A slightly belated Happy 2010

Yes, that's right. I've ditched the i today. I tried to think of something witty but it only ended up sounding trite: iHappy New Year; i2010; iSurvived the Noughties... that sort of thing.

2010 is a number rather pleasing to the eyes, don't you think? It's a bit futuristic looking. I finally feel like we have arrived in the 21st Century. The previous years just didn't seem quite worthy of that accolade but 2010, two thousand and ten, or twenty ten, however you say it, is a fine and proud number. Incidentally, I have yet to place myself in one camp or the other and continue to use the two monikers interchangeably.

After having a wonderful early evening barbecue with close friends and our offspring, then arriving home by 8pm to dispatch said offspring to the Land of Nod, I spent my New Years Eve under the Christmas tree, reminiscing about New Years gone by. I didn't go too far back... just 10 years. It seemed appropriate somehow to reflect on the first decade of the millennium, especially considering the entrance into it was so highly anticipated and celebrated. Besides which, I'm not sure I can remember any further back than that and it hurts my head if I try.

So here's a quick rundown of my past ten years New Years.

1999/2000

A highly decadent, indulgent and intoxicated affair. A grand party in London in which the DJ marked the turn of the millennium with Robbie Williams' "Angels", which was enthusiastically sung along to by all present. One couldn't help but wonder if he had selected the wrong track number. Surely he meant to play "Millennium"? The evening was ended catching up with another group of friends and watching the sun rise, no mean feat in London in the dead of winter. Incidentally, the night before was the last time I lay under the Christmas tree, this time with a bottle of wine, four friends (it was a big tree) and garbled conversation.

2000/2001

A rather dull New Year's Eve with my then boyfriend on holiday in South Africa. We went to what could have been a great party if only we'd known anyone else there. I wore a t-shirt proudly declaring "Keith Tweed" in silver letters, after Cherie decided we should all do a Madonna-Britney and wear t-shirts with each others' names on them. Shame all my friends were in London then. I was the only saddo in South Africa wearing one. Still, it did make me feel rather connected to my missed friends.

2001/2002

My housemates and I had no plans whatsoever. My boyfriend had no plans either. Yet somehow we managed to do completely different things. He went to a White party on the west side of London, bloody miles away. Stupid idea to wear white at New Year, especially when you're a red wine drinker. So me and me mates walked to a local nightclub instead. It was crap.

2002/2003

My last New Year at home before The Big Trip. I went for a curry with my parents (arghghghg) before heading to my Gran's for a G&T. Cheryl phoned me in tears telling me how much she was going to miss me when I left. I drank the least alcohol on any New Years Eve since I was 18, possibly younger. Still, we'd had a lovely frosty walk earlier in the day and saw a sparrowhawk catch a finch. Marvellous.

2003/2004

First New Year in Australia. An Australian friend was over from England so we went along to a party in a holiday apartment with his mates, having spent the early part of the evening with Toby's brother and his wife (and their friends), who had to stay at home because they had a teeny tiny baby. We watched some fireworks from the apartment which was quite high up. Surprisingly, it was a bit chilly on the balcony. I started downing cocktails and was having a rather nice time until Toby dragged me home not long after midnight because he wanted to go for a surf at 5am. Bo-oring!

2004/2005

We had just arrived on Lady Musgrave Island for what turned out to be the holiday of a lifetime. After a day of travelling and setting up camp we were knackered and in bed by 10pm. I was a bit sad as this was the Christmas my dad's sister passed away.

2005/2006

This turned out to be the best New Year's Eve since 1999/2000. We were on a beach holiday at Angourie in New South Wales. We had a surprisingly large party, given we were from out of town. Oscar was filming the party scene for Surfer Sutra. I, having already played my part (beach babe, of course), was kicked out along with the other beach babe and the disciples. We took a bottle of gin and a camera to amuse ourselves. We sang 80s songs and took stupid photos. Blue Steel and Angry Pirates were born and haunted us for many years to come.

2006/2007

In UK and I became a godmother for the first time, to my gorgeous godson, Joshua, son of my oldest friend, Catherine. As Catherine and John have kids and we'd been out all day (and John was bladdered) we stayed in that night. We attempted to watch a film but realised we were just staying up for the sake of it and went to bed. Watched the fireworks in bed then slept. Not very rock n roll.

2007/2008

First New Year as a married woman. First New Year in our new home. It was also Scott & Lucie's first New Year in their new home. We celebrated by having absolutely no plans. Ended up having dinner at Scott & Lucie's then headed up to Point Cartwright with a bottle of champagne to watch the Mooloolaba fireworks that never happened because of the terrible weather. Ended up hanging out at Point Cartwright with said bottle of bubbly in the driving, torrential rain. And wind. Gusty, gale-force wind. Lovely.

2008/2009

Humungously pregnant. Had dinner at Libbette's then a few of us drove to Point Cartwright and watched the Mooloolaba fireworks. A spontaneous night that turned out rather nicely.

2009/2010

Another spontaneous "I've got no plans, you've got no plans, let's have no plans together" kind of a night with Scott and Lucie again. These are turning out to be rather good ones actually but I think that maybe next year we should endeavour to actually do something. But, as we have children we probably won't.

If you've read this far, wow! Are you procrastinating or what? Happy New Year me lovelies.

U2 Vertigo tour 2006, Brisbane

Bono gives it his all. From The Courier Mail

U2 were bloody brilliant.

Wow! I have found it very difficult to describe this gig without using an expletive closely followed by an adjective meaning "dead good". Bloody brilliant. F***ing awesome. Damn fantastic. The best gig I have EVER been to. I managed to run my phone batteries flat by taking photographs (most of which came out all black with a bright white light in the middle) and videos (which look a bit like the photos but sound as though someone is banging loudly on pots and pans whilst swinging the cat around the room) but as soon as it's charged and I've downloaded the pics I'll get one or two up here, so for those of you checking the site by email or RSS, check back.

The long and winding road to the stadium

I read a couple of reviews today and noted some folk were commenting on how badly organised the public transport was. To be honest, I didn't have a bad experience at all really. It took us a lot longer to get there than I'd expected. I've no idea where the stadium (ANZ Queensland Sports and Athletics Centre) was located but it seemed to take an age to get there from James and Melissa's place, where I was staying. Imagine my surprise when, after over an hour on trains and buses we drove past a sign for the Sunshine Coast. Given that James and Melissa live right next to the main road up to the Sunshine Coast this was a tad concerning. So, it is very likely that the duration of the journey was solely down to how shockingly bad Brisbane public transport is but, as most of the time I had no idea where I was and was just following James, I can't really comment. It was a wee bit stressful though as Jill got there at 6.15pm and had queued up and got our tickets and was standing outside listening to the support band, unable to go in because they wouldn't let her leave my ticket outside for me to pick up, whilst we were still waiting for a train in the city chatting up drunken Melbourne Cup tarts and trying on their hats. Other complaints I read included the fact that the gig was at such an out of the way stadium when there's a perfectly good one right in the city which is far more accessible by public transport. That seems like a fair comment to me.

Then when we finally got to the stadium at about 7.45pm (having missed the support act, Kanye West) we struggled to find Jill amongst the 45,000 plus other people meandering around. Eventually we did meet up and it was a pretty smooth ride from there really. James and Melissa went off to do their thing in the general admission mosh-pit area, which I think was a bit more stressful due to the vast numbers of people trying to get in through one gate. I heard they even ran out of beer.

VVV is for Vertigo

Jill and I, on the other hand, queued for about five minutes and made it in to the stadium in time to visit the loo, buy water, queue for booze tickets and then queue for booze. And then began the mission to find exactly where row VVV was. Yes, as imagined it was three alphabets (minus the X, Ys and Zs) up some steps . In fact we ended up pretty much as far away as we could get. Right at the back at the top of the stadium, slightly to the left but not much. Despite the fact that U2 very closely resembled ants from our viewpoint I think we had the best seats in the house. We could see the entire stadium and I got a good idea of what a 45,000-strong crowd looks like, we had a beautiful breeze (it being an open air stadium) and were way up in the stars. Generally I noticed that, other than the mexican waves undulating around the stadium prior to the band's entrance, the majority of people in the stands sat. It is ironic that the seated area is referred to as the stand and I really can't comprehend how anyone could go to such an electifying show and not get up and dance. We were fortunate that those around us were very enthusiastic and danced, sang, jumped up and down, stamped their feet, yelled and rammed on the corrugated iron at the back of the stand for the entire performance. There was an incredible atmosphere.

Lights, big screens, elevation and an electrifying performance

U2 didn't neglect us either. Not only did they delay the show by thirty minutes to ensure we'd got in and settled, they were also kind enough to have erected a 30 metre or so screen made up of goodness-knows-how-many lights right behind the stage, and two large screens either side of that which showed live images of each of the band members. The light show was incredible. From pretty patterns, to clips from their videos, to shots of the gig, we saw it all thanks to that big screen. They even dedicated two of their first songs to us. They didn't specifically state they were dedicated to us but... Vertigo... Elevation... it's fairly obvious, isn't it? There was also a circular walk-way which came right out into the crowd but we were so far away we could only tell there was someone on it when the spotlight shone down.

The performance was energetic and full of classic U2 anthems. I was expecting to mainly hear tracks from their latest album, "How to dismantle an atomic bomb" and maybe a couple from one or two albums before that but I was pleasantly surprised to receive something of a greatest hits performance with as many golden oldies as new tunes. I've included a track list below for those interested.

Yes it's f***ing political

Bono did go a bit political on us but I didn't mind. It's to be expected really and he's not aggressive or angry about it, he's passionate and informative and I happened to agree with a lot of what he was saying. He spoke mainly about ending poverty in Africa but he also mentioned Amnesty International and human rights abuses. He specifically mentioned David Hicks, the Australian man the same age as me who has been held in Guantanamo Bay for about five years now without trial. He called for David Hicks to be brought back to Australia. No more, no less but I was interested to note a division in the crowd. The people in front of us specifically weren't particularly impressed and Jill heard one of them comment that Bono "has no idea about Australians and Australian culture" or words to that effect. I was then interested to read this comment on The Courier Mail newspaper's website:

well Bono you overindulgent prat , Who the heck do you think you are? fact is most Aussies despise David Hicks He would have if he hadn't already shot at Aussie troops so the general consensus is stay out of our politics, sing your pretty little songs and go interfere in some other countries politics. Davis Hicks can rot over there and you can join him if you like,

I'm not sure that this person is the best example of Australian intelligence, I do hope not as his grammar and puntuation are appalling, but it certainly gave me an insight into the Australian psyche with regards to this matter. A little while ago I read Enemy Combatant by Moazzam Begg, a British Muslim who was arrested and detained by American forces for three years without charge or trial before being released by the British government. He mentions Hicks in his book and talks about how he was a very quiet chap and didn't seem to fit in. Being white and western he struggled to converse with the other detainees, most of whom spoke some Arabic. He had also ceased practising his faith and was harshly criticised by some of the other prisoners for this. I have often wondered why the Australian government hasn't sought to bring Hicks back to Australia. Now I'm wondering if perhaps it is because the Australian people don't want him back. Personally I believe it is inhuman and immoral to detain anyone without trial, let alone subject them to some of the horrors reported by Begg.

A milky-way of mobile phones supporting a worthy cause

But back to the gig. One of the highlights was when Bono asked the crowd to create a milky way with their mobile phones. It was amazing, beautiful in fact to see all these tiny screens sparkling in the vast stadium. He then asked everyone to SMS their name to a number to show their support of the Make Poverty History campaign. And this morning everyone who did so received a text message from "Bono" thanking them for their support and directing them the Make Poverty History online campaign.

The last song of the encore was Kite, which made me think of Toby, and they finished by releasing a kite into the sky which was a beautiful and touching end to an extraordinary evening.

The home stretch

Except then there was the journey home and there have been a few complaints about this too. Buses back to the city, or Banoon station - the one that appears to be in the middle of nowhere by virtue of the lengthy train journey from the city to get there but is actually close to the road going to the Sunshine Coast - were provided but it was mayhem trying to get on one. There seemed to be no order, and you know how we Brits like our queueing. We attempted to get a bus to the city but it was just crazy. An impossible crowd pushing and heaving and who knows how long we would have waited. So we got a bus back to Banoon and really didn't wait that long, although it was a teensy bit hairy for a short time when the crowd discovered a middle doorway on the bus right close to where we were standing and practically pushed us onto it. We managed to get straight onto a train which took us all the way home and were were in bed by 2am.

Then I was up at 6.30am to begin the long journey back to the Coast. I'm now incredibly tired and I'm off to bed. Good night.

Track List

Would you believe I remembered all of the songs, only there was one I didn't know and I got another mixed up with something else. So, for the sake of giving them in the right order I borrowed this list from a website but I'll be jigged if I can remember which one:

1- City of Blinding Lights
2- Vertigo
3- Elevation
4- Until The End Of The World
5- New Years Day
6- Beautiful Day
7- Yahweh
8- Walk On
9- Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own
10- Love And Peace Or Else
11- Sunday Bloody Sunday
12- Bullet The Blue Sky
13- Miss Sarajevo
14- Pride
15- Where The Streets Have No Name
16- One
Encore:
17- Zoostation
18- The Fly
18- With Or Without You
19- The Saints Are Coming
20- Angel Of Harlem
21- Kite


(By the way, this afternoon's so called dangerous storm was a bit of a disappointed. After a couple of lightening strikes and moments after my last post, it changed its course and headed north, leaving us with darkness, immense amounts of rain, a bit of giddiness which soon passed and not much else, although plenty of nearby areas suffered hail and lightening strikes.)

Coolum Kite Festival 2006 and windsurfing

The Gist: Nice weather, minging weather, confused cat, juggling, Coolum Kite Festival - very impressive and well organised. Went windsurfing again for the first time in ages - yay!! Spent a week writing this post. The gist is fast becoming more like a list of tags than an executive summary really, isn't it? I've decided to place the entire gist in bold, rather than just the title - what do you think?

This post is so out of date it's not funny. Well, actually it is quite funny as it's completely incorrect so I'm going to have to rewrite it. I was talking about how minging the weather is after a perfect weekend. Well, we've had another perfect weekend but I wouldn't say the weather is minging today and the building isn't whistling like it was last Monday.


The main point of the post now is to say that I've put a few random photos of the Coolum Kite Festival from last weekend online: Coolum Kite Festival Photos

Last Saturday evening I headed up to Coolum with Scott and Lucie to check out the kite festival and had a fantastic time. I was really impressed with the level of organisation and the quality of the entertainment. From shuttle buses from the main car-park a couple of kilometres away, through a multitude of food options, down to spectacular air displays and great music, I take my hat off to the organisers and sponsors. Highlights were:

• once again seeing local band Oka perform, although they were on a bit early and we were wandering around exploring and watching kites at that stage;
  
• a RAAF Roulette fly-over doing crazy upside-down stunts and vertical falls;
  
• night-time sky-divers who looked like shooting stars when they jumped from the plane and then let off bright pink flares when their 'chutes opened. They looked like magical pink fairies floating to the ground although I can't imagine the parachutists would be too thrilled to hear themselves described as such;
  
• fantastic salsa band, Hot Mambo, accompanied by fireworks which had us all boogie-ing away in the sand, which is quite a challenge.
  

Check out some of the photos from last year at http://www.coolumkitefestival.com/framesets/frame17.html

In other news, I actually got to go windsurfing again this weekend, for the first time in months and Lucie took some fab photos. Here's one:


I challenged myself by attempting a bit of small open ocean swell but I didn't really like it that much. Bit bumpy, you see.

And that's about that really. I did have a lot more written but it's kind of irrelevant now.

OK! Hands up who's wondering about the confused cat and juggling mentioned in the gist.

Ride to work... walk to work

Apparently Wednesday was Ride to Work Day and today is Walk to Work Day, a fact that seems to have gone unnoticed by the University of the Sunshine Coast where I work. This is surprising considering they have a research centre for Healthy Activities and Sports Exercise (CHASE), which runs a Healthy Lifestyle Program for students and staff, providing a small number of activities and facilities, such as a walking group, yoga, pilates, weights, karate.

I wondered whether this oversight was to do with the layout, and therefore attitude of the Sunshine Coast, which is very much a car society. The Sunshine Coast is like a city that is growing from the outside in. There is no one CBD as such, and many of the residential areas are semi-rural or just miles away from the urban business districts. The large employers are the councils and the university. The university itself is "out in the sticks" although a small commercial district is beginning to grow not too far away. Public transport is better than nothing - I catch the bus to work most days but I live in a fairly developed and central area. Some colleagues of mine have to leave the office by 5pm in order to catch the last bus home, which isn't much of an incentive to use public transport, and cycling and walking are almost out of the question to all but the exceptionally fit (and crazy) due to the distances involved.

Map of the Sunshine Coast and its many urban centres from www.qldtravel.com.au

With this in mind I emailed CHASE to find out why they weren't doing more to promote these campaigns, and to suggest that next year they follow the lead of Noosa Council, whose Travel Smart initiative provided a free breakfast for those employees taking part. Apparently CHASE weren't even aware of these campaigns.

I have to admit that I didn't ride or walk on either of these days but I cycle every Tuesday anyway and this morning I got off the bus a stop early. However, Toby cycled 45km (28 miles) from our house in Buddina to his office in Tewantin yesterday, proving that it can be done if you really want to. He also car-pools quite regularly, which just shows that we can change our habits to travel more efficiently if we put our minds to it. It just requires a bit of thought, preparation and cooperation.

Speaking of commerative days, my colleague Linda declared today to be Chiton Day. Chitons are intertidal zone molluscs. This is the kind of stuff you inadvertantly learn when you work at a university.

A chiton in its natural intertidal habitat from www.wikipedia.com

Whale Watching and Turtle Lovin'

I really did discover the meaning of the phrase "having a whale of a time" when I was out on a Hervey Bay whale watching cruise this weekend. It was Praj and Tracy's engagement party celebration (very unique) and after a few weeks of rain I think the whales are as pleased as we are to see the sun. Praj and Tracy live in Melbourne now so we hadn't seen them since we were down there in April, although they're moving to Rockhampton in a couple of weeks and will be staying with us on their looooong drive up from Victoria. They're bringing their cat, about which I am very excited, having been without feline company since I saw my own estranged (or should that be strange?) cats last July.


Toby and I stayed with friends from the university (where I work and where Praj used to work), Ben and Mark, on Friday night and we drove up to Hervey Bay together early on Saturday morning where we met up with Karl, also from the university, and eventually Tracy and Praj, their parents, and a whole bunch of friends they went to uni with in Toowoomba.

Without putting too fine a point on it the weather was bloody perfect. We boarded at 10am for a 6 hour cruise and by about midday had seen the best of what the day had to offer. Toby and I had a fantastic whale-watching experience a couple of years ago with my mam and dad and were quite prepared to be disappointed but we were far from it. Off in the distance we could see lots of splashing around and as we approached we found that it was a group of three whales: a mother and her calf with an escort to help them defend themselves whilst feeding. The calf was only a couple of months old and was playing around slapping its tail on the water over and over again. In adult whales this is often interpreted as a threat signal but with the baby I think it was just having fun. We stopped the obligatory 300 metres from the group and the calf became curious and began lunging its head out of the water to have a peak at us, not the graceful spy-hop of an older whale positioning itself vertically with its eye peaking out to have a good look, but an energetic jumping around and splashing back down. When the people on the boat cheered and clapped the baby became even more enthused and just kept doing it over and over again, giving us a couple of attempts at breaches too. It went on for quite some time and is one of the most spectacular sights I have ever seen.

Eventually the mother tried to take the calf away to calm it down and as they left it continued jumping around and lunging its head out of the water until soon they were back with us. They eventually left when another boat turned up and they decided to go over to say hello to them.


We didn't see much for a while after that but that didn't matter as we were being well fed and watered on the boat. They even provided champagne for the party. During lunch someone pointed out a turtle bobbing around on the surface of the water but when I looked at it, it seemed a little deformed and in fact, didn't look much like a turtle at all, except for the whole bobbing-around-on-the-surface-of-the-water thing. A closer look revealed that we were, in fact, witnessing some turtle loving. It's a beautiful thing. Later on we saw another group or two of whales and a couple of solo males, who greeted us in various ways, from a pectoral slap or wave, to a tail slap, a graceful dive and a magnificent breach. They really are beautiful, graceful, curious, friendly creatures. We saw a few dolphins too but, as much as I love dolphins, they seem to fade into the background when whales are around. I think possibly because they are used to humans.

On the way back to the marina we had a couple of bow-riding dolphins which is just beautiful to see. However, the captain slowed down for everyone to have a look and take some pictures and the dolphins got bored and went on their way. By this time, Praj and Tracy's young friends had been drinking for almost 6 hours and were providing us with more than enough entertainment.

After a swim and a rest we went out for a lovely meal at The Boat Club, provided by Praj and Tracy's parents. We stayed that night at The Outrigger which was brilliant because they gave us a free bottle of red wine!

From all the many photos of sea and white water I managed to find some worth putting on my photo blog. Check them out at: http://snapper.cvsdude.com/gallery/linsb/v/prajTracyWhaleWatch/

Here's a short no-frills movie clip straight from the camera - I haven't had any time for that fancy-pants video editing thing: