Projects

You heard it first here on living, breathing, dancing... Jhuny is coming home for a limited time. Twelve and a half days, to be specific. So get in early to book a time to see me...

Tags: Jhuny, Travel, Northern Territory.

Start The Dance 3
Originally uploaded by Jhuny.

Previous: Club SP

As with the last mix, my intention was to complete this compilation on tour as well. Had I actually copied the required files onto my laptop I could have done it. It's been difficult since getting back from tour to finish it because of all the time I've spent with JPB. One weekend I resorted to perservering with the laptop (at half the normal amount of memory because, post new hard drive installation, it simply doesn't like having more than one stick of memory in it) at JPB to get it done, only to find that I didn't like what I did.

Anyway, I've been wanting to do a mix of nineties house and garage tunes and, prior to the tour, it was going really well. I'd gotten my hands on a whole bunch of acapellas, I was raring to go. But I just can't seem to quite get it right. I love it from Hideaway to Deeper And Deeper, and the mashup of Britney with Size 9's "I'm Ready" seems to work pretty well (although I'm sure that a more talented masher would be able to do a better, crazier job). I'm also happy about ending it with C&C Music Factory's "Just A Touch Of Love", which was my overall favourite song of 1990. I haven't decided if Vanilla Ice really fits where it is, the two *songs* after Deeper and Deeper seem like a cop-out, and I was really hoping that I could fit in Crystal Waters' "100% Pure Love" in there somewhere (maybe over the top of Aretha Franklin).

Quite possibly I was aiming for something more than I'm capable of. Hopefully by the time I get to Start The Dance 20 I'll get it right.

Tracklisting:
1. (Intro)
2. Beyonce - Work It Out
3. Sub Sub ft Melanie Williams - Ain't No Love, Ain't No Use
4. Snap - The Power
5. Vanilla Ice - Ice Ice Baby
6. De'Lacy - Hideaway
7. C&C Music Factory - Do You Wanna Get Funky
8. Black Box - Strike It Up
9. Livin' Joy - Dreamer
10. Aretha Franklin - A Deeper Love
11. Aretha Franklin - A Deeper Mix
12. Madonna - Deeper And Deeper
13. Eve Gallagher - You Can Have It All
14. Robin S - Show Me Love
15. Britney Spears - I'm A Slave 4 U
16. Staxx - Joy
17. Black Box - Everybody Everybody
18. C&C Music Factory - Just A Touch Of Love (Everyday)

In there is M People "Open Your Heart" and Size 9 "I'm Ready", not to mention multiple mixes of the listed tracks all mixed up.

Tags: Mix, Start The Dance, nineties, House.

On Saturday JPB and I got invited to go to a BBQ at the apartments on top of Oxford Square. From floor fifteen, Oxford Street actually looks quite pretty (It's a shame that I didn't bring my camera!) especially knowing what it looks like at street level. No trash, no scum, and that's just the people. You can barely make out the litter and the worn-out pavement from that high up, it's all about the trees and the car headlights, reflecting off the windows of the buildings along the street. Pretty.

Being higher up, the view isn't quite as good as the skyscraper panorama from the Burton Street roof-top (there is no Harbour Bridge from this address) but it has some things in common. Horizon, that wavy white monstrosity is seems even more obtuse at this distance, it's so abrupt, it just comes out of nowhere, and just because some rich people want to see the ocean from the centre of town. And Oxford Street is several orders of magnitude more luminous than anything else around.

After a few bottles of wine, stumbling back up the road and it's back to reality: crazy people, construction and chaos. I have to move back to the East!

Tags: Oxford Street, Sydney

Update: Got pictures!!!

See? Pretty.

With hill climbing fresh in my mind and after pondering reasons behind my sexuality, the first thing I did upon my arrival at the All Seasons Verona in Mount Isa was to run up City Lookout to get a good view of the phallic symbol that is the Lead Stack (Aka the Big Chimney). I had to run to catch the sunset but then had to wait over an hour for the “residual light” to fade to get a decent shot of the mine lit up. I called JPB and, with the sun setting in the distance, it was kind of romantic in a disconnected kind of way.

Afterwards I went down to Carpentaria Buffalo Club for lamb shanks and, with memories of my lovely first date with JPB still in my mind, where I ordered the same thing, it was extremely disappointing. A shame, really, you’d think that in a scruffy outback mining town they’d be able to get it right.

tags: Mount Isa.

It was a cool overcast five o’clock as I was making my way down the Castle Hill (Mt Cudtheringa) when I started pass quite a few eager joggers going the other way. Apart from think how mad they were for taking on the rock-and-dirt with such vigor, the most startling observation was the different ways that men and women approached the task. Specifically, most of the women that I passed would be chatting to their fellow joggers, as if running up a three hundred metre high rock wasn’t challenging enough. Guys would generally limit their discourse to a mere syllable, on the order of “hey” or “hi” or simply a barely audible grunt in recognition of our shared presence on this narrow winding track. Being a guy, this was the only reasonable course of action, I mean, I found it hard enough WALKING up the hill (though admittedly I did scale it via the much steeper Goats Track) and, to me, talking would have been a waste of much needed energy.

I don’t know exactly what the women were talking about, tired as I was I couldn’t even muster the energy to pay attention, but the mere fact that they were talking was astounding. Where do women get the energy to talk? It is plain fact that women in general talk far more than men do. To me they seem to have a need to fill some kind of daily quota of spoken words even if it means resorting to talking about the mundane. Like the famously mythological “sweets stomach” that allows women to eat all manner of desserts even after a hearty feast, women must have some kind of extra energy source that’s specifically devoted to speech that men don’t have. Knowing how much women talk, the source must be nuclear, situated in extreme close proximity to the throat. Male vocal chords are hardwired to the mains and is one of the first things to shut down to conserve energy for more demanding tasks like running up a hill. Regardless, it’s one of the great mysteries of women. That and the fact that women require companionship whilst going to the toilet (though I suspect it’s related to the fulfillment of their daily spoke word quota, so demanding a task that they require even those seemingly private moments of waste excretion to do the job.)

With the guys I met on the way up, it only made sense to converse only at pre-determined stops along the track, to avoid the risk of heart attack. The women talking to each other on the way up, saying how hard it was, unnecessarily expending precious energy, made no sense whatsoever. Possibly one of the reasons why I’m gay; I just simply don’t understand women.

Oh, and Castle Hill; it was really satisfying to make it to the top. One word of advice though: don’t wear jeans… Obviously, really. The city isn’t all that pretty, it’s just ugly sprawl radiating from the base of the hill, like a dark shadow weaving around the other big lumps of rock (Mount Louisa, Mount Stuart…). Far more exhilarating is the view of the distant islands in the sea. Silently contemplating Castle Hill from the plane en route to Mount Isa, it seemed so small and abrupt, oddly placed on it’s own so close to the coast. The sound of women chattering away over the top of the plane’s propellers.

Tags: Townsville, Photos, Women, Talking, Gender Divide.

Third performance on this tour and I'm feeling pretty fantastic. Lucky me had a massage beforehand and while being worried that the masseuse went a bit too hard (on my request, BTW) and bruised me, by the time I got to warm-up class I was feeling lovely and luscious, my limbs pendulous and weighty. We've also taken with us our lovely tarquet that has the perfect balance of slip and grip and dances like Goanna that has alot of floorwork is relatively effortless and we're not at the mercy of the theatres in their choice of floor covering.

Afterward we waited forever for a taxi and ended up getting lifts from various audience members kind enough to offer transport. By the time we got to Southbank just about every restaurant had closed their kitchens and were in *bar* mode. Except for the Rhino Bar, which was serving tapas. A wonderful idea, you can get a bowl of chorizo and accompany it with a Corona. Which is what I did. Though I also had wedges (sorry, a rather boring choice) and a Moroccan carrot and olive salad. Tapas and beer, what a fantastic combination.

The Rhino Bar was quite a swish little venue with great light fixtures. Check 'em out!

That last one was taken by YB, she's constantly nicking my camera and taking pictures, she really needs to get her own camera!!! There were quite a few good-looking and well-groomed guys here as well, a surprise considering we're in Northern Queensland.

Tags: Townsville, Rhino Bar, Photos,
Bangarra.

We finished rehearsals rather quickly today and had most of the afternoon to wander around town. All I wanted to do was to sit in the Sun by the beach and so DB, YB, BO-A and I headed off to Rockpool. Unfortunately it was rather windy so swimming wasn't really an attractive option. Neither was sitting down and reading a good book. Instead, we played on the swings!!!

On our walk back we passed the Water Fun Park. The bucket slowly fills up with water and subsequently spills out when it's full. Looks like fun!

Tags: Townsville.

The best thing about Mackay was the audience (sorry for sounding so conceited!) Warm and enthusiastic, and with significant TSI representation, they cheered loudly at the end of our Turtle encore and were eager to thank us afterwards. It helped a great deal that half the audience seemed to be related to home boy PT in some way. But I found the auditorium to be so vast it was difficult to connect to the audience and in any case I was still trying to get back into performance mode, especially for this show which, for me, is much more emotionally demanding. SP said I looked so upset he thought I was going to cry which I guess is appropriate but I certainly wasn’t feeling it as much as I have felt it before.

Mackay itself is a rather unremarkable city. If it wasn’t for PT’s family (and the lovely feast that they organized for us the night we arrived) it could have been any other country town – clean, tidy and friendly people. The location of the hotel didn’t help much either, being a twenty minute walk from the city centre, our nearby food options were KFC, Domino’s and the hotel’s pricy restaurant. At the very least I got pretty decent coffee at Foodspace, the café near the Entertainment Centre.

So it was such a relief to land in Townsville. We’re staying on Palmer Street, an up-coming trendy restaurant strip on the “Southbank” and five minutes from the centre of town (though, admittedly is a bit sparse but Flinders St East looks pretty cool). Within half an hour of checking into the hotel and I’m having a good coffee at Coffee Dominion. Later I took a long walk up and down The Strand, which was really beautiful. The cool breeze coming off Cleveland Bay was really pleasant, and to think I was freezing my butt off in Sydney a week ago. People were hanging out, walking, jogging… I just wished I had my own little someone to walk with…

By the time I got back to the hotel, some of the crew were preparing to go out to dinner, to find decent seafood. The concierge recommended Tim’s Surf and Turf on Ross Creek, which didn’t really sound promising but she insisted that it wasn’t too touristy (in fact, she pointed out that the beach was generally touristy and the river was more for the locals). We decided to take her advice and rewarded with the sight of some of the biggest food servings we had ever seen. Tasty too. The garlic prawns looked so good I decided to risk it, despite having suffered reactions to them in the past, and the oysters were quite fresh. AND we had a really good drop of white, and damn it I can’t remember what it was. Afterwards, I ran into more of the group having margaritas at Cactus Jack’s and had a cocktail with them. Man am I going to put on a lot of weight on this trip.

Tags: Townsville, Mackay, Queensland, Southbank, Photos, Food.

I don't necessarily know who this is going out to but let me just say how sorry I am that I haven't been updating regularly over the last couple of weeks. Lots of things have happened but it's all a little bit too personal for me to write about it here (then what's the point of a blog then??? I ask myself...)

On the things I am more willing to write about, we're on tour in a few days now which will give me something not so personal to write about...

Home on Google Earth
Originally uploaded by Jhuny.

Discovery, are you still up there? Can you fix this satellite?

darkseason did this and so I thought I'd give it a go. But this is about the best it can do, for the moment. So I can't really complain about privacy issues or be concerned about Big Brother or anything paranoid like that because the satellite's on the blink.

It seems to work in other places, though, and you can see my previous home pretty clearly. Though nothing like this kind of detail, any clearer and people might be able to recognise their cars.

So next time you're out an about, look up and wave hello. You never know, you might just get your picture taken.

Tags: Google Earth.