To be honest, I didn’t really enjoy the first Chinese New Year Twilight Parade in Sydney, although I’ve enjoyed the parades previously.
It all seemed like it was just the daytime parade at night, as opposed to being a twilight parade. And by that I mean a parade which made the “most” of the evening and the capacity for lights to bring a parade to “life”.
And it wasn’t helped by the fact that it started late, quite considerably late, losing many of the benefits of the twilight period, as opposed to the dark.
I also found myself crushed at one point when a firetruck needed access through the crowd.
Some of the crowd watching the Chinese New Year parade on the steps of the World Tower in Sydney.
The crush was all a bit too much for me, so I headed off to the pub for a while, while Kate continued to watch the parade from the front row.
Unfortunately the parade was all a little dragged out, with often large gaps between the different floats. We both ended up a little bored, to be honest.
There were some nice bits though, such as running into a woman with whom I work – Chinese heritage – who I chatted with for a while, and seeing some other familiar faces, such as my local newsagent.
I also thought the fireworks were quite good.
But overall, it could have been a better experience.
Public art, thoughtful words from the Pigram Brothers, and the perfect place to check your hair and make-up before heading to The Court Hotel in Perth, Western Australia.I took my first work-related phone call from the Eastern States at about seven o’clock this morning. Even though it was in my diary, and I’d planned for it, I was still fairly bleary eyed. Still, I think I managed to make sense of it all.
I think I also made sense when I took a call the other day from The East where the person on the end of the phone hadn’t quite realised there was a three-hour time-zone difference between Melbourne and Perth. “So it’s 10.30 in the morning?” the person on the other end of the phone said, to which I replied, “No, it’s 4.30 in the morning”.
Three hours time difference between Sydney and Perth shouldn’t make a difference but it does. And I was reminded tonight of why, at the end of 2004, I decided to return to Sydney, instead of staying in Perth: it’s the time-zone difference. On paper, you wouldn’t think two or three hours makes a difference, but it certainly does.
The work stuff you can live with. That’s why you get the big bucks. But a three hour time zone gap makes the biggest difference when it comes to maintaining relationships with family and friends. You arrive home from work, and you think it would be terrific to ring up your family and friends, and then suddenly you realise they’re going to bed. Even though many of my friends back home are night owls, you still don’t want to call too late. And besides, there’s a difference between calling someone at seven and calling someone at ten.
Sometimes when you go to the theatre, and there’s a standing ovation, you feel as though the audience was just being polite. There’s a legendary performer on stage, and they’ve done a good show, and so some hard core fans in the front row will jump to their feet, and through peer pressure, often reluctantly the rest of the audience will follow suit. That wasn’t the case tonight at the Sydney premiere of “Driving Miss Daisy”.
I only have vague memory of the movie from about twenty years ago. Before the movie, of course, there was a play, and that play is now back on stage again in Australia, starring Angela Lansbury, James Earl Jones and Boyd Gaines.
Not having much of a memory of the movie didn’t matter so much, as I had a vague idea before seeing the play tonight that it was about the thirty-year friendship between an older Jewish woman and a black American man.
In the background, we see the human rights movement of the 1960s transform the United States from a place where black men were often hanged by the KKK, and where synagogues were bombed, into something more modern, and hopefully more human.
Through their years together, the lead characters also both undergo a transformation. The culmination of which is the line “you’re my best friend” delivered by Angela Lansbury’s character when she tells the character played by James Earl Jones. I had more than a tear in my eye when that line was delivered. I also had a tear in my eye at the end of the play when the James Earl Jones character feeds the physically incapacitated character played by Angela Lansbury.
Seconds later the audience was on its feet in rapturous applause. The response of the audience was genuine. Nothing contrived here. Best of all? They didn’t milk it. They came on stage, received the standing ovation, and then made their way gracefully off the stage.
It was a good story, well told, and with wonderful performances. I’d highly recommend it.
Even though I only discovered him about six months ago, I’ve become a bit of a fan of Morgan Evans, a country singer from Newcastle. And when I say country, I really mean contemporary country/rock. I’d doubt there’s any redbacks on the toilet seat in his repertoire.
“I’m going back to Nashville with literally just a backpack and a bunch of CDs”, he told us, in keeping with tonight’s “low-key” show at Erskineville (part of Sydney Fringe). There was just him and two others on the back of a truck, performing in front of probably no more than 100 people.
The show was made up of largely new songs, and though unfamiliar to many people, I noticed one woman in the front row who sang along to virtually every track, even the new ones. In between, he chatted about the “risk” involved in the decision to move to Nashville for a year, including a busted relationship. After Nashville and after last week’s Gympie Muster, thirty minutes on the back of a truck in the inner city of Sydney must have been quite a contrast all round. A terrific show.
The crowd watches as Morgan Evans plays Erskineville as part of Sydney Fringe
Morgan Evans plays Erskineville as part of Sydney Fringe
Morgan Evans plays Erskineville as part of Sydney Fringe
If you’re planning a visit to Uppsala and you like things to be open, Monday probably isn’t the day you should visit. In the back of my mind, I knew most museums and galleries were probably going to be closed, but I headed off anyway. The train from Stockholm takes about an hour, and costs you a bit extra, not otherwise covered by the travel card. Along the way, I also discovered you can use your Stockholm travel card all the way to Arlanda Airport, but again you need to pay an extra 75k for the privilege, and which still works out to be slightly cheaper than catching the airport bus.
Uppsala, SwedenUppsala, Sweden
On arriving at Uppsala I was pleasantly surprised. Even though there is a rather strange statue which greets you at the train station, Uppsala is a really lovely little city. You can tell the strong influence of the university, with lots of young people wandering around, with the large numbers of bicycles, and with a multicultural feel to the place. You can also feel the strong sense of history, with the many older buildings.
If, like me, you have grown up Catholic, you can usually pick a Catholic church from its architecture, and, as I walked into the Lutheran Cathedral in the centre of town, I knew instantly it was built prior to the reformation. Hey, there is even a modern statue of Mary! In contrast, the nearby Catholic Cathedral is modern and spartan, reflecting changing times. The graveyard too, is worth visiting. Over the course of several hours, I really enjoyed wandering around, enjoying the sunshine, snacking on some fruit I bought from a stall, and taking photographs.
Maria at Uppsala Cathedral
Last night, the sunset was absolutely stunning as you will see from some of the photographs I snapped on my phone. What is it they say about the right camera in the right place.
Stockholm SunsetStockholm Sunset
The only downside to the day was discovering one of my all time favourite bars in Stockholm, Victorias has closed. I have been there on many occasions, with many fond nights of their schlager nights on Monday. Talk about disappointment.
One of many things of childhood I’ve never grown out of is the ability to sleep. I’m one of those people who can fall asleep at the drop of a hat. I can do a micro-nap on a bus from the City to Surry Hills. A couple of years ago, I even had a brief nap during a work-related conference call. It was an afternoon conference call on a day where I’d been at work since about four o’clock in the morning. I took the call at home and napped briefly during the call, I’m ashamed to say. I reckon if I lived in Japan, I could easily be one of those commuters who could sleep standing up.
While sometimes the cause of these mini-sleeps is not having enough sleep the night before, and other times it’s physical exhaustion (the result of a hard day’s work), tonight it was a case of thinking too much. I walked in the door, made a quick phone call, checked some personal email, and fell asleep on the couch.
I’m working reasonably hard at the moment, with quite a few major projects taking up a lot of time and energy. And on top of that, we’re in the midst of an election, for which I have a couple of important roles to play.
I’ve been espousing my theory the last few days to whoever will listen that Labor will be returned next weekend not because of anything either side of politics has done, or hasn’t done, but because of sense of the “inevitability” of infrequent change in Australian political history.
If you look at the list of election results on Wikipedia, a reasonably consistent trend emerges. If you exclude the first twenty years or so after Federation (on the basis of the extraordinary factor of the First World War, and as our democracy began to settle down into a pattern of consistency), you see very few changes of government.
The longest period of consistent government was, of course, between 1949 and 1972 when the Coalition was returned consistently.
And since then, we’ve only had governments change in 1972, 1975, 1983, 1996 and 2007.
What’s interesting, though, is when you look at the results of the first election after that change of government. Consistently there’s a swing away from the government, but not enough for them to actually lose the election. In 1974, Whitlam lost one seat and in 1977 Fraser lost one seat. 1984 is a little different because the house was increased from 125 seats to 148 seats, but still there was a swing away from Hawke, but not enough for him to lose government, and then in 1998, Howard lost nine seats, but never lost government.
This slowness to change could be a factor of the two-party system, or perhaps it’s part of the Australian electoral psyche that everyone deserves a second chance, no matter how good or bad they are?
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:| Aren’t they supposed to have tonnes of lanterns and cool stuff like that? And float them on a river? Because that would be good. But, I agree, the normal Lunar New Year thing is pretty boring. Not nearly as good as Actual Normal New Year ;)
:| Aren’t they supposed to have tonnes of lanterns and cool stuff like that? And float them on a river? Because that would be good. But, I agree, the normal Lunar New Year thing is pretty boring. Not nearly as good as Actual Normal New Year ;)