AFL Grand Final Street Parade and Spa Party

Wednesday, 23rd September 2009

Forgot to put up this pic in the previous entry, but the back story of this photo is this: I was on my way back from uni and decided to be a law-abiding citizen for once and attempt to sit the free City Circle tram back home. A non-free tram arrived and I decided not to get on it, but a few seconds after it left rain started pouring down and I cursed my luck. Talk about trying to be good for once and it backfired on me.

Another non-free tram arrived and I decided to just hop on. One stop later, we had to get down as the tram driver announced that it would be the last stop it would make fml. And that’s when I got down and saw this rainbow bridging across the skies of Melbourne—it was a beautiful sight.

But this entire week, Melbourne has been shrouded in a gloomy grey.

Friday, 25th September 2009

I reached Collins St at about 12pm in anticipation of the AFL Grand Final Street Parade. Throngs of people were down at the street looking to cheer on their favourite teams.

Swanston St / Collins St.

It was also raining at that time, but that didn’t deter the spectators (and me).

On horses.

St Kilda and Geelong flags, the final two teams.

Marching band. The entire procession supposedly starts at the Victoria Arts Centre and ends at the Old Parliament building.. or something.

The banner. I believe St Kilda’s theme song is The Saints Go Marching In.

Possibly a beer sponsor.

Players in cars keep passing us by, but I was at the way back so can’t get a good shot of the players.

Coca-Cola Zero wtf.

At night, I went with Ethan to the spa party organised by RMIT Outdoors Club at someone’s house on Canning Street, Carlton. We first met up at McDonald’s on Lonsdale St after I was done with my tutorial, then proceeded to go to Woolworths QV to buy some BBQ food for the party.

The two dogs that were running around.

Speaking of dogs, there is not a single stray dog or cat in sight in Melbourne, and presumably the entire continent of Australia. Their pet caring awareness is relatively high, and pets are taken very good care of, unlike in Malaysia..

The German girl looking at my camera. A cocktail maker was also hired by them who made cocktails throughout the night, most of them contain what I suspect to be milk so I didn’t get to drink much. :/

It was hard to get into the spa as it was only an 8-seater but there were so many people squeezed in it each time. At the end I was like “fuck it” and decided to hop right in—at first I ended up at the centre of the spa on top of everyone’s legs, then when the Filipino-Australian dude left, I took over his place. It was fascinatingly warm and rather enjoyable, if only there were less people in it.. at one point when Ethan sat together next to me, the German girl sat right on top of him (wtf) and the guys were making fun of him hahaha. A record breaking amount of 16 people were in said 8-seater spa.. (or jacuzzi, really).

It was very soapy too. Cold water was occasionally thrown around for fun, while drinks and cocktails were also drank in the spa.

The scene in the house. Chico, my Pubgaine teammate, was there as well, although he arrived pretty late.

Ethan was getting pretty buzzed and was incredibly social with everyone. I failed to emulate him due to the lack of booze in my system wtf, and didn’t get into the party mood.

The fire thingy (whatever you call it) where people huddle beneath like insects to light.

Ethan with his bitch; Filipino-Australian guy is on the right. I found it incredibly amusing each time whenever I hear an Asian-looking person speaking in the thickest Aussis accent—it’s often hard for me to see said person as a ‘local’.

Chico and a German guy we talked to briefly—at least, I think he’s from Germany but I kinda forgot.

Contrary to Ethan’s earlier repeated complaints to me that he regretted signing up for the party even though we weren’t there yet, in the end, after telling me that we should leave early at around 10pm, we ended up leaving at about 11pm+ ‘cause he wanted to stay on lol. It rained a little when we were walked back to the tram station, and right when we reached home, it started pouring like crazy and that was when we were a little glad that we managed to make it back home on time.

As Ivan was sleeping, me, Ethan, and Des proceeded to play some card games with my cheap Fruity Lexia goon—at first choi dai di, followed by the game called Cheat, which even Des recognised as the game from Neopets wtf. When I was satisfied at being buzzed, I went back and slept.

Saturday, 26th September 2009

Today’s the day I spent my entire waking hour devoted to consolidating my Investment groupmates’ work, standardising the style, correcting their grammar, etc—from 12pm up till 3.30am wtf. In that 15 hours, I cooked dinner together with Des and Ivan, then Mike came by to ask if he could use the table for their beer pong, and I said “sure”. He proceeded to hug me and Ivan and said “I love you guys” wtf; another American dude came by and recited some Malay words “Nama saya Johnson” wtf when he learned that we’re Malaysians. Had to move to Ivan’s place to eat instead.

After dinner I proceeded to continue working till ungodly hours—I’ll never want to re-live these moments ever again.

Sunday, 27th September 2009

Me and my mates (Spencer, Ethan, Ivan, Des) headed out to South Yarra at about 11am by tram—a kind-hearted old dude, after overhearing us as he was sitting opposite us, was telling us the right directions to get to where we wanted to go (Chapel St), and that’s when we didn’t even ask them. Obviously I’m quite heartened by this after hearing earlier stories from Ghavin about a racist old prick he encountered in a train.

We walked for a bit after meeting up with Marvin (not at Chapel St), then walked a bit towards the direction of Palace Cinema Como. Marvin insisted that we had to redeem our tickets from the papers we printed (which were really our tickets, but he didn’t believe me wtf), so we all went inside the cinema and when enquired, I was proved to be right. /smug wtf

I went to meet Estee (initially planned to be at the South Yarra Railway Station), but we spotted each other while she was walking down the street.

We ate at this American diner right opposite Palace Cinema Como. And this is the funky jukebox.

I was held spellbound at the sight of the American-ness of this quaint diner—there was even a pinball machine here.

Another look of the diner. The rest of the guys were sitting at another table (left of this picture); me and Estee had to sit at a separate table as there wasn’t enough space.

Estee, with a mannequin behind her wtf.

Our burger took rather long to arrive, and it wasn’t particularly huge.. but the diner is definitely a fantastic place to relax, chat, and unwind, with music from the 70s and 80s emanating from the speakers softly.

Then we watched the movie An Education; Estee and I went in first (we were also at least 10 minutes late by then) to the cinema to see if we could get in as the rest was still eating (their food took longer than us to arrive), and I had to sit at the very front row in the end wtf. It’s a quaint British coming-of-age film which reminds subtly of the importance of education through the unfolding drama involving a schoolgirl and a man twice her age, and I liked it.

Had to rush to go back ‘cause my Vietnamese groupmate rang me up (while I was in the cinema, I only picked up her calls after the movie was over) to tell me that I missed out something. Went back to the CBD with Estee by train instead of following the guys who were gonna use a tram.

When we were on the train nearing Melbourne Central station, this Italian-Australian dude who was clearly drunk (with a bottle of alcohol on his hand) asked Estee if she was Chinese etc (“Ah I thought so,” he said, when Estee replied in affirmation) and proceeded to tell us his sob story of being separated by his girlfriend, and told us that women will always break your heart wtf. He looked like he needed a listening ear, but unfortunately we had to get down early so we bade him a quick goodbye.

Our dinner for tonight—laksa mmmm (Des is a good cook), although apparently the taste of the lamb or whatever meat that was used overpowered the laksa taste; still, it tasted good to me nevertheless. Neil the Canadian (Ivan’s housemate) was eating with us as well and he was quite friendly, and seemed somewhat well-versed with the Asian culture.

Monday, 28th September 2009

The last Golden Key’s self-defence workshop was held today, and Sam was replaced by a Middle-Eastern-Australian guy whose name escapes me. Everything was a little more difficult—hence the “intermediate” adjective attached to this workshop—but still executable nonetheless. I was sparring with the same Asian guy from before (whom I later learned after the workshop, that his name’s Joey), as well as with the Middle-Eastern dude when a move required an instructor.

Now I’ve succeeded in learning how to break someone’s arm wtf when the opponent’s sitting on top of my stomach.

Wednesday, 30th September 2009

Watched Milk for free at RMIT’s Kaleide Theatre at 12.30pm (arrived there around 12pm after lunch at Don Don)—yes, my university has its own movie theatre, how awesome is that! There were prolly only like 10 of us in all, and I was the only one sitting third row from the front. This was also the first movie in a decade or so that succeeded in rendering tears from me wtf, and it’s rather powerfully inspirational—to the extent that it temporarily convinced me to be an activist wtf.

Thursday, 1st October 2009

Watched Looking for Eric at Cinema Nova, Carlton for free! The CouchSurfer, Ai, was giving out free tix again, and when I first arrived there, I was immediately greeted by this lady who called me “Hey Clement!” and I looked at her blankly, until she introduced herself, “Remember me? It’s Vicky! We met at Comedy Night” and it all came back to me. I clearly have very poor memory when it comes to people.

We went around trying to locate a group of disparate people but I didn’t see Ai or any familiar places. She asked if I’ve ever gone around asking strangers, “Are you a CouchSurfer?” and I told her no, and we laughed; a few seconds later, we were greeted by a guy who asked us the exact question we were laughing to lol, and he introduced himself as Courtney, who just moved to Melbourne from Canberra. He has a lop-sided smile that resembles a cute kinda smirk wtf.

More familiar faces emerge: Cameron, Dirce, Mari the Estonian, Ai, Andrew the Swiss.. but they were mostly new people I’ve never seen before. Also spotted Kirin who previously contacted me about NZ as he was the City Ambassador there and gave me some tips.

Looking for Eric was alright; it would’ve been better (for me personally) if I could understand the awfully thick British accent -__-, but I thought it would interest any football fans out there (maybe particularly Manchested United wtf) as Eric Cantona was heavily featured in the film.

Vicky and I didn’t join the rest for drinks at Victor’s; we both hitched a tram together, got off at Swanston St / La Trobe St, and I walked with her till she went inside the Melbourne Central station.

Friday, 2nd October 2009

Just the night before when I got back from watching the free movie, I spotted Ai’s new topic again pertaining to more free tickets to a Melbourne Fringe Festival show at the Trades Hall. I signed up for it immediately, after learning that they are $25 tickets to a stand-up comedy night. After experiencing my first live stand-up comedy night at The Comics Lounge, I didn’t want to pass up on this.

I arrived there early at prolly 6.30pm-ish when we were scheduled to meet at 6.45pm outside the Trades Hall, Carlton. Spotted a girl with flaming red hair who’s Marie, a French-Canadian who recently came last Tuesday to Melbourne to work/stay for a year under the Working Holiday Visa. She’s prolly the first CouchSurfer whom I felt comfortable talking to, and I practised my miserable French with her for a few seconds too wtf.

Ai soon arrived, followed by the rest.. and this time Cassie was around too.

Hannah Gatsby, the performer for the night, was outrageously funny with her digs at her mother and her lesbian self. Many jokes were related to her mum’s frightful antics and coded phrases, such as “Kiss me quick I’m full of jubes” which apparently translates to “gay” wtf.

Awesome one-hour plus performance; then we adjourned to a coffee/chocolate place (didn’t order a thing for obvious reasons) where among the topics we discussed was the difference between a pub and a bar, then visited Victor’s briefly to see how awesome the themed bar is with its elaborate interior design (it has a few quiet lounges too, which was really great for chatting), then when they want to relocate to another bar/pub, I had to excuse myself as I wanted to go back to resume my work (it was nearly 9.30pm) and possibly sleep early in anticipation of tomorrow’s day trip, and Ai told me jokingly, “God you’re such an Asian!”. This coming from an Australian-Asian guy (he was supposedly Vietnamese, but born in Japan, lived in Hong Kong and studied in the US wtf) is quite.. ironic.

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Ah, finally managed to catch up with most of my posts from the past week. Three more months till the end of Melbourne.