Magic Numbers

From the Magic:

"I'm no superman - 202 times
A little resect - 127
You can't always get what you want (the stones) - 84
White flag - 46
Here comes my baby (cat stevens) - 45
No no never - 29 (and rising rapidly) "

I think I've started something cool...

Rum, Pirates and a big fuck off Volcano

I'm going to Saint Martin tomorrow, and instead of going to Hay on Wye and missing Godzuki on a night out, I get to worry about the volcano on Montserrat blowing up like this:


I don't think I'm being overly paranoid, as the volcano's dome collapsed 3 days ago. A quote from the Daily Herald:

"Residents of Montserrat were warned to stay indoors Saturday as the Soufrière Hills volcano belched ash and gas into the air, sparking fears of another major eruption."


That's just fucking great isn't it. I finally go to the Carribean, get a tan, run away from pirates and drink rum, and now I have to deal with the local VOLCANO wanting to errupt and kill everything in a 200km radius. AND if, by some fluke of luck we don't die due to the cloud of toxic gas, or the falling pumice stones or suffocation due to ash in the air, then maybe the giant tsunami could take us out, after Montserrat crumbles into the North Atlatic Ocean.

Fan-fucking-tastic. I can't wait.

Beautiful Things

I've found a lot of things recently that I quite like, and finding myself rather limited on time, I've decided to write about them all at once, rather than one at a time:

Anne Black Votive Candles:


These are so pretty. I'm not sure if you can get them in the UK, but I like them just for their simplicity. Would be lovely as a central focus point on a dining table..















Ella Doran
Yay! A designer that is British (and thus, who may actually sell the the UK!)

Ella Dora has some really cool blinds. I think these two are really beautiful, and she also does loads of other things like trays, cushions, beautiful plates and other home accessories. Find her stuff on www.elladoran.co.uk






And last but not least are these really pretty lamp shades from Tazana
They've got lots of other really beautiful lamps, all in this "StemCell" design. This particular one is from the StemcellEgg range.. They also come in red, which I think is really pretty.


Well that's your full lid for today. Enjoy!

53 is the magic number

So yesterday, I blogged about the German Eurovision entry, and their little country and western diddy: "No No Never". Don't get me wrong. I like this song. I really do. In fact I've listened to it now about 12 times in about 3 days. That's kinda allot. (It is a country and western song don't forget). So when I mentioned this to a friend of mine, Calvin, you can imagine my shock when I found out that in the same amount of time, he's listened to it 53 times. 53 TIMES! In 3 DAYS! Which is equivalent to 159 minutes of this song on repeat. 159 MINUTES of hearing this band sing "I'm never ever gonna leave you to cry on your own,
Never ever gonna not go and pick up the phone,I'm never ever gonna let you be chilled to the bone, No, no, never, No, no, neveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrr"

He then went on to tell me some other interesting itunes facts. He's listened to:

• Boys of Summer - 263 times
• A Little Respect - 310 times
• Four to the Floor - 556 times
• And Crystal by New Order - 1150 times.

1150 TIMES!!! This makes my slight OCD tendencies of listening to songs on repeat seem completely normal! Wowzers.

It's not a joke. It's Eurovision!

I do think that one of the best things that has happened to the countries in Europe since the wars of the last century to demonstrate it's ability to live with each other is the introduction of a European wide singing spectacular called Eurovision. Ah.. what better way to fight for European supremecy than to have the cheesiest singers in each country battle it out in a singing competition. This year we had a Eurovision/Betting party, where we all eagerly gathered around the tele, drank beers, had a barbie, and 3 laptops constantly logged into Betfair to allow people to trade on the voting. I have to say that this year, the songs weren't too bad really..

Some highlights for me:

Finish Entry, Lordi with "Hard Rock Hallelujah"

What better way to celebrate peace amoungst European nations than dressing up like the an Orce and Klingon lovechild, and sing into your battle axe?





Maltese Entry, Fabrizio Faniello with "I do"
For some reason when I heard this song I thought it ROCKED! I found myself dancing around my house like a I just don't care. I mean look at him. Those EYEBROWS! How could he fail to deliver? (Having now heard the song again, I realised that drinking almost a whole bottle of wine in an hour will really impare what you think of as good music. This was definitely confirmed when the poor maltese boy got only one point.. from ALL the 35 voting countries)

German Entry, Texas Lightning with "No No Never"
But my real favorite has to be the German entry - Texas Lightning. Look at these kids!! Look at their hats!! And with lyrics like: "I'm never ever gonna leave you to cry on your own, Never ever gonna not go and pick up the phone, I'm never ever gonna let you be chilled to the bone, No, no, never, No, no, never" who could NOT love this song? Clearly very German. Despite the fact the lead girl is from Newcastle, New South Wales, AUSTRALIA!

This song is like a disease. I've now listened to this 10 times in the last 2 days.. which does not make me proud, but then again, I have no shame. YEEHAA!!

I could be hobnobbing with the literati

I am so gutted. Instead of going to the Hay on Wye Festival next weekend on the border of England and Wales:

Instead spending time in the Welsh/English countryside, covered up, and cold, listening to authors talk about books I know I'll never quite get around to reading, knowing that if I ever do get a chance to speak to one of them, the only question that'd come out of my dry clammy mouth wouldn't be "so how difficult do you find it, mixing the poetic view of the world with the painful subject matter of your latest Booker prize winning novel" but would go something along the lines of: "ugh.. umm... do you know where the toilets are?". Instead of ALL of this, I have to spend it on tropical carribean island of Saint Martin (or Sint Maarten if you're Dutch), where it's going to be 30 odd degrees everyday, and me, looking terrible in a swimsuit:

And whilst this all sounds idealic, what I can never understand is why is it every time I go away for a summer/tropical island holiday, does my body decide is the EXACT time to store everything I eat into the ever expanding mass that is becoming my rotund belly? Why? So instead of enjoying myself in the on the beach or besides the pool, I spend the entire time trying to run away from two sets of people:

• one set who think I'm a beached whale, and thus try to throw buckets of water over me to keep my skin from drying out, whilst simultaneously trying to coax me back into the open sea, to swim with the rest of my whale family.
• second set of whale hunters, trying to spear and haul me over their trawler to get at my rich, rich blubber.
  

See, cold and stupid in Wales is a much better option than sun burnt and dead. And I'm definitely running away from anyone called Ahab.

Lighting up beautifully

I've recently discovered these beautiful lamps and lampshades from Meresine which I love:

And these:
And these:

I think they are really fabulous, and especially love the way the bases are big enough to put things in. All I now have to do is a) scrounge up enough doe to afford them b) Find some space in my overly cramped appartement to put them.

Still, I they're really lovely..

Something to do in the pub when people are talking crap

I'm constantly being accused of tearing the labels off beer bottles, which I usually do when I start to get a bit bored, but I love the idea of being able to do this instead! I've not quite worked out how to fold it so the label is still attached to the bottle (it's an Origami Lotus Flower, and the best instructions I've found so far are here), but I'm gonna keep trying until I do. If anyone's managed to do it, then drop me a line.

Thanks to designers block 

If I had a tiny patch of roof space to call my own

I'm in the middle of looking for a new place to live, so am taking the big plunge and saving all my hard earned cash to be rejected for a mortgage in a few months. So I've been recently about what I'd like to have, and the one thing that I know I really want is a roof terrace/garden. Something like this perhaps:

Or like this:
I'm blaming the weather on all of this (look how British I'm becoming!). If it had only stayed miserable and cold instead of teasing us with the long sunny warm days we've had recently (well, last week, but that's kinda recent) then I wouldn't be in complete roof terrace envy. And if I had a roof garden which didn't have any proper furniture, that'd be ok cause I'd get these really cool fold up chaise lounges: (which come from Confused Direction)
on which I can sit outside with a beer, reading a book and watching the cars and trucks go by.

Sigh.

Note: now for the obligatory nerdy bit of this blog, the pictures of my dream garden where found on the design*sponge blog, were done in a very very very cool application from google called google sketch up. This is such a groovy program, that I've seriously fallen in love with.

Not the usual Monday night sounds

It's what, almost 1am now? Gotta say, I did not expect to hear 2 girls, completely tee-totaled, screaming their heads off as they roll down the hill in the park opposite my house, in a shopping trolley.

Maybe living in London has had some affect on me after all. Whilst I find it bizarre, I don't find it all together surprising.

It's not exactly Checkpoint Charlie

In an attempt to legitamize the wall which has been erected between my desk and the next, sentries have now been installed to guard the perimeter:

As you can see the smurf is there to lend himself to the bureaucratic dealing which will ensue when refugees start to try and cross the wall.

As you may also have noticed, the wall itself has depleted from it's original 6 boxes to only 3. I swear this is not my fault. I would never dream of eating the only barrier between myself and the tyrannical régime of next door.



It's amazing how a couple of McDonands Happy meal toys can bring such endless entertainment to my otherwise work-a-day dull life.

Today's rant: brought to you by the letter 'S'

I think I must be getting old (and if you've looked at the title of this blog, you'll be able to work out exactly how old I am). I was trawling through blogs tonight to avoid doing any more of my french essay, and found something that has seriously gotten on my goat. Watch me start to wind up : I can NOT get over how much I hate how people replace the letter 's' with the letter 'z' in words, for example: "my thoughtz" or "emotionz....traitz....own bussiness....lotz more.....". God damn, this blog I found used it EVERYWHERE, and still managed to find the letter 's' for "bussiness"? Didn't spell it buzzinezz did you? (And I'm not even going to get into the fact it should be business, with 1 'S'). HOW FUCKING HARD IS IT TO USE THE LETTER S? Honestly? "My thoughtS" or "emotionS" or "lotS more". Is it that hard? Is it? REALLY? It's not like saving time or characters in an SMS. It's on a KEYBOARD for fuck's sake. It's on the middle row. It's EASIER TO GET TO THAN THE Z IS. It's right here, under your fourth finger. See it? That's right, EASIER THAN THE Z.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no zealot. Random spelling mistakes, I have no problem with. Consistently spelling things incorrectly, that's just dandy. Bad grammar? That's ok with me too. But the mass genocide of a perfectly good letter, for no reason that I can see (and this is why I must be getting old) is just shit, that's right "SHIT" and not "ZHIT".

I'm on a one woman campaign to bring back the letter S. Not as worthy as feeding the starving 3rd world countries, but still, I think I'll have t-shirts printed.

Todays random rant was brought to you by the letter 'S': "sun", "summer", "smiling", "shit-arse-mother-fucker".

Your Moment Of Zen

As I've mentioned previously, the building next to our office is being internally gutted to make way for new student housing for the local uni. So not only are we going to have to hear the constant nattering, load music and probably constant shagging of 19 year olds, we currently have to deal with the deafening noise of jackhammers removing the stairs, floors and lift shafts of next building.

I've stuck a pic of what's going on for your amusement. And btw, big industrial headphones do fuck all against the ear splitting constant banging that can only come from someone with a massive sledghammer trying to break a wall down.

There you go. Your moment of zen. Enjoy

A Wall of Chocolate

A friend of mine's sister, (who runs the best online vegan store around (Vegan Store) sent him up about 8 MASSIVE easter eggs as a treat. They got sent to work, and have been sitting on my desk for the last week, until he can come and collect them / we can sneakily eat them. So I currently have a wall of chocolate dividing my desk to the next:


A WALL of vegan dark chocolate. The best kind of wall around.

PS : I know that there are only 6 eggs in this photo - 'onestly guv, I didn't eat them.

In the pursuit of all things shiny

I saw these lamps by Tom Dixon on the design*sponge website ages, but I really really like them. So imagine my huge surprise and glee when I went to Habitat a
while back and saw them there! I really love these lights, and if I owned my place, I think a few of them hanging from the ceiling into the stair well space would look fantastic.
They are so pretty.

However, whilst dream of being able to buy Tom Dixon type design pieces, in reality, I unfortunately can only afford Ikea type prices (me and the rest of the world. Did you know, that when Ikea opens its stores in Japan, its world wide floor space will be larger than both the independent countries of the Vatican City and Monaco combined?! That is ALLOT Ikea Klippan
couches).

sigh.. Back to the real world of renting and fluorescent lights. 

Pourquoi?

Je le trouve incroyable que plus de dix ans depuis je sois partie le lycée, je fait les examens français pour MON PLEUSIR. Je suis stupide! Pourquoi ? C'est la question que je me toujours demande.

So as I sit here on my bed trying to write my french essay (badly), I can hear the rest of the world outside, having fun, enjoying life. Well, I say 'fun', but it seems more like 2 or 3 guys outside in the park opposite my house, fighting. And the gentle and comforting sounds of 2 or 3 cop cars with their sirens blasting, hurtling down the main road to start to persue them.

Sigh. Everyone's having fun, sauf moi.

Pop Idol/Pop Stars/American Idol Guilt

I can't believe I'm about to blog this: I've been listening to the Brit Awards CD, and the songs that I am actually enjoying the most are not the bands who've struggled and struggled and struggled to get recognised by the industry, or the bands who we should like (e.g. Keane or the Arctic Monkeys), but the Pop Idol/Star winners:

• Biology - Girls Aloud (I KNOW, how crap is this band? Ever watched one of their video clips? Pool luv's can't walk and sing simultaneously. They have to stand there, rooted to the ground, then do their little singing bit, then you see cut scenes of them running around.. not a fully functioning brain amoungst the lot of them)
• Since you've been gone - Kelly Clarkson (oh dear..)
• Switch It On - Will Young

I KNOW. I feel really guilty that, instead of loving bands who've struggled and struggled and who've finally got the recognition that they deserve and made it on the music scene, with the accolade and praise of their peers. I know all that these kids have done was win a talent show on the tele, and now have multimillion recording deals. They're pop rubbish, but I can't help it. I like these songs.

Oh, and I don't like Keane or the Arctic Monkeys.

Demorcratic Right to Vote. Why don't people do it then?

I love living in Britain, honestly I do. And when I tell this to Britains they usually ask me why I left Australia in the first place. There are loads of reasons why I love being in Britain, but what really astounds me about it here is people's complete apathy towards their democratic right to vote. In Australia it is compulsory, with heavy fines if you don't even vote in the local elections. This means that parties are much more in your face, going door to door, having print, tv and radio ads, letting you know of their policies. I never really appreciated this when I was at home, because it was the norm. And with this norm you found that many Australians don't care at all about the political situation. It is almost impossible to have a debate about issues at home, cause no one seems to care. It's not on the news (where a 30min broadcase will be made of 15 mins of sport, 5 mins of weather, and 8 mins of sensationalist news (Yes, cause we REALLY need to know which house in Bondi is not throwing out their garbage) and politics will make up about 2 mins of the total 30 mins news bulletin. When I went home, it really surprised me to hear people say things like "someone asked me about what I thought about the governments cuts in hospitals, and I just said 'I dunno, don't really care. I mean why should I know anything about it, I'm only a nurse'". But in Britain, politics is so much more in the news than it is at home. So what I don't understand, is when so many people here have no problems debating political issues, political parties, and generally have an opinion about everything, why does only 36% of the population turn out to vote. Why? It completely astounds me that 36% of the population are choosing which government will rule 100% of the population. Why also, just before voting day are there no ads anywhere telling people about the parties policies? Maybe if people knew what they could be voting for then maybe they'd turn out. I understand that people think that it's not democratic to make voting compulsory, but I'm going to hold my hand up and say that it should be. I guess I'm just disapointed.

Ok, end of political rant. It's not a great rant anyway.

P.S. The funniest thing I've read about last night's election was on Nick Robinson's newlog. This is halarious. Nick Robinson : fastest naked to dressed political interviewer in the west!

I'm not a country girl, I'm not a country girl. I am NOT a country gril... I hope

I grew up in Sydney, I went to a relatively posh school, and I do not have a twangy accent.. I have no desire to marry my brother or my cousin or anyone related to me in anyway shape or form. But I'm slowly realising that I am a bit of a sucker for songs with a country style guitar and (heaven forbid) if you throw a harmonica in that mix, well god damn! Stick a cowgirl hat on me, call me darlin'.

My current playlist contains some all time rootin' tootin' songs:

Play list name: Guitars & Harmonicas

• Switch It On - Will Young (yes yes yes, I know, but you have to hear the harmonica bit at the end... for some reason I really like this song)
• Sweet Home Alabama - Lynard Skinner - guilty shame that I really like this song..
  
• Gonna Make You Love Me - Ryan Adams - I dislike all his other stuff.... so it's ok to like at least 1 song!
  
• Trike - You Am I - Aussie rock, again that almightly harmonica.. and the slightly stalkerish lyrics that go with it.
• Billy - You Am I - Same again
• Are You Gonna Be My Girl - Jet : to try and someone redeem myself.

HOWEVER I have never, nor do I have any desire to listen to any of the following:

• All My Exes Live In Texas
• Get Your Tongue Outta My Mouth 'Cause I'm Kissing You Goodbye
• Her Teeth were Stained, but her Heart was Pure
• I would Have Wrote You a Letter, but I Couldn't Spell Yuck!
• Still Miss You Baby, But My Aim's Gettin' Better
• I'd Rather Pass a Kidney Stone than Another Night With You

and the all time favorite:

• You're the Reason Our Kids Are So Ugly

YEEHAW GRANDMA!!

I'm not proud.

Aren't these orchids lovely? I just have to say that I am not too proud a girl to ask the florist who came into the local coffee shop to change their floral display if he was throwing these orchids away, if he was, could I have them please?. Nope I am in no way too proud to take dying, wilting flowers practially from the bin. I've definitely made peace with the fact I'm not one of those girls, who, like in those deoderant adds, by spraying the latest nerve agent scent liberally all over herself to mask the smell of her own sweat and walking around in the skimpiest of clothes, even when it's only 5 degrees outside, will get dozens of men running after her throwing themselves and a bunch of roses at her feet.

I'm kinda proud of not being too proud...

BTW: yes, those are 'Java in a Nutshell' & 'Unix in a Nutshell' books in the background. 'Nerd' is not a dirty word.