Tales of Twestival

This is a bit of a late post, but better late than never right?

As per my last post, I went to Brisbane Twestival last Thursday night.  It was held at Metro Arts in Edward Street and was a great night.

I went along with friends and we started the evening with a meal at Wagamama, and then wandered down to Edward Street.  On arrival at Metro Arts we handed our Twestival tickets over to receive our programme, a lollipop, a cute little Twestival badge and a $20 Telstra phone away card.  Bonus!

My friends and I went down to Verve, the fantastic restaurant in the basement of the Metro Arts building.  Now I tell you, if you're in Brisbane, and have never been to Verve, do something about that and go ASAP.  Not only is it a great location with heaps of atmosphere, but the food is AMAZING, well priced and plentiful, and they have fantastic fun, relaxed service.  The whole crew there are heaps of fun and very friendly.  I can highly recommend the blue cheese risotto (I have seen people literally lick their plates) and they have the BEST sticky date pudding I have ever tasted.

We popped down there for a drink before the festivities (or should I say twestivities) started, and I had a rather delicious Sista T cocktail.  Behold!

Anyhoo, after a rapidly mind numbing cocktail, we popped upstairs to the studio for the main programme.  On the way in we popped into the Lolly Shop stall and bought a few of the cute badges they had there.  I quite fell in love with this one, I think you can see why...

They had some fabbo acts on, from local DJ Collapsicon, modern Middle Eastern dancer Moniq, and the AS Theatre who presented an excerpt from their upcoming play "Lazarus Won't Get Out of Bed."  I'm definitely going to see that one.

It's not too late to help with raising money through Twestival for Charity: Water.  Either follow my links  here to the Twestival website, or you can buy the Twestival T-shirt here.

I only wish I could have stayed until the end of the programme, but I was knackered after a rather intense day at work.  Oh well, next year!

Love Libraries?

Do you love libraries?

Then there is an event for you.  Saturday 14th of February is Library Lovers day.  Yes, the same day as Valentine's Day.  It's a movement that's happening around the world.  The Australian website is:

http://www.librarylovers.org.au/

As my contribution to Library Lovers Day, my friend Gina and I are organising a picnic lunch at New Farm Park.  Nothing formal, just a family friendly lunch in a lovely park here in Brisbane, for like minded library lovers to meet and socialise.

It will be from 11am onwards on Saturday 14th of February, bring your own picnic lunch and something to sit on.  Perhaps bring a favourite book or two.  And remember to slip, slop, slap.

If you're interested in coming along, please do, but also please remember this is a family friendly event in a public place.

What Brisbane Needs: Part Two

I live over near the new State Tennis Centre at Tennyson.  In fact, I live within about 5 minutes walking distance.  And of course, the Brisbane International was on this past week.

You can only imagine what the traffic, public transport and parking were like.  Let alone the litter, broken bottles and noise.

I live near a church.  They had to put chains up across their driveways so that people didn't park in their car park, as they would need it for their services through the week.

Parking is now restricted in our area.  The first we residents found out about this was a notice in our mail the day before the deadline to object.  My building has limited parking, and now even less because tenants can't park on the street.  There were cars parked EVERYWHERE.  Dangerously everwhere - we had them right up to our driveway so that their wheels were touching the sides of the driveway, on both sides.  Anyone leaving our driveway couldn't see a thing.  On one occasion, either side of the driveway was parked a MASSIVE 4WD without a spot of dust on it.  Another example of people buying these big cars and not using them for their intended purpose.

There is broken glass all over the neighbourhood.  The already dodgy spots on the roads around the neighbourhood were lethal over this weekend.  I saw at the train station one day at least 200 people standing on the platforms looking hot and pissed off.

Don't get me wrong, I think the State Tennis Centre is awesome.  It looks great, is a world class facility and I am really  looking forward to being able to walk to events there.

However, how about some more planning into the infrastructure and the livability of the residents in the area?  How about repairing the disgusting state of Citytrain's service to this area?  Or adding some more buses instead?  Making parking reasonable and keeping the tennis centre parking out of the residential areas.  Allowing the residents to live safely and comfortably when big events are on.

Like everything else that happens in this city, infrastructure is neglected around it.  Come on Queensland Government and Brisbane City Council, isn't it about time you learned from past mistakes?