Autumn

The Melbourne weather has been crazy good these past 2 months, much better than the summer. Ah well!

On Saturday

After 2 days of barely getting out of the house, we got our bikes on Saturday and headed for St Kilda. We were lucky it wasn’t as windy as your usual Melbourne winter day, even though quite cloudy, so the ride was more than pleasant! I snapped a few photos on the way, as always. But honestly, with such beautiful sights, would you be able to help it?

Oxfam – Monash Innovators Programe

This Saturday, I had the pleasure of volunteering for the Oxfam – Monash University Innovators program. The event was mainly focused on enabling team projects in which the young and the restless had the opportunity to propose new solutions to some old social, development and sustainability related problems. Throughout the day, the students got a chance to listen to interesting talks from some really cool people as well, while in the evening, they presented their projects to a panel of representatives from non-governmental organisations. This was the most nerve wrecking part for most of them I reckon – coping with public speaking, after an entire day of brainstorming. All the ideas were really interesting, even though there was only one winning team that will get the chance to see its project come to life in this following year.

My role there was to assist Amanda, the girl in charge with capturing the moment for posterity, so I basically ended up being the sound guy. Besides some sore muscles, I did however learn how to handle a camera and what exactly to look for when filming an event like this.

Still it was one of the most motivating days I’ve had in a while. It sure helped that I met some really cool and fun people, interested to push the conversation forward. I somehow still can’t get used to the usual ‘How’s it going?’ without people ever stopping to hear the answer.. Interacting with the students was inspirational by itself – it’s so good to meet enthusiast people that want to change the world!

Anyway, here’s are some Insta photos taken from the actual event:

This is me giiving a go to some B roll, extra material to go with the actual subject

Mandatory shot in the elevator: me and Amanda

Rama, the fun guy in charge with the communication for the event

Action!

The teams were about to start their presentations in front of the jury

Rain

Melbourne weather has been completely unfriendly to the working-class-bound-in-an-office lately, with lots of sunshine during the week and heavy rain during the weekends. Good thing I work from home 🙂

Road Trip to Mornington

It may not snow in Melbourne, but usually winter here is translated into strong gushes of wind and heavy raining. It’s definitely not the worst winter someone can experience, but it still tends to make you stay indoors. Last weekend however we stopped complaining and took a day trip to Mornington – a nice area with lots of vineyards and amazing coast lines. The images below are from a vineyard which name I cannot remember, but what a beautiful place that was! There were lots sculptures on that property and I love how my husband took a photo of me and this bird’s butt! 🙂

MIFF Is Here

Melbourne International Film Festival is set to start at the end of this month and I’m beyond excited. We’ve already booked tickets for 12 films, I think, among which the best 2 Romanian movies of the year: Everybody In Our Family and Child’s Pose. Or so they say, we’ll have to see 🙂

Mashable Social Media Day Unconference

I’m really excited to have attended Mashable’s fourth annual Social Media Day unconference in Melbourne, yesterday. Unconference because it is a participant driven meeting where the discussion topics are proposed on the spot. It was a great opportunity to meet like-minded people that specialise in different aspects of social media. Sometimes it’s good to know that we are all facing the same problems, plus the knowledge exchange is priceless. I came back with 1 or 2 tricks that I can’t wait to try!  The event took place in a very relaxed setting called Inspire9, which is a collaborative space in Richmond, where people can come, work or play ping pong, foosball or shoot pool for that matter. All in all, it was a very interesting Sunday. How about yours?

Enjoying Long Walks On The Beach – Part 1

Colourful

Yesterday was the first sunny day in a long time and these beautiful colours spotted at the market really helped build up the day.

Roses

Purple eggplants

Windsor Castle Hotel

A funny building in the Windsor area of Melbourne, which has some pink elephants on top of it. Yep

Miniature Melbourne

This really talented guy decided to do a mini-Melbourne film that really manages to capture the vibe of the city.

Miniature Melbourne from Nathan Kaso on Vimeo.

A short tilt-shift time-lapse film featuring the city of Melbourne, Australia. This piece is 10 months in the making and features a range of different events and festivals held in the city throughout the year.

Music: “Reflections” by Tom Day. Big thanks to Tom for his sound effects and audio mix soundcloud.com/tomday

Equipment: Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 17-40mm f/4L, 24-105mm f/4L and 70-300mm f/4-5.6 USM

The tilt-shift effect and grading was applied in Photoshop, and the film was edited in After Effects and Premiere Pro CS6.

Most of the shots were captured from the Eureka Skydeck, which is a lookout at the top of Melbourne’s tallest building. Other locations were the Shrine of Remembrance memorial, car parks and bridges around the city.

Union Lane, Melbourne

Car Plates

I can’t help not notice some of the personalised car plates around Melbourne. We didn’t have these in Romania. Anywayz, have a look at this one, which, believe it or not, belongs to my neighbour’s electrician. Get it? 🙂

The Sky

Lately, the sun has been putting on a struggle to come out and play. Hopefully, it won’t give up.. even though I’m quite ready for autumn 🙂

Around

As usual, cool stuff happening in Fitzroy, Melbourne.

These Days

My brother in law came back from a trip back home and brought me this sleeping beauty:

Felt like eating something sweet, so I made Benne Wafers. I completely forgot how easy they are to make and how delicious, yum!

The Melbourne Comedy Festival is on, so we went to see Arj Barker, one of my favourite comedians! The show was cooler than expected, laughed so hard. He’s a glimpse of one of his past shows:

Saw bits of the Dumb Ways To Die campaign, at Flinders street.

Saw these pretty tomatoes organised neatly:

Bring it on, Sunday!

Crazy Electrician-Hunter Guy

I snapped this photo from a moving car, somewhere in St Kilda. It’s not good-looking, but how good it is? 🙂 I’m definitely gonna think twice next time I’m going to call an electrician!

TEES: Exposing Melbourne’s T-shirt culture

And a video to go with my previous post on this very cool exhibition: TEES: Exposing Melbourne’s T-shirt culture.

Great Ocean Road

On Friday, we gave a visiting friend the grand tour of the Great Ocean Road. Here are some super duper snaps during the trip.

Gibson Steps

On the right hand side of Gibson steps, where you could get a glimpse of the next attraction

What was left of the Apostles since we last saw them

My best work so far 🙂

A hungry little fellow

Near Johnston Street, Fitzroy

Street Sunglasses

Aren’t they cute? Spotted them somewhere in Fitzroy.

Golden Plains Lucky 7

2 weekends ago, me and a very excited husband got to attend Golden Plains Lucky 7, an independent festival ran by Aunty Meredith (of the Meredith Music Festival fame). We’ve been trying to get tickets for 2 years to no avail – since both festivals have a ballott-based system, which gives you the right to buy tickets. So when we finally got the ‘lucky’ email, we went for it.

Good thing we did it ’cause the weekend was a blast! This was my first independent music festival that I have ever attended, in the sense that the location was some guy’s farm, there were no sponsor banners as far as the eye could see, people were allowed to bring their own booze and food, as long as there was no glass packaging, and there was only one stage where everybody was performing. The latter was both good and bad – good because you finally get to attend each and every concert – Opossom, Tallest Man On Earth, Cat Power, Mulatu Astatke, Toro Y Moi, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion or George Clinton – and bad because, well, I still haven’t developed the Aussie’s taste for garage/ heavy rock – Dinosaur Jr, The Mark of Cain, etc. Another big plus was the weather: plenty of sun to sunbath to and no rain, which is basically heaven for a tent-only festival.

White Night in Melbourne

For the very first time, last Saturday, Melbourne celebrated its White Night entirely dedicated to arts and culture. As far as I know, most of the museums were opened, while concerts and many other street events, such as 3D projections on some of the main buildings, were taking through the CBD. I was reading the newspapers yesterday and it turns out this entire night was an enormous success, with more than 300,000 attending. All I can say the place was nuts and that I’ve never ever seen so many Melbournians in one place!

Here’re some photos from the night:

Because You’re Worth It!

This ad, which is pretty savoury by itself, has been my obsession for the last 4 months. It was laid out on a huge billboard on my way home, but as much as I tried, couldn’t get a clear shot of it. Too far, too big, too much on the left…Anyway, I finally past one of the White Lady Funerals showrooms in Elsternwick the other day and voila: A woman’s understanding!

Hot Chip in Melbs!

Amazing gig last night at the Palace Theatre! Even though you might not be a big fan of their music, you cannot not like their show: the way they deliver their song, the energy on stage, the light show, it was hands down one of the best concerts I’ve attended! Plus the dancing, ah, I could use this type of dancing at least once a week. Hope you’ll be back soon, Hot Chip!

Stichwork

This year is the 10th anniversary of Federation Square in Melbourne, so ‘Fed Square and Creative Production Services have commissioned this new work by Dougherty, whose enormous, expressive sculptures are woven from vast quantities of willow tree saplings and sticks. Over the course of three weeks, Patrick Dougherty weaved and bended more than ten tonnes of willow into an incredible sculpture using just gloves and a pair of secateurs.’

Here’s the result. Not too shabby, right?

TEES: Exposing Melbourne’s T-shirt culture

TEES: Exposing Melbourne’s T-shirt culture is a new exhibition at the NGV in Federation Square. Went down there this Sunday and even though it’s not that big it’s a really fun one. As the description goes:

Eddie Zammit is something of a T-shirt hunter. He owns well over 4,000 of them. ‘I have enough tees to wear one a day for over a decade’, he proudly announces. A collaboration between Just Another, NGV Studio and T-world, TEES: Exposing Melbourne’s T-shirt culture examines and dissects the city’s passion for cotton through Zammit’s eyes. Featuring photography by Nicole Reed, TEESincludes visual content on Melbourne’s influential artists, brands and designers. Visitors will also see some classic local tees and prominent Melbourne T-shirt souvenirs. Zammit has dug deep into his T-shirt collection to uncover influential items that demonstrate the power of the city’s T-shirt past.

Anyway, have a look at some of my photos and if you like it and are from Melbourne, maybe you’ll want to go there and see it yourself. I mean, I would have left with a few tees if I could..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ROA in Melbourne

I’ve got these from stretsmArt, but I can’t wait to go scouting for some ROA!

ROA, in Fitzroy

Cool Shop in Fitzroy

Garden Update

Just a bit of a garden update, with the presentable part of the garden 🙂 Can’t wait for the tomatoes, bell peppers and the eggplants! Anyway, more photos soon.

Chives and rosemary

 

Lebanese eggplant and some spring onion in the back

Tomatoes 

 

Cherry tree

 

Various: bay leaves, basil, some flowers, bell peppers, chilli, parsley

 

Basil 2

Melbourne Metro System

Melbourne tram system surely knows how to get people’s attention regarding the perils of trams. I showed you before the cool ad that you can find all over town and now here’s a little sing-along-song that you’ve probably seen by now, but which shows just how to gain awareness in the best possible way.

Views around Melbourne

Riding the bike this week-end:

 

 

 

National Rhododendron Garden

The National Rhododendron Gardens, located ion the Dandenong Ranges of Victoria, are the home of  blooms of rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias, cherries and daffodils. Depending on the time of year you’re visiting this place, the colours and the entire scenery can be completely different. I was there last week, meaning almost at the end of the rhododendron season, but I still got to see these wonderful flowers in bloom. I couldn’t find any azaleas unfortunately, but here’s a glimpse of what I saw.

 

 

The Melbourne Gaol

Yesterday, I visited The old Melbourne Gaol, the home of many of Australia’s infamous celebrities, including Ned Kelly. The works on the buildings started back in 1841, when there weren’t even streets in the area, and finished around 1850, when the space allocated for prisoners was already insufficient. Well, you can only imagine what the discovery of gold did to Melbourne at that time (1851) and how the need for a new block of cells was becoming more and more urgent. By the end of 1858, they built another one, which I got to visit yesterday. As you can imagine, in time, the gaol kept expanding with a hospital, a chapel, exercises yards, etc, until 1924 when it got closed. Later on, during the WWII, they found another use for it, by scaring young soldiers who were back on a leave and didn’t feel like going back to the horrors of wars. However their stay was mainly temporary, in between 1 day and maximum 10-14 days, just enough to scare them.

The block I got to see was a 3 level building, each level with its own type of detainees: ground floor, the newcomers and ill-behaved, the second floor, to the ones that obeyed the rules and third floor, prisoners that weren’t as dangerous and those who were nearing release. The prison cells were really small, my guess would be around 4 sqm, and they would spend 23 hours locked in there. There was only one hour of solitary exercise, in a courtyard that was actually quite small. They were also not allowed to talk at all times and they had to wear masks which were called “silence masks” and which left uncovered only the eyes area. Something similar to the one in The Man With The Iron Mask, but not as fancy.

Part of this tour included for visitors to go through the getting arrested procedure and experience a little of the back then experience. This one proved very fun, although I can only imagine the horror when it happens to you for real. Also, there’s lots of reading about former inmates and people that actually stayed in those cells and what can I say, many of them sounded as innocent as the next guy. There is one famous case in which they proved the innocence of man in 2004, accused of raping and killing a little girl sometimes at the end of the 19th century. As you can understand, most of the trials back then, were based on testimonies, which usually came from people that were either holding grudges, or would hate you for some reasons independent of you. All I could think of is that I would have been a dead girl, by then, for sure. Anyway, here are some photos, hope you’ll enjoy them.

Lips

Found here.

Harvest Festival

Yesterday we went to another great edition of Harvest Festival, here in Melbourne. Boy, this festival just gets better and better! It is our second time here and it’s not that often when you really enjoy a festival, only to find out that the next edition is even better! The weather was just perfect, really sunny, with the right amount of hot. The venue is perfectly integrated into the Werribee Park, with 3 main stages, plus several secondary ones, with both dj’s and newcomer bands and lots of other fun stuff to do, if you’re not in the mood for big crowds. If you get hungry, there are so many options from which to eat; this is actually an improvement from last year, when we spent some time cueing, but these guys really learned from their mistakes.

Another great thing is that it is an 18+ festival, which means you won’t have to spend more time cueing to get a wristband or any type of proof that you’re over 18. Also, there are not intermediary coins between your lunch and your drink, you get to pay directly in cash. You can probably guess from my excitement how great it is when they don’t waste your time and nerves with those little things that distract you from actually having fun at a festival!

What I also love about the 18+ events is that the crowd looks more homogenous, even though there was a fair share of people in their 50s to rub shoulders with. First of all, nobody is that desperate to get drunk (it might have helped that I was already hungover) and, second of all, I don’t have to wonder whether I’m the oldest at the party.

Plus the line-up! I’m going to take you through each gig we went to, hope you’ll like it,

Houses By Night

 

 

 

 

From the neighbourhood.

Yesterday’s Sunset

Healesville Sanctuary

Look what I did yesterday! We went down to Healesville and stopped at the local sanctuary. Many parts of it was in reconstruction, but we got to see plenty of animals, especially koala bears which I still didn’t get to see that many of or see them so close. Anyway, they were all sleeping, except one, but it still was a pleasure to watch.The sanctuary has also a veterinary hospital, so I got to see several babies as well: cute little wombat, Tasmanian devil, a wallaby and another cutie, whose name I forgot. Good times!

The Best

I found this sign at the entrance of a not-so-easy-to-find store here in Melbourne. I thought they gave it a nice turn given the circumstances..

Sunday

This Sunday was very springy! Finally! as riding a bike turned out to be more fun than I thought. I literary wake up every day and hope it won’t rain.

 

Bouquet

Beautiful bouquet of Australian native flowers.

Old vs New

I passed these two cars the other day and the proportions shocked me! Cars have literarily doubled in size.

 

Behind the Buildings

NGV

In the NGV hall: The Commoners by Jompet Kuswidananto.

Hosier Lane

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By night

…phone quality photos, but outstanding view!

 

 

 

Up There

 

 

On St Kilda road, toward the city.

Albert Park

Local beauties enjoying a lovely afternoon.

Around The Neighbourhood

 

 

 

Arthur’s Seat Views

Arthurs Seat State Park is located 60km south of Melbourne on the Mornington Peninsula. It is about 300 m high from sea level in a very plain area, so coming down the hill yields in these glorious views.

 

On Union Lane

…this weekend. Don’t know what this was all about, but hopefully, we’ll be reading about it soon.

 

 

 

 

Real Estate Humour

This one’s a classic: to place a ‘for lease’ sign in the building where a competitive agency has its hq. In this case, it’s a Colliers and CBRE clash 🙂

Spring Weather

You know when I was talking about the beautiful spring weather? I think I might have jinxed it!

Hmm

Lots of such entertainment on King Street, Melbourne.

Around Melbourne

 

 

 

Civil in Prahran

Up There

 

Geoffrey Rush

Yesterday, Mr Geoffrey Rush set behind me in the train 🙂 He was probably on his way to rehearsals. Yep

Window Shopping

 

The Dandenongs

My exercise routines are now extending from walks and bicycle rides to mountain hikes. Here’s a little from my trip a couple of days ago, in the Dandenong Ranges, in a rainy Melbourne morning.

Bad Ass Australian PM

Crack

It Ain’t Me

St Kilda, Melbourne.

Whatch Out, Melbourne!

Bad Ass Sunset

 

In Prahran

Sunny Melbourne

Summer shows up from time to time, so we basically get 2 days per week of nice sunny weather. And then it drops at least 10 degrees again… But we’re looking at this optimistically and we’ve been making the most out of the sunny ones. I’m also learning how to riding a bike and there are so many beautiful places to ride your bike here in Melbourne! Every single time I think to myself how lucky we are to have that. See if you like it.

Wine Labels

 

 

Husband

I’m doing a 3 month internship (since July!) in Malvern, Prahran and every single morning I grab a coffee at this place called Husband. It’s a very cozy coffee shop with lots of little delicious details, such as the branding on their takeaway coffee cups, which I like!