Turned Around

Sometimes there’s just nobody as good as your mum when you’re having life issues. My particular issue wasn’t that big or anything, but there was pretty much nobody else I could really talk to in the same way about it.

Anyway, I went from feeling mopey to feeling content, and even rather energetic, so I went for a run around the park (decided this was a better idea than jogging – more fun and energetic – although admittedly it slowed down in pace towards the end as I got more and more screwed…).

Got back, cooled down, and what did I do next? ‘Hmm, haven’t been for a walk in the city at night for a while’. So I did, thickshake in hand (and discovered that McDonald’s’ within Sydney CBD are placed about exactly a medium thickshake away from each other (or two for every large thickshake). I only got the one, at the start, but it’s nice to know that if I wanted a constant supply of delicious thickshakes on my walk, they would be there for me.

Now I guess I’ll sit in bed and watch episodes Arrested Development until I fall asleep, ready for a bright, early start tomorrow, which is in preparation for the UTS Open Day (if anybody’s in the area, come say hi at the Faculty of (Engineering and) I.T., affectionately known as FEIT (pronounced ‘fate’), in building 10!

Um, yeah. K. Thx. Bi.

¡Wow, Not Music-Related!

Wow, so I was looking and apparently it’s been a good month or so since I’ve writted a non-music-related post here. And, really, the only reason the music ones go here are because I write them for nickjamvendetta every now and then, and I post them here, too, because I can.

There’s also been a noticeable absense from the Internet in general, which, for the first couple of weeks, could be explained away by a combination of being interstate, overseas (still haven’t written about Macau… Oops), not having an Internet connection (fight with Telstra), and not having a computer (AC adapter broke). But now, well… I haven’t really got an excuse at all. I mean, I’ve been pretty busy with Uni (by far my busiest semester yet) and work (three jobs!) and gigs (notice the number of blogs?), but I still have a considerable amount of free time, I suppose…

I think the real reason is that I’ve found other things to do. I’ve been getting back into some good books, and spending a great deal of my free time with ‘in real life’ friends, just hanging out and whatnot instead of chatting to people on MSN and stuff. And although I do feel bad about not having chatted to a number of people properly for quite some time now, I’ve been really enjoying the face-to-face contact. It’s much better, you know.

I mentioned I had three jobs before, but while I’m not lying, it’s not exactly as bad as it sounds. I have my ‘proper’ job as a software tester, which is two full days a week, but my other two are only a few hours a week, max. My job as a student representative (SPROUTS) usually involves showing a group of school kids around the IT faculty and doing activities with them, and only happend once every couple of weeks, and my new job, as an e-portfolio tryerouterer for the UTS Center for Interactive Media, is a maximum of three hours a week, in my own time. Both my little jobs are pretty fun, really. Something different. Oh, don’t ask me what an e-portfolio is yet though, I still don’t really know. I don’t think anybody really does. However, I do have to travel to level 27 of the tower building for meetings, so it’s pretty secret and high-tech and stuff (not really). Level 27 is the highest level before you get to the plant room, though, so it’s pretty exciting. And the people are nice!

Uni is refreshingly good this semester, I think, although today went into a bit of a downward spiral as we struggled to complete and print out our 109-page assignment for Software Development and Processes, which we got, what, three weeks to complete? Less, really. But yeah, overall Uni is excellent, with none of my subjects being useless, and all four of them well-run. Spanish is brilliant, as expected, and Dimitri is in my class, which makes it seven times more better. I also met new nice people, as one is wont to do in a class full of mostly Communications students.

Software Development & Processes (the one with the long assignment) has been the most hit-and-miss so far, but overall it’s still a helluva lot better than, say ISDM last semester. We should learn a fair bit, anyway. Mobile Networking is a lot to get my little head around, but it’s really interesting, and I’m enjoying it a lot more than I did standard networking. I think it’s a lot more relevant to today’s technological situation, and I’m learning about mobile phones and Wi-Fi and stuff – things that I myself use all the time – rather than routers and switches and packets, which are not as immediately visible and interesting. Also, my lecturer, Peter, is Dutch and funny, and has plenty of real-world experience (he’s still working on projects to this day). I can’t say the same for my tutor, Max, but such is life.

The really exciting subject, though, is Extreme Programming. Sadly it hasn’t involved programming while sky diving or water skiing (yet), but it’s an interesting way of approaching things, and best of all we get real customers to build stuff for. Our lecturer, Andrew (awesome), has people that he knows and stuff that want real-life applications built, and each group puts in preferences and gets allocated to a customer, so we’re all working on something different. My group (with Tom, Steve, and Andreas) got our first preference, and as a result are working on a sort of guide to the Whitsundays for sailors and other people. So long as we can figure out how to do stuff, it should be pretty awesome! Maybe we’ll even get to test it in its natural habitat some day?

Okay, well it’s getting a bit late, I’d better go and get some sleep before my 11-hour day tomorrow. I have two of these days – Monday and Wednesday – which involve Spanish 10-12, work 1-5, and class 6-9. It’s pretty draining, but I have a nice day Tuesday, and Friday is completely free, so it seems to work overall (Friday I pretty much crash, then the weekend is for study!). But yeah, bed. I think I’ll read some of Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh a bit first, though. It’s an excellent book if anyone was wondering; highly recommended.

She could have anything she dreams; I don’t have a chance at writing the book, I just wanna be a page (oh, one single page?) in Jeannie’s diary.

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin – Pershing (2008)

I’ve been meaning to write about this album for ages (I think about writing it so much that sometimes I even think that I have actually written about it, which leads me to not write about it, which leads to a nasty spiral), because, well, it’s so damned good. I just put it on to to write this review to and already I’m having trouble typing because I can’t stop singing along and dancing / rocking out to brilliant opener Glue Girls. If you want proof of how much I love it, just check out my Last.fm and you’ll see how many plays there are. So obviously this review is gonna be a tad biased…

I first found these guys because of their (*pauses to dance to Boring Fountain*) name, which, given that I am currently obsessed with all things Russia (no idea why), attracted me considerably. Desperate to see what kind of music a band with this name would play, I downloaded the first (and only) album I could find, the (at that time) yet-to-be-released Pershing, and fairly instantly fell in love. Um, just a note to any anti-piracy music industry people reading: that’s how we discover music! I am now the proud owner of both Pershing and their debut album Broom on vinyl, and a legal download of Pershing. So fob off.

It’s kind of hard to describe what they sound like, I think. I mean, they’re not exactly hardcore, but they’re not twee, either (despite “sorry if that’s twee, it’s just tomorrow’s hope” in Think I Wanna Die). They’re easy to chill out to, but at the same time, they make me want to sing along and dance when I’m in the right mood. The best place I’ve found for listening, though? In my car, with the sunroof wide open, on a sunny day, with the music blasting. Perfect! Okay, so the only time I’ve had the opportunity to try that was when I was home last, and it was freezing, so I had to have my jacket on and the heater on high, but it still counts! And it was still super fun.

I’d try and list the highlights off the album, so you might have an idea where to start, but frankly there aren’t really any. Well, kind of. It’s more that they’re all highlights. Or at least brilliant. Absolute favourites would have to be Glue Girls, Think I Wanna Die, and You Could Write A Book, though, if I had to list them.

Um, so I don’t know how useful that was as a review, it was pretty much me just raving about how much I love this band. But hey, isn’t that the best kind of recommendation?

P.S. Haha, I just discovered: search for ‘Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin’ on Facebook, and on the first page are both me and Lexie. Apparently we really do love them.

MYSPACE WOO!!

Little Red w/ The Holidays & Andy Bull, Annandale Hotel (Sydney), 22-8-08

Death Cab for Cutie, Enmore Theatre (Sydney), 18-8-08

I wasn’t as excited about Death Cab as I probably could’ve / should’ve been, but there was no reason for that, and they were pretty brilliant. Ben Gibbard was a lot different to what I expected (taller, thinner, younger, longer hair, no glasses, less geeky, etc), and as such it actually took me quite a while to work out which one he was (*embarrassed*). The way he danced, though… Oh my gosh, I wish he ran classes!

They opened with Bixby Canyon Bridge (as expected), and played a surprising (in an excellent way) amount of stuff from their older albums, especially Transatlanticism (which made my night, what with it being my favourite Death Cab record). They also played quite a number of songs from pre-Transatlanticism stuff, so I got to hear some new songs!

The highlight of the night was probably the encore, when they played four songs from Transatlanticism. In a row. It was Expo ‘86, Title and Registration, Tiny Vessels, and finally the epic Transatlanticism itself, which seemed by far a crowd favourite.

My only big complaint was the sound at the start – the mixing was horrible, and you could hardly hear anything Ben Gibbard sung, but thankfully this improved after a while, although it was still much better on the more acoustic tracks, such as I Will Follow You Into The Dark.

The quote of the night, however, came from not somebody on the stage (come to think of it, the stage banter pretty much sucked), but my friend Steve. See, we had dinner first, and as a result completely missed An Horse, and we weren’t even sure that they’d played yet. So when the lights dimmed for Death Cab, I only knew that it was them because of the enormous amount of cheering going on. Steve apparently didn’t twig, though, and yelled out “Why is everyone cheering so much, it’s only the support band?!?!”. Then Bixby Canyon Bridge started. Snap!

I Was In Love With A Place, In My Mind, In My Mind

I was listening to Sufjan Stevens today (still am, actually), and Chicago came on. Not a particularly unusual event, but it made me recall what happened last time I properly listened to it, and I realised that I didn’t even mention it in the post it was the cause of – Home?, which I posted not all that long ago.

So the catalyst of that post was actually Sufjan. Kind of. Well, I was just driving to see Mum not long before I left, and Chicago came on my mp3 player. As it got to the bit that says I was in love with the place, in my mind, I just burst into tears. It kind of forced me to admit that there isn’t a heck of a lot for me in Ballarat (besides family and some (excellent) friends), but I was kind of idealising it using all the memories that I have from over the years. Or something.

Anyway, mostly I’m just amazed I neglected to mention the role of Chicago in the whole episode.

Belle and Sebastian – Meat and Potatoes (2005)

For those of you who don’t know, I have a teeny obsession with Glasgow indie pop group Belle and Sebastian. If you want proof of this, just visit my Last.fm page, where you will see that they outnumber their nearest rival 5000 plays to 3000.

However, I still rather frequently come across little gems of songs that I hadn’t given much notice before; pretty easy to do, given the amount of stuff they’ve released in the past 12 years.

The most recent of these was Meat and Potatoes, a song only released on the Funny Little Frog single in 2005, something which I do not in the least regret buying now! It’s a very unassuming song when you first listen to it, not all that unique melodically, but when you take note of the lyrics, you can’t help but be amazed.

Stuart has always been known to be a little risqué in some of his songwriting, but never as overtly as Meat and Potatoes, a song about spicing it up in the bedroom with the likes of bondage, among other things.

She wanted more

Than meat and potatoes
She may stop at whips and chains
She needs carousal
More arousal
A bit of pain

So we started by using handcuffs
We tried a can of cold whipped cream
I was allergic to so much dairy
She had to finish it all by herself

And so it goes on.

As much as it pains me to do so, I’ll include a download link for the Funny Little Frog single, because it’s rather hard to get a hold of legally, and maybe it’ll encourage people to buy an album or two!

Band of Horses, Metro Theatre (Sydney), 5-8-08

Vampire Weekend w/Little Red, Metro Theatre (Sydney), 4-8-08

It’s been a while since I’ve been to any gigs, but the wait was well worth it for New Yorkers Vampire Weekend, an event I could hardly bring myself to miss when combined with Melbourne quintet Little Red.

As Alexandra mentioned in an earlier post, Little Red are an awesomely fun band, with roots in 50s and 60s pop. Their brilliant album Listen to Little Red is only outdone by their deliciously
energetic live performances (well, one performance in this case, but I’ve heard excellent things about others).

It’s great to see a range of singers getting their piece in, with three of the five members sharing the vocals pretty evenly. While two of them played proper instruments, Mr Coca-Cola seemed to be a bit of a freeloader (despite his wonderful Elvis-esque vocals), playing only the tamborine for most of the night, until he got on the keyboard for a song or two near the end.

The drummer was pretty much the happiest band member I’ve ever seen, spending most of the show with a look of absolute glee on his face. I have no idea how he managed to do such a good job at drumming while keeping it up! On our way home afterwards, Lizzie and I felt compelled to get some Coca-Cola and ice from McDonalds, a very apt ending for the evening.

I’ll just get this out of the way now, so I don’t have to worry about it later: Vampire Weekend’s Ezra is… Well… Lizzie says beautiful, and I can’t very well disagree, to be perfectly honest. He’s pretty awesome, anyway.

Despite chucking Campus in a little early, ruining some of its potential (can’t blame them though, they don’t exactly have a large repertoire), they put on a lovely, bouncy, energetic show that can only increase my fondness for them. Finishing the main show with Oxford Comma, followed by an encore of Walcott, was absolutely brilliant, and I got out of the theatre with the intense desire to go to Cape Cod, and then leave it screaming the lyrics along with Ezra.

The only complaint I can put forth is that the keyboardist was officially the most boring band member ever; he just had a bored look on his face the entire time! Oh, and the distinct lack of fish gloves for A-Punk, of course!

If any of you get the chance to see either of these bands live, I can’t recommend the experience enough!

Who Watches The Watchmen?

Last night I finally finished Watchmen, and, well… What a finish! I have to admit, I didn’t sleep terribly well afterwards, the moral dilemma presented at the end harassing my mind, and various characters from the story appearing throughout other dreams.

It’s interesting, actually, because although I think I agree that what Dan and Laurie did in the end was right for the world, at the same time I am disappointed in them, while Rorschach remains my favourite character.

I really need somebody to discuss it with, though, otherwise I’m doomed.

It’s definitely in my top five books ever though, it’s oh so brilliant, I would recommend it to anyone.