02.11.09
Bit 2 – MJC
So then after a further 8 hour flight (complete with 160mph tail wind at one point – whee!) I made it to Melbourne and after a long trek through their quarantine section was spat out onto the streets.
Got me a bus into the city and then went to find my first hostel.
First impressions of Melbourne? “Meh, it’s a city”.
My immediate task on getting into my room was to check my ankles out. When I had my shower at Singapore airport I’d discovered that my ankles had swollen quite dramatically. This had me buying a pair of those sexy flight socks for the second leg (geddit eh eh?) of the journey.
It turned out that very little had changed. Still swollen and pitting horribly. Is this normal? Or am I just an undiscovered cardiac patient? Fingers (but not legs) crossed.
I wasn’t actually too worried but then I went to the loo and had horrible chest pain. Crumbs. I slept that night with my feet on a pillow. Wee’ed loads the next morning – I’m pretty sure not weeing on the flight much was the problem. No worries after that anyway.
I’d got to Aus at about 7pm their time and was tired so I actually managed to drop into their time easily just by staying awake until 10ish and then going to bed for a good while. I thought that would have been more difficult. Nice.
Oh yes, crappy iPod news! The bloody home button didn’t work on flight 2. Then did the next day, then didn’t the day after etc… I took it into an Apple shop only to be told they’d need to send it off and this would take 2-3 weeks. Nice. Still not working properly. Internetting it seems to suggest that it’s a dodgy piece of design and/or manufacture. So as well as not playing stuff with my file format of choice it also has the XBox360 habit of breaking if someone looks at it wrong. If it wasn’t for the opinions of people whose opinions I trust then I’d have to assume that they sell over-priced, sub-quality tat.
Anyway. The MJC then.
After waking up with synchronised me and Aus time (yay) it was a swift gather up of stuff and then back to the central station to get a train to Collingwood.
After arriving to the college I realised that I didn’t have enough cash to pay to get in.
They let me leave my stuff behind the desk and pointed me at ATMs. Annoyingly Australia is way behind us with regard to placing cash points all over the place; they’re rare beasts over there. Got to the first one to find it wasn’t dishing out any cash. Arse. 10 mins walk later I found another one – not dishing out cash either. Another 15 min walk further there was a 3rd ATM – no dice. Bloody hell! I’d been walking for ages, it started raining – I had about £20 worth of Aus cash on me so nowhere near enough to get a room, or buy much food or drink over the weekend. There were no banks around for me to drop into (and no exchange places neither). The best I could find was a Western Union place that wouldn’t let me use my credit card to buy money. They did let me know that someone could send me cash from abroad. In other words, phone your folks and get them to send you some. Err no.
Eventually I found yet another cash point. This one didn’t give me any cash but did at least let me know why. My bank had blocked the card thinking someone had nicked it. Great. So it’s Saturday afternoon here, early Sunday morning at home, nothing open and no-one to phone for hours. Magic.
So I soggily wandered back to the MJC and luckily the rather lovely Christian let me in by leaving my credit card details. He also lent me his phone to call a hostel. They would accept payment by card too. Sigh. Still didn’t look good for food tho.
So after all that I then had to take all my kit to the hostel which was a further 20min walk through streets I didn’t know dragging all my stuff.
A few zeds later I was heading back yet again to actually meet some jugglers.
Wandering around the place some bloke wanders up and says “I recognise you” and turns out to be some Londoner called Dave. He was at a few UK cons that I was at too. So we had some chatting and then he introduced me to Mr Cheetham (nee Popstar Dave). Another thoroughly lovely chap.
I went to one passing workshop which sounded interesting but turned out to be lots of wandering and figuring out how to do the wandering. Meh, not interested. In one of the halls I met a couple of guys passing and joined in with them for a bit (hello Ash and ?Christophe).
But my lack of juggling for some months soon told and my patterns just went to pot, mainly I think because I just didn’t have the stamina.
At this point I wandered into the canteen to have nice and cheap food from some folk by the name of “Lentil as Anything”. After lots of chatting with new pals and “ah”ing at Hannah’s ?broken wrist I ended up being taught some very bizarre twisted passing pattern.
Incidentally some moron told Hannah that he’d healed her by holding on to her wrist for a while. She said “no it still hurts” so he pressed it harder. Idiot. Anyway on enquiring more she’d had numbness and some pretty decent swelling of the hand – I suggested she get it x-rayed.
Regardless the passing didn’t last too long as the show was kicking off soon. Just before this point my bank phoned me up to tell me that they thought someone had stolen my card. After being grumpy with them for a bit they agreed to let me access my money again and that episode was thankfully brought to a happy end.
To the show: Most of this was really bloody good. The comperes were excellent and the majority of acts had something decent to offer. And it was probably the longest show I’ve seen for a good while.
Highlights for me:
Olivia: a girl doing a wind-up doll routine – smooth moves and ace choreography.
The diabolo kid who came 3rd in Australia Has Talent (corrected for grammar).
2 Antipodean acts – first did parasols very delicately and the second was a very zippy, if brief, 2 person thing where one was the object – very speedy and, if they didn’t need to be brought so far, I’d say bring ‘em for a BJC. Make ‘em do some workshops to bump up their value and that’d maybe do. They were called something like “Feet 2 Feet”.
Another acro thing with 2 blokes and a woman – they did the slightly cliched fighting over the woman thing but their twist was that the 2 blokes ended up together.
Matt Hall justified his entry by impressing with his tennis can routine as well as a 3-7 ball sequence.
There were a couple of acts that didn’t move me much.
Some woman did a hat act that lived up to pretty much every hat act I’ve ever seen. There was a hugely over-angsty meteor act that started on the floor and never really took off. And some bloke did an air guitar act. Yup an air guitar act. Admittedly he did rip off one Umbilical Brothers act as well (complete with wooden screen – yes that Umbilical Brothers act) but that didn’t rescue it for me.
And that was it. A generally very high quality show. I have to admit to being surprised but then I realised that the Aussies only have 2 events each year so they get the good stuff at each of them. The performers want to perform and there’s not much opportunity to do so at JugCons. So fewer, better quality shows maybe. Not such a bad deal.
But then the show was over and so was Saturday. At the moment that everyone should have been all up and excited and trying stuff they’d seen the site was closed and we all had to go our respective ways. If there was one criticism of the event it’s this lack of a 24 hour space. I was told that previous international guests had mentioned the same before. It was really a shock to not have it available. Weird. Definitely the only really noticable big thing to sort for future years.
The next morning I was back for more of the chatting thing. It turned out that Hannah had indeed broken her wrist yesterday and was now all plastered. That’s unicycling for you. Xray showed a full thickness, undisplaced fracture through her radius. Ow.
We were sat watching them set up for volleyclub at one point. This was apparently reasonably new to Australia. I mentioned it was quite popular in Germany and this elicited a “Oh the girl who started it here is from Germany” from someone. Sure enough a german voice echoed through the hall announcing a volleyclub workshop. Oh and she got the rules wrong.
In the evening was the second Renegade (I’d missed the first as it was on the night I’d arrived in Melbourne).
Matt Hall progressed his Scissor – Paper – Stone – Look Over There thing further by introducing the 3 person variant which entertained the room thoroughly when he got everyone playing.
Some guy impressed with unicycling on a slack rope whilst doing a 3 ball cascade, whilst significantly drunk – nice.
They were the stand-outs for me. Until the intermission.
Things got fun here. We were in a school gym. So lots of toys! Someone set up a vaulting horse and springboard which led at first to people vaulting over higher and higher squashy foam obstacles. Then someone had the idea of joggle 3 then do 1 up, do a somersault and then land back into a 3 ball cascade. One kid did it twice to rapturous, well deserved, applause.
And then the problem with not having 24 hours space came in again. They had to finish the Renegade before midnight so they had to stop the vaulting fun (fun for spectators as well as the participants) to get through the remaining acts. Such a shame. If we could have stayed later we could have had both without having to prematurely halt one of them.
Anyway that was Sunday.
Monday was the last day and there were fewer people aroundand I caught up on a bit of sleep as well so just went there to say hi and bye and thanks and nice to meet yous etc.
So then an MJC. Very good indeed. Ace acts, lovely folk. Shame about the enforced home times. Ah well. Doubt I’ll get there again for some considerable time but I do hope a few of the folk I met manage to get across to Europe for a few cons. Would be nice to meet them again.
Major thanks to Christian for letting me in with no money and lending me his phone. Cheers too to Iain, Hannah and plenty more of their pals whose names I forget. I am so crap with names, sorry. And ta as well to Dave and Dave for company and conversation.
Photos here (no show pics tho).