Flash mobs, not-so-flash mobs and fire balls

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.

Until next time, with scary werewolf pictures.  

Much love from Melbourne!!!