I think by now most people already know that I'm trying to totally turn my life around and find a way back into music because I really don't enjoy what I do at work. Auditing is not my calling. Seriously.

I figured out my main problem was a complete lack of available time. I say "available time" because well, I had time but I kept being so tired that I couldn't motivate myself to do anything. Even stuff I like. So, for the past year or so, I've been talking to various managers and partners at work, trying to find a way around this. And I'm really, really glad that I took the jump (and that EY has let me) to get a Flexible Work Arrangement. This basically means I don't work Fridays in off-season (i.e. Apr-Jun, Oct-Dec) anymore!!!

So why did I pick a Flexible Work Arrangement and not just take unpaid leave? After all, both of them result in me taking a paycut because I'm working less. Well, I had a couple of good reasons:

• A Flexible Work Arrangement means I won't go crazy because I'll get some more time off work throughout the year.
• I already kind of don't really take much of my annual leave so buying extra annual leave or taking unpaid leave isn't really going to do anything, because I'm just going to keeeeeeeep working.
• I have a feeling that if I took massive amounts of leave in solid blocks I'll end up either going on vacation or spending all the time procrastinating and doing nothing because my brain is going "YAAAAY I'M ON LEAVE I'M ON LEAVE". Neither of which is going to help me get to Broadway.
• Getting a week day off every week is kinda helpful. Particularly since I can now try and schedule appointments with people I need to meet or errands I need to run. Ever try meeting a uni lecturer on the weekends? It's hard enough convincing people to give up their time to meet with you; trying to ask them to give up their precious weekends just doesn't work.
• Getting time off regularly each week makes me much more conscious that I only have this one, precious day off and I need to make the most of it. It also lets me pace everything out so I can work towards my dream consistently. After all, muses can be fickle and I can't just sit around, hoping inspiration will strike at the precise instant I have a two week window blocked off with annual leave. And everybody knows, consistent practice makes perfect.

This is week two of my Flexible Work Arrangement. The first one was spent pretty much just recovering. Today, I spent the morning sleeping off some sort of weird headache/cold that's been lingering around for the past week and cleaned house. After lunch, I spent some quality time with my keyboard and came up with a few bars of...something...which I will post later...when it's in a more finished form. All in all, I feel like it's a good start, considering that today is the first time I've written any music in over a year because I kept putting it off.

Anyway. I signed up for Noteflight in the middle of last year when it launched but didn't really explore it until today. It's a pretty impressive web-based alternative to Finale or Sibellius and if you're just starting out and composing simple scores, you won't really need anything else. I'm using the free version at the moment, which allows you to create 25 scores and has some limitations on the instruments you can write for, but at this stage, all I need is voice and piano anyway, which is fine.

But you can do some pretty amazing stuff with it:

Now Taylor Swift's "Love Story" kind of bugs me in that I feel like its level of popularity is unwarranted for the kind of song that it is. It is well written, but rather repetitive and doesn't do a lot of interesting things harmonically or melodically. In other words, it's pretty much a song where you can predict where it's going. I'll give it some credit lyrically, since it tackles a common subject matter but from a different perspective and it's cleverly written but it still annoys me because of the prevalence of false rhymes used throughout the song. What is immensely irritating is that despite all of these factors, there's still something about this song which makes me - critical as I am - like it. I guess that's what makes it a great song.

To begin, I am not and have never been a contemporary dancer. I'm very much a Broadway Theatre/Jazz girl and while I have a great appreciation for other styles of dance and have tried a few over the years, jazz is pretty much my type of fare. I do not "get" contemporary. However watching the past few seasons of So You Think You Can Dance has shown me that not all contemporary dance is totally out there and weird and you really can get the story from watching it. Thus when I scored a couple of free tickets from work to Sydney Dance Company 2010 Season 1 New Creations on Friday, Nina and I decided we had nothing to lose and we might as well go and see what all the fuss is about.

ARE WE THAT WE ARE choreographed by Adam Linder

Because I am not a contemporary girl, I have no words to describe this. I'm just going to quote you the program with my commentary in square brackets:

ARE WE THAT WE ARE is a physical exploration into the existence of altered states of consciousness within human experience.

Ooooooookaaaaay. Um. This is going in a direction that I don't think I particularly like.

This works [sic] presents a series of situations that embody states of otherness beyond ordinary rational thought.

A grammatical error within pretentious babble. We're definitely not off to a good start.

Breaking with conditioned perceptions, the work explores a trance-induced ritual, a dissolution of individualism within heightened sexual union, a transfiguring hallucination and the possibility of a collective unconscious.

...what!? Call me completely uncultured, but that made no sense at all. What in the world is a "collective unconscious"? Or is this more bad copy and they mean "collective subconscious" or to be even more correct a "collective unconscious mind"?

By illuminating the potential of the body to transcend conventional notions of self we put into play the myriad possibilities of the psyche.

That last part just sounds like someone did a cut and paste from a philosophy dissertation, ran it through a thesaurus and deliberately replaced every single word using the synonyms with the most syllables.

Anyway. The last time I was in the Sydney Theatre, I was watching Spring Awakening with Terence. This kind of description on the program made me wonder if this performance was going to be Spring Awakening all over again (i.e. random gratuitous sex scenes on stage). It was actually something more bizarre. I think this trailer sums it up quite well:

...yeah. Throughout this whole 40 minute piece of random gyrating to either complete silence or weird electronica music, Nina and I were exchanging perplexed looks with each other and constantly mouthing "WHAT ON EARTH!?!?!??!" And when that large rectangular stage light fixture started pulsing in rainbow colors in what we subsequently assumed to be the "trance-induced ritual" and "transfiguring hallucination", and one of the dancers started miming a leather whip and whipping two other dancers who were bent over AND making the sound effects to go with it, I honestly nearly burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of it all.

6 Breaths choreographed by Rafael Bonachela, set to a commissioned score by Ezio Bosso

Thankfully, the second piece was much better.

As a choreographer I am always searching for concepts and ideas that can become fertile ground upon which to make a dance work and provide inspiration that can inform the dancers' bodies and motivate their thinking. For that reason, I knew 6 Breaths was the perfect idea upon which to make a work. The work is divided musically into 6 sections. Each section starts with a solo piano mixed with the sound of life brathing. Working with Ezio's profoundly beautiful score and inspired by the emotional potential inherent in the 6 movements, I could allow the dance to evolve and to illuminate my feelings about all the facets of the simple human act of breathing.

1st Breath
Out of Breath
Crying Breath
In the Same Breath
Under One's Breath
Last Breath

The piece starts with a projection on a large screen covering the entire darkened stage of what first appears to be an image of rippling water which turns into swirling white fragments. These fragments eventually combine to form a shell of a marble statue of a man while periodically small spotlights illuminate isolated dancers singly or in small groups behind the screen. This screen is later lifted in the piece and the dancers take to the full stage in what initially appears to be a random, chaotic manner but eventually always coalesces into a clean, disciplined formation. Towards the end, the screen reappears, with further fragments forming the figure of a woman in the man's embrace and the piece closes with the statues breaking down into fragments again and the dancers reprising fragments of the choreography from the whole work.

There were some funny moments, in which I realised that all the male and female dancers were wearing exactly the same thing - these long mesh tunics with white statue fragments decorating the lower half over black shiny shorts - which looked great on the girls but made the guys look like they were wearing kilts.

Anyway. I totally got this one, obviously it's about breathing!!!! </sarcasm>

Seriously, I really enjoyed this piece. I appreciated the dance techniques in this piece, though as I said before I am not a contemporary dancer by any means. But the skill involved was much more obvious and I could and did perceive it as a work of art (whereas the previous piece, I seriously believe it belongs in that category of modern contemporary art which is completely overrated). There was dramatic structure, there was grace, and there was this absolutely stunning, haunting minimalistic music.

So I finally caved in to my musical cravings (never mind the fact that I've already bought tickets to West Side Story and Cats later this year) and convinced Terence to go and see Spring Awakening last Sunday night. Yay for $40 dress circle A reserve tickets to the closing performance through Lasttix. This was partly because: (a) I haven't been to the theatre since..."Guys and Dolls" ("Swan Lake" by the Russian Ballet doesn't count); and (b) I really wanted to see this musical when it was on in New York since it had won 8 out of 11 2007 Tony Awards Nominations (including Best Musical, Best Book and Best Score) but I didn't have anyone to see it with where it wouldn't have been incredibly awkward.

And oh boy, was this musical controversial and "in-your-face" about it. Or I could be just very conservative. I did laugh when I saw that they had sanitised one of the pillar songs into "Totally Stuffed" so the cast could perform it on Channel 7's Sunrise morning show. I'm still quite surprised that Sunrise had a whole feature segment on a musical that addressed the themes of the evil "parentocracy", rape, suicide, abortion, homosexuality, incest, child abuse, and more. I also boggled when I went to the bathroom during intermission and saw a matronly lady patiently explain the plot to three young kids no older than seven. Yikes. I guess I must really be conservative and old fashioned.

Quick thoughts since it's pretty late and I need to make an early start tomorrow:

Score

Thought the score was pretty good but I came away right afterwards without a particular song being stuck in my head, which doesn't usually happen with me and musicals (I always come out of them singing something). Though strangely enough, "The Word of Your Body" has been echoing through my mind all day today.

I found the score stylistically was divided in two. There were the rather plaintive, slow, winding melodies for those songs which were rooted in sadness, fear and anticipation. Then the rest of the songs were very angry/rebellious pop-rock. All the songs within each style felt very similar to each other and I can't really recall anything other than the main motifs from "The Word of Your Body", "Mama Who Bore Me" and "Totally Fucked".

There were some interesting moments with counterpoint bringing two motifs together (e.g. "Don't Do Sadness" into "Blue Wind" or the reprise of "The Bitch of Living" in "Those You've Known"). I was surprised at the lack of underscoring. Most of the songs were foreshadowed with only one or two chords which I thought made the transitions into song quite abrupt, unlike the transitions you get in musicals like "Phantom" (which is pretty much nearly sung through) and "Rent".

Lyrics

Throughout the whole musical, the lyrics are really well matched with the music. The lyrics themselves I think are quite fascinating, because they are written such that the songs make perfect sense in context but when you take them out of context of the scenes, it's quite hard to follow. They're less literal and more poetic and thus are more a reflection of the thoughts and feelings of the characters. The songs themselves are used to give the audience an insight into the characters' minds rather as conversation and interactions between characters (rather dialogue appears to be the main tool for that) which I think I find a bit disconcerting because I'm used to songs being in and of each of the moments on stage, rather than as a "pause and reflect on the moment on stage" thing.

I do love the rhyming and the scansion of the lyrics, some of the songs have really interesting structures, like "The Song of Purple Summer", where there's a loose rhyme scheme but the pattern is quite unstructured (emphasis mine, on rhymes):

And yet I wait
the swallow brings
a song too hard to follow
that no one else can sing

The fences sway
the porches swing
the clouds begin to thunder
crickets wander murmuring

the earth will wave with corn
the grey-fly choir will mourn
and mares with neigh
with stallions that they mate
foals they've born

And all shall know the wonder
I will sing the song of purple summer.

Book, Staging, Choreography and Other Miscellaneous Items

I felt the book was...okay. On the whole, the story flowed and there were moments of comedy to lighten what is a very dark piece overall. However, I found there wasn't really much character development aside from Melchior, Wendla and Moritz. All the other characters seem to be pretty two dimensional or where they did have character development - e.g. Martha and Isle (whose character is kind of pretty random overall) - the character development felt forced, like it existed there because the plot required it to be there. This may be a function of the fact that the musical is based on the original play by Frank Wedekind which was more theme/moral driven than character driven but I think a strong book should have been able to develop the supporting characters better.

I think the staging of the Australian production is different to the original Broadway productions as it was a non-replica production. The stage consisted of a sloped floor at the front and a movable double-storey boardwalk hinged in the middle and linked with about eight different ladders. The orchestra were hidden away in the back and the cast doubled as crew to push around the set. The lighting was done well, with these movable bare warm light bulbs which were raised and lowered in turn to reflect the time (e.g. sunrise, late afternoon, evening, nightfall) and a portable, handheld spotlight which made for some interesting lighting effects.

The choreography I have to say that I really, really didn't get it. I didn't get the random waving looping hand actions. I thought the choreography was a bit surreal, though perhaps that was the intention. Some of the choreography felt quite artificial and made the actors look like wooden dolls.

I also have to say that all the use of the Australian accent throughout the musical thoroughly annoyed me. The Australian accent is one of the ugliest sounds in the world. The lyrics are hard enough to understand on their own; it was further hampered by the horrid combination of poor diction and the Australian accent. Ugh. And this extends to all the dialogue being with Australian accents as well. Seriously, I know this is the Australian production but honestly, the Australian accent sounds crap. Get over it and at least use a neutral accent if you don't want to use an American accent.

Finally, I have to say that I really did not expect the sex scene to be acted out quite so faithfully on stage, with the taking off of underwear and all. Seriously, when Act I finished with Melchior and Wendla going at it on stage, you could hear this deafening silence in the theatre before the thunderous wave of applause began as everyone went "...Wow."

Conclusion

Well this ended up being a lot longer than I thought it would be. Overall, I'd rank Spring Awakening probably 7/10. It's very dark and intellectual and a little pretentious but definitely worth seeing. I'm off to find a copy of the soundtrack, just to see whether the soundtrack will grow on me over time, because right now I just feel like it doesn't measure up to what I had gone in expecting from a musical with "Best Score". Though I guess first I need to get some sleep and get through tomorrow.

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to start doing things about my current...situation of not being in the ideal job (promotions and all aside). So this year, during the week of my birthday, I took an afternoon off and got myself was a ticket to the Talent Development Project's "Start Me Up" Master Class.

Talent Development Project: Start Me Up - Master Class

Essentially, this was a two-hour Q&A session with a panel of music industry representatives across artists, A&R executives from major recording companies, representatives from copyright/royalties bodies, music publishers and music teachers, with some free musical entertainment thrown in (no, Jessica Mauboy did not perform. Yes, Wes Carr did perform!).

Wes Carr, performing "Love Is An Animal" at the Talent Development Project "Start Me Up" Master Class.

The event was very much targeted towards young performers trying to get into mainstream music, but they did have two members of the panel (Darren Coggan and Jonathon Welch) who are or have been involved in musical theatre. Most of the session consisted of the host, John Foreman, asking the panel a series of pre-determined questions aimed at facilitating discussion, with the last 15 minutes or so reserved for open questions. I wavered for a split second, decided I had nothing to lose and got to sneak in a very specific (and long) question at the very end about how to get into writing musical theatre.

And thank goodness I did. Had I not asked that question, I would not have found out about the...

APRA|AMCOS presents: Songwriter Speaks Evening - With Lynn Ahrens & Stephen Flaherty

Yup. Two weeks ago, I managed to get an invitation (courtesy of the generous Milly Petriella from APRA|AMCOS) to an intimate evening with Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, directly as a result of asking that question in the Master Class. One of 21st Century Broadway's dream teams who have multiple nominations for Grammy Awards, Academy Awards and Golden Globes, and have won multiple greatly coveted Tony Awards. For those who don't know them, Ahrens and Flaherty are the team behind the music of the animated feature, "Anastasia", including the theme song "At The Beginning" as sung by Donna Lewis and Richard Marx. The whole evening was an incredible opportunity as they talked about their backgrounds, their early careers, how they got to where they are today and performed a few of their wonderful songs.

Stephen Flaherty playing the opening number for the Tony Award winning musical "Ragtime" with Lynn Ahrens.

It was really inspiring to hear that Lynn Ahrens used to work in a completely unrelated field, then got to a point where she found that she was meant to be writing for musical theatre, gathered her courage and made the jump to abandon her career in advertising to work as a freelance jingle writer. Stephen Flaherty's story is also tremendously inspiring - having known what he wanted to do from a very young age, he pursued his dream through formal university music studies doggedly despite growing up in a state (state, not just suburb or city, state) where there was very little in the way of a musical theatre community, eventually making his way to Broadway, New York, New York.

And just when I thought the evening couldn't get any better, I managed to meet both Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty afterwards to ask them for some words of advice (my paraphrasing) and get some pictures:

Lynn Ahrens: "Education will only get you so far. My studies weren't related to musical theatre at all and I didn't find them helpful. Study the greats - like Sondheim, Hammerstein - and learn from them. Musical theatre relies heavily on collaboration; get out there and meet people, get involved in musical theatre clubs and societies, develop and use your network. Don't be afraid to take your chances when you get them - just remember to find a way to keep paying the bills!"

(a very bad picture of) Me with Lynn Ahrens!

Stephen Flaherty: "I found my formal education studies extremely relevant and valuable - to the extent that they arm you with the technical knowledge and skills to write music. Once you have those basic skills, you can continue to hone them on your own. But musical theatre is all about the art of storytelling; so in fact, I would suggest you study playwriting and drama to develop your storytelling skills and learn to marry them with music."

Stephen Flaherty and (another very bad picture of) me!

...I know, I know...I'm such a fan girl. Honestly, I was so excited and nervous that I found it really difficult to sound intelligent and form coherent sentences since the words "OMG IT'S LYNN AHRENS AND STEPHEN FLAHERTY!!!" kept buzzing around in circles in my mind.

In summary:

• I've always believed it never hurts to ask and it never hurts to try. This past month has definitely confirmed this philosophy for me.
• Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty are awesome and I hope I will get the chance to meet them again in the future and maybe even show them something I've written.
• I need more time to go and write stuff and learn and study stuff and join musical theatre groups and keep moving this forward.

Seems like someone is keeping an eye on me and the good things just keep on happening:

#1: <3 <3 <3

Pretty sure everyone knows already, so I don't really need to say anything else here, do I? Very, very, very happy 6 weeks.

Baking chocolate chip cookies on a lazy Sunday afternoon...

#2: New Place (at long last!)

Moved into my new apartment last night and there's...absolutely nothing to speak of in terms of furniture. I'm sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag and using a cardboard box as a dining table but it's still amazing to just sit and let the realization of "OMG THIS IS MY APARTMENT!!!" just hit me and sink in:

Cushions and a cardboard box in lieu of a proper 6-piece dining set...

#3: Promotion!

Got a call this morning and it turns out that promotion to Senior Accountant that I've been wanting since...forever...is finally happening! Formal announcements later this week and salary increases formalised at the end of September. Wow. Validation at last. Maybe I can finally afford to eat out more...

Tonkotsu Ramen from Gumshara, Eating World, Sydney Chinatown.

I haven't blogged much in the last few weeks due to the hectic chaos. Yet it's over the past few weeks that I've come to the conclusion the perfect week would be a four-day work week and a three-day weekend (i.e. the "long-weekend-every-week" week). I have a policy of no studying or working on Saturdays and I've tried hard to stick to that. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail; recently, there's been a disturbing trend of an increasing desire to succeed that is directly proportional to failing to stick by that rule.

Sometimes it's really hard to step back and think of the bigger picture; especially when you're a detail-oriented perfectionist like me. Though every now and again, things happen that make you wonder what the daily drudgery is all for. Why do people willingly spend the better part of their lives doing something they don't like? It's true that for many the choice simply isn't there. But I'm beginning to think that for the rest of us - those more fortunate and blessed - we do have the choice, but we're blinded by all sorts of things. Fear. Inertia. Complacency.

Anyway, I guess I've been going through a bit of a quarter life crisis. It's been just over a year since I came back from New York and started working full time again and I don't feel like I've really gotten to where I wanted to go. I've built all sorts of castles in the air. I've begun trying to move forward in half a dozen different directions. A lot of things seemed to have just...happened, that I either didn't plan on or definitely planned on avoiding.

Plans change, I accept that and I can work with it. But this...feeling of everything remaining stagnant is excruciatingly painful. I HATE this out-of-control-non-productive feeling and I think it mainly comes from the fact that I'm still here, doing something that's not quite what I want and getting bogged down in its day-to-day tasks while there's a whole heap of other stuff I would much rather be doing.

The best option would be to take a leap of faith, quit and just go for it. Sadly, I think nature and nurture are against me. Good Chinese girls - particularly if they're auditors - do not contemplate not finishing their CA and leaving a steady job with excellent prospects to pursue flights of fancy, especially not when there's mortgages to be paid. In hindsight, buying a place (places) was...a supremely stupid decision made purely on economic considerations and ignoring all other factors.

So I think all that's left to me is baby steps. Four days a week isn't so bad. An extra day all to myself to work on personal projects would be good and would leave me a lot more time to just...enjoy life.

Some people have been dubious, quoting the Chinese proverb "first the bitter, then the sweet", and told me that at my age, I should be thinking about building a solid foundation for the years ahead, not wasting my time on frivolity. After twenty-three years of living by that philosophy, I don't know if I can wholeheartedly agree with it anymore.

Is all the bitterness worth it in the end? I don't know. I don't think I exactly...regret the way things played out. I'm not sure it was all worth it though. The problem with life is that you can't live every single possible permutation and then just pick and choose the best ones. We only have one life and to delay living - really living - for so long makes no sense. Life just - happens. I would hate to get to the end and just think the rewards in the end were not worth it and feel like I hadn't lived at all. Not that I'm advocating total abandonment, just to dream and plan as if you'll live forever but live as if you'll die today because after all, there's "no day but today".

Where to from here? I think I'm going to try and make the four day work week a reality, once promotions are announced. It doesn't compare to actually chasing after dreams, but it's a compromise that's feasible and it's a step in the right direction. So hopefully I'll have more time for friends...

Tony donning a very suspicious-looking head sock on an early Saturday morning before going biking around the local neighbourhood.

...more time to be creative, experiment and try new things...

Finally using my LEGO cake mould to make a LEGO butter cake!

...more time for good food...

Arancini at the Harbour Bar, Park Hyatt, The Rocks.

New York Cheesecake at Maisy's Cafe, Neutral Bay.

...nice drinks...music...conversation...

Affogato coffee with franjelico at Harbour Bar, Park Hyatt, The Rocks.

...beautiful surroundings...

View of the Sydney Opera House at midnight from the Overseas Passenger Terminal at the Rocks.

View of the Sydney Harbour Bridge at midnight from the Overseas Passenger Terminal at the Rocks.

Should be asleep but I'm not. Why must we sleep? Sleep is such an inefficient thing. Not only am I completely incapacitated for an average of six to eight hours every night, it produces absolutely nothing useful since I just have really weird dreams rather than any epiphanies.

On the bright side, I got a merit for FIN109, despite having less than ideal conditions in my focus sessions (completely useless). Goes to show doing all the past papers since 2004 does help a great deal. Now to deal with the TAX209 CLP sitting in my piano room...

I bought a Casio CDP 200R keyboard (digital piano) from the Pitt Street Sydney Allans Music store today yesterday. Keyboard, cross stand and midi-USB cable, all included for $890. $890!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The keyboard alone retails for something like $1,040, the stand is about $40-50 and the USB cable is $10-20. So...basically a $200 discount.

That's a deal with me paying $10 under my budget of $900 and that price matches the VIP price from Bava's Music City. I'm pretty sure Allans would have gone lower too, because when I stated my requirements and that I wanted it all for $890, the salesman offered no resistance and just said "Sure, let's see what we can do" straight away.

Unfortunately, it's too late to lower your opening bid when they agree to it immediately! *sigh* Not that I'm complaining...not when I can do things like record a pretty awesome sounding piano instrumental of "I'm Not That Girl" from Wicked.

All I wanted to do was to register on Medicare Online so I can get my Medicare claims paid directly into my bank account if ever I needed to make a Medicare Claim. All I get is error pages and pages that show someone on their web development team is working actively on the site right now.

Exhibit A: Use of "Lorem Ipsum" on the home page and generic filler thumbnails. In fact, this very page changed as I refreshed it when I changed Firefox profiles.

Exhibit B: "Page not found" errors whenever I click navigation links. Particularly the online registration link!

Exhibit C: The "About Medicare Australia" page. Test items in menus, incomplete pages, I'm pretty sure this page doesn't validate.

Yet somehow I'm the only one who can see these things. Firefox 3.0.11, Windows Vista. No one else can see it! This is a conspiracy! *dons tinfoil hat* I've got to go into hiding...

What to do if you've got a public holiday, sunny skies and you're trying to get fit while maintaining your budget? Go bike riding at the Bicentennial Park!

Preparation

Gear:

• 1x crappy $10 K-Mart bike which - until about 1 week ago - has not been ridden for 7 years. Bike shopping failed to turn up anything in my budget ($200-300).
• 1x highlighter green and gold helmet

Food/Drink/Sustenance:

• 4x packs of Tim Tams (Double Coats, Honeycomb Crunch, Cookies & Cream, Sweet Sensations - the one with the chocolate mousse)
• 1x shredded roast chicken
• Stir-fried beef and carrot strips with ginger, garlic and soy sauce
• 1x head of iceberg lettuce
• 1x bunch of some other random leafy lettuce
• 4x cooked vermicelli thingies
• Carrot sticks
• Peanut butter (apparently carrot sticks are more awesome with peanut butter)
• Mayonnaise (apparently you cannot have roast chicken sandwiches without this)
• Sweet chilli sauce
• Rice paper rolls
• 1x ginger beer, 1x vanilla Coke, 1x Sprite, 1x Lift

Clearly, I have my priorities straight.

Sydney Olympic Park - Olympic Park Circuit (Kronos Hill / Mountain X BMX)

Since Benny and I actually stuck to the original plan and Tony's SMS, we arrived at Olympic Park, bright and early at 9 AM. After spending about 40 minutes reassembling our bikes, we did a quick loop of the mangroves opposite Bicentennial Park before Terence, Tony and Billy arrived at 10 AM. Another 30 minutes of bike assembly and adjustments ensued and I learned that having a good bike really does make a difference, since I tried a quick spin on Tony's bike and it was sooooo much easier than my crappy K-Mart bike. Sadly it was too big for me so I had to give it back and get back on my shoddy bike after Billy "fixed" the seat height (apparently using one's leg to smash down the seat is a valid method of bicycle seat adjustment), and off we went on the Olympic Circuit.

View Larger Map

A: Rode out of Bicentennial Park around to Homebush Bay Road/Australia Avenue (past DFO, where we didn't stop to go shopping *sniffle*), through the water fountains and the peace poles and up to...

B: Kronos Hill. Was not expecting to actually go up this hill, since I have a crappy bike and I'm still sore from dance class on Thursday and I'm just generally really unfit on a bike. Then Tony said "Oh come on Deb, it's a spiral path up, you can see where the path is cut into the side of the hill as it winds up." So we went. Tony is such a liar. We all made it up...eventually.

Benny, Terence, Tony, me and Billy at the top of Kronos Hill.

Enjoying the awesome view of the park buildings and fountain from Kronos Hill:

The other side of Kronos Hill. You can see people running up and down the side of the hill to and fro from the pink crate as part of some sort of group competitive bonding fitness boot camp activity.

We then headed over to the Mountain X BMX biking grounds at C before making our way back to food at D. And this is where the epic tale begins.

Introducing Terence, King of BMX Mountain X

Before today, I didn't actually know that there's a BMX dirt bike track/course/thing at Sydney Olympic Park. It looks cool as hell. View from the west side of the course, right at the end of the first straight opposite the starting concrete ramp.

I, of course, fail very, very hard on my crappy $10 K-Mart bike. I failed so hard that I had insufficient momentum and fell just short of the top of the first crest. And I do mean fell, being that I jumped the hell off my bike as it lost traction and slid backwards down the slope and had to drag it laboriously back up in disgrace. Only to have it happen to me three more times in that first run and countless other times over the entire course. At least I was not alone; Tony also failed pretty hard and didn't make it up that first run, or the other parts of the course either.

This was pretty embarrassing considering there are little kids and parents with toddlers and babies on tandem bikes/bikes with those baby seats on the back going at high speeds all over the place.

Terence, on the other hand, is apparently the mortal reincarnation of some BMX biking deity, going through the course twice in record time, attempting jumping obstacles and runs, doing 180s in mid-air, back flips and somersaults on his more awesome K-Mart bike.

All that skill didn't sit very well with the disreputable looking bunch of twenty or so tattooed up white kids who were sitting around on the turf islands in the middle of the course like they owned the place. As we left for food, they gave chase like a pack of rabid wolves and surrounded Terence on all sides with evil intent apparent on their twisted revenge ravaged faces. Surrounded on all sides, beset by deadly enemies, Terence displayed his lightning fast reflexes and demonstrated he is also Bruce Lee reincarnated, emerging from the fray completely unscathed, except for what will end up being a very sexy scar above his left eyebrow. And Terence doth spake:

Terence: I got out with this cut... they got it so much worse. *flexes muscles in a manly pose as a dozen girls appear from nowhere with cameras*

Terence, a.k.a. Bruce Lee reborn, basking in the admiration of his fanclub during the post-scuffle aftermath. And guess who was the lucky girl who got to tend his war wounds? Yup. Bandaging by yours truly. *swoon*

What Really Happened

Terence was fully inspired by the BMX bike track to try and jump the obstacles on his bike, didn't really succeed, but left unscathed. As we were biking back to food and came off the bridge between Holker Street and Australia Avenue, we crossed the road and went to move up onto the footpath.

I was right behind Terence and had a totally unobstructed slow motion view of:

• Terence deciding to jump the kerb
• The left side of the front wheel of his bike clipping the edge of the kerb
• The bike twisting up into the air at an awkward angle due to the speed at which Terence was travelling
• Terence's arms and upper body spinning up and away from the ground as a result of him still holding onto the handle bars as the bike flipped
• Terence taking the fall on the front part of his head not protected by his helmet then bouncing off and rolling on to his left shoulder as the bike crashes back onto the road

Me: *jumps off/runs/throws away bike* OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG ARE YOU OKAY?!?!??!?!?!
Terence: *rolls over again and sits up, with a 1 inch gash above his eye dripping rivulets of blood down his face and his shirt to splatter and pool on the ground* I'm fine, I'm fine.
Me: OMG, dude, just sit there, don't move, don't move!
Benny: (who was right behind me) *runs up and strips off and throws his undershirt to me* OMG, S@#! damn, dude!

*insert me washing out Terence's wound with water and staunching the bleeding with Benny's sweat soaked shirt while Terence keeps insisting he's fine, Tony's calling for help and Benny's on his way to making a run to the car for ice and other supplies since none of us were carrying first aid kits with us*

Lessons learned:

• Do not try and jump kerbs in a bike that you couldn't get to jump on a BMX dirt track
• Always carrying a basic first aid kit, especially when you don't think you'll need it cos inevitably that's when you will need it

The park ranger shows up in about 5 minutes with a first aid kit in tow, but refuses to administer medical aid as that would mean he would have to file a report and he hates paper work. He supplies me with a bandage, a cotton pad and powdered antiseptic - which I use liberally - to replace Benny's shirt.

Terence, recovering from his battle with the kerb:

The shirt with Benny's sweat and Terence's blood. All that's missing is some tears:

Lessons learned:

• Do not expect there to be qualified, trained and willing first aid people to be there, even at official venues like the Sydney Olympic Park

Food Break

Terence needed to go to the hospital for stitches but it was now 1 PM and all parties involved were starving. Since he wasn't concussed, was fine, wasn't light headed or dizzy or displaying any other severe symptoms and was in need of food, we walked our bikes back to the cars and got food.

From our picnic spot: Neil (on the bike on the left), riding Billy's bike. Tony (the hooded figure in white four people to the right, holding his rear end in pain), a good distance away from Neil, after having just received a ride on the rack at the back of Billy's bike.

Billy, getting a taste of his own medicine, as Neil takes him for a spin on the back of his own bike.

Not as comfortable as you think, is it Billy? IS IT?!?!?!?!

The Aftermath

Benny and I went with Terence to Ryde Hospital, with Benny tailing me as I drive (uncharacteristically) at a snail's pace like a typical Asian woman driver because I'm quite unnerved that I'm driving Terence's parents' car which is complex and modern and has strange buttons and glowing displays everywhere, not to mention being heaps wider and bigger than my Starlet and being an automatic which kinda freaks me out because cars should not move by themselves unless I have my foot on the accelerator, as well as the fact that Terence has a head injury and is sitting in the passenger seat.

As we walk into the hospital some 3 hours after the actual injury, Terence calls his parents and the conversation translated from Cantonese goes something like this (emphasis mine):

Terence: Hey Dad, uh, so I was riding my bike and I went splat.
*pause as Terence waits for a reply*
Terence: Oh, I'm fine, it's just my face.

With Terence safely dispatched to the care of medical experts, Benny and I have nothing to do but wait.

The Triage Desk at Ryde Hospital:

Terence emerging from initial treatment behind Triage Desk:

Poor Terence, already confounded by the blow to the head and now pressing a much more expertly applied bandage to his head, is shepherded off to fill out forms to check in to the hospital, where the lady is confused into thinking he's a non-citizen even though he was born in Australia and quizzing him about his Medicare card details.

Finally with paperwork all sorted out, Terence goes back into Triage for his stitches.

While Terence is occupied, his parents arrive in the Emergency Waiting Room. Four stitches later, Terence emerges looking much better:

The triumph of the moment is unfortunately deflated while Terence is signing out as his mom remarks (translated from Cantonese):

"We know accidents are bound to happen when young people go out to play, but you know, when he told us he was at the hospital I was a little worried because he is going to the hospital after all. Especially when he told me it was his face, because I just thought, aiya, he is already not such a handsome boy."

Poor Terence. It just hasn't been his day at all.

In closing:

• Always carry a basic first aid kit
• Don't try to jump kerbs
• For those who are curious, Benny still has the shirt and we intend to disinfect, seal, frame and mount it for Terence's birthday later this year so he'll have a lovely souvenir (besides the sexy scar which chicks will dig)