I thought coming back to adelaide this weekend was a great idea and I’d have a good time but instead I feel like shit.
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I’m currently interning in brisbane over the summer and have been for three weeks now. last saturday night, I was at a party hosted by someone I’d known for two weeks, with about 30 others I’d known for no longer, being hit on by a cute boy, watching drinking games, and generally having a great time. if I was going to that same party but back at home, mum wouldn’t have wanted me to take a 6 pack, and would’ve been concerned about me ubering there, and dad would’ve made some patronising comment about being safe. and I probably wouldn’t want to a) drink as much and b) pursue the boy due to them. I didn’t end up doing either but it was SO liberating to have the choice this time.
since then, they have come up and visited me during the week (for my birthday + making sure i’ve settled in). i’d facetimed a fair bit with them prior, with mum mostly just fussing over me rather than having an actual conversation. it was nice to see them in person but it was also awkward at times, with one night ending with them seeming offended but me not knowing why. it was one of those things were they insisted on visiting and I knew they’d be offended if I said no, but ultimately I’d rather have waited to just visit them back home. my little life in brisbane was just that — mine. outside work, I can do whatever I want when I want, and my roommate is rad, and everything is great. if I want time alone, I get it. whereas at home, I’ll be plugged in with earphones but still interrupted, or going to bed early (to get some time alone) prompts concerned questions and knocks at my bedroom door.
so I visited home this weekend and a funny thing happened. I went to a dinner for my university cohort on friday night, where I just wanted to hang with the people in my year level. instead, everyone was enthusiastically interested in asking me how my internship was going. at first I enjoyed saying what a good time I’m having, but it quickly got tired and I just felt like I was bragging. the attention from my peers felt nice though, and it was good to see everyone one last time.
then saturday night I caught up with some close friends for my belated birthday. people I wanted to talk about my new life with, but no-one cared. it was a nice enough catch-up but some were on their phones or just looking plain bored and it made me feel like I shouldn’t have bothered coming back at all. while there were no birthday festivities, it still felt like it should’ve been treated as more of an occassion than it was.
I love these friends, especially since others I have made during uni have either never come close to what I have with them, or the people in question have moved away. maybe they were having an off night but the group of us doing this internship together in brisbane, who I was hanging out with exactly a week ago, seem to currently bring me more joy and comfort than any of my family and friends at home do, and that makes me really sad.
One of my worst traits as a person is being possessive when it comes to friendships. Maybe it’s an only child thing; maybe it’s because for the ages of 6-9 I didn’t have a “group” at primary school and instead cycled through a different best friend each year; I don’t know. But luckily since then I’ve been in friendship groups, usually around 4-5 people, where on average everyone is equally close to one another. This is still the case to this day, to the point where I’ve known one friend for 10 years (5 of high school, 5 of uni) and the other two for 7, so we’re practically all best friends, to use a term I don’t particularly like. More on that later.
In my first few years of uni though, I experienced something a little different. I became fast friends with two people, and then halfway through our second year, one moved interstate. Cut to 18 months ago, and my family and I decided to travel to said state for a holiday as well as to see this friend. I mentioned these plans to the other friend, and before I knew it, she had one-upped me, deciding to stay with the interstate friend and her family for several days. So my original plan of catching up with the interstate friend for maybe a few different occassions/days turned into seeing both friends for just the one day, as they had plans together for the remainder of her trip, and I would’ve felt weird and rude to intrude.
However the travelling friend doesn’t seem to understand rudeness the same way as I do. You see I still resent her for this; not just the action itself but also her unawareness of how (to me) this seems a rather odd and rude thing to do. We’ve drifted apart since then in the following 18 months, probably due to a mixture of circumstances, my especially introverted nature last year, and my ever-present resentment. I drifted apart from my interstate friend too, although she’s the kind of person you can not talk to for years and pick things up right where you left them off. I thought I’d swallowed my resentment and had moved on from the whole thing, but we all saw eachother last night (with a bunch of others), and I felt it come to the surface straight away.
Don’t get me wrong, we had a great night out. It was nice to hang out with people I only ever see in a uni setting and just chill for a bit. But when they first hugged when everyone was arriving, and when they referenced the times they stayed together interstate, and when a snap captioned “night out with the girls” features just the interstate one, and when I found out today that they’re doing more activities together, it’s there. I still highly value my friendship with the interstate girl, and from the moments I was able to talk to her one-on-one, I know she does too. It’s just hard when I’m as possessive as I am and my friendship with someone is more quiet; of conversation and understanding rather than matching hair styles and shrieking laughter. As such, I have nothing against her, and rather just feel bummed out that this other friend gets to be the Chosen One, and yet I don’t necessarily want to be that myself either.
tl;dr I have a wonderful group of long-term friends, plus I am still on good terms with my interstate friend, however despite all this, I am bothered a stupid amount by this other friend because I am weird.
I went on my 12th pubcrawl yesterday and the 1st for my 5th year as a university student. it was also the 5th time I’d been on this particular group’s pubcrawl (the AUES or “engie pubcrawl”). if you’re in adelaide you know exactly who that is; if not, they’re the ones where some people four years ago got a bit rowdy and walked into/over someone’s car in a busy intersection when the pubcrawl group photo was a thing. whoever thought thousands of people gathering for a photo was a good idea, well, I don’t know. I digress.
that particular crawl, my first, was also my first foray into going out to the city at night and drinking, as well as my introduction to hindley street, our “club strip”. my second crawl involved getting picked up soon after midnight as my conservative protective parents were still adjusting to my new wild lifestyle. my fourth was a great bonding experience in which I was able to socialise with people from my year in a more relaxed environment than uni, with alcohol as a social lubricant. my sixth was with 4 out of 6 of my high school friends. my eighth ended in me vomitting out of a taxi window. my ninth involved sort of flirting with a boy the whole evening. my tenth gave me a piggyback ride down rundle mall. and my eleventh was organised by me (venues and tshirt slogan/design).
tl;dr I’ve had a plethora of fun experiences through pubcrawls that I’m certain would never have happened
otherwise. this year, however, felt different. maybe it was the same-old nature: same group of fabulous friends, same usual venues, same ugly, tight, sweaty tshirts, same poppy songs. I don’t want to analyse it all too much – something I have a tendancy to do – but at the same time, I want to get to the bottom of why things felt different. I was looking forward to having a fun night, and my group had even written a list of humourous things we were expecting to happen on the crawl. were expectations set too high? am I just past it at 22 years old? I started to feel sadder the more I drunk but that was for a very obvious personal reason, and that mood didn’t set in until later in the evening; even before then I just wasn’t feeling it. and this was after a veronicas song played and I sang my heart out to it!
maybe being surrounded by so many drunk firsties AKA freshly-turned 18 years olds makes me feel old and jaded or something. I certainly hope that whatever the reason for the lack of spark last night, it isn’t permanent, as I would rather like to enjoy my remaining crawls this year in the most unadulterated way possible.
T2 Trainspotting is the long-awaited
sequel to 1996’s Trainspotting, the
Danny Boyle film adaptation of the book of the same name published by Irvine
Welsh a few years earlier, that brought the characters of Renton, Sick Boy,
Spud, and Begbie from the page to the big screen. Now, 20 years later (in both
our time and theirs), we are reunited with these iconic characters with a story
that is part original (by returning screenwriter John Hodge) and part based on
both the original novel and its sequel Porno.
I
feel like Trainspotting (1996) is one
of those movies that has transcended the movie review as we now know it; you’ve
either seen it and fallen in love with it, or you’ve vaguely heard about it but
never bothered to check out the fuss. I fall into the first category, after I
chose to read the novel for a year eleven English assessment and then later saw
the film. Despite not relating to the strong Scottish accents, heroine
addiction, or the now iconic soundtrack of 90s rock and rave, I felt like I had
experienced something incredible; something that had used the medium of film to
its absolute limits to tell this story of friendship, oppression, addiction,
and adolescence that would and could never be replicated.
For
those unfamiliar with the original, it follows the story of a group of
twenty-somethings living in Edinburgh in the 90s during its heroin addiction
epidemic. Very simplistically, it ends with Renton running off with ¾ of the £16,000 they make on a big drug deal, only leaving behind his
friend’s Spud’s portion out of sympathy. T2
picks up largely where we left off; that is twenty years have passed but our
group of misfits have been out of contact that entire time, until Renton (Ewan McGregor)
returns to Edinburgh and sets things in motion. The movie kicks off with a
necessary but pleasingly efficient recap on the state of affairs of each of the
three remaining main characters – Sick Boy (Johnny Lee Miller), Spud (Ewen
Bremner), and Begbie (Robert Carlyle) – who are currently in wildly different
scenarios. Unsurprisingly however, they are all far from great.
T2 is a very different film to its
predecessor. Shock scenes such as fishing drugs out of toilets and
hallucinations of babies crawling on the ceiling during withdrawal are gone,
but this does not make T2 any less
captivating. The story too is less ‘exciting’, however this is fitting as the
main theme explored here is getting older as well as looking back at the past.
This is done both through the script as well as literally, with many visual and
audio flashbacks to the original film interspersed throughout and quite beautifully
cut into the current story. Some may find it a little excessive but I think it
rides the line perfectly, a nice self-aware wink to the audience that
acknowledges the past in a somewhat meta way while simultaneously still serving
the story.
Hard-core
fans like myself will no doubt relish the two hours spent reunited with these
characters through Danny Boyle’s interesting and diverse direction. Where they
rank it compared to the original is another thing, however I think most will
see it as a satisfying sequel that was made for all the right reasons. More
casual viewers may find the more mature tone a little disappointing; as for
mainstream audiences, well, I hope the ‘2’ gives them the clue to seek out and
watch the original first, as this is firmly a sequel that needs the context of
the original to understand, let alone enjoy.
this blog is dead but it’s the only one I got and I had such a good
time at St Jerome’s Laneway Festival yesterday that I feel like I have
to document it. i’m not going to bother doing the full reccount of what I
did from when I woke up to when we arrived; instead we’re going to
cut straight to the chase, which in this case was seeing tash sultana.
she was great; it was especially cool to see
her loop and layer sounds live. unfortunately due to the hot sun blazing
down on the bitchumen underneath me, or the shitty somersby cider I was
drinking, or some other reason, I started to feel discomfort in my
chest/stomach and had to sit down in the shade for a bit. luckily it
passed over soon enough and I was able to enjoy her last song jungle,
which for the unititated, made it to #3 in 2016’s hottest 100
countdown that happened just last week.
next we had a gap so we went for a
bit more of a walk around. I bought an iced coffee, which is a trivial
detail to mention but it really hit the spot. annie bought doughnuts and
we sat in the shade for a bit, enjoying the glorious views of the port
river to our side on a beautiful blue-skied day. we
couldn’t sit around all afternoon though as we had gang of youths to
see.
I only knew a few songs by them, annie possibly more, but from what
I can tell, we saw them for three reasons: a) they were bound to be good
live; b) we didn’t care for anyone else in the timeslot; and c) annie is
somewhat infatuated with the lead singer dave (understandable: he is
both attractive and charming). I’d say in terms of performance +
crowd, this was actually the best set of the day; seems odd to say for
the band I was least excited to see but the whole thing was such good
vibes. we were nearish the front but there was no shoving or anything,
and we were even “mosh buddies” with a random behind us. also bras were
removed and thrown towards the stage and apparently dave even sort of crowdsurfed so it
was just a fab set all round.
after that we refueled (read: bought
some more horrible alcohol. honestly why is the alcohol sold at
festivals always just the worst. I guess being a non-beer drinker
narrows my options but can they have more than one variety of cider so I
don’t have to rever to pre-mixed drinks?) before returning to the main
stages to get a primo spot for glass animals. and that we did: mostly
standing with all the under 18s (the festival is 16+) but we got
fourth row spots that honestly were worth the price of admission alone.
we
had to listen to almost the entirity of king gizzard and the lizard
wizard’s set (a band I don’t actually mind but I was impatient) but then
the glass animals lads finally came out and boy were they good. despite
some drunk girl behind me half humping me for most of the set, and
the supposed die-hards in the rows in front of us hardly even
moving, it was great and I couldn’t take my eyes off leader singer dave
(yes, another dave) vibing to his own band’s music. I hope the
crowd was actually good as I couldn’t hear much cheering from behind me
but the band seemed to love us and give it their all.
next we had a
sit down and breather (we danced pretty hard okay) before deciding to
sit by the stage where tourist was performing. this stage was at one end
of the festival, as far from the two main stages as possible, so I took
the opportunity to visit a port-a-loo. unfortunately everyone else had the same idea as me, and as such I missed
basically the entirity of his set just from queueing and felt too gross
afterwards to really enjoy myself during his closing song. still, it was
his first time in adelaide and the crowd seemed to really be enjoying
themselves (they always do at this particular stage, I don’t know why but it’s great) so that was cool. also the sun was setting at this point so the sky
was filled with pinks and oranges and generally looked very pretty.
at
this point I remember rushing off somewhere, I don’t know why or where,
but I did get something to eat, a grilled sandwich burger thing (it was
damn delicious), having a short but somewhat intense conversation with a
random about tame impala’s music while waiting for my order. after that
we had a quick look at floating points, who I imagine would’ve been
quite a treat to see as it was a live band rather than a dj set, but we
weren’t feeling it and were getting pretty psyched (pun intended) for tame impala. we
headed back to the main stage area and holy shit were there a lot of
people, both watching nick murphy (formerly known as chet faker) on the
left side as well as waiting for tame on the right. somehow I managed to
move through the crowd to get us somewhat close to the stage, however I
regretted this as soon as tame started as there was no room whatsoever to dance and I couldn’t see a
fucking thing (so, really, what’s the point).
so
once again I pushed (and I don’t mean slide past or around, I mean
actually pushed) myself back through the crowd from whence I came.
finally we reached a spot and it was perfect: a gap plenty large
enough to dance in, and surrounded by people doing just that, with a
decent view of the stage to top it off. we lost ourselves in the music
for that hour, only being broken by kevin parker’s terrible stage banter
(sorry kev but it’s true) and the three (or maybe four?) times a
confetti canon blasted over the crowd. the guy to my right dancing like
nobody was watching was the cherry on top.
with the sound of new person, same old mistakes
reverbing over the crowd, I walked and annie valiantly dragged her feet
back to the tourist stage to see my faves jagwar ma. I saw them at the
last laneway I went to 3 years ago, and it was nice to see their crowd
was substantially bigger this time round. lots of people were sitting,
some were dancing alone or in pairs a distance from the stage, and
there was a healthy crowd right in front grooving along. there was an
overlap with tame so we missed half of jagwar’s set, which was a real
bummer, but I still enjoyed myself. for me at least it was the perfect
end to a perfect day.
I like the band Foals.
