Bus Journey

Because of the flooding and landslides in Peru that happened a couple of weeks or so before we were supposed to go up to Maccu Piccu, that part of our planned trip had to be cancelled. Instead, Fran and I figured we could visit some parts of Chile we hadn’t been to. The advice given was to visit the desert in the north, by going to this small town called San Pedro de Atacama.

After looking into flights, we decided that we would take the bus up to San Pedro (and the plane back to Santiago) because they were so expensive.

The bus ride up to San Pedro takes about 17 or 18 hours in total to do, which is about 1,100km non-stop. We’d booked ourselves onto an overnight “Salon Cama” bus, which is a two level job, with wide seats that fold down almost completely horizontally, the idea being that you can sleep comfortably on them if you want.

My issue was, I have incredible trouble sleeping in moving vehicles – this applies seemingly to buses, cars, airplanes, boats, everything. So while Fran managed to sleep a good portion of the night only slept maybe 2 hours if that. By about hour number 15, I was incredibly over it, and because of the fact that if we stopped somewhere, it was only for a few minutes, it was quite hard to work out where we were at any given time, and how far away from where we were going. The bus had a toilet on board, and my nightmares will be haunted by it for quite some time to come.

San Pedro

San Pedro de Atacama

Finally arrive in San Pedro in the morning, but with no indication at all where the hotel was. Google maps failed us on this one – it had only shown San Pedro as having two streets, and clearly there were more than that.

After doing a quick scout around, and worked out the street and some street numbers and fully laden with bags, we start walking in what we thought was the right direction to the hotel, in the searing heat. It doesn’t take too long to for us to pass the boundary of town, and basically we’re heading out into the desert. Eventually we get tired (and more than a little suspicious of our progress), and flag down (one of the two in town) a taxi that was passing us. He tells us our hotel is in the opposite direction to where we are heading, and he takes us there.

Church, built circa 1641

We check in, and wander into town. The plaza is really nice, and there’s this awesome little old church, which apparently whose first recorded congregation was in 1650 something. It was full of very old and cute paintings and statues. I liked this one much better than the grandiosity of Coquimbo.

We had an incredible lunch at a cafe in town, both amazing Salmon dishes, and some drinks and dessert. We wander around some more, and eventually book some tours for the next day. Because we mis-calculated, we realised we only really had one day and evening to do anything in San Pedro before we had to leave, so we filled it chock full of activity. It’s was going to be a very very busy time. Since the first tour was starting at 4am, and was going to be right up in the Andes at very high altitude, we went to the markets to I could get a warm sweater, and Fran could get some sunglasses. Utterly knackered by this stage, we head back to the hotel and off to bed.

Next morning we went up to the utterly massive cross they’d built recently on a high hill in Coquimbo. They’re big on religious symbolism in South America it seems. The cross itself was very impressive and imposing, and the view from up near the top inside it was spectacular.

At the base of the cross, before the elevators to take you up to the viewing area in the horizontal beams, there was a very large and ornate church, and a museum full of jewellery, goblets, fine robes and art, including giant paintings of the last couple of Popes (the current one really does look evil). The thing that struck me about this was all the people living on the hill around the cross, were in a state of total poverty, living in buildings which were often no better than shacks. Personally, I found it incredibly distasteful. My cousin later mentioned the same thought to me – I was glad I wasn’t the only one who felt that way about it.

Keeping things reverant

After the markets and icecream, we spent much of the afternoon just sitting in the sun, eating, catching up on emails, uploading photos, that sort of junk. It was really quite plesant and relaxing.

We then had an invitation to have drinks (mainly of vodka) at Laura’s house that night; we got dropped over there, and then went down to the local bottle store, which we were told is set up as a front for the local drug-running mafioso,  and because of this, and their not caring too much about making money, prices are kept, shall we say, quite low. A wonderful night was had by all four of us, and the conversation in half English / half Spanish flowed very well.

Pisco Elqui

Pisco Elqui Plaza

On Wednesday, we went for a trip up to Pisco Elqui valley with Paulina. That is where the local spirit, Pisco, is made; it’s very strong grape liquor and is a little bit like a brandy.

To get to there, we had to take two busses, firstly to Viquña, then from there to Pisco Elqui. The busses were of the small and rickerty variety, and filled to the brim. We had to stand up in the second bus for some of the way, as we barrelled down the road at well over 100km/h in the heat.

We passed through small and picturesque village, and finally reached Pisco Elqui after a couple of hours. We wandered around the town plaza, and through the small markets and around town for a bit.

After a while we got hungry (and not just a little overheated), so we found a neat restaurant a distance away from the main part of town. It was called “La Esquela” (The School), as it was apparently converted from an old schoolhouse. We ate Pastel de Choclos, which I hadn’t had myself in many years, and for desert, this crazy traditional drink which was peach juice, with dried peaches floated on top of a bed of wheat grains. While very tasty, they were also huge, and we couldn’t finish them.

Pastel de Choclo

Dessert drink

After eating, we walked down the road, through to a set of cabins owned by our Aunt and Uncle, and down to a riverbank at the bottom of the property, the idea being to get away from the heat; maybe dip our feet in the water or go for a swim. However recent heavy rains had apparently changed the shape of the river considerably making this unfeasable, so we just rested in the shade for until it was time to go on the distillery tour at 5pm.

Although it was entirely in Spanish (and the guide punctuated every sentence with ‘ya’ which I found funny),  the distillery tour was pretty cool. Pisco is a liquor made from a particular kind of grape, and then distilled and aged. It tastes a bit like a rum I guess. Pisco Sour is the most common cocktail made with it, and the ones on offer here were much better than any I’d had back at home.

Coqiumbo at night

After arriving back in La Serena after our Pisco trip, we had a quick dinner and were then told that we were going to be driven out to Coquimbo for a few drinks, with our cousin and aunt and uncle. After a very slow trip driving along the beachfront road (traffic was horrific); we made it into Coquimbo at maybe 10pm or something like that.

Downtown Coquimbo was pretty lively, there were a number of bars around the central area filled with people, street performers in the plaza, and a bus with the label “Tourist bus” on the side; a double-decker lit up affair with an open roof, music blaring out, and people dressed in various costumes (barney, mickey mouse etc) dancing on top of it.

We found one street that had been blocked off to cars, with bars down one side of it, and filled with tables and chairs. Three of the bars had bands set up in front of them, and each band was taking turns at doing their sets. We managed to find a table in the crowd eventually, sat down and ordered a round of mojitos. One of the bands was seemingly playing traditional classics and every body in the crowd was happily singing along:

After some incredibly tasty nibbles including palm hearts, cheese bits, amazingly tender beef, and spicy sausage, and another round of mojitos (darn those two for one specials, haha), we were treated to some latin beat freestyle rapping curtosey of one of the audience members and his friends:

All in all, an exhausting, full on, and fun day had by everyone.

Beach

After having another big sleep in (I think jetlag is still accounting for this). We get up and are fed again (Empanadas I think)  and are taken down to one of the beaches near La Serena. The weather is lovely, and the beach is very nice, but because the water was unusually warm, there were hundreds of jellyfish floating around. Most were dead, but there were a couple of live ones, and one of them managed to sting one of our cousins on the back of the leg. Nothing dangerous, but enough to itch annoyingly.

Paulinas Birthday

That night was our cousin Paulina’s 27th birthday. For celebrations there were to be drinks and nibbles at one of our other extended cousin Laura’s, house. We met a bunch of people who seemed to remember us from when we last saw them. (I might have been either 6 or 16 at the time, I don’t remember which). There were a couple of people who spoke some English, but they were quickly distracted. After several drinks (which just kept on coming), it became very hard to try and follow the multiple conversations going on at once. In the end I just gave up and started taking photos.

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…

I think that’s pretty much what I said when, probably no more than 3 minutes from touchdown in Wellington, it was annouced that due to fog that had just this moment rolled in, we were to divert to Auckland. The prospect of a 12 hour drive down to Campus A Low Hum was too terrible to contemplate. Luckily we were only stuck on the tarmac there for 45 minutes or so before we were fuelled up and returning to Welly.

So having arrived several hours late, our original plans were in dissarray, hasty arrangements were made, and I got driven out to pick up Chants’ MX5 from her ex, in Stokes Valley (which is a little way out of Lower Hutt). I get about halfway through the 2 and half hour drive through to Palmerston North, when I realise that I’ve left about $200 worth of duty free booze back at Steve’s place. These particular bottles probably would not have been fully appreciated by this ex, so again, arrangments were hastily made to try and get Fran to pick it up on her own way out of Wellington.

We’d also just found out that Maccu Piccu, one of our intended travel destinations, had been hit by torrential rains, the rail line was wiped out, some people had been killed, and they were airlifting people out of the area. Guess that’s not going to happen after all…

So far, this month-long holiday of mine wasn’t going very well.

Things improved, however when I finally arrived at Chants’ place, where I could finally rest up for a little bit. A couple of drinks were had, the customary showing off of all my new toys (new phone, macbook, camera lenses), and eventually we settled in to watch Drag Me To Hell.
I was pleasantly surprised by that movie – I’d very much recommend it if you’re a fan of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series… good classic fright moments combined with just ridiculously over the top comical splatter horror. 3.5 stars.

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…)

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

Bit of a recap as to what I’ve been up to…

Got off the plane, got though customs very quickly, then messed around with my phone for at least an hour, at which point I asked the girl at the vodafone shop if there was an issue with NZ roaming… there was. Turned out the problem didn’t get fixed until at least a week later. Good one Vodafone NZ.. f’ing idiots…
Got the skybus into town, which left me a block and a bit from the backpackers where I was booked into. Got set up there with not too much fuss. Managed to phone people via a nearby payphone to let them know I had arrived.

Spent the next few days wandering around the city, pretty much to get my bearings, and to find out where stuff was etc.. highlights:

• Met Becca for lunch, had a nice catch up
• Got a Vodafone Australia pre-pay SIM, and a decent amount of credit on it. Managed to use up all the credit within a week (Calls to NZ are expensive apparently!)
• Went to DFO (a factory outlet mall) and got myself some better summer clothes.. my NZ summer clothes were still too thick and hot to wear when it gets properly warm…
• Queen Victoria Markets – Fran & Mum could spend an entire week there shopping. It’s got all sorts of things, roughly divided into areas, and what seems to be a very good produce market as part of it
• Melbourne Central Mall, which has a very cool brick tower-like building housed entirely inside this glass cone around it, with the other mall shops around that.
• Got measured for and bought a suit. Very sharp.
• Went up the top of the Rialto Tower (55th floor or something). Pretty amazing views from the observation deck up there..
• Walked through Fitzroy gardens, saw at least 5 or 6 different wedding parties having photos taken. There’s a little model Tudor village there too. Kinda random.
• Sat and read in the other gardens near the backpackers. Got approached by this huge, freaky-ass beetle. Haven’t seen any big spiders yet.
• Managed to work out how the tram/train system works. Works very well as it turns out
• The Melbourne Pizza Bar (next to the backpackers) serves amazing Ravioli. (Thanks Caroline for that tip)
• Went out drinking with some English girls, two Irish guys, and a Californian, all from the backpackers. Fairly entertaining, but we spent most of the night just wandering around town.
• Went to Southbank in the evening. Lots of pretty flash restaurants with little outdoor areas. The whole place looks amazing at night, and they have these big gas flame things on timers along the waterfront. Saw a pretty cool street performer doing an escape trick along there, and got myself a big cup of Gelati. So good when it’s still crazy hot outside.
• Walked up Brunswick Street in 40+ degree heat. I must’ve looked quite the sight once I managed to find a small cafe/bar that looked like it might have something I wanted to eat. Got a smoothie and a fruit salad, both of which were pretty darn good.

Spent New Years Eve with Becca and some of her friends – was just a few people having dinner and some drinks. Great people, interesting conversation, and a burning Christmas tree in the streets

Tired now. I’ll write something about the week and bit since new years soon.