stellar

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Saturday was pretty busy, with a trip down to Williamstown for a bit of a photo shoot and some fish and chips, and then later on that night Joe and I went in to Stellar Bar to listen to some friends DJing.

It's a really good bar and Mike and his mate are really good DJs, happily throwing in all sorts of weird tracks like a remix the the theme from "Different Strokes" that we heard the last time we went or the remix of the theme from "The Muppet Show" that we heard last night. Not something that you would think of off the top of your head as a track to play, but they worked really well nonetheless :)

friday shenanigans

children today worship a new god
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Last friday was another usual day, where much time was dedicated to drinking of alcohol. Now, this friday we had an official occasion and everything, since one of the team at work was moving to a secondment in another section and another member had just become permanent, so don't panic, it's all official, we were celebrating. :)
Given the nature of the evening we didn't even hang out at Yak, but instead went down to Manchester Lane with a fair sized crew to have some drinks down there. The night progressed well and ended up with Joe, myself, Clayton, Kathryn, DJ Mudgutz and Matt as the stayers, lasting until we were all quite silly-drunk :)
Clayton was very funny all night, happily walking up to complete strangers and asking to take their photo, usually very attractive women. It must be something about being married :)

quiet weekend

woodchop
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

This weekend was fairly quiet. With me on Lates and Joe in Sydney there was no real impetus to go out and get drunk on Friday, so instead I had a couple of quiet drinks with a colleague who was down from Sydney and then headed home at a reasonable hour.

Saturday I was ken to avoid any entanglement with the footy Grand Final, so I decided to head off to the Royal Melbourne Show and see if I could find a few photo opportunities. The show was quite small this year, particularly because of renovations occurring on the main showgrounds, so only half of the showground and grandstand were actually available, the rest being fenced off. The show itself has only a few things worth seeing, the events such as woodchopping, equestrian, dog showing, livestock judging, etc. Then the showbags, which as a kid were the main draw of the show but as an adult can be seen for the garbage they are :) Lastly the show has all the usual array of carnival rides and games of chance. Every tent had its own tout with a microphone hooked up to their PA shouting out to the crowd about how their game of chance is the best to play and how they are the ones giving away all the big prizes. As a rough count I saw about 6 'water race' games, about 4 basketball hoop games, 3 'magic ticket' games, 3 laughing clown games, a few ball toss games, one shooting game, and that's about all. :)
A highlight was overhearing a carny explain to a pair of twenty-somethings how the laughing clown game works, and the smirk on her face as she wondered the same thing I did, how you get to be 20+ years old without ever seeing the laughing clowns before :)
The rides had a few new faces this year, basically all working on the round-and-round-up-and-down principle, and most of the same old things like dodgem cars (three sets) ferris wheels (two) and roller coasters (two) were still there.
I went back later in the evening for some night shots and basically photographed everything there was to shoot at least twice :)

Sunday was spent on the couch watching crappy tv :)

Late shift

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Been on the late shift all last week, which gets kind of boring towards the end of the week, but at least it gives me the chance to wander arounf the city shooting some night shots, which is becoming a bit of a tradition with me when I work lates.

Woo Hoo, I am a Weener!

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

I have won a photography competition! Woo Hoo!
This photo has been judged Best Action Photo from amongst 1500 other images vying for Best Action, Best Landscape, Best Personality and Best Overall photo in the Victorian Alps. The Competition was run by the Vic Snow Report website and winners were just announced and I won Best Action!
In true Scootie style, I just submitted some entries and went about my day, not really thinking about it, even when their mail systems stuffed up and lost a few entries and we had to resubmit, and even after they sent out an email saying the judging was delayed etc, I didn't really think about it, because frankly, how could this really apply to me? In fact I didn't even notice I'd won, but was asked by a colleague "did you win an amateur photo competition" to which I replied "I don't think so" because I couldn't think of any I'd entered. Turns out another KPMG person had entered and was keen to see if they'd won and one of my friends was looking over their shoulder at the time and recognised my name.
I'm pretty happy that I won (still a little stunned) because I am very proud of this image. I had to stand in the snow for hours, freezing my fingers (and ass) off, despite wearing gloves (yes, shooting in ski gloves, I love my gloves, they rock, but that's another story) and I was shooting on Manual exposure and Manual focus, because the action was too fast for the camera to react properly, and I knew I'd gotten some really good shots at the time, and had a few "Eureka" upload moments when i put them on the computer. Add to that the fact that I nearly lost all these images when my HD crashed!
Also, in other related coolness: this ski trip I had come to the conclusion that my goggles were stuffed, as the foam was finally going, and they tended to fog up now, and also that my sunnies were in need of replacing, as they were slightly scratched (titanium lenses, very hard to scratch) and the rubber joints were disintegrating, and the lenses were out of position and needed to be refitted, and especially the fact that I lost them on the way home, all added up to Scootie spending some hard earned moolah on new eye wear before the year was out. But no! for Scootie has just won some prizes, including new Bolle sunnies and Goggles. Now technically, I'm an Oakley man, but who in their right mind would knock back free sunnies? not me, that's for sure :)
So there you go, lucky to get the shot, lucky to keep it, lucky I was able to resubmit it, and lucky to have won, luckily winning something I really needed!

Of course, my luck is now officially all used up :) But you get that on the big jobs.

Earthdance 2005

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Saturday was a special day, with the arrival of Earthdance 2005. Earthdance is a global event where simultaneous events are held in over 200 cities in over 50 countries, where everyone is dancing to the motto: Give Peace a Dance.

The Melbourne event was held in Fed Square and attracted a few thousand people by the time the day was over. The weather looked a bit iffy at first, and even rained a bit earlier in the day, but this didn't really do much to discourage us hard-core types :) Sure, a few people drifted away when it started to rain but most of us just tucked down a bit more into our coats and stayed where we were. I don't even think the hackie-sack game was even interrupted by the rain, although they did change to a dryer hack when the rain stopped.
Overall the day was fantastic, really good music, lots of good people and a pretty good mini-crew of flickrites. Joe was there of course, as was DJ Mudgutz and I even met up with WenDee from flickr too :)
The highlight of the day for me was seeing some of the costumed capers that are quite common to this event and to Earthcore, such as three people dancing on stilts, two dressed as trees and another dressed as a mermaid, dancing around a large sun while red painted jugglers danced with them. My favourite of all these was three girls 'breaking free' from their urban confines, dressed in ragged suits and ties that had started to become entwined with nature, sporting leaves and tree branches, all the while elevated on stilts made out of milk crates. One of them is pictured here and they were obviously having so much fun it was infectious :)

The Music was top notch and the dancing great fun and we just had a blast. Being the neo-flickr event that it was, we even ran into s2art as we were walking away, as him and his wife Nikki were heading out to dinner for Nikki's birthday. They were going to Transport but we suggested it might be a bit loud with all the DJing going on and that they might try elsewhere. :)

Friday again

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Last friday was fairly standard fair. Started at Yak for a few beverages, managed to convince my team mates to come along for one or two and also met up with DJ Mudgutz which is now considered normal and won't be commented on especially.
We had a few at Yak and then headed off to The Long Room to meet up with a few friends of Mudgutz's, which turned out to be rather attractive women, so we stayed for a drink or two there until the overpowering scent of pretentious people (not our friends, but most of the other people there) was too much and then skedaddled home for a fairly early night.

a warm house is a happy house

kate shakes her booty while the cardinal entertains the foreman sisters
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Saturday night was the evening of Tania's housewarming, and quite a big night it was :)
Tania has bought a nice flat in Kew, just near the Cotham Rd/Burke Rd corner, which is a very roomy, 70's built, two bedroom apartment, with quite a nice view out towards Doncaster.

The party officially started at 8pm, and we arrived not long after that, a bunch of us having met up at The Palace beforehand (Mick, Joe, Steph, Dan & Cath). The party itself was fairly small, with us, Tania, Katrina, Kate and her new boyfriend Nick, and some friends from Tania's work, etc, all in all about 16-17 people. The party started with the usual amount of milling around in the kitchen, then slowly but surely headed towards a mad dance party in the lounge room :)
The party steamed on, and everyone seemed to be having a good time.

It was good to finally get a chance to talk with Kate's new boyfriend Nick. I'd technically met him at the Sexy Party but we hadn't really chatted that much. He's a pretty cool guy and didn't seem too phased at being thrown it at the deep end and being grilled by so many of Kate's friends :)
After much drinking and much dancing, the official party ended up about 1am, with taxis called to ferry away the party guests, leaving myself, Joe, Tania and Andrea (from Tania's work). We decided that we needed to go out and headed into the city to Brown Alley where Joe and I had planned to go to hear Superpitch DJ.
We arrived in good stead and had no trouble getting in due to Joe having arranged for a spot on the guest list. I hadn't been to the club before and I was pretty happy with it. The layout is a bit weird, with only a tight spiral staircase between the three levels, but we hit the main dance floor downstairs and there was plenty of room to manoeuvre. Not long after arriving Tania and Andrea left, looking for some 80's music, so Joe and I stayed on and later met up with Becy and some of Joe's other friends from the In The Mix forums.
The music was great and we danced until about 5am when I was finally too tired and had to leave. We jumped a cab home and I spent a very lazy sunday at home surfing the net and loading songs onto the iPod mini I'd bought the day before (they're cheap now that they're being discontinued in favour of the iPod nano)

Another Friday passes

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Yet another friday, passed into oblivion this week, as all time goes once it's been used, it's destroyed, forged into the ashtrays of the future, or whatever happens to time when it's used up.

The day turned into an amusing end, with a little more time spent at Yak and Lustre with some of the usual crew. The original intent of the evening was to spend more time with Peta and Clare, as we hadn't really caught up in previous weeks, merely been at the same places, so Lustre was designated as the official meet point, with intention of heading to The Lounge or to Loop later on. But, as Robert Burns wrote, The best laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft agley, and we actually started out at Yak. There were various reasons to do with the timing that Clare finished work, and the need to meet Mick and Steph and 'Teen in a place easy for them to find, and so we started at the usual, where we were joined by Clare, Peta, Mick, Steph, Mudguts (from Flickr), and more than one or two alcoholic beverages.

We moved on down to Lustre at about 6pm, and who should we run into down there but Felicite and Sarah, almost like a mini copy of the previous week at Lustre :)
So we settled in for a few more drinks, and were joined over time by Erin, Stuart (Flickr), Dean (had been working late) and some friends of Clare and Peta's. After a few hours the crew started to break up and go their separate ways, so Joe, Mudguts and I eventually headed over to De Biers for a few minutes to say goodbye to the girls. It was very hard to maintain to Mudguts the concept that we hardly ever go there when we greeted by one of the barmaids like long-lost friends (she used to work at Yak), and also happen to be up on the photo wall of fame (the manager and Joe went to high school together), so I don't really think he believed us :)

On the way home I did the usual drunken stop at Macca's, made more difficult by the occasional spouts of torrential rain from the severe thunderstorm we were in the middle of, and while walking back home I spied Mick, Steph and 'Teen over in The Bridge having a drink. I popped in for a quick pot and then went home and managed to get some very nice lightning shots off the balcony.

The funny thing was that with all the people that ended up showing up, we didn't really get much chance to catch up with Peta and Clare :) oh well, maybe next time.

Te Kotahitanga

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Last Saturday was the New Zealand Te Kotahitanga (Unity) Festival at Federations Square, including the launch of the Te Karangatahi Waka, and due to the fine efforts of fellow flickrite Kiarobro, we were on the list as official photographers for the whole day's festivities.

The day started early with preparations for the arrival of the Waka, a hand crafted boat which were traditionally used to move between the islands and invade other territory. The crew of the Waka disembarked on Federation dock and were greeted by the elders of the Wurrundjeri tribe, the traditional owners of the site.

Later the day saw a whole lot of New Zealand and Polynesian/Maori celebrations, including some traditional dancers and some more modern fare.

There was also an attempt at the world record for the most people performing a Haka outside of New Zealand. The previous record was 505 people, and this event had over 2000 registrations, so they are likely to be awarded the record after Guinness scrutinise the video of the event.

It was a great day and we took a lot of photos, that are to be cut to a DVD and given to the organisers, but otherwise we've gotten some fabulous stuff for Flickr :) I really enjoyed myself, despite being a rare aussie in the crowd, everyone was so happy and having a great day that even my cheering the Wallaby's was met with good natured boos and hisses :)

So you've decided to move to Melbourne

(this is something I just whipped up in am email, to tease a friend who we're trying to convince to move to Melbourne from Canberra)

Congratulations on your choice of moving to what many refer to as "The World's best everything ever". In order to smooth your transition into this multi cultural melting pot that is the great City of Melbourne, the following questionnaire has been prepared to help us, help you.

Please be sure to answer all questions as it is necessary to fully profile your Melbourne experience to meet your needs

Desired Future Living Area:
(a) Central: CBD, Melbourne, North Melbourne, East Melbourne
(b) East: Richmond, Hawthorn, Camberwell
(c) South: St Kilda, Brighton, Elsternwick
(d) West: Footscray, Kensington, Williamstown
(e) North: Carlton, Fitzroy, Brunswick
(f) Non-Cool: all other locations

Originating Area:
(a) Melbourne Outer Suburbs (section (f) above)
(b) Country Victoria
(c) Other: Please don't specify, we're not that interested

Reasons for travelling to Melbourne:
(a) Always wanted to move there
(b) Work transfer, plus always wanted to move there
(c) Backpacker, plus always wanted to move there
(d) Homeless, plus always wanted to move there
(e) I've always been a heavy drinker

Marital Status
(a) Married, but looking
(b) In a relationship, but looking
(c) Single, and interested
(d) Single, and easy
(e) I've always been a heavy drinker

Please also rate the following sports on the scale provided:
Footy (the good one) - Really Great \ Great \ Good \ Willing to learn
Footy (the meathead one) - OK \ Stupid \ Pointless \ I support the All Blacks
Footy (the round ball one) - Good \ Boring \ Confusing \ I Don't watch SBS

Please also rate the following beer brands on the scale provided:
Tooheys - OK\ Poor \ Bad \ Very Bad \ Just Like Emu Bitter
Four X - Really Bad \ Very Bad \ Extremely Bad \ Never tried
Carlton - Great \ Good \ OK \ Good \ Great
Boags\Cascade - Great \ Great \ Great \ Great \ Good

Please indicate which of the following activities you are likely to participate in while in Melbourne:
Drinking Heavily - Yes \ No
Watching Footy - Yes \ No
Riding Trams - Yes \ No
Going to Fed Square - Yes \ No
Visiting the Shrine - Yes \ No
Driving up and down Chapel st - Yes \ No
Going out to clubs/bars - Yes \ No
Going down laneways to drink - Yes \ No
Eating Chinese food - Yes \ No
(please note that a 'No' answer to any of these does not automatically
preclude you from moving to Melbourne, it merely means we may need to
interview you further)

and after skiing?

Birthday Girl
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

So what have I done since skiing? Well, I spent a week at home sick. I won't go into the details, but whatever I had, you definitely don't want. It was one of those things where I didn't even have any appetite, so I didn't go out and shoot photos or anything because I didn't have any energy. I think that from Sunday night until the following Saturday I at the sum total of: three serves of toast, 5 biscuits, and about 10 potato chips. That's it. So I spent the whole time on the couch, or doing a little work from home on the computer, although the motivation was very poor indeed.

I had a pretty negative attitude all week, especially since my external hard disk died on the way back from the snow, so I didn't have access to any of the pics I took until Georgie burned them to DVD for me (I'd kept a copy on his laptop). Even without pictures to upload, all of that time should have led me to a frenzy of flickr activity, but to be honest, I was completely unmotivated to do anything except sit on the couch, half asleep, watching DVDs.

The next week was a bit more exciting, being back at work and all :) although it was actually a lot better, what with being actually able to eat and everything :) The week was ok, started getting my socialisation back on track, went to dinner with Kate on wednesday night, to a nice little Thai place near her, although I forgot we were supposed to be going to dinner so I brought over some chips, much to the amusement of her housemates :)

Friday I was up to my usual antics, drinks at Yakbar with Joe, Peta, Clare and John, where we were joined by fellow flickrnaut DJ Mudgutz. We had a few drinks at Yak and then moved on to Lustre lounge to meet up with Felicite and the crew for her birthday drinks. While we didn't officially meet up until Lustre lounge, I actually accidentally met up with them at the ATM between bars, which was funny because they didn't realise they were standing behind me until I turned around. As well as Felicite we also had Dean, Bec, Julia, Paul and Sarah, plus the crew we dragged down from Yak.

We had a number of very fine drinks, although I was on call so I had to curb my beverage intake somewhat. After some time at Lustre we headed off to get some noodles at a very good (and very friendly) noodle shop next to Robot and The Deanery, and then headed over to Pony, and since the music wasn't what we were looking for we headed to Loop. That's where I left the crew, as I had a photog gig on Saturday, but more about that in the next entry :)

Skiing 05

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Well, the time for the annual ski trip to Falls Creek has come and gone, so I thought I'd better get around to posting an update. This year's trip was pretty good, with a few variations on the regular themes, enough to keep things interesting. The crew this year was as follows: Myself, George, Sharon and Adrian Hillier with their kids Zach, Cassie and Jade, Chris and Danielle Cawood with their kids Tamara and Nathalia, Chris and Tamara Stillwell with their kids Colin and Cayley (and pet rat Angelina), John and Jo Novak with their infant son Nicholas, Phillip and Liz with their son Nathan, and Warwick and Jackie. So that's 14 Adults, 9 kids, and one rat.

One of the variations on this trip was that we had the majority of our groceries and alcohol delivered up to our lodge for us by the supermarket in Mt Beauty. This meant that we didn't have to lug a whole lot of boxes of food and drink up through the oversnow and seriously reduced the amount of gear we had to carry up and back. Another variation was that George and I caught the bus up the mountain from Mt Beauty, along with the Cawoods and Novaks. This is something the Cawoods have done in the past because they haven't had a car themselves (they live in Perth, and fly in to stay at Chris' parent's place in Albury and get a lift down to Mt Beauty). We did the sums and it turned out to be cheaper for the two of us to buy bus tickets and park in their undercover parking, than it was to pay for a week's resort parking and chain hire, not to mention the fact that we didn't have to fit chains and trudge through the snow to the car. The only slight drawback was waiting half an hour longer for the bus on the way back home, and that was really because we booked our oversnow early enough to allow for delays. Also, this year, due to the large number of people, we had actually spilled over into a second lodge, which also gave George, me and the Cawoods a place to escape when it all got a bit too busy at the main lodge :)

The skiing itself was very good, Sunday we arrived during a clear sunny day, with lots of snow on the ground and blue skies overhead. Monday was our first day of actual skiing and despite the heavy falling snow, high winds, occasional sleet, and near total whiteout near the top of the mountains, the snow was pretty good and we got a decent morning's skiing in before deciding to go back to the lodge and give in to sanity :)
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were all bright clear days, blue skies and sun, excellent skiing all over the mountain, and to be honest, some of the best days I have had in the mountains. I was very happy with the snow, extremely happy with my gear (especially the new ski pants that were warm and dry in the blizzardyness and still cool enough on the sunny days. I skied my favourite runs at the Summit, powering down the steeps like a absolute champion. At least until my thighs were burning and my knees were calling me all sorts of bad names, when it was then time to return to the lodge (a short ski away) for much needed refreshments :)

Tuesday night was the first part of the extreme sports (apart form skiing itself) that we would get to witness this year, where some motocross riders were putting on a show of jumps and tricks in the snow outside our lodge. This was the second year they'd had this event and it was till a lot of fun to watch, especially the big finale which was one guy doing a backflip followed by fireworks, which seemed to be going off just outside our lodge, needless to say we are very happy with our choice of accommodation :)

Friday it rained and I did not ski, instead we sat in the lodge and watched DVDs, played games with the kids, and watched the rain try to wash away all of our beautiful snow.

Saturday was lightly overcast, but mainly clear, a bit cold, which meant the snow was excellent, and it was another day of great skiing.

Saturday evening saw the Big Air competition on the summit slopes about 300m in front of our lodge, with a large number of skiers and snowboarders going over a 55 foot kicker jump to compete for prizes such as Biggest Air, Best Trick, Best Costume, Best Old School trick, etc. I went out and stood in the snow for a few hours to get some good shots, and was chatting to the kids next to me and generally having a good time freezing to death in the snow at night :)

Sunday was the day to come home, and just as well since it started to rain again and was not the most pleasant of days to be in the mountains, so we left :)

as requested

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

As requested by Peta and Joe, here is the 'breast shot'.

Peta was going on the prowl later, so stopped by Yak for a few drinks first. I was helping her to determine the effectiveness of her top in attracting men. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Sunday

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Sunday was filled with a great variety of activity and emotions.
The day started (at 12pm) with a BBQ around George's place. Some old friends of ours were in town from Perth for a while and took the opportunity to arrange a big get-together of all the old gang from the late 80's :)
As it turns out, most of them have been spending their time having children :) lots and lots of happy children. It's quite funny, because you don't really think about it, until you're in one room and realise that 1-3 kids per couple, and 5 or so couples, ends up being a lot of kids :)
Can anyone ever truly say that kids aren't cute? I guess it's a survival trait or something :)
The whole thing was excellent, and I was able to spend a lot of time catching up with people and seeing what everyone's up to. The food was sensational, thanks to George's three skewer spit, so it was spit roasted lamb and chicken and home-made dips :)

Sunday evening I went to see a movie at Fed Square with Kate. It was part of the Melbourne International Film Festival, and it was a film called Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire and is a documentary about the UN General who lead the peacekeeping force into Rwanda and was there at the time of the Genocide portrayed in the movie Hotel Rwanda.
It was quite an open portrayal of an extremely disturbing incident in history, where human beings performed inhuman acts to one another, and Dallaire was tasked with doing something about it without being given any of the things like authority and manpower that he needed. Dallaire himself is quite a likable person, and you can't help feeling his frustration and horror at what was happening around him and his inability to do anything real about it. It eventually led to his breakdown and he is still not completely recovered, but it was heartening to see the reception he received in Rwanda, where the people there were clearly aware of how much he was actually able to do, despite him personally discounting them compared to what he felt he was required to do. Kate and I had seen Hotel Rwanda and so we were very interested to see something more factual. Hotel Rwanda itself was a very good film, and did give you a sense of the atrocity that was going on, but at the end of the day it was a fictional piece, based on reality, whereas this film was a documentary of Dallaire's return to the country on the 10th anniversary of the genocide.
Needless to say it wasn't a "fun" movie, but it was very moving, and made me get a little angry at myself for not really paying enough attention to what was going on at the time. I guess this sort of thing happens a lot, but that doesn't make it right.
Anyway, I think it's an important movie, and it helped to improve the characterisation of Dallaire after Nick Nolte's version of him in Hotel Rwanda, although that wasn't too far from the truth, it didn't do the man justice I think.

flickr-meet

flickr-meet
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Saturday was the day of the first Melbourne Flickrmeet at Fed Square. This was a great event, with a really good bunch of flickrnauts showing up and chatting away, talking about cameras and photography and flickr, but also talking a lot about Melbourne and every other possible topic under the sun. There were a few cries of "Geeek!" (mainly from ziz) but all in all they're a pretty cool bunch of people. I think that I would be happy to have any of them in my circle of friends even if we didn't all have the photography/flickr thing in common. Those in attendance were Donina, Oz Lomo, WenDee, make.money.fast, The Cardinal (aka Joe), F o u t u g r a p h e, ziz, barbfi, Eyecatcher, lonely radio and s2art

I had a great time meeting everyone, I think we need to do it again. next week :)

YAF @ YAK

clare and peta
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Friday saw some traditional drinking shenanigans :) It started out with a few drinks with Clare and Peta at Yak. I hadn't seen Peta in a while so it was good to catch up a little. The girls were heading down to De Biers afterwards, as they were very keen to get some gentlemanly companionship and De Biers has never disappointed them before. Come to think of it, I think I recall Kate and Kerry doing the same thing back in April, specifically targeting De Biers for this :) After Yak I headed out to The London in Richmond for John's birthday drinks, managing to get extremely drunk by 11pm and catching a taxi home with Joe. :)

midweek malarkey

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Did you realise that I seem to start most of my blog entries with "Last weekend" and follow with "haven't seen them in a while"? It's almost as though I only exist on the weekends, and that I never catch up with anyone. My week tends to be filled with work and discussion of work and stuff around work and spending time with people from work, near work. It has been my intention from the beginning to not discuss work to any great extent, hopefully not at all, within this blog. So that's a large part of my week already taken away from blogspace, and the rest is mainly weekends and drinking. This week for example, I actually spent some time on Monday night with Joe going to see the Spirit of Tasmania and did a big shoot of the boat, beach and port.

bollywood ball

bollywood
Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Saturday night was the night of the annual KPMG Ball which is usually filled with pomp and pageantry, and this years was no exception. My date to the ball was Leah, who wanted to go along and wasn't a social club member, so wasn't interested in paying $150 for a ticket when members and their dates only pay $85.
The theme for the ball this yeah was "Bollywood" so the room was decorated like a Bollywood musical and almost all of the entertainment was Indian themed, including some traditional style dancers, some modern dance numbers, some traditional music and one snake charmer/dancer that was quite interesting.

I have been to the ball seven times over the last nine years, and it's generally a lot of fun, although like anything, it depends on who you hang out with :) This ball was probably the second best one I'd been to, and I had a significant amount of fun and managed to catch up and have a dance with some people I hadn't seen in a while. I had a great time dancing and chatting and laughing it up with everyone.

The one part of the entertainment that wasn't really Bollywood themed was the dance music. The DJ played a bit of Indian styled dance and then when the 80's cover band came on it kinda blew that out of the water, so it went straight to western dance music after the first 80's set. :) The band was the same as last year, and a really good 80's band for a dance gig, playing all the old favourites like Jessie's Girl and Mickey :) The DJ was pretty good too, playing mainly mainstream dance, but not any of the super super cheesy numbers that some clubs play, so it was deemed 'acceptable' by me :)

Everyone seemed to be having a good time and I finally ran out of steam at about 1am and headed home. It's always a long queue for a cab at Crown, so I usually walk up to flinders st station to get one. It's always a fun experience walking around the city in a tuxedo, for some reason everyone looks at you funny :)

late shift week

Originally uploaded by Scootie.

Last week was fairly low key, having been on late shift all week, which usually makes me a bit slow around midday and cranky all week, at work anyway. One benefit is that come 8pm, I'm wide awake and ready to go, with enough energy to be out and about for a few hours easily. This has of course lead me to do a couple of night photo runs, walking around the city looking for shots and generally just wandering about. I finally managed to get some shots of the flames at Crown Casino that I'm happy with, and generally just made a nuisance of myself around town, looking like a tourist and taking photos of things that normal people don't take photos of. :)

A lot of time was spent in the rest of the week doing some html coding for the Flicky Awards for Excellence in Photography on Flickr (of course)

Friday night started out fairly normal, with the usual plans to only have a few drinks, not have too large an evening, etc. It began with meeting Joe and Steph down at Yak for a few drinks after I finished at 8pm. It was good to catch up with the both of them, as Joe has been on convalescent leave after his ear operation two weeks ago, and I don't see Steph as much as I used to, since she used to be my flatmate :) We had a few drinks and a bit of the usual chat and laughter, although the crowd at Yak was quite loud, and managed to get all caught up. Then it was off to Pheonix to see Kate and as it turns out to partially rescue her from an ex who was making eyes at her, another guy flirting with her, and a girl who was after the ex making a point of ignoring her :) So we breezed in and they left and we all had a bit of a laugh about it :)