If you think I’m tired today, wait until you see me tomorrow.

When it rains, it pours.  The last month has been ridiculously busy!  A few weeks ago I finished up my contract job with the gov’t and fled back to more familiar territory, landing an advertising gig with Stuff.co.nz.  Because starting a new job isn’t challenging enough, I also bought a ukulele and started attending a how-to-play class once a week.  And in addition to that, I put in some serious volunteer time with the NZ film festival, ushering for 20+ films in 2 weeks.  On the basketball front, winter tournament travel has been put on hold, but I’ve still been playing several times per week.  We even played an exhibition game last week against a h.s. team from Iowa, of all places.  I will own up to being hungover as all fuck thanks to a certain film festival afterparty which wound down at 6am, but despite all that we won handily by 10.  Which explains what they were doing in NZ in the first place, instead of a more competitive country…

But Lynn, I hear you say, I kind of hate basketball.  What about this film festival?  Don’t you have some films to crow about?  Well, blog faithful who are probably just my parents, let me forcefully recommend the following:

Four Lions
This was easily my most anticipated film of the festival.  I’ve been a big fan of writer/director Chris Morris since uni, when I discovered his short-lived TV series Brasseye.  The film follows a group of would-be jihadists as they plan a suicide bombing in London.  And it’s a comedy.  It’s a grim subject, and I was impressed by how successfully he balanced the funny with the devastating.  He used a similar structure to Hitchcock (the whole Cinema of Attractions thing), making you laugh really hard and punishing you a second later with something sobering.  The result is an intensely dark comedy which I can’t recommend enough.

A Town Called Panic
This film wasn’t on my radar going in to the festival – I only saw it because a spare usher shift was available and a friend at work had mentioned it.  But wow, talk about a movie after my own heart.  It’s a claymation film from Belgium, ostensibly for children, with a cracked-out sense of humor.  If you enjoy horses with purses and drunkenness and upside-down undersea worlds and robotic penguins and millions of bricks, this movie is for you!  Apparently it’s on Netflix Streaming right now, so you all really have no excuse not to check this one out.

I Am Love
Just a gorgeous film, this one.  Tilda Swinton (the lady, not the cat, may he rest in peace) plays a wealthy Russian socialite married into an Italian family.  And for a couple hours we get to watch them find various truths for themselves via some beautiful cinematography and excellent sound editing.  It was a joy to watch.  If that’s not enough to get you to see it, consider it the cinematic equivalent of pouring out a 40 for Michael’s dearly departed cat.

Wah Do Dem
A Brooklyn hipster goes on a cruise to Jamaica alone thanks to an ill-timed breakup, ends up stranded in the country with no wallet, shirt or shoes, and makes his way to the US Embassy in Kingston via misadventures.  This film should have been insufferable (it was made for like $50k with handheld cameras and non-actors) but it was actually rather wonderful.  It captured the whole range of foreign travel experiences, from the horrible to the sublime, and really just made me happy to be out in the world, misadventures and all.

The Room
Let’s face it, we all knew I was going to love the shit out of this movie.  I am a big fan of terrible movies, and The Room was one of  the best/worst I’ve seen.  A must-see – and don’t forget to watch for the spoons…

So there you have it!  And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some homemade focaccia (rosemary + grape) to check on…

Got shoes, got moves

cultural differences, exhibit a, originally uploaded by lynnith.

As I mentioned in my last post, I spent the past few days in New Plymouth playing for team Wellington in the first of three national Women’s Basketball Championship tournaments.  We ended up in seventh place (out of ten), which wasn’t a bad result considering we’d only put the team together a week before.  It took us a few games to find our feet and we lost our first three before winning the final two.  I came away from the tournament fairly pleased; five games in three days was brutal for someone as old and lazy as myself, but I pushed through and ended up having a great final game, nabbing 12 points and a few blocks.

Not many of you knew me when I was last a competitive basketball player.  I stopped playing in 2001 at age 17 after years of serious training, games, tournaments, summer camps, fall ball, ice buckets, and creaky knees.  By the end of it I was burned out, just another okay player from a string of underachieving teams.  I never really looked back.  Even at the UW, where a basketball band spot was pretty coveted, I didn’t bother to audition.

So you can imagine how strange and wonderful it is, ten years on, to be playing at a national level.  I’m not sure how long this will last – I am not the player I used to be – but it is certainly fun to get a second chance at all this.  Even if I do have to deal with an annoyingly over-sized key and things like the above photo, which I can only assume is an elaborate So D-Vine reference!

In the southern hemisphere, no one can hear you blog

the gang at the acdc show, originally uploaded by lynnith.

Yeah, so I’ve been neglecting this blog thing for a while, but you know, blogging and traveling is hard, whine whine whine whine.  But you two readers (hi mom! hi dad!) are in luck, because tonight I am taking a break from being utterly trashy (see above photograph) to recap my last few months in the middle of nowhere.

Avid readers will note that this blog last left off as I was packing to leave my home in Melbourne, whining about the 90 degree heat.  As of late I have become a professional flee-er of summer, so should not surprise anybody that I landed in Auckland just in time to experience its famed 60s-and-raining weather.  After a couple days in NZ sprawl, I caught a Stray bus north to Paihia in the Bay of Islands.  I spent a week up there, hiking, sand-boarding, boating, eating pies, and brushing up on my beer pong skills.   I saw whales, waterfalls, cows, and best of all, an east coast sorority girl try to explain the concept of rush week to the English.  It was great.

The weather started getting too warm (UPPER 60s!), so after my week in Paihia I packed my bags and headed for Seoul, S. Korea to visit Our Lady of Catface for Thanksgiving.  My friend Amy, who some of you may know as 1/3 of Facedowns, has been teaching English out there for the last year.  This was our second expat Thanksgiving – previously, we taught the Irish about green bean casserole and garlic mashed potatoes and gluttony despite the Great Chip Pan Fire Incident of ’06.  Fortunately, this time we didn’t lose our intended kitchen three days before the feast.  And we’re quite proud of our massive achievement – the upstairs neighbor called the cops on our party at 7pm on a Saturday!  Result!

Disinterested in any further run-ins with the law, I fled back to New Zealand and commenced a bus tour of the North Island’s tourist hotspots.  Highlights included boogie boarding and flying fox-ing in Raglan, blackwater rafting in the caves of Waitomo, rafting down a 7m waterfall in Rotorua, walking around White Island (an active marine volcano) in a gas mask and hard hat, and the ultimate NZ tourist activity, skydiving at Lake Taupo.  I had a fantastic time, and met some great people, but NZ is hard on the pocketbook, so a week before Christmas I headed down to Wellington to resume working.  And in typical me fashion I’ve been funemployed ever since!  Actually, that’s not true – I’ve been doing a bit of temping, but (don’t tell my agencies) I don’t consider that real work (or fun!).

The upshot to being underemployed is that I have been doing a bunch of cooking.  In the last few months I’ve successfully made fresh pasta & ravioli, peanut butter, jam, dill pickles, pulled pork, barbecue sauce, scones, muffins, applesauce, roasted chicken & stock, tomato sauce, and all kinds of other delicious things.  I am going to try to blog a bit more often, and hopefully share some recipes as I try them.

More updates soon (so I promise) about what I’ve been up to in Wellington and etc…

Sorry I haven’t blogged in ages. Here’s some yum-yums.

oh, just baking cookies and gazing at my awesome view, originally uploaded by lynnith.

I’ll be posting about all my travels since Melbourne soon. Until then, enjoy the view I have every time I go into my kitchen!

Americans should be seen and not heard

I’m sitting in my living room right now, willing it to stop raining so I can go to the market in peace.  This will probably not happen, and anyway it’s sad that this ex-Seattleite is being so wimpy about rain.  It’s just that one of the great things about Melbourne is that the rain never lasts very long, so you can usually just wait it out.  By the looks of it though I think the weather is gonna win this round.

My life here is approaching some semblance of normalcy, now that the film festival (and my accompanying open bar-induced hangover) is over.  I’m settling in to the office routine, and though my job requires no actual thinking – I think it could be done by a child, to be honest – it’s pretty easy to speed through the day and I get to leave on time no matter what.  I actually rejected a call from a salesguy on Wednesday because he called at 5:30.  Perhaps my co-workers were mortified, but working past then is not in my contract, so they can shove it!  My goal for the job is to stay as un-ambitious as possible and just focus on two things: stockpiling cash for future adventures, and finding the most delicious Vietnamese food in Richmond.  So far it’s working – I had great pho at lunch the other day, and I get paid on Monday!!

Otherwise I am starting to find my place in this city.  Of course one of my more important tasks was finding a basketball team, and to that end I played three games last week.  The first one was pretty meh, it was a co-ed social club with all the usual issues – showboating guys loath to pass to the girls.  Fortunately, Melbourne has a HUGE sports centre in Albert Park, with all kinds of swimming pools, racquet sports, and about 12 basketball courts.  I’ve joined a team playing in a Tuesday night league, just like at home; they’re all super nice and fun to play with.  One of them also plays in a Thursday league, and for some reason I agreed to fill in since one of their players was out last week.  That team was pretty cool too, so I’ve agreed to be a sometime-substitute for them as well, when I don’t have any other Thursday plans.  It’s been nice to get back into that routine, even though I’m still feeling it…

My house & housemates continue to be pretty cool; we all still get along really well and often end up just hanging out in the living room after work.  Last Saturday, the weather was amazing – 60+ and sunny – so we randomly decided to go to the beach.  I even saw a Shiba Inu there, so, mission accomplished I guess!  It was E’s birthday on Friday so we went out to a chill downtown bar called The Lounge, which has a few floors & a cool second-story balcony with some nice city views.  Rooftop drinking & outdoor cinema are apparently Melbourne institutions so when the weather gets nicer I’m going to start exploring that a bit!  Oh, and on a side note, the CSI-type-show’s production company never called us back, so we are all pretty disappointed but will not be playing junkies/dealers/dead bodies in our living room on nationwide television.  So sad.

Yesterday I went over to Northcote to see a play my friend is stage managing.  We all know I don’t really do the whole theatre thing, but free makes anything worthwhile.  Also, the bio of one of the actors – who has a PhD in something medical – was very Tobias Funke-like!  The suburb is up on a hill (I swear it’s the only hill in the city!) & has amazing views of Melbourne; I think it’s like being on Beacon Hill but further south.  Northcote has some cool bars, as well, and after the play I ended up in the beer garden of one of them, playing bocce ball until about 1:30… and then I walked home, which takes about an hour, because I’m cheap!  I really like walking across a city at night, though, there’s something cool about passing through empty, dark suburban streets and ending up outside happening bars & things and just observing it all.

Okay – I think it’s just raining now to spite me.  I swear it has gotten windier and rainier since I started complaining about it.  Curses!!  I should probably just head over to the market, considering that if this rain never stops and we all get trapped in our houses for days I only have rice, peanut butter and eggs to keep me alive.  Hopefully I won’t drown on the way!

American for tangerine is ‘shut the fuck up’

Don’t ask me why I’ve swapped a Seattle summer for a wintery Melbourne, which is exactly like a rainy Seattle fall.  We even had a thunderstorm today!  But I’m here, and in the last 4 days I’ve managed to find a place to live, secured all the essentials (bank account, mobile phone &c) and, more importantly, secured a couple volunteer jobs at the Melbourne film festival.  I’m helping out with the marketing/sponsorship stuff while I look for actual paying work here, and then when the fest starts I’ll be doing merchandising or something.  I actually started volunteering today, just for a couple hours, and already have some free tickets!  So suffice to say, things are going very well here.

By this point some of you may be wondering how the laziest person you know managed to get this far.  Let me let you in on a little motivational secret: living in a hostel.  Nothing like waking up at 4am to a screeching English girl in the room next door going on about how she can teach her roommates English even though she knows nothing about grammar because, in her words, “you can just talk and I can correct you when you make mistakes!” to give you the energy you need to get the hell out.  It was when she started lecturing them on the definitions of tangerine and tambourine that I put my bitch hat on, knocked on her door, and informed her that American for tangerine is ‘shut the fuck up.’

Actually most people in the hostel are pretty cool, and I’ve made friends with a few German girls.  We’ve gone exploring in St. Kilda, cooked a big group dinner, done the obligatory drinking, and apparently tonight there is going to be karaoke?  Don’t worry though, I won’t destory any foreign eardrums by singing myself…