Shameless Christmas list

And shamelessly jumping on other people's bandwagons.

So:
1. A furry hot water bottle
2. Ethiopiques Vol. 4 - Mulatu Astatke
3. Sex in the City seasons 2,3,4
4. A black cloche hat
5. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
6. ER any/all seasons
7. The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen
8. Some really comfy thermal underwear
9. An external hard drive

Any takers?

Mulled wine and spotted dick

Was 4 1/2 hours late to a mulled wine party last night. It's become a running joke now; it's not that I'm late, I just get the time wrong. When I got there, the men had gone out to get more booze, the women were lazily stretched out on the sofa, and the flat smelled warm and spicy.

It was a chill night, spent chatting and cooing over Max, the cat (who was playing hard to get), and Alex, the baby (who observed everything open-mouthed and very animatedly for a newborn, e.g. when his dad said things like "you're so fucking cute!").

We did have one very active moment of laughing so hard we were literally crying. We played this game where there are two teams, and each team writes the names of famous people on scraps of paper for the other team. Some names that came up: Hosni Mubarak, Johnny Matthis, Draco Malfroy, Jenna Jameson, Mario Puzo, Princess Beatrice, Frances McDormand, Alf Stewart, Pippi Longstockings, Cardinal Wolsey, Sam Neill, Dirk Nowitzki, Bod, Chinua Achebe. (I was sorely shortchanged by my lack of knowledge of British TV shows and personalities, and Harry Potter)

There are three rounds:
- first you describe the person, or try to elicit the name if you don't know or they don't know who it is e.g. This is a character from a fairy tale who has two wicked stepsisters and goes to a ball and her coach turns into a pumpkin (silence) the first syllable sounds like, according to the bible if you do something wrong you commit a... etc.
- then you can only use three words to describe the person e.g. wicked stepsisters pumpkin
- then you mime e.g. guy frantically points to watch, runs with skirts, grabs heel (they took forever to get this)
Each member gets 60 seconds, then it's on to the next team. The first team to finish the three rounds wins.

So the priceless moment was when one of the guys looked at the next name, considered his options, glanced helplessly around, and, in resignation, pointed to his crotch. To which all of us were wondering, why the hell is he pointing to his crotch? Silence, and then someone tentatively said, cock? No, but his index finger continued to jerk in said direction. Dick? OH OH OH Dick Van Dyke!

I was absolutely dying, as was everyone else. What made it funnier is that this guy normally blanches a bit at lewd or suggestive comments. The rest of the night was spent recalling the central moment, as it were.

A slice of home

I'm feeling a bit homesick, so I'm posting up some pictures of the last time I was at home.

In a warung in Kota Bharu, where we had nasi kerabu. On the lower right hand side, there's 'tongkat ali' listed - a local aphrodisiac. I miss milo ais kosong (milo beng on this menu), sirap limau and air bandung. And yelling out "Boss!"

'Seluar' means shorts/trousers.

In a bus station. The sign says "5 minutes early"

In a distant life.

Trying very hard not to laugh.

Dusk in Kuching.

Dusk on Pulau Kapas.

Pulau Kapas again. We stayed right at the end of the beach and did nothing for a week.

Taman Megah skyline. We never get skies like these in Budapest.

Privates around the world

I made 6,000 Fts / $28 / RM105 tonight for two hours of accompanying my private while she walked around a mall shopping for a new mobile phone. Most of that time was spent hanging around while she quizzed the salespeople. I wonder that she thinks this is par for the course, and am half-expecting her to call it quits any day now.

In case you're wondering if it's because of the special things I do on the side, this sort of thing is far from unusual. Everyone has stories of privates who cancel lessons every week and pay, or who all but take you on a skiing holiday and pay you for your hardship at the end of it. It's almost as if they think being around someone who speaks English is enough to learn English themselves.

Though I'm sure many of you out there are making ludicrous amounts of money doing far less.

A Budapest party

Balázs has a friend, an artist I know as Józska bácsi, or Uncle Józska, who lives in what I imagine to be a typical artist's loft: the cramped hallway stacked with frames and a huge open studio with paintings everywhere. His favourite motifs are a particular farmhouse which he has rendered in about 84 ways, and almost graphically straight stairways in every picture. When asked, he said his is a 'hag world'. Or maybe that was the pálinka talking.

I get the feeling that Józska bácsi hasn't painted in a while, but his space is a wicked place to have a party, which is what Balázs intended last night. But these things never go smoothly.

Showed up just as Józska bácsi was arriving in a taxi looking totally pissed (he had forgotten about this soirée and had spent the better part of the day drinking in a little village pub), along with 5 other people, all of whom knew Balázs, but not each other. In the corridor outside the flat, there were another 15 people waiting for the host to unlock the door. All of whom didn't know each other.

This is a typical Balázs party. Throw a whole bunch of people together and see what happens.

Well in the beginning, nothing. We were all standing around with our coats still on, just in case. Some girls set up the food and atmosphere, and I got to chatting with some acquaintances from similar parties, before getting totally immersed in a conversation with a guy who worked for 8 years in an atelier in Paris, making haute couture. When I got up to get a drink, the party was in full gear.

The people I meet in Budapest are endlessly fascinating. In the course of the night I talked to:
- the couture guy, who now owns a bike/ski rental shop
- a guy who has jobs impersonating Elvis and playing lions in children's pantomimes
- a porn actor
- a couple who tango in their free time

Going to a wine-tasting evening tonight, and a champagne brunch (again) tomorrow. There's no escaping the deluge of alcohol in my system. All I can do is accept defeat gracefully.

I'm a Pure Nerd

Did this test and discovered I'm a pure nerd, at 63%. What are you?

Am obsessed with Boards of Canada at the moment, the Music Has The Right To Children album. The first time I listened to it, I was in the huge HMV on Oxford Street and the cute/geeky guy who worked there opened up a listening station and let me listen to whatever I wanted to. Then he brought over this album, gushing, but after listening to it, I pronounced it minimalist, to his chagrin. Ended up buying Sabres of Paradise's Sabresonic II instead, which is a great album. Remember feeling guilty that I was shafting this nice guy's effort to expand my musical horizons.

But now, having spent 3 days with it, I love it.

Just bought a plane ticket for a 24-hour piss-up in Berlin. Can't wait.

Brunch, champagne, John Cusack and Top Gun

I've just had a Very Decadent Sunday.

First I had a nice early morning chat (well it wasn't exactly early morning since I was up till 2 last night at a games evening). Then I got my shit together in time for a brunch with some friends at Budapest Blue, a restaurant/cafe which has a lounge ambience and plays bubblegum techno and Rick Astley but serves yummy coffee(none of that skim milk shit) and brunch fare. I indulged in 3 eggs, fatty bacon and girly gossip.

Then we went over to Devon's place and had an 80s film marathon with champagne, cigarettes, hummus, chocolate biscuits and Chardonnay Barrique. First up was Some Kind of Wonderful, featuring an Eric Stoltz with a clefted chin and eyeliner, and a luminous Mary Stuart Masterson (what's happened to her?). Best line: "Don't go mistaking paradise for a pair of long legs". Where else but in the movies do tomboys with red fingerless leather gloves get the guy?

After that was The Sure Thing, with John Cusack looking remarkably unlined and sans receeding hairline. Personally I like him better now, in his weathered phase (and face). Daphne Zuniga is stunning; wonder why she hasn't been in anything other than Melrose Place. Lots of great lines in there too, except I don't remember since I'm a bit on the pissed side now from the champagne and Chardonnay we had throughout.

To finish off our trilogy was Top Gun, surely the best example of a chick-flick which gratifies men too. This one I remembered best, from the volleyball scene to the solemnly delivered lines e.g. "I'm not leaving my wingman" from a smouldering Tom Cruise. It was a great one to end with, though we punctuated the film with lots of "America, fuck yeah!", from another film of note, which you should definitely see if you haven't.

And then I did the dishes because it's such a therapeutic activity, followed closely by ironing.

A gratuitous picture of Budapest, just because I'm happy to be here.

My daily commute

Sounds boring, I know, but I revel in the banalities of life.

To go towards the tram stop, I have two options: by the main road with the furious traffic of cars and pedestrians, or the quiet parallel street splattered with pigeon droppings and dog shit. If I take the former, I pass a Chinese fast food place which I've never been to, two solariums, a second-hand clothing store, a cinema, a shop selling car parts (with a dummy battery sitting outside by way of welcome mat), a bakery with cakes that are all fluff and no substance, the resident beggar, one of Budapest's major foosball joints, a casino, and a bathroom accessory chain. Having done this walk about 948 times now, I recognise the people I pass quite often, though eye contact is as much as it gets. I used to say hi to the beggar, but then I never gave him money, so I stopped.

If I take the parallel street, I pass a string of computer/software/technical-looking shops with the smokers on perpetual breaks, a shop selling camouflage, a music store specialising in Depeche Mode, a tiny place selling loose leaf tea, an antique bookshop, and a dusty window displaying mysterious metal parts.

There are fly posters everywhere, advertising dance concerts, live gigs, language schools and club nights. Once in a while there'll be a poster from where I work, which always looks like it's trying a bit too hard.

In the underpass that leads to the tram stop, there are more resident homeless people who pass the day watching the performances of the day, from solo violinists and miked opera singers to Jesus punks and native Americans (with their faces painted in the colours of the Hungarian flag) chanting suspiciously un-native American syllables to the minus-one tracks. When they get bored of this, or cold, they ride the main tram around the city, to the consternation of anyone who is near them because of their overpowering stench when all the windows are closed. At night they get pissed and slump against the walls before falling asleep.

(Aside: there's an annual poster competition in Budapest, and one year, one of the winners was a photo of a colourful array of sleeping bags and mattresses lined up next to each other in the same underpass, with the tagline United Colours of Budapest.)

I wait about 30 seconds for the tram, and always get on at the back of the first car or the front of the second one, because they are always fewer people there. I try and remember to stand facing the right way, and better yet, in front of the tram doors, so that when we stop in the middle of the bridge and the doors fold out, I get 5 seconds of Parliament, the Danube, and the castle district and all its steepled buildings.

And then I refocus on getting to work, and try not to fall over as people jostle to the exit before the tram stops so they can be the first to get off. I always give up my seat to parents carrying kids who have cute hats on. And old men and women who have cute hats on. And sit on the laps of men with cute hats on. OK the last isn't true, since they're ramming their tongues down their girlfriends' throats at 7.30am, and it would be rude to disentangle them.

Sometimes I count the trams going in the other direction, usually at least as many as there are stops. Sometimes I make a mental list of where I got everything on my person, e.g. coat-Vienna, boots-Erfurt, jeans-Canterbury, shawl-Karachi. It usually cheers me up because I think about who I bought it with, or who I visited when I went there.

From the tram stop to work is a 3 minute walk uphill, which I do as quickly as possible to get it over with. Some days I stop by the greengrocer's, which is virtually the only place in Budapest where I absolutely have to speak Hungarian, and I think it's safe to say that Feri and I have reached the stage in greengrocer-customer relations where we comfortably engage in friendly banter (e.g. today I bought veggies to make a soup and he said, see you're not that lazy after all). Some mornings a woman walks three gorgeous rust-coloured sheep dogs across the street just as I'm approaching the crossing.

And then I'm at work.