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Temptation – a drabble

A short humorous drabble I wrote a while ago.

“Go on then, have a bite,” said the Serpent.

Eve looked down at the fruit. Contrary to the popular paintings, it was a tangerine.

“Come on, don’t you want to be kicked out? An eternity of raw food and this moron for company?” The Serpent pointed at Adam, who scratched himself as he struggled to name a horsey creature with a single horn in its forehead. His beard was caked with the remains of last night’s meal. He hadn’t said thank you for dinner, then or ever.

Eve glanced at Adam, sighed, and began to peel the tangerine.

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Sydney – Vivid Festival

Sydney is always great to visit, and this time I got to attend the annual Vivid Festival, when Sydney is illuminated by some amazing light shows. We were also lucky to catch the Archibald Prize portrait exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, spend some time at the Manly Beach, and enjoy some great food. I tried non-alcoholic beer for the first time, which was surprisingly nice (real beer still gets a no from me though).

Sydney Opera House is of course the most spectacular light show on offer
Light installations in the park
Light installations in the park
Light installations in the park
Manly Beach
Archibald Packing Room Prize winner, the portrait of Jimmy Barnes

My Top 50 Favourite Albums

I found a list of my top favourite 50 albums I’d made back in 2008, and I thought it would be fun to revisit and update. More than half of my picks remained the same, so my musical tastes haven’t undergone a dramatic change in the last ten years. Organising the albums in the exact order of preference is too much headache, so after the top two it’s a loose list.

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Tasmania – Bruny Island

I’ve been to Tasmania at least five times before, and seen most of its major attractions, but never made it to Bruny Island off the south-eastern coast near Hobart. This beautiful spot exceeded all of our expectations and was very much worth the trip.

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Mt Macedon Gardens

I’m usually on the ball when it comes to sorting through photos, but for some reason I left these pics from our trip to the beautiful Mt Macedon gardens this past autumn sit on my camera for months. Then again, it’s kinda cool to look at them later on the other side of winter and get a mini-blast from the past.

My dear and entirely selfish wish is for my local council to chop down the evergreen trees in my area, and replace them with the European ones instead, so I can get spectacular autumn foliage at my door.

First big trip – USA 2001

I got inspired by another blog to write about my first ever big solo overseas trip, which was USA back in April and May 2001, when I was 20 and a month away from the legal drinking age (not that it mattered since I’m a boring non-drinker anyway). I’ve travelled a lot since then, but your first independent trip always remains a rather special memory. I even dug out my travel diary, which was an interesting read in retrospective. For one thing 99% of it is written in Russian, whereas now my travel diaries are 99% in English, and it’s a bit sad to see how much fluency I’ve lost. And good lord it’s overzealous with descriptions; I spent three whole pages listing all the things I’ve seen at the American Museum of Natural History.

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USA & Mexico Part 3

St Cristobal is a charming place with the pedestrian-only streets in the centre and endless cafes, restaurants, bars and shops. From there, a couple of us went on a half-day excursion to the local villages and Chamula, a town which is mostly famous for its most unusual church. Unfortunately you couldn’t take any photos inside – a fact which was stressed to us over and over – and the descriptions don’t do it justice. Let’s just say that the church is a very bizarre blend of the pre-conquest Mayan and Christian traditions, and involves pine needles on the floor, hundreds of candles, and a chicken sacrifice.

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