Saturday in the square

Down at the square – nearly dying of heat until a bit of a cool breeze dropped in on us, it was a day of meeting interesting people. This is the first guy I met and he had a really interesting story. He’s 17 and I think he may be getting away from home due to a few ahem… domestic complications. The phone he’s got there has the rudest songs I’ve ever heard in my life – he also showed me how to play the same tune on two phones at the same time – not bad…

Local wildlife.

And this is the famous triplets of Perthville – if they formed a band I reckon they’d be giving Hi-5 a run for their money. Do all Perth girls have perfect teeth?

And then there’s the scrabble guys – actually this is speed scrabble, good for people like me who are terrible spellers (what did people use to do before Spelcheck?) The end of that stoy though is that I WON! Yep I’m one of those guys who teaches people new games so that they can beat them at it!

Meanwhile this is Lily, we played a full game of Scrabble before Goliath the 2 year-old decided to do a little bit of random reorganisation. Luckily I was doing really badly so didn’t mind the early exit. Lily came to Perth from Queensland, she likes hanging out with her crew in town, she’s also a great conversationalist – we hung out for a while.

And this guy is apparently a regular local. He was telling me he served in Vietnam, and that people ask him for his address he tells them ‘Australia – wherever I put me hat, that’s m’ home’. He told me his name was Ned Kelly and he looked me right in the eye when he told me that so I didn’t like to hold him up to further scrutiny on the matter, I noticed Lily calling him Uncle Jack but I prefer Ned. I always wanted to know what he looked like. Anyhow, Ned is officially Perth’s friendliest bloke and he told me all about house prices in Australia and reckons that John Howard is chiefly to blame for things being over-inflated. Quote of the day ‘when you kids are old enough to vote, make sure y’vote Howard out’

And speaking of games, these guys went out and got me a pack of Uno. I got my first lesson and VOILA – I won! I must have been on a winning streak. I reckon meeting Ned Kelly on my second day in Perth was probably a good luck omen. Anyway, thanks you guys for bringing me cards, looks like a good game.

Cute window pics of the day – we didn’t get to talk but we did hang out for a bit.

And this is just after I got out for the day – I’m not actually sleeping in the house at the moment. On the left is Ju-oh (sorry I don’t know how to spell her name). After teaching piano for 10 years she is now a Social work student and had some really interesting observations about Australian life. We had a great conversation.

Oh – and this is Crowded House. Someone came by with a spare ticket and took me to the show tonight, I saw them years and years ago and I reckon they’ve still got it…

If this photo was a manuscript it’d be a duet.

Day one in Perth - AWESOME

Friday night was opening of the Awesome festival – didn’t get to see much of the opening – just a few tops of heads from the top of the steps of the Museum. I’ve been to a few Museums – this one reminded me of the foyer to the Christchurch Art Gallery – it’s a great sense of affirmation being in or near a museum, you know what you’re looking at because it’s in a museum. Strange place to live though because when you’re living somewhere you don’t really think about whether it has any cultural or historical significance. Most of my time spent hanging around at home I think about other places and don’t really care so much for things right in front of me, so it was a bit weird having people come and look at me sitting inside my little home with this expectation that I might be somehow significant to understanding things.

I did learn a thing or two about 4 person miniature piano playing. Firstly that it is very very loud when in a confined space, secondly that melody and tone don’t really matter, and thirdly that there is always room for more players no matter how many hands are getting in there.

This is Poppy, she reckons she knows what art is and she’s an art teacher so I reckon I’ll believe her, she gave me her website address though I haven’t checked it out yet. I presumed there’d be a free wireless internet connection somewhere in town but I haven’t found one yet. Anyone know of one? I thought libraries everywhere were getting into that now. Poppy seems like a cool person, maybe I’ll meet her around sometime again.

She also took my camera for a spin and took some of these photos from the outside.

This is great photo… despite 90% of the photos on this site being pictures of people looking right at the camera, I really do prefer shots of people doing things and not caring if the camera is there at all.

Here’s a couple of revealing shots. This is the box that I sent the house over in, it was a huge relief to see it arrived in Perth in one piece – I couldn’t get over how far it is from Auckland! This is a fake picture of me doing a few touch ups to the house… fake because I put my camera on timer then ran back and pretended to paint a bit I’d already done. You get the idea though.

And this is the Awesome lockup where my house is spending the night. Night night.