North To The Ocean, Harder Than The Sun

Hello World.

The past few weeks have been pretty full, but very fun and eventful!

I moved out of home for a few weeks, staying with my friend Jez. I didn't see him very often because of our work hours but when we hung out it was good times. The freedom of not having to tell family members everything I was doing was pretty nice!
While there I went and saw Soul Riot play and got to hang out with those guys too, so that was pretty fun. Check out a video of them I filmed of their song Animal:

Soul Riot - Animal


Dad and I went to this thing called Steamfest and had an awesome time chasing trains around all weekend. For photos of those shenanigans, follow this link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=89972&id=544876388

Yesterday was my Graduation! I was very pleased to receive my certificate and got to wear a fancy getup and everything. For photos of that, follow this link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=89963&id=544876388

But yes, things have been pretty alright lately!

Function Is The Key

Just a few short things.

First things first, I've changed the template of my blog. I'm not THAT happy with it but it'll say like this until I can find a better one.

My work hours have changed again, so if you want me to do stuff with you it will be hard. I now work on Monday, Thursday and Friday nights till midnight. A little annoying but that's the way it is.

When I was in Melbourne I bought one of these little friends:

I finally found a place online to buy film for it too (thanks ebay!) so I'll hopefully be taking photos with it soon.
The button on the top that opens the shutter doesn't work, but when the camera flicks open the shutter opens and closes. A little annoying but I'll deal with it. The camera only cost me $5, which is 1/2 the cost of a roll of film for it. The film is 110 film and comes in a cartridge. Pretty fun.

I've been working my way through my Monty Python DVD's quite steadily and have been enjoying them very much. I've also had my first kick around to get ready for another season of Football. It turns out that once again I'm less fit than the old guys. Pretty embarrassing but I'm sure that after a trial game or two I can come good again.

Nothing too ground breaking for this entry, just a quick update for the sake of it.

Oh yeah, if you haven't done beforehand, please check out this album:

Hello To Wasted Hours

3 easy steps to forgetting your worries and having a blast:

1. Grab your favourite Less Than Jake album
2. Play at a reasonable volume (i.e. loud)
3. Sing every single line at the top of your lungs

Success!

(s)He's Lost Control

Bad week? Yep.

To but it bluntly, early last week I had a friend overdose on drugs, become brain dead as a result die, all within 24 hours. Pretty much the worst ever. He lived in the USA, so I couldn't do much except sit at work pretending not to feel so bad.
The same day I found all that out I got my student feedback forms and noticed that most students didn't like me. Most of it really was my fault. I haven't been as attentive as usual and my brain has been all over the place lately, resulting in me not sitting in with my students as much as I should have. I'm attempting to fix this and get my brain centered.
That morning I also realised I left my wallet at home when I was almost at work on the train. This meant my weekly ticket was at home. I was freaking out because I had to get through the ticket barriers and past the ticket inspectors that had been there all week. Luckily the ticket inspectors weren't there that day and I snuck through the wheelchair exit.

The rest of the week I didn't get much sleep. The weekend was okay because I got to go have some Bulmers and listen to great ska/reggae/punk tunes at a pub and eat some good food, but the funeral of my friend was on at the same time so I was also forcing myself not to think about it too much.

Yesterday I did some mixing at The Gaelic Club, a place I haven't mixed in a long time. They had a new console so it took me a bit to get my head around the routing of it and how it worked. The mixes were good from about 1/2 way through but before that it was pretty rubbish. It was good getting to learn a new and complicated console but also a little stressful as it was a JMC event and all the higher ups were there listening/performing.

Today was a bit lame. I got a nice sleep in, but after sitting around for ages I thought I'd go to the beach for a swim. I drove all the 35 mins it takes to get there to find all the beaches shut because of rough surf. Annoying.
Headed for home and a few mins down the road I heard a "thumthumthumthumthum" noise coming from my front left tyre. I had run over a screw and it was stuck in the tyre. managed to change the tyre and have taken it to the mechanic to see if he can plug it and save me buying a new tyre. He took one look at the screw and didn't look too optimistic. Lame. I pick it up tomorrow and hope that it is fixed.

OKAY I PROMISE NO MORE RANTING ABOUT BAD THINGS IN THIS ALREADY LENGTH BLOG ENTRY.

So, now that all the bad stuff it out of the way, I should mention I'm heading to Melbourne this weekend with Esther, so if you're a Melbourneite and would like to hand out, message/email/sms/call me and we'll sort something out. Esther and I plan on relaxing and taking time out from Sydney so seeing our Melbourne friends would be great times.

This week things I aim to do:
- Wake up
- Be more on my game
- Not be as pessimistic
- Be way more confident and not doubt my skills and talents
- Realise that it's a new week and the past week's events are exactly that, past events

Lets see how I go!

I leave you with something to ponder, and maybe even a way for you to respond to this blog entry so I know if anyone actually reads it.

Which song is better?

Chuck Berry - Johnny B Goode (1958):


OR

The Kinks - All Day & All Of The Night (1964):


?

No They Never Miss A Beat

Wow, I know I say this quite a bit, but I need to update this more.

So, since November huh? A lot has happened, most of which has kept me busy.

I worked right up until Christmas. I was at JMC Mon-Fri and then doing live gigs every weekend, so I was very busy! Things have slowed down now, there are no live gigs (happens at this time of year) and I'm only at JMC 3 days a week until March when the main intake starts up again and we have a lot of students again. The students I have at the moment are doing what's called an "unsupervised recording" where they go off and do it on their own. Make life a bit more relaxing for me, but also a bit boring. I might start ducking in on them all a bit more often to keep them going, take a listen to their tracks and give them some tips. As one student yearned last week, "COME ON, IMPART KNOWLEDGE ON ME!"

After Christmas I was away on beach mission. Having no internet for two weeks was glorious. We had a great turnout of people to our activities and they all seemed to enjoy it. It was good for me in that I got to go to the beach every day (I did miss 2 days unfortunately) and hang out with a bunch of mates. I also produced a video with some of the guys on mission as an exercise at getting used to the new ProTools 8 that came out a week before Christmas. The whole song was written, recorded and filmed in 4 hours. Pretty crazy and dodgy but really quite fun. Check it out here:


After coming back from mission I've been going to the beach an average of 2-3 times a week and can't wait to go back again. Might not make it again till the weekend (or maybe Friday morning before work again, we'll see) as I have work on.

Esther and I have bought tickets to go overseas again. We're heading back to the USA to go to Sarah and Justin's wedding. Hopefully some of the Dutchies will be able to make it too and we can have a cool UK reunion thing. Should be good fun. It's only for 3 weeks but it'll be nice to go overseas again. We're going to try and get to Canada too, at least then we can get a new country under our belts.

I've got a huge urge to do some recording, preferentially of a band that use both live and electronic instruments. If you know of anyone, send me an email.
Also, you know of any bands that want a live recording done, PLEASE get them to email me at structurefire@gmail.com. I'm more than happy to do some live recording, it'll be great fun for all involved and all the band needs to do is play a concert. They don't need to spend days in a studio or anything. Let me know.

That's enough for now. I've got this musical bug stuck in my brain that I think is forming new ideas about doing recordings and styles of music. Might talk about that another day when I shouldn't be about to go to bed, ha.

Night night.

Terminal Rock

I feel I should write something here, especially as I dislike checking my friends blogs and there is nothing new in quite a long time.

I've just been working (and enjoying it quite a lot) on weekdays and lately there have been quite a few things for me to do on weekends (weddings, 21st birthdays, farewells, get togethers etc) when not working.

Today I noticed a good reason why my posture is so bad, so I'm hoping to do stretches and exercises to fix it. I'm not going to bore you with the details of particular muscles in my back and legs and why I know they're the reason, but if you see me sometime please ask me if I've done my stretches that day to remind me to do them. I really want to stand upright. Not only is it good for my overall heath, but my confidence as well.

Oh yeah, here is a sweet sport that Ben posted on his blog that I thought I would share with you too as I think it looks pretty rad. It's called "Slamball" and involves a combination of basketball and trampolines!

Check it:


I should also tell you about this old punk band I found out about called The Chosen Few. They were a band from Melbourne who were around in 1978. I ordered their CD and it turns out they're pretty awesome. You should check them out, but they're very hard to find.

This weekend I'm flying down to Narranderra with Esther and her family for an engagement party for her cousin Michelle and her fiance Rowan. Should be a good trip.

That's about it really, hopefully that quenches your blog reading appetites for a short while.

Revelations

So tonight I had an interesting night.

I had work, but after work I went and hung out with one of my best friends, John. He's getting married on Sunday, so I really wanted to just hang out with him before it all happens.
In the end we did what we usually do, sit around and play records. This time though, because John had just moved house, he'd found all these random old 7" records that we used to listen to. We sat back, discussing why we liked them, why we didn't like any of the newer stuff by those bands, what made them change, the concerts we'd been to involving those bands and all the kinds of random things you talk about.
Because I'd been so busy, I hadn't thought about the fact that this would be the last real time John and I could just sit around doing this before there would be someone else in his life/house who would be around when we wanted to hang out. I got pretty sad when I left to go home. Either I was good at holding back tears or John pretended not to notice.
It's always a weird feeling for me when things like this change. I dunno about John, but for me sitting around just listening to records and having someone else who actually likes them too had been a pretty important thing for me that I've really enjoyed doing. It makes me feel normal knowing that yes there is someone out there that listens to the same music as I do, as opposed to everyone else out there who just doesn't get it, making me feel kind of alienated as "that guy that listens to weird music".
It's not like I'll never see the guy ever again, hopefully now that he's got a house closer to me I'll be able to see him more often, but it's just that things will be different, a state that I really don't handle so well.
I'm excited that he's found someone to spend the rest of his life with, but I'm also shocked at how quickly the wedding has come about and how little I know his wife-to-be. I've only met her in real life 3 times, including the 10 mins I saw her tonight. It feels kinda strange knowing that one of your best friends is getting married to someone you don't really know. I'm sure she's a great gal and I'm looking forward to getting to know her.

I just had a thought. You people out there reading this probably know them and I'll probably see you on Sunday at the wedding. Please come and say hello to me, I probably haven't seen you in a long time.

Upon leaving John's house, he told me to watch out on the drive home (it was 12:30am) because there were lots of deer about. I drove around the first corner and there was this MASSIVE deer with huge antlers standing right in the middle of the road. It was crazy awesome. It also made me drive quite slow for the rest of the trip :p

On the way back, I was keeping a lookout for wildlife, driving nice and slow. I saw: 2x wallabies, 1x wombat, 1x deer. As I was driving, I was also looking around at just the scenery of the Royal National Park (as you need to drive through it to get to his house) and just noticed how peaceful it was in the nightime. It was quiet, animals were out and about, the moon was shining down and the trees were blowing softly in the wind. I thanked the Lord for making such a beautiful place, straight after which I felt compelled to pull over and stop at the park in Audley. I got out and wandered down to the river, sat on a bench and listened.

That's it. Just listened.

It took a while, but after a minute of sitting still and quiet, I started to notice things. You could hear the river slowly sloshing about. That was it. For the minute.

As I sat longer, more things started popping out, slowly at first but ended in a torrent of noise. Ducks up the river quacking, fish in the water, something in the trees behind me (on closer inspection I found some Koalas!), nuts falling off trees, bats flying overhead etc. It was amazing! I thanked the Lord again, and in return he showed me something.

It was only just then, sitting by the river in the dark without any other people around that He really showed me an example of his timing compared to my fragile quick lifespan. He showed me the growth of the land, how without people it still moved and lived. It's perfect balance.
I thought about Genesis and how everything in His creation was perfect, including humans, before 'the fall'. At that same moment, He showed me that without humans around, the world could still operate because He had made it perfect. He showed me how slowly compared to my measily schedule ridden life the world grows and changes. Despite how slowly the world moves, it is just a blip on the scope for Him. Why should I demand things to happen NOW? Why should I expect Him to jump down and do everything I want Him to in such a tiny moment in the short space of time that is my life?

I shouldn't. I should do as He says and wait, be patient, pray, and one day He may if He feels like it should be so.

I thanked Him for everything he just showed me, and he let me sit there outside for a while. Even though it was cold, I did not feel it.

I walked around a bit, followed my ears and found the Koalas (there were two of them) and after a while I asked the Lord to let me know when He thinks I should leave. Straight after saying that He sent me a kangaroo OUT OF NOWHERE that almost ran into me, scared the life out of me, chased me back to my car and disappeared as quick as it arrived. Thanks!

The trip home was spent driving slow (by this time it was 2:15am) and just looking around at God's creation, admiring it, and seeing how we'd flattened it to put roads and houses on.