Dan

A list of things I will remember about my mate Dan, whom the world was deprived of on 20 January 2006:

1. Our final meal together at the milk bar opposite the Law School  – a bag of chips and a potato cake for him and a double shot coffee for me. He was saving to travel to the Middle East in April with the lovely J and was living predominantly on rice and spuds in their various forms. We talked about the brave efforts of the Civil Lit lecturer to make the subject interesting, the effect of Whiskas on my cat, his new job writing submissions for the comparative constitutional law centre, how he had finally got round to reading the book I gave him for his birthday (“The Impressionist”) and the best live music we had seen last year. 

2. The last time I saw him – at a house party in Carlton. I was drinking red wine out of a camping mug and I poured him some into an empty glass jar that we found under the house’s sink (it was an all-male house who had compiled the music playlist for this party some three weeks before, yet overlooked the fact that their guests may require drinking vessels).  He had brought along two little bottles of cognac from a stash of mini-bottles that had been left at his house by the previous tenants. We talked about feeling older than the majority of the party’s attendees who were urinating and procreating in the alley, whether law firms would take offence to his increasingly Tintin-esque hairdo, J’s problems as an asthmatic getting a diving certificate and Dan's ambivalence towards frozen peas. 

3. The last meal he cooked for me – a rice pilaf based on Stephanie’s CC recipe (which Dan called “that big book”).  He omitted the saffron and almonds from the written recipe and instead used turmeric, ginger, cardamom and cumin seeds, sprinkled from little jars lovingly labelled by his housemate Hannah, who maintains the best-stocked pantry of any student house I’ve seen. 

4. The last meal I cooked for him – late night hot chocolate with cinnamon and nutmeg, whisked until frothy, and supped as we watched Napoleon Dynamite and he pretended not to detest my cat. 

5. India, 2003. By day, I would attend four-hour yoga classes and lectures, and Dan was taking tabla lessons and practising his almost fluent Hindi (he taught himself from a tape and was fluent after about three weeks in India so he started teaching himself Sanskrit). By night, we would feast on aloo gobi, various dahls, palak paneer, milk-skin pudding, curd, chapattis and endless cups of chai.

6. A conversation late last year:

To contextualise, during our time in India, I noticed that Dan either went without breakfast or would eat the same thing he had eaten for dinner the previous day.  He said that breakfast food was boring and it made more sense to skip directly to the more gastronomically interesting parts of the day if hunger required it. When we returned to Melbourne, I took him to my favourite breakfast haunts - Ici in Fitzroy, Gluttony on Smith Street (when it was still good) and Big Harvest in Carlton - hoping to convince him of the merits of my favourite meal of the day.

Last year, I called Dan late at night with yet another question about obscure legal theory as I attempted to construct an essay conclusion.  I thanked him profusely for his help and promised to bake him a cake as soon as everything was handed in, as it was very unlikely he would ever require me to teach him anything academic. 

He replied  “but you taught me how to love breakfast”.

Comments

[another outspoken female]

How about a memorial cake in his honour and a picnic this time each year to devour it? Or a breakfast, Indian meal or a contest to make the most creative rice or potato meal.

Hang in there :)

[Sue]

Wonderful memories.

[catonthebench]

Thanks FN, they are lovely ideas, especially the picnic. Thanks Sue as well :)

[nora]

I just came across your site kind of randomly - but I knew Dan too. Not so well, but enough to know he was lovely boy - and that was a lovely post about him.

One less good person in the world.

xox nora

[Jon]

hello --
i came across this blog post somehow... i thought you might like to know, there's actually a blog that exists for dan. and if you're interested, i think something like what you posted here would be really good to include there too. here's the address - if you feel inclined, maybe you can contact me through it - i'm fairly sure we may have met before (though i haven't figured out who you may be).
http://www.dizzydonor.org/danmc/
bests, jon.