Across The Universe

We just finished watching Across The Universe, the movie (musical?) that uses Beatles songs to create a fictional story set in the late 1960s. My sister hadn't seen it before, and she rented it along with a bunch of others - not realising that I already owned the DVD!

If you haven't seen the film yet, and are at all interested in the Beatles' music, watch it as soon as you can, as it is totally made of win!. The film doesn't actually feature the Beatles at all, though - it's a fictional tale similar to but NOT in the same realm as Mamma Mia.
It helps to know a bit about the Beatles' history, as there are a lot of in-jokes and references to the band; most of the characters in the film have names that reference the Beatles' back catalogue - the six main characters are called Jude, Lucy, Maxwell, JoJo, Prudence, and Sadie!

As in most musicals, every now and then a song starts up out of nowhere, but it's interesting to see how the director has used the songs in a way that changes the original meaning - Oh! Darling becomes a duel between two band members; Dear Prudence is a "coming out" song of a more literal kind; and the turbulent struggles of two men dealing with their demons is the backdrop of Strawberry Fields Forever, one of the best sequences in the movie:

The movie has been presented extremely well, and features some striking imagery and fantastic choreography. And the actors have been well cast - they have done a sensational job of this, and I hope they all go on to other good projects soon!
We've all been singing songs from the movie since we watched it. But what's weird is that my sister didn't even know half of the songs from the movie! Like, where has she been?
So... I guess I'll be loaning some of my CD collection to her in the next few months!

Did the Earth move for you too?

Okay, stuff has happened since the last post.
Well, that's a bit bloody obvious, isn't it? It's not as if stuff stops happening when no-one bothers to update their blog!

• Krissy has spent the past fortnight attending classes at Tafe, and freaking out about the work she has to do. It seems that there is a tutor there whose method involves throwing the students into the deep end, ie. giving them instructions on what they need to do, and then basically telling them to do it without explicitly telling them how. Which I think is reasonable, but it can be disorienting for new students, especially those who have come into art with all the pre-conceived ideas on "What Art Is Supposed To Be". His aim is to get the students to learn these methods through exploration, rather than through rote learning, but it can be very stressful and confusing for the novice. Oh, and to those of you who have already been through GippsTafe's Art Department, you all should know exactly who I am {p.b.} talking about. :D
  
• We had an earth tremor here last Friday. At about 9pm, we experienced about ten seconds of the earth wobbling about us. It was a reasonably big tremor, too. The epicentre was in the Korumburra/Warragul area, but it was felt across most of the state, including Melbourne. It was all perfectly normal, and nothing got seriously damaged, but a lot of people were worried. It freaked the hell out of my sister; she was saying, "God, my chair moved across the room!!!" Yes, because that's never happened during an earthquake before.
• Also, Krys found two big spiders in her son's bedroom last week, though not at the same time. One of them was a huntsman (which is big and icky but not dangerous), the other a largish white-tail (which may or may not be dangerous, as I mentioned here). Both of these spiders are frequently found inside houses, especially when the weather changes from warm to cool, so we're trying to keep our windows closed as much as possible now!
  
• There's also a tropical cyclone threatening the Queensland coastline, not far from where my Dad and other family members live. Cyclone Hamish is presently heading south-east, away from where they are, and it seems to be weakening now, but there are still a lot of communities worring about this, and preparing to bunker down. I haven't called up my Dad yet, but I'll do that tonight, if I'm able to.
• Krys' man Andrew scored the part of Gaston in the local production of Beauty and the Beast - awesomeness! He's been practicing his singing in preparation like a good actor should. Also, they've been rehearsing for the other play that they're both in - more details as they come. I'll actually be able to post pictures of them this time, since I only had Dinkycam with me for the last one, may it rest in peace.
  
• It's been the Labour Day long weekend, which means two things: one, work at the service station/s has been really frickin' busy (doesn't help that we're short-staffed again) and two, we had a problem with the EFTPOS facility. Okay, get this, when I went in to work on Saturday, I discovered that we had a *new* temporary EFT console/pinpad thingy, which wasn't integrated with the register like the regular one was (and which, hopefully, will be fixed soon). Luckily, it didn't require a major in electronics to figure out how it worked - it just required a few extra steps, and I was able to cope with the day's trade.
  But, when I opened the shop the next day, I discovered that the *new* EFT console wasn't working, because something had tripped off the fuse on that particular circuit. Long story short, the AC adaptor some black box thingy that the power supply goes through had burnt out during the night, and I mean that literally - it had scorch marks on it. So... we spent the next two days of the long weekend filling out dozens of manual paper vouchers. At least the shop didn't burn down.
  
• Oh, and Krys wants me to mention this - A few nights ago, I spent two hours gagging on a piece of tuna. All that happened was that I ate some canned tuna, and it didn't go down well. I don't know, I guess it got stuck on the way down, though I wasn't choking or suffocating. This seems to happen sometimes when I eat something starchy, like bread or rice, and usually if I have a drink of water it goes away - but this time it seems the water didn't help.
  Anyway, I must have sounded really bad from the bathroom, because my sister could hear me from her room, and she asked me if I was okay. I said yeah, I just had something to bring up. She spent the next hour or so freaking out about me, thinking I'd got food poisoning or something, wondering if I needed to go to hospital, and then she promptly fell asleep! Sympathy fail?
  So, I spent an hour in the bathroom, sipping water and gagging into the sink - and then I spent the next hour in my room with a bucket, because standing in the bathroom was boring and I wanted to finish playing Twilight Princess.

My god, that sounds really sad. "I threw up tuna while playing Zelda." I have to get a hobby or something, I don't think the blogosphere was designed for such lame-ass postings.

Well, so much for my update. How was your week?

I really should be asleep by now...

but instead I am up at 4am updating my blog for some reason.

Just shuffling a few things around...

and letting everyone who knows us that my sister has enrolled in the Visual Arts course at TAFE! Along with one of my friends from the mural project! Yay for both of them!

And yet, for some reason I feel a bit sad about that.
Partly because they are both younger than me and still have some leverage with their lives, which makes me wish I still had the same freedom...
okay, I'm only THIRTY for crying out loud, but still, it feels like I forgot to do something along the way

but also because of something that came up while my sister was talking with one of the Art Department faculty (who instructed me while I was doing the graphic-arty Diploma thing about ten years ago).
Basically, he spent a good portion of the induction telling the new students about the amazing career opportunities that would come up upon completion of their course, and how most of the graduates went on to get jobs in the industry almost immediately.
What he didn't realise at the time was that he already knew my sister - in fact, she and I had both attended the Photography courses he conducted a few years back, and she knew him quite well! Of course, this was about six years ago, and she looked rather different then. People who have known my younger sister for anything longer than six months will understand how he could have missed her. She's a frickin chameleon.

When he worked out who she was, he immediately remembered her, and who she was related to, and asked about what I was doing with myself (probably expecting me to be involved with something remotely arty).
My sister politely refrained from telling him that I'm currently a casual worker in a service station... but I think he got the point anyway. sigh
Then again, I never did manage to complete all of my subjects, thus falling a little short of getting the Diploma. So therefore the Art Dept's track record remains... relatively untarnished.

Boy, this post has depressed me all of a sudden. I really should have gone to bed straight away.

Oh, never mind.
Krissy, Andrew, I hope you both have an excellent couple of years getting your Diplomas of Art. I look forward to seeing your finished works at the end-of-year exhibition, and if I have cash at the time I'll be sure to buy some of your stuff! Promise!

PS. I just thought I'd let all the ex-residents of the Yallourn TAFE Art Department know that Peter Biram has shaved off his moustache. :P

Huh?!?

Where has my blog gone to?
The blogroll has disappeared, but the posts are still readable from the side menu. I wonder what's happened?

...(later)
Oh, they're back now. Sorry to get all confused on you. Proceed.

Paralooping

I bought a couple of new games last week. Yeah, I know, "credit crunch" and all that, but I have been working well the past few months, so I figured I'd be allowed to spend a little more than I used to...

Anyway, I found a copy of Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, which is the sequel to Aria of Sorrow that I already own. Not that it would have mattered if I hadn't, because video game sequels aren't the same as movie sequels; keeping track of the plot lines isn't mandatory, unless it's a hard-core RPG like Final Fantasy. (As a matter of fact, I played Golden Sun: The Lost Age before the first game, and I finished Sonic 2 way before I even got to play the first Sonic.)

This was the first game in the series released for the DS, and it shows, because they've made sure to use the "Touch-screen ability" in a slightly odd way. In order to properly defeat any of the mid-bosses, you need to quickly trace out a pattern on the screen to break the "seal" on the enemy. This is done with the stylus or the fingertip, but since the rest of the game is played with the traditional button arrangement, and the boss scenes are kind of fast, using this system is unwieldy. It smacks of "Hey, let's do this because we CAN!", when um, sorta, no, they shouldn't.
Nonetheless, the game is still excellent. It was also under $30 which is a good price for a DS title, even one from a couple of years ago. Now all I have to do is wait for Order of Ecclesia to come out, and that will be very soon!

The other game I scored was NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams, one I'd been looking for since we acquired the Wii.
The original game of NiGHTS into Dreams was released for the Sega Saturn about ten years ago, and it became one of the few "must-have" titles for the under-rated console. I've never had the opportunity to play it, though I did get to play the Christmas edition; Ta Andrew!

Yuji Naka was part of Sonic Team, developer of the excellent Sonic the Hedgehog games duh! for the Mega Drive. He created the character NiGHTS so that the player could experience the ability of flight, allowing the character to twirl and glide around beautiful surrealistic landscapes. Though the lead character never achieved the recognition of his blue-spiked counterpart, he developed a strong fan base, and ever since then gamers have hoped for an official sequel to the seminal game.

Naka was at first reluctant to return to the game, explaining that he wanted the original experience to stand on its own terms, as a work of art. However, clearly he has relented, because I now own the excellent sequel.
It is beautiful - and tricky. I am using the Wiimote-with-nunchuk configuration, as the controls for the character are quite delicate. I'm finding it a little hard to steer NiGHTS in the correct direction at times, especially when I have to try and aim for a small target. Incidentally: the standard analogue controller for the Saturn was designed specifically for the original NiGHTS. But playing the main levels is fun, and I'm enjoying finding out the best way to make links and collect the blue chips.

My housemates had a look-in of the game while I was playing it the other day, and my nephew finds the game enthralling. He sat there quietly watching as NiGHTS paralooped and twirled across the screen. I thought, "This is better than those SpongeBob DVDs!"
The others gave it a positive grade, though my sister said that the cutscenes were rather overdone - Let's spoonfeed our players, shall we? Considering that the game is supposed to appeal to a wide audience (including younger children) , that is understandable - though why do I have to play through them every time I start the game from scratch, and I can't skip through them, ARGH?!? - oops, not the time and place for it...

Then my sister said that it was "obviously designed to appeal to young girls" - Whaa?
Okay, so I was playing as Helen at the time - I'd already played through the first level with Will the day before, you see...
Despite its appearace, the game is NOT easy. In fact it's quite tricky to get a good score in the game, and I said as much. Then I said that it wasn't the kind of game she would be into, because "you're more into the sandbox-type of game, anyway".
Eep. We launched into a big debate about the games we're into after that. Basically the pros and cons of the Sims, and Animal Crossing, etc. etc. etc.

I feel the need to say this on her and my behalf.
My sister is not necessarily into the "Sandbox" type, which implies the "free-form" game that doesn't have any specific goals. Rather, her preference is the "Non-Linear" game, that doesn't expect you to achieve a Gold Medal, but rather a free-form multi-outcome experience. This explains why she's also into the Pokemon series, and also certain RPGs like Golden Sun and Legend of Zelda (though GameFAQs comes in very handy with those)!

Whereas my favourites are:

• Puzzle games, like Tetris or Columns (or arguably Pacman)
• Puzzly Adventure games, such as the Myst series
• Role Playing Games, like Legend of Zelda or Golden Sun (something we have in common!)
• Platform games - Sonic and Mario Bros. fall squarely into this camp, of course!

There are of course others, like WarioWare which don't fit into those categories, but are muchly enjoyable. The point is, I don't expect everyone to take the same things from their gaming experiences. Where one person will get intensely frustrated at an obstacle, another will quickly see an alternate route; where one person finds a bunch of cool stuff to collect and trade, another will wonder what the hell they are supposed to be doing with this boring crap. It's all relative.

PS. Upon reflection, I realise that NiGHTS is, um, kinda gay. but hey, at least it's not Cho Aniki.

What's in This Box?

This is the box that Nova presented to me when I met up with her (during the visit mentioned in my previous post). Upon opening it, I found this:

Yummy! Kit Kats from oriental shores! Delicious! Admittedly they'd melted a bit before we had a chance to get them, thanks to the extreme warm days we've been having, but still, tasty nonetheless.

With most of these, the flavour component is within the wafer part, not just the chocolate. Here's the list of which flavour is which, and an explanation of how each tastes as we've tried them:

1. Sweet Potato! - actually, this one didn't taste strange at all, rather it tasted just like the White Chocolate ones we have over here. Though we did detect a slightly salty aftertaste.
   
2. Muscat Grape! - WOW. This one so far has had the most dramatic effect on out tastebuds. It really DOES taste like grapes. Slightly eyew.
   
3. Bite size Fruity flavour! These have a decidedly banana-esque taste, or perhaps it was tutti-fruity. But they were little wafer pieces about 1cm square! Yum!
   
4. Bean flavour?! Nova wasn't 100% sure, but I did some research, and it's just Red Bean flavoured white chocolate. I'm not sure why it has a Japanese fan on the front, though. I think the flavour of this one is a little subtle for my palate, as I couldn't detect anything different from the plain White Chocolate variety.
   
5. Mixed Berry - a blend of strawberry, blueberry and cranberry. The big surprise was that the sticks had white and pink stripes!!! Very tasty!
   
6. Blueberry Cheesecake - nice! The wafer had the berry flavour, and the chocolate was the cheesy part!
   
7. I think this one is Caramel Pudding flavour. It tasted sorta pudding-y but not really caramel-y. (maybe because it had degraded in the heat?) Nice, though!
   

It's interesting to see how adventurous the Japanese are with their treats. I used to think that Peanut Butter and Cookies 'n' Creme were pretty "out-there" for a Kit Kat, but I've really been put in my place!
What's more, these aren't even the most exotic flavours they have. You can also buy Kiwi Fruit and Cantaloupe flavoured Kit Kats... hint to Nova for when she goes back

I wonder if it would be possible to get some imported over here...?

A Trip to Visit A Friend - or, Friday the Thirteenth is So Not Unlucky

My friend Nova, who has spent the past year in Japan, has come back to Australia for a month to catch up with family and friends (and also attend to important medical appointments). I had the day off on Friday, so I went up to Melbourne to visit her. The last time I went up to the city was when we went to see the Game On exhibition at ACMI, waay back in March last year. If the exhibition ever comes your way, go and see it if video games are your thing!

I met up with her at Flinders Street, and caught the train back down the line to Clayton Monash Uni so she could get the results of her, um, "ladies' appointment". We had a very interesting conversation about the important medical checkups that the various sexes and ages have to suffer, over a light lunch... appetizing subject matter, you could imagine.
They have an Asian grocery there too, so we went in there to get something to drink. While there, I found some of the soft drinks that are sealed with a marble instead of the screw cap. I also found a can of this:

We haven't tried it yet, but Krys seems to think it's citrus flavoured. God, I would hope so!

After we finished our meal, Nova took me over to the Manga Library where she is a member of staff. Here's a picture of part of the library. It's not a big room, but it holds about 7,000 books. Here is Nova pretending to read something in Manganese for the purposes of my photo:

I got to meet some of her lovely friends and personally, I'm not sure if Kat and Nova are two different people; has anyone ever seen them both in the same room? I have, and I'm still not entirely convinced, read some English-language manga... and then I bought some souvenirs:

The bookmark and badges were made by the staff members (Nova designed the pirate-robot and ninja-zombie badges) and we really like them!
Att: staff - make sure you have more stuff for me to buy next time I come over! =)

I sat and read books while Nova helped out with their cataloguing system (good luck with that, btw!) and we realised that we'd spent about three hours there, and thought, "oops! there's probably other things we could be doing!"
So we went back to the city proper, and I had a look through JB Hi-Fi for some new music and videos. I found "Interstella 5555", "All Together Now" and "Beatles Anthology 2", all of which I'd been planning to buy but couldn't find anywhere else. Happy! I'm listening to the last one as I'm typing this.

Then we walked back to the station, but called into a clothing shop along the way, where we both bought a couple of T-shirts Nova refused to let me buy her some, even though I really could afford to do so! hey, that's the last time I try to buy her an extra birthday present..., and then we called into Hungry Jack's for a meal. We also lamented the fact that that particular branch of HJ's had stopped their "Free Drink Top-Up" policy, as it was really warm that day.

We still had about an hour to kill before my train arrived, so we went to Fed Square to see if the Ian Potter Gallery was still open it wasn't. ACMI was also closed for the day. We wound up sitting in the courtyard between the buildings chatting and enjoying the last of the sun:

And suddenly, it was time to go home!
The train ride back was exhausting. Someone on the train spent most of the trip complaining that he wasn't allowed to have a drink of beer and by the sounds of it he'd already had a few. I felt bad for him, though, because by the sounds of it he'd been fighting some of the fires across the state, and he would have been exhausted by that stage...

Things I've Lurnded from this trip:

1. Nova has has her ears pierced for the first time! This was prompted entirely by a gift of earrings for her 30th. She had actually only had the procedure done the day before, and she kept acccidentally brushing her earlobes and going "ow!"
2. Reading manga books "back-to-front" is disorienting, but gets easier with practice. No pun intended.
   
3. You can't drink BYO alcohol on public transport.
4. You can't drink BYO alcohol on public transport.
5. Nope - you still can't drink BYO alcohol on public transport.
6. Japan has some very strange flavoured Kit Kats -

but that's the subject of my next post! Stay tuned!

Victorian Bushfires

Victorian Bushfires Make National Headlines

Looks like I spoke too soon.

I came home from working in Traralgon on Saturday evening, only to be greeted by huge plumes of smoke coming off the hills behind my home town.
I managed to get a couple of photos before I had to go back to work. These were taken at about 4.30pm:

I didn't have time to take more, but my sister's man took some video footage of the scenes form the front of our house:

There are others like it available on YouTube. Just browse through the "Related Videos" at the end of the movie, or click here.

By the time it got to 6pm, we had to turn our lights on, because it was so dark outside. We were covered by the smoke and ash from another fire happening about 60km away from us.

Basically, we got caught up in the middle of two different bushfires:

• the Churchill one, which never actually hit Churchill, but started in the Strzelecki Ranges behind the town, and spread rapidly south-east toward the coast, and
• the fire that started in Kinglake and swept across the region north-east of Melbourne, which was far bigger than the Churchill fire.

It was very very scary.

I had about an hour between shifts to decide what to do. My sister and her boyfriend were busy setting up the house for protection (incidentally, the safest place to be in a bushfire) and I scrambled around, gathering up backup disks and USB sticks - and wondering why the HELL I'd bothered collecting so much useless crap over the years! (I think it's cleanup time...)

We were listening to ABC FM for the latest fire news, but they told us that the local transmitter was in range of the flames, and that their signal may cut out. At about 8.30 we lost them, and also all of our local TV stations. I don't know if they have been restored yet.

The shop I work at was still open during the emergency, and we had customers coming in and buying all sorts of panic-related things, but mostly they were buying cigarettes. Yes, in times of crisis people latch on to the only coping mechanisms they have!

Outside, a cloud of smoke and ash set over the Valley, and by 6.30pm it was near impossible to see further than a kilometre. The whole sky turned a deep blood-red, then a dark ash grey. Small black particles and burnt leaves fell from the larger bushfire, all across the town. People came in to the shop covered in sooty black marks.
Then it rained - but only a little bit, and it left more streaky mess over the buildings and cars.

My co-worker and I didn't know what else we should do. Were we meant to close the shop? Evacuate? Get out the fire hoses? We didn't have a very good view from our position, and had to rely on everyone who came in to tell us what it was like outside.
We were trying to cope with this, while we had customers coming in and buying sliced ham! icy poles! soft drinks! I saw people wearing loose summer wear; some people were only wearing shorts! (When you're under threat of fire, you're supposed to cover your body with long-sleeved shirts and trousers, to protect your extremities from burning.)
Luckily, my boss was also in the town, and had a better view of proceedings - he said that he'd let us know if we had to stay or go.

The day had been very hot, but a cool change was expected late that evening. It came, and it was very cool by the time we finished work. The only problem was that the wind changed direction, and the fires turned north-east toward Traralgon. Fortunately, the conditions were better suited for the CFA to control that side after that point.

Eventually, the fires came under control, though some of them are still burning as I write this. And although our area ultimately made it through the crisis undamaged, many parts of Victoria were not so lucky.
I believe the death toll currently stands at about 130 people. One of them was a retired news reader for one of the major TV stations. Many of the others were people who left it too late to leave their houses, and were found inside their burnt-out vehicles.
This fire has been labelled as worse than the infamous Ash Wednesday fires in 1983.

The next day, our shop was very busy again, but this time it was customers using our carwash to clean their vehicles. There were people queueing up to use it two cars back, and both bays were used non-stop from start of trade until about 7pm. I left it until Monday to do mine:

It makes me very angry and upset to see all of this happening around where I live. So many people have suffered needlessly.
I want to do more to help, and hopefully some time this week I will.

New Stuff Appearing On The Right

I've been adding photos to my Picasa albums for your viewing enjoyment.
Try clicking on the "Nature Photos" image on the right! You can also comment on them if you wish.

Leah - Thank you very much for the cool Dubai-themed Christmas gifts! I like the camel-themed playing cards and fridge magnets! And Krissy really likes the silky scarf!
Sorry we didn't get to meet over Christmas, but I'll try to send you something really nice!

Boolarra Bushfire

So... the bushfires.

Here's some links to news articles about them:
ABC.com.au - Vic blaze destroys homes as town runs out of water
The Age - Bushfires destroy Gippsland homes
The Australian - Huge bushfire threatens power line, coal mine in Victoria
News.com.au - Gippsland fire now within containment lines

The fires started late Wednesday afternoon. I was at work at the time, and the weather had just turned nasty - as in, 40° Celsius. Most of the grass and vegetation that had grown during rainy December last year had turned to kindling by this stage, so a bushfire was probably inevitable... though I was hoping that we'd see the summer out without having a fire this time.
A customer came in during the early evening, and said "Hey, it looks like there's a fire somewhere..." and I thought, "Oh, no..."

I took some photos from the front yard, and the edge of town. These were taken last Saturday at about 4.30pm, while the weather was still scorching hot, and the huge smoke cloud coming from the fire was still visible. It got worse over the next three hours, until the whole western section of the sky was covered in a sickly purple-orange haze. Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of that because it was just too damn big to fit into 640x480 pixels...

It's taken about three days to get under control - fortunately, the weather has turned cooler again, but the wind has also picked up. During this time, the towns of Yinnar and Mirboo North also came under threat. When I popped in to work to get fuel, my co-worker told me that our town had been issued an alert for falling embers - I went straight back home and filled up some buckets to prepare. Luckily we didn't need them.

Boolarra was the worst hit, however - though no-one was killed, and the general township was spared, at least ten homes were destroyed by the blaze.
One of my friends from the mural project lives - or lived - out in Boolarra. Apparently, she has lost everything.
Her family had no time to grab anything of value - they just had to get out of there. When they came back, they found nothing recognisable. Their house was completely destroyed, as if it had never existed. The only thing they could identify was part of a stepladder.

I'm going to try and send her and her family something to help them get along. I know they'll be eleigible for emergency accommodation and relief packages, but what else can you offer someone who has lost their home and belongings?

This is crazy.
Even worse, there is suspicion that the fire was deliberately lit. If it was, the people who did it have yet to be caught.

I Figured It Out!

Not much new to report here, except that it is absolutely stinking hot today! After months of teasing us with wet cold weather, the summer has finally come in earnest...

Oh, and there's a new section on the right - I finally figured out how to put up a banner-link list! It turned out to be so simple anyone with basic HTML coding experience could do it. smacks himself in the head

I'll be looking out for more banners from my favourite sites, so keep your eyes on that space!

EDIT: God, I totally forgot about the bushfire burning out near Yinnar and Boolarra... I will be posting some pictures of the view from our place tomorrow. smacks other side of head