Magnetic Island And Carmen San Diego!
Random Story:
Stop three of my grandiose trek from Cairns down to Melbourne was on this heap called Magnetic Island. I had initially surmised it’s “Magnetism” was to somehow add an air of “dopeness” to it’s vibe… didn’t really. Attractions included a koala sanctuary and a cheap scuba school, neither of which I was all that stoked on. I was staying at this hostel called X-Base, which was alright, but no where near as good as Scotty’s in Mission Beach.One morning I wake up to this chick asking if she can come in to clean my room, which was clearly fine with me. Her name was Carmen (I think she’s on my facebook if you wanna stalk etc…), 18 years old… German. Ultimately what our conversation led to was me explaining to her that I couldn’t drive standard (manual, stick whatever…) and her offering to teach me. Important things to remember here are: I can’t drive stick, I’ve never driven on the “other-side” and neither has she. The goal was to rent a little dinky go-cart type auto that I think was called a moke and was in essence a mini Mini. I very unfortunately ended up pussing out when 1) my credit card was on the line 2) peeps under 21 weren’t insured 3) I’d known her for like 5 hours 4) She didn’t actually have her driver’s license. I ended up going for the automatic, which was most definitely a good call since driving on the left was weird enough without the added difficulty of shifting.
It’s 4 months later and even though I’ve been driving for a good six years at this point… I still can’t drive a real man car.
Alas, my other lasting memory of Magnetic Island was my Australian DJ endeavor #1. It entailed me playing music with Live off my laptop for a few hours during a bin bag competition (that’s what Australians call garbage bags). Bottom line it was likely the worst DJing experience I’ve ever had since the music was continually interrupted by obnoxious drunken directives for what to do next in whatever drunken game was being played. On top of that people wanted Justin Timberlake and Warren G, which wasn’t really in the repertoire for the evening. Either way I stepped down early and cashed in on my 30$ bar tab and free night’s accommodation for less than two hours on the digi-digi. Learned a couple of interesting things about DJing by sucking that night: the crowd IS the bottom line, BUT if people have Mix Master Mario taste and they get Mr. Mandelephant flavor… they might be… dissatisfied…