CouchSurfing Zone at Sister Bella

Trying to keep myself sane with hip and happening Melbourne and less of an anti-social loser, I took upon myself to participate in various activities throughout the past weeks. I forgot to post this up, but two Saturdays ago I was at a “Welcome to Melbourne for International Students” or something along those lines, which was organised by the City of Melbourne and held at the Multicultural Hub not too far away from where I stayed.

There was an art gallery, some second-hand sales going on (I got a free folder and some transparent plastic sheets along with some black papers for free from an RMIT booth there, which would come in handy), and a reptile exhibition which involved snakes and crocodiles.

Kid touching the croc (or.. was it an alligator?) – its skin was rather tough too.

An exceptionally large croc on display whose eyes ogled at me lol – we were only allowed to touch the tail and the body region near it but not the head.

Last Saturday, the management of where I was staying at organised a BBQ – it was originally supposed to be at Albert Park (which I was quite keen on going as it was a suburb that I’ve not been to yet) but alas, it was relocated at the last minute (I only know about it the night before when I noticed a memo on the notice board), at a park near the management’s office.

Barbecuing in a sunny winter while mingling with residents we’ve never seen before – I got to know a Mauritius woman, who’s witty and likes to crack a joke, and a Malaysian Indian lecturer (who used to lecture at APIIT, or was it MMU..) and is currently studying for her Ph.D in IT at the University of Melbourne. Both of them are staying at Unit 2, at the ‘house’ right next to us!

Guy in brown jacket’s my new housemate from Singapore, the Malaysian Indian lecturer in blue, and our Resident Master, Ken.

A scene of the BBQ with a bird.

Jessie and a staff whose name escapes me – both of them work with the management.

Ethan.

A pair of shoes hanging on top of the wire, possibly from the previous night’s drunken debauchery.

I managed to convince Ethan to come with me to St. Kilda to attend Faye Blais’ free performance at Pure Pop Records. We went here by train – a first time for me after 3 weeks here – and it was quite a pleasant experience.

Ethan kept telling me that we should be on a look-out since there seems to be less Asians in town and we should be wary of the whites, and I had to tell him that his paranoia is getting to me and is slowly affecting my innocuous, prejudice-free mind lol. I guess it can’t be blamed as he had experiences of racist attacks back when he was in Sydney, and I was lucky to have not encountered this.. yet.

It took us about 15-20 minutes to get to Pure Pop Records, which turned out to be a CD store which did look empty from afar. I was expecting for a bar, but we went in anyway as we were already there and then found out that there is indeed a small bar behind the shop, where Faye is due to perform.

The bar. Ethan and I had a beer each – I took the Carlton Draught for $5 per bottle.

Faya Blais.

She plays indie folk (as mentioned on her myspace page), and when I first listened to it I thought it sounded very right up my alley. She had initially posted about it on the Melbourne’s CouchSurfing board, and I thought it’d be cool to check it out, and here I was! To be honest I had expected more out of her performance – although I thought when she sung a song with other two people, it was pretty wicked – but her constant amusing banter with the audience made it quite an engaging and relaxing experience.

One of her songs.

As usual, I checked out CouchSurfing’s board and found out there’s a gathering of sorts of Melburnian CouchSurfers called the CouchSurfing Zone, held at Sister Bella. I asked Ethan to come along and he was interested, so on Tuesday evening after my class at 5.30pm, the both of us went to the $6 restaurant, then at about 6.30pm went on a search for Sister Bella at Sniders Lane – it was not located in the main street of Lonsdale St, but after a shady dark alley where generally people wouldn’t find themselves at.

When we were actually there, what greeted us was the sight of intricate graffiti splattered over the walls, large trash bins, and the sight of several people smoking in the alley – a perfect setting of where drug addicts would hang out back in Malaysia, what with the somewhat poor lighting and all. I was feeling a little apprehensive, wondering if we’re at the right place as there wasn’t any signage at all that indicated that it was Sister Bella, and as we peered around uncomfortably, a girl’s voice called out and asked, “Hey are you guys CouchSurfers?” and we were quickly put at ease.

So she’s Elizabeth from North Carolina, United States (she kept telling us she was from the East Coast, probably ‘cause she thought we wouldn’t know where that is lol), and she’s a pretty charming, humorous, incredibly sociable young lady. She told us that she too had just arrived, went inside and upstairs and saw that it was indeed Sister Bella, but she didn’t know who the CouchSurfers were – she told us she was embarrassed to ask – so we figured that we should go inside and find out.

In the end it was Elizabeth who went to a large group sitting at the back of the upstairs bar and asked if they were CouchSurfers – and yeah, they were – and we quickly found a place to sit. The entire group was separated further into smaller groups, and we found ourselves forming another small group to chat – Elizabeth went to the counter initially to get some beer, but later on got a jug of sangria (FUCK YEAH! I missed Uno’s sangria lol) for AUD$15. When I asked her how much it was, she asked us not to worry about it.

Sister Bella! Sorry for the darkness of this photo and subsequent ones, but I was using my Lumix DMC-FT1 plus I didn’t want to use flash.

The big group of Couchsurfers.

Chris of LA (she moved to Osaka and then moved to Melbourne) jumped into the middle of our conversation and asked if what the three of us were drinking was sangria, and she was all “YES!” – replete with an action similar to that of cheerleaders’ – and then asked if she could drink some. We were then later joined by her collegemate, Dag of Norway.

It was absolutely a pleasant experience – I’m not a social butterfly, but it was nice to hear other people’s travelling experiences or even what they were doing in Melbourne. I took the opportunity to ask Elizabeth a few questions about New Zealand as she had been there – and I asked if I’m short on time, where should I be visiting, and she told me South Island hands down. So there – it’s great to hear and confirm what I’ve been listening about too!

And we were told by the two American girls that LA is incredibly dirty and polluted, and they were surprised by how clean Melbourne is. *nudge at Matt lol.

Ethan and Dag (pronounced as ‘Doug’), the Norwegian. Dag has the exact same DSLR as me too! (which I didn’t bring as I had a pretty long day in uni, from 930am to 530pm, and I don’t need to have an extra 3kg bag with me)

Me chatting with Dag, Elizabeth, and Chris.

A shot Ethan took with flash.

And another look.

Ethan left early at 8pm-ish, while I stayed on till about 8.50pm. As I left, I bade goodbye to Chris and Dag (earlier on, a half-Malaysian half-Canadian lady bade goodbye to us too) and then found Elizabeth outside the bar smoking, bade her goodbye and she gave me a hug, and then I left, feeling positively high from the sangria and the interaction of people from all over the world, where we’re bound by a single common interest: travelling. Both Dag and Ethan were relatively new towards CouchSurfing too, and apparently they’d be registering on it soon.

Talk about a melting pot of complete international-ness, that thus far my relatively limited interaction in university has yet to provide.

I walked towards Russell St to catch a movie from the Melbourne International Film Festival – Humpday from the US. I haven’t been watching a movie at the cinema solely by myself in ages, so it’s a replicate of that solitary experience. Humpday was funny, but the ending wasn’t what I had expected it to be.

And so, it was a walk at 11pm all the way back to my place.

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I have a pretty interesting subject this semester, called Empirical Studies in the Equity Markets. The way this subject is going on seems to me to be more of a research or a postgraduate subject – we are required to have an extensive knowledge of finance and statistics (thus far), and despite how bleeding tough it is (worthy of being a 3rd year subject lol), I’m more than willing to take up the challenge of self-improvement in order to learn something as in-depth as this. And so, I’ve been trying to brush up on some areas of statistics (hypothesis testing, T-test) by borrowing a book from the library (which has a system far different than the one back at Metropolitan, and the self-checkout system’s pretty neat too) and trying to understand the journal co-written by my lecturer.. without much progress. :/

The idea of researching is dull as hell to me, but I’m pleasantly surprised to note that being able to write is considered an important skill as well for this subject – in fact, we were encouraged to find groupmates who have other different skills, ranging from being a quantitative analyst to a researcher, and it’s great to know that I have a skill as important and vital as the rest. In fact, we’ll be writing tons of academic essays – not your usual essays given the standards that we have to follow – so it does sound interesting even though it’s profoundly challenging.

Or.. this sounds like the making of a nerd. =/