HAPPY HANUKAH

Seiney (Soryi's younger sister): "What's wrong with being Jewish? Being Jewish is cool. I like dreidels." ... "And The Nanny."

LUNCH WAS SO GOOD I THOUGHT I'D BLOG ABOUT IT or HI-FIVE TO COLES

YES, THAT'S RIGHT, COLES. The obvious rip-off of Sainsbury's/Waitrose has totally worked. The Ultimo store in the Broadway mall near my office is the latest to get the 'New Coles' makeover, taking it from shitty-shit to super-awesome. No, it's not just cosmetic, it's the way the staff greet you with a (hopefully) genuine smile and hello, to the wider isles, and the samples of foods. It's the number of staff at the deli counter offering advice on a range of cheeses from Europe.

My lunch comes from the following countries: Israel, Italy, Germany, The Netherlands and France, and Australia of course. I also bought some mexican hot-sauce and a few other bits from other places too.

IESSO

PS. Yes, ok, so people in my office are working on Coles, BUT I'm not, and even if I was, I wouldn't support a company for that reason alone. This new change is truly good.

McRAGE or WOULD YOU LIKE TO FLY OF THE HANDLE WITH THAT?

IN MCDONALDS FOR BREAKFAST BEFORE A SUNDAY WORK DAY.

Elliott: Hi. Can I please have a sausage McMuffin and a medium...
McWorker: Medium?
E: Yeah, a medium...
McW: Meal?
E: No meal. A sausage McMuffin and a medium iced coffee.
McW: It might be cheaper if it's a meal. I check?
E: No meal. Just a medium iced coffee and sausage mcmuffin.

McW puts it through the register as sausage and egg meal.

E: I don't want any egg. Just a sausage McMuffin.
McW: No meal?
E: NO. Can I check that it's a sausage one, and NOT a sausage and egg one?
McW: OK

WARNING: The following involves me yelling in a family restaurant.

I get the muffin, with egg of course, and an iced coffee. I go back to the counter to get a new muffin.

E: What's this? (pointing at egg). I asked for no egg. (pushes muffin at McW)
McW: OK.

WARNING: The following involves me yelling louder and with more profanity in a family restaurant.

I get the replacement muffin. WITH EGG!

E: WHAT THE FUCK!?!
McW: Hmm?
E: I said no fucking egg! I checked with you? Get the fucking manager!
Manager: What's wrong? I gave you a new one? I made it myself.
E: It's got egg in it!
M: I know, I chose the best one we had.
E: I told her, no fucking egg!!!
M: Oh, I thought she said that the egg was no good.
McW: No, you said egg.
E: I said NO egg! I checked with you!
(they talk to each other)
McW: Do we even have a sausage muffin without egg?
E: It's on the fucking menu! RIGHT THERE! Try learning the menu, for fuck's sake!
M (to McW): Next time, try listening.
McW: HERE! (handing me the new muffin)

I get replacement muffin, storm out, throwing the THIRD egg on the ground as I leave.

IESSO

FUCK OLD PEOPLE

THERE, I SAID IT. Seriously, FUCK THEM!

7.55am: Old lady pushes Soryi and mumbles racist comments under her breath. I politely give her a piece of my mind "GO FUCK YOURSELF, OLD LADY!" I say. And as everyone looks on in disgust I blast them with a gentle "FUCK ALL OF YOU!"

8.47am: Old people are getting on the bus. I am waiting patiently behind them, so that I can put in my ticket. People are pushing behind me, but still I wait. I go to sit down and they're in my way again. I gently squeeze by and get a angered mumble. "WHAT?! GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY THEN!" I reply.

1.34pm: At the bank, waiting in line for 25 minutes. I finally get to the teller and stand hand over money and doing banking things. And an old man stands next to me and starts coughing. I try to ignore him. He stands there still coughing and looking at me. "Excuse me sir, I don't mean to be rude, but could you please step back. I am uncomfortable with you being in my personal space when I am dealing with money" I gently say. "FUCK YOU! I STAND WHEREVER I WANT!" was his reply. "WHAT?!?! FUCK YOU! GET OUT OF MY SPACE!" "YOU HAVE PLENTY OF SPACE! I'M NOT TRYING TO STEAL YOUR MONEY!" he says. "I didn't think you were, I just feel uncomfortable with you standing right next to me!" "YOU BETTER STOP TALKING BEFORE I STOP YOU FROM TALKING" was his response. Now I can't very well beat up an old man, despite him being an insane one. "GO TO HELL SIR!" I say, and storm out of the bank.

Seriously, am I going completely crazy. What the fuck is wrong with the world?! and me?!?!?!

IESSGOFUCKYOURSELFYOUFUCKINGFUCKS!O

PS. FUCK!

TRUTH NUGGET

If it doesn't kill you, it'll make you stronger.
What about polio?

IESSOliteral

MOVEMBRÉ

THIRTY FIVE

We've been experimenting with an old Pentax 35mm SLR and an old Konica point-and-click 35mm. Both produce photos with some really magical qualities. Really nice.

IESSO

PS. The ones of me smoking are old. While I do miss smoking sometimes, I haven't had any since the wedding. I promised Soryi I'd quit for her, and I intend on keeping that promise.

THE NEW LIST

Back in 2005 I made a list of places I wanted to visit, and about half of those places I've made it to. Here is a revised list, some from the old list, and some new ones. Just dreaming at this stage.

UPDATE: Soryi Linus, it was 2006.



IESSO

MONDAYNE PORTFOLIO UPDATE

My portfolio site has had a makeover, and some new content put up. Soryi and I were up all night getting it ready. She built it, and I scrambled together the pictures. I've got an interview on tuesday. Check it out if you like. www.mondayne.com

IESSO

KONG HONG AND MACAU

Here's some photos from our trip. There's plenty more in this Flickr set.

Hong Kong

SO WE HAVE 24 HOURS AND 15 MINUTES LEFT. Soryi is in the hotel room sleeping, and I'm waiting another 14 minutes now so I can check us in for our flight online. We got back from a day-trip in Macau about 20 minutes ago, and we are both exhausted. This whole trip has been exhausting. Of course, because that's our style, we see the HELL out of a city when we visit. But it's also been a lot of fun. We'd definitely come back! And recommend it to anyone we see.

I can't post any photos just yet, no memory card reader, but I'll try on Sunday. We arrive at 06.35am, so I'll probably sleep a lot first before I do anything, but we'll see. Suffice to say, the photos are awesome. Literally! Some of the best I've taken. Hardly any photoshopping required this time.

Anyway, check-in is in 10 minutes now.
IESSO

WE'RE GROWN-UPS NOW!

IT ALL WENT REALLY WELL. You'll have to wait for stories untill after we get back from Hong Kong (early Sept) and I be able to put up more pictures too. But suffice to say, it was a nice day, a small affair, and exactly like we'd hoped for and nothing at all like we feared. Thank you to everyone who came, and apologies to everyone who wasn't able to make it. There's always VEGAS in 2011, which we're still planning on doing... why? WHY NOT!?

View the photos as a slideshow HERE.

IESSO

ONE

TWO

HOLGA MEDIUM FORMAT

THREE

FOUR

IT MIGHT HAVE SUNK IN NOW

WE'RE GETTING MARRIED IN FIVE DAYS! I can't believe it. It's really exciting. And it feels right. I'm not nervous (yet?) and I don't know if I should have any reason to be.

What I am though, is bored at work, so I threw this together in photoshop. And now I understand why all those kids were/are doing this style; it's totally freaking easy! Distressed scrapbookey-romanticy-crap is a peice of piss.

IESSO

FIVE

WE'RE getting married this weekend!

EIGHT

In front of the Louvre in Paris.

NINE

TEN

Soryi spots a giraffe at the Dublin Zoo.

ELEVEN

Sorry I missed 12, 13 & 14, I've been away from the internet for a few days.
IESSO

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

We're getting married in 17 days! YAY!

We've got it all sorted now;
- Dress/Suit: CHECK
- Venue for ceremony: CHECK
- Restaurant for reception: CHECK
- Invitations: CHECK
- Rings: CHECK
- Honeymoon in Hong Kong: CHECK
- Someone naive/crazy enough/actually willing to marry me: CHECK?

It's all sorted, and now that everything is organised I can finally get excited and look forward to Soryi being not just my girlfriend, but my wife. The concept is still crazy, but it's also extremely awesome.

Like I said, the ceremony is going to be very small, four of our super-closest friends, and our families. That's all. So don't feel bad if you didn't get an invite, nothing personal, and you can live vicariously through the photos if you want. And speaking of photos, we've got three cameras planned; DSLR, Holga (medium format!) and polaroid. It'll be great.

IESSO

Typography

TOP: Flies. BOTTOM: Leaves. For no real reason. Click images for larger sizes.

IESSO

Happy Little Vegemites

From mX (free newspaper) printed 01/07/09

If people ask why I want to leave Australia, this is the answer. I've encountered this attitude since I was nine years old, and frankly I am sick of it.

I wrote to the paper:
"I am not a Happy Little Vegemite either, but due entirely to your article. Get your facts right, and stop with the pointless America-bashing. If you don't like the politics that is understandable, but the people are generally not evil. Not all of us are fat, or greedy; as you seem to think. I've been confronted of this general attitude from Australians ever since I moved here when I was a little kid, and I can't understand why. If you don't like the new Vegemite, there is an easy solution; don't eat it. There is no need to turn this into some sort of "America is an evil imperialist empire, trying to take over the world, and extinguish our last glimmer of Australian identity" crisis. Lastly; for the record; Kraft has always been an American company, and Mel Gibson was born in New York."

IESSO

TUESDAYNE 2: TUES CONTROL

So Linus wants an epilogue. So here it is:

Things are pretty much back to normal now. Boring I know, but that's how it played out. It wasn't always back to normal though, something else happened in the time it took to return to normal.

After I was sent home, and had my wallet stolen I watched a lot of tv. For 2 days in fact. And then on Friday I was back at work. But I kind of wasn't feeling well. On Saturday Soryi got sick. Then I got sick properly on Sunday.

On Monday morning I went to the doctor to get some help. By the time the train arrived at the station I was feeling nauseous. Sea sick I guess. The doctor said I had a throat infection, a sinus infection and a lung infection. Which effects the bits in your ear that controls balance, explaining the sick feeling. He gave me some medicine and sent me home. So of course instead of going home I went to work. The files were still not recovered and looking less and less likely to ever get recovered.

The next day I felt weird when I woke up. I was still sick feeling, because the medicine hadn't worked yet. But on top of that I was also REALLY REALLY itchy. It was a different kind of itchy though. It was UNDERNEATH my skin. Not like a sunburn. Or a mosquito bite, but everywhere on my body. And deeper down.

I didn't know what it was, but figured a shower would help. I thought I over scrubbed myself when I got out and was all pink. But then I noticed that I was pink EVERYWHERE. I was pink on my eyelids. I was pink between my toes. I was pink behind my knees. And when I say pink I mean PINK!!! Pink like one of those old-fashioned erasers. And it wasn't going away.

I went back to the doctor. Trying to hide my skin, which looked like I'd washed my face with magenta ink. The doctor asked if I was itchy, I told him I was, he thought for a second, trying to figure out how to phrase the bad news. Did I have cancer? With two weeks to live? How was I going to tell my family? Or Soryi? We were supposed to be getting married soon!

Luckily it was only a simple allergy to the medicine. But before you let of that big sigh if relief, it's not just any allergy; I'm allergic to pennicilin. The worst allergy you can have. Oh sure, it only is the greatest medical discovery/invention of all time, but hey, Elliott, you should be allergic to it. Yippee.

Actually it could have been a lot worse. The doctor told me that if I hadn't come in, and kept taking the medicine my blood pressure would've dropped, my heart would've stopped beating and no epilogue for Linus.

He gave me some new medicine, without pennicilin, an injection of anti-inflamatories, and told me to go home.

Which I did.

On Thursday the itching hadn't stopped, but the original illness was almost gone (remember that one?) and I went back to work, with only the pinkness level of someone running a marathon. In the sahara.

The files were lost. For good. With no way of getting them. So it was time to redo everything, work late and get everything back on track.

After another day of that I was feeling worse again, but good enough. And that's how I feel right now. The pinkness is gone, luckily, the itch at only 5% of it original level, but not gone, and my suck feeling only slightly higher.

Work has returned to normal too. And in case you were wondering Soryi is completely fine, her sickness only lasting the one weekend.

IESSO

In other news: we're finally getting our act together about the wedding. YAY! It will be held in Brisbane some time in the near future. That bit isn't finalized yet. What is finalized though is our trip to Brisbane on the 18th of July to go to the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages to put in the paperwork and choose a date.

The ceremony is to be held at their ceremony room in the old printing factory in Brisbane. Which is good because it's design related. And heavens forbid we do anything that isn't design related!

Also, we bumped into Sebastian from Luveworm in Sydney. He's doing well, having spent a while in the states doing sone art thing. He's got an exhibition coming up, but he didn't say where or when it was, or any way of getting in contact with him, so we'll probably not get to go.

Anyway that's sort of all for now. I'd tell you about work, but it's painfully boring to do, let alone talk about. The only exception to that is: for once I am doing something fun for one project. With costumes! But the client will probably kill it and end up looking like crap. But I'll upload pics to Flickr if things work out.

Lastly: Where in the World is Linus? San Diego perhaps?

TUESDAYNE

LAST TUESDAY WAS A BAD DAY FOR ELLIOTT. Not life-threateningly bad, or bad in any grand, ultimate sense, no-one died, no-one was hurt, but nonetheless, tuesday was a bad day anyway. So what happened then that made the day so bad you might ask? And if you didn't ask, don't bother reading the next part, for I shall be explaining why tuesday was bad.

7.55am
I woke up late, as I sometimes do. Tuesday was different though. I had just gotten back from Perth, and Brisbane earlier in the week. And I didn't feel like going to work. More than that perhaps, I felt I shouldn't go to work. It turned out I was right, but I don't believe in premonitions, so I am hesitant to say I had a feeling that the day would go bad. I just didn't want to go to work and I didn't know why.

9.32am
I arrived at work early. I wanted to get straight into it, I'd missed a lot of work over the previous week, having only gone in two out the five days that week, because I was in Brisbane, then Perth. So I walked in, said hi to everyone and got started checking the work emails and that sort of thing. My boss suggested I swap computers around, because my computer was slow, and I have lots of Photoshop work to do, and the other computer is faster.

9.40am
I unplugged my computer and swapped it with the faster one. The faster one had the server harddrive attached, so I moved it along with the fast computer. It was dusty, but I didn't it was a big deal. But I guess it was, because when I turned the computer, the server harddrive was corrupt and everything was gone. Everything. Everything from the last five years, from the whole company was lost.

9.43am
I was sent home, unsure when, or indeed if, I would be coming back. Without the files, there was nothing to do. The harddrive was taken to a data recovery specialist, but they're still not sure if anything can be recovered. So without any work to do, and my mind replaying the event of 3 minutes earlier I went into the city to calm down, get some reading done and maybe go to the gym to blow off some steam.

2.16pm
I finished my book after sitting in the park in the cold. This part wasn't so bad, actually it would have been quite pleasant under different circumstances, but on tuesday it was distracting enough to serve it's purpose, but not enjoyable enough to give any sense of pleasure. On a side note; the book was The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. It's another Penguin book, I'm making my way through all the orange and white ones. This one was pretty good.

4.02pm
I went to the gym. Because I was in Brisbane/Perth I didn't get a chance to go, so I was a bit out of practice. First I did my usual stint on the treadmill, then the swingamajigg (it's almost a torture rack), then weights, then situps and more weights, then the swingamajigg again. Like I said though, having not been in nearly two-weeks I was a bit sore, and weak feeling. My arms were stiff, and I was out of breath. I figured it was best to go home.

5.30pm
It was time to go, I was going to meet Soryi anyway. I got changed, put on my jeans, and the shirt and jacket, I got my bag, and put my towel in it, and grabbed my train ticket so I would save time at the station. Except I didn't grab my ticket, because my wallet was gone. Gone where? I don't know. But it wasn't in my bag, I checked six times. It was gone. The thing is I made sure that when I locked it in the locker (of which I am the only one with a key) I put it on top. And I guess that when I opened the locker an hour and a half later, it wasn't on top, but the locker was locked. It's really weird, and I don't have any explanation for what happened, but my wallet is gone, along with all the cards and money in it.

Fun times for Elliott. Lots of fun. I went to the bank the next day, and the bank had lost my Visa account, so I couldn't even get the money out. They had lost all the money in the account on top of everything else that had happened.

IESSOmebody put me out of my misery

THANKS BRIAN ENO

FOR THE COOL, BUT UGLY 77 million paintings you've projected onto the Opera House. I know I complain about Sydney being boring, but when it's cool, like this is, it's actually not too bad. I like that the Opera House gets all this attention, and that I have a million photos of it, despite what _linus says. So I guess I should stay positive or something.

Also, check out the Flickr photostream for more photos of other light things going on in the city this week. There's lights all over the place!

IESSO

REDUCE. REUSE. RECYCLE.

ANATOMY OF A MURDER vs. THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM vs. PRECIOUS. Saul Bass, you've done it again! So the first two were done by Saul, but the last one is for a new movie starring MARIAH CAREY! So you know it's gonna be a heavy hitter. Without having seen the movie, and only hearing some reviews (positive though) I won't comment on it, but I will talk about the poster.

I actually like it. No, REALLY like it. It's great... I like the fact that is a clear Saul Bass ripoff. I like that because it's nice, and looks cool. I wish the influences weren't as obvious, but it still doesn't bother me. I wanted to say how annoying it was that new ideas are gone, and that rehashing old ideas are the standard now, but I really don't mind in this case.At least it's not Ultra Bold Gill Sans in red on a white background.

IESSO

MELBOURNE

SO WE GOT BACK ON SUNDAY NIGHT after three days of Melburnian fun. It was great.
I'm totally regretting moving to Sydney. Linus, if you're reading this: Don't move to Sydney, even if you wanted to be with friends. I take back all those things I said about it being ok. It is ok, but Melbourne is better. Move there instead and I'll come and visit!


St Kilda Pier through Soryi's glasses.


Me in St Kilda.


Having breakfast on our last day.


From Southbank facing the city. (Soryi is facing the Crown Casino)


From Federation Square facing the city.


Flinders St Station


An odd thing to see at 9.30 at night; some guy dressed like this doing tai chi. He wasn't asking for money either.


Just outside an amazing tapas place, across the road from Fed Square.


Wayne Brady and co in Fitzroy.


Zombies crossing the road. There were literally hundreds of them. More photos on Flickr.


Return to South Melbourne Beach to reshoot an old photo.


All the food we ate while there; breakfast x3, lunch x1, dinner x3.
I'd definitely recommend Movida, the tapas place. Try the chilled citrus and mint soup with cinnamon dumplings and melon. Also, try the pate with fennel and chocolate drizzle. Oh, and the anchovy with salmon sorbet! ALL AMAZINGLY GOOD!

Also, proof that Sydney is lame.
Backstory: I'm walking down the street in Bondi Beach and wearing a scarf.
SURFER: "You know what I really hate?"
OTHER SURFER: "What?"
SURFER: "Scarves. The next person I see I'm gonna bash."

What is the deal with the anti-scarf sentiment? I've heard things of this nature three times now. What is the deal!?
IESSOoWhat?It'sFrigginCold!