The conundrum of the clumsy parker

My driveway deserves a medal for perseverance. For decades, it has fought tooth and nail against the roots of the rubber tree which has pushed it upwards, inwards and finally caused it to crack. A giant fissure like an upside down V. Like this: ^

This morning, my driveway got a makeover, and as a result all three cars "evacuate(d) the driveway! (sing to the tune of "Evacuate the Dancefloor! by Cascada, thanks).

That was easy enough, but this evening when I got home, it took three rounds around my street for me to find a nice place to park. All because I kept missing the nice place to park the first two times.

I blame it on the dark. And I blame it on the orange siren lights on top of the skit. And I blame it on my poor night vision. And I blame it on the distracting work men watching me circle around 3 times, looking increasingly confused each time I came around. Like, whatever! Have you never seen a clumsy parker attempting to park in the dark?

The third and final time they waved to me. That wave you do when someone lets you in on a bumper to bumper road: raise arm, straight palm, finger fingers evenly spread, then down. I acknowledged their acknowledgment with a toothy grin, my own straight palm wave and ventured up the newly smooth driveway, and into the house.

Spring has sprung...

Spring has officially sprung.

Sun streams into my room at 6:30am; the days are longer. The sky is blue; leaves are returning to trees. The sun is a little hot; but nicely toasty. My black turtleneck is sometimes inappropriate when I'm meandering mid-afternoon; but lovely and cosy when I'm sitting in the shade.

Such are the symptoms of spring.

Today Miss Ebae and I wandered around the Rocks like real Ajumas (korean for older ladies- they generally walk very slowly and rest frequently on benches, while proclaiming "why, my legs are so sore!"). We pretended to be tourists visiting Circular Quay for the first time, and took a number of photos to mark the occasion. We lunched at a sidewalk cafe, watched the Rocks fashion show which starred everyday girls and the odd boy as catwalk models, witnessed New Zealand traditional dancing and got free cupcakes.

It was a scrumptious spring day and I suspect the day will end with a Seinfeld marathon.

In other news, Ms CalmFarm had her last day at work on Wednesday. A positive move and a timely change- but nonetheless:

WE'LL MISS YOU MS CALM FARM!

And to finish it off, some photos from today: Contortionist street performer

Spring in the City

Rocks Fashion show displaying the Rocks Markets' talent



The National Costume which Miss Universe Australia wore




Old school post box



Rocks markets on a lovely spring day



Tour groups going on history tours around the Rocks. Costumes and all.

Sail patterns

New Zealand traditional dancers

Miss Ebae and me:

My new Paris locket from the Markets

Acn uyo unjmubel tihs?

Time: 7:00 pm
Day: Monday-Friday
Location: The North Shore bound train
Obsession: Anagrams.

MX has a section devoted to them on the puzzles page and I just can't get enough.

When I do them, I feel like the huge part of my brain that never gets used, is flexing its cerebral muscles. When I solve them, I feel an enormous sense of satisfaction swelling up inside my belly. Can words be any more fun? I silently declare like the nerdy nerd I am.

Then I sit back and enjoy the rest of the train ride home. Sometimes I even indulge in a banana, because man did my brain work really hard right then!

Words that scream what they mean

Miss K Kaif and I will often be talking about something when suddenly we'll hit a roadblock- a linguistic crater- an impassable trench- because for this particular story, at this particular point in the narrative, the English word just won't do. She proclaims:

Damn it! We have this word in Persian and it means like shiny, glistening and really super sparkling (insert Persian word).

And I will nod, as if I completely understand.

The truth is, I do. When you eat something funky, in Korean you say that you feel kipponuppah. A word that equates to feeling so badly gross, unhappy, like you want to cleanse your insides with Domestos, if only it wouldn't kill you. In English, you have to say at least ten different words to get the same effect.

Likewise in Persian they have an infinitely more colourful and precise vocabulary-- they even go as so far as to discriminate between silent farts and noisy farts: chosidam and goozidam respectively. Hilarious, huh? In Korean, we also have a bunch of words that mean fart: Pboong, bpahngu and podt (the last one may have been made up by my mum but I've definitely heard her say it before).

Why is English so comparatively boring? Maybe I just need to learn more words...

A week of short commutes...

Man from Mars was in Sydney for the entire week and his work shacked him up at the Crowne Plaza, Darling Harbour. Talk about living next door to your work, Man from Mars had to walk half a short block to get to his office, while I had to walk up the road to get to mine. Compared to the normal 6 am start, I luxuriated amongst the sheets until 7:30 pm, snuck mountains of pastries from the breakfast buffet and handed them out amongst my work mates like the the Baker Godmother that I'm not.

Unfortunately, the convenience of living in the city made us lazier and by night we hibernated in the hotel room, venturing only as far as the end of the street to go to a tiny Japanese restaurant that specialised in "half-size" dishes so that we didn't even have to exercise our brain muscles: noodles or teriyaki salmon? Why not both!

All this easy living caught up with us and by Friday we were pining for some home cooked food. We swung by my house, ate some genuine Korean courtesy of my mum and were mildly irritated by the screechy tones of the narrator on Escape to the Country, an informative, if not slug-paced show on 7Two about old English couples who have decided to make the seachange to the country. Did you know that in some of those countryside towns, you can get massive houses with quirky medieval features and rolling hills for your backyard-- all for 300,000 pounds? Bargainables!

On Saturday we drove to Manly (pic above), copped some fabulous Australian sunshine, a massive Canadian breakfast and then drove to Chatswood to watch Inception. What an awesome movie. Although I think it drained Man from Mars and I of a couple of hundred brain cells and buckets of sense because halfway through the drive home Man from Mars accidentally told me that:

"you tend to get too close to the left side of the lane when you drive" and me in my hyper night blinded state shouted:

No I don't! It's just because it's dark and I can't see!

Anyway, that marked the start of a pretty circular argument- me preaching about the importance of Man from Mars picking his words carefully and him telling me to stop putting words in his mouth. Who me? We pretended to ignore each other for the rest of the night and Man from Mars made us make up this morning by offering a conciliatory hug. I returned the hug grudgingly and he laughed.

This morning we trained it in to the city and he took a bus to the airport. I popped into work and was so chuffed because there on my desk was a sweet little package from Miss CalmFarm. In the past couple of weeks we've been exchanging stories about what our passion is, how we can combine our passion with work-- is it even possible? Anyway, always the thoughtful, classy one, she got me "The Element- How Finding your Passion Changes Everything" by Sir Ken Robinson.

I'm so excited to read it. You guys should too- I'm a couple of chapters in and it's riveting stuff.