What's old.

Wow, it’s been awhile since I’ve updated this, so I will do my best to remember what happened. The Friday after my last post (12 August.) we had a “booze cruise” on the harbor. Sarah, Joey and I went down early and walked around Darling Harbour a little bit. We got on the boat around 6:45 and took full advantage of the open bar until around 10 when we docked to get off. The whole trip cost $20 and we had open bar of beer, wine, and champagne as well ass some appetizers that they walked around with. Afterwards I walked around the pier a little bit enjoying the weather, and then we hopped on a train to go home. A pretty uneventful Saturday followed, until that night when we had a little gathering at an apartment next door.

Didn’t do a whole lot on Sunday if I recall. That Monday I went to an internship orientation session. It was pretty boring and uneventful. I waited for people to get back to the apartment so we could go get some fish and chips at the Ranch. By the time we got around to heading out, the kitchen had closed at the Ranch. We found out that the Maccas a bit away was open 24 hours, so we decided to take a little excursion over there. It was a good walk and we hung out there for a while. It tasted fresher than McDonalds back home.

That Tuesday was back to classes, then there was a party at the World Bar in King’s Cross. I went downtown early to stop at the Opera House to pick up tickets for Graphic (more on that later). Sarah and I then walked from Sydney Opera House to World Bar, only making a minor detour out of the way to ask for directions…  We got student price teapots of alcohol for cheap. They were fairly alcoholic mixed drinks and they gave us little shot glasses to go with it. We hung out there for several hours, drinking, and karaoke-ing, and having fun.

That Wednesday was pretty cold and rainy out and I had a meeting with some guys from Colourful Trips and a bunch of other students to talk about a mid-semester break trip, so I forewent Ultimate Frisbee club that night. The trip is a 13 day, practically all inclusive trip up the east coast to our final destination of Cairnes. Along the way we will be stopping at Fraser Island, surfing, and doing all sorts of fun stuff. But more on that later…

That Thursday and Friday were pretty uneventful. Then Saturday was Graphic at the Sydney Opera House! I got up early and caught a train to the city and got in around 10:15 or so. Got to watch a panel with several Australian comic writers who were presenting their work in a slide show. Highlights of that were, one guy who had a friend playing metal guitar as a soundtrack for his Viking epic about the last Viking, and the Chinese dragon dance to present the comic about the training that goes into learning the dances.

After that, I went to watch Masaya Matsuura talk about his career in sound and music video games. It was pretty fun. Then I had a few hours off so I wandered around Sydney to get the lay of the land better. That was pretty uneventful, but I do feel more comfortable in the city now. I went back to the Opera House and watched a panel on wordless comics and how they need to be approached differently than normal comics when being created. It was alright, but I wasn’t very familiar with any of their source material on the subject, so I didn’t get as much out of it as I would have liked. After that, the final show of the evening was a screening of Talking With The Gods, a documentary on one of the greatest comic writers, Grant Morrison. This was an awesome movie and a great ending to a great day!

The following Sunday was day two of Graphic. This was the day I was waiting for with the Scott McCloud talk on Understanding Comics. His books lead the market of the graphic arts “how to” books. Sometime during the hectic weekend I got in my head this event started at 4. It wasn’t til I got on the 3:00 train that I realized it was at 3 actually. I decided to go for it anyway, but the theater was closed and said no entry when I got there around 3:45. I was pretty distraught, but decided to walk around the rocks after grabbing some fish and chips and eating on the Quay while listening to some didgeridoo buskers playing there. I wandered through one of the markets in the rocks and looked at all the cool arts and crafts they had around there. After an hour or two down there, I went home and had a pretty easygoing night.

That’s all I have time for right now, I have a paper outline due tomorrow. I will hopefully have time to catch up to this week tomorrow. We’ll see how it goes.

-Dan