Writing Gardens

The week before I surrendered my soul to a half a semester-long imprisonment in the jail of studies and assignments, I had a blast going out and enjoying myself in the city of Melbourne, aided mostly by the Melbourne board of CouchSurfing. I’d have liked to go into detail of my days, of the conversations that surfaced, of the things I had experienced, but I suppose pictures and some notes would suffice for now.

Tuesday, 18th August 2009:

#1 The tram stop at La Trobe St / William St, where I always waited for a tram, preferably the City Circle tram (otherwise hitching other trams illegally would do too wtf).

After our Investment lecture on Tuesday, Estee and I decided to head to the gardens nearby for a stroll—my Empirical Studies lecture was cancelled for that day. She had initially wanted to go to St Kilda Beach, but as I had other plans for the evening, we decided on a nearer destination.

#2 The State Library of Victoria, a place I pass by nearly every single day.

#3 A closer look of the statue.

#4 I love sunny winters—neither too hot nor too cold. It’s also at the State Library’s grass where you’d see people lying down/having a picnic/chatting/reading a book/doing whatever they please.

#5 A church at Swanston St, corner of La Trobe St. (If you’ve not been to Melbourne and are wondering what on earth I’m talking about, because the CBD is set out in a grid-like fashion, there are plenty of intersections and a single street can be at least 1km long, hence when trying to locate a place, it’s important to get the nearest intersection too.)

#6 Plenty of police cars at Flinders Lane / Swanston St—there’s a police station at Flinders Lane, where I always pass by to get to Port Phillip Arcade for the $6 restaurant..

#7 A Melbourne Writers Festival booth at Federation Square—the festival runs from 21st to 30th August 2009. I love how the city places emphasis on arts and encourages its development, unlike Malaysia.

#8 Crossing the Yarra River.

#9 Another look of the city from the sidelines.

#10 At Alexandria Gardens!

#11 A woman waiting. And waiting.

#12 Sun shining behind the clouds.

#13 With a picture like this, it’s hard to believe it’s winter here.

#14 My strolling partner from Singapore, Estee.

#15 Et moi.

#16 My favourite pic of Estee.

#17 Obligatory jump pic.

#18 Rowers at the Yarra River—the river isn’t exactly clean, but I figured it’s row-able.. makes you wonder whether anyone would row down the Klang River in the future.

#19 We weren’t sure at first whether to walk all the way to the Royal Botanical Gardens as it was a little far, but we did it anyway.

#20 The moment we stepped into the gates, we saw a field of small, delicate white flowers to our right.

#21 We spent a bit of some time taking pictures over there too.

#22 Reading a book beneath a tree (in actual, it’s a leaflet wtf).

#23 Et moi doing the same.

#24 Estee in thought.

#25 The grass is sooo soft and comfy I’d have liked to actually lie down for real (instead of posing wtf) and stare at the sky and the cloud formations.

#26 At the first section of garden we came across—the Grey Garden.

#27 Estee’s turn.

#28 It was nearing 5pm+ and we decided to head back, as I had wanted to check out a “Free Furniture” place at RMIT Building 10 car park.

#29 If only it was me and Haensly. <3

So the two of us did make it to the “Free Furniture” thingy going on (every Tuesday from 4.30pm to 5.30pm)—I had wanted a chair as my current one in my room absolutely sucked and gave me a backache, but when I got there most of the chairs they had were gone. Apparently I came a little too late as it was filled to the brim in the ‘cage’ just an hour ago or so, and was advised to keep checking back again. I didn’t really bother with it ‘cause I hadn’t thought of how I was going to drag a chair back all the way back to my place via my pair of legs and public transportation. (Incidentally, today I saw a very amusing sight of two Asian guys carrying a washing machine to the City Circle tram WTF.)

I had also posted up the night before for the heck of it on the CouchSurfing’s Melbourne board, inviting people to join me to watch District 9 that night. I had two encouraging responses, one from Michael whom I’ve met, whom I’ve also known to be a huge sci-fi fan and later learned to be a movie critic of sorts. I had earlier bought my own tix after he texted to me that he had bought two tix for himself and another CSer, and when I met him outside of the Melbourne Central escalators at La Trobe St / Swanston St, I almost didn’t recognise him for some reason.

I was there about 5-10 minutes early, then we waited a while for the American girl with the Russian name, and when she was 5 minutes late from our scheduled 9pm, we went in first. She later joined us in the hall in time. The cinemas here have large, extremely comfy seats btw, which is way better compared to the cinema seats in Malaysia—at least, the ones in The Summit and Sunway Pyramid.

District 9 was a brilliant piece of film—as I have a review assignment to write for my Writing Angles elective, I’ll post it up once I’m done with it.

Walked all the way home at 11.30pm-ish or so (movie was scheduled to begin at 9.20pm) after separating with the other two—last I remembered was Michael intending to not use a ticket at the Melbourne Central station of La Trobe St / Elizabeth St.

As I was about to cross the road somewhere near my place, a disheveled-looking old man approached me and asked if I knew where the nearest McDonald’s or Hungry Jack was. I hesitated for a split second, before telling him to wait for a while while I try to get my bearings right—I knew there was a 24-hour McD’s nearby but I needed time to imagine where it is in my head. >_>

He told me that he had not been eating the entire day and was incredibly hungry, and had only $9 left and that he had just missed the last train. He looked pitiful to be honest, so I brought him there because I wasn’t very good in giving directions, and so as the both of us crossed Queen Vic Market, I felt a little wary—all the while he was speaking in a horribly thick Aussie accent, something about selling things from a van and making money from it, and lamenting over the fact how people are fighting with each other from different races lately, Aussies against Aborigines, Asians, etc.

He was also telling me how the people he had asked directions of either walked away in a huff or didn’t know where the aforementioned fast food restaurants were (I was thinking to myself that I had considered doing what the others did as well wtf).

That night was an eye-opening experience—although if I was robbed by him there and then, the Good Samaritan in me would’ve died for good.

Wednesday, 19th August 2009:

#30 Passed by the State Library again on the way to uni on a sunny, cloudless winter.

#31 RMIT Building 108 on Bourke St, aka my Business building.

Ai of CouchSurfing organised a free preview screening of Adam, at Hoyts of Chadstone Shopping Centre at a suburb, and he invited 16 CouchSurfers and gave the rest of the tickets away to the international students of Monash, of which he was an alumnus of or something. Dirce offered to give some of us a ride, and so me, Kris, and Michael (yet again lol) took her up on her offer, and she drove us from somewhere near Spencer St / Lonsdale St. (Long story of how I ended up at the other end of the city because of some miscalculated judgement.)

Chadstone was also supposedly the largest shopping centre in the southern hemisphere, and it reminds me oddly of 1Utama.

#32 Someone rammed into Dirce’s car from behind, during a somewhat peak hour too. Not too sure if it’s only the guy’s fault or both, as Dirce was driving a little dangerously and she told us she had just came back from a 2-week vacation in Malaysia.

We got to Chadstone at least 30 minutes earlier from the scheduled meeting time of 6pm or so, so we walked around for a bit, but noticed that most shops were beginning to close wtf. I can never see this happening in Malaysia at all.

#33 The cinema hall where Adam is screened.

#34 Where I was initially sitting, a single seat on my own wtf.

Long story short from what I understand, there was a problem from the management of Hoyts who released more free tix than there were seats, and so there were quite a number of people who didn’t have seats, like my partner Michael at that time (we were ‘partners’ as 1 ‘ticket’—in the form of a card of some sort about Adam—allows an entrance of 2 people). We entered the hall quite late too as we were waiting for Dirce to return from the toilet, otherwise we’d have gotten the seats.

There was a new CouchSurfer whom I didn’t see before, Pete, who told me that it was his first time attending a CS event too.

So we were supposed to get our replacement vouchers, where we could watch anything at all, as long as we used said voucher today. We contemplated briefly watching District 9 at La Premiere (a premium movie-watching experience that would’ve cost $30, with even larger seats and you can order wine (not free) and stuff), but as both Michael and I had just caught the movie the night before (sigh we shouldn’t have, otherwise we could have watched District 9 for free!) and Dirce didn’t like the sound of that movie, we settled on Public Enemies at 9.30pm.

#35 As we were early, we went out to town to have a bite and settled at this Chinese restaurant that looked packed. Looks can be deceiving, as the food sorta sucked.

Earlier before entering the restaurant, Michael talked about dumpster diving which sounded incredibly fascinating to me (he said from his experience where a CSer brought him to the back lane of a Bakers Delight store in Carlton, people would queue up outside the dumpsters and chatted with each other like a bunch of regulars and trade findings with each other WTF). We also learned how Michael is a huge sci-fi geek ‘cause he watched the original Star Wars for 21 times, has a vast (somewhat useless) knowledge of Star Wars, model of droids, stuffs like that wtf. He also jokingly scorned the aforementioned American girl with the Russian name ‘cause she mentioned she was a fan of Dr. Who but only watched the reimagined series or something.. =>_>== Incredibly interesting character.

Public Enemies was… okay. Would’ve been better if I understood what was said in the movie because I couldn’t catch what the characters said like 60% of the time and there wasn’t any subtitles. Yes, it’s an English movie WTF. -_-

We went home at around midnight after the movie supposedly ended at 12.04am (what’s interesting was that the movie tickets here actually indicate when they’re supposed to end >_>), and Dirce very kindly sent each of us home to our doorstep, with me being the first to get back home.

Saturday, 22nd August 2009:

#36 After visiting my uni’s comp lab, I went to ACMI at Federation Square to catch a free event from the Melbourne Writers Festival—a reading of The Age Book of the Year from the author, Steven Amsterdam of New York, itself. I found it to be an interesting experience as Steven was interviewed by The Age’s editor or sommat, and the author’s ideas of having chapters of his novel with ‘gaps of 3 years’ in between them was quite intriguing. The story of Things We Didn’t See Coming was set in a post-apocalyptic world, and has supposedly garnered pretty good reviews—I would’ve wanted to buy his book if not for the pile of books I’ve yet to finish reading still lying in my room. Plus, the British and the American releases sometime next year would supposedly be revised a little.

Steven’s an interesting guy who has multiple varied educational and working backgrounds—he worked in publication, has a degree in pastry making and was a pastry chef, and currently in Melbourne, he has a degree in nursing and works as a nurse wtf.

Sunday, 23rd August 2009:

#37 Wordplay (for the Melbourne Writers Festival) at Festival Club at the ACMI Building. It’s an event where guest poets would present their poems, which an even more fascinatingly interesting experience. Haven’t been to a poem-reading ever in my life.

Someone presenting his poem about Melbourne—adult language seems to be used a lot here, not that I’m complaining. (Again, something you’d never see in events like this in Malaysia.)

My favourite poet of the night—this old dude was incredibly hilarious with his very witty and unique poems, particularly ones about ordinary objects.

There was a female poet there—my favourite poem by her has to be the one about reconstructing virginity with an appropriate calm yet funky sorta music to accompany it.

When I arrived there and sat down, someone called me from behind, and I turned to see Cam and his friend. Neat! Sat next to him instead, then after Wordplay ended, we walked for a bit (some dude yelled in a passing cab “Blowjob for jobs!” wtf) and parted ways at Lonsdale St / Swanston St.

Wednesday, 26th August 2009:

Went with Estee to a free hearing test at Building 57 at Carlton by VicDeaf as published on the news of the RMIT website. I was concerned whether I had any hearing problems after developing wild theories about how my difficulty in understanding people with different English accents could be attributed to my inability to capture different sound frequencies or something—but I was deemed to be within the normal hearing range.

Tbh I felt a little disappointed in hearing that as I was rather convinced by said wild theories (not that I had wanted myself to have hearing problems wtf)—but that means I really need to socialise more with the Caucasians.

Friday, 28th August 2009:

#38 After a dinner with Ethan at the $6 restaurant, we went to check out an RMIT’s student art installation at Lingham Lane.

Watch past the first few secs as it’s too dark, but you should see a projected, animated graffiti. Pretty cool stuff, although what was displayed looks a tad bit depressing.

Saturday, 28th August 2009:

#39 Ethan cooking beef mixed with salsa powder for our burrito lunch mmm.

Also earlier today, shared my aglio olio with him (which he proclaimed it to be good :D) and he shared his leftover burritos with me. Watched a BluRay rip of Ghost in the Shell on his laptop—a fairly good, intriguing watch which explored some philosophical concepts, not to mention that the animation was just superb.

And that’s my 2 weeks. :)