Travel planning

I have recently booked (and by recently booked, I mean, have been in the works of planning this bad boy for a while and have finally made concrete the first step by buying flights in and out of Australia) my flights to South East Asia! Yay!

This blog was initially conceived as a personal diary for my travel expeditions overseas, but then when I realised I was too lazy (read: actually still finishing up essays overseas that were meant to be completed and deposited to uni before I left the country), it didn’t happen. So I am really excited to share with you my preparations and all that stressful but amazing stuff that goes along with planning my next big trip. Whilst I have only been on a few travel jaunts, I’m still quite young and have covered countries ranging from India, to Israel, to Ireland, all independently. Whilst I am a bit of a country collector, I love getting to really explore a country in depth and end up staying quite a long time doing one country well, instead of lots of places, for one or two days. That said, I still have a goal of getting 100 countries before I’m 30 years old. So I need to get a hopping!

Since everyone has been asking, this time around: I’ll be headed off to Indonesia, meeting a few friends and practising lots of yoga! Then I’ll head over to Kuala Lumpur, and hopefully down to Malacca, for a little bit. Then shooting up to Burma (sorry, sorry Myanmar) and visiting Yangon and Bagan, then over to Thailand, going up north and doing a Hill tribe trek, and then going down south for NYE, then back up to Laos, going through Luang Prabang and Vientiane, and crossing into Vietnam. I’ll be staying up in the north for a little bit, then snaking through the country side and stopping off at all the cute little towns that I can find (time permitted) then hitting Ho Chi Minh City and floating up the Mekong into Cambodia. In Cambodia, depending on time restrictions, I’m going to visit the capital, then the Angkor complex and hopefully a few little islands off the south west coast. Afterward, I’ll be hitting up the Philippines and going to Palawan and kayaking under the UNESCO world heritage underground caves and then home time.

All in all, my South East Asian odyssey is going to take 3 months and even then from the rudimentary planning thus far,  IT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE ENOUGH TIME! But that’s the plan. I love travelling and reckon that it’s the only way to really learn about the big wide world around you. From all the places I have been, the biggest thing I have learnt, is that people aren’t going to hurt you. Rather people (and we can call them ‘the locals’ if you so desire), really are amazing, and will go out of their way to help you. Independent travel really becomes a bit of a philosophical exploration, because the things you learn on the road, you definitely take back home with you. And for me, one of my greatest lessons is to trust others more.

But yeah- check out these photos. You jealous? I’m jealous already and it’s my trip! But yeah obviously not my photos guys. Just saying.

A leaf from The Book of Cities: volunteering with Makeshift

It’s only recently dawned on me that I should make posts about exciting things I’m doing BEFORE I do them, or at the very least, during the time that I’m involved. Retrospective looks are cool and all, but it really means none of you out there in the internet world could have come and seen and been part of the events. So that’s something I’ll try to change. Yep.

I recently volunteered with Makeshift, invigilating “A Leaf from The Book of Cities”, an exhibition that was held within the men’s and women’s conveniences in Taylor Square. It was part of the parent event, We Make This City, which, if you have read anything else from my blog, is also the parent event that brought us all the amazing Cycle-In Cinema. So as you can guess the exhibition was all about urban situations and negotiating our social actions within a greater movement toward sustainability and encouraging environmentally friendly endeavours through a creative means.

Saying that it was an exhibition doesn’t do it justify as it involved so much more than some pretty things being hung up on the walls and installed within the space. A series of small scale installations, dealing with a variety of previous crafts and skills that, have for most in part, been forgotten through the increasing reliance on modern technology, engaged with reclaiming and reinvigorating these crafts and skills, and it explored the possibilities of how these skills challenge our current economic practice. Moreover it incorporated a mobile printing press that on the final day, printed and produced a catalogue. Also the conveniences were a sight of a think tank, where experts, including the artists and a wide range of persons including economic specialists, gathered and discussed sustainable endeavours and our to guide our social action. These discussions when simulatenously broadcasted through the conveniences so that whilst audience members moved throughout the site, observing the installations, they were able to aurally engage with the dialogue.

I really enjoyed a variety of ideas that the installations addressed, such as the notion of creating a community through a communal vegie and herb garden, as well as the push to encourage neighbourhood sharing’s by preparing preservatives, like chutneys and stewed fruit, and then gifting them, and exchanging them with other jars. It was a really nice way of looking at how we can reclaim old skills, like cooking, challenge a very disposable idea of food, by sealing preserved food in glass jars and moving away from everything plastic and artificial, but also it addressed ways in which our social actions, and our economic structures, do have an effect upon ecology and therefore are intimately connected with sustainable action.

I sometimes feel like a bit of a hypocrite learning and supporting things like this, because I, by no means, am the perfect citizen. I drive a large car, by myself, I enjoy takeaway food and probably shower for too long, but really this exhibition is looking at the small actions and ways that we can engage with sustainable action. Sure, it addressed things like the fact that instead of borrowing books from the library and sharing them, we are driven by the uncanny want to consume and own EVERYTHING for ourselves, and sure it addressed things like the housing crises and the problems that we have, as a society, in where there are huge numbers of vacant housing, both residential and non-residential, but we have an increasing rate of homelessness. These are pretty big issues and us as individuals can’t necessarily change the world, but what “We Make This City” is all about, is not just the ways in which we can increase education, but rather the push, that so many of us know about the problems of global warming and unsustainable energy consumption, but we aren’t doing anything, really, to work against it. These suggestions, made by Makeshift, through this exhibition, explore and suggest small ways to reclaim our bodies, our minds and ultimately, start making better choices.

The exhibition space was open to the public on each Saturday through March and ran concurrent with the Sydney Sustainable Markets and was brilliant. The artists, Tessa Zettel and Karl Khoe, who’s collaborative process involves such methods as installation, printmaking, writing and sculpture, creatively engage, quite heavily with the possibilities of transforming and rethinking our political, economic and social commitments, and are pretty bloody brilliant at challenging their audience to contemplate their own choices (because this exhibition really did challenge me quite a bit). To check out more about their work, you can visit their website here: Makeshift's website

p.s apologies for the crappy quality photos, I took them with my iphone, but had a dead light (another hectic story about my hectic life ahaahah) so I couldn't actually even see what I was taking!!! And the last three photos are not mine, stolen from the "We Make this City" website.

Just chilling to some tunes

Now, look, I don’t really have any intention to make this blog about music, but I love art and culture and to ignore my current “can’t- stop- pressing- the- reply- button” obsessions would be ill considered, now wouldn’t it. So here are two songs that I can’t get off the repeat.

I love rap. I know the hipsters of Sydney might shoot me down for this, but I really love hip hop culture. I am fully aware of the fact that the manifestations of hip hop culture contribute and reinforce some pretty horrible hierarchies and stereotypes surrounding sex and race. However the developments of hip hop music, namely on the streets of New York, represent a counter culture that addresses and critiques the hegemonic state of affairs that privilege the rich, white, male. I will write more on this in later posts, because the types of music and the types of art that have been and are being created within the hip hop sphere is really exciting and interesting.

Having been working on a lot of feminist writing pieces for my studies, I could spend a long time talking about how hip hop culture has constructed certain types of masculinity and femininity, that are reflexive of the highly racialised and sexualised climate, but I’ll save you all a year of reading, and myself from just thinking about all of it and not posting so please excuse the quick brush over!

Now you wouldn’t be entirely wrong in saying that this track wouldn’t kill without it’s sample, but if you listen to her distinct sound and watch the incredibly stylised film clip, you’ll see that this girl is brilliant. Iggy Azalea. Iggy Azalea. Iggy Azalea, I’m really just enjoying her name to be honest.

She has mentioned in interviews that she hates the continual references to her ‘whiteness’ and womanhood, but I think the girl needs to own these identities because it’s what makes her whole persona so subversive. She is a young, white, blonde haired, Australian, rapper and really is the antithesis of the typical characterisations found in hip hop culture. Hip hop has worked off, and reinforced traditional gender roles and ideas about what men and women are and what they should do, and much of these constructs characterise an aggressive, pimp like, bravado masculinity whereas women are depicted at their sexual disposal. The large exclusion of women in rap, outside of this traditional eye candy hooker image demonstrates the, quite frankly, misogynistic climate of hip hop culture.

 Sooooo when we have someone like Iggy come along and drop this bomb of a beat, yeah she is completely aligning herself with this masculine idea of what it means to be a rapper; she is tough, aggressive and in your face, but ultimately she’s a woman, a white woman, and doesn’t fit within these assumed boundaries of hip hop.  This fact is the exciting thing about what she is doing, she’s breaking these rules about what hip hop has to be and do for woman, and as a lover of rap, that is so exciting! Go girl!

And this film clip is actually amazing! Check it out below but her clothing here kills. The mesh, 80’s references and graffiti cheerleader, the asesthics combine this strange masculine attitude and ultra feminine babe. It’s this clash of roles and identities that is most powerful, so hopefully Iggy is going to storm the industry and carve is up a bit.

My World. Iggy Azalea.

            The other song I can’t stop playing: the Drake remix of SBTRKT ft Little Dragon, “Wildfire”. Ok seriously, the original is amazing, but having that little bit of Drake rap at the front just makes the song so much cooler. SBTRKT, who basically is a London DJ, (yeah he composes and mixes and produces and all that, but for all intensive purposes let’s call him a DJ) is kind of fucking amazing. His name, pronounced ‘subtract’ is all about anonymity and bringing back the music to the music and not all this hype about fame and everything of the DJ. Quality shit. I love that and think that’s really cool and obviously a lot of DJ’s are into that right now i.e Bloody Beetroots and all that but most people seem to not know SBTRKT so here he is! I also love the fact he always wears these amazing African masks, there is something very modernist about it and it just reminds me of the whole cubist movement and Picasso’s paintings, especially this very famous one! 

Just listen!

SBTRKT Wildfire drake remix

yay!

One relaxed evening

Moving forward from a recent post that was all about strengthening and valuing our friendship based relationships, a few days ago, two of my close friends threw a little soiree for a bunch of old school friends. My friends, Miranda and Rachel have gotten the party hosting down pat, putting on a mean BBQ and decorating the heck out of their house with fairy lights. Impressed? Yeah you are.

It was a really great evening to catch up and check in with some dear friends, some of whom were once the most important people in my life, but through one way or another, life has gotten the best of us and our lives have drifted apart. There is something exciting and humbling about being reminded about whom you were in high school and what you did, even though it wasn’t that long ago. Having been a bit all over the shop with my life lately, having a chat with a few certain people really gave me a good shot in the arm and reminded me about the things I value in myself. Sometimes you really need to listen to the people around you because even though we are great at assessing our own strengths and weaknesses, we are each our own best critics. Friends have the benefit of hindsight and sometimes their special insight and support is really just what you need. They have a strange combination of closeness and distance that during a crisis, we might not always have. Love and treasure those around you because The Beatles were right, “I get by with a little help from my friends”. 

Photo credits: Jenni Chen

Cycle In Cinema

There are many things that I think make life worth living, and for me a few of these things include great film and great people. Getting to live and play in the electric city that is Sydney, I have been lucky enough to get to volunteer at a few of the amazing events that our city holds every year and have met some talented and passionate people along the way. This weekend just gone, Sydney held one of these brilliant events, of which I was able to partake in.

Over Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, there were these great cinema events at Taylor Square on Oxford Street, called “Cycle in Cinema”. Now imagine old school images of loved up couples in Cadillacs, sitting at the drive-in cinema, watching some black and white movie about a teenage mutant lobster zombie rampaging the all American teenagers’ burger joint. Now imagine instead of sitting in your car, you’re sitting on your bike, pedalling away to power the moving image and generate the sound. Well, that was the basic gist of “Cycle in Cinema”, a series of cinematic events produced by the City of Sydney as part of the parent event We Make This City. Now don’t get me wrong, you didn’t need your bike and not everyone had their bike BUT everyone got a chance to ride one of the several bikes that were hooked up to this amazing system that generated the movie. People brought picnic blankets and there were some tyres to chill out on as a different series of short films were screened each night.

We Make This City, is basically a series of events that creatively address the problem of climate change and need for sustainability, positing that with all the education and awareness about the problem and the solutions, why aren’t we, as individuals and as a collective, doing anything about it? Specifically Cycle in Cinema engages with ideas about renewable energy and its potential through pedal-power. I found it a really experimental and thrilling way to experience film and it really appeals to your social conscience. This event couldn’t have been made possible without the driving force of an organisation called Magnificent Revolution Australia. Their partner organisation in the UK developed the technology to generate and harvest energy through pedalling on a bike and having held heaps of events across Europe and even a few in Asia, its been brought to Australia, with a roaring success! Yay!

I thought it was such a brilliant, chilled out series of events. The first two nights were held outdoors at Taylor Square, with a screen set up against the old conveniences and the third night, due to wet weather, was held in this slightly abandoned looking bar down the road. All three nights had a great turn out and the variety and quality of films showcased was inspiring, thoughtful and hilarious. I was an invigilator, so I basically helped out where needed but the great perk of this volunteer job was that I got to watch the films as well.

Friday hosted a special Queer night, in recognition of Mardi Gras; the films were humorously poignant and in a genuinely funny way reflected upon the gay experience. I know that is a bit wanky but there was this one film, DIK that just blew my mind! It was about a conversation between a married couple regarding their homosexual experiences, catalysed by something their son innocently drew. I actually thought Sunday was the best night in terms of the films screened. It was all about sustainability and you need to look them all up now! I can’t describe them enough and they were short, incredibly educational, eye opening, and brilliant pieces of cinema. Go now: Plastic Bag; Hairytale; Waste Not; Skipping Dinner; and Magic Harvest. I’ve included the link to Plastic Bag, because it’s totally a life changing, tears in the eyes movie about, a plastic bag. Yep you read that right, I cried a tad bit from this one. 

Plastic Bag via YT

Tea and biscuits: a belated Valentine's Day

Tonight I had the most fabulously chilled out tea party with some lady friends of mine. In an effort to reaffirm and deepen our friendship (oh bless) and just to spend time with each other we have been holding little tea drinking sessions! It’s actually adorable. We sit around and discuss our lives, drinking scrumptious teas in lovely teacups that are freshly brewed from ornate teapots. Tonight was extra special because as we were sitting around our circle of tea, with a backdrop of thunder and heavy rain pouring down, we suddenly had a blackout. After a little shock and a lot of me holding onto Michelle, whilst I was jumping up and down with excitement (I’m still young, what of it), we found some tall and small, and tea light candles and decorated the room with light.

             It really was just a fabulous chance to catch up with some friends and check in on each other. Having just had Valentine’s Day, I have been thinking a lot of about love and friendship and all matters of the heart. Whilst I disagree with the consumerist driven, greed and jealous centric praxis of the holiday, having recently had a small revelation in my life, I am trying to change the way I view and act toward love. Whilst Valentine’s Day and the people celebrating it, get so caught up with expressing romantic love, this often precludes the other forms that love takes on! Whilst it is easy to get bitter if your single, and upset and lonely, we need to not forget that we are always surrounded by love, day in and day out. We need to remember that we need to love ourselves first and foremost, but we also need to utilise and rely on the strength of love found in our friendships. These relationships are of uttermost importance, because when things go sour with your romantic love, these people are the crutch upon which you rest.

One of my friends has just recently gotten out of a long-term relationship and has been struggling with this idea of love. There have been moments in her break up that she has asserted that she needs to find a man to validate herself and justify herself, her independence and beauty. I find it upsetting that my dear friend, my beautiful, confident, intelligent friend feels that in order to be a better person, a more whole version of herself, she needs to be in a relationship. Whilst having time to talk to her about all of this (and she was at my little tea party) I think she is coming to realise that the most important relationship anyone can have is the one you have with yourself. Even more so when you have just broken up with someone you dearly loved. I explained to her that love can’t just be switched off and on and that in order to properly heal from the trauma that, let’s face it 99.99% of people go through when the get out of a relationship regardless of how it ends, she needs to reassert herself and her independence and self worth not through another person.

Whilst I have faith that my friend will realise her importance and I think that she understands that she needs some time to be single, it reminded me of something really insightful a guy friend of mine said recently. On the topic of Valentine’s Day and relationships, he noted that society doesn’t really teach us (or really allow for us) to be single. I think this is something really important to realise, and this realisation is quite saddening. When did it become that we were to be defined by our romantic relationship status? When did it become ok to conflate your identity and self worth with a social status of being in a relationship? I was out shopping today (not the fun type but the boring, let’s buy some groceries type) and this woman walked past me talking very loudly on the phone. I couldn’t help but overhear (that’s a nice way of me saying that she was practically having the conversation with me, standing next to me, screaming) but she was obviously talking to a friend. She said, “I’m so glad you finally can be happy, all you really needed was to find someone and it’s about time you had a boyfriend”. This woman was only young, but I found the conversation so hollowing. She equated her friends worth and her happiness with whether or not she had a man. When did that become ok?

           

Society doesn’t teach us to be single. Now you could make some argument about the evolutionary need to be in a relationship of sorts so that we can procreate and continue living, but honestly, in this day and age, fuck off. We need to start working at loving ourselves more. Being confident and happy and secure in who we are and what we do, loving ourselves as individuals and for being individual enough to assert our self worth independent of another. And we need to start loving our friends more and taking out that time in the day to check in and check on these types of relationships. We need to realise that partners come and go, but it’s the friendships that were there before, that are usually the ones that help you out when its over. Stop taking our friendship love for granted and starting living life with more self-love. Wow this might have just gotten a little preachy, but honestly, if you can’t love yourself, how can you expect anyone else to love you?

                              Because loving my friends is about going geo-caching with there fine asses.

                            

Melbourne alleyways: a photo essay

     Having only recently started this blog, and even more so, having written blogposts, it has only just dawned on me that it takes a bit of effort! I spend hours and hours on paragraphs for the essays I produce for university (literally I will spend over five hours on the INTRODUCTION) and whilst some will call that a little crazy, a little obsessive, and a little over the top, it's my usual attention to detail that allows me to fully explore and realise my ideas and arguments in academia. I think blogging needs a bit more attention, as I keep realising I leave out words and add ones in that don't belong! Argh- just preaching my efforts to be a better writer!

    Well, I have posted quite abit about my trip to Melbourne and coming back I have been able to talk about and recount those memories to all my wonderful friends, family and the strangers I pick up on the streets. Melbourne is a great city and it was wonderful to be down there again. We drank at many wonderful bars and ate at even more brilliant food stops. We shopped along Brunswick St in Fitzroy and down along Smith Street. We found a costume shop and spent hours trying on costumes and hair pieces and having the staff have a good ol' laugh with us. We chilled out along the very italian main stay that is Lygon Street, enjoying bucket loads of pasta, pizza, gelati and fro-yo. We saw the Great Ocean Road, the Yarra Valley and so many great things. We visited numerous art galleries and museums, like the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Federation Square. As well as the incredible Ian Potter Gallery- the Aboriginal art collections were phenomenal! I have such a budding interest in Aboriginal culture but specifically material culture. I study art theory at University as well as cultural history, so material culture, I find, compelling and insightful because it addresses people- and we all know I love my people ahhaha. Also worthy of important mention, the Koorie Centre- which showcases Victorian Aboriginal culture and looks at things like the Stolen Generation, white invasion as well as including contemporary art exhibitions (and it is curated amazingly!). We went to fabulous market places, all around the city, we got to enjoy Chinese New Year, and ate along the Acland "the French place" street in St Kilda, and walked along the beach and oh my. We had a fabulous time.

    One highlight was finding the backalleys of Melbourne and documenting the changing artistic face of these walls. There is something wonderful about this city that reminds me strikingly of my time in Berlin. I attribute it to the open counter culture atmosphere that Melbourne so proudly badges upon itself. Seeing graffiti and so many tattoos demonstrates this visible attack upon the prevailing status quo and there is something humbling about being involved in a city that openly considers other ideologies and experiences, assaulting the forced and assumed 'naturalness' of so many things.


So here is just a few bits and pieces to summate my time in Melbourne: