Helen – Page 69 – helenthura.com

November 23, 2007

a word or two of advice

Tomorrow marks a very big day in the future of Australia. I won’t tell you who you should vote for as it is pretty darn obvious we need a change. As Tim Freedman said tonight, I wrote this song in 1997, I have never played it under a Labour government, I would like that chance.

A phrase that I picked up from Tim Freedman tonight is this. We have a country that is a society not an economy. Remember that. This builds on something that the Chilean president said “We do not believe in a society of consumers. We believe in a society of citizens”. When did it become the norm for Politicians to spend more time campaigning in shopping centres than they do anywhere else?

At the end of the day Australia is about the people, it is about you, it is about me, it is about of all of us. It is about knowing that the Australia that we talk so passionately about still exists. Bring back the ideology I say.

Vote below the line tomorrow and don’t vote thinking only about your hip pocket. Vote with your brain and your heart. The economy does, will and can look after itself. Vote for what you know is right in your brain and heart about the future of this country, not just the future of the interest rate. Vote for the future of the environment, for a fair go at work, for better healthcare and education.

Vote for something that you believe in. Let us all be citizens again instead of consumers.

November 23, 2007November 23, 2007

Dymo Desires

I have a Dymo at work. I have one at home as well but that is an old school one.
I have a secret desire to label things.
I want to put calculator on the stapler.
I want to put unrelevant phrases such as the sky is green on my phone or strength tester on the hole punch.
I want to put open on the door to one of the utes out in the yard.
I want to label the photocopier the beast.
I want to label a coffee cup with large hazelnut latte.
I want to put out on the in tray and in on the out tray.
Oh it could be fun.

November 22, 2007

Lazy Sunday

I need to stop going off on tangents. I sit down to do one thing and end up 45mins later somewhere else and having barely touched what I sat down to start.

Last Sunday was a Sunday. Not one of those Sundays but one of those Sundays. Sundays where we spend the arvo at the Farm. Sundays where we get out of the car and a minute later are sprawled out on Grandad’s bed talking about the week, what we have seen in the paper today or of course just plotting world domination plotting world domination with Grandad

Those Sundays are also about going for a walk. Though this Sunday it started raining so we went back inside to read instead. I caught up on my National Geographics. Matthew slept. Pabbi read/slept/just lazed around.

November 19, 2007

Rock-Bottom Jackpot

Friday day. Another day in the office. Answering the phone. Doing the mail. Typing up quotes. Answering the phone. Chasing suppliers. All that fun stuff that fills my day between 8am and 4:30pm each day.

Friday night. Another night in this not so sleepy city. Relishing that sometimes mellow, sometimes rock reggae sound floating out into the night air. The DÃ© Jah Groove boys were in town to release their debut album Rock-Bottom Jackpot and had pulled out two of the staples of the local scene The Cool Calm Collective and Heavyweight Champions and an up and coming band The Colour who were mighty impressive.

The venue was of course The Step Inn, in some sense the little train that perhaps just could of the Brisbane venues. It used to be the Shamrock, a place on the fringe of the “The Valley” which was more of a shall we say public bar establishment than a place to go to see fine live music. The last year though the Step Inn has really “stepped up” and became almost a go to venue. They play host to a wide variety of bands from pyschobilly to reggae dub to metal and I have a feeling that after we all stop saying, it is still the Shamrock, we will realise what a treasure it just might become though it has a lot of work to go yet in improving the venue.

It doesn’t have the nicest lighting mostly due to the design of the stage and the room in general. The lighting though does change a lot depending on the band that is playing which is a lot more than can be said for some of the other live music venues round The Valley. Friday night though I was at the extremes ISO 3200, lenses wide open round the 1.8-2.2 stop and my shutter staying at 1/200 because other wise there was no hope in hell of getting crisp photos because unlike some of your more folky acts. Those boys like to move around a bit. Back to the show though. It was a nice night, talked to a few people, missed catching up with some people who I had wanted to say hi to, running into some girls from Caloundra the other weekend, taking photos and enjoying that sound. I have to give it to the DÃ© Jah boys for playing a nice long set which will stay in my little memory box for the weeks to come.

This is one of my favourite tracks off the album – One Drop High. Enjoy.
[audio:09%20One%20Drop%20High.mp3]

some photos of course. The rest are over here in a Flickr set

The Cool Calm Collective

Heavyweight Champions

The Colour

November 17, 2007December 24, 2007

Saturday Arvos

Nothing quite like a Saturday or more exact a Saturday Arvo. Spent the arvo picking Basil leaves for “normal” Genovese pesto and Lemon Basil leaves which I think will become a pesto with a bite to it, in the way of chillies and a decent dash of lemon juice. mmm just thinking about the idea now, I can just see a bowl of rice noodles with a bit of the pesto, some cashews and perhaps some steamed Asian greens.

Saturday arvos are also about sitting on a milk crate in the back yard listening to some fine Australian music, chopping up tomatoes and capsicums to go in the dehydrator. In a day or two we will have the most gorgeous semi-dried tomatoes. Some of which will get used to make a tomato pesto. Gee do you think I might like pesto? Really though how can you not. Just a handful of ingredients, a bit of love and tasting and you end up with the most flavoursome “sauce/paste” that can be used in/on just about anything.

Saturday arvos are also about mowing the lawn. Which I did this arvo.

Saturday arvos are also about sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper, cutting out snippets for books or exhibitions that we want to check out. Speaking of exhibitions to be checked out, it is only 22 more sleeps till the Andy Warhol retrospective opens at GOMA and to say I am excited would be an understatement :). The even cooler thing? Andy Warhol or more precisely 300 of his works are only coming to Brisbane, they are not going to those two cities down south who always talk about their capital C Culture. Yay for GOMA :D. I am so looking forward to the Andy Warhol retrospective and I have a good feeling that it won’t disappoint me as much as the Guggenheim in Melbourne did. 22 sleeps also till the big opening bash which is going to feature some of Brisbane’s finest artists including Robert Forster, Adele Pickvance & Dylan McCormack doing a bunch of Velvet Underground songs. The even better part? tickets are only $25. They go on sale on Monday – I am getting some for sure 😀

I have just finished my last run through my photos from the De Jah Groove/Cool Calm Collective/Heavyweight Champions/The Colour gig last night (which was a pretty darn decent night) before I send them off to the marvellous batcher. I started using Lightroom a month or so ago and it has sped up my processing so much. I dump the photos, walk away and let it import them/render previews (takes a while on my beast), come back flick through and mark my rejects and give a rating to the photos I have narrowed down, flick through to make sure they all look ok and then off to the batcher they go. Lightroom is nice.

For a change I am also listening to 4MBS Classic FM at the moment and the most delightful piece has has just finished playing (Brahm’s Hungarian Dancers 1-10) everything else has also been quite delightful.

November 13, 2007December 24, 2007

Basil

A year ago or pehaps a little longer if you had asked me my feelings about Basil I would have made gagging noises about my distaste for it as I had often had meals where my father had used a pretty heavy hand cooking with dried Basil. Then one day I picked up a bunch of fresh sweet Basil at the markets and made pesto. I haven’t looked back since then. Now I can’t get enough of that Basil taste and in fact if it was taken away from me I don’t know how I would cope.

I have a Greek Basil plant in my garden which has provided me with my fresh basil fix over the winter and in a few weeks I will have an abundant supply of Sweet Basil to keep me going over the summer.

I made my first Sweet Basil Pesto of the season tonight with some Basil that I picked up at the markets on the weekend. Whilst Greek and Sweet Basil both have that Basily taste they so many different levels to them. The Greek is a much more peppery plant I feel and as it is that Pesto I am used to tasting, I kept on adding more and more pepper to the Sweet Basil Pesto tonight as it was tasting too green. Lol. The adventures of Pesto. For Lunch tomorrow I will have Cous Cous, Chicken and Pesto. mmmmmm yummo.

Here is the Sweet Basil waiting to be planted. Waiting to give me hours of Basil Bliss in the kitchen 😀