Update on Life at Uni

Life has been going pretty well around Brisbane. When not traveling around to different areas of the country, I am pretty busy with day to day life. Classes are going well, we have finals in about a month, and then it is winter break. I'm pretty sure I told this to most people already, but I decided to stay over here another semester of classes and won't be back in California until around Thanksgiving. I figured that I probably won't get the chance to live overseas again for at least a long while, and that I should take advantage of the opportunity to spend some more time over here. I figured out my classes/internship credit so I can still graduate on time back at home next Spring. I got an internship at a nonprofit company called Q Music, which is a pretty neat place. They assist artists in Queensland with business questions they may have, and help them develop their careers artistically as well. They put on a songwriting competition every year, and we are in the middle of collecting entries for all the different genres that people have submitted. There are some really funny entries, I see quite a few of them because I do the song data entry into the computer system on days I come in to work. I saw one this week of a country song written by a group of cowboys about hating public toilets, and also metal songs submitted by 13 year old boys. Its pretty diverse. The company also holds an industry conference in a few months that is currently being planned out called Big Sound, and apparently music industry people come from all over the world to attend and be a part of it, so it should be cool to see what that's like.

I also got a job at a deli in the mall in Toowong (a city down the road about 5-10 minutes on the bus) to get some cash money. It's been a good job, the people I work with are really nice and we serve up the sliced meat and other deli goods with crazy expertise and talent. And the best part is that its $20/hour! They have crazy high wages here, I believe working at 7-11 is $25/hour or something like that. Everything costs more, so it evens out, unless you have no job, then you're just screwed.

I have been playing water polo, and it's been a lot of fun. We are in playoffs right now, and all our good players decided to show up for the first time last week. They are on the men's olympic development team or something advanced like that, and then the rest of our team is first time players. It was a really great game, they were just messing around with people. They would hide underwater at the bottom of the pool and then shoot up and freak out people on the other team, and our goalie tried to block every shot taken on him with his feet and legs. It was a pretty ridiculous game, but we ended up winning 11-4 I think, these guys were pretty good. I played some field hockey games for my res college too, and I have concluded that field hockey is so so much worse than ice hockey. It is the most frustrating thing I have played, you can't use the back of your 'blade', if you can even call it a blade. It's more like a club. But you can only stickhandle on the front side of the blade, and the ball isn't allowed to hit your feet or any other part of your body either. And there is no skating. In conclusion, there is really nothing good about field hockey. I also play pickup soccer and frizbee a couple times a week with people just out on the oval, I like how there are always things going on outside around college, it's cool how active people are here.

I also go out in the city or the valley with friends, which is always good times. The city has some good spots, its more low key than the valley, which is full of clubs and the more trendy party people. There are buses that take Union out to a different club every Thursday, and sometimes ICC events are organized on these days, which mean that every res college is a part of it and we just invade wherever we are going. The most recent one was called Timewarp, where everyone was divided by what year they are in uni (I went with the second years because I know the most of them), and each group has a separate decade. We were the 60s, first years were 80s, and third years and older were 20s. It was funny to me that when people were talking about costumes, that every decade stereotype had to do with the US. I thought that maybe dressing as the 20s or 80s might be a bit different in Australia, but they were like, oh 20s! Like gangs of New York! Or hippies from SF for the 60s! Apparently these decades only took place in America, it was interesting to me. Anyways, each year went out to a different venue to start the night and get snacks and drinks and hang out, then they bussed us all out to meet at Birdee Num Num's, this club in the valley. It was a really fun night, just started too early. The first bus left from uni at 6pm! They really do go out insanely early here.

One of the best nights out I have had was when we went out to celebrate my friend Matt's 22nd birthday. We went to this club in the valley called the Family, and it is supposed to be ranked as one of the top 10 clubs in the world, or best in the southern hemisphere, or some other such title that eludes to its amazingness. It was a really sweet place, the way they decorated it was awesome. They had three different rooms with different sorts of music playing and they were all setup differently. They had an ice bar in the one upstairs, and the light fixtures looked like huge icicles. The main room downstairs had really cool lights set up and video screens playing random stuff. The DJs in the downstairs room were amazing, we were there for so long and they kept spinning the most awesome stuff I have ever heard out at a club. I wish i had more pictures of just what the place looked like, there was even a giant statue of a baby that went through from the bottom floor to the third floor that had a TV for a head, and a giant flower on one of the walls where lights and designs were projected onto it, just random stuff but it all created a really neat atmosphere. I'm hoping to get back there sometime before I go, they have really big DJ events there too. DJ Tiesto performed there a few times last month, pretty much all the heavyweights roll through there.

Anyways, that's what been going on in my life recently, and tomorrow we are having a pancake cooking fest at one of my friend's houses. Should be good. Pictures are: guys on my floor dressed up as the Beatles in the middle of the night rocking out in the bathroom and photos from the ICC timewarp event.

Hippies Down Under: Byron and Nimbin

I went on a road trip with 7 other friends this past weekend, and after a fair bit of trouble at the car rental place (clerk with the grossest mullet/rattail i have seen kept adding random fees to our bill), we piled into our awesome minivan and headed down to Byron Bay in New South Wales. Byron is a chill place, I wrote about it before when I visited at the beginning of the year, but this trip we got to spend more time hanging out there and it was very chill. We got in the first day and just hung out at the beach. The main beach there is probably my favorite beach, we had a great time swimming and bodysurfing, the waves are just perfect and the water is so clear. We went up to the lighthouse around 5:30 to watch the sunset, which was very beautiful. The lighthouse area is the most eastern point in Australia. There is a sign pointing this out, and it's funny to see all the tourists lining up and taking pictures with it. I hiked around the paths there with my friend Jess a bit looking for whales, but didn't see any. They are supposed to arrive in May, but I guess they are taking their time to get to the bay. We went back to the downtown area and met up with some other UQ students (about 15 of them) that had a house rental where we hung out for the night and crashed on their floor (My friend and I thought sleeping in the van the first night would be a great idea, but it turned out to be freezing cold all night and got super bright at about 5:30 in the morning). They were cool people, mostly internationals, but there were a couple Aussies from Cromwell College as well. The Aussies made a mix of 'goon punch' in the wastebasket (bin), which I was quite impressed by. It was 4 or so boxes of goon, a bottle of vodka, a bottle of gin, and some juice mixer, plus teabags! In a wastebasket! I thought the teabags were an interesting addition, but they said its totally normal and they do it all the time.

The next day we took a shuttle bus over to Nimbin, which is about an hour and a half inland from the coast. Nimbin is a very small town of about 500 people, but it is a very famous spot that is mecca for the hippie/stoners of Australia. It's similar to Haight/Ashbury or Venice Beach. The Mardi Grass festival was going on there this weekend, and many other people were camping out there or traveling over for the day. On the bus ride in, our driver made an announcement over the intercom that the police were searching every vehicle to come into Nimbin for drugs. Apparently, the police wanted to make a statement about this event and crack down on substance abuse, so they sent a really big force over to the town this weekend. It was sweet! A drug sniffing labrador came onto the bus and checked us all out. He honed right in on this one guy that had to be taken outside and searched, but he ended up not having anything. We went on and got dropped off at the street and wandered around Nimbin for the afternoon. There were markets there selling random souvenir stuff in addition to the permanent businesses on the street. My friend Alex bought these crazy psychedelic silky pants because he felt like he had to fit in with the crowd more. There was music going on in the 'peace park', and I spent some time listening to some crazy bands. One that stuck out was Wild Marmalade, a didgiridoo player that was just jamming out with this really great drummer. I hadn't heard anything quite like it before, it was very tribal sounding, but also funky. He got some really crazy sounds out of the didg. The 'hemp olympics' were also going on, where there were bong throwing contests and other random events. There was also a parade later on in the day, which was pretty amusing. I missed part of it, but I got to see the procession of naked old people walking through town, as well as a bunch of girls dressed like green faeries. It was quite the experience, lots of dreadlocks and beards and hemp clothing all around. There were cops everywhere, and I thought it was funny that for an event that was pretty much devoted to stoners, I didn't see anyone around smoking. Most concerts I've been to have had more drugs than the Mardi Grass festival, how ironic. It was a good day, I mostly enjoyed the music going on all over the place (bands would just set up on the streets and play), and people were telling me that the scene at Nimbin was how most of the corporate music festivals started out. It was cool to see a different sort of event that is not shoving sponsors or other commercialized things down your throat the whole time. It was very community oriented, the town organizes the whole thing and it seemed to run smoothly and people were having a good time.

The next morning, I woke up early and jogged over to the lighthouse to just hang out there some more because its such a peaceful place. After fighting over floor space and blankets the last couple nights, it was nice to just have space and quiet for a bit. We spent the rest of our time swimming at the beach, which was a lot of fun. I would say it was a great weekend, lots of good times and pretty cheap all around as well (costs tend to go down when you sleep in cars and on floors, good for future reference), you can't go wrong.


Pictures are: friends up at the lighthouse, the most eastern point of Australia, guy with beard rocking out on a hand drum, drug sniffing dog, festival people dressed up, and goon punch creation.