Alive & Well: Catch-up on Fiji, Laneway and 2025 so far

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening (depending on your preferred sticky-beaking time). Welcome to this catch-up post. I know I said before that I’d be back to chat soon, and by the time I post this it will be mid-late February, but I had to farm something to present to the class – by which I mean, I got busy and had some fun and now I am ready to document, archive and move on with the year. There’s a fair bit to get through and I do not wish to write a novel, so that’s enough introduction. Let’s jump in.

Fiji and it’s completely different but also still Fiji

I really hope that you understand my subtitle was a cheeky nod to Charli XCX’s brat remix album. No worries if not. My point is, I’ve been to Fiji with my family a handful of times. I find that funny considering I’ve travelled nowhere else. I’ve just been overseas to the same place multiple times. Anyway, this time was exciting because I took my lovely wife with me, and everything is more fun with her. We got to show her the sights (the grocery store and fruit markets), chill out and have a week-long holiday. Sinead and I went on a lovely sunset dinner cruise. We seemingly enjoyed a different cuisine every night. Using our bare hands, we cracked a coconut together (highlight of the trip for me). Zip lining was beautiful. We went to a nightclub that one of the neighbouring resorts which played almost exclusively 2016 throwbacks. We went kayaking (a treat!), and we snorkeled a tad. Luckily, we avoided getting too sunburned, which is wonderful work on our part.

RYLA: Suspected cult experience turns out to be pretty good

At some stage last year, my boss at Women Illawarra was talking to Rotary Corrimal. They were after 18-25-year-olds to recruit for some sort of professional development program. As one of two employees at Women Illawarra within that age bracket, she forwarded some info to me. I couldn’t tell exactly what I was agreeing to. By the time February rolled around, I had accepted that I couldn’t get more information and forgotten about it. Essentially, I was to be sent away for 6 days to a facility in Stanwell Tops with a bunch of other young people, and RYLA stands for Rotary Youth Leadership Awards – so I knew it had a vague leadership theme. I knew little else outside of that, and I’ve since learned that they are vague on purpose. Any time I mentioned it to an older coworker they would say “oh yes, that’ll look so great on your resume!” but admittedly, I was confused and apprehensive.

Alas, the date creeped up on me. I considered cancelling but went anyway, at least to find out why it’s so mysterious. To my surprise, I actually had fun, and some of the other people there were really nice to get to know. We did team-building exercises, physical, emotional and intellectual challenges and listened to a bunch of lectures from smart, successful people. It was like a holiday, if a holiday was super intense and exhausting but fruitful nonetheless. RYLA has been running since the 60s or something. There’s a whole bunch of people world-wide who’ve been, and found it very enriching. The program is designed to provide a really supportive and safe environment to challenge yourself – and from what I observed, pretty much everyone in my cohort significantly developed their self confidence in the end (after we got over the cringe of it all). So, all in all, it was a really random time, but it was definitely interesting and I’m sure the experience will benefit me in some way going forth.

Laneway: Me and Clairo + 40,000 other people

I have been looking forward to Laneway since the fateful day that my wife and I were lucky enough to snag some tickets before they sold out. As usual, Sinead showed Ticketmaster/Ticketek, who’s boss, and secured the goods. I was excited for Charli XCX, of course, and hugely, Clairo – who I’d assumed I’d never see live. Olivia Dean and Remi Wolf came in second in order of excitation. My wife likes Charli XCX in a different and better way than everyone else – she’s been a fan for a long time, so I was also very excited for her to see Charli XCX again.

It was a great time; the weather was nice – even though we were expecting rain and instead we got a whole lot of heat. We lost some of our friends but kept track of a few and not get lost and abandoned, which is an impressive feat because I’m sure so many people became stranded. I was excited to run into other friends at other points in the day, because the odds seemed extremely low – there was no mobile service and way more people than I thought there were. Charli was awesome, and Clairo was adorable. We saw some artists that I’d never listened to before, and that was fun too. Nothing bored me, not even for a moment. I can’t overstate how fun and great it was. But I experienced some frustration, purely because I carry prejudice against Sydney crowds since covid – not because I fear getting sick, just because I haven’t been at more than a couple of shows in Sydney since lockdown where the crowd was excitable and willing to have a decent boogie. The videos I saw from other cities visibly look more vibrant. We’re going to Yours & Owls in a few weeks and it will be interesting to see how different the vibe will be there.

Hottest 100: A small side note

Speaking of fun music-related times, Triple J Hottest 100 happened back in January. I found myself without plans for the day, and on a last-minute whim, invited my friends Taylor and Dan, and of course my wife, to come over and listen to the countdown with me. In 2023 I bought a little fire pit from Bunnings, and it came with a removable cook top. The Hottest 100 presented a great opportunity to finally try the cooktop and make celebratory sausage sandwiches for us to enjoy. It was a really nice day, and I felt lucky to get everyone together at short notice, given that everyone is busy and booked. I was happy that Chappel Roan won, and if you vehemently disagree, you’re sexist and boring.

Work and other such things

This is a general update, because I don’t wish to bore you with talking about work, but I will mention that work has picked up in what feels like a very sudden way. It’s a good thing, but it’s definitely a challenge to get into a rhythm with everything. And it would be strange to leave it out of this post, because it takes up a good 85% of my time lately. I’ve gone to some silly events and spoken to some interesting people for stories this year so far, but I don’t need to go into that here, because you can just read the articles in their finality.

Anyway, quick recommendations & reminders list

Have a splendid morning, afternoon or night!