A Weekend in Melbourne (featuring Day6 and Victorian Spinsters)

Well, it wasn’t exactly a weekend (more like three days that ended on Saturday) and technically I’m not a spinster, but my three days in Melbourne has completely blown me away!

Waiting to fly!

It was only to be expected, I suppose: not only was I planning to meet up with authorly friend Suzannah Rowntree to explore gothic and art deco wonders, but I had also bought tickets to attend my first concert–Day6’s YOUTH tour stop in Melbourne. Naturally, there was also Shopping to be done.

Day One: I arrived a bit past noon and carted my little carry-on around the streets of Melbourne for about three hours in

I’M HOME!

search of cool streets, good food smells, and, ultimately, pancakes. Pancakes found, I squirrelled away a roll of kimbap for later and started to walk to my hotel now that I could check in.

In hindsight, now that I know I could have hired a locker for a while, I would have hired one for my bag and wandered sans bag, since by the time I stopped wandering around, I was further away from my hotel than I would have been had I simply walked from Southern Cross Station and straight there. After stowing said bags at the Pan Pacific–and convincing myself that an 8th floor room didn’t mean I was going to die in a hotel collapse–I visited the DFOs that were literally 30 metres from the front reception. I mean, I knew they were close, but I didn’t know how close! I had a list of things I needed to buy, and I only bought one thing that wasn’t on the list, so that was a good day.

Lovely clouds for Day Two

Day Two (the morning): This is where the fun really started!

I met up with Suzannah at Pie Face at about 9.30. Due to the circumstance of there being two Pie Face shops at Southern Cross Station, obviously we each waited in a different one, and had to message to find one another. Once together, we each discovered that our walking pace was perfectly suited to the other and agreed to be Victorian Spinsters on a walking tour for the day.

In pursuit of this goal, we went first to the ANZ bank…which doesn’t sound very Victorian Spinsterly until you find out that the bank was built in 1887 (exactly one hundred years before I was born) and is a wonder of golden gothic architecture that lends itself to the kind of gaping that causes people to accuse you of being the country cousin. Among the amazing features were old, handwritten bank notes, gold leaf fleur de lis, wall etchings, and multiple coats of arms, along with painstakingly worked pillar toppers and six granite pillars that had to be brought in by 30 horses each.

The Elusive Miss Rowntree…

Having moved on from the bank, we went to see some lovely art deco features in a few different places; however, since my phone nearly died shortly thereafter, I wasn’t able to take as many pictures as I would have liked to take. We also visited a truly gorgeous church that was well aware of its own gorgeousness (they were charging $5 just to permit people to take photos with their own equipment), and darted down a few side streets in search of mosaic tiles and bao buns.

Both bao buns and mosaics were gorgeous, and we took a break to eat and top

Mosaic!

me up on sunscreen, since I was already slightly burnt–and really, what better evidence can there be for my status as a Victorian Spinster than my ability to sunburn at a moment’s notice?

We rounded out our day at a second hand bookshop, where I managed to find some Don Marquis books (!!) and trotted back off to my hotel in delight at having found such treasures.

(I would also like to mention that I met one of Suzannah’s brothers, who works in the kind of place I thought only existed in TV land–the start up company that has the exercise balls for seats, a hanging chair, random bed, and writing on the glass walls. It’s the sort of place where people ride bikes around, you know? Delightful!)

Day Two (the evening–or, Day6): I love Day6’s music, but I was a bit nervous about going to the concert. For a start, I’m the kind of person who attracts weirdos in the street, so I was slightly concerned about being out on the city streets at 10.30; and since I have some balance issues, dark places with lots of people and loud music are usually a bad idea for me unless I have someone to cling to.

Getting ready!

I mitigated the first fear by dressing in ripped jeans and a leather jacket to try and look too mean to harass, and decided to just do my best for the second.

I was amply rewarded for my efforts by the amazing performance I was able to enjoy. The music was breathtakingly loud–and I do mean that it literally made me gasp–but since it was Day6, it was good music, and I enjoyed myself thoroughly. I was originally sad that I couldn’t get VIP tickets because I wanted a great seat; however, on the night, I could see very well, and it felt very close. I left the concert sad that I couldn’t get VIP tickets for another reason–I would have liked to have joined the Hightouch event to have expressed directly to the boys how much I enjoyed their music. I won’t forget this night out for a very long time, and when Day6 next comes to Australia, I’ll be buying a ticket, pronto.

After seeing a performance that I’ve really enjoyed, it takes a

Gasp! So soon!

while to come down from the high of being part of it–and Day6 really knew how to make me feel a part of the show, despite the fact that I was probably the oldest person there who wasn’t a parent.

From Jae’s casual joking to Young K’s amazing command of English and delightful stage presence, to the adorable and really very successful attempts SungJin, WonPil and DoWoon made in English, Day6 was an amazing stage presence. They didn’t seem arrogant, but they did seem comfortable, which was lovely to see. I really liked the fact that they thanked the parents for bringing some of the kids out.

After the concert

In short, I loved the music (already did, of course, but to hear it live…!). While Jae may be the most easily recognisable of the band, for me it was Young K who stole the show with his cheeky grin, adorable dad-dancing, and general habit of making fun of the members who were trying their best to speak English. I already admired his songwriting talents, but now he’s my firm favourite of the band.

Day Three: Coming home…

Usually when I travel, I suffer from bad home-sickness. This trip there was very little of that; I was happy in my own company (and in Suzannah’s–thanks, Suzannah!), and I felt that I could have taken a lot longer wandering around

Coming home…

Melbourne to see what there was to see. Who knows? Maybe Pet and her three psychos will visit Melbourne at some stage…

At any rate, I’m back home and working hard to have the WR(ite) Newsletter out early next week with a surprise sale on one of my books and another chapter of LADY OF WEEDS.

Recommendations: Namesake, Misaeng (미생), and Day6

This is technically a Favourite Things post. So I guess, have the proper pic?

Here ya go:

The problem is, I have about three new favourite things I want to share with you.

The first, as you might have guessed from the name of the post, is Kate Stradling’s new book, NAMESAKE.

Somehow I managed to miss both the tweet announcing its publication AND the blog post (I blame the flu. I am sick, and tired, and incredibly stupid) so I was hugely excited when a random Amazon search showed up Namesake.

I’ve now finished reading Namesake, and have joined in a discussion of its linguistic and thematic excellencies over on Kate’s blog in the comments section, where she announced the release.

I would normally do a proper review here, but the fact is that I was reading and reviewing Kate’s books before I actually knew her, and then I discovered that she had in fact read and reviewed mine, which makes things awkward. (I don’t review under my author name, and it was a mistake far too easy to make.)

So now I don’t so much review her books as scream “BUY THIS BOOK IT’S FLAMIN’ FANTASTIC AND YOU’LL NEVER WANT TO STOP READING IT”.

(For the record, I’ll have it be known that I was her fan first.)

(Also, read Namesake. It’ll be the best book you read this year.)

Misaeng. Ah, Misaeng!

Ah, those iconic Misaeng terrace scenes…so many…so good!

You guys probably know by now how much I love puppy dog heroes. I love being able to cheer wholeheartedly for characters, and I can thoroughly cheer for Jang GuRae. I was a little unsure at first, because the actor is the slender, pretty type that I don’t necessarily care for–but that character! Guys, the character! He’s a Baduk player (think a Korean sort of Chess) who at the age of 26 has been unable to continue playing Baduk from a necessity to earn money. He joins a company instead, sponsored by a mysterious benefactor–something that earns him the immediate ire and disdain of his coworkers.

This is basically Sales Team 3 in a nutshell. Mr Oh is wild-haired and mad, Mr Kim is slightly concerned, and GuRae has no idea what’s going on but lots of enthusiasm…

I love seeing the world through GuRae’s wide, idealistic eyes; and more, I love seeing how this drama shows the way the world sees GuRae. I love the changes he brings about because people come to see the world through his eyes–or themselves through his eyes. And it’s not just puppy GuRae; the rest of the characters are wonderful to watch. Because although I love Jang GuRae the best, I relate best to flawed, twisted, wrong-minded characters who stand on the knife’s edge of ruin. I know how hard it is to see yourself as you are, and how much harder it is to change when the change needs to come from within yourself. I know how easy it is to give up and blame anyone but yourself.

And this is pretty typical of all the interns. I love them all.

This drama does everything right character-wise, and it has one of the most beautiful ways with metaphor that I’ve seen since watching Beautiful Office. The episodes have flown by, though I’ve been trying to eke them out, and now I only have 7 left to go…

This one is going to be one I buy after I watch it on Netflix.

Okay, so the last thing that I discovered this week and immediately loved is the Korean group Day6.

Guys, I try really hard not to discover new Korean groups. I’m very happy with Jung Yonghwa, CNBLUE, B.A.P., and a smattering of BTS and GOT7 with assorted, much older faves. I don’t have the time or the energy (or the money) to be buying more Korean music. But somehow I ended up on the Twitter of Day6’s Jae–I don’t remember how, maybe it came up in my reccs–and there was Dwight’s face (yup, the Office’s Dwight) staring at me and a feed that I found pretty amusing. Which of course meant that when I went to Youtube and found a clip of Day6 mixed with other stuff, I thought, well, why not give it a listen.

I’m so glad I did. That first clip was Congratulations, which I loved the first time I heard it. Loving a song straight up is really unusual for me, because when I find a new group it usually takes a few songs for me to warm to them, and a few repeats for me to thoroughly love the music. I dunno. Maybe something’s broken in my music centre. Then I went on to 좋은걸 뭐 어떡해 (which translates roughly to ‘What can I do?’) and which I loved even more than Congratulations. So now I have a new band to listen to. I NEVER ASKED FOR THIS, GUYS. I DON’T HAVE THE TIME. On the other hand, Day6’s music is a great addition to my writing playlist, so there’s that…

Last but not least–and nothing to do with Favourite Things but more in the way of a general update–the cover for Memento Mori will be done in another week or two, after which there will be excerpts, cover reveals, special blog posts, giveaways, and other awesome stuff in preparation for Memento Mori‘s publication month!

I’ll have preorder links to share, too, so keep an eye out. And let me know about your Favourite Things discoveries this week!

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