Melbourne 2015 - #yezmelb15

Earlier last month we all jumped on one of the first flights Saturday morning to head to Melbourne for the Labour Day long weekend. As with any trip, the days leading up to the departure date were spent planning what we would get up too and day dream of how much mischief we would get up to. We had it all planned out: go karts, ramen, film a porno in our hotel room, darts, ramen and visit the casino to enjoy throwing away money.


Obviously the plan I was most excited about was unsurprisingly, filming a porno in our hotel room. We stayed at Somerset on Elizabeth and we've stayed there before so we knew it would make the perfect backdrop for our first step into the porn adult film industry. First order of business (or first business of order as Kim would say): the title. We all know the title would make or break the whole film and we decided on "Exploring Melbourne's Alleys". The story of a Sydneysider's trip to Melbourne, meeting a girl named Alley in one of Melbourne's famous/hipster alley ways. Then it was back to the hotel room for the 2nd and 3rd act of the film, where I would fulfil my dream of being a director. Kim would be my assistant, leaving either Hieuy or Mowad (or both) to fill the role of the protagonist then we would have to find someone to fill the female (pun may or may not be intended) role for it to all come together.


Instead when we landed things didn't go to plan as we had hope. Fortunately no issues with airport security even though Kim has a history of getting pulled up every time. The troubles started at Europcar when we went to pick up our rental car for the weekend. Mowad's licence was due to expire on the final day of rental and Dean, the shiny forehead assistant, made shit difficult and refused to allow Mowad to rent the car. Instead I had to put it under my name and I was the designated driver for the trip, fucking great. We then met up with our honorary Yez member, Ying, for lunch at one of many hipster cafes in Melbourne. Within seconds of looking over the menu, the majority of us were just confused with the fancy names given to each dish but Mowad, the chosen one, was not impressed when he miserably said:

"This annoys me"

We all had a quick look at the menu and couldn't figure out what could be annoying Mowad so much he had to explicitly state it. After everyone else exchanged confused looks at each other, Mowad looks up and explains that the orientation of the double-sided menu was 'incorrect' according to conventional printing standards of Australia. We then all paused, after a moment of silence as we processed the revelation that Mowad has just dropped on us, we all just bursted out laughing. Less than an hour of arriving in Melbourne, Mowad was all ready to rage quit and claim his 72 virgins. It wasn't a good start to the trip for Mowad but hopefully things could only get better from here.




Although Mowad wasn't having too much luck I didn't lose hope and was still trying to tick everything off our 'To-Do List' for the trip. I stayed positive and later that day we hit up 2 kart tracks and ate ramen for dinner. Just like that 2 things got ticked off the list and we even dropped by Sandown Raceway for Skyline Nationals. The next day we hit up more karting tracks, ate even more ramen, played darts and threw money away at the casino. We were on a roll, this trip was turning around and I'm pretty sure Mowad was enjoying himself finally.


And before you know it, it was Monday morning, we were all sitting at yum cha and slowly getting ready to leave the wonderful city of Melbourne where the people are friendlier, the highways were more efficient, that kart places were better and the vibe was just so chilled. Definitely a place I'd love to move to one day if I get the chance. Oh by the way, we never got around to filming 'Exploring Melbourne's Alleys' as we got too caught up go karting, eating ramen and arguing over who would have to drive. I guess that'll be something we'll have to work on for our next trip.