Hello Sunday Morning | Simo

A FALLEN SOLDIER (by Simon Maher)
21/04/10 • 1 Comment

Tadaaki's time was before digital camera's

The first-half of my HSM experience has been great for me, I have really come in to my own and settled in to not drinking and being comfortable with it. Warning; this blog is a little more serious. HSM director Chris often refers to individuals and their relationship with alcohol. To be honest, at first I thought this was rubbish. I thought it was a cop out. Wait up… now I can now see much more clearly where he was coming from, though I think I can relate to it on another level. Your relationship with alcohol is your relationship with yourself. It’s that ‘internal dialogue’ which gives us confirmation that what we are doing is right or wrong. Booze is so prolific, that it can be described as more than just a thing, but an entity which provides a different (mostly blurry) world to play another character in. It’s that [...]

ADDIN’ SWAGGER TO MY STEP (By Simon Maher)
20/03/10 • 10 Comments

This aint so bad, in fact, I’m having an killa time. The first weekend hanging out with the old boy proved an initial challenge. The seasoned drinker that he is, proceeded to pull out two delicious looking ‘big guns’ in the wine world. A Rockford sparkling Black Shiraz and a Rockford basket press Shiraz. For those that are thinking’WTF is he on about’, this wine is highly sought after and very tasty. Normally, I would jump straight in to it; the old boy is an extremely generous man, he especially loves sharing a drink with me. Often we can consume copious amounts of wine, staying up until all hours until one of us declared being a ‘shot duck’ and admitting defeat (because sunrise was only a couple of hours away). Ouch For a lot of young aussie men, sharing a drink and a yarn with the old boy are times to be cherished and this is [...]

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE (By Simon Maher)
06/03/10 • 3 Comments

I sit here and take a deep breath, hold it in for a bit and let the oxygen fill my lungs and shortly after, spike my brain with a hit of dizzy energy. I’m beginning to become short of breath; even at a standstill. I’m fatigued from an ongoing barrage of booze, cigarettes, late nights and junk food. It has become more so apparent how fortunate I am that Chris Raine approached me to take this challenge on, I cannot begin to express the timeliness of this. Firstly, I won’t tell you about that ‘binge drinking is the worst thing in the world’ and that ‘no one should ever try it’. I love a drink. Instead, I will explore and uncover many of the behavioural and social associations that alcohol has developed within myself; much like other researchers have. The difference is that I’ll bring it from the front line, [...]