Then there were sculptures

So, in a nutshell, this is what happened during the past eight days:

• I procrastinated so much on some homework I had due last week, and ended up doing it in twenty minutes, during a break at work, which happened to be about an hour before it was actually due.
• I complained way too much about how I hate Friday’s subject, otherwise known as Digital Information and Interaction Design, which will now be known as the worst subject ever.
• I was continually spammed with emails from university telling me to do the student feedback surveys. With them sending one, to remind you, you’d think it’s enough, but they had to send one practically every day too.
• I was so glad when Friday rolled around because I can’t tell you how much I was dying to get out of class to go to a gig and see one of my favourite bands, Lime Cordiale, as well as the awesome RnB-jazz-swing band Electric Empire. They were incredible, and as my friend Joel put it, I was blown away.
• James and I went to Sculpture by the Sea, where over a hundred sculptures were showcased by the beach. We also had a dinner date.
• Sunday night, I didn’t sleep. I was writing two thousand words for a reflection for a group project, and two thousand for another project. Let me say there were some slackers in my group.
• I complained some more.
• I had some lemonade because it was awesome.
• I whined.
• I had had two hours of sleep when I woke up on Monday morning. My group member had finally finished putting the assignment together, so I could burn it to a disc and physically put it in the assignment box on campus before 9:00am.
• I had a group presentation last night and when I got home, I was so tired I sat on the couch and fell straight asleep. I didn’t wake up until 10:00am this morning, obviously realising I was not only late to work, but felt like utter shit, so I didn’t go in.

Well, there are only a few things in that list worth writing about. One is the gig that I went to on Friday night. Impatiently waiting in class at 8:00pm, I wanted it to end soooooo bad. I walked really fast to the theatre to make sure I wouldn’t miss Lime Cordiale on at 8:45pm. I was rather tired by the time I arrived there and hadn’t had any dinner, so I just enjoyed the music I’d never seen Electric Empire live, but I really loved their music. Their music sounds like that of the swing-jazz bands from the 70s. It’s unique and has a classical touch to it, which I like. I adore bands that have that kind of unique sound. As for Lime Cordiale, they were good as usual. It was great to catch up with Oli and Louis from Lime Cordiale too. :D Just a few days beforehand, I found out Oli could speak Indonesian, which was rad. Not that I can hold a general conversation in Indonesian very well… :P

Naturally, I took photographs once I composed myself. I always feel a bit strange taking photos on my own, if there aren’t any other photographers, but then I get miffed if other photographers are in my way… okay, I can’t win, and I’m also really indecisive. I did end up taking photos, and one of the photographers started talking to me, so it wasn’t so bad. I was in the middle at the front, so I did get some good shots. Bravo.

More photos!

James had wanted to see the sculptures since a few weeks ago, so we arranged to go on Saturday because it was the best day for us to go. The last day the event would be on was Sunday, so we’re lucky we had a day we were both free (and not tired :P). On Friday we were worried it would rain the next day and ruin plans. Lucky for us, it was only set to be a cloudy day with a chance of showers. Still not the great sunny weather we’d hoped for, but I remember at the end of the day James said that it would have been awful if it was hot and sticky.

It was raining in the morning when I did the washing, and hung the clothes up on the line. I had to wash Brandon’s school uniform anyway, so I hung up the clothes in the shade. The rain did clear up before James picked me up. We were using the iPhone app Waze to find directions to the beach. You can see other Waze users in the app, and I noticed this one user who was pretty much headed in the same direction. I kept spotting him!

When we reached the beach we struggled to find all-day parking. A lot of parking spots were only for two hours, and there was even a ranger who was writing tickets and placing them on vehicle windscreens. We finally found a spot after driving really close to the beach - right at the end of a dead-end road where many other cars were parked. It was really far from the sculptures, but it was somewhere we could park all day for free, which was great. We didn’t mind walking either; it would be good exercise.

The sculptures were all lovely to look at. Here are the first few we saw. We were aiming to get them all, even though I don’t want to upload every single picture here! The zipper (which was actually titled spinal column was the first one we saw.

I think this punk frog was one of James’s favourites! It actually moved its legs and “rode” the bicycle on its own.

This one was one of my favourite. It was made of what seemed like rolled up scarves and towels of various colours.

The sculpture was made of a grid framework so you could see the towels/scarves from inside as well. People had been encouraged to write positive notes to refugees.

Unfortunately there were no more badges or pieces of paper left. There were some funny messages too.

There were a few more we saw before we left for lunch. I had to peek behind this bottle!

We had planned to get bagels from a really great Jewish bakery so we started walking in that direction with the help of Maps on my iPhone. It had started to drizzle, so we walked all the way back to the car to get James’s umbrella. We were a bit silly not to get it the first time. I waited at the bottom of the hill to empty the sand from my shoes while James went to get the umbrella. I was wearing elf-like shoes and they somehow encouraged sand to get in them. Eep.

As we started walking to the bagel bakery, it stopped raining and actually started to get really sunny. As usual, carrying an umbrella is just good luck… most of the time, it doesn’t rain when you carry one, and if you don’t, it just so happens to rain really heavily.

We passed a strange-looking house that was absolutely covered in junk. The entire front yard and porch was covered in… just… stuff. It looked like the person was hoarding, but upon closer inspection, we actually heard someone inside. It was so peculiar because the door was covered up with mattresses or something. It also seemed like the junk was strategically placed, not like the person was actually a hoarder. A bunch of closed umbrellas actually caught my eye. James said that maybe the person who lived there was secretly rich, just putting the junk on for show.

It was so strange.

When we reached the bakery we realised it was closed. :( We checked the website and it turned out the other bakery nearby was closed too. They were both closed on Saturdays. We ended up getting fish burgers with salad, and hot chips. /drool

There were still more sculptures to have a look at, so away we went!

We were just gawking at this rock. It just looked like a really huge rock covered in foil. We kept thinking it was probably the rock that was always there by the beach…

These were cute, inflatable animals… even had inflatable piles of poo next to them. XD

This one, made entirely of plastic forks and spoons, was called Midden by Jane Gillings.

This was definitely one of my favourite - paper boats. ♥️

Undoubtedly James’s favourite is this huge chili!

This one was a little spooky. All the rubbery critters were covered in dirt, no doubt from two weeks of weathering and erosion. I’m sure there was some kind of secret meaning behind the artwork, but I couldn’t quite figure it out. Perhaps it represented us as prisoners in our own world? All different, in colour, but inherently, all the same?

This cool dome was reflective on the inside.

This one is called The Optimist - James made the connection between his style and Psy’s (of Gangnam Style fame).

There were just soooooo many great sculptures, but this post is already getting rather large so I’ll share just the funny ones left. This guy was made entirely of staples. Or, at least the exterior.

A happy mummy in a coffin. Woooot.

This was… weird. A preteen girl was laughing to her mother about how detailed it was.

Strange half man, half centaur. With a head from the 30th century.

James took this photo from one end. The kid was so cute, he wanted to climb in. I also got a photo from the other end at the same time.

Before we went for dinner, we sat down on the beach for a bit. It was rather cold and windy, but we weren’t hungry at all because we’d eaten lunch at 3:00pm. We planned to go to an Italian restaurant called Gelbison’s, as per my friend Marco’s recommendation. I realised that we were on the part of the beach where Hey Geronimo filmed their latest video clip, so I had to take a photo of it, and got James to take a photo of me jumping from it. I had accidentally taken a photo of him while he was jumping off a ledge onto the sand earlier, so I wanted to have a photo of myself jumping in midair too. /bounce

After sitting on the beach for a while we decided to walk because the restaurant was a little far anyway, and hoped we’d be hungry by the time we got there.

Thankfully we were! Hooooray. We ordered a pizza - half mushroom and half pepperoni, and some tortellini. The pizza was honestly amazing. I have no idea why people buy frozen pizzas and fast-food pizzas when they can get affordable gourmet pizza at restaurants. It is seriously the best. This from the girl who usually hates pizza. Since that pizza was fantastic and we finished our tortellini and wanted something droolable, we got a tiramisu. Great tiramisu too.

By that time the sun had just set and the sky was a lovely pink as we headed back to the car and walked past all the sculptures again, this time in the dim light.

It was a good day. /eee