Boy in da corner

Boy in da corner
The dizzee rascal concert @ the gaelic club last weekend was pretty tight. I didn't know much about this British rapper but he's got some good rhymes. The place was packed out - approx. 400 people. When he came on stage and did the first freestyle as a kind of mic check, that was pretty cool . I think that stunned and impressed the crowd a bit. In terms of acoustics, it was a bit hard to hear him at times, cause he's got some brixton kind of accent and he raps kinda fast. His beats are different too - garage beats, which is popular in the UK. I was impressed that the majority of the crowd (well at least on the dancefloor) knew his songs as he was getting the crowd to participate in them. Although i suspect that the most people didn;t know all this song.

The concert was pretty short, approx like 45 minutes. I felt a bit ripped off having been waiting there listening to the support acts for like 3 hours and then he shows up and is gone in a flash . When he left the stage I think the crowd was anticpating that he would come back and do an encore. In fact the DJ had to tell people like "he's not coming back!". That was only the flaw in the concert, although i major one. However, checking with Tim (the resident hip hop guru) Dizzie only has a pretty short track list as he only has one album.

I checked on Amazon.com, and a lot of the americans were giving him props as well. Dizzie is unique in the rap game because of his combo of garage beats and very fast story telling rapping style (kinda like Twista) and reminds be a bit of a young Busta Rhymes - a guy that is a bit odd in the rap game that he is experimenting with a lot of new sounds.

Have to admit that there was like one pretty cheesy segment - not that I am really complaining - but involved getting a bunch of girls on stage to dance to various beats. And Dizzie didn't even choose the best girls in the house! The crowd had to nominate to the DJ who to a part of the "dance-off" , so Tim and I started pointing at this hottie in the crowd downstairs (we were situated in the balcony upstairs). Another guy standing next to us saw what we were doing, and started going crazy too , pointing at her too, yellling out "Mr DJ - over here!". it was hilarious.

Other interesting notes were that there were these speakers stacked up like about 7-8 metres high and this dude has decided to walk across there from the balcony and watch the concert from there. It was funny cause he looked so outta place until security decided to drag his ass outta there.

Overall i rate the concert as a 8.5 out of 10. The support acts were quite good too and showcased some of the best of Aussie hip hop. Nervatude (not sure of the exact spelling) were a 2 man DJ team that were playing a lot of wicked beats. One guy was mixing on the tables and another was playing chords on the keyboard - pretty sick sounds were coming out. I orignally thought these guys were crap until they started combining the music into awesome arrangements. It looked even better as I was upstairs to see how they were mixing - a great view and I gained even more apprecation of how hard DJ's work and exactly what they do in a set.

long time between posts

it's been 17 days since my last post. i've been pretty busy working at the tiling company, then skiing at perisher blue and thredbo, and then holidaying at the blue mountains for a couple of days. after this whirlwind of three weeks, i'm just  gonna sit back and relax!

my uni results came out last nite and i fared pretty well: 1 HD, 2 D's and 1 credit. I can't believe that i pulled off 97% in Professional Conduct 1: Legal Accounting and 80% for my law honours research project. WOw. That's pretty kick ass.

First and foremost I have to thank the man above for my results. Especially during the semester when I was panicking big time about the honours thing, I turned to you for help and guidance. Also got to thank everyone around me as well for putting up with me when that's all i would talk about. For six months, that's bascially all i lived and breathed. Have to thank Aadesh especially for sitting down with me and explaining heaps of stuff, late nite phone calls to calm me down, all his materials and his words of wisdom, and basically for telling me that I'll be ok. Also gotta give props to my family, 'specially Mum for calming me down, and William and Ray for helping me put the final touches and typing. Gotta also give much love to Dawen for putting up with me talking about it 24/7 and helping me out with the editing. And my homeboy Tim, for just being a wall I could sound out to when I was stressing out big time. Last but not least, to the lecturerer that put me through all this. For challening me and pushing me to my utmost limits. For driving me insane and providing unique insights.

I'm not sure if many people realised what I went through to put this thing together, but it was one of the toughest periods I've had to go through (which may not such much about my life experiences!). There was a period of time when I was really into it, just doing it non-stop, then a period where I didn't want to touch it because it was too difficult and wanted to quit. BUt after the period where it was too late to quit, I put my game face on and  just became determined to complete it. Sometimes you gotta suffer to be successful.

My mark will never accurately represent the learning experience and knowledge that I gained (since when does the mark ever represent what you learnt). Even  though I was cheering and jumping for joy when I got 80%, I know that I learnt so much more than that and it will be carried on to bigger and greater things.

For anyone that takes the research project or any honours project - this is one simple tip - just do it on something that you love. Do it on something that your really passionate about. I was so fascinated by what I was researching and writing about, and prolly will be for some time, but it made it  so much easier to wake up each morning and stay up late at nite doing it.  

For everything that I went through, it was worth it. Mos Definetely.

 

Rodeo ride

Went to Phil's 21st B'day party on the weekend - kind of crazy coz she had all these carnival rides. She had the jumping castle, sumo wrestling, rodeo ride, horizontal bungee, clown, fairy floss. The craziest ride was the rodeo bull ride. Basically, you sit on this bull and it moves around and ride it as long as possible. Easy right? Not quite! The bull is not the easiest thing to sit on plus you can only hold onto it via this little 15cm rope protruding from the back of its neck. The guys can only use one hand, while the women can use two to hold the rope

Btw you have to step into the "ring" which inflated and has padding, giving you a somewhat soft landing. The bull is controlled by the ride co-ordinator and everytime you handle a stage for about 25 seconds, the controller increases the ride to the next stage. The bull has a number of tricks to throw you off. It can rise straight up and go straright down, spin clockwise or anti-clockwise, rise at a diagonal angle. Trust me, it's very difficult to hold on when it gets to the hardest stage. I managed to stay on for 10 seconds on the "expert level" and won the prize from phil for "not staying on the longest, but trying the hardest" . Perhaps the try hard prize?? LOL.

Every time I went on, I was intent on breaking the record. There was just this fire inside of me that said "I am going to conquer this bull!". The skin on the back of my knuckle ripped open slightly cause I was holding on to the rope so tightly. I think it was because when i was falling off the ride, I didn't want to let go and fall. I was constantly trying to pull myself up.

3 days later and I am feeling so sore after the ride. My forearms and hands were killing me. I could barely open a car door that nite and had great difficulty using the can opener. My inner thighs were also killing me. I just didn't feel like walking most of the time and really struggled to get out of a chair. My guess is that the vibrations and the violent rocking motion of the bull caused it.

Although I have endured pain and soreness (trust me) I still want to go on that ride again. I have to beat 14 seconds.


New Job @ Tiling company.
After a week of bludging around watching old dvd's and the 2004 NBA finals, I managed to score a job! Its a casual job for 3 days in total doing filing and admin, and arranging and cleaning tiles (not really sure what that entails). Mostly its paperwork/admin, so i'm happy. I get to get off my butt and do something, instead of nothing each day, so I'm excited. Although won't be too excited when I have to get up at 5.30am to go to work at crows nest. During my studies, I haven't worked that much ( part time jobs but they have only been casual). I want to pay my own way through uni (although I've only got 1 semester to go) rather than bludging off my parents most of the time. So hopefully, the money from this work will go towards a good cause eg. textbooks or more likely movies, food, transport, going out!.

One sleep to go - State of origin
Hopefully, NSW will win. Home crowd, Freddie, and Phil Gould's last game should put us over the top. Queensland shouldn't be underestimated though and are riding on the strength of the win from two weeks ago. With almost the same side, they've at least got some continuity and familiarity in their team. On the other hand, with six new faces in the NSW camp and several players lacking a bit in match fitness (BK, Ryles, Trent Barrett), this may cause a problem. I'm rooting for NSW, although QLD may easily snatch the game from us if the boys aren't on their game. Scoreline prediction NSW 22 Qld 18.

Greeks win Euro 2004
Congrats to the greeks! The euphoria and the celebrations have just been crazy from the Greek community in Australia. As one commentator puts it, the greeks aren't "quiet achievers". Its a wonderful thing to see how passionate they are about soccer - especially all the greek flags flying from the car windows and the constant beeping in the street. Now I think I'm gonna hear it from every greek that I come across about the win !.