Yay for daylight saving

Summer time is here and the city has come out of hibernation. I’ve decided that i like summer in Sydney. It’s far more pleasant than the relentless and aggressive heat of Tokyo and people are relaxed and up for a good time rather than being grumpy and haggared…well at least until Christmas. The festivals have started. Went to a couple of food and wine festival events, Sydney Festival guide should be out soon and Mardi Gras Festival guide not far behind. Going to Tropical Fruits (alternative queer festival) up in Lismore (Near Byron Bay & Hippy (dis?)utopia, Nimbin) for new year’s eve.

Just spent the night in front of the telly…new comedy series on the ABC “The Librarians” is very very funny. Australia’s answer to The Office perhaps, but with a bit more bite.

Speaking of Christmas, tacky tinsel and xmas crap is appearing in shops. Just call me Ebby, but I bloody hate christmas and it’s still 2 months away.

Drank some good wine this week – d’Arenberg’s Galvo Garrage. Yummy Bordeaux style. Sophisticated Red, not fruity, ribeena cheap new-world cookie cutter wine.

Off to India and Sri Lanka in less than a week

Welcome to my new stream of consciousness concept blog

Anti Howard T-shirt

Saw a great T-shirt today. Someone please let me know where I can buy one. It simply said (in capital letters)

JOHN HUNT IS A COWARD.

The death of Nova?

My old company in Japan looks like it’s about to fold. The last couple of months they’ve been unable to pay some people’s salaries on time. Excuses were given initially about new computer systems holding up pays. Just before the 15th of October (normal pay day) company president Sahashi-san (his name translates to Monkey Bridge) sent a fax saying that due to ongoing problems salaries would be paid on the 19th. Today’s the 20th and 5000 teachers haven’t been paid.

I honestly hope that my old friends and colleagues managed to leave Nova before things got this grim.

Election frenzy

So the Prince of Darkness has called the election. Hopefully he’ll be PM no more after 24 November. Though we’ve been here before. Somehow he brainwashes all the mum and dad voters in the burbs that their comfortable existence will suddenly be lost if any party left of Mussolini gets voted into power in this country…and Rudd’s labor is fractionally to the left of Mussolini….probably somewhere around Thatcher.

Howard has won previous elections based on fear generated by Asian Invasions (think late ’90s Pauline Hanson), Nasty, dangerous refugees (Tampa AND Children overboard), scare mongering about a terrorist threat which was negligable before he took the country to an illegal and immoral war and is probably still not all that much of a real threat despite dire warnings on our fridge magnets and bus stop ads. Then there’s all the bleating on and on about the economy.

Screw the “economy”. If we have so much money floating around, why do I get approached by destitute and homeless people begging for coins every time I pop out the front door to go to the supermarket? Why are public hospitals and schools so desperately underfunded while the private sectors are getting fistfulls of cash? Why are Australian Universties among the lowest funded out of all OECD countries? Why are 19th centrury polluting industries still being propped up and encouraged while “alternative” energy entrepreneurs are making millions selling wind power technologies to the Chinese and solar energy technology to the Germans (Yes, solar power to Germany!!!) and Californians. There’s plenty of money to build freeways, but nothing to fix the railways – not so much as a band aid.

Then there’s the conservative social agenda. Refugees are turned away en-masse. Would-be citizens are condescended by making them remember obscure facts to pass a meaningless test about Don Bradman, the National Anthem and Wattle plants. Howard discovers at the 11th hour that polls suggest people think his performance on Indigenous issues is well below par, but still can’t bring himself to say sorry to the original owners of the land for past injustices.

Closer to home, a recent Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission report identified 58 pieces of federal legislation which disadvantage same-sex couples – some in contravention of UN standards on Human Rights. When the report was released, there were some rumblings within government ranks that they would pass laws to eradicate all 58 barriers to equality. Howard put a stop to such pinko-commie tommfoolery. I can imagine the cynical conversation behind closed doors. The poofters and lezzos are only 5-10% of the population, and probably don’t vote for us anyway. We’re much better off courting to loopy, happy clappy Christian extremist vote if we have any chance of covering our political asses – pun intended. Labor has made a few half hearted promises to deal with the legislation, but they’re ruling out civil unions, let alone marriage for us.

A pox on both their houses I say.

The final word can go to drag uber-personality Vanessa Wagner who wrote this week in the Sydney Star Observer:

“This neo-con, capitalist interface we call government is a blight on civility, justice and culture. When this government is ousted – and they will be shortly – we may look back at this epoch as porous, perverted and tragic, for all Australians are not better off.”

Sore backs

Chai and i are both having treatment on our backs. He spent a few days at the vet earlier this week after he woke up last Sunday barely able to stand or walk. They gave him a steroid injection and pills of some sort which have done their job. The vet ordered three weeks of “cage rest”. Much easier said than done with a bouncy Dachshund who seems to have already forgotten that he was paralised from the hips down a week ago. He just wants to get back to his usual mischief.

I went to the Chiropractor with a bit of a twinge in the middle of my back last week. He did x-rays and used a machine to make measurements of my feet and the way they touch the ground. Apparently I’ve got fallen arches, one lege shorter than the other, poor pelvic allignment a spine that’s a bit skew-whiff and a neck that sticks forward too much. To treat I’m getting fancy inner soles for my shoes, thrice weekly visits to the Chiropractor for quick cracking sessions and as of today a simple exercise routine. Thankfully due to a clerical or computer error my health insurance is paying 100% for all of these visits instead of the 60 or so per cent they claim to cover. Shhhh. Don’t tell them! i see it as karma. They refused to pay for my second round of injections for India, so i deserve a break. As for the twinge in the middle of my back…it’s still there.

Dog reiki

I think baba is losing marbles at a fast rate. Chai still has a sore back, so baba is doing Reiki on him. Chai’s thoroughly non-plussed. Baba insists that the reiki has made Chai’s hair very shiny.

Looking forward to the new ABC comedy series The Librarians. If the promos are anything to go by, I think it will be very dry and witty.

Greenie dog chews. Deadly?

Had to take Chai to the vet for an x-ray on Monday because it looks like he moght have a bit of a bad back. Thankfully the x-ray came back with no serious problems. The problems began when I brought him home. At the vet I bought a couple of “Petite Greenies” – 5cm long, tooth-cleaning chewy things for dogs. One minute chai was chewing happily, next minute the thing had completely disappeared – swallowed whole. My heart sank. Chai has had to have his tummy cut open twice after swallowing foreign objects. This was looking like number three.

According to the Greenies website, the chew things are made from gluten and other plant-derived products and are meant to be highly digestable. According to many other websites that come up on a google search, Greenies are dangerous harbingers of death. There were all sorts of scary stories of pieces of greenie getting lodged in throats, tummies, intestines and bowels; that’s just pieces, not whole bones. Needless to say, Baba was at his seething, passive-aggressive best when he found out that I’d given Chai something to chew on any smaller than my forearm.

I rang the vet who said that it should digest and not be a problem, but o take him to the emergency 24 hour vet if he starts throwing up or showing signs of abdominal pains. We had a restless night’s sleep. Chai was looking a bit groggy; hard to tell if that was because of the thing in his tummy or because of the sedation from the x-ray. In the morning he was still not looking all that perky. We gave him a tiny bit of breakfast which he gobbled down – and gave dirty looks for is being such a small amount. Baba decided to work from home on Tuesday. I rang the vet again, who gave the same reassurances as the previous night. Baba wasn’t convinced and was still giving me the cold shoulder.

Tuesday night, we gave Chai a little bit more soft food. Again his appetite seemed fairly healthy, but at the same time his energy levels remained fairly low. Since eating the greenie, he hadn’t done a poo which was a bit of a bad sign…suggesting that there could be a pretty serious blockage.

Finally on Wednessday morning, Chai did a big, heavy, steaming slightly green tinged poo.Crisis averted. It looks as though he did indeed digest most of the greenie and passed the rest.

So greenies are digestable, and not necessarily deadly if swallowed whole. At the same time, Chai won’t be having any more because he’s likely to swallow the thing whole again. I dare not suffer baba’s wrath again!

War on Democracy

I went and saw the abovementioned John Pilger film this afternoon. For those not in the know, it details the shady, shonky and downright F**ked up actions of Uncle Sam in removing democratically elected governments in Latin America who refuse to play the game, and replacing them with right-wing dictators who are happy to allow their countries (and any disenting citizens) to be raped and pillaged by america, its military, its biased media, its secret agents and its big companies.

There were laugh-out-loud moments when some absolute tool of a CIA person denied the thousands of deaths of disneters that occured in Pinochet’s Chile, not tomention the United State’s involvement in the torture and countless deaths. When confronted with the evidence, he took on the all too familiar Machiavellian “our national interests and security” line. And according to this man, he in all seriousness believes that Amnesty International is part of an international anti-american propaganda conspiracy. moron.

I would draw similarities between this film and Noam Chomsky’s excellent book Hegemony or Survival which also delves into America’s long term and deliberate empire-building ambitions (in the more palatable guise of spreading democracy) to protect its economic prosperity over and above all else – including peace, human rights and morality.

Collecting an Indian Visa in Sydney

…is just as much of a pain in the bum than submitting the application a week earlier. Applicants are told to come between 2-3pm on their alloted day. I arrived a bit after
2:30 to a huge and chaotic crowd. I took a number and managed to find a vacant seat. Lots of fun people watching. There were a few ageing hippies who seemed to be very familiar with the whole visa routine. There was an assortment of package tourists and businessman types and then there were the queue jumpers and queue watchers. I seem to remember reading somewhere that almost any queue in India where there is potential for raised voices between the petty bureaucrat on on side and a frustrated man, woman or child on the other will always attract queue watchers. The queue watcher the other day was getting plenty of free entertainment with a number of cranky and upset people trying to get their way with the visa officials. An hour or so after I arrived, they opened up the two counters which had remained closed and abandoned the premise of serving people according to ticket number-order. They simply started calling people’s names out. Thankfully mine was one of the first called. According to one hippy, the best strategy to avoid having to wait forever is to arrive just before 3, so you can still get in the door and grab a ticket, yet at the same time with the anticipation that by 3:30 or so they’ll put more staff on and start calling names. I’ll remember for next time.

In other visa related news, Baba’s permanent residency came through this week. It only took a few weeks from the date of submitting our paperwork for the proverbial rubber stamp to officially change his visa status from provisional permanent residency to the real deal.

Along with the letter was information on becomming a citizen….which as of last week now involves the taking of a ludicrous multiple choice test on topics as wide ranging as Don Bradman, Wattle and Edmund Barton. wank wank wank….baba has no intention of getting an Australian passport – partly becuase Japan doesn’t allow dual citizenship and also because a Japanese passport will get you into a helluva lot of countries without a visa – or a cheaper visa. My Indian one cost $75. His cost $16!

Buzzz and Head Candy from Happy Herbs

To my regualr readers: This post contains drug use and sexual references so in the words of the creators of South park, it shouldn’t be viewed by anyone….

Long weekends in gay Sydney mean big dance parties. baba and I skipped sleaze on Saturday night (too expensive, no really interesting DJs) and opted for going out on Sunday night instead. First let me backtrack.

A couple of weeks ago while getting our hair cut, our hairdresser (Funky Japanese guy in Kings Cross who does an excellent job) was telling us about a mate of his who found a Shibuya-style “Head Shop” on King St Newtown. They sell all sorts of barely legal mind altering substances. We decided to go and check it out on a Sunday afternoon. There’s lots to choose from and everthing has a little written description on a card describing the high/trip/buzz/journey/feeling/effect that the substances have; comparing them to their not so licit “equivalents”. After a bit of deliberation, we settled on some pills called Head Candy, made by a company called London Underground. We went home and took one each at about 4pm, put the stereo on and planned to just chill out – thinking that at $40 for 3 pills and being both legal and somewhat “herbal” they’d give us a light buzz for a pleasant Sunday evening. How wrong we were!!!! They take quite a while to come on (2 hours) but when they do, they’re as strong and dreamy as most e’s without the chemical “background hum” and tight jaw. Music sounded soooo good, dancing (in the living room by candle light at first) was light and liberating. Head Candy pills are a bit more introspective than ecstasy, not so much of the huggy huggy kissy kissy feeling (though the sex we had some 6 or 8 hours later is possibly the closest I’ve ever come to Tantric!!). We ended up popping out to the Colombian for a bit more of a dance and then just blissed out. The beauty of them is that while the pills are pretty strong, they can also be nice and mellow, depending on the surrounds, music and one’s inclinations. There’s no real come down to speak of, it just fades nicely, with a few “reminder” waves even a day or two later. At times the feeling was a bit similar to mushies I tried in Tokyo. The only major drawback is insomnia. I didn’t sleep at all that Sunday night. Consequently I had a “migrane” and didn’t go to work on Monday, but still didn’t sleep during the day. Not until I’d been to my wine class and had a couple of glasses of sparkling on the Monday night did I get any sleep. Despite that, I felt clear headed and far better than I would have after say four or five drinks the night before.

That brings me back to Last night. At the 11th hour we decided to get tickets to “Action”. having only one pill left, I decided to go back to Newtown for supplies. Horror of horrors, they were sold out of Head Candy. The helpful guy in the shop suggested a little vial of liquid called Buzzz as a substitute. We each had half the Head Candy and half the Buzzz (diluted in water). The feeling was more or less the same as last time taking a full head candy. The music at Action was pretty hard (lots of peole there were on crystal meth, so the vibe was a bit tweaky and negative)and perhaps not entirely suited to the more dreamy feeling from buzz/head candy. There were however some exquisite moments from Kate Monroe in the House room where music, herb and chemical came together as perfectly as one could want.

Long story short, head candy is the goods….especially in this day and age where ecstacy pills contain less and less MDMA and more and more meth, speed, rat poison, no-doz etc. Head candy are exactly what party drugs should be: safely manufactured, measured doses of feel good chemicals and herbs, sold over the counter at a reasonable price.

Off to the beach now to bliss out on a beautiful warm spring day

(edit: for more on head candy pills, check out http://verdanticity.wordpress.com/2008/01/09/head-candy-pills-from-london-underground-really-work/