Weekend Project: Footscray

The next-door chapel has a thing for a theme. Every week, the message at the sanctuary would be in accordance with a theme regardless of the speaker background and inspiration. And this year the theme happens to be ‘Homeland’.

Home is a simple word that we all learn in preschool. But it is such a hard word to define. It may be a place, a person, a feeling or even an idea.

Being the nomad that I am. Home is usually a person to me. But if I have to find a place which somewhat resembles home in Melbourne, it would have to be Footscray.

Footscray does not exactly look like home. Neither is it filled with people from home. But when you are at Footscray, there is this sense of how all time has stopped and that you are back to your 5-year-old self on a Saturday morning.

Your parents are not at work and the entire family is out on an adventure to the neighbourhood market. You sit and have some breakfast, which is usually an array of dishes from a range of foodstalls.

As you dig chopsticks and spoons into communal dishes, there is always someone bustling about. And yet you know that no danger lurkes. When you are done with breakfast, you wonder into the wet market: marveling and observing.

It doesn’t matter where your parents are. And you are never concern if you had lost your way because in a very special sense, you are in your element. So you sit for hours at a small obscure corner with your eye on the fishball maker on his wobbly wooden stool. Pinching fully rounded balls of mince fish meat out from a highly unattractive pool of gooey lump.

Or you can watch the women with their arms weighed down by the many colourful bags they carry, prodding the skin of fishes and examining their gills and eyes. And the uncle behind the booth is always bathing in a fountain of flying scales as he run that magical device over a chosen salmon or promfret.

Although Footscray does not have a huge wet market with such sights… it triggers those fond memories. I cannot help but smile to myself as I walk among the throngs of shoppers, feeling quite present in the moment but lost in the vast idea of time.

Weekend Project: Elegance Served

Time is sacred these days.

I feel that I can identify with what Tina Fey said in the movie "Datenight". She said something along the lines of how she sometimes fantasise about being alone in a hotel room somewhere, with a book in one hand and a bottle of sprite in the other.

I fantasise about being alone. Doesn't matter where and with what. Just alone. Without any expectations. Questions. Provocation. Silly pressing issues. Just me, myself and I. Somewhere. Alone.

So today after a highly over-rated experience at Red Emperor with some friends, I took the highroad and went to stroll about the Southbank Farmers Market. A delightful little place where there are tons of little stores. Correction: over-priced little stores. Selling prints and other crafts and such.

Imagine my delight when I found a serving platter in a rejects basket. AUS$10 and in my favourite colour: red. Lined with 24-caret gold. For my keys and such.

Joy in the littlest things.

Things I Swore I Will Never Ever Do.

Some days boredom drive you to crazy deeds. On days when all you do is lie about in college reading compilation of Murakami in short bursts you realised that life ahas got to hold a tad bit more meaning than that.

And so you go for a leisure round of golf with a bunch of noobs who barely know how to hold their clubs. This is inclusive of me of course. We just whacked instead of doing stuff Tiger Woods style. I ought to be more careful about referencing to Tiger Woods these days. Somehow he is now better known for other things than golf. Hmm.

And you go golfing with people who own clubs that are most probably older than they are.

Life is sometimes hilarious.

Weekend Project: Light Proofing

Half Light-Proofed French Doors

I consider myself somewhat of an expert in DIY Home Improvement nowadays. Staying in 3rd grade student accommodation helps train that side of you.

Since moving into this current room, I have been woken up unceremoniously in the early morning by the sunlight filtering through the French doors that open onto the balcony.

While the natural light is well appreciated in the day time, it officially wears out its welcome when it intrudes into my dreamtime.

So I started on a Weekend Project to light-proof the above mentioned French doors. Multifunctional Blu-Tack with expired thick calendar paper easily allowed me to accomplish my mission.

Crossed fingers for a all better night sleep.

Completely Light-Proofed Doors for a Good Nights' Sleep