Soundday

Josh from Sleepy Age

This was one of those big gigs put on in Hagley Park, by Fabel Music / RDU / City Council. There were a whole bunch of act including P-Money, Don McGlashan etc, but we were there pretty much for Sleepy Age, who were one of the first acts. We had been allocated a number of backstage passes, but as per the usual story there weren’t as many as there was supposed to be, so we did the old trick of sending someone out with two passes, and bringing someone in, and then using that pass for the next person. Once you are backstage and it looks like you’re supposed to be there, nobody ever asks any questions

Once backstage, there was a variety of food, watermelons, egg and bacon sandwiches, beer, red bulls etc. This was very welcome at 10 in the morning, as I’d had very little sleep the night before (hur hur), and even less to eat.

Will being buddies with Don McGlashan

Sleepy Age played an excellent set, and I managed to get some decent photos and a bit more video (which will have to wait before it can be uploaded)

We hung around for a bit longer – it was a nice sunny day, and frankly very pleasant just sitting around, but the later bands were quite boring so we decided to leave, and pick up the rental people mover that we had hired for the purpose of going to Barrytown.

Barrytown

The idea behind the Barrytown roadtrip was to see F in Math and The Show Is The Rainbow play the community hall there. It seems like an odd place for a gig, and it is, but other big bands have played there, like Trans Am (who I saw there with Dan G and Marc) and Shellac etc. Bang Bang Eche were also supposed to play, but Zach ended up having to do something else that weekend instead.

There was a bunch of people who had said they were keen to come, and some of them couldn’t make it in the end, but we managed to get Fionn, Netta, Hollan, T’Nealle, Fran and myself all in the people mover by about 8pm. By this point we were already about 2 hours behind schedule if we were to make it to Barrytown before the acts started. To top this off, supposedly it had been arranged back at CALH, that we were to be bringing the PA for the gig, but had never been entirely confirmed.

It’s probably about 11:30pm by the time we finally arrive in Barrytown, seemingly not quite as lost as we thought we were… and the hall is completely shut, and there’s just a bunch of people drinking outside the pub. Oh, looks like the plan has gone completely awry. A couple of people check inside the pub to see what’s going on, and Darren (aka TSITR) is there just having drinks while a busload of German backpackers are in the middle of a pimps and ho’s night. It turns out that a) the promoter of the gig did nothing at all, so the hall wasn’t open, and nobody knew about the gig, and b) we were supposed to be bringing the PA!

Luckily we had borrowed a very small PA and thrown it in the back of the people mover. So it looked like the show could go ahead! Oh, wait, no microphone. Damn. Still the Barrytown pub looked like a fun place to have a drink. Along with Darren, F in Math was there, along with Polka Dot Dot Dot (for some reason). A bit later on (and after spending $10 on wedges, chips AND a jug of beer), the barman rocks up with a mircophone, which apparently he’d found by phoning up all his mates to see if they had one. The show was ON!

Darren Keen aka The Show is the Rainbow, doing his thing

Darren played, and then F in Math, only about 3 songs each, the backpackers didn’t quite know what to make of it, but it was spectacular.

Fionn and T’Nealle jumped on Facebook on the PC in the bar(!) and invited everyone they knew to the Polka Dot Dot Dot show that had just been organised about 30 minutes prior.

We all wandered down to the beach at about 2am, as it was still wonderfully warm out (probably about 20 degrees still) and hung out there for quite a while.

As Netta had work the next morning, we had to head right back to Christchurch without sleeping, and it was my job to drive the return leg, despite having been up for ages by this point, and not really slept the night before. Oh dear.

None of us had really eaten anything either, aside from the wedges, but very much to our surprise and delight, Greymouth has a 24-hour bakery called the “Do Duck In” which had delicious pies and pastries, which we gratefully shoved into our eager faces at about 3:30am.

The drive back was uneventful, aside from that the crazy Japanese CD player would only play 2 discs from all the ones we had, and both happened to be Australian country bands, and that I’m pretty sure I fell asleep at the wheel at least twice, depite stopping a few times for quick power naps. Frankly, we’re probably lucky to all still be alive…

Arrival

Campus started out wet. It had been raining fairly heavily all of the day before, and this continued for much of the first day. Pitching a tent in the rain, is not fun. Also cellphone reception, typcially for Camp, was about nil, so getting hold of people to find out where they were (we had arrived a bit later in the day) was impossible. It turns out that it would have been useful if we had, as the others had managed to steal a couple of the dorm rooms that seemed unoccupied, even though they were apparently all sold out.

Went and saw some bands at that point, DZ (from Brisbane) were particuarly good, and I caught the end of Bandicoot, all of whom looked like they were 12. Turns out they are 15, so I wasn’t too far off.

Some of the bands were playing down the deep end of an emptied out swimming pool. Great idea, and good for getting a decent view, but unless the room was packed, the acoustics were terrible.

First night dramas

So on the first night, pretty much everyone got over-eager on the drunky water (and whatever else), and it was pretty messy. At some point in the evening I found myself in the Renegade Room, with a band that was just about to start. By a few seconds into the first song, everyone was on stage jumping about, I found myself operating the high-hat pedal, while myself and a few others worked the hat cymbal…. I didn’t see it myself – there was too much chaos, but apparently midway through that song, the guitar player collapsed unconcious from having had waay too much to drink earlier, while the rest of the band played on, not aware of what was happening.

Once we realised what had happened, we’d put him in the recovery position, worked out that he wasn’t dead, and went for help. We found one of the people on the gate, who radioed for the medics to come. When they arrived, we got the guy onto a blanket (as the next band was setting up around him) and moved him outside. During this, he threw up on Fran’s hand. Awesome.

So we wait around for the ambulance to show up from Whanganui, which takes ages, and they finally take him away. Apparently at this stage, Fran decides she’d had enough playing grown-up, and wants to go have some fun. She goes to the gym stage, and is there for about 10 minutes before she decides she’s tired and wants to go to bed. She turns around to tell Netta this, and some monstrous fool at that very moment throws a monitor speaker wedge down on her foot. I come on the scene I guess a couple of minutes later, as Fran is sitting outside with her foot up, looking very hurt, and somewhat pissed off. So myself, Josh, and a bit later, D-Rad, carry Fran over to the Camp office, where we wait again with the medics, this time for an ambulance for Fran, and this time one coming from Palmerston North. It arrives finally (around 3am by this point) and takes Fran away. I think I headed to bed myself then.

Fran, post hospital adventure

It turns out that Fran waits for something like 7 hours in Palmerston North hospital to even get seen by a doctor, who then proclaims: “Well I’m not an expert in reading x-rays, but I think you’re foot is not broken”. It seems to me that the one thing an emergency room doctor should be good at, is reading fucking x-rays. Mental Note: Never ever get hurt anywhere near Palmerston North.

I slept fairly well that night, I think it was due to how much I’d had to drink. The following night I laid awake for hours, sober (which was the problem right there), trying to sleep through everyone partying it up around me. Turns out we’d mistakenly camped in the ‘party’ zone instead of the quiet zone.

There was a roller disco in the gym on the second night, that’s pretty much the only thing I remember now.

Physical exertion

On the third morning I wake up, and hear music and sounds coming from the gym building (which was next to the camp area) so I pop in to have a look. Dan Deacon (one of the acts) is hosting a Physical Education session/class with probably a couple hundred campers. Fran is watching from the side (still on crutches) so I go to look. There is an interpretive dance off. Then everyone is called to go to one side of the gym (me included), and one person from each side is picked to sprint from one end of the gym to the other and back, and then tag somebody. They both then have to sprint back and forth, tagging someone, so eventually everyone is sprinting back and forth at once. I got tagged third. FML.

Birthday

Birthday cake. Totally masculine in every way

As Zach was turning 21, and I was turning 30, we decided to have a combined 51st birthday party in one of the dorm rooms. There was cake, Bratz cake, and very shoddily made Long Island Ice Teas. We were even joined by Darren aka The Show Is The Rainbow for cake and drinks, and tales of how he messed his knee up during a show. At some point Zach and I bundled up DZ in a room and talked at them for ages about Nethack. Good times.

Bands on the last day

The last night of Camp is usually the best for seeing bands, and this one was no exception. Earlier in the afternoon, Sleepy Age played in the Renegade Room, well received by all. I got some HD video of one of the songs and put it up on youtube:

Gaywire also played, who are an 80′s metal band (in the truest sense of the word) from Lower Hutt. They were really awesome, and everyone was getting really into it. I think half the crowd were enjoying it for it’s super sense of deep irony (goddamn hipsters), and the others were enjoying it becuase it was just damned good music. I fell into the later group. I also ended up stage diving during their set, still wearing my full suit (I was planning on going to the Camp prom later, but didn’t end up staying for that because it was a bit lame, and I ended up seeing other stuff).

Die! Die! Die! were also awesome, which I found surprising because the other couple of times I had seen them I had decided they really weren’t my cup of tea at all.

The end

We had to leave quite early on the last day, to catch our flight back to Christchurch, and DZ ended up grabbing a ride with us. Both of them managed to sleep the entire drive back into Wellington, waking up pretty much just as we were getting to the airport, lucky sods.

Gigs:

Little Pictures (x2): Fran mentioned that these guys would be hitting town, and I remembered seeing them at her alternative craft fair event last year, so I thought I’d pop along to give them some support as it’s got to be hard playing in an unfamiliar town.
Anyway, their first gig is at some weird multi-level club, in the basement level. Apparently the event is some end-of-semester student thing, and there are a very very young and very very drunk kids running around. Dressed in fluro. Throwing up all over the place. Most of them luckily spend their time upstairs away from the bands. I actually had to talk my way past the bouncers because I looked too old. Good grief.

Little Pictures at Pony

Managed to have a good chat to Mark and Johanna from LP anyway
Their second gig (well it was their third actually, they played a show at The Tote as well) was at Pony, which was a much more age-appropriate venue. Even though their set started at 2am, by that stage, the place was packed out, and they were a real hit with the crowd that night, who were begging for encores by the end of it. GG guys

Angelspit and Baal: This was actually the night after the first Little Pictures gig, and held in the same venue. This time, however, instead of a few drunken teenagers, there was probably a hundred or so cyperpunks and goths in full dressup, dancing away to Industral rock from Japan (Baal) and Electro/Industrial from Sydney (Angelspit). Both bands were pretty awesome, both Clara and I enjoyed it a lot

The Mars Volta: Since Clara put me onto these guys a while back, I’ve become a fairly big fan… mainly their album “Deloused in the Comatorium”, which is pretty epic. Anyway, we both got tickets for their gig at the Forum Theatre, which is pretty epic in of itself:

Forum Theatre Mezzanine

Forum Theatre Auditorium

It has this crazy painted-blue ceiling, so it feels like you’re standing outside, in this crazy Roman Colosseum sort of place.
The Mars Volta themselves… hrmm.. well they played for about 3 hours, and as far as we could tell, it was only material from their new album, which neither of us like anywhere near as much as “Deloused”. They seem to be big fans of the super-extended jam versions of their songs with additional sonic wankery toppings. They were very tight and had moments of sheer brilliance, but it got old after a while, and a bit of self-editing I think would have helped my enjoyment considerably.

A couple of Saturdays ago, I found myself with nothing to do, as plans I had fell through, and then I remembered that Joe Satriani was playing in town that night, also at The Forum. The Friday night show had sold out a long time beforehand, so I didn’t think there’d be any tickets left, but I went along to the box office at 7:30 or so anyway, and yes, they did have some available. Joe was excellent – I managed to get a decent spot, and could see and hear everything pretty well. Stu Hamm was pretty good on bass, although it sounded like the crowd were booing him at several opportunities.. I later found out they were yelling “Stuuuu”, which is some kind of in-joke with him. Videos here: Cool No 9 and Summer Song.

The Greenmatics: This is a band that a friend of Frans is in… Mel has been living in Melbourne for a couple of years, so it was very nice to be able to head along to their gig at the Roxanne Parlour – which is pretty hard to find (typically), and have people to chat to. Mel’s friends are crazy, like good crazy

Tricky: This was at the Prince Bandroom in St Kilda, on the day before Fran arrived back in town to visit. Ended up going by myself, mainly because a certain friend of mine who is a massive Tricky fan, was feeling too broke to come along, which was a huge shame. The gig itself was pretty awesome – the singer he had, which is a replacement for the one he used on the records, was amazing. Tricky himself “sung” on a handful of tracks (something for which a reviewer later gave him crap for), but he spent most of the time ‘conducting’ the band – being the producer that he is. Anyway, the show utterly rockes. Videos here: Pumpkin, Black Steel, Overcome.

People:

Well, this is going back quite a few weeks now, but the notes are there so here we go…( in roughly chronological order – I think)

Went out with Dana (the American girl I met at a cocktails meetup thing ages and ages ago) again, this time out to Pahran, because neither of us had been out that side of town before. Ended up wandering around looking for suitable bars… we managed to find a couple, including a very cool tiny little place, which was more a cafe than a bar, but it had a DJ playing in the corner, a going fireplace, a bunch of friendly looking people who seemed to all know each other, and Monteiths Golden on tap. It kinda had a bit of a “Sputnik Cafe” vibe – for those of you in Chch who remember that wonderful place We also managed to stumble upon the infamous Revolver bar, which seemed pretty cool… but mind you, we there during it’s more civilised hours – it’s open all weekend without closing….

The girl I mentioned in my last post.. didn’t really work out like I thought it might… eventually she had some time off during the weekend, so we arranged to meet up at Pony, to Little Pictures, and whatever band happened to be on before them. I get there, and she’s with this other guy, who she had mentioned meeting a little while earlier, but said they were just friends. They were definitely not just friends. Ah well, move on….

Managed to catch up with Greta, who is the younger sister of a guy I was friends with in primary school, who has moved here in the last 6 months or so. Went down Brunswick Street to find a cafe to get something little to eat and have a chat… we got pretty lost looking for the Black Cat, which is a place we both knew. It was hopeless Turns out our stories in how we ended up here are pretty similar. Anyway, headed into town after that, went to Murmur, which is a little bar, which I was a bit hesitant about the look of at first, but turned out to be pretty damn cool. We met up with some friends of hers there (including someone who was in the same year as me at the same high school… we knew some of the same people…. small world!!), and moved on to the Croft Institute, which is a two-level place, with the bottom level all decked out like a 3rd Form science lab, with the benches with sinks in, and science-y glassware all over the place.. very cool.

Also I’ve been helping Clara out with her computer woes. It hasn’t gone well so far… as most computer woes tend to do… I’ve also got her hooked on my Outrageous Fortune DVDs. Can’t blame her really, it’s the awesome

Went out again with Dana, this time to the Espy, hoping to see a band (whose name escapes me now), as neither of us had been there before either Turns out the band we wanted to see didn’t start till like 1:30am, so we went to the back room to watch whatever band was on in there. Whoever they were, they weren’t good. At one point, what we could only presume was one of the band member’s girlfriend got on stage and started to attempt to play the Tamborine… quite half-heartedly, while holding a can of coke. It was so appalling, we just had to stand there and laugh Then we wandered around St Kilda seemingly in an attempt to play every pinball machine in every bar we could find. Anyway, the night ended well. I’ve been hoping to catch up with her again, but her pending work-related trip overseas, plus the millions of vaccinations required seem to be conspiring against me

Movies:

I saw the Get Smart movie, and was actually surprised at how good it ended up being. Cool.
Managed to find a couple of really good box-sets of the original Battlestar Galactica (which is truly cringe-worthy) and the Evil Dead trilogy. These things make me a happy chappy.

Stay tuned for the next episode (hopefully coming pretty soon) in which Fran visits town again, we see a band from Iceland, an awesome movie on a stupidly big screen, eat rather too well, see an old friend, and get a rather sad bit of news…

Highlights:

• The Gin Club at The Gem in Collingwood – basically we were looking to go to a gig, and it was Sunday night, and I’d heard that this was on. We get into this tiny little suburban pub, and it’s totally packed out, standing room only. We then find out why; The Gin Club are just fantastically awesome. They’re a 7 (or so) piece from Brisbane, and all the band members write songs, and take turns at doing their songs. Everybody sings. At once. Just awesome
• Empanadas and other South American sweet foods in Fitzroy. Also Churros.
• Going to the State Library, both NGV galleries, seeing all the graffiti art in the laneways.
• Managing to go to the galleries, Queen Vic markets and Luna park… on the one day of the week that those things were individually closed… no forward planning FTL.
• Lots of wandering around town
• Some really terrible grunge band at Pony. Followed by a better indie punk group afterwards
• Catching up with Becca / cocktail bars

Photos here

Gigs and Zombies

Went to see Liam Finn play at the Evelyn on the Wednesday, supported by The Gin Club. Both really great performances, again, totally packed out. Saw The Gin Club again the night afterwards at the Northcote Social Club. Becca was supposed to come along, but was super tired after an epic week at work…

Didn’t do much on Friday except go to work… was in a bit of a “bleh” mood…

Saturday, I went along to see the Melbourne Zombie Shuffle – that’s where bunch of people dress up and act like zombies while wandering around the downtown part of the city…

I didn’t manage to get hold of anyone for the shuffle, and still hadn’t managed to rustle up anyone to do anything for that night, so at the last minute, I decided to go see Shihad who were playing at Hi-Fi just down the road, and it looked like there was going to be door sales…

So I turn up after getting some food, and there’s a bunch of people just standing around outside waiting to line up for tickets… and there’s this girl standing there by herself, looking a little upset, so give her a quick smile. Then comes time to line up, and she comes stands next to me, and eventually I grow a pair and start to talk to her. Turns out she’s from NZ too and has only just moved to Melbourne a few months ago and doesn’t know anyone. She also went to the Liam Finn gig on Wed, and also the church gig he did in Christchurch back in November (which I also went to)… Anyway we spent the rest of the night hanging out, chatting, dancing to the band and generally getting on pretty well. She handed me her phone for me to put my details in.

Turns out I was a dumbass and didn’t check the number when I put it in, and ended up leaving a digit out…

How did know? This afternoon I hadn’t heard (and was getting impatient) so I go to google and put in 3 identifying things about her (name, where she’s from and occupation), and her bebo page is the first result Amazingly enough, it’s set public and I send her a message asking if she wants to go for dinner/drinks..

I get a message back a couple of hours later saying she tried to text me earlier, but I’d got my number wrong… and that she had only set her page to be public for a couple of days, and that she’d had an awesome time on Saturday and yes, she would like to come out for drinks etc soon.. It turns the reason she was at the gig by herself was that she was supposed to be meeting someone there but got stood up!

Geohashing

Readers of XKCD will know about Geohashing. Basically, every day you end up with a random GPS location (somewhat nearby) that you are supposed to try and get to, and then, like take a photo there or whatever.

This Saturday’s location was out in the middle of nowhere – I had to catch the train out to Ringwood station (which is like 45 mins) and then met up with the rest of the group of Internet Randoms to get in a car and then drive like another hour and a bit to get to the park. Along the way we run into another geohasher going to the same place… except he was cycling all the way there.. in the rain…

We then managed to get lost in the park for at least an hour – the road signage was wrong, and I couldn’t get the GPS in my phone to work without a network connection… Eventually we had to ask someone at a house nearby.

“Hi we’re trying to get here (pointing to the map)”
“What’s there?”
“Erm, nothing really. We’re just trying to get to this exact point”
“Why are you trying to get there?”
“Errrr….. ummm…..some friends told us to”
“Uhhh ok…. well you’ve totally gone way past it, and these roads on your map, don’t exist any more etc”
“Thanks”

We finally did manage to make it pretty darn close to where the point on the map was. We took a bunch of photos – mine here and Gnat’s here.

It’s been a busy few weeks!!

Easter weekend: Amber and Bella came to visit from chilly old Chch… They spent most of their time here hanging out with Clara, but on the Saturday, they came over after going to the Draculas stage show thing, hung out a bit, had a few drinks, then we went into town to the goth/metal club – danced around like utter idiots.. it was great

Ways to die...

I got invited to go on a day-road-trip out with my housemate (that’s what they call them here…) and his girlfriend out along the great ocean road on Easter Sunday. The road itself reminded me a lot of the road on the way up to Kaikoura. Being the last day of the long weekend, there was just streams and streams of bumper-to-bumper traffic… going the other way. Thankfully we managed to avoid the worst of it coming back into Melbourne. We ended up in Lorne, which is a small beachside town, where we had some nice, but extremely overpriced fish and chips, most of which ended up in the bellies of the local seagulls. We also went for a short bush-walk out the back of Lorne. It was very pretty, although right as we were starting to turn back, it started bucketing down with rain, so tried to run up the very steep steps to get back to the carpark. We were all totally out of puff after that Lots of photos are here. Of special note is the sign showing you the multiple ways in which you can die on the track….

Blooduster gig / DV8: The next weekend was shaping up to be very quiet, Clara was busy doing something else with a friend of hers, and it looked like I was going to spend the entire Saturday night blobbed out in front of the PC. Not good for troop morale, no sir. A quick look on the an online gig guide showed that the Royal Melbourne Hotel had a couple of metal bands playing, and because it’s only a few blocks away from here I thought fuck it, I’ll just go along. So I did. Only really got there in time to see Blood Duster, who were pretty good… the singer was thowing bottles of water everywhere, and as a result the mosh was a slippery disaster zone. Awesome. While there, I bumped into the very nice female DJ from DV8 that I’d had a chat to a couple of weeks prior (yes, I’d totally failed to mention that in any of my other posts.. oops). She had to leave to go DJ at DV8, so I figured I should head along to that and have a few (more) drinks and dance around like an idiot. I was going to request that she played “Imperium” by Machine Head, but she beat me to it as I was lining up at the bar. Got her to play some Arch Enemy instead. Just as I was about ready to go home, Clara shows up…. it seems that great minds do think alike

More stuff with Becca: Went 10-pin bowling with Becca out in Northcote… I normally suck pretty bad. I still sucked, but I started to suck less when I realised that I should be keeping my arm straight. Naturally I had the usual sore arm/wrist the next day, as I’m forced into using the heavier balls, as my fingers won’t go in the holes of any of the lighter ones….

On Wednesday, went with her to see the “Monty Python’s Spam-a-lot” stage show, which was excellent. It’s basically the story from “Holy Grail” but with songs from other films mixed in, as well as a couple of originals as well. It was all very big-budget, and over-the-top, but it worked very well. Even though I was pretty familiar with a lot of the material, I still laughed my ass off Aparently I need to see Priscilla next, and then Guys and Dolls after that. This town seems to be overflowing with musicals…

Shipping woe: I got the rest of my stuff delivered by the moving company recently. Well most of it. It looks like they managed to lose one of the boxes… it doesn’t seem that anything of great monetary value was in it, except that there was a bunch of sentimental stuff in a box inside of it – stuff like school yearbooks and such .
Also, Harcourts have continued to be utter dicks about the finishing of my tennancy in Chch, and after a drawn out process (including the Tennancy Tribunal), it looks like I’ll have to pay them a chunk of money. Ass.

V Festival: Which is a fairly large music festival, apparently the last major one of the festival season (which is still a concept I have trouble dealing with). The timetables were somewhat compressed with a fair bit of overlap, but even so, I managed to see decent chunks of Hot Hot Heat, Cut Copy, Air, Jesus and the Mary Chain, Queens and the Stone Age, CSS and Duran Duran. I did make sure I saw the complete sets for Modest Mouse and the Smashing Pumpkins. I’ve always been really bummed out I never saw the Pumpkins in 1995 when all my friends went… and the wait was definietly worth it
Usual drill: I’ll be putting videos from my phone up at http://youtube.com/user/haxtheplanet.
Also, some kind soul has put their photos up on Flickr here.

Outdoor comedy: I recently joined a “meetup” website, and one of the groups on there had arranged to all meet at this free comedy showcase that’s being put on as part of the Melbourne Comedy Festival, in Federation Square. By the time I got there, the place was packed, and there was no chance of finding any of the other people from the meetup group, but I stayed and watched the shows anyway. My favourite definitely had to be “Mario, Queen of the Circus“. Hilarious stuff.

Work: Today we spent the entire day in a “training session”, mainly going through the process of building stuff in at the various layers of a Spring J2EE application, and how we go about testing them. I’ve learnt heaps, which is great, although Spring seems like a lot of work to get going, and seems to have insane amounts of configuration that needs to be done…

Movie meetup: The same meetup group I mentioned before also had organised a trip to the local art-house cinema (which is fairly close, and has much better films on than the local Hoyts) to see The Dinner Guest, which was a French comedy. The film itself was fairly average, but had some good funny/cringe moments. The main thing is I got to meet a few seemingly really nice people, who I suspect I will be seeing again at similar things

Melbourne is full of random: On the way home from the movie, I got off at the tram-stop near the Library / RMIT / Hungry Jacks, and saw that some enterprising souls had covered the entire inside of the shell with Post-It notes… and people were just writing all sorts of stuff on them…. Sometimes this city is just… awesome

(Click the images for bigger versions… they’re a bit blurry as the flash on my phone isn’t the greatest…)

Nightwish played at the Palais Theatre in St Kilda, which is a grand old place, (think like the Theatre Royal in Chch) and totally appropriate for their gothic overtones The new singer, Annette, though not as operatic as the old singer, was great, they did mostly stuff from the new album that she sings on, but she handled the old classics very well too. Also, she’s hilarious.

Iron Maiden was nothing short of full on epic grandness of the biggest scale. Pretty much stuck to the old classics, which everyone sang along to. Both gigs were allocated seating, and people were actually sitting down, which I couldn’t understand.. I stood for most of it anyway.. I managed to get a seat right at the back of the arena, but pretty much in the center, so the view was good, if a little far away. Video screens helped

Videos from both gigs are at http://youtube.com/user/haxtheplanet

I tried to see the excellent Disasteradio play at the Northcote Social club last night, but I arrived just as he was packing up. He’s in town for a couple of weeks though, so I’ll catch him at one of those other shows.

That’s about all really, aside from the truly horrid experience I had with a girl I met at the goth club in town, but that’s life I suppose and these things happen.

Ah, and I’ve finally managed to arrange to get the rest of my worldly possessions sent over from NZ – Fran will be glad to get her garage space back, and I’ll be glad to get my guitars and PC back

~joff

I started my new job on the 2nd of Jan.. I was pretty much launched right into the thick of things… they had me working on bugs in one of the main apps by the first day. I’m working right in town for a private contracting company, but located right in the offices of the state govt agency who are responsible for managing the wildfires across the state. There’s an emergency co-ordination centre right next to where we’re working (it’s all a bit mission-control) and quite exciting to look at They’ve recently had me working on Ruby on Rails apps, which has been quite a rapid learning experience, but it has been surprisingly quick to pick up. My impression has been that rails is cool, but still quite immature.. with time I expect it will improve.

Most lunchtimes we play card or board games. Bit different from previous gigs I’ve had, but it’s been quite enjoyable

I was still staying at the backpackers when I started work.. I got a few odd looks when I’d leave in the morning all suited up, while everyone else were still nursing hangovers
Clara arrived back in town a couple of days later, and I arranged to stay at her place for a few days while I continued to look for somewhere to live. She was still living at that stage way out in Clayton, which is about a 30 min train ride out from the city, plus probably 15 mins of walking thrown in as well. Meant I had to get up pretty early to get to work, which most of you will know is quite un-natural for me
It was still very hot that week – and Clara’s place didn’t have any air-con, and no fan either, a couple of times I had to resort to wetting a towel and trying to sleep under that… it works remarkably well.. as long as you don’t mind being a bit damp..

Went to see some local metal bands at the Royal Melbourne Hotel.. it’s been fun trying to work out all the bars/clubs/venues etc. Many of them are down little side alleys and completely unmarked.

Went to Edithvale beach on one of the 40°C+ days with Clara’s workmate Jodi, who lives right next to the beach. Took forever to get out there by train though… it’s not one of the closer beaches It was 100% worth it once we got there though.. so good

I had a fair amount of fun and games trying to find a place to live.. over Christmas/New Years is not a good time to be doing that I think I was looking for places near town, and eventually decided that the best thing was to actually just be done with it and find an apartment in town.
I was looking at a place on Southbank, and was about to head back to Clara’s, when I thought I’d check my email on my phone, and I had received a message via one of the flathunting websites. I called the guy right there and then and arranged to see the room. Looks like I’d got lucky, and by the next day, I’d arranged to take it.

So I’m sharing a 22nd floor apartment with this friendly aussie guy right in the middle of town. I’m 10 mins walk from work, and close to heaps and heaps of stuff – there’s a food court, supermarket and a Big W (think Kmart) right underneath the building..

That’s the view from my bedroom. There are more pics of the place here.

Got taken to a couple of cool Fitzroy bars with Becca, for a birthday for some friends of hers. Turns out they’re from Palmerston North. It seems like it’s hard to actually find Australians here One place had a gypsy band, including a guy playing the tuba in a pink, floral rubber skirt, and the other place served amazing pizza and lychee vodkas.

There’s a Hoyts at Melbourne Central Station/Mall, which is right around the corner from my place. So far I’ve seen American Gangster (quite good, but very long) and Sweeny Todd, which was brilliant, and 100% classic Tim Burton.

Went to the work belated Christmas BBQ, which was good.. played boules and darts, as well as a strange Australian trivial-persuit like game.. which was funny cause most of the participants weren’t local (I work with a bunch of Scots), so everyone was equally hopeless at it. I felt quite young (for once), being one of the only people without small children

Clara told me about Minotaur, which is a great big nerd store, with books, comics, figurines etc, etc.. I went in and walked out with a couple of books, a Shaun of the Dead figurine set and a figurine of The Dude from the Big Lebowski. That place is gonna make me poor..

I had the day off for my birthday, so I made good use of it and got my health insurance and medicare stuff all sorted out. (Whoo super exciting I know). I spent the rest of the afternoon by heading out to St Kilda beach, (pics here) and just hanging out for a bit. I found the Palais Theatre, which is where the Nightwish gig is next week. I have tickets to that and the Iron Maiden gig next month. I’m amped for them both

Went out for a few drinks with Clara, Becca and Al that night.. went to a couple of neat kitchy bars, then Clara and I tried to find this other place, only to find that there was a dance thing on there that night… Quite a scary 1995 throwback type place complete with wide pants, glow sticks, big fluffy boots etc. Frighting.

Went to the Grindcore 2008 gig at the Corner Hotel last night. That was very cool – they had two stages, so it was very quick changes between bands, the 3 we managed to see were all very good. Went to DV8 in town afterwards – it’s a 3-level rock/goth club, and is pretty cool, I suspect it’s going to end up being a pretty regular hang-out

Went to see Liam Finn (again), but this time he was playing in St Michaels church in town, supported by Dictaphone Blues (which is one of the guys from Degrees.K backed by the Heavy Jones Trio). They were great, but due to our expected lateness, only caught a couple of songs from them. Was very impressed though, the acoustics in the church were amazing.. all venues should be long, and have very high angled wooden ceilings. Liam was also excellent, and segued (quite a bit) into crazy layered noise jams right in the middle of quite lovely pop songs. It was very entertaining at least. I’m thinking I’m going to have to buy his new album, the material is very good.

Went back to the Dux, and got there in time to see the Charlie Ash (hadn’t seen them before), who played some quite dancable sexy electro-pop (perhaps the girls in the blue and yellow leotards helped), who were excellent. Bumped into Fran just as she was leaving there to go to “The Loons” in Lyttelton, for the “She’ll Be Right Records” showcase show.

Once Charlie Ash finished, went over to The Loons, which I have now decided is the coolest bar in the greater Christchurch area. There was a blues jam band playing (whose name I managed to miss), and Shay and Jodi giving out raffle prizes.. just an awesome vibe.

Got breath tested on the way home, but I’d only had a couple of beers all night, so that was all good. All in all had a really good (non-date-styles) night, and has lifted my spirits a fair bit

Got a phone interview with a place in Melbourne tomorrow afternoon. Should be interesting.

Saturday: Woke up feeling a bit shit, Chantel suggested I come over, and go for a wee drive for a bit. She suggested we go to Kaikoura for Fish and Chips, and me being in a go-with-the-flow kind of mood, said, “Sure, why not?” Drove up there, got the food, got in the car, and she said “Why not just keep going?” So we did. All the way up to Nelson.
Got there, decided we needed somewhere to stay the night, so I thought we could try the Tahuna motorcamp that we stayed at last time we were there. Made it over there right before the office was about to close.. and asked to get a room with linen, pillows etc, as we only had the clothes on our backs and whatever else we happened to be carrying at the time we left. Got a pretty nice cabin too.
After watching a bit of Terminator 3 (so funny), we went into town to see what was going on. Being winter, only about half the bars were open, and to my horror, the local Grumpy Mole was the pick of them. Chants got accosted by two very drunken Chilean guys, who spoke very little English, and one of whom was quite determined to have his way with her practically right there in the street. Joff to the rescue with as much Spanish as I could remember, and into the Grumpy we went, danced a bit after Chants made the poor bar girl make us Castaways.

Sunday: On the way home, we stopped at the swimming hole south of Blenheim, took a bunch of photos, stopped at a small boutique chocolate factory / stop where I got a couple of treats. Chants drove all the way from Nelson to Kaikoura.. including over the rickety old car/rail Awatere bridge (we got some video footage of that to freak out Mo).
Arrived at Fran’s birthday pot-luck dinner probably only an hour late. Pretty good effort if you ask me

PHOTOS HERE

By some total random chance, I ended up going to the Christchurch Symphony on Saturday night.. one of Liz’s friends ended up with a spare ticket, and a few frantic last-minute txts, and a hurried jog to my car later, I was in the town hall listening to Grieg’s Piano Concerto, which was actually pretty enjoyable – the last time I’d sat down to listen to classical music was probably in my first year at university…

A google search for ‘geek dating’ turned up these three pages, which seems to offer some pretty sound advice, but the most disturbing thing, is that they appear to have been written by none other than Eric Raymond. Yes, this Eric Raymond:

Of course, one cannot mention him without mentioning the excellent Everybody Loves Eric Raymond webcomic.

Oh, I solved my async JMS callback problem, using a fairly in-elegant hack, where I have a singleton object which maps the session bean instances to a reference ID, which I then pass in via the JMS message. It’s ugly, but it works :-/