Author: Kristian Golding

If you’ve been watching the news, Florida has been in it again. Damn, a lot of stuff goes on over here… or at least the media would have you believe that. What I have seen just made me sick, and everyone thinks they should have a say in what happens. It’s really not anyone else’s business. Let the people who are affected be in peace. But I’m not going to comment on that any more 🙂

Otherwise, I’ve been struggling with a dodgy home internet connection this week, which sort of sucks because I’ve gotten used to data flying around at high speed. And I’ve been reading books and stuff. I’ve got nothing further to add though.

Oh, Sony did release their PSP over here this last week. I am not interested in buying one at all. (1)

Also, now that I remember, I did go to Opium Garden in South Beach last weekend. My quest to get to most of Miami’s cool bars and clubs continues. It’s a pretty awesome place and had some cranking music playing. I don’t know how the hell we got in, considering we didn’t have any girls with us. I didn’t see any Hilton sisters or anyone famous, or at least I didn’t recognise anyone famous. If I saw Puff Daddy (or whatever the heck he’s calling himself) there I probably would have spat on his shoe (in my vibrant imagination, anyway) for all the unoriginal music he’s pumped out.

(1) Yeah, right.

Here is a quick pic of part of my living space over here in the US. What I’m exceptionally happy about is that thing sitting to the left of the picture, for which I’ve finally found a power supply and is now working. Yay!

Also, the Ultrafest dance music festival was awesome. But I’ve gotta get the pics and movies from my friend’s camera before I write a dedicated post about it. I was a bit unhappy that I didn’t get a movie of Chris and Mike from Hybrid doing their DJ set – the battery on the camera I was using was too low. I did get a couple of pics though. Anyway, more about that later.

I’m pretty stoked at the moment. I just received my ticket for Ultra Music Festival 2005. This is supposed to be America’s biggest electronic music event, which is saying something in terms of size. Although I’m expecting it to be multiple times as large as Enchanted (approx. 50,000 people are expected to attend) I doubt it’ll have the same charm as Enchanted as none of my Aussie Enchanted friends will be there! Ah well.

I’m incredibly bloody picky about what electronic music I listen to – a lot of the harder techno styles I think are utter crap and could have been written by monkeys, and most of the dance music I’ve heard whilst I’ve been over here has been… uninspiring. I dunno, if it’s dance music it has to have a certain latin flavour for me to like it but then again it can’t be too laid back. I don’t really like the really hard drum and bass stuff either. Sometimes it sounds like someone with no music knowledge at all sat on a keyboard and pressed record. But then I still do like a lot of other DnB songs. Like I said, I’m picky. So on that front I’m very interested to see what this will be like. Once I’ve recovered from this event I’ll write up a review, or something like that.

I think my flight back to the US was the worst ever for jet-lag and annoyance factor. American Airlines has yet to prove to me they can get me somewhere without being over an hour late. Well, here’s hoping for the future!

I knew things were going to be bad when I arrived in the US because I had a connecting flight through Dallas, TX to Fort Lauderdale. Of course the flight from LA to Dallas was an hour late, so as I touched down in Dallas I was supposed to be boarding my next plane. I ran out of the arrival gate (A24 for future reference) and across the travelators to the adjacent terminal to get to gate C4. Just as I arrived I heard an announcement that the gate had changed to C11. After moving to that gate and waiting for about 15 minutes (yes, not surprisingly the outgoing flight was going to be late departing) we had another gate change to C2. On the way over to that gate there was a guy strumming a guitar with a girl tagging along with him. I said to him “you should sing us a song about all these gate changes!” So he did! It was pretty funny. His name was Ryan and when I asked him what he did he said “Dude! I surf, dude!” (I kid you not). I think he was actually a construction worker by day but lived right on the beachfront in California and surfed at night mostly. The girl he had with him, Krista, was also from California. He was your typical cliche surfer. Blonde hair, even a beard and the most surfie sounding voice I’ve ever heard. If you’ve watched Finding Nemo just think about all those turtles Nemo meets. Exactly the same sort of voice. It was freaking hilarious!

We had not finished the musical chairs with the gates yet – an announcement made over the PA system said that our plane was now leaving from gate A29. This was back at the terminal we’d arrived at originally. Amazing! We sat down – Ryan chose to sit in a wheelchair – and he played some more of the ‘songs’ he’d written. One was about Bambi and how one day Bambi was just minding his own business when a hunter shot him, took him to McDonald’s where they processed him and then put him in a burger. I was in stitches because the words to the song seemed to be… I dunno, influenced by weed when he would’ve written them.

I couldn’t resist taking a picture of a guy sitting in a wheelchair playing a $20 guitar from Target whilst singing songs about Bambi. So here ya go:

Nuff said? I think so 😉