The Adelaide Fringe 2005
I’m currently sitting in my favourite local Vietnamese restaurant, the Pho Linh. I’ve ordered a Beef Bun Bowl, which just arrived as I typed this.
Beef Bun Bowl
It has beef strips, carrot, cucumber, lettuce, bean sprouts and vermicelli noodles. There’s an option for chilli sauce and I have added soy sauce.
It’s an amazing meal.
I’m here because I just renewed my medication and picked up some diabetes related blood testing strips and felt like having something for lunch.
The lady behind the counter didn’t charge me for the strips and gave me a brand new glucose monitor for free.
I have two brands of strips because I wanted to test how if I get different readings between the machines. The strips have a useby date and my previous strips had expired and were giving wild numbers.
The reason I am doing this today is because I didn’t manage to do it yesterday because I was working at the Adelaide Fringe Festival.
I am working there again tonight.
The Adelaide Fringe Festival
My job at the Adelaide Fringe Festival is just to hand out flyers promoting various shows for the people who present them.
The main shows I am promoting are:
Ben Hall: Up Close, a storytelling magic show. I’ve seen it, it’s quite good. He even stumped me a few times.
Charlie Caper: Magical a comedic magic show including a robot dog.
Limbo a circus style show.
La Ronde another circus style show
I don’t just hand out the flyers, I sing out stuff and make jokes too. My throat has begun to get a little hoarse, but I am taking easy too.
Positive Experiences
One of my employers there is an amazingly nice woman from the UK named Beth.
She’s easy to deal with, but is a little too focused on the ticket sales. I have no control over what people do once the flyer leaves my hands. I just hope they don’t litter.
Another person of interest is a guy named George. He’s a professional spruiker. He carries a microphone and makes all sorts of jokes and suggestive comments. He helped me come out of my shell a lot more.
He wanted to recruit me for next year.
There’s lots of people, music and noise, musicians, comedians, magicians, entertainers of all descriptions. The streets are blocked off and there are tables and chairs for restaurants. Rundle Street is packed!
On the way home from last night’s shift, I had someone recognise me from my YouTube Channel He was waiting with a friend outside of The Exeter Hotel.
He pointed at me and said “You’re famous on YouTube!”. It took me by surprise but I kept walking thinking it was a prank. As I walked further I heard him say “I swear I’ve seen him on YouTube…” to his friend.
I turned around and smiled and he became really excited. “It is you! Shane, is it?” “Yeah, that’s me.” I replied. “Awesome!” He said shaking my hand repeatedly. “I’m subscribed to your channel and I’ve seen you do videos around Salisbury…”. “Yep, that’s me.”
Later he commented on my most recent video about the incident and I will talk about it in a future video.
It’s funny because I created the YouTube Channel for local name recognition for job search purposes and you never really know whose watching those videos or even reading my blog posts.
In truth, you don’t know who’s watching and listening and it’s really important to give creators feedback, encouragement and even financial support.
You also never know how close someone is to quitting, not only their creative pursuits but also their own lives.
In general, I have loved meeting other people who work in and around the Adelaide Fringe.
Celebrities I’ve Met
Arj Barker, Dave Hughes, Luke McGregor, Eloise Eftos, Tahir Bilgiç, Ben Hall, La Ronde (so far!).
I’ve also been working at the Adelaide Oval, restocking the drink fridges in preparation for the upcoming AFL game. It’s start of the season and I hope that it turns into a lot more work.
This has meant that I have been grinding out 13 hour days at times.
I won’t go into the negative experiences right now, and there have been a few, as they will probably require a post of their own.
Sometimes in life, it’s best to seek out new experiences and new perspectives. You never know where it will tale you.
Here’s a video of me spruiking Charlie Caper’s magic show.
That’s all from me today. Thank you for reading.
Shaidon
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