BDO

I've left this blog in terrible neglect so I'll cram in a few posts now before I forget the last month or so.

Big Day Out in Melbourne was awesome. Me and Jen stayed at the Crowne Plaza on the Yarra river, right across the road from the (unrelated) Crown Casino. Didn't bother going to the casino cos neither of us are really into gambling.

The first night we were there, we met up with Duncan and Peti, Meriam and L'il Phil and had a ball. We went to a place on the Yarra for dinner then moved into a bar in the city that was supposedly a Kiwi bar. It was cool and chilled out and we stayed till closing time then went back to Meriam and LP's place for some cocktails. Once we'd had quite a few Phil decided it'd be a good idea to go inside the Crowne Plaza (where he works), grab the master keys and go up onto the roof where there's no public access. That was sweet- we had the best view of the city from up there. After that me and Jen retired to our hotel room.

BDO itself was great. We got there a bit late but that was no problem as the bands we really wanted to see started later anyway. We caught some of Josh Pyke, Arcade Fire and numerous hard rock/metal bands. We got to see all of Spoon, Mammal, Silverchair and, of course, Rage Against The Machine. Rage went off as expected, Silverchair were really good live as well. One standout act was Mammal, a local Melbourne hard rock band who were playing in a small tent but really kicked ass. We only had a couple of drinks each the whole day which was odd considering how we're usually both raving alcoholics. It was good to see live music and actually be able to remember it the day after though....

The next day we got in touch with Duncan, Cat and Ju and met up with them at the place where Ju was working in the CBD. A pity we couldn't have a night out with the whole lot of them but it was a last minute trip and we weren't there for long enough I guess. Will definitely see them next time. Duncan is living off his savings and doing fuck all like a usual bludging Kiwi, Cat just scored a job while we were there, so she's getting established which is great. They're all living in separate places at the moment so there's no flat to go and stay at but we'll see what happens now that nRt and James are down there.

On the way to the airport we talked about Jen moving to America and what that meant to us. Until then I'd been entertaining the idea of a month-long holiday to the states at the start of her trip but looking at the cost, timing and the fact that I'm not that excited about the USA, I decided against it and told her. Also a contributing factor was that I'd been getting much closer to my flatmate Amanda and wanted to see how that was going to pan out. Stay tuned!