Mellen Events: Armin van Buuren – Metro City, June 13 2008

Tonight’s gonna be awesome. The entire group of friends whom I go clubbing with are going. My brother and his friends are going. My cousin and his cousin and friends are going.

Trance music is good. When it’s mixed and spun by Armin van Buuren, even better. And when I’m surrounded by so many people whom I know, it’s super great.

This year’s show sold out really quickly. Each of the three phases of ticket releases sold out within a half hour. Why? If you had went to last year’s White Party, then you are guaranteed to go this year. And if you had went last year, you would have ranted and raved about it for days like I did so that everyone who’d missed out would be itching to go this year.

Everyone whom I’d talk to in the clubbing circle agreed that last year’s show was the best dance music gig of 2007. This year? You will have to use your imagination or search elsewhere because I’m not carrying my camera tonight – I’m gonna totally lose myself in the crowd and music.

On my only night out in Melbourne, I had arranged to meet up with an old friend whom I have never met before. girlstar7 had started reading my blog in 2005 and through comments, emails and instant-messaging we’ve gotten to know each other quite well.

I had arrived at our meeting spot outside the Melbourne Central Mall a little early so I decided to take a walk down Flinders Street, to get a feel of the place and to take some photos. I’ve been to Melbourne 10 years ago and what stayed with me was the architecture and the trams.

In this photo, you can see a tram and also the tram rails on the road, and the patch work of electrical lines above it.

Melbourne is known for its shopping, and its sense of style and culture. And there’s a lot of nooks and crannys with shops tucked away.

A lot of alleys also have nice street art.

Then it was time to meet up with girlstar7 at around 9pm.

We went to The Lion inside Melbourne Central, and shared a jug of beer and a bowl of nachos.

Considering it was our first time meeting, the initial awkwardness went away pretty quickly. I think the beer helped. Hah!

We talked about how she first stumbled onto my blog, her studies and work. And because she’s been reading me for so long, she knows a lot more about me and my friends than I do about her. One thing I am constantly reminded of during our conversation was that girlstar7 is one of many younger (yes, a whole lot younger) people that I seem to be more in tune with these days. You wanted to know my secret to staying young at heart? That’s my secret.

After that, we took a walk around Flinders Street thinking of the next pub to crawl to. We had walked into The Lounge but they charged cover and we were in a cheap mood so we didn’t go in. girlstar7 then decided on Cookie. It was nice and chill – I loved it.

I like the decor very much.

Over two glasses of Hoegaarden we talked a whole lot more. Being a clubber herself, we talked about the Melbourne clubs that open the whole weekend (awesome!), our first times partying, music, and everything else in between.

After Cookie, we then stumbled into St. Jerome but the tiny place was quite packed and noisy so we decided to move on to the next place.

That next place was Transport on the corner of Flinders and Swanston. On the walk down there, one can catch a magnificent view of Flinders Street Station.

This was the outside of Transport.

And this was the inside of Transport.

It was a place with great atmosphere and very nice views. If only the Yarra River didn’t smell that bad that evening. Regardless, that night was a most awesome time. Thanks girlstar7!

I was sent to Melbourne to meet my colleagues there whom I instant chat with on a daily basis, and to also get a feel of the mothership now that we are a part of a bigger company. The flight there was good – I watched Danny Bhoy’s Sydney Opera House show, read a graphic novel from start to finish, and had a beer with my meal and an ice cream after. The 3 hours went by very quickly. Even managed to nap a little.

I arrived Melbourne around 8pm Wednesday night. It was cold. The taxi ride to the hotel way out east of the city took nearly 45 minutes and cost about $80. Luckily I wasn’t paying for that.

The hotel corridor looked like a scene from a scary movie.

But the room was not too shabby.

The next day I caught a ride into the office with my boss who wasn’t to be – he had sold the company a few days before I started. No guesses who now owns us, and who that mothership is.

The tech park that the building is located at is very pretty, with a lake in the middle.

I was given a tour of the building and met my team mates there. As big corporate buildings go, it was pretty sweet. I especially like the canteen/cafeteria – you didn’t have to go far to buy munchies, lunch or coffee.

This was at around 10:30am, hence the empty tables and chairs. A few people were spread around having morning coffee breaks, and there’s a covered seating area outside.

This was the area that my team’s cubicles are situated – that’s one of my team mates waving, and the Chinese guy sitting behind him is the other team mate. We were smack bang in amongst MYOB’s product support and sales teams. If this photo is one block, imagine a rectangle of 5 x 2 blocks and that’s about the size of the entire open-plan floor. It was a big hive of activity with a lot of people. I got lost the first few times when I wandered to the toilet and back.

My two days there were spent coaching my team mates on processes and sharing my technical knowledge. Just like how my team mates in Perth coached me, so was I doing the same here. My Melbourne team mates were supporting MYOB products previously and they’d just moved into the role identical to mine in Perth.

On the first day, my immediate boss took us to Chadstone Shopping Centre for lunch. It is supposed to be the biggest shopping centre in the southern hemisphere and it definitely looked and felt like it.

It was v. pretty.

I’m glad to have been given this opportunity to meet up with the team in Melbourne, and to soak in the culture and working atmosphere at the big head office. And as you’ll see in my next blog post, this trip has also allowed me to explore a little of Melbourne’s night life which I loved.

At the office before I flew back to Perth, I was asked if I’d changed my mind about moving and my answer was, “If there were more females on the team, I’d be half-way here already.” Hahah!

I am shaking my head at this seriously inept attempt to plagiarise my posts. The guy has linked me on his blogroll thus ensuring that I would know about his existence if I did a vanity check on my incoming links, and then he proceeds to copy and paste 4 of my posts in their entirety on his front page without acknowledging that I was the original writer.

The posts that were copied are the following:

• Men are dense
• Annoying girlfriend behaviour
• What’s wrong with being comfortable?
• Getting to work early: the secret

Copying posts in their entirety without adding a word of your own thoughts is bad enough; doing so without giving credit where credit is due is worse. Furthermore, in one of the posts I had use a photo on a Creative Commons license which I had credited the photo owner for, but this guy just copies it wholesale without doing the same.

I’m not gonna give him any link love but here is the address:
adneo.wordpress.com

I’ve already sent him a polite email and a comment trying to explain to him how it might feel if someone else had done the same to him. The posts are still up there. So I guess I’m going to have to say a bit more on the subject.

You don’t get ahead in blogging by plagiarising. You will not gain loyal readers because they will notice that the writing style is suddenly different. And you lose credibility the moment that you are caught. Even if you do become a good writer down the track, you’ve done irreparable damage and people will be less inclined to believe a word that you have to say.

So don’t be stupid like this guy. Practice your writing by writing your own words and you will get better. Plagiarise and you’d go nowhere.

Karen Cheng is as you would know, an uber mom / hot-chick / graphic-designer extraordinaire, and a blogger who’s got onto Australian TV. And in her photos of herself, she has developed this pose, much like “BlueSteel” or “Magnum”, called simply “The Karen Cheng”.

And here’s me with a poor imitation of it – at the front door, after a night out and slightly tipsy.

Join in the fun, why don’t ya?!

Got back from Melbourne late last night and I had a great trip there, both work wise and exploring some of the seriously hip and chic bars in the city with girlstar7. Pictures and write-up will be done soon.

In the meantime, I would like to say something about why I love this country and it comes from an aspect not often talk about: taxi drivers. During this trip, I took six taxi rides and during these six rides I’ve had drivers of six different nationalities: Lebanese, Indian, Aussie, Pakistani, Sudanese, and Armenian.

With the Aussie who is Melburnian, because he visits Perth often, during my ride from the hotel into the city to meet up with girlstar7 he’d point out some of the suburbs and buildings which reminded him of Perth.

And with the ethnic drivers, we immediately shared a bond from being immigrants. While I gathered that everyone else seems to have a problem with the Sudanese for being too aggressive on the road (it was true with the driver that I had), there was one thing that everyone of them shared.

Muslim, Christian, white, black, or brown, everyone of them used the phrase, “No worries mate”. Despite all the differences, and no matter which part of the world they had come from, everyone ended up being assimilated in one way or another. And amongst other things that indicates that you are from Australia, one of the most obvious giveaways is saying “No worries”.

And I think that’s great. I love it.

Work today was hellish. Two colleagues called in sick, and another got sent home in the middle of the day so that he can come back later to close up the office which one of the off-sick colleagues was meant to do. I was alone for 4 hours answering calls after calls after calls. Meanwhile, the support emails just kept piling up and the voice mail count increased at a scary pace.

I was stressed out, and impatient customers were pissed. It was not a good day at all and I’m sure management is gonna have some words about it.

I was so wound up when I left that when I got home, I quickly downed two bottles of beers in quick succession. I needed to mellow out the tension and it felt good. I also needed a laugh and what do you know … I stumbled across this on my colleague’s blog. (Thanks Sam via Phil!)

It’s funny because it’s true. But yeah, impure thoughts and all that. I feel dirty.