I've had a brilliant past few days - Sydney is a bustling, exciting place to be in, with strange things happening all the time. Not bad-strange, but unique, funky strange.
For example, Virgin Mobile were giving away luxury Icecream from a pimped-out Icecream van, complete with alloy wheels, ice-cream/red paintjob and scantilly clad ice cream donors. On the same street, there was an aging homeless shoeshine who I'd seen on the TV a week or so before (presumably in a news lull). Had a chat with him about his new found fame, though couldn't offer me his services on account of my shoes being flipflops.
Everything here is a lot more compact and less organised than in Melbourne - blink and you'll miss a huge shopping arcade on your left or a cheap Sushi shop on the left. Still enjoying sushi - for $5 you can get a decent, healthy and nutritious lunch.
My hostel that I'm staying in is "interesting" to put it one way. On the first night, I was watching TV on a beanbag, coloured a slightly mottled and darker version of what it should have been, when I saw something moving out of the corner of my eye. On closer inspection I couldn't see anything, but it happened again 5 mins later. I looked right to see a cockroach running up the wall, its antennae flailing like corn in the wind. I've now got used to these non-paying visitors and their flying, biting relatives, even when they crawl from under your toothpaste. or around the food storage areas.
Other interesting things in "The Palms" (technically wrong, as there's just 1 palm tree outside...): Wanna sit down on the toilet? Pic the seat off the floor at the side of the loo. My bunkbed is also made from bendy aluminium and has the ladder at the end, over another occupant's bedside table.
Its not really that bad, these things just make for an interesting blog. Theres free web, tea and Xbox; my room has an ensuite and ceiling fan. Woo!
A few nights ago I met up with some relatives of mine (Mum's cousin)- Alan and wife Helen. I went over for a super nice dinner of smoked salmon (which you could actually taste the smoke flavour in) and avocado, followed by a thick piece of lamb and sides. They were nice people, and seemed to enjoy good food and wines - I equired what the type of wine I was drinking was, in a vague attempt to become cultured and edumacated, to be told it was a 1999 Caberet Sauvignon. 9 year old stuff? That must be expensive! They've obviously done well, being situated in a 24th floor central Sydney apartment overlooking a public park and the sea to the North-East. And the phone they had I saw on Will & Grace the following night. Alan created some of the rules and regulations for the stock markets and Helen works as an unpaid academic/lecturer. Very interesting people who told me I have some similar mannerisms as Mum.
Contrasted against the Youth Hostel Association 'crowd', the poeple in my hostel are pretty similar to me, except 1/2 of them are German. One funny incident involded me picking up a riff that someone was playing a guitar. Eventually it led to a request session of songs not many people would know, and me being introduced to Brant Bjork, who sounds worth looking into. Oh yeah, I was singing a lot of the songs... Ouch.
Musically, the past few days have been brilliant - culminating in yesterdays physically demanding V Festival in Centennial Park in Sydney.
I stumbled across a flyer in a shop a few days before, and low and behold, Queens of the Stone
Age and Smashing and Air are playing! All of whom I've had on my 'to see' list for a long time.
So I get up bright and early yesterday (10am), make a beefy sarnie with salami, cheeze and margarine, and get going to the Virgin Megastore which was vending them. Then, incredibly, I see one of my favourite drummers walking down the street towards me. I stop and say "Hey, are you Joey Castillo from Queens of the Stone Age??" to which he replies that he was! I think I just said typically uncool stuff like "Oh my god, I love your music, can I have a picture", and resulted in one of the roadies (who may have been a new keyboard player onstage later that day...) taking a picture of me and this drumming icon.
Needless to say, I walked away internally skipping and externally beaming with a smile a cheshire cat would be proud of.
After getting my ticket ($137.50 for the day... I winced but thought I need to splash out every now and then), I asked 4 different bus drivers and information point-type people how to get there. Of course I got 4 different ways, but I eventually got there, asking 1 final person which stop I should get off at.
After a brief heart attack at being told my UK Driving license wasn't sufficient ID to be let in (and just going to a different line to get let in perfectly fine), I wandered in, under the midday sun. No one of the information point people knew when any act was on yet, so I wandered around, collecting free Jagermeister temporary tatoos, Gnarls Barkley peak hats and orange flavoured mints from the "VIP" Virgin Mobile loos.
I ended up seeing about 5 bands/artists including the happy clappy Plug in City, Swedish pop-idol Robyn and indie-ers Hot Hot Heat. The next band suprised me - Modest Mouse are another band I'm going to CD-up on when I get home. Singing some very punk lyrics through the guitar pickup to the backing of 2 drummers, an accordian and double bass was quite an amazing spectacle and created some brilliant music. The following band, The Jesus and Mary Chain, had a middle age man jumping and spinning annoyingly infront of me for the 1 hour set, aparently this brit-pop style band had just reformed or something, so he was celebrating, sweat, balding head and all.
What came next was in a totally different league to everything else I'd seen all day - Queens of The Stone Age, the people I'd come to see. Incredibly hot, heavy and tiring, it felt like being in an inside arena due to the heat. A lot of people were being dragged out, staggering by friends, obviously dehydrated and not tip-top. Best thing they played was an extended jam version of a song that they lost the tapes of in the post - The Fun Machine Took a Sh*t And Died. THE live song. Definately going to see if some people have put this up on youtube in a fewdays...
After lots of inter-song innuendo (big beach balls floating around, it ain't hard), my back started to ache as the adreneline faded when they walked off (with no encore...).
I didn't quite know what to expect from the Smashing Pumpkins; afterall they were ageing rockers with only 1/2 the original lineup. The lead singer walked on to 50,000 screams in a shiny silver skirt, naturally. The music was almost totally new to my ears save a few songs, which were altered greatly and jammed. Its brilliant hearing new(ish) music!!
Got back, tired and hungry, after being slightly bemused that the train system uses trains with 2 floors and being annoyed that the cheap jelly I bought for emergency energy was powdered crystals, not proper 'raw' jelly.
Good times! Now onto looking for a job...
For example, Virgin Mobile were giving away luxury Icecream from a pimped-out Icecream van, complete with alloy wheels, ice-cream/red paintjob and scantilly clad ice cream donors. On the same street, there was an aging homeless shoeshine who I'd seen on the TV a week or so before (presumably in a news lull). Had a chat with him about his new found fame, though couldn't offer me his services on account of my shoes being flipflops.
Everything here is a lot more compact and less organised than in Melbourne - blink and you'll miss a huge shopping arcade on your left or a cheap Sushi shop on the left. Still enjoying sushi - for $5 you can get a decent, healthy and nutritious lunch.
My hostel that I'm staying in is "interesting" to put it one way. On the first night, I was watching TV on a beanbag, coloured a slightly mottled and darker version of what it should have been, when I saw something moving out of the corner of my eye. On closer inspection I couldn't see anything, but it happened again 5 mins later. I looked right to see a cockroach running up the wall, its antennae flailing like corn in the wind. I've now got used to these non-paying visitors and their flying, biting relatives, even when they crawl from under your toothpaste. or around the food storage areas.
Other interesting things in "The Palms" (technically wrong, as there's just 1 palm tree outside...): Wanna sit down on the toilet? Pic the seat off the floor at the side of the loo. My bunkbed is also made from bendy aluminium and has the ladder at the end, over another occupant's bedside table.
Its not really that bad, these things just make for an interesting blog. Theres free web, tea and Xbox; my room has an ensuite and ceiling fan. Woo!
A few nights ago I met up with some relatives of mine (Mum's cousin)- Alan and wife Helen. I went over for a super nice dinner of smoked salmon (which you could actually taste the smoke flavour in) and avocado, followed by a thick piece of lamb and sides. They were nice people, and seemed to enjoy good food and wines - I equired what the type of wine I was drinking was, in a vague attempt to become cultured and edumacated, to be told it was a 1999 Caberet Sauvignon. 9 year old stuff? That must be expensive! They've obviously done well, being situated in a 24th floor central Sydney apartment overlooking a public park and the sea to the North-East. And the phone they had I saw on Will & Grace the following night. Alan created some of the rules and regulations for the stock markets and Helen works as an unpaid academic/lecturer. Very interesting people who told me I have some similar mannerisms as Mum.
Contrasted against the Youth Hostel Association 'crowd', the poeple in my hostel are pretty similar to me, except 1/2 of them are German. One funny incident involded me picking up a riff that someone was playing a guitar. Eventually it led to a request session of songs not many people would know, and me being introduced to Brant Bjork, who sounds worth looking into. Oh yeah, I was singing a lot of the songs... Ouch.
Musically, the past few days have been brilliant - culminating in yesterdays physically demanding V Festival in Centennial Park in Sydney.
I stumbled across a flyer in a shop a few days before, and low and behold, Queens of the Stone
Age and Smashing and Air are playing! All of whom I've had on my 'to see' list for a long time.So I get up bright and early yesterday (10am), make a beefy sarnie with salami, cheeze and margarine, and get going to the Virgin Megastore which was vending them. Then, incredibly, I see one of my favourite drummers walking down the street towards me. I stop and say "Hey, are you Joey Castillo from Queens of the Stone Age??" to which he replies that he was! I think I just said typically uncool stuff like "Oh my god, I love your music, can I have a picture", and resulted in one of the roadies (who may have been a new keyboard player onstage later that day...) taking a picture of me and this drumming icon.
Needless to say, I walked away internally skipping and externally beaming with a smile a cheshire cat would be proud of.
After getting my ticket ($137.50 for the day... I winced but thought I need to splash out every now and then), I asked 4 different bus drivers and information point-type people how to get there. Of course I got 4 different ways, but I eventually got there, asking 1 final person which stop I should get off at.
After a brief heart attack at being told my UK Driving license wasn't sufficient ID to be let in (and just going to a different line to get let in perfectly fine), I wandered in, under the midday sun. No one of the information point people knew when any act was on yet, so I wandered around, collecting free Jagermeister temporary tatoos, Gnarls Barkley peak hats and orange flavoured mints from the "VIP" Virgin Mobile loos.
I ended up seeing about 5 bands/artists including the happy clappy Plug in City, Swedish pop-idol Robyn and indie-ers Hot Hot Heat. The next band suprised me - Modest Mouse are another band I'm going to CD-up on when I get home. Singing some very punk lyrics through the guitar pickup to the backing of 2 drummers, an accordian and double bass was quite an amazing spectacle and created some brilliant music. The following band, The Jesus and Mary Chain, had a middle age man jumping and spinning annoyingly infront of me for the 1 hour set, aparently this brit-pop style band had just reformed or something, so he was celebrating, sweat, balding head and all.
What came next was in a totally different league to everything else I'd seen all day - Queens of The Stone Age, the people I'd come to see. Incredibly hot, heavy and tiring, it felt like being in an inside arena due to the heat. A lot of people were being dragged out, staggering by friends, obviously dehydrated and not tip-top. Best thing they played was an extended jam version of a song that they lost the tapes of in the post - The Fun Machine Took a Sh*t And Died. THE live song. Definately going to see if some people have put this up on youtube in a fewdays...
After lots of inter-song innuendo (big beach balls floating around, it ain't hard), my back started to ache as the adreneline faded when they walked off (with no encore...).
I didn't quite know what to expect from the Smashing Pumpkins; afterall they were ageing rockers with only 1/2 the original lineup. The lead singer walked on to 50,000 screams in a shiny silver skirt, naturally. The music was almost totally new to my ears save a few songs, which were altered greatly and jammed. Its brilliant hearing new(ish) music!!
Got back, tired and hungry, after being slightly bemused that the train system uses trains with 2 floors and being annoyed that the cheap jelly I bought for emergency energy was powdered crystals, not proper 'raw' jelly.
Good times! Now onto looking for a job...
1 comment:
thats well cool that you met joey. check your myspace.xx
Post a Comment