le petit prince

"Good-bye" said the fox. "here is my secret. it's quite simple: one sees clearly only with the heart. anything essential is invisible to the eyes."

"anything essential is invisible to the eyes" the little prince repeated, in order to remember.

"it's the time you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important."

tftf xxx

listening to rice grow

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to celebrate gerard's 39th birthday (what!? is he that old?!), we headed to the 'the land of one million elephants' (called the land of one million irrelevants during the vietnam war) - the people's democratic republic of laos. i might mention at this point that we did not see a single elephant for the whole trip, though with the amount we both ate we certainly came back the size of one.

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our first afternoon in luang prabang, we hopped into bed for a quick nap and woke up 15 hours later. the mood was thus set for a relaxing holiday. to be honest, the population is so laid back that you can't really be anything but relaxed in laos, and the closed restaurants and deserted streets at 9:30 in the evening made sense when in one hotel we read a sign saying we had to be in bed by 11pm by government decree! we had no problem with that. the land of one million cuddles ;)

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the french had a saying during the colonial period: 'the vietnamese plant the rice, the cambodians watch the rice grow and the lao listen to the rice grow'. how very zen. the storekeeper below was listening so intently she entered a trance-like state.

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luang prabang is an ancient capital, situated at the confluence of the nam khan and mekong rivers. replete with colonial architecture and 32 ancient wats, it is supposedly one of the best preserved cities in south east asia. and yes - it was beautiful. we spent our days hanging about drinking lao coffee, inspecting wats filled with monks that were holy by day and cigarette-smoking, foul-mouthed spit-in-the-bushes type monks by night, and perusing the tropical homes that we might want to live in one day too.

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there wasn't a great deal to do, and that suited us just fine. in fact for the most part we were curled up in bed exhausted from doing absolutely nothing.

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half way between the ancient capital of luang prabang and the current capital vientiane, our next destination, vang vieng, was a tourist town on the banks of the nam song, surrounded by the same gorgeous karst mountains we have come to know and love from vietnam and guangxi province in china.

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waking up to a vista of lush green mountains draped in a tropical fog from a small lover's cabin set between a rice-paddy and a river is something one could do every day of one's life. apart from hiking in the mountains and visiting the caves, the number one thing everyone in vang vieng does is 'rubber tubing'. basically, one hires a huge inflated rubber inner-tube, jumps into it, and merrily merrily floats 5 km down a tropical stream surrounded by mountain peaks. to cater to the hordes of young, drunken western tourists floating by, every 20 metres or so along the first km or 2 are bars where you can leave your tube, have a drink, and swing like tarzan into the river, slide down a concrete water slide, or cruise on down a flying fox.

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click on the video link below to see my flying fox experience. for some reason i had thought that i would gently come off the wire at the end and plop into the water feet first, but when the fox suddenly stopped and my body kept going, it was more like crash-test ondrej.

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once i'd relocated C5, we were able to jump on a bus to the capital.
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i can't say we loved vientiane. a funny little city on the banks of the mekong, with thailand on the other side, it evokes some of the other south east asian colonial capitals, but with not quite the same charm. one day we headed out to a bizarre little buddha park filled with concrete statues of a variety of gods, but otherwise we just chowed down. when in doubt, chow down right? we managed to push back litres of fruit smoothies, noodles, soups, baguettes, and even a meal at a sophisticated french restaurant with francophonic staff. like mum says - diet starts tomorrow.

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and then suddenly it was time to go home - back to melbourne and work and study and reality. i hadn't even taken time off - just squeezed in a trip to laos between shifts - how weird is that?! we jumped on a plane to KL where gerard left me for HK. i rubbed my eyes, finished the final chapitre of 'harry potter et les reliques de la mort' (what were you thinking j.k. with that stupid epilogue?) and then found myself in front of a newspaper announcing obama's election victory in the USA. i cried my little eyes out. i'm not sure how you all felt. but suddenly i felt really good about america, and i was proud of my american friends, and i felt like i was living through something momentous in our world's history. not so much about a black president in america, but more about a shift in the way the world is headed, a shift that signals a change for the better. something felt right with the world.

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after a week in super-saturated 30 degree lush and dripping asia, i'm back in rainy melbourne contemplating work and study and the future. there's something about travel that makes me feel so good. when a life is but a sum of one's experiences, then surely filling one's days with new and unknown sights and sounds and smells and thoughts is what living life is really about. it feels so strange that one could waste even a second of it in front of a television or in a mind-numbing job one hates (which is not my case if you were concerned). yet even that could be richly valuable as an experience of its own. it doesn't seem to matter what you do or don't do, life's stream carries you along at break-neck pace (even in the absence of a flying-fox), and when you step away from it for just a moment, you look back and feel such pleasure because you're the one that's there living it. you have lived! what a delightful thing to have done.

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diet starts tomorrow.

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joyeux anniversaire mon chéri d'amour. je t'aime grave :)

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deception

i wonder about our sense of disappointment, and how it affects our ability to live our lives with happiness. does someone who is born with a disability live a life of disappointment, or does one only feel disappointed when one can no longer achieve the things they once could, or once believed they could? the french word for disappointment is deception - a so-called linguistic false friend - or is it? perhaps we feel disappointed when we have deceived ourselves into believing we can do what we in fact cannot.

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damn this judas of a body.

the lightness of being unbearable

i have of late, but wherefore i know not, rediscovered all my mirth...
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i was walking home from coles the other day, green bags slung over each shoulder filled with baked beans and two-minute noodles to keep me going while the cook is away, and i almost floated away - right there and then - into the sky above the mixed-zone pseudo-suburb of cremorne.

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how does something like this happen? how does a moment of spine-tingling, goose-pimpling, electrifying happiness and love for life overcome one while performing the most banal of everyday activities? when one stops and smells the cut grass mixed with greasy tar of the road, and sees the sunlight dappling through the branches of the eucalypt, playing upon the surface of a discarded plastic bag, and one feels so light that one could literally float away and hover above the surface of the earth. in the presence of an existentialist understanding of the meaninglessness of life, and our meaninglessness within in it, the gravity of that beauty - the everythingness of it, and the everythingness of the moment in which it is contained - makes living life so very light - unbearably light.

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i think of this as perspective.

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tonight i will flap my wings and fly to laos, to meet my frog who hopped over to his business lillypad last week to soak up some different sun. i wish you all a zen day.

biennale!

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after pampering ourselves silly for the last 5 months in marvelous melbs, it was time to emerge from the warehouse of love in cremorne and get nasty.

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we thought we'd slum it out for a few days in australia's metropolitan equivalent of an antichrist (or a cheap tart): sydney.
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the occasion? the 2008 biennale: a massive, free, public art show that took place at multiple locations throughout the city.
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i have to say that as a location, sydney is gorgeous, and seeing the bridge and opera house together is like an iconic slap in the face. whilst the locals were nasty, they can't detract (much) from the amazing city they live in. definitely in my top 10 australian cities.
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at circular quay there was a massive inflated telstra dome-ball where we went in pretending to be french tourists with little english, wrote some hero-mail to stephanie rice and sat in big eggs watching the olympics. it was great - but doesn't change the fact that telstra are fucking australia up the arse by maintaining their stranglehold on broadband!
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incidentally, there seemed to be a frenchwoman on every boat, beach and street corner, which made the act of loudly abusing people tricky.
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everyone talks about melbourne as if it's some sort of restaurant haven. i am a self-confessed melbo-centric bastard, but it just seemed that every restaurant or cafe we walked into in sydney was an absolute winner: from burgers to thai to korean bbq, G + i were packing it in until we were bursting at the seams.
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in fact, on our final night we visited an all-you-can-eat vegan restaurant where i lost all impulse control and developed what i can only imagine was vegetable-induced blunt trauma to my stomach - from the inside. i just pushed in one too many fried cauliflowers! i've loved the restaurant on previous visits because it has an associated cinema with beds in it - the perfect place to cuddle and spoon while watching the action on the big screen.
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a good deal of the artwork at the biennale was concentrated on cockatoo island - an old shipyard island in the harbour which had its barracks, warehouses and docks converted into spaces for art display. what an awesome idea. even the free ferry out there and back was a treat. as far as visiting a city goes, having something like an art show as a base to from which to work each day was really good. no more savage wandering of streets with nothing to do.
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one of the highlights for me was cirque du soleil, which i've been wanting to see for a long time. we realised it was in town, jumped on the net to buy tickets, and a few hours later were in the heated tent watching what was probably the best two hours of entertainment i think i've had in my life - incredible. i was so amazed at what was going on on stage that i actually started crying on a number of occasions, in addition to gasping, howling, clapping and shouting. the cirque is coming to melbourne next year, and i'd recommend it to everyone. compulsory viewing.
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the biggest highlight was of course the g-man. basking together in the sunshine (on the grass in the middle of winter!), walking about the nearby beaches or through the city or even drinking cocktails on the 35th floor of a harbourside hotel (thanks for the tip-off, n), g+o has been, and continues to be, a pretty magical combination.
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or i make one

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the olympics opening ceremony dragged. slumber party. we popped down to wilson's prom the following week for a couple of days with vov, nick and their friends jean and max.

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sandwich queens

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rockhugging
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that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a barren promontory.

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G looking particularly froggish
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the wilson's prom team

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join us next week when we head north for winter.

all crushed into these big feet

It was time to show G some of the sights, so off we went on a journey along the great ocean road. here's the obligatory shot of G+O and the 12 gay apostles.

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had to sneak this one in of healesville sanctuary from the week before. who knew you could have so much fun with a carrot and a furry animal?

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at night we crawled into our den of comfort, from which the frog was difficult to extract the following morning

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australian? gerard's first EVER fish and chips!

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The frog contemplates some of life's bigger ponds

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the 'round the twist lighthouse
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a moment of tenderness captured at tower hill

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morning feast en train de se faire

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proof that physics loves gerard at the balconies in the grampians

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. . (at the wind farm near ararat) I would stand,

If the night blackened with a coming storm,

Beneath some rock, listening to notes that are

The ghostly language of the ancient earth,

Or make their dim abode in distant winds.

Thence did I drink the visionary power.

new beginnings

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at 3am on wednesday the 3 may 2006, i awoke from sleep on a mattress on the floor of a peasant's house in haba village in northern yunnan province. i was in excruciating pain. something had happened to my hip! (the dedicated readers among you may even remember the very blog entry recounting the drama!) ... so began two years of debility, non-diagnosis, multiple rounds of imaging, and a distinct psychological downturn, that has, with any luck, just come to an end.
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i'm writing to you 24 hours after having had my left hip re-modelled. that's right! i've got a new hip - but this one is a super-deluxe version for a new ondrej. it's a new hip for a new beginning.
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pictures of my hip! top left is where the labrum had a chunk ripped out of it

bottom right is a piece of bone floating freely within the joint. no wonder it hurt!

for those who are interested - and i know you are - the surgeon took down the labrum, cut away part of the acetabulum, stuck the labrum back on, and then reshaped my neck of femur. in lay terms - i was sliced and diced! post-op highlights included shitting in the bed because i had had a spinal, and vomiting all night long from the GA. coming home highlights include having my very own blue-eyed, red-bearded nurse waiting on me hand and foot. that part is most particularly nice.

it is a year for new beginnings. gerard and i, both formerly ruggedly independent bachelors, have thrown ourselves down the slippery slope of domestic bliss to convert our conte de fees into a real life love affair. gerard is an unashamed hausfrau, and even i am starting the morph into a domestic goddess. soon i'll even be able to cook something.

we started renting a reconverted warehouse in the industrial part of richmond known as cremorne. we had a fun housewarming, and special thanks to all the trashy drags that turned up in style - in particular dad! the apartment itself is wonderful, and for those who haven't seen it and even those who have, open invitations exist to come over whenever you want and stay for as long as you want.

the apartment is a stone's throw from the botanic gardens, and we have been exercising our freedom to grab a blanket, cheese and wine on a sunny sunday afternoon and cuddle away the hours on the grass while trying to wish the park's children out of existence.

we're settling in for a comfortable year - gerard is working like a dog, and his business(es) are slowly but positively taking off, and i'm working part time in order to focus on getting my health back up to scratch and pursue some more language study. turns out you can do exactly what you want with your life and get away with it.

the third member of our household - musashi the siamese fighting fish

it's been great seeing everyone in melbourne and i hope to see lots more of all of you, and even some of you who are overseas and visiting this year!