Entries from March 2004 ↓

It’s been more of the same of late, but I’m hoping that’ll change soon. I had another three job interviews this week, and if the law of averages stands up, I’ve gotta hit paydirt sometime. The interview I had last week didn’t turn me up a job unfortunately, though the woman who called to let me know seemed a bit too apologetic and sounded like she was going to break into tears. Crazy people, they’re everywhere I tells ya. I got the call just after I went into a primary school last Friday to teach a Year 7 class about black holes. Now to be honest with you, I wasn’t sure how much I’d have to dumb it down for them, since there’s some pretty tricky concepts involved with black holes, but after finding out what they knew about time, space and gravity already, I decided to throw a pretty heavy slug at them and they just gobbled it up, so I was suitably impressed (this was of course at a christian primary school, which meant that the kids were almost surrealistically well behaved and attentive). They asked a lot of questions and thankfully I wasn’t too rusty on the subject (I did a fair whack of work on a black hole project in upper high school) and had a lot of answers, even for questions they thought were silly, like white holes, wormholes and so on. So I had a fair bit of fun doing it, and aside from the two kids that for some god-unknown reason asked me what would happen if he planted a nuclear bomb in Bunbury, and how much fire it would take to blow up Jupiter, they were pretty damn quick off the mark. But like I said, straight afterwards I got the call about the job and was feeling a little frustrated, futile and generally down, so I decided to solve my problems the American way. I bought things. Which didn’t really make me feel a heap better at the time, but has kept me well entertained ever since, considering I mostly bought DVDs and magazines.

In a kind of sudden, incognito fashion, my birthday’s snuck up on me. I mean normally I get kind of chuffed about it before hand and organise some party, gathering or other do at least a couple of weeks in advance, but this year it’s just, well, appeared I guess. It’s actually in eight days time, which means I’m leaving things a little late, but I feel like doing *something*, (if for no other purpose to try and elicit gifts and free drinks from people I know… BWAHAHAHAHA!) so I’d better get cracking. This means if anyone has any ideas, suggestions or wants to volunteer a venue or someone elses venue, I’m all ears. I’m undecided (whoo, something new and different for me) on whether I’d be planning the shenanigans for Bunbury or Perth since there seems to be a pretty even split of mates between the two. My birthday’s on the Friday, but as years of handing things in late and weaseling extensions has taught me, as long as it’s within a couple of days either way, noone will bat so much as an eyelid.

Operators are standing by to take your call…

and so I’m sitting there, car in neutral with the handbrake on, two wheels off the side of the road and the others just verging on the last of the tarred highway before it rubbles off into gravel siding. The engine has been sitting silent long enough for the oil to cool and settle, I reach over to turn off the hazard lights because the ticking is beginning to bother me. The sun slips lightly through the half-open window and water beads up on the outside of the bottle on the passenger seat. And I’m sitting here still and silent, breaths slowly gliding in and out. I don’t know where to go. A map book sits in the footwell on the passenger side, but it wont serve any purpose. I think about the last time I opened my wallet and how much is in there, I think about what I’ve left in the boot of the car and how far I can get on the fuel I still have in the tank. I stop to wonder if anyone’s expecting me to be anywhere sometime. An old sedan pulls up behind be and a figure steps out of the passenger side. A face leans down to meet the level of my own and glances through the open window. You right mate? I nod and tell him yes, so he jogs back and gets in the sedan, waving as they roll off past me. But I’m really not so sure.

So today’s Tuesday, and I’m now where, and doing what, I was expecting to be doing on the Monday, but we’re gonna let that slide since I had a good time filling in the space between the two. Had another interview on Monday, which seemed to go pretty well, though I didn’t get a lot of feedback. I should know what the score is by the end of the week. Applying for jobs is starting to get *real* old already…

On the bright side of things though, I found out there was a Kawasaki dealership just over the road from where my interview was, so after I’d finished I wandered over and pawed at some of the bikes. I got talking to one of the guys working there for a little bit and he was only too happy to hand over to me the keys to one of these for a test ride. One Kawasaki ZX-6R in a very sexy blue, with a 636cc engine making 125hp wedged into a bike weighing 161kg dry, and it moves like a sonofabitch. Of course this is relatively speaking. I could go jumping on a new litre sportsbike, but I find it’s more fun to try and get the most out of what power you have rather than just go straight to the fastest thing on wheels. Anyway, this was my first encounter riding a proper balls-out sportsbike, so I was having fun before I even got on it. So after filling out some forms so that they know where to start the manhunt when I lead the police on a mad high-speed chase through the city endangering hundreds of civilian lives, I was itching to get moving. First thing I noticed was how different the riding position was, I mean my current bike is a sports-tourer and the other bikes I’d riden have all been commuter-style bikes, which means you sit in a position where your back is relatively upright and the handlebars are around your waist height. I got on the ZX-6R and noticed straight away that my ass was higher up, my legs were tucked right in, and I felt like I was just about grabbing my ankles to get a grip on the handlebars. Of course it sounds uncomfortable as hell, but once you’re sitting there more in the bike than on the bike, it’s actually quite comfy. So, I wriggled around to get snug, checked for traffic, let the clutch out… and stalled.

*ahem*

I know these inline fours don’t make much power off idle, but I thought I’d be able to get away with dawdling off. Apparently not. Start the bike again and this time dial in a few more revs, and off I roll into traffic. After about two blinks I got used to the digital speedo idea, and while I wasn’t able to just quickly glance down and see the digital rev meter (I found I had to intentionally make a point of looking at it), I didn’t have any trouble reading it once I was looking. A quick zing down to a roundabout, a couple of sets of traffic lights, and I was ready to see what I’d been missing.

There were three main things that I noticed myself thinking (and/or yelling to myself inside my helmet) regularly throughout my hour or so ride, and it’s probably fitting to recount them to you now.

1. God-DAMN! - This seemed to pop into the front of my mind every time I grabbed a good handful of the throttle. After I’d zipped about a bit and taken it onto the freeway to see what kind of pull it had, and was grinning ear to ear like a loon, I took a few breaths, composed myself a little, only to realise that I hadn’t yet taken it over 8000rpm… It redlines at 15,500 and doesn’t make peak power until 13,000. Obviously something had to be done. The following task involved finding a nice slow freeway onramp, looking for a nice clear opening, and nailing the throttle it for all it was worth. This indulgence promptly assisted my body in relocating several internal organs and thoroughly tightening ones sphincter. It was an eye-opening experience, and leads me to regular thought number two…

2. No Dwight, No! The law, THE LAW! - I thought I had it bad before. My little ZZ-R may not be taking me to MotoGP victory, but it’s no dead slouch. Over the past fourteen months that I’ve had my licence, I’ve been tempted to slip in between cars here and there, overtake at a rate of knots and so on, on what is a pretty much constant basis. I have also never in my almost five years of driving and riding, had a speeding ticket. But with this kind of power and engineering prowess between your legs, things take a dramatic turn for the tempting. While there are many faster bikes on the market with larger displacement, a 600-class sportsbike is by no means slow. A current model from any of the big four Japanese manufacturers will find you covering a standing quarter mile in within a bees dick of eleven seconds flat, if not faster. They have a power to weight ratio that would equate to driving a 1200hp Commodore or an S15 200SX with over nine hundred and fifty peak horsepower. While their design means that bikes are limited in that they can’t generally tow a boat or a caravan, I’m sure you’re following what I’m getting at here. When a little throttle means zero to a hundred k’s an hour in 3.7 seconds, you get awfully tempted to do things that you shouldn’t, or at least, things that are particularly illegal. This found me grabbing the brakes quite often to keep myself in the law-abiding sector, brakes I might add that were something else entirely, the stopping power was immense. But before I get back to the bike’s personality, thought number three.

3. Awwww…. me nads… - While the sales guy explained to me that this years model had been softened up a bit on the suspension side of things after a lot of criticism about its harsh factory settings, the front felt like it was held up by crowbars, a notion brought swiftly to my attention every time I hit a substantial bump in the road by a firm and unforgiving blow to the groin by my friend Mr Fuel Tank. I got around being beaten into impotence by trying to avoid bumps in the road and sitting a bit further back in the seat, but I couldn’t totally eliminate the issue. If I bought one, first stop would be softening up the front in a substantial fashion, as well as doing something to the rear, which for some reason felt kinda vague, though that could’ve been due to any number of things (me being green at this was also potentially one of these).

So aside from me being giddy like a schoolboy with a whoopee cushion, I tried to make mental notes about the bike so I could try and compare it to any others I take for a spin before I sign away my soul in order to purchase one. The big thing I noticed; this thing is a precision machine. Now it could be that I’ve always just riden slightly sloppy bikes and that all sportsbikes are like this, but everything was precise, simple and exact (aside from the rider). The bike had incredible balance and just fell into corners feeling entirely planted without a jitter from the front. The brakes only required a gentle squeeze to pull the bike up and the throttle was sensitive to the slightest notion, which saw me surging forth more than a few times (which is most likely due to a jittery hand or me being in the habit of using the throttle like a 250 rider, i.e. ham-fistedly.). The one exception was the clutch, which was a lot heavier than I’m used to. Thankfully though, to make things easier on my left hand, clutchless upshifts were both a breeze and smooth as silk.

To sum it up, I loved it, and I was expecting to. I knew from the get-go that I was looking at a Japanese 600 for a suitable replacement, and these days it’s pretty damn hard to buy a sportsbike that isn’t pretty damn good to begin with, They’re bursting at the seams with bleeding-edge technology and incredible engineering and the competition between brands means there’s no room for design mistakes. The deciding factor on which bike I end up getting will probably be more down to personal preference in comfort, looks (and colour =P) and what deals I can swing than any noticable performance difference between them. 95% of riders (myself included) have nowhere near the riding talent you’d need to run out of bike before you run out of skill. That’s one 600 down, three to go.

So in the meantime, I’ll be hanging around waiting to hear back from this interview mob. A new job is just about the kind of lifestlye change I’m really aching for at the moment.

Whoooooo!

Well, I went in today and passed my R class licence test with a perfect score. The Terminator (as the testing guy is often called… imagine going through life being referred to as The Terminator… anyhow…) couldn’t pick me up on a single thing. So that means I can now legally ride anything with two wheels in this country (and a wad of others) for the rest of my natural life. Awesome. I feel like these guys…

Before we get into things, I think it’s only fair to give you fair warning that pretty much the entirety of this entry is going to be about the David Bowie concert I went to last night, so those of you that aren’t interested can put your pencil cases in your drawers and go to recess early. Don’t forget to push your chairs in.

Well, as I’m sure you’ve gathered, I went to see Bowie last night and it was damn well awesome. Of course it wasn’t cheap, but I’m just gonna have to let that go. Another thing I’m gonna have to let go is the pent up rage about the tshirt I got (or I could just hold the grudge until the end of time itself, either is a perfectly legitimare course of action). So I wandered over to the merchandise van (as you do) to part with even more of my hard earned, seeing as how they obviously weren’t making enough out of the roughly $2mil worth of ticket sales for the event, and was happy to see they had a suitable black tshirt with the tourdates on the back. After double-checking that Perth was actually on the shirt (seeing as how they decided to tack the date on late in the game), I asked the woman to grab me a large one. No good, all out of large. Not a problem, I’ll grab a medium, just a little less baggy. So seeing as how I’d already worn a shirt to the event (yeah yeah, I know, I’m getting conformist in my old age), I stuck the shirt in my pants (yeah yeah, conformist I know) pocket and went and sat down. Of course it was only after rolling out of bed this morning that I discovered that the silly tart had given me a shirt with the 2003 european tour dates on the back. Lousy whore. Still, somehow I’ll manage to face the days and continue living. I don’t know how, but I’ll sally on.

Something for Kate were opening for the tour and the main thing I noticed was that watching them play was roughly equivalent to someone putting on a something for kate CD really loud and have some people dance around on a stage with instruments at the same time. I don’t know whether this says more about them being able to capture their live sound really well in a studio recording environment, or whether it means they just plain suck live, but I didn’t put a lot of thought into it. I was busy slurping my coffee and waiting for what I’d come to see.

One other thing I’ve gotta say is that the setting was awesome. Even though I’d been making unpleasant faces in the direction of the overcast clouds all through the day, it didn’t rain on us, which was a good thing. The place looked awesome, The stage was plenty big with a huge array of lights and so on set up (the lightshow rocked arse), and on the right, you have the moon rising over the top of the skyscrapers, and on the left, there’s the belltower all lit up, with the whole place surrounded by big-arse trees. It was really quite nice.

So after a lights-check that seemed to take about half of forever, they finally cranked up and the place went off. There was a lot of interaction with the crowd, everybody seemed thrilled off their nut to be there and the songs thy played were brilliant live. Some of them had been played with a bit to go a bit more with the piano, or guitars and so on and so forth, which was cool, noone wants to come along and hear something that sounds just like their CD’s at home.

If you’re that way inclined, here’s the

Set List for Perth, 1-Mar-2004, Supreme Court Gardens: (forgive me if the order of one or two songs is a bit out)

Rebel Rebel (from Young Americans, 1975)
New Killer Star (from Reality, 2003)
Fame (from Young Americans, 1975)
Cactus (Cover of an old Pixies song) (from Heathen, 2002)
I’ve Been Waiting For You (Cover of an old Neil Young tune) (from Heathen, 2002)
All The Young Dudes (from David Live, 1974)
China Girl (from Let’s Dance, 1983)
The Loneliest Guy (from Reality, 2003)
The Man Who Sold The World (from The Man Who Sold The World, 1970)
Pablo Picasso (from Reality, 2003)
Hallo Spaceboy (from Outside, 1995)
Sunday (from Heathen, 2002)
Heathen (The Rays) (from Heathen, 2002)
Under Pressure (from a collaboration with Queen)
Life On Mars? (from Hunky Dory, 1980)
Looking For Water (from Reality, 2003)
Quicksand (from Hunky Dory, 1980)
Slow Burn (from Heathen, 2002)
Days (from Reality, 2003)
White Light, White Heat (Cover of an old Velvet Underground track)
Ashes to Ashes (from Scary Monsters, 1980)
I’m Afraid of Americans (from Earthling, 1997)
“Heroes” (from Heroes, 1977)

encore
Changes (from Hunky Dory, 1980)
Try Some Buy Some (from Reality, 2003)
Five Years (from Ziggy Stardust, 1972)
Suffragette City (from Ziggy Stardust, 1972)
Ziggy Stardust (from Ziggy Stardust, 1972)

He played roughly half of each of his last two albums, most of his general “greatest hits” kind of songs, as well as a handful of obscure tracks from the dusty back corners of his back catalogue (which dates back over three decades), not to mention doing a number from The Velvet Underground, which was sweet. All up the set was 28 songs long and lasted a solid two hours, which has gotta be the longest and most polished set I’ve ever heard.

So unless I’m an absolutely horrific writer, you’ve probably gathered that I had a ball. It was a great start to the week, and I’ve got my open class bike licence test next tuesday. Still no real developments on the job front, still harassing anyone with ears like a job-fiend. As soon as I manage to wrangle myself something I’m going to be over the moon. Cue the happy dance.