beceh

What else has been going on?

Our friend Alice from Japan came home to Melbourne for a visit for a few weeks. She stayed at our place the weekend after the funeral and then we went to a gig with her the following weekend. It was great to see her again. I can hardly believe it’s been a whole year since we last saw her in Osaka. We spent almost all of last August with her after we left Yokkaichi. I’ve missed catching up with her every other month or so, but we regularly chat online. Good to see her in person though! She hadn’t been home since just before the pandemic started, so she had a lot of people to catch up with and wanting to see her and exhausted herself being social non-stop for two weeks.


We’ve been to a couple of gigs. Before last week I honestly don’t even remember the last time I went to a gig. It’s been a long time. We saw Gang of Youths (Greta Ray & Middle Kids supporting) last Saturday night at Rod Laver Arena with Alice. Lots of fun. I’ve wanted to see GoY live for aaaaages, so was pretty stoked. Good show. I would love to see them in a smaller venue though. Big stadium shows just take away that layer of something magical. Or maybe it was just the drunk dudes behind me that took that away…


We bumped into my friend Mike from work afterwards - he’d been to the Sigur Ros gig next door at Margaret Court Arena. Ended up having a beer and late-night ramen with him after Alice peaced. It was the first time Keenan met Mike. Keenan’s dropped a few comments over the past couple of months that made me think he felt a bit weird/threatened by how much I chat with Mike. He said something again on Saturday and I said, “you seriously need to meet him.” After meeting him I said, “do you see what I mean? No reason to be threatened.” I like Mike, I really do, he’s a good bloke and I enjoy talking all things teacher and writer with him, but I am not physically/romantically attracted to him in the slightest. I talk to him like I talk to all my other friends. There is zero flirting. Meeting him and seeing us actually interact seems to have put Keenan’s latent insecurity to rest for now, thankfully. 


Our second gig was down in Gippsland, in Meeniyan on Friday night. Elisa organised it. Liz Stringer. I’d never even heard of her until Elisa asked if we wanted to go to this gig. We drove down to Ian’s parents' place near Trafalgar on Friday afternoon. Timed it well - got there about 2 mins after Elisa, Ian and the kids got there. I’d been there before, but it’s been a while. I think the last time was either Ian’s brother’s 21st birthday or when Ian got Aussie citizenship. Either one was in 2009. It must have been Simon’s 21st. I’m pretty sure that was later in the year. Anyhoo. It was dark by the time we got there, so couldn’t show Keenan the lovely views.

Ros made us play a very, very long game of Pass the Parcel. She’d made it. She’d also forgotten how many layers there were. We kept thinking it was the last layer, but no, there’s more! It was made by a 5-year-old so the prize was a tiny bit of cardboard painted like a rainbow.

The actual gig was great. In the town hall, BYO drinks and nibbles, all table seats. Really enjoyed it. Good music, great atmosphere. Would like to go to more there, and also visit Meeniyan in daylight. I like Gippsland. Very pretty corner of Australia that I have not explored much.

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School is plodding along. Only 4 weeks left of term. Weird. It’s going fast. A few weeks ago I was asked to pick up a couple of Humanities classes, so I’d be dropping my Tutoring responsibilities completely, but so far nothing has actually come of that. Apparently, it’s still in the pipes, but who honestly knows at this school? The teacher who I’m meant to take over from is finishing up at the end of this week and I still haven’t heard anything official. I’m not going to be very impressed if they chuck a CRT in there for the rest of term when I am here ready, or also not very impressed if they finally get themselves organised on Friday for me to start Monday.

My classes have been going fine. We just did an assessment, and while I haven’t actually properly marked them yet, from glancing through I think they did really well. Mike said his class didn’t do very well, and he had a look through my EAL students’ papers (I was making copies of them in the staffroom for my EAL helper) and he said theirs were much better than a lot of his kids, and that included four of my lowest kids. I’m really happy with how well they did, even my kids who normally struggle to write a sentence wrote a whole paragraph and I just have fuzzy teacher-happy feelings. Unlike Mike, I actually looked at all my kids’ drafts to make sure they were on the right track ( I don’t see the point of forcing them to do a draft and then them not getting any feedback on it, especially at Year 7) and happily for me all but one (out of 45) was actually on the right track. I didn’t do any heavy marking/revising on their drafts, just underlined a few misspelt words and pointed out of they were missing anything major from the criteria. Sometimes I worry that I’m not a very good teacher, but seeing all these great assignments made me feel like I must be doing something right, especially seeing the massive improvements from my lowest kids between this assignment and their one last term.


We’re finally getting our pay rise this week. It’s a whopping $20/week for me after tax, so amazing. We get our backpay this pay as well (from January-now), which is about $420 in my pocket after a bunch is taken out for tax. Victorian teachers got a pretty shite new agreement. 1% raise every 6 months. My hourly rate went from $37.something to $38.something. Laughable in the face of current inflation rates.

I’m neglecting a tonne of stuff.

 Nick and I went to the John Butler Trio gig in Melbourne on Friday night. It was awesome. They just looked like they were having so much fun up there on stage. The music was really good, they played a great variety of songs both old and new - I think 'Ocean' might have gotten the biggest cheer, I was so glad he played it, I love that song. I also really liked one of their new ones 'Revolution' but it's not out yet, so I can't listen to it again. 

You know a band/artist isn't miming when they forget the lyrics and start going 'F*** me f*** me f*** me I forgot the lyrics again" or start singing "plug in the bass plug in the bass plug in the bass" and the bassist is laughing his head off. Yeah. 


The only bad things - other people in the crowd. There were some real idiots who were totally pissed and were just bleargh. And the 6ft 4 guy and his 6 ft 3 mate and their other 6 ft 2 friend and his 6ft girlfriend.... I know they can't help their height, but well.... I couldn't see John Butler 3/4s of the time because of them. And they were standing right in front of a pack of girls who would have been lucky to be 5ft.... granted those girls probably wouldn't have been able to see anywhere but right near the front, but standing behind those blokes was probably the worst place. 
Yeah so I decided to become really rich and have my own private concerts with no drunk morons and tall people at the back haha. 




This is the view I would have had if I were a few inches taller :-) 

But anyway it was an awesome gig :-D 

Had a few adventures before we got on their though - as anyone in Melbourne would attest to, Friday was a stinking hot day and as such about a quarter of the people who turned up to the gig were wearing thongs (including yours truly - I hadn't really thought about it...) but unfortunately The Palace has a very strict "No thongs/flip flops" policy.... which was stated nowhere on the ticket or the website where you buy the tickets.... only on a piece of paper that has been printed out and bluetacked to the door. 

So yeah, everyone in thongs was denied entry and told to go and buy shoes if they wanted to get in. By the time me and Nick got there it was just after 9pm.... and yeah, not really any shops were open? I saw a few guys walking back holding sneakers and asked them where they got them - Target, but it had just closed. Buggeration. Nick was fine he had shoes on, but yeah, silly me in my thongs. So we kept walking, looking in dispair at all the shoe shops that were shut, joined forces with a gang of other angry thong-wearers and finally stumbled across Big W at QV and bought ourselves some cheap sneakers and socks and raced back to The Palace, half the city away.

So we have no idea what the support act was like, as we were traipsing over the city looking for an open shoe shop while he was playing.

I had a look online and some people actually missed out on the gig altogether because they couldn't find shoes. $50 ticket down the drain because of the wrong footwear!!! So glad Big W was still open otherwise I would have missed out as well!

I don't know the no thong rule their is a safety thing or a statement thing - if it's safety it's a bit stupid when you look at some of the highheels I saw some girls wearing..... WAY worse than thongs. 

But anyway. John Butler actually said something about it too and how he thought it was stupid "tyranny comes from all sides" I think is what he said, and he apologised for any inconvenience it cause. 

It would be even funnier if it was a Xavier Rudd gig - he doesn't even wear shoes. Ever. 
Enough of footwear talk. 

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Earlier that day we met Dad and Jen for a belated Christmas lunch (Dad was up in QLD with his fathers family for Xmas) at Wongs in Elsternwick which is a restaurant that Mum and Dad used to go to a lot about 30-25 years ago. Apparently it hasn't changed much haha. ANyway it was good, had a really good time and the food was yum. Had a bbq tea down at the beach with Elisa & Ian and Rachel and Ian & Rachel's mum which was cool.