I know it hasn’t been incredibly long since my last specific post, but these are fun, quick posts to write and since it’s my birthday next month, I thought I’d share one of my favourite playlists with you.
I spoke about it briefly ages ago in my post all about playlists, but the importance of good hype music for any type of situation needs to be made very clear. In this instance, hyping yourself up, having fun with friends and preparing for a night out to celebrate literally anything.
I have an entire Spotify playlist dedicated entirely to the cause, fondly and fittingly titled before the uber comes, considering that is when it really gets it’s best run, and it’s one of my favourite playlists on my account.
So without further ado, here’s a very specific playlist, best suited for a boogie before the uber comes.
Fake ID – Riton Cutting Shapes – Don Diablo Kiss Kiss – Chris Brown Work – Rihanna I Enter – Seconcity King Kunta – Kendrick Lamar Tonight – Don Diablo One Dance – Drake Be With You – RUFUS DU SOL Picture Me Rollin – Chris Brown Freak Like Me – Lee Walker ft Katy B & MNEK Attention (Bingo Players Remix) – Charlie Puth Trini Dem Girls – Nicki Minaj Senorita – Justin Timberlake Show You Love – Kato Tipsy – J-Kwon Deep Down Low – Valentino Khan On My Mind – Jorja Smith, Preditah OKAY – Shiba San Nuh Ready Nuh Ready – Calvin Harris ft PARTYNEXTDOOR Gasolina – Daddy Yankee Notorious – Malaa One Kiss – Calvin Harris ft Dua Lipa Do It Right – Martin Solveig You – Dom Dolla
Make sure you check out my Spotify for a ton more songs! I have quite a few playlists dedicated to the hype and you can bet they get put to use.
Thanks for choosing to give me some of your time, I can’t guarantee it’ll be worth it, but we can sure as heck try.
This week I thought I’d let you guys in on a week in my life, more specifically, my first week back at university, and an exceptionally busy week in general. I’ve done one of these before, my I Blogged My Day post, where I gave you updates as I went about my regular day at university, but I thought I’d extend on it a bit, considering I have a busy week ahead.
Let’s get into it!
(I hope you all notice and appreciate the date stamps on the photos throughout this post, I wasn’t playing any games this week).
SATURDAY
I worked today. I struggled considerably to get up at 9:00 this morning due to the Melbourne public transport system screwing us over last night on our way back from the footy, turning what should have been a forty minute trip home into a two and a half hour nightmare.
It’s been pretty slow at work for the last few weeks, I guess because it’s school holidays and quite a few people are away and schools aren’t buying anything for the term yet, but there’s never a boring day at the music shop. Since I finished smashing boxes considerably fast (amazing stress relief would highly recommend) I was sent over to the MI section to help out at the counter.
I count myself incredibly lucky that for a solid hour and a half I got to sit in the guitar room and tune all the electric guitars and basses with one of my coworkers, with whom the banter is top quality. It was a great way to start the day.
yes ppl I work here, I’m jealous of me too :)))
But then it decided to start picking up, meaning we had some customers coming through the door, and ya girl ended up selling a ukulele and a kids guitar within a forty minute time frame. I was slightly buzzed off the adrenaline but it was a good kick start.
One of the best things about working a Saturday shift is that the company buys us lunch, meaning we got to scoff down pizza during our break before we got straight back into it. I followed the guitar and ukulele sales with the biggest fluke, by selling a bass guitar.
Towards the end of the day I helped in setting up an electric drum kit, and spent the last hour just messing around with the kit and some bass guitars with the other guys working in the MI section with me. It was a good way to end a good day.
SUNDAY
Today was a really productive day.
Today meant rehearsal.
‘For what?’ I hear you say. For a performance. I finally have another gig coming up next month, and this time I’m playing not only with a friend (colleague too as he works with me at the music shop) accompanying me on the guitar, but with a drummer as well. Which obviously means, we need some decent practice time.
This was the second practice we had, and we managed to get a lot of stuff done, despite the vibes and our energy levels being a lil bit low during the first half of the day, however from 11-4 we plowed through, managing to perfect a few of the songs. PLUS, the boys even helped me finish up a new song, which I had finished the lyrics for earlier in the day while they were setting up the drum kit.
We managed to sort out majority of the setlist, but there’s still one song, an original of mine that we aren’t entirely sold on yet, so depending on how next week goes, we’ll probably try to rework it a little bit more, or choose a different one. We shall see.
not a fan of the chamomile tea, don’t come for me
Unfortunately I was also coming off a cough and cold that’s been floating around, so I wasn’t able to sing as well as I could or really go for any of the high notes in my set, of which there are a couple, though…the dudes forced me to chug two huge mugs of chamomile tea and honey, disregarding me whenever I mentioned that I actually liked neither of those things.
However, I didn’t mention it while I was there to save their heads from exploding, but it definitely did the trick, and we were able to give the last couple of songs a bit more energy.
The rest of the day following rehearsal was spent lounging around at home, only slightly panicking over the impending beginning of university and binge watching Queer Eye on Netflix.
MONDAY Ah, Monday. The first day of the week, and the first day of semester two at university. It was definitely a very chill day for me, despite the 7:30 wakeup that was a severe shock to the system after nearly a month and a half of getting up between 9:00 and 10:00. That said, the day did not exactly go off without a hitch, as I came to realise that I’d misread my timetable, and my tutorial only started at 11:30 rather than 10:30.
So what did ya girl do? Literally nothing. I walked back to Melbourne Central to get me some bubble tea cos I live off that stuff, and browsed through some of the shops, all the while checking the time until I could finally head to class.
The class was good, at least. Sure we had to do an ice breaker that I recall doing in Year 7, but it was fun. I have a pretty decent class, and even though none of my close friends are in my tutorial, I have a good group.
During the tutorial however, I managed to take a quick glance at the schedule for the lecture that I had next.
Some of you will judge me for this.
I am not a huge fan of introduction lectures. If whatever is being said can be said on the PowerPoint presentation that’s uploaded online or compiled into a succinct, quick email, then I am all for that option. Which is why when I saw that my lecture would be precisely that, I decided to head to JD and grab a bargain.
These, my friends, are the newest members of the family.
I’ve had my eye on the Reebok Classic Club C’s for ages, they’re one of the top shoes on my ‘Sneakers To Snag’ list on my phone Notes, so when I saw this pair, originally $150, down to $120, and then dropped to a ‘final-pair’ absolute steal of a deal of $60, I knew they were mine. Now we just wait for the 85’s to get on sale too and I can rest.
Does anyone else share an absolute obsession with sneakers that are stupidly out of your budget, save for sales like the one I was blessed with??
Anyway, after I picked up my shoes, I jumped back on the train and headed home. Like I said, a self-inflicted ‘chill’ kinda day. Also it was 13 degrees outside, so chill to that extent as well.
To make up for the cash I dropped earlier in the day, I managed to hold off on buying any lunch on my way home, and made use of the stocked pantry at home. It was a good day and a relaxing evening.
TUESDAY Tuesday marked the first day of my newly appointed Tuesday afternoon, 12:00-5:30PM shift at the music shop. Thanks to a much more forgiving university timetable this semester, I was able to jump on the MI roster, meaning I get to work a couple more shifts in the musical instrument department, as well as my regular Saturday shift in the print music department.
Which is exciting.
I spent the first half of my shift doing the usual low rank jobs, none of which I had a huge problem with. The first was flattening cardboard.
Working in a music shop means we are constantly getting instruments and equipment delivered, meaning we are usually left with a large assortment of cardboard boxes in varying sizes, that end up being tossed in the back room for the poor soul left to deal with them at the start of every week.
This week, being me.
However, I can’t say I cared all too much. Our work is pretty lenient. If I’m stuck in a back room, sorting through boxes or doing any odd jobs out of sight of customers, I’m all good to pull out my phone, throw on some tunes and get the job done. Flattening cardboard means I get to go out the back of the store near the carpark with a Stanley knife, blast some tunes from my Spotify, and flatten cardboard at my leisure.
It was a chill start to the day. Again, it was bit windier and colder than I would have liked, so chill in all senses of the word.
Once I finished that, my next job was one of my favourites, one which I jump at the chance to do every day; tuning guitars.
Um … sitting in a room of beautiful guitars, tuning them all up and having a strum when I’m finished each one?
Yes please.
That took up quite some time too, meaning that by the time I was finished, my manager left to go on his break, leaving my other colleague and I to hang out at the front counter, banter over proper conductor hand movements and assist any customers that happened to come in.
Ya girl got another customer lead for a guitar and amp pack meaning commission, but we shall see.
Considering I’m going to be on this shift until the semester finishes and my timetable switches up again, I was also shown how to lock up that end of the store, finally attempting to wrap my head around the twelve key keychain.
We’re very blessed at the music shop, to be within walking distance of heaps of yum food, which is where I headed straight after I finished work at 5:30, right next door the the Chinese restaurant, where I was planning on meeting one of my closest friends Nishika, who’s recently returned from a trip to Asia.
I see her often enough when she’s here and we go out with friends, but it was really, really nice to catch up with her one on one, considering we’ve been close friends for the past six or seven years and I’ve considered her a sister to me for the longest time. There was heaps of talking, catching up, lil bit of crying, and a whole heap of eating and shovelling food into our mouths, resulting in us being the last ones left in the restaurant until my mum picked us up.
Tuesday was a good day.
WEDNESDAY
Welcome to the off-day. Thanks to picking up that Tuesday shift, Wednesday became my completely free day. However, it also meant I had one day to do most of the things I had to do during the week, and it was a pretty easy feat considering the university semester has just started and there isn’t a whole lot to catch up on. I did, however manage to watch a required movie, The Social Network, for my Screening Politics and Economies class, and it was a pretty good film. I enjoyed it and laughed quite a lot more than I anticipated, definitely recommend if you haven’t already watched it by now.
I made the effort to start looking for some hooks around my house. My dad has a slight hatred towards anything that needs to be banged into the wall, so majority of the things that are hanging around my house are stuck on with the sticky hooks, and so far they’ve worked well enough, it’s just hard to get them perfectly in place on the first go.
I have some digital drawings that I did on my phone that I actually liked enough to print out and frame, and I plan on hanging them up in my room above my bed, the only issue is all the sticky hooks around my house have disappeared, so the project is currently on hold.
kehlani, donald, lauryn, michael and billie
My next activity for the day, is what I like to call ‘independent learning’, a relatively new endeavour I’ve undertaken, where for an hour a day I try and learn about something new. Whether it’s through a TedEd talk, a podcast or whatever, just learning something, taking some notes and all. Today I learnt about altruism, contagious yawning and the science behind memes. It was enlightening.
The rest of the day was spent hanging out with my dog (it counts as an activity, fight me), watching Queer Eye, and finally getting around to watching End of The F***ing World (Chloe, you’re welcome), which made me pee my pants with laughter, but also creeped me out because they’re both complete psychopaths.
It was a relaxing day. I definitely feel I managed to get as much done because I woke up a bit earlier than I usually would, which I’m aiming to start doing from now on. Not only do I have more time to get things done, but I also feel a bit better.
THURSDAY
Thursday marked my second day back at university.
By all means, as has been the running theme throughout this week, it was a pretty decent day and I wasn’t hating life at all. It was pretty windy in the morning, so the walk to the bus stop was not entirely pleasant, but it was a smooth train ride into the city for my first class.
I had a two hour tutorial for my Screening Politics and Economies course, and I was lucky enough to know at least one other person in the class, considering a lot of the students taking the subject were Cinema Studies students. The other boy at our table with us was nice as well, so we got on well as a group as we discussed The Social Network. Once the class was over, I exited the building, only to realise that the huge clubs day and sign-up was happening in the main courtyard that I had to walk through, meaning it took slightly longer than usual to get back to Melbourne Central for lunch.
After a quick cheeky Nando’s for lunch, and watching an intense dance battle going on courtesy of the marching band and the dance club, I made a quick stop at Glassons (rip my wallet) and Pandora to pick up two gifts for my sister’s 14th birthday the day after.
After walking back to the right building I was joined by Kate, my best friend who has been mentioned on the blog before, and we made our way to the one class we were lucky enough to have together, despite doing different courses and forgetting to consult each other when putting in our timetable preferences, TV Cultures. Fair to say it was a very enjoyable class that consisted of everyone sharing and conversing about their favourite TV show, getting to know our tutor who is one of the most laid-back, chill teachers I’ve ever had and then talking some more about TV and shows she needed to watch, as well as people life hacking Netflix with their own VPN. It was a great tutorial, really fun, and after the two hours were up, Kate and I caught the train back home.
FRIDAY Friday was a fantastic day. A bit busier than the rest of the week, but it was really fun.
I woke up earlier than usual, to make sure I could give my younger sister her 14th birthday gift before she left for school. I got her the July birthstone ring from Pandora considering me and two of my other cousins all have ours, as well as a cute burnt orange top from Glassons, just to slightly poke fun at the fact that she finally had her own clothes from my favourite store, so now she didn’t have to steal mine.
I had a tutorial in the morning, this time a 10:30 class, meaning I was on the bus around 9:30, and catching the train into the city, listening to my Spotify playlist to get me through.
My first class was actually my practical for my main course, Global Perspectives, and I had chosen a really fun studio, all about covers and cover songs. Our first class was the usual introductory class, and we all shared our musical backgrounds so our teacher could really tailor the semester for our capabilities and styles, and then we spoke for a little while about some of our favourite covers. You know I had to learn everyone a thing or two about my favourite cover, Moon River by Frank Ocean, as well as a heap of the Triple J ‘Like A Version’ covers.
It was a very relaxed studio, mainly filled with talking and listening to a ton of different covers, and I learnt a bit more about our assignments and practices which are all basically going to be recording our own covers, sampling pre-existing music to use in our own music, creating remixes and understanding mash-ups, all of which I’m super keen to get into.
Choosing again to skip my next introductory lecture, I picked up a call from my cousin who I was seeing later in the evening, to find that she was in the city as well, so we decided to meet up at Melbourne Central to grab lunch.
After a short Gong Cha break while I waited for her, we decided that $4 pizzas from the Asian Beer Cafe (ABC) was the move.
Two pizzas, a bowl of chips and two very satisfied gals later, and we decided to head on back to my house.
Once we got home, we only had to wait a little while until my other cousin arrived at my house, as the sisters, as well as my sister and I were planning on going and watching Richmond play against St Kilda at the football at Etihad Stadium.
We left my house around quarter to 7, and made our way to the station and onto the train. We had a slight mishap one station in when we tried to change carriages to find a place for all four of us to sit, only to have our group split up, leaving me with my younger cousin on the train, and my older cousin with my little sister on the platform, watching us as the doors closed between us before they could get on.
We only had to wait at the next station for ten minutes to meet them on the next train and from then on it was smooth sailing, and a good laugh.
We made it to Etihad Stadium, where I had seen Ed Sheeran a couple months ago, and after buying some food to eat, we walked around the stadium to try and find some seats.
We managed to get some decent seats with a pretty good view, and settled in for what we knew would be, not a very eventful game, considering that unfortunately for me, St Kilda are 15th on the ladder of 18 teams, while Richmond is currently 1st, much to my sisters delight.
While it was an easy win, there were a few moments when my younger cousin and I thought the Saints could pull up even a little to make the loss slightly less embarrassing, but I’m glad we left at the start of the fourth quarter, just in time to miss the huge crowds on the train, as well as the 54 point loss.
After a quick stop at Hungry Jacks for hot brownies, we were back on the train on the way home, with my younger cousin reading inspirational cringe-y quotes from Pinterest that had us all giggling like idiots until we got off the train.
It was a good way to end the week.
So there you have it friends. It was actually a pretty fun week, and I really enjoyed myself with all the people I spent it with. Work was fun, rehearsals were great, I’ll probably have to try a bit harder with lectures next week but I’ll let you know how that ends up going.
If you read everything, congratulations and thank you, let me know if you enjoyed this type of post, I know it was long, but it was great fun to sit down at the end of every day and run through how it went. I had heaps of fun taking and editing the photos too, date stamps are my new lil obsession.
Hello friends, and welcome to yet another instalment of what’s quickly becoming a regular post, my Very Specific series.
This blog post, I’m going to be sharing some songs that fit into a specific context, quite close to my heart.
If you’ve been here for more than a couple of months, you’ll know how passionate I am about aggressively speed walking within the city, to and from my university classes. What makes this activity ten times better? My playlist. So without further ado, here are some songs specifically for speed walking through a busy city.
Sunrise – The Kooks
Nice For What – Drake
KOD – J. Cole
Campfire – Amine
South of The River – Tom Misch
Home – Johnnyswim
Miracles – Coldplay, Big Sean
Dedication To My Ex – Lloyd, Andre 3000, Lil Wayne
I Wish – Stevie Wonder
Bonkers – Dizzee Rascal, Armand Van Helden
Heads Will Roll – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
You Don’t Know Me – Jax Jones, RAYE
Let’s Dance – David Bowie
That Girl’s A Genius – Jet
Down With The Trumpets – Rizzle Kicks
Thumbs – Sabrina Carpenter
Overcome – Laura Mvula, Nile Rodgers
Teenagers – My Chemical Romance
That’s Not My Name – The Ting Tings
Shake It – Metro Station
Intoxicated – The Cab
My Way – Calvin Harris
Little Black Dress – One Direction
Blame It On Me – George Ezra
Raise Hell – Sir The Baptist, ChuchPeople
Bad Liar – Selena Gomez
That’s it! Have fun stomping around your city, think of me while you do!
Hello lovely people. Due to the following week being insanely busy for me, I thought I’d take this bloody four hour gap in-between my classes on this cold Monday to schedule some posts. As great of an idea as that is, I’ve struggled to come up with post ideas, (all though I do have a review and music video to share that I’ve been putting off for God knows how long).
As I was recently hanging out with my best friends, Kate and Jess, I thought back to a conversation we were having on the train, regarding university and how we were finding it. So I thought I’d continue that ramble here, and kind of unpack my first week back at university, now in my second year, fitting considering I only recently let you guys in to how I found my first year.
One thing to get out of the way. I love my university. It’s literally in the heart of the city, a five minute walk outside Melbourne Central and it’s a massive campus with something happening at every minute of every day. That said, I have to return to a point I brought up in my last post about university. It’s very easy to get caught up in how big the city is, how much is happening on campus, the hundreds of people that are constantly surrounding you, and how small you are. That was definitely a feeling I had to get used to and learn to confront all over again, especially after four months of really not doing a lot outside of my own personal sphere.
Monday, exactly a week ago, was interesting. I had a movie screening at 9:00AM, meaning I was up at 6:30AM to ensure I was on the bus on the way to the train station by 8:00. The screening was interesting, just due to how obscure the films we’re watching are. Well, obscure to me. Apparently some people love the film list and know all the films, but I’m just gonna go along with it. And then came the first four hour break of the semester.
I hate it. A huge downsize of being right in the heart of Melbourne and a five minute walk from Melbourne Central is that I am surrounded by shops, some of my favourites, and I have zero will power, so of course, I walked into my recording studio session four hours later, $40 poorer. I don’t regret that however, because I got some good shit. My studio class is by far my favourite, purely because I’m in the recording studio, I love the people in my class and it’s quite an independent class structure. Aside from one hour of being taught in’s and out’s of the studios, most of which we generally have a grasp of, the whole focus is about making music, churning out tunes, collaborating with each other and producing stuff, which I am all about. My closest friend at university is in that class with me as well, we worked together quite closely on group projects and songs last year, and that’s what we’ve planned to do this year as well. I’m really looking forward to finally making some more music, hopefully posting some on SoundCloud, maybe releasing some more on Spotify if I really love anything.
Monday is one of my longest days, purely because of my early start, but finishing at 4:30 is not too bad at all.
Tuesday was decent. I guess. I have one class the whole day, which means I’m traveling for two hours all up into the city and back out, for one tutorial, which I wasn’t ecstatic about when I got my timetable. It’s not even a lecture so it’s not like I could skip it and watch it online at home. So I made my way into the city for my 9:30 tutorial, and I swear to God I had to stop myself from falling asleep at least three times. It was a painful experience, but one I have resign myself to. The tutorial itself wasn’t horrible, but they’re all going to be about the movies we watch during the screening I mentioned on the Monday, and considering I know none of them, it’ll be an effort through. Oh well, only one semester.
Wednesday is a pretty cruise-y class. However, there is one downfall, that I’m sure my family and friends are incredibly tired of hearing about, and that’s the lecture hall. Remember when I mentioned how huge my campus is? Well the lecture hall I have my main class lecture in, is in the last possible building on the city campus map. The furthest possible building from the train station and a hell of a hike to get to. Might have to start wearing gym clothes on a Wednesday. I was incredibly glad that all my friends were equally as pissed off about the huge walk, but once we got into the lecture it was fine. I love my main lectures for Music Industry. There’s always something interesting to talk about and topics and subjects are never boring. Even the introduction lecture was fun. After the lecture my friend I mentioned before and I walked back down into the main courtyard of our area of the university, and in our search for somewhere to eat, stumbled upon the row of cafes and restaurants that had been in the works over last year and throughout the holidays. Coffees, sushi, burgers, pizza, lasagna, it was kind of perfect, and we both enjoyed a pizza for lunch, before heading to our tutorial. Again, it was just an introduction but it was still interesting. We planned our first group assignment, in pairs thank god, and chose our genre topics (you know we had to pick RnB).
Timing wise, Thursday are probably the hardest. I have my first lecture at 8:30, meaning I’m up at quarter to 6, to catch a bus at 6:45, and I’m on the train by 7:15. The lecture was daunting to say the least. The hall was massive, at least three hundred people and just when I thought the class was done, more and more people kept pouring in. The size of the course made me feel so overwhelmed, but a quick review assured me that all the people who were with me from Music Industry felt the exact same way, considering we were the smallest group of people in the elective. The class was Music In Popular Culture, so despite the size of the elective, the content was really interesting and I enjoyed the lecture.
I had the tutorial for the class an hour later, so got a drink and made my way to the class, expecting to be in the same class as my friend, only for us to realise that due to the size of the elective, several tutorials were running at once and we were in different classes. Mood plummeted drastically, but as I mentioned the content was pretty interesting and I got through. Just.
I feel like if the last week was a reflection of the rest of the semester I should be fine. Hopefully I can pull through with some new music and songs to share with everyone. Hope you enjoyed this post, sorry if it’s a little different again than what I usually do!
YOU SHOULD HEAR 