Day 290! Today started off as a super slow day… but quickly turned into a fun day with friends! I even ended it off with going solo to a drum and bass rave which I bought tickets for when I first came to Melbourne.

I was hungry when I woke up this morning… so I went downstairs after getting ready and made myself a big, hearty breakfast.

As I near leaving, I’m coming down to the end of my groceries. So I’m having to make do with what is left. But I think I have the perfect amount to last till Tuesday!

After eating, I spent the next 3 hours lying down in the TV room reading my book. I’m flying through it and hopefully will be able to snag the next one at a bookstore before I leave! I’ll need something to do on my long train rides.

I ate lunch around 1pm, cheffing up some quesadillas. And then I promptly scurried back to the TV room to devour more of my book.

Most of my friends were at work today and it was pouring down rain outside… so it was a perfect day to sit inside and read.

Eventually my friend Q came back from work and wanted to go check out a happy hour in South Yarra. So we ventured out into the drizzly city and took a train to Benny’s Burgers.

I’m not sure you can call it a happy hour exactly… but after 3pm this bar and restaurant has $5 pints. So Q and I had a few while chatting about our lives and upcoming plans. Q’s planning on staying in the city to try and lock down a finance job. It’ll be sad to leave him and the rest of the gang next week, but I’m sure I’ll see them all again and I’m excited to make some more friends!

We made our way back to the hostel to change into some warmer clothes for the night and then headed right back out for dinner. I had just gotten paid by ARC and was wanting a dinner out. So we walked back into the drizzle to a nearby kebab restaurant.

I haven’t had a kebab in a while and this one was pretty dang good! We got fairly wet walking to the restaurant, but after we finished up, we got even more drenched on our walk to Callum’s apartment.

Callum and Theo were having people over to their apartment for a little party. We got to enjoy a beautiful view of the city and a great group of friends all together.

As I said earlier, I really enjoy these people. But I’m sure I’ll be meeting some amazing people in Yamba and future towns/cities to come!

I ended up staying at Callum’s till midnight. I walked with my friend Aurélie to one of the tram stops and we hopped on. Thankfully Aurélie took a look at her Google maps because we accidentally hopped on the wrong direction… and rode it a number of stops.

So we got off and got the next tram in the other direction.

Somehow, this was perfect for my timing. I stopped into the mansion to use the restroom and then I walked about 20 minutes to a nearby club that was having one of my favorite drum and bass artists playing!

I walked in to a packed house of drum and bass lovers. I made my way through the crowd and was just excited to be able to dance to the music. I couldn’t really chat with anyone, since the music was loud, but I actually did meet a number of people through just dancing, smiling, and enjoying the music! It’s a pretty cool feeling that people can connect even without a conversation.

Mere minutes after I showed up, Fox Stevenson came on! I had a guess he wasn’t playing the entire night, but I had no clue what time he’d come on… so I got pretty lucky!

Everyone at the club was whooping and hollering, excited for the night to kick it up a notch. Fox Stevenson ended up playing mash of all of his best songs and even a new one! Everyone was dancing, singing along to the songs with lyrics, and even singing along to the beats of songs that didn’t have lyrics too!

He played for about an hour and a half before finishing his set and a local DJ came on. That DJ played till 3am! But while he was playing, Fox Stevenson hopped off the stage and started taking pictures and meeting fans. I was hemming and hawing if I wanted to take a picture or not… and as the line of people almost came to an end, I stopped my dancing and walked over to him.

I could tell he was tired and wanting to go, but even so, he stayed for every single fan that wanted a picture with him. It might have only been a room of 150 people, but it still was pretty cool to see him make an effort to meet everyone.

The last DJ finished up and I made my 20 minute walk back home, cooling off in the nice drizzle of the night.

I went to bed pretty much right after I got back… but that was still around 3:30am. So I had a feeling I’d be sleeping in late the next morning, or… this morning I guess?

– Elie