g'day melbourne

so i finished up in the great city that was adelaide last friday. i truly enjoyed that one. the picture at left is in adelaide at victoria square which is pretty much smack dab in the middle of the city. i ended up seeing kelley stoltz play at the grace emily on thursday night like i had planned... i had a chat with the guy afterwards only to find out he grew up in detroit, his grandparents lived about 2.5 minutes from my house in west bloomfield. real small world. needless to say that was kind of a funny conversation to have...


bring on melbourne!

the place has got style, there is no doubt about it. the architecture is all very contemporary and just the overall motif of the entire city is very distinctive-- from apartment buildings to the infamous federation square (pictured at left). i think that part of this comes from the fact that the place wasnt settled until 1835, with major changes to the actual landscape and such coming around 1839. so compared to most standards, the place is VERY young. now, becasue of this, i feel the stylistic elements of the city parrallel this idea very closely-- to a point where i think in about 30 years or so, we will look back on melbourne and see it is very dated (stylistically). It is pleasing to the eye right now though!

i arrived at the spencer street bus station on friday evening in the pouring rain. most of the time this would really suck, however, i was quite pleased to have the opportunity to tote my brand new rain jacket that i picked up before the trip.

bryan and i set up an interesting scheme to meet up once we both got in to town, but oddly enough those emails never made it from me to bryan-- which makes the way that we did meet up a stroke of pure luck.

coincidence? probably not.

i was just walking down the street after noticing bryan was late for what i thought was our 7pm meeting time, and i hear my name being shouted from across the way. sure enough, it was bryan across the street and we picked up right where we left off.

we went out in st. kilda that night with a friend we had made that night at the hostel named karim. we really havent been hitting the bars that much so far on the trip, so we made this a big night. needless to say, it was a good one.

i kind of picked things up the next day from where i left them the last time i was in melbourne. i had missed a lof of the museums last time around so my interest was primarily in seeing the national gallery of victoria (ngv) and also the australia center for contemporary art-- both in the city. bryan opted to check out the stanley kubrick exhibit in federation square instead. i was particularly impressed with the contemporary design and sculpture exhibit at the ngv but also a lot of the temporary exhibits they had-- one in particular on the evolution of contemporary design in furniture. now of all things-- the evolution of design in contemporary furniture is not something you catch every day, and as you can imagine there were some pretty far out concepts. i tried to snap a picture of this one couch made of only cardboard and i thought the ngv federales were going to have my head for even attempting such a feat.

to change gears a bit now... the "volvo great ocean race" (haha ironic name) is a sailing competition that goes around the world. the current leg of the journey had the teams stopping in melbourne believe it or not! the abn-amro 1 boat was slated to arrive from cape town saturday evening and we thought it may be cool to see. turns out we were correct-- it was awesome. these guys had been sailing from south africa for some 6,000 miles and they pulled in to melbourne to an anxious crowd of spectators and a whole sleu of media people and champagne. what was even cooler was that in order to dock the boat safely in the docklands at melbourne, they had to pass under the bolte bridge. now that seems like an easy task, but for these monstrous 20+ meter long sailing vessels, the main mast was too tall to pass under the bridge so they had to effectively tilt the boat at a ridiculous angle to get it under the bridge. incredible to see! photo at left is the abn-amro 1 team celebrating with champagne as they rolled in to melbourne leading the race.

now as bryan and i are on this whole "classy" sports kick, we immediately jump to the australian open-- also taking place in melbourne at the moment. the whole feat of scoring top notch seats (row 8!) for FREE i will hand to bryan who effortlessly orchestrated the whole event. i just played along. i mean, the thought of seeing a tennis match sounded cool, but i wasnt losing sleep over the thought of missing out on it while in melbourne. needless to say we got a day pass for two solid matches (both were american as well)-- lindsay davenport/svetlana kuznetsova and also the andy roddick/marcos baghdatis (photo below) upset match. i was a newcomer, so the rules and such were new to me but by days end i was really in to the stuff.

i have to admit, when roddick lost i felt pretty damn good for the unseeded greek dude that beat him. it was a pretty classic case of the underdog seriously whooping ass and being classy about it. at the end of the match he stood at one side of the court to have (of all people) jim courier interview him. courier asked baghdatis if he would be watching the match that evening to see who he would play later in the week.

baghdatis looked at him and replied in kind of broken english.. "my coach will watch the game tonight, i must go to bed with my girlfriend.."

hahaha i thought it was great. and the jovial aussie crowd couldnt agree any more as they burst in to laughter and applause.

i am sitting here now, having just arrived in sydney fresh off the bus from melbourne. it was an overnight ride, and i didnt get much sleep at all-- but it sure does feel quite nice to be back in the city i once called "home."