Art Nerd

A Lao friend once asked why foreigners liked sunsets so much. Someone told him it was because you don’t get to see it that much when you live in a big city, and here in Vientiane you can see a good sunset every single day.
I was reminded of this when riding to dinner after work this evening, and being unable to look away from the blushing horizon. I’m always like this when confronted with scenes of natural beauty- a blazing blue sky, a rainbow, snow, the beach. Ignoring it, or turning away before I’ve drunk it up thoroughly, seems callous- as though I’ve forgotten what the world is made of, or something.

Anyway, lest you think I’m suddenly going to start using this blog to write about sunsets and stuff, I’d like to use this a segue-way to counter the accusation directed at me over the weekend that I HATE NATURE.
Sure, I don’t particularly enjoy going on long treks, or kayaking, and I certainly don’t like camping. But that’s not nature’s fault- I love nature! I’m just a bit lazy when it comes to, you know, carrying stuff. And there’s something so primitive about sleeping on the ground. Not to mention uncomfortable.
I blame school camps, as I do for many of my dislikes- enforced group activities, board games, campfire singalongs, etc.

Anyway, the steak I ate tonight at Le Vendome was easily the best meal I’ve had since I got back, and should go some way towards boosting my lame immune system, which seems to be still recovering from the ‘bug’ I apparently had in my stomach when I stepped off the plane in Canberra a month ago. The bug that I choose to believe I got from the food on Thai Airways, although it could just as easily have been the ping gai [chicken on a stick!!] I had at the Ban Keun Boat Racing Festival the day before I left.
Our old family doctor said it was anyone’s guess.
The irony! I hadn’t been sick once in Laos, and here I was back home with my parents and unable to partake of any booze with them.

Home sweet home
I’d like to dedicate this post to one of my Melbourne buddies Pat (and Ben and the others at Gorgeous George), who gave me an ‘Art Nerd’ badge and diligently copied no less than 22 albums onto two CDs to renew my severely deprived collection- a gift that keeps on giving!
So, everyone, that’s why I haven’t written for so long- I was in Australia. And when I address you as ‘everyone’, I am actually visualising quite a few people. Because EVERYONE I met up with at home seemed to have read it.
The shame!

So: home. Canberra was colder, of course, weather-wise. My nephews are bigger and, like, able to say stuff- clearly prodigies. James (4) puts his hand on Oliver’s (2) head as they sit and watch TV. Mum and dad have renovated the house, and even though my childhood room NO LONGER EXISTS, the whole thing looks pretty classy. My sisters were both ensconced in exams, reminding me of what late-October-early-November was all about once upon a time.

All my very oldest and best are ironically living back there, too. Brooke, snug but unsure in her mother’s flat in Kingston; the Two Peas Cristy and Paul, currently expecting a third- she’s got so big already! SC, working at DFAT, has even bought his own flat in the ‘burbs; Chris and Heather were right where I left them on the couch in their flat in Kingston.
Comfortable relief mixed with hunched-over paranoia at every corner, in every favourite restaurant, that I might bump into someone…unsavoury, if you know what I mean. The place where you grow up is always full of ghosts, right?

I love Melbourne Part II
Just the way I left it. I drifted around the good parts and stayed away from the waves of loneliness in the cafes on Smith Street where I used to spend Saturdays and Sundays alone with the newspapers.
Instead, I stayed on the other side of the river, with Libby and Billy, newly married. Libby and I propped each other up at breakfast over our impoverished states- both in the name of love. Money replaced with virtue, we reminded each other.
Caught up with all my radiant favourites- Jess, Emily, Annie, who has finally found love in a place she hadn’t looked before.
Nelly, a lawyer again instead of a journalist, still single. She had a date while I was in town. “It won’t work out,” she said. “His surname is Paserella, so if we got married, I’d be Antonella Paserella!”
Ate seafood (fish from the ocean!!) in Fitzroy with the J-Crew; Christy, (soon to be married), and Miki, the only one of us brave enough to move to the country and be a real journo. She’s the one with whom I swapped my red couch before I left last year for an antique garnet ring from the Camberwell Markets. I’m still wearing it, but in the meantime, she took an upholstery course to relieve the country boredom and recovered the couch herself.
And my wonderful and wonderfully-anxious friend Emma Caine, who made me read passages of the book she was halfway through, to assure her that it really was extravagantly overworked and verbose, and, in my opinion, a very good reason to get worked up.
Also Connie (I missed Vince), still the classiest cat-lover I know, and my old work friends.
And an old (boy)friend Sky, who still hasn’t figured out a way to earn a living without working (how could this be?)
And to crown the week, Oli and Schram, and the looks on their faces when I strode, uninvited, unannounced, unexpected, into Schram’s 30th birthday party.
I also made a mercy dash to Wollongong, of all places, to see Kate, and remind her that Laos wasn’t a dream.

So anyway, picture this:
Scene: a random city pub in Melbourne. I’m wearing skinny jeans, a jacket and a scarf. It’s chilly out. I order two gin & tonics and a pint of Carlton, and hand over a $50 note. The bar tender gives me back $30.
Me: Excuse me, I think there’s a mistake. I gave you a $50, and you only gave me $30 change- that can’t be right.
Bar tender: Yeah it is. $6.50 (points to one G&T), $6.50 (points to the other) and $7 (points to the beer). Equals $20.
Me: Seven dollars for a beer???? YOU WHAT???? That’s crazy! That can’t be right!
Bar tender: (stares at me blankly for a second and turns to the next customer)
Me: (turning to my friends) SEVEN DOLLARS!!! A whole CRATE of beer costs less than that in Laos!
My friends’ expressions turn to pity. Not for themselves, for having to pay such exorbitant prices, but me, for having forgotten…

Cut to Wednesday evening two weeks later. I’m sitting in a dim, mellow cocktail bar in Vientiane, drinking red wine and scrutinising a bunch of paintings being unwrapped by the bar’s owner.
All by regional artists, with the proceeds going to a new school in Vang Vieng? Of course I bought one.
I’m still not sure whether it borders on tacky, although it does look pretty good in our living room. But rest assured it will be added to the rest of the stuff I own, mainly in boxes under my parents’ house in Canberra, that I can barely envision ever being able to unpack permanently. Books on shelves, paintings on walls, CDs in stacks, flowers in vases. A pipe dream at this stage.

The other home sweet home
It’s good to be back. To be home, I guess. It’s a lot drier than when I left, and the all-pervasive dust that was in the air when I first arrived in January is has returned. So has the smoky smell. And that bloody rooster next door.
The Island was gratifyingly pleased to see me again, as were all my friends- the characters in this particular chapter of the saga.
But as I said, my immune system, ladies and gentlemen, is down, and I’ve had a filthy head cold. It’s at times like this that words like ‘yoga’ and ‘steamed organic vegetables’ run through my mind, and I make vague resolutions to become a quasi-hippy. But today I think I’m on the mend, especially after that steak.
I’ve got a new Lao teacher, a new office, a new work plan- things are shifting back into focus.

I’ll get back to you once I’ve mastered the names of my new colleagues at Vientiane Times.