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Entry # 3
Sunday - 3/12/06 - 5:54am
Hmmm... words to describe this past weekend? FUCKING AWESOME! Yea, that might begin to describe it. (Sorry for the language but it just begins to describe my feelings.) The last three days have been the WOMADelaide festival (World Of Music, Arts, & Dance - in Adelaide). Surely giving the New Orleans Jazzfest a run for its money... not an easy thing to do for sure! Don't even know where to begin, I spent around 6 hrs on Friday, 10 hrs Saturday, and 12 hrs on Sunday at the festival... followed by a post-party for staff and artists at the Hilton... which just ended a few moments ago...
In general, the vibe and the people at the festival were incredible. The good-natured people were quite uplifting. I found myself looking up to Coco Mbassi in particular more than once, and in more than one way. What an incredible spirit and role-model. What if the children were to look up to someone like Coco Mbassi, vice 50 Cent or someone else of the like... what an incredible world me might be heading towards!
And the others... where to start?! I managed to see just about every artist that played and enjoyed every one. Blown away by most! Honestly the most incredible 3 days of music I've ever witnessed. But then again, that's what you get when you take the masters of their music from 27 different countries and bring them all together. The Musafir Gypsies of Rajasthan and the drummers of the Dhol Foundation energized the crowd to new levels, and I found it hard to shoot myself due to a combination of their quick movements, in addition to my own dancing!
One of the greatest things about the music was the expansiveness of it. From folk and blues to African, Indian, Indonesian, Canadian, and the list goes on and on... even concluding with Talvin Singh, a dj/electronica artist, that I just finished the evening talking with and discussing the interests of his type of music, esp at like festivals.
Today was funny as stuck my foot in my mouth not once but twice. The first came as a little boy dropped his bottle and ran away. I grabbed the bottle and returned it to the father, informing him that his 'little girl dropped her bottle'. He replied "oh thank you so much, HE does that quite often." And not more than a few short hours later I asked the mother/instructor of the Tanzania Golden Pride Children's Choir how old 'the little boy conducting the choir is'. And as you can guess her response... "it's a girl, and she's 11.". Doh! No more talking about little kids today!
Overall the best weekend I've had thus far in Australia, and probably the best I've had in a much longer period of time... Now where to catch the festival the next time... Spain, England, New Zealand...?
Updated with photos (4/10/06)
Here are the photos (3 pages) on my website:
http://www.shrubin.com/pages/Concert/060310_WOMADelaide/Set%201/WOMAD_1.html
And here is an article I wrote with photos that were just recently posted on
the Jambase website, the company I photographed the festival for:
http://www.jambase.com/headsup.asp?storyID=8198
I'll be photographing the East Coast Blues and Roots Festival the weekend of April 13-17 (Easter w/e) for Jambase as well, and most likely become much more involved in the future. I'm psyched, the lineup looks great! 5 more days of incredible music, in supposedly one of the most beautiful places in Australia... it's a tough life, it really is... ; )
Tuesday - 3/21/06 - 11:43pm
Sunday night the Fringe festival ended after 3 weeks. It's kinda sad, the Fringe became a staple of Adelaide for me so far, esp with all the excitement directly across the street. ; ( I guess on the bright side, I can now sleep with the sliding door open and not be awoken multiple times throughout the night due to the noise. I can also go without feeling like someone is constantly watching me in the apt from the ferris wheel!
The moon is nice tonight. It's been very low lately. Last night when eating dinner outside at around 10:30pm, it looked like a streetlight off in the distance.
Thursday - 3/23/06 - 11:50pm
So a few weeks ago I began playing softball with team M.O.D., my workgroup.
Two weeks ago we lost, last week we won, and yesterday was the league
championships. Played a great game but unfortunately lost 18/10 to 18/13.
Yea, strange score huh?! Tell me about it... many of the rules of their
game were quite strange! So here are a few...
1) Each team gets up once, for 15 minutes, then the teams switch
2) The final score is read "runs/outs", so while there aren't 3 outs per side,
the outs are just as important
3) You pitch to your own team
4) Each batter gets 3 pitches, doesn't matter where they're pitched (i.e. hit
the batter, bounce, etc), you've gotta hit the ball straight or you're out after
3
5) 2nd baseman and shortstop are wrapped up into 1 player, usually defending at
the shortstop position
6) You are not only allowed, but expected, to overrun both 2nd and 3rd to avoid
collision. You don't even need to step on the bases (any of them!), when
running, just run past them.
And there are many more... really weird! I caused a few collisions over
the 3 games, as I had a hard time with overrunning the bases and not
stepping on them! I was ok with it, I simply justified it to myself to be
their fault... naturally... ; )
Went to a great Sudanese restaurant tonight. There's no such thing as rushing customers out around here. We finished up dinner and hung around for a good hour without anyone else in the place. Got talking with the owner, an older native Sudanese man about the recent WOMAD, other world music, African politics, etc etc. He was perfectly content hanging out way past closing time and enjoyed chatting... it was nice.
Monday - 4/10/06 - 7:50pm
Ok, so while there are a lot of strange language differences between the US and Australia, this one gets me every time. When Australians say the letter 'Z', they don't say 'Z', but instead say 'Zed'. Of the 26 letters in the alphabet, it's the only one that is referred to as a word. So when discussing XYZ planes at work, it's 'X', 'Y', and 'Zed'. So strange. And of course when asked why that is, the common answer is "Hey, idunno, that's just what the English do." ... Anyone got a better answer?!
Not to worry though, the guys at work have printed me off 11 pages of Aussie slang terms, so I'm brushing up on my Aussie slang. It's been a real ripsnorter of a time, that's for sure!
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Sorry so short this time, in a bit of a rush over here. Plenty more to
come on Melbourne, the Great Ocean Road, and the upcoming festival...
I wish everyone a great Easter and Passover and any other holidays that may be
quickly approaching. Thanks for reading and viewing the photos as always!