Sydney Life

In the last few days, I've been almost lynched, I've been in and out of hospital, and the world has nearly ended. Not to, you know, catastrophise or anything. There was a giant arts festival and a student election and not all bad things.

Well, firstly - the lynching is connected to the election, not the hospital. I decided this year, as I wrote last entry, to run for editorship of Honi Soit on a nice little ticket called PULP. We have been running in opposition to HYPE, who are bigger and schmicker and wear wayfarers and have serious branding. We, on the other hand, are smaller and more creative and put out a zine and had lots of oranges and made lolcats references in our chalking.

Oh OK, backtrack backtrack: in university elections the candidates have to campaign like real candidates in real elections do, so they make lots of posters and leaflets and chalk and put their name and their main points everywhere and have a stall and talk to people in cafes and lecture-bash (that is, make quick announcements at the start of your classes to advertise). All of this can seem pretty annoying to the average apathetic Gen Y'er (John!) but is part of that good ol' process we call Democracy.

I don't love how things run: I'm particularly appalled at the amount of paper wasted. I think, personally, that the SRC should make some limits on postering or maybe just ban it - honestly, what happens is that one team goes out and sticks up posters, and then another team goes out and sticks up posters over the top of them. And every other event that has a poster - including revues, classifieds, and student lectures - gets covered up by layer upon layer of SRC posters. That's just silly. I know that posters equal visibility, but perhaps a thought to the environment would not go astray.

I think, also, that politics at uni are too much of a closed group: new people find it all too aggressive or based on past relationships and affiliations and become apathetic and cynical. If there was less personal attacking and more talking about ideas, more relating it to people other than the candidates' friends (preaching to the choir, if you will) then people would be more interested in actually voting. Which is, kind of, the whole point of the exercise, no?

This conveniently leads me to the lynching. I, more capable at writing and talking and arguing than postering and physically taxing activities found myself embroiled in a rather angry argument about censorship and Honi Soit on .... Facebook. This is only really because the current Honi Soit editors posted an article about the SRC president and secretary ON Facebook after it was 'censored' by the SRC elections officer (due to a stipulation in the constitution about writing about SRC election candidates during the election period... basically to avoid biased reporting and slander). It quickly became a lot of people v. me, and I think I held my own, but I was, admittedly, a little afraid to go to uni the next day after all of the anger and aggression that had come down the interwebs towards me. It has been a pretty personal and bitchy election period, with naughty things being done on both sides.

Now, where was I in my little list? Oh hospital. Yes - I got the appendix out. Which would have been a relatively simple and painless experience had the hospital not starved me for a whole day. I was told to come in at 2pm, fast from 7am and no water from 9am, and I went in to surgery at 10pm. That's right: ten in the evening. I was almost dead. I was not happy. I had been given a drip once I started to cry, but I was still particularly not OK. The thing is, once they give you the anaesthetic, you wake up a moment later and it's all over. Waiting for eight hours is pretty much the absolute opposite of that: time goes by so slowly (I'm a Madonna lyric!) and you feel incredibly powerless. Despite this, the operation went well and I am almost fully recovered. Today I took off the bandages and the cuts are very small and healing well. I'll probably go back to class tomorrow (I have been unable to help with campaigning or go to class today but I think that's fair enough) and I've got an extension on an assignment due on Monday. Luckily everyone has been quite understanding.

As for the arts festival... I think I can do that in a little bit of detail with some photos.

So. Opening parade. Kids dressed as golden mermaids and lip-shaped couches. I was appointed as a be-everywhere-when-you-can photographer and also loved a lot of the events and went volunatarily. The organisers - two students - are lovely people and were wonderful to work with/for.

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Then, Pink Floyd accompanies The Wizard of Oz. That was pretty sweet. Same night hosted Wine and Cheese (so much drunkenness saw two contributors in a rap battle and one walking away with a whole bottle of dessert wine, promptly sculled)

and Circus (SURCAS - Sydney Uni's Circus Society) performance at Manning Bar.

Then there was an art competition, which had kids like preschoolers in a circle on the grass decorating slabs of wood with happiness and creativity. Always good.

Some competition for Parklife tickets involved making sculptures out of Red Bull cans. Talking Shit involved the Writers' Society kids being obscene in a public forum which eventually disintegrated in to hard theory (as Arts students are wont to do). Hermes, the oldest literary journal in Australia, was launched - with Rainbow Chan doing a nice set and lots of canapes eaten.

And there was cabaret - or should I say, Babaret - a production from independent theatre company Bambina Borracha - as well as Videomusic: essentially hours of hot Gondry, Cunningham and Jonze clips followed by seven or so people ripping up the dancefloor and wandering off in to the night.

Band Comp - exciting - The Bakery, Super Florence Jam, Wifey (who won).

Weekend break. Somewhere in there Ben Jenkins stayed up for 24 hours and did stuff on facebook. Then back to awesomeness! Queer life drawing (explicitly non-sexualised) was clothed but fun, and the Verge Art Debate about censorship was derbaterly, followed by the PALM awards which showcased prose, poetry, photography, art and musical composition from all corners of the Uni including the Con and SCA.

Sketch the Rhyme went off with hip hop and graffiti, and then World Bar hosted some kind of strange combination of cabaret, live piercing, jewellery and cool. Zine fair: radical. Zines, wriitng, art, cupcakes, jewellery, busking, night time, clothes, food, drink. Brilliance. Should happen more often.

To close - Fantasia in the Quad (mainly for littlies but still amazing if you appreciate dancing hippos) and then Verge Awards.

If there's not something in there that you like then I don't think there's anything more anyone could possibly offer you and you are offically impossible to please.

As for the world ending - oh, that was just the supercollider. Turns out we have to wait unitl October or something before the actual threat of black hole under Switzerland becomes real but it still gave us all a bit of a fright. "Pretty big margin of error," as Bill Bailey said on Monday.