weekend roundup

[darren_stranger]

Friday night we headed down to the Esplanade to catch Vampyre-X as planned.  We arrived on the stroke of 9.30 only to find they'd already started - about five songs in, according to a bystander.  The place was packed, so it seems they've already got a decent following despite (i think) having played only one show before (must be a hell of a lot of Misfits fans out there).  They sounded pretty much as you'd expect for a (Danzig era) Misfits tribute band, with songs seeming to be split evenly between Misfits covers and originals which i can't remember but liked at the time.  They've got two more shows this month, at least one of which i hope to see.

Despite having an early morning scheduled, we decided to stick around.  From Hell played next, with some well-played Warped-style rock'n'roll, but with the glut of well-played, Warped-style rock'n'roll around at the moment we didn't pay that much attention.  Day I Die were a little more interesting, in that high-voiced, melodic-hardcore style that i'm only just beginning to take notice of.  Noted for future reference.

We were going to stick around to catch Kingpin 440, but as midnight passed we decided we'd already stayed too late and slunk off home to steal a few hours' sleep.

On Saturday we dragged ourselves painfully out of bed sometime before six to trek off to Bendigo for a 'Challenging Behaviour' class.  Highlight of the drive up there was a thick blanket of fog we encountered just near Woodend, quite surreal in the way it sat on the ground in clearly defined cloud patches, so that we went from bright sunlight to barely able to see the car ahead of us in a second as we passed into it.  It was as thick as jellied brains.  Thicker.  Seeing it laid out on the countryside was quite different to experiencing it in the city (even moreso in the twilight on the way home).

It had been 20, maybe 25 years since i'd been to Bendigo.  i had totally forgotten, if i'd ever noticed in the first place, how picturesque the city centre is - a much nicer old-world feel than Ballarat's main drag (made me think of being in Edinburgh).  Sadly, we didn't have time to look around before the class and very little afterwards.  A look at the quite impressive cathedral and a brief drive around town were all we had time for before hitting the road again, but i'd love to make a day trip of it to have a proper look around.

The class itself was interesting, at least as far as it made sense to me as the only person there not already working in the disability field (though some of it may come in handy of i do a bit of volunteer work to get started).  One bit that threw me was a little session where we broke into groups and had to role-play a specific situation, applying an approach that we'd just been learning about.  Somehow, foolishly, i agreed to the suggestion that i go first in the role of staff member and, while i was still with my head in the book working out what we were supposed to be doing, the 'clients' were already at the stage of throwing punches at each other.  After a minute or two of drawing blanks as it escalated, i just threw my hands up and said let someone else do it as i didn't have a clue.  We switched roles and Elaine took over and sorted the 'incident' out, while i sat stewing on thoughts of whether i would be really cut out for this work and the fact that if it was a real situation i would have just let them kill each other while i went blank (a real possibility as that's my usual response in a crisis).  Over lunch, i was still stewing on it, though i realised it didn't help to be thrown into it as a rank newbie in amongst experienced workers, feeling like a white belt asked to order a bunch of senior students around, and that it would be at least a little different coming from a position where i knew i was in charge.  It also dawned on me that the scenarios that we were roleplaying, and the responses that were used to handle them, actually bore no resemblance to what we were supposed to be enacting - everybody just did what they would normally do in that situation, not what we'd been shown.  So here i was still reading up on the rules for baseball while the rest of the group was already halfway into a game of cricket.  As i also began to suspect that half the reason was that much of the group were experienced workers (possibly pressed into doing the course to keep their qualifications up to date) who weren't really appreciating being taught how to suck eggs and not taking it that seriously, i found my feelings of self-doubt quite quickly turned into a seething black anger that hung around me for the rest of the day.  At one point i noticed myself feeling actual hatred towards a couple of basically friendly, good natured people.  Watching my own emotional responses was probably the most fascinating thing of the day, and i'm still pondering it.

Sunday we went to RMIT in Bundoora for an open day, as Elaine's thinking of doing a Bachelor's course part time once she finishes her Certificate.  Seeing all the year 12 students wandering nervously about had me contemplating the folly of expecting people to decide the direction of their lives when they're still legally children, and what different choices i might make if i had it to do over (someone should slap me whenever i start playing the 'what if' game).  Sometimes thinking too much is not a good thing.

After Elaine had collected all the info she needed, we wandered into the biology area to look at the Anatomy Museum (since she would have to do a little dissection of body bits as part of the course).  i'd actually never seen even parts of a dead human before, so it was quite fascinating.  Just knowing what things look like from photos doesn't quite give an idea of the complexity of what's inside you, and it's amazing to think that all this complex wiring grows by itself from a programme pre-coded in the DNA of the little bean that grew out of a fertilised egg.  All i can say is "It's a fuckin' amazing machine."  By contrast, it struck me that the brain looks just too plain and uncomplicated to be the sophisticated computer i'm sitting here composing these words with - even though i know it's more likely the 'wiring' is too fine to see, it still just looks like rolls of fat that couldn't do anything so amazing.  i'd like to say i didn't feel the slightest bit self-conscious gawking at body parts while dressed in 'goth' style, but.. oh well.

Now i just need another weekend to rest and recover from this one.

Comments

[blithespirit.livejournal.com]

Seeing all the year 12 students wandering nervously about had me contemplating the folly of expecting people to decide the direction of their lives when they're still legally children

Amen to that.

[morgan303.livejournal.com]

And a second amen, here.

[andricongirl.livejournal.com]

well Ill be keen on that art house gig if your going

[hbdeath.livejournal.com]

the folly of expecting people to decide the direction of their lives when they're still legally children

I'm personally more interested in, and worried by, the ones that *have* made the decision. I was the odd man out among my clique at school, all of whom had already mapped out the course of their lives by the start of Year 12...