Unscheduled Service Outage

Yeah… Sorry about that. Things have been a little bit hectic just recently. You know how it is, your fiancée moves to town, you plan a wedding in a foreign country, switch churches, appear in a stage show and look for  new job and before you know it, you’ve gone two months without uploading so much as an irreverent haiku. It happens to the best of us. And also to me.

So naturally I decided the best time to rectify the situation would be a week before my wedding. It’s not like I’ve got a million other things I’m supposed to be doing. But Kim’s off at a code black top secret dress fitting, so I’m home alone with the dog and my laptop. I tried playing chess with the dog, but she beat me in twenty three moves, so I’m blogging instead.

So I’m in America again, camped out with Kim’s family in Ohio, ready for another cross-country adventure to Ocean City, NJ for the big day. Ten day from now. This is nuts. I knew this year was going to go fast, but I really don’t think jumping straight from January to August without asking for permission was entirely justified. Still, here we are.

Order of service is coming along. Playlist is getting there, and now I;m thping with mey eyes clsaed becyase Kim is walking in with her fress.

Sorry about that.

I should go write something more useful. Like vows or something. But take heart in the meantime, blogosphere. I haven’t forgotten you.

I’m just completely neglecting you.

Make of that what you will.



Garry with 2 Rs

Profile

Personality quizzes don’t work on me.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a Myers-Briggs test in a psychology textbook or a “What flavour paddle-pop are you?” quiz on Facebook; they don’t work on me. Usually they either end up telling me I’m simultaneously extroverted and introverted, calm, manic, leader, follower, quiet and loud and upside down, or that I’m rainbow flavoured when I’m obviously the choc-banana one. Even classical astrology can’t make up its mind whether I’m Gemini, Cancer or Asparagus.

This is part of the reason why I get so upset about it when I apply for jobs and have to do an online aptitude test first. I have absolutely no confidence in the ability of a computer to understand who I am based on a thirty question quiz. Human beings have been trying this for thirty years and haven’t really gotten anywhere.

Well, I guess there’s at least one person who has some vague idea what’s going on here.

Kim and I registered for some pre-marital counseling this week. We’re meeting with a minister to get some guidance on what stuff we need to sort out before August, which seems a wise idea since it’s ONLY THREE FREAKING MONTHS AWAY!

Ahem…

You can imagine my enthusiasm when the minister told me the first step in the guidance process was to fill out an online questionnaire to compare my approach to the universe to Kim’s and decide what we need to be talking about.

It was a great success. After we’d both entered all our answers and submitted the test, we had a long, deep and powerful conversation. Finally we agreed: Online personality tests are stupid.

We haven’t got the marriage prep survey results back yet, but I’m pretty sure the computer will be okay with us getting married. If not, I’m sure we’ll have a very open, honest, emotive and defenestrative discussion with the computer.

I feel better already.

Garry with 2 Rs

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

Party Party Party

I spent last weekend in Sydney again. Between us, Kim and I have been keeping Jetstar in business for the last twenty months and every time one of takes a trip to see the other, we almost always end up with a weekend so packed full of activities that we don’t actually get much time to relax.

This trip was no exception. No sooner had I settled in to Sydney than we were off to watch Six60 play at the HiFi. They’ve come a long a way since the last time I saw them and it was a very big and very enjoyable concert. After the show, we hung out backstage with Chris and got another taste of the rock’n’roll lifestyle as we all piled into a minivan and tripped back to the band’s hotel. I don’t know how he does it; that lifestyle would run me into the ground within a month.

Saturday was just as packed. My family joined us in Sydney and we had lunch and did some shopping. We all popped in to Saturday Night By The Bridge before heading over to The Loft at Darling Harbour for our Engagement Party. That was a fantastic night with friends from all over the place in a nice setting. There was some concern that we wouldn’t have a place to put everyone, but after some logistical juggling by the staff we were nicely accommodated with our own private corner. Very nice.

Sunday saw us cavorting with family around Circular Quay. The weather was horrible, but we had a nice lunch before we put the family back on the plane to Adelaide and took off to meet Nic, our friend and photographer. We had and engagement photo shoot scheduled for that afternoon. Thankfully the weather cleared up nicely, and we spent two and a half hours being serial posers around the shores of Kirribilli. That was great fun.

Kim had to work Monday, so I amused myself wandering around the CBD looking for clothes for the wedding. I don’t want to spoil the final effect, but I will way I found just the thing, and that no-one is likely to mistake me for anyone else on the big day.

By the time I got into Darwin at midnight on Monday, I was thoroughly spent, but it was a great weekend and a nice way to celebrate with family and friends. Now to turn our attention to the wedding itself.

Make of that what you will.




Garry with 2 Rs

A Truly Engaging Evening

I’ve had a bit of an exciting week. I’ve just gotten engaged to my beautiful fiancée, which means that my fiancée and I are now creatively finding as many ways as possible to work the word fiancée into every sentence we utter (fiancée). I made a bit of a spectacle of myself in the whole proposal process, and I was a little alarmed to see not just my friends, but a few complete strangers filming the event on smart phones. It’s not that I’m shy by any means, it just meant we were immediately in a race against time to get to all the family and close friends of me and my fiancée by phone before YouTube beat us to it. It sounds silly, but when we went FB official with it after a couple of days, we had over a hundred likes in less than two hours, which was really affirming and really quite intimidating at the same time. I wish I could send the screenshot to my high school self, and say “don’t worry about it mate, this is how popular you’re going to be one day.

Ocean's Eleven

After the madness of New York City, we were ready for a break, so we joined Kim’s family for a few days at her grandparents’ beach house in Ocean City, New Jersey. BY the time we got there, the house already had Kim’s grandparents, her parents, her two brothers and her one sister-in-law, so the addition of two extra bodies to the two bedroom, one bathroom house was of course just what the doctor ordered.

It didn’t matter too much, as we tended only to all be inside when we were either eating or sleeping. The rest of the time was spent enjoying the coastline of the Atlantic Ocean. Strangely enough the Ocean City Municipal government seems to think it’s okay to make people pay to go to the beach. As an Australian I was outraged at the very notion, but the locals assured me it was a completely normal practice. In any case, we largely ignored it as we only had three beach permits (the very cheek) between the lot of us and it didn’t stop us for a second. Viva la revolution!

We tried out boardwalks in a number of locations, including the vastly over-rated Atlantic City boardwalk. It was basically identical to the Ocean City boardwalk, but with less shops where you could buy hermit crabs.

On our last day in Ocean City we were visited by Kim’s great aunt Ruthie, who came to teach us a few things about card games. Actually, based on her success rate, I suspect she may have been making it up as she went along. Who calls a card game Pea Knuckle in the first place?

Aunt Ruthie makes ten. Ten oughta do it, don’t you think? You think we need one more? You think we need one more. Alright, we’ll get one more.

Um… after Aunt Ruthie departed we were visited by a Bulgarian aristocrat named Miroslav who had been on a pilgrimage from Stara Zagora to Barcelona and had got a bit lost. Well… very lost. We pointed him in the right direction and he… swam off into the distance. Kim and I jumped in the car instead and headed back towards Cincinnati.

Make of that what you will.




Garry with 2 Rs

The City That Doesn't Sleep

It seems like such a cliché to write  a post about New York City. Everyone who’s ever gone there has written a story, or a song, or a poem, or something about hustle, bustle, never sleeping and being completely nuts. Yeah, well… I went there and I had a great time, so I guess I’m adding to the cliché. Deal with it.

Kim and I were there about four days all up, and we managed to cram a fair bit into those four days. Day one was mainly taken up with just getting there from Ohio and finding the people we were staying with, but we found some time late in the day to get out and find a dodgy underground comedy club. That was really fun, and really encouraging because it turns out that dodgy comedy clubs in New York City run their nights almost the same way we run our dodgy comedy club back home. We must be doing something right.

The next day started with church with our billets. I wasn’t sure how I was going to go in American churches, but this one was a traditional Methodist congregation, so this Darwin Uniting boy was right at home. They even had a digital organ and a guy who knew how to handle it.

After church we took the train into town to visit the Ground Zero memorial. The museum was still under construction, but the memorial pools that sit in the ground on the site of the original two buildings are open and quite moving. They’re inscribed with the names of all the victims of the 11^th of September attacks, and they sit in the shadow of the buildings that have been redesigned and rebuilt.

There was a lot of talk about renaming the new towers things like “Freedom Tower” and “Liberty Tower”,” which each have their merits, I guess. But I really love the new tower names. The old towers were called World Trade Centre 1 and World Trade Centre 2. So what are the new ones called? World Trade Centre 1 and World Trade Centre 2. Suck it terrorists.

To make our contemplative morning complete, we had lunch in a pub across the road run by firefighters. As luck would have it, the firefighter serving drinks that afternoon had been one of the first responders on the ground on the morning of the attacks. He had a scrapbook full of photos and clippings of stuff that was going on that day, but it was just fascinating to hear a story from a guy who found himself buried alive under tower 2, and against all the odds survived, only to have to dig himself out. Then he went back for the others. Crazy heroic stuff.

After Ground Zero we headed for Broadway for our first show of the trip: The Lion King. I hadn’t seen the stage version before, although I loved the movie when I was a kid. I enjoyed remembering all the old songs, but more impressive than the music (apart from old Rafiki, who was sensational) were the sets. The elephant graveyard, Pride Rock and the stampede in the gorge were all very cleverly designed, particularly the way they would appear and then disappear into the floor.

It was a matinee show, so we had some time to kill in town that night. We grabbed some dinner and then caught another comedy show in town. It was a slightly more professional set up this time, but at the same time the comedians were not as good. We still had fun.

The next day was a New York icons day. We started out with a trip up the Empire State Building. That was pretty cool, and we stayed up the top for about forty minutes before riding the lift back down again. Then we caught a subway down to the Statton Island Ferry to get a look at the Statue of Liberty. We would have had to have booked months in advance to actually go over onto Ellis Island, but the ferry ride passed close enough to the statue to get a good look.

We had lunch on Statton Island and then rode the ferry back to Manhattan and walked along the High Line, which is a raised walkway with plants all along it constructed up above the streets. It was really nice walking along there, particularly at sunset.

That night we saw an off-Broadway show called Sleep No More. We were quite excited about the concept of the show, which was based on Macbeth. It was set in an old abandoned hotel, with different scenes of the play being played out in different orders in different rooms of the hotel. Or so we thought. The different levels were all there, the random order was all there, but someone had neglected to let us know that there was no Shakespearean text being done; it was the Macbeth story presented through interpretive dance. I’m sure it was all very modern, cutting edge and symbolic, but it didn’t really impress either of us, so we headed home and got ready for our last day in the Big Apple.

We spent that day strolling through the Museum of Modern Art and Central Park. We hadn’t really been finding time to eat properly with all the sightseeing and show taking-in we were doing, and having had ice cream for lunch we were feeling a bit zonked, so we had a nice dinner at a favourite restaurant of Kim’s before we saw our final show for the trip.

This was probably the highlight of the whole trip: We saw Pippin, which has been revived from its 1970s form and brought back at the Music Box Theatre. I hadn't realised it was a Stephen Schwartz show before we went in, but in hindsight that does explain why the songs were so catchy, original and fun. But the music wasn't the whole event, the show was a combination of cabaret, acrobatics and magic, like a blend of a circus and a Broadway musical. There was always something different happening and some of the acrobatics were astonishing. You can always tell when a show has impressed me, because the first thing I do is look for the music score, which I found in the Broadway souvenir shop. Nice.

And then before we knew it the whirlwind had blown itself out and it was time to head for the beach. But I'm pleased to announce that New York City really was one of those rare places in the world that can live up to its own hype.

Make of that what you will.




Garry with 2 Rs

A Month of Crazy: Dinner Time

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any crazier than the Queen’s birthday, my own decade capping birthday has to come along and step everything up a notch further.

I turned thirty on Friday and guests started arriving in town a full two days before the event. So every night since then I’ve been out eating, drinking and being merry with various combinations of family and friends. And in keeping with the finest traditions of my family, we ate dinner. A lot.

It started on Wednesday with the arrival of my parents. I hadn’t seen them since Christmas, so naturally we went out to dinner to celebrate. That was lovely and a nice way to warm up for the craziness that was yet to come.

On Thursday my sister and her husband joined the party, along with my aunt, uncle and two cousins. Eh Steve had never been to Darwin before, so naturally there was trip down to Mindil Markets for dinner. Apparently there was no sunset. That was weird. I escaped this one and went to sepak takraw training. There was no sunset there either, largely because we were inside. And overnight the craziness was brought to a peak, as I headed out at midnight to pick up Kim – and Phil for some reason – from the airport.

Friday was the big day, and my nearest and dearest gathered to celebrate in fine style. I threw a costume party and had everything from Neo to Wolverine in attendance. It was certainly a colourful gathering with a cake baked and decorated by my truly excellent housemate. And would you believe it? We had dinner. I had ordered five platters of food, and the caterer showed up with seven for the same price, so we were handing out leftovers for people to take home left right and centre.

We all spent Saturday recovering. Well… Kim and I did. The rest of family thought a trip to Crocodylus Park might be in order. But we all gathered again that evening and… went out to dinner. This time we all went out for a sunset dinner cruise, again with no sunset. Something is obviously wrong with the Earth’s orbit just presently. It was a lovely evening all the same.

Sunday arrived, bringing with it my cousin’s thirteenth birthday. After church we had a celebratory lunch, which made a nice break in the pattern. We sat around for a while discussing this and that as families often do, and before we knew it it was time to go home and change just in time to … go out to dinner. This time it was down to the wharf for a chance for friends of my parents to drop by and say hello.

I took Monday off work to spend some extra time with Kim and the family, so we went to spend the day down at Litchfield park, which is my favourite place in the world. We visited Wangi and Buley, Florence and the Magnetic Termite Mounds, and headed home exhausted after a long day. We were all ready to crash and zone out for the night.

So naturally we went out to dinner. And sat down to a full Chinese banquet no less. I'm not even sure how that happened.

I’m spending most of today shipping them all off on various flights. By tomorrow everything might be back to normal, but we’ll see how long that lasts. Something will come up, no doubt. It always does. But have no fear. There appears to be no problem so great that it cannot be solved by going out to dinner.

Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

A Month of Crazy: The Queen's Birthday

After the unexpected awesomeness of last weekend, I decided to return the favour by jumping on a plane to hang out with Kim in Sydney for a weekend. Unlike Kim’s effort, mine was pre-planned, so we were able to schedule an action packed weekend of glitz, glamour and excitement.

I got in terribly early on Saturday morning after a sleepless flight (thanks Jetstar for once again making everything as inconvenient as possible) so after a quick nap on Kim’s couch we were ready to roll. First up was a trip to the cinema to see the Great Gatsby, which we had both been waiting to see until we could see it together. We both enjoyed it, and spent a considerable part of the bus ride home comparing and contrasting it with the book. We came to the conclusion that naturally the book was able to go into more detail, but that the book could have been improved by the inclusion of Leonardo DiCaprio, who basically carried the film. And the movie was more colourful.

After Gatsby we called in to Saturday Night Church at CBTB in Kirribilli. It was nice to catch up with everyone again, and after church we all went back to a friend’s place for a fellowship meal like the good parishioners we are. That was really cool.

Sunday was even more spectacular. We headed into town for a matinee showing of Jesus Christ Superstar. I’ve been a fan of this show ever since my mum bought the Australian cast recording back in the early nineties and it didn’t disappoint this time either. Tim Minchin as Judas Iscariot was an inspired casting choice, and Andrew O’Keefe was surprisingly good as King Herod too.

After Superstar we had dinner at one of Kim’s favourite restaurants and then wandered down to Darling Harbour to watch the aquatechnic displays for the Vivid festival. That was pretty cool and a nice way to cap off the evening. By the end of all that we were both completely exhausted, so we said goodnight and I crashed in my hotel room.

Monday was a public holiday (thanks Your Majesty) and we met some friends of ours for a nice picnic lunch at Balmoral. And by the time we got back from that, we had just enough time to recuperate before heading off to the airport for my flight back home.

Thankfully I was able to head into work on Tuesday to have a rest from the long weekend.

Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

Ladies Night

So I’ve been freaking out a bit  about performing stand-up comedy at Ladies Night this week. I get a little bit nervous when it comes to thinking about jokes about women, or jokes by women, or just being a room with women.

Basically the short version is women make me nervous. And usually that’s okay, because the world of stand-up comedy is founded a long tradition of goofy guys who are rubbish with women. There’s nothing funnier than a guy paying himself out for being relationally inept right? Well, maybe monkeys riding unicycles. But I don’t have one of them, so instead I spent my ladies night set presenting a researched treatise on the socio-economic and spatio-political influence of goofy lonely men, and how I’m basically better than all of them.

I think the real strength of goofy lonely guys doing stand-up about being goofy and lonely is that it’s a like a theatrical/romantic model for both socio-economic capitalism and Hegelian dialectic socialism. It also has a lot in common with the messianic writings of the ancient Jewish scholars and also films by the Warchowski siblings.

Basically the premise of capitalism is that in order for a few to be prosperous, the majority have to struggle. So the while the dream might be that if you work hard and use your money well, one day you’ll be rich and successful. It’s basically like The Great Gatsby.

And there’s another thing. Last week I read a review of Baz Luhrmann’s latest effort on the Great Gatsby. I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry, when critics, who wrote as if they knew things worth reading about, complained that the Great Gatsby was “over the top” and “all style, and no substance”. If you’re going to review a film, you should, as a bare minimum, know something about the book it’s based on. Apparently “Baz Luhrmann fetishizes romance, rather than feels it”. In other news, Star Trek Into Darkness, was  abit too science-fictiony for my taste, and we were all disappointed that Titanic ended so sadly.

Where was I?

Yes… Romantic capitalism

So in stand-up comedy you’ve always got the big names. The celebrities who made it as professional entertainers. And beneath those bright lights, you’ll always have twisting seedy undercroft of goofy lonely guys, desperately clinging to the dream that women love a guy with a sense of humour. At open mic and amateur comedy nights all across the country, goofy lonely guys are slogging away, working towards the dream. And eventually the goofy lonely guy comedic energy reaches a critical mass, and one lucky goofy lonely guy is catapulted from obscurity onto the grand stage of Australian sketch comedy to enjoy the world of celebrity, where in theory they’re supposed to be able to get any woman they want, but really they continue to be goofy and lonely, but at least they’re slightly less impoverished.

And all the others left behind look up and see the success of the lucky one and salute the new inductee with a heartfelt “oh I could do that” and then get back to writing their next five minute set for open mic night at the RSL club. And the system keeps going.

Now if all of that seems a little dark and cynical and not quite as funny as I had hoped, take heart. My children there is yet hope. Because in every good Jewish messianic scripture, or Warchowski siblings film, there is the coming of the One. The one person who has the ability to turn the system on its head, free the oppressed, bring justice to the streets and punch Hugo Weaving right in his face. And tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I can announce that tonight this Warchowski film has been fulfilled in your presence. I am the one. I’ve turned the system on its head, because despite my long history of writing a series of increasingly ridiculous songs about being single

I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND!!!!!!!

Just in case anyone had somehow missed that over the last nearly eleven months.

She’s a lovely girl from Cincinnati Ohio, in the United States of America, but this presents a bit of a problem for my stand-up comedy career, which up until quite recently has consisted of me writing a series of increasingly ridiculous songs about my now defunct inability to get a girlfriend. So since that comedic well is now dry, I now have a new and fascinating life goal to write about, because in August, I get to travel over to the United States of America to meet my girlfriend’s family.

I do have the usual worries that go with meeting your girlfriend’s family for the first time, now combined with the added concern that if they don’t approve of me, they might just shoot me. My girlfriend has very lovingly tried to reassure me that this is unlikely to happen. She actually said these words to me:

“I promise you there are no guns in my parents’ house. We’re a little bit worried about our next door neighbour, but there are none in our house”. So as long as nothing goes down in the house that’s likely to startle the neighbours we should be fine.

Anyway, it’s probably the easiest thing in the world to write a series of increasingly ridiculous songs mocking the United States of America, but I’ve been assured in no uncertain terms that if I do that, I’ll be back writing songs about not having a girlfriend in fairly short order.

So I guess I’ll stick to political/economic commentary. That’s much funnier.

Make of that what you will

Garry with 2 Rs

A Month of Crazy: Surprise!

For quite some time now, June has been shaping up as a month of madness. There’s the usual Comedy and One Body to deal with, plus a trip to Sydney, a potential trip to Malaysia, a mumbleth birthday to negotiate including a visit from my extended family and a new job to find. On Friday the 31st of May, I sat in my room staring down a list of upcoming events, grateful for the chance to get a rare decent rest before crashing face first into June.

At ten past one on Saturday morning there was a knock on my bedroom door. Bleary eyed, I wondered what on earth my housemates could possibly want at this hour. I opened my door to find Kim standing in my flat, and not holidaying in the Blue Mountains as she had told me. It was a very nice surprise, and a good reminder that June had arrived, albeit only for an hour, and things were already getting crazy.

So this week I've already had One Body, which went well, and I've still got Happy Yess Comedy to come on Thursday, before I head for Sydney for the regular scheduled, not-so surprising visit we've been planning for a  while. Maybe after that thigns will settle down a bit.

I doubt it




Garry with 2 Rs

A Perfect Weekend

It’s been a little over five weeks since my last trip to Sydney for Easter, so I was very excited to have Kim coming up for the May Day long weekend. I spent a bit of time planning out the weekend and making all the bookings: we were off to Kakadu for three days and I wanted to make sure everything was perfect. There was fuel in the car, food in the bags (!) and plenty of time to take things easy.

We made pretty good time and arrived in Jabiru with enough time in hand to check in and relax before heading out for a Yellow Waters cruise. I was quite excited for this, because although I’ve spent plenty of time floating on wetlands and looking at birds in the past, this time in addition to the sunset cruise we were booked on a night cruise, which was aimed at star gazing and sharing some of the Dreaming stories of the local people about the stars and how they came to be where they were.

Unfortunately the arrangements for cruises had changed a bit since the last time I was out there. The car park for the boat dock was still slightly underwater from the wet season which we are rumoured to have had (I saw very little evidence of this), so the idea was to arrive at the resort just around the corner and get ferried over by someone with a large bus. So you need to get there twenty minutes before the departure time.

I did not realise this.

We arrived about fifteen minutes before and were summarily dismissed and told to come back the next day. It was a bit of a nuisance, but after rearranging our bookings, we jumped back in the car and headed for Ubirr. I’d planned to do Yellow Waters on Saturday and Ubirr on Sunday, but there was no reason why we couldn’t do it backwards, right?

Well, the traffic on the road out to Ubirr is a little bit steadier than you might normally encounter on a road out to the middle of nowhere, and not every car out there is as awesome as my Focus, the GSS Unity. Some prefer to take the road at something a little closer to what I might be able to manage on a golf cart. By the time we made it to the Ubirr car park, the sun was very low in the sky and we were in serious danger of missing the sunset altogether. Fortunately Kim was wearing the sneakers she had assured me she wouldn’t need, so we were able to manage a quick sprint up to the lookout.

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to run straight up a rock face. In my experience it’s not really conducive to the kind of contemplative/romantic serenity I’d had in mind when I planned the trip. Nonetheless, we made it up in time for me to watch the sunset and for Kim to take about sixty identical photos of it.

The next day we were all set to take another run at the Yellow Waters. We took no chances and I made sure I had us down at the resort a full hour before we were due to depart. Unfortunately this meant we had to sit around in the heat for forty minutes waiting for the guides to show up. My father would have been proud of me.

The sunset cruise itself actually went pretty well. The air over the water wasn’t as hot and the guide was out to practice his upcoming comedy routine on us. We didn’t see any jabirus or brolgas, but we got some great views of some White Breasted Sea Eagles, which are my favourite bird and Kim’s favourite rugby team (Don’t ask me why).

We had some dinner and waited until the night cruise was ready to start. It was cloudy, with a slight chance of rain, so the guides did what they could to talk us out of making them take the boat out. We were really keen to go, so we stuck our heels in and asked for the tour to go ahead. After a few delays, a massive and yet still ineffective dosage of insect repellent and an apology that we weren’t going spotlighting, we got moving and went down to the boat dock again.

The boat had a flat battery. We turned around and came back.

I don’t know what dreaming story they tell about that, but I do know that we drove back through the rain, and that by the time we got back to our hotel the sky was clear as a bell. At least we got our money back.

Monday afternoon we got moving again and headed back to Darwin. I wouldn’t exactly say the Kakadu excursion was a complete disaster, but I certainly hadn’t been everything I had imagined. We had a dinner reservation at Nirvana that night, which was handy because I had a voucher I had won at an open mic night a few weeks previously and had stored carefully in the glove box in my car for just such an occasion.

Naturally, it was nowhere to be found when I needed it. That's not unusual; things go missing in my car all the time. But they usually do show up when i need them. My car is a bit like the Room of Requirement. But not this weekend. And I think that's the second one that's gone missing. I can only assume that at some point in the future I'm going to find myself in dire need of Nirvana vouchers (I have no idea why) and there'll be a stack of six of them waiting on my passenger seat.

We had a lovely dinner anyway, and were contemplating desert when Kim got a text message from Jetstar. With just four hour's notice, her flight home had been cancelled. Not postponed, or rescheduled, just cancelled completely. There was a phone number for her to call so that she could organise her own way home, and a promise to pay for accommodation for the night. So we quickly paid (Full price. Oh well.) for dinner and then wandered off into the night to find Kim somewhere nicer than our living room floor to stay.

I took her to the airport the next day only to find that the entire airport had been dismantled by an army of demonic nuclear powered scarab beetles.

Not really.

There are a number of lessons that can be learned from last weekend.

1) Don't use Jetstar ever. I have yet to meet anyone who has had a positive experience with them.
2) Boat rides in Kakadu at night sound really romantic, but probably aren't
3) It doesn't matter how comprehensively wrong a weekend goes, if you have the right company it still turns out pretty good.

Shut up.

Make of that what you will.




Garry with 2 Rs

It's Complicated

A couple of weeks ago I published the internet’s most explosive revelation since Isaac Newton tweeted his discovery of gravity: I’m dating Kirribilli Kim and while the entire blogosphere may have been set a buzz by the information, that’s nothing compared with the furore of comments that erupted when we updated our relationship status on Facebook.

I had a laugh when I changed mine, as realised that since the first day I logged on all those years ago, my status had been set to “It’s Complicated”. And just as you might expect, switching off the sign that says "it’s complicated" was just the signal the karma fairies had been waiting for.

After Tassie, I spent a few days in Sydney with Kim. We hired a car to drive up to the North coast of New South Wales for Kim’s best friend’s wedding. Having not driven in Australia much, Kim has a tendency to drive on the wrong side of the road, so it fell to me to take the helm for an epic journey of discovery.

It should have been simple enough: Get on the Pacific Highway and stay on it for an hour and a half or so. But Sydney has a nasty tendency to spring surprise lane changes, merges and inescapable exits on unwary drivers. If you don’t know what you’re doing it’s easy to end up on the fast lane to Parramatta when you’re supposed to be aiming for the Harbour Bridge. It’s complicated.

By sheer force of will (and blatant disregard of a few road markers) we managed to stay on the highway until we got out of Sydney, but at some point we teleported off the freeway and found ourselves on a windy mountain scenic route, without either of us having any memory of having exited the freeway. It was a lovely drive actually, but I still have no idea how we managed that one. Fortunately the scenic route met up with the freeway again further up. I don’t know how much time it cost us, how we got on it in the first place, or even exactly where we went. It’s complicated.

But it all worked out in the end. We made it to our accommodation in a little village called Long Jetty. As you might expect, the main feature of the area was a really long jetty, which we walked out along around sunset. It was one of the most amazing sunsets I’ve ever seen; Kim must have taken upwards of thirty photos. Even I took a few.

On the way back we were accosted by a little girl who asked us if we had any fish for her, in a voice that suggested she might have been possessed by elves. We didn’t have any fish, so we ran away.

The next day was the day of the wedding. Kim and I got dolled up and made our way out to find the wedding site to make sure we’d have plenty of time and wouldn’t be running late. Sure enough, we found with plenty of time, so we went for lunch in a café up the road. Something went wrong with time, but I don’t know what. It’s complicated. The next thing we knew, we were running late for the ceremony anyway. Fortunately we got there before the bride, so it was all good.

After the ceremony we milled about for a bit and then made our way up to the reception. It was simple enough; Kim informed me that the reception was at a lighthouse just around the corner from the ceremony.

The lighthouse was a beautiful location, overlooking the beach and with lovely conference rooms. It had everything that could possibly be wanted, but it was missing one thing.

It wasn’t actually the reception venue. We had got the photo shoot location and the reception venue mixed up. So now we got to drive around I circles in a sleepy North Coast town, looking for a bunch of people celebrating a wedding. We tried the bowls club and the beach and the lighthouse again, and eventually we had to call someone to find out what the hell was going on. It was in the surf lifesaving club as it turned out, which was both lovely and very difficult to find by accident.

The following day we made our way back to the city and I attempted the most complicated operation I’ve ever undertaken: I took Kim to a cricket game at the SCG and then proceeded to try to explain to an American how cricket works.

By the end of the first innings, she had got the basic idea sorted out, and we were all ready to settle in and put her education to the test in the second innings when the skies opened and the entire match was rained out. No matter, you can check her progress here. I was disappointed not to get to watch the full match, but in the meantime we also got ourselves up on the big screen doing karaoke (don’t ask) and bore witness to the largest beer snake ever constructed. It made it all the way from one end of the Victor Trumper Stand to the other; a truly epic achievement, but perhaps an inevitable outcome at a cricket match with no cricket.

And then before I knew it, it was time to pack up and fly back to Darwin. But first I had to drive our hire car through Sydney peak hour to return it. I had to do three laps of King’s Cross just to get into the lane I needed. It’s complicated.

But that’s Sydney for you, I guess. It’s a nice place and all, but everything you put your hand to turns out to be far more complicated than you realised.

Make of that what you will.





Garry with 2 Rs

Hitting the Ground Walking

Okay… so more of the usual nonsense it is then.

Welcome to 2013; a post-apocalyptic world where the rules have changed, where we stand together as a united humanity in our finest hour, facing an uncertain future with a re-born spirit of determination and togetherness.

Business as usual then.

Apologies for the over-abundance of sentimental and self-indulgent nonsense I’ve been posting over the past few months. It’s all been part of a campaign to give expression to the fact that (possibly due to some fundamental shift in the way the universe works) I’ve become romantically entangled, without mentioning it overtly on my blog. But since my girlfriend has now gone and posted pictures of me all over her blog, perhaps the first post for the year is the right time to confirm that rumours (most of which were probably started by us anyway) are true; I’m dating Kirribilli Kim and I have been for nearly six months now. So there.

So now that game changing revelations, Christmas, New Year and the Mayan Apocalypse are dealt with, life continues apace so, it’s time to put the boots back on, knuckle down and get some serious work done.

So I’m going on holidays.

I’ll be off for a few days in Tassie for a family wedding followed by a week in Sydney spending some time with Kim. I’m sure there’ll be a post or so to come out of that, but if not there’ll certainly be something to be said about the church leadership conference I’m heading to later in the month.

So in the meantime, have a great new year, won’t you?




Garry with 2 Rs

The Write-Me-Back Falls: Episode 3

Previously on Cum Tacent Clament…

“Stop changing the subject and tell me what’s wrong,” I yelled.

“We can’t,” explained OG in a voice that implied I was missing something flagrantly obvious, “We’re not all here yet.”

“Oh good grief,” I groaned. “Who else could we possibly be waiting for?”

“For me, of course,” said a voice behind me. And since I was standing with my back to the cliff edge, that was a little disconcerting. I turned around slowly and realised that it couldn’t possibly have been anyone else.

“Nice of you to join us,” I said to … Samantha Triton.

And now… Write-Me-Back Falls continues.

Ba daah, de dat daah da de dah de dat dat daah – Dat daah de daah de dada daah Daaaaaah.

“Theme music? Really?’ asked Samantha “On a text only blog?”
“Shut up,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“And as if Write-Me-Back Falls would have the theme from A Country Practice as its opening titles anyway.”
“…I was going for the theme from Jurassic Park, actually.”
“You really need to learn to sing better.”
“I really do. How come you can fly?”
“Rocket Boots,” explained Samantha as if it was obvious. She touched down with a hint of overdrive and toggled the rotary speaker effect off.
“Of course,” I sighed. “I suppose there’s no point asking why you’re teaming up with OG and BL over there? I thought you were on my side.”
“Of course I am,” she said, with reverb.
“Then this doesn’t make sense,” I said, by way of plot exposition. “Oxfam Girl is almost completely imaginary, and Biscuit Lady is one hundred per cent metaphorical. You’re real. Or at least, you are when you’re being a piano. Not so much when you’re a flying woman. Also: Why are you dressed like that?”
“I’m a time-travelling space pirate.”
“YOU’RE A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT!”

“I hate to interrupt,” interrupted Oxfam girl. I suspect she quite enjoyed it actually. “But could we get on to what’s really going on here?”
“I’d love nothing more,” I said
“Hmph,” hmphed Biscuit Lady.
“We’re all here because we’re about to be blasted out of existence,” said Samantha, a little too matter-of-factly.

“Don’t be stupid,” I replied, “It’s clear that none of you exist except in my mixed up mind anyway. What have you got to be worried about?”

“That,” said all three of them in unison, pointing out to the electrical storm gathering over the ocean. I laughed at them.

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a little rain cloud?” I chided. “What kind of tropical girls are you?”
“I’m from a musical outlet in Brisbane,” said Samantha.
“I’m from an Oxfam Shop in Sydney. Sort of,” said Oxfam Girl.
“I’m a sociological metaphor, and I don’t like thunder,” said Biscuit Lady.
“Besides,” said Samantha, rolling her eyes, “That’s no ordinary thunder storm. If you look closely you’ll see the lightning is flashing steel blue, with a band of green around the middle.”
“That is unusual,” I admitted. “What do you suppose is causing it?”
“We don’t know,” admitted Biscuit Lady. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I asked the Bureau of Meteorology about it and they said they don’t really have a classification for it yet either.”
“I have a bureau of meteorology in my subconscious?” I asked.
“Stay focussed,” said Oxfam Girl. “No-one knows what that thing is, but we all know it’s dangerous. We can feel it.”

“We’re calling it Resolution Seven,” said Samantha.

“That’s… an awesome name for a thunder storm,” I said as a brilliant flash of blue lightning, the colour of the ocean at sunset, was followed by a particularly resonant thunderclap. And it was certainly getting closer. I watched, fascinated, as the clouds blew in and hovered over the cliff top. The imaginatrixes shivered beside me, and Biscuit Lady was looking decidedly pixelated.

“Get behind me girls,” I said as I smiled insolently at the storm, “This will only take a second.”

It sure did. Almost without warning, a steel blue thunderbolt flashed straight through my chest. The ground shook around me, but I stood my ground, just barely. As a good Christian Boy, I’d never felt more Weird. And as the fireball dissipated and the rain began to fall in warm, huge splotches (none of this rubbish southern rain, thank you very much. It’s my brain after all), I looked around to make sure the girls were okay.

They were gone.

In their place stood a piano, a 'make poverty history' wrist band and a plate of damp biscuits with a 'highly commended' certificate. I smiled, nodded once to say goodbye, and left them behind. As the storm of Resolution Seven closed in, without looking back I stepped to the edge of the cliff and jumped.

This is the part of the dream where I’m supposed to wake up and get on with writing. Apparently I still haven’t. It’s possible this blog is about to get really strange. Either that or I’ll be back in 2013 with more of the usual nonsense. Who knows?

Make of that what you will.




Garry with 2 Rs

Mission Accomplished

So my Nanowrimo campaign has ended successfully. I made it to 50178 words, with just over four hours to spare, in further demonstration that not only can I produce copious amounts of nonsense in a relatively short time span, I can also do it according to a carefully managed schedule. A big thanks to everyone who got behind me to get it done. And a raspberry to those who thought they could stop me.

It still needs some fairly heavy duty proof reading, but if you want a copy of the manuscript let me know. And if you pledged to sponsor me, I’ll be ‘round to collect sometime before Christmas.

Make of that what you will.



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

Extreme Slacktivism

Next month I’m going to attempt National Novel Writer’s Month (NaNoWriMo) again. It's an entirely silly endeavour that challenges writers to compose a 50,000 word novel during November. I gave it a go a couple of years ago, and was successful, both in the task of writing 50,000 words in a month and in the far more important task of beating Kiriibilli Kim.

Despite having a whole lot of other stuff going on, I’m going for it again this year. And this time I’m hoping to achieve the goal I failed at last time, which was to raise money for charity through sponsorship, rather than just writing a whole lot of rubbish for no apparent reason.

Up on the top bar I’ve set up a new tab called NaNoWriMo 2012. If you’d like to get behind me on this, drop a comment here or on that page. Make sure you leave your name or some way for me to contact you. You can make a one off pledge conditional on me getting to 50,000 words, or you can choose to sponsor X dollars/cents per Y words (bear in mind that even 1c per word will come in at $500 if I make it to 50,000, so be careful how you calculate that one).

Any money I raise this way will be donated to the Australian Red Cross in support of their "Save a Mate Our Way" program, which works with community members in remote communities across Northern Australia to reduce alcohol and other drug abuse and to foster initiatives for healthier lifestyle choices.

Please get behind me on this and help me make a difference for disadvantaged and at risk kids in the Top End. By sitting at my computer for hours on end writing stuff. It's like posting memes on Facebook, except it actually achieves something.

Cheers




Garry with 2 Rs

Memory Lane

After all the craziness of Adelaide, I needed some time to relax, so I booked myself in for three nights in Sydney.

It was basically a few days of reliving old memories. I actually checked into the same hotel I was in for the first week so many years ago, back when all this blogging nonsense was still getting started on the hallowed halls of MySpace. I called in to my old church and spent some time in my old work haunt in Chatswood (Appen appears to have long since relocated). I even walked across the same Sydney Harbour Bridge that I used to. I caught the ferry over to Manly for no reason at all, as it was cold and dark and in the middle of winter. The city lights on the way back are still awesome though.

Just for sentiment's sake, I stopped in at the shopping centre to visit the Oxfam shop which was the scene of so much made-up heartache. Not only was 'she' not there, but even the Oxfam shop itself was gone. I was heart broken, and a little disturbed. Oxfam Girl may have had some fictitiousness related issues, but I was sure the shop was real. Maybe the whole torrid affair was even more mental than I realised...

Given the amount of friends I still have in Sydney, and the relatively short time I had to spend there, I seemed to spend an entirely disproportionate amount of time with Kirribilli Kim. I choose to blame a corporate aversion to dish washing for this, but it did make for a great few days.

It all started innocently enough (well…) with a murder mystery party held in Kim’s flat. I was going to skip the explanation for this and just link you to Kim’s post about it, but that turns out to be just a bunch of photos and the rather spurious suggestion that I’m not as cranky as I seem (I flatly deny this). I’m still definitely too lazy to go over the details, but basically Suzie did it and we had taco salad for dinner.

I mention the “salad” for two reasons: firstly because none of us had ever heard of taco salad. I’m not sure if it’s a peculiarly American dish or whether I’ve just spent too much time avoiding anything connected with salads to pick up on it. Seriously, you could call a dish the “three kinds of meat and a couple of cheeses salad” and I would probably still skip over it on the menu. But it was pretty good.

Anyway…

The other reason to mention the meal is to foreshadow the frankly incredible amount of dishes generated by the preparation and consumption of said salad. As the other guests began to filter away from the party, I made the uncharacteristically chivalrous decision to hang around and help clean up. Seriously, the pile of plates was bigger than Kim.

In the subsequent hours, some of the following things happened. Some of them didn’t.

We discussed the relative virtues of various chocolatier franchises.

We invented a new species of duck.

I learned to play euchre.

Kim learned to play the cello.

We washed the dishes.

We discussed pressing social issues from various religious standpoints.

We covered everything in Kim’s housemate’s room in aluminium foil.

We made out for about an hour and a half.

I fell down three flights of stairs.

We slunk away as the sun rose over Neutral Bay, thinking “That was a crazy night. I’m going to regret this”.

Kim walked into a glass door.

What a night! Make of that what you will.




Garry with 2 Rs