Death (metal) in Bratislava

Curls of haze, the half falling shelf of the bar holding up a few bottles of selections of what looks like home made vodka, bar maid (fat, black singlet, black eye liner, black bob) shouting at a customer across the bar, a vicious looking women's ice hockey game playing on the big screen. What resembles really really hard metal in an unfathomable language blasting out from the 80s-sized speakers covered in dust, dodgy looking bucket of brown fluid sitting next to a keg outside the women's bathroom that had no toilet seat...

Random travellers sitting on a tall table not sticking out like a sore thumb for some strange reason cos the locals chose not to acknowledge us(myself and two dudes from the hostel - Tom: Preppy boy from Sydney Uni that had just been in Vienna for an 'international law competition', and Chris: HBOS Risk Analyst (didn't dare ask him why he's on holiday) from Cardiff that had just regaled us with how he survived having one of his balls cut off at age 24 after suffering from testicular cancer. They are not the most randomist people I've met so far. One woman from my dorm is a Macedonian grandma in her 50s who travels around Eastern Europe following figure skating championships and reports it for an online forum... bit like the Balmy Army, just way classier --) Tom helpfully suggested the reason why we blend in so well is because we were all wearing black.

Matiu and Lansaren (I'm sure that's not how you spell their names but...) two young metal heads in typical long-hair-black t-shirt attire approached us with very good English and began a warm and introductory conversation about life in Bratislava, the shit hole they call home and make good music in a 13th century basement around the corner. Matiu longed to make it big on the UK scene so he could get out of his insurance job. 'I hate wearing a fucking buttoned shirt!' he lamented. Lasaren is a bit more relaxed. 'I go to Prague, have fun, then come back, no problem if I am never rich.' Subsequently they found a hole at the back of Chris' jumper and began tattooing the exposed skin with ball point pens. At this moment on the screen the game was drawing to a close, but one of the girls was sitting on ice in agony and appeared to have lost some teeth and began to spit blood.

The dodgy pub lighting began to flick on a off, and the bar maid bangs on the bar table yelling something, which is probably last drinks calls. We were still enjoying the story of Matiu and Lasaren's further adventures in the Czech Republic and my accounts of blackwater rafting in nuclear free New Zealand (it really is my favourite subject at the moment), when the bar maid came around banging on the tables, screaming some more. I asked Matiu what she said. He said that she said 'FUCK OFF ALL OF YOU!! GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY FUCKING BAR I HAVE TO GO HOME AND BREAST FEED MY CHILDREN, SO IF YOU DON'T ALL FUCK OFF RIGHT NOW I'M GONNA FUCK YOU SO HARD THAT YOUR EYES FALL OUT ONTO THE FLOOR, SO FUCK OFF!!!'. So we did (probably the smart thing) but quite reluctantly, and I went home with a huge piece of pizza that costs 0.88 Euros, which is a very lucky figure in my culture too.

And Bratislava by Day:

Czeching it Out

Camp's out and holidays are in - am on a small junket through Eastern Europe before I properly settle down into routine in Berlin.

First stop Prague is undoubtedly a grand and gorgeous city - quirky, eclectic, colourful and absolutely stunning at the beginning of spring. But that comes with a price - I really am feeling quite overwhelmed by how popular it is amongst the international tourists, and how much its making the locals get so opportunistic and just cold and business like, so I must say I am fleeing here reluctantly to search for a bit of chilled time.

Hello Mumsee, hello Dadsee, here I am at Camp Werbellinsee

`I´m Kurt, I´m 11, and I´m incorrigible´.

- The Sound of Music (1965)

And so it begins, the spring camp season in Germany. Along with 5 other English speaking foreigners, I am the `governess` of 50 German children, 10 girls and 40 boys between 7 and 16 at English Football Camp on the beautiful shores of Lake Werbelliner just 55 kilometers north of Berlin, though already into the depth of the Brandenburg woods. Our camp ground is a B-grade resort reminiscing a miniature city of lodging houses (sleeps about 70, complete with deer antler light fittings...), picnicking and sporting areas, communal dining cafeteria, mini video cinema, cabaret and various tiny shops and of course an over priced Internet cafe. This caters for the East Germans who likes their holidays like their ordinary lives - orderly, symmetrical, minimalist and somewhat sterile...
The lake is a calm, glass like oblivion that changes colours constantly under the spring sun, surrounded by a thick cover of Nordic pines and small hills, covered in spring buds on the verge of exploding into a sea of mint green and pink glosses of cherry blossoms. But underneath this innocent backdrop, there lied secrets that only the trees knew, and the water remembered. For its not so often spoken by the locals, about how the Werbellinsee Retreat began life as a training camp for the Nazi Youth (exactly the same age as our campers... to give things a spin), built in the 1930s by the SS, complete with secret bunkers that is hidden under a few of the lodging houses, and a few tucked deep into the hills. Year after year Camp Counsellors like myself have tried in vain to uncover the whereabouts of them on wandering walks during a break, often somewhat challenged by the posted warning signs about asbestos infested sheds and buildings that surrounds the main camp ground.

My day would begin in the dorm I shared with a fellow colleague, the delightful and exuberant American songstress Amy. At 0725 usually the younger boys across the hall wakes up and begin their chaotic morning routines of not finding their t-shirts, exploded toothpaste tubes and chasing insects. 0815 a German breakfast of cured meat, cheese, cured meat, cheese and cured meat. Tad heavy, but in hindsight, completely necessary for the demanding day I was about to taken on. 0930 an hour and a half of pure English with Baroness WaWa who of course perfectly enunciate her kiwi monovowel for the 10 to 11 year olds. The half hour break at 1100 usually involved me collapsing in bed from exhaustion and the children dosing up on sugar on some really quite dramatically horrible collection of sweets, ranging from a whitish marble coloured marzipan the size of a tennis ball, a bottle resembling one of those roll-on deodorant sticks except the liquid that comes out is brown syrupy goo, and all kinds of liquorice that a 80s child could never have dreamt of. 1130 is `rotation class´ where each of us teachers take another teacher´s class to talk about each of our own countries/culture. My chosen topic for this camp is ´New Zealand Sports`. I try and challenge the imagination of these kids a little, but try picture me having to explain that black water rafting doesn`t actually involve water that's been dyed black, nor does it involve a raft, but a rubber tube and that one wears a miner`s helmet and headlight and hang out with glow worms. Though I was just as surprised to discover that there is a different version of kite surfing in German. Lunch at 1215 sharp is probably one of my most feared hours of the day. This is the only meal of the day that´s eaten hot for the Germans, which the penny pinching house staff likes to serve the cheapest roast and boiled meat and potatoes and beans. Usually we end up feeling bloated and lethargic to face the endlessly sportastic afternoon.

At 1330 the boys and girls would have already changed into their ever-colourful football gear awaiting the arrival of Richard the (hot=) English football coach. The obsession with football starts from infancy, an indoctrination of kulcha that I don´t think I could ever understand. Mark my words, teenage boys with rich parents take the opportunity of football to ingratiate their lust for the latest fashion - silver shoes, orange shoes, green and black sparkled shoes, shoes with a side string strap, shoes with a flat flap, shoes with Ronaldo or Podolski charactures. On the field they push, shove, squabble, hurt themselves, cry, swear, spit, and act like half their age (which is not very much at all) a lot of the time, but then I see the passion burn in their eyes, between their grinding teeth and even the youngest, smallest boys pick themselves back up after a fall and carry on despite what must be the most excruciating pain. One of the boys, only 9, had been kicked in the same place on the right shin at least 4 times this week, and though it drove him in tears, after he rolled on the ground holding his knees, he still got up and charged on. That´s a standing ovation to me. And the sweetest comradery of carrying each other home when a friend had really really hurt themselves....

Dinner is pretty much a repeat of the breakfast smorgasboard with the addition of a few cold salads -most of them would be drenched in mayonnaise: potato salad in mayonnaise, shredded ham in mayonnaise, orange and mushrooms in mayonnaise, prawns in mayonnaise, picked eggs in mayonnaise, shredded herring in mayonnaise, etc etc, you get the picture... There would be the occasional roll mop, which disgusts me enough with the thought, but to top it all, on evening we were served the brown vinegary pickled fishballs marinated with carrot and turnip? in a jelly sauce. For those of you that know me, I love food, I adore food, I worship food. I enjoy food so much that I even have a food blog. I will eat anything and everything. But for the first time in 20 years, I spat a mouth full of picked fishballs out because it honestly tasted something like Courtenay Love´s vagina after a hard night out in Malibu.









In the evenings our irreverent and reluctant Director usually pulls some sort of fancy evening program out of his arse - there was the scavenger hunt, a Wacky Olympics, a fashion show (which brought out the transvestite in all of us), and then a last resort of watching the ill-fated Bayen vs Barcelona game for the boys. One evening we did do a fantastic bonfire out at the lake, where, of course, none of the Team had to lift a finger because we all know what pyromaniacs these Germans are. Do have to say, kerosene flavoured marshmallows did give me a bit of a strange hallucinating high, which lead to me telling an extraordinarily peculiar version of ´Tiger Aunt´, ie. the Chinese version of ´Little Red Riding Hood´. Though I secretly hoped that the bed wetting that evening was caused by my scary story than that dodgy chemically enhanced meal that was given out...

And were you one of those children that wondered what the teachers got up to after they sent you to bed? In between the after-work beers (which, unlike my London routine, had somehow been pushed back till 11.30 in the Director´s bedroom), dirty sheep jokes (blame it on the Scotsman on the Team, not me...) and fags, we take phone calls from dissatisfied parents (Hi, my daughter says everything taste like plastic, why??), and worry about Johanna and Pascal, the young budding lovers of 15 and 14, because they have the tendency of sneaking into each other´s bedrooms at night and make mayhem for the other children in the dormitory, and one of two kids who just won´t make friends. One evening the amusement did surround ´who shat in the shower´when we discovered a very large stool in the boy´s showers. After dressing up as The Ghost Busters to ceremoniously clean things up, some quite convincing conspiracy theories did emerge from this overqualified group of children-minders to give Agatha Christie a run for her money. And you´d think that it should all be over by 1am? No, there are bats in the dorms to shoo out. Transylvania is just around the corner, isn´t it?

My most memorable moment however belonged to Laurenz , one of the 10 year olds in my English 1 class (he is also the only one that has guinea pigs as a pet cos he´s allergic to everything else). Having discovered a loose baby tooth, he and his friends wiggled it ferociously through out the course of the class. He simply came up to me unannounced and opened his mouth. I was only trying to figure out what he was trying to tell me in German, and right there he popped his tooth out in front of me, blood, saliva, broken white bits and all. The children broke out into hysterical laughter as my face turned pale and slightly green in horror and confusion.

At that moment, I realised that I had forgotten the joy of innocence, the delight of discovering these things about life for the first time, that restless carefree feeling of living from one fun day to the next. Every graze, every tear, every stolen Pringle chip and every spoonful of honey meant more to them than what I can now imagine. That need to pick that fight, that need to prove that you can, that vulnerability, and that courage to just cry when you need to. I´ve been given the chance to be fourteen and a half for the second time, but could I? All this waiting to grow up, being misunderstood and underestimated, feeling completely ignorant of the world outside of an endless suburbia, learning everything the hard way... what a throwback. There is that something mysterious about the adult world of complicated and practised social games, cunning network of unspoken rules, dangers of sexual intrigue, and where privileges and responsibilities weigh exactly the same on the shoulders. So when I am here you can´t make me go back. But how wonderfully interesting it would be to predict how some of these kids will turn out as adults. I really have high hopes for some of them. Others will sink into bastardom very easily, but others, I am sure, will be some of the most interesting German individuals like the ones we would have met on those backpacking trails, and probably discover by accident sunbathing naked in Abel Tasman National Park. And others? they would no doubt write about that stupid camp with the stupid foreign teachers that talked crap about black water rafting in those ghastly footballer autobiographies that the nation would flock to buy. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Overdosing on sunshine & caffein

... back in Kreusberg, Berlin. Who can blame me??

Bye bye Lalaland

悄悄的我走了，
正如我悄悄的來；

徐志摩 詩 1928

..............
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqsyXdj_p_I
`No Surprises´by Radiohead

This is my favourite song to play on the crowded tube on a weekday morning at rush hour. Raindrops falling steadily into the silent crowd. The heads hung low, the vacant eyes, tired arms hanging onto the loose railing, chugging above the relentless track. Another Stop. The painful look in one's eyes as one by one another squeeze past bumping into you, outwards towards the jaw like door of the carriage, then as one by one they file back in...
'no alarms and no surprises, please.'

................................

From Whitechapel I walked down Brick Lane, which has become not only my favourite street in London, but perhaps the world.

I walked under the metal gate of Bangla Town, past the neon lights of the restaurants, past the curry touts who were by now too tired to say hello, instead huddling in a small group smoking cigarettes and sipping cans of imported canned soft drink. Past the giant BanglaCity Supermarket, past the old men in crispy white punjabs and skullcaps, past the window holding a group of English blokes so sloshed that they were standing up on the dining tables singing a football song.

I walked past the BBQ stand outside The Big Chill, past the Emo Boys and Shoreditch Princesses sitting on the edge of the curb, now also too tired and huddling in a small group smoking cigarettes and drinking cans imported soft drink. Past the stomping bar above All Stars, Studio 95, the over-priced vintage shops, past the dark alleys ways leading to Commercial Street, under the old bridge, and past the construction site. Past the salt beef shop, now with a small que outside, past the tiny Christmas lights of Casa Blue.

I crossed the road and come to Sebastian's house. His upstairs window glow like cats' eyes caught in the headlights. Through the half opened window, in his kitchen his collection of knives neatly lined up on the magnetic strip.

I hope he never finds out that I stand out here all the time.

................................

Everyone I love is here. Well, almost everyone. And they all fit into this tiny apartment. Candles glow for Earth Hour against the rims of the wine glasses, the amber liquid swirling against Herbie Hancock.

Wendy - whimsical, vivacious, empathetic, gifted, alluring, nurturing.

Armando - sensitive, casual, engaging, inquisitive, mysterious, unpredictable, irrisistable.

Shanti - curious, lustful, cynical, giving, wild, cautious, unbeatable, frank.

Mel B - personable, seeking, bold, impatient, wily.

Mel K - soft, optimistic, stylish, innocent, unbridled.

Claire - big-hearted, bountiful, undiscovered, sentimental, Australian.

Daivd - open, unscripted, undisciplined, generous, drifting, fun-loving, exuberant.

Jo P - unchallenged, loud, energetic, warm, confident, quirky, excellerant.

Deno - thinking, perceptive, self-deprecating, complicated, surprising, sensitive, intriguing, sanctimonious.

Tane - well-versed, observant, engaging, enthusiastic, excitable.

Keren - elegant, searching, articulate, stable.

Yuki - sweet, colourful, vibrant, curious, childlike. If I was Japanese I would be her.

.....It still feels strange that my individual friends could get along so well with each other. They are all so solitary and unique, it seemed like they should all have a planet each. But it has taken me, and most of them, good 30 years to come to this. This is a beautiful stage of one's life - mature enough and seen enough to be truly interesting, and still young enough and haven't done enough to make them incomplete and wanting. So this is pushing thirty with the propensity to over-indulge - Dancing in a second hand dress in the depth of a credit crunch, holding up a strawberry martini in a room full of people I love.
...................................

Spring sprinkled in effortlessly, and its made leaving the hardest thing to do. Gone were the relentless long nights replaced by energetic sunny afternoons of more ales on the sidewalks and chatter before the football. On the top of the double decker the view is of children bouncing their way back from school, and daffodils, neatly planted in curvy lines, dancing to and fro to Wordsworth's old poem. In the evening the best-heeled bejewelled besuited and gasping crowd at the ballet swarm around the art-nuveau style campaign bar at the opera house, and end the night hopping into a black-cab after ensuring a short mention by the private eye. On the bus in my comparatively and embarrasingly down-market outfit, I enjoyed the scenes of hens nights grinding to a messy halt and flouro jacketed and steel-cap booted men sweeping the cigarette butts and what not out of everyone's way.

Between the wild and often euphoric farewell parties I feel mildly melancholic.

There hasn't been a place anywhere else I've felt I could slip in so easily. London just absorbed me in so quickly and so graciously. I've never felt at home more here. Within a month or two of arriving here I was trudging the streets and negotiating corners as if I've know them all my life. I realised that I belong to places that are so busy and so distracted that they don't notice me. Another six months would have done me so happily, but then we are never satisfied, are we? But a fate is sealed when you arrive feeling transient, temporary and anonymous, like every other person in this town. Recyclable faces; rent-a-crowd.

How little and and how inconsequential I am. Maybe this is a little bit like dying. The self-centred perspective we all take when we try and articulate our existence or non-existence. That life would go on without me, children would grow up, people will change, building will get torn down, then they will rise again. And this very tiny tiny slice of London that's embedded into my memory will only ever be relevant to me. Yes that's sentiments. and a little bit of regret.

But my father said to me, that when our ancestors left the impoverished and repressed fishing village off the coast of Fujian in Mainland China more than 400 years ago, restless blood began to flow in our veins.... so its not something we should fight.

So I close this chapter of my book with this line from Mr Dickens:

'It was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on.'
- Great Expectations, 1861.

Climate Camp Carnival

Climate Camp Carnival @G20, Bishop's Gate 11.20am

Brrrm Brrrm Berlin

My year may be up in London soon but I aint ready to go home yet. Nuh uh.

I'm in Berlin on a brief scouting trip and some training for a kids camp counselling job I got lined up before I officially move to the continent on my next 'working-holiday' in April.

And here I am on a soggy Monday evening.

On the S-Bahn from Schonefeld Airport on a Monday
(........||...........)(........||........)(........||........)(..............||........)(........||..............)(........||........)(...................||...............)
(........||........)(........||................)(...................||...............)
(.....me, reading a Lonely Planet on Germany....|sat opposite|....a German girl, reading a guidebook called 'Arbeitsfeiertag-Hersteller in Neuseeland'.... )(...................||...............)
(........||........)(........||........)(..............||........)(........||..............)(........||........)
(........||........)(........||................)(...................||...............)
(........||........)(........||Old Punk rolling tobacco from a rusty tin, watched over by his Alsatian at least twice his size......groans..)(..............||........)(........||..............)(........||........)
(........||........)(........||................)(...........ticket lady looking very grumpy........||...............)
(...................||...............)

Camp Counsellor Training on a Tuesday

I have an instant family for the week. Never have I seen a gathering this random yet this strangely-well-fitted grouped together in one room- essentially for baby-sitter training: 'Painter' from New York USA; 'Biochemistry graduate' from Tanzania; 'Sculptor' from Honduras; 'Performing Artist' from California USA; 'DJ-Author' from Adelaide Australia; 'farm girl' from Perrinvalle, Australia (ie. Perrinvalle- area 4047km2: population 3 vs Berlin - area 892km2: population 3.5million); 'Med student' from Kenya; 'Fiddler in an Irish Band' from Glasgow; 'Children's books writer' from London; 'Musician' from Melbourne Australia; 'Opera Singer' from Virginia USA; 'Sound Artist' from Melbourne Australia; and me - the highly suspicious Tiwi 'Freelance Social Scientist'.

Naturally, in the evening we crashed a hip-hop party in Tacheles.

Berlin Rules on a Wednesday

1. Don't J-walk or face condescending frowns
2. Feel free to drink on public transport
3. Look left instead of right before crossing, or you'll soon find out why
4. Don't get caught without a ticket (re: Indiana Jones Zeppelin Scene)
5. Feel free to light up inside bars and restaurants
6. If you have a dog you get extra dole money
7. Be a good German and cycle
8. Be an even better German and recycle

DJ'ing on a Thursday

I must have a very high ego permeability. Its only day 3 and I've already started dreaming in German.

Thursday nights are Gallery Opening nights and DJ-Author from Adelaide took me and the Sculptor from Honduras for an all night Gallery Opening Crawl. Many shots of vodka, one too many beers and a €25 print later, we ended up at another Tacheles Bar, where DJ JimmyKrass let me have a go at the helm. Fuck- those earphones sounded amazing. I shouted "Everybodeeh Say - Doe, a deer!" and they just ignored me.

JimmyKrass is an extreme uber-geek version of Deno half the age, and looked like someone that would play a collection of Kraut-Rock, but instead he's strangely into Motown. He'd completely lost his accent (in the interim he sounds like a Finnish Dolphin) as well as his affinity to the land down under, thus making him completely unAustralian. His sex-kitten French girlfriend is delightfully dressed like Katy Perry and has Run Lola Run hair. She says she into body suspensions.

JimmyKrass turned up to camp-training the next day quite late and during a Masai-Warrior jumping exercise, a number of women's make-up items dubiously fell out of his jacket pocket.

House Party on a Friday

The Kaisermart white wine@ €1.99;
Cured pork disturbingly named 'Biofleisch' dipped in mustard €1.95 ;
Soft cheese €1.15;
copious amounts of pretzels€2;
Dressing up as characters from those Peter Fox videos for pillow fighting- ummm... priceless








Market-crawling & NGO-Cafe Party on a Saturday

I totally confess to being a market junky. It really is the most pleasurable way to check out what the locals anywhere do, eat, say, what they exchange with each other, what they value, how they establish unspoken rules, what they consider junk, and what they consider treasure, how far, and how low they are prepared to go...

I snapped up some pea soup with a large brotwurst swimming in it, and a fascinating and often hilarious and amusing 2008 bilingual and introduced version of 'Pocket Guide to Germany' - a little part-propaganda-part-military-instruction-part-travel-guide manual given to American GIs on D-Day by the US Army regarding everything from appropriate etiquette, psyche, politics, history, music, geography and sexual health.



In the evening, 'Fiddler in an Irish Band' from Glasgow invited us to their gig at an NGO-sponsored cafe-squat house in Freidrechshain for a pre-St Patrick's Day gig. Its a very very dingy house full of all kinds of junk but still runs a successful cash bar, a couple of cuddly dogs (re extra dole rule) sleeping on the couch and the kitchen is busy making vegan slops. Punks and hippy kids filled the air with smoke and the dancing to 'What Should We Do to the Drunken Sailor' on the thin floor jolts cold rainy night...











First-Aid Training on a Sunday

The dummy I have to blow into has a detachable plastic face. And then there are random facts like this:

Trainer: What should you do when someone gets bitten by a poisonous snake?
WaWa: You should tie a bandage around the bite and suck the venom out with your mouth?
Trainer: No... in Germany we don't suck on anybody unless they tell us they like it.

Looks like I'll have to be back to learn about other do's and don't's....

Hi Australia

The reports on the bushfires are breaking my heart. Thinking of all of you - bless you and your courage.

FB

Snowflake Oblivion II

The most amazing thing about this snow storm is that it happens in complete silence. Its 1am and I cradle at the edge of the balcony, watching these featherlike flakes drifting from above. I know rain and I know hail – nasty heavy noisy stuff. Not snow. I don’t know snow at all. And for once, in the middle of the city, there’s no traffic noises or the sound of broken bottles being cleaned out from the pub around the corner. Just silent snow. The fleeting shadows of the falling flakes silhouetted in the glass of my lounge room window cast on by amber coloured street light.

..................................................

I felt like I was three again. Screaming in delight as I woke up to yet more coats of snow all over the estate gardens, covering the streets, building up the front door of our main entrance and settled on the top of lamp poles and tree branches… kids all over the premise making snowmen or playing snowball fights, taking advantage of cancelled classes.

Other commuters as bewildered as I was wandered carefully through the knee-deep fine ice, avoiding various puddles of brown sludge in the gutter as they crossed the road. There’s no buses and most of the tube lines are down, and there aren’t enough people keen to take on the streets. Its so empty, and white.

It took me over an hour on an ordinarily 40 minute walk to get to work, mostly because I was having too much fun taking photos!

..................................................

I ate a mouthful of snow. It was fluffy and cold, that’s about it. I still felt like I was three.

..................................................

The 17th century marble building was like a haunted castle. The painted images of the founders of our revered organisation peer out from their designated frames, watching the place on behalf of the senior managers who couldn’t get to work today, because they all lived in big country villas far away from the rest of us, and their 1.5 hour daily commutes were impossible with the South England-wide public transport shut-downs. Only about 30% of people made it to the office, and it was quite apparent after a ‘survivor’s meeting’ at 10:00 that it would remain this way for another day if not the rest of the week.

I danced around the empty corridors and made faces into empty office spaces – its like having the house to yourself when your parents had gone on holidays. I run the show now! I run the show now!

Outside my window the snow continued to fall. Some LSE students rolled pass a gigantic snow ball, completely outdoing me in outrageousness.

..................................................

TV’s broken. My flatmates and I were so totally drunk on mulled wine. Its only 4.30 in the afternoon, but what else would we do?

..................................................

The current Squeeze comes in the form of an Italian chef from Milan, a 25 year old version of Al Pacino, but more grunge. His excitable yet suave personality reminds me of Merlin the Mighty Tiger. He won’t eat any of my food unless its ‘authentically East Asian’ or unless he’s hung over. Its both an insolent challenge and a blessing in disguise.

“You know, Bambina,”
“…yeah?”
“I can call you Bambina, no?”
“Yeah that’s fine, that’s really nice.”
“You know what they say about my carbonara?”
“…no?”
“They say, it taste like snow.”

…don’t let me stop you.

..................................................

Snowflake Oblivion I

Snow storm in London or heatwave in Melbourne?

Recently updated:
Iranian Spaceships
Persepolis I
Persepolis II
Cowgirls at Fire Temple