(Past Your) Prime Real Estate

I haven't officially moved back to Sydney yet, but that doesn't stop me from planning what my perfect life is going to look like when I do.

And the perfect life requires the perfect apartment.

For awhile there, I had this delusional idea that I could live by myself in a studio. After watching too many episodes of Sex And The City and developing an unrealistic idea of the world, I thought I could be single and fabulous ala Carrie Bradshaw in a art-deco apartment in Darlinghurst. I could have a gigantuous walk-in closet, I could sit on the kitchen counter to eat take out and could walk around the apartment naked. It was all going to be so perfect.

But once again, I am faced with the sad realisation that Sex And The City is girl-porn but nothing like real life.

As I  was trawling through the online property listings, it started to become clear. If you're a struggling 20-something on a base salary on $40,000, you're only accommodation option is to live in a share house (or at home, but really? Really?) Even if you were to find a studio which was under $300 a week, add on top of that your utilities and an addiction to expensive cheese and you're looking at a large chunk of your weekly pay disappearing to living expenses.

Plus, I have picky requirements regarding studios. I don't like the idea of cooking curry in the same room as my bed. That smell travels. And clings.

And it's not that I have any issues living in a sharehouse. As long as you can stomach my sarcasm, unashamed addiction to trashy television and lazy habit of leaving used teabags in the sink, I'm everybody's dream roomie.

But when you've spent the last 15 months either living in a camp bunk with 14 teenagers, in a share-room with three other girls or a hostel room with God-knows who and what, personal space becomes a relished term.

Hence, the desire to flat with me, myself and I.

However, the Sydney real estate market is stubborn and unwilling. A clean, fairly fashionable studio apartment with a seperate bedroom/living space and a kitchen with a stove-top is in the range of $400 to $500 a week. Can a struggling 20-something on a base salary of $40,000 afford that?

Yes, if I never eat, shop or get my nails done ever again. And I walk every where. And I join a nudist colony on the weekends. That way I'll never need to buy clothes or a bikini. Or get a spray-tan.

This discovery made me realise that the only time I am ever going to be able to live by myself in an art-deco apartment in Darlinghurst is when I am making upwards of $60,000 a year. And for a creative-type, the only time I'm going to be making that kind of money is when I've been in the industry for a few decades and they have to pay me on experience. So, when I'm 40.

Which made me realise, the only time I can ever live by myself in my dream studio apartment in Darlinghust is when I am 40. And still single.

Gulp.

This seems somehow unfair (not to mention, terrifying) . Just because I am young and single, the real estate market is forcing me to slum it in a share house? And when (IF! I mean IF!) I am 40 and still single, only then I can have my own walk-in closet?

I guess this must be the perk of being 40 and unattached. One gets to sit on the kitchen counter, naked, eating take out in their swanky, art-deco apartment in Darlinghurst.

Well, if it's good enough for Carrie Bradshaw....

KH.

Over The Hills

A terrible thing happened this week.

The last episode of The Hills aired on Australian television.

I am in mourning.

In my post-travel, umemployed lifestyle, I had taken to watching The Hills on Go! every afternoon at 4:30 while running on the treadmill in my living room.

Not only did watching The Hills feel indulgently pathetic, but watching it while working out in the kind of sad saggy sweats one is too embarrassed to wear outside of the house, made it also comfortable.

 But mostly pathetic.

I found a sick enjoyment about working out while watching the superficial lifestyles of The Hills'  transpire in front of me. Plus, imagining myself with abs as flat as Audrina's always helped get me through those last asthma-inducing kilometres.

I have an unashamed, minor obsession with The Hills. I realise the show is completely fabricated. No one's hair is that blonde, no one's teeth are that white and no one has that much money to spend on spray tans as well as Hollywood rent. Most importantly however, no one's life is that affected by drama on a daily basis.

Except, maybe Lara Bingle.

Oh, but isn't this what is so satisfying about The Hills? The drama. The drama that has absolutely nothing to do with you, but you can be a non-involved by-stander passing opinion while all those trivial tall tales are spun like a silk web?

And doing all that while pounding it out on a treadmill in the early afternoon heat? Oh heaven.

But the more I watch, the more I start to feel like I am actually involved with these people, that they're actually my friends. I have lamented every failed relationship of LC's, wished Kristen wasn't doing such an injustice to the collective of our Given Name, yelled at the television screen everytime Audrina got sweet-talked by Justin Bobby and withheld my rage every time Spencer opened his insidious mouth.

Until I realise I know more about these 'characters' than I do my own friends. Then I think maybe The Hills reaching a sixth and final season is a good thing and a prime opportunity to ditch my saggy sweats and pound the pavement outside.

Maybe I'll run to JB Hi-Fi and buy The City of DVD?

KH.

You can grow the mo, but can you raise the dough?

November is coming up which is exciting because that means my birthday is a few weeks away and that means I get to be spoilt and claim the limelight for 24 hours (plus the birthday sub-clause of additional birthday limelight three days prior and three days after actual birthday, which is general birthday celebration etiquette.)

And with November comes other things - the last month of Spring, the Melbourne Cup and Movember.

Ah, Movember. An annual tradition that must be endured for the good cause that is furthering research for prostate cancer.

I have a small issue with Movember, although nothing to do with the actual meaning behind it. It's not that even that I dislike facial hair. I appreciate a good after-5 shadow, a handlebar moustache makes my loins tingle and there's something about a man with a full wirey beard that makes me feel naughty. I swear, it has something to do with Ned Kelly, who in my bushranger dreams is a bad boy and therefore, a debaucherous lover.

Anyhoo...

My issue with Movember is men sporting beards, whether they be side burns, Mexican mo's or a Chopper Reid-styled 'stash simply for the sake of Movember. Not because they are registered with the Movember organisation and actively raising funds for prostate cancer research.

It's walking the walk, but not talking the talk. Growing the mo, but not raising the dough. I understand and appreciate the activity of creating awareness, but it bothers me when people say they're 'doing Movember' and all that involves is not shaving their lip hair for a few weeks.

I want to see true dedication. I want your donation tin rattled under my nose. I want to invest in your facial fuzz and feel like I too, am supporting something important. Because when you're officially doing it for the cause, other people get to enjoy your mo too, not just you.

So gents (and ladies, I guess. I mean, you never know what kind of imbalanced hormones some people have. I don't want to exclude those with their fair share of testosterone), please go and register! Do it for your mo. It'll help it grow. And you can be a bearded beauty knowing that your 'stash is raising some cash. 

KH.

Guess who's back, back again...

After a 16 month hiatus from The KH Chronicles, I bet you thought I would never come back.

I bet some of you even hoped that I wouldn't. Shame on you.

But here I am again, back in the editor's seat of the most opinionated publication in cyberspace.

Returning from my 15 month jaunt in the USA and Canada, I can confidently say I am not the same girl who sat in front of this blog little over a year ago.

Okay, so I might have the same face, the same caffeine addiction and the same lack of social etiquette, but the rest of me is different. Kind of like a sweat-stained dress you put in for dry-cleaning that comes back looking all sparkly and new again. I feel all sparkly and new.

I won't bore you with slides and stories that begin with, "Oh, that's just like that time I was in New York City..." or (cue abnoxious laugh) "You remind me so much of this great friend I met snowboarding the Canadian alps..." because I was once a non-traveller too and I know how that talk is like an ice-pick to the brain.

Plus, you should have read Where In The World is KH anyway and need nothing explained to you.

As you can see, The KH Chronicles has had a bit of a makeover. I thought it was about time the header had a facelift. If The Daily Telegraph can re-design so can I, but don't fret. I'm not going tabloid just yet.

The KH Chronicles is still going to have your daily dose of wit and satire. I'm just making the place look a little more stream-lined. Plus, the Blogspot designer is so fancy these days I feel like a female Steve Jobs.

... too soon?

If I can draw your attention to the right-hand side of the screen, we have some newly published pages about Yours Truly. This may be of particular interest to those readers who have been re-directed here courtesy of a recent job application that may have landed in your inbox. There's a couple of You Tube clips in there too, if you're tired of reading.

But if you're tired of reading... what are you doing here? This is a blog.

Have a look around. Get a little reacquainted. Feel free to hire me if you like what you see.



KH.