There was no better way to kick off the summer in Melbourne than The Gathering music festival in Werribee Park on Saturday. It was a perfectly sunny, breezy day spent lounging in the grass, listening to great music and cracking open a few cold ones with a good friend. What more could a girl ask for?
The line up was epic for a day festival, but the bands that I was most excited for were Bright Eyes, The National and The Flaming Lips. So, sadly because of the standard music festival complex I had accept that I'd miss a few great bands on one stage to catch my priorities on another. I missed out on Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Portishead, Mogwai and Holy Fuck...but such is life. I also managed to stumble into a few good shows that left me with the itch of musical exploration. So I guess one could say that all is well in my musical universe. Ultimately, I left happy and (due to diligent sunscreen application) without skin scorched by the hole in the Aussie ozone layer.
Other than the festival, it's life as usual here. Working, playing and trying to plan my next move. I'm thinking it'll be New Zealand come the new year and maybe even a brief trip home around mid February. Whether it'll be back to New Zealand or Australia for work after my stint in Florida or on to another grand adventure, I'm not sure. All I can say for myself is that as of now, I'm a happy camper living the day to day and enjoying the little things as I stumble upon them.
Sooo, apparently I only blog once a month now. Talk about falling off the wagon. I was so diligent before. I think it's a sign that I'm settling into a normal sort of life and pattern here in Melbourne. I work, I hang out with my friends, I do laundry and dishes and take bike rides and chill out in cafes. It's not a hard life, but not an overwhelmingly exciting one either. Well, I should say not exciting in the way that travelling is where I feel the need to share all the amazing details and incredible new experiences that are constantly happening.
Anyway, so this is it now. I've been working in a new restaurant in South Wharf called the Boatbuilders Yard. It's really a beautiful location just off the Yarra River and South West of the city so you get a beautiful view of the skyline all set up on the backdrop of an 19th century boat/maritime museum called Polly Woodside. My work mates are all really fun and laid back, the bosses and owners included. We often enjoy a couple knock offs in the sunshine at the end of our shift. If any of you have ever travelled to Melbourne, you have undoubtedly been walking along the Yarra one night and been caught off guard by a series of explosions of fire on the south side of the river. When I first saw these in the reflection of a building window, I don't know exactly what to call it, a sculpture or an installation or something, well anyway, when I first saw these flaming balls of glory, I though there was some sort of terrorist attack or bomb strike of some sort. Below is a low quality video I took one night after working a night shift while having a knock off by myself. It's epic because it goes off hourly so I get to count my time at work with these strikingly beautiful fireballs. If you ever come to Melbourne, you should come sit at the Boatbuilders Yard with a pint and wait for the show to begin. It is truly beautiful.
A beautiful afternoon knock off
One of my work mates, Juan Pablo or 'Pampa' as we like to call him
Another cool thing that I did since my last post was join a flash mob!!! One day while I was still working at Síyía I was on my break munching a delicious salad bowl and browsing through the Melbourne Fringe Festival magazine which outlined all the cool things that were happening with the festival. While perusing the pages I stumbled across a thing called Crowd Play, which was basically this flash mob open to the public to join and planning a few performances during the duration of the fringe festival. Well, anyway, Marcelle and I went to a rehearsal along with practicing with instructional videos at home. In the end there were 3 performances. I made it to the final two, Marcelle the final one. It was perfect timing, because the boys had just arrived from Canada so we had some unsuspecting victims to spring the flash mob on. Well, it would have been a perfect surprise, but Marcelle is not so good at surprises and kept saying that we have to 'practice' one night when I had everyone over for dinner and she had a couple of glasses of wine in her. The plan was to all meet in Federation Square and walk to my work for lunch, conveniently passing the flash mob location at 1:30 on the nose. Sadly, Marcelle and Charlie were running late and Marcelle, un-sneaky as ever, made Charlie run from the tram stop to meet us. Charlie became curious why we were running to lunch and eventually called the flash mob thing while we were dilly dallying in Queensbridge Square at about 1:33 cause the flash mob started a few minutes late. Whatever! At least Cam was caught of guard. Here's the videos of the final flash mob. You can catch me a few time in in, and Marcelle once. I'm wearing a lacy black top and sunglasses, Marcelle has jeans and a green shirt on. About 54 seconds in you see me singing and my friend Eddie videoing the fiasco.
Ohhhhh Marcelle, gonna spill the beans.
Eddie captured the post flash mob high
The Melbourne skyline from the south side of the Yarra
Let's see, there's definitely more to catch up on.
Ah yes! Occupy Wall Street, meet Occupy Melbourne. A slightly less enthusiastic, but more excessively policed sister protest here in Melbourne. Marcelle and I attended, really excited since we feel like we're missing out on all the Occupy action happening in the states right now. There were a few different protests all rolled into one. Here is a little video I took which shows the excess of police. The video doesn't make it to the end of the march, which was walled with police and tailed up by a line of police and two passenger vans filled with even more cops.
Hmmm, and one more video for pure entertainment value! This is a performer at Little Creatures one night when Daniela, Winnie and I were having some dinner at Little Creatures.
So I think it's safe to say that it's been too long since I've posted a new blog. A month...that's a long time to catch up on. So much has happend. Where to start?
I guess the last time I filled in the blogosphere of my happenings was when I got back from Geelong with Katy, Andrew and Zeke. It seems like ages ago. My life has changed a little since then.
Here's the short version:
First and most importantly!!! Marcelle coolio has joined the Australian fiesta, and sad to say, our little Española, Maria, has left it. Also, Matteo, the other roommate at my place has returned from his summer break at home in in Italy. That's the next news, my place is no longer my place. I've made the move from my shared double suite with lady Kiernan in Fitzroy to my new pent house suite in Brunswick. Marcy moved into my side of the bed though, so I still spend plenty of time on that side of town, even though I don't live there anymore. Oh yeah! And a got an awesome little bike to transport my sleepy self to work at 7:00am. I can say, the crisp morning air and freezing hands (because I have yet to get myself riding gloves, lazy as I am) really wakes you up in the morning. Another major change, I just put in my two weeks notice at my cafe because I managed to land a place where I can get lots of hours, unlike Síyía where I was only getting about 35 hours a week. I'm definitely going to miss my work mates there, but I think I'm really going to enjoy this new restaurant that I'll be working at (I'll save the in depth story on that place until the next post seeing as I have so much to catch up with this blog). Actually, I'll save a lot of details until the next blog, including the grand tour of my new place, but all I can say is get ready to be wowed by my new digs and my new housemates.
Oooooh!!!! and more big news!!!! The Canadians are finally joining us. I'm suuuupppah excited for Cam and CK to get here so soon. It's 10 days away (or so I've been told). I'm stoked :-D More, more and more to come.
Phew, that quick catch up is actually longer than the normal short and sweet posts I'm used to. This is what you get for procrastinating Andrea. Ok, here are some photos and their anecdotal captions.
One of Maria's 100 million going away dinners...I think. There were a lot, so it was sort of hard to differentiate after a while.
Summer is rearing it's lovely little head sporadically in Melbourne. Maria, about a week before she left us :'-(
A lovely view on one of my last days living at a walking distance from my work.
Beer, laundry and musica in the back yard
I loved that jasmine bush.
Katy at work, serving up her fish and chips.
and Marcelle is here too!!!!
Haha, Maria got drunk at her final going away drinks and accosted the street musician, her favorite drunk pass time.
A sneak peak at my new digs...aaaand my awesome new bike!!!!
Just something interesting (and a little gross) that made 7:30am a lot more entertaining at Síyía.
As I've mentioned before, I work with a really cool guy named Andrew (or should I call him Fergie as his Geelong friends do?). Anyway, he's from Geelong, a little city about an hour outside of Melbourne that is nestled in a little bay, not far from the beautiful beach towns of Torquay and Barwon Heads. Last week Andrew invited Katy and I to go to Geelong with him for the weekend, where he had to take care of his dog, Zeke, as his parents were off on an epic European vacation. Of course, Katy and I jumped at the opportunity to escape the city for a weekend and see a little bit more of Australia, not to mention hang with Andrew and his friends, and I'm really glad that we did.
Andrew and I got off work around 4:30 on Friday afternoon and we rushed to gather our things, and get on the road in an attempt to miss the traffic. We managed to get out by 5:00, but missing the traffic didn't really happen. No matter though, we all just had a fun little road trip, listened to some good jams and had good conversations (while Katy and I tried to fight off the driving induced narcolepsy from which we seem to suffer, oops). That's where the sugar rush from the pack of double dipped Tim Tams came in. For my American brethren, Tim Tams are the most delicious, most fattening, and sinful snacks you can get in the grocery store prepackaged cookie aisle. It's like an oreo on crack, dipped in chocolate....twice. Yeah, that dangerously delicious. Apparently, there's something called a Tim Tam Bomb where you bite off both ends of a Tim Tam and use it as a straw through which you drink a coffee, which then soaks the inside of the Tim Tam with coffee goodness, thus making it EVEN MORE delicious. It is one of my life goals to try a Tim Tam Bomb...just saying.
Off the topic of Aussie junk food...
We spent an amazingly relaxing weekend brunching, slamming coffees, taking Zeke on beach adventures, perusing markets that specialized in selling absolutely random junk that you would never ever ever need, hanging with Andrew's friends, eating ice cream in a New England-esque beach town, watching footy and playing beer fueled Pictionary, where Katy and I proved to have an uncanny mental link rendering all competitors utterly helpless to our superiority. If that epic run on doesn't sum up our weekend for you, I'm afraid you'll never be able to understand how much I truly enjoyed this beautiful weekend in Geelong.
Maybe the photos will help :-)
Massive, and I mean massive, hip high, piles of seaweed were washed up on the beaches of Torquay.
At Cartel, where we were served coffee after coffee after coffee as if it were winery offering us tastings...except it was espresso, and we are mere mortals who left with racing hearts and mountains of energy
I started collecting these beautiful little periwinkle shells. That's Andrew just tossing the tennis ball for Zeke.
Om nom nom, fresh crab claw.
Katy and a sea urchin, post mortem
I found one that was still living and chucked it back in so it could live the, I predict, 20 or 30 extra minutes before it gets washed up on shore again.
Andrew or Fergie...whatever you want to call him
Das one big ass sea weed youz got there
The first penguin I've seen not hiding in rocks. Poor fella probably got lost and ended up getting washed up here in Torquay.
There was lots of pretty seaweed...not like that boring brown Florida seaweed.
Just Katy being pretty at Andrew's friends' place.
I swear, Australians have a complex.
Waiting for fish and chips in Barwon Heads. Zeke looks hungry ;-)
Yummm, fish and chips. Also, fun fact...the winner of this year's Tour de France, the first Aussie ever to win, Cadel Evans, is from Barwon Heads. It was funny, every shop window had big yellow signs of congratulations to Cadel on his big win. Granted...it is a big deal. Go Cadel!
My workmate Andrew has taken to making me extravagant coffees when I arrive at work. I guess you can say that I'm thoroughly entertained by them, because every time one lands in front of me I can't help but take a photo. Ahhhh, how easily I am entertained. Also, I have to note that it's dangerous that my job allows me to drink as many cups of delectable coffee as my little heart desires!
In case you're wondering, and am so not addicted coffee at all, at all...
See! It's my name.
This was the morning after I saw the midnight showing of Harry Potter...which was aaaamazing(ly hilarious because a twenty something year old balled through the entire thing) [and no, that girl was not me]
It's supposed to be a giraffe.
He said it was supposed to be a pussy cat, which made me giggle because I'm a child.
A bunny!
He really tried for a frog...I commend the attempt.
