The do's and don'ts of the Melbourne Show

Recently, I went to the Melbourne Show 2013. I have been to the Melbourne Show each year for as long as I can remember and I will share some tips I have learnt over the years.

Do: Visit exhibitions there
This year, Masterchef Australia was filmed in Melbourne, on the show grounds. As a Masterchef fan, it was opportunity not to be missed. 

Youth Alive 2013

After an amazing experience last year, I was motivated to go to Youth Alive 2013. 

Youth Alive in Melbourne City is the final event of several smaller youth alive concerts hosted in several regional churches across Victoria. The concert has two other performers apart from the Youth Alive band; this year it was New Empire and Young Chozen (who also attended last year). 

New Empire is a Christian pop-rock band from Sydney. They have performed with other Christian artists in the past, such as Hillsong and Owl City. It happened to be the lead singer's (Jeremy Fowler) birthday and the audience sang 'Happy Birthday' to him before they performed. "Thanks, you made my 42nd birthday great", he joked afterwards. 


Here's some photos of the event:

The sunset

Fluent Indonesian in 3 months in Australia

Image by Nicolas Raymond

Since 2010, I have been 'studying' Indonesian and have gotten A's on my reports, assignments and tests. But I still can't speak it fluently. Around August 2012, I started 'learning' Indonesian; speaking it on Skype, learning vocabulary on Memrise1 and other resources outside of the classroom. 

For the last couple of years, I have been reading Benny Lewis' blog 'Fluent in 3 months'2 and learnt some key points about languages such as:

• 'Fluent in 3 Months' is not a guarantee, but a challenge.
• You are more likely to succeed in the challenge if you tell a large number of people about it. (I did announce on FaceBook that my new year's resolution is to be fluent in Indonesian)
• Your target language should be part of your daily schedule. (I am working out how to balance assignments with learning Indonesian)
• You learn more from speaking that writing. (Indonesian uses a phonetic Latin alphabet, so each word is written how you speak it)
• Whether you were good at languages at school or not is irrelevant: your commitment is. (I did have the advantage of very enthusiastic teachers who focused on speaking) 
• You don't need to be in the country to become fluent. (He learnt Egyptian Arabic in Brazil)
• All languages are hard, with the exception of Esperanto for some people. 

Image by zsoolt

Travel Review: Melbourne CBD

About three weeks ago, I went to Melbourne City for five days. As I live outside the metro area and used to seeing farmland, this was an interesting experience for me. This is a journal of what I did. 

Day 1: 

I travelled into the city via train and exited at Southern Cross Station. I was with a group of other country-people who were also exploring the city. We started the day by doing an amazing race-like challenge where we given clues of what we have to photograph. 

For lunch, I ate at Your Thai restaurant. I ordered vegetable dumplings and a green tea milkshake (I had no idea that existed). Then to finish the day, we walked to the Eureka Tower (tallest tower in Melbourne and 2nd tallest residential building in Australia). This gave us a better understanding of how the city is set out. Many people in the group went on the edge, an experience where you a put in a glass box that extends out of the building, this gives you a stronger sense of how high the building is because it has a glass floor. I didn't want to do this for two reasons: I am not fond of heights and I didn't want to pay $10 for a glass floor.
Going on the terrace was scary, because it was so high up, the winds were very strong and when I was taking photos I was worried that my phone would fall out the guard. 

Lyre birds

After visiting Mason's falls in Kinglake and seeing an actual lyrebird in the wild (I have only seen them in captivity), I have been researching about lyrebirds and have learnt quite a bit about them. I already knew that they mimic other bird calls and sounds around them but I didn't know how well they could mimic. 

I can see why they're significant enough to be on the 10c coin. Lyre birds can mimic chainsaw sounds, camera clicks and even human voice!

If you listen close enough you can hear; 
0:58 "C'mere chook, chook"
1:05 "What are you doing?"
1:46 "Hey don't touch that"

Australia has some very unique animals and we should be grateful that these animals aren't extinct. 

Also, I hope to write a post about my trip but we took over 3000 photos on the trip so I will have a series of posts in the future. 

Pay It Forward 2013

Every January, Xfactor Youth has a volunteer camp called 'Pay It Forward' where young people help others in our community (and sometimes in other regional town's - Mildura) who can't help themselves or find difficulties in completing a job or task. 

This camp has two objectives, firstly to share God's love with others by paying it forward and secondly,  growing in your own faith in God in your spiritual journey.

We spent 5 days this year; weeding, cleaning, painting, gardening, mulching, putting bikes together, moving furniture, moving chicken coups, learning, throwing paint, getting our lunches eaten by goats (well only my sandwich got eaten) and pouring water on people's heads. 

These photos have been taken by Ben Young and others.

On the first day, I went to Doreen Primary School to move bricks.

Tom carried 13 bricks. 

We also made a fence of logs.

We also kept finding chicken heads everywhere.

Day 2 - helping the Northern Austistic School

We had a competition to see what group could make the
best dessert for $10 or less in 45 minutes. 

This is what one of the people we helped said.

Day 3 - Cleaning around the church

We also went to the pool

We had paper stuck to our backs and people could write 

things that we like about that person. 

Pay It Forward was a fun experience and I hope to go to Pay It Forward next year. 

Links: 

Xfactor Youth FaceBook (if you want to go to Pay It Forward next year)

Japan Culture and Art Festival 2012

Last Sunday (25th of November), I went to Japan... well not really Japan but kind of a half way illusion. 

I went to the Japan Culture and Art Festival, which displayed traditional and modern Japanese art forms and culture. There was origami, calligraphy, traditional dance, modern music, martial arts and traditional games and lots of Japanese people.

This was my experience there:

Entrance 

Origami - I learnt to make an origami flower

Martial Arts

Kendama (Japanese toy)

Traditional dance

Japanese calligraphy

I learnt how hard it is to do Japanese calligraphy (my name in Japanese).
Left - Neat, nice done by an expert, Right - My attempt 

Ikebana - Flower arrangement

Japanese game - go 

Score -
Opponent = 9 points
Me = -13 points
You know you failed when your score is in negative numbers. 

Pastel Art

Japanese rice ball thing with green soy (very chewy)

Kirigami Lotus (Origami with cuttings) 

Kirigami dragonfly 

Kirigami bears 

A gaijin (non-Japanese) in a sumo suit

The Japan Culture and Art Festival was fun as well as being a bit too loud. I learnt new things about Japan and Japanese culture which I didn't know. I went to many other stalls and places but couldn't take photos due to the large amount of people pushing and shoving to look at what is on the table. :) 

Overall, I enjoyed the day and got to experience Japanese culture that I would have had to fly to Japan to see or research on the internet. 

Links: 
Japan Culture and Art Festival website
Japan Culture and Art Festival Blog

Mali in the City Auction - Photo Blog

En français      En Español

Two months ago, the Melbourne Zoo placed elephants that resemble Mali, their new baby elephant around Melbourne City. You can read about it here. 

After a couple months of street exhibitions, the Zoo Committee auctioned 50 elephants to Mali supporters, interested parties affiliated with the Zoo. This was a great night and here is my experience of it:

Mali's Self-Portrait

Gabriel

Eltham Copper Butterfly Story

Elephantasy

Bromley Two

Mali paintings

Paintings of the Mali elephants

I met Pippa Makgill, the artist who painted
the Spooky Possum Mali 

Spooky Possum Mali

The cutest picture of a koala I've seen

Pippa's Spooky Possum Mali will be on display at Luna Park, Melbourne along with Kevin Presley Mali. 
If you want to see more of Pippa's art, go to these links below:

Spooky Possum Mali
Pippa Makgill's website
Pippa Makgill's blog