for the first time in recent history, i voluntarily arose before nine on a sunday morning. in a last-minute decision, i booked a ticket to a session at the mwf, 'spotlight on helen garner' at ten. i decided i would be noble and go by myself, and not drag mark along with me. i had the best intentions - but as i walked out onto racecourse road, i saw that the train to the city was just pulling away from the station. then i got to the station and saw the next train was at sevsn minutes to ten and the next tram was at ten to ten, so i hoofed it back home and was rescued once again by personal super-man, who heroically roused himself from slumber and valiantly delvered me to the malthouse door in his golden chariot. the session was packed out - i got there just in time to join the queue. it was a moving session - i really respect the fact that helen garner puts so much of herself into her writing - and it ended with a reading from 'joe conque's consolation' which induced lumps in several throats, including mine. after the talk, i purchased a copy of the book and had a little chat with her, which was quite nice. i always get so nervous when talking to authors - i was left shaking like a leaf. afterward caught up with clare and set up a meeting for later on this week, then had a coffee with another friend. the rest of sunday was perfect - wandered back to the arts centre and browsed the markets (something i haven't done for ages) and caught up with marky for a late lunch. we then went to acmi and browsed some exhibitions, then ate ice cream and folded origami in fed square. a perfect day, though it was quite surreal to be sitting there and to look up and see tina's face smiling at us from the bond's billboard on the corner of swanston and flinders.

let's hear it for the boy! he is a legend. he fixed my laptop! so i am no longer in the pits of despair as i was yesterday. i swear, he is like my own personal super-hero. thanks marky!
last night, mondo thingo had bollywood movies as its 'thingo of the week'. here's an excerpt from the show that had me cheering on the couch. anupam sharma is a bollywood film maker and casting agent, and daniel prypchan is a venezuelan actior. enjoy!
ANUPAM SHARMA: So, you said on the phone you want to go to Bollywood?
DANIEL PRYPCHAN: Yes!
ANUPAM SHARMA: What do you want to be in Bollywood?
DANIEL PRYPCHAN: I would love to be a lead or part of a surreal film, like a god or something.
ANUPAM SHARMA: Straight to the top.
DANIEL PRYPCHAN: Yes. That's a dream.
ANUPAM SHARMA: I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the chances of you becoming a lead actor in India are pretty much zero. You don't look Indian. Your hair is certainly not Indian. You don't have a father who's a producer or a star in India. So that takes you pretty much to the end of this long international queue. But like everything in India, there is hope. You could try to be the token mafia evil person from abroad. Or you could try out at song-and-dance sequences.

ah. today, i think my laptop died. before you start thinking 'oh, she's coping well with that knowledge', think again - i'm currently in voluntary denial - i don't even want to think about what i've potentially lost. i can't bear to thnk about it. i'm a little numb as i sit here at the upstairs crap-box computer, and i just want to crawl into bed and sleep for a while. shutdown, so to speak. switch to safe mode. my brain-saver has kicked in and is blocking all pain receptors and logical thought sequences in order to safeguard against spontaneous self-destruction. downstairs, lying on the table next to the carcass of my laptop, are my old usb flash disk (it now rattles when you shake it) and my new usb flash disk (it is shiny and purple but i'm still a little wary of it - i have only saved my novel onto it, and all working folders realted to the novel. i'm not sure i trust it yet). i am told that the words 'unmountable boot volume' translate to 'it can't find its hard disk', and i understand enough about these things to know that a hard disk is pretty much the guts of it. but why can't it find its hard disk? as far as i know, it would be in the same place it was in yesterday. i am currently reading helen garner's new book 'joe cinque's consolation', and i think my current state of numb incredulity at my computer woes, a situation that would normally drive me to banshee-grade wailing, has been instilled by the details of the story i am reading. i am not even half way through the book, and already my heart is crying for joe cinque's family. is this right? is this an honourable way to feel? i will re-evaluate once i have finished the book. in the meantime, i will murmur sweet nothings to my thinkpad in the hope that the strength of my love will bring it back from the brink. wish me luck.

ok. if you know me, you know i am a huge bjork fan. you know that i have all the sugarcubes albums and all the solo albums and was heartbroken when my fanclub-only copy of bjork unplugged went awol. you'd know that i get a little narky when people go 'oh, bjork? that freaky weirdo who bashed up a photographer, did that stupid screamy song, wore a swan dress and laid an egg on the red carpet of some hollywood awards ceremony? she's bizarre!' well, anyway, some of you might have seen something from me in the letters section of the age last sunday - in response to an article in the age the sunday before, on the olympics opening ceremony. if you didn't see it, you can find a copy of the letter here. anyway, the reason why i get so shitty is that if people got past her public persona and listened to the music, to the lyrics of her songs, they'd see what a beautiful poet the woman is. to illustrate my point, following are lyrics from some of my favourite bjork songs (oh, and in case you're wondering, 'it's oh so quiet' is not one of my favourite songs. but then again, it's not one of bjork's own favourites, either). by the way, oceania was the song she sang at the opening ceremony, and no, it wasn't about sweat being salty as such - it was written from the perspective of the ocean, observing her children at the games, after billions of years of evolution. think outside the square, people!

oceania (from 'medulla', out aug 30) one breath away from mother oceania your nimble feet make prints in my sand you have done good for yourselves since you left my wet embrace and crawled ashore every boy is a snake is a lily every pearl is a lynx is a girl sweet like harmony made into flesh you dance by my side children sublime you show me continents - I see the islands you count the centuries - I blink my eyes hawks and sparrows race in my waters stingrays are floating across the sky little ones my sons and my daughters your sweat is salty - i am why

unravel (from 'homogenic') while you are away my heart comes undone slowly unravels in a ball of yarn the devil collects it with a grin our love in a ball of yarn he'll never return it so when you come back we'll have to make new love immature from 'homogenic' how could i be so immature to think he would replace the missing elements in me? how extremely lazy of me!

i had an amazingly productive and fulfilling weekend. it all started friday night actually, when mark surprised me with a little cruise up the yarra after work. i'd always wanted to go on one of those - it was quite nice, especially going under the bridges. i love having a close-up look at bridge-undersides. then saturday we got our taxes out of the way - totally booked out an itp office because between us, we had six returns to do... the tax lady didn't bat an eyelid, apparently a lot of the people she's done tax for hadn't done their returns for eight to ten years. that made me feel a whole lot better! having that weight lifted off our shoulders, we returned home and dove into housework, had the obligatory domestic that goes hand in hand with diving in to domestic chores, and then got over it. a friend who we hadn't seen in ages came over and stayed the night, so we ended up having a nice, quiet night in. then sunday. up again at sparrow's, said hello to the day by cooking up one huge pot of dahl and another huge pot of lamb curry. i had the family over for lunch, and that meant a little bit of preparation - can you imagine getting up at nine thirty on a sunday to chop up three kilos of lamb chops? well, thats how my day started. but it was all worth it, we finally ate at about three, and it was so nice to have mum and dad, my brothers and their kiddies over. the littlest nephew is going through an interesting stage. if he sees his own reflection anywhere, he will stop to stare, then slobber all over it - it's quite hilarious to watch him in action. hence there are now knee-height drool-marks on every reflective surface in the house. we think he might be in love with himself. the weather was so so nice this morning, it's exciting knowing that soon, a coat with be optional when leaving the house. i'm starting to smell jasmine in the evenings. last week, i got excited because when i came out of class at deakin, the sky wasn't totally pitch-black. i can't wait till daylight savings starts...

a flash of inspiration and advice to 'loosen the reigns a little' saw me doing a bit of writing yesterday, and i'm hoping today will continue in the same vein. actually, the creative burst was also helped along by some olfactory trigger therapy; i used some coconut soap that we bought in fiji, and it bought back a few memories - like i yelled out to mark through the mist, 'it smells like castaway in here!'. i might have to chat with the family to see if there's anything else re the whole christmas in fiji thing that i've forgotten... wouldn't it be nice to be able to make a 'research' trip* back to fiji? i found that being there last year actually helped with a lot of imagery in my writing, a lot of things brought back memories i didn't usually access very often. weird thing is, i felt the same way in queensland - so maybe my real triggers are sunshine, the ocean, and frangipanis. i did do a little hooning around with some of my cousins in qld - that probably helped a lot. though i would love to go back to fiji for christmas this year - there's a bit of a reunion happening, and a wedding, so there will be family from all over the place going. well, fingers crossed. you never know what might happen between now and then.
on a different note, it seems i will be forced to watch a current affair this evening, as norma khouri has decided to 'break her silence' to ray martin. couldn't she have picked a better show? i would have loved to have seen her on enough rope, though maybe she is a tad wary of andrew denton's crap-o-meter. from the vision they've been using on channel nine for ads for tonight's interview, it seems that ms khouri does not understand why we'd like to know what she thinks she's been doing. she said something about 'doing what she did for one purpose only' (to expose honour killings), and newspaper reports have her saying that she has yet to receive a cent of royalties, that she never expected to anyway, as the plan had always been to donate it all to charity. i understand that honour killings are a bad thing, and i think that you'd have a hard time convincing a 'western' audience otherwise. what we don't get is, why did she feel like she had to fabricate her own past in the process? you know what, it's true what people say. they're a weird bunch, them writers.
*donations welcome, all correspondence will be entered in to.

i had a mini-crisis last night. my usb memory stick thing stopped working - and sure as hell, shalini's been doing a lot of writing lately. and shalini didn't make a backup of her work. i found out when i was doing my usual hour of computer time at uni before classes last night - i plugged the disk in, and the little blue light just didn't come on. changed computers, still no luck. i felt like such an idiot. to make matters worse, the night before i'd had a conversation about that sex and the city episode where carrie loses all her work cause she didn't make backups and her laptop dies - and we were all standing around flinging around phrases like 'how funny was the surly nerd who was trying to fix her laptop?', 'i never make backups of my work!' - now that's karma in motion, people. well, luckily for me i have twenty-four hour access to an only-sometimes-surly nerd (i don't want to praise him too much or he'll get a big head) - the lovely mark who somehow managed to make it work again just long enough to get a copy of everything off it, and on to my laptop. i swear, i was so depressed, even australian idol didn't make me feel better - i sat there thinking of all the stuff i'd written, and how i'd have to start all over again. so, my plea to you all is, please, if you do anything today, don't forget to make backups! won't somebody, please, think of the children!!!

a good sign that i watch too much tv - i was roused from my usual realtiy tv apathy last night by the thought that chanel cole might not get through the first round of public voting in australian idol. yes, i voted. yes, it was more than once. now i am not interested in voting again till the third round, when billie is on. then i might just have to leave it up to the rest of australia. i am none too pleased that yasmin got the wildcard - if only we could vote to get people out instead of keeping them in - but maybe it'll be fun to watch, ie cat amongst the pidgeons and all that. maybe what australian idol needs is a good, old-fashioned bitch fight. she could be the one to make that happen.in other non-reality television related news, i will be doing a reading tomorrow night as part of a spoken word performance night at bar open called 'translated letters of an alien'. i am reading 'destiny', the short story that was published in meanjin. just checked my email and i got a bit of spam from someone called 'cure my snoring'. what is that - a plea or an offer? meanwhile, the spam in my hotmail account has hit 200 items - so time for another cleanout, perchance a spampoem. trust me - it's 100% spam email titles. so go ahead and read spampoem five.

seeing as the last post was a little heavy, let me bring the tone of this blog right back down to earth by saying - australian idol. i love it. i cannot wait till sunday. and i think i have a crush on chanel cole. i got home from uni just in time for inside idol lat night, and i was so worried when i saw chanel crying that she would be the one to give it up and leave... thank god that didn't end up happening. if i could sing i would like to sound like her, i love that her register is so low, and that she doesn't just sing songs straight, and that she's not trying to do the warbling r&b thing... i also think i might be crushin' a bit on billie, that girl has a voice like a windchime, so pure and jazzy. it will be interesting to see how long they both last, seeing as they are so far from mainstream - though the judges are in love with them both, so that's a good sign. that ben eaton guy looks familiar, like i might have worked with him before, but maybe not - he has a generically attractive kinda face, so i could be mistaking him for several past-fellow-call-centre-employees at once. i have my fingers crossed that they don't decide to give yasmin abeydeera a wild card entry, she was a bit too ricki lake for my liking. now that i've said that, i hope she doesn't hunt me down and bash the crap out of me. for the record, if you find me in a crumpled heap in a back alley somewhere, covered in glitter, diamantes scattered around me at random, you'll know that's what happened.

something that's intriguing me at the moment is the whole norma khouri fact/fiction debate thing. if you have no idea what i'm talking about, go to the book sections for the age online or smh online and read about it: in the meantime, here's a brief rundown. norma khouri is the author of a 'non-fiction' book called 'forbidden love', an international bestseller. based in jordan, it is about her childhood friend dalia, whom norma met when they were both three years of age, and with whom norma opened a unisex hair salon in 1999. dalia falls in love with an english customer to the salon, and they commense a chaste love affair. dalia's father finds out, and kills dalia by stabbing her twelve times. dalia's father gets away with it because the law in jordan recognises 'honour killings' like this, where a father is seen to be protecting his family's honour by killing a daughter who is no longer chaste. after the murder it is found that dalia was still a virgin. norma khouri has travelled the world denouncing honour killings, something she has described as her 'life's mission' since her friend dalia's death. she says she lives in fear for her own life and has received death threats, that if she ever were to return to jordan, she would never survive the trip.
here's the thing, though. dalia never existed.
it has now been found that norma khouri left jordan with her family when she was three, and lived in chicago for the next twenty seven years. she has a husband, two children, and a married name of touliopolous. she has a mother and sisters still in chicago who have not seen or heard from her since norma, her husband and her children left suddenly in 1999. norma khouri has been living in queensland under a protection visa granted by the australian government, a visa for which her publishers were sponsors. norma khouri has been eerily silent since this story broke, only issuing brief statements standing by her version of events, and advising that she will be back soon with proof. her publishers have gone from vehement support of their author, to pulling her books off the shelf and admitting that they, like the rest of us, are waiting for norma. what i want to know is, why didn't they ask her for proof that the story was real before they printed it? it seems that norma khouri has built herself an imaginary world, and then bought her own story. i can't wait to see how this one pans out.

what a weekend. friday night was supposed to be subdued. we went to see a film called 'mutiny: asians storm british music' which was on with the melb international film fest. it was agreat doco, all about indian/pakistani/punjabi musicians in britain, and about the reasons they got involved in music. i sat there listening to what these artists had to say, and i was going 'yeah! i get this! i feel exactly the same way!'. so i guess it was inevitable that i would feel invincible afterward, and that i would take full advantage of the 2 for 1 martini deals at the bar we went to later. i was even teaching people how to do the bhangra on the dancefloor. we got home around three... then saturday night, and janet's party. needless to say, i went off there as well, which in itself was surprising seeing as i felt like death when i woke up on saturday. we got home at four thirty. it was an ace party, had a rock and roll theme, and i managed to put together a pretty impressive outfit with bits and pieces i picked up at savers, dimmeys and kmart. fishnet stockings refashioned into a shrug of sorts was definitely my piece de resistance.
okay, enough fuzzy recollecting. i must get down to the writing thing. adios!