well, dinner last nigth was a bit of a disaster - i started one curry, then burnt it to a crisp (this had never ever happened to me till last night, mind you) - but then i recovered from my shock and cooked another from scratch. anyway, back to the story of our sydney trip -
happy t be on solid ground, i met up with mark at our hotel on sunday night. it was raining so hard that we had room service and just chilled - given my holiday curse, i was sure it would rain the whole time we were there. thankfully, i was wrong - the rest of our trip we had perfect weather (apart from the gale force winds that started just before we had to fly - grrr!). so monday we did the usual - woke up late, got our bearings, caught ferries. took marky to that cool pancake place called passionflower for breakfast. i swear, passionflower has the best icecream flavours - incl. (of course) green tea, duriyan, black sesame, sticky rice, lychee and mango... yum! after having discovered that place with joey a year ago, i had to take mark there this time around, and he loved it! than we went to luna park, though it was weird - mark and i went on 2 rides and we were the only two ppl on them. i kept thinking, 'wow, this is what it feels like to be michael jackson!' (except that if i were him, mark would be eight). anyhoo, monday night was a highlight - met up with fellow blogger chick, saffron (of mouthing the words), and what a ball we had! yeah, okay saff - we did walk a fair bit in search of the noodle markets, but hey - who cares? we ended up going to a pub for dinner and we talked and laughed so much. felt as if i'd know her and her mate for ages! so thanks, saffron, for putting a definite sparkle in my sydney trip. tuesday, more browsing and visiting the mca, then we caught up with joey for cocktails and nibblies. wednesday morning had to get up really early - i was going to have a chat on the breakfast show and i had to be at triple j at 6.30! all went well though, we got there in good time - turns out we were staying walking distance from ultimo - and i got to go on air for a chat with adam and wil, outing myself as a bollywood geek for 'geek week'. they are both very nice guys - made me feel very comfortable so in the end, it felt more like a chat with mates than a live radio spot. snuck in a plug for the hello kitty canberra gig, too, which was a little cheeky i guess, but i had to do it! we hung round for a bit, but left around 7.30ish. that experience put a spring in my step for the rest of the day - i have asked for a copy of our chat so i can work out whether i was any good or not! went back to the hotel for a catnap, then re-emerged to wander around near the qv building - saff had pointed out this cool japanese bookshop called 'kinokuniya' on monday night, and we spent most of the day browsing and drooling (not on the merchandise, of course - more metaphorically) in there. why does sydney have the cool shops like kinokuniya and passionflower? anyway. so here we are, back in melbourne. i turn 31 next wednesday, and i'm looking forward to it! will dive headfirst back into novel next week, and will keep you posted. bye for now!

after traipsing around lismore and sydney for the past week, it's good to be home again. actually, i am quite happy that i don't need to get on another plane for a while - here's hoping that the weather's a little kinder come our canberra hello kitty gig. with all the travel last friday, the melb-syd leg of the journey was fine; drama started on the syd-lismore leg. it was the first time i'd ever travelled on a small regional airline - there were about 33 seats all up. on our descend into lismore it seems another plane beat us to our runway - our plane had to pull up in a hurry, and two quite sharp turns later, we landed on a different strip. if only i'd known what was in store on the trip back, i would have bought bus tickets... anyway, met up with the rest of the crew, had dinner and went to bed early. then saturday - woke up to 33 degrees of sticky mugginess. after breakkie, we spent the whole day at the star court theatre rehearsing. the theatre reminded me a lot of the pre-homogenised movie theatres in fiji - vinyl seats in two shades of green. then back at seven for the performance at eight. we had a crowd of about 180 in the audience. doing a reading is so different from doing standup - there are no laughs, just an audience listening to your descriptions etc - so it was a definite experience for me. i couldn't help feeling like i'd done badly - but i was measuring myself by audience response, like i usually would when doing standup. i am glad that the karaoke song is after the reading - it was a great tool to work off all the adrenaline that had built up inside me. i had the crowd singing along as well, a fact that the rest of the crew seemed quite impressed with. after the performance we had some beers then went back to emile's room for our 'cast party' - he scored a family sized room so we crashed it. we sat around drinking beers and chatting for ages which was fun. sunday we wandered around lismore looking for shade and free airconditioning till our flight at 3... then the fun began. we hit a storm near sydney - let me tell you, i have never been through turbulence so bad in my life. tash had been making buddy holly jokes all weekend, saying if we went down on the way home it'd be 'the day the spoken word died' - well, the irony of it did cross my mind in between thoughts such as 'oh my god, the plane is moving from side to side!', 'i think i'm going to throw up', and 'i seriously just got thrown out of my seat then'. we were being thrown around in the tiny plane - it was like being a passenger in my grandfather's old, no-suspension jeep in fiji when he used to tear down johnson road to and from the farm, only without the comfort of the ground being so close. scary scary scary. i was so glad that mark was waiting for me in sydney... i needed a hug. i have to go cook dinner now, so i will return for another entry and give you an update of our time in sydney. laterz!

twelve days to my birthday... then on the thirteenth day, i'll be thirty-one. my thirtieth year on the planet currently takes the cake for being the best year of my life so far - and i thought the year before that was good. who knows what my thirty-first year has in store for me? apart from the obviously quite amazing fact that i will officially become a novelist, i wonder what else will rear up and whack me in the face. oh, oh - there is one other thing i know will be happening early in my thirty-first year on earth - i will be going to my first meredith music festival. a whole bunch of our mates are going, and they were telling me about it when we were out not too long ago - and i decided that we should crash their campsite and join them this year. it sounds like a whole heap of fun - i am so looking forward to just kicking back and chilling out that weekend. as for the here and now, half the kitties are on their way to lismore as i type, with dave and i to join them tomorrow. i am looking forward to the gig. the venue reminds me a lot of the old movie theatres in fiji - lots of seats and not much stage room - so it should be rather interesting. ah well, i'll just lose myself in the karaoke. if any of y'all know anyone in or near lismore (or if you are yourselves), come on down (or up, depending on what your exact geographical location is, of course) to the hello kitty gig this weekend. i think i might have been able to swing an on-air chat to promote our november canberra gig on triple j breakfast on either tuesday or wednesday next week, so open up your ear-balls if you're listening to adam and wil then anyway.

now that it's past the 18th, i can tell you - just in case you were wondering, i didn't end up winning the victorian premier's literary award for an unpublished manuscript by an emerging victorian writer, but i did get a free meal and a waterman pen with my name engraved on it. last night, mark and i attended the awards dinner at zinc federation square - my first literary event! also at my table was one of my fellow shortlisters, jarrad henry, writer of 'deadly force'. angela savage's 'thai died' (great title, huh?) took out the main prize - i caught up with her and had a little chat later in the evening; she was ecstatic, as expected. as a weird coincidence, the rest of our table was made up of penguin people - childrens/young adults editors and publishers, and one of their authors, david metzenthen, who was shortlisted for the prize for young adult fiction. it was an interesting night, and nice to be able to talk to david about writing, and being a writer. today i must write an essay that i have to hand in thursday, then friday i am off to lismore, and my first time performing in hello kitty. i am quite excited about that - i need to get organised! i am looking forward to our little break in sydney next week - it'll be nice to just hang for a few days. i hope the weather clears up in time for our visit, though!

once, in a moment of desperation when bookstore browsing in sydney, i bought a book called '1,818 ways to write better and get published'. there was a checklist of common misconceptions of writers, writing and publishers/editors in there. books like that help, but it's just so much better when someone who's been there before decides to share their experiences. that's one of the best things that's come of this whole getting a contract thing - obviously, the getting published bit is quite amazing also - though that won't be 'real' for me for quite a while yet. fact of the matter is that the book will most probably be out next year some time - late next year. publication takes 9 months from when the manuscript is finalised. it kinda shits me when i have to explain this to people - which is one of the reasons i haven't been telling a lot of people. i watch their excitement turn to slight disappointment as they frown and go 'oh! next year?!' i should deadpan and say 'yeah, unfortunately it'll take me that long to get the cash together to pay them to publish me'. i feel like saying, 'look, can we just cut to that part where you say 'oh wow!' and leave it at that? cause when you look doubtful, i start to think i made the whole thing up, and have a blinding urge to throw myself infront of a tram'. or something. the funniest reactions i have gotten so far have been from some of 'the indians'. when chatting, if i say something like 'i have some news', they clutch at my arm, and gape excitedly from my belly, to mark, to my belly again. then i say 'no, i'm not pregnant, that's just my beer gut, i'm actually getting published', they go 'oh' and get all disappointed. it used to really shit me that some of them just didn;t seem to get how much of a big deal this is to me - but it actually amuses me now... ah, well.
to lighten the mood, here is an extract from '1,818 ways to write better and get published'.
- some common misconceptions about writers and writing -
- a writer must suffer
- writers must reach deep into their souls when they write
- writers are cerebral, intellectual people - probably even eggheads
- writing is a noble act
- writers are wise
- writers are unhappy
- you must bare your soul in everything you write
- you must be completely free of distraction and interruption to write well
- the only good reason to write is to make money
- making money is not a good reason to write
- all writers are a little bit (or more than a little bit) crazy

ah, so the fringe is all over. saturday night went really well - a full house again, and thankfully a high energy crowd too, which made for a very energetic and enjoyable last performance. my parents were in the audience, too, which was fun - my final joke is about my dad, so it was fun to be able to address it directly to him instead of talking about him when he wasn't there. afterwards at the awards night it was cool to see scott get an award for his show, 'super happy robot hour'. i think we all ran out of steam by the end of it - it was 1.30am by the time the awards finished. we ended up coming home and playing the simpsons hit & run till four.
sunday was a real lazy day, you know the ones - papers and brunch in bed till early afternoon - and then in the evening, we went to see a play which was on at the arts centre for the melbourne international festival. it was called 'alladeen', and it's a multimedia performance about call centres in bangladesh... it totally blew me away. i am so glad i bought tickets to it - i heard about it by chance, stumbled across an article about it in the age online last week. have a look at the website - www.alladeen.com - to get a feel for the show and watch some clips, and if you hear of it touring your area, make sure you go! it will blow you away, too. after the show we watched some fire twirlers in the botanic gardens across the road from the arts centre, then stopped by the gelati guy at docklands on the way home - he truly makes the best icecream i've had in ages - and walked around new quay. that place sure looks pretty by night... i still think it would be weird to live there, though. the place reminds me of computer games like 'the sims' or 'rollercoaster tycoon', where all the communities are built using pre-designed everything - apartment blocks and shops and outdoor features. even the boats in the harbour looked too shiny and new.

'hit for a six' is what they call it, i think. i've been out with some sort of virus since monday, and it sucks bigtime. i've never had a bug like this before - my throat is so sore that i think twice about eating anything (i know! me, think twice about eating anything?), and i have this cough that hurts my throat, and i sound like a drag queen. which should be fun when doing standup tonight. i've been mooching around the house all week - this week, the one that was supposed to be my first as a 'real writer' - haven't had the energy to do anything else. though i did do some writing earlier in the week, and i'm obviously doing some now, so i must be on the mend. send me happy, healing vibes, people - i need to get rid of this before hello kitty at the end of the month. i know it's a way off, but trust me - when you've felt like i am feeling now since monday, you begin to wonder if you'll ever get better. boo hoo!

friday and saturday were easily the best nights we've had so far. great vibe, great audience - performing was a pure pleasure. friday night we had a full house (again), plus three or four people sitting on the stairs. i did the second ten minute spot and it was so much fun - there was this woman in the front row who was laughing so hard that i was afraid she would hyperventilate - and i hadn't even started my routine yet. sharon, pete m, emma and pete, vicki and jostein were in the audience for me. then we re-joined the office party at strike, and i convinced everyone to bowl again - boss man was very, very generous that night, i think he was sad that i'd handed in my resignation friday (my advance has come through so now i can afford to stay at home and finish the novel - yay!). ended up getting home at 3.30, and mark decided to stay out - he got home at 5 apparently, but seeing as i fell stone cold asleep the minute my head hit the pillow, i had no idea till he told me the next day. we spent most of the day recovering.
then saturday night - we were packed to the point that we had at least two people per stair, some audience members sitting in the floor at the side of the stage, and about five people standing near the back of the room. i had a bumper turnout of mates - nat & mel brought two friends; yuki, scot, narelle, greg and and extra friend; mel and tim; hoogie from uni. i decided (after friday night's performance) that i was ready to try the headline spot - i've never done twenty minutes before - but i'm so glad i did. had a great time up there, even though it was hot as hell because of the lights and all the extra body heat in the room. i think i might do one more headline before the season's over - maybe the night mum and dad come to watch!