GALFROMDOWNUNDER UPOVER

This morning I switched on my Blackberry Pearl and clicked on a link a customer Leon in South Africa sent me. His email simply said: When we tend to complain how bad things are sometimes we do not know how fortunate we are. This is an article out of today's Sunday Times . The first thing displayed in my little handheld window onto the world was the above picture with this caption: No grocery deliveries: Food is much scarcer in Zimbabwe’s rural areas than in the cities. Kudakwashe Chiveura prepares to catch a cricket he has dug up to eat in Mutoko, northeast of Harare. Picture: AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi When I switch on to a news site from the west, like NYT or CNN, the first thing that's windowed is "Democrats set to offer loans to Carmakers". Even on a salary of $1 a year, think of how infinitely better off an auto exec is compared to the above gentleman about to breakfast on a cricket. How ever hard it may seem, we must try to be thankful. Thank you Leon for you...

Strewth, you learn something new and wierd every day ... I just posted this video of myself getting a haircut (for NY) in Chinatown for my upcoming Cheap'n'Choosy blog post and noticed almost 900 hits on it within a day of posting. How odd ... I used YouTube's handy Insight tool and found that a large chunk of views came from the clip being linked at The Shampoo Forum . Reading through some of the posts there reveals a foamy fetish - people who love getting their hair shampooed, brushed, combed ... Now we all love that feeling, just like a dog loves a good scratch, and especially when comes with a free scalp massage - but I never thought of it as being discussion topic. The internet never ceases to amaze, eh. On this forum, "blow job" takes on a whole old meaning! Well, at least unlike porn, it's all good, clean fun, and the participants have little chance of getting pregnant or catching any communicable diseases. I wonder when the Proctor and Gamble's w...

Dumbo Feather is very nice to touch-and-sniff coffee table mag featuring interviews with people who've spent a bit of time physically and/or mentally outside their own postcode (or zipcode as they say upover). If your internet connection doesn't complain about downloading the very stylishly art directed PDF, do avaread . You can find this link to it buried in my bio . They've made some of my snapshots look very arty indeed, including a classy cropping of the above shot, which is simply a close up of a topo map of the Nanawale Estates subdivision where I have my sliver of foliated lava on the Big Island of Hawaii . I was contacted by Kiwi editor/owner Kate Bezar while downunder 2008 , and she came over to my apartment and let me ramble into her little dictaphone. Since it came out I've received emails from some wonderful people from my past: Sue Carey and Gigi, from my days at Saatchi. And some coincidences: I was wandering down 19th street in Chelsea, Manhattan a mon...

From this article by Nicolai Ouroussoff : "But traumatic events have a way of making you see things more clearly. When Rem Koolhaas’s Prada shop opened in SoHo three months after the World Trade Center attacks, it was immediately lampooned as a symbol of the fashion world’s clueless self-absorption. The shop was dominated by a swooping stage that was conceived as a great communal theater, a kind of melding of shopping and civic life. Instead, it conjured Champagne-swilling fashionistas parading across a stage, oblivious to the suffering around them. The Chanel Pavilion may be less convoluted in its aims, but its message is no less noxious." Maybe it's just as well I didn't go inside! Here's my take on something even more noxious

Thank you to Peiheng Tsai for this cellphone image, taken in Union Square, NY, 1:18am on November 5 It's the day after the election. With the line "the election wasn't about color, it was about the economy" being bandied about, I, as a person of color, beg to differ. BARACK OBAMA: The Power of Positive Discrimination is my take on my FastCompany blog. In that post you'll see I also mention Little Person (that's dwarf or short statured person - but never midget) Dan who, like Obama, is doing great things for his minority group - by being out there, and being successful. Celebrate our differences, because as Obama shows, they're the true catalysts of change. Watch Dan in action . Speaking of little people, I saw one enter the same pizza place I was in. I found myself avoiding looking at him for fear of being rude - how many of us know that feeling? OK, now imagine you are that little person, feeling people's eyes shift away from you but knowing you are...

Pictured: Not doing a century in Alaska with winter riding expert Simon Rakower of All Weather Sports I DON'T do centuries. I find lotsa miles boring. I generally do the middling option - 50-60. Even on PACTOUR events (but for that, I am always working in some capacity so can usually wag out and save face). My technique for a) getting fit and b) meeting almost everyone at some point and c) getting back early enough to still have most of the day at my disposal - is to only do the 50-60 option. The drill: leave earlyish but not real early. Hammer with the fast guys as they catch you, hanging on for long enough to impress (but BEFORE you start slipping back). Bid them adieu, drop back, take a rest, mingle and chat with different groups bringing up the rear. Wait for the next fast group. Repeat until you've worked yourself all the way to the back. By this time you've finished early enough, you've had several good hard sprints, which are better than one long middling slog (...

I've just posted some multimedia about this intriguing, outspoken and let's face it, super buff Aussie social activist, Peter Melov: MOVIE: Peter Melov Live Food Cooking Class - 3-part video showing us how to make his signature chocolate balls, loaves and not fishes Photo Gallery of the class Melov's credo: Coconut! "A medium chain saturated fat that is understood by the human body." However, he is adamant his cooking is really just to sweeten people up for his real message, that of social awareness about the sinister politics of the food pyramid - and what he believes are the lies and propaganda we ingest along with bad food, thereby supporting big Pharma, conglomerates and other organizations that feed the need for greed. "My family think I'm crazy," he says. His family are medicos and apparently "obese, got acne, health issues ..." I met Peter after eyeing off his caco-nib-studded chocolate balls at the Bondi Junction weekend market...

Fashion designer Telfar Clemens tests out the Bike Friday tikit PHOTO GALLERY    Small wheels, tall models MOVIE CLIPS   Playlist The casting (7 mins)  Young NY models audition for the show, including riding the tikitTM! The show (10 mins)  20 minutes of fame as 250  fashionistas converge on Telfar's lunchtime showing I just finished filming a collaboration between Bike Friday and young fashion designer Telfar Clemens at New York Fashion Week. No, that's not Telfar above, that's Pavel, one of the young models at the show, who you may see brooding from giant CK billboards. The photo is meant to show our comparative heights: if he's the Empire State Building, I am in comparison, the illegal taco cart in parked in the cutter. Below is a shot of me and Telfar Clemens, with one of the monogrammed tikits we loaned him for his show. Read the full monty below ... JUST WHO IS TELFAR, I hear you mutter as you tuck your Arm...

Two score and six years ago ... my parents did the default here I am. I've just landed in NYC after 4 months of rabid customer evangelizing downunder . I was met at the airport by a Manhattan midnight cowboy who immediately whisked me off to the house of superlative bi bim bap to celebrate, Gam Mi Ok . It's the best, most healthy Asian square meal ever, in a round bowl (vegetarians can always refuse the meat). Just before I got off the plane, my lawyer James von Boeckmann (the nicest lawyer you'll ever meet, 541-485-0912) called and told me my greencard petition finally got approved. Unbelieveable! It's the end of a longish road. Rather than waiting years going the traditional employer route, I opted to self-petition using the faster, riskier route: National Interest Waiver. What is NIW? You have to show "exceptional ability" (the rung above it, extraordinary ability, is for young Einsteins and Nobel Laureates) and that your work is in the national interest. H...

That's what this t-shirt says. Think it will help calm road rage? I whipped it up using the Design-O-Matic t-shirt designer at www.remo.com.au Read my take on REMO and view the movie clip

There's always a pole to practice on, like this one on New York's L-Train Amber, Miss Poledance NSW WITH THIS, my third – or is it fourth? –  post about pole, I'm starting to get funny looks at the confessional. How long can I keep up the line "I only do it for my biceps/triceps, honest" when, with all my gallivanting around Oz for Bike Friday , I've barely had time to shin up the $550 chrome wonder propping up our living room ceiling? After my first multimedia post about the school, the principals Vanessa and Bobbi gifted my mother and I with two ringside, or should I say, bathtub side tickets, to one of their July Showtime evenings. Yes, the third 2-hour, champagne-drenched recital by the teachers featured a smoking act involving a couple of plastic shell-shaped bathtubs, ankle deep water, two sea sponges and the reigning Miss Poledance Australia, Candice, and Miss Poledance NSW, Amber. (As a duo, I reckon they should call themselves "CandAmber...

Today I blogged on FastCompany about Dr Doug Meyer, who jumped 17 floors to his death. Read post Thanks to Doug's colleague Steve Chang, a great friend and Bike Friday customer, for providing insight into Doug's life. The last time I saw Doug was at Halloween in NY; such a low key and unassuming man, he stayed clear of my video. Steve, however, appears at the end. Halloween in NY movie clip I've been busy tripping north to spread the low-hydrocarb gospel in Brisbane . Here's how I arrived in Brisbane, 14 hours in a folding hotel room. Check out the folding frenzy of the Countrylink sleeper cabin (Movie clip) Before that I interviewed REMO, the purveyor of Stuff with a Story (Movie Clip) - astounding, given that I'd upset them by critiquiing their email campaign. Finally, here's the kind of urban jungle we'd all welcome - hidden in a fold of suburban Paddington in Sydney: Heading back to Sydney July 17, then to Eugene, Oregon, Aug 6.

PHOTO GALLERY: Bobbi's Pole Studio End of Term recital MOVIE CLIP: Poledancing - the perfect workout for the modern urban cyclista In just a couple of years since my mother and daughter excursion into this femme fatale fitness fad, it seems poledancing has become the new 5BX - or rather X(XX?)BX of exercise for women of all ages, stages and sizes. I landed back downunder to discover that the local PoleStars franchise, where I did my introductory course, was up for sale. However, an outfit called Bobbi's Pole Studio was going great guns, with reportedly 1000 students. When I asked Bobbi, an utterly magnificent speciman of the XX chromosome, why she was leading the pack, she replied, "I've been doing poledancing all my life." Her studio, discreetly housed on the 4th floor of an old diva of a building, has zero street presence, perhaps to deter any riff raff. When you mount the stairs, you arrive on a floor bathed in pink lights and shiny fabrics and p...

Picture of the moment: Speaking of bodily use-by dates (see below), this Will kit for Singles caught my eye - clever marketing, since it probably contains little more more than a Post-it note to pencil in the solitary name of the person you're leaving your stufforama to - that's right, Thou Thyself Thou! Highway robbery at $24.95 - how stupid do they think we singles are? OK, I admit I did turn it over and over and wonder exactly what it said inside ... I paused in front of a Chinese Massage/Acupuncture clinic today, and decided to go for it. I've been suffering from a bit of a stiff upper back, plus a disturbing recent development where my skull and neck make a loud "crunching" sound when I look down. It's probably everything to do with my work and play - I ride a bicycle for a living, I spend too much time laptopping, and I'm going to be 50 in 5 years' time. Despite conscientious efforts to stretch and remain flexible, poledancing classes and sepa...

Pictured below: Can I get my former adland mentor Siimon out of his Aston Martin and onto a Bike Friday tikit ? I know the bike will go in the boot! We'll see when I get back from Melbourne and Sydney ... Pictured above right: Celebrating Melbourne's new "All bagged folders on trains, at all times" policy. What do you do with a folding bike? Be conspicuous, like a good company gal. Check the BF events calendar for dates of my Film Fest (7-10pm, May 13, 6 bond St Melbourne and May 15 Manning Clark IV Theater ANU, Canberra) where I'll be showing my handlebar movies. www.bikefriday.com/events Call me at 0420 968 967 or email galfromdownunder@gmail.com What am I doing downunder? 'Avaread.

Now here's a sight for a jaded junketeer's eyes ... A home made telescope (alright a pretty durn serious one) in deepest darkest Cowra, somewhere Downunder, afforded me this peeping-Tom's-eye view of the sexy, sultry, siren of all planets ... Mars. OK just testing you. I got to see it on the Australian Bike Friday Club annual Gathering - read my multimedia report which includes a movie clip of me oohing and ahhing the beast. I've seen 2001: multiple times, played Space Invaders, ogled the pictures in the "U" and "P" volumes of World Book Encyclopedia and those oversized Time Life tomes; seen endless "artists impressions" of the solar system on wall charts, books and of course, the web. As a teen I was mesmerized by a book in the library called "Black Holes, Quasers and the Universe", and would nip in there every other lunchtime to stand in the aisle, reading and re-reading the two pages on how an astronaut gets strung out like sp...

I think I've been duped by a fake Turbotax site, so consider this a public service ... and not an ad for the grannies at H&R Block, really: http://www.fastcompany.com/blog-post/work-life-will-real-turbotax-please-stand if you see someone called Lynette Chiang who doesn't look like me, driving a slew of kids in an SUV to the soccer field, it ain't me ...

... that means I've been busy as a botox kiosk in Beverley Hills. Doing what, you might ask? Take a look: San Francisco/Berkeley Hawaii Arizona Desert Camp making like Charles Atlas as you can see at the right ( Lon Haldeman took that shot) And now I'm off to Australia for all of April and May '08, carousing with customers here . My FastCompany blog slowed right down when they ported it over to a new system which didn't quite work at first. But now it's up and running as is my latest post (which says March 3 but it was actually March 15). One thing I tried in Hawaii, was to get a Hawaii driver's license. I thought it would be the coolest thing to hip out and brandish when the weather drops below freezing in other parts of the country. I haven't needed a car, or to drive, for 15 years. But apart from the envy factor, something tells me it might be useful to have one, especially in an emergency, and not be a burden to others. In a nutshell I passed the wri...

The latest addition to Wayne Takazono's 'Famous Paintings On Vacation' series. Buy a cool print of this original for $29 from the man himself, email wtakazono at hawaii dot rr dot com Ah, my Hawaii sojourn is drawing to a close. Before I jet off to Arizona for the annual Bike Friday Desert Camp I'm making a quick trip over to check on my postage-stamp-sized piece of Hawaii and dream about what I can do with it. I was thinking of investing in a condo of some sort (using coconuts and bike parts for currency) but this is one alternative to consider - build your own shack, rather than pay dearly for someone else's shack. Especially when the sun and rain are free and plentiful in Hawaii. No insulation needed, no heating or airconditioning if you build it right. Land has dropped down to around 10-15k a lot, but you don't buy there to make a killing. You buy because it's just one killer place to live. Take a look at my photos from '05-06. The lava is slow ...