Friday, November 16, 2001
Sorry I haven't been writing over the last few days; the home PC is dead, I don't have the money to replace it until next pay and I've been really busy at work writing reports to the Minister.
Forecast for the weekend
A strong cold front is expected to move through NSW over the weekend and will produce showers and possible thunderstorms in the Canberra area some time late Saturday.
Damn; just in time for Tweaknation's Abode! Well, I hear it's a pretty big house, so it shouldn't dull the excitement too much. Did I mention there are going to be six DJ's at this party?
One thing that can really deflate a good night out is when a DJ forgets they're there for the crowd & starts playing music *they* want to hear, but clears people off the floor. Some geeks have put their heads together and have suggested one solution; take some of those heart-monitor watches, some sort of wireless comms chips (ala Bluetooth), plug it all into a system with master tracks and what do you get? An AI DJ. Just as drum machines can't replace real drums, DJ machines won't replace real DJ's.
...and in other news...
Today the final schoolbell will ring for 39,000 Year 12 kids in Queensland. Yearbooks will be signed, uniforms will be destroyed and people will get watery-eyed, hug classmates they've hardly talked to in the the last five years and promise to always keep in touch forever...
This afternoon, or tomorrow morning, they'll collect some clothes, fake ID's, cash, jump into cars and head coastwards for a week free of authority figures and full of drinking, smoking and bodily-fluid exchange.
For this is the start of Schoolies Week!
This is the season tourism operators love and loathe simultaneously; so much money, so much potential for property damage.
I did the Schoolies thing in '94. Ten of us rented two cabins at a caravan park in Palm Beach on the Gold Coast. Mum & Dad were really good about everything and had packed a care-package of food, a basic first aid kit and a variety of other things "just in case". They even bought us the first carton of beer to get us started. I think they were actually worried that I wasn't going to go.
Ah yes, ten days of great weather, sociable neighbours (the whole park was taken over by Schoolies) and complete free will; joy.
I still have distinct memories of early morning body surfing, pretending to be asleep when the cops cruised through the park on their "turn the music down or we'll take you to the watchhouse" tour through the caravan park on the second night, the guys discovering that Eno (the antacid) fizzes on your tongue if you eat it raw (you can't blame 'em, they were under the effect of munchies), Cavill Ave being absolutely packed on that first weekend with all the news crews running around making sensationalist "riotous schoolies" stories, my sisters saying "we saw you on the news!" when I called home to reassure the family that everything was fine, and the barely-contained 'I got lucky' grin on Tisch's face that couldn't be denied after he disappeared to the beach for a few hours one saturday arvo/night.
I remember wandering around Cavill Ave going from party to party one night when some of the guys headed to Jupiters Casino (they could actually pass for 18, I couldn't, I was still getting carded when I was 22). I visited some school mates who had an apartment on Cavill Ave, went for a wander along the beach, back up through the mall and eventually grabbed one of the late night buses back to Palm Beach. I came back to find the guys sitting around the cabin and got an earfull of "Where have you been? We've been worried sick about you!". Evidently I'd been gone longer than I thought.
Have fun & play safe kids. I'm not going to give you tips; for good or for ill, this is something you have to experience for yourself.
By the way...
My cousin Sarah has written a review of the Melbourne Robbie Williams concert; she's a convert it seems.
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