ragingyoghurt

0

in the last few weeks… i traded in a bunch of frequent flyer points – amassed over several years of flying between sydney and singapore and new york – for a ticket to vietnam, china and singapore. i quit my job. i got my passport organised. i stepped past falungong protestors outside the chinese embassy – rain or shine – to get a shiny chinese visa in said passport. i bought a lonely planet guide, heavy as a brick. i got a polio vaccine that left a dark tasting trickle down the back of my throat, and a shot for tetanus that kept me from moving my left arm or sleeping on that side for three days. i bought some grape flavoured yoghurt sweets to take along. i saw myself eating ice cream and pork baguettes and pho, and swimming in halong bay with the boy who left me his fridge (see previous entry).

and it is quite possible that i will not be going, thanks to the mystery killer virus that seems to be sweeping through the region (and beyond) like some vile european dance music tune. no. not an april fool’s joke. my disappointment is far more bitter than that polio vaccine.

the one good (ha) thing about this experience is that i have become well-acquainted with the world health organisation’s website, which issues a daily update on the virus as well as a daily cumulative infection and death tally. it surely makes for compelling reading.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 1 April 2003 at 9:44 pm
permalink | filed under grumble

0

my new material possession, which i purchased from the sunday markets in the shadow of (depending on the time of day i suppose – in fact there was no shadow while we were out there, blinded by midday) the sydney opera house, after the lovely little puppet show “a world of paper”, in which, around a little japanese actor playing a small child, two japanese puppeteers clad in black ninja gear bring to life all manner of washi paper bird, butterfly, squirrel, tortoise and horse. and raincloud! and fire goblin! the lady puppeteer was quite inscrutable but the guy would put on a facial expression that matched the animal character he was… becoming. when he operated the prancing horse, he had a horse face! and they scurried about the floor on their tip toes while crouched on their haunches! so light and quick! how did they do it? i just tried, and besides feeling like an ungainly, waddling duck, i think i also put my knee out. ow.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 30 March 2003 at 9:42 pm
permalink | filed under around town

0

snow pea shoots are really good stirfried in an oyster sauce thickened with cornflour, with the fried puffy tofu that soaks up half the gravy before disgorging like a sponge in your mouth.

i was standing by the chinese vegetable stall at paddy’s market, clutching a box of them and looking for someone i could give some money to, when the chinese vegetable auntie came up to me and pressed a longan into my hand. $2, darling, she said, smiling. don’t need a bag? good girl.

swiftly unpeeled next to a pungent rubbish bin, the longan was sweet, a wobbly globe of juice.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 21 March 2003 at 3:46 pm
permalink | filed under around town, snacks

an act of war

0

a year and a half ago, on my way to work, i passed through a food court to get a blueberry sugar bagel for breakfast. the multi-tv screen display was showing over and over footage of planes flying into the world trade center buildings.

this afternoon, by coincidence, i went into the same food court after a trip to art express at the art gallery. lunchfolk gathered around the tvs; missiles had just fallen in… on iraq. oddly, a reuters cameraman was there filming the tv footage — maybe he had missed the plane to the gulf, or flunked out of the military-run media training sessions.

i asked the girl i was having lunch with if she would go to the rally on sunday (12.30pm, belmore park, sydney), which led to a discussion on whether or not war was the right thing to do, and why we shouldn’t just accept that these things happen. i was having trouble following her argument on why “collateral damage” was, y’know, fine, when the bombs would get rid of an evil dictator in the end. obviously it was fine because it’s an anonymous bunch of dusty, brown people on the other side of the world who don’t hold western values.

i said, it’s like when you were at school and there was this one bad girl in class, and the teacher punished the whole class for something the one bad girl did.

the girl i had lunch with said, oh! well when you put it that way…

posted by ragingyoghurt on 20 March 2003 at 8:27 pm
permalink | filed under around town, misc

0

tonight the moon is a great white circle, so bright it hurts to look at it.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 17 March 2003 at 10:13 pm
permalink | filed under misc

0

two hours into “the pianist”, after the pianist has just been cast out of his latest hiding place by nazis with flame throwers, something that sounds like an air raid siren goes off. and goes on and on. eventually it becomes clear that it is not part of the film, and is actually coming from outside our cosy cinema. no-one seems too fussed, though some guy down the front heads out into the corridor to investigate, and returns to his seat like everything’s all right.

the pianist clambers and falls over a wall into a deserted street, flanked to the horizon by pale shells of previous buildings. the air raid siren continues. does anyone else feel a little ill at ease? the screen goes blank and the lights come on. for an audience who up till now seemed unperturbed by the siren, we sure stand up really quickly.

polite and orderly, everybody files out the fire exit, through the concrete bunker that is the belly of the multiplex. i’m thinking that maybe the war has begun, and maybe we weren’t in first with the bombing, but then beyond these last doors there is clear blue sky. out on the pavement we wonder what has happened.

on the other side of the world missiles and men (and women) wait for an order; a mystery epidemic sweeps through south east asia, baffling the experts; i’ll have to sit through the first two hours of “the pianist” again, to find out how it ends; not even ten minutes after hanging out a load of laundry under clear night sky, it starts to rain…

posted by ragingyoghurt on 16 March 2003 at 9:16 pm
permalink | filed under around town

0

out at parramatta yesterday for… ahem… client meetings, i stumbled on the biggest harris farm yet! there were bowls of cheese and little tubs of yoghurt out for sampling, and many exotic wafers and mayonnaises and fizzy. mmm… free cheese. eventually i came away with a little bottle of grapefruit fizzy, a large bottle of apricot nectar and a tub of parsely and almond pesto. slurpy yum! the whole experience made me joyful and so, so wistful. aisles upon aisles of big fresh shiny produce, colourful things in bottles all piled up… and me, never ever in parramatta.

a nap later, there was waikiki, a cute band with really nice graphics, which they sometimes put on stickers that you get with the cd. is it bad to like a band because they have a cool logo? last night at the gaelic club, a lovely venue, they sang pretty and in tune and did shimmery tambourine moves and flicked hair about, and the rhythm section sang along even when they weren’t singing into microphones… but it seemed strangely unemotional, as though they were holding out for the whole show, and not until the last song – “this is our last song” – did they truly rock out. by which time my eyes were too sting-y from cigarette smoke, the floor was too sticky with spilt beers to do a hands-in-pocket foot shuffle, and i was completely over the girls in front of me who kept leaning in to talk during the show, and flicked their long ponytails about, and stood arms akimbo with their elbows sticking way too far behind them. pah. girls.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 15 March 2003 at 9:27 am
permalink | filed under around town, grumble

0

i bought a loaf of fruit bread the other day: sour dough with whole figs and dates studded through, so that when you cut into it, you sometimes got a whole cross-section of succulent fig in your slice. also the clever bakers had thrown a handful of mixed seeds and nuts into the bottom of the baking tin before filling it with dough, so the loaf came with a crunchy base of sunflower seeds and almonds.

this morning i made myself a pot of bush tea, cut myself a slice of magic fruit bread and crumbled some marinated fetta over it. seven minutes under the grill, the cheese was bubbling and the bread golden with the oily cheese marinade. it was a great start to the day.

which only got better because: i had one of those phone conversations with nello where you start talking and then suddenly it’s two hours later; i got a cheque in the mail for a job that isn’t even over yet; walking home from cashing said cheque later in the afternoon, i got rained on very heavily by something that went from light drizzle to blinding torrential downpour in about forty seconds.

i felt cold hard raindrops indenting my head and shoulders.
i felt happy to be alive.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 11 March 2003 at 8:58 pm
permalink | filed under breakfast

0

sometimes when you see a boy off at the airport, a boy who leaves you his magnificent frostfree fridge to look after while he heads off on an indefinitely long trip overseas, not knowing when exactly he will return, and even though you may well be catching two planes to meet up with him in vietnam or china in six or ten weeks, you have to take two buses home, and scrub down your old cyclic defrost fridge which sits alone down in the garage, so that maybe you can sell it off to someone who doesn’t know its history of being a happy home to many evil little cockroaches.

also, you have to put on a ratcat cd. don’t go now.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 7 March 2003 at 6:05 pm
permalink | filed under around town, boy

0

when i first knocked this blog together, i wasn’t really sure what i’d be writing about. as you can see, the first entry is all like, wah maybe i’m too old to be going “woo!” at a rock show, and wah maybe war is a bad idea. unsurprisingly i have slid into this groove where maybe i’ll tell you a little story about my day, with an emphasis on tasty (or otherwise) treats i encountered along the way.

so the new title of this page is “adventures in good eating”, which is a well-lettered sign i took a picture of on the outside wall of a restaurant in seattle when i made a grunge pilgrimage there in um, 1999, when i thought grunge was dead. and now, 2003, it obviously isn’t! hurrah!

today’s tale is: don’t eat those new strawberry ripes whose advertising campaign is in overdrive. the original cherry ripes are so much better.

posted by ragingyoghurt on 4 March 2003 at 9:45 pm
permalink | filed under misc
« older posts
Newer posts »
  • Click

    • here
    • there
  • Categories

    • (after a) fashion
    • around town
    • art
    • at the movies
    • blog
    • bookshelf
    • boy
    • breakfast
    • cake
    • candy
    • chocolate
    • dinner
    • drawn
    • drink
    • grumble
    • ice cream
    • kid
    • kitchen
    • lunch
    • misc
    • nellie
    • packaging
    • shoping
    • snacks
    • something new
    • soundtrack
    • trip
    • tv
    • werk
  • Archives

    • August 2012
    • June 2012
    • May 2012
    • March 2012
    • February 2012
    • January 2012
    • December 2011
    • November 2011
    • October 2011
    • September 2011
    • August 2011
    • July 2011
    • June 2011
    • May 2011
    • November 2010
    • September 2010
    • August 2010
    • July 2010
    • June 2010
    • May 2010
    • April 2010
    • March 2010
    • February 2010
    • December 2009
    • November 2009
    • October 2009
    • September 2009
    • August 2009
    • February 2009
    • January 2009
    • December 2008
    • November 2008
    • October 2008
    • September 2008
    • July 2008
    • June 2008
    • May 2008
    • April 2008
    • March 2008
    • February 2008
    • January 2008
    • December 2007
    • November 2007
    • October 2007
    • September 2007
    • August 2007
    • July 2007
    • June 2007
    • May 2007
    • April 2007
    • March 2007
    • February 2007
    • January 2007
    • December 2006
    • November 2006
    • October 2006
    • September 2006
    • August 2006
    • July 2006
    • June 2006
    • May 2006
    • April 2006
    • March 2006
    • February 2006
    • January 2006
    • December 2005
    • November 2005
    • October 2005
    • September 2005
    • June 2005
    • May 2005
    • April 2005
    • March 2005
    • February 2005
    • January 2005
    • December 2004
    • November 2004
    • October 2004
    • September 2004
    • August 2004
    • July 2004
    • June 2004
    • May 2004
    • April 2004
    • March 2004
    • February 2004
    • January 2004
    • December 2003
    • November 2003
    • October 2003
    • September 2003
    • August 2003
    • July 2003
    • June 2003
    • May 2003
    • April 2003
    • March 2003
    • February 2003
    • November 2002
    • August 2002
    • March 2002
    • January 2002
    • November 2001
    • September 2001
    • September 2000
    • August 2000
    • April 2000
    • February 2000
    • January 2000
    • September 1999
    • August 1999
    • June 1999
    • February 1999
raging yoghurt blog | all content © meiying saw | theme based on corporate sandbox | powered by wordpress