It’s all happening

I’ve been forgetting to update. Things have happened.

 

Third year started and already there is so much work to do, but I love my subjects and it’s been really good seeing people again (especially Allie) and getting back into some sort of ‘normal’ routine. Although the early starts aren’t so good. My subjects this semester are Politics x3 and General Education x1: Propaganda & Satire; Australian Foreign Policy; The Art of Political Science; Introduction to the Australian Legal System. My politics lecturers are amazing. I have my favourite professor for one subject, Dr Levey, so I spend Tuesday mornings basking in his greatness.

 

 

 

Drawings by Allie (paying attention during Australian Foreign Policy, obviously).

 

I went to the Mardi Gras for the first time, except the crowd and trying to find friends in the complete insanity meant I basically didn’t see the parade at all. Still, the vodka + rum was nice, and seeing people I hadn’t seen in a while was good too.

 

    

 

My Wog friend Alex had a horrorpunk themed birthday party which was a lot of fun. Messy and fantastic. Kylar and Jack came as my replacements for Annie and Zig. A vey wasted girl in Kings Cross was nice enough to share her cigarettes with us. They were Vogues and actually quite nice. I made Alex a mix of music from the mother country (well, MY mother country). This was the track-list:

 

Van Gogh – Klatno (live) : Belgrade, 1997

Elektricni Orgazam – Nebo : Belgrade, 1981

EKV – Ja Znam : Belgrade, 1983

Azra – Krvava Meri : Zagreb, 1980

Prljavo Kazaliste – Noc : Zagreb, 1979

Riblja Corba – Necu da zivim u bloku 65 : Belgrade, 1982

Idoli – Moja si : Belgrade, 1982

Zabranjeno Pusenje – Guzonjin sin : Sarajevo, 1988

Partibrejkers – 1000 godina : Belgrade, 1984

Sarlo Akrobata – Mali covek : Belgrade, 1981

Elektricni Orgazam – Odelo : Belgrade, 1982

Bijelo Dugme – Pamtim evo deset dana : Sarajevo, 1974

 

    

 

Hung around Liverpool a couple of times and saw The Unborn with Jasmina which was actually quite scary. Also, Gary Oldman is brilliant!

 

  

 

Morgan and I helped Zig out with a COFA project which involved photobooths. I got to wear an eyepatch!

 

I fell in love with this poem:

 

Rhododendrons

 

It was the dream
I was allowed
to touch you in.
We were strangers.
You kept your eyes closed.
I cannot really say
if there were rhododendrons
or anything like music or
even if I asked you.
Only your blue skin and the pleasure it gave you –
the way you moved,
the way you caught your breath
whenever my hands moved
so I kept on moving them.

-Thomas Lynch

 

& ten more copies of Feels Like Friday #7 sold at Sticky in Melbourne!!!!!!!

Baby, I’m bored

 

Postcard from Mexico (thanks Kylar!) & chocolate from Nenad

Don’t get offended
If I seem absent minded
Just keep telling me facts
And keep making me smile
Don’t get offended
If I seem absent minded
I get tongue-tied
Baby, you’ve got to be more discerning
I’ve known never known what’s good for me
I will be yours

-Bloc Party

Yesterday evening I called Nenad & Drazen down to the ‘burbz to have a cigarette with me because these days, I seem to surround myself with people I can’t smoke around. We smoked and gossiped in a quiet street in Drazen’s car, then drove down to Black Rose for hot chocolate/peach ice tea/cappuccino (me/Nenad/Drazen).

Today I had another appointment with the Dentist of Doom. Since last week’s horrible experience when I felt I was suffocating and had a mini panic attack halfway through, going to the dentist has become even more intolerable than it previously was. Just a few more appointments…

The lovely people who develop my photos thought there was something wrong with my camera because the photos are Supersampler! How cute! (….stay tuned for a post with my new Supersampler photos!)

My new phone is so complicated!

I have a review to write and I seem to have “writers’ block”.

I love all of you

Annie & I saying bye to Marie on Oxford St after we saw The Wahas play at Spectrum on a Wednesday night.

Seeing Galija play at a Serbian venue in Canley Heights with Jasmina, Nikola, my sister and her friends. I was sick and didn’t have a good time but the music was beautiful. & I had Kitty Power on my side!

More photos from our lazy day at Stanwell Park.

Hyde Park day.

Adventures in Liverpool with Jasmina & Nikola.

UPDATE!

Some things I’ve been up to since I last remembered to update…and with my memory, I bet I’ll forget about a bunch of things:

 

- Hung out with my friend Anni from Albury-Wodonga. I’ve known Anni longer than I’ve known most people, yet we’ve only actually seen each other in person twice. We (plus her boyfriend Dan) hung around Hyde Park a bit before they had to head back to the airport.

 

- Went to Drazen’s Slava which was…uncomfortable. I really dislike his parents and the people they know. Jasmina, Nikola and I left soon after, hung around Black Rose for a while before Nikola had to go to work, then Jasmina and I went to her place and watched Family Guy for a while.

 

- Hung around a park near my house in the early hours of the day a few times.

 

 

 

 

- Hung out with Morgan in Hyde Park & went to Big Day Out with Morgan, Mark and Nina (and some of their friends), which was a lot of fun, minus the intense heat. We saw bits and pieces of Tzu, The Grates, Lupe Fiasco, The Ting Tings and some band inside Lilyworld, but the bands we actually saw were Pendulum, Simian Mobile Disco, Hot Chip and The Prodigy. Pendulum and Hot Chip were both really good but Simian Mobile Disco and The Prodigy were fucking amazing!!! During The Prodigy someone broke a giant glow-stick in half and started pouring it all over everyone…for like a minute it was the most fun thing ever but then it started to burn our skin and we had to frantically look around for water to wash it off. I sustained many little injuries on the day…some of which I’m still recovering from, a week later! But it was a really good day and I don’t even mind that we missed Neil Young, because The Prodigy were so insanely good and perfect for how I was feeling.

 

- Saw The Prodigy at the Hordern Pavilion with Jasmina, Nikola and Nenad which was once again, totally fucking amazing. I could actually focus on the music this time which was great. They are just….so, so, so good! I got a sweet Prodigy bag! At the end, as the crowd was leaving one of the songs playing was that Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You song and everyone was singing along. It was pretty great! Also, The Prodigy ended with Out of Space and cut off the sound right at the end to leave just the crowd singing! Was awesome.

 

 

 

  

- Spent three consecutive days in The Ghetto. Day 1 was spent hanging around Liverpool with Jasmina and Nikola, then playing pool in Bonnyrigg (and being patriotic because it was the Bonnyrigg Serbian Club!), then after Nikola went to work, going to my place to eat, then back to Liverpool where we hung out with Nenad, Drazen and Milan (Nenad’s brother) in Memorial Avenue…then Drazen went home and we went up to Nenad’s to watch Resident Evil & How I Met Your Mother.  Day 2 was Nenad’s Slava which was mostly just a lot of hanging around Nenad’s room looking up hilarious, horrible ‘music’ video clips from Former Yugoslavia. So bad yet so fucking funny! And completely, completely inappropriate. Day 3 was Nenad’s 20^th birthday. We spent the night drinking at his place (well…I wasn’t drinking but I was so sober, I felt completely out of it!) which was a lot of fun until someone who shall not be named got too drunk and too loud and we got kicked out of the apartment by Nenad’s scary mother. But before that happened, lots of all-male nudity and bonding managed to happen… (More photos here.)

9th January 2009

My film cameras are being cunts and half the photos on every film just won’t come out at all, and it’s making me really sad and almost makes it seems like a good idea to start using my digital camera more often, which is nowhere near as fun and exciting. I wish Polaroid film wasn’t so expensive because then I’d be taking Luigi with me everywhere!

    

Update…

I received this email the other day and it made me pretty happy:

 

 Hi Ivana,

 

elle from sticky here. I am really enjoying Feels Like Friday. please
keep it going. I really like your writing. and now I have a query for
you….
 
I was wondering if it would be OK to use a scan of your work for a
powerpoint file to be submitted to australia council as examples of
the types of work that we (as an arts organisation) support.

…

 

Sticky have been very good to me and I am really excited to go to Melbourne just so I can hang out at the shop all day long!

 

Two new pieces of writing by yours truly are up on The Dwarf: my not-so-nice review of Iglu & Hartly’s album & Then Boom. Watch me turn “this is a pile of shit” into 350 words. Also, my fangirl rant about the Tegan and Sara concert is here.

 

Yesterday was a nice day. I dropped off some photos to be developed in Cabramatta (never, EVER will I develop photos in Liverpool again. Rabbit Photo charged me $18. My awesome people in Cabra do it for $12). Then I went to the city, obsessively listening to Alisa and Azra on the way. I wandered Basement Books and bought Junkie Love by Phil Shoenfelt which looks pretty interesting – the cover has a syringe and love hearts, and on the back is a quote from Nick Cave about liking the book, so…how could I resist? (Also, it was only $7!) Then I went to Hyde Park and was writing/reading/smoking/drinking coffee/minding my own business/waiting for Morgan, when this random dude with no shoes comes to talk to me. I figured he was just a random drunk who was bored, but then he says he was sent over to invite me to “join their party” and points to this group of people sitting on the opposite side, one with a guitar, one a hippie looking girl with glitter on her face, etc. I say I’m waiting for a friend and so he stays around to talk. He’s from Brisbane, has been in Sydney for a few months, slept in Hyde Park last night. Then Morgan arrives and Dave (I think was his name), the shoeless dude, continues talking to us, then the hippie girl (Elise?) joins us and they convince us to join them. So we sit with them for a while and they’re all random people that met each other that day in the park and have been ‘recruiting’ other people to hang out with them. It was so incredibly weird and random and funny. Morgan and I were a little anti-social so we didn’t talk to anyone except Dave and his girlfriend (I assume she was, anyway) because they kept talking to us, but the sunshine was nice and we hung around for a while before we left to make use of my ‘present’ of which we didn’t have enough to share with everyone. Then we smoked across from a church which made us feel pretty good. So we hung around for a while and discussed how amazing Josh Beech is, and then Morgan had to leave, and I wandered the city a bit more but it was a Sunday evening and everything was closed so I got some food and headed off.

 

I went to Liverpool where I met up with Jasmina and Nenad and we went to the cinemas, and with very little movie choice, watched The Day the Earth Stood Still which was SO BAD; it was hilarious. Keanu Reeves cannot act. At all! It was too funny.

 

Today I had to get up at 7.30 because I had a ‘job training’ appointment at 9. The only reason people go to job training is because they will stop getting their Centrelink money if they don’t. I don’t GET money from Centrelink so I realised it is completely fucking pointless for me to go. Oh and not to mention USELESS. The trainer is a condescending asshole who treats us like we are retarded and/or five years old. It was incredibly painful to sit through. I’m going tomorrow to ask them whether I can get money for going, and if I can’t, they can fuck right off. Seriously – he SHOWED US HOW TO USE A COMPUTER. He showed us an inspirational video then asked us comprehension questions. He says things like “ok so if you do three hours in the morning, then three hours in the afternoon, how many hours is that – anyone?” UGH. I wanted to shoot myself. But it’d probably be a better idea to shoot him.

 

I’m making Feels Like Friday #9. Yay!

Now I wanna sniff some glue

      

Where is my mind?

Some things that have happened since I last updated…

 

I saw Galija live in concert which was really good. I hadn’t really listened to Galija much before but I knew the music thanks to my sister (who also paid for my ticket because she really wanted me to see them play). It was a really great concert; I’m glad I went. The three musicians are all extremely talented and the frontman especially looks so happy when he is playing. They make incredibly beautiful music. Beforehand and in between there was a really great band playing. They did gypsy-d up covers of various Serbian songs, and a couple of songs were sung by an African man! In Serbian! It was amazing. I was with my sister and her friends and I worried about feeling a little……out of place? But it was actually a lot of fun and I really enjoyed the night.

Galija – Dodirni Me

Galija – Pege

 

I hung out with Jasmina & Nikola twice. Now that I am on good terms with Nikola again, I’ve remembered how much I actually enjoy hanging out with them. I’ve known them for a long time and I feel very comfortable around them. Last week we watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button which wasn’t too bad (but not too good either – luckily Brad Pitt is pretty much perfect). Then today we had dinner at Black Rose where we also ran into Bodin and Nenad’s brother Milan. The pizza and tiramisu at Black Rose are really fucking delicious. Later we drove around a bit looking for a place to play pool and when we didn’t find any place we wanted to go, we hung around a park/graveyard for a bit before heading home. They have some great music in their car, including System of a Down covering Wu Tang Clan’s “Shame on a Nigga”. Fucking brilliant!

 

      

 

I also hung out with Kylar before he left for Amerikkka. I met up in the city with him, Morgan, Thea and Josh and we hung around Hyde Park, had coffee, etc. That was fun also.

 

Zig came over from Kempsey for a few days, from the 30^th to the 2^nd! She stayed at my place and I showed her around suburbia. We got stoned in a park in St Johns Park and walked to the Bonnyrigg McDonald’s to get ice cream when the Plaza was closed on New Year’s Day. We also watched a lot of bad 80s video clips and came up with a dance routine to Wham’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go”. When we got stoned in the ‘burbs we came back to my house, still stoned, and hid in my room away from my parents, with only my fairy lights on, lying down on a mattress, listening to Neil Young. It was….so fucking lovely! Neil Young is amazing. We also saw Twilight on the day Zig was leaving, because it’s not out in Kempsey yet. Robert Pattinson’s jawline remains as perfect as ever.

 

I found out that a kid I knew died. That really shook me up.

 

I went to a wonderful New Year’s Eve party. It was at Alex’s house and was a night of blazing and crazing…of course! A lot of wonderful people, conversations, music and Mary Jane. It was a lot of fun. We went to see the fireworks in the city and it was the first time I’d seen them live. I may have gotten more excited had I not been so stoned. The night ended with “Ignition” by R Kelly. Oh yes! As soon as R Kelly came on, there were complaints about the music! haha. I don’t really remember much of the night to be honest, except I think reciting the lyrics to White Rabbit with Alex, talking about pole dancing with Lachlan, being the Bong Master (then spilling bong water all over myself), walking to get hot chips because I HAD to have them, attempting to air guitar to November Rain, seeing the sunrise, bucket bong at 6.30 in the morning, waking up my parents at three in the morning because I was worried when they weren’t answering my midnight call….and just generally having a good time. We left around 7 in the morning and the city was COVERED in filth. It was disgusting. Then Oz Turk pizza….nothing better for when feeling seedy. When I got home, I crashed, still in the previous night’s clothing, and slept until 7 in the evening. And I would have continued had my sister not woken me up.

 

So yeah…it’s been mostly good times around here.

10th December

This is me attacking the Birthday Boy.

 

Wednesday

Wednesday was my friend Drazen’s 20^th birthday. It was also the day my Canadian cousin Vlado’s older brother Zoran came to Australia. There are three brothers, the sons of my dad’s brother, and Zoran was the only one I hadn’t seen since I was a baby and therefore too young to remember him. He’s about 30 now and he’s an artisteeee. It could be the age difference, or maybe just a personality clash, but I got along with Vlado much, much better. They’ve both gone to New Zealand now. They slept over at our place before my dad drove them to the airport in the morning. So I hung out with them during the day before heading over to Liverpool in the evening to see Drazen for his birthday.

 

I met up with Nenad at his place in the fucking ghetto (seriously, that area of Liverpool makes me feel like I’m stuck in one of those tales-of-inner-city-American-life movies), then we walked over to Black Rose where we met up with Nikola and Jasmina. Drazen’s family was having dinner and his annoying-beyond-words brother came outside to have a cigarette and insisted on sitting with us and questioning us like a teacher on what we’re doing. He made a snide remark about me being an Arts student. I didn’t make any comments but seriously…he’s one person that really shouldn’t pass judgment on others. Anyway. We ended up having a few drinks at Legends….which has been cleaned up and is now called Macquarie Hotel and is a shiny gambling hellhole really. Sasa, Mark George and Bodin joined us also. Then off to this little barbeque area behind Drazen’s building to smoke. Sasa left, we convinced Mark George to smoke weed, Bodin still refused (and refused to let me dress him up in tight jeans) & Nikola and I ‘officially’ started talking again! Fun times. Then we drove around a bit, ended up in some park in Carramar, Bodin and Mark George left, and we drove down to a lake in Lansvale. It was actually quite nice considering its location. Really quiet and peaceful and completely unexpected…I mean, a lake!

 

It was a good night.

      

Gonna live on science alone

    

 

I’ve been feeling down but I have ways of dealing.

 

Yesterday I met up with Kylar in the city and we went to American Apparel where he spent forever trying on clothes as I wished I’d been born a boy because their clothing is much better. Except for the heel-wearing girls get to do, but I’d wear heels even if I was a boy, and I don’t actually get to wear heels much now because I am a giant and also don’t really know how to walk in them. Anyway, the customers at AA bugged me a little but the employees are lovely, and Kylar bought green jeans. Then we had coffee at Bill and Toni’s, wandered around…I guess we wandered around a lot because I sort of lose track here and we end up at Jet…oh yeah, we went to get Kylar’s novelty lighter fixed but that didn’t really work out. We saw Albert so he joined us for a while at Jet. He was waiting for a friend who was an hour and a half late and we left a little after she arrived. Kylar went home to feed the cat and I went home to watch too much TV, then talk to Nenad until 3^rd Rock From the Sun was on at 1.30 in the morning, doing lots of sit-ups in between because I have lost my mind and think that sit-ups are the cure for everything. (Since 10^th November, I have done 1120 sit-ups and 450 crunches altogether. Go me!)

 

 

Today looked good to start with, then absolutely everything turned to shit rapidly, I did some crying, etc and then decided I had to make myself feel better or else, so I left the house in a hurry, went to the city with about $5 to my name & walked up Broadway giving my resume out (I am so desperate for a job I even gave my resume to that horrible Goth-by-numbers store near Easy Way). Then I walked further down to the University of Sydney where I met up with my sister and we walked to Newtown where she bought us Thai food for lunch and we wandered King St for a bit. By this stage I’d basically completely forgotten how miserable I’d been earlier. I just need to keep myself distracted. Then we went back to her uni, to her interesting but sort of depressing lab (it’s fascinating but spending long hours there would be horrible) where she finished an experiment. To my disappointment there was no fire, smoke, bubbling liquids…nothing. Science isn’t as fun as they make it seem on TV! Then we headed homewards, and she continued towards Liverpool to meet up with friends.

 

My Canadian cousin Vlado was at my house; he’d had lunch with my parents and so we hung out, talking, watching TV, etc. I found out he’s got a job at the same place Kylar works, so I warned him about it. Oh and then I got my grades and that sort of brought the good mood to new levels.

 

So the downside now remains that I am broke as a fucking joke, have no idea how to get any money, am on constant bad terms with my mother and my sister is going away for the weekend! But I’m ok and am seeing Die! Die! Die! & Ohana tomorrow regardless of the money situation…I’ll figure something out (dentist money, anyone?).