Star Wars Episode 3

Hi Folks,

Just a quick blog from the Silver Kris Lounge at Sydney Airport. Last night, I went to see the latest (and lastest) installment in the Star Wars franchise. I have to say that after the disappointment of the previous two offerings, granted the Clone Wars one was ok, I was not only pleasantly surprised, I actually thought it rocked!

Maybe this is because I went to the cinema on my own after walking from my hotel down to the Macquarie Centre in North Ryde. Be that as it may, the content of the film is something you'll see for yourself, so I'm sayin' nowt! What I do want to tell you about is the experience of going to the movies on your own as a saddo busines-type dude 12,000 miles from home.

Firstly, walking from a hotel complex in suburban Sydney to anywhere is a bit of an exercise in adventure tourism. This is not becasue of the marauding gangs of guys in their hotted up Commodores, but because of the logistics involved in navigating. When you're in the car, if you go the wrong way, you just turn around and go the other way. The principle is the same on foot, but the effort involved is significantly more. To illustrate this point, I will explain about how I went down Herring Rd. towards the Macquarie Centre and found the place no trouble. The thing is, that the shopping centre / movie complex is frickin' huge and the majority of the small village required to house this behemoth is taken up bythe carpark! All the lights were off at the front of the centre so I thought I would follow the neon sign around to the cinema complex - BIG MISTAKE!!! I ended up traipsing through about fourteen levels of the multi-storey carpark trying to find a way into the cinema bit. The only navigation points I had were those crappy signs that they put on the roof to "navigate" you while your looking for your carspace. They just don't cut it on foot!

Anyway, after a couple of hours, I found the entrance to the cinema and made my way optimistically to the ticket queue. No problems on getting a seat for the 20:45 session, just make your way through to Cinema 6 please. I went around there about 20 mins before the session and since it was only day 3 of the film in Oz, the queue to get a seat went around the corner and up the stairs. That would be fine, I'm a cultured person quite able to wait my turn for something. Now this is something they just don't do in Switzerland, but that's not for here as Marjorie Dawes would say. What annoys me though is when a geek in front of me, yells out to a bunch of people he goes to uni with and invites them to join him in the line. One person I can handle - 6 people. "Oi, fuck off to the back of the line ya wankers!!!" Or at least that's what I was thinking. What I said was - nothing. If ms. mac had of been there, we would have been getting ready to rumble. She has an endearing quality I like to call agressive politeness. Couple that with an uncanny knack of saying what she thinks, and you have a recipe for trouble. It's never dull with her at the shops. I think she managed to get a written warning for a British Airways check-in chick once.

So I got into the cinema, found a good three seats on the end of a row that were not occupado and sat down. The bunch of teenage girls next to me were annoyingly loud but I figured they'll be quiet once the movie starts. I wish that was my only trouble! During the "pre-game show" portion where they play the ads etc, an old, hugely fat wheezy man hauled his old, fat, wheezy carcass up the stairs and looked for a place to sit. I was praying he wouldn't sit next to me but, you guessed it, to my horror, he literally fell into the seat next to me, huffing and puffing (and not in the good way) for the next 2 hours and 26 minutes. Fucking hell. I was leaning to the left trying to get some space and some air, and my arse was getting numb as hell, but I didn't want any part of us to touch. Not because I'm worried about touching another man. That's no problem - but this guy was old, fat and wheezy FFS! Anway, to cut a long story (and geez this turned out to be an epic) I made it through the movie - old, fat, wheezy guy snored, snorted and wheezed in my ear for 2 hours 26 minutes and then it was over. It kind of made it special though. For most viewers of Star Wars Episode Three - Revenge of the Sith, Darth Vader doesn't turn up until the last 15 minutes, but I got to sit next to him for the whole fucking film - which was nice!

As I got up to leave, I found that I could have pulled up the arm of the chair next to me and used up the spare seat that was next to me thus alleviating the oldness, the fattnes and the wheeziness that I lived through for the whole 2 hours and 26 minutes. It just goes to show how often the inhabitants of chateau mac get to the cinema!

Anyway, off to Singers now (that's Singapore, Kim) and then a couple of weeks in Malaysia. Don't know about bloggability up there. Let's play it by ear shall we?

Tschüss

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