Stay Another Day

Christmas 2007

Twas two nights before Christmas, and an all weekend binge session was still in progress.

My housemates old Melbourne house mate was visiting for 24hours on his way back home from China so even after a big session with my colleagues on Friday, an even bigger session at Daft Punk on Saturday... it was time to dig deep and show Vardsy how we do it in Sydney.

An extremely random day saw us sinking beers at home in the yard, in the Palace, the CBH, and repeat visits to some of those. We thought we were winding down toward the end of the night as the Palace gardually cleared out. We all headed off home before the drunken randomness that you can only really associate with Christmas kicked off.

Back at the Lane, the music came on, the Christmas lights twinkling in the front room and back yard as we bopped away to recent iHits.

Party tricks including Jarrads "Lizard", Vardsy's "Worm" and my own "Human Jump Rope" made their way on to the make shift dance floor... Everyone was a little excited and as Aaron tried for his best slide across the floor, he stumbled and fell forward with nothing but a wine glass to break his fall.

Seconds later he had his hand under the tap washing the claret down the sink. My final recollection of this Sunday night/Monday morning was that at about 3am, Aaron & Jarrad made their way to the emergency room just around the corner from where we live to get his hand sorted out...

Then, 4 hours later, I was awake again, for the night before Christmas - or as it was this year... the last day of work before Christmas - bummer. Luckily I managed to escape reasonably early and was back home snoozing and doing anything but embracing festive cheer.

Christmas had come early for me this year - "Eve" had been Fridays work party, "Day" had been the amazing Daft Punk, and "Boxing day" had been spent in typical fashion with friends at the pub/house/beach/bar/house/emergency room.

My real Christmas however, consisted of plenty of food consumption, with my house mates... we even made a short video to celebrate the Aussie Christmas - excuse us, we may appear a little tipsy:

Boxing day I awoke and my partying had well and truly taken its toll. My hangover manifested itself as some kind of killer head cold which I then spent the remainder of the year trying to beat down. This really made those inbetween days at work enjoyable... I hope yours were more enjoyable than mine!

Back to work Thursday & Friday, I was hanging out for the weekend due to feeling unusually crook... Aarons old housemate came to stay at Bundock and so the weekend had us showing off our city as tour guides. Saturday we hit Wooloomooloo and the Botanical Gardens and Sunday we all jumped in Todds car for a quick trip to Palm Beach (set of Home & Away).

I hope your Christmas was fun, festive and maybe a little more relaxing than mine ;)

Daftendirekt

DAFT PUnK, Homebush

Throughout November & December, it has seemed very much like someone pushed the throttle to 'Full', and life has been hurtling by quicker than I can take everything in.

My original plans for Christmas were scuppered when I realised I had run out of time to send things internationally, a huge oversight on my part for which I am really sorry, for not getting a greeting card out to many of my good friends. I'd like to take this opportunity to wish everyone who reads this, a very merry Christmas and an awesome new year when I hope to catch up with all of you!

With time flying so quickly, one of my most hotly anticipated events of the year came on Saturday. Daft Punk made it to Sydney at last. Considering I bought "Homework" in 1996 and their other studio albums since then, it's quite strange that I've never seen them live before. I think this is mostly due to their rare and sporadic touring patterns though.

Although the weather wasn't particularly great, the day got to several key points where emotions ran so unbelievably high... sometimes it was the music, sometimes the additives in the Jager. But concerts and days like this don't come about any where near as often as I'd like.

After the awesome Presets (final) warmup act, it was time for Daftness. They lit up the stage for 90minutes with every shade of neon light you can imagine possible as light patterns slid like silk across the huge LED pyramid on stage. It was mesmerising... at least the moments where I stood still long enough to be mesmerised.

*Now a few days have passed (this is a late edit), I can state that this was the most fun I've ever had a stadium gig. 5 days have passed and I have longed to be back at Homebush in front of the Frenchmen. If they EVER tour again; I will be there; wherever, whenever.

I made a video diary of the day that you can see below, turn up your sound and enjoy!

The Trick to Life

12 Pubs of Christmas 2007

Wow, to start my first Christmassy post with a huge cliché, time sure does fly. A year on from last years 12 pubs of Christmas pub crawl, the now annual event descended upon Sydney faster than I could fathom.

A few weeks prior, a few of the organizing committee went for a practice run of prospective pubs to be used on this years circuit. This was to avoid potential hazards such as opening hours, dress codes, heavy handed doormen and pubs that simply wouldn’t let a vast quantity of people in in one huge drunken surge.

Members of last years rabble showed up this year, with friends that had had to listen to the good time stories of T12POC2006, certain they wouldn’t miss out this year. If I’m honest… which invariably I am, they got what they were after.

The beers flowed faster than Rudolphs consumption of carrots on Christmas eve. The laughs emanated like Chris Chringle on Nitrous Oxide and short term memories dropped away in much the same way that a festive balloon might, having been attached to the ceiling by static electricity.

The rabble Started at the Rocks, working around towards Darling Harbour, then cutting across Market Street and then violently doubling back on themselves back to the spiritual end-point of T12POC – the Metropolitan Hotel above Maccas… convenience in physical form.

Stories will be recounted in years to come undoubtedly – “who kissed who?”, “who fell victim to the porcelain Gods?”, “who took a wrong turn and wound up drinking coffee instead of being at pub 9?”…

In it’s second year, the day is becoming legendary… see you there next December?

Opportunity

Soccer & Photography wrap up

The last 8-10 weeks have seen me kept invariably busy throughout the week. Monday nights were home to a 6-a-side mixed soccer tournament… Our form roller-coastered along though we finally scraped into the finals day playlist. Our final 2 games won with 1-0 victories.
Our semi final was against one of the teams we’d just beaten the day before – and so we were somewhat confident we might be able to pull of another upset… the luck was with us a while, with the ref failing to spot a ball over the line from them. It soon faded however, and before we knew it, were 3-0 down with 5mins to go.

An awesome team effort clawed us back a well deserved consolation goal and meant we could leave the field with heads held high after never failing to score in 3 meetings with a team that topped the league group.

The following evening was another finale – this time from my photography course that I’d been partaking in. The aim was to learn full manual control of my Minolta digital camera (and all other digital SLRs).

The final night was presentation night – where everyone in the class had to make a presentation of around 15 pictures that they’d taken since the course began. The tutor picked me at random to go first… you can see the full picture selection on my other blog: http://www.fonfara.blogspot.com/.

The water shot got some ooh’s and ahh’s, and I got quite a few questions right after asking which techniques I’d used to capture my images. I great feeling of accomplishment enveloped me and I can safely assume I reached my goal set at the beginning of the course.