the art of relaxation

The holiday continues... We in Koh Tao, a small island near Koh Samui/Koh Phangan. There are three type of people here: 1) Thais 2) beautiful tanned Scandanavians/exotic types and 3) us. I have chosen to exaggerate the gap between the beautiful people and us (by which I mean me) by breaking out in hives EVERYWHERE and wearing runners constantly on account of rubber thong-induced blisters. Nothing says 'out-of-towner' like runners and socks on a tropical island. Except maybe being covered in red spots. Oh wait...

Today Carney and I went for massages. Incidentally, they were naked massages, which was a surprise for everyone involved. I spent a good deal of time wondering if my masseuse would be touching my boobs. And she did. And I endeavored to appear very relaxed about this by not tensing my body or opening my eyes and thereby having our eyes meet and having a 'moment'. Possibly this serves to further demonstrate my lack of Scandanavian-ness.

When the massage was over, my friend the masseuse attempted to braid my unkempt hair elegantly. This was a mistake, after about three knotty and rather painful plaits I ran out of hair. She patted my on the head and generously pronounced me 'beautiful' which made me like her a lot. Probably more than the boob-touching.

Oh, and this is where we stayed in Koh Samui - it was fancy pants and has ruined me for budget accommodation (hopefully, anyway).

Kitty

sawadee, tom yum and other thai things

A little while between posts because I'm in Thailand and internet access is intermittent. And also because there is far too much good food to eat and frankly, anything else is a distraction. Culinary highlight thus far: dried pork on a papaya salad from a street stall. Ordered by Carney, consumed by me. I am terribly parasitic - 'oh, I'd love a bite. you want any more?' - when it comes to street stalls and desserts.

Two nights ago - is today Friday? ha! hate me, I on holidays! - after an existential crisis about whether we were supporting an ethical industry, Carney and I went to a night of Thai boxing. I was expecting it to be a pretty awful touristy sort of thing where fat/drunk/burnt/all of the above westerners sat around drinking and betting on fights. Or worse still, nominated themselves to have a go and got knocked out and chocked on their own vomit, but it was actually something of a cultural experience. Particularly if you compare with the I time I went to Ibiza and they had white t-shirt competitions that you could enter for free shots. At a Denny's-style family bistro. And the entrants were mothers. Whose ten year old sons were present. But that is, granted, a low yardstick.


Anyway, we went here :

Image credit

And it was actually pretty cool. Because we are semi-important people we sat in the 'medium-VIP' section at barstools with our own table (decorated a single long stem rose in a vase - a curious addition I think) and table service for food and drink. But the nicest thing (aside from the prolific salted nuts) was the sportsmanship - e.g. fighters helping their opponents up after knocking them out, etc. It was quite heartening, I liked it.

And that's all I have to say about that. Air conditioning beckons.

Kitty x

so slowly...

I did think that the slowest time ever passes is when I am waiting for my lunch to cook in the canteen and my Frightening General Manager comes in. All I can think in such situations is ‘for farks sake cook! Cook!’ (yelled internally, at microwave), and ‘............’ [blank] in the way of conversation to the GM.

I have (re)discovered however, that time passes even slower at the hairdresser. Having experimented with balayage in an attempt to look like Alexis Chung:

I finally realised I don’t actually look like Alexis Chung. Heartbreaking. So I spent a million hours at the hairdressers tonight. Tedious but urgently required because we are going to Thailand on Monday. AAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

That was totally the whole point of this post.

Kitty

the opposite of fast food

Good leftovers are when you take your lunch to work and think 'it must be like, 11:30 and I can eat my lunch in an hour' but you pretend that you think it's only 11am so that you will be pleasantly surprised when you look at the clock BUT then when you look at the clock you discover it's only 10am and you basically just had breakfast.

Today's leftovers were awesome. You see, I have been stockpiling dried chickpeas for forever. They seem like such a great idea at the market. Such a great idea, in fact, I keep having the same great idea over and over. Lest I become the chickpea version of the woman who lives in the house with all the shoes yesterday I finally got around to cooking them.

It was a good decision but wowsers! What a time burglar. I set out about 9am with the soaking to make these bad boys – lazy Sunday night dinner, etc. and my god, they took about ten hours from go to woe. I made the ridonkulous decision to make the equivalent of one can (why so frugal self?) and then had to google dried to cooked ratios and then wait and taste and boil... I ended up 'testing' half of them and dropping the rest on Carney's pants while serving them up.

But the leftovers made it all worthwhile.

Kitty

census fatigue

When I helpfully informed carney on tuesday night that it was census time he said 'can you do it for me?'.

To which I enquired as to how his previous slave had died.

To which he responded: 'Well... If you don't do mine, I will do it and lie'.

Well played carnaby, well played.

backstreets back, alright

This is a bit Johnny come lately but look what's on little Bourke st near southern cross station:

It's part of K-Rudd's apology speech.

And next to that is this:

Which is the Canadian PM's apology speech.

Seemed like an odd thing to see, so I tried to find out what the building was and then realised it's part of the City of Melbourne's commissioned laneway art. Did you know that they release walking tour type pamphlets each year to showcase that year's commissioned pieces? That's pretty awesome. Planet X tried to rip off the concept of laneway art but because they're rather more conservative instead of having people do something directly onto a wall they let troubled youth 'graffiti' a couple of small canvases with textas and then installed the results for a brief period of time in an out-of-the-way back alley. It was... unimaginably lame.

Anyway, this is part of the caption for Cathy Busby's 'We are sorry':

Apologies for both the stolen generations in Australia and the Indian residential schools in Canada were of major cultural and political significance when they were delivered, yet each was a relatively fleeting media moment. We Are Sorry give these apologies a renewed and sustained presence, while highlighting the shared histories of two British colonies that wrongly sought to assimilate Aboriginal people.

I like the 'brief media moment' contrasted with the 'renewed and sustained presence'.

Kitty x

one, two, i like to count

It's census time! In 2006 I was disappointed to be deviating from my normal routine on census night; I was on holidays and had to record myself at a hotel. This meant I didn't get to enter in items such as how I got to work. Rest assured though, this year will be an accurate reflection of daily life. Hopefully for you too, Australia.

Especially the Jedi among you. Did you know that 73,000 identified as Jedi (religion) in 2001? And then in 2006, the Australian Bureau of Statistics put something in about fines for misleading information and it seems this deterred the true believers. At least I've heard of Jedi though, unlike the Pastafarians, talk about an obscure in joke.

Unrelated: reading Benjamin Law's The Law Family. Hilarious bits. And available here on google books for free. Which is ridiculous, mainly because I just paid $22.95 + postage to get it delivered. What is this internet thing? It's crazy, how are they making money? So much free stuff.

Kitty

picture credits: http://images.wikia.com/muppet/images/9/90/CountCountsLP(2).jpg