Catching Up With Events Part II - Yeah Yeah Yeah, Take her to the Zoo!

The turn of the New Year also brought the arrival of Becky to Sydney from Melbourne reuniting at least two of the Full Moon familia. Melbourne hadn't quite worked out as she hoped so she came to give Sydney a go as well as get back on the travelers lifestyle having been a bit out of the city there. It was a delight (or "rare treat" if you prefer Leona) to see her but also brought home how much things had changed in the two months since i'd left Thailand never mind Angleterre. As she was running out of dollar quicklty she wanted to do as much as the city as possible at great haste, hitting all the usual sights like the Opera House, Harbours, Bridge, Botanical gardens etc but also wanted to go to the zoo so i got swindled into it. I'm not sure where i stand on Zoo's, the last time i went to one was Barcelona back in 98 and that was just to see some albino silverback gorilla called Snowflake, plus me Da has a weird comedic obsession with primeapes so i got swindled into that one too. Orangutan being his favourite by the way. Anyhow my trip to tarragonna left me as conflicted as ever on the subject.
The day started with me grossly underestimating the time it would take to reach the harbour from the cross in the soaring heat. Matters certainly weren't helped by bumping into Iwan on the way leaving me completely confused, startled for five minutes and having just one of the surrealist conversations of all time. I told him i was on the way to the zoo and he responded by informing me that coles have a boy one get one free offer on cereal and he had bought one there so i should have a look. Baffled already. I then came to the understanding that he's bought one and wanted me to go look to see if he could get another one since there was a promotion on now, then i though he was just telling me that i could a good cereal deal there. We went round in circles like this for five minutes with both of us looking at each other is if the other one was the stupidest person of all time and massive fucking weirdos. I just kept thinking " why is he going on about cereal when i'm off to the zoo in a clear hurry?". Finally i managed to get out of him that the cereal boxes had a ticket promotion on them so i should check there and i may save some cash, why he couldn't have just said that at the start i don't know. Stupid Welsh, nothings ever simple with them countryside folk.

That weird altercation set me back from my original twenty minute journey estimation, to make matters worse i'd confidently informed Becky to buy tickets for the ferry so i really had to get a move on to get there in time. The only way i could do this is to run from Hyde Park to the harbour in the sweltering sun...... in flip flops.....I don't run. I could only imagine what a sight to see i was gliding through the central business district in the most awkward fashion of all time. I made it to the harbour with minutes to spare luckily entering at the ferry that was labelled the zoo, no Becky though and the ferry was just about to leave. After many frantic phone calls it turned out i was as per usual in the wrong place but thankfully she'd paid for a later ferry, leaving me being out of breath, soaked in sweat and generally all over the shop for no reason. Good times.

When i got my working visa I obtained a travelers card with the promise of lots of offers, discounts and free stays at hostels, so far after three months i had the opportunity to use this an amazing grand total of zero times, therefore it was pretty good to actually finally pull it out of the wallet and get some dollar off. 3o bucks still seemed a bit steep though. The zoo was situated on the otherside of the harbour so the short trip provided a nice view of the city even if the weather was not the best for it, it was also on the top of a steep hill so a sky bus took you up showing even better views of the Landscape. As for the zoo there's nothing much to say about it, it just like every other zoo. Full of animals looking depressed in small enclosures as everyone else gawks at them. They try to promote the conversation efforts, mating schemes and the general opportunity to raise awareness for endangered speeches but there's just something inherently wrong with seeing a Tiger pace back and forth in a small area with a complete look of fear and mania in their eyes. Same goes for Elephants and Giraffes being in a ridiculously small area given the same area. I did enjoy watching the mearcats though, it was like watching some mad psychedelic cartoon and the Koalas just appear to be massive stoners which is always good. After spending a few hours trawling around we decided to call it a day and head back home, i'll probably do Australia Zoo as its a more natural Habitat and it's meant to be a must. Zoos are no Sea World though, you can't beat a bit of Shamu.

The first thing i saw on my taxi ride from the airport when i arrived in Sydney was a poster for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs playing a gig here so i snapped a ticket up straight away and after two months the date finally arrived and another great venue in the form of the Hordern Pavillion. I had zero clue as to where it was so used the good old google maps on my iPhone for navigation to Moore Park, except it ran out of battery 33 seconds after leaving the Hostel. Great. Somehow i managed to head in the general direction, basically stalking a group of people who looked like they'd be going to a gig and it proved to be a rather successful tactic. Australia isn't like England, Moore Park has a  cinema, football stadium, cricket ground, bars and music venue all pretty much on the same street. It would be chaos if we tried to pull that one off.
The venue was again great at about 3000 people with amazing sound. I was expecting good things from the gig but they still managed to blow me away and was an easy top 5 entry into the best gigs i've been too. Perfect setlist, you can tell the loved every minute of it (the drummer had a constant beam on his face) and well Karen O is just a one off. She has more charisma in her little finger then the lead singers of most other bands and is exactly what a proper rock star should be, unbelievable voice Jeff too.

1. Zero 
2. Phenomena 
3. Heads Will Roll 
4. Black Tongue 
5. 10 x 10 
6. Dull Life 
7. Gold Lion 
8. Y Control 
9. Skeletons 
10. Soft Shock 
11. Pin 
12. Zero 
13. Cheated Hearts 
14. Encore:
14. Maps (Acoustic) 
15. Art Star 
16. Date With The Night

Maps was probably the highlight along with Skeletons, Y Control, Zero, Cheated Harts....well it was all just fucking brilliant really. 

Catching up with events Part I - New Year Down Under

It's been quite awhile since i've updated events here and there's been much goings on since my last blog. To be honest far too much time has been spent with my being an awful drunk but there has been some other events of note. The lack of "quiet time' to write, no internet access, a gammy arm and mainly a lack of desire have prevented me from doing so but after scanning through what i've wrote previously(and rather enjoying it), i thought i should attempt a major catch up. With it being over a month since anything's been written i'm just going to try and write the main stuff through a series of blogs or i'll just be in a perpetual state of 'catching up', ending up with me just phoning everything in. Here goes with New Year  then....

Christmas may have been a bit disappointing but New Year in Sydney certainly lived up to expectations and was by far the best one i've ever had. Hardly a stretch comparing it to a night at the Academy or Dusk but very true none the less. Bedlam had a pretty settled crowd over Christmas with everyone having to stay for the two week period so the place had a really good atmosphere with everyone wanting to have a bit banter and at one point 63 people came for a night out. Carnage.
I made an incredible schoolboy error by going out the night before New Year, not only that but for some reason we decided to make it 'Wine Time' leaving me in not the best of states. To give you a quick idea i ended up back at the hostel emerging from my room with Chilli sauce on my face and not only my shorts on inside out but i some how managed to put them on back to front too. Quite a feat I know, I really am a classy guy. Needless to say i was a lil bit rough in the morning.....Speaking of which i awoke at about 6am to the sight of some random weirdo standing not only right next to my bed but my face too, I was so stupefied by it all (and the drink) that i was actually rendered speechless for once. To make matters worse he was dressed exactly like the Yank off Trainspotting who walks into the bar muttering "Can i please use your bathroom" then gets beaten up and his clothes taken off him, i should've done the same in hindsight, just terrible manners. He was a friend of Julia's and Sarah's though so it figures, they just had to get up early (or come in late) at every opportunity making as much noise as possible, turning on lights, using hairdryers all to the delight of Leona. "How Rude".

It being New Year n all Sydney was packed to the brim, to get a good spot round the botanical gardens you had to leave at about 5am then spend hours queuing and then having to do it all again if you wanted to leave at any point. This clearly wasn't an option at all with me "not doing mornings" so the hostel decided to head down toward Rush cutters bay and set up camp down there. On my rising it was a pleasant sight to see "The French" being a lot more organised than us and were heading down the bay to set up shop for everyone so to speak; they were also going with the intentions of getting on the drink, just a bit ambitious i thought with the likelihood someone was bound to be passed out when the fireworks et al were on. None of us (Us being Skinner, Jacobs and Jon) were entirely sure just where Rushcutters was so thought we'd better scout it out at 3 before "getting on it", so with the help of "Storyteller" John Maughan's directions "Yeah its ten miutes away. you just go left, right, forward, left, right" we headed off. Yeah John, stellar directions there, it took us a hell of a lot longer than that but we got there in the end and found a pretty good spot had been set aside for us. About 30 people were already there well on the way to getting trolleyed and had a nice patch of cushions, mattresses, sheets and anything else they must've found on the way. We couldn't really see the Opera House and weren't right on the bridge but the view of it all was pretty stellar and the city landscape more than good enough for me. Rushcutter was pretty banging too but not too crowded to the point you couldn't move. We quickly made an executive decision to get on it, buy some booze (via hangover food at McD's) and then get straight back down there.

For some reason unbeknown to me everyone in the City was encouraged to wear blue, i have no idea why, some bullshit to do with "spirit" but i obliged anyway and stuck on a blue top. We picked a few more people up from the hostel (including the debut of Amy "Martens pils" Roast) and headed straight down to rushcutter where we found immediately that my prediction of  people "peaking too early" was far too true. Most of the hostel was well on their way to being completely fucked with Francois being in the lead, he greated me with a nice big spit of booze all over my chest. Looking around it was clear i wasn't the first victim of this and the girls came off the worst with Nina getting a particularly high volume burst of alcohol. The best thing about the night was that despite their being large groups of English, French, German, Danish, Dutch and Canadian we all mixed together and people didn't just stay in their "clique". Everyone was having a good craic on and the whole place just had a really good atmosphere really. This was also the point in time where Eddy gave birth to the catchphrase "Do You Know Lucky Luke?" Apparently it's a Belgian-Franco cartoon that is pretty famous to everyone on the continent, he must've asked about 342 people that night. All the while Francois's drinking had left him passed out  and shirtless on the grass, "someone" decided to leave a "please help" sign next to him with a little plastic cup for loose change as if he was a tramp. He managed to make a fair few dollar before waking up in a rage, kicking the cup as if he was going for a super bowl winning field goal sending coins flying everywhere. Of course they had to be some stereotypical English dickheads standing next to us who reacted in the same way they do to every other situation by wanting a bit of argy bargy. Thankfully after a bit of chatter it all simmered down and Francois gave the French a lecture.
The night carried on with the masses getting more and more drunk as you can imagine, obviously when this happens people tend to need the toilet a lot but this was clearly an unforeseen event to the Sydney council. To say the area was lacking in portaloos is a massive understatement which led to some rather animalistic scenes. There just wasn't enough at all leading the queues to get far too big for anybody who'd had a skin full, leading to people to just go on the hunt for anyway to go. Rushcutters was situated on a road with some rather nice houses on the other side of the grass and yiou really had to feel sorry for the owners when these became the toilets of choice with people releaving themselves in doorways, garages and anywhere else. The "security" at the place was a joke and at one point i stumbled across a rather humorous scene involving a drunkard, the owner of a house and a security guard. The three of them were within six feet of each other, the drunkard pissing on a house, the woman next to him alternating screams of "stop it" at him and then turning to the security guard with "Do something now!!!!". He just stood their like a tin of milk with absolutely no reaction in his face whatsoever, I think he was a bit retarded actually. So I do.

Another strange character made an appearance in the form of two blokes running a hot sausage and burger grill. They had the whole patch to themselves and must've made an absolute killing that night with no other food in the area. One of them freaked me out a bit though, he looked like part of experiment where they create a perfect human but need to make two, one good one and one for all the cast off bits. He pretty much was the Penguin from Batman Returns just without the flippers and Danny DeVito's gift of the gab.
The first wave of fireworks went off round nine and with the city backdrop it was quite impressive compared to England style but the harbour and city view were good in itself really. The main display at the turn of midnight was a lot better still, it was rather humorous though with literally everyone standing back uttering "ooohh" and "whoooah" at random intervals in tune with the fireworks. By this point things get blurry as we all were trolleyed, the Police however wasted no time in ejecting us from the area. They formed a solid line the length of the park, walked from one end to the other pushing and kicking everyone away and causing more bother than anything in the whole day. If you had stuff on the wrong side of the line then they're attitude was just "tough shit, have a boot", i fucking hate the police.

We all got scattered with me somehow getting lost from everyone and ending up at Edgecliff station. How i managed this i have no clue but a vaguely remember falling over at one point, fortunately the cross is only one stop away so i made it back to Bedlam fairly hastily and was one of the first back. I looked about wished some people Happy New year and found Shaggy the angry mute in his usual place in the TV room. This time though instead of just wearing a scowl he had a cowboy hat on too, it probably took me about 5 seconds to take it off him and then perform a Shaggy medley for him. I fear the whole event was lost on him though. Over the next hour everyone came pouring back in and we all just had a great time, things get really blurry at this point and i have pretty much no memory of it but i ended up losing my shoes somehow. Good times though and that was New Year.