after traipsing around lismore and sydney for the past week, it's good to be home again. actually, i am quite happy that i don't need to get on another plane for a while - here's hoping that the weather's a little kinder come our canberra hello kitty gig. with all the travel last friday, the melb-syd leg of the journey was fine; drama started on the syd-lismore leg. it was the first time i'd ever travelled on a small regional airline - there were about 33 seats all up. on our descend into lismore it seems another plane beat us to our runway - our plane had to pull up in a hurry, and two quite sharp turns later, we landed on a different strip. if only i'd known what was in store on the trip back, i would have bought bus tickets... anyway, met up with the rest of the crew, had dinner and went to bed early. then saturday - woke up to 33 degrees of sticky mugginess. after breakkie, we spent the whole day at the star court theatre rehearsing. the theatre reminded me a lot of the pre-homogenised movie theatres in fiji - vinyl seats in two shades of green. then back at seven for the performance at eight. we had a crowd of about 180 in the audience. doing a reading is so different from doing standup - there are no laughs, just an audience listening to your descriptions etc - so it was a definite experience for me. i couldn't help feeling like i'd done badly - but i was measuring myself by audience response, like i usually would when doing standup. i am glad that the karaoke song is after the reading - it was a great tool to work off all the adrenaline that had built up inside me. i had the crowd singing along as well, a fact that the rest of the crew seemed quite impressed with. after the performance we had some beers then went back to emile's room for our 'cast party' - he scored a family sized room so we crashed it. we sat around drinking beers and chatting for ages which was fun. sunday we wandered around lismore looking for shade and free airconditioning till our flight at 3... then the fun began. we hit a storm near sydney - let me tell you, i have never been through turbulence so bad in my life. tash had been making buddy holly jokes all weekend, saying if we went down on the way home it'd be 'the day the spoken word died' - well, the irony of it did cross my mind in between thoughts such as 'oh my god, the plane is moving from side to side!', 'i think i'm going to throw up', and 'i seriously just got thrown out of my seat then'. we were being thrown around in the tiny plane - it was like being a passenger in my grandfather's old, no-suspension jeep in fiji when he used to tear down johnson road to and from the farm, only without the comfort of the ground being so close. scary scary scary. i was so glad that mark was waiting for me in sydney... i needed a hug. i have to go cook dinner now, so i will return for another entry and give you an update of our time in sydney. laterz!