Adelaide was a lot of fun, even though I was only there for a day. I rented a bike for free and travelled around the city to THE MIGHTY BLACK STUMP, a couple of nice city parks, and the Adelaide city library. I also wiggled myself into an Adelaide library card so I can have access to their ebooks and audiobooks when I fly home. technically, you should be a resident of the county in order to get one, buuuuuut whatever.
Overall, it was a pretty relaxed day. I found myself spending a lot of time in the downtown area where there were tons of street musicians performing and some really cute stores, including a bookstore that was having a going-out-of-business sale and it was 3 for $15 on fiction books.
So, naturally, I bought three.
Which in retrospect was pretty silly of me since I only have my carry on and it's only allowed to weigh up to 7kg for when I fly and it already weighed 6.3kg. But hey! Its still under. Barely. It just now means that anything else I buy (souvenirs, gifts for the fam) have to be small and light. Challenge. Accepted.
But anyway, the last thing I did was watch this really cool street musician by the name of Trav Collins for about 10 minutes before heading back to my hostel. I gave him five bucks and downloaded his EP on Spotify (he's pretty established) because he was pretty legit and it's always been my policy that if a street musician makes you stop, you owe them at least a dollar. That was that though. I went to bed early that night because my flight to Melbourne was at 6:10am.
When I arrived in Melbourne, I wasn't allowed to check into my hostel until 2pm so I had approximately 6 hours to explore the city. Well, try and explore the city. I got a map from the hostel, heard there was free transit around the main city center, and set off!....in the completely wrong direction. I didn't know it at first and I wasn't sure where I had started so I kept thinking that I was on a different street than I actually was on. But after four intersections of being completely lost, I found myself on the map.
A quick aside: in my outdoor education class, one of the things we were required to submit before our last trip was a "lost procedure", outlining what we would do if we were ever lost. Since we were given no direction for this document, I designed mine rather humorously, quoting facts like "87% of mapping accidents occur when walking" and "Acceptance of being lost is the first step towards recovery." The first step in this guide was to stop moving. Dear reader of this blog, when I was in Melbourne, I did not head this advice.
I PRESSED ON! Walking aimlessly, taking tram route blah to destination blah and if I was to point at the map I could confidently tell you that I was either there, there, or there. But it was all in good fun. Even with all my mucking around, I still made it back to my hostel around 1:30 because I couldn't think of anything else I wanted to see that day. So I sat in my room for the rest of the night and read, finishing two of the books I was reading.
My hostel in Melbourne was a lovely place. And by lovely I mean rough. There was a limit to the WiFi you could use every day and I feel like I got off on the wrong foot with the staff. They just seemed real bitter towards me. But I really only slept there and occasionally read there so it wasn't a big deal. I went to the library to download my audiobooks though. I also spent the day seeing the Victoria gardens and the centre for contemporary art. I caught a comedy show at 6:30 that night at a local comics club that was a hoot and a half. The comedians we're all really good and the atmosphere was very casual because it was "new material" night where everyone was trying new bits. Some landed real well, some didn't. But we still got a good laugh out of those ones anyway!
My third day in Melbourne started late because I was tired but still included touring the Royal Botanical gardens and the National Gallery of Victoria. I also got a library card at a city library on the harbor docks (no shame). The place closed at 7 though and I got there at like 6 so I decided to return there the next morning.
So I did.
And proceeded to do NOTHING ELSE that day.
Okay. Let me tell you about this library.
It's not a huge library, only 3 floors of modern architecture with a bunch of glass and wooden floorboards. Very artsy and exactly my style. And despite having three separate eCheckout library Apps, there isn't much of a selection.
BUT. They have, not just an activity room with ping pong and pool, not just a computer space with high-powered gaming computers and top notch design Macs with every creative program you can imagine (gimp, Adobe suite, protools, some 3D imaging programs that I only wish I knew how to use), not just one but FOUR 3D printers, not just a VR gaming space preloaded with a ton of games (including Subnautica, a game I just got hooked to), but also 5 different standalone Midi keyboards and boxes.
So, having arrived at 10 in the morning, I spent 9 hours on one of those drumboxes (a piece called the Novation circuit, retail: $349. I know because I checked) making tracks. I made 5. It was so addicting. But at the end of the day, I had to bid it farewell. I was going to try and record my tracks into protools in the last hour so I could save my work for my own record, but they ended up not having the audio cables (3.5mm to 5-pin) needed to hook the device up to the computer. I did, however, convince the lady at the desk to allow me into the recording space (a soundproof room!) and record the essence of the tracks with my phone and the device's speaker. I'll put those up on this blog later when I have access to a computer.
[Marc from the future here: below is a video with all the tracks.]
Anyway, now I'm in Sydney! I took a 4am bus (3am wakeup, woot woot!) to a 6am flight and I have time to get lost here before my 11am show at the Opera house! I'll be updating again after I head home from Sydney.
Here I go!
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