Music I've been into lately

I started writing a post for this months ago (featuring depressing winter music) but as one would expect, what I've been listening to has changed since then. Here are half a dozen artists/bands/songs I've been smashing lately during this weird in-between hot-cold-rain-drought summer (alphabetised according to Artist name). I guess my taste is always somewhat dark-ish but there's a bit of a mix of genres etc*

A Place to Bury Strangers - To Fix the Gash in Your Head

So I've been real shit at keeping my to date with music and stuff for at least half a decade or something, I can't believe I hadn't listened to these guys since recently (and as a consequence, missed their Sydney gig earlier this year). No surprise why I like these guys - noisy-as dance-able post-punk with distortion on distortion. That noise. My ears are pretty much never happy unless they feel like they've been strained through a grater. Jokes aside though, these guys are pretty sweet. And I have a strange fixation with drum machines.

Abbe May - Karmageddon

We randomly stumbled upon this badass lady from Perth one bored evening when searching for a gig to go to. She was fantastic live, juggling vocals, guitar and a drum machine with the intermittent help of a guy on saxophone and a sheep skull. Interesting mix of electronic elements with a dark blues rock-influenced songwriting style (especially evident in some of her older stuff, I think). I vaguely remember one of her songs mentioning kicking out her old drummer and replacing them with a drum machine because they didn't believe she had it in her to make it as a musician - and to that, I say a big "fuck yeah!"

Florence and the Machine - Cosmic Love

Spent a night last month dancing in the rain to sweet tunes while Florence Welch pranced around the stage like a possessed elf. It was fantastic. She was a fantastic performer, and really brought this song to life  in a way that even this melodramatic music video can't. Before the song, she told a story about how she wrote this song while in the throes of one of the worst hangovers of her life. This song is one of the most beautiful takes on the pain of being in love, and makes me feel ashamed about my hangovers in comparison, where my productivity generally comes in the form of puke.

Goat - Hide From the Sun

Saw these guys live a couple of days ago. It was amazing. I don't even have the words to describe. Who can say no to a weird masked psychedelic Swedish artists' collective led by a guy called Mr Goatman who is supposedly a member of a commune under a voodoo curse?

Sleater-Kinney - New Wave

Combining two of my loves - Bob's Burgers and riot grrrl! And soon to be joined by another one of my loves (hi Melissa!), who I'm going to see these guys with in Feb (reliving our teenage BDO days haha). So much excite! Admittedly, it's been years since I've given these guys a proper listen, so I've been dusting off (digital) albums I haven't listened to much since high school, as well as giving their new album a spin. The only thing that disappoints about their new stuff is that it has much less of Corin's banshee screeching, which I felt gave their angrier stuff more sense of urgency.

Anyway, five is enough for now.

*Who am I kidding? I only ever listen to alt rock >_<

Crappy and out of date

Wow I'm shit at this blogging thing. Here's what I've been up to in the 1.5 months since my last post:

- Got over shitty cold #1 and had less than a month of not resembling a huge mucus-trailing slug before being felled by another shitty cold. Am currently on 2nd week of slithering around feebly, trailing sputum in my slimy wake

- My tomatoes have blown up into a crazy tomato jungle and I don't really know what to do with them

- Periodically overfeeding a box of worms

- Started Spanish lessons (because failing at 2 languages is just not quite enough)

- Entered a Mario Kart 64 tournament and failed due to drunkenness

- Presented a poster at a conference, also going to another 2 conferences this month ('tis the season?)

- So much dentistry. I don't even want a mouth any more

Stir Crazy

I've had a pretty awful cold for the past 3 weeks or so, and haven't really left the house apart from to go to work and for various errands. I've only got the lingering tail-end of a cough left to fight off now, so hopefully I'll be able to go out and do something fun this long weekend. Meanwhile, here are some random things from inside my apartment.

The only vaguely active thing I've been doing is some gardening in the corner of our balcony which gets a bit of sun. I'm trying to be good with remembering to water things, but it's anyone's guess how long I'll be able to keep these little guys alive for. My negligence is notorious when it comes to things that don't vocally nag me to feed them. Thank goodness for flatmates who are less slack than I.

Beers at South Head

A couple of sunny Sundays ago, we ventured across the city to Watsons Bay/South Head. After a confusing start (in which we nearly trespassed on a navy base and then almost fell on a small child while climbing down a dirt track), we managed to work our way past the throngs of tourists taking pictures of middle-aged men's junk on the nudist beach and secure ourselves a secluded clifftop spot  (far from any pale buttocks cheerily quivering in the cold ocean breeze) in which to enjoy some afternoon beers (because day-drinking is the best*). There are a bunch of neat things at South Head, including the cute candy patterned Hornby Lighthouse (build after more than 100 people died in shipwrecks off the coast in the 1850s) and a bunch of old gun emplacements and tunnels, not to mention awesome views over Sydney Harbour on one side and east towards NZ on the other.

Watsons Bay is super easy to get to, only about 20 minutes by ferry from Circular Quay, and the South Head Heritage Trail is an easy walk which can take anywhere between 15 minutes and a whole afternoon depending on how strongly your inner meerkat urges you to play in the tunnels.

* Disclaimer: don't try this at home or elsewhere, kids. Climbing up and down cliffs to drink illegally in public is for stupid irresponsible adults like us, not sensible people who don't want to fall to their deaths and/or be fined^. 

^ Seriously though, if you insist on drinking in public, you'll probably be fine as long as you're not trying to get totally wasted and aren't making a dick of yourself and/or littering.

I'm on a thing

Our group had a paper published recently - go Kelly! We had champagne at a meeting at about 10am, because that's how we roll. I feel a bit bad that my name is on it because I did next to no work on it - just optimised some primers. However, not gonna say no to upping my publication record! 

City Lights

I really am the most terrible blogger. Once I let one week slip by without a post, the others just sneak right along after and by the time I notice, it's already over a month since I last touched any photos! The worst part is, I have all these posts planned in my head but I never get around to setting fingers to keyboard or remembering to take my camera with me when I go out. I'll try to be better, but only time will tell if trying is enough.

Following on from the topic of my slackness, I finally got around to looking through my photos from Vivid several months ago. Vivid is a festival held annually in Sydney in May/June where the city is decked out in interactive light-based art displays. Most of the major landmark historical buildings are lit up, and the displays change every year.

This is the third Vivid I've been to, with the first being the week after I moved to Sydney - a great introduction to a new city!

They really outdid themselves withe the Customs House building this year, with vines breaking through the brickwork and bursting into an exuberant display of the magic of nature.

This year, they also extended the light displays to Chatswood, with a nautical theme incorporating one of my favourite creatures, the jellyfish!

Despite all my complaints about Sydney, stuff like this makes it a pretty interesting place to live in.

Drunken Restaurant Reviews #2: Kammadhenu

We headed out to Newtown one cold and rainy night in search of some delicious spice-laden food to assist our bottle of wine in warming us up, because there's nothing like a good curry to make you sweaty and disgusting and satisfied (three adjectives for which I aim in all things in life). King Street is dominated by Thai places, while Indian places are few and far between (I think there are like a total of three Indian/Nepalese/Malaysian-Indian places on the whole street). We chose Kammadhenu using the very rigorous scientific process of basically walking into the first Indian restaurant we came across, because we are very lazy. The extremely purple interiors exuded the kind of slight scunginess usually associated with cheap deliciousness and questionable service, both of which we received in plenty.

The waiter brought us wine glasses while I mentally gave praise to Dionysus that we brought our own wine instead of having to resort to their wine selection, which consisted solely of that awful one with the picture of birds on it that you can get for about $6 at any liquor store. I gulped back my first glass as I gazed in despair at the menu - so many delicious-sounding things! I look helplessly first at Jeremy, then at the super religious cow on the front of the menu, hoping that one of them will offer me some spiritual salvation. Or, you know, just help choosing what to eat, which is arguably more important. My stomach gurgled as the wine splashed in, and it sounded like "pooooorrrrrtttttteeeerrrrrttttttooooooo....." - the belly has spoken, so potato it is.

Masala Dosai - $9

Wow this thing was long. Like longer-than-Jeremy's-hairy-forearm-in-the-background long. I'd filled up with more wine in order to try and stave off my hunger (it didn't work, pretty sure my stomach lining had started dissolving by then). Thankfully, this delicious tube of soft soft lightly spiced potato wrapped in a paper-thin crepe arrived to save my gastric mucosa from dying a sad, lonely and wine-soaked death (much like the one which I will likely one day succumb to). All the best things in life somehow incorporate carbs and sauce, so carbs wrapped in carbs dipped in chutney ranked pretty highly in my list of "good things that happened to me today". This dosa was big enough to be a light meal for one, and I'll definitely be back for more next time I get a bit peckish while wandering around Newtown. Together, we polished this off in about 1.7 seconds.

Lamb Rogan Josh - $13.90

Average. Don't bother.

Manchurian Chicken - $12.90

This dish is pretty much why multiculturalism is awesome - great things happen when one culture puts their own spin on food from a different culture. A weird delicious hybrid creature with aspects from both, yet tasting like something unique gets created. Such is the oddness of the chimera that is Manchurian chicken. I'm not the biggest fan of sweet and sour, especially the way it's done outside of China (i.e. in order to accomodate for the weird-ass tastebuds of white people). However, the addition of spices and a more curry-ish texture, while cutting down on the sweetness makes this dish awesome. This was a pretty decent take on the Manchurian - the chicken was nice and vaguely crispy outside, and the sauce was very flavoursome. Jeremy's mind was blown by the existence of Indian-Chinese food. Or maybe he's just really easily impressed while drunk.

Overall, food not too bad for the price, service as average as what you'd expect, and we managed to get pretty drunk and may or may not have gotten sidetracked on our way home and had several more drinks at a pub and severely regretted it the next day. Next time, I may or may not just get 3 dosas instead.

Seriously though, eat a dosa.

Kammadhenu Newtown
171 King Street, Newtown
(02) 9550 2611

Cover Girl

A paper I worked on made the front cover of the journal :) Quick, someone stick it on their wall so that I can say I'm a pin-up!

A walk

Although I have practically no inbuilt insulation, I tend to prefer cooler temperatures than the crazy heat that seems to engulf Sydney for half of the year. After 2 years, I think my heat-intolerant body is finally acclimatising to the Sydney weather a little, in that this winter has seemed as freezing (if not more so) than winters in Auckland. However, unlike the perpetual sogginess of Auckland, Sydney winters mean plenty of clear skies and gentle breezes. This creates fantastic opportunities for doing outdoorsy things at a temperature that doesn't make me want to melt into a puddle of goo.

We headed out to Manly (thank you, free Opal trips!) on Saturday to get some nature and such in us on the Manly Scenic Walkway, a panoramic track that winds past several nice beaches, through some bush and past a bunch of  beachside mansions where millionaires probably eat hookers or whatever it is that rich people do on the weekend.

The Council website lies - the stated 4-5 hour walk only took us 2.5 hours or so, including a detour where we decided to clamber over the exposed rocks at a couple of beaches during low tide rather than walk a track like sensible people. I can't deal with beaches easily accessible by public transport in the summertime (because of this), but maybe I need to reassess this situation next summer with beaches that require an hour's hike to get to. This was a relatively busy walk, as it's probably one of the more popular day walks in Sydney, but there were still many pockets of tranquility where the strange squawkings of the avian inhabitants were only interrupted by the humming of ferries from far across the harbour. On the whole, not a bad way to enjoy a lovely sunny winter's afternoon.

Photos taken in Sydney in July 2015.

Drunken Restaurant Reviews #1 - Izote Mexican, and an introduction

So a while back, I had the "genius" idea that I would attempt the monumental and hugely misguided task of eating at every single establishment on King Street in Newtown. Why? Well, why not. I like food, Newtown has lots of cheap food, and trying to eat at every single place is like attempting a collection. Jeremy suggested that I blog about it, which was a fantastic idea in theory, until we remembered three important facts: 

1. The majority of restaurants in Newtown have cheap or free BYO
2. We are boozehounds
3. I'm a lightweight, so half a bottle of wine moves me beyond the tipsy zone into the next-morning-regrets zone

As a result, these restaurant reviews will come in an extremely untimely fashion, as I tend to forget that I took pictures while I was drunk. Also, my drunken photography sucks even more than my normal photography (I can't aim straight and Jeremy's hairy arms keep sneaking into frame), and my memories of what things taste like are somewhat vague. HOWEVER I contend that these reviews are still valid, because despite lack of flavour memory, my drunken memory of emotions is pretty spot on, so if I remember being ecstatic about my food, chances are it was pretty damn good. Drunken reactions to food don't lie. Nevertheless, perhaps these so-called "reviews" should be read a more of a chronicle of my adventures in inebriated eating, rather than detailed analyses of cuisine. But hey, if you are ever in need of a drunken munch, this may serve as a decent guide.

So one Friday night a couple of months back, we grabbed a bottle and headed down to Izote Mexican, at number 6 on King Street, chosen partly because we'd  eyed it up previously while walking past on our way to other places, and partly because it was the first open restaurant we saw after walking from our place and we're very lazy. This is a cozy little restaurant which always seems pretty busy. As we cracked open our wine, a person at the table next to ours got super excited because she hadn't previous realised the place was BYO, and promptly took off to the bottle shop down the road, returning with more bottles than there were people at her table. We were impressed.

We crack open the wine and have our first glass while we peruse the menu. The interwebs suggests that this restaurant may be pretty authentic Mexican, but we're plebs who have never been to Mexico so you could probably serve me a cookie wrapped in a tortilla and I'd still 80% believe you if you said it was authentic (hence my ongoing life plan of eating in every country in the world so I know what everything is "supposed" to taste like). We're 2 glasses in and I'm tipsy by the time our entrée arrives. 

Queso Fundido al Chorizo - $13.90

"Holy shit this is huge and incredible", drunk KZ thinks to herself. This dish consisted of corn chips served with some kind of intensely cheesy mashed bean dip, with chunks of delicious chorizo and jalapeño. The dip is rich but not overwhelming and the soft beans contrast and compliment the super crispy chips. By the time we're down to the last few chips, I'm hissing at Jeremy like a bobcat over the last slice of chorizo. Always the gentleman, he lets me have it while I cackle gleefully.

The mains roll out fairly quickly, and even in our lightly-pickled state, we're aware enough that we have made a huge mistake in not reining back our eyes which were far far bigger than our stomachs.

Beef Enchilada Verdes - $22.90

Mole Poblano - $25.90

My mole poblano consists of an entire chicken's worth of breast coated in a smooth sauce which supposedly has chocolate in it. The sauce is tasty and only has the slightest of kicks to it (to my heat-resistant tongue tempered in the fires of hell), as the chocolate mainly serves to counteract the spice rather than provide any strong flavours itself. A pretty solid dish - not incredible, but definitely enjoyable. I'm only about halfway through my chicken and pretty much finished the wine when my stomach's decided that I've shoved a sufficient volume of food into it, and I'm internally having a drunken cry because I know that I'll have to surrender this poor tasty dish to the cold, cruel world instead of enveloping it in the welcoming embrace of my digestive tract. Word to the wise - share this between two people. I managed to force myself to eat about 60% of this before I died.

What Jeremy remembers of his enchilada (quoth he, about 20 minutes ago): "It was pretty fucking good". He finished his entire dish, but was too full to have more than a bite of my mole poblano. This is a man who habitually eats enough food to feed a family in one sitting. I kid you not, the portion sizes at Izote are huge. Be warned.

I sighed at my mole in defeat and we asked for the bill. It was a little bit more than we usually spend on a casual cbf cooking type of night, but we probably had enough food to comfortably feed 3 people, so I guess it's fair enough. We rolled out of the restaurant drunk and well satisfied, somewhere between pleased and painfully bloated.

Izote Mexican
6 King Street, Newtown
(02) 8084 9651

Cold beaches and twilight vistas

During my last NZ visit, I took some time off from lying around my mum's house playing Pokemon to visit my friend Melissa in Whakatāne. We did a trip out to White Island (photos to come later) and she also showed  me around some of the scenic spots in and near the town she's (grudgingly) called home for the past couple of years. In classic NZ style, this called for beach visits despite the late-autumn chill, and finding the highest point from which to survey the environs. Luckily, being in the Bay of Plenty meant that we had plenty of sunshine to keep us (vaguely) warm(ish).

Even after two years in Sydney, I'm still not used to the lack of proper hills here. I read somewhere once that the appreciation of aesthetic landscapes may have evolved from the survival advantage conferred by being able to see predators from a height and better strategise your attack or retreat using your view. It's certainly true that I'm never entirely comfortable with my whereabouts in Sydney because I can't climb up the nearest hill to see which way all the roads run like I used to do in New Zealand. Maybe this evolutionary advantage works better for the geographically challenged like myself.

And now here's a dude lying down, just chillaxing in the water, as you do.

Photos taken around the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand in May 2015.