I saw this in today’s newspaper and was relieved to see that I’m not the only person who feels this way. In fact I’d been planning to write an open letter to Brisbane City Council about the state of Fortitude Valley for some time, but never made the effort to sit down and write about it. But upon seeing this, I have been motivated to finally have my say:
Dear Brisbane City Council,
I live in Fortitude Valley and have done so for a number of years. I love the convenience and how close I am to everything in the inner-City. Plus I love the fact I can go out for a night on the town and it’s only a short stumble home afterwards. I don’t intend to move away from the Valley anytime soon, but there are days when I wonder why I live there when I am confronted with the worst this suburb has to offer, more often than not.
While I try to walk to work every morning, I sometimes have to catch a train which means taking the escalators from Wickham St up to Valley Metro and am constantly appalled by the state of things in such a small space. First of all, you have to avoid a close encounter with some of the Valley’s least desirable residents who take to sitting on the ground outside Cafe One, yelling at each other and in some cases, getting into fist fights and dealing drugs. Then you have to deal with the escalators which do not work 99% of the time and are caked in filth, only to be greeted with the disgusting mess that is the walkway between McWhirters building and the Metro food court. I have literally never seen it clean. There are inches of dust and grime coating old rubbish and fast food containers. I once saw a pie that has been smeared into the wall last about a month before it was cleaned (or most likely, fell off on its own accord). Considering Fortitude Valley station is the 3rdbusiest in Queensland, this is appalling.
Imagine being a tourist, who has taken the train to the (in)famous Fortitude Valley and that is what they see. Or if they choose to enter the Valley via the main exit they get to witness another nasty side of the Valley which is Brunswick St between the five-ways and Wickham Street. This is another area that I’ve never seen clean and always has a range of dodgy looking people hovering around, asking for change and then abusing you if you refuse. On one side of the street you have dank old cheap shops that you can smell from a mile off and haven’t been updated since the building used to be a Walton’s, facing $1 peepshows, strip joints, nightclubs and the dingy Chopstix Arcade.
The rest of the Valley ain’t much better either. Footpath’s are in a terrible state (though some have been totally replaced near our unit which was a nice surprise), the Brunswick St Mall is ridiculously outdated and the TCB arcade that was probably meant to raise the mall’s profile echoes as it’s almost completely empty. The China Town mall has been updated and looks kind of cool (if not a bit barren) but otherwsie I haven’t seen anything in the public areas of the Valley updated since I’ve lived here. Most of China Town is revolting too. How most of those restaurants haven’t been shut down for health and safety violations is beyond me. Some mornings as I walk to work, I gag on the smell emanating out of the bins sitting out on the footpath and can only imagine what the kitchen’s look like if that’s what was taken out.
I’m not saying the entire Valley needs to be cleaned up, renovated and changed. All I’m asking for is a bit of a spruce up and disciplining the daggy shops for stinking up the place so badly. Fix the shitty footpaths’s, replace the devastated street furniture, jazz up the Brunswick St mall and make shop owners fix up their shit because seeing massive holes in the overhangs of shops, many of which still bear the names of shops from 25 years ago is nasty. The Valley should retain some of its slightly derelict charm, but overall it needs some serious updating, a good scrub down and if possible, PLEASE move the drunks and druggo’s elsewhere so I don’t have to fear for my safety anytime after 8pm. It’s shouldn’t just be about the nightlife on Friday and Saturday nights, it should be a place for people to visit at any time of the day, on any day of the week. After all, those Valley markets on Saturday’s aren’t even worth a second glance these days and every other retail outlet is having a closing down sale because no one wants to spend time in the Valley any more.
Thanks in advance,
Ruby Velour Concerned Citizen
About Ruby
My name is Cara (but you can call me Ruby) and I like the colour pink, swearing, fist shaking, daggy dancing and 90s RnB music. Often all at once. I live in Brisbane which is always warm and is famous for its zombies.
OK so I know I only just wrote about wanting a puppy and asking for advice. But um, guess who got a puppy on the weekend?
He’s a long-haired chihuahua x silky/Japanese chin. He was born on June 7th which means he’s only 11 weeks old. He is TINY, I can hold him in both hands easily and he’s so light you feel like you’re holding a ball of dense fluff. He has skinny feet but a super fluffy body and the tiniest nose I’ve ever seen. He’s mostly brown but has black down his back, on his tail and around his ears. He also has some white on his chest and a white spot on one hind foot.
Can you tell I’m in love?
We’ve named his Rhaego. If you watch Game of Thrones or have read A Song of Ice and Fire then you’ll know what that means. I only watched the finale two episodes of season 0ne last night and so didn’t realise the fate of the character he’s now named after, but it’s still a cool name and so we’ll keep it. I love geeky names :D
As he’s such a new addition to the family, I don’t have too much to report yet, so I will leave you with a video of him playing with his new tiny tennis ball from earlier this evening:
I have something I have to share with you all. I am absolutely obsessed with the idea of getting a dog. It is pretty much all I think about lately, and it’s totally consumed me. My poor friends and family have pretty much heard nothing from me unless it’s about puppies and how badly I want one. I spend hours looking up dogs online and accidentally discovered the most amazing site full of the tiniest teacup puppies you have ever seen (that’s one of them in that photo, awww). Believe me, if I had $5000 spare and the means to bring dogs over from the USA, I would have one of those guys right now. SO CUTE!
But realistically, I am looking for a small dog that can live in our unit who won’t be too yappy and won’t be too high maintenance. Not that I’m not willing to put in a lot of effort, but I nearly got a miniature poodle last week but when I realised it was 7 months old and hadn’t been trained at all, I realised I couldn’t commit enough time to get it used to a brand new home on top of going through all of the basic training when I don’t have the option of taking a lot of time off work.
So I am asking you guys to help me. Please tell me a breed of small dog that is well suited to living in an apartment, that doesn’t have a reputation to be yappy, that likes to go on walks but doesn’t have to have one every single day, and is generally going to be a an amazing friend. Although I’d love something super-duper, sickeningly cute, I have learnt through my mum’s dog Lily that it’s what’s on the inside that counts. I’d also love advice on how to train and look after dogs that live in inner-city apartments. I have a very large unit without a balcony (well we technically do have one but it’s fully enclosed and used mostly another room).
Well it was a massive 5-week month but July is over, which means Dry July is also over. So, how do I feel? AMAZING! I’m sure it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that abstaining from alcohol will do nothing but good for you, but I am absolutely floored by how great I feel. OK so the last two weeks were spent with cold and horrific migraines BUT they were caused by non-alcoholic related sources, and so I know I recovered a hell of a lot quicker by being dry for three weeks previously than if I’d been hitting the piss all month.
I admit my sweet tooth went into overdrive without my usual sweet champagne’s, ciders and wines to placate it, but I have only managed to lose weight because no matter how many cupcakes and sweets I eat, nothing is worse than the liquid fat that is alcohol. I also realised it is actually not that difficult to not drink. I managed to go to a few events, including a gig, a boozy work function and a friends birthday dinner and not feel tempted to pick up a glass of wine. OK so there was a tiny bit of temptation, but it was super easy to resist and I felt awesome being able to get up the next morning feeling the marvelous clarity of sobriety.
So what have I learned, in summary? It’s really not that hard to say no. You feel amazing if you keep off the booze for a decent period of time. Friends will try to get you to drink at times, but good friends will take “no” as your final answer. Drinking a glass of water for every alcoholic drinks is really important. That last one is a big one I have never been good with, but will put into practice immediately. I will also remember to drink less and just say no if I am not really in the mood or have to do something the next day. They all seem simple enough but the lure of a naughty little drink is hard to resist.
Right now I am drinking my first alcoholic beverage for what has been just under six weeks. If it wasn’t for some special events next weekend, I probably wouldn’t even bother drinking at all this month either. But as I have promised to share a few drinks with a visiting friend, I am slowly introducing our evil friend back into my system. I have a feeling I will be asleep by 10pm at this rate, it’s already starting to hit me!
Guess who was in the newspaper today? It’s kind of funny how, after the Brisbane Harry Potter fan club ceased to exist a few years ago, we still get contacted to do interviews and appear in the local press. This is by far the best one yet as far as circulation and the fact the journalist didn’t misquote me to make me like a total moron (as has happened a number of times in the past). On the downside, they got my surname wrong :(
You can see the online version of the article here as I haven’t had a chance to scan the actual newspaper article. Meanwhile I am off to sulk and mope about the last movie (which I have already seen twice now) and finally finish off he final book so I can sob and wallow some more!
Unless you have been hiding under a rock, you’re bound to be aware that the final Harry Potter movie is coming out this week. If you also happen to read my blog regularly, then you may have noticed I have been MIA lately. These things are not just coincidence, I have been spending much of my spare time these last couple of weeks re-reading all seven books and re-watching the seven movies. Yes, I am a MASSIVE Harry Potter fan and I am not ashamed to admit it. I became a fan of the books back in 2000 after my mum bought the first three books (the fourth book, Goblet of Fire had only just come out at this stage) and spent the next two weeks gushing over them and begging me to read them. I figured it was some dumb fad and wouldn’t give in at first, but my mum was extremely persistent and so I decided to finally give them a go. And the rest, as they say, is history. I was obsessed almost immediately and devoured those books in no time. Shortly after I finished the fourth book, there was news that they were making the Philosopher’s Stone into a film. So for the next year I obsessed over these beloved books, and eagerly awaited the first film. I must have spent thousands on Harry Potter merchandise, in fact when I look back through photos at that time, I barely wore anything but my Harry Potter shirts. I bought ridiculous amount of collectibles off ebay and generally spent any time not at uni, obsessing over Harry and his magical world.
During my second year of Uni, I decided to start a Harry Potter fan club. I’d gotten inspiration from a local school that held weekly fan club meetings in the library and wanted something for adults to take part in, since I often got comments from other fans on my many shirts that I owned. I put up flyers around my uni and received a few emails from interested people. I even discovered a few people doing the same course as me were huge fans and quickly became good friends with them. The fan club was a pretty big deal back then, the first film had been a huge success and people were Potter mad everywhere you went. We got invited to the premiere of the second film at Movieworld and even got to meet Jason Isaacs, who plays Lucius Malfoy (he was here shooting Peter Pan at the time). I was on TV and in the paper all the time whenever a new film or book was released and lots of local book shops and libraries would get us to come act like characters and even hand out the new books. During my time living in the UK I saw the release of the Half Blood Prince (we lined up at Waterstones in Oxford Street for over 6 hours in a queue that ended up being about 10 blocks long and I’m now forever immortalised on getty images as a result) and the film release of the Goblet of Fire where I got to see all of the actors in the flesh and even got to shake the hand of Mark Williams.
And even after 11 years I am still a huge fan and find myself re-reading the books every year, I still finding them funny, sad, exciting and complete magic. I even have two Harry Potter tattoos (the dark mark and the Hogwarts crest) and still have ideas for others. I class myself as a Gryffindor and still have a rather vast collection of Harry Potter collectibles. I am a fan of the books first and foremost, but the films (even the 1st, 2nd and 4th ones which are pretty poor) hold a special place in my heart. I have gone through relentless teasing over the years for being such a big fan, and have even been called, stupid, childish, evil and a (god forbid) nerd for being so open about it. But it doesn’t matter, because I have helped so many other people discover the magic of Harry Potter over the years, and I feel that anyone who is so unwilling to give it a go is sad, boring and absolutely not worth any of my time. If you can’t give the most famous series of books a chance and feel the need to tease anyone who likes them, then I have nothing more to say to you. If however, you’re willing to give them a go, I promise you they will at the very least be a very enjoyable read. And at most they will be the greatest books you’ve ever committed yourself to and will undoubtedly become as big a fan as million of us Harry Potters geeks around the world!
So I am nervous and excited and even a little bit sad about seeing the final film at midnight tonight. While I will always love the books more than the movies, the last three films have actually been really good and this will be the end of an era for many of us. Personally it’s been eleven years but I have friends who have grown up with harry Potter since the first book came out back in 1997 so it really is a big deal to many people.So it is with pride that I will be wearing my Gryffindor uniform once again, not for the last time but at the last proper launch of something this big and official. I’ve made some terrific friends and had some incredible memories as a result of my love for Harry Potter and for that alone it has been totally worth it.
Share your Harry Potter memories or stories. I’d love to hear them!
In actual fact I got these amazing phone charms from a shop that I’m fairly certain is Korean. But it’s almost the same thing (ie. awesome). One is a puffy, sparkly pink heart lined with pearls. The other a black fur ball with random pearls and jewels. The case is one I created myself with a plain case which I then attached with dozens of jewel stickers. I think it is fair to say the effect is absolutely amazing.
This is a little something I used to do back in the good old days of Livejournal (which I neglect very badly these days). After a big weekend I would do a “Weekend Roundup” which went through everything that happened on my weekend since I used my LJ as a personal diary more than anything and I did live a fairly hectic and fun-filled life in London which I wanted to remember forever. Since we just had a five-day weekend thanks to Easter and Anzac Day and I have been a tad slack with my blog lately, I thought I would run thorugh the events of my action packeed weekend for you all.
On Thursday night I went to my mum’s place as I am still getting used to being paid monthly and wanted to chill out with mum and spend as little money as possible. I knew there’d be people at my place all weekend since the boyfriend is a social butterfly, and I was looking forward to peace and quiet. Good Friday was fairly uneventful, we just lounged around reading, watching TV and hanging out with mum’s pup Lily who has just come on heat which means she had a few male callers which I had to chase off with a broom more than once. My sister and her boyfriend came over for dinner for a roast (can you tell we’re all atheists?) and I got a bit tipsy on fancy cider and black Sambucca.
On Saturday mum and I went shopping. As Borders stores are closing most of their stores, they’re selling all of their stuff for cheap. Including their ebook reader the Kobo which I desperately wanted. So we made the trek to the store which still had some and got one each for just $112 (mum already has an Amazon Kindle which she doesn’t like much because it’s tied to Amazon). Needless to say I love it and have already downloaded the Harry Potter series which I am re-reading right now. I might post a review once I get some more use out of it.
Later on Saturday night we went to the movies and saw Paul, which was hilarious. I highly recommend you go and see it, if you haven’t already. On our way home though, we came pretty damn close to death. A Commodore sped through a Give Way sign right in front of us, and had I not had a bad feeling as we approached the intersection and been looking for something, we probably wouldn’t have seen that car until too late and it probably would have been the end of all in both cars. It was a terrifying moment, and I’m so glad I have a little bit of ESP now and then for moments like these. We tried chasing the jerk but they’d long gone by the time we turned mum’s car around.
On Sunday morning we were woken up by one of Lily’s lover friends who the night before had found a way to dug under the house and get into mum’s backyard. He’d gotten much further than this though, and had managed to break in through the locked doggie door and got into the house! Mum almost had a heart attack when she got up to take Lily outside to pee! He was so stealthy, we hadn’t heard him and he’d managed ton squeeze through a doggie door that’s about 3 sizes too small for him AND WAS LOCKED FROM BOTH SIDES. It took us almost two hours but we managed to get a collar and leash on him, get him into mum’s car and take him to the pound. Luckily there were two guys there who helped us get him into the cage. He was a nice dog but we’re pretty sure he’s a stray and t was kind of scary wondering if he’d bite us at some point. Thankfully the most he did was snap at one of the men as he was locked into the cage at the pound.
After that we had a pretty lazy morning before I finally went home. That afternooa few of us went to a BBQ for a friend who had only breezed into town for a day, Janette Slack. Here she is having some post-nap milk (how very rock n roll, we all joked):
Afterwards I attempted to go out with a few girlfriends but due to the fact the next day was Anzac Day, everything shut at midnight. In retrospect I’m glad this was the case as I really couldn’t afford to go out drinking, thanks to my dear little e-reader purchase the day before.
And the last two days? Well, let’s just say not much has been done at all. Sleeping in late, watching movies, cooking enormous meals and lazing about has been all that’s really taken place, and it’s been wonderful. I managed to venture out of the house today to get my nails done in some cutesy colours, but that was about it:
I am the type of person to get unreasonably excited about the sort of things people ususally find mundane or at best, kind of average. I will stop in my tracks to look at a dog, I get a thrill when I find money lying around and I squeal with delight when I find pink version of everyday items.
So imagine my delight when Iopened up the fruit box at work and found the DOUBLE BANANA!
I let it ripen up for a couple of days and then when it was finally a perfect shade of bright yellow, I decided it was time. What wonders would this enormous, double width banana hold? Was it just a big, funny shaped banana, or was there going to be two perfect bananas squished into one skin? IT WAS TIME TO FIND OUT!
Under the watchful eye of a workmate who was almost as excited as I was, I opened it up:
YES! It was better than I expected, there were two perfect bananas in the one skin. I thought I was going to hyperventilate with excitement, especially so when I discovered it didn’t have a single bruise (a sure-fire way to ruin any banana experience). It was now time for the taste test.
I like to eat my fruit all cut up so I got a-cuttin’ and was presented with the most perfect pair of bananas of all time. Neatly encased in the one peel. Two for one baby! The two bananas pulled apart easily and except for being slightly indented from being stuck in such a small space together, they were completely and utterly perfect.
And the best bit? They were honest-to-god the tastiest bananas I have ever eaten. It was an excellent day!
Well Supanova 2011 is finally over and I am exhausted. If you thought attending for two days straight was exhausting, try having a stall there as well as going and getting your geek on. It was intense! We decided to get a booth for the Brisbane Zombie Walk, to help promote it and get some extra funds from donations and selling some merch. We got a lot of registrations and sold all our left over shirts from last years walk as well as the figurines and books we had from some of our sponsors. We’ve already started planning our stall for next year which may involve brain-icing cupcakes to draw in the crowds.
Things I observed over the last two days while surrounded by Brisbane’s biggest nerds:
The girl in the stall next to us drew people as anime characters and was revoltingly good at it. She would have made thousands from her custom portraits on top of the pre-drawn pictures of manga and anime characters she was also selling. We are amused to see one man get her to draw his little doll which he had sitting on his shoulder as he walked around the convention. It was super weird and probably the highlight of the weekend for all who witnessed it.
There is absolutely no such thing as body-shame at a convention like Supanova. Guys and girls were wearing some of the most revealing and skin-tight costumes I have ever seen and they walked around like they did not give a damn. Good on ‘em because god knows I’d have to lose about 20kg before I’d ever feel that confident without pants in public!
Tiny top hats are pretty popular at the moment which is kind of cool but also makes me very jealous and possessive because I feel like it is my thing. There were some amazing ones there though and will have to start hunting them down to add to my collection.
I was able to identify a lot more of the costumes than I thought I would. Maybe I spend too much time on the internet, or maybe I just have an excellent memory for useless crap. But at the same time there were just so many costumes I couldn’t identify at all so I just assumed they were all from anime’s I’ve never seen or heard of .
People were cashing in on internet memes like Troll face, fffuuu guy and Forever Alone which was hilarious. One guy had a mask of Troll Face and pranced and danced around all the time. Too funny.
Many nerds lack manners. The amount of times I was nearly knocked rotten by some pimply faced teen who was making for some stall was appalling. But then again, many of them are all super polite and in some cases extremely chatty. A couple of times I found myself in intense discussions about Lara Croft or dyslexia which was interesting albeit a little bit disconcerting.
People actually recognised me and read my blog! I was shocked to say the least. I’m now going to have to up the ante knowing people who aren’t my friends read this thing. Thanks to those who came said hello, it was so nice to meet you :)
As a grande finale for the weekend, my sister and I went and got photos with Tom Felton (aka Draco Malfoy from the Harry Potter films). Naturally I was excited because I’ve always had a soft spot for poor Draco and loved how Tom played the character. He was really, really lovely and such a good sport. Basically the scene played like this:
Tom: Hi there.
My Sister: *loud whisper* Show him your tattoo!
Me: Hi! Um, I want to show my tattoo off in our photo *suddenly very starstruck and giggly*
Tom: Oh my god, is that genuine? *strokes my Dark Mark gently*
Me: Yep! *dying on the inside*
Photographer takes a photo, Tom has his hand around me and points at my arm and I try to pout but am overwhelmed with giggles so don’t quite pull of the come-hither look I was aiming for.
Tom: Thanks, lovely.
Me: Thank you! *walks the wrong way, dying some more*
Click the pic for the larger version
All in all it was a great weekend, though I am officially not doing anything zombie-related all week lest I end up strangling someone! I am probably going to be all Tom Felton/Draco Malfoy obsessed instead :D
