summer, music festivals, parties, burritos, 90s bands, road trips
It's been a ridiculously long time since I last posted. The fun times of summer have been keeping me busy. After many years in regional Australia it was nice to finally be back in Sydney for summer. And I totally made the most of it, catching up with friends and partying. Sydney really does come alive in summer. It's been so good and I have loved every minute of it.
Festivals... so many music festivals... All up I went to 8 music festivals this summer and dare I say it I feel like I might be suffering a bit of festival fatigue. It does make me sad to know that there are no more festivals on the horizon, although I think it's safe to say my body is grateful.
The festival recap:
1. Meredith Music Festival - Back in December I went to MMF. Feels like a lifetime ago now. The road trip down was hectic, with flooding closing the Hume Hwy from about Yass to Albury. Water on road became a common sight. The festival highlights were Jeff the Brotherhood, Those Darlins, and Custard. As well as the mud, wet weather gear, the make shift water slide and totem tennis championships. I also ate a lasagna pie in Wagga. Yes a pie filled with lasagna. Epic.
2. No Sleep Til - We went to No Sleep Til to celebrate Magda's birthday. Security confiscated our roll on deodorants and medicated creams but somehow missed the 1.5 litres of vodka we had hidden on our bodies. Frenzal Rhomb - we still love you even if you played a short set and had shit banter between songs. Parkway Drive - have by far the most crazy / dedicated fans. Gwar - most impressive costumes and sprayed blood and slime on the crowd. Silly fun times. The Descendents - pop punk songs with a nerdy edge played with such heart and passion.
3. Field Day - Goodbye 2010. Hello 2011. I don't go to too many dance festivals these days. Field Day like many of the dance festivals is trapped back somewhere in our early 20s. It was the Rapture, one of my favourite indie bands, and the opportunity to see hip hop legends Public Enemy that got us back to Field Day. And boy was it good to go back.
4. Big Day Out - We travelled on a mini bus from Cronulla and it was Australia Day. I've never felt more bogan / awesome in my life. Andrew WK totally brought the party, even with a circle pit. So much fun. There were really bad tattoos. And people in really bad matching tshirts. LCD Soundsystem were fantastic as always. Overall fun day out with friends.
5. Laneway - The Festival Ladies first ever dj set. The fabulous and totally crazy Les Savy Fav. Total party times.
6. Playground Weekender - A ferry ride across the lovely Hawksbury River got us to the festival. There was way too much techno dance music and quite a lot of down time. But fancy dress Saturday totally made up for it. There was also some great performances from Cut Copy, You Am I, Manchoir, Betty Airs, and Architecture in Helsinki.
7. Soundwave - Some of the highlights include: Sum 41 ending their set with Still Waiting, In Too Deep, and Fat Lip; Slash's guitar solos making up for the Axl try hard vocals; Social Distortion playing Ring of Fire; New Found Glory's fan following; The Melvins two drummers; Boo saving the day during the Bronx; Fucked Up living up to their name.
8. Golden Plains - 3 months after MMF and we were back at the Meredith Supernatural Theatre, probably my favourite place in the whole world. The food as usually was awesome and the festival vibe fabulous. The Hold Steady, Belle & Sebastian, and Wavves were the stand out highlights. It was also great to be exposed to some new music from Sonny & The Sunsets, Justin Townes Earle, Os Mutantes, Pulled Apart By Horses, and Imelda May. We had a more chilled out road trip down to Victoria (compared with MMF) stopping at Echuca and Bendigo on the way down and Gundagai on the way back.
We have posted reviews and photos of all the festivals on Festival Ladies so you should probably check that out if you want a more detailed account of all the action.
The rest of summer has been filled with:
Right now I am back down in Gippsland. Been here for a week, only here for 4 weeks. I'm down here helping with the dewatering process, centrifuges, sludge, etc. I’m working Tues to Saturday from 4pm to midnight (argh). All I’m really doing is operating the centrifuges and loading sludge into trucks. Everything is very manual. The polymer system is quite temperamental and needs to be watched carefully to make sure it behaves. It’s hard to get the centrifuges working correctly and everyone is still learning what to do. So I take a lot of samples to try to work out what’s going on. Truck loading is completely manual, as in you have to stand there the whole time watching the sludge fall into the truck. Sometimes it can take 4 hours to load a truck!!! Usually it takes about 1.5-2 hours. Due to the high H2S it is not possible to get the truck driver to load it. So a lot of time is consumed loading trucks. They have 4 trucks a day, 7 days a week at the moment because they have a stockpile of solids in the Anaerobic Reactors. But we are making good progress getting the solid levels down and after that things should go back to normal-ish. Apart from that it’s all the usual chaos, lots of rain so lots of flows to the plant, the MBR foam monster came back this week to say hello (I think it missed me), and the citric acid tank ruptured spilling 15,000 litres. So lots of challenges still. Despite everything it’s actually pretty interesting to be here again. I'm learning about the industrial side of the process. I didn’t really know much about dewatering so it’s been a good learning curve.
It's less than 3 weeks now until I fly off to the USA for Em & Glenn's wedding. I'm leaving on the 16th April and flying straight to New York. I'm there for a week and a half and in that time is the Hen's weekend and wedding (on Monday 25th April). Then I am flying off to Portland on April 27th for a few days to catch up with Ciaran and Amy, and Gil and Wendy (as they are both working in Portland at the moment). After Portland my plans aren't definite. I might go straight to San Fran, might go to Yosemite for a few days, might meet up with Ashley somewhere. It's all a bit up in the air at the moment. I'm flying out of San Fran back to Sydney on Friday May 6th. I'm getting really excited the trip. I've never been to the USA before!
Woah... this ended up being really long... if you have got to here then you have done well.
Until next time (hopefully not in 3 months time).
Festivals... so many music festivals... All up I went to 8 music festivals this summer and dare I say it I feel like I might be suffering a bit of festival fatigue. It does make me sad to know that there are no more festivals on the horizon, although I think it's safe to say my body is grateful.
The festival recap:
1. Meredith Music Festival - Back in December I went to MMF. Feels like a lifetime ago now. The road trip down was hectic, with flooding closing the Hume Hwy from about Yass to Albury. Water on road became a common sight. The festival highlights were Jeff the Brotherhood, Those Darlins, and Custard. As well as the mud, wet weather gear, the make shift water slide and totem tennis championships. I also ate a lasagna pie in Wagga. Yes a pie filled with lasagna. Epic.
2. No Sleep Til - We went to No Sleep Til to celebrate Magda's birthday. Security confiscated our roll on deodorants and medicated creams but somehow missed the 1.5 litres of vodka we had hidden on our bodies. Frenzal Rhomb - we still love you even if you played a short set and had shit banter between songs. Parkway Drive - have by far the most crazy / dedicated fans. Gwar - most impressive costumes and sprayed blood and slime on the crowd. Silly fun times. The Descendents - pop punk songs with a nerdy edge played with such heart and passion.
3. Field Day - Goodbye 2010. Hello 2011. I don't go to too many dance festivals these days. Field Day like many of the dance festivals is trapped back somewhere in our early 20s. It was the Rapture, one of my favourite indie bands, and the opportunity to see hip hop legends Public Enemy that got us back to Field Day. And boy was it good to go back.
4. Big Day Out - We travelled on a mini bus from Cronulla and it was Australia Day. I've never felt more bogan / awesome in my life. Andrew WK totally brought the party, even with a circle pit. So much fun. There were really bad tattoos. And people in really bad matching tshirts. LCD Soundsystem were fantastic as always. Overall fun day out with friends.
5. Laneway - The Festival Ladies first ever dj set. The fabulous and totally crazy Les Savy Fav. Total party times.
6. Playground Weekender - A ferry ride across the lovely Hawksbury River got us to the festival. There was way too much techno dance music and quite a lot of down time. But fancy dress Saturday totally made up for it. There was also some great performances from Cut Copy, You Am I, Manchoir, Betty Airs, and Architecture in Helsinki.
7. Soundwave - Some of the highlights include: Sum 41 ending their set with Still Waiting, In Too Deep, and Fat Lip; Slash's guitar solos making up for the Axl try hard vocals; Social Distortion playing Ring of Fire; New Found Glory's fan following; The Melvins two drummers; Boo saving the day during the Bronx; Fucked Up living up to their name.
8. Golden Plains - 3 months after MMF and we were back at the Meredith Supernatural Theatre, probably my favourite place in the whole world. The food as usually was awesome and the festival vibe fabulous. The Hold Steady, Belle & Sebastian, and Wavves were the stand out highlights. It was also great to be exposed to some new music from Sonny & The Sunsets, Justin Townes Earle, Os Mutantes, Pulled Apart By Horses, and Imelda May. We had a more chilled out road trip down to Victoria (compared with MMF) stopping at Echuca and Bendigo on the way down and Gundagai on the way back.
We have posted reviews and photos of all the festivals on Festival Ladies so you should probably check that out if you want a more detailed account of all the action.
The rest of summer has been filled with:
- gigs - the highlights were Menomena and Deerhunter... performances that will stay with me for many months / years...
- parties - 30ths, engagement parties... they've all been really great excuses to catch up with people from school, uni, Shire, and Coles that I literally haven't seen for years.
- Randwick Races
- burritos and the Beach Burrito Company
- Wind in the Willows - who knew men dressed up as animals could be so entertaining!!!
- the cricket - pretty much the only time I've been proud to be half English!
- Carley's very cute dog called Marcel
- and brunch, brunch and more brunch.
Right now I am back down in Gippsland. Been here for a week, only here for 4 weeks. I'm down here helping with the dewatering process, centrifuges, sludge, etc. I’m working Tues to Saturday from 4pm to midnight (argh). All I’m really doing is operating the centrifuges and loading sludge into trucks. Everything is very manual. The polymer system is quite temperamental and needs to be watched carefully to make sure it behaves. It’s hard to get the centrifuges working correctly and everyone is still learning what to do. So I take a lot of samples to try to work out what’s going on. Truck loading is completely manual, as in you have to stand there the whole time watching the sludge fall into the truck. Sometimes it can take 4 hours to load a truck!!! Usually it takes about 1.5-2 hours. Due to the high H2S it is not possible to get the truck driver to load it. So a lot of time is consumed loading trucks. They have 4 trucks a day, 7 days a week at the moment because they have a stockpile of solids in the Anaerobic Reactors. But we are making good progress getting the solid levels down and after that things should go back to normal-ish. Apart from that it’s all the usual chaos, lots of rain so lots of flows to the plant, the MBR foam monster came back this week to say hello (I think it missed me), and the citric acid tank ruptured spilling 15,000 litres. So lots of challenges still. Despite everything it’s actually pretty interesting to be here again. I'm learning about the industrial side of the process. I didn’t really know much about dewatering so it’s been a good learning curve.
It's less than 3 weeks now until I fly off to the USA for Em & Glenn's wedding. I'm leaving on the 16th April and flying straight to New York. I'm there for a week and a half and in that time is the Hen's weekend and wedding (on Monday 25th April). Then I am flying off to Portland on April 27th for a few days to catch up with Ciaran and Amy, and Gil and Wendy (as they are both working in Portland at the moment). After Portland my plans aren't definite. I might go straight to San Fran, might go to Yosemite for a few days, might meet up with Ashley somewhere. It's all a bit up in the air at the moment. I'm flying out of San Fran back to Sydney on Friday May 6th. I'm getting really excited the trip. I've never been to the USA before!
Woah... this ended up being really long... if you have got to here then you have done well.
Until next time (hopefully not in 3 months time).