Life in Pink

The Yellow Brick Road has been a wonderful journey. I want to say a heartfelt thank you to all my readers. Receiving your feedback and even just knowing that you were interested enough in me to read my blogs gave me motivation to write. And writing makes me happy. So thank you :o)

After moving back home to Oz, I felt like The Yellow Brick Road had run its course and I'd finally reached its end. Which is of course not the end at all, but the start of a new chapter in life...

Of course I couldn't stop writing though. And my new years resolution is to blog more regularly.
On that note........I'd like to invite you all to start following my new blog-

Life in Pink
http://lifeinpink-viennerose.blogspot.com.au/

Ive written a few posts so you might want to start from the first entry, to avoid confusion... :o)
Looking forward to an exciting new journey with you all.

Peace and love

Anna x

ode to bunny yaz ♥

♥ i'm just loving these days of freedom with the sun shining, as if the universe is saying to me 'yes, youre back on the right path again now and i'll shine on that'.

i helped out at my incredibly talented cousin giorgia's photo shoot for her new baby clothes range 'cheeky britches' and had a lovely day, getting a taste for a the life of a stylist. i've had lunch on the beach with giorgia, coffee on chapel street with bridie and a picnic on the beach with jerry! really living the life... and making the most of it before i start working again...

i even got the chance to have a long skype chat with my favourite bunny friend, the amazing bunny yasmin.

oh how i miss my bunnies, especially yaz, with her wicked sense of humour and arty eccentricity. what i love most about her is that she's on exactly the same wave length as me. it's not very often that you meet someone who is so similar to you that they have exactly the same hobbies and interests, and who you can cook up a trillion creative ideas with in the space of one phone call. most of the chats i have with yasmin i end up spending laughing my guts up. she has so many hilarious stories and i have to share one of them with you now...

a few years ago she won an english beauty pageant as england's 'miss spain' since her mum is spanish.. she was flown around the world with all the other international contestants to promote the pageant and stage performances, each beauty queen displaying her respective talent. yaz was 'miss spain' but didn't speak a word of spanish and her 'talent' was flamenco dancing, which she had no idea how to do.

they were flown to africa to perform for the king of ghana. it was a grandiose affair with the kings family and all his councillors seated around the stage, all clapping politely at each performance. when it was yaz's turn, she got up and just completely winged it! just invented her own flamenco on the spot!! and for the finale she ripped off the top of her sequined outfit to reveal a matching sequined bikini top underneath! and everyone just clapped politely!
when i heard this story i was in tears.

for yaz's birthday last year i wrote her a poem, which probably has lots of inside jokes that you might not get, but i thought i'd post it anyway:

to yaz; my dearest bunny friend
i'm sad to say we're parting ways
these are all the things i'm gonna miss
of our wonderful playboy bunny days

musical black jack and black jack in spanish
your poems of misery and broken dreams
bludging in the privé massage chair
your jokes and farts in the canteen

ill miss our expeditions and photo shoots
our talks on the world and on every subject
our brainstorming on creative ideas
your 'dont worry, its for my art project!'

ill miss our fun bunny party nights out
pooing in your toilet for the handyman finder
you stealing my things from the bunny hutch
our locker that smells like your vagina!

the way you make everything seem funny
your hilarious stories of beauty queen drama
when i need a giggle i just picture you
flamenco dancing to the king of ghana

to miss spain who only just learnt to say 'hola'
i just know that youre destined for fortune and fame
with simon rolling in the american dollar
soon it'll be in lights that i see your name

you're a diamond in the rough yaz,
youre one in a million
full of life, spirit, soul, pizzazz
Im gonna miss you gazillions

happy birthday to my dear friend yaz,
ill stay in touch... i promise
i dont want to say goodbye to you
so ill just say 'adios, nos vemos'.


:o)

Freeeeeeeeee!!!

 

Ah there's nothing like the feeling of freedom after you've been trapped for a long time in a dark place. That dark place was for me the real-estate industry, which engulfed the past month of my life, six long days a week, becoming seven even!

on saturday i threw in the towel, explaining to my boss that i could feel it in my heart that it wasn't the right path for me. i had somehow imagined a future as a real-estate agent and busted my guts to get the job. i tried my best at doing the job well too... but i was like a fish out of water. or oil trying to mix with water, or something along those lines, you get my gist. the whole vibe repelled me.

there's a good reason people hate real estate agents. because they're salesmen! always hunting for the kill. and to be good at it you must master the arts of trickery, pretence, manipulation and intimidation. its psychology at its most cunning and you don't leave it at work.. it creeps around, follows you home...

i found myself befriending neighbours in the lift, purely to see if they were thinking of selling their flats; leaving shortbread on an old ladies doorstep, of course with the note 'i would love to help you sell your home'..; buying get well cards for strangers; hand delivering letters, all with the aim to reel people in. each day i sat on the phone and called 100 people from my database, hunting for appraisals. you know those infuriating indian telemarketers that call you every day? i now feel their pain.... 'dont take it personally' my colleagues told me. i tried different tactics, different voice tones, different diaologues..... but people know when you want something, and no matter how much you try to shake it off, a harsh rebuke and a hang-up in the face is negative energy.

i don't know if i became someone else in that month or if i just suppressed the good parts of my personality... but the whole thing definitely felt like a long morbid, soulless dream, from which i'm very glad to have woken.

though i'm now unemployed again, i feel reborn, liberated, energized, back to my bubbly self, with a new-found joy for life! i'm flooded with creative inspiration and motivation! maybe it was a good thing, experiencing the loathsome world of corporate sales, because it's kicked me back on track again!

my mum discovered a fantastic sounding course called 'professional photo, film, tv and personal stylist's' course, which i've enrolled in for next month! they say there's a huge demand for stylists and guarantee to find you your first job in the industry... i can see myself as a costume stylist for film or theatre. i would love that in fact!

here's to a new chapter! and to feeling like myself again!

:o)

smelling roses

❉ i just loooove this balmy weather! hot summer nights like these are one of my favourite things about australia. what a beautiful country this is, so much more so after my long absence.

i guess i haven't really expressed how happy i am to be home, have i?... i am :o)
in the beginning i went through a short period of reverse culture shock and i still have slight anxiety about putting away my traveling shoes and settling down... is that normal?.. i'll never stop being jealous of other peoples travel plans, but there's something to be said for making a home somewhere too and that feeling of belonging.... it will come with time, to me and hopefully to jerry too.

my problem is that i think about everything too much and wish that i could just stop and enjoy life. that woman who was supposedly the longest living woman in the world at 120something years old, said that her secret was drinking port-wine, eating chocolate every day, and not stressing about anything. wow! the port and the chocolate are easy to do, but how do you manage to not stress?! i guess monks wouldn't stress, and all truly enlightened people really for that matter... how nice that would be, to be so above things like shitty traffic and running late and not getting job offers or having enough money... and to actually realise that nothing's really worth worrying over, or that worrying doesn't help anyway.

between the worries of being in limbo, i find happiness in small moments each day...  dancing with jerry to lionel ritchie in the lounge room, driving with the roof down on palm-lined streets, music sing-along wars in the car (stevie nicks on gold fm vs. jerry's house music mix cd), lazy breakfasts on the balcony, smothering my pot-plants (to death, in the case of the coriander), and most of all (still).. our morning walks along the beach. in a way i enjoy making the list of things to do when we have proper jobs and money to fritter... we'll definitely enjoy them all the more for having done without....

have a good weekend my lovelies... smell the roses, drink some port-wine and dont stress! :o)

oh camilla

❄ in flinders lane there lies a beautiful italian restaurant, legendary and timeless with magnificent mosaic floors, high ceilings, cherub statues, chandeliers, vast marble bartop (behind which works a very cute and familiar swedish boy)... and at the front door, next to the marble pillar holding the reservation book, you'll find me, in a pretty dress and high heels. yes i'm now the hostess at Rosati, and i will meet you and greet you and escort you to your table should you wish to come and dine with us of a friday or saturday night.

it's just a casual job until i break into my new career, but it came at the perfect time. and i still get to spend the weekend with jerry while he's working :o)

the rest of my weekend was spent at lovely lazy barbecues with friends and family, enjoying good food, glorious sunshine and great company. oh how much more i prefer a good sunday barbecue lunch than a saturday night out on the piss!.... which is a sign that i actually am now officially old.

and old friends are the best thing about being old. my darling friend sarah came to stay and we went to southbank to meet old friends sarah H and pat for a lovely luncheon catch up, followed by a trip to the recently discovered Camilla boutique in malvern road...

one could die in that shop. the beauty, the decadence.... racks and racks of pure glorious silk: luxurious kaftans, playful jumpsuits, floaty flowing gowns in rainbow colours, silk shoes, silk fringed vests, silk undies and camis and turbans and kimonos. dreamy is the word that best describes it.

sarah and i tried some pieces on and then prized ourselves away, teased, tantalized and tormented. 'when we're rich we'll come back and buy the whole shop' we promised.

later, after my work and her friends hens party, we drank port wine on the balcony, with the muffled roar of st kilda nightlife in the background, and chatted about life and love and how if the truth be known, we both just want to be artists.

:o)

seven deadly sins

✽ in the mornings, the sun shines through the palms that overhang our balcony and cast jungle shadows on our white walls. we leave the blinds open because its so nice to wake up to... i make sure to practice the secret, taking mental notes of such things to be grateful for. apparently this gratefulness will attract more things to be grateful for... such as... perhaps...a job.

by lunch time the washing is done and i'm back lying on my bed, still in pijamas, eating cadbury's favourites (not even mine- but jerry's valentines present from me!) ..and feeling very unemployed.

how can it be this hard to start a new career...?! ..and why have i waited so long to start one?! no, i don't regret any of my travels and adventures, but now i'm really head-butting the wall. i feel exactly like that lazy grasshopper from that story.

my cousin assures me that its normal i'm feeling crappy- changing careers is one of the 5 top causes of stress, along with divorce and marriage... and whatever else.
i wonder: maybe i'm not made for the serious job world... and all these people copping my CV in their inboxes can see that too...

i eat some more chocolates, then head to the bathroom to pick a few pimples, where i catch my reflection. what a gluttonous sloth i am! in fact today in particular i suspect my soul to be infested with all seven of the deadly sins. i quickly google them just to confirm. yep. sloth, greed, gluttony, wrath, envy, lust and pride. well, actually maybe not lust or pride.. but definitely the others.

it starts raining outside (ahh melbourne) and my phone dings with a sweet message from jerry who's at work. i admire him so much! he's totally landed on his feet in australia while i'm the one lost in my own country!

its time to stop being so useless. tomorrow morning i have another interview and then my friend sarah is coming to stay. we're going to go out for lunch and try on camilla kaftans, pretending to be able to afford them. it's going to be a beautiful day and i'm not going to feel unemployed or sorry for myself. and no more cadbury's favourites.

:o)

our new place in melbourne!

The visa to Oz!!!!!!

❉ i was able to have a little sleep in this morning since my morning swedish class had been cancelled. when i woke up, jerry was still sound asleep, so i lay in bed and quietly checked my emails.

sitting there in my inbox was a message from our immigration lawyer. my heart skipped a beat. in an anxious panic i clicked the wrong button and sent it to the trash. i fumbled around to open it and quickly scanned over the first sentence..
'.....australian high commission..... jerry's visa....granted'..... i bolted upright, tears exploded from my eyes and i jumped on the sleeping jerry, pounding him and screaming directly into his ear 'WE GOT THE VISA, WE GOT THE VISA!!!' ... the poor thing was so worried and confused at being woken in such a way that he didn't know what was going on. i had to calm myself to get it through to him. 'we......got......the......visa.....!!!!!!!!!'

finally i can go home!

nobody can understand how big this is to me.... i've been traveling for many many years now, and it has been amazing and wonderful, i've met many very special people and had life experiences that i would never cash in...... but when i met jerry three years ago, i was feeling nearly ready to go home.... i was missing it.

we first applied for his visa over two years ago, so we've been waiting for it for two thirds of our entire relationship together! of course we've had loads of fun along the way, but for me there's always been that small sense of waiting... and now after all this time, we've finally got it! jerry cant quite believe it. he was expecting a rejection so this is a huge shock to him.

for breakfast i cracked open a bottle of champagne and we sat in bed and toasted the new australian. we skyped my mum and dad and they were so excited that they cracked open a bottle of bubbly too and drank with us!

i started this blog two years ago after we first applied for the visa. i called it 'the yellow brick road' because it would be about all my adventures on the journey home to Oz.... and now it seems that Oz is finally in sight... but don't worry, its not the end.... just the start of a new adventure! :o)

:o)

'It's showtime'!!

❊ i rushed straight from swedish class to mariatorget, where my google map lead me into a residential area thick with high-rise apartments. as i wobbled in my wedge-heels down side streets and alleys, through gardens and up stairwells, i finally found a warehouse garage door painted black, with 'IT'S SHOWTIME' stenciled on. for a brief moment i hesitated, before opening the door.

fifteen minutes later i found myself stripper-dancing in my jeans and bra, to an imaginary 'sausage man' sitting on a chair, with sleazy strip-club music playing... in the middle of a film set..... on film.

how the hell did that happen?! as far as i knew i was going to a casting for a TV commercial in which i would be an extra, dancing in the background at an after party!

when i walked into the warehouse, I was greeted by a small group of funky young girls and guys who were super cool and who worked in this awesome production studio. they showed me the story board for the tv commercial which was based on a giant sausage. the ad starts off with this sausage man  fist-fighting a famous politician as paparazzi snap away, then ends up at a seedy strip joint where lap-dancers in bikinis bump and grind him as he boozes it up. he then passes out and wakes up in the chair of a tattoo parlour, getting a horrible biker tattoo done and finally crawls back home to the fridge, where he slips back into a packet of sausages. i think the message is something to do with local insourcing...

it was the story board that sold me. it was brilliantly done and seemed like a very quirky concept, somewhat reminiscent of the 'hangover' movies. i told them i hadn't realised that it would be that type of dancing (that must be why the money is so good!) but that what the hell, i would have a crack at it anyway. 

there was no actual sausage man there for the casting, so i had to imagine him sitting on the chair as i danced. afterwards they told me i was very natural and that i'd obviously done it before (no i havent!!)... i guess maybe my burlesque and belly dance classes came in handy! ... as i walked back to the tube station i called jerry who's response was 'oh thats so exciting! i hope you get it!'

:o)

mission: wipe-out

*what i loved about london was the opportunity for excitement.... it seemed that anything you dreamt of doing you could do in london... the book 'the secret'  which i'm reading at the moment, tells you that your life is exactly how you've wished and expected it to be, and that if you want something more, you must wish it into existence (that's a shitty summary of the book. there's so much more to it than that but read it for yourself if you haven't already :o)... i decided to put it out into the universe that i want some excitement in my life.... and sure enough the universe delivered.

i'd registered my profile with an extra agency online when i first arrived in stockholm and hadn't heard a peep from them til yesterday, when all of a sudden i got a phonecall from a man named kid.
kid: 'would you be interested in being a contestant on the tv show 'wipe-out'?'
me: 'isn't that filmed in argentina?'
kid: 'yes it is. of course all expenses would be paid by us'.
me: 'yes i'm interested'
kid: 'great. can you come to a casting tomorrow?'
me: 'yes i can'

oh.... my..... god!!! i hung up the phone, stunned like a mullet, then broke into a wild screaming jumping dancing fit. jerry was both insanely excited for me and insanely jealous... he loves that show and has always wanted to be in it...then he read the information email which included the magic words 'bring along your partner to the casting to enter the couples competition'!!! ... and for me: 'wear the costume that you plan to wear on the show if you go through'..... !!!!
we began to plan 'mission: win wipe-out' i had to think about my costume for about two seconds.... of course i have to go as a bunny.

jerry informed me that he has all it takes to win and that i better start going to the gym to strengthen up because if we lose because of me he may kill me. i had to remind him that it's thanks to me that he's even got a chance to be in the show!

we arrived at the casting today, me in a bunny costume and jerry in a smart bow-tie and short-pants suit. no-one else was dressed up. initially embarrassing till we realised it gave us the advantage.

we killed it in the interview. jerry told me i ate the camera. which must be a swedish expression for coming across well on film. it's all a bit of a blur now, because of the adrenalin, but i remember jumping at the chance to go first, shaking my bunny tail, singing 'hey big spender', saying a stupid thing in swedish which i thought rhymed but actually doesn't and demonstrating the scream i would do if i won.

the prize is 50,000 crowns. 9 days in buenos aires, all expenses paid.
though i don't know if i'm through yet... i just want to say thank you to the secret and to the universe.

:o)