The Zeitgeist

Update + Melbourne Blog 6

It's been an up + down week as usual. The results of 3 out of 4 of my assessments have come back and they are all more or less favourable... haven't received the one I'm most worried about though, the essay about Chinese Peasants... that was a toughie, so we'll see how I go. I expect 60 at the most so I don't have very high hopes and will be happy with a pass... well not happy but sort of... not surprised.

Finals are coming! Argh! 3 weeks time! Seriously! And I'm still looking at quotes for my flight to Bahrain (which might turn out to be a flight to NYC, long story)... and trying to find a way to wrangle the Dept of Acctg to let me take my exam earlier...

A more-or-less party weekend (including V's party, Lammo's drinks, Isaac's potluck and Thomas' drinks) it culminated in a great night with the boys on Monday night at my place. Despite not winning their money for the first time since we started our poker nights (I won 3 in a row) and actually dropping out first, I had a great time. As usual... the shit talk and general good times were well worth it, especially the fact that I could drink without constraint since I wasnt driving home. The 3am (or whatever it was) drive to Maccas was a good call though. We polished off a good amount of Maccas + antipasto. Plus I drank a whole bottle of wine (never done that before, dont drink wine that much), Pete polished off half a bottle of vodka and Ippei+Daryl finished a bottle of Jack Daniels between them. Reasonable effort given that we werent particularly drunk. One caveat... that room still smells of cigars!

I've finished reading Zen + The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance... I'll put up my thoughts on it one of these days. I've also just read Camus' The Outsider. A novel that impressed me a great deal and gave me a lot to think about, especially in relation to the theories of absurdism and existentialism. More on this later.

I've recently discovered a new love. Melbourne Supper Club, an excellent bar that is the epitomy of Melbourne laid back class... more info and pics to come in future posts but I do have some other Melbourne things I'd like to showcase...

Today, we have some grand old buildings...

This one is South Melbourne Town Hall. Photo credit goes to Heidi here, snapped out of a car window too... there was a wedding going on here at the time when we passed by but I love the grand style of the building and its massive columns. Only a few of the inner city town halls around Melbourne are in this grand old style and they reflect the history of Melbourne's older suburbs. This particular hall was built in 1879-80 and is one of the best, most grand examples of this kind of Victorian style architecture in Australia. The building is actually much longer than this photo shows... here is a small pic from wikipedia


Another grand building is Melbourne's GPO or former General Post Office building:



Towering commandingly between the corners of Elizabeth/Bourke and Elizabeth/Lt. Bourke... this grand building is a wonder to walk through. It was built in 1859 in the Renaissance Revival style, GPO ceased operating as a post office in 1992. It was gutted by fire in 2004 and was then restored to be a major shopping and entertainment precinct and a hub for high end labels such as Akira + Comme des Garcon. It also contains a variety of restaurants (including Kenzan which serves reportedly awesome sushi) and some bars (including the Library, mentioned in previous posts and Lexington, ever popular with the after work crowd). It also has Fat, Mimco, Roy and Ben Sherman... some of my favourite labels.

Here we have a picture of Readings bookstore in Port Melbourne, taken trough a rain splatter car window by the lovely Heidi. Readings is a great chain of community bookstores, with stores in Malvern, Hawthorn and Carlton, in addition to the above one. Its bookstores tend to become focal points for the community with important arts and literary events being conducted in store and bulletin boards advertising all manners of things by residents being heavily utilised. The Pt. Melbourne one also contains a quaint little cafe, pictured below with a man enjoying a book + a coffee, two favourite pastimes I also share.


The below photo which I'll finish with was also taken by the dear Heidi (she's taken 3 of the 6 photos I've posted today... she does have an eye for great pics.) Taken out the window of Bimbo's, it's a photo of a street corner on Brunswick St.

The neon lights of bars, cafes + retail outlets are still glowing despite a more-or-less empty street, devoid of its usual revellers on a week night. A week night in Brunswick St is an enjoyable event... although many of the best places (Marios, Atomica, Ici) are indeed closed in the late evening, the street is also devoid of many of the yuppie/wanker types that go there to get drunk and create a ruckus. It is populated by more-or-less harmless homeless, poor workless bums from the Housing Commission flats down the road, and bummy student/arty types who have nothing better to do than to sit around in Gypsy Bar/Bimbos and chew the fat with their bohemian compadres. The bike with the basket says it all.

Labels: architecture, melbourne, social life, studies

posted by LX @ 3:34 AM Comments: 3

Update + Photoblogging

It's been a while since I posted last, another bout of blogging laziness. Despite the lack of comments, I've had quite a number of requests for more Melbourne blogging, which is good because it means people do read this and it isn't just for my benefit (although I'm totally gonna love reading this stuff when I'm overseas... love and hate that is). So included in this post are some more photos I've taken in and around Melbourne. No interesting cafes, restaurants or bars in this post, but will include some more in the next one. :)

In terms of updates, there was, of course, State Conference plus I went on a awesome Great Ocean Road trip with my loveliest travelling companion and, for anyone wanting more details about the trip - lets just say it was 3 days and we took around 5Gb of photos. Yes. A lot of photos.

I've recently passed through a major mid-semester assessment period where, over a weekend, I had a 40% Financial Accounting exam on Friday, followed by a 20% Accounting for Corporate Entities exam and two major essays (one about Chinese peasants pre and post Communist Revolution and one about the Greater Syrian National Congress after WW1, totalling 3500 words) on the following Monday. That was hellish but I got through it, not sure with what sort of results (we shall see) and have been mostly kicking back work-wise, now realising that I'm hella behind.

I've finished reading Jung Chang's biography of Mao, which was full of hate, vitriol and loathing for Mao on every single page. Biased indeed, but an interesting read nonetheless. Am now reading "the most widely read philosophy book of the 20th century" which is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig. If anyone's read it, holla at me, but it seems it was more of a baby boomer book.

I've attended two shows as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and they couldn't have been any more different. Akmal, an Egyptian born comedian was absolutely hilarious... giving audience members a great deal of hell and repeatedly taking the piss out of Sheikh al-Hilaly, Alan Jones and the Cronulla riots at the same time. Daniel Kitson on the other hand, a tubby, bearded, nerdish looking Briton, delivered more of a philosophy lecture than a comedy act which was funny at times but undeniably witty, interesting and full of magical insights into the way we are. His act won the top award for the festival's best performance so there ya go.

I've also watched some films. Heavyweights, as part of the German Film Festival at Cinema Como (a lovely cinema, by the way, wish I had my cam). A true story about two rival Bavarian bobsledders having to work together for the benefit of Germany at the 1952 Winter Olympics. Hostel, Eli Roth's horror movie about 3 backpackers that get lured to a shady hostel in Slovakia by the premise of partying and hot sex (Americans, surprise surprise) and receive that, plus unspeakable terror. And, the best of the three, 300... (seen with the glorious one, who detested the gore and is now forcing me to see a chick flick with her, shit) by now you shold know, the film adaptation of a comic about the Battle of Thermopylae where 300 Spartans (and some other random Greeks) made a heroic last stand against King Xerxes' of Persia massive army (of horrible fiends). As a result of the final one, I have been running around yelling "FOR SPARTA!!!" at every opportunity.

So thats about it from me, below are the pics i mentioned earlier, gonna try to blog more often but then again, how often do i say that.


The Melbourne Trades Hall building on Lygon St, opened in 1859 and the home of the Victorian labour movement. The flags seen atop of this building are the Australian flag, the Eureka flag, the Aboriginal flag and the Red flag (most commonly associated with communism but actually representing the blood of workers worldwide, a symbol that predates communist ideologies).

The Melbourne skyline as seen from Southbank. The tall building in the centre is the Rialto Tower, formerly tallest building in Australia (now Eureka/Q1).

Some random bottles against the backdrop of graffiti art down an alley off Johnston St in Fitzroy, near Brunswick St.

The busy corner of Lt. Lonsdale St and Swanston St at dusk.


Snapshot of the sea, taken in Port Melbourne just near Station Pier.

Labels: film, literature, melbourne, studies

posted by LX @ 12:44 AM