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August 28, 2005
Nokia Terminal 9 Tour
We went to Nokia Terminal 9 Tour last Saturday to see Mix Master Mike, but it was True Live and The Loose Cannons who stole the show.
True Live is a six piece hip hop band with Keyboard, Drum, Double Bass, Violin and Cello. They are effing ROCKS! You just have too see them to believe it.
The Loose Cannons is a 8 piece funk band from the UK, watching them live is an experience by itself. I can't find their CD in any of the local online music shop, [sigh] I guess I have to import them from UK.
Posted by vhadiant at 10:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 18, 2005
The original backstroke of the west
Found it! More screen caps and hilarity continues.
Posted by vhadiant at 09:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 17, 2005
The backstroke of the west
This is fucken hilarious: The backstroke of the west.
If you've never seen this before go now and follow the link. I was laughing my arse off for ages. I think you'll appreciate it more if you've seen a lot of Chinese movies or have seen some of those dodgy pirated DVD from Asia.
Posted by vhadiant at 08:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 16, 2005
Haggling for green slip
AAMI sent me my green slip bill for $498. Normally I wouldn't bat an eye and just pay the bill, in fact that's what I have been doing for the past 4 years since I bought my car, I didn't shop for insurance at that time. In fact it's crazy that I shop relentlessly for better price in miscellaneous cheap items, but as the price increases I care less and less about getting a bargain. It's stupid really, one thing that my good [and very money conscious] friend G* couldn't get over with (actually in the end she does and just accepted that it's me).
So this morning I don't know what inspired me to bitch about the my green slip's cost to my colleagues this morning. Maybe because I managed to got a free car speakers (which I couldn't use anyway) after bitching about the cost of the new new MP3/WMA car stereo that I bought a couple of days ago. Or maybe it was all the free lunches and drinks that our client is showering us making me think that I shouldn't really pay this much for anything.
Anyway [I'm babbling here] ... my colleague said he's with GIO and happy with them, so I went to their website to get the online quote, and guess what they quote me $398. I was fuming when I called AAMI demanded that they did something or else I'll vote with my feet. Luckily the dude on the other side of the phone was very friendly and told me that AAMI have a "new" test to calculate the fee, but it isn't applied to all the old customers. I wonder why ...
He asked me some questions and gave me the quote for
Posted by vhadiant at 09:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 14, 2005
City to Surf
As expected I was way off my 70 minutes target. The clock was showing 86 min when I finished, not sure what the deductions will be on my group, but I think it will be around 10 minutes, so that will bring it down to 76 minutes. 6 minutes off my mark, a bit disappointed, but it was the cause of failure that really pissed me off. At about 10KM my left knee started to hurt really bad, and I was limping for the past 4KM. I had to stop twice at 11K and 13K to rest my knee grrrhh and limping all the way through. I thought it would've been my right Achilles heel the one that was going to give me trouble, but the left knee is a bit of a surprised. Not sure what happened there, but until now it's still very sore. Hopefully I didn't stuff it up. I reckon if my knee wasn't giving me any problem I would have a good chance to break that 70 minutes.
Posted by vhadiant at 10:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 13, 2005
1 more day to City to Surf
So tomorrow is the 35th City to Surf. I will try to break 70 minutes this time, but I doubt it. I haven't trained enough and way underprepared.
Posted by vhadiant at 10:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 10, 2005
Saturday night @ Home
Home is changing, now being branded as "Home: Sydney's House Of Music". Last Saturday was the last hurrah for "Together @ Home" that means the only regular dance music night @ Home will be the venerable Sublime. The Saturday night @ Home has always been difficult, IIRC there has been 3 different styles that have been tried.
Suddenly the influx to of Saturday night event @ Home make sense. This Saturday will be the 2005 Technics inthemix50 tour. Next Saturday (20/08/2005) will be Nokia Terminal 9 Tour, followed by Oneself which has recently announced that they are changing the venue to Home nightclub. The next week will be "Home Presents Together Again", looks like the old Together crew are going to throw another party.
So we can see that Home is moving toward an event based venue rather than regular night like Sublime or the now defunct Together. It'll be interesting to see what's going to happen with Sublime. Seems like they are going strong or at least the promoter would like to give that impression. 50 more weeks to go till 10th Sublime anniversary they said :) Somehow I feel that the demise of Together will bring more crowd to Sublime. Although the crowd is very different, the Cargo room upstairs attracts a very similar crowd with Together. This may keep Sublime @ Home for a little while.
Posted by vhadiant at 11:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 07, 2005
K750i pics
I took my K750i for a test drive yesterday. Snapped a couple of pics around Manly just before I went for a surf. The result is pretty bloody amazing for a mobile phone.
I also uploaded a couple of other miscellaneous K750i shots that I've taken in the past few days (just fooling around).
Posted by vhadiant at 07:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Daily Telegraph quality journalism
So .. I was in a coffee shop yesterday and foolishly picked up the Daily Telegraph. Skimming through the pages, a big bold heading caught my attention, "Lebanon vs Korea ... (and I forgot the rest)" it says. The story was about this Lebanese kid who got killed in a gang brawl between the Lebanese and Korean gang in Liverpool. Odd, that's the very first thing that came out to my mind whilst reading the article. Korean gang in Liverpool, is that right?
I continued reading the article and it goes on explaining that there has been tension between the Lebanese and Korean community there since a Lebanese kid was killed a few months (?) ago. It then goes on the murderer has been arrested blah blah blah. But most interesting is the person's name, which I couldn't remember now, but it was clearly a Vietnamese name. Now .. that make sense. Two more kids have been arrested and both have Vietnamese name, while the article keep saying that those are Korean gangs. The word Korea & Korean were mentioned multiple times in the article and so no it wasn't a misspelling.
There you go ... makes you wonder what kind of "journalist" work for the Daily Telegraph that couldn't even be bothered to check the fact.
Posted by vhadiant at 07:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 01, 2005
Home to become live music venue
Now this is big. Sad news for me but no doubt a good news for others. Ahhh Home ... a club that is dear for me. Although I'm getting old for Subbies (friday night at Home) and haven't been there for ages ... and I do mean ages like ... not even once this year, I'm still sadened by its demise. I've been to Home countless time during its heyday and many more after it's getting less and less popular. I had so much fun back then. I remembered the first few months when they first opened way back in 1999 the queue would have spilled all the way to the IMAX theatre and beyond.
But first some rumour about Home's demise as Australia's one and only "superclub". From the grapevine I heard that like they're not going to phase out dance music altogether, but more to cater both type of music. Some people said it'll be more like Metro and some said that live music will be from 7 - 11 and then the night club open. Regardless what's they're going to do it's still a big change from a "night club".
Home's fall from grace is a long time coming and everyone who's in the clubbing scene have expected it for a while. The clubbing scene in Sydney is not big enough to support a club as big as Home. First a big chunk of the main floor was cut out to become Home Bar, a semi pretentious half restaurant/half bar, I think this happened a few years ago. Then they moved the DJ to the north corner to make even the dance floor smaller.
The rumour had it when they first moved Sublime from the old venue at Pitt St. to Home the new owner bought the right of name for $5 million, this is totally unfounded rumour and I seriously doubt anyone would shell that much money for Sublime. Anyway after the first year of success, I noticed the gradual decrease in crowd. It was still a premiere club then, if one had a friend visiting from out of town and wanted to go clubbing Home would be the "safe" option. As the years gone the crowd at Home become younger (think of 17 - 18 years old) and less people are going there and they were hit with the first bankruptcy. The owner declared bankruptcy and it was bought by other company. I think this was the time they decided to make the club smaller by creating Home Bar.
Home had a bit of resurrection around 2001 - 2002, they changed the saturday night theme and Cargo upstairs had a loyal following (me!), and here Kate Monroe stamped her right to be the "First Lady of the House" in Sydney, but by this time it has been associated with "newbie" club :) That means people who don't go clubbing go to Home, but really who cares about those clubbing snob anyway :) I kept going to Home and had a lot of fun there up in Cargo room. Of course I went to hell lot of other places in Sydney but strangely I also kept coming back to Home. Some people were totally anti-Home, they think it was a bad example of clubbing in Sydney, it's true in a way but that's because we don't have any other "superclub" and such Home doesn't represent the real clubbing scene in Sydney.
Attendance kept dwindling and by late 2003 the only night Home can pull a big crowd are the free InTheMix parties (proof that most Sydneysiders are cheap!), big parties that still staged at Home (ie: Transmission) or when a big DJ had a gig. At this time I wondered how on earth Home was going to survive, obviously it couldn't.
Last Friday was Sublime's 9th birthday, Sublime so synonymous with Home and its fate is forever linked together Sublime is the Friday night at Home, the promoter of a night in a club and the club owner usually are different people, this is mostly true in any club in Sydney except the small ones. Bev, Sublime's promoter for 5 years finally call it quit and people have been saying that it won't be the same without her, well now it seems that there are more about her quitting here. I wonder what will happen to Sublime? Will it continue on? Will it move to another venue? Or become once a fortnight/month event?
Also the article mentioned about the "diminishing clubbing scene in Sydney". Hmm ... interesting, having been out from the scene for a while I couldn't really say this. However a quick check on what's on Sydney this Friday night still show a long list of "regular events". Although having said that, there's a lot of dubious places on the list like "Civic Hotel", "City Hotel", "Hotel Metropolis", 3 years ago none of those places would ever appear on InTheMix what's on list :)
Big events are still strong as always, Field Day for example are always sold out months in advance. Sound on Sunday occasional events are also big. Hordern pav have some big events happening once every couple of months. And of course there's always Transmission or Park Life. Maybe we're experiencing a bit dip in the dance music scene but I doubt that it will diminish, there will always be 17 - 19 years old gurners in a need for a venue :)
Well this has been a long post, a bit of a tribute to Home and Sublime. If indeed it will be closed down as a night club, I think I need to pay a homage one last time to Home. Time to round up the old gang :)
Posted by vhadiant at 12:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
