Sven's life in Oz

In my never-ending quest for random crazy shit to fill my time before I die, I have accrued a highly skilled team of like-minded weirdos who are always up for the same kind of antics as me. (By ‘random crazy shit’, I mean legal random crazy shit, of course: the kind where people say “how did you find out about that?” with mouths agog, as opposed to “what the fuck where you thinking?” with eyes rolling.) One of these side-kicks of fun is my good friend and colleague, Sarah, who seems eerily on my level when it comes to almost anything, including my theories on humans as giant walking tubes, cheap gin, and why lesbians hate everyone. Picture my face when she strolled into my office and told me that she had bumped into two guys who had convinced her that roller derby was the greatest show on Earth and she should book tickets now or just kill herself.

I have known that roller derby is the hottest shit around since I saw Whip It one Saturday night when I was sofa-bound with a hangover. I immediately googled my local roller derby league and liked them on Facebook, followed them on Twitter and subscribed to their RSS feed. I was actively searching for people who would come with me to the first interstate roller derby showdown right here in Sydney not two weeks later. You’re excited now and you’re just reading it: imagine how I felt! We were agreed: it was on.

Enter the third member of the cast of madness: my partner in dog bites and pyjama-clad dining, Nicholas. Back from Atlanta for a limited time only, he was excited long-distance at the prospect of watching teams of butch women race around a track in roller skates and try to beat each other up. Who wouldn’t be? Sarah roped in a couple of her friends, Adrian and Ivana, and the five of us rocked up last Saturday to watch Brisbane eat Sydney’s wheels.

The derby was like an awesome instruction manual in what-the-fuck: no one under 18 could sit trackside in case a skater broke loose and charged into the crowd, I read the programme and the rules were still a complete mystery, and the fans came from every walk and stage of life imaginable. To my left a bunch of skinny emo girls sat patiently watching the action; to my right a group of middle-aged housewife-types were out of their seats and screaming like banshees. There was a Mexican band playing on stage. The half-time entertainment was a pole-dancer. Adrian had been drinking since lunch, Ivana and Nick were conversing in Serbian (what are the chances?) and Sarah and I were getting slowly addled on Bundaberg rum-and-coke out of a can. It was trippy.

After the match (Sydney 106: Brisbane 86. Sucks to be you, Queensland!) we all bundled into cabs and made for the nearest (only?) Baltic restaurant in town. Nick and Ivana could barely contain themselves as they explained to us just how much meat we would be eating. They failed to fully explain the amount of onion that we would be eating with the meat: enough to give you breath that could give a man a stroke from twenty paces. Nonetheless, the prospect of working our way through the equivalent of an abattoir’s daily output was too good to refuse; and, I might add, utterly delicious.

As we sped our way towards our impending meat feast, Sarah suggested that we do something completely out of character every month. I’m buggered if I can think what could possibly beat this, but if I find out, I’ll let you know.

I love baking. It’s a bit ironic since I’m actually not much a pudding fan – I would always pick a starter if I had to choose, and a cheese plate over an ice cream if I were really pushed. I think it might be the objectivity with baking that means I can admire my success without wanting to make it totally perfect. I always feel like I can make savoury stuff more appealing; with puddings I don’t feel the same pressure. Odd, isn’t it?

This weekend I had two great excuses to get some serious baking done: it was James’s birthday, but I also had a pile of goodies in my kitchen for various reasons and next week I’m starting my healthy living regime. I’m going to New York in June (more on that to follow) and I have to look amazing. I need to use all that sugary, fatty shit up, and a party means I won’t be eating it all myself. Everybody wins! Having seen this fabulous idea on Bakerella, I thought I would give it a go. The plan was to bake chocolate brownies, and serve them with ice cream in individual chocolate bowls. The brownies turned out wonderfully; I remembered I have a fan-assisted oven just before they all burned to a crisp. Dark chocolate brownies with white chocolate chips and mixed nuts and raisins: even I couldn’t get enough of them. They’re like confectionery heroin. I defy you to stop at just one.

The chocolate bowls were a little less successful. The first batch, in fact, were a complete disaster. The instructions say the chocolate doesn’t need to be ’superhot’; I would say that any heat at all is a bad idea. You need to get the chocolate just before it starts to solidify for the best results. Don’t do what I did, and dip your water balloons into the chocolate while it is still warm. Nothing makes a bloody mess quite like 12 chocolate-covered water balloons exploding in your kitchen. The place was completely covered. There was a man-shaped clean patch on the wall behind me – I was plastered in the stuff from head to toe. Everything else was dripping in molten cocoa products, and it took me half an hour to clean the place up. The second batch survived the chocolate immersion and, a few hours later when the I popped the balloons, I had twelve shell-like chocolate bowls to serve at dinner.

They were a hit for the novelty, but the brownies were the overall winner. Make some for yourself and enjoy!

Ingredients

• 100g chocolate (70% cocoa solids)
• 110g butter
• 50g plain flour
• 225g granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• white chocolate chips/nuts/marshmallows (I used 200g mixed nuts and raisins, and 200g white chocolate chips, but you can throw in whatever you like. If it starts to get too stiff, throw in some more chocolate).

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180?C. (If your oven is fan-assisted, you’ll probably want to set it a bit lower.) Grease a baking tray or oven-proof dish.
2. Melt the butter and the chocolate slowly together.
3. Mix the other ingredients, except the nuts/chocolate chips/whatever, together in a large bowl.
4. Add in the molten butter and chocolate to the mixture.
5. Mix in the nuts etc, then pour the whole lot into the tray/dish.
6. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes.

On Friday night, Genevieve and I took part in a brand new night out in Sydney: a mystery dining experience called Secret Foodies. Apparently it’s based on a similar idea in New York, where groups of strangers all meet up at a mystery location and have dinner together under the guise of reviewing the food. Really it’s more of an excuse to go out and meet people, and who can complain about that?

We got our first text notification at around 6pm, telling us which suburb of Sydney to get to, so Gen and I met in the pub beforehand to get a few drinks in before meeting a load of strangers. I find it helps to be half-cut when making new friends. At 7:30 we got the address of the restaurant and jumped in a cab. The taxi took us on a magical mystery tour of the back streets of East Sydney before depositing us outside our venue: Café Pacifico.

The restaurant is crazy: Gen and I were straight on the tequila shots with Bloody Mary chasers while she explained to me (having eaten there before) that dancing on the tables and bar was actively promoted later on in the evening. We took our seats, introduced ourselves to our neighbours and got stuck in. This being an online, multimedia kind of experience we intended to tweet about the food as a kind of live review, but after the first course the drinks kicked in and we couldn’t really be bothered with that any more.

The food was good, although having such a large group it was a bit of a fight to get everything out at once and keep it warm; I had a couple of cold tacos towards the end because (a) it had been sitting around for a while and (b) there was so much food I felt guilty if I didn’t try to finish it off. I hate seeing food go to waste. We did get the chance to make our own margaritas under the instruction of a very well-informed cocktail waiter. (Is there a title there I should be using? It sounds like the kind of job that would have a great name, like ‘mixologist’ or something.) Mine was a triumph, and I enjoyed every drop of it. Naturally after four tequilas, a margarita and a number of beers, it was only a matter of time before I was dancing on the bar with a French girl, a bandit mask and a maraca held together with masking tape. That’s just par for the course.

The night itself was a success. The other diners were generally quite lovely and everyone seemed friendly and chatty. I did my best to pimp Gen out to some guys at the bar and then discreetly leave while she got chatting. The girl needs no help from me, but it’s always nice to feel like you’ve played a part. I flounced about, chatted to some people and drank more as the night went on. Once you’ve danced on the bar you’ve always got something to talk about, no matter who you’re speaking to.

At the end of the night we tripped off to the Green Park Hotel for a drink with Nathan, before sensibly calling it a night at about 1am. A different dining experience, a catch up with friends and an early night? I call that a great Friday.

Things don’t stop happening to me simply because I’m old enough to know better. I may be 30 years old, but I still know how to have a good time. Crazy shit just seems to hunt me down. If all this happened to you in one weekend, you’d be unhinged like me too.

Bitten by a dog

My friend Nick came to stay over ANZAC weekend and I took him to a housewarming party on Sunday afternoon. The original plan was to arrive around 2pm, stay for a few hours and then leave and do some traditional ANZAC stuff like stand in a pub betting on coin-tossing with strangers until closing time. What actually happened was thirteen solid hours of drinking ending on the stage at Stonewall. Somewhere in there photos were taken of me holding a mannequin’s decapitated head, Nathan and I had a glitter fight with a pair of sparkly bowler hats, and in all the excitement the poor dog didn’t know what to do with himself and nipped me quite fiercely on the back of the leg. I still have the scabs to prove it. I’m not sure why people keep asking me if my tetanus is up to date – unless things have switched and you now catch rabies from a rusty nail – but I’m not foaming at the mouth or dead yet, so I think I’m in the clear.

Throwing up in the gutter

In my defence, I had barely had anything to drink on the public holiday Monday, so I don’t believe I deserved this, but having started drinking my own body weight in alcohol the Friday prior, I probably had it coming. Monday evening Nick and I decided that a quiet night was in order, and headed to Blockbuster for a DVD and some crisps. Nick got himself a Thai on the way; I couldn’t face a thing after going to lunch earlier in the day and forcing down some of the richest cuisine in Sydney, despite looking and feeling like a diarrhoetic turd.

The funny thing about being sick is that you know you are going to do it well in advance. There’s obviously some signal that tells your brain things are about to kick off, even though you can’t really feel it in your stomach just yet. I decided to turn around once I got that sign, but as we were at a crossing I had to wait for the traffic to stop before I could run home to vomit. An icy feeling set in as the blood drained out of my face, while hot shivers started across the rest of my body. I made it halfway home before I ran out of time and projectiles of half-digested barramundi, beef souffle, capsicum and courgette flowers came screaming out of my mouth and down the window of Lonsdale. If you work in the Crown Street store, I’m sorry. Poor Nick, on his birthday no less, had to leap three feet backwards to keep his flip-flops clear of the mess, and it was all in vain. What a champion friend I am: come to stay with me for your birthday and I’ll throw up all over your feet. Classy.

Getting locked out

This final treat wasn’t even my fault, though I had been expecting it for some time. Only having one set of door keys is just asking for trouble. My flat is tiny and there was no way anyone could stay here without catching whatever cold I had at the time. Nick, covered in my stomach juices, stood less chance than most. Tuesday I went off to work and he occupied himself with whatever he did that day, culminating in a flu-busting sleep all afternoon. When I got home I rang the bell and waited to be buzzed in. Nothing happened, and I was about to ring again when he appeared at the gate.
“This would have gone really well…if I had both keys.” he said.
It doesn’t take a maths whizz to work out that two locks + only one key = you’re fucked. The real estate agent had closed five minutes earlier so all we could do was call a locksmith and wait. What do Sydneysiders do at 6pm on a weeknight with an hour to kill? They drink, or they eat. Drinking was still off the cards after my ride on the chunderbus, so dinner it was. And that is how I ended up in a Vietnamese restaurant on a Tuesday night with a man in his pyjamas. Now, I don’t know about you, but if being a thirtysomething means more tales like this, then I’m looking forward to the next decade.

Let’s go have fun.

Sometimes writing is good to get things off my chest. Other times, it can be good to put off writing about something until I have thought about it some more. At these times getting it down on paper is more like ordering my thoughts; like running them through a sieve to get all the crap out before I can make anything out of them. This is one of those times.

I am having a good time being single. However, lately it seems that the whole world wants to settle down and get married. Every man I meet is looking for a boyfriend, which is fine, but when I say that I’m not that guy things go decidedly sour very quickly. Most recently a guy actually told me off for leading him on because, I can only assume, I didn’t tell him right at the start that I wasn’t looking for a long-term relationship. (The idea of ‘looking for a long-term relationship’ is odd to me anyway – I always thought these things happened organically. It appears I was wrong.) This latest episode got me wondering whether everyone is looking to settle down, or if I am the cause of my own problems. Turns out it might be a bit of both.

Last week in the pub, I lamented my sorry tales to the NEC, who told me that my problem was being too nice. “You are friendly,” he said. Ordinarily it would be a compliment. “You need to be more shrewd. You can see why people get the wrong idea. Don’t text back straight away; leave them hanging for a while. They’ll get the message.” The problem is I’m crap at that kind of thing. I like to text back straight away or I forget – just ask my sister. I adore her, but I’m rubbish at keeping in touch. If I don’t do it immediately, you’ll be waiting till Christmas to hear from me. Whatever the relative merits of playing games, I hate it when people do it to me and I’m dreadful at doing it to anyone else.

When I discussed it over cocktails with my friend, Sarah, we came out with quite a different answer. “You’re not too nice: you just can’t help it. It’s not your fault you are charming,” she said. Of course people would want to settle down with me, the conversation went, I’m freakin’ fantastic. I’m a victim of my own loveliness, it seems. Whether it’s true or not (and there are days when I assure you it most certainly is not), friends who can take your crushed confidence and turn it into ego-restoring compliments like that should be treasured forever.

Finally I talked about it with James, and he looked at me incredulously. He often wonders what planet I live on, and this was definitely one of those times. He cut straight to the chase.
“People are looking for love,” he said. “Maybe you aren’t, but most people are. It’s what people do.”
He could always tell me what I needed to hear when I didn’t want to listen – in this case: “it’s not all about you”. I’m not too nice: if anything I’m rather selfish. But he made me see that there’s nothing wrong with that, so long as I remember that the rest of the world doesn’t necessarily see things my way. So you want to date me? I’m flattered, not faulty. Thanks but no thanks, and that’s all there is to it.

Right, what’s next?