Change of Habitat

Dear Reader,

In the course of my personal development I felt the urge of moving on in my electronic identity as well. You can visit my new blog under

charcoalstained.wordpress.com

Hope you'll enjoy this one.

Cheers,

Sixthblockseven

cooper & ivy

For I am here in Australia, I certainly have to make the attempt of assimilating as well as I can in this strangely familiar environment. This attempt actually entails watching heaps of sports while sipping on a cool Cooper's Pale Ale. Coming from a fairly sporty country - as regards soccer - I felt that watching games at the pub is a nice thing to do but coming out of the pub and joining the action seemed a bit more appealing. This happened yesterday, when I attended my first Rugby match here in the Sydney Football Stadium. It was supposed to be heaven for me but turned out as one of the most boring games I must have seen in my life. The Waratahs (the local New South Wales team, named after the, for this area, typical flower) were playing the Chiefs from NZ. Knock-ons, missed tackles, lack of passion - this game had it all. After this disappointment it seemed only logic to go and forget about the game while having a couple of drinks out in town. My constant companions, Simon and Igor, took me out to a place called 'Priviledge', a name that speaks for itself. I was in fact not privileged enough to enter, even though wearing working clothes and showing up in a way I would possibly not consider if I was back home in Holland. A small talk with the bouncer followed and he did not accept my driver's license as an ID. Fair enough, you get wankers pretty much everywhere. But why do we need the 'Privilege', when we got 'The Ivy'? Awesome location with big prices but nice people. It is probably one of the poshest places I have ever been in and after last night not the last time. Oh yeah, I forgot to say that Simon and I were on our own, since Igor stayed at that former club to meet up with some of his mates. We met some girls that we asked to mime our company and within a split second were were called through, passed by the 30 meter line and entered the realms of expensive debauchery. To those of you who know me and that are aware of the fact that my background is fairly sweaty - let me tell you that I actually blow-dried my shirt under the hand-drier in the bathroom. Ridiculous. Well, my dear working colleagues with whom we attended the match as well as Adele, my dear friend I met in Hong Kong joined us and we had an awesome night.

On our return home, Adele and I decided to go onto my balcony, put down some pillows and had (what turned out to be actually two each this morning) a final beer. Adele then fell asleep and I joined in. Her endeavors to wake me up by shaking my leg, faded away in the sweet numbness of a drunkard's sleep. At about 6 am I awoke, feeling approximately 500 kg heavier, covered in mosquito bites and tired like a... ah, think of a metaphor for yourself.

Now I am sitting in the pub, hoping that our Internet connection will work on Monday, so I can have more substantial and consistent contact with everyone. Ciao me friends.

the sudden break

Well, it has almost been two weeks since I have arrived here in Australia and this will actually be he first entry after having fully settled in the new environment. I have managed to find a gorgeous place in an area that I consider metropolitan yet familiar and cheerfully childish. I guess it’s rare to find these places even though some cities have put their focus on producing retro neighborhoods with heaps of exclusive material that shows once more that the thought of something familiar to people has been abused to the extent that they spend vast amounts of money to be part of the whole. I think I have found an exceptional area where the people are just so true and just don’t take into account what other people think. My friend Ed, with whom I have gladly stayed for my first week here, mentioned this phrase that probably hugely contributes (or at least should) to one’s self confidence: “Bro, that’s what the gag is all about; just wearing whatever.” This was actually about the sunglasses of Jojo back in HK that did look kind of weird. But even on a less superficial level I can see what he means. Everybody helps each other, people are satisfied with what they have and they therefore actually have a more chilled out vibe than a lot of other people I have met thus far. I know all this sounds fairly cheesy; nonetheless it is what I think at the moment.

I come by Café Sappho every morning, get a genuine “Good morning dude, how are ya?” and then continue my way to work in a happy-go-lucky kind of way. I am in fact lucky that I got to stay with Ed since he introduced me to virtually half Sydney and I have met some people I really enjoy spending my time with.
My work is very interesting and consists of convincing the Australian Government to grant a great deal of visa to people that try to escape their miserable situations. I only realized today (after having talked with a client) that this is not just theory but that these people actually do fear for their existences and that I – or Amnesty respectively – am their last hope. It feels challenging and weird and is a tiring job since I have to read through, mostly, big files that contain legal documents that concern the cases of separate cases. Today was my fourth day of work and I already have to deal with 10 different cases of which most are thankfully not that urgent or even active but their stories are strange and worrying for my perception of human life. Every time when I see a case and think that situations could possibly not get any worse for people, they do.
As to my inner thoughts, I can think that I eventually managed to arrive in this city, that my life is becoming more organized and I can eventually start considering myself in some flow again. I even started making sketches again. I feel well.

Oz

I have eventually arrived in 'Oz', seeing through the eyes of someone that has a quite milky vision, still. Weird coming from an area that is about 40 degrees colder into the warmest weather. I have not yet arrived fully since I have indeed not found a room yet. I have been looking at only two places thus far which were, frankly, proper shit holes. I guess it is the damnation of metropolitan life that makes housing prices sky rocket as if there was no tomorrow. Fair enough. At least that's the case all over the world. I have now found some places that cost about 400 Euro a month.

Else, I can say and see that the weather - even though hot as f*** - does me good in terms of getting quite quickly out of the ever so present winter depression that Dutch winters engender so badly. I found myself doing some research on the flat situation, followed by some random strolling through the streets of this vast city. And then my feeling for the strange came back, not least due to the fact that it is once more time to say 'Gong Hei Fat Choi' which means as much as 'Happy New Year' in Chinese. I wandered around the streets of Chinatown, loosing myself in the thought and impression of being in HK again; a feeling that made my heart jump. I start liking this city but I have to get settled, make some friends and celebrate my being here. I am very much looking forward to mid February when my dear friend is moving to Sydney to work in a law firm. Sweet as, so to say. I need a couple of people that are as stoked about being here as I am and do all the stupid shenannigans that tourists are known for - going to the zoo, taking heaps of pictures and just be stunned by the beauty this country possesses but that I have yet to discover and experience.

So far for now, off to Ed's work now to sip a couple of iced coffees while talking nonsense.

Leaving on a jetplane, don't know .....

There it is again: A feeling of excitement, the want to make the plane about three times as fast, the unexpectedness about what there is to come and last, not yet least what the new home I will dwell in for the next couple of months will look like. Good feelings prevail as I cross the icy deserts of Greenland (sounds paradox in that perspective, doesn’t it?) until i reach San Francisco. Then, i guess it will be time for a quick change of clothes since I will have worn mine for the extended amount of not less than 20 hours... And even then, in San Francisco, I will not have travelled half the way since another plane will guide me over the Pacific Ocean towards my, for now, final destination, Sydney. I catch myself typing ‘Sydnet’ instead of ‘Sydney’ way too often. I should learn how to type with the 10-fingers system anyway.

I never got why planes always have to be that loud. Lately someone told me that there was something like a quiet plane in which they in fact had installed some speakers for the crew that imitated the sound of the machine for the good and simple reason the pilots couldn’t sleep without it. That’s awkward since i guess that well paid pilots do not necessarily live in the closer area to airports in order to get some good sleep. Or do they? These are the questions in life one really needs to look at. I will probably think twice about publishing this post due to its redundancy but then again...’COME OOOON!’

Bored on a plane...If you die all was for nothing...BAMMBAMM!!! For those of you who do not know what i am talking about (attention new English verb to come...), ‘youtube’ (like ‘google it’) ‘snakes on a plane in 5 seconds’. Still haven’t seen the movie itself but these 5 seconds clips are damn funny.

Life in a nutshell

Not quite. I have been lost again in this ever so inconvenient time of the year in which most things do get to me, I don't have time to do my sports and school just does not seem to reduce its workload on me. Short: It is time to move. Packing things is ahead of me and I still do not know where to start. Take the CDs or my emotions, the books or my mind and bury them in the depths of the paper cubes. Well, that being said, I feel nothing. Nothing really. It is about the same situation as last year when moving to Hong Kong: "I will only start to realize I'm leaving when I am actually on the plane." Right. That of course is one of these lies I calm my mind with and it does work substantially well. My head is calm during the day time, messy when I try to sleep, messy with things I still have to accomplish and organize before the plan shouts "HUUUUIIIII!!!!"

My motivation is here. And it is here to stay. That's quite a good thing considering the distance. If I can have such a big motivation to perform and live well in Sydney, this means that I have the quality to amaze myself with a lot of things. Well, there is nothing that is not amazing about the fact that I will leave my mother's continent for the 3rd one I will be living in. Sweet.

Thoughts about inner feelings have not changed and I am still that emotional wreck, that indecisive being that gives itself the creeps with its actions sometimes. Acting grown up they call that I think. I am even starting to like my grandpa's shoes I recently took from my mum's place. Brown leather shoes. Who would have expected that on me? Behaving and looking like a bum are different things though and so I took the opportunity to engender my looks to get accustomed to actually walk round in business clothing. I am still pledging on not having to wear this kinda clothing since I will be working for Amnesty - an organization which (according to my research) has a rather informal dresscode.

Take the emotions of a fifteen year old, add the turmoil in my head (bit like Gaza at the moment), a pinch of crashed creativity that needs to be released and the infamous need to chill: That's Christoph up until now in 2009.

There, the creeps. Self reflection. AARRGGHH!!!