Thursday, July 29, 2010

Quarter life crisis

Today I uploaded my first video to YouTube You can check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQKsEgWTYV4.It contains footage from 5-6 years ago of some of Dinkibike's first shows. I watched myself in this footage - A Skinny, tall kid with multicoloured hair and a tonne of attitude playing music with his friends and giving a big "Fuck you" to the world. We may have been rebelling against the usual teen cliched stuff but it just didn't matter, We felt important.At what point do we decide that it is time to grow up, that these causes are unworthy and we lose the edge and attitude of sincerely not caring what anyone else thinks and being happy to be a freak? Why is it that as our actions become more significant to the world around us we feel that we are insignificant and we can't change the world?These are questions I don't have the answer to right now but I certainly don't think that the young freak in the video has truly left and I am pledging to let him take control from time to time.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Big changes or more of the same?

First blog with any content and news.Yesterday was the first day back for second semester and I must say it could not have come sooner as I was starting to lose my mind (which is never a good thing for someone training to be a teacher) from boredom. It was nice to see some familiar faces I haven't seen in a while who have started mid year. It was a strange feeling to witness the confusion for new students to Masters of Education at UWS, which seems far worse for mid year intakes who get far less help and hand feeding of information. It was, however, gratifying to be able to offer advice and help for these friends. Honestly, I had no idea that I had absorbed as much content and administrative knowledge as I have. I think it might be an interesting read for me to reflect further on the phenomenon of unconscious learning when I have a touch more time to reflect and write.While the start of the semester came just in time to cure my boredom, it also coincides with some personal and financial complications. I'm not really at liberty to divulge most of the personal stuff so I'll chat about the financial.I have a very limited income and the past few weeks have placed some stress on my funds. I seem to have had some cash disappear out of my account and my savings, I have noticed this at the same time as I need some cash to buy books and fix up my car and buy new tyres. Thankfully my Dad has come through for me with help in paying for this stuff. Regardless, this series of events has led me to pledge to be far more thrifty and conscious of my finances. I have created possibly the most complicated personal budget one could imagine where I am allocating and limiting the spending of my limited income in order be able to pay for my costs and save up for some products in order to reward my savings instead of wasting cash on crap films and fatty food. In my list of goals is: a new Laptop, pay off my car, a new bass rig, a digital camera, a new video camera and many more things.With such limited income I'm going to struggle to achieve ANY of these things this year so I'm trying to grow my income stream. I have started tutoring, so far I have only one student but I'm hoping this increases soon.In addition to the tutoring I'm going to start looking around for some solo acoustic covers. I am currently putting together my repertoire of songs. I am trying to select songs which: I enjoy playing, I play well, are popular but are not flogged to death by every pub cover band in the country (There will be NO living on a prayer if I can get away with it). I am open for any advice on getting gigs and what kind of prices to charge, what PA set up to use etc.Of course, The covers thing will NOT take priority over DINKIBIKE. The band has been my focus for a long time and it doesn't seem like that will change any time soon, It certainly won't be beaten by something like doing covers which offers very little creative expression, Although I will try hard to make these songs my own.I think the next Blog should be all about DINKIBIKE so subscribe and see

Greetings and salutations

Hey, Here is my introductory Blog.
I'm curious to see how often I add to the blog but You can expect a variety of things on this Blog such as my opinions on Music, Politics, History, Education and so much more. In addition to this I'll chat about my life, review CDs and gigs, post some poetry, talk about the happenings in My band DINKIBIKE and hopefully, when I get the suitable technology I will post links to Music and videos.