A Saturday of Melburnian arts and party

What is the quest of the human race?

The question which we put forward was accorded answers to, time and time again — but at this very moment for me, it is the quest for knowledge. I was in the midst of an internal conflict today, over the fact that I ditched an elective of Understanding Philosophy: Themes from Popular Culture for Writing Angles : Popular and Professional, but it wasn’t as if that I didn’t learn anything from the latter — I did, in fact, learned grammatical aspects that were very new to me; for instance: do you know that there are differences (albeit subtle) between the hyphen (-), the em-dash (—), and the en-dash (–)?

I sorta regretted that I didn’t sign up for the Philosophy elective just to get a hold of the timetable, drop it, then attend the 1-hour lectures, even if I won’t be tested on them. It would’ve been an eye-opening experience — I’ve always wanted to dive into the world of philosophy just for the sake of enlightening myself of questions raised of life, the universe, and everything that falls in between. As horrifically nerdy as it sounds, I’ve always been thirsting for knowledge — and it is now that, after attending the Golden Key information session at 5pm earlier (where free pizza — and therefore dinner — was plied to us), I am more certain than ever that I wouldn’t want to ever work in any place that’s remotely alike to a bank. The RMIT Swanston Library, I just realised, was an extensive library filled with books across all fields that I would’ve loved to stay on all day just to read, if not for the fact that I have assignments to work on.

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And now for less nerdy things.

On Saturday the 15th August at about 2.20pm, I walked towards the Arts House (at Meat Market, 5 Blackwood Street, North Melbourne) — a kilometre’s walk away from where I live. According to Tim who posted up about the free theatrical production, we can get free tickets as long as we use emission-free mode of transportation: be it tram/train, the bicycle, or good ol’ walking. I almost regretted immediately, as I walked towards a new set of roads I’ve never previously explored, not bringing my Canon 450D with me as there were interesting Victorian architectural sights of houses along the way, not to mention that the streets were calmly quiet on a sunny Saturday afternoon.

Tim (the Melburnian who went to Italy to study the language for 4 months) and Michael (the New Zealander who has a PhD in Chemistry, wore a suit that day as he was “doing the laundry”, and currently tutoring high school kids) were already there when I arrived — Michael amazingly walked all 9 kilometres that took him an hour and a half.

So we met three other friends of Tim’s and a female CouchSurfer (who came to the screening of Howl’s Moving Castle a few days prior), and then we were ushered in to watch The Ballad of Backbone Joe, a dark comedy/noir/musical of which I couldn’t understand most of the jokes due to cultural differences and/or the fact that I may have hearing problems as I couldn’t understand what they were saying sometimes.

It was interesting to experience an Australian — if not Melburnian — theatre (both Michael and I sat at the last row); I was suitably impressed with the effects and the props utilised (compared to the simpler Malaysian plays, of which I had only experienced once) considering that there were only the three of them. The jokes were undoubtedly lame but hilarious — an hour well spent into the forays of pre-war Australia, I’d say.

Then me, Tim, Michael, and Tim’s friend hitched a tram towards the CBD and we made our way to a cafe somewhere near Swanston St / Collins St.

The sights from where I sat (that’s Tim’s face btw).

The cafe where they had hot chocolate, coffee and a chocolate marshmallow and I had none as they weren’t lactose intolerant-friendly. =/

As we sat in the cafe, Michael had a repertoire of amazing stories to tell — ranging from his crazy travels in Morocco where he was hidden by a local in a bus to an unknown destination, to his fascination with science fiction and therefore the latest movie District 9 (as was I). A good storyteller is not me, so I contented myself with immersion in the tales that were spun around the table.

We went to a bookstore near Swanston St / Bourke St as Tim wanted to get an Economics for Dummies book, and then we bade goodbye to Tim’s friend, and subsequently hitched a tram towards St Kilda (I was pretty fascinated with the strong winds and the overall backpackers’ atmosphere as it’s a well-known backpackers town) where we were supposed to have dinner with a couple of CouchSurfers who got in touch with Michael.

At a pretty funky backpacker’s waiting for a short French girl — notice the kayak dangling on top.

We eventually met up with two Finnish girls at a tram stop and we went to have an Indian dinner. Ah, to have papadam in Australia, of all places — it’s my favourite Indian snack.

I had a Kashmiri lamb something.

I had my meal with a plain naan with some.. rice that I forgot the name of. My Kashmiri lamb was about $12 but we ended up paying $20 each ‘cause we also shared the naan, the rice, and plain water. T____________T Most expensive meal I’ve ever had in Australia thus far, but sigh, I suppose I could indulge once in a blue moon.

Further interesting experiences were told at the table — I learned that the Finnish language is unique in the sense that Finnish speakers could make up their own words and other people would be able to understand them. O_O Or how both Tim and Maria shared the same birthday (August 28th). Maria also took the opportunity to ask Michael and Tim if they could host her for a few days as she’d be moving out and would be homeless till she moved into her new place.

With our dinner done, we walked to a nearby bottleshop to buy our own choice of alcohol (I learned recently that this is the exact term to use to describe a shop that sells liquor in Australia), then towards Martin’s house (yet another CouchSurfer who posted about this event online, ) somewhere near the Balaclava railway station.

It was funny though — the units of the houses/apartment went from 300+ to about 100+ in less than 10 metres or something wtf. When we stopped by in front of the house that didn’t seem to have its number displayed, a guy was coming out from it, saw us holding bottles of liquor and beckoned us to “Come in! Come in!”. We looked at each other, wondering if we’ve even gotten the right party, but Tim and Maria decided to open the door and waltzed right in, and I followed. And it was the right house — would’ve been funny if it wasn’t.

So it was Martin the German’s place who was blasting trance and whatnot from his stereo. I was at first in a makeshift group with Cassie (whom I’ve met like 3 times by then), Tim, and an Italian dude called Stefano who wanted to be called Steven ‘cause people kept mis-pronouncing his name. Steven kept mentioning how horrible the Italian food sold in Melbourne is, “especially carbonara, it’s the worst” lol, as being Italian, he’d know better how to cook ‘em. He had apparently asked a chef why the Italian food tasted so different compared to the ones back at his home, and the chef had said that’s because the locals staying here didn’t like the original Italian taste, and he had to cater to their differing taste.

And another shot. The guy in white who looked as if he was looking at my camera’s Martin — he had apparently just bought a Canon 30D recently off Gumtree too.

I prolly drank like half a bottle of my red wine, and at about 11.30pm, me, Michael, Tim, and the French girl (who was really quiet and sat alone by herself not talking to anyone wtf [even if I don’t talk that much, at least I was still mingling around]) had to go back early — Cassie was getting so drunk at one point she snatched my phone away when I was checking it for SMS (she thought I was checking the time) and passed it to Steven, who subsequently dropped it. -__- No (visible) damage done, but I was a little too tipsy to be even bothered by it lol. When I made an attempt to leave, Cassie snatched my bottle away and placed it on the table, proceeded to hug me and told me loudly, “Clem’s my new best friend!” LOL.

But yeah, we still had to leave early anyway to catch the last train, while the French girl caught a tram back. The three of us stopped at Melbourne Central, but Michael and Tim went on to catch a connecting train while I left the station and walked all the way back, dropped by at Ivan’s place at Walsh Main (Ethan told me that they were gambling there wtf) where a bunch of Asians were playing In Between — I was forced to play, and I prolly won like less than a dollar lol.

Sunday saw a turbulent fireworks of storm and the rain — the Outdoors Fitness group meeting was cancelled (I got an e-mail the night before, so forecasts can be accurate after all!) because of that, and I then went to Building 108’s computer lab at about 3pm to use the computer.