Free Portable Curiosities by Julie Koh

absolute revelation. Everyone who’s anyone worships him. He’s ice-cream royalty, and no one’s going to get anywhere near him for a very long time.’
    â€˜Ready to see where the magic happens?’ says G. He presses a button on a remote. The security gates swing open.
    G’s house is a glass hemisphere – a stand-out look for the industrial Alexandria skyline.
    â€˜It’s a converted warehouse,’ he says as we walk up the driveway. ‘I told my architect to design me a place that literally looks like the Sydney housing bubble.’
    On the front steps, we run into G’s advertising team. He has them living on the premises while they develop the promotional strategy for the venture. They’re standing around in a cloud of their own herbal smoke, holding their cigarettes out to the side, tapping the ash. They are in the midst of an impenetrable conversation about organic Dutch carrots and mise en scène and style sins and intercultural artistic collectives.
    G introduces me to the art director. ‘Tell her about the campaign, Rhys.’
    Rhys visibly shivers with excitement under his Native American headdress. ‘Oh my God, it’s so high concept it’s on Pluto. It’s so underground it’s above ground.’
    I tell him I’m very curious about the new product.
    â€˜Hells yeah,’ says Rhys. ‘So are we.’
    He doesn’t even know what the product is?
    â€˜Well, no. But we’d totes line up to taste it. We hear it’s a killer flavour.’
    In the hallway we have to edge past a TV crew.
    â€˜Just ignore them,’ says G. ‘They’re filming our renovation contest.’
    The hallway leads us straight through to the centre of the bubble. The ceiling, at its highest point, must be ten metres above the floor.
    â€˜Money comes, money goes,’ says G. ‘You have to do something with it. May as well be high ceilings.’
    In the centre of the bubble is a circular pool area with two yellow slippery slides. The slide on the left is open-topped. The slide on the right is a closed tunnel. Two streams of beautiful naked women with high hair and big breasts slide down them over and over again. The accompanying soundscape seems to be a recording of a busy construction site.
    â€˜Like it?’ asks G. ‘It’s an art installation. You have two viewing options. You can either watch the ladies slide all the way down on the left, or on the right you can delay visual gratification until they pop out the end. The fact that I buy important pieces of art like this, it really makes me feel like I’m giving back to the community – completing the loop.’
    Lining the outer area of the bubble are rooms with views of the central pool.
    G shows us the kitchen first, where a pair of eager contestants is awaiting G’s approval. G casts his eye over the space – which is scattered with multicoloured Eames chairs – and shakes his head.
    â€˜The splashback has to go,’ he says. ‘What were you thinking? Three out of ten.’
    We move on with the TV crew. Pairs of contestants have been assigned to each room. The boom operator tells me that each couple is responsible for renovating a room according to a theme selected by G. The money comes out of their own pockets, with many contestants borrowing against their own homes.
    Most are in a state of panic. They stand in the middle of their rooms, heads bowed, weeping silently, with paint rollers in their hands. A rumour is going around that the team with the lowest score at the end of the day will be asked to crawl out of the bubble on their hands and knees, before being whisked off to an hour-long session of electroshock therapy.
    I ask what the show is called.
    â€˜Is it a show? We hired a camera crew, so I guess it looks like a show. I just wanted a reno, really. The original interior was so last quarter.’
    What’s in it for the