December 2005

30-Dec-2005 - The end of 2005

Its been two weeks since i've updated this site. I'm on holiday mode and havent kept to my normal routines.

Tomorrow is new years eve which i'm looking forward to. I have my flashing alien tshirt ready and waiting ;-).

I am on holidays until the 3rd January and have been quite busy the last week. On Friday night I went to a rave called Reactivate. It was a bit of a trek to get there - it was in a Windsor function centre. Me and jules drove up the M2 for ages and then got to see a bit of the new M7 before taking an exit and driving along a road i've never been on before to get to Windsor. It looked like an interesting place - I will have to visit during the daylight hours one day.

Anyway we turned up and there were two rooms - one largish room and a smaller breaks style room. I thought the music was great in the larger room, but the most amazing thing was the lasers. I would have to say that they were the best lasers i've seen EVER. Now i've been to raves since 1994 - thats 11 years of raving and probably 100 parties by now, and I have never seen a laser show this good!! There were about 3 or 4 lasers in the main room, with a projection screen for the main one. It was a full colour laser projecting all these cool 3D graphics and animations onto the screen. It looked awesome. After a few hours raving away we got over it and headed back to the city for a bit of clubbing.

On saturday (christmas eve) I went over to my mums place and had dinner, and the next day had lunch with her and friends. I got lots of wine, some clothes, some money, chocolate and other bits and pieces from Santa :-).

On monday I went to julians for a swim with ben, julian and james. We got some really nice Thai from some place at Crows Nest - damn it was nice! We went to george st in the city and had a coffee afterwards and talked to some random german girls at the table next to us. I have no idea what happened next, but it mustnt have been exciting :-).

Its been ages since i've been to the beach, and since its holiday time I decided to go on Tuesday. Ben and Jules and I all went to Balmoral beach. Spent most of the time sunbaking, but me and ben went into the water for a bit... until Ben noticed something strange... something floating.. in the water! Yes it was a piece of crap. So it was time to get out!! Went to the city at night and saw Jevad on stage singing karaoke at a bar (really really badly) haha.

All the post-chrissy sales are on this time of year so had to do some shopping on Wednesday. Got myself a new pair of shoes, and two tshirts. Then went clubbing that night with jules.

And it was back to the beach on thursday. This time i wanted to go to an ocean beach so we went to manly. It was PACKED as always (hmmm.. manly is not a good choice), and there were rips everywhere. They closed the beach for most of the time so there wasnt much to do other than sunbake and drink frozen smoothies :-). That night me jules and ben went to the city as usual. Ben went to talk to a friend at a bar and me and jules went to T2 for some ravery music and dancing. Had a bit of fun there, then talked to randoms on the street.

Been wanting to go to waterslides :-). But noone i know wants to go :-(. Oh well tomorrow is NYE, and i'll be going to have dinner with ben and jules and the crew and then heading to watch the fireworks. Hooray!

16-Dec-2005 - Cronulla

Well the last week has been pretty uneventful for me, but of course there is all the stuff happening at Cronulla and Maroubra to keep everyone amused. Its like a real life version of GTA..

Supposedly this weekend at Cronulla there is going to be another clash between the 'Aussies' and the 'Lebs/Mediterraneans'. The police say they are going to have 1000 of them on the job on saturday, and 1500 on sunday. So it will be interesting to see what happens. As for me, i'm staying far clear of Cronulla this weekend.

6-Dec-2005 - Mr Stacky

Well oxford st is full of strange and unusual people. My favourite has got to be Harry. But among many others is a guy I call 'Mr Stacky'.

We have seen him around lots, and on a couple of occasions we have seen him in cafes sitting there for hours. And what does he do? Stacks things! You name it.. anything within reach all gets stacked one on top of the other to make a big tower. Then he unstacks it.. and stacks it up again!

Its great to watch.. he can do it for hours and his amusement never seems to end.

On Sunday night I was having coffee with Ben, Jules and Rachael when Mr Stacky comes walking by. He kinda looks like the scientist guy from Back to the Future.

Mr Stacky. GREAT SCOTT!!

So we have a bit of a chat to him and then ask him how many cups do you reckon you can stack on top of each other. Well that question started him and straight away he started stacking... using the stuff on our table!

I started cracking up - I couldnt help myself! The higher the stack got the harder I laughed. It made my night :-)

Of course I had to take a photo of him with his creation.

Mr Stacky with his masterpiece

What a great guy. Mr Stacky - we love you!

6-Dec-2005 - The Newcastle adventure

Well I can now say that i've finally been to Newcastle. I hadnt been there before and i've been wanting to go have a look for a while. It was a longer trip than I thought and it was quite a hot day.

I picked up Julian on the way and he brought his iPod, so we listened to music on the big drive. It was the first time I really got to test the new car to the max. Driving at 110km/h most of the way, my car was handling the speed quite well. When we were in the central coast area we pulled into a service station along the freeway and got some maps, some food, and listened to awful music in the fast food outlet.

We decided to call Aaron who lived somewhere in the central coast. Amazingly enough he was not far from the next exit to the freeway. So we had a change of plans and detoured towards the big lakes in the central coast. We met aaron in a shopping centre in Lake Haven. He lives in Blue Haven. And between Blue Haven and Lake Haven is Charm Haven. Notice a pattern?

We found a guy at the Boost Juice in Lake Haven called Ben Taylor which I thought was an amazing coincidence! After Julian said a few words to the guy in the Gloria Jeans shop we were on our way again ;-).

A while later we finally arrived at Newcastle - hooray! But it was much later than we intended to get there and most things would have been closed. We drove down to the water and had a bit of a rest in the park while checking out the map.

Julian trying to push Aaron into the water

A church or something next to the park

Aaron suggested we go take a look at a lookout tower nearby, so we checked it out..

The lookout tower

There were a lot of stairs to climb! And you could see outside the tower through the grilles. It got very high very quick.

Julian walking up the stairs

Dont push me down the stairs!

At the top of the tower the view was great. You could see the big shipping ports and parts of Newcastle CBD.

Aaron was fascinated

You can see Newcastle train station

We went back to the car and I decided to drive around the beach areas on the way back home. It wasnt long before we started driving back to Sydney - we didnt spend much time at Newy cos it was already late arvo soon to be evening. At Blue Haven we dropped Aaron off, and got back onto the F3.

On the way back there are a lot of big hills on the freeway. It was a hot day and my car had already been driving for hours and hours. The temperature guage on the car was moving up close to hot so I had to take it easy. Fortunately it survived the trip and we were returned intact.

And so that concludes my (brief) first trip to Newcastle. Hooray!

2-Dec-2005 - Rains and raves

Its been raining most of the week, and it was raining hard on friday night and saturday morning. I had a bbq at Johns place and the weather wasnt looking good. It was meant to be at midday, and amazing at around 11am the sky cleared up totally and it was a really sunny hot day - perfect for the pool and a bbq.

Saturday night I went to a rave called 'Hard Wars Outdoors' at the Sydney International Tennis Centre at homebush bay. It was outdoors and the weather forecast was for big storms and lightning. I picked up Julian, Ben (tims friend) and Tim on the way and we got there around 11pm. A huge queue of thousands of people were lined up to get inside. Ben and Tim had VIP passes and went straight to the front while me and Jules joined the back of the line. After a while we decided to go have a look where Ben and Tim went and joined them in what we thought was the VIP line.

Turns out it was some other line, and Ben and Tim went straight through another section without having to line up at all. Well now me and Jules were right up the front of this massive normal queue, and so we surreptitiously merged into the line of people. I felt a bit guiltly but hey - it always happens to me at other raves so its my turn.

Thank god we did because they were letting in about 10 people every couple of minutes. It would have taken hours to go through the whole line - it was a very poorly organised event. Basically never go to an event promoted by overdrive.com.au or the Promotions Republic - I have been consistently disappointed with these parties.

Once inside it wasnt anywhere near as big as they suggested. They said it would never sell out.. there is room for 15,000 people etc.. etc.. crap! It was PACKED and there was hardly any room to dance. There were only a few thousand people and it was so packed. Water was $4 a bottle, there was one toilet room for the guys and one for the girls. The guys one didnt even have a trough or urinals - only a few cubicles. For thousands of people! There were not enough toilets and within a few hours people were pissing on the walls in the toilet area.

The sound system was pretty piss poor, and the music wasnt that great either. Well at least it didnt rain because it eventually got cold.

I have told myself before not to go to overdrive parties, but I didnt listen to myself. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. But what about if i've been fooled thrice! Well hopefully its the last time i'll get fooled.