She's Here!

So this week we finally put an end to this whole “long distance” rubbish, and shifted Kim up here to start her life as an official Northern Territorian.

“How official?” I hear you ask.

What do you mean you never asked that? Don’t be ridiculous. I heard your voice with my own mind. Are you calling me a liar?

ARE YOU?

Well, this official:

So far we’ve got her an official NT driver’s license, changed her contact address with just about every agency in the country and a few that aren’t, applied for an ochre card, bought a car, settled her into a new job and had dinner at Moorish. We’ve just about got the process complete.

Unfortunately, when I made a comparison between various pubs in the rural area, she still found the name ‘Humpty-Doo’ hilarious, so I’ve obviously got a bit of work still to do. But we’ve got time for that.

Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

Transitions Part 2

Tonight I’m boarding a plane to Sydney. This is not unusual. In fact I’ve done this once a month or so for the past year, give or take. A long distance relationship will do that. What makes this trip special is this:

It’s the last time.

I’m headed for Sydney to pack up Kim’s room, clean some stuff and then bring her back to Darwin with me. This I undoubtedly the most positive development my life has taken since I convinced her to marry me back in January. It’s going to be a crazy four days over Easter, but by Tuesday hopefully everything will make sense again. Or at least be a greatly improved version of nonsense. I don’t know.

I can’t wait.



Garry with 2 Rs

Showcase

Last week Top End Comedy put together a week long workshop as an attempt at professional development for the impressive gang of comedians we’ve assembled over the last 18 months or so. After a crazy amount of effort on the part of the formidable Amy Hetherington, we secured a government grant and flew an international comedian into Darwin to spend some time honing our crafts.

I probably spent more time on sandwich eating than on craft honing, but that’s not to say I got nothing out of the workshops. The chance to sit around with a room of comedians for three days and bounce material off each other was fantastic, and set the stage for what followed.

On Friday night we put on a showcase of local comedy talent, followed by a set from Nik Coppin, our illustrious international guest. Twelve of us got up, each delivering a five minute set that we’d spent the past three days working on. Even with a couple of inexperienced performers (and one fantastic first timer) no-one bombed; in fact we delivered a solid two hour line-up of quality presentations. And Nik obviously did a great job at the end too.

Raw Comedy is coming up in just over a month and I've registered to go again. Top End Comedy has come so far in the last twelve months that the NT heat isn’t going to know what hit it.  I can’t wait for our first Happy Yess gig this week.

Yah dumplings!

Garry with 2 Rs

Christmas Part One - Clever Girl

Earlier this year at a Happy Yess Comedy gig, I threw a few saucy velociraptor references into my insightful and side-splitting discussion of the role of chivalry in twenty-first century masculinity.

It didn’t go very well.

I was concerned that my sociological discussion was perhaps not quite as funny as I had believed, but was later relieved to discover that the problem wasn’t so much that I wasn’t very funny (I’m freaking hilarious), but that a disturbing number of audience members - to say nothing of fellow comedians – had never seen Jurassic Park.

Those few of us who had had the knowledge and fear of raptors instilled in us during our formative years regarded it as our moral responsibility to address this cultural deficit, and set about planning a Top End Comedy Jurassic Park Christmas Party. We waited until one of our number had left Darwin, and then invaded her house, set up a Christmas tree and decorated it with small plastic dinosaurs. This is what we do for fun in the Top End apparently. Once the tree was appropriately bedecked, it was time for the main event: A full length viewing of Jurassic Park on the second biggest TV I’ve ever seen.

As much as I love it, as a film Jurassic Park hasn’t aged well. The animatronics, which were astounding at the time it was released, don’t really stack up against the computer generated miracles we can create these days. The computer systems in the ‘state-of-the-art’ facility left us laughing even harder than the multimedia demonstration of how DNA works.

These days there probably isn’t a better way to enjoy the film than in a room over crowded with slightly intoxicated stand-up comedians. The night ended with those of us who had already seen the film grinning and remembering our childhood and remarking to each other how awesome Jurassic Park was, while those who had just seen it for the first time seemed comprehensively underwhelmed. I felt a bit like Sam Neil’s character trying to explain to the scoffing child that velociraptors are much more than just over grown turkeys. And no-one except me seemed to agree that “clever girl” is among the great lines of English literature.

In the end it was a great party with great friends and a great film. It’s just a shame that they never made any sequels.

Ever.




Garry with 2 Rs

The Messiah

I have a very strange relationship with the Darwin Chorale.

Every few months or so I do a show with them, and every time I do I tell myself at the conclusion that it will be the last one I do. And then within a few weeks I find myself back at rehearsals, not unlike a substance abuse problem or an old girlfriend you just never quite get over. And not much better for me really.

Still, I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to sing the Messiah with them, now was I?

Apparently it had been about five years since the last time Handel’s Messiah was performed in Darwin, which was an unacceptably long time for many of those with the influence and relevance to make statements like that. So the Darwin Symphony Orchestra and the Darwin Chorale teamed up again to put on two shows in the NT Supreme Court, which is a great venue for that sort of thing and seems to be built out of gravitas. And wood panels.

I’d never sung the whole thing before, although I’d sung bits of it with a few different choirs, so it was fun for me to learn all the bits and pieces and to see how they all came together to paint such a vivid picture of Christ, using scriptures taken from all over both testaments of the Bible. It’s a freaking difficult thing to sing. Some of the movements around the crucifixion are really intense, but amazing when they come together, which they did most of the time.

And of course the highlight of the whole show both for the audience and for the choir is the Hallelujah Chorus. Between the full orchestra and the Chorale, we just about lifted the roof off the court house, which would have drawn some very concerned stares from the local judicial officers, who would then have repaired it by glaring at the roof until it apologised and resumed its place on top of the building.

Almost as much fun for me as the Hallelujah was the finale, including the most emphatic Amen I’ve ever sung. It seems like a great way to put a cap on a short but illustrious Darwin Chorale Career, as I’m sure this has been the last project I’ll do with them for a while.

This time for sure.




 Garry with 2 Rs

Surprisingly Awesome

So our monthly comedy gigs at Happy Yess are ticking along nicely. Last night we had a virgins night- A night for all first timers doing stand-up comedy. It had potential to go either way, but we were all blown away by how much fun the night was.

It started out with the usual panic attacks when we realised that we had an hour and a half to fill, and only two comedians on the list. None of the regulars had prepared anything, so we were all wandering around figuring out what we could pull off at short notice, when Amy wandered in with four other comedians in tow and we went from there.

You wouldn’t expect to get seven good ones in a row at a first-time amateur comedy night, but that’s exactly what we got. Everything from dark yet somehow self-deprecating socio-political commentary (from someone else this time) to an entire string of mother jokes made about the comic’s own mother (who was in the audience). And one particularly inventive man who attempted to pick up the previous comic by impersonating an amputee construction worker.

Basically the point is that Darwin is awesome, hilarious and packed full of more talent than most would expect. I suspect it’s something to do with laughing to distract ourselves from the weather. So next month we’re having Ladies’ Night at Happy Yess Comedy. A night when we all get to make fun of… no wait, that can’t be right…

Make of that what you will.




Garry with 2 Rs

As Raw As It Gets

About nine months ago I started doing stand-up comedy with my friends at Happy Yess. We started out small and token, but this year we’ve launched a re-vamped and rejuvenated version with themes and headliners and organisation and everything. I’m really excited to be a part of it, and putting some time and energy into developing my own stand-up stuff. Having tried a few different ways to stand up on a stage and make an exhibition of myself, I can confidently assert that comedy is both the most challenging and the most instantly gratifying of all the theatrical arts.

On Friday night I took it to the next level. I decided to enter the Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s Raw Comedy, which is a national amateur comedy competition. It was a significant step up for me, having only tried out comedy in the comfortable shelter of Happy Yess, and it was certainly a much larger audience than I’ve ever tried to be funny for before. Apparently there were about 400 people in the audience. Not that I could see any of them for the bright stage lights.

A few of my fellow contestants were trying out comedy for the very first time. And I was surprised at how many of the others had never been backstage at the Darwin Entertainment Centre before. These days I’m as at home backstage as I am in a bar or a church, but I suppose not everyone has had the same theatrical background as me, or lived in Darwin for as long.

There were about a dozen contestants, all of whom did a pretty good job, and the crowd were, for the most part, really good and generous with the laughs. There were only a couple of instances of heckling, and they were reserved for those who could obviously handle it. And at one point a little girl jumped on stage and asked if we had any fish for her.

Phil had assured me that the best strategy with Raw Comedy was to do a musical number, so that was what I did. I’ve been writing little musical numbers for Happy Yes for a few months now, so it wasn’t a big stretch to write full song for the competitions. And it went over pretty well.

I really hadn’t been too fazed by the whole process, but when the winner was announced and it wasn’t me, I discovered I had wanted it a little bit more than I realised. I was a little disappointed, but no so much as to harbour any ill feelings.

In the wash-up, Phil asked me why I had done a song. “I’ve spoken to the organisers,” he said (apparently this is still the sort of thing that just happens to him), “and they told me they’re really not looking for musical numbers these days.” I don’t know… one of these days.

I think I’ll probably give it another go next year. We’ll see what happens.

Make of that what you will.




Garry with 2 Rs

This is How it Starts

I’ve always had a rather strange relationship with prayer meetings. I’ve grown up in the Church, and I’ve acknowledged how important prayer is for people who claim to be in relationship with God, but special corporate prayer services have always struck me as being a bit like health food: I know it’s a good idea, but I don’t really get excited about it until someone guilts me into it.

I’m kind of a rubbish Christian when you look at it. Don’t get me started on my diet either.

I think part of the reason is that I’ve been to too many prayer meetings that are just opportunities for people to stand up in public and demonstrate how super-spiritual they are, not just by the fact that they like to go to prayer meetings, but by showing us all how fluent they are in the use of whatever spiritual buzzwords happen to be fashionable at the moment.

I don’t care what the dictionary says: “Prideful” is not a word! And even if it is I don’t think God is going to be impressed by how many times we can fit it into a paragraph.

But let’s be honest, I can babble on just as self-righteously as the next guy. I just do it on my blog instead of in a church service. The real reason I don’t go to prayer events is because I’m lazy and complacent.

But recently a bunch of people who run One Body with me have started calling random prayer and praise get-togethers. I went along mainly for solidarity, but I’ve been really struck by the power of what’s going on here.

This is no inner circle talk fest. This is a small group of young people who are quite passionate and committed to meeting together to seek the Lord. And we’re already seeing signs of a response. We met together at ten o’clock on Saturday night (because we’re all young and reckless like that. It’s absolutely a logical time to get together) and kept praying through to midnight, when we decided we’d better head home because we all had church in the morning.

My sister posted an article on Facebook this morning about something called Poe’s law, so now I’m all concerned that you’re not going to understand how sincerely excited I am (see my last post) to find more people in Darwin who are sick of the division and disunity that’s been crippling us for the last decade or so. If so, that’s fine. I’m sure this post makes for excellent satire if that’s how you want to read it.

If, on the other hand, you’ve decided that I’m dead serious, then keep an eye on the right sidebar. I’ll keep it as up to date as I can with news of the next get together. It’s on.

Make of that what you will. Unless you can’t tell whether I’m serious or not. In that case, make of that something else. If you will.

Will you?




Garry with 2 Rs

Life in the City

So at the start of the year I moved house from Malak in Darwin’s northern suburbs, to a unit right in Darwin city. I’ve moved in with two friends in a unit with a harbour view, five minutes’ walk from work, church, Happy Yess and the supermarket. It’s definitely been one of the smarter moves I’ve made. I can walk to all of them with no dramas at all, although my decision to walk to church bare foot yesterday was not my brightest ever.

City living has an entirely different feel to it. I realise it’s a bit misguided to talk about “city living” in a metropolis the scale of Darwin, particularly given how much time I’ve spent in Sydney recently. But it’s still a different vibe. It brings an increased sense of possibility and involvement and a new sense of being all grown up and mature.

In celebration of this new found sense of being an adult, my house mates and I have spent the weekend developing highly sophisticated ways of entertaining ourselves on stormy afternoons. I hereby present the first known documentation of the new game taking Harry Chan Avenue by storm.

Padawan Learner: A game for two or more players.

You will need:
A plastic light sabre
Adeptness with the Force (optional)
At least one Nerf gun
A blindfold (not recommended)

Points are scored (if you can be bothered) for every Nerf disc successfully deflected with the light sabre. For best results, a selection of different guns should be used. Experimental evidence suggests that Matt’s giant 40 disc shooter actually fires with slightly less velocity than my lighter ten shooter, although obviously I run out of ammunition a lot sooner.

Actually dressing up as a Jedi is recommended, by not essential.

May the Force be with you.



Garry with 2 Rs

The Perfect Sunset Photo

I love sunsets. I’m one of those peculiar people who can quite happily sit on a beach, balcony or boat and do nothing but watch the sun slowly sink below the horizon. I love watching the colours shift and refract in the clouds, and I love that no two are ever the same.

Darwin does an awesome sunset. It’s part of the reason I love this city so much. When I’m not run off my feet with rehearsals or church or God knows what else, I’ll quite often just take myself down to the beach or to the Nightcliff jetty and watch the sunset while I think, pray or complain about the day I’ve just had. And I’m usually not alone. There’s always at least one photographer out with gadgets ranging from a simple hand held digital camera to an SLR on a tripod with a lens longer than his arm and three different kinds of light meters.

They do get some good ones. I’ve seen professionally produced photos on sale around the city from time to time and some of them are spectacular. But there’s something that leaves me a little restless about the amount of time that goes in to capturing the “perfect sunset” and putting it on a page for sale, when we can just sit and watch it for free every night.

The other interesting thing about sunset photography is that there actually isn’t any such thing as the perfect sunset photo. Anyone who’s ever stood on the beach and taken some quick snaps will tell you there’s always a better colour, light, cloud or reflection just when you thought you’d got the shot you wanted. I took a traveller down to Mindil Beach the other night to watch the sunset, and laughed as she stood up every five minutes to take another photo. I was a bit concerned for her, because I’ve seen these symptoms before: It starts out simply enough with a few happy snaps from your holiday. The next thing you know you’ve bought a fifteen hundred dollar camera off the internet and can spend entire Sunday afternoons talking about nothing except the effect on memory size of different shutter speeds at higher resolutions.

I took to her to talk to one of the professionals at the markets for some therapy and to ask about her collection of sunset efforts. Some of them were just stunning. She’d been working as a professional photographer in the Top End for four years, and we asked her which one of her photos she thought was perfect.

“None of them,” was her answer. “I keep trying, but there’s always something more you can improve. The light, the focus, the reflections; there’s just so much going on.”

At the risk of over romanticising it, I think there’s a lesson to be learnt from the plight of the sunset photographer. You could spend your whole life out there waiting for the perfect moment, for the perfect photo. But if experience is anything to go by, you’re never going to find it. You can work your whole life trying to capture it on film and end up with terabytes of photos which are almost perfect. Or you can sit and enjoy it, and end up with a head full of memories which are absolutely flawless.

Say cheese.



Garry with 2 Rs

The DMUC Code

Last week there was a break-in at our church office. Thieves managed to jimmy one of the back doors, and then used a trolley and presumably some very buff arms to make off with the safe from the back office. I’m quite impressed that they managed to move it at all. Less impressed with the criminals’ ability to choose their target; the safe contained neither cash nor anything of financial value. They successfully absconded with a safe full of master keys, which they self-evidently didn’t need, and the church’s roster of baptisms and marriages, dating back to the 1940s.

Police found the safe, broken open and empty, lying at the bottom of Adelaide River. That’s about a hundred kilometres away, so I don’t know how they found it, but good on them. We haven’t recovered the registry, which is a major blow to … people who want to know how many people got married in our church in 1957. It did have a lot of sentimental value to the church members, particularly those names were in the book. I suppose my baptism was noted in there somewhere.

The really interesting part from my perspective is that ours isn’t the first church these criminal masterminds have hit; apparently the Catholics and Anglicans have had safes stolen in the past month as well. I’m not sure how many break-ins it’s going to take these geniuses to realise that churches don’t actually keep vast stores of ancient and priceless treasures locked up in the vestry.

We keep them in the bank like everyone else.

So since these guys have now stolen three church safes and have presumably not come away with anything valuable enough to be worth the effort, I have come up with two possible explanations for their behaviour:

1) They’re dumb.

2) They really are criminal masterminds, but they weren’t after money in the first place. They’re on the trail of a ten thousand year old legend, promising immortality and endless riches to whoever can break the four seals on the tomb of St. Capsicum of Guam.

The first three have already been broken by an evil conglomerate of mining magnates, kidnapped nuclear-physicists and Nazis, and now the thieves are in a desperate race against time to find a way to break the seals before the Nazis take control of the entire international ruby market.

A clue to the fourth seal is rumoured to have been transcribed by an eccentric parish councillor in an undisclosed church in Darwin City, and hidden from the outside world in a secret code written across time into the very fabric of the baptisms and marriages registry, which is really a cipher for the charter of a top-secret para-church organisation known only as “The Disillusionati”. The race is on to find the right registry, crack the code and niggle St. Capsicum before it’s too late.

With the DMUC registry located at last, the criminals are currently zooming across the Philippine Sea in a hot wired speed boat, with angry Nazis in hot pursuit in hovercrafts armed with machine guns.

As an extra insurance policy against a double cross, the mining magnates have abducted the thieves’ girlfriends and taken them to a top secret lair on the outskirts of St Petersburg. But unbeknownst to them, the girlfriends are ninja pirate alien zombie librarian vampire robot kung-fu masters. And they’re ready to kick some Russian Nazi arse.

Meanwhile, our church has to have all its locks changed, and do something about shoring up the door that apparently only needed a fairly token effort to force it open. Thanks for nothing St. Capsicum.




Garry with 2 Rs

Australian Horizons

I spend a lot of time making music. Most of the time it’s at church, some of the time it’s with the Chorale and every now and again it’s just me and Samantha. Last Sunday, between the three of them I started singing at half past eight in the morning and didn’t stop until four o’clock that afternoon.

The Darwin Chorale’s latest concert is coming up this weekend: Australian Horizons – Songs from the Bush to the Beach.

It’s a weird project for me, because a lot of what we’re singing is not remotely connected to any picture of Australia as I understand it, but that’s largely just because I’ve only been around for twenty-mumble years. The old colonial ballads and rollicking shearing songs are fun to sing and all, but they might as well be from the other side of the world for all the cultural connection I feel to them. And to me, the fact that when they asked us all to come in traditional Australian bush gear, we all had to go out and buy some, suggests that our cultural identity might have shifted ever so slightly at some point during the last two hundred years. Mind you, there’s no getting past it: I look seriously hot in an oilskin coat and Akubra hat. I mean, it’s no red shirt and black fedora, but I can make it work.

We’re doing some contemporary stuff too, but again, it’s not what I think of when I think of Australia. I think of Cold Chisel, John Farnham (The better old stuff. Just ignore anything after about 1995), Powder Finger, or even ACDC, although choral arrangements for that might be a little difficult. We’re doing some Ice House and Graeme Connors, which would be alright if not for the fact that we tend to sing most of it in the manner of a bunch of old women, which to be fair, broadly speaking, we are.

We are also doing an arrangement of Bogle’s Shelter, which is still one of my favourite songs of our country, and about the only one in the repertoire that I feel any real connection with. Still, if I have to pretend like I know things about droving, am frightened of cyclones and have any idea where Gundagai is, then I think I can manage it for two performances. I may be a rubbish shearer and only a mildly capable tenor, but there’s one grand Australian tradition that I have in spades: I’m a thoroughly accomplished bullshit arti… er… yarn spinner.

So come along to Australian Horizons - Songs from the Bush to the Beach, this Friday and Saturday at the Darwin Entertainment Centre’s Studio Theatre. It’s gonna be… a dinky-die, um… true blue…

Look, it’s going to be alright, okay? Make of that what you will.




Garry with 2 Rs

Ok Chorale

So I’ve joined the Darwin Chorale.

It’s something that I’ve always managed to avoid doing, though to be honest I’m not really sure why, given that I enjoy singing in choirs. I think most of the problem is that until recently I’d never heard the Chorale sing anything that I could really get excited about. Last year they did a great all singing all dancing show full of the twentieth century’s greatest love songs.

I hate love songs.

Meanwhile, I’ve been getting my choral fixes by tagging along with the local Operatunity company. And as far as my ability to spend extended amounts of time in a room with an entire section of sopranos goes, that has been quite enough, thank you very much. Occasionally those of the Operatunity fold who were also in the Chorale (that is, most of them) would remark more loudly than was necessary about how much they were enjoying the rehearsals for the Chorale’s latest project, and how they wish they could find more tenors. This would be backed up by a meaningful glance in my direction, and followed by a stealth retreat and exit-left on my part. And so an unstable but mutual understanding has developed between the Chorale and me: They don’t bug me and I don’t bug them.

That is, until now.

Operatunity aren’t doing a show this year. And the Chorale are doing a fun show in June, which will be a review of all the best bits from Broadway shows. The usual plea for more men went out, only this time in more earnest. I got a personal phone call from the musical director, which was weird, but nice. So I went along to one rehearsal to check it out. I had kind of thought that joining a choir the size and reputation of the Darwin Chorale, even in Darwin, I might at last have the chance to sing with a decent sized tenor section.

Not so much. I discovered quickly that when they called me up to say they were desperate for tenors, they meant it. We had three on my first night there. I was ready to walk out in disgust. Then they pulled a clever political manoeuvre by offering me a solo, which I decided was too much fun to reject.

So now I’m in the Chorale. And I have to learn a part for an ensemble with proper singers. And a duet with a soprano. And I’m freaking out a bit.

Make of that what you will.




Garry with 2 Rs

A Change Is As Good As a Holiday

So I've taken two weeks leave from my job and taken up a temporary internship with the NT News. It's not everyone's idea of a fun way to spend their holidays, but for me it's a great way to get my name and face known in the newsroom, with a view to getting a more permanent and less token position there some time down the track.

And for someone who enjoys writing, it's actually pretty close to a vacation, particularly compared with the stress of managing people and cash that I usually face. I'm taking the same sort of internship position that would normally be given to high school students or people still finishing their journalism studies.

But I have finished my journalism studies; quite some time ago. So, for me, spending a day sitting in an office just writing up media releases and following stories with government departments is the mental equivalent of lying by the pool in Bali, which is what everyone at work thinks I should be doing anyway.

Being the work experience guy also has other perks; you get to handle the thoroughly ridiculous stories that no one else wants to go near, but which suit the 2 Rs sense of humour and local awesomeness down to the ground. My favourite so far? A government department's specially written press release rejecting calls to release a herd of elephants in the outback to control weeds. Having said that, the Palmerston Mayor who got himself convicted of assault with a golf club this afternoon was pretty spectacular too. And my placement is only half way through!

I love Darwin.




Garry with 2 Rs

Housing Crisis

Ask any young Territorian what the biggest problem facing young adults is and the ones who think like me (the others aren't really worth listening to) will tell you "housing prices". Like me, those people are a little self obsessed and completely wrong because, when you think about it, drugs, alcoholism, violence and the yawning chasm between the standards of living in cities and remote communities are far more important than whether or not a goofy white office worker has any money left for the movies after paying rent. But shut up. This piece is about housing prices, okay? Geez...

A few months ago I made enquiries with my bank about home loans. I wasn't really feeling optimistic as I have no savings, no assets and a collection of debts that would make the Greek government blush. Just as I expected, I was told to go sort out my car loan, HECS debt and credit card and then come back. Fine. Who expects help from a bank anyway?

The problem in Darwin is the insane amount that housing costs. In Australia, only central Sydney has a higher mean house price. This tends to lock low to middle income earners like me out of the market more or less permanently. And it doesn't really matter what the government does about releasing more land or adding grants for first homebuyers: Demand for housing is so high that estate agents and property developers can charge whatever they like, confident in the knowledge that while normal (well...) people like me can't afford it, investors and and large corporations will happily pay half a million dollars for a two bedroom unit if they can make it all back in exhorbitant rent or write it off as a tax break.

NT Government to the rescue! I was super excited to find an ad in the newspaper for a government scheme to help lower income earners afford a house. I jumped straight on the government website and typed the program name into the search box.

Zero hits.

Typing the name of a housing department program into the search box on the housing department website gave me zero freaking hits. This did not bode well for the ultimate usefulness of the program, but I wasn't ready to give up yet. The alternate information source was to call into a TIO branch.

There isn't a TIO branch in Casuarina for some reason, so I had to wait until I had a chance to get into town during business hours to visit a branch. Fortunately that wasn't as much of a problem as it would normally be (more on that later). Unfortunately no-one in town including me seemed to have any idea where the TIO branch office was, since the last one got blown up by a lunatic with a trolley full of fireworks.

After walking a few laps of Mitchell St in the sun, I finally found the branch nestled inside an airconditioned shopping arcade and asked the questions I needed anwered. Tragically the receptionist couldn't answer them; I had to make an appointment to meet with a financial consultant the following day. I really just needed to be told the interest rate and deposit required, but these things have to be done by the book, I suppose.

I'll skip over the fun I had having my financial affiars appraised by a relative stranger. The sharp end is that after all that effort, the advice I was given was to go sort out my car loan, my HECS debt and my credit card and then come back. Alternatively I could go get a wife and come back with two incomes.

Of course, if I could do any of those things, I would have just gone to a bank in the first place. What a freaking useless program.

So here's to you, NT Government. Yet another fantastic initiative of no practical benefit to anyone. I'll see you in August.

Did you know Yarn Bombing is a thing?




Garry with 2 Rs

One Body

And now for the main event.

You know how for the past three years or so I've been chirping incessantly about how I'm going to start up an intercongregational worship event among the Church of Darwin? And you know how for those same three years I've not provided a shred of evidence that I'll ever follow through on that chirping?

Well the shredless days are over baby. Last weekend we finally kicked off the first ever One Body worship service. It was the culmination of months and months of talking and about a week and a hlaf of frantically running around making things happen.

Look, I'll be honest; we ended up with just a three piece band, playing just seven songs, and only ten people came. But the point is we made a start, and got people there from three different congregations hanging out and getting to know each other. Plenty of locals have offered to help run the next one, which hopefully means there's some chance of it being organised properly.

Things we learned from One Body:

1) Twenty minutes before the service is not the right time to see if the data projector works.
2) It is possible to fit an enitre drum kit in my Ford Focus hatchback.
3) Nobody responds to Facebook invitations anymore.
4) Bass players are over-rated.

Make of that what you will.




Garry with 2 Rs

More Fun with Spruikers

Wow!

What an eventful week it’s been. I don’t want to put the mozz on it, but February is shaping up as the best month in quite some time. I really don’t know where to start on this one, but since it’s been a while since I’ve actually sat down and written anything, I think I’ll warm up with a quick run through with an old favourite.

How much fun is playing with street spruikers?

I met a really nice one last weekend, who, despite having come up from Sydney, refrained from making comments about how he had no idea what was going on and how different Darwin was from Sydney and how it was sooooooo hot and how much he liked the markets. I mean those are all valid points (except the markets one. They don’t start up again for a while yet), but you’re not going to convince me to give you money by telling me how weird my home town is. Like I don’t already know. This guy made sensible comments about the charity he was spruiking, and actually listened to my answers and questions rather than abandoning each unsuccessful persuasion technique in favour of a different approach. In the end, I had to tell him I was all tapped out for charity donations for now, but if you have some spare space on your credit card, go check out Mission Australia’s Youth Up program. It looks like it would be really worthwhile getting behind.

Meanwhile at a different charity stall:

Hot German Backpacker: Hi. Would you like to come and talk to me?

Gw2Rs: (checks watch and confirms how much of his lunch hour is left) … Okay.

HGB: What is your favourite animal?

Gw2Rs: The velociraptor.

HGB: The what?

And with that she blew any possible chance she had of being taken seriously, either as a charity spruiker or as a human being. I decided to stick around and see how much free information I could get out of her.

Gw2Rs: Never mind. I like eagles.

HGB: Wow. What an interesting answer.

Gw2Rs: … ?

HGB: Most people say cat or dog.

Gw2Rs: BORING!

HGB: I know. So have you heard of the WWF before?

Gw2Rs: The wrestling show?

HGB: … No. Well, what we are doing is we are trying to save endangered animals from extinction. Do you like tigers?

Gw2Rs: Sure, who doesn’t?

HGB: Did you know there are five different types of tigers in the world?

Gw2Rs: Hmm… Bengal, Sumatran, Siberian, Tasmanian… What’s the last one?

HGB: … I don’t know. But what is really sad is that soon all these different kinds may be extinct. Blah blah blah reducing numbers, blah blah destruction of habitat, blah blah humans are evil. We are starting up a new program to help tigers. In ten years, 2022, it will be the Chinese year of the tiger. We are hoping to save all the tigers in the world by the time that year comes.

Gw2Rs: Sounds good. Apparently this year is the year of the dragon. How many of them did you save?

HGB: I don’t know.

Gw2Rs: (gives up and leaves).

Apparently the missing tiger types are Malayan and Chinese. They aren’t so well known, mainly because they really are as rare as they say they are. Maybe it’s just as well. I was going to suggest Italian, but God knows what the next poor guy would have been told if I’d given her that idea.

Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

Getting Things Started

I don’t know what it was about 2011. It seemed no matter what I turned my hand to, it just didn’t work. Things which should have been straight forward were ridiculously complicated, and things which would have been complicated anyway ended up being flat out impossible. Last year, while I may have had nine and a half resolutions set out on my side bar, really there were only three things I actually cared about. And I didn’t get any of them done.

I’ve wanted for ages to get a combined worship service going in Darwin again. I’ve wanted it to be intercongregational, or ecumenical, or interdenominational, or whatever your preference of term for “all in it together” might be. My friend and I have come up with “intercongradenomonagalactical.” If that sounds stupid, that’s only because it is.

But the point is it’s happening. We’re booked in for the 4^th of February. One way or another, I’m making a start. I don’t have a drummer, a drum kit, or anyway of getting the word out apart from right here on CTC (and maybe Facebook), but come what may the movement is starting in two weeks. Stay tuned.

Probably the biggest disappointment from last year was my utter failure to get myself a vaguely interesting job. Sure, I made the move from staff trainer to operations supervisor, but even though I counted it has half a point on my checklist, it really wasn’t what I was looking for. I tried a few strategies to get into a job with more to do with media, communications or writing, but just couldn’t make anything happen. I started to get pretty despondent about the whole thing towards the end of the year there.

This year, I’m determined to turn it around. I have a two week placement booked with our local paper, the highly esteemed NT News, which is more than I’ve managed to achieve in two years up to this point. I’ve spoken to some friends who work for the paper. They’ve unanimously advised me not to work there, as apparently it sucks the soul out of you. But when it comes around, I’d rather work in a sould destroying job doing something I like than work in a soul destroying job doing something that I have no interest in whatsoever. It’s a pretty bleak view of the universe I suppose, but there again, I don’t imagine there are that many people in the first world thinking “Hooray! Time to go get a job!” anyway.

And then there’s resolution seven. That link goes to some post about Dan geting married. I think it's the only one with an overt mention of resolution seven on it. I was going to write a post about it at some point... but I didn't. Basically last year's resolution seven was "fall in love".

No. Still nothing to report on that front. But the way I see it, it’s not even the end of January yet, and I’ve already achieved a gazillion time more than I had in the two year previous. Two out of three major life goals in the pipeline, and one that I’m not really in control of anyway. Geez, if I could just generate the self-discipline to stop playing with my new computer and actually do something worthwhile, I might just change the world this year.

Probably not.

Garry with 2 Rs

An Unremarkable Evening

We had our office Christmas party last weekend. For reasons I don’t fully understand, this year we decided to break with our tradition of taking a harbour cruise for the Christmas party (which has always been fantastic) and to hire an open topped double decker bus to take us on a pub crawl around the city.

I had originally intended to write a blistering exposé on my impressions of the party bus, but to be honest it wasn’t remarkable enough to warrant more than a paragraph or so. We visited a few bars, had some drinks and finished up at Monsoon’s in the city. My distaste for Monsoon’s is well known, so I didn’t stay long. Besides, it was what happened after I left the party that makes for the better story.

I walked out of the pub at about ten o’clock and started thinking about the best way to get home. The night bus service wasn’t going to run until one o’clock and a taxi was going to cost me forty dollars or so. Right at that moment, before I’d even had a chance to walk more than half a block, a white car came around the corner, ran out of petrol half way through the intersection and coasted to a stop about a metre in front of me. A friend from church jumped out and said

“Garry! Thank goodness. I need your help”.

I happily agreed to walk with her down to the service station and fill up a jerry can with diesel, and in exchange she very kindly offered me a lift home. She also asked if I minded stopping by the school where she worked so she could pick up some work she needed to finish up over the weekend. While we were there, she also picked up her bass guitar and offered to help with the worship band on Sunday morning.

And then I found ten dollars.

Okay, so it’s not a really interesting story after all. But after finishing up with Earnest last weekend, I’ve really been enjoying having a week where I haven’t done anything that required too much thinking. It’s been good, but unfortunately it doesn’t lend itself to staggeringly interesting blog posts. Shut up. I’ll write a Christmas post next week. That’ll be nice.




Garry with 2 Rs

The Show Must Go On

Last weekend was all about the show.

For one thing, it was the Show Day long weekend. Every year the Royal Darwin Show unfolds itself on to the showgrounds. For three glorious days people stream through the gates, and then walk around in circles trying to figure out what they’re doing there. It seems to me that if you’re not a small child, a carnie or a farmer there isn’t really much to get excited about apart from eating things outside in glorious dry season weather, which we could do anyway. And then three days later the livestock, balloons and rides fold themselves up into temporal stasis for another year, ready to emerge again, unscathed and unchanged, in twelve months time.

I swear: it’s even the same cows.

Meanwhile, there was another show on in town. For reasons I still don’t fully understand, Corrugated Iron decided that show weekend was a good time to put Tease on. Having long since backed away from an acting role, I was quite keen to put on my writer’s hat (I don’t really have a literal writer’s hat, although I do have a black fedora, which is just about the same thing) and sit and watch the words I’d written come to life on stage. I’d never had that experience before and it was kind of awesome.

I really need to give credit here to the cast; Kadek Hobman, Danielle Andrews and Dylan Bennett, and also to the director Alex Galeazzi. Those guys were awesome, and put in performances that made the play seem a lot better than it was.

All in all it was a great success. I got a lot of really positive feedback from people whose opinions I respect and I’ve had more than a few people ask me what my next project is. It’s a bit embarrassing to have to say I don’t have one. Still, I’m feeling more than a little inspired to find one; after all, you know what they say:

A splash of apple cider never hurt anyone.

Garry with 2 Rs