she looks like my uncle

our first impression of canberra was that it was closed. our second impression was that we had arrived in the middle of a fucking nuclear winter. even after our 4.5 days there, we were still left with the vague feeling that the weather reports were wrong (sexed up for the politicians perhaps?) and that the city was in the process of being abandoned.
.
.
but first thing's first: the best thing about visiting our nation's capital was seeing sarah! we spent a day with sarah, carla and sarah's dad eric wandering around the national gallery and the national portrait gallery (damn good galleries, people), and munching on the fattest pizza you'd ever have the nauseating pleasure of getting your teeth into, but needed a follow-up vanderwal hit, so jumped on a bus the following day to get out to the sticks where sarah lives for a night of munch and drink and nerdily indulgent trivial pursuit. it was wonderwall. so many of us have been thinking of sarah over the past months, and it was good to see and touch and hear her again after so long. i carry back all her love and hugs and kisses to the good people of melbourne. come and get 'em.
.
.
.
incidentally, the bus terminal near sarah's place is to be avoided at all costs. classical music was being blasted over the speakers at a feverish pitch, the lighting was dim and unflattering, and at any given moment we were expecting the boys from a clockwork orange to round the corner and break our heads with a baseball bat.
.
.
despite her generous offer, we didn't stay with sarah, but near the centre of town - in easy distance of all our objectives. our accommodation situation was both wonderful and wonderfully dodgy, and we bartered for it accordingly.
.
.
so back to the stuff we saw. the new parliament house was stunning. it is a proud structure and i was overwhelmed with pride while in front of it, on top of it, and especially within it. while i do not consider myself patriotic - a term that rings for me of a willingness to kill for small ideas - i am very, very proud of being australian, and that pride gushed out in a staggered series of weeping episodes at various locations throughout the building.
.
.
on a tour i was distressed to find that sessions of parliament open with the lord's prayer! can anyone believe it? i couldn't. i'm still quite upset about it. instead of the lord's prayer, i have devised a 'parliament dance', which i demonstrated in the house of representatives while we were there (check it out in the background). click below and tell me whether you would prefer to do the parliament dance or say the lord's prayer before work if you were an MP. which is in the public's greater interest?
.

.
parliament sat on the monday that we were there, so we booked a couple of tickets and went and sat in with them. i wanted to see what was happening on the other end of my vote. we got to see kevin and julia and malcolm and peter and all their friends come to the microphone to spin their shit. we even saw the big costello good-bye, which was a small moment in history (i suppose). the irony is that the people who lead our country - grown men and women - seemingly have no respect for each other as they interject and guffaw while others are trying to speak, and yet the people who employ them (in this case just me, as g doesn't really pay taxes) had to sit like statues and indulge the rabble. i put my hoodie on because the aircon was blowing on the back of my head, and within a few seconds an aggressive guard appeared and ordered me to take it off. perhaps he was concerned that my daring grey knitted cardigan would be too much of a distraction for the PM. when i told him that i wouldn't take it off because my ears were too cold, he grunted "take off the hood" and looked at me with a threatening look in his eye, as if it were a national security issue. i thought to myself 'what the fuck is going on here?'
.
..
the other cultural highlight of canberra was the war memorial. people had raved about it, but i was skeptical until we went there, especially because i have a vague distaste for celebration/commemoration/focus on the world wars, which i believe distracts from the fact that we still do not have peace in our time. sarah had described it as "the best museum i've ever been to, and i've been to a lot of museums", and now having been there, i can't say i disagree. here again i felt proud of being an australian, and even had a little cry when i was explaining to g what had happened at gallipoli. australian nationhood was born, g! the presentations were just so tasteful and well researched that you couldn't help being really engrossed.
.
.
and that's about it. g and i are heading off the land of the rising sun in a few days for almost 6 weeks (how excitement!!!), so watch out for a massacred endangered whale caught for scientific research-sized blog entry at the end of that one. in the meantime, ではまた!
.