By Elizabeth Flux:

When people hear the word “Fringe”, they do not usually think of a man with three earlobes. Or maybe they do. If so, we should all totally meet up over a cup of tea and discuss our future facebook group.
The year was 1996. My heart was yet to go on, the city was plastered with posters of a screaming blue child, and my major life goal was to find that wily fiend Wally – whom incidentally, I now suspect is actually Harry Potter in the witness protection program.
Ginny could totally take Wenda.
Anyhow, I was the rainbow-colour, music-note, year-itch age, so when my parents started talking “Fringe” I fully expected to be marched into the bathroom and attacked with scissors. Alas, it was not to be, and before you could say “how now brown fox quickly throwing rocks at glasses half full” I was bustled into the car and on my way to the city. That’s how I came to be standing outside FringeTix, complete with parents, youthful ignorance, and curiosity about the man with the torn right ear lobe.
There is also a residual sense of everything seeming orange, the way that sometimes happens in memory, but I guess that is beside the point.
Now I’m not sure about everyone else, but the seven year old me was convinced that crimes were happening everywhere, just waiting for me to solve them. The mysterious man with a maimed ear? Merrily chatting away to a lady friend? My mind snapped into action, determined to figure out what was what and who was who.
Having learnt from the best (well, the Secret Seven), l deduced that the damage to his ear was caused by a shoulder dwelling parrot that had literally talked his ear off, and had then proceeded to snack on it. Parrots belong to pirates, and pirates are pernicious. One cannot argue with alliteration.
In retrospect, he was just a performer sporting an ear stretching gone wrong. However, at the time I was wary because it was something I had never seen before, and just a little bit scared because like most seven year olds, I had attended the Disney school of Who-Is-A-Villain. This man checked a lot of the boxes: obvious injury ala Scar and Captain Hook plus significant lack of bird, dwarf, or forest creature entourage. He also wasn’t singing. Therefore on the scare scale of the under tens, this experience ranked somewhere above the rabbit-pie baking Mrs. McGregor from Peter Rabbit, but below the horror that was the EC doll from Lift Off (I still have nightmares).
Overall, despite subsequent experiences, much like hop and skip, lamp and Brick, or the Jonas Brothers and “why?”, whenever I think of the Fringe, an image of this man will pop into my head, alongside a faint residual feeling of wariness…and an overwhelming sense of orange.

By Emma Marie Jones:

This question seems to be popping up everywhere I look lately. Subsequently, I have jealously perused a number of glamorous responses from lucky folk who can actually lay claim to having met and partied with headline acts, donned their Glastonbury gumboots or followed a single festival around the country.
Not being a rabid festivalgoer, my own memorable festival moments tend to pale drastically in comparison. In fact, one of my more hardcore festival experiences is a very embarrassing one, and involves me passing out from dehydration during a ukulele solo in an undercrowded tent, about one hour after said festival had opened its gates.
With such slim pickings, my answer to the above question appears doomed to be, well, highly uninteresting. And uninteresting it may be, but memorable all the same.
The air of excitement as festival season takes hold appears contagious among the aforementioned glamorous folk. Conversely, as a pale, timid, bookish, and generally wussy type, I’m not cut out for feats of physical endurance such as standing in the sun for eight hours, and instead of excitement, tend to become gripped by a certain apprehensive fear. This doesn’t, however, diminish my love for music, live and/or otherwise, and on more than one occasion I have been known to commit the fatal error of purchasing a festival ticket and testing my strength. It doesn’t always end well.
I, like many Australians, popped my festival cherry at the Big Day Out – or, more accurately, as close as I could get to the Big Day Out, skulking around the perimeters of the Wayville Showgrounds in my school uniform. Exchanging shifty looks and swigs of Passion Pop with fellow truants, I was far too absorbed in my rebellion to catch the occasional drifting strain of Rise Against or the Hives.
Sadly, my festival memoirs go downhill from there.
I frequently attend festivals with a printout of the timetable folded in my pocket – yet still somehow manage to miss the one act I bought my ticket to see. A great proportion of my time at festivals is spent drinking water. A correlating proportion of my time at festivals is spent queuing for the bathroom. I lose wallets, cameras and phones at festivals. I also lose consciousness and dignity. Is my lack of enthusiasm for festivals becoming clearer?
And so it is that I have begun to devise a festival tactic of my very own. Everybody has one. For some, it’s straight to the bar and away with sobriety in any way, shape, or form. For others, everything follows a heavily pre-meditated route; cramming in a small part of every set on every stage and missing nothing. Others still hover around the backstage entrance with a cigarette, the epitome of blasé, hoping to be noticed by a particular favourite without looking like a slavering fan.
Me? I’m equipped for survival. It’s like Man vs. Wild over here. Before I take my position in a moshpit, I’ve planned and perhaps even tested out an escape route. Strategic meeting points are fixed with friends before any kind of timetable-related separation occurs. At any given moment, I know the location of the nearest restroom (or, in dire situations, semi-private shrub). I’m not smuggling drugs or alcohol into the venue – I’m stocked up on water, Panadol, No-Doz and salty, anti-nausea snacks. I’m probably better equipped than the St. Johns guy.
So who says pasty nerds can’t have a little fun at music festivals? The time has come to break the stereotype and create some memorable moments of my own. Stay tuned.anti-nausea snacks. I’m probably better equipped than the St. Johns guy.

By Priscilla Chia

Being home during the summer break not only means being able to be around family and friends, but also to celebrate a festival of red packets, feast-till-you-drop reunion dinners and nosy relatives.
There was nothing special this year compared to the last, but don’t get me wrong – of all the Chinese New Years that I have celebrated throughout my 21 years of existence, this year was definitely the most memorable one. Firstly, the feeling of seeing familiar faces after spending months down under was simply indescribable. Sure, Facebook, emails and phone calls (and the occasional snail mail!) enable one to keep in touch, yet nothing tops the feeling of seeing people in person and enjoying their physical company. No, we did not get drunk or gamble our life savings away via mahjong, nor did we get our hair burnt playing with firecrackers (which, by the way, are banned here). Rather, this festive season is more of a family gathering, over lots of food and well-wishes. Of course, and who can forget receiving red packets containing good old cash? Used as a symbol to give and receive blessings, red packets are given by elders to young, unmarried children like yours truly. To my family, Chinese New Year is more of a cultural festival prevent us from sticking red couplets that scream “longevity” and “happiness”, though. After all, who doesn’t want those?
I also secretly enjoy the different overplayed tunes in the malls (minus the horrendously re-mixed ones). It is because of this atmosphere that I look forward to jetting home, just like many other Chinese. Home is more than a physical infrastructure on a fleeting landscape. It is about going back to familiar territories and reaffirming relationships with people that matter to you. To know that you belong somewhere warms you inside out. Sometimes new homes are created, like over here with my very lovely friends at this university. Many of us have our dreams and aspirations, be it to work overseas, to move out of state, or to simply do something beneficial to humanity. Yet at the end of the day, there is a sense of wanting to feel part of a group and community that you can connect with. Relatives notorious for their never-ending questions can be a bane to some, yet nothing changes the fact that you share something in common. I feel fortunate that there is a place that I can look forward to going back to, even as others come and go. As Valentine’s Day also coincidentally falls on the first day of Chinese New Year this year, this is a wonderful time to also let everyone know how much you appreciate them in your life (but no thanks auntie, no boyfriend). As of now, I feel rejuvenated knowing that there are so many wonderful people in my life, and that certainly makes returning to uni a lot easier. Don’t you love the summer break?
Happy Chinese New Year everyone, whether you are Chinese or not.