so, here i am. rendezvous hotel, brisbane. the day after the concert. yesterday was friday. i didn't get any sleep over the night and into the morning as you may recall, but got all my things packed into a little suitcase and we made our way to townsville airport at roughly 7:30am. super reluctant about leaving my pets alone, gave leo a big hug and kiss on the forehead before i went. anyway we went through the security at the airport and into the shops where my brother found tiny halo collectibles so we spent $26 before even boarding the goddamn aircraft. eventually we made our way through gate 2 and hopped into row 7 seating on a virgin plane. enough details?
plane food is always so goddamn expensive but i was hungry, so i had my pringles and $8 wrap while james and i compared our halo figures. man, i went to the airplane toilet for the first time ever and those things are so scary to flush. i can't really describe what it sounds like, but it's kind of like.. a big instant vaccuum being turned on. you can hear everything just whoosh below you and into oblivion, or wherever the sewage goes. so yeah we eventually touched down in brisbane airport and grabbed our luggage (which arrived the moment we got to baggage collection, awesomely enough), and made our way to the airtrain station. they've jacked the fees right up, it was $84! and there was a big picture of bono at the train station booth captioned "still haven't found what you're looking for? catch the train!" which i grabbed a photo of but forgot to upload, haha.
the train was so silent. we jetted right into central station and headed across the road to the rendezvous hotel. the lady in the concierge told us that we weren't able to check-in until 1:30pm which was an absolute pain in the ass (it was 11:30am at this stage) so we left our bags at the hotel and headed towards queen street mall. dad, james and i split from mum and shopped around. we headed towards myer to look at the electrical section (but never actually found it, the place has no signs), and coming out of level 2 we decided we'd ring mum to tell her where we were. at this stage, the indiana jones logo caught my eye in the window of a toy shop, so i went to have a look at it. i swore for a split second that i'd seen "rapture" in the bioshock andes font, and i flipped out in my head thinking.. no way, lol, wtf.
sure enough upon closer inspection, there staring me in the face were the bioshock memorabilia figurines i'd been e-chasing for the past three months. can you imagine? i was like a kid in a candy store. yvette in a gaming memorabilia store is the happiest yvette possible. i tried to absorb everything around me and holy crap, i've never been more excited. i had to have it all. since i've been practically chained to crazy clarks like a dog whose owner lazily tied it to the pole outside the shopping centre, i've stacked up a fair amount of money over the last couple of months. let's just say, it's a good thing i hadn't spent it. $150 later, i left the store absolutely beaming. i'm going back tomorrow morning for more.
so then i rung my mother and we met up outside myer and travelled to my intense protest to the woolworths supermarket to buy food and things. we then made our way back to the rendezvous with all this stuff and checked in around 3:30pm. inspected our double room and sat down for a bit watching 'that 70's show' on the tv (which is actually not that bad) with james asleep in the other room. eventually 4pm rolled around and we walked from our hotel to the train station and headed to milton station which is a little walk across the bridge to suncorp stadium (the concert venue). there was some crazy bitch in the train some carriages down who the entire goddamn vessel was getting an earful of (sounded just like the crazy cat lady off the simpsons). so then we walked to suncorp stadium with the big crowd over the footpath, signed various petitions to save all kinds of things and bought a program. $30, pretty steep for a picture book but anywho. then we checked out the merchandise stall and i got myself a t-shirt ($50, even worse, but you gotta get a shirt), scanned our tickets and went through the turnstiles. i then headed to the ladies' to put it on.
we then got our lanyards and programs, and headed to the members lounge for dinner and drinks (shit yeah VIP privileges!), where everybody challenged me for being underage. i was literally tapped on the shoulder and asked to leave by the security as 'no children are allowed in this area'. if only i had ID, i could've shut them up, so i said to the guy 'fine. i'll go and rot in the under twelve corner over here.' and stood with my brother. bastards, they just have to have their little bit of power, don't they? ah well. father brought over a beer for me anyway. i felt weird drinking it, and got about halfway through it simply because i felt like i wasn't allowed to drink it. i still see myself as being underage and not mature and all that crap. so i gave it to dad and he finished it off, when i decided i'd go and update my facebook status from my phone.
but where was my phone?
no, i swear it was in the bag with the programs, because it was with my camera whe-
.. fuck, i put it on the toilet paper dispenser when i was putting on my U2 shirt. you know that mad rush of fear you get when you realise you've left something of value/importance behind? my phone is everything. i bolted back downstairs to the ladies' toilets, ran into the first cubicle where i'd put it down, and guess what was waiting for me in all its black, red and silver buttony facebooky glory? nothing. my phone was gone. i had my dramatic moment with mother, and we headed to the nearest security people, who told us to ring the number. why i didn't think to do that i have no idea, but i borrowed mother's phone and: SOMEONE PICKED UP. she told us to meet her at the entrance to seating in row 301. it was another lady in a security outfit, holding my big red phone. i had to stop myself from hugging her, kissed my phone, and we went back to members. ohhh god. so lucky. so i did get to update my facebook status after all.
bet you didn't see that one coming? lol. we then decided it'd probably be best to go find our seats, so we walked over to where our ticketed seating was meant to be when security stopped us and told us we'd been upgraded, swapping our tickets over for some more fancy looking tickets and redirecting us closer to the stage which was awesome. we eventually found our new seats which were being closely guarded by a tough looking security guy.
the view from where we sat was spectacular, you could see the whole centre stage plus a sweet full view of the claw.
then a clock appeared, signalling a fifteen minute countdown coupled with no sleep til brooklyn, viva la vida, and some rap song (which was a kind of random countdown playlist but anyway), and i got a few photos of it as it made its way to 00:00.
and jay-z came out after that. god his set was loud, my eardrums hurt and i wanted to cower in the corner for a while. watching mum's face was pretty hilarious, she hates rap.
wish i'd brought my iPod with me (i still haven't found the bitch), it's photo quality is far superior to my phone.. anyway. soon after jay-z's show was over, an analog clock appeared (with the wrong time..) and counted forwards at a rapid rate of knots, which was confusing.. eventually ground control to major tom started playing (?!) and the clock's arms and points and stuff started randomly flying all over the place, like the thing was melting. any photos i took with my phone from thereon weren't properly uploaded to facebook so i'll have to go and post them when i get home.
and then U2 walked out onto the stage. ahhhhhh. i died. they sounded so great, it was such a brilliant show. two of my photos managed to make their way to facebook:
i also got some video footage on my phone towards the end, but its sound quality won't be great so i'm not sure what i'll do with it. i rung dylan and jarman a couple of times during streets & with or without you, but i'm not sure if they heard anything with any level of clarity.. also mum lost her glasses during the night but we eventually found them when the lights came on after the concert. we waited for the huge sweaty mob of people to start moving through the doors and eventually got outside and followed them to the train station. getting on the train was ridiculous, like being in japan during peak hour. everyone crammed right in, and i had like five different armpits in my face and people trodding on my feet and stuff. it was pretty awful. after what felt like half an hour of that, we got off at central station and grabbed mcdonalds. mum and i had some deaf guy beg us for money, it was really friggen creepy. i told dad i hated where we were, and we left for the rendezvous across the road.
i unloaded all my stuff and immediately fell asleep.
i found myself being shuffled off the couch and into my bed in the other room by mum at roughly 9:30am, as mum got james ready to go to the airport (he was leaving the morning after the concert because he was getting a tennis trophy this evening) but i fell asleep pretty much straight after i'd relocated. time passed very quickly after a random ass dream about stuff i can't even remember now, and i heard the door to my hotel opening. freezing in my bed thinking it was a terrorist, i made sure not to move until the door had cloesd again and i checked the clock. 4:30am. shit, i'd wasted a day. oh well. i got up and opened the door into the next room to find a note saying my parents had gone out, next to a note from housekeeping saying they didn't make the other room up because there was a guest in the bed. that was nice of them.
i inspected my reflection in the mirror of my bathroom and went to make pasta. wondering why the hell i couldn't find my phone anywhere, i gave up and switched the tv on and watched max for a while, hearing a screaming ambulance go past many floors below every so often.. i contemplated what i'd do if my parents had been killed and i'd been orphaned while on vacation, but thankfully enough they eventually walked through the door with a bunch of shopping bags and wind-ruffled hair. i asked them whether or not they'd taken the bags from my room as i had noticed they were missing, and dad said he sent them back with james's luggage to save us carting it all back when we left. my phone and camera are both in one of the bags. so i have no phone or camera for the rest of the trip. joy.
the rest of the evening was spent eating, raging and watching television. they have pay tv here for free! how cool! so now it's 2:39am (wow, an hour since i started this. what a life i have) and i'm really missing having my phone with me. my father's laptop is at 17% remaining battery so i guess i'd better wrap this up. tomorrow i'm going back to the toystore to buy more bioshock/halo figurines! i'm gonna be broke by the end of this shindig. i'm so happy i've seen U2, i feel fulfilled. i'll be in platinum aspiration for some time yet. bring on the 15 hour days at crazy clarks if need be, i'm on the moon.
you might hear from me again in the near future, stay tuned! much love, yvette.
No comments:
Post a Comment