spend a while

…wedgetail glides… prides of gnats cried…

wide vista of sea tide…

laid like foamy loam…

mackerels move meandering so…

mimosa mirth melts in my mirror…

regaling vales, swathing swards
revealing bales of big blue pokes

sway swiftly agrestically more…

hark back to early days...

when nights were dank

and darkness lingered…

where we waited

when what we wished

whom we wanted

to woo

were wowed…

way ahead

salty breeze salves…

shaking through spotted gums

to shores abound with wave thrums…

how succinct you may succumb

twirl through summery curls

…to spend a while at paspalum point…

finally the sea rejoins the lake at cuttagee beach ©140512

nature of the art

rock patterns of gerringong ~ speak a thousand words, million years in the making...at least, i think...

...did you not know that...the rock group pink floyd named themselves after legendary bluesmen, pink anderson and floyd council...?

the king[fisher] and I

…remember postcard?…yes, one of those paper picture thingys that you stick a stamp on and 'post', the word we now use on fb with ease as if it is also invented by mark zuckerberg?…well, this afternoon i went to the local post office to check if there was any mail and there was this pretty picture postcard from an australian friend of ours who went for a holiday in north-eastern thailand some months ago to see her family…

posted from prasat srikhoraphum surin province, thailand

...it was slightly unreal to hold this thing in my hand, to feel the card texture, to look at the picture of a khmer temple ruins on the front… turn over and there on the top right hand corner the [always] slightly askewed 15 baht stamp of a siamese sunset, next to a blue 'airmail priority' sticker… then the handwriting... suddenly I could see the colours in the curls, shades of the blue ballpoint ink from deep blue to fade-out tints... and you could feel the closeness of the writer who has held the postcard to steady it flat while writing on it... the last time I received this endangered item was over 20 years ago…

...the fact is the sender's already back in canberra  arriving 5 days ago, very much ahead of her much appreciated, much missed postcard… someone wasn't kidding when she or he first coined these words: snail mail ! …

...did you not know that... 'øl' is how to ask for 'beer' in danish and norwegian...?

remote control

…at any weekend you don't see many people in their whites play cricket anywhere around here at the coast…not like in canberra where ovals are usually peppered by these players in long pants…but like canberra, we watch the sport on the pub flat screens…

then again, there usually are many different things going on on different screens in any pub here, i couldn't be sure what exactly are the other drinkers watching…perhaps they aren't watching the screens at all…most times these half dozen or so tvs blare out music clips, different rules or leagues footies, car, bike, horse and dog racings, the tennis match between ivan lendl and boris becker from way back in '89, and the cricket of course…and nobody is actually watching any of these flickering offerings…patrons are mostly trying to talk with one another over and above the whole hubbub…


we were all encouraged to try all sorts of sports while i was in boarding school...but i never got around to knowing what a cricket score means let alone how the game is played…then i got this explanation from a book my son left behind…this is how cricket is explained to a foreigner, it says [although it doesn't explain whether the foreigner is one who is from a non-cricket country or someone who is foreign to the game]…it starts like this:

you have two sides, one out in the field and one in…each man that's in the side that's in goes out…and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out…when a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he's out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in…

when they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out…

sometimes, there are men still in and not out…

there are two men called umpires who stay all out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out… 

when both sides have been in and all the men are out [including those who are not out] then the game is finished…

…and still...i'm nowhere nearer to knowing what a cricket score means…








...did you not know that...watching tv uses up 50 percent more calories than sleeping...?

dead sea lake

...it bugs me when the abc tv journalist said last night, the 'sahara desert' when 'sahara' means 'desert'… it's like saying a 'jewish synagogue,' or a 'muslim mosque' which is a little bit superfluous isn't it?…or a 'coastal beach'…can we say that?…you may say that there are beaches that are nowhere near the coast…like there is a sandy beach in canberra, albeit a small one… I remember swimming from it to a square platform out in the lake which was caked with seagull droppings, and apparently aboriginals call whites seagulls… I begin to wonder now what aboriginals call us asians... I know the aboriginals in canberra call me, just me, brother... 'you from malaysia?... you're welcomed to our land, brother,' one said to me once in an african club in bunda street... I digressed... yes, canberra does have seagulls which is a bit weird, and they hold squawking gull meetings at night in the carpark across from gus' cafe… and wading through the grumbling sea of white, I imagined what musa must have felt when he split the red sea…

...talking about sea, did you know that the dead sea is really a lake?…keep that in mind for trivia nights…

...oh by the way... that swimming in lake burley griffin wasn't a great idea because I was told later on that waste from old canberra royal hospital ran into the lake... he said body parts too but I guessed this was embellishment to the story... this in addition to the lead dregs from captains flat old mines... the pesky european carps in the lake must be full of heavy metals and human parts... could that explain why there aren't many people fishing on the lake... the popular excuse is that the carps aren't good tucker... then again, all these could just be part of the capital's urban myths...who knows...

barragga point ©160612

...did you not know that...'tfbundy' is an acronym used by doctors and nurses for 'totally fucked but unfortunately not dead yet'...?

a blog of houses

tanja: an art gallery that's housed in a former church

…i could claim to love architecture...studied it, went away to the other side of the world to get a paper for it...my current mild insomnia began at technical college where at the last four days or so before a project was due to be handed in, everyone of us 'archipeck' students practically lived in the studio with no sleep for days on end...and part of the reason i ended up in australia was because of it...

'form follows function'

...i enjoy architecture - its aesthetics, its vernaculars, its funness...if others say a thing of beauty is to be beholden, i'd add to it that a beautiful architecture is to be lived in and be alive in...and there're buildings around here that are simply wonderful…looking at them in their own unique settings, they're credits to the people who live in them…and are beautiful for me to behold too…may i share some with you here?...

central tilba
i noticed this house as i entered the carpark in central tilba

      

brogo:
last stop for these home-owners

a lovely b&b  

 central tilba

          

bega

this building looks old but i can't be sure

    cobargo: there's someone living upstairs

tanja

the window of the art gallery at top

a dairy farmhouse      

                          tilba tilba

reminiscent  of kids' wooden blocks

bega

this charmer can be seen from across the carpark

guerilla bay

the fireplace is nicely done...and the  waves can be seen through the trees

rosedale

             i simply lurve the name...

narooma

     this little beauty is up for sale...

bega valley
                                                                    

  ...last but not the least...

...did you not know that...madonna bought diane keaton's beverly hills home for 7 million aussie dollars...?

roadblog

long beach, south coast

…i often ride along the princes highway as far south as eden and north  all the way to gerringong…i remember stopping for the pie to drive for a couple of k south of ulladulla…and checking out people fishing at the harbour breakwater…then a pub stop in milton…off to huskisson at the edge of jervis bay…a good cuppa in berry at the jam shop…

…now allow me to share a little anecdote about places' names…

...a long long long time ago... there was a boy called Ya who went hunting but did not catch a thing...very disappointed, he returned home, and said to his mom, "No Roo, Ma." His mom, a bit miffed, was about to lecture him on the finer points of catching a good tucker...when suddenly there was a phone call...Ya's chick, from another mob in another village, was on the other end... Ya proceeded to tell her about his unsuccessful hunting venture…after which she said, " Should've chucked yer boomerang 'round here luv...coz here, there're More Roo, Ya!" ... and so the names NAROOMA and MORUYA stuck to these two coastal towns to this day… (i just made this story up...but the towns are very very real indeed)... 

...did you not know that...there's a river in nicaragua called the pis pis river...?