party

I’m not dead…

… I just couldn’t be arsed posting any more! It takes at least an hour to write in my journal then get it up here on the t’internetz. So posting from now on will be very sporadic.

Latest update is really about last weekend as I was up in Beechworth for my mate Jezza’s Dad’s 70th birthday shindig. Oh what a great weekend that was! Essentially it was filled with beer, BBQ (this was a full slap up including the biggest Barramundi I’ve seen, and helped prepare, along with meat and everything else), tunes, bonfire, mega awesome proper (and legal) fireworks (talking a trailer used to set these boys off!), sleeping outdoors, successfully learning various ways to open beer bottles, visiting the local brewery twice, night time Frisbee Tron style, dancing…. gah loads of awesome stuff. I didn’t want to leave really, well it looks like for my farm work activities I’ll be going up there soon enough. 🙂

Anyway here is a video of me waking up on the Saturday morning ready for party times, good few photos on the Facebook’s.

In other news I’ve been working doing the usual IT stoof, drinking beer and watching Breaking Bad.

Winter is coming…

Today I simply couldn’t be arsed.

Nat and Jean were off to an engagement party which I refused an invite. The two major things that happened today were getting 3 crates of free bottles from a member of the homebrew club and then watching 9 episodes of Game of Thrones. Everyone has either seen this or heard about it and now I’m one of the former, it is very good I must say. 🙂

[I stayed up until nearly 2am with sporadic hits of thunder & lightning which only added to the atmosphere of the show ;-)]

Bikini’s, Booze and Beats

Went for a nice cycle to the homebrew store down in Yarraville for my grains and yeast, got some advice from the guys and had another free sample of beer (had to be done). My hops should arrive Monday but it’s a public holiday so most likely not, we are supposed to be wakeboarding then too. I cycled over to Moonee Ponds Creek as its a better cycle home, less harsh hills.

Chilled at the house for a bit then left for town with Nat as her cousin was taking part in a bikini contest at a fitness exhibition. Haha, that sounds kinda funny but it’s the truth. I didn’t get to meet her though (awwww) as it was $30 to get in and I wasn’t prepared to spend that at a body building event, that’s beer/food money. You should have seen some of the folk walking about there, tanned so much they looked black and bulked so much they were like an Aboriginal Hulk.

I wandered up and down the Yarra river, got some sushi at Southern Cross station then met Rose at her place where we would meet Nat later. Hung out with Rose until Nat arrived (her cousin got 3rd place) then we all headed back to our place where I met Rowan, a friend of Nat’s, then things got messy… We ended staying up until after 5am drinking, dancing, discussion many things and listening to music by DJ Dan. Uggghh.

St Kilda Festival

St. Kilda Festival today and mercifully the temperature was continuing to fall during the day, a nice sea breeze also helped. This festival is probably one of the biggest in Victoria, if not Australia, with the website stating between 300-400K people attending, as it’s free that makes sense.

One of the main entrances to the festival

One of the main entrances to the festival

The main stage is right next to the beach and like most festivals there are stalls, food, entertainment, etc. We wanted to go on the catapult ride but it was like $30 per person, total rip off. All roads in and around the festival are closed to traffic so walking around is easy peasy.

Main Stage

Main Stage

We ended up in a Royal Legion type of pub so didn’t actually see much of the music outside, drinks here were cheaper and the atmosphere relaxed. Around 10-ish me, Nat and Louie left the festival, got some beer and a pizza and chilled at home for a bit. I managed a slightly intoxicated Skype chat with my Dad and niece Emma (who’s birthday it was, Happy Birthday!) which was great. Hopefully get out on my bike tomorrow if the heat stays away.

Blagging our way yet again

Today was Benjamin’s Birthday Party, Monday is his actual birthday, so we went to Pizza Hut for lunch. Thankfully there wasn’t too many kids about, about a handful of his mates were there exchanging gifts. Stuffed my face with pizza (as expected), so much so that I didn’t need tea later on. Chatted to Ben about interesting business ventures before we scoffed some Christmas/Birthday cake and headed home.

I left everyone to it as Benjamin was entertaining his friends, I met Randy at ‘Wudaoying’ hutong. He nom’d on some pulled pork at ‘Stuff’d’ whilst I nursed a pint. Thomas wasn’t his usual happy self today, think he has caught the bahumbug spirit. Leaving here we headed to a cool looking set of buildings I had spied on my walk to the pub on Thursday. This compound is called ‘MOMA‘ and it’s a collection of 70’s era future looking buildings, connected by walkways and has enclosed amenities like a school, shop, cinema, etc. Everything you need under one roof, kind of thing. We weren’t quite sure if we were allowed in but we sauntered by the gate unchallenged.

Wish I got a panoramic here

Wish I got a panoramic here

Had a good explore around the place ultimately trying to figure out how to get to the walkways above. Taking a step of bravado and stupidity we entered the underground carpark and found ourselves in the elevator of one of the buildings. The majority of the buildings here are apartments and we realised this as we checked a few floors to access the bridge. A young guy was manning the desk so Randy simply asked him how we get to the bridge, he then passed us to another security guy who then took us to an elevator in Tower 1 and left us to our own devices.

Haha! I can’t believe how many times we have done something like this and got away with it. Awesome. So here we were wandering around this super swish club for the rich, undisturbed (next to no-one was here). Passing over one of the bridges we noticed a swimming pool beneath us, what the hell, pimpin’. The view up here was great too, pity the pictures we had were shite. We were able to walk around each building via the bridges, the further we got from our starting point the less furnished and lit everything got, eventually leading to darkness. We couldn’t get down in the last building so we had to walk back. What a fun experience that was. 🙂

Beer Keg Brewpub

Beer Keg Brewpub

Leaving the compound we headed to 8-bit bar but via the brewpub we had noticed on Wednesday. We sampled their only beer on tap (pale ale), it was O-K. I poked my nose in the back to see their equipment and chat to the brewer. 8-bit was only a few minutes away so we were soon sat down with a pint playing Mario Kart 64. 😀 This bar is pretty cool, it has a MegaDrive 2, SNES and N64 with a bunch of games to play, so we stayed here the rest of the night playing Bomberman, Streets of Rage 2, Street Fighter, Donkey Kong, etc. Fun times. 🙂

Then late subway home and bed.

[UPDATED: Randy’s photo’s]

Christmas has arrived

This morning I was conscripted to setup not one but two Christmas tree’s, it’s finally arriving to the household! It was a bit of a pain in the arse though, takes longer to set these fake things up than it does to decorate them. I use ‘decorate’ loosely, my skills in this area are poor at best and I was set a greater challenge as what little decorations there was, were fairly shite. Haha. Bahumbug eh? 😉

Scoffed some noodle lunch and headed off to class. Did a bit more work this time and I also revised the textbook’s word index, remembering most of them which is cool. Kinda crazy how the pin yin of the character can be exactly the same as a completely different character, this happens more so than not. It seems the only way you can tell is in the context of how it’s written or spoken. English really is a piece of piss in comparison, learn the alphabet and your sorted.

On the way home I nom’d some baozi and bought more beer to share with Ben over dinner (he wanted to save it until tomorrow and paid me for it, nice guy). Benjamin was late home as usual, I forgot to mention yesterday that he lost one of his front teeth, looks like a ruffian now. Tomorrow is his Birthday party at Pizza Hut so I’ll be OD’ing on pizza at lunch time. Hopefully it’s not all pepperoni…

So that’s how hot water is made

Happy St Andrews day! I didn’t really know much about the true celebration of this day if I’m perfectly honest, thanks to Wikipedia for getting me up to speed. Also waking up to the news of the air disaster in Glasgow wasn’t great.

Anyway Adventure Times! I met Randy and Suzy at the most North-Westerly subway station, ‘Anheqiao’, to hike the hills of ‘Baiwangshan Forest Park‘. Randy had brought a bunch of snacks, I had brought two bags of peanuts (one bag I pretty much ate myself, too nom).

Military monument remembering the good old days

Military monument remembering the good old days

How we entered the hills was via a campus of military establishments as a military academy was nearby (the entrance to that place was oh so grand), this didn’t seem to be an issue though. We definitely didn’t take the official entrance but we found a path that took us up to the small temple on top. The views, especially thanks to the great weather, were fantastic. Beijing is so flat but surrounded by mountains. We munched on the snack horde here.

From our observation point we noticed two buildings of interest; a steam factory that had a natural garden of sorts on it’s roof and the other a very big and old derelict building. Heading back down we investigated.

The steam factory was closest and when we approached a guy came out looking like he’d just had a shower. “It might be a bath house” said Suzy, “let’s take a look.”. Her and Randy strolled in. OK. I went in after them…

Where hot water is made

Where hot water is made

This is not a bath house, we’ve just walked into a hot water factory. This place is humid, active and smells distinctly off-limits. What happened next though was brilliant. A dude popped out wondering what we are doing, but instead of us being asked to leave Suzy started chatting to him and we got an unofficial tour of the factory! Haha. Brilliant. It was really interesting too. I’d mentioned before that the heating in houses (via radiators, etc) is only activated in winter and controlled by the government, well this is one such place where the hot water is made and distributed. We were shown where the water gets pumped in via salt to remove calcium (and stuff) then heated to over 70C in big boilers (powered by gas and pumping out ridiculously high temperatures) and then pumped back out to homes. Impressive stuff really. Thanking him for the impromptu tour we left for the derelict building. (Going outside we were confronted by about 8 security guards, thankfully they weren’t there for us, a bit unnerving at first though!).

The old building was big, about 4 floors, filled with rubbish and furniture, possibly and old medical facility and we could get to the roof which was cool. Seems like such a waste just rotting away, if anything I’m surprised it hasn’t been torn down. After our snooping about we went back to the subway as food was very much required (it was getting dark and cold too).

Massive pizza’s were mentioned so we went to the ‘Tube Station‘ restaurant right beside the ‘Workers Stadium’. It was busy but we passed the time by playing badminton in the courtyard until our number was called. I broke one racket which Suzy “repaired” with selotape. Wasn’t pretty.

When we got in an ordered holy crap they weren’t wrong when they said the pizza’s were big! The 24″ meat feast arrived and it consumed most of the table with it’s salivating size, oh yes! Think I had five slices of this bad boy, it was very nom and cheap too (85RMB/8.50GBP each inc. 3 pints each).

At this point the subway wasn’t an option home so we decided to keep drinking. A beer (and other alcohol) shop had opened up nearby (Happy Beer House I think) so we went to check it out. The prices and the selection of beer was good but atmosphere not so much, Randy comparing it to a hospital waiting room (no tunes or people he wasn’t far wrong). Chat was good though and the night was winding down for me here, especially when two young American numpties joined us with cringe worthy conversation and attitude. I was done.

I’d headed off to get a taxi but Randy and Suzy had managed to get rid of our new “friends” so we regrouped and dug deeper into ‘Sanlitun’. Grabbed a beer at ‘Heaven’, Randy got a pie at the pie shop, checked out the Christmas tree construction and had tequila slammers in a bar. I was in no mood for partying though, Party Dan had left hours ago and it was past 3AM.

Randy called it a night along with myself and I got a taxi home (thanks to Randy’s skills of walking in front of the taxi, sometimes they don’t stop). 62RMB/6.20GBP home, not bad.

In search of a Doo

Benjamin’s Dad stayed only for the weekend last week but will be returning again tomorrow night. I thought I would grab a few beers to introduce his taste-buds too at ‘Heaven Supermarket’ today. He told me that a US journalist based in South Korea was so fed up with the choice of beer available there that he decided to do something about it. He took a leap of faith, quit his job and invested in a pub serving craft beer. Now he has three establishments across Seoul, just goes to show good beer is in demand everywhere, whether punters know it or not.

Turns out I was too early for ‘Heaven’ (hoho) so just just headed straight for my next destination, ‘Great Leap’. I enjoyed a pint and a burger at the reduced price, yas and nom. Chatted to Enda and asked about New Year celebrations and what he does, not much apparently Chinese New Year is where it’s at. I’ll miss that. I mentioned ‘Hogmanay‘ party and he said he’ll ask a few of his mates about it and see if there is anything going. I want to wear my kilt! (Randy had found a ceilidh this weekend but it was too soon and quite expensive) New Year is still very much a Western celebration here so I won’t be partaking in any Chinese traditions.

I had a couple of stouts, observed the staff changing the beer list and overhead grunts of “Guh! Guuh! Guh!” “Woah! Wooah! Woah!” “Tsuh! Tsuh!” as two guys were practising Chinese. Was quite annoying actually!

At home I played a wee bit outside with Benjamin and Randy. He had lots of homework in the evening so we didn’t get to do anything. Need to think of weekend plans…

Old People Celebration Day! (+ninja’s)
Benjamin attempting to ride his RC car

Benjamin attempting to ride his RC car

This morning me and Benjamin played outside with his remote-controlled car, it’s massive. I didn’t get a go, unfortunately, but it was fun setting challenges. I need to get a shot though. The rest of the afternoon was reading and playing.

For tea, oh me, we had a type of Xian Bing (what the Chinese would call a pie). Think of it like a stuffed (beef/veg), circular, oily naan bread. Delicious. I ate about 8 of these where 4 would have been enough. This is another recipe I need to get.

The camera loves you!

The camera loves you!

After food we went outside, but not to play badminton. Yu said there was a party going on for all the old people at the North gate of the complex. As we got closer I could hear music (not unusual as they play music for the aerobics) and then entering the site I was greeted by a stage, lights and older woman prancing about like a catwalk. What is this?!

All different kinds of song's were sung

All different kinds of song’s were sung

As it progressed it got better and better, including an older woman performing martial arts with a sword, various forms of singing (including a security guard), sign language singing and tai ji. The best though was the 3 kids doing crazy martial arts (all kinds of flips, kicks, spins, sword play, etc – all on concrete) and their Master hitting a guy on various parts of the body with sticks (one flew off and tore the stage background). The Master then had his team, including some security guards, hold sticks whilst he punched and kicked them to bits (leaving one security guard without his hat as it went flying off). It was all highly entertaining! 😀

Sword play - terrible photo, then my camera died

Sword play – terrible photo, then my camera died

So when did my camera decide to pack in? After a couple of photo’s, so I missed all of the good stuff! Gah. 😦 Overall though I think this display is a celebration of age and showing others that older people can still look good and are more than capable. I really enjoyed it.