I can't believe I waited this long!

About a year ago I first saw a Little Red gig advertised and I really wanted to go, but never got round to buying the tickets. They also played the Big Day Out and I couldn't make it :(

But last night I finally managed to see them live. They were fantastic! Unfortunately that's their last Aussie show before heading off to London to record a new album, but when they return you HAVE to go and see them.

There were four bands all up. We caught the last half of the Canvas Kites' set and they were pretty good, although they were playing to a dead room, poor buggers. I realised that I actually have one of their songs on my iPod thanks to triple j free downloads :D

We missed the next band, but came back in time for most of the Vasco Era's set. They were great. Okay, so the lead singer was quite possibly on drugs and sometimes was a little shriek-y, but it was a really high energy performance all round and I enjoyed it. They totally rocked out (haha, I feel so old saying that!!). I thought I might have a Vasco Era song on my iPod too, but unfortunately not :( I'll have to look out for them on the triple j site. Hehehe!

Finally at 11pm, Little Red were up. Oh my goodness that's really late for us on a weeknight, but they were totally worth staying up past bed time for! It would appear that the fan base of Little Red are abnormally tall, but I actually managed to get a pretty good view of the stage for the majority of the show. Yay! These guys were also pretty high energy and their songs were tight. When a brass section was required, two dudes from Hunters and Collectors came on the stage and Wilbur Wilde was on sax for Jackie Cooper. Fricking awesome!!

Well, I had a great time. You may well ask how much one must pay for such an event with no less than four bands at the corner hotel. It was pretty pricey and I'll have to tighten my purse strings this weekend to account for the whole $25 each that we had to splash out for the gig. What a freaking bargain!!

Have I mentioned how much I love Melbourne??

In the interest of gender equality....

For my birthday party, I asked that people bring a donation to the Girl's Night In fundraiser for women's cancers in lieu of a present. I pledged that in the interest of gender equality, I would match the total amount fundraised and donate this to the men's equivalent, Call to Arms.

It is with great pride that I donated $390 to Call to Arms today. I thank all of my friends for donating to my event so we could raise this amount of money.

I donated this money in honour of my father and other men like him who are battling prostate cancer. I donated this money in the hope that we will one day rid the world of this disease. My thoughts go out to all those who are affected by cancer and I wish you all the very best in your fight.

Last 20s Birthday

According to my birth certificate, it was my 29th birthday on Saturday. However, I'm pretty sure I'm still around 26 or 27. I think I'm still mid-20s. I'm not ready to be late 20s. Even just typing that made me feel a little queasy.

When do you start accepting that you're growing old(er)?

I still don't know what I want to do with my life. I don't feel like I have any major achievements under my belt. Okay, I have a PhD, but if it hasn't led to a career that I enjoy and excel at, does it really count? I don't have any real ambition or drive at the moment. I'm just plodding along.

Do you think that people have big parties so that they can feel happy around their birthday because without the party they'd just feel depressed about getting old? Or are there people out there who love birthdays regardless of what they represent?

So, I had a big party on the weekend. Well, big is subjective. It's the biggest party I've had since I moved to Melbourne. Some Adelaide people came over and partied with my Melbourne friends and I cooked up a Turkish feast.

Here's a pic of my trial turkish delight. These set better than the ones I made on the day, but the ones on the day had a better flavour. I obviously still need to work on them. lol!

I also made hummus, baba ghanoush, the pastries I've shown previously, kebabs, kofta, and baklava.

I'm pretty sure everyone had a good time. I had fun at any rate. I haven't uploaded any pics from the camera yet, so you can expect those in a future post.

A Trip To Healesville

Last weekend, Mum and Dad came for a visit. We spent Saturday relaxing and on Sunday we went for a trip to Healesville.

The birds of prey show was a highlight.

The birds flew quite low over the audience, so you got a very close up view of them. They were really impressive. Unfortunately, in this photo, the eagle is out of focus, but it gives you an idea of how close they came and what it looks like to come face to face with Australia's largest raptor.

This tiny little Currawong was protecting his eggs and attacking the massive birds of prey. Here he is swooping the wedge tailed eagle.

More photos from the day can be seen here.

A visitor

We had a visitor in our garden recently. Here he is sitting on the washing line. The purple is the peg basket.

Abstract Theatre

Last night we went to a play called The Dictionary of Imaginary Places.

For weeks I've been calling it Conversations on a Train, because I'd forgotten the real name, but I knew that all the dialogue in the play had come from conversations overheard on Melbourne trains. The writers had been travelling the Melbourne lines for a year and collecting bizarre snippets of conversation.

I had thought that they would be intertwined into a story. Instead what we saw was more installation art. Four actors talking, sometimes to each other, but most often to themselves and sometimes over the top of each other. They'd recite random things that the weirdest and probably most drug affected bogans in Melbourne had said while catching a train.

Whilst they were reciting the lines, they were also interacting with the set, which was essentially rows of chairs similar to a train layout with bits and pieces strewn about. So they might stand on a chair and do some yoga poses, or pick up some rubbish, or screw up a newspaper and proceed to shove it down their dress, etc... One of the actors put on a pair of bathers under her clothes, then took off her clothes and stuffed them into the bathers - including her stiletto heels. Another actor was wearing a balaclava with plastic cups stuck to it in a sort of a mohawk style and at one stage he took a cup off his balaclava and offered it to another actor.

It was bizarre.

Some of the lines were classic and I'm sure I've heard many similar conversations on my train line. Especially all the relationship ones.

It was just a very surreal interpretation of the lines. A world where surrealism, Melbourne and psychodelic drugs intertwine.

I'm not sure I'm quite arty enough to appreciate that sort of theatre.

Not very pleasant at all

Paul and I have had a gastric virus this week. Paul's started in the very early hours of Monday morning. I had a few twinges on Monday, but thought that I had got away scot-free. On Tuesday afternoon, I realised that I hadn't :( Our house has not been a very pleasant place to be for the last few days. But Paul's back at work today, and I'm in my final day of quarantine. I'm much better today, but I have to keep away from work for 24 hours after the symptoms end so I don't infect my workmates.

It's one of the few times I'll ever say it, but I'll be so glad to be out of the house and back at work tomorrow!

First BBQ of the Season

There's nothing like a good Aussie BBQ, where the men hover round the hotplate overcooking lumps of meat and women stand in the kitchen and gossip while they toss their salads. Well.... that's how they're meant to go anyway. I think we've just about grown out of that cliche... well, almost.

We went to the first bbq of the season on Saturday and the boys did hover round the bbq, but the meat was far from overcooked. Okay, so the women did make salads, but there was no gathering in the kitchen gossiping and the segregation didn't last long at all. We couldn't have picked a better day for the bbq; the weather was perfect. And the company was great. It was a really fun day!

Of course I took my camera along and got some happy snaps.

Here's an introduction to the people present at the BBQ...

I've posted photos of Giorgia in this blog before. She's such a cutie and so animated. She also poses for the camera, which is even more adorable.

Here she is with her Mummy and Daddy, Stefania and Matt, who have also featured in this blog before.

And like a true model, she decides when the photo shoot is over.

Barry is kind enough to share his lab with me at work. It's a big deal for an electrochemist to let a messy organic chemist encroach on his personal space, but Barry is a generous person, so you'd expect nothing less from him. He and his wife, Jane have a gorgeous baby girl of 7 1/2 months called Monique.

Victor and his wife, Margaret, have 1 year old daughter, Victoria. She's gorgeous, although she's a bit nervous when meeting new people, so she cries at first, but after that initial shock, she brightens right up.

I share an office with Slavica. She and her family are X-Box fiends. One day Paul and I will hook up with them to play Halo online. They all crack me up. Slavica and Allen, her husband, know each other so well and are very quick with their comebacks to each other. It's obviously rubbed off on their son, Aleksa. I haven't met their daughter yet, but I hope one day I'll get to see if she's inherited her parents' quick wit too.

Su May is an RA in our group. She's been inducted into the company and is now working on top secret industry stuff with me. Her husband, Pete is the Maharajah in the tent and Su May is fanning him with a palm (grass) frond.

And here are some more random shots from the day...

The cliche: Sumay tossing her salad and Matt working the BBQ

Paul's trying traditional Serbian plum grappa for the first time. It's powerful stuff, but actually tastes pretty good. I'm so surprised that Paul was upright after that glass!

I'm not sure if Giorgia was too keen on crazy lady cuddles!

And of course, no BBQ is complete without backyard cricket! This was a very international match and really quite hilarious to watch at times. A number of sixes were hit and some fences had to be scaled to retreive the balls. Notice the appearance of the taped tennis ball in some of the shots.

Batting:

Bowling: