Days of Being LJ

So I’m at the start of another weekend and I feel so happy that I won’t have to go to work until Monday. I have no idea how I’m going to deal with the next 40 years of my life but I’m hoping that somewhere along the line I can subsist by only selling photos, poetry, advice or whatnot and languish at home with my pretend cats emulating the best of Judi Dench in Notes On a Scandal.

I had dinner tonight with Lam and his Voice Actor whom was participating in Lam’s Media Arts Project this semester. I stuck around to help a bit afterwards and since I had my trusty camera, took a few production stills. It made me realise how much I did miss the production side of things, the tangibility of the equipment, the fiddling of knobs and buttons…Problem solving on the run. I really like the awesomeness of production technology and overall I miss collaborating with different people, actors, crew etc. However I’m sure that if I was working on a freelance project, I’d be bitching about it forever so perhaps I’m just happy being miserable?

Anyhoo, because my mobile ran out of battery earlier in the day it meant I couldn’t contact anyone in the city to hang out with so I just decided to head home on a lonely Friday night, since Lam was bound to spend ages recording his script. Got to Wynyard and missed my bus by 5min, the next being another 25min wait, so I hopped on a 273 instead and decided to walk from Crows Nest back home and perhaps take some piccies along the way. Google Maps tells me that it was 3km exactly. So I legged it and tried some long exposures at the freeway overpass on Miller Street and at the Tower Bridge at Northbridge. I felt a tad of a ditz with my tripod and camera on a freeway overpass on a Friday night but I think it turned out for the best really.

Some favourites from tonight:

Torrents of Light (Freeway Overpass)

Bridge of Light

I think some of the reasons why I’ve taken up this period of photography with such aplomb are:

1. I haven’t properly photographed using an SLR since 2002.
2. Sometimes I enjoy looking at the world through a camera lens. I’ve done it consistently for the past 10 years of my life. There’s no sense in stopping now.

LJK life, photography filmmaking, judi dench, long exposure, photography

I went to the NSW Gallery over the weekend and managed to see the Archibald and Art-Express exhibitions for the first time, I’ve been lazy what can I say? The Archibald was good, I think the winner was well chosen, but my fav will probably the public’s fav is the portrait of the kid from Australia whose name totally escapes me. Very nice portrait, almost like a photo, great depth of focus.

Art-Express just made me feel slightly inadequate of my own artistic abilities, although comforting it was to see that fantastic works were also joined by works so prententious only a 17 year old could come up with it and think it’s oh so meaningful. The saddening thing is although I admit to being prejudiced about private school kids, they clearly had the resources for a greater wealth and quality of materials. But the beauty of art is that with only a pencil and paper you can create something so absolutely fantastic, and the best works did just that.

I’m in love with the Deep Fried Morning Glory Salad from Saap Thai, I had it twice in 3 days. The first time was soooooooo fantastic, the batter was ligh, crunchy and really fresh. The mixture of pork mince, fried shallot/garlic, vinegar and fish sauce as the topping was just intoxicating. It was such a dissappointment when I had it the 2nd time after my visit to the art gallery. The batter was heavy, stale and rock hard…UGH!!!! I still don’t know what morning glory is, I know fried stuff is bad for me, but I’m still kind of craving it. Methinks I might have to go again at lunch sometime, just me, some rice, a thai milk tea and the salad.

So my mum didn’t appreciate Saap Thai as much as I do but anyhoo, speaking of mum, in the past few months, ever since I figured how to hardcode Chinese subtitles onto videos, fast and painlessly (and also where to find such subs), I’ve been feeding mum all my old films. The brilliant thing is that I also found subs for BBC Bonnet Dramas, which is so excellent, cause now I’m bonding with mum (and dad – dad is a closet soapie addict) over Pride & Predjudice, North & South and over this weekend, Cranford.

Watching Cranford just makes me ACHE to become a bbc TV director, I mean working with Judi Dench (be my grandma, please?) and Philip Glenister making 5 episodes of witty social repartee…heaven. And bbc does it best folks, the production values, the comedy, the angst and all the sadness…Just brilliant.  We watched Persuasion which was an itv production and it just wasn’t the same, even my dear Rupert Penry Jones couldn’t save the wannabe indie camera angles.

I mean how can anyone not love it? I hated studying North & South for the HSC, if only they made the series earlier I would have known what actually happened in the 2nd half of the novel and discovered Richard Armitage a lot earlier.

LJK art, culture, food, television art, bbc, food, judi dench, thai, tv