The Harbor at Dawn

I am so chilled out right now. I’ve just spent my day off body boarding with Davy over at Manly Bay. What a day!

 

Anyway, a quick recap over the past few days.

 

The morning after my first night in Sydney, jetlag woke me up around 4am. When I say it woke me up, it really got me out of bed, fully awake and out the house by 5am. I walked down to the harbor with my camera and took pictures of the Opera House and the bay whilst the sun came up. Some of them turned out really well!

The tiredness kicked in around 8am though (11pm UK time) which was just as I was walking into work. I was exhausted all day and eventually left work early to crash out at the hotel. I think I was dead to the world by about 9pm. Up again at 3am. In fact this morning was the first morning I slept past about 5am. Last night I passed out on the couch and finally made it in to bed around 11pm. Natwest rudely woke me this morning as they thought my card had been stolen. Last night it wouldn’t work in the cash mashine as they had blocked it entirely, so this morning I had to get on the internet and call the UK to get it working again.

 

Work is all going well so far, it has been pretty chilled out, seeing as we have had about twice the time to put everything together than we will normally have. We got the whole system up and running yesterday and spent a bit of time listening to it and tweaking bits and pieces. For those of you who are interested, we are touring six MSL-2s, four UPAs and a lot of UPMs for delays, front-fills and surrounds. I think we have some JF80s on stage for foldback, though I haven’t investigated that all yet, and lots and lots of subbage. Front end wise the show is being driven from G-Type show control, triggering Akai S6000 samplers and a few CD Players. Everything is running through a M7CL for the Australian leg and a PM5D for the rest of the tour.

 

So anyway, enough of work. We had a great day today at the beach. It started off raining in the morning, so we wandered around the market. We contemplated climbing the big bridge that crosses the harbor, but it was $199 to do it, which is a bit too steep really, so we (Davy and I) hopped on a ferry over to Manly Bay, to go to the beach. Once we were there the sun came out, the water was warm and after watching the surfers for a bit, we decided that the only sensible way forward was body boarding. What a great time! The surf was just right and there was absolutely no tide to pull you half way down the beach. We were riding waves for 20 or 30 metres into shore, and it was such a beautiful place.

 

On the way back into Sydney we got the best sunset on the boat. I don’t think I have been this chilled out in a long time. It was such a great day, and a perfect way to start a tech week! The stress of the tech should wash straight off my shoulders after today!

Jetlag & Beaches

I’ve arrived!

 

What a day! I’m not too sure how I am feeling right now. The past few days, or should I say, the past very long day has been a totally surreal experience. My day started on Tuesday when I boarded flight QF2 to Sydney, via Bangkok. The flight itself was actually surprisingly pleasant considering. The journey down to Bangkok was only about half full. I had managed to get to Heathrow early enough to blag myself a seat on an emergency exit isle. This by the way is a very good plan for anyone travelling long distances. It is well worth turning up early and asking for an emergency exit isle. You have so much more legroom, plus the freedom to move about the cabin without having to ask the person you are sitting next to you to let you out. On the first half of the flight, the seat behind me was also completely empty, meaning I could lean back all I liked without feeling guilty about impeding on the poor guy behind me’s space.

 

Quantas are also an excellent airline entertainment-wise I had an ‘on demand’ video screen, something which was reserved for the business class section of my United Airlines flight to America in December last year. This meant I could pick and choose when I wanted to watch movies, as opposed to be forced to start watching a movie when it started or having to wait for the next one to start to enjoy one. I had 80 movies to choose from, plus loads of TV shows, documentaries and even a CD library. Excellent! Although with the help of some night nurse I didn’t need to watch too much telly, as I passed out for about 9 hours in total over the course of the flight.

 

Bangkok was really humid. I think it was 32 degrees outside but it was really heavy humidity and that was after they had filled the airport with aircon units. Thai customs and security were even more tight than in Heathrow, with them taking a few small bottles away from me that Heathrow security had let through without thinking twice about.

The second half of the flight was more packed out. On the first half the only other person in my row was an Irish girl called Emma. After Thailand a loud Australian called Dalas joined us. It turned out Dalas was also a sound engineer and so we got chatting a bit about the shows we had been working on. He gave me his email contacts so when I get a chance I shall drop him a line. The flight was fairly unremarkable. 

 

So finally we arrive over Sydney, half an hour early. Brilliant! Almost home and dry! Of course not! It turns out the wind direction is wrong which means the runway we want to land on has a cross wind and isn’t safe for landing. The only other runway that is big enough to carry our (quite frankly huge) Boeing 747-400 is right near residential houses, so it has a noise restriction, meaning we can’t come into land until 6am. Great. After 24 hours in the air we literarily have to make big circles around Sydney for an hour before we can touch down. Excellent.

 

So to cut a long story short, after queuing to go through customs, and then another line to check your baggage we finally made it, via a bus, back to out accommodation. Absolutely no complaints from here on in. I have a wonderful, spacious apartment all to myself. I will post some pictures in a few days but I really don’t have the energy right now. Davy and I just went for a walk down to Bondi Beach. I can’t explain how wonderful it is down there, especially after spending so long cooped up on a plane. Fortunately I don’t have too, as I took my camera down there so you can see for yourself. We walked along the coastal path for about 4 kilometres, then took a bus back to the harbour where The Sydney Opera House is. Or shall I say, where work is. How beautiful is this?

I just got home and I am in the middle of trying to activate possibly the most complicated mobile service in the world. Seriously! Here, you don’t just top up and get minutes, you get three different kinds of minutes, which all come with their own long and complicated T’s & C’s! I was on the phone to this guy for 15 minutes as he read them out to me. Maybe it is just because I am still 9 time zones to the left, and it feels like it should be 9:30am this morning, except I haven’t slept a wink for all the hours it was supposed to be nighttime. I don’t know, but I didn’t understand a word of it. Now it is activated I am desperately trying to setup my 100mb of data I get so I can check my email in my flat without having to pay $24 a day. I looked into getting a 3g card but it will cost me $200 to buy the card, plus $30 a month for 2 gig of data. Probably not worth it if I can get a bit of data working on my phone. It is infuriatingly complicated though.

 

Anyway. I am now off to locate some WIFI so I can post up this entry. I am hoping I wont feel quite so groggy tomorrow, seeing as I have a lot of work to do on this show.

 

Plan of action number one: Create a strategy to beat this jetlag!

Four Days To Go

Hi everyone!

Some of you might remember me from previous blogs, such as....

Anyway.

I have created this space to document life on the road with Edward Scissorhands, for anyone who is interested. Hopefully I will have enough time and internet access to update regularly, though I can't promise too much, we shall see how things go.

I fly over to Sydney on Tuesday and I will be away from the UK for just over three months. Things are almost all sorted out now, with just a few minor details, such as when my flight actually is and where I am going to be staying still to be figured out. Just the details then.

Please leave me lots of comments! I like comments! he he he...