Random stuff

Hello my unknown audience!

I must begin by admitting I am slightly discouraged by the progress of my blog. I feel like I just don't have enough time to keep up with it as much as I imagined doing. Also--perhaps--I am being lazy about it and not being proactive enough. I'm going to try to be better. I just had a caramel slice before opening up this page, so hopefully some kind of Pavlovian conditioning will take effect wherein I feel compelled to blog immediately after eating sugary foods. Then the posts will be rampant!

ANYWAY. I am currently sitting in a little cafe in the Surry Hills neighborhood, which is one of my favorite. "Hills" is not a misnomer, though, and my already over-used legs took a beating on the way here. I finished work at my own cafe just an hour or so ago, and am relaxing before going in to the restaurant to work the dinner shift. Another day, another dollar. (An Australian one, which grows ever more powerful while the US prints up a billion new dollars. Yikes.)

Yesterday was Melbourne Cup Day, which is basically Kentucky Derby times ten. It's a horse race in Melbourne; and Victoria gets the day off as a public holiday. In Sydney we do not, but everyone leaves work around one and gets pissed while watching the horsies and betting on them. It's seriously a HUGE deal-- every bar and restaurant in the city had been advertising their Melbourne Cup Package since I arrived in September, and yesterday there were balloons and decorations on every storefront I passed. At the coffee shop in the morning, everyone who came in talked about where they were going to watch the race, what horses they were betting on, etc. For the race itself, we had a function of 160 people come into the restaurant and drink for 5 hours. The ladies were all wearing fancy hats, and some of the men as well. The women seemed to all relish the opportunity to get all gussied up, whereas the male camp seemed to be divided between the traditional "gentleman" look (which was lovely and Mad Men-esque with fedoras and three-piece suits) and the outrageous (coonskin caps, bight turquoise brocade silk jackets). They were a nice enough bunch but obviously it's not the most fun to serve alcohol to a bunch of drunk people. Even less fun was telling them they had to leave and could not have any more wine when 5:00 FINALLY rolled around. C'est la vie.

Finally, I just want to share the book I finished a few weeks ago. It's an Australian book, and actually takes place in Melbourne. I loved it so much I wish I could go back to the time before I had started it just so I could read it again for the first time. But I'm a freak. It's called "The Slap" by Christos Tsiolkas and I encourage anyone who's interested to try and track it down.

Thanks for slogging through a picture-less blog post. I hope it wasn't too painful. Hope to write again soon!