April 16, 2006
Six Foot Track
Two mates asked me to go for a 2 days bushwalking trip on the Six Foot Track during the 2006 Easter break. Looking for a justification for my new rucksack I quickly agreed.
We didn't do the entire 42km, that will take 3 days worth of walk, instead we did a section from the Megalong Valley Rd's Cemetary down to Cox's River camp site. It is a 7km walk down, and another 7km to walk back to the car at the cemetary.
It's the best section of the entire Six Foot Track as my friends claimed (they've done the full 42km), but the coolest thing is Bowtell Bridge. It is an alternative route to cross Cox's River if it's flooded, but I reckon most people will cross the bridge for the hell of it. It's a suspension bridge, hanging about 10 - 15m above Cox's River and by God it swings around when you cross it - for safety reason only 1 person is allowed at any time. Although it looks scary and it does scare you a bit when you're crossing it, it's actually quite safe. I saw a few kids jumping around the bridge on the way back.
Cox's River camping ground is quite large, unfortunately it is accessible by cars from the Jenolan Cave's side. There was a large group of families with very noisy kids and one trumpet. Whoever played that trumpet only knows a part of a song, the soundtrack of Lord of the Rings. Luckily all the kids got tired after all those screaming and running and went to sleep early, leaving the rest of us a quite night.
Nothing much happened on the way up, it's just a nice 2 days bushwalking trip. I'm glad I did it.
Posted by vhadiant at 06:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 15, 2005
Wrong way suit!
Me and two other colleagues decided to buy an early lunch today around 10:40 ish. As we walked out our building there was a very loud and boisterous protest outside. And so we decided to hang around a bit checking out the crowd. Soon enough after realising that the nurses' union probably was not part of the protest we started to walk down south to grab our lunch. The protester were marching north (toward Martin Place I presume). As we walked down one of the marcher - didn't really have a good look - shouted to us "Wrong way suit!".
For a second we were silent, before bursting into laughter. What the? Well we were on our business shirt and ties and kind of walking on a different direction with the protesters. Needless to day the "Wrong way suit!" became the running joke of the day.
Posted by vhadiant at 09:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 08, 2005
And they got the boot
Katrina Nugent and Melinda Bird email exchange that has been doing the round cost them their job.
This Whirlpool thread contains numerous links from various sources.
This made news.com.au front page but stupid news.com.au the article will dissapear in the next few days.
Those two must have hated each other to start with :)
Update: More on Radar blog. I couldn't believe that they even got Slashdotted.
Posted by vhadiant at 07:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 05, 2005
Petrol price
Seen 139.99c at BP Willoughby Rd. Crows Nest. Crazy ... just last Sunday I filled in at my own record price 126.90c
Posted by vhadiant at 09:41 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
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
July 06, 2005
Vienna Sandwich
A few years ago when I was working in North Sydney I discovered what I would say the best sandwich shop in Sydney. It was called Norths Sandwich then. The bread is excellent and their daily specials is just mouth watering. Really the saddest part moving away from North Sydney is not being able to have Norths Sandwich anymore.
When I started working down here in the city near Martin Place, I lamented about the sandwich quality in the city to a colleague. Well Being shop nearby is good, and that gourmet Italian place in the Strand Arcade is yummy as well but no where near the quality of Norths. My colleague pointed out that there's this nice gourmet place on the corner of Barrack and York St called Little Vienna, not only that they also wrap their sandwiches in aluminium foil ala Norths.
So I went to check it out sometime last week and I fell in love straight away. That is by far the best sandwich you can have in Sydney, period. I am known to make bold claims of things, but I do mean it on every single one of them. Anyway little did I know that Little Vienna is actually Norths! Norths changed their name to Vienna Sandwich a while back and opened a branch in the city called Little Vienna. The old menu hasn't changed from 4 years ago, only now the original menus are called Vienna Classic, while their daily specials is now on everyday ha :) You just have to try every single item on the menu, there's grilled chicken, sausage, risoles, tuna, leg ham etc. Oh and they make a really good coffee too, just make sure it's the asian dude with glasses who make it for you. He's a good Barista.
They even have a couple of chairs just outside their place to eat in. I've been taking a few of my friends there and introduce them to Vienna :)
Posted by vhadiant at 06:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 01, 2005
That much rain and still not enough ...
I hate rain. Let me say that again. I really .. really .. really ... really hate rain. I wish there's 366 days of sun in a year - in Sydney, please rain go west to where the farmers are. Sydney is drenched in wet and windy weather for the past week, since last Saturday if I remember correctly. Today was the worst of all. The almost gale force wind make my umbrella pretty much useless against the wet weather, and I've just dry clean my suits last week!!!
Not only that, to add to the insult all those rain fall in Sydney not in our catchment area. Now that sucks ... big time.
Posted by vhadiant at 12:14 AM | Comments (0)
June 05, 2005
Cross City tunnel delayed.
Ooohh in a big embarrassment for Bob Carr, the much touted 12th June 4 months early Cross City tunnel opening will be delayed. Now it seems the tunnel will open in the end of July, that still makes it 2 months in advanced.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Carrs-great-tunnel-debacle/2005/06/04/1117825107298.html
Posted by vhadiant at 10:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 30, 2005
Sydney's public transport woes
The Herald is running a series about the sorry state of Sydney. What particulary disturbing for me is the fact that only 10.6 per cent of weekday trips to work are made on public transport (50 years ago half of all trips are made on public transport), the train lost 6 million passanger last year (not surprising considering the state of City Rail), and last year 315,645 new vehicles were registered in NSW (a 14.5 per cent increase on 1997), two-thirds of them in Sydney.
This is nuts, the public transport system is in a shamble. I'm lucky to live only 15/20 minutes bus ride to work (and back home), but the bus is so unfrequent and if I miss the last bus at 6:27pm that's it, I might as well stay back and do more work until 7:30 and get a cab home (work pays for it). For the entire year last year I had to drive to work because there's no public transport to my workplace, and from all the news with City Rail that I've been hearing I think I'm quite lucky not to use it. To make things worst, the state government loooooves building roads, tunnel and motorway. The new cross city tunnel will open 12th June, four months ahead of schedule. Geezus, if we dig a tunnel across the CBD and finish it 4 months ahead of schedule, why can't we fix our public transport system?
For a city as big as Sydney, the public transport system is just retarded.
Posted by vhadiant at 10:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
