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It was YB's birthday on Tuesday and, to celebrate, we went to Luna Park on Saturday. As it is her last year in her twenties, she decided it was fitting to go to an amusement park and act like kids, going on silly rides and stuff. I'm not one for rides but Luna Park is such a good opportunity for pictures.

The highlight of the trip was Coney Island; DB pondered that we were old skool... but how can you beat silly mirrors and slippery slides. As we entered the building I raced ahead to take happy snaps of the girls on the various rides and a random guy came up to me, thinking the girls were some kind of celebrities or something, and asked me if I was a professional photographer. No I'm not and no the girls were just having fun. DB and I decided to try out the big kids slide, which is crazy high, as we were about to slide down we questioned what the hell we were doing up there but, after the first go we were immediately back up the stairs for a second go. Fun. Later a group of us tried the Wheel of Joy, where you sat on top of a spinning cone and tried to stay on the longest. I slid off fairly early but DB was challenging for a win when she stacked it and did a full forward roll over her tiara and got a couple of bruises. Awesome!

None of the other rides at Luna Park quite matched Coney Island, except maybe the Dodge 'ems, which is classic. YB decided it was more fun to try to avoid being bumped, which only just made her even more of an appealing target! We also tried some of the games. The first was a sort-of race where you tried to roll balls into holes, each hole makes your chariot fish go a certain distance. Three Bangarra dancers had a go and we got third-last, second-last and last positions. We have shamed our company. Later on JS and I tried the Clowns; I initially thought that high scores are good and felt dejected half way through when I was only on four when we found out that we should actually aim to get a LOW score. Consequently I did pretty well and got a Cat In The Hat, which I gave to JPB. He loved it...

Well THAT was a fantastic Easter Weekend, wasn't it? I mean, it started out slow (experimenting with customising MySpace pages over Good Friday) but there's nothing like a seventeen hour party to get the festivities going. Actually, after that effort I was pretty much a wreck for the rest of the party season but I had a good time. And its only now that I feel like I've recovered. Easter Tuesday and I'm sweating out all the fun of the weekend and ohmigod I spent the morning standing on my head way to get over it all.

The last couple of weeks I've been suffering from a persistent cold. From uncontrollable sneezing to aches and fatigue, it was hard to get over it after doing full days of rehearsals and by pre-Easter Monday I just had to take the sickie that I should have taken at the start of the whole ordeal. Wasn't really inspired to blog about anything. But thank God I was feeling much better by the weekend, and I guess the alcohol did its thing and killed off the bugs. JPB still has a nagging cough that keeps you up all night though...

I haven't written much about the love of my life lately but everything is going well. It's just a bit too personal to talk too much about us. But he's been absolutely adorable and we've been having a great time. Well past the eighteen month point and still going strong.

I have to sort out my resume. Woah! When did I last write one of those? I dug a couple out of my backups, they go way back to 2002. Double woah! I guess I didn't need a resume to get into Bangarra.

And the things you need to do to update it! I had two: the first one was written in the vain hope that I could get the kind of job (and pay) I had before all this dance hoo-ha began but, being at the wrong end of a IT jobs slump (and despite having had such a position only the year before) it was fat chance I was ever going to be a software engineer in too much of a hurry. Tried to update it but decided that at the moment I don't have much of a need for a resume that describes the developmental outcomes for the implementation of the blah-blah-blah system or whatever.

It was more straight-forward to modify the dance-orientated 2002 resume but, still, as if I need to specify my landline number (like as if I ever use my home phone except for calling for taxis and take-away). And does anyone care what I got in high school now that I'm THIRTY? (not like it was all that necessary at TWENTY-FIVE, I guess...) And there was a distinct lack of URLs that now seem quite necessary. Sepcifying in my resume my Bangarra performance history was a bit convoluted, too. There's been three different versions of the Clan program; only Unaipon is the common thread, the others have works from other programs. When spelling it all out on my resume I felt like I was repeating myself. But not really. Sounds confusing and, considering it's all on the first page, its not a good thing.

Like as if you need resumes nowadays anyway. Its all about the networks and ready portfolios and showreels and stuff. Don't tell us, show us. Not as if I know, I haven't looked for a job in quite a few years now...

Tags: resume, Bangarra

Post Corporate Gig for Bangarra sponsors Qantas and Jhuny is well on the way to getting very drunk. Scene of the crime: Stonewall. Twelve o'clock and Jhuny "The Boy" had just turned thirty. Whoop 'de do! I have no idea when I got home but I think it was a very civilised half-past-two.

What wasn't civilised was the hangover. Didn't get to work until twelve OOPS! which, for us, is about the beginning of rehearsals. It wasn't until the end of the day, after sweating and jumping around in lines and around the room, that I started to get over the hangover. Which was the perfect time to start drinking again. JPB took me out to dinner, we went out with some friends to the Cricketers for more drinks before coming home to get even more inebriated, finally falling into bed at seven in the morning. The dawn was beautiful.

Welcome to my thirties!!! It's been wonderful so far. The day after was the Cinemoves screening at Sydney Dance Company. It's pretty safe to say that none of you went. The few people that did attend had the pleasure of enjoying a brilliant program of Australian dance films. Lots of leftover food and wine. Went home and was still exhausted from the previous night that I was asleep before twelve.

But Sunday was lovely. Went to a very late brunch with a friend and her man, dropped by the Lord Roberts for a late afternoon bevvy before settling in to see an Irishman become Australian Idol. Lots of talent in the Final 12 but didn't they find it hard to all sing together? Never to be minding.

Technorati Tags: Jhuny, Thirty, drinks, Sydney, Cinemoves, Dance, Festival, Australian Idol

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Paris is stunningly beautiful. Food practically spills out onto the road from all the patisseries and boulangeries and cafes and what have you. Like London, there are beautiful churches and buildings around every corner but the Parisians seem to have sorted the place out so that the most prominent civic monuments are given their rightful space (though I guess this all came at a cost to the lower classes when the various rulers decided to impose their "town planning" schemes on their subjects...). Even their centrepiece waterway is spared the riverfront developments and given a line of trees along its banks. From the time JPB and I arrived 'til our Saturday night at Eiffel Tower, we simply couldn't have seen any more beauty and splendour. Paris is truly magnifique!

But then Sunday arrived. Dimanche.

My first day in London was a Sunday and the place was alive. People were out taking full advantage of their city. In particular, all of the shops were open and packed with people. True, London was experiencing the kind of weather that even a Sydney-sider would consider to be superb, whereas Paris had turned gloomy and grey. But, in any other city, it would have been fine if we could find a decent place to spend some money.

At about lunch time we discovered that even the department store down the road (Bazar d'Hotel de Ville) was closed. What hope did we have? Only the crappiest shops pushing crap-arse multi-coloured Eiffel Tower models were doing business. We couldn't even get a decent croissant!

So JPB and I decided to ditch our shopping efforts and went off on a river cruise. Nice. By the end the rain had stopped, which allowed us to get out and take pictures. I guess I would have had a better time if I had gone to the toilet before the cruise, otherwise I wouldn't have spent the entire time busting to go to the loo and enjoyed the sights more. My bad, yes. After the cruise we found that the tickets entitled us to a discount at the Conciergerie, an old prison that housed about 4000 people in its history including Marie Antoinette. Besides the old clock (which is outside anyway and free for all to see) and the Hall of the Men-At-Arms, it is by far the CRAPPIEST tourist destination in Paris. Don't bother going, even with discount, it sucks.

Not happy with the way our day was turning out, we decided to quit the sight-seeing and headed down to the cinema. The Devil Wears Prada was showing at the Odeon on St Germain Boulevard so the pass the time 'til Seance we headed down to a pub for a beer each. SEVENTEEN EUROS LATER (not to mention the expresso that was four euros fifty a pop!) we headed back to the cinema only to find that the movie we wanted to see was Complet and there was a massive line to buy tickets for the NEXT session.

Unperturbed we headed across town (over the Ile de la Cite) to Beauborg only to find that the cinema there showed Version Francaise. Not only that but at that moment someone had fallen off the Centre Georges Pompidou (or jumped off, we weren't sure) and apparently died, and the police and ambulance were starting to gather. Pulling out our respective city guides we decided to catch the metro up to Opera and, after walking down the street in the wrong direction, finally found a session in English.

Really enjoyed the movie, BTW.

Had some pretty unremarkable French food and headed home, glad to have the dreaded Sunday firmly in the past. Except the next morning, JPB woke up and wasn't feeling very well.

The lesson is: Paris is great, except on Sundays when it really really sucks.

And lundi isn't much cop either!

But I do still love the place.

Tags: Paris, JPB, Sunday.

We're stuck in some motor inn on the main road of Ballarat and so were only required to fill out a Personal Form.  Ripped off, we only got to answer questions
 about ethnic background, education, employment, and whether or not I did unpaid domestic work (yes, I did tidy up my hotel room that day when I slept in 'til lunch...)  There was that optional question about religion and, not wanting to seem all 2001 and put "Jedi", I just went for the "no religion" option.  Possibly the hardest questions were about how many hours I worked last week (how long was that flight to Hobart again?) and where was I living five years ago (what's the post code for Menora again?) but, besides that, it was disappointingly straightforward.

JPB back home had a more interesting experience:  what is the status of our relationship?  Just eight days shy of our first-date one-year anniversary, his suggestion was to have me down as "rent boy".  Cheeky.  Anyway, it didn't seem enough to cross the "de facto" box; although a simple cross-reference to an earlier question would uncover just as much, it seemed more appropriate to exploit the "other" box to state clearly: "same-sex defacto".  Sure, this is tainted slightly by the notion that such a relationship is an "other".  But what else is there to do?  Apparently there is no questions specifically about orientation so this is it.

In any case, its better than "rent boy": my limit is only five hours a week of domestic work...

On second thoughts, I think we should have just went for de facto.  A computer better understands a marked box than handwritten letters.  Oh well, better luck next time.

Technorati Tags: Census, Gay, JPB, relationship status