We are the lucky ones.

We are the lucky ones. 

Yesterday I woke up, bought coffee, went to work, left work, bought sushi. Meanwhile my sister-in-law laboured with her first child. I told my students that I would be looking at my phone frequently during class because of the situation. They were, as you would expect, quite obliging. People like babies and people want babies to be born healthy.

I left work at 1:30pm or so and walked towards the State Library on Swanston St, texting my housemate Megan and friend Amy who were already at the Refugee rally. We all wanted to go to protest about the abysmal immigration policies that are stepping up the anti in terms of cruelty and economic waste. I found Megan and Amy and we joined the march, which was by that point moving towards the immigration department. I got a text from my mother. Erin was at 7cm.  Not that far off.

Erin was having a ginormatron, as she put it. There were some concerns that he (the baby) was going to be too big. She was possibly going to need a C-section. I realised that if this situation was happening a hundred years ago or in a developing country, they would likely be among those who wouldn’t make it through. Thank God for modern medicine and hospitals and doctors.

Yesterday as I marched I asked my friends what they thought would happen to Erin if she was at this time giving birth not in a nice modern hospital but in a detention centre. They shrugged. It wasn’t a good thought. Thank God my nephew won’t grow up behind bars. Held prisoner because his parents were trying to seek a better life for themselves and him. Or separated from them, as was the case recently with one woman. What happens to babies born in detention? Can we even find out?

I want my nephew to have a childhood and adolescence and adulthood in a place where he is free and safe to be who he is. Where he has healthcare and education. Where he won’t be oppressed for his race, his religion or his sexuality. He probably won’t have to face what is happening in the places asylum seekers flee from, and that's good, I don’t want him to grow up in a place where he can’t be safe and well. I also don’t want him to grow up in a country that doesn’t realise its own wealth and luck and treats the most vulnerable in this world like they are criminals. I want him to be a strong and loving and compassionate man. I have to say that at the moment his country won't help him with this.

Atticus Declan Sessions was born yesterday at about 3:30 in the afternoon. He is big and hairy and healthy and his mother is well. His father is proud. His grandparents are very happy. He was named after Atticus Finch, a character in Harper Lee’s classic ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ Atticus Finch represented a wrongly accused black man in a time where racism was the norm. He fought against an unjust system and did not accept what was, to him, blatantly unfair. I’m sure that my nephew Atticus’s parents want the same for him. Congratulations. He is loved by many. 

break up poetry is fun.

Ok, well it's not fun so much as satisfying. Sorry if it's rude, but heck it's a better outlet than punching someone or robbing a service station right?

Goodbye, goodbye and goodbye.

And with that, goodbye.

To my first love

The one who held my heart

So gently, for a time.

And then dropped it off a precipice

Into a garden of thorny weeds

Surrounded by gnomes in pointy hats

Who stomped the shit out of it for a while.

Truthfully though, he didn’t do it because he was bored,

Or cruel,

But because he couldn’t hold it any better.

His hands were previously damaged,

In a Christmas sale or a bicycle accident.

Who the fuck knows.

But now goodbye. For the last time.

Not like the last, last time.

The friendship ship has sailed too, I fear.

A while ago, with the wind

which also caused the cascade of calls I made to go unanswered. Again.

Unfortunate, yes.

Reality, also.

I should have seen the latter a little earlier but,

I’ve been told that these things happen. 

Oh baby, baby it's a wild world

I have always loved Cat Stevens (who now goes by Yusef Islam). Last night my flatmate Jen and I got last minute half price tickets (awesome!) and went to see 'Moonshadow' a new musical using his songs. 

The set was incredible, very kind of Tim Burton crossed with old-school Disney, and it was really beautiful to hear his music covered by the performers who were all quite strong. The best voice for me, hands down, was Jolyon James who played 'Moonshadow.' James definitely would have benefited from a few more solos. 

However - (I'm not sure if this is a trend in musicals that are trying to fit in as many songs by a particular artist as they can), but the storyline was pretty confusing and hard to follow. 'Moonshadow' is set on a distant and troubled planet, where the dark shadows have taken over and everyone works night and day just to buy embers to stay warm. No one can remember a time when people were kind to one another. The central character is Stormy, who goes on a journey away from his parents to get back the sun. He is encouraged on his journey by his Moonshadow who is invisible to everyone but him. 

The premise has obvious parallels to Cat Steven's spiritual journey to Islam, and you can certainly see elements of the whole pilgrimage thing, there was even a scene with loads of hippies in it who are kind of following a cult. The problem was that there were too many scenes and a lot of them went by too quickly but us to know what was going on. Stormy got arrested and was in a prison (it reminded me of the torture chambers from 'The Princess Bride') but escapes and that whole scene can't be longer than two minutes. Then there's this woman wearing a kind of 'Lost in Space' outfit who turns out to be the evil queen who is stealing the sun, or something. She made me think of the evil queen from Narnia, or Mad Max or a kind of female Bowie from The Labrinth. Lots of intertextuality. Then there was a lot of Lord of the Rings kind of Mount Doom things going on and some very Orc-like bad guys. Then Moonshadow disappears, re-appears and then disappears again. And then everyone is happy and sings. I was feeling a little devastated when at the end they hadn't sung 'Peace Train' which is my favourite, when they did it during the applause, which was an excellent solution to the lyrics not at all fitting with the storyline. So I was happier after that. But generally the storyline didn't flow particularly well and we were a little confused. 

One thing to factor in though was that having bought cheap last minute tickets, if we had been any higher up we would have gotten altitude sickness. Looking down on such a wonderful set is definitely not as involving as being right in front of it, and perhaps we would have felt more absorbed in the storyline had we had a clearer view of the stage. All that said, I wasn't bored for a moment (and I have a pretty appalling attention span), so it definitely wasn't a wasted evening. Just a slightly confusing one. 

So after that, I would say Moonshadow is probably only for Cat Stevens' fans. 

I'm the procrastination Queen of the World!!!

It's true. You may think that you're the King, or the Queen. The truth is however, you've got nothing on me. 

I just actually cleaned the stove top with that special stuff you use to clean stainless steel. Why? (Do you need to ask really?) Because I have an assignment due that I didn't feel like doing. It's not even a bad assignment. It's a feature article about charities and social networking. I picked the friggin' topic and yet here I am, blogging, using my own social networking kind of thing to avoid writing about social networking. Seriously. 

I wonder sometimes if I would ever have joined or started anything if I wasn't just avoiding doing something else. I definitely wouldn't cut my hair nearly as often. Or have learnt to play the ukulele. When I have something else I need to do, all I can think about is writing my novel. When I try to work on my novel all I think about is how my hair needs a trim. I'm sick. It's an illness. However my ukulele skills will continue to improve unless of course I join some kind of ukulele group and need to practice, which then of course will mean playing the uke will be the thing I have to avoid. Isn't this exhausting? 

Now I'm going to go and eat some chocolate.

and yes indeed we shall see, we shall see.

So if you have been to my blog before you may notice that the title has changed just a smidgen, and that's because it didn't feel legit to masquerade as a traveller when I am one no longer (except in my heart of course). Now I am, as the title says, a Melburnian, except that I give myself away when I ask people where they're from, and unless they're from about 7 different suburbs I go 'eh?' But anyway.
In my now 3 months of living in the south, I have noticed one big philosophical difference between Sydney (my former home) and Melbourne (my current home) and that is this....... Melbourne is very flat. It's totally flat. Don't move here if you're trying to enhance your quads, it just won't work. Unless you want to go to a gym, which is what crazy people do.

It would be a little long-winded, and probably boring to write in this post all the stuff that's happened to me since my move down south, so I won't. But I will tell you something strange I saw yesterday. I was sitting in a cafe (shocking, I know!) and the cafe had these cool, tubular water bottles that had screw on lids. There was a couple sitting at a table near me, and when they were leaving the woman took the water bottle, which was half full (or half empty, depending on your perspective) and put it in her handbag before they walked out. So apparently Melbourne folk steal water bottles. Just like Sydney people have epic quads from all their walking up hills.

Well that will do for now, I will get back to the writing that I actually have to do (which is much less fun, probably only because I have to do it, because it's actually quite interesting if you're a nerd like me) but I will keep blogging away, just because, and keep the two or so people who read this abreast of my goings on.

Oh I have a sweet pad, view from the lounge room.                  From the back room.

Tram works on St Kilda Road. 

Degraves St. aka coffee street. 

I heart Ikea. 

study time in the State library. 

parisians get a bad wrap but jetlag's a bitch.

So I'm back in the Southern hemisphere, and here I am, not sleeping even though I'm exhausted. Jetlag's a bitch, and we all know it. So while I sit here and wait for my last 'Boots' purchase for a while (sleeping pills) to kick in I'll write this.

I accidentally took the wrong backpack off the turnstile when I arrived. It was the same make and colour, and I only realised as I was standing at a parking meter as my friend was paying for parking that my backpack wasn't as full as I had made it. The owner of the backpack had in fact done the same thing, taken my bag through customs and only realised on the other end too.  It all worked out okay in the end and luckily the bag I took through customs wasn't full of cocaine or anything, or if it was they didn't find it.

My last stop before heading back to London to get my flight back home was Paris and I was really excited about going there. I went to Paris when I was about 5, and I remember thinking that it was very dirty and remembering the time when my dad tried to order hot chocolates but ended up getting chocolate crepes. I also remember being absolutely mesmerised by Notre Dame and the big purple stained glass windows.

This time, to be honest, when I first arrived I didn't like it very much. I arrived with my folks at Gare Du Nord on the Eurostar and we got the train to Gare du Lyon. The metro is dirty and smells like pee. It also gives that vibe of you're going to get pickpocketed. Compared to London where most of the tube stations are very clean and I don't feel like I'm going to get robbed it felt quite kind of... yuck. But.. within two days I really did love it.

There is a charm to Paris. The weather was pretty awful while I was there, getting to -5 degrees, but it's just such a beautiful city.

so long and thanks for all the fish

If you know me, then you probably know that I have an attention span comparable to that of a cocker spaniel. (It's not very good) and so I blame this attention span for why I haven't written anything on this for a while.

I'm actually on the road as I write (metaphorically; as in I'm travelling but literally I'm sitting having coffee, which is pretty much what I'm always doing when I write this, it's lucky I like coffee.) I'm in Paris. And it's really cold. Really, really cold. Even the lady in the metro who sold me gloves agreed.

My parents are over here with me at the moment. It was quite fun showing them around London. I took them to my favourite singing lift, and even though they were still tackling jetlag they appreciated it. We did a bunch of the normal Londony type stuff and branched out a little seeing a last minute decision circus show, where one of the acts ended with a naked woman pulling a red handkerchief out of her nether regions. We also saw Matilda the musical, which was (I can't stress this enough) Amazing! The Trunchbull changed my life. Bruce Bogtrotter!!! Is anyone else re-living their childhood by just reading that name!? Well done, Tim Minchin, well done!

We then went to Cornwall, hung out with the relatives, drove around a lot and ate pasties.

We spent five days in Venice which is incredibly, incredibly beautiful. A real highlight was going up the bell tower on the church on San Giorgio and seeing the most amazing view.

Check it out..

Cool huh?

A lot of Venice revolved around eating. I wanted to try risotto, gelato, pizza, seafood, tirimisu; and managed to squeeze it all in. Literally. I drank a lot of coffee. Once to the point of feeling quite ill, that was the day I decided to just copy what an Italian ordered and wow 'doppia' is more than I can handle. Those people can drink me under the caffeine table. Venice really is quite unique though, I am a bit disappointed that I won't be able to see more of Italy, but it's definitely a must return to destination. Venice was just a little taste of it and I want more.. 

I also lived up to my blog name, and totally stacked it on a bridge in Venice. It was horribly embarrassing, I was on my own and was instantly surrounded by Italians who looked very concerned so I had to wave them all away, collect my dignity. Now I have a big ugly green bruise. If anyone asks I had to rescue a baby from a runaway horse, or something. 

(Just to do this all out of order) Just after new years before the arrival of the folks I was lucky enough to spend a week with Mr and Mrs Butchens in Vlissingen, Holland. (So that's Hutchy and Anneke to anyone who knows them.) It was the nicest week, (even though I had a cold) I did some good imposing on hospitality. When you're on the other side of the world meeting up with friends who you haven't seen is just the best thing. I had a really nice week exploring their local towns and did a couple of day trips to Delft and Amsterdam, saving tonnes of dosh (which has become very important..) getting lifts, using their wily local knowledge and free entry museum card. The Dutch are a funny and very pleasant bunch. They're very straight forward and once I got particularly confused when two ladies told me that the tower I wanted to go up was closed. They said it so dead pan I actually thought they were joking, but they were not. Also when they say they speak 'a little English' it means they speak perfect English. I'm not sure if they're falsely modest or they genuinely don't realise they've got it all right. 

pictures, for those struggling with all these words.. (they're from Holland!) 

I'll write in another one about Paris because this is getting long. But...

(Again, if we're really friends in real life you'll know this but I'll write it here just for the record) I've decided to end my clumsy London ways and return to my homeland. While I had planned and dreamed (!) of living in London for a year or more, truth is that I don't really ... like it that much. Well that's not entirely true, it's more that I've felt London doesn't like me that much. The truth is that London is not a fun place if you're broke. And I'm broke, having had little luck in finding a job. The job that I was doing casually, if I managed to get full time (which was unlikely) would leave me with enough money to pay rent, and buy a train ticket and then not eat any food. Because I like eating food I'd have to get some kind of second job, (which again, may be impossible) and still wouldn't leave me with enough moolah to enjoy London, or get out of it to see other places. So I decided to dust myself off, go home and re-skill. So I'm moving back to Oz to do a Masters. Very exciting! Might be a challenge with my attention span, but it should be good! I won't be back in Sydney though I'm switching sides (though my allegiance will remain true I'm sure..) and moving to Melbourne. 

Wow, this is long. Anyway, I'll write about Paris tomorrow, but for now, The End.