TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Friday, February 06, 2004

2:51 PM
Posted by jodi rose

Yes the muggy weather is beginning to pall on me already.
Note to self: don't go to art openings at artspace. The international rent-art-crowd were there, painfully hip young things, with bladerunner blonde hair, serious retro suits, pointy green shoes and everything in between. Drinks at W bar afterwards and then Narai Dreams at the Narai Thai - a fabulous restaurant on Victoria St that hasn't changed the prices or menu since I was last there in about 1996. They serve whisky sour, pink lady and gin fizz amongst other cocktails for $5.50 - best prices in sydney where you pay from $12-16 depending on location, proximity to water and mood lighting. Note to self: stop going out to cocktail bars. what is it with this town - in melbourne there are all kinds of bars, that you can loung in, see rock'n'roll, perform medical experiments, something for all tastes. Here, it's just cocktails, spawning regardless of cultural or social geography. Strange.

Decided it's futile to compare melbourne and sydney and I should stop. Also not much use comparing the sydney I grew up in to the one I find myself in now. It's like some beautiful youngish thing with a raffish, dishevelled charm who has lost their innocence and found a self-conscious awareness of their own beauty, becoming hard and brittle with constant face-lifts and botox - all bright, shiny and expressionless luxury apartments, the retty harbour - but if you pull back the skin behind the ears, or leave the eastern suburbs, you can see the scars. layer upon layer of poverty, social injustice and blatant disregard for the welfare of those who don't have ooooodles of cash and power. A case in point being the sacking of South Sydney and City of Sydney Councils to create a 'supercouncil' - so much for no forced mergers. No doubt this new entity will be allowing free reign to developers over all that run-down, inner city property - who cares about community when there's so much money to be made from all that prime real estate?
Enough social commentary, here's some shameless self-promotion:

The Artist in Residence thing which I'm now doing is no longer 'The Listening Room' Residency (no comment on that, but it's an interesting and volatile time to be here) it's now called:

ABC Radio National Radiophonic Residency
Feb - July 2004

Decided that Finland is not a ruinous fancy, it is in fact absolutely essential and I will be there. To make bridges sing at:

pikseliÄHKY 2004
festival of DIY electronic art
1-4 April 2004, Helsinki
http://www.pixelache.ac