, the people are by and large quite nice, there's a high level of autonomy as there is rarely an immediate superior looking over your shoulder, tea breaks are plentiful, and telling drunks what you do for a living is a great way of repelling wankers. Having said that, there is a big problem.

You know, there used to be a time when I was considered interesting. There was my general weirdness combined with my verbal diarrhoea and ability to converse on any given topic at a time. However, the more I work as a scientist, the more boring I'm becoming. Serious. It seems all I do nowadays is fret about my work, and sit on microscopes. And my work is stuff that I've given up talking to people about because it's pretty mind-numbing. Yes, it is. I can barely talk about things like history or politics or theories of stuff...my perspicacity is shot to pieces! In addition, I'm becoming decidedly less opinionated and more apathetic about stuff. This is not right!!!

But seriously people, what can be done to rectify this horrifying turn of events?

Movie review - Tropic Thunder

An ensemble cast under the *care* of a first-time director are in Vietnam filming a war movie. Featured in the cast are action star Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller) whose career depends on this movie's success after an ill-fated shot at *serious* Oscar glory, Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black) a drug addict who specialises in comedies a la The Klumps, Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr) a thespian in search of constant challenges, Alpa Chino (Brandon T Jackson) a rap star trying to break into acting, and unknown newbie Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel). After the actors' egos clash, a huge stunt going awry, and with the Executive Producer (Ton Cruise) breathing down his neck, the Director (Steve Coogan) decides to take his stars into the jungle for some make-or-break shooting. Alas, things go wrong here again and the stars find that the movie they're shooting becomes real when they stumble into Golden Triangle territory.

This movie is serious funny. The laughter starts from the beginning with a bunch of fake ads and trailers and continues into all out laughter. Now I've read a bit about people protesting that this movie is racist and degrading to the disabled. And I say that those people haven't actually watched this movie because the bits that may be interpreted as *discriminatory* are actually commentaries on the way such things are treated in/by Hollywood. It's true - when actors have played non-able-bodies roles, they tended to be reward with trophies and nominations - I can think of about 5 right off the top of my head, and black actors usually are cast in secondary roles. So there.

In a movie where everyone plays their part well, the main problem is that a number of the roles are underwritten or a bit obvious. The absolute, absolute, ABSOLUTE star is without a doubt Robert Downey Jr. He may not have been in that many movies in the last few years, but his role as Kirk Lazarus, the 5-time Aussie Oscar winner who goes deep into method acting and never breaks character is CLASSIC. It not only shows how great an actor he is but also that he doesn't take himself too seriously. Do not miss his trailer for *Satan's Alley* where he and Tobey Maguire show us how much they can do with facial expressions and mood lighting/music. His accent is also pretty good!

Despite all the glowing things I've written, there are some provisos to enjoying Tropic Thunder. If you are not familiar with Vietnam War movie genre, in particular Platoon, Apocalypse Now, and Full Metal Jacket, as well as the stories surrounding the filming of them, it may greatly hinder your understanding of why it is so funny. There are also some scenes that go on too long to the point that they almost lose their funniness. You'll know them when you see them

While certainly containing a fair share of stupid for the sake of stupid moments, Tropic Thunder is good fun, especially if you're a fan of Viet war movies.
7.5/10

More drinks

After the fun of last Friday's drinks, we decided to do it again.
(If any members of the SBA are reading, yes, that's a reference to you know what.)

To rectify the dinner problem of last week, we booked a table this time around. So dumplings at the new dumpling place - worth a 45 minute wait? Hell no!!! The dumplings didn't have enough meat in them for one, and the fried dumplings were fried on one uniform side! It was as if they took the dumplings, put them on a frypan and just left them there. And don't get me started in the xiao long bao. Wrong wrong wrong. That's not to say some of the things they served weren't tasty - the handmade noodles were a nice touch. But overall, I rate it a 5-6/10. It's okay and the noodle sizes were large but as a dumpling place, the decor is lovely.

Onto the bars. Unforch my absolutely appalling week and weekend meant I couldn't make myself get into the mood for a bender. *sigh*. Research, think carefully as to whether you want to enter it as a career field because no one tells you about those hours of weekend work. After the bouncer debacle of last week, we decided to pretend not to know each other and managed to get into Toff as three pairs rather than one group of six. I had a lovely grenache from the Cotes du Rhone here. It was very smooth.

Enjoying my grenache - Pooey, I'm totally wearing that Primmy headband

Later we went to Cho Gaos where we scored a nice place on the balcony which provided me with a great view of the lit up State Library.

The Library

Clockwise from L - Me, Gordon, Annamac, QQ

Me, QQ, and Handbag

I recall ordering some glasses of shiraz here for me and QQ and when the bartender gave them to us, the wine was WAAAAAAAAYYYYY over the little line. It was fantastic :D

We then re-organised some furniture at RedLove, before going to Seamstress where I have given an absolutely disgusting cocktail. It smelt like rosewater and tasted like turpentine. Very disappointing. Since I had a date with Pascal at 10am, I had to leave before midnight. It wasn't too bad and I was only 30 minutes late.
Drinks count - 6.

Mathematical modelling

I'm a geek. I happily admit to it. The Pom is also rather nerdy. We also like to go to the gym. So with our powers combined, we have come up with the perfect mathematical model to explain the number of people in the gym.

Number of People in the Gym = (K + 1/d(x)) * 1/n ± R

Whereby
K = hardcore gym people
x = guilty people
d = day of the week
n = number of week in semester
R =randoms - this may require another equation to predict!

Dancinghula watched while we nerded over how to explain each of our variables and debated on the need to include differentiation, antidifferentiation, time vs population graphs etc. Her verdict was that we were power nerds.

It has also been decided that with some modification, this equation could also predict the number of people in a shopping centre with regards to the Christmas shopping period. Is there anything mathematics can't solve?!?

Recreation

I need to write an equation that explains the number of people in the gym according to time in semester. There's a lot of people in the gym...it may be related to the fact the Olympics are on. That would skew the equation. I will think about it tomorrow at morning tea and present my findings to my peers to be reviewed (in the tea room) before publication (online).

Reunion

Wow...10 years since I finished high school. Of course, you could also read it as 10 years of which I have been at uni. Regardless, it was pointed out that while I had no particular desire to see people whom I had not seen in a decade, it wasn't as though I had anything to be ashamed of in the last 10 years (well, maybe the length of time I've been at uni :D), so off I went.

The school is pretty much as I remembered. In fact, the sensation of walking through the grounds and various buildings was almost eerie - as though time hadn't passed. It was also amusing to see that construction continues at the school - I discussed the fact that the school must have a plan to keep tradies on site as a means to:

• 1. Provide eye candy on campus so the girls attend rather class rather than hang out at the station, and
• 2. Sort out which girls can ignore the tradies and continue studying from the ones who may be trouble and shunted off to other schools.

It was also nice to see the buildings or as it has been called - what my fees paid for. We also found that it doesn't matter if a church is renovated, it always retains that musty church smell.

But what did I really think? Honestly? I felt no sudden epiphany or rapport with those I hadn't seen in 10 years. In fact, I was equally amused and unsurprised to find the girls who hung out with each other in school automatically reformed their groups at the reunion. If anything, while I don't feel as though I lost anything by attending (other than precious baking time), neither do I feel I gained anything. Let us see in another 10 years

Resurrection

Oh, Friday night was like one of the Friday nights of yore. Around the same time I started feeling as though it had been ages since I went on a true bender (it has been ages), Lydia mentioned it had been a while since we'd caught up, and Gnoudesavanes made some sort of comment asking what kinds of things tourists could do in this city. One thing led to another and I was organising a bar crawl. The theme was upstairs. The aim was to visit many upstairs bars and go hard. While not everything was achieved, I believe we did well.

Our contingent comprised of (at various points in the night) myself, QQ, Lydia, Gnoudesavanes, QQ's handbag, Gordon1, DrMish, Annamac, Lydia2, Gordon2, and I can't remember who else. With some fortification via two glasses of red at After Seminar Drinks, we trundled down to meet the others and have some victuals in the city. Unforch, our chosen place told us we would have to wait 45 minutes for some dumplings. We duly ditched them and had some Thai food instead.

The bar crawl itself did not get off to a great start as the bouncer claimed that there was a guestlist for our first bar. Excuse me?! A guest list at 7:40pm on a Friday? The old *too many people already up there* excuse would have worked better. No matter, we moved on to old favourite Manchuria were we partook in a bottle of sparkly.

L-R. Dr Mish, Mallymoodle, Lydia, QQ, and Lydia 2

Nice. Continuing on the upstairs Asian theme, we went down the street to New Gold Mountain.

Now I must make a mention of NGM's Cocktail no. 8. At some point in one of our conversation sessions, Gnoudesavanes mentioned that he loved absinthe (typical frenchie) and how it was to be drunk. Cocktail no. 8 contained absinthe (and tanqueray gin, pomme vert, lime, and kiwi fruit) so it was ordered with a bit of apprehension as to how it would taste given the non-traditional preparation. It was awesome and the table ended up purchasing a total of six.

We enjoy our number 8 cocktails
L-R. Me, Lydia, Annamac, Gnoudesavanes

The revelry then shifted to Siglo where some of us braved the rain to look at the view Parliament House and Nicholson St which is really lovely.

It's hard to hold still for night shots

Gnoudesavanes (tries to be) is cool *EDITED ON 25/Aug by request

Even though it has an upstairs component, we were seated in the ground floor section of our last bar, 1806. Given how late it was (around 1am now), this is when things started losing their class. While we started off with cocktails (I had a Mitch Martini, Gordon had a mojito, I can't remember Lydia2's drink, someone whose name I can't remember had a drink that I can't remember, Gnoudesavanes had the infamous sazerac), we watched the bartender painstakingly drip water into our absinthe, and then quickly followed by tequila shots - the salt for which was very good!

Soon after this I had to go home as I was spending Saturday afternoon with Meta (Pascal was being huffy and spent the day with someone else). So my total drink count for the night came in at a highly respectable nine. Needless to say, I didn't get much work done.

Ito's and Sophie Koh at the Toff

Last night I ventured out to support Mischka's bud Sophie launch of her second album. Originally a large band of ACBers were going to go and we had a huge plan to eat dinner together at Ito's. Eventually most of them piked and our party ended up smaller. Nonetheless we still went to Ito's where I had the Special Seafood Curry Bento. It was tasty and caused a bit of meal envy in Mischka's Sorella, but that may have been because by the time my meal arrived, Sorella had already finished her meal.

Since Sophie didn't come on until 9pm, we went to the Carriage Bar to have drinkies. Here's some pics!

My butterscotch...margarita? I dunno, it tasted good though!

Mischka does her best Sean Connery/Landed Gentry impersonation

Anyway, by the time we made it to the showroom, the place was packed and we had no seats! No matter, despite wearing my sexy NYC boots, I sucked it up and enjoyed the show from my position near the front

Sophie sings

Fun times had by all.

Ain't it always the case?

We had a meeting today to discuss my paper.

I need to do some more experiments to make it EVEN sexier.

Mmmmm, nice.

But in other news, I'm going to an album launch tonight so I'll probably have something more exciting to write about tomorrow!

Work-free weekend round up!

Oh, it felt damn good to know that I wasn't going to be spending 12 hours on Pascal this past weekend. It was downright sweet. So what did I do with my suddenly empty time?

Well firstly, I did something I haven't done in a while. Yes, I went to the art gallery. That is, I went to the art gallery that is in Melb rather than one in Europe. So Gnoudesavanes and I attempted to have a French lesson there but it basically boiled down to us just saying 'eh, c'est joli/e!* Oh yes, I also started speaking French as though it were merely English with a French accent - I called a clock (une horloge) a bell (une cloche). Think about it.

Since that didn't work, we went to a bar where he bought a French beer and my lesson was to read the label out loud while he corrected my pronounciation. That didn't really work either because 1. It was pretty loud in there so we couldn't hear each other and 2. It was also pretty dark so we had to strain to read the bottle. So we gave that up and I gave him an impromptu tour of Melb bars. In one of the places we went, there was a bed as one of the places you could sit, and I SWEAR, that bed used to belong to Miss Pooky! (Hi Miss Pooky!)

And then I went home to sleep and it was fitful and not haunted by images of glia burned into my retinae.

Then on Sunday I thought it was my 10 year HS reunion. It wasn't, so instead I crashed at my friend's place for a few hours. That was fun too and I had some chocolate covered strawberries. Nums.

Okay, that is all.

Hey, guess what people?!

I'm not going to work to do work tomorrow!!! (Can't guarantee that I might not pop in to water my flowers).

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*does a happy dance*

Okay, that is all.

David Silva

This entry is for dancinghula. Enjoy!

I am boring

Sorry for the lack of updates to my (very few) faithful readers. Life has gotten quite boring for me lately. I spent all weekend pretty much hanging out with my illicit lover, Pascal. Illicit because it defies the laws of just about everything. Mmmmm-hmmm, I spent 8 hours with him and Saturday and then followed it up with 4.5 hours on Sunday by which time I finally cracked it and told him that we were clearly spending too much time together and needed a break but not a break up.

But the really annoying thing is that the software that takes the photographs is programmed to save the files as .lsm (challenge to the nerds who read this, based on this information, which company made Pascal?). This means that for every photo I take, I have to spend extra time converting them to .tif so I can use them in programmes such as ImageJ and Photoshop. Considering that I have 6 slides, on each slide there are 6 sections, each section requires 12 photographs, that equals 432 photos to be altered and 1296 more times my sanity, fleeting though it may be, is challenged.

However I (hope) I am reaching the end of this particular study and my sanity can return to normal, and then receive further challenge while I finish everything else in a whirl of manic action!

Movie review - Let the Right One In/Låt Den Rätte Komma In

For this year's MIFF, I opted to watch this movie. Oskar is a bullied boy whose life changes when he becomes friends with a Eli, a girl who moves into the apartment next door. And so begins a story of friendship, serial killers, loyalty, revenge, aqua aerobics, vampires, and love.



I figure I can't really say too much without giving major plot developments away - although the vampire bit is not a spoiler. While not particularly ground-breaking, this film sure is interesting. We are shown the drudgery of Oskar's life, his physical, psychologial, and sometimes geographic isolation from everything around him, sometimes I just wanted to smack him for his complete cluelessness. He's got a very dopey face. And the same applies to the murderer and vampire! I really didn't want them to get caught! But I might just be weird like that. I particularly like the use of silence and the white white snow. I can see life being very dreary there.

Surprisingly tender, often quite funny, and not particularly gruesome or violent although it's not often you see a children in movies covered in blood, I didn't fall asleep during the film despite my bone-deep tiredness and walked out feeling entertained.
6.5-7/10