[The Life of Shaun #400] Lady Gaga (Feat. Beyonce) - Telephone

Lots of you have seen this already, I am sure, but if not, this is possibly the best piece of pop culture to come out in the post-Madonna world:

http://vodpod.com/watch/3234181-lady-gaga-feat-beyonce-telephone

(Make sure you watch full screen.)

And who'd'a thunk Beyoncé'd be getting on the bandwagon; but there you go - she ain't no dummy.

Cheers,
Shaun

PS - I suddenly want a Diet Coke and to switch to Virgin Mobile...

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "The Life of Shaun" group.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to The-Life-of-Shaun-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/The-Life-of-Shaun

[The Life of Shaun #399] Sunset in Shadwell

I just came across this pic from January -- sunset from my flat.

Guess it ain't so bad to be home*.

Cheers,
Shaun


*It'll be even better when I can sleep past 5:30, but hey ho.

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org/
http://shaunism.blogspot.com/

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "The Life of Shaun" group.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to The-Life-of-Shaun-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/The-Life-of-Shaun

[The Life of Shaun #398] 29:04:48

Twenty-nine hours, four minutes and forty-eight seconds total transit time from Rockwell Gardens, Potts Point, Sydney to Kelday Heights, Shadwell, London, but I made it.  There was constant turbulance (literally, I mean) from Afghanistan to Ukraine, but other than that the flight was Xanaxful.

It's good to be home, but I see there have been sweeping changes in my time away; TfL has thoughtfully reclosed an escalator at Bank, deeming the 18-month closure which just ended a couple months ago too short, and one of my favourite local council estates is being torn down to make way for modern housing.  You can't stop the beat.

Shower, start laundry, eat - my day's ambitions.

Hope to see all the London folk soon.

Cheers,
Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Shadwell, Tower Hamlets
London, UK

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "The Life of Shaun" group.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to The-Life-of-Shaun-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/The-Life-of-Shaun

[The Life of Shaun #397] Sydney Mardi Gras

"They didn't sell out tonight, there'll only be about 25,000 people."

And with that, I entered the world's largest gay party. Three main halls, each one more substantial than most clubs I've shook my tush in, en suite with several smaller venues in a gated gay fantasia. My engaging, nurturing and handsome tourguide, Matt, shuffled me from venue to venue, ensuring we found the best nooks and missed none of the important shows. I saw George Michael and Kelly Rowland, but left before Amanda Lapore and Adam Lambert.

Completely singular event, and as I entered, I thought about how exceptional it was that this largest and most impressive party takes place in a relatively small city on the farthest fringe of the gay travel map. But, after a few more drinks and pondering, I thought that perhaps the enterprising, but pragmatic, denizens of Sydney realised that they had to throw such a singular and exceptional event to inspire tens of thousands of leisure-minded gays, lesbians, their friends and supporters and their disposable income to fly for the better part of a full day to their fair city, bypassing scores of closer, bigger gaycation destinations along the way.

With Sunday afternoon came the follow-up party, Toybox, at Luna Park, Sydney's 1960sesque, fun fair - actually the main event in a lot of people's books. Equally dazzling and certainly unique -- but I left after two hours. Sometimes you just know when you are done, and I was done. I'd had a good party, and I've had a great holiday, I was happy and sated. It was time to go home.

Not looking forward to 28 hours of travel tomorrow, apexing with a three-train ride from Heathrow to East London, but looking forward to getting home and, crucially, staying there for a while.

Homeward-bound,
Shaun


Pics: Just how far away Sydney is and the city from Luna Park.

Shaun H. Coley
Sydney, NSW
Australia

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "The Life of Shaun" group.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to The-Life-of-Shaun-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/The-Life-of-Shaun

[The Life of Shaun #396] Shrove Sydney

The last weekend of my Australasian adventure has arrived; tomorrow is the official Mardi Gras party and it's pretty much a nonstop progression of inebriation into hangover and onto the plane from there. So in that sense, today's my last day on holiday! Boo!

Sydney (and Mary Keany) has been a gracious and welcoming host. I came here in 2002, intentionally not for Mardi Gras, as I wanted to see the city as it was in situ as I was thinking of trying to move over. But I was newly in love with New York, and after the bright lights of Manhattan, Sydney, despite all its charms, couldn't compare.

I am not sure if it's because it's Mardi Gras, I am older and in a different place, that I have friends here now, or if the city's just matured - most likely all if it - but I am loving it this time. Had this been my first experience here, I could've had a very different noughties.

But lovely as it is, Sydney can't escape its one disabling drawback: isolation. It is so far from everywhere else. New Zealand, its closest neighbour, is 3.5 hours away. If everything and everyone you care about is already here and you are content with holidaying in the Blue Mountains, then well enough. But I am already too far from too many people, thankyouverymuch, and I'd live a life of penury satisfying my travel compulsion here.

And, alas, as great as the hypothetical of another week or two here sounds, it is time to get back to my London. I've had a few pangs of homesickness and am ready to get back in the saddle. Also, life is falling apart without me there - Marco is buying wine from Iceland, Kimb'uh and Lottie are exchanging recipes rather than hangover cures, XXL is wrapped in a cloak of sadness and Alexi and I are down to five months to achieve our 2010 aspirations. My friends and city need me and I need them.

But first I have a hangover to get started on...

G'day
Shaun

Mary Keany's horrible building - it's been quite a hardship staying here. Her neighbourhood, Potts Point, is like a little antipodean New York - I like it immensely.

Equally as wretched, the view from down her street

On the left: the restaurant with Opera House views we wanted to eat at; on the right: the cruise ship they've parked in front of it. There was not a single customer inside. We ended up farther along the pier where we could have lunch with a view, but it meant A$40 fish & chips. Still? Worth it.

My unsuccessful attempt at taking the obligatory photo with Mary Keany

The improved version, thanks to a kind couple from Missouri

Dusk from the other end of Mary's street

And the city from her neighbourhood

Ms. Lapore made the rounds (she says "Hi", Mike! Well, with all the collagen she really says "Mmhhmm!")

Me and my Aussie girlfriend; she's offered to marry me if I change my mind about relocating.

And, summing up the week, me and Sue She after she did her reworking of "Bad Romance" entitled "I Think I Pooped My Pants" at a drag competition. She won.

Shaun H. Coley
Sydney, NSW
Australia

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "The Life of Shaun" group.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to The-Life-of-Shaun-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/The-Life-of-Shaun

[The Life of Shaun #395] Jumper

And for those who're interested in seeing one of the idiots jump off...




Cheers,
Shaun
Shaun H. Coley
Auckland, NZ

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "The Life of Shaun" group.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to The-Life-of-Shaun-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/The-Life-of-Shaun

[The Life of Shaun #394] Tāmaki-makau-rau

I've made it to the penultimate destination of my Australasian adventure - Auckland (distantly related, also the name of the street I mostly grew up on). When I came to Australia in 2002, I wanted to jump over here to see it, but there just wasn't the time. I figured this will likely be the last time I am in this part of the world for a while, so I better do it now.

Auckland must be about the luckiest city on Earth; nestled between two separate bays, so nowhere's far from a beach, tucked between over 40 green mountains and hills, moderate weather, situated in a rich, Westernised, well-liked nation, urban, but not overcrowded, a diverse population - it's about as good as it gets. (At least on paper; if I were a W1 kinda guy, it might be nirvanic for me, but I am definitely E1 - I need a little grit, edge and vibrancy in my cities.) The style and feel of it actually feels like the nice part of LA around UCLA - I can understand why LA was so desirable before it grew into the unlovable cancerous sprawl it is today.

(Lottie & Argie, I wish you were here with me! There are a couple of bars here I really want to go to and you're the only other people in the world who would go with me!)

One more night out here, then it's off to Sydney in the early afternoon.

Cheers,
Shaun

1. IMG_0330 - Actually a pre-Auckland pic: my chariot from Bangkok and where it took me

2. IMG_0333 - Leaving Sydney

3. IMG_0337 - And arriving in Auckland - they look related, don't they?

4. IMG_0348 - Interesting self portrait

5. IMG_0357 - Just about wherever you are in town, you can see the Sky Tower (the tallest structure in the Southern hemisphere, as you will doubtlessly hear dozens of times). This is my view from outside my hotel.

6. IMG_0367 - Close up and underneath; the cables on the right hand side are used to guide down the idiots that pay to jump off the tower.

7. IMG_0371 - Central Auckland from the tower

8. IMG_0373 - And a view the other direction from the tower - you can see how the city stretches out to another bay.

9. IMG_0384 - Typical pleasant Auckland street

Shaun H. Coley
Auckland, NZ

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "The Life of Shaun" group.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to The-Life-of-Shaun-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/The-Life-of-Shaun

[The Life of Shaun #393] Views from Cambodia

Hi all,

I've posted four videos from Cambodia on my FB. I normally don't bother as videos tend to be too long and dull, as are these, but they're there for anyone who's keen.

Out into the wilds of gay Auckland - wish me luck!



The road from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh



Entering Phnom Penh



Typical road in Phnom Penh



How to make a right turn in Phnom Penh

Cheers,
Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Auckland, NZ

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "The Life of Shaun" group.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to The-Life-of-Shaun-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/The-Life-of-Shaun

[The Life of Shaun #392] Shaun H. Magellan

I'm back in Sydney!

This time I've arrived from Europe via Asia, landing from the West instead of America and landing from the East as in 2002, and with this I have now officially circumnavigated the globe. Not a huge feat in this day and age as it once was, but still sounds kinda cool.

Flight from Bangkok was bumpy, but still a Xanax haze. Grabbing some Western food now (I see a McD's over there...) and then it's just about an hour till boarding for Auckland.

Loved visiting SE Asia, but glad to be back in the "West" - though I will miss Asian prices!

Cheers,

Shaun

Shaun H. Coley
Sydney, Australia

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "The Life of Shaun" group.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to The-Life-of-Shaun-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/The-Life-of-Shaun

[The Life of Shaun #391] Kruising Kampuchea

Seems I wrote a long one on my even longer layover at BKK. No hard feelings towards the skippers.

It was not with a heavy heart that I left Bangkok (and my current situation of laying over at BKK is not endearing me any more in the slightest), so I was ready to love Siem Reap, home of Angkor Wat and my first stop in Cambodia. And Siem Reap happily obliged. From the moment you debark the plane to the tiny airport to pay for your $20 on-site visa (Cambodia is unofficially dollarised - the local currency, the riel, is only used for change - so they get hard currency in however they can) you are aware you are in a poor country, far away from home. But it's relaxed and pleasant and charming, in its underdeveloped way. I liked it immediately.

Our hotel was great, which helped, and the post-temple-touring nightlife was just on the right side of not being too touristy. SR is emphatically hippyish in the old Northern California style, full of backpackers who've stayed on longer than intended, whiling away the hours with cheap beer and live music. Not my normal scene at all, but somehow it worked here. There are hotels going up everywhere around the town, so I imagine this will be squashed within a few years, so if you have any desire to see the temples of Angkor Wat, I gently encourage you to do so soon.

Temple touring is also totally not my cup of tea, but the Angkor Wat temples are impressive enough that even I enjoyed seeing them. I was pretty much templed out after Angkor Wat itself and reserved the last of my tourist energy by doing drive-by sight-seeing until Ta Prohm, the "Tomb Raider" temple, which is cool as they've allowed it to remain as rediscovered, overgrown and wild. But several hours outside urbanity are more than enough for me, and it was quickly back to the gay-friendly Golden Banana Resort and its cocktails.

Sadly, I only had one day in SR (in hindsight I should've cut Bangkok down by one) and so on Tuesday I found myself on a bus with 35 new friends on the "highway" ('It's paved the entire way now' - Lonely Planet) to the capital, Phnom Penh. It was a six-hour Discovery Channel documentary on the daily life of the poor in the developing world. As I sat at my window, farms, homes on stilts, children playing in mud, emaciated cows being walked to pasture, markets selling the most improbable necessities and foods unpalatable to a Westerner, beggars, school children and an endless stream of scooters flickered across my live action TV.

Pulling into the bus station at Phnom Penh you are immediately encased by tuk-tuk drivers, so you pick one and head out into its swarming streets. There are practically no traffic lights (and apparently even fewer traffic rules), so any journey is a non-stop obstacle course through a river of scooters, cars and tuk-tuks. Again, I was instantly fond of Phnom Penh. Being put up in a schazzy house with a maid, cook and cleaner didn't hurt, but I loved the thirdy-worldy feel of the city, without the crushing weight of a megacity. It was chaotic, but manageabley and engagingly so. The people had a harder edge than the Thais (but they've also had a genocide within most of their living memories, so I forgive them this), but are still accommodating and genuine.

I saw the three requisite tourist sites: S-21 (the prison where the Khmer Rouge detained and tortured its enemies before sending them to site number two), the Killing Fields (less impactful than S-21, though that's due to the ill-thought memorials more than the gravity of the place) and the Royal Palace (a five-minute stop any any itinerary is sufficient). S-21 was really quite effective in getting across the three years, eight months and 20 days of Khmer Rouge rule. It's not overdone or overly graphic - some of it's comically underdone - but I felt queasy by the time I was in building B.

After all that (with a curry lunch personally prepared for me in the middle), it was onto the rooftops of the hoity-toity quayside for $1 drafts to wait for Mary Keany's arrival from the North. A lovely dinner at a restaurant run and staffed by former street children rounded out the night and my trip to Southeast Asia. I'm now leeching WiFi in Bangkok's airport waiting to be able to check in my luggage so I can go through security to find somewhere to plant myself for lunch. Overnight flight to Sydney, short layover there before heading out to New Zealand. Don't worry, I still have 58 Xanax left.

Choum reap lia,
Shaun

Me at Angkor Wat

Going into the top level I had to have my shoulders covered, so I used Mary's shawl. Very Middle East chic, I think!

Me in one of the trees at Ta Prohm, the "Tomb Raider" temple. They've left this one for nature to take its course.

Mary made the mistake of letting the market children outside the temples know she was comfortable with parting with her money and quickly acquired an entourage.

Standard Cambodian homes along the "highway" from Siem Reap and Phnom Penh. What was really odd, actually, is that along almost the entire length of the road, there were houses such as this or other rural structures. Only occasionally did the development expand more than one building back from the road, creating a town of sorts, but you could almost hand someone a letter in Phnom Penh, and that person could pass it to his neighbour, and so on, and the letter would eventually reach Siem Reap.

The charming market town we stopped in half way to Phnom Penh

Children playing in a mud pool outside the capital

A reminder that not all visitors to Cambodia have the purest intentions

S-21 (Tuol Sleng), a former high school turned prison where the Khmer Rouge held and tortured "enemies of the state" before taking them to the Killing Fields

List of rules for prisoners

The most disturbing, but effective, displays at the museums were pictures such as this. In many of the cells, a picture has been hung of who was found in the room (and in what state) when the prison was liberated.

Enemy of the state #24

Cambodia was a French colony, and you see their shadow in the architecture throughout central Phnom Penh

Shelves of skulls from the Killing Fields

Some of the holes left from the uncovered mass graves

The killing tree. The theory of the Khmer Rouge was that if you kill someone, you should kill the entire family, including babies - there's no gain in keeping them alive, and you risk them seeking revenge when they are older.

Traffic circle in PP

The first Western chain in PP is, surprisingly, not McD's (though considering I saw about 50 KFCs for every McDonald's in Bangkok, perhaps it's not so surprising after all).

Typical street in PP

The prime minister's understated house, discretely located on the main traffic circle in the diplomatic quarter of the city, overlooking the Independence (from France) Monument

If you ever have the chance to stay with someone with staff (esp. a cook), I encourage you to do so!

Royal palace (not where I stayed...)

Me at a rooftop bar (quelle suprise) overlooking the quayside

PP from the same roof. It's not yet a city of towering edifices, though they are starting to try.

Shaun H. Coley
BKK, after Phnom Penh, Cambodia

http://www.nocirc.org
http://shaunism.blogspot.com

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the "The Life of Shaun" group.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to The-Life-of-Shaun-unsubscribe@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/The-Life-of-Shaun