Sunday, March 3, 2013

Cultural misfit or reclusive writer...

Adelaide gets a little bit crazy in March. I'm not even sure how the planning works, but every worthwhile event that seems to happen in this city is held in March.

Traffic goes stupid, accommodation is impossible to find and flights in and out of the city are at a premium cost - if you can get them.

It's bad planning on behalf of the organisers to do everything in one month, or maybe it's good planning and plenty of incentive for out-of-towners to come to our humble little city. You can stay for a month and do everything worth doing.

What it does, is make our lives difficult on the project when we're trying to move our project team around the country to train staff in preparation for our project go live date which is only 4 weeks away.

Yeah, okay so we didn't plan our project dates too well either, and lets not even get started on the fact that the cutover tasks (ie the bulk of the transitioning activities) will need to be done over the Easter weekend.

I really do love that my city is such a mixed bag of culture and festivals but couldn't we spread it out a little. Look at this as an example, in Adelaide this week we have the following activities happening;

Clipsal 500 - 4 days of car racing and music concerts. Today they had a sell out crowd with 95,000 people attending the final race day and people having to be turned away. For this race they block off a section of the city to create a massive street racing circuit. Last Wednesday (the day before the event started) and it took me 50 minutes to get from my place of work to where I was doing my night course - that's about a 10km distance, traffic is that crazy.

Adelaide Fringe Festival - The Adelaide Fringe is held over 4 weeks in February and March and it's open-access nature means that anyone with a show, exhibition or cultural event is able to register and be part of Australia’s largest arts event. The result is one of the most diverse arts festivals in the world, renowned for fresh ideas, spontaneity and fun.

Adelaide Arts Festival - Held in the first 3 weeks of March and incorporates arts, dance and visual arts exhibitions.

Writers Week - This festival is part of the Adelaide Festival and is seven days of all things writerly. There's readings, seminars, author signings and everything to do with celebrating the written word.

Soundwave 2013 - Almost forgot this one, a night of absolutely amazing music with heaps of live bands

So given all that activity in my little patch of the world and where did I go this weekend - nowhere! Instead I stayed home and created a business plan, wrote a freelancing project plan and wrote an article which I've submitted for review.

I could have gone to some artsy shows, only none of my friends are really that way inclined and hubby is as far removed from that as is possible. Attending something like that would be up there with walking barefoot on hot coals for him. He did go to the car racing on Friday though, as did middle son. I loathe car racing almost as much as they loathe the artsy stuff.

I looked at the Writers Weeks schedule but unfortunately the things that interest me are not scheduled on the weekend but during the week, which is not really possible at this stage in the project for me to have a day off and attend.

I did however partake in a totally artsy, cultural moment tonight- we dined on homemade pizza made in hubby's wood fire pizza oven. We still need a little bit of perfecting on the cooking times and temperatures, but it was definitely edible and tasty.

March in Adelaide makes me feel like a bit of a cultural misfit, or maybe a social pariah. In fact the reclusive writer title probably fits me well.

Hope you all have a superbly cultural week everyone,


 

4 comments:

  1. I haven't lived in Adelaide for about 15 years but I have a feeling that WomAd was also around this time of year, does it still exist? Another music festival... I hope you enjoyed your pizza, homemade is definitely best.

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    1. You're right - I totally forgot this one. WomAdelaide starts this Friday as well :-)

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  2. LOL! I'm sure you get out and about plenty. But you sound really busy in March with work. A woman has to stop and rest (and eat pizza) sometimes.

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    1. Stop and rest ...mmm what a treat that would be

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