dave bushe dot net

It Overtakes Me/The Stars Are So Big, I Am So Small… Do I Stand A Chance?

4:28 am Wednesday, 30 July, 2008

Tuesday evening. I am in bed in my hostel.

I did go and seem Heima and it was indeed awesome. It did have me thinking back to the previous time I’d seen it and to other Sigur Ros gigs and indeed just to thinking (no drugs involved Alison!).

It looks beautiful. Leaving the music totally aside, there are any number of frames that I’d hang on my wall as photographs. It has, again, left me wanting to go and to take my camera to try and take a single shot that would stand up to a single frame.

Now that reminds me. Actually we’ll go on a bit of a tangent to get there. One thing which I really noticed when I was living in the US is that little buzz I get from seeing movies now that I’ve been to the places they were made. Las Vegas and San Francisco are that little more real for me and it’s a lovely reminder that I’ve been there and it just adds a tiny drop to whatever it is I’m watching. Chris mentioned the other night that if I feel like it I can go and see the amusement park where they filmed the Punisher fighting ninjas in the Lundgren Punisher. Not quite the same…

Anyway The Dark Knight did that for me too with Tokyo. Okay so only a few scenes in there but several establishing shots and indeed one shot where Fox meets Wayne that I was standing in just under three months ago. Little things like that I think are awesome (I can be very easily pleased).

Now to tie that all up, I can’t remember if I mentioned that last week (or so), I watched the French adaptation of Harlen Coben’s Tell No One. Coben is one of the standard crime writers that I like and follow. I kinda missed the movie when it came out as there was a lot of stuff going on and I’d been meaning to catch it at some point. It’s pretty good but that’s not the point. While I was watching it I was reminded of two things. First my French is appalling. For the amount of years I spent studying it, it should be way better than it is. I was last in France about seven years ago for a long weekend with the then girlfriend. I was in a similar situation then but the longer we were there and the more I used my French, the more came back to me I was able to do better. Makes sense. I never really forgot that, it was floating around somewhere that if I started to use my French, I should get at least a spoken level back up.

So I looked into some courses. I researched everything from evening adult education to going back and doing a full degree. I applied for a lot of stuff but then as I had made my mind up the US was first floated. At the time I thought was more of a lockin for the (eventual) job than I turned out to be (thanks Malc!) and so I shelved all the plans for furthering my French. Again though I didn’t forget it and in fact when I first found out I lost my job I had two plans. The first was to use the tail end of my US visa to go and live in San Francisco for a three months (you may recall how taken I was with SF) and the second was to go and live in Paris for a few months. Neither would have involved me working (though legally I could have in Paris), they would just involve me renting somewhere and enjoying some quiet time. Paris I figured would throw me in at the deep end and a few months there would easily get my spoken French back up, it would have to.

That all went out the window when I ended up on the round the world trip but those were the ideas. Lost opportunities, perhaps. I can still do either in the future of course. Anyway watching Tell No One and hearing the French reminded me of that and I’ve been meaning to type it up.

Sticking with a vaguely French theme. I don’t know if it was because it was a Sigur Ros gig or if it’s some new Australian custom I have not come across but there was a disturbingly high number of berets in the cinema this evening. Now I guess it was a arthouse theatre and I guess it wasn’t exactly a mainstream movie (though it really should be) so it could just be that but I cannot recall seeing a collection of berets quite like that at any previous SR encounter.

Back now to an Irish theme and I’m pleased to report that Durty Nellies passes with flying colours. Good Guinness, a lovely young girl from the County Down behind the bar. Now as if that’s not enough they stock both Club Orange and wait for it…wait for it…yes Tayto! Glorious. I suspect that I was not the first to make reference to the Star Of The County Down but she didn’t take it too badly! Anyway I must return there a couple more times over the next week. They, like most Irish bars abroad, have their own t-shirts made up. However instead of being stupidly expensive, you simply need to drink 8 pints of Guinness and you get one for free. There are two t-shirts but I only like one of them so that’s not too bad but I suspect it’d go down well enough with my dad so I need to get 16 pints down before I head out of Sydney. Handily (or not as the case may turn out) it’s pretty close to my hostel and is in fact close enough to just stop out for one or two with my book. The food menu looks decent too so lunch with a book over a rainy day (cause you just know there are several more of them to come) sounds like a plan to me. Also I think it’s close to where I’m seeing SR on Saturday evening so I can do pre and perhaps even post drinks there. Handy eh?

Now speaking of my hostel. I think it is perhaps contributing or at best not helping with my mood. It looked all good at first. The location is fine, it’s central and yet not quite so it’s a bit quieter. There are bus routes to anywhere I could want to go and there are shops and all that nearby. The bed is fine and it’s weekly rate is cheap. (Side note: I should have looked into weekly rates much earlier on. The two I’ve had so far have not even been as much as five nights. The only catch is you pay upfront.) But the room is odd, the three other lads are just odd. There’s almost no conversation in the room and everyone seems to keep such odd hours. It’s just an odd place. It’s not enough that you know I’d move, I have paid upfront and it’s by no means worth the effort to pack my bag nevermind find somewhere else and then move. It’s just not helping with my mood though.

I guess it’s the weather. Ha, actually maybe it’s the snow. I asked Chris as we were walking along the other day if it ever snowed in Sydney. He was feeling the cold quite badly and in fact a number of pubs now have notices up on their front doors suggesting that you come inside because it’s warm! Anyway he pretty much laughed at me and said no and then was gobsmacked to see a news report in whatever pub we were in later reporting on snow in Sydney. So yes it’s winter and I probably didn’t plan this part all that well (or at all…) in terms of weather. It’s just after spending months in glorious weather without having to worry about carrying a jumper or wearing anything other than a t-shirt and shorts, to be getting up and putting on trousers and then a t-shirt a jumper every day is a bit of a downer. To not be able to leave without a rainjacket is even worse. So yeah that’s getting me down. When the sun comes out it’s lovely. At that point it’s easily t-shirt and probably shorts weather but without the sun it’s cold and miserable and seemingly always wet. And it’s only going to get worse going down to Melbourne nevermind winter in New Zealand…hmmm

So to help get out of this dose of the blues I am going to come up with a plan for tomorrow for all types of weather! Also, it’ll be my first day doing tourist stuff here with a plan and that would be good. I’m going to getup (whenever, lets not go overboard in planing here!) and I’m going to grab a bus down to Circular Quay and I’m going to go to the art museum (Museum of Contemporary Arts I think?). If I’ve got some time left when I am finished in there, cause you can never tell with museums if you’ll rush through or still be there at closing time, I shall go back over to the Opera House and do the tour, rain shouldn’t affect that! Then I shall perhaps feel like I have seen and done more here and I shall feel a little better. I dunno, ’tis an odd one all around.

I do still need to update that beer posting. Mark kindly sent through a listing up to a certain point for Sunday. That’s when it gets hazy for me too. I know there were three Gage microbrews after that and then some cider. Anyway no huge standouts other than the aforementioned Nelson’s Blood porter (and indeed the 3 Sheets Ale and the Quayle Wheat beer) all microbrewed by the Lord Nelson in The Rocks. Perhaps I shall simply add a microbrew list.

Hey, it’s almost August. Isn’t that cool! And as I did recall while I was bitching about my current mood to Christie earlier (we’ve both been having some travel downs recently), at least I’m not stuck in that fucking city in China! Although to be fair as I was thinking about that earlier today, I finally started to see the funny side of the government warning experience.

Now it’s time to get some sleep, afterall I have plans for tomorrow.

23.54 Sydney Australia Tuesday 29th July.