Originally uploaded by Scootie.
Kathryn's sister Dani has come down to visit her for the Christmas/New Years period so we all went out for dinner and a few drinks last night. We actually went to Frostbites, which I would normally consider a sleazy meat-market, and it was pretty empty, so we played pool and joked about and had a good time. She's a good kid, always smiling, and has the same silly sense of humour as her sister :)
Haxxorz!
Originally uploaded by Scootie.
Christmas day was again spent down at Mum's house for dinner, with Mum, Dad, Cam, Cindy, Courtney and Krystal. We usually have a bit of fun, laughing at Dad and his jokes (not laughing at the jokes, laughing at him for what he thinks are jokes), and opening Courtney's presents, as we don't really bother exchanging much in the way of gifts these days (Mum still buys me some clothes and I still get her something as well)
The funniest present was one of those 'password' diaries that's supposed to recognise your voice so that even if someone knows your password they can't open the diary. Took us ages to set the password in the first place, because it requires absolute silence and the word has to be said twice in completely identical ways, but then when it comes to opening the diary all of us were able to imitate Courtney's well long enough to open it, so it was pretty funny. :)
Originally uploaded by Scootie.
(Very Large Christmas Party)
Yet another year at KPMG has drawn to an end, with the occasion marked by a very large Christmas party, held at The Hyatt again this year. This year the themes were Kaleidoscope, Pirate, Matador and Glacier.
The Kaleidoscope room proved to be the most popular, with lots of bright colours, a hula competition earlier in the day and great dance music throughout the rest of it, so most of us spent most of the time there.
The Pirate room was decorated like the set from The Pirates of The Caribbean, but had some pretty crappy music so we mainly stayed out of there.
The Matador room had Spanish music and flamenco dancers and was pretty interesting, so we spent a little time in there.
The Glacier room was the main foyer and had an ice sculpture and a person running around in a polar bear outfit, and we mainly used that for meeting people and travelling between the other areas.
Overall it was a gigantic party as usual, and we all seemed to get smashed. Or maybe that was just me. :)
Originally uploaded by Scootie.
The Annual Clitus Kris Kringle was held again this year, although funnily enough for the first time it was not held at 1 Clitus Ave as normal but at the Richmond Bowling Club. It was a good night, catching up with some of the guys I hadn't seen for ages and exchanging some funny presents. The funniest was Winston who received a number of framed photos of the English cricket team (Winston was NOT happy about The Ashes being won by England) and some Adult diapers as a comment on how pissy he was over the results :)
Originally uploaded by Scootie.
Myself and a fellow flickrite Kerryn took the trek out to Ivanhoe to view the Christmas Lights on The Boulevard to try and get some interesting shots. I had already been earlier in the month when some of the houses were set up but the official event hadn't started yet, but it was a lot more interesting to go during the proper time. It's a bit of a surreal experience, as some people have very nice and classy displays, and some have the most bizarre and cheesy things up. Once house actually had both, where the house itself (viewed from the side gate) had a very classy set of white lights draped over the main house, simple and classic and very beautiful and stylish, and the front yard (viewed from the front gate) was super cheesy and frankly hideous. Another interesting part of the experience was the way people would pimp out their kids musical talents to promote some cause or other, because they know that hundreds of people are going to be passing by every night.
Originally uploaded by Scootie.
The Lectro crew held their Las Vegas party on Saturday and it was definitely one of the best club nights I've been to. The music was fantastic, filled with some phenomenal local Techno DJs and that by itself would have been enough to make it a great night, but the crew added a couple of special extras that seriously upped the ante.
The first special event was a hilarious bout of jelly wrestling. We knew it was going to be a special event when the initial participants didn't just start wrestling each other but grabbed their friends form the audience and threw them in the pool :)
The second major highlight of the evening was a sterling performance by Elvis, complete with sequined jumpsuit.
We laughed so much it started to hurt, and then we dances a bit more and the pain went away. Overall a fantastic evening of fun and frolics.
Originally uploaded by Scootie.
You know that the silly season has begun when the regular friday night down at Yak turns into a madcap time filled with craziness and new friends.
Originally uploaded by Scootie.
What do you get when you cross a Bus with a Party? A Party Bus! :)
It was Clare's birthday last week and her party was to be held on the Party Bus (one of a few actually).
I was a bit sceptical at first, as I had always heaped scorn and abuse on the party buses whenever I saw them, but figured that Clare and her friends know how to have a bit of fun, so I was willing to be dragged along kicking and screaming :)
I was wrong, it was a lot of fun :)
It's a bit cheesy, and the bars we went to (Flanagans, Frostbites, Icon, de Biers) are also all a bit cheesy, but being with a bunch of people happily getting into the cheesiness really helps. And it's quite amusing to be driving down the city streets inside a small nightclub, having people dancing away while stuck in traffic really helps the time pass by :)
Overall it was a pretty good party, and if you're into cheesy then I'd probably recommend it. :)
Clare seemed to be having a very good time, and winding up at de Biers (their usual hangout) meant that instead of staying there for an hour and then getting the bus home, we just stayed there until the place closed :) They even managed to play some decent tech by the end of the night, and the security guards were the same guys that worked the inthemix.05 gig that Joe and I shot photos for, so we had a bit of a joke around with them and didn't have to worry about being hassled for having cameras :)
Originally uploaded by Scootie.
Well, last Friday was our ITS Christmas party at work and a very good party it was. Although full disclosure requires me to state that I was on the committee, so when I say it was a great party, I'm partly blowing my own trumpet. :)
The theme of the party was The Commonwealth Games, and it was held at Olympic Park, a world class athletics track that will actually host some of the official Commonwealth Games activities. Our games were not quite as official, as they consisted of an egg and spoon race, volleyball, and tug-of-war :)
Everyone seemed to have a good time and a large number of people kicked on afterwards, turning into a very messy evening.
Highlights of the day include seeing our friend Julia riding the back of her new boss like a rodeo star, trying to earn a few bonus points, or catching one of the senior managers cheating at the Egg and Spoon race by the use of double-sided tape :)
Originally uploaded by Scootie.
Well, another very busy weekend to put a bit of a cap on a rather leisurely week. Friday saw a return to Yak for a few quick beverages and to catch up with the regular crew. Had some drinks with Joe, Kathryn, Bec and Pommie John especially before retiring relatively early due to drunkenness. Kathryn had already invited me around to her new flat to check it out and to see her new widescreen LCD TV, which was very nice, so nice in fact that I ended up crashing there as we stayed up too late watching TV. Saturday morning was spent sleeping in and coming up with excuses not to get up and go home, excuses such as watching DVDs and more TV. :)
Originally uploaded by Scootie.
Saturday afternoon it was off to the Retreat Hotel in Brunswick for another episode of aLive. This is fast becoming a traditional day getting very drunk in the ber garden and laughing ourselves silly at the antics of ourselves and our comrades, there's a core group of people from inthemix who go there and they are a very funny bunch of people. The best thing about the aLive gig is that it's all live tech/electro/minimal, so it's local djs/engineers/musicians creating stuff on the spot to a very appreciative audience. It's good to see local guys and girls just creating good music on the spot, using all sorts of crazy gear like old analog synths, laptops, musical instruments like trumpets and clarinets, and lots of hammering on the keyboards :)
After aLive we headed into Honkytonks to listen to some more tech laid down by some very good Melbourne DJs, Mark Callendar and Mathew Jonson. Not that I managed to stay awake long enough to see Mathew Jonson, I was pretty tired and ended up going home at about 3am :)
Originally uploaded by Scootie.
Sunday was another long day, where I headed over to The Flying Duck in Prahran for Lee and Matt's engagement party. I expected to only be there for a little while, but ended up staying until the end and having quite a good time catching up with some mutual friends I hadn't seen in a while. It was quite a nice afternoon, and the beer garden at The Flying Duck was excellent, although there was a group of hairdressers nearby having a "truth session" where they basically bitched and fought with each other all afternoon. A couple of the guys from our group mingled with theirs and apparently they have this session regularly to avoid all these issues festering in the background, so anyone can get said what they want to say without it being held against them outside of the session. It all sounded very civilized once it had been explained, but I don't know if it actually works out that way in reality. It was pretty funny to watch, especially when our friends were clearly starting to go crazy with having to put up with it :)
Monday, the last day of my holiday, was also a nice clear sunny day, so I met Katrina in the city for a few drinks after her exam to help her celebrate the end of her studying for the year, then wandered around to try and take some photos, but nothing really took my fancy, and then Mick, Steph, Katrina and I had dinner at The Elgin and consumed a few more beers. Altogether it was a very beery day, and a good end to my holidays :)
