Currently in Melbourne

It's gusty outside. The past week had been beautiful, warm, and sunny.

Listening to "Falling Slowly" by Glen H. (of the Frames) and Marketa I. Pretty much addicted. Take a listen. It's haunting. I do a poor job singing it (someone said it sounds like Enya to them - and it's SO NOT ENYA!). Take this sinking boat and point it home, we still got time. Raise your hopeful voice, you have a choice, you've made it now. Falling slowly sing your melody I'll sing it loud. Thing is I don't know what the song means. It's wonderfully vague and therefore precise. Which I suppose is the beauty of art.

Trying to work on my assignment instead of listening to This American Life's most recent episode: "Break-up." It sounds promising, in the typical TAL style of making you laugh and cry at the same time because it's all so familiar... Ira Glass & crew: Thank you.

Drinking Earl Grey & milk & honey.

Reeling from getting my ass kicked by a friend (via e-mail) and a sermon (online) I just listened to. Sometimes the hardest things are the simplest and most obvious. The heart is deceitful above all things; that's it, I need a new one!! It's on order.

Praying for Ev and her pending move. I know how much LA will miss you, sis, because I miss you... but I look forward to seeing new things springing up; here's to new hope and adventures ahead!

Thinking of DJ and VSJ getting married on Sunday. WOW. Can't. Believe. You're. Getting. Married. It's the best. Two dear wonderful friends finding each other to be the one they want to commit to. I've seen a few of these successes now in my circle of friends, but it doesn't diminish the fact that I'm so entirely happy for and proud of them.

... and much more. But that's all that's fit to print.

And maybe this. More recent good times had in Melbourne and surrounding areas.

More of Melbourne

Hotel Breakfast

My cousin got married last weekend and so a whole clan of us came from all over the world - no, quite literally - to partake in the celebration. At the hotel during breakfast I found my uncle (actually, my father's cousin, which makes him... what does that make him?) who resides in Hong Kong sitting alone, so I joined him, knowing that it would be an interesting breakfast.

He's a chatty one, my uncle, always has something to say about everything, while admitting that the thing he's most well-versed at is BS-ing. Interesting, like I said. Most of the time it's something about some relative of ours (whom I don't know) - since my family is very large. Very. He speaks deliberately, in his British slash Chinese-accented English (work with me here), and always with a twinkle in his eyes like he is about to make you laugh.

"I was talking to my cousin about something I read in the newspaper. His alma mater admitted a 12-yr old Taiwanese boy into a PhD program."

Twelve?

"I wonder, I said to him, why higher education institutions have not, in my living memory, admitted a child prodigy for, say, literature, or history?"

Hmm.. good question.

"His alma mater, by the way, is the Massachussets Institute of Technology."

He does have a dramatic flare about him.

"In my living memory. Not a single one."

He was looking for me to react - I know - but I was more interested in what he was going to say next. Plus I was busy chewing my food. Good breakfast. So he went on.

"We think that it's because a 12-yr old boy cannot know - or know very little of it, to articulate it - the depth of being in love, or being betrayed, or wanting to die for something. Suffering or deep disappointment in the world, no matter how genius he is... and that's the stuff of literature."

He smiled, knowing that I was agreeing with him.

More good music for everyone

Finally! Someone (or more than one, it turns out) understands!
Internet radio - on your radio!

So fun. Bye-bye commercial radio...

This is my city

Yep. She's mine.
But. I do like to share. So, here you go.

This is my city