I’m actually at a loss for words, and I’d rather not tell a story while being all fangirly (though that might have been the case when I retold this story to my friends). I want to write this as a story, just the way it should be.
Yesterday I went to my first show (Dylan referred to it as a gig). I don’t know what they call them these days, seeing as this was my first one of “those things”. I’ve been to operas, dance concerts, music showcases, musicals, orchestral performances, and each one of these was in some way, shape or form majestic, enjoyable and terrific. I could have replaced those three adjectives with a lot of others.
But for yesterday, no. I have to use every single appropriate adjective I can think of, and now I will explain why.
I want to thank my lovely friends Sebastian, Dylan and Ryan for tagging along. We went to see Ben Jorgensen at the Gaelic theatre in Sydney. Ben Jorgensen, for those who are unaware, is my idol; he was the lead singer, guitarist and songwriter of Armor For Sleep. When they disbanded I was shattered, but Ben still continued to inspire me. Many people disliked his new works including his electronic project God Loves A Challenge, but I loved it, and I love his solo work. I really admire his dedication to what he does, and it’s amazing how he tries these new things.
I met up with my friends early, about three hours before the show was due to even begin. I guess I really wanted to make sure I got a good place during the show, and it being my first, I didn’t want to risk it.
We were so early that no one was at the theatre yet. I wouldn’t call it much of a theatre, it’s a bit like a bar. Rather small. In my head, I tried to imagine how the show would go, but I really didn’t know what to expect. I remember chatting to my boyfriend James about it, and I said I’d really be happy just to see him on stage and even get a blurry mobile phone photo if that happened.
We walked around for an hour and came back. My stomach was being rather mean to me and I lost my appetite so I didn’t eat dinner. Perhaps I was too excited. I was actually a little worried that I’d be so excited I’d faint.
When we returned to the theatre after getting food and going to the bookstore, Ben was on stage practicing. I stood some distance from the bar and watched in awe. After some time he packed and walked in my direction and I took the opportunity to say hello.
Hello – unlike I’d imagined. I shyly asked for a photograph, which Sebastian kindly took, and nearly forgot to introduce myself as Georgina.
When I did, it sprouted a conversation. If I remember correctly, one of the first things Ben said was, “I saw all the website stuff you do, it’s amazing”. I was very flattered. I really couldn’t believe it; I know I’d talked to him several times online, but with no idea that he might have browsed my Fuck Yeah, Ben Jorgensen tribute or my other online works.
After we chatted I told him that I looked forward to seeing him play. I couldn’t believe that I’d just talked to him. I was so amazed, and in real life, he’s just as friendly as he is online!
After having to line up outside and the poor lady at the door getting very confused with at-door ticket prices, we went in. I was first in. When everyone came in there really wasn’t that much of a crowd. I was expecting to be squished and squashed but it was actually really chill in there. People danced, walked around with drinks and took photos to their hearts’ content, you could move and walk so freely.
I don’t remember the name of the band that was up first. They had a pop-punk sound and were a bit like The Used. They were really loud and as Dylan told me, I’d be able to feel the beat through my entire body.
The second band was awesome. I mean awesome. They were a four-piece from right here in Sydney, named The Initiation. They reminded me of the Classic Crime and I stood up front again because I started to really enjoy their music. The lead guitarist/singer’s (Davey) guitar string broke and he pulled out another guitar. The other guitarist (Paulie) kept throwing his guitar on its strap around his body in between sections of a song; it was amusing to watch.
At the end when we were all waiting for Ben to come out on stage, the bassist (Dana) came up to me and gave me their EP.
“I noticed you at the front, I’m gonna give this to you and thank you for coming!”
I didn’t know what to say but I thanked her almost endlessly and said that I really did love their music. I was planning to buy the CD anyway, but woah. Woah.
I stood at the front again, and waved at Ben. I think I started getting chills at this point… the air conditioner had been turned on and I was pretty cold, and Dylan had gotten me a glass of water. It was ice, ice cold, and I was incredibly thirsty, but I drank the water despite the goosebumps forming on my skin. Better than the heat outside, I guess.
Hearing Ben Jorgensen play was amazing. I knew all the songs he played, though I didn’t know the words to All I Need (a Radiohead cover, it was), so I didn’t sing along. I recorded a few videos, took many photos. The girl next to me was singing along too. I wanted to say hi, but for fear of being horribly awkward as I usually am in social situations and for missing any part of Ben’s performance, I left that thought behind.
Ben Jorgensen played with Wes, who was a whiz on the guitar. It was amazing to listen to, and I believe I almost cried from feeling the music.
I got to chat with Ben after the show, I felt weird waiting around but I got him to sign his EP (that Dylan bought and gave to me for him to sign). Not only that but I actually stayed around for a chat. He’s such a lovely guy, honestly. He mentioned something about Tumblr, I could not hear above the loud music now being played in the bar, but I managed to pipe out that I did have that Tumblr tribute to him. He’d actually seen it. He told me how much he loved it and how much it meant to him. He even said that his girlfriend loved it too. I’m glad, I actually feel really touched. I don’t know what was going through my mind then but I really couldn’t believe it. (I still don’t.)
I thanked him for putting on such an amazing show. Before I left we hugged and he said I was one of the most awesome people he’d met, and to “keep in touch on Twitter”. :’) I thanked him, finally, for writing such amazing music.
It truly is. So was last night. My head still spins and I swear on orange cows I don’t believe it. All I expected was to hear the music. But I feel like I lived it; I got to talk to Ben, he didn’t mind taking a photo, I got an autograph… he remembered me talking to him online before. He’s a wonderful person. You always get people around who don’t care about their fans but he does. And I know I’m going to support him for a long time to come, because he continues to inspire me. He can sing, write, play instruments – he makes amazing music.
It’s hard to find words, really. But that is why I need a whole box of adjectives. I never expected my first show to be this freaking amazing.
My laptop’s been playing up for the past few days, which is why I haven’t replied to a lot of emails. I’m really sorry for anyone who is waiting a response, I’ll get to it as soon as I can.
Basically, Fin, my laptop, decided to have the equivalent of a heart attack. I was listening to music and typing my previous post (Almost) Three Years of Love, decided to open a new tab in Firefox to check out another website, and my laptop froze. Fantastic. I thought I’d wait a while, and after waiting a minute, the music I was playing in iTunes decided to stop, too. My cursor didn’t move and after hitting Ctrl+Alt+Delete and having nothing happen, I forced the laptop to shut down by holding the power button.
After that, Fin wasn’t the same. He started up and he would run a lot of disk checks, and there was this ridiculous notice telling me that the laptop didn’t shut down – blah, blah, blah. Windows didn’t load. I had to go through the process of forcing a shut down about three times before another disk check ran on its own and Windows finally loaded.
I’m on Windows Vista, and for anyone who says that it sucks balls… please don’t. I am well aware of that. But in the near two years I’ve had this laptop, I haven’t had any problems with the operating system. Any. I swear – any. The only problem I’ve truly had with my laptop is that he pants in the summer when the weather is really hot, hence he overheats. But yes, I know Vista is lame, I don’t need to be reminded. I’m most likely going to upgrade to Windows 7 anyway, since James offered me last year but I wasn’t prepared to delete and re-install everything.
This problem continued for a couple of days. I also had a lot of trouble shutting down. I waited an hour, and Fin said ‘logging off’. After a whole hour, too. I’m so lame; I even kept talking to him and telling him to please cooperate.
It wasn’t a virus either, and cleaning my laptop didn’t work. A lot of things didn’t help until James helped me out. We set my laptop’s settings to ensure it was the best for performance, which made the UI look like Windows 98. Haha, good times. I wasn’t bothered by it; in fact, James said, “Hey, don’t you like retro things?”
Well, it was alright, except it looked a little ugly and weird, and I wasn’t used to it. Yeah, David Tennant was still on my desktop and not as pixelated as the text. In the end, I disabled and re-enabled my docks (ObjectDock and RocketDock), did a system restore, and with more of James’s help, I installed a new driver for what appeared to be my monitor. Yikes.
Basically, that solved the problem, and Fin is fine and healthy.
A couple of days ago I had some bullshit with the wireless internet. My brother was keen on helping me out and we spent a lot of time reinstalling the wireless router many times. After completely and totally resetting our internet as if we were starting totally fresh – everything was A OK!
Pah, that’s all for technological troubles, I’m sure we’ve all had our own, right?
I’m now a little down because Lilian left for Malaysia earlier this evening, and James is going to Hong Kong tomorrow. I shall miss them so much. I’m looking forward to seeing Ben Jorgensen in concert on Saturday, but after that I really don’t know. I hope I won’t get lonely and that they’ll be back before I know it. Hoho. And I guess, thank goodness for technology, because there is still some way we can keep in touch.
Whew, it was raining today after a very hot day yesterday! I appreciated the cool change.
I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas! I spent most of my Christmas relaxing, which is really unusual for me. Maybe it was because it was Christmas? Usually I’m on the computer for most of the day, and spend some time doing chores as well.
Yesterday I woke up pretty late, admittedly. I have been sleeping at inconsistent times lately – 2:45am the other day (my mum came home from work late and didn’t have keys!), yesterday at 1:00am (distracted…) and today, I don’t really know, but I’m hoping to sleep before midnight.
After I woke up late yesterday, my mum wanted me to go with her to our neighbours’ house to drop of some Christmas presents. We spent some time there having a chat about the neighbourhood and such. This elderly couple lives next door to us and lived there even before we moved here. We moved here when I was three years old, before my brother was even born.
We started talking about my mum’s work, and other rebuilt shopping centres around the area. A lot of shopping centres have been rebuilt or been extended. We talked about this one about twenty minutes away, which recently opened with an underground car park. What’s really funny is that the wife of the couple used to live there when she was younger, and back then it had been farmland with only a few houses in the area. It’s strange how it’s all urbanised now, and apparently they’re building penthouses.
I ate breakfast rather late, after we returned home. This resulted in a late lunch at about 4:00pm, and a late dinner at about 9:00pm. I had eaten some fruit throughout the day, so my dinner was just a can of tuna and a few spoons of rice.
Though I was online and checking my email throughout the day, I chose to lie down on the couch in the afternoon and watch a concert with Human Nature (an Australian vocal group) and the Sydney Symphony orchestra. It was only an hour and a half, and it was very enjoyable to watch. It reminds me of the 22nd January 2011, the day which I’ll be going to my first concert for Ben Jorgensen. I’m quite excited already – less than a month left.
I’m hoping to start the new year nice and fresh and I have some resolutions in mind. That includes sleeping early! As I mentioned in previous posts, I’m going to be cleaning my websites and fanlistings out too. I’ve already made a new layout and moved my writing portfolio to Aquapheric.net. Let me know what you think and if you’re into writing, be sure to leave a comment.
Speaking of writing… I’ve been working on a novel. I wrote one a long time ago when I was 14, but it was terrible. The plot was awful and there was just too much dialogue throughout the entire story. The novel I’m working on has about 8,000 words now. I wrote the first chapter about a month ago when I suddenly felt inspired to write. I don’t really want to share this story, but I’ll definitely share the news if it gets published or not. I’ve got a long way to go but I’m glad I’ve found my writing roots again.
Also, for those of you who are always surprised about the number of domains I have – I’ve revamped my domain collective that is Georgie.nu. It looks classier now (or so I hope!), and more organised. Some of my domains aren’t listed there as I’m going to be getting rid of them soon. Let me know what you think!
It’s my brother’s birthday today! Brandon turns 15. It’s rather late, so his birthday is nearly over. However, this morning, he was still awake at midnight so I made sure I gave him a tackle-hug! He had disappeared from MSN and told me that he didn’t want people to bombard him with happy birthday messages – especially people he ‘doesn’t know’ or ‘doesn’t remember’.
It happens all the time; I guess, even though I don’t have a Facebook, I’ve heard how easy it is to wish someone a happy birthday on there. In fact, I recall Ben Jorgensen (you know, my idol, the lead singer of now-disbanded Armor For Sleep, and the guy I’m seeing in concert next January…) saying, “Thank you guys for all the Facebook messages… I’m sorry I can’t reply individually but I know how easy it is to wish someone a happy birthday on Facebook”.
It made me laugh, because I’d wished him a happy birthday on Twitter and he’d replied.
My brother doesn’t feel any different, as most people don’t… it’s not much when you’re a year older when you’ve been counting down all the days and essentially, the only real difference is that you’re a day older than yesterday.
Along the lines of people my brother ‘doesn’t know’ or ‘doesn’t remember’ though, this rings a few bells of old friends. In a sad predicament, we graduate from school or high school and never again talk to the friends we made. While it’s sad that I went from having so many friends in high school, to being proud of the five or so friends I have now – I don’t feel any regrets in that, for I don’t feel like I’ve lost a friend or lost someone so dear to me. However, what really irks me is when people you ‘used to know’ and whom you felt really close to – talk to you only when they want something.
I had a close friend; she’s still in high school because of our age difference. We went to the same primary school together, talked to each other on the bus on the way home, and really got along. But now she barely talks to me anymore, and the last couple of times she’s talked to me is to ask me for money. Her bill was too large for her mobile phone and she was asking me if I had a credit card she could borrow. Right. She’s sixteen or so – not that it really matters – but this kind of thing is her responsibility and I thought it was rather rude that she was asking me for money. I’m more than willing to lend money to a friend, but her situation was just ridiculous. I didn’t have a credit card, and I simply said that I couldn’t give her money.
I put most of my money in the bank as soon as I get paid, because I don’t want to have it sitting around at home when I could really be putting it to good use and getting interest. Even though I told my friend this, she tried to make me take out money for her. I just refused.
On that note of money, I was finally paid for the website work I did, and the money appeared in my account when I checked today. Whether or not I will continue working is unknown, but I am not so keen on it.
In news of websites – I’ve added Tumblr themes for you Tumblr freaks (there are only two, though). I have also made a new Tumblr account because I just wanted to start fresh. I was sick of my old account and all the rubbish on it. I don’t really use Tumblr to interact with people anymore; it’s just more of a personal thing. I am now at 05th.tumblr.com. Don’t forget my little tribute to Ben Jorgensen at Fuck Yeah, Ben Jorgensen.
I’m going to the zoo with James tomorrow so hopefully I’ll have some pictures to share next time, or you can keep an eye on my photoblog!
Bad/shitty news first. James is going to Hong Kong in the summer1, and Lilian is going to Malaysia. Sad, sad times when I shall be home alone without my two closest friends! And I can’t travel with either of them – mostly because of extremely worried and concerned parents, and a bit of a lack of money. You see, we’ve got a huge family trip planned for 2012, and we’re going to Indonesia – my cousin’s getting married and it’ll be five years since the last time we went there. It’s hard to believe that we’re planning so soon, but I guess it doesn’t hurt to be a bit organised.
But yes, I’ll be extremely sad when James and Lilian go; James misses out on our third anniversary. Which is very sad, since I don’t think we even celebrated the last few years. Or not that I remember! But he returns on Valentine’s Day, and hopefully I can see him at the airport.
You know, be one of those people holding a sign with someone’s name on it. A sign that says “JAMES“. Ahh. Then maybe we can go and have a nice quiet lunch for Valentine’s. I know the day is overrated, but it’s not like I’ve celebrated for it ever, really. :B
Other than the mention of such sad news, I have had a really stressful week. I really need to finish the last two reviews I’ve got. After this I don’t think I’ll be writing reviews anymore. They take up too much of my time – often five hours or more. I like helping people, but I don’t want to spend time on that anymore. I know I enjoyed them but after two years it got… it just got too much. I really enjoy doing a lot of “site stuff” but sadly, that doesn’t sit in reviewing anymore. It got bland and boring and tedious. And I know a lot of people can learn from the reviews I’ve written, anyway.
I had to choose subjects for next year, which was a pain in the butt. It made me so frustrated because I had to keep choosing and changing subjects. My subjects kept clashing with each other, and all the classes I wanted to take were held on Monday. So I had to choose a lot of other classes and sift through the list of subjects, choosing subjects they didn’t have requisites or didn’t clash with my other classes. All the times are planned – I just had to go right through it. I should be okay now. Some of my subjects don’t have classes open for choosing yet but I do hope I get the ones I want.
While it’s sad that James and Lilian are going to be away, especially because I wanted them to come to see Ben Jorgensen with me – that’s the whole blob of excitement. Ben Jorgensen, my idol and favourite musician – is coming to Australia. I cannot wait. And I’m actually going. Yes, I’m going. Sebby said he wouldn’t mind coming along, and Ryan said he might come along too. This will be the first show/concert I’m going to – yeah, not down the rock or metal road of music that I love, but still, a show nonetheless!
As I said, I’m so excited I can barely contain myself. The tickets are less than $20 per person, and he’s playing in January. I can hardy wait!
Aye. Well, James and I are talking about how many people hated us in high school. A lot. It seemed he copped most of the flak from some rather nasty people. Man, high school was bitchy.
Sigh, I’ve got a long weekend coming in. I’ve gotta hand in a lot of stuff and complete a lot of stuff. I don’t know how I’ll cope, but anything site-related probably won’t come until the holidays, just as Kat said. We’re both so busy with university, that’s just first priority now.
We went to see Ben Jorgensen at the Gaelic theatre in Sydney. Ben Jorgensen, for those who are unaware, is my idol; he was the lead singer, guitarist and songwriter of Armor For Sleep. When they disbanded I was shattered, but Ben still continued to inspire me. Many people disliked his new works including his electronic project God Loves A Challenge, but I loved it, and I love his solo work. I really admire his dedication to what he does, and it’s amazing how he tries these new things.
I really couldn’t believe it; I know I’d talked to him several times online, but with no idea that he might have browsed my Fuck Yeah, Ben Jorgensen tribute or my other online works. 
When everyone came in there really wasn’t that much of a crowd. I was expecting to be squished and squashed but it was actually really chill in there. People danced, walked around with drinks and took photos to their hearts’ content, you could move and walk so freely.
The lead guitarist/singer’s (Davey) guitar string broke and he pulled out another guitar. The other guitarist (Paulie) kept throwing his guitar on its strap around his body in between sections of a song; it was amusing to watch.
I think I started getting chills at this point… the air conditioner had been turned on and I was pretty cold, and Dylan had gotten me a glass of water. It was ice, ice cold, and I was incredibly thirsty, but I drank the water despite the goosebumps forming on my skin. Better than the heat outside, I guess. 
I thought I’d wait a while, and after waiting a minute, the music I was playing in iTunes decided to stop, too. My cursor didn’t move and after hitting 
I’m so lame; I even kept talking to him and telling him to please cooperate. 
In the end, I disabled and re-enabled my docks (
I’m looking forward to seeing Ben Jorgensen in concert on Saturday, but after that I really don’t know. I hope I won’t get lonely and that they’ll be back before I know it. Hoho. 
