Events

I've made my way to several unique Aussie festivals over the past year: electronic Parklife, all-Aussie Homebake, summer favorite Big Day Out, Sound Relief to raise funds for the Victoria bushfires, and last weekend, I attended what has been referred to as "Australia's best festival of the year": Splendour in the Grass.

The festival took place over two days in Byron Bay, located a solid 12 hour drive from Sydney just below the NSW/Queensland border. The little beachside Berkeley-esque tourist town is quite sweet, with its yummy wraps and coffee stands next to boho boutiques and open air bars that pump with music at midday.

On Thursday morning, Paddy and I packed the car (his younger brother, bless his heart, had loaned us his car for the weekend), then started the grueling drive up the coast. I've done this drive a couple times - on the Greyhound bus back from Brisbane in October, and up towards the Gold Coast with Bonnie and her family in November - so I was relatively acquainted with the scenery: turnoffs to the beach, crowded cities bustling with activity, other sleepy towns with not much more than a few restaurants and a petrol station, and of course, The Big Banana at Coffs Harbour (the banana plantations town.)

One unique stop we did make was in Frederickson just outside Kempsey at Fredo's Pies. The roadside sign advertised its 50 pie variations, including kangaroo, chili and pasta, ostrich, and its "famous" crocodile pie, so we turned off to sample the reptilian pastry. It wasn't bad, actually - the skin was about as tough as chicken, but I thought it tasted like fish.

We had a 10-person house waiting for us just outside Byron, but a few of Paddy's friends go to uni in Lismore (30 minutes west of Byron), so we stopped to hang out with them at their uni bar for the night.

The next morning, being that it was Friday, we lazed around the residences for a bit, then hopped back in the car and drove to Lennox Heads, where a yummy fish and chips shop overlooking the beach caught our attention for the next couple hours. The water was freezing, being that it is winter here, but the weather was absolutely beautiful.

The night was pretty uneventful: a few drinks and some munchies with the folks staying at the house (it was basically a Batemans Bay reunion) as we prepared for what was going to be a hectic next couple days.

The festival featured a mix of national and overseas talents, ranging from the Aussie hip-hop and hard rock to dance, acoustic, electronic and DJ sets over five stages on a massive muddy field:
- Hilltop Hoods (who put on a fantastic show Sunday night)
- Bloc Party (fun English dance music)
- Gutter Twins (Aussie acoustic guys; I’d never heard them, but we popped in for a few songs and they’re great)
- the Beautiful Girls (laid-back, reggae-style; awesome)
- Brooklyn duo MGMT (who was actually pretty crap – much too quiet and they seemed to have stage fright)
- Friendly Fires (a great electro party on the dance floor)
- Sarah Blasko (I actually didn’t see her, but apparently she’s amazing on stage)
- Grinspoon (Aussie rock, reminded me of AC/DC)
- Flaming Lips (didn’t see them either, but they’re headlining a tour on Treasure Island in October with MGMT)
- White Lies (young Aussie rock)
- Dananananakroyd (from Glasgow, Scotland – their name combines the Batman theme song with actor Dan Akroyd’s name, haha. I missed their set, but I heard on the radio that they’d split the crowd down the middle, then had everyone hug as many people as they could during the song.)

Since there was a decent size group of us, we set up a meeting spot at the big shows (Hilltop, Bloc Party, Friendly Fires, etc.) at the front left pillar, and then just wandered to check out the different stages. It was a great festival and I really enjoyed a lot of the music, but

Monday was recovery day at the beach just near our Suffolk Park (Byron) house, and then we grabbed lunch in downtown Byron before starting the long trek home. On the way, we stopped at The Entrance on the Central Coast (where the channel enters the Tuggerah Lakes) and chilled out for a bit before continuing back to Sydney.

Now that I’m in my last week in Australia, I’m planning to spend my time at the beach (the weather’s on my side at the moment), at weekend markets with friends, going to one last AFL game, surfing (yeah, I’ve been here for over a year and STILL have not been on a surfboard. Lame) and hopefully having a shrimp on the barbie before I depart my year on holiday and return to my busy American life.

It’s been quite an adventure.

I had quite an international birthday affair...

On Saturday, four Italian students (Francesca, Eleonora, Lara and Alice - they ALL live in Geegal and our birthdays are within 2 weeks of each other's!) and I had a big BBQ party in the Geegal courtyard. It was awesome: in addition to all our friends from Geegal and the other two residences (Bulga and Gumal), there were tons of people from my Malaysia trip and other UTS students milling around, chatting in all sorts of languages (there were actually quite a few Italian students, so I heard a lot of "Buon Compleano!" (Happy Birthday.) Since everyone's been pretty overwhelmed with uni work over the past couple months, this was a great opportunity to get everyone out of their flats and reunite them all in the name of...well, my (our) birthday. Haha. Mother Nature was on my side that weekend - the only time it rained was Saturday afternoon! (Mind you, northern New South Wales has been flooding, so that says something.)

My friend Vikash (who's from Holland, but I actually thought he was American when I first met him - his accent is ridiculously similar to ours) gave me the ultimate birthday present - red party cups! so difficult to find in Australia - so a group of us immediately set up a game of Flip Cup in my apartment. (Basically, you line up red cups filled a quarter of the way with beer on either side of a table and team up, then it's a race to chug and flip your cup over before your opponent. Good fun, but we've experimented with several other types of plastic cups and they just don't flip like the American style ones.)

That night, a bunch of us from the BBQ caught the train out to The Rocks for some bar-hopping fun. Sydney bars can be a bit annoying when it comes to dress codes so it was tough to get everyone into the same places, but I ended up having a blast with Paddy, Vikash and my friend Luke from my old restaurant job.

Monday was my real birthday, and I woke up to Miriam and Anja's crepe paper streamers covering my door and Paddy's idea of an "American" breakfast: pop-tarts, with a small bunch of daffodils. Awa brought me coffee from a little cafe across the street, then I headed out to Manly to visit my friend Elise (who happened to be visiting from SF - she used to lifeguard with me at SF State and had a couple journo classes with me before transferring to CU Boulder last semester.) We shopped around and had this great (cheap) Thai lunch overlooking the crashing waves (under a cloudy grey sky, but it wasn't too chilly), then made our way over to the beach house she was staying at with a friend's family.

I almost missed the ferry back home (had to run in my sundress and sandals!), but I was able to quickly get ready for my birthday dinner - Thai again, but this time at a fabulous place in Newtown - with a bunch of Geegal friends: Paddy, Rob, Anja, Miriam, Awa, Shellie, Will, Devini (my Sri Lankan friend), Sanyukta (my newer Indian flatmate - the only other non-Aussie), and Francesca. Before we left, I was nearly drowned in generous gifts - silver earrings, scarves (that's become my signature accessory, along with bracelets), the HOTTEST black peep toe pumps from my flatmate Will (most impressive is the fact that he guessed my shoe size by comparing a shoe in my closet to his forearm), a James Squire t-shirt (shout out to my favorite Australian beer), a photo album of mine and Miriam's epic trip to the Southwest (complete with her witty comments) and a signed photo collage of a bunch of my Aussie friends and silly things we've said over the semester, put together by my flatmate Shellie. It was pretty overwhelming and I was beyond touched by all their efforts.

After dinner, most of us headed across the street to Kuleto's, a cocktail bar that serves up some of the most ridiculously tasty drinks I've ever had. I ordered a Red Corvette and a Japanese Slipper before Paddy and I left to grab amber ales down the street at Marly Bar.

I'm truly lucky to have such incredible friends on both sides of the Pacific.

Easter dawned as our one fully free day in Malaysia and we were all determined to make the most of it. Some folks trekked off to explore the rainforest, others went shopping, but a considerable number of us decided over breakfast to hit up the Sunway Lagoon Theme Park. My Sydney friends Nizam (who was originally from KL) and Adrian (who's mother was from KL and had thus visited several times) had both recommended this as a top place to go, and since the weather seemed all right that morning, we figured it was a go! Hitching a 2RM bus ride (so cheap!), we made our way to the park.

We were unprepared for the sight that greeted us.

The park was hidden behind a multi-story, American-style shopping mall (yeah, Billabong and Starbucks were among the brands represented), and was surrounded by several flashy hotels and resorts. We had expected to find just the Sunway water park, but quickly discovered there was so much more to see - Sunway actually consisted of FIVE parks: an Extreme Park (ATVs, paintball, and flying foxes), an Amusement Park (roller coasters galore), the Water Park (slides, a wave pool, and some sort of surfing pool that actually offered lessons), a Wildlife Park (the park housed a TIGER!), and finally, a haunted Scream Park. Overwhelmed and ridiculously excited, we all purchased a five park pass for 90RM and made our way towards the water slides.

The novelty of the five park pass wore off around 2pm when, like clockwork, it started raining (I should mention that in KL, it rained pretty much every day around 2pm. Luckily, it was still about 26 degrees Celsius, so low 80s Fahrenheit.) We expected that the roller coasters would shut down due to the inclement weather, but to our disappointment, literally every single attraction was closed until the rain passed. We grabbed lunch, then headed over to the Extreme Park to wait out the rain. After about an hour, Jeremy, Andrea and I got over the weather, so we caught a bus back to the hotel.

I spent the rest of the afternoon avoiding the rain, shopping around Chinatown (let me point out that DVDs here are about 8RM and you can score a box set for 35RM!) and getting a 30 minute foot reflexology session/30 minute back and shoulder massage for 70RM before meeting up with Courtney, Alecia and James to dine at the Hard Rock Cafe.

Music festivals are kind of a big deal in Australia during the summer, and the most hyped-up one has got to be Big Day Out. Held in Australia's major cities - Sydney, the Gold Coast, Melbourne, Parth and Adelaide, as well as Aukland, NZ - BDO attracts hundreds of thousands of people for a full 12 hour day of music, sunshine (being that January = summer!), and friends.

A group of about ten of us - most being my new flatmate Paddy's friends from down south, plus Nizam and Dylan from Geegal - caught a train to the Sydney Showgrounds at the Olympic Park in Homebush the morning of Friday, January 23rd, grabbed a couple beers (or for some, a vodka slushie - what a strange phenomenon), and headed out to check out the FIVE outdoor stages (plus the indoor Boiler Room, which was just that: boiling hot). Among the highlights of the day were...

- TZU, an Aussie hip hop band who put on a great show. One of the band members proposed to his girlfriend at the end of the set.

- Birds of Tokyo, a Western Australia band with very catchy rock songs. I ended up sitting down in the stands to catch their entire set.

- Pendulum, a fast-paced rock band also out of Western Australia. I'd never heard them before, but they were one of the best performances.

- Cog, another surprisingly good live rock band.

- Sneaky Sound System, whose songs makes you want to jump up and dance ("UFO" and "I Love It" are big ones.)

- Cut Copy, whose electro-dance beats I caught at a show the previous month. My music taste has certainly changed since I moved to Sydney...

- The Living End, whose frontman has a great voice. Download "White Noise," their hit single at the time.

- Neil Young. His set was incredible, and the crowd was a mix of twentysomethings through people in their sixties, all rocking out to "Old Man," "Keep on Rocking in the Free World," and many more of his classics. Dylan and I literally stood there and hugged each other through the set, captivated by Young's gruff voice.

Needless to say, it was an awesome day.

On Sunday, my friend Rob and I drive down to Canberra with a few of his old school mates to hang out at his friend Bum's (that's not his real name, haha) for Australia Day. (As the weather in Canberra was beautiful and hot, this was a smart plan; it rained all day in Sydney). This is basically celebrated like the 4th of July in the States: pool, BBQ (sausages, white bread, eggs and bacon, the works), music, and copious amounts of beer (plus fireworks, but we just barely caught those by the time we got back to Sydney.)

This Australia Day commercial pretty much sums up the day's nationalism: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGZEBjzkZMg

Despite the fact that I'd literally walked into a high school reunion with a bunch of people I'd never met, I ended up having a blast playing volleyball in the pool, sunbathing with the girls, and listening to the Triple J Top 100. (Triple J is an extremely popular radio station in Oz that's actually broadcast in every big city in the country.) Before Australia Day, listeners login to their website and vote for their favorite songs of the previous year, and these are then compiled into a list and played from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. on the 26th. I recognized a fair amount of the songs, but what I found hilarious was the fact that, in the top 5, four of the tracks were by American artists:

5. "Kids" by MGMT
4. "Walking on a Dream" by Empire of the Sun
3. "Use Somebody" by Kings of Leon
2. "Electric Feel" by MGMT
1. "Sex on Fire" by Kings of Leon (which received the most votes in the countdown's 19 year history and is easily the most overplayed song on the radio; when it won, they actually played it twice in a row)

Some fun facts:

* Both Vampire Weekend and Kings of Leon scored four tracks each.
* 48 of the Hottest 100 songs were by Australian artists.
* Both Kings of Leon and MGMT placed twice in the top 5 - the first time two bands have done this. The last bands to achieve two songs placing in the top 5 were Gorillaz (2005), Powderfinger (2000, Nirvana 1991 and The Offspring (1994)
* The song "Ice Cream" by Muscles which placed at 14 in the previous years countdown is in again at 45 with a Triple J live acoustic version.

One day, I hope to come back and experience this weekend all over again. Amazing.

Ah, New Years' Eve in Sydney. On TV, it looks incredible; in real life, it's mind blowing.

By the time 31 December rolled around, my NYE group had reached close about 20 people (Geegalites, folks from another UTS residence called Bulga, a few others from the Gumal residence, and Bonnie's visiting sister and friends). Everyone was having trouble figuring out where to go because, while there are tons of places along Sydney Harbour where you have a clear view of the Harbour Bridge and thus the fireworks, many of these such venues were overcrowded, full of tourists, or not BYO friendly. So, taking the advice of my Danish friend Jonas (who had conveniently done his research and checked out a few spots earlier), we decided to catch cabs and head out to Rushcutters' Bay at Darling Point. Since we arrived there at three in the arvo (afternoon), we spent our time playing cards, chatting, challenging each other to drinking games, or napping in the late sun.

There were two sets of fireworks: the family-friendly 9 p.m. show, and of course the midnight extravaganza. Watching these light shows in this kind of environment - with beer on a warm night surrounded by friends from countries all over the world - was the ultimate experience, and it was one of the best NYE celebrations I've ever had.

Wish my camera took better photos at night.