RAFW!

I just worked till 9pm the other night and all yesterday (that was a public holiday) to do the seating plans for 2 out of the 5 shows we are doing for Rosemount Australian Fashion Week that kicks off Monday. It will be exciting and i have not had the huge responsibility of doing a show this year which is nice. But i am doing all i can to help my team who have been slaving away for weeks. Though staring at an excel document for 8 hours can really do your head in.

Looking forward to the shows, look out for Hotel Bondi Swim, Therese Rawsthorne, Stitch Ministry, Ruby Smallbone and Lee Mathews, as they are our shows.

Will update you on the week...

Tooth

hey, went and saw a new dentist. Who was so nice and had this great team in Woollahra. Quoted me $1600 for the entire job and also said the guy i saw was a total shark and known to overcharge. Pity i am on this side of my $850 before finding that out, but i needed my tooth put back in. Anyhoo after fashion week, i will start my root canal therapy and then have a new chomper. I think i will call it Ploppy.

Good outcome!

Hard Candy - Full review

"Whose ya mama?"

This is not the album I expected, somewhat a relief and a disappointment at the same time. Madge has not lost any of her sledge hammer subtlety nor her love of a good boogie. This album has tweaked layers and interesting twists, From the slurpy Candy Shop, where she invites you to get sticky fingers in her candy box, to the closing electronic Notre Dame of a song in the Gothic Voices, this album is like nothing Madonna has claimed before.

The outstanding tracks are: Give it 2 me that charges like a bull in a lingerie store, and enjoys every dirty moment. The hypnotic Heartbeat and Miles Away are the most ballad-like tracks, but they still have a thump to keep the neighbours annoyed. The Beat Goes On and the utterly awesome (!!) Dance 2Night, are guaranteed dance floor anthems. Mining classic 70's disco, complete with the handclaps, bells, whistles and Justin Timberlake's Bee Gees style 'Aahhs'. While the wonderfully titled The Devil Wouldn't Recognised You, is a classic mournful and dark Madonna track.

This is a good album but like real candy, the satisfaction is short lived and leaves you wanting more. Madonna has created some of the strongest albums in her career in the past ten years, but Hard Candy feels slapped together and slightly short on the life we expect from a Madonna album. Bad tracks include the overlong and slightly undercooked Incredible. Strangely enough feels like it needed a few more sessions through the Madge-a-tron to make it work. Spanish Lessons is another raiding of the Latin cupboard that M spent alot of the 80's in, this time it just sounds dated. On the upside she embraces her inner M.I.L.F, growling "If you do your homework, maybe i'll give you more". I am grateful that the utterly awful Ring My Bell, a bonus track on the special edition CDs, did not make it to the final album. it would have tipped the scales into crapdom. Without it Hard Candy teeters safely on the good side of things.

I was quite concerned that Madge would get lost in the forest of R&B try hard, Hard Candy is not a bad album but we have come to expect more after the tour de force that was Confessions On The Dancefloor. The tracks rattle the teeth and it is really hard not to wiggle when she hits her groove, but it feels too top heavy with the Farrel and Timberland production, and Madge ends up like guest on her own album. The climax of the album ends with a bell tolling, which I am sure this not accident, and is a reference to the expectation that she will now that she is almost 50 she will (or should apparently) pack up the decks and knee length boots, to make toilet roll covers. I get the feeling, for her, this album is a staunch middle finger to all those doubters.

I do not agree she should retire, she has so much more to give and more ground to cover but its disappointing Madonna does not seem to care as much anymore. Hard Candy is a modern album that ticks all the mainstream boxes, but over time may melt into a sugary blob when compared to her previous collaborations. B-

'All i want for xmas is my front tooth'

Well, i have bad karma or something this year. Just as i am getting over the hospital event, i was sitting down this Sunday to a tasty BLT and my fake front tooth fell out! I was horrified, in a sub hysterical tizzy i hence forth found a 24/7 dentist and went and paid $850 to have the tooth fixed back into the yellow stump. I then found out the problem was much bigger than a bit of super glue, the issue is i have an infection in my gum due to a bad root canal when it first happened. You see it was 7 years ago in NYC and i slipped on ice and smashed out my tooth. I was living in London and sans insurance, so i found a dentist who stabilised the tooth for my flight home. Unfortunately it was not done well and i have ended up now with an abscess. So now i am looking at out about $4000 worth of work to clean out my tooth, new root canal, reconstruction of the post and a new porcelain cap. Suffice to say i was quite upset, but now realise i have to do it or my tooth will keep popping out to say hello to my sandwiches. So i am going to see a dentist tomorrow for a second opinion and search for dentists with long term payment plans so i can get it done ASAP.

Bit sucky but hey at least i do not have a brain aneurysm!

How not to work out...

Starting again

Ok, went back to training again yesterday and I felt like I had been out of it for 4 months. I was so tired and weak. Its a strange feeling that your body has slowed down when the brain has not, I guess that's illness and aging. It will take me a while to get back to the place I was pre-illness but I am determined to do so. Last night I was talking to my friend Jennifer in NZ and realised I still have not computed the whole episode and she was surprised I went through most of it alone and so quietly.

This was not so surprising for me as it was bad timing that 99% of my friends were away for Easter, my mum was in NZ and I am single. So to me I had no other choice but to do it alone. I have to admit it causes some pangs of hurt when I think about it but I think those pangs are tied into my overall feeling towards the whole event. I was never going to crawl into a ball and fall apart over this, and to coin a common phrase: what has not killed me has made me stronger.

I have to admit that I went back to work too early, but I had no other choice but too. The project I was working on was at a critical pre launch stage, and it needed all hands on board. But now I feel like I need to take some time to crunch the numbers and breath. So I may ask my boss for some time off in the next months after Fashion Week. That being said I am not naive that a holiday will wipe the slate clean but I think it will help. But I am assured the effects of the past few weeks will show themselves for a long time to come and has, maybe in a small way, changed me forever.

When Brains Attack!

As i have alluded to I had a major health scare about three weeks ago, I was admitted to hospital just before and again during Easter. I was training and had just started it, when I got what was the worse headache I have ever had in the front of my head. It was like an explosion. Suffice to say I could not stand and my balance was all screwed up. So I went off to hospital and was admitted for CT scans and a lumbar puncture (which was horrible, where they put a huge needle in your spine). The doctors thought I may have had a brain aneurysm and needed to test me for all and sundry to make sure was not going to drop dead.

I was let out of hospital the next day but went straight back in two days later as one in 100 people have adverse reactions to the lumbar puncture. Including inability to stand, ultra sensitivity to light, hideous nausea and the most horrible headaches ever. So I was admitted to the Neurology ward for three days. They had to do an small procedure (with another huge needle) on my back to fix the problem but then I had to do heaps of other tests including one with radioactive iodine which felt like I had pissed myself.

It was so scary but I did not realise how much until I got out and just was devastated due to the stress and worry. It was not pretty.
The neurology ward was just horrific, I was directly opposite a guy who was a vegetable and had half his skull missing. He use to wail and moan like some animal into the middle of the night. At that point they did not know what was wrong with me so I was terrified I would end up like him.
They finally figured out it was some type of reaction to stress and over exercise, causing all the blood to rush to my head and cause what my neurologist called a “thunderclap” headache and the reason I had been turned into a human pin cushion is that the symptoms I had matched a sub orbital aneurysm (AKA possible killer bleed).

So after all that scariness it was a rather simple explanation, but it has taken me ages to recover. I lost about 6-8 kgs, had panda eyes and was quite shell shocked and emotional for a while. Its only now I can exercise again and am feeling better. I went back to work too early as i had these events to finish, but i was very slow and unable to respond very fast to people and questions. It was weird, like I was wrapped in cotton wool.

So it was a really traumatising time, very lonely as well, but feel interestingly Zen afterwards now. On the bright side i was overwhelmed by the support I got from co workers and friends alike. So that is really it for me, I am just glad to be ok.