Dear Winter Olympics 2006,

I am writing this to express my heartfelt anguish at being apart from you. I miss you! I think fondly back to all the moments four years ago that filled my heart with great joy and intense sadness. I remember the tears I shed in good times (oh, that women's hockey final) and bad (oh, that slip at the end of the figure skating pairs). It pains me that no-one in this ridiculously warm side of the world seems to give the time of day to cold weather sporting. I suppose it is difficult to love watching the powder fly under the alpine skiiers if you don't know what it's like to feel it shoved down the back of your jacket in the middle of february. Even still, you think they could devote a hint of a whisper of a newscast to inform me of the progress of my beloved, eh? Sadly, this is not the case. I have resigned myself to an era of darkness and futile longing. Sometimes I hear about you from friends and the familiar thrill is ignited in me once more. Often though, I am like flotsam on a sea of medal-count uncertainty. Anyway, I hope you are well and thriving, even without my obsessive rapt attention. It is certainly my deepest desire that we will be reunited one day - after all four years is not so long to wait when there is so much to experience together. Take good care of your dazzling, spectacular, brilliant self - and I promise to think of you every single time I get heat stroke. With much affection, M

Places/Things

Flinders St. Station, Melbourne. The place to meet under the clocks. I am genuinely curious as to why I (with an intense dislike and phobia of dead birds) am constantly stepping on them with my barefeet (or in this case, bits of them). Does this happen to other people too? Here, I am attempting to channel my intense horror into an art form by photographing the disgusting little foot. Tomatoes at my grandparent's house. Pronounced with the long 'a' please. Prickly pears. Yes, yes, it's cactus, it's fruit. beautiful grapes (there's a raging contest between my cousins and the birds over who can steal more, faster) Two types of plums from the same tree. Well, really two trees spliced together. Bizarrely wonderful, no? A myriad of shrimp, Footscray Market Crabs turn bright red when you cook them, right? Apparently some are bright red whilst still alive. However, until I was peering right at them, and they started writhing towards my nose, I was not aware of this. Apparently crabs and not-being-quite-dead are a theme of 2006? (Also Footscray Market).

A Blurred Dusk at Altona Beach

Luca with his cricket bat (apparently, along with the ball, you can also throw the bat, your shoes and mud during informal cricket games) And for the record, I would just like to inform the general body of people who may be reading this that - I may be a girl, but I too can pee off the pier into the ocean

Mouth Stuff

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome: Now in a can passion fruit + mango The Pepper Gamble: Most of them are mild, but every once in awhile you get one that's so hot you're rolling on the grass with the garden hose in your mouth for the next 2 hours. * Cheese balls, ravioli. Sorry K. . . . Peaches in my grandfather's wine Grape Bender Paddle Pops - they're popsicles made of frozen jelly that flop over instead of melting * true story