Long Time No See, Stranger

A certain Mr Oliver Amphlett has come out to visit! 

I went to go meet him at the airport and after a little bit of an emotional (on my behalf... with everyone staring, it was very embarrassing) reunion in the airport we headed off to begin our intense three week catch up and travel adventure!

We spent the next few days mooching about in Sydney, waiting for Oli to get over his jetlag, going to places like Searock, UNSW campus, Circular Quay etc. As my standard jetlag cure for everyone who first arrives in Sydney (Harry was the first victim, my family shall be the next), I made him do the Coogee to Bondi walk. It's quite a long walk, but the views are amazing and you go down into each little cove and can see all the different beaches. The walk finishes by walking past Icebergs which is a super famous sea pool/bar/club just on the edge of Bondi, and then you end up right on the beach where we stopped for a few drinks at The Bucket List.

We spent some time shopping in Surry Hills and found the most amazing cupcake place called Sparkle Cupcakery which is a very cool little place and the cupcakes are YUM.

We also found a shop with a skate park in the back of it....

...how incredibly hipster. I also found my new favourite shop which is called Service on Oxford Street. It stocks loads of amazing one-off stuff by Australia designers and everything is beautiful and very unique, but sadly pretty spenny. 

One of the days we went to the markets in The Rocks and then headed to right underneath the Harbour Bridge for Oli to do some of his long exposure photography.

We also went to go see Justin Martin play at The World Bar with Harry which was a good night out, and met up with Nelly for a nice supper at a gorgeous little tapas place near home called The Spanish Fly. So strange to all be out in Sydney together!

We leave for our big East Coast road trip early tomorrow morning... very excited!

B

Last Day at Searock

Sunday was my last day at the bar and luckily for me, it was a warm and sunny day and I only was rostered on until 5pm, just in time to avoid working happy hour! We had some live music from a girl called Reagan who was doing some amazing covers with a DJ, they have a kinda 80s vibe going on and very voice is insane, and the vibe in the bar was really lively. I clocked off, grabbed a drink and went and joined Amie, who'd also just finished work, and we chilled on the lounges in the sun outside. 

Slowly, every half an hour someone else would finish work and would come and join us, and in the end we had a bit of a spontaneous party. Free drinks from the bosses and free pizza from the Italian restaurant next door drew even more people over, and we all stayed out watching the sun go down over the harbour until late. 

Everyone was far too nice to me - going to miss you guys! We've had a lot of fun together at Searock but I am very ready to get out and do some travelling now, but I promise to come back for a drink or too soon. 

B

Brag Benefits

The handy thing about working at a music magazine as an intern is that they give me loads of free tickets to gigs, and with a little bit of English eyelash-batting and name-dropping, I can sweet talk myself into pretty much any gig, tickets or not. And, luckily for Harry, I allowed to take a +1.

On Thursday night we headed to Oxford Art Factory to go and see Foxes as Chris, the editor, had put my name on the door for me. She's sort of a new kid on the block and is actually English from Southampton, unbelievably, and had come over to tour Australia before trying to break America. I didn't think I knew much of her music, but turns out she's sampled by loads of DJs as she has that perfect garage/house kinda voice they all love and I recognised loads of her songs. OAF is a really cool, simple, but very famous venue on Oxford Street and the crowd there that night were really chilled and because it's not very big, it was really intimate. So intimate, in fact, that I could have sworn she was giving Harry the eyes over the heads of everyone as she sang, the little minx. 

She gave a really good set and her voice was amazing, and it was so nice to hear such a familiar accent! Only annoying thing about her is her obsessive hair flicking, which is kinda cute at first but then just gets really annoying she she's got a full on mane and it kinda gets in the way.... never mind, she was still good.

We stayed for her full set but headed home when she finished as Harry had to sleep and I had work the next day. If any of you guys want to check her out then she's coming back to do a UK tour soon.

After our fun and free night out on Thursday, a friend asked if I was going to the Astral People night at Basement where Shigeto and Phaeleh were playing, and it sparked a little idea. Tickets were $40, which is a leeeeeetle pricey, and so I tried my luck and emailed Astral People and told them I wanted to run a review on their gig for The Brag magazine and would they fancy sticking me on the door with a +1? Half an hour later, Harry and I had free tickets. BOOM.

The gig was on Saturday night and I scuttled home after work, had a quick change, and then we headed back into the city. Basement is in a slightly bizarre place as it's right down in Circular Quay in the hub of the CBD and is literally just the basement of a huge skyscraper. It's a cool venue though as it's basically like an underground pub and the stage is only slightly raised, making it feel like some kind of open-mic gig, apart from the fact that it's world renowned DJs...

Shigeto did his set first and I really enjoyed watching him and how versatile he is as a producer. He's also an awesome percussionist and did loads of live sampling which was amazing to watch. After a short break, Phaeleh began his set and continued on for a good two hours. He's really different live compared to his recorded stuff, as his music is mainly quite ambient and people expect him to be super chilled out, but he's not. It was amazing to be stood so close to him, I literally was 2m from him, just watching everything he was doing. Very different from seeing him at Outlook/Glastonbury!

It was so nice to finally find a really good venue which was host to amazing underground nights, bringing in some of mine and Harry's favourite musicians. I kinda feel that Sydney is lacking a bit with it's music scene not really amounting to much, but Astral People are an absolute blessing and I'm sure we'll be heading to many more of their nights. Fingers crossed I'll be able to work my magic and get free tickets again....!

B

Grace's Massage

By chance, as well as Oli, Grace also bought me a massage for my birthday - can't complain! We hadn't found time to go together yet, but eventually we were both free on Tuesday and met at Circular Quay and caught the ferry across the harbour to Neutral Bay. Seeing as we live in the Eastern Suburbs below in Sydney, we hardly spend any time in the Northern Beaches, so it was nice to go on a little adventure.

We went to this lovely little place called Thai Waya and had the most relaxing full body thai massage. It was very different to the one I had on my spa day, as at Park Hyatt they used a lot more oil etc. and this massage was more about working out the knots and all our stress from exams (well, Grace's stress.... I'm not feeling particularly stressed at the moment!). They properly climbed all over us and even used their knees to massage us! Kinda bizarre but actually amazing. I'm going to have to be careful not to get too used to weekly massages...!

Afterwards we stopped by a bar right next door called Cactus Blue and decided we would just have 'one drink' before we caught the ferry back. Several drinks and a free birthday-shot of absinthe on the house (!? and also bleugh) from the barman later, we finally left. We should have seen that coming.... look at the size of our wine glasses buckets.....!

The ferry ride home back into Circular Quay was amazing. Its nice to get out on the water sometimes and properly take in the Opera House and the bridge from a different perspective. The city is always so impressive at night.

Thank you Gracie for a lovely girly evening! Loving the fact that I've somehow managed to drag my birthday out for a good three weeks....

B

End of Exams

So usually finishing your exams at the end of Semester 2 (I've started out here halfway through the year as the academic year is different) is a huge relief and a good excuse for a huge party to start the summer with a bang. Well, not so much for me, as I didn't really have any exams... All of my Spanish tests were in class (there were quite a few though - oral, written, listening, grammar... you name it) and then everything else for Music was just presentations or hand-ins, all of which were over and done with before lectures even stopped for the exam period. There was one day when I had three exams on one day but.... meh.

So, here I am now all finished and ready to party and pretty much EVERYONE else is just beginning their exams. It's been quite fun to walk around gloating about my four month summer (when everyone else only has three) for these past few days but the novelty is waring off and people are really beginning to start to hate me.

Good news though, Harry's moved from the Hunter Valley and now lives at UNSW! He's got a very important new job with a famous race horse trainer just by Randwick Racecourse which is literally across the road, and whilst he was flat hunting, came and crashed at mine for a few days. By chance, a friend here called Em was going off travelling and was looking for someone to sub-let the room off her so that she wasn't paying rent for a room she wasn't using, so Harry has now moved in to her room and is living on campus with me! I have to move out of my room in a few weeks as my tenancy runs out on 26th November, but another girl in the same flat will be moving out then and also be wanting someone to sub-let her room, and so by the end of this month Harry and I will be living in the same flat. Good times ahead boys and girls, good times ahead....! Sadly though, Harry is on a bit of a bizarre schedule as his shifts are from 3am - 9am and then he has the rest of the day off except for having to go back to feed the horses at 2pm for an hour, and this obviously means he has to be in bed pretty early and can't come out much. I'll convince him soon enough though, but he's on best behaviour as it's his first week so I'm being tolerant at the moment. 

I'm keeping myself busy with work at the bar which is pretty hectic now as it's getting into the Summer season, and I've still got another 3 weeks of my internship. Also obviously doing my best to get that mythical bikini bod I know is hiding in there somewhere ready for Summer, but I sprained my ankle last night whilst running and so am now hobbling around like a cripple. I had a bit of a panic moment as I haven't sprained my ankle for years (I think the last time I did it was on the trampoline when I was about 12!?) and had no idea what I was meant to do as Mum/Sister Gil wasn't there to nurse me! I've managed to seek out some suitably sporty people though who have told me "Rest, Ice, Compress and Elevate" and so I've been watching Breaking Bad with my foot up with a bag of peas feeling like a right tit. Oh well...

The weather hasn't really been that great for the past week but suddenly today was boiling and so I dragged Harry and some others down to Coogee for a beach day. We just lay and baked ourselves and soaked up some much needed post-exam vitamin D, but I've managed to burn my bum and so I can't sit down OR walk now, which is proving to be quite annoying. Also the woman in the pharmacy called me a 'silly pom' when I hobbled in to buy some aftersun and ibuprofen... bit embarrassing. I was meant to go out to a shisha bar this evening with a few friends but I had to bail as I wouldn't be able to do that lotus flower thing with you legs, which is obviously obligatory when smoking shisha, and so, what was the point!? (If I'm honest, the real reason is that I have also burnt the lower half (!?) of my face but I was wearing lip balm with SPF in it and it means that I now have a weird white line all the way round my lips.... BRILLIANT. I'm a mess. Hopefully it'll be gone by tomorrow....)
Halloween was an odd one this year. I thought I was going to have to work until midnight and wouldn't be able to join in with anything at all, but they let me go at 8pm as the bar wasn't busy. I rushed home, shoved on some black clothes, Halloweened the shit outta my face, grabbed some wine and ran to meet everyone in a friends flat. I was met with a 'What.... what are you!?' by most people, which was fair enough as everyone else's costumes were pretty impressive. Here are two of my faves....

Ailsa's freaky cat eyes

Stan and Thierry as Jesse and Heisenberg from Breaking Bag - good hey!?

Everyone got very drunk and most people traded bits of their costumes with other people, so by the end everyone was looking like a bizarre hybrid of some kind of meth-brewing-vampire-cat, or something equally as weird. I woke up in the morning wearing a vampire cape (yup, thats right, I slept in it) and there was a micro scooter in my room which definitely is not mine. Also, according to the photos on my phone, we went to Macdonalds at some point and Adam ordered a burger which had no burger in it!?

Look at his little face, bless. I've never seen someone look so shocked and upset over some bread. (Quite possibly one of the most hilarious moments EVER though.)
I have horrible images of myself zooming around Macdonalds on the scooter in the vampire cape, but lets just not think about that. I hope that didn't happen....

Anyway, that's my life right now. Lots of much more exciting things coming up soon, as Oli's coming out here for 3 weeks at the end of this month, then my family come out for Christmas and New Year, and then I'm going to hit up Indonesia and Asia for Feb/Jan with friends before uni starts again in March. Plus a few festivals thrown in their somewhere.

Love to all back home...!

B