Russian Drinking Tips

Under the category, you learn something new every day, my Russian colleague Gregory gave me a number of drinking tips last night, none of which I've heard of before.

Of course, the main advice was on how to drink vodka the Russian way - as well as not to get too smashed when drinking with experienced Eastern Europeans.

1. Make a toast, or after someone else has made a toast, clink your glasses with everyone.
2. Sniff a piece of pumpernickel bread.
3. Exhale quickly and completely
4. Down the shot all at once (I was mostly doing half-shots... I know. Wimp)
5. Without inhaling, put some food in your mouth - a half a cherry tomato, a pickle, etc.
6. Eventually. Inhale.

This reminded me of advice I've heard from smoking marijuana where you are supposed to hold in your puff as long as you can before blowing out. Which I heard from elsewhere was a myth.

The instructions above seemed pretty effective though - considering that 2 bottles of vodka were shared betwen 4 of us... (with others participating in the toasts but not the vodka) - and that I barely felt drunk (pat on the back for me).

Other advice:

• If no food is available, then sniff your shirt sleeve instead of the bread.
• Don't mix drinking different types of vodka (=hangover)
• Always eat something with a shot (which is modified advice from what I've always heard: don't drink on an empty stomach)
• Start from the lightest alcohol during an evening and end with the heaviest. Beer-Wine-Vodka is fine. Vodka followed by Beer is apparently disastrous. Which, come to think of it...
  

The Blog is Comatose / Facebook Thoughts

I've felt little need these days to keep up with a public blog. Everyone is making their lives and thoughts so public these days, it seems like overkill.

I haven't succumbed to the Twitter craze, either reading or writing.

I have become addicted to facebook - and I found in many cases that their "notes" function means I reach a far greater number of my friends than my blog would.

I guess the one thing that the blog is useful for is a kind of public meandering thought process, where your words might be stumbled upon by a random stranger... as well as for getting up writing that you want to make public - since facebook notes are still only limited to your friends, unless you want to make your profile completely public. Which would be a bad idea, methinks.

Oddly, I also feel somewhat shy about using the notes function on facebook, knowing that it is SO accesible to so many people that I know. How strange that it seems more anonymous to blog about something since far fewer people will read about it here.

So many levels of privacy in one's lives these days, or in facebook parlance "settings". What parts of my life do I want open to family and friends, what parts would I prefer to share with an anonymous blogosphere, which of my photos do I want everyone to see, and which do I hide away on my Picasa account so I can share them with a specific few?

Having said that, I'm finding it more and more interesting to see how my friends respond to facebook, now that it is no longer a passing phase. I think we've passed the mass acceptance phase and are onto the late adopters, even older folks who are finding that this is the way they're going to see family photos or be kept out of the loop! That means that most people are on it, and the few who aren't fall into a few categories. Those who truly are hopeless at technology. Those who truly are too busy with their lives offline. And the die-hard resisters who become braver and more isolated by the day. They seem to come in three categories, though with intersection. Those who think it would be a waste of time and find communication with friends a chore rather than pleasure, those who don't want to live public lives (and imagine facebook being an invasion of their privacy), and those who prefer to limit their social interactions to a small number of loved ones in an old fashioned manner.

I have some admiration for all of them... though I don't exactly relate to those feelings, and feel frustration when I can't share my photos with them, or invite them to my facebook events.

But stay tuned (my few and anonymous readers). I do have some ideas for some blog postings, which will hopefully go up sooner rather than later.

Christmas Dispatch

A few days from Christmas. I'm sitting down with a California Sauvignon Blanc in a guesthouse down from my brother and sister-in-law's place in Kaneohe, Hawaii.

If I had gone home to Vancouver, it would have looked like this at my family homestead. Our neighbour sent this photo of our home, and another of our street.

But here in Hawaii, the weather is milder. I tried to post other photos - My grandma's old house (now my brother's family's) and her street. I visited here almost every other summer when I was a kid, until about the age of 12, when the trips became more intermittent.

Last Christmas, at my dear friend's house near Pottsville, I think it was he, Daniel, who told those of us assembled about the "tur-duc-hen". How had I never heard about this?

"A Turducken is a de-boned turkey stuffed with a de-boned duck, which itself is stuffed with a small de-boned chicken. The name is a portmanteau of those ingredients, turkey, duck, and chicken. The cavity of the chicken and the rest of the gaps are filled with, at the very least, a highly seasoned breadcrumb mixture or rice dressing and sausage meat or seafood stuffing."

We looked it up on wikipedia to discover that the largest recorded nested bird roast is 17 birds, attributed to a royal feast in France in the early 19th century. We laughed about it for days, and later that holidays, when I told my partner and his best friend about it, the word Turducken kept ringing in her ears as we drove around the South Island of New Zealand.

So, imagine my surprise to find out this Christmas, as part of our feast, we will be having a turducken roll. I can't wait...

But of course, the real reason I'm here is for my family. My nephew and niece are adorable, energetic, and exhausting. They believe in Santa Claus and when they see him at the malls, or at the Christmas Light Street, they call out, "Santa, santa, santa!" It will be fun to see them on Christmas day opening their gifts.

I suspect I won't be sending out a newsy e-mail update this year, but will simply leave it at this. A dispatch from here, to wherever you may be, with wishes to you for a great holidays and new year.

(And in fact, it worked much more easily to write this dispatch and attach photos using facebook notes. Uh oh, blogger. Are your days numbered?

Books I've Read

I first kept this list on my webpage, but then figured that it would be easier to edit (and access) on my blog. Of course, now on facebook, I quite like visual library, in terms of the covers, and seeing mini-reviews by friends and others - though it doesn't seem very orderly. So for now (as of 7 July 2008, my 39th birthday), I'll keep trying to update this list. Time to put up some of the books I read in 2008.

I’ve kept an informal list of books I’ve read in the last few years though I've missed recording a number. I sometimes get this feeling I don’t read enough – but then realise that I actually read a lot, especially on planes and in hotel rooms, with all the work travel I do.

Miscellaneous books that I read and loved (before I started keeping this list)

• Milan Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being (and others)
• Alice Munro’s Short Story collections (all of them!)
• Lorrie Moore’s Birds of America
• Edmund White’s Boy’s Own Story (and others)
• Favourite poets (of which I’ve usually read a few of their books): Margaret Atwood (Selected Poems 2 is excellent), Mark Doty, Sharon Olds, Patrick Lane, Pablo Neruda.
• Anne-Marie MacDonald’s Fall On Your Knees
• Wole Soyinka’s Season of Anomy
• Salman Rushdie’s novels (particularly Midnight’s Children, Satanic Verses)
• Paul Monette’s Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story
• James Merrill’s Changing Light at Sandover

Bolded means that I think your life is less complete without reading this book (or at least that I really really loved the book).

2009

• Reading Six Feet Under - TV to Die For (Cultural Studies) - not for everyone, academic analyses of different themes in the TV show, but it allowed me, with pleasure, to revisit the best TV show ever.
  
• Alice Sebold's The Almost Moon (Fiction) - it didn't grab me, or was this just because The Lovely Bones was so unforgettably good.
  
• Dorothy Porter's The Bee Hut (Poetry) - a beautiful short collection, published posthumously and including some of the last poems of this very original voice.
  
• Norman Doidge's The Brain That Changes Itself (Science) - thought about this for weeks, talked about it with friends for weeks. Still affecting the way I view the world.
  
• Lorrie Moore's Collected Stories (Short Fiction)
• Tara Moss' Fetish (Crime/Thriller)
• Robert Bly's translation of Rumi, The Kabir Book (Poetry).
  
• Haruki Murukami's Dance Dance Dance (Fiction) - Wow, does this man have an interesting mind. Really enjoyed it.
  
• Henry James' The Aspern Papers (Fiction) - since I was passing through Venice, I took a friend's recommendation to read this slim book set in Venice. Now I can say I've read some Henry James...
• Tim Winton's Breath (Fiction) - A lot packed into this short novel.
• Second Person Queer (Essays) - Finally read this anthology that I was included in. A few great pieces, not sure whether the idea works as a whole book.
• James Robert Baker's Adrenalin (Fiction) - Phew. A wild ride, read on the high recommendations of friends who are huge fans of his. A piece of gay history.
  
• David Ebershoff's the 19th wife (Fiction) - Interesting topic. Didn't like it as much as the Danish Girl.
• Tim Winton's Dirt Music (Fiction) - God I loved this book. Great introduction for me to a premier Australian writer.
• Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon (Crime) - read for a literary salon which I eventually couldn't make it too. Darn. Could see it was the model for much of what followed - but didn't love it.
• Dorothy Porter's Monkey's Mask (Poetry/Crime) - also (re)read this for the salon. Amazing book. Quick read!
• Michael Ondaatje's In The Skin of The Lion (Fiction) - I read this aloud to my partner - an interesting experiment. When are they going to make a movie of this?
• Kate Atkinson's When Will There Be Good News? (Crime Fiction) - A nice surprise, as I loved her first novel, to see she's turned to crime... and with a great story and characters. sweartogod.
• Anne Enright's Yesterday's Weather (Short Fiction) - Enjoyed them. Now curious to read her Booker Prize winning novel.
  
• Edmund White's Hotel de Dream (Fiction)
• Tom Cho's Look Who's Morphing (Short Fiction)
  
• Ken Wilber's Grace and Grit (Philosophy/Biography) - I'm loving this book as I read it and it's changing the way I think about spirituality, enlightenment, disease and the new age movement.
• Levitt and Dubner's Freakonomics (Culture/Non-Fiction). A great read. Fun and insightful and challenging.
  
• Alice Munro's Lives of Girls and Women (Fiction). I'm a huge fan of Alice Munro - and it was interesting to read one of her early books.
• Best American Poetry 2008 (Poetry) - My pal John introduced me to this series years ago. I really like this year's collection. Some stunning work.
• Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence (Fiction) - completely adored this.
  
• Best Gay Poetry 2008 (Poetry) - some amazing work in here
• The Kite Runner (Fiction) - Good story but I didn't love the writing itself. Maybe I expected too much because of the hype.
  

2008

• Markus Zusak's The Book Thief (Fiction)
• Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants (Fiction)
• Sean Horlor's Made Beautiful By Use (Poetry)
• Lorna Crozier's Whetstone (Poetry) Stunning.
• Sharon Olds' Blood, Tin, Straw (Poetry)
• Miranda July's No One Belongs Here More Than You (Short Fiction)
• Alex Boyd's Making Bones Walk (Poetry)
• Fiona Tinwei Lam's Intimate Distances (Poetry)
• Anne-Marie MacDonald’s Fall On Your Knees (Fiction) - Reread it to see if I still liked it as much. I did.
  
• Margaret Atwood's Moral Disorder (Short Fiction)
• Jes Battis' Night Child (Fantasy)
  
• Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (Fiction)
• Elizabeth Bishop's Eat Pray Love (Memoir)
• Alain de Botton's Essays on Love (Fiction)
• Sarah McDonald's Holy Cow (Memoir)
• Keirsey's Please Understand Me II (Personality Test)
• Nam Le's The Boat (Short Fiction)
• Brian Rigg's A False Paradise (Poetry)
• Augusten Buroughs' A Wolf at the Table (Memoir)
• Sarah McDonald's Holy Cow (Memoir/Travel)
  
• Candace Bushell's Sex and the City (Fiction/Journalism)
• Martin Harrison's Wild Bees (Poetry)
• Alan Weiss' Getting Started in Consulting (Business)
• John Gould's Kilter (Short Short Fiction)
• A.M.Homes' Things You Should Know (Short Fiction)
• Eduardo Galeano's Memory of Fire (History/Fiction)
• Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist (Fiction)
• Raimond Gaita's Romulus, My Father (Biography) - Loved this book as a portrayal of immigrant Australia. Great characters, great storytelling.
  
• David Marr's The Henson Case (Non-Fiction) - A clear, lucid account of the Bill Henson controversy
• Kevin Hart's Flame Tree: Selected Poems (Poetry)
• Colin Carberry's Ceasefire in Purgatory (Poetry)
• Michael Ondaatje's Divisadero (Fiction) - Great finish to the year. What a beautiful book.
  

2007

• Alain De Botton’s The Art of Travel (Philosophy)
• Henri von Doussa's The Park Bench (Fiction)
• Jonathan Lethem's Men and Cartoons (Short Fiction)
• David Mitchell's Ghostwritten (Fiction)
• Linda Gregg's Flesh and Things (Poetry)
• Billy Collin's Sailing Alone Around The Room: New and Selected Poems
• Best American Poetry 2006
• Jerry and Esther Hicks' Ask and It Is Given (New Age/Philosophy)
• Rattawut Lapcharoensap's Sightseeing (Short Fiction)
• Steven King's On Writing (Non-Fiction)
• Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake (Fiction)
• Alexander McCall Smith's The No. Ladies' Detective Agency (Fiction)
• Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's (Fiction)
• Jean-Dominique Bauby's The Diving-Bell & The Butterfly (Memoir)
• Anonymous's The Bride Stripped Bare (Fiction)
• Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Law Vegas (Nonfiction/Journalism)
• David Allen's How to Get Things Done (Career/Self-Help)
• Gangaji's Diamond in Your Pocket (Spirituality)
• Seminal: The Anthology of Canada's Gay Male Poets (Poetry)
• Patrick Lane's What the Stones Remember (Memoir)
• Eckhardt Tolle's A New Earth (Philosophy)
• Ben Elton's High Society (Fiction)
• Suzanne Chick's Searching for Charmiane (Biography)
• Tracy Quan's Diary of a Married Call Girl (Fiction)
• Alice Munro's The View From Castle Rock (Memoir)
• Margaret Atwood's Moral Disorder (Short Fiction/Memoir)
• Alice Niffenegger's The Time Traveller's Wife (Fiction)
• Pablo Neruda's Isla Negra (Poetry)
• Milan Kundera's Farewell Waltz (Fiction)
• Salman Rushdie's Grimus (Fiction)
  

2006

• Mark Doty’s The Source (Poetry)
• Mark Doty’s School of the Arts (Poetry)
• Ken Wilber’s No Borders (Philosophy)
• Stephen Greco’s The Sperm Engine (Erotica/Memoir)
• Alice Munro’s Runaway (Short Fiction)
• Sean Condon’s My ‘Dam Life (memoir/humour)
• Daniel Gawthrop’s The Rice Queen Diaries (memoir)
• Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi (Fiction)
• Joanne Harris’ Chocolat (Fiction)
• Edmund White's My Lives (Autobiography)
• Gregory Maguire's Wicked (Fiction)
• Michael V. Smith's What You Can't Have (Poetry)
• George Ilsley's ManBug (Fiction)
• Edmund White’s My Lives (Autobiography)
• Eckhardt Tolle's The Power Of Now (Philosophy)
• Shauna Singh Baldwin’s What the Body Remembers (Fiction)
• Shalini Akhil’s The Bollywood Beauty (Fiction)
• John Murray’s A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies (Short Fiction)
• Lorna Crozier’s What the Living Won’t Let Go (Poetry)

2005

• Jonathan Franzen’s The Twenty-Seventh City (Novel)
• Gerald Stern’s Last Blue (Poetry)
• Alain De Botton’s Status Anxiety (Non-Fiction)
• Michel Houellebecq’s Lanzerote (Fiction)
• Noel Rowe’s Next to Nothing (Poetry)
• Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line Of Beauty (Novel)
• Dorothy Porter’s The Monkey’s Mask (Poetry)
• Lynne Truss’ Eats, Shoots and Leaves (Non-Fiction)
• Gerald Stern’s This Time (Poetry)
• Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink (Non-Fiction)
• Jill Jones’ Screen Jets Heaven (Poetry)
• Marshall Moore’s Black Shapes in a Darkened Room (Short Fiction)
• Sandra Alland’s A Shape of a Tongue (Poetry)
• Victoria Finlay’s Colour: Travels through the Paintbox (Non-Fiction)
• Michael Cunningham’s Land’s End (Non-Fiction)
• Gerald Stern’s Lucky Life (Poetry)
• Steve Kluger’s Almost Like Being in Love (Novel)
• Tony Hoagland’s Donkey Gospel (Poetry)
• Greg Wharton’s Johny Was and Other Tall Tales (Erotica)
• Kevin Bentley’s Let’s Shut Out the World (Memoir)
• Randall Mann’s Complaint in the Garden (Poetry)
• Jameson Currier’s Desire, Lust, Passion, Sex (Short Fiction/Erotica)
• Ann Hood’s An Orthinologist’s Guide to Life (Short Fiction)
• Kevin Bentley’s Wild Animals I Have Known (Memoir)

2004

• Best Gay Erotica 2004 (Erotica)
• Mark Doty’s Still Life with Oranges and Lemons (Non-Fiction)
• Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda (Novel)
• Gerald Stern’s American Sonnets (Poetry)
• Peter Minter’s Empty Texas (Poetry)
• The Complete Guide to Spirits and Liqueurs (Non-Fiction)
• Best Gay Asian Erotica (Erotica)
• David Sedaris’ Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (Humour)
• Ian Phillips and Greg Whartons’ Law of Desire (Erotica/Anthology)
• Meanjin’s Australasian Issue (Review/Anthology)
• Gerry Turcotte’s Winterlude (Poetry)
• Philip Hammiel’s In the Year of our Lord’s Slaughter (Poetry)
• Marshall Moore’s Ideal for Living (Novel)
• Wayson Choy’s All That Matters (Novel)
• Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex (Novel)
• George Ilsley’s Random Acts of Hatred (Short Fiction)
• Anne-Marie MacDonald’s The Way the Crow Flies (Novel)

Around 2003

• Best Gay Erotica 2003 (Erotica)
• Tracey Quan’s Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl (Novel)
• Jim Gladwell’s The Tipping Point (Non-Fiction)
• Joel Tan’s Monster (Poetry)
• Sharon Olds’ The Unswept Room (Poetry)
• Laurie Moore’s Self-Help (Short Fiction)
• Luke Davies’ Running with Light
• Carol Shield’s Unless (Novel)
• Kevin Bentley’s Boyfriends from Hell (Anthology)
• David Sedaris’ Naked (Humour)
• Kate Fagan’s The Long Moment (Poetry)
• Michael Farrell’s Ode Ode (Poetry)

Around 2002

• Michael Cunningham’s Home at the End of the World (Novel)
• David Eberschoff’s Rose City (Short Fiction)
• Michael Chabon’s Adventures of Cavalier and Clay (Novel)
• Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost (Novel)
• Martin Foreman’s Butterfly’s Wing (Novel)
• Noel Alumnit’s Letters to Montgomery Clift (Novel)
• Michael Smith’s Cumberland (Novel)
• Michael Cunningham’s Flesh and Blood (Novel)
• Louis Bernieres’ Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (Novel)
• Jonathan Franzen’s the Corrections (Novel)
• Imogen Edward Jones’ My Canape Hell (Novel)
• Scott Heim’s Mysterious Skin (Novel)
• Colm Toibin’s The Story of the Night (Novel)
• Eva Sebold’s The Lovely Bones (Novel)
• Ursula Leguin’s The Other Wind (Novel)
• Seamus Heaney’ The Open Ground (Poetry – Collected)

Around 2001

• Dave Egger’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Novel/Autobiography)
• Jhumpa Lamphiri’s Interpreter of Maladies (Short Fiction)
• Michael Cunningham’s The Hours (Novel)
• Neal Drinnan’s Glove Puppet (Novel)
• J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (Novel)
• Nicholas Jose’s The Red Thread (Novel)
• Blaine Marchand’s Bodily Presence (Poetry)
• Billeh Nickerson’s Asthmatic Glassblower (Poetry)
• Mitch Cullin’s From The Place in the Valley Deep in the Forest (Short Fiction)
• Steve Kluger’s Last Days of Summer (Novel)
• Neal Drinnan’s Pussy’s Bow (Novel)
• Elizabeth Knox’s Vintner’s Luck (Novel)
• Edmund White’s Farewell Symphony (Novel)
• Francisco Ibanez’s Flesh Wounds and Purple Flowers (Novel)
• Bruno Bouchet’s The Girls (Novel)
• Dennis Altman’s Global Sex (Non-Fiction)
• Micha Ramaker’s Art of Pleasure (Non-Fiction)
• Marshall Moore’s the Concrete Sky (Novel)

Rush!

What a morning to wake up late. My 7th morning in Nepal, and previously, I'd woken up at 5:30 or 6am almost every day. I can't quite adjust to the 5 and 3/4 hour time difference (did you catch that? a quarter hour time change!). Last night, I fell asleep early too - as I don't feel like boozing by myself, Kathmandu is not a night-time place for me. And I put my alarm next to my bed. But must not have set it.

So, a deep dream and waking up with a start. Damn. Just after 6am, and I was aiming to be in a taxi now, half an hour away from the airport, where I was supposed to check in for my short flight around My Everest an hour early at 7:30. So, throwing on whatever clothes I could fine, rushing out the door, grabbing things on the way: the camera being the most important. There are no taxis at the bottom of my hotel's street where they usually are, so I need to run out to the intersection. The taxi driver won't use the meter - but doesn't charge as much as I'd expected. 300 rupees, or $6 Australian. Fine, I say, let's please rush. So, instead he gets out of the car, and another driver gets in. "Are you single?" he says. I'm looking at him in disbelief, and say, "please, to the airport, I need to catch a flight." "Are you single?" he repeats again, and I motion for him to start driving.

Of course, I realize as we start driving, on roads that are thankfully quiet, that he was asking if I was waiting for another passenger. Nope. It's like how I can't get used to the south Asian headbob. Those in the north don't do it, but a woman I work with sometimes from Kerala, jiggles her head clockwise and counterclockwise, yet fixed in place as if at the back of her head, aligned to somewhere just below her nose. They do it here too in Nepal, but it seems even more pronounced, and somewhat unexpected. At a gut level, I'm understanding "no", it's close enough to the negative shake of the head, before I remember that it's more of a "yes", an I understand you, sure, whatever.

It takes only 20 minutes to get the airport, I rush in and try to figure out the melee. I jump the queue to put my bag through the x-ray machine ahead of a mountaineering expedition with a dozen packs. The security guard points at my waist as I go through the scanner. "Open, open," he says, but I don't have anything to open, no waist-bag (I've stopped saying fanny-pack after living in Australia), and my crumpler bag is just now coming out of the x-ray machine. I look at him quizzically. He points at my fly.

An enthusiastic volunteer rushes towards me loudly pointing me this way and that, to the airport tax counter. I'm thinking that I can't possibly have to pay the foreigner's exit fee of $35 just for the mountain flight, so brush him off and try to check-in. And get sent back to the tax counter. It's only $4. They can't find my time on the passenger list, and slowly think about what to do, before writing my name down by hand. I'm short-tempered these last two days. I find the people here lovely in manner, warm, and with beautiful eyes. As I always try to do when I'm travelling, I chat to people in stores, try to be respectful, when people stare at me in the street, I smile and say "namaste". But I'm a little tired after a week here.

Inside the boarding area, I rush to the gate. But I can't figure out what's going on. It's crowded, perhaps a hundred of us or so waiting. The guard at the gate looks at my boarding pass, and tells me: "not 7:30am, 9:30" and then "Japanese, are you Japanese?" Which I get here on a regular basis. I don't mind the assumption, as I've been mistaken for Japanese ever since I grew a beard and moustache, but it's boring having it called after me so often.

I'm tired and flustered. I busted a gut to get here on time, and don't love the idea of a two hour wait here, but I finally check with another guard, who tells me the flight will be at 8:30, and they'll call for boarding 15 minutes before. So, here I am, after the rush, in the internet lounge, hopeful for clarity, good conditions, safe flying.

Some small things about Nepal

I wake at 5am. My neighbours have woken the last two mornings at 5:30am; I've been roused by a low male voice talking at full strength through the thin walls of the 5 star Hotel de L'Annapurna. I don't know if he's talking to someone else in the room, or on the phone, or? So this morning, I've pre-empted that - I guess I'm staying on Australia time for now, 5 hours later. I switch on the light, get up. When I look back down at my bed, a small brown bug in high contrast to the white sheets scurries along. Cockroach? Bed bug?
Later, there will a blog post about about my overall impressions of a place I've wanted to spend time in, my amazing colleagues, the sites I hope to see. But for now, the small things. As I've been in meetings for 2.5 days and have seen little:
I was lucky enough to remember to request a seat on the right-hand side of the airplane as I flew into Kathmandu from Bangkok. I had no idea what to expect, and how beautiful it would be, to see the mountains floating on top of the clouds.
Thai Airways, one of the two Asian airlines that fly into Nepal from Sydney, provide their own version of the customs declaration form for arrival. I loved it. Among the non-consumable items that you are allowed to bring are: Used Portable Music System One Set and Recorded or Blank Cassettes up to 10 pieces; Tricycle 1 piece; Used Fountain Pen One Set. Ball Pen or Pencil One Set; Used Simple Medical Equipment One Set for Doctor; One Set Playing Item for Player; One Set Musical Instrument For Musician; Fishing Rod; Perambulator 1 Piece. Passengers having more than the given quantity are required to proceed to the Red Channel. Dear Reader, I lied. This artist of deception smuggled through my three ball point pens and headed out through the Green Channel.
Outside the terminal, the taxi touts are omniprescent but wander away when I say that the hotel is sending a pick-up. At the ATM machine, I ask for more than the daily limit. I punch in a reduced request, and a women security guard appears suddenly through a door to the side of the machine. "No, no," she scolds, but I can hear the whir and buzz of a successful transaction. At the hotel room, I see that I received 8,000 instead of 10,000 rupees. You have to admire an ATM machine that gives it what it wants to give you, rather than what you ask for.
The hotel is familiar, the same that I stayed at on my visit in 2005 (painfully short, with little time for sightseeing, I literally had to jog around the famous stupa here to get back to my waiting driver). Traveller's tales often end in the toilet; I won't diverge. I love the bottle water they've left for me there. "Thirst-Pi". Named by an admirer of mathematics, or is Pi an allusion to Pee? It was the winner of the internatonal quality award for commercial prestige, in Italy, in 2002. Which I suppose it reassuring. I've heard many times over the years of how the western position for toilets is unnatural; squatting is better. This one seems to combine the two. The plastic seat slopes back so that I feel like I'm wedged in place. Neither comfortable nor natural. Comical, I'd say.
I'm gifted with a week in Nepal this time, before the next meetings in Delhi. Unusually for me, I haven't planned what I'm doing! This morning, I'm visiting a colleague in the hospital, and will visit three organisations during the day. I'm considering going to Nagarkot tomorrow evening, which will then allow me a famous sunrise view. I might as well take advantage of the time I'm waking up!

Musical Theatre, Cabaret, Dance and Plays - Shows I've Seen

While I'm at it with concerts, why not list a few shows I've seen too - big shows and little shows, but memorable for some reason or other.

Australia (+)

2009

• Avenue Q, Sydney (August) - The Australian cast made it their own, and I loved it.
  
• Pilobolus Dance Theatre, Sydney (May) - Amazing and beautiful, the vocabulary of dance that I am familiar with was upended and expanded. Very erotic.
  
• Lipsynch - Robert Lepage
  
• The Twink and the Showgirl - Phil Scott & Vincent Hooper - Parramatta Theatre
• Gutenberg! The Musical - Seymour Centre (2 different casts)
  
• Alan Cumming: I bought a blue car - Sydney Opera House
• Justin Bond is Close to You (Feb 2009, The Studio, Sydney Opera House)
• Gatz, Elevator Repair Service Company, Playhouse at the Opera House, (May 09)
  

2008 and before

• My Fair Lady
• Priscilla
• Mamma Mia
• Titanic!
• Into the Woods (New Theatre)
• Angels in America Part I (New Theatre)
• Falsettos (New Theatre)
• Merrily we Roll Along (university production)
• The Hatpin, Seymour Centre, Sydney
  
• Sweeney Todd (two different productions at the Opera House)
• Avenida Q (mexico city)
• Pippin, Kookaburra, Sydney Theatre
  
• Cabaret
• Homebody/Kabul, The Belvoir (08)
  
• Stringberg's the Dance of Death with Ian McKelland (03)
• Chess, Theatre Royal, Sydney
  
• Wicked, Melbourne (08) - fantastic!
• Little Show of Horrors (08, New Theatre)
• Kaash - Akram Khan Company, August 2002. Great Dance Performance.
• Laramie Project, Company B Belvoir.
  

Europe

• After a time in London, I was encouraged as a gay man to get to know Sondheim. At the Edinburgh Festival, I saw an amazing version of "Into the Woods", a mediocre "Company" and a god-awful "Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum".
  
• And then in the following two years saw at least 3 productions of "Side by Side by Sondheim", 2 of "Merrily We Roll Along" (both great), and "Assassins". Also, a concert version of "Sweeney Todd" and the amazing "Sondheim Tonight" tribute show at the Barbican Centre, London from September 1999
• Tony Kushner's Slav's (Edinburgh)
  
• Rent (London production)
• Fame
• Miss Saigon
• The Iceman Cometh (with Kevin Spacey)
• Naked (with Juliette Binoche)
• Pippin
• Godspell (a children's version - didn't know until we got there...)
• Richard II with Ralph Fiennes at the Gainsborough Film Studios, London, 1998
  

Canada/U.S.A.

• My brother's high school put on "My Fair Lady", "Godspell", "the Wiz" and "South Pacific" (in which he played the Chinese manservant)
• And then when I got to high school, there was "Oklahoma" and "Godspell".
• I also remember a high school production in Hawaii of "West Side Story"
• And a touring version of Annie
  
• Chorus Line (Touring Cast)
• The Good Woman of Szechuan (Peterborough)
  
• Marat/Sade (I was in it!) (Peterborough)
• Happy Days (Peterborough)
• The Caucasian Chalk Circle (Peterborough)
  
• Cabaret (Touring Cast)
• Rent (Vancouver, Touring Cast)
• Angels in America, parts 1 and 2, new york, summer of 1994
  
• Thoroughly Modern Millie, Broadway
• Avenue Q, Broadway
• Forbidden Broadway - 20th anniversary celebration - Sept 2003, New York
  
• Gypsy (with Bernadette Peters), Broadway. Sept 2003 (Sigh, I passed up Into the Woods with Vanessa Williams and saw this instead.)
  

Concerts I Have Been To

At an Eros Ramazotti concert in Oct 08, I was musing at the amazing artists I've seen from around the world, and while around the world. I thought I'd indulge myself with a list of concerts of famous, obscure, alternative, and mainstream folks that I've seen through the years.

Australia

• Eros Ramazotti
• Sufjan Stevens
• Dixie Chicks
• Pink Martini
• James Keelaghan
• Kylie Minogue (Fever Tour - Aug 2002)
  
• Scissor Sisters
• Polyphonic Spree (I think this was my favourite show ever)
  
• Iron and Wine
• Aengus Finnan
• The Idan Raichel Project
• Josh Groban
  
• Robynne Dunn
• kd lang (twice)
• Rufus Wainwright/Beth Orton (tribute to Leonard Cohen concert)
  

Europe (+ more)

• James Taylor (London)
• Nanci Griffith (London)
• Ani Difranco (London)
• Orchestra de la Luz (Expo 92)
• Celia Cruz (Expo 92)
• Sarah McLachlan (Expo 92)
• Lucie-Blue Tremblay (Expo 92)
• Celine Dion (Expo 92)
  
• Ryuichi Sakamoto (London)
• Shawn Colvin (London)
• Zizi Possi (Rio)
  

Canada

• Men at Work (Vancouver - my first concert ever, I was teased at school because of it, but hey, I loved them)
• General Public (Vancouver)
  
• Suzanne Vega (Vancouver)
  
• Bob Dylan (Vancouver)
• John Gorka (Peterborough)
• James Keelaghan (Peterborough)
• Ani Difranco (Peterborough, at least twice, and Toronto, once)
• Spirit of the West (Peterborough)
  
• Holly Cole (Ptbo)
• Molly Johnson (Ptbo)
• Stephen Fearing (Ptbo)
  
• Angelique Kidjo (Vancouver)
• kd lang (expo 86)
• Michel Lemieux (expo 86)
• David Bowie (Vancouver, Let's Dance tour)
• Shonen Knife (Toronto)
• Bruce Cockburn
  
• Jane Siberry (Vancouver)
• The Flirtations (Vancouver)
• Lynn Miles (Vancouver)
• Leah Delaria (Toronto)
  

Old Poems

(26 Oct 08) Today I tackled a folder of old poems on my computer. They were written on old PCs, and are now barely readable by my year-old Mac - being the organised-sort that I am (i.e. so organised that it scares people who are unorganised), I decided to decode them and put them in an archive file.

It was an interesting journey scanning over the first poems that I ever wrote, at university, nearly 20 years ago, and from a few years after. I saw the handful that made it into my first collection of poetry, Slant, others that came close, and more that were never in the running.

As a young writer, I often did not have enough to say in the poems, there was a good idea or image, but not much else. I had the tendency to describe emotions and the world in general and grandiose terms, with an occasional interesting turn of phrase, but often lacking something specific, a detail, which would really bring a phrase to life.

I wrote too often about poetry itself, and language, but being young had nothing wise to say. There were some pieces which are better off as pages of a journal, a few cringe-making earnest political tracts (the one about the anti-fur lobby stood out here).

But I was also drawn to what made good poetry: weight, gravity, grief, joy. There was a lovely youth and liveliness to some and occasionally I could keep an idea uncomplicated but sharp enough to work well. It was interesting to revisit all those seeds and grains and see how they grew into what were published in magazines, and then my books, to see the young poet in formation, in love with words, already on his way.


Peach Stone

This translucent stone
is bright and simple.

I fixed it to my forehead
with apricot jam
and thought of you all night.

Now it reaches you
after having travelled
through spaces
no person could ever fit.

Touch it to the ground once more
and ask from it its secrets.