Love, love, love rhymes with sympathy now

last weekend was valentine's. hope you guys all had a good one. joey had to go to miami to walk his aunt's wedding so we had an early valentine's dinner. he bought me some godiva chocolates in a heart-shaped box and a first edition of Bright lights, big city which made me tear up because it was so unexpected and so what i've always wanted. it's kinda funny too because the cover has an illustration of the Odeon on it which is an restaurant around the corner from me. but i didnt think it was the same thing until i noticed the twin towers in the background of the picture. the book is about the excesses of ny or something and i don't see the Odeon when i think of that.

anyways so from thursday night i was left to my own devices. so i went to this party at nikki beach that loic has been asking me to go to for the past two weeks. twas fun. olivier was there too and it was good catching up and meeting loic's new girl. then after the club closed a whole bunch of us went over to this random guy's penthouse. there was this russian chick in our group that kept saying she felt really awkward. but the guy's whose place it was, had to be the most hospitable person ever. he got drinks and drinks for everybody and he also had an enormous collection of records. pretty soon everyone left but i wanted to stay and listen to music so loic and olivier stayed too. ernie is an ex club owner/ex DJ and he had an incredible knack of picking the perfect song for the mood, moving seamlessly from rock, house and old school rnb. we stayed until 7am dancing. actually i left and the two guys crashed there.

friday night went to kiss n fly with all the same people. it was fun. but i wasn't really into getting drunk again and the club was really, disgustingly packed. i was thinking of leaving when ernie showed up and took me downstairs to the private club RDV which was infinitely better. anyways, when it was time to go, we didn't leave. we hung around for ages and the people didn't kick us out because everyone knew ernie. and i went to his place again but this time a lot a lot a lot of people showed up. it was an interesting night, with a lot of interesting characters. i'm not sure if i felt out of my element, it was just so random. but i did feel complimented when i was told that i fitted right in. anyways, it was a source of inspiration for my future poetry class.

Nothing Else

I miss your odd talc-like scent
Your bristly mustache
Your tangy, drug-laced tongue
Your authentic New York accent
I wish it were true that I could never leave
That I was really now part of the family
That we could crawl into your bed together and sleep and spoon and nothing else except finish Ulysses.

That was one poem that my teacher/poet in residence read aloud in class (he only reads out the very few that he really likes, and he read out a lot of mine, but that's because i liked writing in the style that he likes)

And here's another, that could be the second part of the first.

The Movers and Shakers

But you had the whole of New York in your apartment
The movers and shakers you called them
Nina, the blue-eyed, blonde Japanese girl wearing a lurid red teddy and nothing else,was somehow giving the whole room a lap dance simultaneously
She would live with you for a month if you had the money.
Marcus, the grouchy old Australian, sitting alone because no one had to talk to him anymore was sneering at the Holly Golightly reject that was letting her friend do a bump off her de- stockinged thigh
That's no way to fit in he said, between stories of a sexless Elle Macpherson, turning down Justin Hemmes, and lining up girls' nipples in the secret back room of his old club
And you were going to make Marcus a star again
All you needed was ten Ninas you decided as you eyed the grinding nymph-bot
Then there was Nikki, yet another girl you let stay with you because you just couldn't stand seeing another fresh young thing get chewed up and spat out by the scene
Nikki, the new Melanie because Melanie was off with Wilhelmina, fought with the other DJs in attendance over who got to play their mix
And you went around and made sure everybody knew that their role was most integral
Peter, the drug dealer, was selling liquid capfuls of GHD from a suitcase but what he was really hocking was his jade dragon collection
Ella, the redhead stand-in, was holding court in the bedroom regaling us with the time she made Jeff Goldblum cry
When she was done, she thanked us for letting her speak, did a little curtsy, and turned back into that shy little girl that started acting because she was too timid to talk to anyone
Meanwhile I was a mirage that kept flickering on and off
In a red, sateen dress with big swirling ribbons and a tangled pair of black opaque legs
The most beautiful girl I had ever seen was sitting across from me with collaged leather boots that matched her auburn hair, politely declining any drugs because she was on E
Robert's bright eyes brightened when he noticed me
Can I get you anything?
I feel like I should be doing something for you.
At that, Nikki turned into a giant Brazilian snake and slivered and slinked over my knee and snorted something through her serpentinus slit
Whiffs of brunch plans were being made; it was 11am and people were ordering food
And I had forgotten what it was that I was waiting for
Two nights in a row here is a lot for anyone, you said
I wish it were just the two of us
Get out!
I just want to say to everybody
Kick everybody out so we can snuggle and listen to Dark Side of the Moon on vinyl
No don't do it Ernie, they will cry
she is new to the scene
And the newspapers tomorrow will decry
Ernesto shunned all of New York society for an Australian girl.

'Cause I've got issues with my sleep

Loic, my french friend moved! which is really surprising because he LOVED the lower east side. he went out there, ate there, even convinced me to move there for two months in the summer. so it's troubling that he moved. and not even within manhattan. to long island city! oh but the view, the view is magnificent. and it is. he's right by the water and across from times square, the empire state building, the chrysler, everything.

but i'm wary of venturing out of manhattan. i'm afraid of getting stranded without all those yellow cabs. but he convinced me to come up and visit him and reassured me that it was a really safe area. and it is. too safe. as I was waiting for him on the corner I ducked into a convenient store to get ciggies and this guy that was coming out of the store jumped out of the way and held the door open for me and made a big show of "no after you"

then as i'm trying to light my cigarette outside this guy with a small suitcase comes up to me with his lighter. but then he bums one off me. and then starts telling me how he just got a job selling cruises but he hasn't sold any yet and because he only gets paid in commissions he hasn't been paid. and he was crashing at his girlfriend's place in staten island but her landlord made her throw him out. so this was really embarrassing for him but he's been sleeping in atm booths for the past few nights. so he's homeless and wants to know if i know of any place he could stay.

and along comes loic so i ask him if he knows of any places he could stay. but he doesn't. and i try to hint to him that maybe we should take him back to his or at least invite him to dinner. but he doesn't respond. so i give homeless guy a few more ciggies and bid him adieu. i felt bad because he looked so cold but loic said he was shivering on purpose to make us want to take him in.

so that's my impression of long island city. so nice even the homeless are attractive.

because loic made me go to long island city. i made him make me dinner. it was tres drole to watch because he didn't know what he was doing. we had gone to the supermarket and gotten ravioli, alfredo sauce and chicken. so all he had to do was heat and combine everything. but he decided to drench everything in truffle oil. which might have made it great. it was really yummy!

Oh academia, academia, academia

As you know. I came to New York to study. And my 2nd semester is over next tuesday! I only have a writing folder to compile and a 10 page paper to write and then I'm done!!

but first I want to share this paper I just wrote. So it was for Cultural Studies. which has been the coolest subject. all we do is watch youtube videos and discuss insanely interesting topics. ok so each week we had to write a short paper about anything we wanted. he gave us ideas but we could do whatever and most people just turned in rants. like the one i did about the security guards at my dorm. but then he assigned the final paper. where we decide what grade we should get and he guarantees to honor it. so basically we didn't have to go to class or turn in any papers at all because he will give us whatever grade we ask for. he said we could write: fuck you A and we would get an A

but i wrote this paper. which was immensely satisfying.

Why I should get an A

I should get an A. I don't even believe in A's. An A doesn't mean anything. It's all so subjective, an A does not have a fixed value. Obviously an A from Harvard is not the same as an A from some community college, but not in the way you might think. An A from Harvard is worth more in the eyes of employers and society but it's not necessarily worth more in terms of the student's work. According to USA Today, “the fact that 50% of all Harvard students now get A's is a troubling problem”.¹

People pay a shitload of money to go to Harvard. And if your grades weren't good enough to get you into Harvard you are paying a fuckload in endowments to be there. So the last thing the university wants is for their students to leave. It goes both ways. Since the students pay so much they expect nothing less than A's. And the college wants the student to stay for as long as possible and to continue making contributions long after they leave so they make it as easy as possible to get A's.

Grade inflation isn't just confined to the Ivy Leagues. The same article states that: “fewer than 20% of all college students receive grades below a B-minus”. Make-up papers, exam re-does and contesting of grades are uniquely American things. It is uniquely American because there are very few countries, if any, where $40,000 per annum is the norm for college tuition. University is free in Russia, France, Denmark and practically free in other countries such as Australia where it's $4000 per annum but there is a government loan system whereby it's possible to never have to pay.

Americans are geared to think that more expensive means more valuable. In one of my classes, the professor asked if we would prefer free or cheaper university and only one person raised their hand. Of the people that didn't, one said they wouldn't want to pay less because than they would not care to be as motivated. Um, so they need to pay $40,000 in order to care? Couldn't they be just as committed paying $4000?

This is alarming. What's even more alarming is the extreme sense of self-entitlement that this brings. In another one of my classes, the professor asked us to grade ourselves but since we are paying a rather hefty fee to be there, he allowed people to ask to be graded by him. But then one student piqued: “Well, we are paying, so shouldn't we be able to decide our own grades”.

NOOOOO. We shouldn't be able to grade ourselves just because we pay $40,000 a year. That would be like buying grades, which is pretty much what we're doing now. Where grade inflation has made an A worthless. But still, we clamor for them. So in the spirit of assimilation: I am demanding an A because I paid for it.

And my ponytail now is really cute. It's never cute! it's usually pouffy or frizzy or blah but now it's cute!

Yeah I'll miss the boredom and the freedom and the time spent alone

sunday night.

went to see smart people with steph and pili. they said they liked it but i thought it was long and boring. but that might not be the fault of the movie. i have no attention span anymore. like i have 400 channels on tv, some good ones like the sundance channel and i should really be watching some great indie and world movies but instead i watch the same episodes of the real housewives of new york all the time. and i can actually feel the brain cells dying as i'm watching.

monday night.

went to le souk with loic (from nikki beach) for dinner. it's more of a nightclub though. we drank quite a bit and afterwards got a shisha.

wednesday night.
went to loic's to cook. i made pasta with steak and tomatoes. it was soooo good to eat something home cooked.

thursday night.

went to the angelika, this ancient cinema that plays indie movies with joey (from my floor) we watched paranoid park. which was soooo incredible. gus van sant's images kinda mimic memory patterns but it wasn't contrived. then we came back to our building and my roommate and i aren't getting along again. it's so awkward between us it's unbearable to be in my room with her.

so i watched a dvd in joey's room. we watched the suicide club which is this japanese movie. i think tiffany told me about it a LONG time ago. like it was banned because it was making people want to kill themselves? anyways joey kept warning me that it's depressing but i actually found it kinda uplifting. like the first half of the movie is hysterical and then it turns heavy, but it's so out of this world pretty that it could never hurt you. joey sees it as uplifting now too.

friday night.

it was james' (steph's friend, the promoter from martinetti) 30th birthday and he had a black and white ball on a boat. i was really up for going on a cruise around manhattan but it was heaps of fun as well. everyone on the boat were very stylish and from sydney. there was an open bar and steph kept bumping into people she knew from childhood but didn't know were in new york. this guy was looking at me weird and he's like i've met you before. and i'm like, i really don't think so, while he tried to figure it out. but he's a hairdresser at bumble and bumble, this place that i've been meaning to go to for ages now. so maybe i will soon. i also met this guy, pete who's apparently a mtvj. he won the rolling stone competition back in australia so he got to work for rolling stone in new york and now he's at mtv. and he went to kings.

later i asked this man to take a picture of steph and i. then he asked me what my name was and he was like blown away because his name is sunny and that's remarkably similar? so we were talking for a bit and i asked what he was doing in new york. and he's promoting a film. and that's when i realised he was sunny abberton and he was really sweet, like he kept looking out for me and making sure i was alright.

when the boat docked. some people piled into a bus to go to the after party. but steph and i were tired. so we just got a cab home. as i was exiting the taxi les called. so i tagged along with him to this loft party down the road from mine. it was ok but i guess i needed a wind down and i'm trying not to be in my room like ever.

saturday night.

allie came!!! we met up with steph and had din din at this pub on stone st. the weather is warmer now and all the tables have come out. after we went to see forgetting sarah marshall. oh it was sooo funnny! muchly recommended!

afterwards allie and i met up with brice (the french promoter from nikki beach who's name is actually not bruce) and loic and olivier and others. first we went to spotlight in times square which was pretty horrendous. then to mansion which was light years better.

And I want you to say Do you know what I'm saying?

first weekend back allie came to visit! friday we just bummed around timesquare. saw 21. saturday went up to barneys where i bought a present for my mum's birthday. the barney folk are so nice we got directions to alice's tea cup which is this tea room that allison wanted to try. the concierge had written the directions on this delightful card so i felt like i was on a scavenger hunt or something. alice's tea room is delightful. it's themed around alice in wonderland but not in an obvious way. the tea we had was soooo good.

saturday night ended up going to knitting factory. we wanted to see fan-tan after checking their myspace but we got there too late. we saw object who were really good. after that kinda zoned out the other bands that were playing cause we got talking to object and fan-tan. it was this girl's birthday and a cake was bought out for her. eventually i managed to score myself some but it was sooo gross. it was a vegan chocolate cake. got totally smashed on three drinks. i was drunk after one and a half. they are especially liberal with their drink pouring at kniting factory. object drove us home. but we craved maccas. so we hid for a long time not wanting them to see us sneaking off in the other direction. it was the BEST maccas EVER!!!!

tuesday raven asked if i wanted to go to home nightclub. and i'm like sure. what i didn't know was that she wasn't 21. and half way to this place she's like oh i forgot my fake id. and i'm like we should go back to get it. and she's like no i know people we'll be fine. um WE WEREN'T. so we tried some other places. then we went farther away to plumm which is owned by a whole host of celebrities including mr. big. and the bouncer was like i'll let you in if you go pay off that cop in the car who'll keep watch. and sure enough the cop comes over to us and goes: you have to do it on the sly put $20 bill behind your id and hand it to me. like OMG he was giving her step by step instructions. we didn't end up going in.

thursday was jenny's birthday dinner at buddha bar. ok so japanese in nyc is pretty expensive but i got ONE roll at buddha bar for $20. anyways our waiter was sooo cute and really nice. he kinda looked like aidan but younger, slimmer and cuter (i don't really think aidan's all that cute) so i wanted to pull a samantha but Buddha bar was giving me the shits cause there was no reception. and i was meant to meet up with les so i skipped out on cake. which i'm regretting now cause les stopped by, made me get him a sandwich and then was kicking me out of his car cause he had to get up early for a photo shoot in the morning. GAARR

friday caught up with pili and steph. went to the pub near stephs place. which has awesome food and awesome drinks but a TOTAL BITCH behind the bar. so the story is when stephy's bf was here they went to this place alot. and the bitch tried hitting on him..like eyefucking him and went so far to say "doesn't this song make you want to have sex" when your body is a wonderland came on. so we hate this bitch. and later in the night she wanted us to do these shots. but by then we've had several cocktails and couldnt drink anymore besides we hate her. but then when we asked if we could smoke she said "no because you didn't have my shots" like BITCH so we went up to the bar and had her freaking shots and she goes to steph, oh i know you, your boyfriend is hot.

saturday went out with stephy. checked out plumm which sucked! went to kingswood afterward which is owned by some australian boys. met steph's friend johno.

thursday heard from mor. we got lunch then wandered around wall st and south street seaport.

LAST NIGHT. stephy and i wanted to go out. went to the park for din din. and cocktails. i got a text from that french promoter telling me to come to nikki beach and he'll take care of me stephy really wanted to check it out so we went.

got to nikki beach and there's a MASSIVE line out front. stephy said to just text the promoter to come get us. i was a bit apprehensive since i didn't know his name and i wasn't sure if i would recognize him. but i did and it was fine. more than fine he took us straight in, bypassing the massive line we didn't even have to take out our ids.

so steph tells me his name is bruce. he's fucking crazy. once inside he's like darting everywhere. he gets champagne for us and he tells us that we must meet his "two best friends" who are two french dudes from miami now living in nyc. they're nice and a little while later we get a bottle and a table.

it was such a great night. got really happy drunk and danced a lot at the table and on the dance floor, which if you remember from before is this long runway thing. and people there are such exhibitionists. standing on speakers and gyrating.

at buddha bar with the giant buddha in the background:

an old photo:

when we couldn't get in anywhere cause raven was underaged so we ended up at our friendly neighbourhood diner:

By the way she looked I should've calmed down

so my flight from paris was delayed for a few hours, in which time i was sitting next to this dude with a ysl muse bag and louis vuitton luggage. i always wait till the last moment to board and lo and behold i end up sitting next to this same dude. i was window and he was in the middle and there was another chick. all of us young and on our own. weird huh. so OMG our tvs don't work, like just our row. and we're sitting in silence and I pull out british vogue and then 10 at which point the dude had to ask because he knows hardly anyone who reads 10. turns out he's an assistant to fashion at W.

so we're at the back of the plane and by the time food gets to us they're out of chicken and only have fish. to which the dude chucked a total fit, he's british so it was a lot of bloody hells, fucks and rattling of the chair in front. so that kinda broke the ice. and made me feel too bad to eat. so with no tv and no food we turned to drink. i guess we were rebelling. we had 4 or 5 white wines each, champagne, gin and vodka. on a empty stomach. and at very high altitudes.

we moved the drinking to the back of the plane. and severely pissed off several stewardesses by sitting on the emergency exit door. but we were having a cocktail party with w assistant, patrick lamenting about his german billionaire boyfriend who upon visiting him in paris said that he "missed missing him" and valerie the 18 yo, soul singing, new york au pair from amsterdam who kept saying that she would totally do patrick if he were straight. at one stage we were joined by the woman sitting in front of us who told me she couldn't believe she was speaking to me cause she saw me on the train in paris and thought i was so pretty i could be a model. it's so cool when you learn of a stranger's impression of you. it's reminds you that people are watching and judging all the time. then we were joined by marcelle a charming, old french man, a shoe designer who had on a pair of fabulous black patent oxfords.

alas it's a terrible mistake to drink so much on the plane. i was sick in the bathroom and only went back to my seat because we were landing. patrick returned shortly thereafter and we made a silent pact to act from now on that we did not know each other. valerie was talking and we were both ignoring her. well she was one person away from me so it was mainly patrick. the woman sitting behind us was complaining about us OBNOXIOUS people. i've never been called that. i mean we had NO TV lady.

when we finally landed patrick sprinted off and i hung around trying to distance myself. i think valerie was upset. customs was GRUESOME. sometime during the two hour wait i realized that i hadn't eaten for close to 20 hours and grew fearful that i would pass out. all visitors have to be interviewed and i had to be stuck behind this guy who's purpose to come to the us was to make "special hats". needless to say i was stuck for awhile.

when i finally got through and got my luggage this fucking nyu medical student grabbed my luggage off me and told me he'd drive me. one of those unaffiliated drivers who prey on people at the airport and charge you twice as fucking much. but i was too out of it to protest. he didn't know his way downtown and i was too weak to direct him so i just let him drive round and round. but finally got home. got rid of my stomach lining shoved a cracker in my mouth hopped into bed hoping i wouldn't die. and THAT was the most hellish night of my life.

anyways here are some photos from cph:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21166080@N04/sets/72157604361866391/

You've got your pleasures all around you They're all in a row

This was the view from petra's window. It was sooo cold in denmark when I was there that we couldn't really do all that much. Besides half the time I was there EVERYTHING was closed because of easter. but it suited me fine to wake up late, take ages to get ready, not dress warmly enough and then finally bracing the cold.

we were at the mexibar, which is a cute little place that has a whole lot of crap on the walls like moving deer heads. it was completely packed and everyone was having frozen strawberry magaritas so we had some too. but there was meant to be a snowstorm that night. there were weather warnings and much ado. so when the place closed at around 4 we were going to go to rust nightclub. but we couldn't breathe the air was so cold so we kinda panicked and went home. turned out the snowstorm wasn't so big a deal.



This was really yummy.

We spent quite some time here. There's cafes on the left. We sat outside for hours once even though it was cold. They provide blankets.

We went to this tea room. It was sooo adorable. Not a single thing matched. not even our teaspoons.

Oh everything is really expensive in denmark. but we went to this student bar that had really cheap shots of "fisk" which is this vile menthol thing that wasn't too bad. but the shots here are sooooo small. it's 20ml as opposed to 30 in aus and they have a timer on the bottles so you don't get a drop over 20ml. we had close to 10 and it didn't do nearly enough.

denmark is really pretty. even though all the shops were closed. we still wandered up and down just window shopping.

One night we went to watch Into the Wild. it was such a good movie. so 90s. loved it. and the theater was so quaint like everything else in denmark. the blurry castle thing on the left is tivoli, which i understand is like luna park but with more class. unfortunately it's only opened when it's warmer.

one day we visited christiana, which is in copenhagen but they've divorced themselves from denmark. they're their own country. petra said it reminds her of wonderland, like the derelict old australia section near the beast i thought it looked more like the horror bit near the demon. but yes it was sooo rustic it looked fake. and there were bins on fire and grafitti on every square inch of everything. unfortunately you're not allowed to take pictures because of the drugs whatever. but i loved the graffiti everywhere in denmark it was just much more concentrated here.

we also visited hans christian anderson's grave. which was in this adorable cemetery. we went to the little mermaid, which is this famous statue in the sea. a bus load of russian tourist just pulled up as we got that, after petra and i had to trek to it. and my fingers were stinging from the cold. i seriously thought i'd lose them to frostbite.

one night we made little cabbage pies from a russian recipe. they turned out great. but there were over 20 of them. for easter we dyed eggs but couldn't find any food coloring. so we tried some natural dyes as suggested by some website, beets and curry did not work. but ribena did. yay for ribena.