I started preparing for New Years as soon as I published yesterday's post. I was very ambitious this year - I had packed a black dress and heels to wear for the event. I had purchased tickets for Bren and I to go to a club for New Years in the south outside the city center. I told Bren I wouldn't be caught dead in Manhattan on New Years and I sure as heck not going near the city here in Melbourne. Anyway. I put my contacts in, did my makeup, put on the dress and headed outside to call an uber. It was definitely possible to take the tram to the party but I sure as heck wasn't chancing it in what I was wearing. Especially since it's so rare for me to dress up like that, it's totally uncharted territory. Soon enough I was standing outside this bougie nightclub and waiting for Bren to show up.
He turned the corner and soon we were walking in. I gave him a bit of guff for wearing the same shirt he had worn earlier but he laughed and said at least he put on nice shoes. Walking in to the club it was definitely the fancy kind of place. It was pretty empty as we had gotten there right on time which was actually nice cause it gave us a chance to get our drinks and chat. By our third round I was delving into the nuances of tipping in Australia. Bren said it was hard to describe and started going through all the different scenarios of when you would tip and when you wouldn't. I thought about it for a moment trying to make sense of it all then said, "if I tip the bartender $20 now will that result in what I want which is to get better service when we come back to the bar throughout the evening?" And Bren laughed heartedly and said yes it might. So I did what my mother would've done, I tipped the girl and sure enough had instantaneous service for the rest of the night.
I had gotten so lost in conversation that before I knew it the place was crowded. It was around 10:30pm by this point and I was growing tired of people pushing their way through us all the time. I decided it was time to drag Bren to the dance floor where quickly I garnered the attention of every woman there. I think at least four of them came up to me and said I looked amazing. I helped one escape a creepy guy (I saw her outside later and she thanked me profusely). The girls were all so friendly and I had a wonderful time cutting a rug with them. I even started to chat it up with their dates and they kept asking Bren how we knew each other since I came all the way from the other side of the world (New York is surprisingly far) to visit. I didn't know how to explain that we had spent a few hundred hours playing video games together and the first time when we tried to say we met online it also got us only quizzical looks. Eventually we settled on that we were friends from Uni and Bren shouted to me if anyone asks just say we met at (insert name of Bren's university which I can't remember now).
Dancing, drinking, and more dancing. Even a trip to the restroom brought me a bunch of compliments and friendly greetings from the girls, one even helped me clean up some smudged makeup. Back to dancing and it's almost midnight. Bren said he'd be right back and 15min later was no where to be found. I texted him and he replied he was outside. There I found him, slumped on a plastic chair, head on a plastic table outside a late night gyro joint. Oh great I thought. Some water and time and Bren was back on his feet like nothing happened. I had never seen anything like that before. While I was sitting out there babysitting him I met a bunch of the girls I had been dancing with outside. More compliments about my outfit and then we were all swapping stories about our travels and previous New Years experiences.
Eventually Bren and I made our way back in, danced the night away for a few more hours then decided to call it a night. I wasn't sure how easily I could get home from there and surge pricing was out of control on uber. I decided to just follow Bren back on his friend's apartment who he was housesitting for and wait out the surge. We had a lot of laughs hanging out at the apartment, especially staring down the cat that lived there, and eventually I was able to get a cab back to my hostel.
When I started traveling for New Years I didn't know what to expect on New Year's Day. The first time, which was four years ago, JP and I were so tired and hungover that the process of leaving our room to re-check-in to another room was so painful I swore to never do anything ambitious on New Year's Day again. When I was planning this trip I made my flight for January 2nd specifically because of this rule I made for myself. After I got back to my hostel I was able to finally take my contacts out and put on comfy clothes. I did my laundry and picked up some food, packed my bags for my early morning flight and then waited patiently by the phone for Bren to confirm a time to meet up for farewell drinks tonight (something he had mentioned before I left him that (very early) morning). Tired of waiting and napping, with no responses from Bren, I decided to say screw it and head out into the city on my own. With the sun setting I walked along the river walk again and then up the road to the visitors center. I realized I must be close to where all the bars are, the area we went to my first night in town. My other video game friend Tommy would call that excellent map awareness. I kept wandering then finally stopped for dinner. I decided to go with the mega sushi roll place again and then sat there for a while to write this. By the time I had finished writing about everything that happened up til that point my phone went off with a text.
It turns out Bren had been sleeping the day away, literally. He couldn't believe it was 7:30pm which made me laugh. He's probably one of only two people I know that could easily sleep the entire day and early evening away like a sloth or koala. I told him to put on some pants and meet me for my last evening in town. One of the girls that he works with had her birthday party going on at a bar near Chinatown so he said to meet there.
I went back to walking around. Picked up a latte from Starbucks, watched some street performers for a minute, then eventually found myself in Chinatown. I'd say Chinatown in Melbourne is like Chinatown in DC - it encompasses a few blocks near the outskirts of the city and is extremely decorated. There were Chinese gates on every street, statues, paper laterns, and the typical signage. I didn't even realize it but the bar was down this narrow alley just off the Chinatown block.
When I got to the bar the party was certainly going and there was a short line of people waiting to get in. I got on the back of the line after confirming that it was indeed the bar I was supposed to meet Bren and his coworkers in. I stood there for about 15min by myself until Bren showed up in a freshly pressed shirt and shorts from around the corner. We stood there for another 15minutes watching people play basketball on a makeshift hoop and court in the driveway between the bar and the next building. While catching up on what happened the night before and filling in some of the hazier memories for Bren this small slender girl in a tube top and yellow jacket comes up to us. It turned out to be one of the girls Bren works with and I was immediately greeted by her with a big hug. She and Bren were talking about the other people at the party and I gave up on trying to follow along with their conversation. When she left to go wait at the back of the line Bren asked me a follow up question on what they were talking about. I shrugged and told him, "I'm sorry I don't speak Australian."
The language barrier here is tough. It's not so much the colloquialisms but the accent and speed. It takes a great deal of concentration and processing power to keep up sometimes and even more so if it's two Australians speaking to each other. Last night at the New Years party I got so tired of asking people to repeat themselves only to still be unable to understand them so I started just doing what I did when I was in the nightclub in Oslo, Norway - "I'm sorry I don't speak (blank)" - in the case of being here it either gets a quizzical look or a hearty laugh. Thankfully most of the time it's a laugh and when I explained to Bren why I was telling people that he thought it was hysterical.
Suddenly Bren says to me that he thinks there are people trying to cut us in line. Having stood there for nearly an hour I was not about to have that. I turned around and sure enough there were two girls chatting up the bouncers and trying to figure out how quickly they could get in. I stared at them for a moment then opened my mouth. With the most New York accent I could muster I asked them if they were trying to get in before us and that that wasn't gonna happen. One of the bouncers looked surprised and the other smiled. The two girls of course said no of course not they were just trying to speed up things. The smell of their crap filled my nostrils and I said, "that's fine but you ain't gettin in before me I've been waitin too damn long." Now both bouncers were smiling and the girls said no of course not then asked where I was from. I told them and one of them replied, "oh! I've been to New York before!" My face must've made it very clear how dumb I found that statement to be and if it didn't then me responding "yea you're not the only one" certainly did. Suddenly laughter erupted all around me and the bouncers were practically rolling on the ground.
Finally people were leaving and the bouncers pushed the two girls aside. As soon as they left I stepped forward to cut them off and the bouncer who was counting the people smiled. The other one said okay you can go in, just 1 right? And I said no! There's two and grabbed Bren by the shirt. No way I was going to leave him behind or let those two girls get in before him. The bouncer was very amused and said no problem and we were in.
The bar was called Section 8 and reminded me of a cross between the club I went to in Oslo where the whole thing was basically the ground floor, basement, and backyard of an old house and DeeJays, the day club, on the Jersey Shore. Bren bought us a round of drinks and quickly found his group of girls in a corner of the small bar. In each corner were wooden pallets set up like seating areas then there was the bar in the front and the dance floor. That was pretty much the whole place. The women Bren works with were warm and friendly, all giving me hugs and asking how I knew their boy. It was funny to see him as the elder in a group of young women. One of them asked me why I would ever leave Melbourne for Sydney and suggested I skip it to spend more time in Melbourne and head to New Zealand from there. The idea was very tempting and something I thought might be a possibility when I booked the trip back in June, but I wasn't sure what Bren's work schedule was and besides hanging out with him there wasn't more then a day or two worth of stuff left to see that I hadn't already. Bren told the girl that I had a whole big trip in front of me and it was important to me to see everything.
The night went on until the bar closed at 11. The group of us girls plus Bren dancing and chatting. Some of them mentioned going to another bar around the corner afterwards but by the time Bren and I looked up to find them most of the group had left to go home. The others were annoyed by that and decided to go for food instead. They invited us to join but Bren said no we would just go back to his place and have a few drinks there. So it was back to the Bren mobile and we were off to his friend's apartment again. This time I didn't see the cat - we aren't sure where it hides but the food is gone and the litter box is full so it must still be alive. We sat on the couch and watched Rick and Morty, talking about tv and politics and whatever else came to mind. And I thought maybe I should just skip Sydney.
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