Music, Moomba and spending the night with bats

We've become band groupies of a Melbourne band called Buttered Loaf. They're a jazz/ska/ rock band. We saw them first at a night market we went to several weeks ago. They were the jazz band in the jazz/ bellydancing combo, in case you remember earlier posts. It's easy to be groupies of Buttered Loaf, as they don't have a CD and don't gig very much. But last week they played at Veludo Lounge, a bar in our neighbourhood. The gig was free (I think all of Buttered Loaf's gigs are free, again making them a good band of which to be a groupie), and the bar was cool - loads of comfy couches and a balcony overlooking Acland Street.

On the subject of bands, I'm going to use the opportunity to give a shout out to the Scissor Sisters. They're my obsession at the moment. Make sure you read the tag at the bottom of the post - I don't think Leslie would want anyone to think that he likes the Scissor Sisters. But he's not home at the moment - he's at a job interview.

A job interview? Tell me more! No, you'll have to wait. We have some more pictures of the Moomba Waterfest, and so I'm going to have to write some copy as an excuse to use them.

The Birdman Rally is apparently a well-watched ridiculous event. Aoife said she saw it on the news. Although, there is a lot of really awful journalism on Australian television news. We watched a purported news programme that was doing an "investigative piece" on Mormons. The reporter in her intro called the people of the town "pure evil," and asked her interview subjects why they "committed child rape" and "kept women as slaves." Regardless, though, it does seem that the Moomba Festival is a major event in the Melbourne event calendar.

There were fireworks all three nights of the festival, and they were really spectacular. There were half a dozen or so barges in the river, and first a guy came out on each of them and danced with fire. Twirled it, threw it, lit other things from it. It was cool, especially since it was choreographed with the other barges. Then the sky lit up with a huge fireworks display. Having experienced the NYC 4th of July and New Year's fireworks, I have exacting standards for fireworks. These made the grade.

The carnival rides also looked cool lit up at night. I don't have much more to say about that, but I wanted to use the picture.

The Aoifes have left. Aoife and her friend Aoife flew to New Zealand this morning. We met up with them in the botanic gardens for a picnic before they left. The botanic gardens here are very impressive. While the rest of Melbourne's greenery would be more accurately described as tannery, the botanic gardens are lush and green and absolutely stunning. Walking through them feels like walking through a rainforest, but better, because there's nice wide paved paths (which is about the level of Nature I'm willing to take). You don't have to worry about snakes as you stroll among trees with six-foot-diameter trunks. Or at least it doesn't feel like you have to worry about the snakes, as this jungle is nicely tamed. At dusk dozens of large bats fly from their cave somewhere deep within the gardens to seek out unwary night-flying creatures. The gardens officially close at 8:30, but when we got to the gate at 8:20 an over-zealous security guard had locked us in. There are no attempts to sweep the gardens and get everyone out - a bell rings five minutes before closing, and if you don't make it out in time, well, that's your problem. It was a problem, indeed. Leslie wanted to go cross-country and try and climb over or through the hedge, but the Aoifes and I knew that you shouldn't go into the underbrush and you shouldn't separate from the group when you're locked somewhere you shouldn't be after dark. We've seen the movies. The snakes, which seemed such a remote possibility during the day, now seemed like a real menace. Aoife (it's impossible to distinguish since I don't know their last names) was afraid of the bats and while when they first came out it seemed silly, now that we were facing a night with them they no longer seemed quite so harmless. We went round to other gates and found that they were locked as well, but we managed to squeeze out of one. So we didn't spend the night with the bats after all, though it was touch and go for a moment there.


He also turned down a different job he was offered. He's not really sure what the job was - he didn't get further than "so you dress up like a superhero..."

I have some news on the job front too. I got a call last night from a guy from Fairfax Media, a large media chain that owns a large percentage of the newspapers in Australia. They might want me as a sub-editor on one of their community papers. They have a few people trying out at the moment, but if they don't get it or if they need someone else they'll have me go in for a few trial shifts next week.