Sunday: Marches, Sign Language, Cinema

Today I decided to explore the eastern side of central Sydney. Up until today, I've mostly spent my time on the George Street side of town.

I made my way to Elisabeth Street to discover that the side-roads were all blocked off. It turned out that today was an Environmental March day. As I didn't have much planned until the cinema in the evening, I waited for the march to arrive near a set of bus stops.

Signing Kerfuffles
After a few minutes, some people wandered past having been ushered around the corner to where the buses were re-routed. A deaf chap, presuming I wanted a bus pointed to the corner.
When I signed back the reply "Thanks, but I'm waiting for the crowd*" he was somewhat taken aback.

Asking if I was deaf, I signed "No, I'm British", which made him laugh, although it turns out that the sign I know for "British" actually means in a universal context "The country that I live in and we are in", thus he thought I was Australian until I replaced "British" with "English".

He then started ranting about how an environmental march would do no good, as it was "Vengence from above" (this took some sign-based explaining, as my signing skills are as rusty as errr, something very rusty left out in the rain). After that, he went into what appeared to be a rambling political rant (again, my signing wasn't up to following everything he said, but I got the key-words)

Now, don't get me wrong; I'm all for sensible political debate. However. He was clearly quite mad. At this point, I signed a thank-you goodbye and made my quick escape! I can now confirm that Auslan is very similar to BSL.

The March
Once I'd escaped the ranting, I waited for the march to arrive, so that I could take some photos. First a motorcade of police came past. They gave me rather dirty looks. It was only then that I remembered I'd thrown on my greenish Peace/War logo t-shirt at random this morning. Then the marchers wandered past, who also gave me dirty looks. This they stopped when I hid my nice red Starbucks cup in my bag. After that, they were happy for me to snap away. It's at times like this I could have done with my Canon350D, using its professional shape to bluff my way into asking the marchers probing questions.

Cinema
After a while, I grew bored of watching the marchers file past, so made my way to the cinema. Originally intending to watch Underdog, I chose instead Day Watch, which turned out to be:
a) Russian with endearing subtitles,
b) filled with vampires, blood and gore; and
c) very good.

If you get a chance to see it, do! It's a pleasant change from the clean Hollywood "Vampire/Good/Evil" genre; the Russians really know how to make something dark yet with comic undetones - Even the bodyswap halfway through was at the same time funnier than LiLo & Jamie Lee Curtis in Freaky Friday, and as black as the darkest night. Lots I didn't fully follow, as I haven't seen the first film (Night Watch), yet it kept me enthralled throughout.


* I didn't know the sign for "march", but "crowd" seemed to do the trick.