moving...

I'm moving overe here

Kanjilish

Kanjilish is a Firefox add-on that allows you to practice reading kanji while you read English web pages.

It replaces the first letter of a word with a kanji of similar meaning so, for example, the word read might appear as 読ead.

Here's an example from The Age with Kanjilish turned on...



(I hope they had some spare meals on the plane.)

kawaii counters

Cute Japanese counters for your blog!

The Island Room

This is the Island Room, the tourist class nightclub on the P&O liner Canberra. This photo is from a set of postcards sold on board...

"A vast colourful mural of Ceylon and the Pacific Islands surrounds this room, which has many uses: dances, concerts, games."

The 200-foot long mural was designed by British artist Mary Fedden. The room's designer John Wright wrote that "the painter covered the walls with so much vigour and colour that it was enough to match two or three of the colours for furniture coverings and leave it at that".

On the port side an annexe served as the children's playroom (where I would go up after tea to watch Stingray and Fireball XL5) and in hot weather the glass screen walls at the sides of the room could be opened onto the open decks leading to the pool.

Some of the original laminated plywood furniture still turns up in online auctions. Unfortunately the original 1960s interiors were obliterated in the 1980s - the ghastly makeover looks like it was designed by someone's mum.

The Foy's Santa

I saw a story about the giant Santa on the Whitcoull's bookstore building in Auckland. The beckoning Santa with the winking eye has been an Auckland Christmas fixture for nearly 50 years and luckily it looks like he's going to stay.

It reminded me of going into Melbourne as a kid and seeing the huge Santa on the old Foy and Gibson department store corner at Bourke and Swanston Streets. Why isn't he still there and where did he go? He must have disappeared sometime in the late 1960s, probably when Foy's closed down and briefly became Woolworths in 1967.

There was also a rooftop fun park but we never got to go. Rats.

The Foy's building looks very imposing in this early photo and I think it looked better before the extra floor was added. Just beyond Foy's up Bourke Street, you can see the Hoyt's Esquire Theatre and Mantons department store, which became Coles store 200 in the 1950s.

I saw a movie at the Esquire just before it closed. I used to go to that Coles too (they used to make announcements "Thank you for shopping at Coles Store 200") but it had the drabbest cafeteria so I preferred the Coles flagship store further down Bourke Street, now David Jones, or the one in the Nicholas Building on Swanston Street that had a fab Luncheonette in the basement with excellent milkshakes.

Both the Esquire Theatre and Coles store 200 were gutted in the 1990s to become Target. Although the interior is gone the facade of the Esquire is still there, hidden behind the Target sign on Bourke Street.

Project Christmassy

We were invited to join the Project Christmassy Flickr group so we thought we'd better get organised and so Christmas has arrived at Chez Bird.

We now have four xmas trees in the lounge room. Watching TV in the evenings with the lights glistening against the tinsel is like sitting in a twinkly forest. There are currently four trees...

The Big xmas tree, a green 1960s plastic tree with some festive, mostly retro, decos.

The Bird xmas tree, a turquoise aluminium delight, adorned with vintage bird xmas decs including a set of 12 wonderful xmas robins made in Hong Kong in the 60s.

The Japanese xmas tree is new but looks suitably old school and is decorated with adorable stuff we picked up in Japan, including some lovely chirimen owls made from kimono fabric.

The Vintage xmas tree is my favourite. It's only about a foot high and it's where the most special vintage santas live.

And now we have to make room for the 2 foot 1960s aluminium xmas tree I just bought on eBay! More photos on Flickr.

The Tao of Pooh

I've been experiencing anxiety attacks lately and they've been getting worse and worse. Friday night was probably the worst yet. Scary.

I'd been to the doctor on Friday afternoon and left with two sample packs of medication. They apparently come with some free side effects that seem far worse than what they're supposed to treat, so I've shoved them to the back of the cupboard and I'll take them back to the doctor next time I go.

In the meantime I'm using cognitive behaviour techniques to control some of my thoughts that are triggering the anxiety. These thoughts have been around for so long I've gotten kinda used to them, and they're getting sneaky too. When I try to head them off at the pass they often reappear moments later in disguise, so it takes a little while to recognise them and realise that they're back. But it is slowly working, I'm sure of it.

"Supposing a tree fell down, Pooh, when we were underneath it?" said Piglet.

"Supposing it didn't," said Pooh after careful thought.

A lovely day

I like Saturdays. 土曜日が好きです。

Actually Friday afternoon started the weekend off nicely with a workshop at the State Library where I caught up with Derry and saw Keely for the first time after a long time.

Keely, 久しぶりですね！

We had a little chat about learning Japanese. Her classes seem to be going well so I got all enthused and rang up Japaneasy as soon as I got home and booked myself into their week long JLPT 4 Intensive class in the first week of December. Back in August I registered for the first level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, and the test is coming up soon on 7th December.

On Saturday morning Wayne and I headed into Japaneasy to meet Mina and pay the fee, stocking up on pasta at Mediterranean Wholesalers on the way in. Unfortunately we found ourselves on the wrong side of the Christmas Parade so had to fight our way across Bourke Street before heading up in the creaky lift to the top of the Theosophical Society building, just across the road from Kanga Kanga.

Walking into Japaneasy was just like walking through a time/space vortex into a tiny bit of Tokyo. We were ushered into the Crane Room, decorated with a mural of Japanese Cranes and tiny folded origami cranes, where we filled out the paperwork and chatted in broken Japanese. I'm looking forward to the class but a bit nervous, my spoken Japanese needs work!

Next an early lunch at Tokio and a chat with Kiyomi and Etsuo, and then after a slight detour trying to get back past the Christmas Parade again, Wayne took me into a tiny shop in Little Collins Street where we ran into Kim. I loved the crocheted xmas decorations, very like the ones we picked up at Seibu Loft in Tokyo last year. Nice to hear that Kim is very into xmas too!

Making our way through the remains of the Christmas Parade we headed down a lane only to have a brass band start up the second we walked past, but it did lead us to a great shoe shop where I picked up a really nice pair of brown shoes.

Then to ever wonderful Outre Gallery to see the Hunt & Gather show and to order a Derek Yaniger print. Wayne discussed the colour of mount boards with Martin while Gemma shared her "corn trumpet" snacks with me. Martin thought they were very retro. We've ordered the One for the road pink elephant print, and also preordered a *signed* copy of the new Derek Yaniger book. Wayne isn't allowed to look because it's a xmas present, sshh.

Home made pizza for tea, and then settled on the couch with the dogs to watch a crazy 60s Japanese scifi DVD "The Mysterians" on the TV.

Kitchen garden stage one

A few weeks back I bought Lolo Houbein's book One Magic Square, about food gardening in a square metre sized plot. As she writes in the intro, "To start growing your own food without delay, put down this book, go out in the garden and select a spot in the sun" and that's what I did.

Lolo suggests you start with one square metre and then expand as the mood takes you, but I've been inspired and built the first garden bed 4 m long so I can start off with four of her garden planting suggestions. Her book has all sorts of rotation and succession planting schemes to try out.

Our soil is terrible, sand on top of clay, so I've started with layers of sugar cane mulch, pea straw and mushroom compost. I think it might be a while before we'll be ready to plant but I do have a couple of pots planted with tomato seeds which have just poked tiny green leaves out of the soil, and I've spent a pleasant hour or two flicking through the Diggers Club seed catalogue.

I've also taken Lolo's advice on "hardware" and we've begun stockpiling toilet paper tubes for seed planting later.

Willy and Kuma are also making use of the kitchen garden, it seems to be a choice spot to bury bones and while away a sunny afternoon.

Indian ring necked parrakeets

I recently got interviewed by Marty at his Ephemera blog about my collection of old ship menus, and I've been going through the box this morning looking at them.

Here's a dinner menu from the P&O-Orient liner Oriana. The cover is a beautiful painting by Keith Shackleton of Indian ring necked parrakeets, one of a series of six "depicting some of the birds seen in and around the countries and oceans served by P&O ships".



The chef's suggestion for this Saturday night in 1969 was Potage Fontanges, Poached Fillet of Dover Sole Duglere, Chicken a la King and Peach Tartlet. A note advises passengers to check the dinner menu at luncheon and order their dinner wines in advance so that they may be served at the correct temperature.

The menu includes a description of Chicken a la King which "originated in the United States where it is very popular" and was apparently a favourite of band leader Benny Goodman.

Potage Fontanges is, according to Old Foodie, a soup of peas and sorrel "named after Mlle. de Fontanges, Marie Angelique de Scorailles, one of the mistresses of Louis XIV". Duglere, as in the Sole dish, is a sauce with onions, shallots and tomatoes created by Adolfe Duglere at the Cafe Anglais in Paris.

These photos show the Oriana's First Class Restaurant, designed by Brian O'Rourke. After dinner the passengers would retire to one of the public rooms where liqueurs and coffee were served - your choice of percolated or Nescafe.