Over the years Perth has been lucky enough to have been graced with some big names in the dance music world: Armin van Buuren on multiple occasions, Daft Punk, Paul van Dyk and the yearly Godskitchen events.

But the one act who has never performed here before is Dutch DJ Tiesto. So you can imagine my excitement when it was announced that he will be coming here for 2 nights in February 2010. Squeee! And hence the reason for this truck-load of Youtube clips below.

To give you an idea what got me hooked onto his sound a few years back, here’s his collaboration with American DJ BT, “Love Comes Again”.

His awesome banger “Traffic”.

And his interpretation of “Adagio for Strings”.

These days he’s exploring the sounds beyond trance and venturing into more housey beats, like this remix of Calvin Harris’ “I’m Not Alone”.

And this thumping remix of Tegan & Sara’s “Back In Your Head”.

And a remix of Bloc Party’s “One More Chance”.

I’ve heard two of his newer songs that will be on his latest album “Kaleidoscope” called “Feel It In My Bones” with Tegan & Sara, and “I’ll Be Here” with Sneaky Sound System which are a bit too mellow for me to dance to. Nonetheless, I hope they only serve as a precursor to the truly rocking stuff later in the night. Can’t wait!

Which is why I took tomorrow off so I can jump online and get the tix at 7am sharp! Hahah! Woohoo!

The funds have been transferred to the settlement agent and I’m now a proud owner of a plot of dirt! Well technically, the bank owns the land because they are holding on to the title of the land, but yay me!

This journey started back in October 2008 and as you’d know, I’m not planning to build a house on it because I can’t afford it right now.

I’ve learnt some valuable lessons about the process. Firstly, all the agents involved from the real-estate agent, the mortgage broker, to the settlement agent (the one that collects the money for the real-estate agent) – why is there a need for such an agent?! – will assume that you know what you are doing. They will advise you to a certain extent but you are expected to know more, especially the things that are deemed common-sense to them. That is, they will assume that you do this on a daily basis.

So my advice is to be a total pain in the ass and ask as many questions that you can possibly think of, and call and email them frequently as long as it’s business hours. I wasn’t a pain in the ass and as a result, I was unnecessarily stressed out a lot rushing to meet this deadline and that filling out forms and transferring money between banks and accounts.

Second, any time there’s money involved between people, you are going to have a lot of arguments. In my case, it was with my parents. They chipped in for the deposit for the land so it is expected that they be anxious that I don’t fuck it up and thus causing them to lose the deposit or having to pay additional fees.

A lot of arguments were had about why am I not chasing up after such and such, when I didn’t even know what “such and such” was and why were they important. Argh! On many of these occasions, I was so tempted to yell out, “Buying this piece of land was YOUR idea!” But I just bit my tongue, sucked it up and stormed off. Hah!

I’m very glad that it is now over. But the next phase of stress begins: I better not get fired.

John Hughes’ movies were a big part of my teenage years. Through fantasy and a keen sense of what teenagers go through, they offered a sense of hope and optimism that the ordeals of life and love is not as bad as one would think. And most of all they were funny.

Among movies like Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, and Home Alone, my favourite John Hughes movies were Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science and Uncle Buck. Even those of his movies which were not predominantly about the tortured lives of teenagers like National Lampoon’s Vacation and Planes, Trains and Automobiles were great.

If I have to pick my favourite lines from a John Hughes movie, they would all be from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off:

Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?
Don’t worry about it, I don’t even have a piece of shit. I have to envy yours.
Life moves pretty fast. You don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

And then there were the theme songs. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off had that infectious tune by Yello called “Oh Yeah” which was used in a lot of other movies, but I thought that it fit this movie the best.

Uncle Buck had Tone Loc’s “Wild Thing”.

Weird Science had … “Weird Science” by Oingo Boingo.

And fittingly to end this post, Simple Mind’s “Don’t You Forget About Me” from The Breakfast Club.

Thanks John! I could not have imagined my 80s without your movies.

I had to go and tempt fate today …

First half of the working day was great. I was breezing through my work, getting things done and answering and solving most of the problems presented to me. I stepped out for lunch and the sun was shining on a perfect Western Australian winter day: not too hot, not too cold, just very nice.

There I was chowing down on my favourite burger, a Double Bacon Deluxe, sitting by the window watching the crowd walking by. On the stroll back to the office, I lost count of the number of pretty girls that I walked past.

I was thinking to myself, “It can’t get any better than this. Man, I really really love Perth.” And I was smiling all the way back.

When I got back into the office, I immediately updated my Facebook status:

So in love with Perth some days that it’s unnatural.

Then I got a call from a customer who swore at me. Figures.

Last night I had an appointment with the mortgage advisor. The title to the land that I was buying will be available next month and I wanted to see what my options were. In short, I had just the one option. A lot has changed since last November when I first explored the idea of building the house that I wanted on the land that I had just agreed to buy.

About a month ago, I had lost the permanent casual job that I had, there was no expected pay raise from my full-time job, and some extra hours that I usually do now for the company might be curtailed. To summarise, my earning capacity has decreased and so has my borrowing ability.

So that one option that I had? It’s to borrow enough to just pay for the land now and decide later about building on it. I will be losing out on approx. $14,000 in the first home-owner’s grant but that’s not too bad. With a lot of people rushing to get the grant, current home building prices are artificially inflated anyway.

I was a bit disappointed of course but going into yesterday’s meeting, I already had an inkling that that was to be the outcome. Although I’m very glad that I didn’t get the land title back in May when it was supposed to have come out. I would have decided to start building and thus borrow more money based on my higher income then. With my reduced income now, I would have been stuck with loan repayments that I can’t afford. I think I dodged a bullet there, phew!

So yeah, my dream house? Maybe later. It can wait. In the mean time, I am going to enjoy my mother’s housekeeping and hospitality just a little bit longer.

Friday night started out at Sel’s place for some pre-party drinks. Because I wasn’t driving, I was a happy drunk by the time we left for Rise. Yay!

Ernesto vs Bastian played a great set – hard, tech-trance is what we like! Gary and Simon met us as we got there. And throughout the course of the night, in between jumping around, we drank and lost count of the drinks. Luckily I wasn’t driving but because of that I let loose and got really hammered. I kept asking Sel and Kayo to slap me to jolt me up. Heheh.

Because of the night’s partying and supper till 4am, we were so tired the next day. I slept till 2:00pm and was still feeling lethargic. But another night of festivities await because it was Simon’s birthday. I had a quick lunch, rushed out to buy a big birthday card for everyone to sign, and then went home to nap at about 4:30pm. Yes, I had only been awake for 2 hours and a bit before I felt sleepy again.

Before I knew it, 6:00pm came along and it was time to rush out the door to pick up Tham and Cheewah. We were heading to Outback Jack’s for dinner. I was happily looking forward to the Wagyu steaks. And I have to say: I was disappointed. The Wagyu meat on display did not look that nice so I ordered the Angus porterhouse and it was over-cooked! Grrr. Everyone else’s steaks were not that fantastic too. With the Wagyu burger that some had, the meat pattie was so dry and tasteless that we thought it was such a waste of high grade beef. Sheesh.

So yeah, dinner was very mediocre but friends, conversation and laughter saved the dinner. I’ve always said that it’s not the places that we go but the people we are with that makes it all worthwhile.

After dinner, we headed to Exotica for the birthday boy to gawk at some naked female flesh. It was a good excuse for the guys in the group to go too. The women in our company came along as well and it made for an interesting spectacle as we walked into the place and they were gawked at.

No photos here to tell the story. We had an ok time getting up close and personal to fake and real breasts but got bored pretty quickly. As I told Simon while we are there, “This used to be more fun in the past, wasn’t it?” I think the guys in the group all understood the pointlessness of paying good money to get teased, that we might as well just go to a brothel if we were into that kind of entertainment. But the girls, some of whom were taking pole-dancing classes, enjoyed the main strip-tease dance of the night.

Next stop was Eve at Burswood where the drinking continued.

The time there were spent talking, dancing and drinking. At one point in the night, we all whipped out our phones to update our Facebook statuses, and commented on each other’s statuses. Heheh.

Happy birthday again Simon! We were all so tired after two nights of partying but it was all very worth it.

(photos are from Sel’s camera, thanks Sel!)

I realised over the past two days that there are more friends in my social circle who read my blog than I had thought. So there’s the weekend that I can’t blog about, and there’s the weekend that I can. Either Perth is really small, or I’m really famous. I think it’s the former.

What can I say about the weekend then hmm? The common theme was alcohol. My Friday night out started at 10:30pm with drinks at Kitty’s house. Then her, Tham, Kayo and I headed out to Rise for the therapeutic sounds of loud and heavy, and repetitive electronic beats. Most exciting part of the night? Kayo accidentally stabbed me in the forehead with a straw. A straw! It left a small reddish circle, almost like an Indian bindi. The woman’s got mad Shaolin skills.

The next morning? Headache. Though here’s a tip for the drinkers amongst you: a bottle of Gatorade before sleeping eased the hangover a lot.

Saturday night we attended a farewell dinner at New Shima for Andrea who was moving to Melbourne. There were 10 girls and 4 guys on the table. I sat in the middle with most of the girls. The conversation that got me riveted throughout the night? Double-sided tape, breasts, bras and something called “chicken fillets”. It was awesome. Oh the food was excellent too – I can still remember the tastes of the ebi maki and beef tataki. Drool.

After dinner we headed to Metro City to party the night away. Entry was free before 11pm. Sweet! We decided to go to the upstairs bar which was dead except for my group. We had the dance floor and the bartender to ourselves. It was great. A lot of drinks were consumed and I remember doing the spinning sprinkler dance a few times which my friends thought were hilarious. I think there might be some photos on Facebook coming up soon. Don’t ever say I don’t do anything for youse!

Then, somehow we all got separated from each other. I think that’s par for the course of a night out that involves alcohol. When I decided to leave Metro, I offered a drive home to a girl whom I’ve met on the night. Nothing happened. And I’m not proud of it.

Around 2:30am, I found out that Kayo and Kitty were at Dragon Karaoke so I decided to join them there before heading home. I bumped into a cousin there and had one more drink for the night. Over the next 2 hours, I talked shit with him, the girls, their boyfriends and then right before we left, we had instant noodles. Nissin Cup Noodles FTW!

This morning? Headache.