I keep staring at it and wondering when I’m going to start feeling cool. According to friends who have popped their tattoo cherries, that moment never comes. Oh well.

So it’s the end of the day, I’m about to leave for a work dinner. My tastebuds are tingling for some Pekingese cuisine. Thought I’d squeeze in a bit of blog-reading before the end of the day and came across Estelle of 3000 Books’s latest blog post, which was her own take on the Paris Review’s Culture Diaries.

Given that I’ve called upon my extraordinary powers of self-control and have refrained from meme-ing the shit out of this blog, I think I deserve this one.

Al, the original culture diarist, basically puts me to shame. So please click on the above links AFTER you read mine.

Friday:

Watch Four Lions at the Dendy Newtown. Indie film at indie cinema is overwhelming. We precede the evening with Thai and vodka. Finally subscribe to HEAT magazine.

Saturday:

Call my mum and tell her that I’ve booked my literary tattoo. Spend a few minutes explaining to her the origins of the phrase “someone had blundered.” Spend a few more minutes defending my choice. Watch the first two discs of Mad Men season 1. Discuss with friend whether or not it’s fair to claim that The Smiths are the greatest band in the world. We decide it’s a fair assessment. We earmark poems from an old Oxford Book of Children’s Poetry and then turn them into songs. Realise while reading the poems that we aren’t the first to do this. The Beatles beat us to it. Then, some local live music down at Petersham Bowlo’s (Little Lovers and Shakin’ Howls).

Sunday:

Book club: Discussion of East of Eden. I bake orange and poppyseed cake. Watch more Mad Men, and wonder if this website of vintage ads for social networking sites has anything to do with my recent decision to finally watch the show everybody’s been going on about.

Monday:

A wild card reading of my short story at Penguin Plays Rough. Listen to other more talented writers read their stories that range from the disturbing to the hilarious (often within the same story). A pole dancer performs. Favourite story is the final one, in which Carrie Bradshaw begins a heated affair with Maya Angelou. Eat some communal organic chocolate. Urges to move to culturally superior Melbourne are sufficiently quashed for now.

Tuesday:

I wake up early enough to listen to music while I’m getting ready for work and spend a good forty minutes dancing and singing loudly to Edith Piaf before rushing out the door. Second book club. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. We spend most of the night wondering how Hollywood turned a 29-page short story into a feature length film. Watch more Mad Men and realise that the “surge in adolescence” Campbell’s father-in-law refers to is the baby-boomers (i.e. my parents!) I feel culturally and historically connected to this show now for some reason, and fantasise about living in 1960 New York.

Wednesday:

More Edith Piaf with similar results. Brief discussion in elevator at work with colleague who looks at my book (Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s short stories, Welcome to the Monkey House) and tells me there’s a scientist named Kurt Vonnegut who did something cool during the cold war. I plan on researching this claim during my lunch break but get distracted by Bret Easton Ellis’s version of The Baby-sitters’ Club. Chinese banquet dinner. I salivate over the Meredith Festival line-up announcement. Discover through an online newspaper’s slideshow that advertising has actually manufactured many important aspects of our culture such as jogging (Nike) and coffee breaks (American Coffee Company or something). Urge to kill rising as I search in vain for the original link to said slide show, and I start playing a Go-Betweens album. Urge to kill fading. I make a mental note of this, the 14th Simpsons reference that I said, wrote or thought on this particular day.

This panel session was destined to be made entirely of win. Illustrator Shaun Tan, of The Arrival and The Lost Thing fame (not to mention a plethora of picture books), Eddie Campbell, best known for illustrating the graphic novel From Hell with Alan Moore, and Neil Gaiman, who probably needs no introduction (although here comes the obligatory mention of his famous Sandman comics… Oh, there it went).

The topic of discussion was the enigma that is the evolution of an idea. Given that the works of these panellists in particular have been adapted into new media, and given that they’ve all worked on various collaborative projects, the discussion very much revolved around the challenges and advantages of such creative developments.

And while the ideas that came out of the discussion were insightful and clever, mostly, the audience was treated to some delightful anecdotes.

Gaiman brought up one my favourite recurring panel topics, the enormous influence of writers, films and music on a person during their most formative years. While I’ve always been a firm believer of this, Gaiman actually put an age limit on it, almost declaring that this formative age expires at 20 years old.

Mr Gaiman, if that is true, I’d be very sad, because I’ve discovered and devoured many, many new writers, films and musicians in the nearly 2 years since I turned 20, including you, and I’d hate to think they were any less influential on me.

In fact, when I was doing some workshopping with the Inspire group last year, we were told the ‘Identity-forming’ stage was considered to be 18-24, or something like that. I’m still trying to figure out who I am, and I think to put an age on something like that is a little short-sighted. Some people’s “formative years” stretch longer than others. But I digress.

Shaun Tan also raised a really intriguing aim of storytelling, to create an absurd new world, a la Dr. Suess, and convince the reader to abandon all reason and jump into the author’s universe. What a relief that his mother reading Animal Farm to him and his brother when they were children didn’t emotionally scar him.

Eddie Campbell mostly shared stories that didn’t seem to have anything to do with the panel discussion. To me, he is the king of comically awkward pauses and that foot-in-mouth disorder specific to panels.

It was far too short, and clear that the guests could have probably talked for a good couple more hours. The questions avoided stupidity, to my great relief, and there was never a dull moment.

The best part about this panel was that I was only vaguely familiar with the artists’ works, but these insights into their minds will hopefully shape my reading experience for the better.

Also, it turns out Gaiman is an expert in obscure Edwardian literature. Tre cool, no?

When I moved into Sydney’s inner west, I promised myself I would make a special effort to venture out of the area as often as possible. Just so I didn’t find myself trapped in the insular, comforting world full of decent eat-outs, overwhelming choice of live bands, knitting cafes, droolworthy indie bookshops, and literary hoo-ha’s.
That promise is becoming harder and harder to keep, namely because I keep finding more fun things to do: nerdy fun, kitsch fun, drunken sing-along fun. With this in mind, DAMN YOU ERSKINEVILLE. DAMN YOU HIVE BAR. And DAMN YOU CJ SHAW.

The Hive Bar, on Erskineville road, in…guess where… Erskineville, hosts a monthly live music night called Shut the Folk Up. It’s folk music, if you hadn’t gathered. I went along last night because friend and poet Fiona Wright (of HEAT magazine and Giramondo Publishing) was doing some readings in between the folk music. I guess poetry and folk music kind of go hand in hand. I’m not a poetry expert, but I have to say, after listening to Fiona and her honey-dripped voice (which I think she emphasised to match the old school ’sexy

blues diva’ microphone), I’m really keen to get in on some poetry action.

Peter Miller-Robinson opened the night with songs about his prematurely born, bubble-wrapped grandson, and eBay mamas. He pulled out a ukulele. It was much bigger and fancier than mine. Plus he can actually play it. Maybe I’ll sound like that one day with the fancy finger-pluckin’ and whatnot.

Fiona’s first reading of the night included poems about growing up in the shire. Well, according to her parents she grew up in the shire.

According to everyone else, she’s a westie.

“The Courthouse”, a Newtown poem, highlighted her talent for taking eavesdropped conversations and making them sound delicious.

Isaac Graham then pulled out his guitar and folked that shit up old school, his brother eventually accompanying him on the harmonica.

A band called Arbori was next, and while we waited a good 15 minutes for them to set up, there was a perfectly acceptable reason. Keyboard + guitar + vibraphone (that’s right bitches!) AND piano accordion. They played dreamy, ambient folk that damn well nearly put me to sleep. I blame the vibraphone.

Fiona’s second set featured one of my highlights of the night. Her never-before-read “Tupperware Quartet” painted an absurd and accurate picture of the conversations and goings-on at these mysterious social rituals known as tupperware parties. I almost want to go to one now and see if they’re that…erm…entertaining.

A female folk singer followed (whose name I have embarrassingly forgotten), doing mostly covers (Holly Throsby, Clare Bowditch), and then the host, CJ Shaw, borrowed her guitar for some political folk parody protest songs. Or something like that. I was getting yawny by this stage, so the sing-along he instigated at the end of the night perked me back up for the long walk home.

I was really only there for the poetry, but there was a great non-wanker vibe down at the Hive bar, and while I don’t normally go out of my way to listen to folk music (with a couple of exceptions), it was a surprisingly pleasant evening. After trudging through the streets alone, on a night that was cold, windy and wet, finding yourself in a crummy dive can be very depressing. Luckily, I found myself in a cosy little nook and some talented, folkin’ rad people.

Disclaimer: Fiona is a good friend. But don’t accuse me of bias. If I thought she was no good, I wouldn’t have written this at all. Plus, I’m only friends with talented people.

Oh and they have a Facebook group.

This blog was my creative crutch for over a year. I was working part-time hours for a publishing company that specialised in non-fiction books I had no interest in ever reading.

A few weeks ago I started my publishing internship with a fiction imprint of a much bigger house. I’m surrounded by beautiful books and writing all day. I’m reading for work, and for pleasure, and, to be honest, the brain is getting too full.

This, if you hadn’t realised, is my pathetic excuse of an apology for the lack of posts lately. With a few reviews in the pipeline, I’ll take this opportunity to show off my book loot from an impulse book-buying frenzy that occurred a couple of hours ago.

Do you work with books night and day? Is this fatigue common or am I just weak, with a soft-spot for trashy tv?

* 2666 by Roberto Bolano

* Revenge of the Lawn, The Abortion & So the Wind Won’t Blow It All Away by Richard Brautigan (3-in-1. Score!)

* Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys.

* The Trial by Franz Kafka

* Atomised by Michel Houellebecq

A rare occasion. No, not the book launch attendance. And no, not the gate-crashing of the post-launch drinks affair with the posse of Burgers and Tweeps (although, technically, if you ask the author “can I crash the post-launch drinks?” it doesn’t count as gate-crashing).

The rareness came from actually going to a  book launch for an author whose books I’ve read. And whose blogs, tweets, and high-brow journalism articles I’ve read. And you know, whose writing has had such an impact on my own worldview and writer-like aspirations.

Mr. Birmingham knows how to talk. But more importantly, he holds his own. I mistook the stool that held the microphone for an interviewer’s seat, and so was surprised when he pulled the chair over and sat down alone, and told us about the writing process for his Axis of Time trilogy, as well as After America and its preceding book Without Warning. And when he peppered this talk with advice for baby writers (although if you read Mr Birmingham’s blogs, he’ll always take an opportunity to share wisdom with the baby writers). He’s also good at answering questions. The first question of the  night came from a young gentlemen who, with an accusatory tone, asked Mr. Birmingham what made him go from blogs (and yes, Felafel was a blog of sorts), to “trashy airport novels”, and the response was dignified, and even a little defensive of the doomed first-question-asker, who had elicited outbursts of disapproval from the devoted crowd. The question reeked of wank. Not because he used the word ‘trashy’, but because of the tone behind the question. And I have low tolerance for irritating questions at author events.

And after learning that scathing literary reviewers of Mr. Birmingham’s books apparently go onto a list, and are ruthlessly murdered in the next part of the series, I’m actually tempted to read After America and post a meanypoo bitter review of it. Just to see what happens. Not that I consider my reviews here to be that high on anyone’s radar, but it’s a worthy aspiration, right?

He’s a proud father, and didn’t miss an opportunity, given the arse-kicking aspect of his fiction books, to boast a little about his daughter’s mean ju jitsu skills. I don’t know her name, but as a result of his anecdote, have come to think of her as Yoshimi (a la the Flaming Lips song, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots).

The next part of this write-up refers to something that is not so much a rare, but rather a common occurrence. I have essentially no  money to my name. And as such, I lined up, like a douchebag, to say “hello, I have nothing for you to sign”. This being a book launch and all, the writer was able to relate to my situation all too well, and despite being stocked up on the free wine, I was shouted a couple of drinks at the post-launch do. I promise you, reader, that these free drinks had no bearing on this post, apart from the obvious alcoholic residue that I like to occasionally use to polish my book launch posts.

So if some poor sod ever decides to pay me for a piece of writing, that pay cheque is going to go first and foremost towards paying back Mr. Birmingham.

Oh and I have one complaint of the evening. The toddler-sized stools that they expected us to sit on over at Ariel. I stood during the event because I knew that to be seated would tempt the gods of breaking chairs, and  my red face wouldn’t just be a result of too much wine.

I’m sure I’ve said this before, but of all the awesome reasons I love my blog, one of the top three has to be the opportunity it gives me to show off all the amazingly talented and artistic friends I have.

Lingsi is one such friend. She can paint and draw and takes amazing photos, and with her Diana F+ too!

A couple of weekends ago Lingsi, Pam (another rad photochick) and myself (Diana mini noob) hit up the Sydney Biennale at Cockatoo Island. Some of the shots below are from that trip, but Lingsi’s one hepcat Lomo-er so some are from her other lomo day excursions.

from Vivid Sydney

Cue show off fanfare.

Lingsi also wrote an interesting post over at her blog comparing digital and film photography. She says: “in this digital era where people have no idea to function their cameras and put everything on ‘auto’, it can get a bit impersonal and brainless, whereas lomography is more of an artistic and creative process of capturing moments.”

I think this could also apply to my recent typewriter adventures. The way one writes on a manual, sometimes sticky-keyed old typewriters is so much more careful and deliberate. At first it’s frustrating that

my fingers cannot keep up with my brain, and I realised how much I take the ‘delete’ key for granted. But there’s something soothing in the hard punching motion of the keys, and something a little more rewarding when the end result is a hard copy piece of text.

Lingsi doesn’t discount digital photography, which I think is quite thoughtful (and lucky for us, given that she’s also a gifted digital photographer!); rather, she compares the two types of photography: the widened artistic scope that is made possible by the digital medium, as well asthe accidental beauty that can stem from mistakes in lomography. You can see more of her photos at Lingsi’s Flickr site.

I only speak English.

I have no interest in books written by Indians, or set in India, or about travelling in India.

I still refer to its cities by their imperialistic, Anglo-names (Bombay, Calcutta) without a second thought.

I have never seen the movie Gandhi.

I have never read Q&A or seen Slumdog Millionaire.

When people ask me where I’m from, I get a little offended, but mostly answer them in a confused and confuddled manner, seeings as I’m still not one hundred per cent sure of the answer myself. And how dare they ask me a question I don’t even know how to answer?

I assume all Indians are the same, whether or not they’re from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Fiji, or South Africa.

I’m what kids these days call an Oreo.

My infatuation with the cool shit, like Bollywood dancing, henna and those Sikh warrior bracelets, was short lived.

But I do not find Indian men attractive. ESPECIALLY not Shah Rukh Kanh.

But I still get annoyed if a white person knows more about those things than I do.

Sometimes I just say I’m Malaysian without explaining anything. (Does it still count if you were there for less than a year of your life?)

I think Russell Peters is hilarious, but if he didn’t have a Canadian accent I probably would’ve dismissed him as an unfunny loser.

I freak out when I meet other Indians because I feel like I have to act a certain way, that I end up saying stupid things like “so what part of India are you from?” (The dreaded question.)

I’ve only watched a handful of episodes of The Big Bang Theory and would sincerely like the Indian on that show, who insists on saying ‘dude’, to be shot.

As soon as I realised wearing henna and having a nose piercing and wearing a Bollywood dress to your school formal doesn’t make you any cooler, I stopped doing it.

As soon as I realised embracing the interesting cultural aspects of my heritage didn’t make me any cooler, I stopped doing it.

I’m probably never going to learn any of the languages.

I will never read a dramatic Indian-tear-jerker-Oprah’s-Book-Club novel.

I get insanely jealous when people tell me how gorgeous Aishwarya Raya is (as if I hadn’t noticed), because I start to worry that they are using her as a benchmark for Indian feminine beauty.

Nearly everyone I spoke to at SWF told me all the good shit happens AFTER the sessions have finished. When the volunteers and festival staff have packed up the chairs and wrapped up the mikes, throngs of literary types shuffle to the conveniently located bar for a piss up and wind down.

This is partly true. And while I’ve been blogging over at the ABC Book Show blog about festivaly goodness, I feel like I’ve been self-censoring. Guess what? I DON’T DO THAT HERE!!!!*

So I can shamelessly name-drop, and tell you how freaking awesome it is to be given a media pass lanyard. The golden ticket. The little piece of plastic that makes people hate you when they’re standing outside a venue in the rain, being refused entry, and watching you get waved in like you’re someone important. (The illusion that I’m important, just to clarify.)

And I can tell you about catching up for drinks with Willy Vlautin and his Richmond Fontaine bandmate Dan Eccles, their Australian distributor Nick, and Granta editor John Freeman. We sat on the pier down in Walsh Bay with a bit of rain and a gorgeous sunset, and debated whether or not Rocky III was the one with Mr T or the one with Apollo Creed. So my, “interview” was in fact me just sitting back and listening to the conversations around me. (A completely different story 5 hours and many alcoholic beverages later, but we won’t talk about that.)

And I can tell you about Tom Cho’s fbi session today, where we listened to a handful of songs that have impacted his life, or writing, or both. Tom talked about pop culture, and the heavy references to various films, bands and music in his short story collection Look Who’s Morphing; the impossible task of having a short story collection published. Because everyone knows they’re unsellable. (Tell that to my bookshelf- there are two whole rows dedicated to short story collections I’ve read over the years); and he read from a few stories. Everything was working against Tom and his interviewer: People were walking in and out throughout the event, and because of the entirely rude and inconvenient rain, the footsteps were very sqwidgy sounding There was a woman right outside the MCA building shouting incoherent words of, I’m guessing, a motivational nature, and so the final two back rows were getting very distracted. And we were on the very top floor. Floor six + Two very slow elevators = impossible to leave. But we did get to listen to songs from Dirty Dancing and Fame, as well as the Itchy & Scratchy theme song.

And I could tell you about a certain author I met very briefly, who borrowed my lighter. I never got it back, but in this author’s defence I ended up making a hasty exit so I guess I won’t hold it against him.

And I could tell you that book publicists are bloody troopers. Sure it looks and seems all glamorous but these people are working non-stop. Troopers.

I could tell you all the books I’m currently reading:

The Lesser Blessed by Richard Van Camp (just finished). I dropped my signed copy on a soggy floor, but the cover is still perfect looking, and discovered evidence of food that passed (or missed) my lips on one page. If enough people are still interested, I will happily host a giveaway.

Lean on Pete by Willy Vlautin (only a few pages in, and my bookmark is doing a terrible job so I’ve read the first 30 pages about three times now)

Baba Yaga Laid an Egg by Dubravka Ugresic. (<< fantastic speaker and hilarious woman, just so you know :))

A million and one zines from the MCA Zine Fair.

Just quickly, I have to say to the zinesters I met today, many of you were lovely and friendly and a real pleasure to talk to. But some of you weren’t. I’m not sure why. Perhaps I was grumpy and hungover, but as a punter and not a current zine-maker, I still love talking to you all, and don’t like being made to feel like I’m wasting your time by saying hello.

Richmond Fontaine are playing at Notes in Newtown this Friday 28th May and at The Troubadour in Brisbane on Saturday 29th May.

Wow, I typed those last two paragraphs with my eyes closed. I’m going to sleep and dream about authors, piers, Russian fairytales, canapes, words, and the Itchy & Scratchy theme song.

*To my own demise