The Saga of the Dead Laptop, Ballroom Dancing, and Generally Hanging Out with Strangers

This is what happened to me in the past week:

Thursday, 30th July 2009:

Attended RMIT’s Outdoors Club Introductory Night, which they plied us with free beer and free pizza.

Saturday, 1st August 2009:
I went to attend a same-sex marriage rally at Federation Square to see what was up, considering that the movie theatre that I was heading to was held at the same place too. On the way there, I had my umbrella completely destroyed by a sudden gust of wind and had to throw it into a nearby bin, and walked in the light drizzle that occasionally stopped – Melbourne’s weather is weird like that.

Booths set up for petition-signing, which I did.

One of the ads on the way to Federation Square.

At the Federation Square.

Thousand-strong crowd showing their solidarity despite the rain.

When the girl in purple saw me snapping photos, she immediately raised her sign up for me to snap hahaha.

Oddly hilarious costume from a guy who gamely agreed to me taking a photo of him.

An a cappella performance going on.

A short video of the rally.

I hung around for a while, and from what I understood from the speeches, some of them were lambasting the government, which is something you’d never ever see in Malaysia – because you’d immediately be arrested under the ISA (Internal Security Act) for committing such an ‘atrocity’.

The screen. I also saw a placard that someone was holding, saying “PLEASE LET MY MUMS MARRY”.

Haha how cute!

I then went to the theatre about 30 minutes early, and even so we had to queue up already as there wasn’t any seating number allocated – our tickets were also in a form of a receipt-like paper and there were barcodes for the staffs to scan before letting us in. And so I watched Love Exposure, a Japanese movie of about 4 hours long (incredible, I must say), and it was quite the experience. I thought the first 2 hours were brilliant, but the 2nd last quarter was a bit draggy and it finished quite nicely in the final quarter. It was then I learned that you weren’t supposed to text while in the cinema. >_>

Sunday, 2nd August 2009:
Laptop went dead – details as described in my previous entry.

I hung around at my university’s computer lab to look for a new laptop online after the whole deal with visiting a nearby laptop repair shop, then hung out with Ethan and his friend Spencer as I had really nothing better to do on a Sunday evening with a broken laptop.

I met up with the both of them at Docklands (took a City Circle tram there myself and walked around NewQuay on my own while I was waiting for them), and stopped at Etihad Stadium. This picture depicts Ethan posing in front of the stadium.

Testing the pinhole effect on my Lumix DMC-FT1. There is a cow on top of the tree.

Me posing in front of the cow.

Ethan and Spencer.

Walking by the dock.

We then went to a Chinese diner called A1 and ate our dinner there before heading back.

Monday, 3rd August 2009
Made a phone call to Dell after finding out that I wasn’t able to check the status of my order – long story short, I had to re-order a new one ‘cause I had keyed in the wrong billing address of my debit card but I managed to get an 8% discount for it on the basis that I was an RMIT student. I was told later that should I choose to customise my laptop, it would take about 3 weeks for it to arrive – which I absolutely could not afford to wait – so I chose to take the quick bundle.. and this decision was made at about 10-15 minutes before 8pm, which is Dell’s closing hours (I talked to a sales representative directly, Daphne).

I was talking on the phone with Daphne and noticed that someone was trying to call me as well, which I suspect was Cameron of CouchSurfing, as he was due to arrive around 8pm-ish. When I finished talking to Daphne, I immediately rang him back, and sure enough he was outside of my place, so I went down immediately to get him.

I greeted both Cam and his friend Dan, and they brought Cam’s things down from the car (which Cam borrowed from a friend) and store them in my room – a few days ago I had saw Cam’s posted topic on the Melbourne board of CouchSurfing requesting for a place to store his things, which involved a long story of how he was about to move out when his landlord told him that he has to wait longer. So there are now some additional amount of boxes at the corner of my room, along with two set of large posters – one of them is from Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (Cam asked me when he brought it down from the car if I’ve watched Amelie, and I was like “Uh I don’t think so” until I saw the poster lol).

(And when I first returned to my room completely forgotten that I have additional things in my room, I was quite taken aback by a huge image of a smiling girl at the corner of my room lol, until I remembered what and why it’s there.)

When we were done moving his things, Cam asked if I’d like to join them for a drink. Initially I contemplated no as I had wanted to do some exercises/revision for my Investment tutorial the next day, but seeing that I had no laptop with me and I’m likely to be bored anyway, I accepted his offer.

And off I jumped into the car of two complete strangers.

We were headed – albeit a little lost – towards the direction of Carlton to a friend’s place to move the remainder of his things there (I think), so Dan and I went into a liquor store nearby to get a 6-pack of beer. And when Cam finally returned (found out that the both of them were high school mates and were from Perth, Dan was only here on a short vacation), we then returned the car and waited at a tram station, a bottle of beer in our hands.

Pondering over the legality of drinking on the streets (apparently it’s legal in some areas or something, and Cam told us that we can prolly plead ignorance when we’re stopped lol), a police car passed by and we immediately hid the bottles beneath our jacket and waited to see if it’ll make a U-turn lol. (It didn’t.) We hitched the tram to the CBD and stopped at Bourke St / Swanston St, right where my uni’s building is located at.

We walked towards the direction of Public Bar near Queen Victoria Market, and saw a long queue.. we joined the madness of queueing up in the cold in winter (even Dan, a local Australian, was feeling the chill as he told me that Perth is much warmer than Melbourne), and then both Dan and I went towards the direction of the market to find some public toilets to pee in, only to find that they were locked. We only did what was natural and absolutely necessary at the time to relieve a full bladder – we peed right in that narrow lane where the public toilet was and I did it next to a couple of plastic boxes they prolly used to store stuffs wtf.

We both then headed back to the queue where Cam was (apparently the guys in front of us have been waiting for 30 minutes already wtf), then after a while, got out of the queue to meet Cam’s friend Martha who was celebrating her birthday with a bunch of other people, then we were asked by the staff to queue up (heh) even though we had a friend there, then we went back to the queue again (much more further back by then), then fed up with the waiting, we left and went to a bar near an International Backpacker’s, which I reckoned was where Ethan had been before the first time.

More new people (one of the new guys joked to Cam how me and him go way back) were over there, and after about a jug of beer, we then moved on to Workshop, yet another pub. By then I was somewhat smashed enough to not know where we were, but it was fun sitting around, chatting around with a mug of beer in hand and getting to know them (there was a French dude in our group, along with a half-Australian half-Filipino guy sitting next to me who used to study at RMIT Building 108 too, and graduated just last semester, doing the same Investment class last sem too). I also talked to Monica, who is currently taking double Masters (possibly the first time I’ve heard of such a thing) that would go on for 2 years (one of the Masters is in Accounting) – apparently she only chose to do this after she wasn’t able to get a job due to the current economic problems.

A cute poster-comic hanging on one section of the wall of the Workshop. It says, “Kuro, the black cat. Cat keeps forgetting things!!”

Me and a bunch of wicked random strangers, with Cam to my left. (Yeah I was the only Asian around but that didn’t make me feel less weird, if you don’t count the half-Filipino half-Australian dude. I had to mention this ‘cause I didn’t feel the racism that Ethan seemed to have felt from his previous experiences.).

A random shot – that’s Dan on the far right of the pic, and the French dude who was talking to.. one of the girls.

Cam and Monica.

Cam, me, Dan.

We left the place, then went to a bottle shop (some of us were denied entry – including me – as they don’t accept any other IDs but passports) to get more beer (I had initially told Cam “I think I should head back” twice but continued following them and he was like “You already said that earlier!” lol), and we were supposed to move to another person’s place by cab to continue the ‘party’ – but at about 1am+, I wasn’t that keen to go as I’d have a full day of classes the next day, while Dan wanted to get a kebab and Cam told him that he wouldn’t go if Dan would bribe him with a kebab lol. And we promptly walked to the nearby Stalactites restaurant at 173-183 Lonsdale St, and I got myself a Chicken Souvlaki for $9.80 while Cam and Dan ate a Beef Souvlaki.

It was rad, eating a massive souvlaki outside in winter (for some reason they didn’t choose to sit inside the restaurant) – I was even more amused to see the birds/pigeons gathering nearby us and one of them even swooped in instantly to eat some of the kebab that I accidentally spilled on the ground.

Dan posing with a bottle of beer and his Beef Souvlaki.

We parted there near Stalactites, and I walked all the way home while the two of them walked towards the direction of Carlton (Cam had to ignore a few phone calls from Martha who was wondering where we were, and finally lied to her that we were already in a cab lol).

Suffice to say, the next day I had a hangover and felt ill – I swear I have the weirdest possible reactions to things, because I diarrhoea-ed like 6 times that day sigh.

Wednesday, 5th August 2009
I was hanging out at the computer lab after a class in the morning and ate my lunch, and was pondering over the details of my Dell order ‘cause I couldn’t track it online. An e-mail to Daphne was left unanswered, and when I finally rang her direct line she told me that it’s not handled by her anymore and that I had to contact Customer Care but she’d forward my request to them anyway – which um, after talking to Matt about this, he told me to just ring Customer Care up and I did. That person gave me a consignment number, and then I had to ring up Startrack Express (the courier company that was used) who then told me that they were sending it today.

... fml.

I immediately went out and ran all the way back (took a City Circle tram which conveniently arrived), hoping that I wouldn’t see that piece of card that would say that they have arrived with a parcel but I wasn’t in and if I’d please call back to re-arrange another time.. but no, I received that card. :( They arrived at 1.15pm and I was late by about 2 hours. fml.

I headed back to my uni disappointed, but to Building 3 instead. Didn’t do much at night except attempt to study and chat with Matt on GTalk on my phone.

Thursday, 6th August 2009
I woke bright and early at about 730am, took a shower, and got ready – all because that lady from Startrack Express who was talking to me told me that they could come as early as 815 or 830am. I waited by the window of my room as it overlooked the street to watch out for any delivery truck, then when I went downstairs to the kitchen and talked to Gloria, my Chinese housemate, she agreed to my request to help me ring the doorbell to see if I could hear it from my room.

...and I couldn’t. WTF. Ethan even helped me out a while later and confirmed that I indeed could not hear the doorbell at all, then we experimented it with me in the kitchen, and it was quite soft. I resigned to the fact that I had to either:

a) stay in my room by the window (warm temperature)
b) stay in the kitchen while do some studying (semi-cold temperature)
c) go outside to the courtyard to listen for the doorbell loud and clear (extremely cold temperature)

After lunch, at about 1pm I went for option C, after ringing up Startrack Express again earlier who then told me that they should come at about the same time as yesterday.. which meant that I woke up so early for nothing fml. So I was chatting with Matt again to pass the time and complained to him when they didn’t arrive at 1.15pm sharp, only to hear that doorbell two minutes later and I was like O_O ‘cause they really did arrive at almost the same time as yesterday. This is bizarre because they’re so unbelievably efficient.

I set up my laptop and immediately went to uni to do a fair bit of downloading.. then ate dinner together with Ethan and Spencer at a Chinese restaurant on Lonsdale St.

Friday, 7th August 2009
I hung around at my uni’s computer lab after my afternoon class ended at 4.30pm, and then left at nearly 6pm when it was due to close, awaiting my date for the night to arrive at Flinders St Railway Station – Estee from Singapore, my Investment classmate. We went to the $6 restaurant at Port Phillip Arcade for dinner (I ate two Whoppers for lunch that made me incredibly full, go figure.. but I had a voucher from my housemate Jessica that would buy 2 flame-grilled Whoppers for only $6.45), stopped by at Flinders St station to use its toilet (I had a bizarre experience of being ogled at the urinal by an Indian man), then strolled down near Yarra River for a bit and I almost wanted to check out the Ferris wheel but Estee suggested that we head back.

A panorama of Federation Square and the scene around me. Click to enlarge. (But it’s probably a little too small, still.)

And just as well, ‘cause we found out that our train was due to depart in like 10 minutes and there won’t be a next train till an hour later at 8:53pm, which would be too late by then as we were supposed to arrive at 9pm sharp.

We got on the train at the Sandringham line (we were a bit lost trying to locate Platforms 12 & 13 until Estee asked a lady walking by) and got off at the Ripponlea station. We followed Enrique’s instructions (who organised the social ballroom dancing event on CouchSurfing) which I found from a topic he made, but we must’ve wandered for like 15 minutes before we finally found the house – I also snapped some pictures while we looked around, but they weren’t very nice as I failed to capture the extraordinary beauty of the moon that night.

Said failed pic. (That’s the Ripponlea station at the background.)

When we finally found the place, an elderly man called Marcus brought us in and we were led to an amazing hall that has a fairytale theme to it – in fact, nearly the entire house was so decorated. There was a machete stuck in the wall (something about recreating horror tales live for his niece wtf), a mattress and a pillow with mosquito netting at the corner.. etc. Quite an awesome mansion, really.

As we were quite early (we arrived at 8.30pm), Enrique taught us how to dance the foxtrot (“so that you guys will be on top of the game later” lol), and it wasn’t that hard at all! But then again, we were learning basic ballroom dancing. We also then mingled around with Sian (a Walsh name, we were told, and she’s a lady, yes) and another dude, then when the crowd started to roll in, we began with our first lesson in foxtrot – Enrique singled out Estee to dance with to show the rest as we have sorta gotten used to it compared to the rest, who were all complete beginners who didn’t know how to dance too btw! Nothing more motivating than knowing that you’re not the only one with two left feet wtf.

Enrique (in the middle explaining about a dance move).

One of the ladies taking a photo for us – a pic of me dancing with Estee.

The hall.

At another angle.

We learned the foxtrot, waltz, chacha, and jive (difficulty increasing in that order), and it was getting tougher and more complicated. I only managed the most basic moves and wonder if I can even retain whatever I learned that night, else it would’ve been such a waste. But it was the most fun 3 hours spent on a Friday night – mingling around yet again with a bunch of CouchSurfers was just another amazing experience as everyone was friendly and rather non-judgemental. Tim, an Australian living somewhere in the suburbs of Melbourne, told me that he had watched Sell Out! (I didn’t remember that it was him who posted a message about it at the MIFF topic on CouchSurfing) and thought it was great. :D Amusingly enough, he wondered why there were English subtitles, and I told him, ”’cause you guys prolly won’t understand Malaysian English without them?”, to which he replied that he could, except the bits with Chinese in it. o_O

Enrique teaching us the chacha.

Part 2!

Enrique teaching the ladies how to do the chacha.

I probably hadn’t mention this before, but this entire event was conducted free – we just had to bring a bottle of something with us (I chose wine, in fact, many others brought the same thing as well) and Enrique told us that he didn’t even know how to dance before he got a job as a ballroom dance instructor – apparently the Miami-born dude may have gotten the job because of his Latin-sounding name, as he really didn’t have any prior experience nor knowledge in dancing at all! Though he has been attending non-paid training of ballroom dancing about 20 hours thus far.

A group of the 4 of us left at about 11.45pm – me, Estee, a girl whose name I’ve forgotten (sorry!), and Tim – and we went to sit on the train together.

I walked home from Flagstaff Station feeling particularly upbeat about the entire experience – I’ve been going to social events to meet strangers more times in Melbourne in a month than I did in a year in Malaysia.

Saturday, 8th August 2009
I was out at the computer lab at Building 108 in the afternoon, then as I was about to head home, remembered that there was going to be a party held at Walsh Main. I rang up Ethan to confirm my attendance, then after eating my own home-cooked aglio olio, went over when he rang me up to tell me that I could come at almost 8pm.

There was a group of mostly Americans, with Ethan, Ivan, and me being the only Malaysians there then, playing beer pong. Mike (left) and another dude playing against the girls.

It was too bloody cold outside even for the Westerners, so we moved inside when Neil the Canadian suggested it. It was me and Mith (also another Malaysian but he has been in Melbourne for 8 years already, hence he didn’t sound Malaysian at all) against Ethan and Adi from India. We won the first round with my aims being fairly accurate, but as I got tipsier and tipsier, my accuracy fell to nearly zero LOL.

The amount of beer cans around is simply staggering.

We shared $5 each to get 4 pizzas, and I had 4 slices in total I think. Yum.

I went back early at about 10pm.

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And that’s my fairly eventful week which took my hours and hours to write.

It would’ve ended on a better note had I not found out today on a Sunday morning that I had raked up a bill of about AUD$250 (RM750) for my phone bill last month FML. Would’ve ranted more about it but I got over it after a nice long talk with my parents who were incredibly cool with it – seems like I’ve been making too many expensive mistakes since arriving in Melbourne.

And I found out just two days ago from Poh Yuen’s blog entry about Gary’s sudden passing, and I’m incredibly saddened by it because he’s such a promising, talented young man even though we only met twice. What’s even worse is that there wasn’t even any sufficient media coverage about his death, and having someone die from something as avoidable as dehydration goes to show utter negligence by the organisers and the state of the Malaysian healthcare. Click here for further details on the sequence of events the day Gary left us.