housewife

❀ nueva andalucia



















































❀ i've been playing the little housewife lately, waking up at 8am with jerry, preparing him a good hearty breakfast and seeing him off to school each day, then cleaning the house. he openly admits he wouldn't do the same for me. i'm a good catch, to be honest.

i go for my morning walks through the rich area of town, just to see how the other half live. the deeper in you go, the bigger the mansions, the wider the roads and the thicker the big green hedge fences. this must be where the beckham's have their house. i know they have one in our neighbourhood somewhere...... imagine if they read one of my nanny flyers that i've posted up all around the place, and happened to need a nanny... although my old colleague was friends with their last nanny, who sold her story to the UK tabloids for a huge amount of money, about david cracking onto her and how much of an arsehole he was to poor victoria.

the streets in this area are always silent and deserted, except for the little latino servants and gardeners pushing wheelbarrows and doing maintenance work with the air of resentment hovering around them. i see their side-ward glares- they think i'm one of the mansion-owners.

but i'm just here for the exerices, and to gather up data for an article i've decided to write for a travel magazine about this gorgeous place....

❀

anxiety

the bar ❖



















































❖ since my documentary's gonna be on tv in less than 6 weeks, my mum's been pushing me to tell my story to magazines and newspapers...
to spark their interest, i had to write a short story myself and i was putting it off for so long, because even thinking about the bar in costa rica gives me anxiety.

as soon as i started writing, i was instantly transported to that time, and the panic flooded over me. its not that i regret the experience at all. it was one of the best in my life. but of course the magazines want to know all the gritty stuff- all the dramas, the hair-pulling and the nightmares...

i had to squeeze into my story the constant lack of money; the debt-collectors chasing us so that we had to lock ourselves into the bar during the day and ignore their knocking, the 4 maxed-out credit card debts which haunted us daily, the landlords at both the bar and our apartment hunting down back-rent which we couldn't pay (eventually we had to abandon our apartment and move in with my brother's girlfriend)......... then there was the accountant ripping us off, law-suit threats made against us, the alcoholic chef stealing from us, having to illegally send our passports to the border to get renewed, not knowing if they'd return, the municipality refusing to give us permission to open a few days before the grand opening night, then making us resubmit, resubmit and resubmit, the constant visits by police, sent by the jealous neighbouring bar, the flood caused by dodgy tradesmen, the sabotage to our car by attempting robbers, the ferocious arguments between my brother and i, who at times were close to disowning each other...... it goes on and on.

but of course there were the good times as well. nights when the bar was packed like sardines, and money was rolling in, there were the crazy parties, the romance, the friendships, the pride over how beautiful the bar was and the feeling of having succeeded in achieving our dream against all odds..... the tv show doesn't even really brush the surface of what happened. i think my brother plans to make a movie about the real story one day.....

♧

giorgia ✿

❄ some of giorgia's 2009 winter collection
























❀ me, donna & giorgia












❀ jerry and I have been giving each other the silent treatment all day, after an argument over a movie title.... when there's not much drama in our lives, we just create our own! ;o)

i was browsing facebook and came across a newspaper clipping, featuring a stunning ball-gown, created by my very own, super-talented cousin, giorgia, who's recently finished her degree in fashion design. she's starting her own fashion label, which is sure to be a huge success...

i remember the two of us as teenagers, cutting big triangles out of the bottoms of all our jeans to make them into flares and sewing in triangles of embroidered flowers. then getting out nanna's sewing machine and making little hippy skirts. my projects were always half-arsed, with the pockets on crooked, the hem hanging down and loose threads everywhere (and i wore them like that!) but giorgia always took hers home and did the finishing touches...

every time i've seen her over the last few years she's been wearing one of her own beautiful creations and now she's in newspapers and starting to advertise for her new collection... the dresses are gorgeous! when (and if) i ever get married, i want my dress to be made by giorgia :o)

on that note, i guess i should start speaking to jerry again...

✿

halloween

halloween at kashmir cocktail lounge ☆
















halloween on the cruise ship ☆





























☆ there's a huge party happening this weekend in puerto banus to celebrate halloween. since we havn't been out partying in ages, i'm trying to convince jerry to have a night out...

halloween has always been one of my favourite festivities. mainly because i love dressing up in costumes. but when i was a kid, it was more about the candy. since my parents were health freaks, we never had any junk-food in the house, so halloween was a chance to stock up on it.

halloween was never very big in australia and most of the time we had to explain the tradition to the people in each house before demanding the candy. nevertheless, mum and dad encouraged my brothers and i, every year, to dress up and go 'trick-or-treating' around the neighbourhood.

every year we wore the exact same costumes. joe was a ghost, (the lazy costume) which just involved cutting 2 eye-holes in a bed sheet and throwing it over his head; samuel was a devil (the gayest of all costumes) in tight red skivvy and leggings, red horns and tail; and i was the witch with a long black dress, home-made cardboard pointy hat and the most bizarre thing: black plastic glasses with nose attached in the shape of a big penis!!! instead of being the classic warty witches nose, it was one of those funny sex toys that somehow ended up in the kids costumes! mum and dad didn't seem to have a problem with the nine-year-old me wearing it while doing rounds of the neighbourhood!

several years later in high school, my girlfriends and i decided to go trick-or-treating for fun, even though we were way too old for it. by teenage-hood we were more excited about the tricks than the treats, so after a while, even if the people gave us sweets, we decided to trick them anyway. we stuck to the classic tricks of 'egging' the houses and covering the front door in shaving cream, until sarah (who was always the most evil ;o)) suggested the good old shit-in-a-paper-bag-and-set-it-on-fire-then-ring-the-door-bell trick. to this day i cant remember who shat in the bag, or if we just used her dog's shit....i do remember my costume was the most impressive with the old penis nose.

if only i had it with me to wear this weekend!
;o)

sensei

♘ today i've been busy getting together my application for sydney university next year.... that is providing that australian immigration ever feel like granting jerry's visa....

after giving up on my dream to study film-making (well, i havn't really given up, just postponed it for when i can afford the fees), i decided that a master of teaching is probably more practical right now....

teaching english has taken me around the world and given me some of the best experiences of my life, and i've met some amazing friends along the way..... and the teaching part was sometimes fun too. i especially loved being called 'sensei' in japan ;o)

if i get the masters, i can work in public schools in any country and i can teach subjects i prefer, like languages and art. it'll take 2 years, so ill graduate at the same time jerry finishes his hotel management course....and the world will be our oyster once again ;o)

this is the dream anyway. i havn't wanted to think about what we'll do if jerry's visa gets denied. its looking like london is plan B but i'd really like to not be banned from my own country...

fingers crossed ♘

hola guapa

at the saturday market ☼


























☼ jerry's friend My is staying with us for the weekend, which is really nice. i never get sick of jerry's company, but lately we've been bickering a bit, probably from spending so much time together, so its good to have a guest in the house.

today we all spent the afternoon at the saturday street market, which i love and is full of bargains and designer rip-offs; sunglasses, bags, jewelery and clothes. and it's really good practice for my will-power to rub my own face in all those bargains and not buy a single item...

since it was a beautiful sunny day, i wore appropriate clothing (singlet and shorts) and then instantly regretted it when the first of a million 'hola guapas' and indecent comments began from all the sleazy spanish and disgusting moroccan stall owners. My had more intelligently worn a long sleeve shirt, which she decided not to take off.

we began to discuss the issue- surely that sort of slimy behaviour doesn't get them anywhere with women! it certainly isn't good business practice, since as soon as they started up, i lost interest in their wares and moved on to the next stall, cursing them under my breath.

and i realised, that's a really nice thing about sweden. the guys are not sleazy at all! some girls argue that this is unfavourable (elin ;o)). and its true, i was shocked when i first moved to stockholm and didn't receive a single whistle or car toot, didn't turn a single male head.... not even construction workers stopped work to have a perve! even on girls nights out (and my girlfriends are stunning), few swedish guys tried their luck....

it took a while for my ego to recover from this, but i soon realized that it was much nicer!..... to be able to walk in public places alone without being harassed, to feel comfortable walking past a group of guys knowing they won't start clapping.... generally to feel respected.

i consider myself a feminist in my own way, even though jerry calls me a hippy and a bull-dyke for it. but he has the good fortune to come from a country that doesn't seem to have as much need for feminism.

anyway i guess while i'm here in spain ill just try to accept the 'hola guapa's' as compliments and leave it at that.

☮

sordid icky

the getaway















































me & my















my day's mission yesterday was to meet up with annika, who put the coyoto ugly ad in the paper. the meeting spot was way over the other side of town, so i dragged an unwilling jerry along with me....

afterwards, he was so glad that he was there to witness such a spectacle! (and to forbid me to accept the job). i've never met such creepy eccentrics!!!

annika, a 60 year old has-been party-queen, with henna-red hair, a botox face and the look of a brothel madam, was waiting at the pub, accompanied by her wierd, weasel-ish 20 year old son. they both sat there chain smoking and chugging down pints of beer, at 4 o'clock on a thursday afternoon. i recognised her type; taste for the booze, loves to talk your head off with her crazy ideas and to brag about her accomplishments when its obvious she's just a washed up desperado.

her son sat there muttering to himself as she rattled on, switching from topic to topic, contradicting herself and then nagging her son to fetch her another packet of cigarettes. the coyote show seemed like a big pipe dream and totally unorganized. all she had was 2 hungarian girls, a wannabe dance choreographer and an irish pub willing to host the show. of course she thought she could 'squeeze me in'....

she then switched topics to her photography studio and offered to 'help me' with a modeling folio and then i knew for sure she was a scammer. when she started to bitch out her own mother who'd moved to spain to live with her, jerry had had enough. he excused us and we made the great escape.

as we walked towards the bus stop, we looked at each other and began laughing in shock, but soon fell into a disturbed silence, as if we'd been somehow traumatised. we couldn't shake the feeling for several hours!

what a horrible glimpse into someone else's life. i was so disturbed i couldn't even write a blog!

today we had a more cheery day with milkshakes down by the port with jerry's friend My.

;o)

wanted: coyote ugly dancers

lucy & me ♡




































❆ i was searching the job section of marbella's english newspaper, praying to find something......anything, to get me out of the house. maybe there was someone who needed a secretary, an experienced english tutor, or maybe an english-speaking nanny...
.... sure enough, hidden in the long list of telemarketing and real estate scams, there was the magic ad:

'coyoto ugly dancers wanted for bar shows. call annika'

what a blast from the past! it was nearly ten years ago that lucy and i became the official coyoto cowgirls of fullhouse salloon bar, shepparton. what a job! basically to walk around socialising (and drinking as much as we liked) giving out free drinks at the door and getting on stage to pour cowboy shots into a crowd of screaming open mouths.... really really classy ;o)

for $25 an hour, cash in hand, back in the day, and the limitless drink card, it was the best job we could possibly have imagined! we even became local celebrities for it; they talked about us on the radio, jealous girls cursed us in the streets, the works...
i get all nostalgic even thinking about it!

so, did i call the number in the newspaper? ....of course i did!

♥

No Way San Jose

today i'd planned a cultural day of museum and art gallery visiting. i made a list of addresses of the various free galleries around town and went to pick jerry up from his spanish class. by the time we arrived in the old town of marbella, the galleries were all closed for siesta.

it's not the first time our entire day's plans have been ruined by this spanish tradition. jerry condemns the siesta as downright laziness and idiotic business policy, but i think there's something nice about it...

the spanish enjoy life. they work to live, they don't live to work. and if they're still closing up shop for 3 hours every afternoon for a nap, during tourist low-season, in the middle of an economic crisis, then they mustn't be doing too badly. im glad they havn't given up that custom and joined the rat race...

we can visit galleries and be cultural another day. instead we go home and watch tv.... michael moore's documentaries are awesome! and that reminds me- today i found out that we got a time slot for 'No Way San Jose' (our documentary). and its prime time- yay!!!
for you aussies, the first episode's gonna air on ABC2 on wednesday, december 9th at 8pm (for 6 weeks)...please WATCH IT!!!! so much blood, sweat and tears went into making it.... and its really good, even if i do say so myself...

;o)

karma

i took this photo on san blas island, central america.







i'm feeling much more positive today! its amazing what half a jar of nutella and a chat to your mum can do for your spirits!

instead of tormenting myself about my future, and wallowing in such first-world problems, i'm going to relax and enjoy this holiday and be thankful for living in such a beautiful place and having so much free time..... according to the laws of karma and reincarnation, such un-gratefullness on my behalf should probably mean that in my next life ill be born as a balinese peasant who has to wake at the crack of dawn to tend rice-paddies every day 'til i'm 60 and never learn to read or write or travel outside my own village.....

oh, touch wood!!! ....its time to start doing charitable acts so as to earn a decent re-birth.... i ask jerry what he thinks about saving up and going on a mission to nicaragua, to volunteer in an orphanage. it could be really fun actually. you know those projects where they clean the place up, do some renovations, help the kids to decorate with colourful wall murals and mosaics, plant a veggie garden etc...we could film the whole thing and make a documentary out of it....!

i have a friend (english joe) who lived in africa, doing volunteer teaching for several years and said it was the best experience of his life. his stories used to blow my mind. the people had absolutely nothing and death from HIV was a daily occurrence, but they were still SO happy! joe's students were so respectful and eager to learn that in his classrooms full of 80 kids, there would be complete silence- just a sea of big white smiles in black faces. (such a stark comparison to the hellish classes full of bratty russian mafia kids that i taught at summer school in croatia a few months ago)...

i'm impressed that jerry's actually into the orphanage idea and i officially add it to my list of 'things to do'.

;o)

the old conundrum

my favourite wes anderson film

i've hit the old 'what am i gonna do with my life' wall again. it happens every time im in a situation (like this) where i have too much time on my hands to think about my future...

when i was at university i lived in a share house with two very good girl friends of mine, jeanette and liz. they both knew exactly what they wanted to be from first year. jeanette wanted to be a psychologist and liz wanted to be an art curator. i had no idea, so of course, i did an arts degree and just picked subjects that seemed interesting slash easy. 

ten years later, jeanette's doing groundbreaking research in clinical depression and is about to move to london where she'll work as a psychologist and liz is the executive assistant to the dean of RMIT university. (its not art curation but its a good job!)... 

although my problem of lack of direction, or perhaps of superfluous directions, has meant i've travelled the world and gained lots of different work experience from english teaching to bartending, what troubles me is that i'm nearly 30 and i still don't have a career.....and it feels like its getting a bit late to find one!  

i know this is a classic complaint and normally when other people express similar predicaments i always brush them off with 'ah, doesn't matter, the most interesting people don't know what they're doing with their lives, its good to experiment, you'll discover your passion when you're ready'...etc. but the truth is i've probably been trying to convince myself.

its not that i'm not ambitious. i have loads of dreams. for example i'd love to make my own movies or even to work on a wes anderson or sofia coppola film set. but when jerry forces me to do an internet search on available entry-level jobs in the film industry, its true there aren't many paid ones.....

so i guess ill just bludge around until i find the next shit-kicking job to pay the bills and hope that one day someone's gonna come up to me and say 'hey, you're way too good for this job, you're wasting all your potential! i know what the best job in the world is and you'd be perfect for it!'.....  any of you....? 

;o)

prison stories

jerry invited his classmates sofia and brooke over today for a barbecue. after some 'sun-baking' (an expression i've discovered is unique to australia), we sat on the terrace drinking beer and exchanging shocking stories, which is something that always turns into a competition, especially with jerry and i. these days, shocking incidents in our lives, even the shameful, humiliating and disgraceful ones, turn instantly into story opportunities, notches on the belt and sources of pride. we almost welcome them!

but today brooke took the cake. the innocent, blonde, american girl-next-door was arrested by police while intoxicated and under-age, dressed in a kinky police-woman costume (she'd been at a halloween party). she was thrown in a prison cell, still in the costume, with three other women, one who'd just stabbed her husband to death, one drug addict and one drunk-and-disorderly. she was still in her kinky cop costume when they took her mug shot. that photo would have been my most prized possession and my permanent facebook photo if i was her!

jerry tried to show her up with his prison story and i found myself feeling jealous and regretful that i'd never been locked up to be left with a scandalous jail story to tell....

but as hilarious as jerry's criminal record is to people who know him, it's the reason we're not back in australia already and thats pretty annoying...

✌

anniversary

♥ first date in venice





























































♥ the first time i saw jerry was on his first day on the cruise ship, serving drinks in the pool bar in his crisp white uniform. he looked across the bar at me with his bright blue eyes, blonde back-slick and white toothpaste smile and i thought he was such a pretty-boy, he had to be gay. i've since discovered that groomed, ken-doll, metrosexual look is the swedish look.

that night in the crew bar i ran into him again and since i was pissed and wearing a mask (it was a masquerade ball), i decided to show off the swedish expressions id learnt from an old colleague, beginning with 'slicka min snippa' (which i wont translate) ;o)

i wasn't interested in him at all, but each day on the pool deck, he tried again and again to hit on me while there were no guests around, asking if i wanted to watch a movie in his cabin, if i was going to the toga party, would i go out for dinner with him.. etc.. i enjoyed the attention and made my rejections carefully ambiguous.

after a few hilarious nights out with him in istanbul, ukraine and then mykonos, i finally realised that i actually really liked this guy, who was like no one id ever met. when the ship anchored in venice, i agreed to go on a date with him and as we walked together across the dock, in the most romantic city in the world, a huge shooting star shot across the sky in front of us and it felt like we were in a really corny movie.

tomorrow is exactly one year since that day. anniversaries are a pretty sentimental, girly thing, and i've never kept track of them in the past, but i think you know when you've found 'the one' and i guess finding them is a really nice thing to celebrate. :o)

the Russell dynasty

my family coat of arms













today my brothers had a meeting with a big-time investment group, 'the melbourne angels', to present the new iphone application they've designed called 'DreamWalk' -(check it out here)- it's like a mobile treasure hunt with prizes donated by companies who want to advertise.
its a pretty big deal. they're asking for a million dollars to market it.....
and i'm one hundred percent sure they're gonna get it. not just because its a genius idea but because i've always known that my brothers are gonna be rich and famous. some people are just so clever and talented that it seems they're destined for it. i always thought i was going to be as well, like we'd create a big Russell dynasty ;o)

jerry reckons everybody thinks they're special and that they're gonna be rich and famous... i don't think that's true..... is it?

anyway, i've been to about a thousand fortune tellers over my life, its just something i've always been into. i think it started when i was in high school when i worked twice each year in an ice cream stall at a hippy festival called 'earth haven' that my godmother ran. my god-sister and i were the ice-cream scoopers and every time id have a break, id sneak off to get my future told by the nearest tarot reader, astrologist, palm reader or psychic, who all had stalls set up.... and they all told me i'd be rich and famous. one told me i'd travel the world and that i'd be both independently wealthy and that i'd marry a wealthy man. (i could use this to keep jerry on his toes, but of course he doesn't believe in that shit).

my godmother herself is an amazing tarot card reader and has been reading my cards since i was a kid and predicting all sorts of random, detailed things. she told me years ago that she'd see my name in lights before i was 30....

...two years left to hit the big time. ;o)

povos

shiny face-maskers








visualising..........































✥ with both of us unemployed and me unemployable, we calculate a daily budget based on the funds we already have. it turns out that after rent, we've got €10 each per day to spend on food, water, internet, mobile phone credit, bus tickets and anything else we can afford, which will be nothing.... !!!!!

neither jerry or i are used to budget-living to this extreme! but in a way its fun, making the money stretch the distance, and its actually pretty romantic, enjoying all the free things in life like long walks, cooking meals and reading books together on the terrace. jerry even lets me do a pedicure and face-mask on him!

as we sunbathe by the pool, i pick up an art-auction magazine left behind by one of our rich neighbours. its full of andy warhol scribbles worth a million dollars, antique chinese vases and at the back, the real-estate section full of castles and huge seaside villas.

i begin to daydream when i'm reminded of the documentary movie 'the secret' which promises: if you want something badly enough, you have to visualise it every day, in detail, and eventually it will come true.... my brother told me that him and his girlfriend have been designing their dream-house and visualising it for ages... so i begin to note down some ideas. a castle would be nice. or maybe a hillside tuscan villa. tree lined driveway, vineyards, swimming pool of course... this is gonna be a work in progress :o)

Tour of the apartment

the new apartment!!

the street market






paying the rent

we both fall in love with the apartment as soon as we step inside. its spacious and homely, its got a terrace and a pool and is fully furnished in fresh ikea style, not like all the granny floral and cane, 70's, bad-taste places advertised online.

since its a short-term lease, we have to pay the whole lot in cash upfront, and parting with that much money is a bit scary! but we're so happy in our beautiful new home!!!
we explore the area... there's a supermarket directly next door, a street full of restaurants around the corner, an outdoor mall down the road and a huge street market on saturdays!

i'm feeling like its my lucky day when, on the way back from the market, 'small world' rings me to tell me i've got the job! 'so, you've got your social security number and everything..?'. they add in at the end.
' ah....no. can't you pay me cash in hand?'....
'no, we can be fined tens of thousands of euros for that'.
and everything comes crashing down again.

i guess spain isn't like it used to be. jerry sweetly assures me he'll look after me while we're here, but i don't want that! i came here to work!

small world

on my way to the interview at small world






itching to unpack our suitcases in a real apartment of our own, we get serious about house hunting. we call up numbers on spanish real estate websites and most of them either don't answer the phone or tell us they'll call back and don't! what the hell?!

so we drop in to all the agencies in the area and they all try to tell us there's nothing in our price range, which is not true. jerry's getting so angry at the 'dodgy spanish trying to rip us off' that he's nearly at boiling point when we finally reach a lovely little agency called 'Marbella For Sale'. a dutch woman and her english partner welcome us in and find a handful of places in our budget that they can take us to look at! theyre so genuine and honest and friendly that we regain our faith in human kind.

at 6 ive got my interview at small world. the owners, 3 young english guys, are all super cool and easy going. i pass the interview and start my trial straight away. all the bartenders, waiters and cooks are from different countries and really friendly. jerry and his friend My drop in incognito for a coffee. two old french guys who are apparently regulars call me over to be sleazy and as they tell me it doesnt matter if i have a boyfriend, i turn around to see jerry staring over at me, his eyes sparkling with jealousy and rage.

its a really fun place to work and at the end of my shift im pretty sure ive got the job.

wanker

the wanker





✽ day 8 of job hunting and we hit it hard-core. i dare to even break the number one dress rule by showing both legs and cleavage! we do a cross-country walk, applying at every bar and discoteca we come across. i decide to go in to a restaurant we ate at last week called 'small world'. by the time we arrive back home and check our emails, there's one sitting there from the english owner of small world, saying that he's received my 'amazing CV' and wants me to do an interview! im so excited to finally hear some positive news!!! and flattered that he thinks my CV's amazing. the thing is if i counted the number of jobs i've done in my life, it'd be over 200 so i can cook up a pretty good (and honest) CV for pretty much any type of job!

absolutely exhausted from walking all day, we retire to the beach and lie down on our sarongs in the hot afternoon sun. as jerry gives me a little shoulder massage i look over to see a dodgy old man, hiding himself in a bushy corner ten metres away, watching us and wanking behind a newspaper!
even when jerry stares at him he continues the job! shocked and repulsed, we begin packing up and jerry ponders 'well...maybe that's just his little fantasy... everyone has fantasies' to which i respond 'yeah but he's not allowed to force us to be part of his fantasy!'

the EU click

im woken at 9 in the morning (way before wake-up time) by a phonecall- someone asking in spanish to speak to a 'harib'. annoyed at being woken by a wrong number i rudely hang up.
an hour later the same person calls asking for 'cherry'. after i shout 'no! you have the wrong number again!' jerry snatches the phone from me.... 'yes this is jerry'.
oops! its the hard rock cafe asking to do an interview and im SO jealous that jerry got an interview and i didn't, that i begin a snooty tantrum.
an hour later they call me too. :o)

we get up early the next morning for our interviews. jerry's is first which suits me because he can prepare me for the questions they ask. since he's getting his student allowance from the swedish government, he doesn't care if he gets a job or not, so he's not nervous at all. when they ask him to summarise himself in three words, he says cockily 'im the best'.

i'm a bundle of nerves even waiting in line before my interview. when they sit me down in front of a panel of interviewers, i'm so nervous that after the fifth question i ask if i can switch to english. despite the nerves, i feel like i've done pretty well until they tell me at the end that if i get the job ill need a social security number. the spanish embassy has already told me that there are no spanish working visas available for australians..... i'm so sick of being left out of this annoying clicky, elite EU club!! >:o(

i leave feeling pretty disheartened and so desperate for a job that as we walk past the 'private gentleman's club' i decide to slip in a CV (for a clothed bartender job of course)... desperate times seek desperate measures. ;o)