Last night, Justine and I went to TGI Fridays to see someone from Justine’s work off as she’s leaving.  Even though I didn’t want to go, don’t know the person and was basically forced to come along, dinner wasn’t too bad (I had a Jack Daniel’s burger).

The thing I don’t like about most work outings is that if the significant other doesn’t know the work people very well, they usually end up sitting around being totally bored.  Also, unless there are lots of significant others (which there weren’t last night) then you don’t usually have anyone to talk to.

But I digress; when the girl was taking our drink orders, I was carded!  What the heck?  I was easily the oldest person there (besides the owner of the store at which Justine works) by a large margin.  Maybe it was because I’d shaved recently, maybe it was because I’d had my hair cut over the weekend, maybe it’s getting really annoying.  Even stranger, I was the only person at the table of around 15 people to get carded… least that I saw.  Apparently I look younger than a bunch of 18 and 19-year-olds.

Our first wedding anniversary came and went this weekend.  Since we are strapped for cash after our bid trip (we’re still paying it off but hope to be finished before the end of the year) we didn’t have any big plans.  Someone at work scored free tickets to the Chill Island music festival at Phillip Island over the weekend.  Given that they didn’t want the tickets and the first anniversary is “paper” (and tickets are made of, you guessed it, paper!) we managed to snag them for ourselves.  The festival was to take place on Sunday.

The weather on Sunday at Phillip Island was so fierce that the event had to be postponed until today.  Both of us were working today but skipped out early and made our way down to “the island”.  The event was held on Churchill Island, a small island near the top of Phillip Island, just as you arrive on the island from San Remo.  As we were late, we seemed to miss out on having to pay the $10 parking fee, which made it that much cheaper.

Entering through the gates, Clare Bowditch was playing and it was then that we realised the whole event was just a tad too “hippy” for our tastes.  Of course, the crazy fisherman pants, the organic everything, the lentils on sale… they just sealed the deal.

We spent an hour or so sitting on the grass listening to the band play before we deemed the event to be not our scene.  Retreating to our car we drove into Cowes for a little while before taking the long drive home.  It’s lucky that we were able to find out these events are not our cup of tea for the low-low price of $0.  The tickets and parking fee would have set us back over $150 otherwise.

Sunday morning saw Richard, Chris and Dad driving down to our place and then all hopping into one car to drive to a location which only I knew, as this time around we decided it might be fun to keep the location a secret. I can hardly say “this time around” since I never managed to make any of the other monthly photowalks.

The location had actually been decided by Justine; I was intending on taking everyone into Richmond, close to where Trav and I have been before. Instead, Justine pointed out a poster for the Site Unseen street art exhibition (which is part of the Fringe Festival). I had the (rather useless) map printed out and handy, as well as a number of “scavenger hunt” items on bits of paper just to keep things interesting. The idea for those was, sadly, not mine either; Chris had suggested a month or two ago that he would like to see the scavenger hunt return.

Street photography is something I rather enjoy — lines, angles, shapes, textures are all things I find fascinating and attempting to mesh these into an appealing piece of art is enjoyable. The result may not be a “photo” in the way that you’d expect or are used to seeing, but that’s part of the appeal!

It was interesting, then, to hear the others (particularly Dad and Chris) comment that they were struggling to find shots when I could see them around almost every corner. To their credit, the guys all did come up with some great shots but I think they were more “photos” in the regular sense.

After four hours of trekking through Collingwood and Fitzroy we succumbed to hunger and ate lunch at McDonald’s — not my first choice but I was hungry. We returned home and Richard departed.

Dad, Chris and I ventured out to the “duck pond” nearby to take a few more photos in the afternoon sun. Chris lent me the 17-40mm L lens he had for the week and while the others snapped bird photos with their 300mm lenses, I snapped wide-angle everything.

I also issued a challenge where we all had to take ten photos of an item someone chose. Chris chose a small dead tree, I chose a bench and Dad later chose an electricity pylon. Not only is it interesting to try and get ten different shots of something yourself, it’s great to see thirty unique shots of the same object from three different points of view.

After deleting the obviously crappy shots, I came out with around 150 photos of various quality. I’ll upload them to Flickr (and here) as I get a chance, they should all appear under the same date, though.

Saturday morning saw Trav and I meet up in the city for what turned out to be a very long day of shooting. Since Trav’s camera battery had exhausted itself on our last shoot, we left off from last time. The night before, I had reminded Trav to charge his camera, and when looking at mine, decided it didn’t need a charge (what’s the deal with having the meter go directly from “full” to “charge me now“, anyway?).

We walked down and around for a couple of hours before deciding to have breakfast. We ate at a place that claimed to have great juices and smoothies; I ordered a bacon/egg toasted sandwich and Trav ordered a large cooked breakfast (no beans!). Both came with a freshly-made “South American” juice concoction of some sort. The waiter wouldn’t tell us what was in it, and when he brought it out, gave us strict orders not to stir the juice or else. The food wasn’t bad, and the juice was pretty good, even if I did stir it a little near the end of the glass. My palate isn’t great but both Trav and I definitely detected lemon and/or lime juice. That was about as far as our palates took us.

Back to walking and we walked further this time, out of the CBD and down to Southbank, up to Birrarung Marr and back to the CBD while shooting all the while. Deciding to again break for food (another 2-3 hours had passed, oh my!) we ate at a cafe of some sort in Melbourne Central. I had leek and potato soup while Trav ate risotto.

Deciding our legs had done a magnificent job, we both decided to part ways for the day. For some reason, after looking at the photos I took, I must not have been in “the groove” on Saturday since I only ended up with 150 or so (after deleting the ones during the five hours we were walking). Of those, I don’t think there are too many winners, either. Normally on a walk of that duration, I would have way more shots and usually be trying to decide between a multitude of great shots. Not so from this shoot. I think I might have been having too good a time shooting the breeze instead of things in front of me.

Eight of us recently dined on the Colonial Tramcar Restaurant to celebrate the birthdays of four of us. A good time was had by all.

To celebrate the twenty-ninth anniversary of my birth, I received — among other things — from Justine a lovely bottle of Pusser’s British Navy Rum.  Pusser’s is another unfortunate-named rum (alongside Mount Gay) that uses the same recipe used for over three-hundred years for the rum supplied to the British Navy.

To buy the original rum supplied to the British Navy costs thousands; until 1970 sailers were provided with a daily ration of rum.  Since that time, the remaining reserves have been highly prized by collectors, leaving paupers like me to settle for a remake.  Which is damned nice indeed.  Compared to the Mount Gay it’s a bit stonger and more “brown sugary”, but quite smooth nonetheless.

On Sunday, Cheryl treated us to a dinner on the Colonial Tramcar Restaurant.  Justine and I have been once before and the menu was slightly different to last time (at least it was for me, I had chicken instead of the beef I had on our last visit).

Seventy-five percent of the people at my booth had cameras and were using them profusely.  It seemed more like a camera club meetup than a birthday dinner; until, of course, the entire tram sang Dad and I “happy birthday” (I don’t think I’ll mention the crazy asian waiter, “Sugar”).

Of course, it’s definitely the birthday season around our place.  This weekend we have two more birthdays to celebrate, then a couple of days another one (so we’re celebrating that this weekend), then a week or so later another one!

As I had been given Gold Class tickets through work, and these tickets expire at the end of this month, Justine and I decided to use the tickets to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.  We chose the Jam Factory Gold Class as this is the one that has been most newly refurbished so we figured it would be a good time to check it out.

The most significant differences between this Gold Class and the ones we’ve previously visited is that the staff come to you and take your order, as well as having a “call” button between each seat pair to, well, call a waiter. As it’s been a while since we visited any Gold Class, this may be common in the others now.  The screen and sound system at the Jam Factory are much bigger and louder than other ones, the screen is almost a regular size screen. The seats are also different; similar but just as comfortable.

On to the movie: Throughout, I had trouble determining who was the focus of the film. It certainly didn’t seem to be the Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) character, as he was absent for many scenes. So then who? It seems as though the writers were unsure who should be the main protagonist so avoided giving anyone too much screen time.

Too much screen time is a nice segue into my next point: there was too much screen time. The movie ran for a good two-hours-and-forty-five minutes (which, in hindsight, is good value for a Gold Class visit) but I’d say it ran forty-five to sixty minutes long.

Of course, I had to slum it and order popcorn and a Coke, while other patrons ordered beers, cakes, pastries and other fancy things. To be honest I hadn’t even considered ordering fancy food so we had dinner beforehand. Plus I just felt like movie popcorn.