Ante up!

go Ferg!

http://www.timeout.com/chicago/articles/clubs/69144/getting-down-loadable

Things are good... we are considering moving to the beach. I'm watching Steve Zissou.

Reggie Watts

http://vimeo.com/134034

I really dig this guy - he's coming to sydney pretty soon, similar to Jamie Lidell but less soul and less heavy electronica. Great stuff


Reggie Watts: Out Of Control from Jakob Lodwick on Vimeo.

Am I a hipster?

I love it.

http://www.antiquiet.com/features/2008/11/how-do-i-know-if-im-a-hipster/

True or False:
“I would pay around 5-7 dollars for a Pabst at a purposefully shitty bar in a trendy neighborhood.”
“I am willing to spend 30-40 dollars for a single V-neck shirt at American Apparel or some more boutiquey (but still identical) shop, especially if it comes in neon.”
If you answered “False” to both of these questions, then congratulations! You are not a hipster. If you answered yes to one or both, I have unfortunate new for you: You might be a hipster.

Nooooooooooooooooooo!

Great time to visit australia.


I'm probably not the only person who just saw their net worth drop by 40 percent in the last month or two, but that doesn't make it any less ridiculous.

Hand-pressing Flash light

Rupal bought a flashlight which has a handle you squeeze to recharge, and we spent half an hour trying to read the caption on the back without breaking out in laughter. It's worth sharing. I've typed it exactly as is on the box, including the punctuation.

Product Characteristics:

1. This product is a new science and technology product and made with high and new science and technology. It can illuminate only placing

2. No need any power no environmental pollution. Low noise and health. Comparing with common torch,it can be several times on lift.

3. Con stantly using this health torch, it can benefit to your palm, arm and shouldter stretching and blood circulation,so as to let your hands relax and brain clever,hand and brain coor dinate and promote your brain memory and health composition.

Awesome!

The goings on

Anna is in town visiting, and luckily the weather is juuuuust right. Got back from Kangaroo valley a few minutes ago for Janet's 30th, 2nd time in 3 weeks we've been there - it's tough to leave. So gorgeous! We saw wombats, as you can see in this:

Here are some wild random pics of the weekend - love you!

camping adventure

now that we have a video camera I don't even really feel the need to provide commentary - just images... since this is pretty self explanatory.

With the fresh pack of gum

Click on the photo, event code is "rupal"and your sister. I think her name is Debra.

the debate in one minute, and a rant about vice presidential candidates

Like every american I'm speaking with are ill about the position we are in with the bailout that is needed to shore up our economy and putting it back on the right track. It's gotta be all about job creation. Health care reform, reducing takes has got to accompany trade as opportunity, not as competitive scary thing. All those things under the umbrella of job creation makes my head explode! This bailout is a part of that.

Oh Shit!

Back To the Grind

We're four weeks into Mr. & Mrs. Iselin. Married life so far is pretty great, though I'm not yet comfortable with the 'mrs.' part (nor the 'Iselin' part, while on that subject). Our time home was perfect and because of our wedding gift for the 'rents, we've got it on home video.

Coming back home to Sydney was difficult. The perfect blend of homesickness requires heaps of perfect weather, a dollop of Grand Canyon, two servings of wedding, and a few days at the Four Seasons to taste. The best cure for it is summer's approach in Sydney.

This weekend was fantastic. After weaseling our way into Diplo at the Oxford Arts Factory (which is a block away) on Friday night, I went to to James Squire Brewery in Darling Harbour to watch the first presidential debate with Democrats Abroad. Watching the debate with a room full of Americans was exciting... I get more riled about being an American when I'm abroad. After spending the rest of the day in the Rocks, I met Josh at Coogee beach with a picnic in hand. Josh was a bit pissed after a day at the races (to those Americans reading this... 'pissed' means drunk, and 'races' are the horse races where everyone wears outfits straight from the polo scene in Pretty Woman). Dinner on the beach and a movie. Today was more of the same - barbie with some good folk, beach, and now bed.

Check out facebook for some wedding pics!

The goings on

Apple store just opened in Sydney to the delight of dorks everywhere. Stupid people flew from the US of A to wait in line to go to a store they could have gone to in the US (where it's cheaper anyways). What in the insane is going on?

Then like 2 weeks later the iphone is released. It's complete mayhem. there is an 8 hr wait at the apple store.

Why can't I have one?

Check us out right here

http://sydney.citysearch.com.au/sydney-mediasmart-photogallery

"Fore-sta"

We went to Forester last weekend - it's pronounced "Fore-sta." A good way to remember it is to think of it as four-star with a twist, although I'd give it 3.


at a winery we went to in the middle of nowheres.

Make sure to click on the picture on the right - Rupal is the tiny dot in the corner. We went hiking at some mountain on the way home. Rupal thinks it was called mt. askot. I refuse to look it up.

Make sure to click on the pic on the left, Rupal is in mid air.

Wedding planning is taking over. Beginning to lose touch with reality. Reading a really good book though - it's call ed "The Brief Life of Oscar Wao." Highly recommended.

This weekend we did nothing. I didn't leave my bed except once to make tea - I had food poisoning from some faulty Friday night feast. Pretty sick. I watched Sopranos, and drank gatorade.

OK back to bed. :-( but before I do, here a picture I took 3 weeks ago of one of the best afternoons of my entire life. I'm prone to exaggeration, but damn look at this picture. It looks like a dream sequence from a movie about "HORS D’OEUVRES" which I clearly copied and pasted from the first website I could find that knew how to spell.

We're back at it again

tunaman, in search of tunaas usual

Ahoy,



Yea yea, this hasn't been updated in a long time. Like close to two months. And we have valid excuses, mostly having to do with Indiana Jones. But I'm going to skip those and get right into it.

The past few months have absolutely flown - most recently my parents came to town for my mom's 20th birthday...

These arehappy people

The tunaman came straight from Coachella, which was insulting and awesome at the same time. The crew went straight to the Hunter Valley upon arrival, and then after recovering from jetlag spent a few days in Sydney, and up to Cairns->mission beach -> dunk island.

grizzled as ever, tunaman attempts to be cute and fails

Dunk is a national park island with a resort, so we got to see wicked spiders and snakes but weren't too far away from gluttunous all-you-can-sneak-in-a-ziplock-bag seafood.

I didn't take this picture in a zoo, or at a farm for freaky poisonous creatures. This thing is not made of plastic. The photo is not blown up to 20x. This spider is the size of my torso.

Rupal and I smashed a coconut against the rocks like savages, but then enjoyed the plentiful bounty

After spending a day in the hot sun playing golf, archery, and other unfathomably weird sports we felt refreshed as ever

What else... we had a going away party for our friend Phil, with a costume theme of "p." Rupal was a princess, I was pee-wee herman (and a dead ringer). See facebook for snaps of that.

Much love and hope to update this a bunch more in the upcoming months.

Neglect

Sorry for being negligent, but traveling for work and parents being in town has been distracting.


Here is a picture of some happy people. I promise to add more in the next day or so.

Love,
Josh

oh bummer

It's been raining the last two days, we hit daylight savings in the wrong direction, and Radiohead is headlining Lollapalooza. Weak.



This is a picture of some cool dude we met in a pub in Tasmania to make me feel better. The red thing in the foreground is a bottle of champagne we pretended to steal from the guy next to him.

Rupal Rules!

Go Rups!

Go Rups!!

Does a digestible Sydney music scene exist?

My fiance and I moved here about 10 months ago from Chicago - we are late 20s working professionals who love to dance and are very into music but don't go to clubby clubs or stay out until 10am. We have friends and they are generally pub-goers, and none of them are in tune with any sort of musical happenings. We have gone out to Melt in Kingsx and Ruby Rabbit (or something like that) on Oxford, and that's as close as we've come to finding our "scene." We also had a fun night at Oxford Arts Factory once... we need more stimulus. Time Out was our go-to in Chicago and we had dj friends to help guide us, but TO hasn't really broken the surface here just yet and the dj friends are now in London/Chi.

Sydney seems somewhat clic oriented, so it's tough to break into social circles - we want to find places to go out are not big pubs with bad music and not untz untz clubs with bad music, but some middle ground with cool djs or bands, and we want to hang out with likeminded folk - I like to refer to us as yupsters (yuppy hipsters) but are totally down to hang with any music lovers, regardless of profession/ambition/sneaker collection. We like indie rock, electronic, and anything inventive. We are avid podcasters, and do maddecent, nyub, fabric, and npr.org on the regular, to name a few. Personally my favorite artists at the mo are Modeselektor, Panda Bear, Jens Lekman, and I just downloaded Devotchka which is excellent and the new Raconteurs album. A wide spectrum if you've heard some of those guys, but the theme is creative new stuff. We blog sometimes too.

Please holler. No we don't want a threesome.
Josh & Rupal

some textual delight

I'm on the road, so I'm going to regale you with tales of strong coffee and strange architecture instead of my normal photo dump with a title.

I was in London last week, and amidst work and meetings I had a weekend of fun and fancy free. Saturday I got to meet up with Kelly Love and a bunch of her friends in Kendal Green (they all taught English in Japan together, very interesting dynamic) - one couple had just had a baby and I played with their 6 month old and looked out at the cloudy rainy day and thought life was pretty good. We had tea and chatted about life in London, real estate, telecommunications, and babies - then moved on to "The Island," a trendy pub down the street.

I ordered a bloody mary, which was quite good - Kelly and I shared a lasagna made with sweet potato which seems like a bad idea but was executed with skill. Roy stopped by and complained about how all the beautiful women in London are married/committed, and we chatted music and London social life before Roy & I relocated to Shortage for dinner with Kim & a few others. We were 15 minutes late, and this was a huge deal. Dinner was fun if a bit uptight, but I enjoyed it. The food was mediocre, particularly compared to lunch - but this wasn't the main point of contention; I had gotten myself into trouble again by bringing up a controversial topic (Australian racism) which did not go over well. One of the beauties of not seeing people again: the lack of consequence of honesty.

We moved on to Bar Music Hall, which was loud and big - I'm done with loud and big, so after a few cocktails Roy and I ditched the crew and went to a place called "Jaguar Shoes and Handbags," which was exactly as hipster as it sounds. This place was incredibly crowded but small and nooky, which I was impressed with. Somehow we got drinks and a seat very quickly even amidst the mustaches and party dresses. Fantastic.

Kelly and 2 of hers met up, and Roy left, and I found myself dozing off. Was it the tequila, the lack of sleep, or the chair? I have no idea. All I know is I was about to get in a cab when instead I said "Now, we are going dancing." Off to "Plastic People," which is one of my favorite places I've ever been, ever. Half of a sign on the front door and no line/one rough looking East London bouncer leads you to believe you are walking into a sticky situation, but downstairs is nothing but an amazing sound system, a dj playing soul/electro/jazz/booty bass/jamaican dancehall/add other exotic genres here.

Sunday was mostly taken up with Scrabble in the oldest pub in Kensignton or Heathbridge or whatever, and a pie. My team won, which is a shocker since I have nothing to contribute in any scrabble situation. I also walked around Camden markets which I would encourage anyone and everyone to not do. Then I met up with Tania & Alfanso who took me to tea and then a light dinner back in red brick or red brick road. I missed the Spittlefields markets, which despite their name are evidently not to be written off.Good times... now I'm ready to go back home (in Barcelona at the mo, but more travel time ahead - off to Singapore). Adios.

Tuesday Surfing

On Tuesday, a vendor took me and my team surfing in Bondi. We left work at 4pm and took lessons as we watched the sun set.

Surfing was followed by some primo burgers (and fries and onion rings and wine and beers and dessert). In addition to a lot of other things, Andy ate a one pound burger, no sweat. All in all, a great Tuesday.

Hunter Valley is mountainous

Mountainous? Hunter Valley? I didn't realise in order to have a valley you must have mountains. I thought wine valleys were flat and boring, but hunter suprised me big time. We were hiking (bushwalking, the aussies call it) in some pretty rugged terrain.




We stayed at Willowgatehall, and it was excellent - the wine was delicious, and the weather was perfect. Another one for the record books.

Bamboo Banger

I had a work trip to India but had a free day





Sorry for our lack of communication, but things have been pretty nuts lately.






Love, Josh