A little bit of revamping and my Australian Idol FAQ

Firstly, you'll notice that my blog has been revamped...yes, no more warping colours! No more password! (I figure the people I was shielding this from [or was I shielding them from this??- hmm!] no longer would give a crap about what I thought- and if that's not the case, I no longer give a crap about what they think =) (Actually, if you're reading this for the first time and I happen to have ever bitched about you, sorry! It's all water under the bridge and I hope that you understand that everything written here was in the heat of the moment and only read by a certain select few who held the password to it.)

Secondly, I wanted to blog about my AI experience...I figure that if I post all the info up here I can just go "here! go to this site and read all about it!" (NOT)

Soooo....where do I start! O ok, I didn't actually get anywhere in the comp, so you can stop holding your breath and emailling me for personalised autographs just in case I get famous! (Not that anyone did =p)(Though you still never know!)

Roz and I woke at 4:30 a.m. (yes 4:30 A.M) and arrived at Darling Harbour at 6:30 a.m. If you know Darling Harbour, the line started outside the Convention Centre and snaked past IMAX to Cockle Bay Wharf (outside Nick's) and back round again- so by the time we arrived, it was looped back past IMAX. (At the line's zenith, it was looped past IMAX for the third time...then they started turning people away.) We were armed with a picnic rug and a warm woollen blanket...we needed them! it was freeeeezing!!

There were some pretty irritating people in the line...this bunch of leb chicks who were armed with an esky and were REALLY hamming it up for the cameras. There was also this small skinny indian guy (who loooked abt 15 but would have had to have been over 18 to be there without a parent) dressed in a long sleeved t-shirt and jeans...he was physically shivering and people kept trying to offer him blankets and coats, but he kept rejecting them! There was also this psycho heckling woman. Ok, not that she was psycho...just...convicted(?) maybe? She was about 55-60 and was standing next to the line yelling "YOU STUPID STUPID PEOPLE! MAKE GOD YOUR IDOL! GOD IS THE ONLY TRUE IDOL!!!" for about 15-20 minutes. Then she started crying and praying loudly. Not that I condemn her for trying, or for her passion. Just that...well...it's counter productive. All she succeeded in doing was getting people all annoyed and thinking "Geez, Christians are psycho", as opposed to inspiring some actual thought. O well, God bless her, at least she had the guts.

Around....7, they went through the line handing out rego forms, and they only had a limited number of the forms, so if you missed out, you missed out on an audition, which culled the line to about...50m(?) behind us, so good thing we were there at 6:30! Any later and we might have been cut. There were people around begging others to sell them their forms...think a few changed hands for $20-50!

Auditions started at about 8:40 and from then the line was moving fairly constantly in 5-10min intervals. We got up to the head of the line at about 11...then the line stopped moving! Arrrrgh!! We were standing there for about an hour without being able to sit down, in the sun (also discovered my bottle of water had sprouted 2 bits of algae with ROOTS...ewww). Fiiiinaaaaaally, we got let inside a huge room with heeeeeeaaaaaaps of people in side....more an 1000? (I realised I'm really bad at head counts!) waiting to be heard. When I got into this room, I had to register my form with a rego desk and then get a number. Overheard these two guys- one was gonna sing and the other was just there for moral support, but they were both lining up and the moral support guy goes to his friend "I've been lining up all day, dammit, I'm gonna sing!" and his friend was all like "...but you don't sing! What will you sing??!!" hehehhee.

So yeah, we were in that room from 12-about 4pm waiting. They had various entertainment-y things going on. The hosts (the ones from TV- Andrew and James) were getting people up on stage to sing and other random stuff (one of the things they had was a "songwriting" contest where people had to make up songs about people they pulled out of the crowd, based on random facts about them...this resulted in such comedic gold as "He plays backgammon...and goes fishing for...salmon!" hehehehe). When Andrew and James weren't on, this absolute KNOB was MC-ing...he was SOOOO not funny!! Really annoying!!

Aaaaanyway, the audition process works like this: they call your name and number, you go line up outside a door...then they let you into a little foyer where you wait outside an audition room, where you audition in front of a producer and their assistant. THEN if they like you you get a blue card which you take to the executive producers, and you audition in front of them...then if you get through, you get a pink card, which lets you into an audition with the real judges (Dicko et al) on another day. I think all in all...we must have seen about 7 pink cards floating around. They made one guy who got one sing for everyone...he was REEEEAAALLY good. He looked a bit like Guy (better loooking tho). He sounded a LOT like Guy (he might be even better!). hehe. He was amazing tho!

So when they called my number, I went in in front of a guy and a girl. Sang for about 10 seconds...(1st two lines of "Breathe" by Blu Cantrell) and then they (well the girl) went "Sorry, we can't put you through". They were quite ok...(there wasn't much time to be nice or nasty!) but they kind of looked like they were really buggered, and tired of seeing people.

So yeah! That was it! Then we pranced off to have udon and iced green tea cappucinos at the Galeries Victora!

I'm actually really glad I went, even though it might seem to some as a total waste of a day. I'm really used to just doing things I KNOW I can do, that I don't have to risk anything for. In fact, I'd say I am averse to doing things when I have to put myself out there and risk a little bit for them. Auditioning for AI was something where I knew the chances weren't high, but instead of wondering for the rest of my life, I DID IT, and for that, I'm happy with myself. I hope this is the start of a new, not-afraid-to-risk-stuff-for-the-things-I-want-to-do me!

In other news, I reckon I'm about to lose my job. I had this rather garbled conversation with the manager the other day when I was busy shopping. She was changing my shifts around and I asked her by the way why I was getting less than 12 hours, even though I was employed part time. And then she goes "You're not part-time!" and I was like...umm, actually, yes I am! Then she goes...O but you want to be casual right!? And since I was kinda busy and flustered I was like...Ok, whatever. But they've given me a grand total of ZERO shifts for next roster. It IS really annoying, especially since I've worked for them for AAAAGES- the LEAST they could do is tell me if they want to sack me. GRRRRRR. O well, if I do, I'll take it as a door closed...time to move on a find another, hopefully not retail job =p. Pray that doors will open and opportunities wave themselves in my face ok!

And in other other news, PERTH won My Restaurant Rules...my LEAST favourite couple....arrrrrrgh!!!!! Though it was semi-ok, cause Peter (from Melbourne) again established what a knobbish knob he was by giving way too many (2) of his incredibly irritating coaches lecture/pep-talk things...he makes EEEEEVERYTHING sound like a coach's pep-talk!!

Ok, I'm off! Feeling slightly vulnerable about no password, maybe I should go thru and censor everything....hmmmmmmmmmmm....

Geez that was a marathon post! Thanks for getting this far!
Ciao! xoxo