KEEP IT IN THE PHAMLY

My morning routine used to involve 20 minutes of blow-drying and 15 minutes of running late. If it were just me, it'd be okay but I commute with Little Sissy Pham and she uses flex time for all her medical appointments. The simpler solution would have been to wake up earlier but that's way too logical for the likes of me.

Instead, I got a new hairdryer from this decade to blast the heck out of my hair. Who knew hairdrying technology could advance so much in 10 years? All this time I thought it was my stubborn, thick Asian hair that refused to let go of moisture. Hairdressers comment every time they try to dry my hair so I'm not all delusional. Only slightly.

But with my spankin' new Remington Studio Styles Ionic Pro Pack I'm sorted in 5 minutes. For $50 it gets the job done well and people have commented how shiny and flowy my hair looks now. Little Sissy Pham finds the placement of the buttons on the handle inconvenient but she's a fussier Pham than me. Which is why when her hairdryer died a couple weeks ago, I bought her a fancy GHD dryer for Christmas! I have an annoying habit of spending much more on other people than I do on myself. It's crap.

Of course, as soon as I got my own new hairdryer, Little Sissy Pham and I started swimming in the evenings so now I shower at nights and don't need to speed-dry my hair in the mornings anymore. Such is life.

I've gone from not wearing patterns and prints to a number of floral and polka dot dresses. For some reason I always thought prints didn't suit me but I've come to realise I look like Mum Pham and she exclusively wore patterns and prints.
I look more and more like Mum Pham as I get older. I’m so much like her I started to worry and asked Little Sissy Pham, 'What if mum's become an evil spirit and is taking over my body?' to which she squealed 'yay!' and I sulked for the rest of the day.

I guess if I were to turn into mum it won't be so bad. After all, Mumma Pham was one stylish lady. These are just some of the many patterned jersey dresses I've bought from ASOS.com recently.

Last year's Harvest was an emotional affair because it was my very last day in Melbourne before moving interstate. This year, I went back for sentimental reasons and ended up having the best ever festival experience of my life. As an ex-music publicist and obsessed fan, I've been to so many music festivals I thought once I quit I’d never go again. Until Harvest.

What makes Harvest stand out? Harvest has eliminated all the bad elements of festival outings and enhanced the good.

The Werribee Park site in Melbourne is so beautiful. No mud, no dust - it's all green grass and flourishing plants in November. Melbourne weather even blessed the festival with two glorious days of sunshine and thanks to the trees, there was plenty of shade to keep my blonde-hair and blue-eyed pals from burning to a crisp.

The food is divine - all gourmet and high quality food stalls. None of the overpriced rubbish that seems to be the norm at most big festivals. I seriously wished Harvest wasn't a one-day festival so I could try more food! There were also art installations and chill spaces around the entire festival which made the experience even more relaxing – though with added kooky fun. It’s not every day I get to sit in a human-sized bird nest to enjoy coffee and waffles.

In its start-up year Harvest queues for drinks and toilets were quite insane but the festival listened to the feedback and this year they had a way more effective drinks system and toilets aplenty. No queues whatsoever. Thanks for caring, Harvest!


All this and I haven't even started gushing about the amazing line-up! The team behind Harvest Festival put together a line-up for genuine music lovers. They're not going for the so-indie-you-don't-know-them-but-pretend-you-do line-up or the so-mainstream-you-don't-like-music-but-you-go-because-it's-fashionable-and-get-blind-drunk-and-pass-out-before-midday crowd.

I explored the festival site with Dandy Warhols as my background music, I got to see my favourite band in the line-up, Liars, front and centre, discovered Mike Patton’s Mondo Cane, stoner rocked with The Black Angels, chilled out to the beautiful sounds of Beirut, had a blast dancing to Beck (my surprise favourite performance of the day – I knew he’d be great but I’m not a Beck fanatic so didn’t expect him to be my festival highlight), stopped by Fuck Buttons for a bit of party-electro but decided the indie experimental Grizzly Bear was a much gentler ease into the atmospheric glory of Sigor Ros. Everyone was top quality.

Thanks Harvest for the most beautiful festival experience I’ve ever had. I’ll see you next year.

Love.

I went back to Melbourne for my first proper visit since moving and enjoyed me some Harvest 2012, Melbourne Aquarium, a real life data centre, Bleeding Knees Club @ the Corner, got a talking-to from tarot lady and did so much catching-up with friends over food I vomited in my mouth from overeating. Twice.

When I left Melbourne last year I wasn't in a great place (read: In loving memory of Mum Pham). I'm glad the general vibe everyone got from me this time is one of a sun-kissed, happy and healthy girl. I feel more me than I have all year.

Seeing my Melbourne friends reminded me how much love and fun and life I still have inside me. It's been too long since I've gotten this type of reaction from my friends:

Tarot lady says in 2013 everything's coming up Milhouse (my interpretation of her words, she didn't actually say that). I believe her because now I've got my  'anything is possible' attitude back, anything really is possible.

I had a trippy night out with my second cousin, Peter, in Melbourne. My mum and his dad hung out when they were young. History continues with us, the two kids who look exactly like our deceased parent. I kept freaking out when he looked at me with his dad's eyes, and he kept wigging out when I pulled a Mum Pham face. It was spooky yet fun.

I'd been waiting half a decade for Peter to turn 18 so I could take him out to gigs, but just as he reached legal partying age I went and moved up to Brisbane. So I set this right on my recent trip to Melbourne by taking him to see Bleeding Knees Club at the Corner Hotel.
Boy, do I thank the rock gods for delivering unto me a skate/surf band who fit a year's worth of rock & roll experiences into one short and sweet set for Peter. Naked guy (pictured), moshing, crowd-surfing, drinking beer out of sneakers and two near knock-outs - all set to the catchy tunes and charming banter of the BKC boys. FUN!

This was Bleeding Knees Club's last tour before they take a time out to write album #2, but next time they're down your way I highly recommend you go see and partay.

Most of the time I think I'm a good Aunty. And then I hear myself speak.

I caught the bus to work the other day. The same bus my eldest niece takes to school. In the space of 5 minutes I'd told her that Little Sissy Pham is an alcoholic (as a joke - the only person more sober than her is me) and that the bus wasn't packed as usual because adults slack off on Fridays (not a joke). These are just two of the multitude of things that spurt from my mouth without my brain's or Little Sissy Pham's approval.

Lucky for my nieces, I'm not their only Aunty option. There's Little Sissy Pham and their mum's sister too. It's okay though, I make up for my personality with material things like these novelty penguin-shaped presents from Melbourne aquarium. Eldest niece got rose-scented hand cream and Middling niece got a waddling, wind-up penguin toy. I didn't get mini-bro anything because she can't understand language so I haven't damaged her outlook on life and don't owe her any quick-fix gifts. Yet.

Check out this awesome(ly nerdy) interactive graphic. It helps put life in perspective and made me realise, my ears aren't so big.

I got an email the other day asking if my blog posts are paid for promotions because I'm so positive about everything. It reminds me of the time Ben Garden from Grafton Primary told me, "I can't figure out if you're a total trash bag or just high on life." (Answer is the latter.) This makes me wonder how many other people find my sheer enthusiasm for life hard to believe.

As a result, I've started an OAQ section on my 'about' page (once asked questions). The short answer is no, I'm not asked to write any of my blogs. Actually, my Phamly sometimes ask me not to write blogs... but, really, they just shouldn't do so much funny shit to spark post ideas.

The longer answer is: I started this blog knowing I'd want it to be positive(ly silly). There's enough negativity on the internet and in the world. Why add more? Ain't nobody got time for that! I avoid making nasty remarks on my blog so I only write about things I genuinely love and recommend.  Whatever I write about I've discovered on my own and bought for myself.

While I can proudly say I've personally selected everything I blog about and none of it comes from external promo requests, it's not totally true to say my opinions are my own. My opinions and all my brain-thoughts are a running stream of pop culture quotes from TV, movies, books, magazines... I don't think I've ever had an original thought in my life.

Arnott's new double choc mud Tim Tams remind of me of a recent Phamly dinner where Little Sissy Pham accidentally put middling-niece off both her dinner and dessert with but a few words.

First on the menu was wonton noodles, which Middling heard as 'one tonne noodles!?!?! Um, I ate already.' Her mum explained it was the yummy noodles with soup that she loves. She enjoyed her dinner after that.

After dinner came chocolate cake with strawberries and whipped cream. Little Sissy Pham told our little prep goer who makes mud pies at school the cake's name to which middling exclaimed "MUD cake?!?!?!" and refused to eat any. It took a lot of coaxing to even get her to try the cake. By try I mean she slowly poked her tongue out and touched an edge with the very tip of her tongue before setting it back down.

Probably didn’t help that it was a gluten-free cake – another failed attempt to help Little Sissy Pham’s terrible case of psoriasis through dietary means as well as the bazillion creams and UV treatments the docs have tried over the past decade. Anyway, the happy ending is I got to eat my cake and Middling’s too.

If I ever turn off my greedy gut to share double choc cake Tim Tams with my niece I'll tell her "it's a yummy chocolate biscuit. I love it, it's my favourite." Because you don’t tell a 6 year old it’s mud. On a serious note, I'm not a Tim Tam fan to begin with but I am obsessed with the double choc mud ones. They smell of delicious mud cake and have soft, muddy chocolate in the middle. So good. You gotta try them – they’re part of the exclusive Sweet Wishes range of Tim Tams and this flavour is only available from Woolworths.

Agent Smith from The Matrix was right. Humans are like a disease to this planet but I'll be damned if he thinks we're not cute when we multiply and spread. Meet the newest germ in my Phamly:


I call her Mini-bro Pham because the poor thing looked awfully like Big Brother Pham when she was first born. Actually, she looked exactly like the baby from Ice Age 1 first, and then when she opened her eyes she looked like my bro.


Then we took her home from hospital and she realised, 'Holy crap... this is what I have to live with?' Though, to be fair, I didn't buy her that onesie - I rightly assume she bought it herself with the baby bonus. Babies get to spend that, right?


When she's old enough to crawl, I'm going to put her in the middle of the hallway and make her pick the Auntie (singular) she really loves. If it's me, I'll cry until my blood vessels burst and spurt blood out of my eyes. If it's Little Sissy Pham, I'll knock my sister out with a baby rattle. Either way, mini-bro is going to have a traumatising life experience 6-9 months from now.

Life with The Phamly won't be all bad. We don't suppress her desire for Tin Tin hair (actually, it's her natural do - nature really is amazing). We took her bowling for her 1 month celebration of life where she drank and sharted.