Banquet

Bloc Party - Hordern Pavillion

So here we are. Sorry - had to start with that... Bloc Party, one of my favourite bands of recent times, out in Oz, and I managed to get tickets this time, albeit to the second spillover show after the first sold out in less than 5minutes.

I took my camera along, as I have been to a few gigs of late, and planned to sneak it in, the body with no lens under my jacket, and a 100mm lens cunningly wrapped in a sock and placed in Laurens bag... the doormen waved me thru, and searched Laurens bag - a little panicked, I was almost laughing out loud when he aked her to removed the "socks" so he could check out what else was in the bag!

And so we went in, drank some beers and anticipated the band. The last time I saw these guys, was at Glastonbury, they absolutely went off... this time however, they just seemed plain jet-lagged, tired and over it. The pitfalls of being a mainstream act too, meant the idiot ratio was higher than I'd like at a gig too... though with negativity aside, they played Banquet and everything was fine in the world.

I split from Lauren to go and try to get some close-up shots of the band but struggled in the density of the crowd. I resigned myself to some average shots and then returned to the seated area with Lauren with about 4 songs of the gig to go... then, a bouncer spotted my camera. I had the torch of shame pointed at me, and was then escorted out the back exit of the Hordern Pavillion - not before I'd whipped the memory card from my camera... they were quite good about it really, and we just listened to the last couple of songs from the entrance of the Hordern thus beating the crowd home...

I won't bother seeing them again... sour grapes? me? never!

Kids

Movember & Paintballing

Another November, another dodgy Mo - this year I opted to grow some super dodgy handlebars off the end of mine. I was, once again extrememly happy to lose it.

As a final Mo foray, a group of us headed out to the killing fields... the paintballing killing fields that is for a day of firing Body Shop Bath balls at each other and getting quite dirty... and welted. The usual cheap option was soon surpassed as the organisers showed us the standard weaponry that we would get for our $40 - and everyone upgraded their weapons to shoot about 10 or more paintballs per second... if required... I managed to go most of the day before feeling the brunt of several of these rapid fire little doo-hickys as they sprayed the back side of my right leg... nice. I made up for it during the day with a couple of awesome little shots.

Poor Lauren copped one to the head in the first game despite her fool proof plan of staying at the base for the entire match. She bowed out a few games later and surrendered her ammo to me - which was nice :)

I'm on a Beach

Australian Rental Property #2 , Maroubra - New South Wales, Australia.

November 1, It was time to move to my second longish term home in Australia. One suburb away from my old home in Randwick, is Maroubra. Famed for it's slightly rough past, the "Bra Boys" have caused some fights in their time, and maybe, just maybe, kept the prime beach front property prices that bit lower than all the other Eastern beaches. Thanks boys.

So a Saturday spent moving stuff from one house to another, the Sunday spent getting things straight, and then the following week nights, having to zip back and forth to the old place to get things finalised for our bond... and then the following weekend - SWEET SWEET NOTHING. A relaxing weekend at the beach. A year of weekend holidays at the beach starts here.

I'll leave you with some random shots from the surrounding areas...