Matt Hobbs

I’m a celebrity – get me over there!

Just bought my ticket back down to Australia. Huzah! Leave England on June 1st to go to New York for a few days, then head over to San Francisco to catch up with folk over there and then, on June 17th arrive in Melbourne. From there the plan is to head up north to Cairns for a few weeks of intensive scuba diving and tan work, then back south for another Surfari and finally back down to Melbourne via Sydney. This should give me about six months left on my work visa to enjoy down in Melbourne before whatever happens after that! Simple really.

All change

Currently in the process of moving from the old, banner crazy hosting site at ultrahi.tripod.com to a fresh new site hosted by FastHosts. Of course this involves the transfer of funds and the added confusion that the name ultrahi.net is hosted by Enom. Fasthosts is going to be at matthobbs.co.uk, which should start working in the next few days hopefully and then I’ll repoint ultrahi.net to that address as well.

So in the meantime these updates may mean things look a bit weird for a bit… but like all change for the better a short distruption to normality is worth the end result. Huzah!

Above the earth from the air

Wandering around Kensington today and came across the outside exhibition of Earth from the Air next to the Natural History Museum. Now putting aside the irony of setting any kind of outside photo exhibit in England this is a must see, just make sure you bring an umbrella. Seeing these wonderful photos from around the world printed large really brings them to life. Amazingly they were only taken on 35mm (using a Canon EOS-1N) and from a helicoptor, which can’t have been the easiest platform to get a non-blurry photo from but Yann Arthus-Bertrand has done an outstanding job. Go see.

Continuing on the subject of artists (as in ‘successful’ rather than ‘struggling‘ and other such words beginning with ‘s’) I went along to the new Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Lisson Gallery. The Lisson is Kapoor’s normal show ground when he’s not filling the Tate Modern with wonderful red PVC mega-structures. Consequently this was a return to his post-Marsys forms of reflective cones and columns of varying shades. This is, to my mind, a shame as the metallic structures never seem to have the impact of his more organic, earthy works. So it was good news to see a pile of the familiar klein blue dyed rubble illuminated by strobe lights. The highlight of the trip had to be having the door opened by Anish himself while he chatted away on the phone to someone in French. So stunned was I that couldn’t think of a thing to say to one of my favourite artists, combined with the fact of his self-imposed anonymity means I’ve only ever seen one picture of him and so was unsure whether it was him until someone called his name as he left.

Spring cleaning

Well after the unseasonably un-English sunny weather of last week the English spring has hit with a vengence today. Lashing rain and gray skies were in full force so I decided not to go for my usual jog round Clapham Common! Instead I’ve re-located slight up the road from where I was staying – from Aimi’s house to Phil’s. This is all of an extra four minutes walk so not the most strenuous of moves. Plus Phil has excellent internet as every good host should. Thanks to both Aimi and Phil for their hospitality.

On the subject of homes and houses yesterday was my nephew Nathanael’s christening. The lucky little chap now has four god-parents, two of whom are vicars, so his christian soul is veritably saved already. Amen. This can be added to the confusion of having two uncles called Matt, so it will probably all even out in the end. Oh, did I mention that other uncle Matt is also a vicar? All dog collars aside the dampening of Nathanael’s head in a draughty church was cause for much family celebration down in Aldershot with huge lashings of food for everyone. The sun also delayed its departure just enough for us all to eat outside before rushing in out of the rain for tea. Smashing.

Hmm.. not really on the subject of homes and houses. The tenuous link however was that I was back in Camberley again, so spent a happy few hours boxing more of my hoarded crap up and throwing other bits and bobs out prior to mum and Henry’s planned move sometime this year. This spring cleaning frenzy just extended itself to my Yahoo mail inbox where deleting the emails of a number of ex-girlfriends led to the recovery of about two megs of badly needed mail space – huzah! I’m sure if they ever do decide to talk with me again then this will afford a better fresh start. So on that note I’m off to clear up more electronic crap from my hard drive. Night all.

Back to school

Phew! It’s hot and sunny in London at the moment. Most atypical but very nice when you’re not working. I’m currently staying near Clapham Common with Aimi in a converted school. The apartment is the most amazing loft space I’ve seen in London yet, really reminiscent of good Billyburg loftage. Unfortunately the lease is up end of this month so it’s only a temporary thing.

Although that temporary state is handy as I’ve still yet to decide on my future plans. I’ve been hanging around in England now since March 17th when I came back from New Zealand and I still haven’t either a) bought a ticket back to Australia for the rest of my year visa or b) decided to settle back here. My mind keeps flip flopping between the two which is most un-helpful of the little bugger.

In the meantime though having fun catching up with friends, seeing art galleries and sunny weather so it’s not all bad…

South of the border, west of the sun – haruki murakami. A short novel from Mr Murakami this time and the shortness works in its favour as often his books can seem a bit drawn out. This tale is of lost childhood love and the choices faced in mid-life, not an uncommon theme but this time the main hero is not an expert cook. One of his better ones.

Sophie’s world – jostein gaardner. Interesting basic introduction to a number of philosophers with bizarre tacked on ‘alternate reality’ plot. Targetted more at late teen age rather than adult so a lot of the characters (such as Sophie herself) are extremely one dimensional to the level of being annoying avatars. Not bad.

The luck o’ the mattish

Just about to head back to England after a fun few days over in Dublin visiting Louise (with big thanks to Roseanne and Vinnie for letting us stay). Seen lots of sights – well, lots of bars anyways, and of course the Guinness brewery which has mad views of the whole city from the gravity bar at the top. So, of course, drank some Guinness and whiskey, visited Bono, Enya and Eddie Irving’s palatial residences and looked at the new big pointy thing in the town center. Mmm… pointy.

At the moment though I’m hoping my flight back is a lot less precipitous than the flight over. Having almost enjoyed a 24 hour flight back from New Zealand I find it ironic that a one hour flight can freak me out so much purely due to the fact that the plane tipped 45 degrees right after take off (followed by some more turbulence). Of course this was the first flight in ages that I hadn’t taken any Dramamine (my flying drug of choice) and was sitting right at the back of the plane so that just made things worse. Luckily though my weekend flu-like illness, replete with dry cough and muscle aches, seems to have subsided meaning that it probably wasn’t SARS after all…

Hangin’ Around

For those of you who’ve been wondering where my usual witty and urbane bloggy banter has been (hi mum) I just worked out that Blogger had managed to lose my page template somewhere, hence it wasn’t updating properley. Oops. Anyway, should all be fixed and luverley now so onto a quick update…

Ah, Easter bank holiday. A four day weekend when everyone rushes out of London to see some other part of the world, which is normally the motorway for at least the first six hours. Luckily for me I was driving into London on Thursday lunchtime to drop off my rental car, watching the queues of traffic the other way growing fat as more folk escaped from the city. Of course the great thing about this is that London becomes very quiet and chilled out for the whole weekend, with pretty much most things open as usual.

Dance dance dance – haurki murakami. An even stranger than usual story from Murakami… The hero has strange dreams about a hotel he used to visit with a prostitute in another part of Japan and decides to go and try and find out what it means. What follows is a tale of random (and not so random) connection culminating in a slightly confusing ending. The ride along the way is good though this is not one of my favourite Murakami books. Oh, but it does have the interesting aside of a character who is an author called Haruki Murakami – this is apart from the hero who, as usual, is an intelligent loner who likes cooking and occaisionally bedding attractive woman but not falling in love.