Wednesday, November 30, 2005

new endings and sweet beginnings


god i'm tired! but i intend to stay up just a little longer to fill in you, my dear readers, on the doings of today and the wonder of life just now. and yes, i do realise how pretentious that sounds, but i really truly dont care.

to start with, the plane got in at 12:30 this morning, and once i got to bed, i could barely sleep anyway. when i did sleep, and wake, i couldnt beleive i was home. it was sorta disappointing in a way. after a week of being treated like an adult, i feel like ive aged a decade. i feel more refined and sophisticated somehow, and its rather nice. on the plane cait and i talked more than we have in months, really talked about things honestly. we decided that the circumstances and the people from singapore have really really raised the bar for us. yes, in case any of our sing mates decided to read this, i am talking about you guys, dont let you ego get out of control though :p anyhow, it'll be nice to start living now really.

in other news, i think i finally got stupid 'sexual healing' outta my head. damn that song! it has embarrassed me so greatly over the past few days and nearly driven me up the wall in the process. and if anyone knows the name or the artist of that awesome indian thing going around with all th bells and such, comment and let me know, we need it for our holiday cd. ta

anyhow, tonight was our valedictory dinner, so i'm writing this with teary eyes. talk about a nostalgia fest! i almost cried though the presentations, and through father p's homily thingy. it was so very moving, and deeply touching. he may be a little crazy, but he knows how to work a crowd. when sham started singing, i really lost it, and during the dvd my eyes were prickling like mad. my mascara was saved, however, by the clip they slipped in from ITS ACADEMIC!!!! at that point pure embarrassment took over and teary emotion was put on the back burner.

beautiful things were said, promises were made, and i found out that cristine doucas actually likes me (i thought that smile was tolerant embarrassment mostly) which was rather nice really.
so, all i can really say to round it all off, is

goodnight, acheive your dreams and cleanse your souls.

as irreligious as i am, i cant help but quote father P in saying "bless you all" and fare on fair voyagers

rani

Monday, November 28, 2005

Exodus




Well its finally over. Damn pirated DVD people! We could have been wakeboarding and getting sore muscles all over again but nooooooo. Bloody "John Smith" the Malaysian pirated DVD dealer - "I'll be there between 12 and 1pm" he says. "Bah, humbug" says we!

Anyway, putting that behind us, we've managed to cram a good amount of shopping into the last few hours of holiday. Selina and I (being Cait) went out this morning to get our photos developed at the cheap photo place. 521 photos later our total of photos printed at this place found its way into the 1000's (inc. Jess' earlier escapade).
Kirani and Jess later went out, pretending to be Jetstar Asia cabin crew and bought much much perfume at a discounted price! (Thanks Matt!)
This time the room smelt like perfume instead of cigarettes and alcohol - and in our opinion this is a vast improvement.
----------------------------------

Still waiting for "John Smith" - so here's a list of songs for our CD to commemerate the holiday...

-High (Lighthouse family)
-Unchained Melody
-Wind beneath my wings
-sexual healing (don't ask)
-come fly with me
-some Indian thing (Please guys, tell us what it is)
-Bananaphone
-Witch Doctor
-Little Blue Man
-Karma Chameleon
-That one by Fastball
-Tub Thumping
-Bear Necessities
-yellow submarine
-High hopes
-photographs by Nickelback *shudder*
-Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps
-walking on sunshine
-Break my stride
-Lifted (lighthouse family)
-Needles and pins
-Call me
-Zombie
-I'm into something good
-Its my life
-I still call australia home (co-rny)
-shook me all night long
-next to be with you

Hmm... maybe CDs would have been more appropriate...

Okeydokey, we're off to catch our taxi now!
Hopefully we won't crash into any mountains... or get struck by lightning... *jess screaming in corner... wuss*

This is the merry band of travellers signing off!
Ta-ra daaaahlings (Note: This is all Kirani's fault),

Cait, Selina, Jess and Kirani!

PS - Cheers to Dad (Greg), Dave, Pete, Matt and Justin for a great time!
By the way, we're holding you to your word - we'll see you in a month : p

Sunday, November 27, 2005

day the sixth - a defence

firstly, i'd like to mount a defence on behalf of jess and myself to the accusations made against us. we did in fact get home. that at least was a gross falsehood against us. the state in which we got home, and the time was more or less right, but thats not the point. the others really rather missed out in fact, to my mind, as the bar and club we went to were pretty amazing. we crawled home at 4:15ish, and then slept till 10. thats all there is, there isnt any more! nothing that you will ever hear about anyway.

Moving on. Well, today we bought this (even though all the muscles in our bodies (kirani's brain included) were screaming):

Righto- we're off to eat and drink and watch Coupling.
More tomorrow when we're more compos mentos.
Cheers!

Apparently we look 23...

after friday night's dinner two of the guys took kirani, jess and I (selina) clubbing! yay! i'll leave the details of that to your imaginations..... so since we got in at 3.00am it was technically day 5. Jess then got up at 7.30 crazy crazy girl.

today was the day for us to be stereotypical tourists; we went to Sentosa island. much to Kirani and Jess' consternation we took the cable car which carried us across to the island 200 metres above the ocean. we took pleanty of cheesy tourist shots and bought overpriced souveniers and ice cream for lunch. unfortunately the Merlion was under construction so the sound of jack hammers 'shattered the brilliantly constructed illusion of serenity'.
We then headed off for the beaches - sun, sand, palm trees, oil tankers. It was lovely. To the left were palm trees and little cafes and to the right were Malaysian tankers and container ships... picturesque!
Well, we thought so-


After narrowly avoiding a storm (the cable cars weren't *that* strong!) we headed back to the flat for some well deserved rest... or so we thought...

Having finally woken up, we managed to organise another night out with the guys - and since we've been here for a while we realised we needed to wash and dry some of our clothes. Singapore being so bloody humid means that nothing dries in less than a day (or 7) so we decided to brave the little washer/dryer unit that we have in the flat.

Looks innocent, no?

May I just say first, in my own defense, that the instructions for this little machine are REALLY hard to follow. So, after washing our clothes TWICE we finally figured out how to put the machine into "dry" mode.

Two hours later and we discovered the temperature was stuck below 30C and our clothes were still sopping wet. We bumped up the temperature to about 100C and pressed the 'go' button again.

Another hour later and we still had wet jeans. We only had 45 minutes to get ready so things started getting a little desperate. Going between a dryer door that doesn't open while the thing is on, rain, wet shirts, an iron that only has a steam setting and an unopened (until now) box of Ferrero Rochers we finally decided we had to take action or wear wet clothes. So how did we deal with this I hear you cry?

Weapon no. 1: The iron - so steam ironing wet clothes doesn't *actually* dry them.

Weapon no. 2: Hairdryers (x2) - marginally more effective than the iron, we draped our clothes over chairs and proceeded to blow-dry them while listening to the Beatle's Yellow Submarine album.

In the end we discovered that the best way to dry the jeans was through body-jean heat transferral. Ie Jess and Kirani had to wear wet jeans out while Selina and I wore nice, dry skirts!

Eventually we found our way to the Stanford hotel and met up with Dave and Pete, the guys from the night before. The hotel was very swish - there was even a lady in the bathroom to hand you a paper towel! We cruised our way up to the 71st floor and managed to get into the Equinox Bar (there isn't a bar that's further off the ground in the Northern Hemisphere!) even though the minimum age was 23... which we later found out that none of us were above. Selina having caught a cold and not wanting to mix flu tablets with alcohol (good Selina) ordered a Lemon, Lime & Bitters... Unfortunately they didn't seem to know what exactly that *was* so Selina ended up with something that tasted distinctly like Lime juice and soda water - yum! After being joined by Justin and Matt we washed that down with some Indian food and more drinks in a little dockside Indian restaurant . Selina and I being absolutely intolerant when it comes to anything mildly hot stayed with the garlic-flat-bread-stuff and good old steamed rice. Three hours later Selina and I packed ourselves into a taxi and headed off to the flat leaving Kirani and Jess to partay on.

With a ratio of 2 21-24 year old pilots to 1 girl we'll let you know what happens when (and if) they return!

Nighty night,

Cait and Selina (the sober ones)

Saturday, November 26, 2005

The Fourth Day, the Wakeboarding

Good Eeeevening.
Wow - have we had a day! We got up significantly later today and bummed around the flat until about 1315 (that's 1:15pm in pilot-speak) then the four of us, my dad and his coworker, Dave, went for a bit of a wakeboard. Now, for all of you who do not know what wakeboarding is, I'll give you a quick rundown:
Think of a snowboard that requires large amounts of hand-soap to get into. This is a 'wakeboard'. Essentially, you sit in the water, attached to the board, hold on to the rope and let the boat pull you upright. And let me tell you its bloody difficult until you get the hang of it!

Eventually, we all managed to ride the board and even do some nifty turns. We were then completely shown up by Dave who turned out to be a bit of a profficient on the wakeboarding front. The only consolation was the fact that, yes, he could jump the wakeboard... but he could not land. Naturally, much clapping and general bruising occured:


Its true! People falling over *is* funny!


'Please don't let me break a rib, please don't let me break a rib...'


Kirani 'wakeboard extraordinaire' Carlin

Jess getting the hang of things

Moments before my arms fell of from sheer exhaustion

Its not that we're jealous or anything...

And if this wasn't enough, we were invited over to another of dad and Dave's mate's places for dinner. We had spagbol cooked for us and we sat round on the couches listening to music, eating and generally chatting. All in all, very good fun.

Here's the group of us (ignore the beer can... you cannot see the beer can... there is no beer can)

Right. I *am* going to bed now - we're off to Sentosa tomorrow to be freely and embarrissingly touristy.

So, as Kirani would say - toodlepip and all that, wot wot.

Friday, November 25, 2005

day the third

what did day three have in store for us i hear you cry, well here it is. if you thought we were all shopped out yesterday then you we're wrong. we found a wonderful little shoe store where nothing was more than $30 so naturally kirani bought 3 pairs, although these ones are somewhat less 'dominatrixesque'.jess came a close second, buying 2 pairs. i got my mum a genuine POLO wallet for $40 which makes me wonder whether if really is genuine but the important thing is that my mum will never know the difference! One thing we found amusing was the name of this shop;













then we found a place for Jess to get all the photos that shes been collecting up over the year developed. the place was amazing, they printed all 475 photos in 45mins then they gave her 10 free mini photo albums. it may interest you to see some of the photos we came across;

After copious amounts of shopping we all caught a cab home for a well deserved rest and swim. Unfortunately for us, we didn't have the pool to ourselves...

I present to you, the 'Paedophiles from the North'

We were happily making fools of ourselves diving off diving boards when we realised we had an audience... who clapped at us. They looked to be a father-son team, which was all the more disturbing... So we ditched them (after the official-looking guy in the white shirt came over and told them to nick off) and sunbaked to our heart's delight. Mildly burnt but slightly more tanned!

After that was time for our trip to the zoo, or 'night safari'. Catching a London Cab into the zoo grounds we made for the nearest Bongo Burger and ate (real) chips and hamburgers and drank lemonade out of jars...

after the joy of consuming real, actual food, we set off on the 'night safari' part of the night safari. it was all set up like a wilderness with different parts representing different places, ie, savannah, and the aminals thereof and therein. all the critters were illuminated with soft lighting and a tour guide in our littlezebra striped trolley with the soft voice told us all about their little quirks and fancies. we then alighted, and went off to find some leopards. unfortunately, also looking for leopards were a groups of annoying tourists, australians *pft!*, who didnt seem to understand the whole concept of quiet. we shushed them somewhat effectively in the giant flying squirrel cage, but they reccurred as we got to the leopards, making such intelligent comments as "oh look, a cheetah" *head slap*. after we had seen a rather gorgeous leopard, we took off again on the zebra striped trolley, this time with an entirely new guide. she was so cool! think playschool meets the jungle book- she had one of those carefully modulated voices complete with many pauses for dramatic emphasis. We also discovered that she had a thing for cows when she pointed out the asian cows with their "sexy white stockings". more than a little odd.

selina seems to hold a peculiar attraction for fruit bats. or so it seemed when they continually dive bombing her throughout the night. after that, we caught the show in the junglish amphitheatre. so incredibly cute! although kevin, the american presenter with the accent and the hand signals was more than a little annoying. the show was great, involving alot of performing animals, including a cervil, a reticulated python, and something that looked alot like selinas cat beckham. they solved the litter problem with their recycling otters *CUTE!* and there was a striped hyena wandering around in the background with no particular purpose. there was a bit of an uncomfortable moment when kevin realised the volunteer he picked to handle the python was actually a canadian, but that passed ok, and all was well in the animal kingdom. the animals were great, very well trained, which is more than i can say for kevin himself, but hey, hes american, what else can you expect.

AMINALS

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Day 2: Attack of the sore feet

Hello all,

Day two's almost over and wow are we broke! Shopping for five hours straight really takes it out of a girl. Collectively - here is a list of things bought:
2x Indian Pixie Shoes
1x Dominatrix Heels
3x purses
4x bags
24x books
rings, necklaces, stationary, shirts, skirts and cd's, cheesy watches, wallets etc etc.
All in all a good days work, I'd say.

Restaurant Review:
Coffee Club Express - 0.5/5 stars only because none of us have thrown up yet! Never ever ever ever ever ever ever go to a Coffee Club Express. The worst cafe ever!!!!!we started to realise things were going wrong when i saw them making my "passionfruit freeze". all the normal things went in eg. ice, passionfruit juice, then the last ingredient was a large scoop of what i think looked like blue frog spawn. So when i got the drink it was white! has anyone else heard of white passionfruit juice because i sure as hell haven't!!! it was foul! on top of that they couldn't give me a croissant with cheese ham AND tomato because it wasn't programed into the till. so when my cheese/tomato( and lettuce and mayonaise which i didn't ask for) came it was small flat and burnt. yuk!


and while we're one the topic of disgusting/weird food, check this out;


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If there was one reason to love Singapore (besides the people, the beaches, the atmosphere etc) it would be the kinokuniya bookshop. This bookshop... this bookshop was a good 19.6 times bigger than your average Dymocks store - seriously! You couldn't see one side from the other! It was fantastic! There were people sitting in the aisles reading, atleast 100m straight of Literature, general fiction, sci-fi, fantasy and anything else you can imagine. So, considering who we are (especially Kirani), we must have spent a good hour or two walking around this store, being overwhelmed and on the verge of hyperventilating (again, Kirani). I got lost FIVE times! It was amazing! Between us we managed to purchase 24 books of varying sizes and copious amounts of stationary. Nice.


Shopping. Wow, well what can i say- they have everything here! Even the little man at the door of the Louis Vuitton (yes, Louis Vuitton) store opened the door for us and let me into pure torture- everything was absolutely gorgious but wow oh so expensive. But that was only a taser. Image 1000 shops all along Orchard road, with 6 or more floors of Gucci, FCUK, Esprit, Chanel, Cartier, Tiffanys, Armani, Miss Sixty, Nine West and much much more. It is like i have died and gone to heaven- except in heaven i would have a limitless amount of money to spend!

Cheerio till tomorrow,

Jess, Kirani, Selina and Cait

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

SINGAPORE!

the diaries
Okeydokey.
How long have we been in Singapore? Well, let me ust check on my pocketwatch... my $5 pocketwatch! Apparently, we've been here long enough to buy atleast one (or in the others' cases, many) useless items at bargain prices.

hello my sweetlings. singapore is fantastic! hows leavers????!!!! we want all the stories, feel free to include them as comments so we can laugh at you sooner rather than later. to even the odds, heres an opportunity to laugh at us. well, selina anyhow. thing is, she managed within 5hrs of landing, to get locked in the bathroom, 18 floors off the ground. after whacking uselessly at the door for half an hr with various household implements, we eventually had to call in a locksmith! she was stuck in the bathroom for about an hr and a half, while we played blackjack and fish under the door. here are the photos. laugh, laugh hard. we did.




I am in heaven! Shopping here is fantadastic (as Selina would say) cds for $7, pocket watches (yes, pocket watches) for $5 and much much more! Stay tuned for more of our shopping adventures....only one dollar one dollar!

Ok, singapore officially has the COOLEST taxi drivers!!!! one of them broke the ice by singing unchained melody (elvis) then proceeded to tell us every corny joke he knew eg what sort of birds do you hear during dinner????? SWALLOWS!!!! also whenhe asked how many hundeds of thousands of dollars we had brought with us he refused to forget that i have $200 000 apparently therefore i must be george bush. so then we all had to take on the personas of ugly old politicians; kirani=john howard/monica lewinsky (same person)jess=hilary clinton and cait=donald rumsfeld. that gave him an opening for another corny joke; "you're not bush you're a flower". as a final salute he joined us in a chorus of "you are the wind beneath my wings" with comments: "but you don't even know my name, you've only just met me"


well, thats it from us for today, but we will be back (*RUN*)

toodlepip my sweetlings

rani, cait, jess, selina

Monday, November 14, 2005

gough whitlam

ok, i know this is going to sound a little odd, but has anyone else noticed the marked similarity between gough whitlam and dame edna/barry humphries?!

Sunday, November 06, 2005

opera

ok, i have a confession to make; i love opera. really really truly love it. its something about it, and theatre in general that gets the nerve endings tingling.

this love for opera led me to go on saturday to see Carmen performed by the WA opera company at his maj. completely fantastic! best production ive seen in some time. it was utterly mindblowing. Carmen herself did an amazing job, perfectly characterised, lovely voice, and all the rest. don jose was suitably pathetically broke, and escamillo (who i've always loved) was everything he needed to be.

what was not quite in order how ever was the couple who sat beside me throughout the 2nd act (after coming late) and HUMMED!!!!!! ok, they did far more than hum, but it was that which was most annoying. from the smell of them they were excessively drunk, and from the look, both excessively seedy. it all started with the running commentary on the story to his wife, then to the surrounding three rows. his wife, who obviously knew the tunes well, hummed and sang, with ever increasing volume, often pre-empting the performers. throughout the whole, we, and our friends on the other side of them, shushed conscientiously, but to no avail. i think the real high point was during the scene in louis pastilia's bar, while carmen was arguing with don jose, her lover, when the bloke next to me elbowed me rather painfully in the ribs, and shouted out, 'what a bitch' in carmen's general direction. then, during the love aria, when we all got a little teary, his wife begins to cry very noisily, and the man gives us a running commentary of that, starting with 'look, the silly bitch 's crying'. needless to say, they were swiftly removed at intermission by the lovely lovely security people.

but regardless, it was a beautiful time. and for the first time, i noticed the beauty of some of the lines in carmen. particularly the love imagery. for those who dont know, carmen is a very beautiful and seductive worker in a tobacco factory, who most of the men are in love with. she scorns them, and instead falls in love with don jose, the only man who, at least seems to, reject her. don jose is a very dutiful police corporal, with a affectionate mother in a town to the north. the action opens with don jose receiving a letter from his mother, delivered by childhood friend michaila who is love with him. when carmen is arrested for attacking another factory worker don jose helps her to escape, and is jailed for this. she works in the bar belonging to her friend while waiting for his release, and in doing so meets matador escamillo, who falls for her.
don jose is released and returns. he is forced by carmen to join their smuggling operation and become an outlaw. escamillo, unaware that don jose is buzzing around, comes to the smugglers hide out to see carmen, but meets jose standing guard, and they duel. when michaela comes with the message that his mother is dying, it becomes pretty obvious that carmen doesnt love don jose anymore, and he flies into a jeaous rage, knocking her out then stalking off. later, he travels to seville where escamillo is performing as a toreador. he argues with carmen, who continually proffesses her love for another, until he shoots her.

that, in a nutshell, is the story. what i love about it is the all consuming, breathless passion of it all. she (carmen) puts into words the essense of how love should be
Love, love is a rebel bird
that nobody can ever tame,
and you call him quite
in vainif it suits him not to come.
Nothing helps, nor threat nor prayer.
Love, love is a gypsy child,
it has never, never, known a law;
love me not, then I love you;
if I love you, you'd best beware!
it all a rather lovely idea, that love without which you can never live. love that overtakes all things.
a friend of mine told me a few days ago that life wouldnt be better in the opera. think of the minor characters who have no story, let alone love, he said. but how wonderful it could be to be the major character, to have that wonderment and all encompassing passion. instead, the modern world gives us polite, insipid affection. ah well, thats the way things pan out i guess.
anyhow, this has become a rathr long post, and i really really need t be studying
so
i will leave you without more ado, staying only to repeat a rather amusing analogy i was told;
There's two goldfish in a tank, one says to the other "I'll drive, you man the guns
ta ra
toodelpip my sweetlings
rani

Thursday, November 03, 2005

beige-ness

tonight, and everynight in recent times, i feel beige. i dont know why exactly, but beige is definitely the colour of the moment. this is annoying, i'd infinitely prefer to be aquamarine
yes
aquamarine could be nice