Excitement, adventure, and really mild things

There have been some interesting developments in the last few weeks or so:

Australian invasion!
Sophie came for a visit, and it was so effing good to see her and have an excuse to eat with abandon at all my favourite restaurants. I look forward to learning more about her interesting developments in the coming months.  :)

I also learned that Anthony will be coming for a visit in July, and watching him take on Boston in full summer swing should be good for many, many laughs.


Moving on!
Colleen-the-Lawyer, Flattie Karen and I found a house! This is extremely exciting, not just because I'll be moving in with the G-word (!) but because it took us a fucking lifetime to find a place. We were actively looking for a solid three months; if you think the real estate situation in Sydney is bad, well, I'm not even going to start on the mess here, but please believe me when I say that it is much much much much much worse. This was not helped by our minimum requirements, which included being near public transportation while also being near the highway; two full-sized bedrooms; outdoor space; extreme pet-friendliness (two dogs and a Buster among us); and a maximum rent that was fully $600 less than pretty much anything of a decent standard that fulfilled all of our other requirements. (If we would have been happy living in a hovel, we'd have been golden.)

It is also much much much much much more expensive and involves massive deposits: landlords are allowed to (and almost always do) demand first month, last month, and security (= 1 month) in advance, PLUS the renters cover the real estate agent's fee, which is usually another full month again. This is standard operating procedure: it doesn't matter who you are or what your situation is, you're expected to front four full months' rent before you can even sign the lease. We lucked out in that we only got charged a total of 2.5 months' worth, but even that was a big ask.

But it was all worth it in the end, because the house we found is awesome: it's a row house, but unusually for Boston it's divided vertically, not horizontally/by floor, so it feels much more like a house of our own than a flat. It's sunny and spacious, and the location is fantastic: slightly less public transportation-convenient than I've been spoiled by in Dorchester, but in exchange I'll be back in a neighbourhood that has an identity - Inman Square, which is part of Cambridge - and is chockers with cute shops and good food and some of the best ice cream I've ever had in my life. We're one block back from the main street, and as happened in most of my Inner West houses, that's enough to mean that we're isolated from the street noise and cars while still being right in the heart of stuff.  And to top it all off, we'll have a guest room, so there is a standing invitation to you all that won't include sleeping on the couch or sharing my bed. It's so good!


Happy hemiversary!
Colleen and I had our six-month-iversary  a couple of weeks ago. That is, of course, six months from when decided we were officially dating, not from when we first started the whole ridiculous process - which was almost two years ago now, if you can believe that (I can't). The day passed pretty much unremarked upon, but it's nice to know we've made it this far, because god knows most people weren't sure we would (I wasn't).


Dance for your life!
I performed my first drum solo the other day. I've done lots of them before, but I don't think I've ever performed one, and I know I've never performed one by myself. Drum solos are notoriously tough: they're fast, and sharp, and they tend to be short because they're hard to maintain for more than 3 minutes. My whole performance was about 5 minutes long, but that's because it starts with a short sword piece (that's actually way more like a drum solo itself than it is a traditional sword number; they tend to be slow and dramatic, and this one is quick and flirty) and goes into the drum solo. They fucked up my music a couple of times so you'll see some weird pauses, but it's pretty fun just the same, I reckon:



(In other news, I need new dance pants: they're not supposed to be baggy!)


XOXO

A Short Play about the Things You Can Get away with When You're far from Home.

I'm not sure how common they are in the Antipodes (pronounced 'anti-podes'), but I am signed up to about a dozen different e-coupon/deal notification services. Groupon is the major one, but there are heaps of smaller ones and sometimes they send pretty amazing stuff.

I started and erased three different descriptions of one I received today, but have decided that I can give myself the night off and let the jokes write themselves. Enjoy - it's champagne comedy from the headline on down.

Smokey Robinson Presents Human Nature: Australian Vocal Sensations Perform Motown Hits Orpheum Theatre (Boston, MA) FULL PRICE: $61.50 OUR PRICE: $15.00 - $31.75* Smokey Robinson presents Australia's most popular vocal group, Human Nature. They are coming to the Orpheum Theatre as part of their first ever U.S. tour. Formed originally as a doo-wop band, Human Nature have become huge pop stars at home, soaring up the charts with multiple top ten hits, as well as three multi-platinum records. Their success attracted the attention of Smokey Robinson, who recorded the song "Get Ready" with the band. Robinson then brought them to Las Vegas, where they've played sold out shows for more than two years. Their show, billed as "The Ultimate Celebration of Motown," showcases the distinctive, dynamic harmonies of members Toby Allen, Phil Burton, Andrew Tierney and Michael Tierney as they perform Motown's greatest hits, including songs from The Temptations, The Four Tops, The Supremes and more.

XOXO

The Best Day of My Life.

I use Twitter pretty much only to keep up with Australian goings-on via the rantings of Wil Anderson, Hannah Gadsby and Tony Martin. I never send anything myself, but today Tony Martin was tweeting about adding your own background music to old silent films. This prompted me to tweet him the YouTube link to the original '70s theme music for 'Monday Night Football'.

A few minutes later, this popped up in my inbox:

Tony Martin @mrtonymartin retweeted to 28,846 followers:

YoshiBoston Elena Cotto @mrtonymartin Try this truly amazing background music, courtesy of gridiron in the '70s: tinyurl.com/7fzl9xk Apr 05, 7:28 AM via web

Thank you, Interwebs.


XOXO

Everyone knows it's windy!

Just a quick one today: I did my first veil performance on Sunday and it went really well, so I thought I'd share the video.



It's from a show my teacher Zehara organised called 'Elementals'; all of the performances had to be inspired by one of the four elements, and mine was wind. Considering that I once managed to nearly garotte myself with a veil in the middle of King Street (really), I reckon I've made some good progress. Just for the record, it's an Australian band but Zehara picked the music for me, so the didj is not my fault. :) Also, look how long my hair's getting! I'm quite handy with the flat-iron these days.

While we're at it, here's another piece I did a few months back:



This one's a double-cane piece, which is... well, not many people do them. You have to be a bit ambidextrous, and apparently I am (?). It's a more traditional saidi (Egyptian folk dance with cane) piece, and I'm wearing the proper outfit, by which I mean I'm dressed as Elvis's cabana boy. I did it more recently in a more modern costume and wish I had a video of that show instead, because saidi dresses are not what you'd call flattering, but there you go.


XOXO

P.S. At 0:14 of the first video you get a quick shot of Colleen in the back row - she's all the way at the end, in the white hoodie. None of you will be in the least surprised.

Tartling Tatties

A couple of new things have come to my attention recently.

One is the awesome and reassuring word tartle. This comes to us from the ingenious Scots, and refers to that thing that happens when you're introducing someone - someone whose name you absolutely know and have no right to forget - and completely blank.

This happens to me all the time. No, I mean: All. The. Time. Like, to the point that I don't even try to introduce people in a group anymore, because if there's more than three names involved I am guaranteed to seize up and have to pause in an awkward and completely unmissable fashion.

As useful as it is to have a word to put to that phenomenon, I am more relieved to know that it happens often enough to enough people that it deserved a word of its own. I Am Not Alone, you guys.


The other thing is lavender-scented potatoes. This is, apparently, a side dish that happens; it was brought to my attention by my friend Alison ('The Chef'). Last week she took over as Chef de Cuisine at a local restaurant that's been around for many years and is in need of a shake-up. When we were out to dinner the other day she was filling me in on her first week, and suddenly she started raging - with a fury I have never, ever seen in her - about the lavender-scented potatoes that were being served as a bed for an innocent piece of fish that had done nothing to deserve such treatment.

Cut to a totally separate conversation I was having with Caitlin today, in which I mentioned Alison's new job. The following exchange ensued:

Caitlin: Someone needs to take a stand against the scourge of lavender-scented potatoes.

Me: Comin' over here, stealin' our jobs....

Caitlin: Dude, if one more lavender-scented potato beats me out for a Middle East Program Associate job at a DC think tank, I swear...
Me: Actually, I think 'lavender-scented potato' would be a great term for someone who gets something undeservedly. Like, they seem fancy and decorated and whatnot (lavender-scented), but underneath are just plain and no better than anything else (potato).
Caitlin: I like it. Putting it that way, I think I really do get beaten out for jobs by lavender-scented potatoes.

me: Oh, I'm sure you do. There's no other explanation for it.

So yes. Two new entries in the Yoshi Lexicon. I would encourage all of you start using them as well. After all, I now get to tease Colleen on a near-daily basis for using Australianisms she's picked up from me, and I still take credit for the introduction of the word 'hoodie' to Sydney (no really... I do), so we might as well keep it going.


XOXO

P.S. A quick update I keep forgetting to give you: I mentioned a few months ago that I was going to be participating in the Climb for Air, a fundraiser in which I would walk up 789 steps - that's 41 stories - to raise money for the American Lung Association. Well, the Climb was almost a month ago now, but that doesn't mean I still don't feel a bit proud when I think about the fact that not only did I complete it, but I completed it in 11 minutes, 46 seconds - not bad for my first time, I reckon!

I will definitely be doing it again next year, when my goals will be to run at least part of it and to make it in under 10 minutes. It was incredible to do it, and even more incredible to get to the top and realise that I wasn't tired or even especially winded - the only physical side effect was that for the last 10 flights my legs had been a bit wobbly and I was really having to think about where to put my feet down; apparently your body gets a bit weirded out by doing something like climbing that many stairs in that short of a time and starts asking you if you're 100% sure this is the thing you mean to be doing. But other than that, it was actually fun to do, besides being incredibly exciting for me to know that I can do that stuff now. A win, definitely a win.

four years/first anniversary

It will be February 29th here in just under two hours; it already is the 29th where most of you are.

It's been four years since the last February 29th, and those of you with extremely sharp memories (or maybe too little on your minds) might remember the last one. I do. I remember waking up so nervous I thought I would be sick, and chugging peppermint tea; I remember a huge fuck-up with the cab we'd booked that meant that we ended up being seven minutes late for our 10:00 appointment; I remember that it was a 10:00 appointment and that seven minutes late seemed like the end of the world.

I remember sitting and waiting to be called, trying to keep my shit together with that big, fat binder in my lap. I remember sitting in front of a nameless but kindly clerk, nervously sharing the details of my life and trying to make him understand why it was important that I got to stay there forever. Not just that I wanted to, but that it was important. I remember how pleased he seemed with all of the paperwork, and listening to Bel explain how hard it would be for her if we were separated, and hearing him say, 'You're not going to be separated.' With that sentence, those six words, I knew I would get my residency. I had it. I was one of the few who would have it granted on the spot, and it was going to happen, and I would be safe. I would be safe, finally safe.

But as we all know, I wasn't. And in one of those small but inescapable ironies of life, that same kindly clerk was working on the day I went back, about eight months later, to declare that the relationship was over and that I was no longer eligible for that residency. I remember smiling at him in a no doubt fairly desperate fashion; he didn't remember me.

I don't remember the date of that day; I do remember maintaining so hard the whole time I was in the office, and buckling afterwards when I was waiting for the elevator. I remember Tim helping me walk out, and how quietly but deeply angry he was that this was happening to me, that it was just done, that fast. I remember being told I had 28 days to leave the country; I remember sitting on that little built-up patch of grass outside and filling out a tourist visa application so that I could ostensibly buy myself a bit more time, but really so that I could apply for another student visa. I remember feeling like I could fill out immigration paperwork in my sleep, which was a fucking blessing because I was so checked out of my life by that point that don't remember a single other goddamn thing for about a month in either direction, apart from the week in Samoa with Jac that has all blended into one warm, coconut-tasting memory. I actually don't remember much of anything of about a year there, from roughly mid-July until around the following September.

But I remember February 29th. I remember booking the appointment over the phone with a nice young man who clearly thought I was batty but laughed conscientiously along with me when I said that we thought Leap Day would be fortuitous. And it was; it just didn't play out in the long run like I thought it would.

I think the worst legacy of the last few years is my complete inability to trust that anything good can last. I realise that sounds overwrought, but have the rug pulled out from under you enough times, even just in little ways, and I promise you'll end up feeling the same. And I look at the girl sleeping next to me as I type this, with her ridiculously beautiful lashes and her hair all messed up, who smells like warm and dreams out loud, a girl whom I love more than I know what to do with, and I can't help but feel scared to my bones that she'll go the same way as everything else has. I want to grab her and hold on and never, ever let her out of my sight, and maybe if we stay perfectly still everything else will happen around us and we'll be safe. (Again and always, safe.)

But that, of course, is not how the world works. We may last 50 more years or five more minutes, but I'm not going to make a difference in that by trying to keep everything else out. And while a lot of what I do remember was fractures and lacerations, I also remember the hard hard work done by people who loved me, who tried to make my dream come true by holding my hand and writing essays and making me tea and beating me at Scrabble, and who helped me put my life back together by picking me up when I fell and being endlessly patient and making me eat and beating me at Scrabble. So all in all it's a push, but I'll probably still get really drunk tomorrow.

Happy anniversary; now please fuck off for another four years.

An update.

(With apologies and gratitude to Anthony, who received an e-mail suspiciously similar to the text below just a few moments ago. Whatever, I'm sick and feel like a jerk for having fallen off. I'm trying to catch up, y'all.)

The Political

I saw this BBC article a couple of months ago, and I wish to god he had named the person quoted in this exchange:

A leading Republican, who was in Congress for more than 10 years, answered my question: "Who can beat Obama?" with a casual, "a mammal". Then he added sadly: "But they are all reptiles."

We're all hoping that they destroy each other and don't end up putting up someone who looks moderate enough to lure away disenchanted Dems. In the meantime, I'm usually too focused on keeping down my food anytime one of their god-awful faces is on my tele to pay much attention to what they're saying, and that's probably preserving my sanity.

The Personal

I had an interesting four-day weekend: I went to Florida to meet Colleen's family. They're in the suburbs of Tampa - which is to say, Tampa; the whole bloody city's one big suburb - and they are hardcore Republicans with Christian overtones and Tea Party inclinations. They've long since made their peace with their gay daughter, but loving her deeply and wanting a good and safe life for her somehow does not equal choosing not to vote for people who want her miserable or preferably dead. It's a conundrum.

I had been warned of their political leanings and Colleen had pleaded with me repeatedly not to get involved in any kind of political discussion with them, mostly because a) I'm obviously not going to change their minds, and b) her Dad is a... fucking fucking fuck, I've lost one of my Australian words... he likes to start trouble because he thinks it's funny... AUGH. I get really upset when that happens. I've started forgetting words and street names; I couldn't come up with the name of the Annandale a while back and I drove myself crazy with it. Stupid and unimportant, except that it isn't at all. Anyway, whatever the word is (and please post in the comments if you know what it is)*, that's what he is, so the only way to avoid getting into an ugly and unwinnable argument is to refuse to bite in the first place. But it's hard when you're pottering around in the kitchen and notice the Obama countdown clock prominently displayed on the counter, and when politics keeps coming up in conversations going on around me, and also, well, have you met me?

Fortunately I managed to keep well out of it, and it all went swimmingly and they liked me very much. But it was weird being in that environment. In some ways it felt almost disturbingly familiar - the beaches; the crazy flora I've never seen Stateside, including a bottle-brush tree in their front yard! - and in others it felt so completely unrelatable. The place has no soul, and that's a big part of it - it's all planned/gated communities and strip malls and chains, not an independent anything to be found anywhere - but the other was definitely the people. You'll hear that Southerners are much friendlier, but I don't think that's correct: it's warm, but it's automatic; it's manners, not friendliness. With the people, as with the city, there's no there there. It's dead inside. And the politics are effing terrifying. I really do fear for this country.

But I'm trying to focus on the good of the trip, which was that her family really did seem to like me. I was so fucking terrified: it's been a long time since I dated someone who cared what her family thought. It's a lot more nerve-wracking this way (even though it probably says some very good things about Colleen and the choices I'm making these days. Look at me, growing up).

The Patriots

Didn't happen. Did not happen. Don't know what you're talking about.

XOXO

* EDIT: The word is stirrer. Which I remembered while brushing my teeth, because why not.