no skin off my nose.

i look like my dad. this is not an opinion- this is a fact. people who know my father but who have never met me will come up to me and say, "you must be ralph's son." our faces line in exactly the same way when we smile. our eyes are almost the same blue. it must be said that i have inherited an awful lot from my dad.

i have also inherited other, non-physical traits as well: the way i sigh, my enjoyment of red wine and potato chips (not necessarily at the same time), and, unfortunately for most, my father's pool brat tendencies. put my father near water and he immediately becomes devilish and remorseless, an unpredictable hooligan. i have a distinct memory of him pulling our good family friend joanne into a backyard pool while she was fully clothed and in heels. my dad once flipped a paddleboat with my mom in it (for the record- have you ever tried to flip a paddleboat? it ain't easy brother). my mom did not find this quite as entertaining as my dad did. you can't stand on a dock or on the side of a pool when my dad is around and not get mercilessly tossed, pulled, or flipped into the water. and i must say the same is to be said for me.

let me make this clear- neither of us are a pool bully; we're not in it to drown. we are rather pool brats. if you ask me, we're not in it for harm or hurt, we're in it solely for fun. a good time, a laugh, a charming anecdote to go along with the occasional scar or bruise. however, if you ask my sister, who has bravely born the brunt of this behavior for just shy of twenty years, she might sing a different song. actually, she probably won't sing in front of you, but she will certainly offer a different perspective.

this trait inspires a kind of reckless abandon in the water, one that applies not only to my interaction with others but also to my own actions. and believe me when i say that i have been burned before. i have felt the horrifying sting of a front flip off a metres-high boathouse gone terribly awry. i have been smacked in the face by canoes, surf boards, pool noodles, sea turtles, lighthouses, and one mermaid who looked remarkably like darryl hannah in 'splash.' once i wiped out spectacularly whilst water skiing and smashed the handle so hard across my thighs that i had a perfectly straight bruise for the rest of the summer. but somehow i just never learn. these are not the moments i remember.

had i remembered them i might have been more cautious when chris and i were in the whitsunday islands two weeks ago. i might have thought back to more disastrous instances when we got to whitehaven beach with the pure silicone sand and the spectacular surf. i might have remembered my mistakes when we trounced into the crashing waves to body surf. had i remembered my past i might have been more careful, i might not have climbed onto a huge barnacle covered rock emerging from the ocean and posed for snapping cameras on the beach on my perilous perch, and i most certainly would not have dived off the rock, face first into the very shallow water. i would not have scraped the skin off most of the bridge of my nose and part of my forehead and would not have spent my time in one of the beautiful places in the world being photographed with a giant wound smack dab in the middle of my face. i would not have had to continually disinfect it with betadine, an iodine-based liquid that left my nose a lovely shade of orange so that i looked not unlike gonzo the muppet. i would not have been asked by everyone on the boat, "what did you do to your nose?" none of it would have happened were i not such a giant pool brat.

alas, we are born as we are. some are born redheaded, some are born eunuchs. i was born a pool brat and i will likely be this way until my dying day. so i guess i am deserving of temporary disfigurement.

who's the bigger pool brat you ask, me or my dad? right now i would have to say it might be me. by a nose.

oatmeal for one.

for fifteen days, chris was here in sydney with me. fifteen glorious days, almost all sunny, all of them made immeasurably better by being together. and now chris is no longer in sydney.

chris and i fell into a routine of starting our days with breakfast on my front verandah in the early morning sun: oatmeal, fresh fruit, maybe a flat white coffee from the cafe at the end of the drive, a glass of a mixed fruit cocktail referred to simply as "brekky juice." plans for the day would unfold, one spoonful at a time. perhaps a gecko would dart across the patio. perhaps there would be a newly ripe kumquat on the tree. it was just wonderful.

yesterday chris boarded air canada flight ac34 from sydney to toronto, departing australia at 12:30pm and somehow, after twenty-two hours in the air, returning to canada by 5:30pm. neat trick. tuesday is just beginning now and he is on his way back to work.

this morning i measured out one serving of oatmeal. just one.

it was wonderful to have chris here. i realize how lucky i am that he could come over here. but i still don't like eating my oatmeal alone.

a night at the opera.

tonight chris and i went to see la boheme at the sydney opera house. the show was just fine, if not predictable- you know the character with the cough isn't likely to meet a happy end in an opera. but the show was extraneous. we were inside the sydney opera house.

there are people who don't like the opera house, who think that it is tacky or overrated or simply too white. i, however, think that it is breathtaking. stunning. it is magnetic, pulling you closer, forcing you to look just once more to see if it really can be that beautiful. and tonight i was inside it, inside of one of the most recognizable and celebrated buildings in the world.

before the show began we stepped out onto the north veranda to sip a glass of champagne and take in the harbour at sunset. why? because we could.

i assure you it was lovely. if you ever come to sydney, you must go to the opera. you needn't see the show even; but you must stand on the edge of the world's most famous concert hall and marvel at the beauty of the world's most lovely harbour. you simply must.

you got my back?

traveling alone has been an interesting experience. to say the least. chief among the things i have realized are how many day to day activities require another person.

i am fine on my own. let me say that again- i am most certainly fine on my own. i am enjoying time to myself, the eagerness with which i talk to anyone who will have me, the long hours to get acquainted with the music of the streets and yael naim. but there are certain things you simply need another person for.

conversation, for example. it is hard, though not impossible, to have a conversation by yourself. it is exceeding hard to do so without drawing a certain negative attention to yourself. it is also hard to be the photo-snapping, finger-pointing, "look, they have 7-11 in sydney!" kind of tourist on your own. there are countless day-to-day things that are much harder to do on your own. play pat-a-cake. walk hand in hand. ride a tandem bike. the argentine tango. and a million more, including putting sunscreen on your back.

i never realized just how much i take for granted that extra set of hands when it's time to slather on my spf 30. when you have someone there, there is always a complaint: "you have sand on your hands!" or "the sunscreen is too cold!" or "that's not how my birth mother does it!" but take those hands away and i'm singing a whole different song- and an exasperating song at that. there is nothing romantic about putting sunscreen on your own back, nor is there anything graceful or easy about it. your arms are never quite long enough. you always miss that hard to reach spot under your scapula- even if you use the spray bottles. i have almost dislocated my shoulder on several occasions, creating silhouettes that would shame those nine-year-old asian contortionist in cirque du soliel. all in the name of uv protection. five weeks of this nonsense and i was, suffice it to say, a mite tired of it.

you can imagine my great delight when chris arrived this sunday past. forget that he had narrowly escaped being detained indefinitely in toronto due to the snowstorm. forget that we hadn't seen each other in over a month. forget that i would have a traveling companion and someone to tour through the life i'm making for myself here. forget that. what really mattered is that i would finally- finally!- have someone to do my back. thank goodness.

chris and i are having a lovely time together here in sydney, thanks for asking. the weather has been impossibly good and our days have been filled with adventure and gelato. yesterday we walked the shore from bondi beach to bronte beach, something so beautiful that i would feel content if my trip ended tomorrow. tomorrow we will get on a plane and fly up the east coast to airlie beach where we will spend three days sailing the whitsunday islands and diving on the great barrier reef. yes, we are having a lovely time indeed.

and through it all, chris has been there, ready for conversation, doubles tennis matches, and the countless times i turn to him and ask, ever so humbly, "will you do my back?"

please don't take my sunshine away.

once upon a time i was a fastidious blogger. and then it got sunny. and then i was less fastidious.

can you blame me for being in the sun while i can? it is perilously difficult to blog and swim at the same time. i also have to plug the broadband cable into my laptop to access the internet and while the cable is generous in length i somehow don't think that it will stretch to manly beach. and so i have been neglectful of this blog. so sue me.

when i arrived in sydney the weather was only okay. i didn't make a big deal of this for three reasons: firstly, i knew that most people back home wouldn't believe that the weather wasn't that great as everyone assumes that sydney is perpetually sunny; secondly, i knew that whatever i had here would most certainly be warmer than toronto; and finally, i didn't want to ruin the impression that i am having the time of my life as so many people are assured that i am having. and so when it rained i opened my umbrella and shut my mouth.

i arrived in early february to be greeted by the coldest ferbuary sydney has seen since 1957. more than half a century of glorious summers, then i show up in my shorts and flip-flops and all anyone can talk about is how bad the weather has been. this is not to say that the weather was even all that bad- a few rainy days and a higher than normal percentage of gray skies but nothing to start knitting about. and i didn't really mind. i still found my way to the pools and the beaches on the days where the sun shone and even somehow managed to get sunburned on the inside of my left knee. so rest assured there was some sun. and i was fine with it all.

but then. then-

just over two weeks ago the skies shifted. the clouds went- well, somewhere else and the sun cranked it up a few. and i went outside and never looked back.

there are precious few things that feel better than the warmth of sun on your face. i know i say this to a city buried beneath a ceaseless snow, a city whose back aches from shoveling and whose lips are chapped. i say this from a city that is alive under the blazing heat of a tropical sun, whose face is turned skyward and whose smile is widening day by day. i wish you were warm with me. it feels so good.

so please forgive me my negligence. the sun and i have been making up for lost time.

fright club.

i got a haircut today. it was fine, thanks for asking. but i won't back to karen at hair by; she was a bit too rough with her thinning scissors for my taste and she wasn't quite as precise as i would have hoped. her loss, or at least i would like to think.

i returned home from the hairdressers with that awful itchy hair all over your body feeling that often occurs post-trim. no thank you. so i promptly shed my shirt and shorts to avoid the itchiness. and then went to make lunch in my undies. why not? sheila wasn't home and no one can see into our house and well really, i don't care. it was noon on a hot wednesday and the need for excess clothing was minimal at best.

so i was staring into the open fridge contemplating whether or not i wanted to put some red pepper spread on my sandwich when i heard a very clear "how you going?" from just outside the kitchen. there are very few things that are quite as startling as hearing someone when you thought you were alone- perhaps touching an inanimate object and having it move or realizing that you have grabbed a stranger's hand in place of your parent's. terrifying. and so i reacted accordingly. with a shriek to the high heavens and a jump that would make barishnikov proud. i think i just about made it into the butter keeper.

sheila of course found it hysterical. as did i. as did sheila's good friend kath. and her nine week old puppy. i have now met kath twice, once in my bathing suit and once in my calvin kleins. as carrie bradshaw would say, "i'm like friggin annie get your clothes on."

sheila has decided that she will now loudly announce herself upon arriving in the front hall. not necessary, but thank you sheila.

i have decided that i must find a way to accidentally-on purpose scare her by arriving with many guests. when she is wearing just a wetsuit or a tutu or a bunny costume. just to be fair.

name that blue.

sydney is a city painted blue- blue everywhere. i am running out of ways to describe all of blues that make up my daily landscape here.

i can't talk enough about the sky- the brilliantly clear azure sky, the hazy white-blue sky, the eternal cobalt big top that billows over this city. the sky goes on forever. the blue of it is enough to break your heart. honestly. it is that perfect.

when i was on the bus across the bridge today the water colouring the harbour was the most brilliant indigo. blue like the crayola blue of a kindergarten seascape. finger paint blue. irresistibly blue. sapphire if you're fancy. the people who make up names for paint colours must come to sydney when they're naming blues (big sur, wisteria, calypso).

the city buses. the school uniforms. the flags. the denim shorts. the eyes. blue blue blue blue blue.

perfect.

the view from balmoral beach. just a little blue.

happy mareh iraq!

predictive text is a funny thing. an inconsistent know-it-all, you might say. like that girl in your third year women, power, and politics tutorial who was pretty smart but said "like" way too often to be taken totally seriously. "female circumcision is, like, not an issue we can rightfully condemn from a western standpoint." something like that.

anyway- predictive text. for all the convenience it offers the scribe of the text, it is undeniably frustrating at times. "tell of he you are going to be good tonight." i'm sorry? i think you meant "tell me if you are going to be home tonight." predictive text does not know that i am named brian and prefers to tell me that my name is asian. it offers a unique signature, that's for certain. "love, asian."

the reason i bring this up is because it was mardi gras here this weekend. mardi gras is the australian gay and lesbian festival- down under pride, one might say. i was texting home to my friend chad to tell him that it was mardi gras and my cell phone told me instead that it was mareh iraq. well if you say so. i found it funny, if only because my phone seemed to think the average australian would write mareh more often than mardi. mareh isn't even in the dictionary- trust me, i looked! what one earth is a mareh?

so anyway- mardi gras. this saturday night past sydney got its glitter on to celebrate thirty years of mardi gras and i was there, smack dab in the middle of it all, to see how sydney's biggest tourist draw stacks up against toronto's big gay street party. here are my main observations- musings, if you will:

- toronto pride and syndey mardi gras are like night and day- seriously. while the toronto parade kicks off under the blistering sun at 2pm, the sydney parade doesn't start until the sun sets just before 8pm. this means that the parade begins and ends with fireworks, people feel justified in wearing glow bracelets, and there is no shame in drinking right from the get-go.

- speaking of drinking- any rules about public consumption of alcohol seem to fly straight out the proverbial window with the arrival of mardi gras. i have never seen so much unabashed public drunken tomfoolery in my life- and i went to theatre school, so that's saying quite a bit. everyone is drinking. in the streets. and rambunctious. and sloppy and a bit wild, which is somewhat surprising for a city that has a reputation for being so well behaved. i saw two men nearly end their own lives by getting into a shopping cart at the top of a very tall hill- that was also a road- with moving traffic- and ask a third friend to let go and let them careen downwards to what i can only imagine would have been a very painful end. a policeman stopped them. thankfully. though i won't pretend i wasn't the tiniest bit curious to see what would happen.

- the parade was fine, but like the parade in toronto once you've seen one you might as well have seen them all. there's only so many times you can cheer for the lesbian ladies lawn bowling association (i'm serious). and dykes on bikes are- shockingly- still dykes on bikes here. and topless men dance in wee shorts. and kylie minogue plays on repeat. people cheer for the anglicans for equal rights for differently-abled transsexuals and boo for the conservative politicians trying to show they really care. but where sydney really does have toronto beat is in the choreography. every marching group- anglicans, lesbians, and all- have choreographed dance routines to take them through the entire parade route. there are many things in life that i love (entertainment weekly, my family, brown sugar, and folding laundry to name a few) and chief among them is a good old fashioned choreographed dance routine. factor in cheering crowds, flashy costumes, and the occasional rhythmic gymnastics ribbon and it's almost better than the finale of bring it on. almost. toronto needs to get its act together and tell the peel region pflag chapter to start practicing their steps- june will be here before we know it!

- the thing that struck me most of all was how much of a mess mardi gras made. i have never seen so much garbage on the streets in my life- empty bottles, cigarette packs, abandoned milk crates people had stood on to watch the parade, flyers for the newest ultra club, free condoms, snakes and ladders, filing cabinets, seventeen pairs of tap shoes, and a well-thumbed copy of erica jong's groud-breaking 1973 erotic novel "fear of flying." more or less. but the city streets were gross and made me feel quite sorry for the maintenance workers faced with cleaning up after hundreds of thousands of careless revellers. i made sure to throw my bottles in the recycling thank you very much.

and so mardi gras came and went. i ended up in a bar on oxford street where i somehow bypassed the $30 cover charge to dance with some uber-hipsters. we're talking studio 54 meets those club kids who used to go on jerry springer in the mid-nineties. playsuits and headdresses and face paint and all. they played, among other things, "that don't impress me much" by shania twain. and that don't impress me much. i missed the last bus home and so walked across the harbour bridge under the stars. i slept in on sunday morning.

bottom line- choreography? good. public drinking? i ain't too mad. messiness? well now, let's get it together.

funnily enough this is pretty much how i feel about britney spears as well.

happy mareh iraq!