Saturday, September 21, 2013

Meat and the fruit baby

I was happy to be invited to the baby celebrations of my dear friends in Sydney.  They were some of the first people I met and became friends with when I moved to Sydney and it was fantastic to be able to celebrate this milestone in their lives.


Instead of having a traditional baby shower, they decided to have a semi-combined event.  The girls would have their baby shower in one room while the guys would be outside having a BBQ.  Everyone got to have their fun and I got BBQ.  I was happy.

There was a ridiculous amount of food at the BBQ, but I was even more happy with Jimmy brought out the enormous tomahawk steaks.  I had never seen anything like these steaks before.  They seemed to belong more to a Flintstones episode than to real life.




Inside at the baby shower, the girls were having their fun.  The weird food theme of the BBQ had carried over to them as well, with a "fruit baby" being the star attraction.


Personally, I found the fruit baby slightly creepier than others and so I decided to go back outside to eat some of the enormous steaks.

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Finals Fever

I never seem capable of expressing the extent of my love for AFL.

It elicits an emotional response from me that I never experience in anything else.  I think it's because it helps me to tap into my childhood feelings and memories more easily than anything else.  When I'm at game, I lose my usual calm and collected demeanor and I scream and curse with the angriest fans.  It's probably cathartic for me and it definitely helps me to relieve some stress.

Going to games that don't involve the Hawks are also usually better for me as it reduces my passion levels and lets me enjoy the spectacle of the game itself.

That is when there is actually a spectacle there to be enjoyed.

I went to the finals game between the Swans and the Blues.

It was possibly the worst finals game I have had the personal misfortune of attending.  The game was over after about 15 minutes as the Swans overwhelmed the Blues and the game died a slow death over the next two hours.


Thankfully, there was a group of Melbourne boys sitting in front of me.  They had flown up for the match to the support the Blues and the shift of the game against them led to a stream of abuse being hurled towards all the Swans fans in the area.  Most of the Swans fans laughed it all off as "banter", but the hatred in the eyes of the Melbourne boys spoke of this as being far more than a mere joke.

It made for excellent viewing.