New Year in Melbourne
Bernarda Maia March 8th, 2008
The experience of a person who spent the last ten new years watching the fireworks at Copacabana beach, was very interesting. The year hadn’t changed yet in Brazil and here it was the morning of 1st of January and for me it was very strange to think that at the same time my whole family and friends were together celebrating the end of 2007 and anxious waiting the beginning of the New Year.
It was difficult to decide what to do here in Melbourne on the NYE since we didn’t know anybody but it is not a problem for us, because we spent the last NYE together, only two of us and it was our choice.
We were invited for a party on a friend of Phillip’s friend house and then we were supposed to go to a nightclub party. But a party in an unknown friend’s house and in a night club is not exactly what we like, especially because we don’t like hip hop (kind of music that is popular here at the moment). We decided to decline the invitation.
Some days ago we had dinner in a Greek restaurant near our building and we met a couple that I met at Phillip’s company party, where the guy works. We were talking about the NYE and they told us that every year on Yarra River there are fireworks to celebrate it, so we decided to go.
On the NYE day, I spent the whole day cooking black beans because we don’t have the special pressure cooker for that. I took more than normally it would take to be cooked. On the menu we had rice, black beans, salad and porterhouse (the way that they cut the beef here is different, and I don’t know which part of the cow is that but a porterhouse is a big steak and if you go to a restaurant in Rio de Janeiro called Outback and order a special dish called Melbourne you will have a Porterhouse which is a tender steak).
It was ten past eleven when we were ready to go to the Yarra River. We set up everything and I took the bottle of champagne from the refrigerator when Phillip looked at me and said haltingly: “My love, where do you think you are going with this champagne? And I said surprised: Why?! And he continues: Because here is prohibited to drink on the streets and if you get caught by the police you have to pay AU$200! When he said that, the only thing that I could think of was our last NYE in Copacabana beach where everybody pops a cork at midnight!
Well…I shall continue…
We left our apartment and walked in Federation Square direction, which is basically in the end of the street that we live. As we expected, the streets were busy and there were lots of parties around here, although we were not expecting a hot night! When we arrived on Fed Square we were sweating and quite uncomfortable because in fact there were lots of people drunk and drinking on the streets!
We watched the concert of an Aussie band called True Live while we were waiting for the beginning of the New Year. The band was pretty good, but we decided to go to the Yarra River to see the fireworks and as an amateur photographer I was very excited to shoot the fireworks.
Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one…Happy New Year! Everybody was celebrating 2008 and while me and Phillip were hugging each other I was paying attention to the people around us. There were lots of Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Indian people and I could hear them speaking in their languages, probably whishing good things to each other and it was really emotive for me. Because I felt comfortable in the middle of that multitude when I realized that I wasn’t the only one that was an outsider, that lots of people, were also far away from their families and homes.
Ten minutes of fireworks on the sky and I started to make jokes and think of funny things while shooting… “Phillip?!”, I said, That is something really interesting. And he obviously asked, “What?!” and I concluded “That is the first thing that I am seeing that is really created by Chinese and I don’t know if it is Made in China! Everything here is made in China, maybe not everything, but a considerable number of things. The Australians could finally have bought something original!” He laughed…and so did I.
The fireworks finished and when we came home to pop some champagne the cork flew forty-one floors below. I called my mother through Skype and she was very happy and suddenly the TV turned on by itself – the remote control was squeezed between the sofa and the wall – and there was a film starting and coincidentally it was a Brazilian movie, called “Os Normais” (“The Normals”). We laughed a lot because it had English subtitles and for us it is really funny! Well, of course we watched the movie that finished three in the morning and we were to bed with that sensation of “The End”
Happy New Year!
