Ballgowns, Beijing, and Boots
So my husband and I are in Beijing.
I weigh too much now to fit any of my jeans, so I bought thermal and tracksuit pants before I left – but wore a massive velvet ankle-length ballgown my friend made me (years ago) for travelling. It worked great, even if it does make me look like a weirdo (if the shoe fits. . .). I also wore my boots, which I’ve had for years and which have been visibly dying this year – which made them perfect for Beijing, because it means I have warm footwear for a week, and can then throw them away when we go to Indonesia. Unfortunately the plan backfired when EACH boot had a catastrophic fail en route. Oh well. They’re holding together again now, and I’m optimistic.
The two things that most frightened me were: travelling (especially yesterday, with a twenty-hour journey, and more than half of it spent in one flight ie trapped with strangers – scary), and the cold (the average temperature at this time of year is between 0 and minus ten – I just asked the American guy beside me what it was, and he said, “Between mind-numbing and death”).
The travel was relatively okay – travelling with my husband dampens my panic by heaps. On our second flight, the guy in front of me had his seat fully reclined before the plane was even loaded. I hated him, his stupid big head, and his stupid toilet-brush hair. The flight attendant made him lift it back up when she was handing out drinks. Later, I was trying to sleep hunched over on my food tray when he suddenly went back again, almost trapping me between the tray and his stupid chair. I didn’t do anything violent (always an important plus), but cried like a girl.
When we did get to sleep in a real bed in Beijing, I was so exhausted (and light-headed, since it had been about ten hours since dinner) that it felt as if the room was swaying.
All good now though – that was our biggest travel day for this whole trip.
Oh! And we saw fireworks going off from the plane.
At Beijing airport, we witnessed the wacky sense of humour of the locals when our plane let us out-out. That is to say, outside. At midnight. With our big coats, naturally, still zipped up in our checked-in luggage (on its way to the distant terminal). Happy New Year.
It was great! We had scarves, jumpers, gloves (two pairs for me) and beanies with us, which turned out to be enough for a short slab of time outside. So that was the worst of my fears dealt with.
Today we spent quite a bit of time wandering around the local area (this time with borrowed coats made of down, which are BRILLIANT), and it was honestly fun – cozy, even (because the down jackets are SO warm). I did feel a teensy bit like my eyeballs were frosting over, but what’s a loose eyeball on such a nice day?
In an hour or so we’re going to a gig (my brother in law is a musician living here, which is why we came to Beijing).
In 2004 I studied double Mandarin at the Australian National University.
The instant we entered Sydney airport and joined a bunch of Chinese people in line, my Chinese language came flooding back (and, in places, expanding). It feels entirely superhuman to go from a cautious “hello” to “Oh, he’s my husband, that’s my brother in law, and I really like Beijing thanks. Please may I have two orange juices and some bread” in 24 hours. Being superhuman is a nice feeling. I’ll probably have a vocab of several hundred by the time we leave (in less than ten days).
I’m writing this from my brother in law’s sharehouse/flat, so I should be able to blog quite regularly.
We also ate (of COURSE) Chinese food. Everything we ordered was deep-fried (including the beans, which were wonderfully buttery and crunchy) and I am in loooove.
3am blogging. . .
. . . is never good.
Since the partner and I left Canberra on Christmas Eve, I’ve had a headache more often than not (which I now realise is due to my current contraceptive pill, since I had the same four-day headache last month), I’ve spent a lot of time light-headed and dizzy (walkin iz hard), and on the eve of our departure I had. . . food poisoning.
I think the dizziness is because of taking anti-depressents last week (but not at the moment – I try to travel in such a way that all I have to think about is food and shelter), and the food poisoning is from drinking Sydney milk (which, clearly, I won’t be consuming in China or Indonesia).
So here’s hoping it gets easier from here. And that I can get my last three precious hours of sleep.
To infinity and beyond
The last few days of 2009 are crawling past. On New Year’s Eve (assuming time doesn’t stop completely), the partner and I fly off to (bitterly cold) Beijing. Right now we’re in Sydney, in the peculiar position of being assistant housesitters to his parents. As far as I can tell, everyone is content and happy.
Our finances are so tight and I’m so un-calm that I’m pretty much housebound. The others are out shopping, and I decided at the last moment (despite being somewhat stir-crazy) not to go with them. I really hope I perk up once we’re overseas. If all else fails, I should be competent in Indonesia. And my husband’s brother is in China, so at least my husband has someone to do fun things with if I’m not super functional.
Stay home, people! Travelling makes you smelly and tired! Just say no!
Ah well.
2010 is looking very. . . calming. We have just one wedding – a cousin of my husband’s – and no major family events whatsoever. Not even big birthdays. (My partner turned 30 this year, too.) We’re not moving house, although we will be reducing our stuff in preparation for living an entire year with my parents-in-law in 2011 (rent free, which is sufficiently awesome to take the edge of the perfectly natural fear of such an arrangement). I reckon we’ll then live in my parents’ bedsitter in 2012 (cheaper than a full-size flat, and good for my cats), and maybe even have a kid that year. Then in 2013 we start looking at actually buying a house (having karmically earned it by living in such tiny quarters for so long).
I know the idea of actually planning things like babies is laughable. The magic of all the above paragraph is being able to MAKE plans, for the first time in my life. It doesn’t really matter too much what actually happens.
I believe strongly that happiness comes from having something to hope for. The babies and house and happy marriage notions are the loftiest goals I’ve ever come up with, and they’re also the most plausible. That’s pretty incredible.
Next year, I hope to get better at financial management, and to get into the healthy weight range and stay there. And of course, like every year, I hope to get at least one book accepted for publication.
Living it up
Right now I’m in Sydney, helping housesit my partner’s aunt and uncle’s house while, at home, we have a housesitter of our own.
The house here is very near the beach, and also has its own pool. It’s also very large, which is handy since we’re sharing it with my partner’s parents and grandma. That’s always interesting.
His parents are very introverted, and we’re all excited by the novelty of Foxtel (there’s at least one large-screen TV each), so it’s very simple: to keep the peace, all we need to do is help with cooking, cleaning, and dishes.
I felt a lot better as soon as we left Canberra – the house and cats are taken care of, and life is a lot simpler (it’s all about food, shelter, and amusing ourselves). Even my twitter tales (and blog) are sorted.
I’ve been thinking about what God wants for my life, and went through various epiphanies before realising life never has one over-arching theme. So it’s just a matter of keeping moving and trying to blindly do what seems good. The best epiphanies are the ones you edit into the story after the fact.
Next year I plan to get into the healthy weight range and stay there for twelve months. That would be really excellent.
In the first quarter of next year, I should get responses to three different books – the one I’ve been obsessing over most of this year; the fart book; and my realist novel (which, because it’s so different to the rest, I sent to a much smaller publisher – which theoretically means a better chance at publication).
And next week, I’ll be in China.
Christmas Letter 2009
For those who want gratuitous cuteness at this time of year, go see http://twittertales.wordpress.com
For the rest of you. . . here’s MY Christmas letter:
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The year gasps for air. It shudders. It foams at the mouth. It bleeds from the ears.
It doesn’t have much time left.
January: Got married. It was nice. There were butterflies.
Developed severe phobia of weddings.
February: Sister got married. It was nice. I smashed a bouquet on a tree when she wasn’t looking. Evidently I am still mentally ill.
March: Had my sixtieth novel rejection. Concluded my novels are too literary, and began a book entitled, “Farting my ABCs”. The research was exciting (especially the experimental bit). Partner still shares my room. Clearly our marriage will last anything.
April: Car broke.
May: Other car broke. Twice.
June: Cold. Partner clearly thinks “Farting my ABCs” is my best book yet. Hm. Got first car serviced, and discovered it was broken.
July: Still cold. Wrote blog entry on experience of marriage after six months. (Left out the interesting bits, despite rule 34.) Husband clearly from the dollhouse ie he has been programmed to make me happy. Not sure who is paying for it. Second car broke again.
August: Winter is stupid. Started twitter stories at http://twitter.com/Louise_Curtis_ (Louise is my other, nicer personality). Tricked people into interviewing me on radio and for the Canberra Times.
September: Cold. Hot. Cold. Hot. Parents had their 25th wedding anniversary. It was nice. Bribed nephew with cheese so he’d behave. Bribed self with LOTS of chocolate. First car broke again.
October: Fifteen kilos heavier than I was. When did that happen?
November: Passed the 1000-followers mark (between twitter and facebook). My cult leader status is now upgraded to Upper Minion. Tricked a writing conference organiser into letting me be a guest author. Made up a “reading” since none of my books are published.
Brother married. It was nice. I developed an eye twitch and a brand new photo-specific phobia.
Wrote a full-length novel on a whim. Lots of action scenes. See? I’m not literary.
December: No immediate family members remaining to get married, thank goodness (now eyeing four-year old nephew with suspicion. . . you never know).
Both cars broke. Fixed first car. It broke again. Merry friggin Christmas.
Here’s me and the partner:
And, in lieu of children, here are our cats:
May you live in interesting times.
Felicity/Louise
Airport Jelly
More stressful events are passing one by one, and I’m increasingly able to focus on the big event: I’m shortly leaving for China and Indonesia with my partner (who’s never been overseas).
I’m also taking happy pills again, and just had an extremely informal visit from my landlord (our first semi-inspection in a year), which motivated me to clean the whole house (which resulted in minor cuts, bruises, burns, muscle pains, and oddly sore fingers). Having a clean house makes me feel much more peaceful. And I think I just did my absolute last shop before Christmas. Since we’ll be in Sydney for a week before going to China, that means no more grocery shopping this year. (We have a house and catsitter for the whole time, yay!)
China and Indonesia are obvious choices for us to go to. For one thing, we already live in a wealthy Western country, so why visit another one? They’re nice and all, but not worth visiting as a first priority (our to-do list is basically: visit the third world, have kid/s, buy a house. It also works as a ten-year plan, but it really works best in that exact order). The reason visiting the third world is so important is that, for twelve years, I planned and trained to live permanently in Indonesia – probably as a volunteer teacher living in or near a slum. By way of preparation, I have visited Indonesia six times, I speak the language fluently, and I even have a favourite slum.
That life is over for me, but it’s something I thought my partner needed to understand, at least a little. You really need to see – and smell – emaciated children to truly know our world is. . . just wrong.
So why China? Simple – my partner’s brother is currently living there.
We’re not doing any volunteer work, and we’re staying with friends (rather than aid workers, as I usually do), so it’s a different sort of trip for me too. In China (based in Beijing) we plan to see the Great Wall, a few things around Beijing, and go to the ice sculpture city H-something) a bit to the North. We’ll also have a six-hour stopover in Guangzhou on the way back. And, perhaps most importantly, we’ll be eating Chinese food.
In Indonesia we’ll visit Mount Bromo (an active volcano), and (I really hope) eat soto at Jakarta domestic airport. There’s a little restaurant there, and I LOVE their soto (which gets translated as “Javanese chicken soup” – ingredients include sweet soy sauce, lime juice, and coconut milk. Mmm).
I have cunningly set up the first twitter tale for 2010 to take place in China, Indonesia and Australia, so that when I’m able to blog (via email to my parents if there’s an issue with the Chinese government’s anti- social media stance – they’ll be putting the story on twitter and facebook, plus posting some pre-prepared twittertales.wordpress.com blogs) I can just say what I’ve been doing, and it adds to the story. So for the first two weeks of January, there’ll be more of me in http://twittertales.wordpress.com than here. The story is called “The Spy Who Shoved Me”.
The airports I’ll be visiting are (in order): Sydney, Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Jakarta, Denpasar, Brisbane, Canberra. We’ll be flying with three different companies. What could possibly go wrong?
Me Write Good
I wrote this on the 26th of November, but was apparently too addled to correctly publish it online. So, conveniently, I have some good news to balance the post I just wrote. (And the dieting – except for the uncontrollable rage – is going surprisingly well, thank you.)
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Last night, around midnight, I finished my National Novel Writing Month book (adding a completely useless conversation to fill in the last five hundred words. As you do).
This is the first time I’ve written a fifty-thousand word manuscript since 2005. (2005 was about the time when I noticed I was losing my mind, and that’s not very confidence-inducing.)
Finishing something (even a hideously flawed first draft) this big is VERY confidence-inducing. It also means that I have a better feel for what 50,000 words looks like when I rewrite the second and third books in my young adult trilogy (I’m still waiting for the publisher to reply on the first one – they’ve now made a new Australian record for Slowest Response Ever, further supporting my, “They’ll probably say yes” theory and sending me deeper into hope-induced madness). Incidentally, that first young adult book is also a NaNo book, which grew to over double its original size during the editing process.
I might not be very good at walking or talking but I am truly extraordinary at producing novels fast. During the process of writing, I noticed that I often wrote at a rate of two THOUSAND words an hour. That even boggles my mind. I really wish I could apply that kind of skill level to something a little more practical, but at least I can do something not everyone in the world can do.
Now seems as good a time as any to say that my friend’s sick baby is home and appears to be completely unharmed. Today I’ll also begin a new attempt at losing some of the fifteen kilos I’ve gained this year, utilising the post-NaNo high.
Some of you already know that I didn’t plan to do NaNo this year (mainly because the logical book to work on is book 2 of the young adult trilogy, which has large good chunks which I’ll cut and paste into the new version). So here is how it happened:
On Thursday 12th November I woke up from a dream which I thought had some moderately interesting elements – an empath community that had a large underground sanctuary made of stone, and that could track each other by thought. I also had two scenes in my head – one involving kidnapping, in which my hero rescued a child but wasn’t able to save his mother; and one in which the baddie shot at the hero and killed her closest ally. From that, I started writing. I have a bad habit of letting my characters sit around and chat, so I worked on making sure every chapter had some direct physical conflict (eg baddie fights hero, baddie fights hero in different location, hero is chased by police, heroes run away from fire set by baddie). One of the interesting side effects is that I did a little editing of another novel of mine at the same time, and REALLY noticed how much I need more action (something publishers have been telling me for years). Hopefully this is a handy epiphany that I can apply to all my work. And when I go back and edit the NaNo novel, I can cut the talky bits and expand the action.
One of the fabulous things about NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month – which is actually international) is the truly apalling writing that spews forth unchecked. At one point I noticed that (of about 13 named characters including four cats) I had a Ginny, a Jenny, and a Johnny (Jenny and Johnny are students in the same class, and Ginny is a teacher). Hm.
Total body count: 8 (at the moment)
Personal favourite moment: In the climax, as the baddie is enacting a plan to turn the world into mindless automatons, a two-month old kitten saves the world by biting the Prime Minister at just the right time. (The kitten’s name is Fluffy.)
Worst plot point: a baby is left on the communal doorstep at one point, and performs no useful function whatsoever. (Because hey, it’s a baby.) I gotta either work on that or delete it.
I also wrote this beautiful sentence (and many others like it):
In her place, I didn’t think I’d still be thanking the person who had unsuccessfully tried to protect me from someone who wouldn’t have attacked them if I wasn’t there.
A Senior Moment
I’m handling my minimalised life pretty well, and I even wrote 4000 words of my NaNo novel last night (discovering that my writing rate is now around 2000 words per hour).
The supermarket nearest to me is also very close to a retirement community. I’m constantly running into little old ladies (sometimes literally) when I shop. Every so often, things get a little surreal. On one occasion a busload of seniors had evidently arrived, and the supermarket was fuller than usual. A security guard pulled aside a staff member near me and said (in a low voice), “Check their bags. All of them.”
They didn’t check my bag – but they did thoroughly check the bags of the elderly man in front of me. Old people these days!
Today (same supermarket) I observed a little old lady buying literally twenty packs of garbage bags – some medium, some large, and some extra large. She bought almost nothing else.
Now I know what Dexter’s groceries look like.
And speaking of seniors, in my efforts not to strain myself at all this week I’ve been watching daytime TV. Most fascinating of all is “The View” in which a group of women argue for an hour. I can only handle about 30 seconds before I turn it off. Then I realise there’s nothing else on, so I put it back on for another 30 seconds. And repeat.
One of their topics today was whether cosmetic surgery should be taxed. This led to the quote, “I think it should be, even though my face will be paying more tax than I am.”
Later on they were talking to Zac Efron and Clare Danes. The panelists were making it very clear that Zac Efron was deeply nervous about working with Clare Danes in whatever movie they’ve just done. His comment was, “She has such an amazing body. . . of work.” His pause, hilariously, was unintentional, and the women all around him (excluding Clare, who probably felt a teensy bit uncomfortable) hassled him about it.
Ah, daytime TV. Only an hour and twelve minutes until “Just Shoot Me” comes on.
Who me?
Immediately after this photo was taken, this innocent-looking fiend whipped down the gun and shot the photographer dead.
I got better.
Making Friends With Salad
Those who know me best will find the following entry particularly disturbing, but it’s true: Lately I’ve been finding myself irresistably and obsessively drawn to salad. Bingeing, in fact.
Here’s roughly how it goes (my recommendations are in italics):
1. Mix sesame oil, lemon juice, rosemary and sage in a bowl (about 1tsp of each substance per person)
2. Add 1 or more of: chicken roasted and chopped (or fried with garlic)
peanuts
ham (chopped)
bacon (cooked and chopped)
tofu (preferably honey soy)
3. Add peeled, sliced, herb-sprinkled and roasted sweet potato. [Keep in mind it doesn’t have to be hot or even warm, and nor does the meat.] Roast for ten minutes at 200 degrees Celsius, flipping halfway through (It cooks a lot faster than potato, and tastes good cold.)
Or, serve with plain buttered bread.
4. Add any two of: green capsicum
snow peas
raw peas from the pod
baby spinach leaves
lettuce
celery
green beans
5. Add either red capsicum or baby roma tomatoes (chopped) or both.
6. Optional: add mushrooms and/or shallots (possibly fried) – chopped.
7. Pick 1: half an apple per person – chopped (if you’re making a 1-person serve, eat the other half an apple for dessert, and/or grate it and sprinkle with sugar).
some grapes (sliced in half)
8. Add about 30 grams fetta per person.
9. Mix and eat.
*Cheapest Version:
Mix any kind of oil with any herb and lemon juice.
Add roasted, cooled chicken drumsticks (chopped) – this is also the most delicious option, in my opinion.
Add green beans, lettuce, and tomato (chopped).
Add a chopped apple.
Add grated cheese (any cheese is delicious – and cheaper – when you grate it yourself.
Mix and eat with bread and margarine.
*The most low-labour version (no chopping or cooking, and the smallest possible number of ingredients):
1. Sesame oil and any herb/mixed herbs stirred together in the serving bowl with peanuts, baby spinach*, baby mushrooms*, baby tomatoes* and fetta (the crumbly kind, so mere stirring breaks it up). Ignore starch; you’ve probably had too much today anyway.
If you mix and eat it with the same dessert spoon, there’s precisely two items to wash up (three, assuming you have a drink).
*Yes, I like eating babies. Don’t you?
Mmm. . . crunchy.
Felicity Banks 