Thursday, January 17, 2008
I finally went to the Australian Open!! It's quite sad...I've been in Melbourne for 13 years now and even though I am at times a mad tennis fan, till now I had never actually managed to drag myself to the Open. It's only when I realised i have only a month left here that i decided i should go.
The morning started way too early for my liking. I wanted to meet in the city at 10 but Greg (i don't think he reads this so i have the freedom to say wateva i want muahahaha) came up with this brilliant plan to meet at 9:30 so we'll be at Melbourne Park with our tickets nice and early. So there I was in the city at 9:30 when Greg messages me twice....first time saying: "i'm going to be late" and then a few seconds later i get another message from him saying, "i should emphasise this..i'm going to be quite late." Turns out he hadn't left the station at Ivanhoe and he arrived one hour late. The boy is never going to get a gf.
Anyway, we scurried off and joined the very long line of people queuing up for tickets. (at least we hoped we were lining up for tickets..the queue was so long we weren't quite sure whether we were actually in the right line) Being the cheap people we are, we didnt want to pay the extra $10-$20 for Vodafone/Rod Laver Arena tickets and got the ground pass instead.
When we finally arrived at Melbourne Park we met up with the rest of the gang (John, Devrim and Tommy) I think all of us were first timers to the Open and none of us had any clue where we were going and for quite a while..we forgot there were such things called 'signs' around to guide ppl where to go. Tommy, John and Devrim couldn't sit still! and we were going from court to court watching 5 minutes of random games but we did see Justine Henin, the world number 1 practising on a court with her little entourage of ppl (her coach and a couple of random guys) which i thought was pretty cool but Greg really wanted to see a proper game. Finally Bas arrived (so glad she came or it would have been quite boring) and the three of us (greg, Bas and I) decided to go hunting for proper tennis matches to watch. Mind you...if you EVER go to the aus open..make sure you're smarter than us and bring your own food. We paid $8.50 for what i thought would be a decent sized pizza...little did we know it was bout 4 mouth fulls worth. grrrr Anyway..after lining up for 45 minutes to get into show court 2(if you think that's long..others lined up 2 hours and didn't get a seat)..we ended up watching Nardia Patrova play(seeded 13 or something around there) which was quite exciting 7-5, 7-5 and the highlight of the day would have definitely been watching the Williams sisters play doubles against 2 puny Australian chicks. Far out..Serena and Venus are manly...but they're no doubt very very strong players. My face started to resemble the colour of beetroot (despite the sun screen) due to the sun constantly shining on our faces and so I decided to leave early (plus it was 6 and i hadn't had proper lunch) and ditch the Gonzalis match which heard later was rather exciting but oh well. Few photos:
Serena and Venus Williams
Ah well, I was actually going to post about something else but maybe I'll save it for tomorrow =)
posted @ 8:16 PM
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