Miles Davis

This book was a diamond in the rough and was found in a tiny bookstore in Johannesburg where it was one of a just a handful of auto/biographies. The book provided much more than just an insight into one of the greatest Jazz musicians of all time, but told a very candid story of the Jazz scene in general as well as the habits of many of the Jazz musicians during his time, particularly ‘Bird’ (Charles Parker) and Dizzy Gillespie.

Written in a style that ‘talks’ to you, you’re guaranteed to start swearing like a trooper during and after your read. I was surprised that for an amazing Jazz musician Davis seem to possess such a small expressive vernacular that mainly consists of ‘bad motherfucker’ or ‘that shit was bad or baddest’ – I guess everything went into his music.

Although I had already known that most of the Jazz musicians dabbled in drugs, what I didn’t realise was how serious the problem was. It seems from Davis’ account that quite a number of the greatest Jazz musicians that ever existed had serious heroin and cocaine problems many of which lead to their premature death. Miles Davis himself had a very serious drug problem and it wasn’t until his own health started to fall apart that he made some real attempts to quit. The book provides quite a good historical account of some of the social issues faced by ‘black’ American’s at the time and although the music that they produced were far superior to that of the ‘whites’, they were rarely given the recognition they deserved both financially and in accolades.

If you read past the drugs, women and racial prejudices that are documented at the time, you can really feel the passion behind Davis and his determination that borders on obsession to constantly reinvent himself and come up with new ideas and concepts. Some people may say that they are marks of a true genius and I would agree. The book is an inspiring and insightful read and if at all possible I would recommend reading the book whilst listening to some of Davis’ music as it was nice to actually be able to hear the changes in the music he writes about.

The Beautiful Side of Canberra

Monet - The Water-Lily Pond

In amongst the list of hundreds of things to love about Sydney is its proximity to Canberra, most people probably don’t see this as an advantage, but it allows for an increased selection of cultural precincts only a few hours drive away.  Unlike my visit to Canberra last year the focus wasn’t on the food but on the art itself. There has been a lot of publicity surrounding the “Masterpieces from Paris” exhibition most of which except for the queuing is extremely positive and I myself was lost for words at the skill and talent on display.  I have ‘zero’ knowledge when it comes to art and art history but I’m an art lover and I could honestly say that you could be a person that couldn’t care less about art and the exhibition would have taken your breath away.

I particularly loved Monet’s 1899 – “Waterlily pond, green harmony” or …. “Le bassin aux nymphéas, harmonie verte” and was extremely impressed by Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh and Georges Seurat.

Aside from the paintings, I’m not sure whether many people noticed the beautiful frames they were set in, I for one think that the frame the paintings are in plays a significant role in directing your eyes and has a role in capturing the audience.  The craftsmanship in some of them were in themselves worth noting.  There’s probably been quite a lot of university study gone into analysing ‘framing’ and there are probably a lot of fancy-smanchy terms to describe what I’ve just mentioned but I think they’re cool and important! So PHD that!

The only thing left to do now is somehow getting my hands on one of these!!!

Melbourne

Melbourne Skyline

As with any trip, its just never quite long enough. Our days in Melbourne were always going to be limited but it was a much needed ‘holiday’ where not much really happened. I probably learnt after drinking a Coffee, Ice Chocolate and then a Mint Hot Chocolate from Max Brenna that I was at the very least mildly-lactose intolerant.

The most important thing about the trip was the opportunity to reflect on the last 6months which have absolutely flown. It seemed like only yesterday that I was planning and organising my trip with Tim and Kieran. Its now July again and I’m looking towards what might be of 2010.

Many of us have chopped and changed our plans for next year, many of us have decided that next year will be the year that travels is on the agenda, its no different for me I guess. I’m still seriously considering what I want to do with Africa and The Middle East and whatever else that might occur afterward, but back to Melbourne…

The very first night we were there we ate at Oriental Tea House, they happened to be having a “Duck Month”. It was pretty good and for 10 entree sized dishes it wasn’t priced too badly, our only criticism would probably surround the often ambiguous description of the dishes, but I guess if you compare it to most Chinese restaurants it was pretty darn good.

Whilst on this trip I managed to visit the Old Melbourne Gaol for some good old colonial and Australian history, the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) twice, once for the supposed “Jane Austen” exhbition with Amanda and her blog-buddy Carmen and the second time for the Salvador Dali exhibition which was absolutely amazing and recommended to anyone visiting Victoria.

Probably the most exiciting news on the trip was Kieran’s win in the Vivid Student category for Best Student Product in Vivid’s Awards for Excellence in Design. I have to say that I gave him only a very slim chance of winning, so slim that I didn’t even bother turning up to the presentation at the Furnitex show. A great show of support from his trusty friend no-less.

Lots of drinking, eating and being merry took place and may eventually be documented, but for now we’ll have to live with this very short summary of the trip.

Decisions, Descisions and Descisions

As the year progresses and the dust settles on the events and the shattered dreams of the year bygone, the light is now beginning to shimmer on the future.  I am still relatively undecided about what I want to do in the next ‘chapter’ of my life.  Chats with close friends at bizzare times has stimulateda reflective process in me that has me wondering about what I value most in my life.

I know that I will miss my mates, dearest friends, my nieces and the lifestyle that I currently live, I know that I will love the travels, but I also know that true and hardy friendships are hard to forge and can not make up the friendships already formed.  I am surrounded by such great friends and travel can at times be lonesome.

At this stage, I have almost removed Japan from my equation to travel, but it is no doubt still there. The desire to travel to Africa and volunteer has almost single handedly removed my ambition also to travel through Indonesia and the Phillipines due to time and money. All though technically there are no set dates on this trip, my biggest and toughest hurdle will be getting to and working in the UK. I will need time to settle into work, settle into life and work out what to do.

It seems like even before I make the move there will already be two chapters in the making, ‘the getting to the UK’ and the ‘living in the UK’.

When I start to again get on top of my work stuff I intend to look further into things. April/May is fast approaching and that is the artificial start to my 1 year countdown.

Quick life update and my D90

It has been two crazy months and boy am I looking forward to the school holidays. I never thought that I would admit to being burnt out or run down, because I’ve never been so exhausted.  In the past things have been exhausting, either physically, emotionally or painful, but never really all together at once.

I’m still trying to keep my head up remain as optomistic as possible, but I’m feeling flat. (insert your mumma joke here) Study has been plaguing me, work responsbilities are killing me and I’m glad my inservice presentation went better than I thought.

On other news… My old digital camera which I bought for an even $1200 on ebay over 18months ago sold for $815ish, which I was pleasantly suprised about and the guy even saved me some fees by using Direct Deposit. Ebay currently has ‘zero insertion fees’ which tempted me also to sell my old SonyEricssonW850i for just over $150.00 and my old point and shoot digital camera for just under $150.00, meaning I’ve raised approximately $1100.00 to cover the cost of my new Nikon D90.

My semi-upgrade to the Nikon D90 has been prompted mostly by some of the disappointing shots taken in low-light during our recent travels to Japan. I opted for the D90 mainly for size, pre-exisiting equipment such as memory cards, spare batteries and lens meaning that I wouldn’t have to invest even more money on equipment that wouldn’t be used. I have to say that whilst the ‘Live view’ feature (I use this the term feature lightly as I still think its a bit of a ‘gimmick’) is nifty, it actually really doesn’t get me excited. I would have happily done away with it, paid a little less and be happy with just the new censor.

There are only two more technological items that I need or wish to upgrade before I embark on my journey and that’s my laptop and a new point and shoot camera. I’m committed to getting the Canon G10 at some stage, but I’m more than happy to wait it out, because I don’t use point and shoots that often and even then, I have my old Sony.

I can’t deny that I think the $900.00 bonus payments to be a bit farcical. I do actually believe that it should be better spent, but having said that, I have a assured way of almost doubling the $900.00 and that’s by putting the money back into my Superannuation account and receiving more of the government’s co-contribution money.  It doesn’t bother me that I don’t get to spend the money now, because at some stage down the track in life, I’ll be using the money anyway.

Mop Head

So I finally got my hair permed, but I’m giving it a month before I’m going for a shave. I’m bitterly disappointed and that’s probably and understatement. My hair wasn’t very co-operative and it didn’t want to curl as much as it needs to get a nice round afro. Instead it hangs down my head like a wet mop. *sigh* what I waste of months of long hair and persistence.

I have to admit that I am extraordinarily stressed and probably just a little down the past few weeks. The dreams had some part to play, classes late at night and throughout the weekend has had something to do with it, all my jobs have played a major part on the state of my psyche at the moment. So much so that yesterday when I went for my hair cut/perm… the hairdresser discovered a patch of grey hairs. I actually haven’t been so stressed to the point that my hair was turning grey since the middle of third year when I was playing catch-ups with uni.

I’m trying to stay positive, but it’s just one of those periods in life that when it passes I will be relieved.  I am currently mentoring a student at one of my jobs and thankfully she seems pretty competent and quite enthusiastic, but I’ll be glad when she finishes and for that matter looking forward to a trip to Tasmania in July.

When will it end…?

Okay so this is the third morning in row that I’ve had very similar dreams, this time round I was able to quite litreally ‘in my dreams’ stop us from getting back together, which I knew was not what I wanted, but knew that somehow it was all going to end just like it had the other times.  This is all twisted and stupid and I’m over trying to fight it. At some point in the next few weeks I’m going to have to confront these relationship issues staring me in the face. I wouldn’t even call them relationship issue, because there’s no relationship to start with, perhaps ‘emotional’ issues would be a better word, but almost implies that I’m having a breakdown rather than confusion about women.

Just Another Dream… …again!

I’m not sure what’s going on but I had a similar dream last night/this morning with similar scenarios to the night before.  I’m not sure that it’s haunting me so much as depressing me first thing in the morning.  I’m still waking up to the sound of birds, the sun, etc but I’m now waking up half-way to tears in the realisation that what I thought was happiness and bliss was not true.

This time it was even more real. We spoke, we embraced, the features, the smile and the glimmer in her eyes. It was all so real. I was even careful this time, remembering somehow that that it was all taken away from me the day before, so I asked  “this is just a dream right?” To which the response was a kiss to reaffirm that it was all true. Moments later, I woke up as the radio came on to sound the start of another morning.

What the hell is going on?

On to other news… I’m starting TESOL tomorrow night, although I will be missing Basketball and Touch Footy this week. They’ll probably win without me in both games.

A little time to think

It’s always good to hangout with Louise and she offers much food for thought and different perspectives on the world.  I wish I offered the same but I have to say that for my own happiness I have started to analyse and question things less and less. This is not because I am less curious nor disinterested but often feel that ignorance is bliss.

Anyhow… more to come… my headache has returned.

Domestic Violence

I’m not going to divulge all the finer details, but last night on Valentines Day – night, I had some friends over for a quiet dinner and games.  Nothing terribly exciting, it was an alternative to going to The Overflow in Homebush where we were going to watch the Sydney Symphony play. As it is, after a crazy heat wave it has rained 4 days straight here in Sydney.

Whilst the girls chatted, Kieran and I decided to head out to buy some take-away.  We made it to the restaurant, made our order and decided that we’d go for a walk. As we chatted and waited outside the restaurant, we witnessed a guy throw a number of punches at a woman which he’d been arguing with.

Kieran looked at me and asked me whether we should call the cops at exactly the moment I was already reaching for my mobile. We’d made the call and the cops were there in under 5minutes. I’d never actually seen the Police respond to anything so quickly.

I don’t really care for what they were arguing about, violence is wrong full-stop. I felt disgusted and although I didn’t outwardly show it, I was pretty angry about it.  I wanted to run over, pin the guy down and beat the crap out of him. (Did I mention that I’m a hypocrite?) In the end justice appeared to prevail and some of my confidence in the Police force has been restored.

I know there’s not many positives to come out of such a situation, but I’m really glad that Kieran also thought to call the police. Believe it or not, people don’t often do it for a number of reasons. Within our group we often joke about stupid things like ‘hitting women’, ‘rape’, etc. To any outsider we’re a bunch of sick mid-twenties men with a bad sense of humour, but eventhough the jokes are distatesful, we have nothing but respect for the opposite sex.

I can’t speak for the whole group, but my very own values are modelled on the fact that men and women aren’t created equally. I don’t care whether a ‘god’ intended it that way or whether it was evolution. Aside for the obvious physical differences we are ‘wired’ differently right from the onset. (Please note that this is only in the world of personal relationships, women are every part the colleague, manager or assistant just like any other man would be in my professional working relationships).

I think women are like flowers, no matter what they think they’re delicate and should be treated with TLC.