You Stay Classy

Distance Traveled:   79,730 kms (BNE-MEL-SYD-BKK-PKT-BKK-CNX-BKK-PP-SR-BB-PP-HCMC-NC-TH-HA-H-L-MR-AG-SV-TF-AC-LL-ML-CZ-TF-CZ-SV-L-BP-ZG-SP-LJ-VN-PG-SZ-MN-ZR-GV-ML-FC-RM-FG-MN-VC-CT-RM-PDX-NYC-DC-PH-NYC-HP-NYC-LA-SF-SB-LA-BNE)

Time Difference: None!

Soundtrack: Michael Jackson, barbershop, Beethoven, Rihanna, Beyonce, Muse

Stacks: None!
Agent Rejections Received:  14

Three hundred and fifty four days. Sixteen countries. 92 towns and cities. Countless stairs and steps to bell towers, castles, mesas, hills, cathedrals, ruins. Mountains and deserts. Rivers and jungles. Caves and beaches. Lakes and volcanoes. Tigers, elephants, dogs, butterflies, camels and monkeys. The world's best paintings and sculptures. Art from most modern to most ancient and everything in between. Natural history, human history, culture shock. Tiny one horse towns to the world's largest cities. Every kind of food known to humans. Orchestras, choirs, barbershop, master pianists, jazz bands, steel drummers, rock concerts, traditional music of all kinds. Planes, Tuk Tuks, minivans, taxis, buses, sandpans, yachts, trains, cyclos, trams, cable cars, subway / tube / metro. Eating, drinking, dancing, swimming, talking, writing, singing, walking. ADVENTURE.

I was reminded of the phrase “Life Is A Journey, Not A Destination” when I arrived back here to Dad's place on Saturday and noticed a wall hanging which I had given to he and Lyn a couple of years ago, which said just that. How interesting it was to me to see an item which, in hindsight, had absolutely no application to the life I was actually living, but that obviously still resonated with me. I thought about how angry I became when I went to Washington DC and saw all these beautiful phrases about what a great country the USA was inscribed in the stone monuments which had no bearing on the actual social politics of modern day America, and realised that by preaching that phrase to others when I was living a miserable and untruthful existence, I had been doing precisely the same thing. Fortunately, and unlike the American government, I have now rectified that situation. The life I was living before seems cloudy, strange and nightmarish, and the life in front of me seems shiny, full of hope and promise.

I was happy to be overseas, and now I'm happy to be home, I think mainly because I'm happy, full stop. A whole bunch of crap I have been carrying around for years both mentally and physically gradually dropped away over the course of the last 12 months as I began to realise what I needed to make myself whole again and began making choices with those goals in mind. Now that I know what I want to be “when I grow up” (a writer) I will be pursuing that goal with as much assistance as I can render myself in terms of conducive lifestyle choices. Basically that means I refuse to go back to the miserable, soul destroying boys' club of the corporate world and will instead work probably in hospitality, life a frugal and uncluttered existence and write, write, write until someone wants my stuff. My next non-writing goal is to win a gold medal at the national barbershop contest with a quartet, so with all of the above in mind I have decided to move to the Gold Coast in order to better facilitate both my new hippie lifestyle and my singing aspirations, as there are other singers there I wish to be around.

Final shout outs need to go to my NYC crew - they know who they are - who made my time there so much fun and so memorable. To my hosts Denise and Sheridan in Santa Barbara for taking me in for my last three days and just letting me chill the fuck out, I shall be forever grateful. Of course I cannot forget the lovely people in London who allowed me to camp out in their lounge rooms for the entire six weeks I was in the UK, and the four couchsurfers I met along the way who let me into their homes for a few nights each and helped me navigate their cities. Finally to all the random strangers who will never read this, who helped me figure out the freakishly confusing New York subway, who helped me with directions / bandaids / advice and conversation along the way. Every person I remember is now inextricably woven into the fabric of my one year adventure. Last and certainly not least, to everyone who has liked, commented, shared my adventure with me online, who has eased my homesickness with news and emails, and who has had me in their thoughts for the duration – thank you so much. I never felt too far away, because of you guys.

I have gritted my teeth and applied my left brain to the task of indexing all of my blogs in case someone would like to re-visit a specific one or recall something about a particular country at some stage. Please see below for the list of all. They are all linked.

Til The Next Journey...

*LOVE*

Natalie



BLOG INDEX

9^th October 2011
LaunchingEat, Write, Eat (and Kiss) Your 2012
Australia: Melbourne, Sydney

15th October 2011
Money Money Money
Thailand: Phuket, Patong.

22nd October 2011
Two Steps Forward...
Thailand: Bangkok, Chiang Mai

30th October 2011
Desperately Seeking Supervision
Thailand: Chiang Mai, Golden Triangle

9th November 2011
The Culture Shock Club
Cambodia: Phnom Penh

13th November 2011
Gods of Emo
Cambodia:  Kep, Kampot, Sihanoukville, Ream National Park, Siem Reap

20th November 2011
Waste Not, Want Not
Cambodia: Siem Reap, Tonle Sap, Battambang

27th November 2011
Trains and Boats and Planes
Cambodia: Kampong Chnang, Phnom Penh

4th December 2011
System Re-Boot
Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh City, Mekong Delta, Ninh Chu

11th December 2011
Ahoi hoi!
Vietnam: Nha Trang, Tuy Hoa, Hoi An

18th December 2011
I Am The Rain Goddess
Vietnam: Hoi An, Hue

28th December 2011
Children of the Revolution
Vietnam: Hue, Hanoi, Halong Bay
UK: London

6th January 2012
Rocking the Kasbah
UK: London
Morocco: Marrakech

15th January 2012
Hillsongs and Hijabs
Morocco: Marrakech, Sahara Desert, Dades Valley

22nd January 2012
Agadoo-doo-doo
Morocco: Gueliz, Agadir

29 January 2012
Que Pasa, Bitches?
Spain: Seville

5th February 2012
What is Six Times Seven?  Nope, Not There Yet
Spain: Tarifa

12th February 2012
Me Gusta
Spain: Algeciras, Gibraltar, La Linea de Concepcion, Malaga

19th February 2012
Happy Festivus!
Spain: Cadiz, Santa Cruz de Tenerife

27th February 2012
Glittery Cockroaches
Spain: Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Mount Teide

4th March 2012
Fool On The Hill
Spain: Cadiz, Seville
UK: London

12th March 2012
Full Of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing
UK: London, Birmingham

25th March 2012
At The End Of The Day
UK: London, Hampton Court

9th April 2012
Yeah, Nah
UK: London, Warwickshire

22nd April 2012
Travelling Tastebuds
Hungary: Budapest
Croatia: Zagreb, Split, Hvar, Dubrovnik, Mljet, Korcula, Makarska

29 April 2012
City of Music, City of Dreams
Slovenia: Ljubljana, Bled
Austria: Vienna

7th May 2012
My Favourite Things
Czech Republic: Prague
Austria: Salzburg

13th May 2012
U Bahn, Me Bahn
Germany: Munich
Switzerland: Zurich

21st May 2012
Run To The City Of Refuge
Switzerland: Geneva
France: Lyon

27th May 2012
No, This Is Amore
Italy: Florence

3rd June
Venus In Firz
Italy: Florence

10th June 2012
The Adventures of Crazy Pig Stupid and the Fire Giraffes
Italy: Florence, Pisa, Rome

17th June 2012
Hoc Est Meum Italia
Italy: Rome, Tivoli

24th June 2012
Romancing the Cone
Italy: Rome, Fuiggi, Naples, Amalfi Coast (Minori), Venice

1st July 2012
Magic Mountains
Italy: Cinque Terre
USA: Portland

10th July 2012
Keep Portland Weird
USA: Portland

15th July 2012
These Vagabond Shoes
USA: New York

22nd July 2012
The Madhattan Tea Party
USA: New York

12th August 2012
Freedom. 20% Off.  Limited Offer!
USA: New York, Washington DC, Philadelphia

26th August 2012
How Sweet It Is
USA: New York, Cape Cod

9th September 2012
Fat Bottomed Girls
USA: New York

16th September 2012
Life, The Universe and Everything
USA: New York

23rd September 2012
Howl and Other Noises
USA: New York, San Francisco

Howl and Other Noises

Distance Traveled:   64,970 kms (BNE-MEL-SYD-BKK-PKT-BKK-CNX-BKK-PP-SR-BB-PP-HCMC-NC-TH-HA-H-L-MR-AG-SV-TF-AC-LL-ML-CZ-TF-CZ-SV-L-BP-ZG-SP-LJ-VN-PG-SZ-MN-ZR-GV-ML-FC-RM-FG-MN-VC-CT-RM-PDX-NYC-DC-PH-NYC-HP-NYC-LA-SF)

Time Difference: -17 hours (from Brisbane)

Soundtrack: Joni Mitchell, kd Lang, Beastie Boys, Mozart

Stacks: None!
Agent Rejections Received:  12

Does anyone need me to caption this?

I tried to cram everything I still had left to do into my last few days in New York, and almost succeeded.  Ultimately I’m happy with everything I saw, and spent my last full day in Manhattan just wandering around, saying goodbye to my midtown and downtown haunts, having one last lobster roll, taking the Staten Island Ferry past the Statue of Liberty and enjoying the crisp autumn air.  Does anyone else ever feel discombobulated at the change of seasons?  I was already feeling quite jittery and unsettled at the thought of leaving (my subconscious was grabbing onto the sidewalks and kicking her legs in the street) and the change of weather added to it.  As a result in my last 24 hours in the city I veered wildly from devastatingly sad to nervously excited and touched pretty much every point in between.  It was exhausting!  I was glad I got to have my one last date with New York though.  Our relationship has been turbulent but always passionate, and I think of late I’ve been taking it a little for granted.  It was nice to get back that surge of love and affection I felt for it when things between us were still new and exciting.  I will miss it.

Headliner comedian

The second comedy night I went to was quite different from the first.  I think the comedians were trying out new material as it was a Monday night, and a few of them read from notes and had a quite a few jokes which fell flat.  That’s always awkward isn’t it?  The headline act was a mixed race guy and told quite a few racist jokes – he asked all the people from different nationalities in the audience “Who are your Mexicans?”  There were Swedes, English people, Germans and others there, and they all answered various other races when he pointed to them until he got to the Norwegians and they said “the Swedes”.  It was actually quite funny.  Then he went off on a spiel about Indians and how the domestic violence rate there is about 70% (true I understand) and was making a variety of jokes about beating women that which I won’t repeat here.  Interesting, the personal lines we draw, isn’t it?  I believe that stand up comedy is one of the last bastions of free speech and comedians should be allowed, nay, encouraged – to joke about any subject under the sun.  I retain my right to find them unfunny or offensive (on topics such as domestic violence, rape, paedophilia among others), but this is why TVs have off switches and clubs have exit doors.  In other words I like that the freedom to be horribly offensive and inappropriate in the name of humour exists, even if I don’t like the humour myself.

Egg Cream

Finding someone to take me to a Yankees games proved to be a more difficult task than expected.  I eventually managed to twist a friend’s arm and we booked it in for the Tuesday night before I left, and then the weather decided to play sillybuggers that afternoon, cancelling the game.  I was not available for the postponement, so I ended up leaving NYC without ever setting foot inside Yankee Stadium or seeing even one second of baseball, which is irritating.  I’ll take it as the universe’s way of telling me I shall have to return for a visit.  On the plus side I went out for dinner that night and got to try my first ever "Egg Cream", a weird kind of milkshake with seltzer water in it.  I don't think it contains any egg actually, or much cream, if any.  But it was a NY thing apparently I *had* to do.

Really leaving things to the last possible minute, I took my seven snail mail writing queries to the post office on my final afternoon and sent them off to the agents.  Thus far out of 49 queries I have received 12 outright rejections and 2 follow ups, from whom I have heard nothing back.  A lot of the agents say that they simply don’t contact you at all if they aren’t interested (like, they don’t even acknowledge receipt of your work! So rude!) so I can safely presume after a decent amount of time that the others from whom I haven’t heard are also a “No”.  This is fine as my expectations have always been realistic on the first novel front.  I have already started writing my second…

At the restaurant

My leaving dinner was a blast.  I decided to try Ethiopian food for the first time, and it was a great experience, although would have to be one of the worst looking cuisines I’ve ever seen in my life.  Afterwards we went to a local bar and tried to sing (most of us were barbershoppers) but got shushed by the waitress as apparently some of the other patrons had complained.  That’s a first for me!  Interesting.  Still, I had a great night and was really happy I got to spend one last evening with just about everyone I had hung out with in my time in the city.  You can click here to see my pics from the last date with the city and my leaving do.

My blackboard

On Thursday I spent a looong day travelling to San Francisco, as due to this part of the trip being a change to my flight home, I had to go via LA.  As a result I didn’t arrive at my hotel until late, and my tired eyes brightened when they landed on the room.  It’s like a little writer’s haven!  There is a beautiful desk and lamp which sit next to black venetian blinds, through which the streetlamps glow in saffron lines across the furniture.  A blackboard and chalk sits patiently waiting for your waffle.  The walls are beautiful VJs up to about head height, over which is white wallpaper with Jack Kerouac’s “On The Road” printed on it in old typewriter text.  A book of Alan Ginsberg poems, The Great Gatsby and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas hard copies sit on a retro black lacquered table, and a huge comfy green paisley armchair finishes the room off.  It’s just divine, and I don’t want to leave!  I could live here easily (if I could afford it).  San Fran is really expensive, and my four nights here are costing more than a month’s rent in New Jersey, if you can believe it.  It was partly my fault for forgetting until last week that I had to actually book myself somewhere to stay.

Steel drum band

People have told me a lot about San Francisco in the past.  They told me about the hippie culture, the great food, the wharf, Golden Gate bridge, the freaks, architecture, dot com millionaires etc.  And they were right!  It has all of those things, and it’s a really fantastic place (I’ve been calling it San Fabulous).  You know what no one told me though?  How much MUSIC there is everywhere!  I’m surprised no one thought to mention it, really.  On my first night there was a lone saxophonist playing under a streetlight near my window, and I have been rarely without some kind of soundtrack since.  There are buskers on every street corner – really good quality ones.  This morning I stood and listened to the most stunning soprano sing Ave Maria until I actually got a tear in my eye.  Yesterday, among others, I passed a steel drummer group, an amazing black vocalist who sounded like Otis Redding, a young kid in a white suit and hat playing trumpet interspersed with tap dancing, a willowy electric violin player and an incredible keyboard player and singer.  All these people belong in clubs and on albums.  I have heard several people just singing as they walk along the street or take the train.  Of course there are a decent number of people who just stand there and rave to a captive audience of thin air, as well, so you sometimes need to listen for a minute to figure out which group they belong to.

You can click here to see my first tripping around San Fran album.  It has seals in it!  Loads of seals!

The famous chowder.

Highlights here so far were definitely Lombard St (the crookedest street in the world) Haight & Ashbury (hippie central) and The Golden Gate bridge.  Also being able to eat an entire Dungeness crab - only slightly smaller and less tasty than a mudcrab - for $16 was pretty sweet.  The famous fresh Bourdin sourdough breadbowls filled with steaming chowder are an absolute delight, as was the shop full of every possible flavor of saltwater taffy under the sun.  I went mad, and have since made myself feel ill three times after overeating the stuff.  Someone take this damn sugar away from me!!  I was doing so well!  I’m glad that as well as crooked streets, San Fab also has an abundance of hilly ones.  Much exercise is needed.

Land rights for gay whales!

I have never seen so many penises in one place.  San Fabulous really… err… embraces… the human form.  On a tour around yesterday (I took a bus in disappointment and at a loose end after finding out that trips to Alcatraz were booked out until after I left the city) we passed a group of naked men standing near City Hall.  I think maybe they were protesting their right to be naked in public, although they were all quite clearly naked in public and I didn’t see anyone arresting them so I’m guessing they probably just could have gone about their daily business.  Today the nakedness was a little more expected, as I went to the Folsom Street Fair, a gigantic leather and fetish street festival.  Still, it was quite the visual overload, and I found myself shaking my head occasionally to clear it of something I had just seen.  I have taken many photos but can’t post them all to facebook because they violate the nudity guidelines.  Still you can see the rest of my San Fab photos and the ones that pass muster by clicking here.

I have also recently added some food to my food album, so you can check it out here.

Tomorrow I am catching a bus to Santa Barbara, in the hope that it will be warmer than here and I can actually spend some time on a Californian beach before I come back.  Thursday night I fly out from LAX, and I land in Brisbane at 11 on Saturday morning.  You may have seen my FB invite to the Welcome Home Party that Dad is throwing me at his place on the 13th October.  If you haven't, you are welcome to come, just ask for details.

Til Next We Speak

*LOVE*

N

Life, The Universe and Everything

Distance Traveled:   60,470 kms (BNE-MEL-SYD-BKK-PKT-BKK-CNX-BKK-PP-SR-BB-PP-HCMC-NC-TH-HA-H-L-MR-AG-SV-TF-AC-LL-ML-CZ-TF-CZ-SV-L-BP-ZG-SP-LJ-VN-PG-SZ-MN-ZR-GV-ML-FC-RM-FG-MN-VC-CT-RM-PDX-NYC-DC-PH-NYC-HP-NYC)

Time Difference: -14 hours (from Brisbane)

Soundtrack: Loads of barbershop, Spring Awakening recording, Elvis, Lacuna Coil

Stacks: None!
Agent Rejections Received:  7

Not my pic

As my final Broadway experience I decided to see Avenue Q.  If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a musical based on an apartment block in a fictional outer borough of New York.  The complex is inhabited by a mix of humans and puppets, some of which are meant to represent humans and others which are “monsters”.  The superintendent of the building is Gary Coleman (Diff’rent Strokes), who is played by a woman.  Songs include: “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist”; “The Internet is For Porn”; “It Sucks to Be Me”; and “Schadenfraude”.  Some of the puppet characters have sex on the stage, for quite a long time actually, and the profanity-laced music and dialogue is interrupted by frequent colourful cartoon messages and words on screen, Sesame Street style.  Hooked yet?  It was certainly a different one!

I liked the concept of using such a unique setup to tackle relatively sensitive “coming of age” dilemmas.  Did it pull that off?  Not really, in my opinion.  There wasn’t any real insight or anything markedly profound about the content.  The payoffs were pretty limp.  It was more like “Oh, here is this issue”.  “Now here is another one.  Lalalala.”  I would have preferred that they just kept it silly and fun, rather than attempting to deliver a poorly articulated bunch of messages.  Still, I found it entertaining for the most part, and was especially glad that I managed to get a last minute box office ticket for twenty dollars!  As in every single show I’ve seen here, the talent and production were exceptional.

Oh, hi!

On Monday night I headed out to Brooklyn to work with the Sweet Adelines chorus there on some Barbershop 101 stuff.  It was heaps of fun!  The group was really responsive and worked super hard.  By the end of the night I felt like I’d given them a lot of really solid things to work on, and of course I also got to spend some more time with the lovely ladies I met when I first arrived.  One of them kindly hosted me in a fabulously named suburb called Rockaway, where I spent the night petting her fat cat Oreo and listening to the sound of the waves crash on the nearby beach.  I need more beach.  Need it now!!  I finally experienced a true fresh onion bagel with lox and cream cheese from a little Jewish deli, and it was absolutely to die for.  You can click here to see my updated Brooklyn album.

Saturday dinner at Vocalfest

It’s been quite a musical week.  I had my last rehearsal with the Sirens on Thursday night (as I fly out this Thursday) and afterwards a couple of us went to the Voices of Gotham afterglow downtown, following a performance they had.  This was my last night with most of the boys too, so it was a bittersweet evening.  You can see my updated Sirens and Voices album by clicking here.

This weekend was spent with a bunch of Sweet Adelines from Region 15 (New York and New Jersey), including the Brooklyn girls and my very own Sirens.  Education and fun all rolled into one!  We had an incredibly impressive vocal coach working with us on technique, and some other interesting classes.  Nights were spent sharing beds at the Parsippanny Sheraton, many laughs and very little sleep.  I couldn’t have asked for more perfect timing in terms of a bonding experience with my girls before I left.  Of course now it makes me even sadder to be going!

Click here to see the photos from the weekend.

Street Fair on 8th

Speaking of sad, I went for a walk tonight to get icecream with a friend from Jersey and his two dogs.  He is coming to my leaving dinner on Wednesday so I didn’t feel sad about saying goodbye to him (yet), but it was my last time hanging out with the naughty puppies and, oh man.  What is it about animals?  I felt like my heart was breaking when I cuddled them goodbye.  I think they picked up on it too because they stopped going crazy and chasing each other around like idiots as I was about to leave, and came to hug and lick me when usually they just ignore me while they’re playing.  It just kind of hit me that it’s entirely possible that it is the last time I will ever see either of them!  Hard.

Today I encountered my first proper NY street fair and had the best pizza I’ve had here.  Not bad for a delirious outing after four hours' sleep.  Delirium took a fairly benign turn but still announced its presence when I noticed some makeup on a tissue I had used to wipe my face and got totally grossed out, thinking I hadn't taken my makeup off properly the night before.  I scrubbed one side of my face vigorously before realising that I had actually applied makeup that morning.  Then left it as it was.

You can see my updated Manhattan: 6 album here and my updated food album here.

Just a short one today, but the next week will be crazy pants.  Watch this space.

Til Next We Speak

*LOVE*

N

Fat Bottomed Girls

Distance Traveled:   60,470 kms (BNE-MEL-SYD-BKK-PKT-BKK-CNX-BKK-PP-SR-BB-PP-HCMC-NC-TH-HA-H-L-MR-AG-SV-TF-AC-LL-ML-CZ-TF-CZ-SV-L-BP-ZG-SP-LJ-VN-PG-SZ-MN-ZR-GV-ML-FC-RM-FG-MN-VC-CT-RM-PDX-NYC-DC-PH-NYC-HP-NYC)

Time Difference: -14 hours (from Brisbane)

Soundtrack: Loads of barbershop, Grease, Lacuna Coil, John Lennon, Beastie Boys

Currently Inspired by: These ladies

Stacks: None I'm prepared to discuss in a public forum!
Words written: 94,170.  We do all that work just to have to delete chunks of it to make it better.

If we are not facebook friends, you wouldn't have seen the video tour I posted of my apartment here.  You can click here to see it.
 

What an eventful couple of weeks!  More of an eventful week really.  I have NFI what possessed me to fart around and do so much of nothing last week when I’m so close to leaving, but as it is, I now have ten very full days ahead of me as I attempt to cram everything in I want to do.  I still haven’t seen the Statue of Liberty.  I haven’t been to the Guggenheim, the Bronx or to Queens, except for my trip to the US Open which involved walking 100 metres from the train to the stadium and back.  There are still several shows I want to see, and I am now going to be forced to choose which couple I am able to go to.  I have more tickets to a Comedy Club that I am yet to use.  I have not sent out my book!  More accurately, I have not yet sent out my query letter and synopsis, which is all most of the agents will accept (of the ones that accept unsolicited queries at all).

Loved the African Art

I have, however, ticked a few things off the list.  Feeling that I had taken a sufficiently long break from museums, I happily checked out the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Saying the Met contains a lot of objects is like saying New York has a couple of Starbucks.  I understand the number is around three million (of both, probably).  From walking in the front door I toured pretty rapidly for two hours and couldn’t even manage to cover the ground floor.  Unfortunately this was all the time I had to spend there so I had to leave the rest to my imagination, which fortunately has been well supplied by the endless museum and gallery visits throughout Europe.  

Look at that preservation!

I couldn’t help but smile at the huge difference between American and European museums.  They might display similar content but the similarities end there.  Everything in the Met is spaciously accommodated, artistically arranged, restored, cleaned and polished until it shines.  It smells like antiseptic and fresh air.  Compared to the European museums where priceless pieces jostle for position in dark and dusty rooms, masterful paintings crowd each other on groaning walls, labels are either torn off or illegible and bored security guards chat or read while the hordes troop through on mouldy carpet, everything in the Met is brilliantly illuminated, coherently described and carefully scrutinised by the many staff members.  I have to say, the way the Met is organised definitely appeals more to my new world sensibilities, but it didn’t have any of that authentic sensory overload of the less manicured museums I visited in Europe.

Sammy did us proud!

The US Open was so much fun (apart from the rain).  I just chose a random day and booked tickets, and it turned out to be the day that Sam Stosur was playing Azarenka in the quarter finals.  I was glad I was there to cheer her on, however the atmosphere was somewhat strained by the drunk Australian guy who insisted on screaming out the "Aussie Aussie Aussie" chant about every two minutes throughout the match.  At first people were enjoying it and humouring him, but the crowd quickly turned.  The many Americans around me who were actually supporting Stosur and had cheerfully yelled the "Oi Oi Oi" part many times, began to mutter under their breath and exclaim to each other at his over-the-top carry on, and gradually it was only his equally drunk friends who were responding.  I wanted to slap him.  These kind of things do not breed positive feelings for Australian travellers, and in fact the exact same thing happened when I saw Mark Phillipoussis at Wimbledon many years ago. Might have been the same guy!  Like some demented travelling cheer squad.  I wished upon him and his cronies the hangovers of their lives.

Click here to see photos from my fifth Manhattan album.

Against my better judgement, I allowed myself to be swayed by the reviews of Bring It On: The Musical while standing in line at the half price booth in Times Square on Wednesday.  My risk didn’t go wholly unrewarded as the stunts and dancing were pretty spectacular.  Unfortunately they didn’t quite make up for the cringe-worthy dialogue and song lyrics, nor the forgettable music.  A musical about high school cheerleading… not really sure what I expected.  I haven't seen the film.  I don’t think I’ve ever met a person who cheered in high school.  Do we even have it in Australian schools, does anyone know?  As far as I know, cheerleading has always been done by girls around 18 or more and appears to be one rung up the social ladder from stripping (and a few rungs down the salary ladder).  It was still a high quality production with high quality performers, but it was not a shining Broadway moment for me.

I have seen two off-Broadway productions so far: one very good, one mediocre.  The mediocre one – a revue entitled Closer Than Ever - would have been good were it not for its lacklustre “stars” and the good one was a strange and intense little play by the name of “Cock”.  It follows a gay man as he breaks up with his boyfriend, falls in love with a woman, freaks out and goes back to his boyfriend and then tells both of them separately he will choose them and leave the other.  It culminates in a painful dinner party between the three of them where both the guy and girl who love this one man are waiting for him to drop the bomb on the other one.  I won’t give away the ending.  Containing plenty of tension and emotion, it is set entirely in the round in a tiny little theatre where the audience sits on four rows of circular benches around a stage which is probably only three or four metres in diameter.  So it was quite intimate and pretty intense.

I forgot to take pics of the parks, so... here's a cat

A friend from chorus hosted a picnic in Prospect Park in Brooklyn on the Labor Day holiday, so my housemate Vanja and I headed there.  I was amazed at how lovely Prospect Park was and compared Central Park rather unfavourably to it, and as it turns out, unfairly.  I went back into Central Park for only the second time on Friday, and it was much, much nicer than I remembered it being.  I think as you get further uptown, which is where I first entered on my second day here, it becomes a little barren and boring.  However this time I went in from the southernmost end and it really was quite lovely.  So for months I’ve been giving my honest opinion which was “Central Park really isn’t nice at all” to anyone who asks, and now I feel like I have to retract it.  If I have given a false impression on here, please disregard it!  I also feel like I missed a few opportunities to spend nice summer days there because I had no interest in returning to CP.  I’m glad there are parks a-plenty in Brisbane, where I shall be landing in T Minus 19 days.  I intend to come home, shower for about a week, spend another week or so just breathing, and then I should feel returned to normal, nice and bored, and ready to take off again.  Joking!

End of the Parade

After Prospect Park we stopped off to see the Caribbean Day Parade.  This is apparently the "coolest parade in NYC", however we only saw the very messy tail end of it as the dancers and floats were simply crawling along to reach the end of the roped off road, and there was no order or any kind of genuine celebration to it.  Already feeling conspicuous, I was more that happy to keep those thoughts to myself.  I found it prudent to leave quickly however, once my dear companion loudly exclaimed "this is nothing but a bunch of fat bitches!" I think eleven people were shot at last year's parade.  I didn't want us to be the statistics for this years'.

Click here to see the pics from my sixth Manhattan album.

Chorus continues to be wonderful.  I have my final rehearsal with the girls on Thursday night (as I fly out the following Thursday) and then, in a case of superior timing, this weekend is the region’s local Vocalfest, with education and bonding for the Sweet Adelines in the area.  I can’t wait, and it will be a great way to say so long to the girls with whom I’ve spent the last two and a half months.  However I am looking forward to getting home and joining a group I can commit to properly and long term.  

Tick tick tick…  Now that it’s getting so close to crunch time I’m alternating between feeling wildly impatient to have it over with and freaking out about it being finished so soon.  I think once I have sent my book queries out I’ll feel better about leaving.  Mostly I think I don’t want to come back and have to get a job – oh boy that is going to hurt!  It will also take some time for me to be able to deal with sitting still in one place for a while, so you are all going to have to be patient with me if I get fidgety.  Still, I can’t wait to squish everyone to death.  Skype just ain’t the same.

Til Next We Speak

*LOVE*

N