I set the alarm on my phone last night, because I didn't want to change the alarm times on my alarm clock, and then have to fix them again.

I was able to sleep in this morning, so I set the alarm on my phone for 9.45am, when it went off, I woke up, and dragged myself out of bed, because my mate (the drummer) was coming to pick me up at about 10.30am.

I looked at the time on my watch, and saw that it was 8.45am. Oh damn, I never fixed the clock, because of daylight savings, on my phone.

Bugger, that's an hour of sleep I could have had. Oh well, I'm up now.

I sat on the computer for a while, and then I got ready, had a shower, got dressed, had breakfast etc.

My mate turned up a little while later, he came in, we bummed around for a couple of minutes while I finished getting ready, and grabbed the REM ticket, and then we jumped in the car, and drove over to our other mate's place.

When he got ready, not long after we got there, the 3 of us jumped in his car, and we drove Wyoming shops. My mate had a cough, and wanted to buy some cough syrup.

While he was at the chemist, I took advantage of it, and went and bought a new ventolin.

We got back in his car, and then drove home again, and we waited in the car while he went in and took some cough syrup. Gees, he could have just bought a measuring cup thing, and taken it in the car, instead of coming all the way home again.

He came back to the car, and we got going again. He asked how big a shot glass was, and I told him 30mL for a standard one, which he thought it was, as he'd used a shot glass to measure the syrup. Heh.

We went and got on the freeway, and drove into the city. We parked in the parking station that we usually park at overnight, when we stay at the Travelodge.

We walked around the city, got on George St, and the first place we went was a poster shop, we spent quite a while in here, maybe 15/20 minutes, looking through all the posters.

There were quite a few good ones, but I've got no where to posters, no walls to put them on, and I'm never at home to look at them anyway.

We left from there, and continued up the street. We decided to go into the pub, to get a beer and some lunch.

We went in, and I asked the chick behind the bar if we ordered food at the bar, and she just said "the kitchen's over there", yes, that's all good and well, but you didn't answer my question. I then asked her if we ordered here, or over at the kitchen, and she said at the kitchen.

Fair enough, I've been in other pubs, where while they have a kitchen, you order at the bar, and you collect your food from the kitchen.

We went over, worked out what we wanted, and ordered our food. While we waited, we ordered drinks, and found a table. We sat and chatted for a while.

I reached in my pocket, and found the instant scratchy I'd bought on my way back to work after lunch yesterday, that I'd forgotten about.

I scratched it, and won nothing.

I found I still had the programme from Cockatoo Island in my pocket too, so I showed that to my mates, since they were interested as to who was playing there.

Lunch was served at that point, and we sat and ate, and then after lunch, my mate wanted another beer, but I don't like more than 1 beer, so I got a contreau instead.

When we finished our drinks, we kept wandering, and went into the record shop that my mate and I had gone to the other day when we were down here, to go to the Beatles exhibition.

I'd already looked through most everything in here the other day, but I just dragged around looking at it all again.

When we left there, my mate (the drummer, who'd had a couple of beers at lunch), needed to go to the loo.

We continued wandering up the road, figured there'd be some in the KFC we had lunch at the the other day.

We waited while he want in, came back a minute later, saying they were closed for cleaning or something.

We kept going, and went into the Queen Victoria Building, thinking we'd find some toilets in there fairly easily. Wrong.

We ended up going right through the QVB, before eventually finding the loos, what seemed like a kilometre away from where we'd come in.

I decided to go to, if it's going to be this hard to find loos in the city.

We came out, and exited the QVB, back on to the street, and then my mates wanted to go into HMV, not realising that we could have just gone straight in there from where we came out of the toilets, not having to go out on to the street and back in again.

We wandered around in there for a few minutes, I couldn't beleive how expensive everything was in here.

We left, back on to the street again, and the walked to Red Eye Records.

Again, I'd looked at everything when I was in here the other day. We all ended up in the second hand section upstairs at one point, and the chick working in there had all the Crowded House LPs on the floor, and was repricing them.. more expensive, presumably now because Paul Hester is dead.

I thought that was awful, to be doing that. We spent a little bit longer in there, and then I got fed up, and said I was going across the road (to the 7-11) to get some chips.

I went out, crossed the road, and not paying attention, accidently walked into the newsagent next to the 7-11, and thought it was the strangest looking 7-11 I'd been in, before realising what I'd done.

I went out, and into the real 7-11 this time, got a bag of chips, and went back across the road.

I just got back across the road when my mates came out of Red Eye, and then we started walking back to the car, because they'd both bought stuff they wanted to drop off in the car.

On the way back, we got near the EnergyAustralia building I used to work in, when I worked for CSC, and my mate spotted the pub around the corner, which I went to a few times when I was working in the city at EA, and I said it was pretty good, so we went in there.

We sat in there for about 20 minutes, having a drink and a chat, and then we left, and kept heading back to the car.

We got back to the car, dropped all the stuff off in the car, and then we decided to try to find the drum shop my mate (the drummer obviously) wanted to go to, to look for a new drum kit, because the one he has now is a pile of shit.

We walked up into Surry Hills, and we found it. We spent a good hour and a half in here, looking at all the drum kits, and accessories. My mate spotted one he was interested in, and the guy was pretty good, gave us a good deal, but because it was getting late, and they wanted to shut (it was nearly 7pm), he told us to come back tomorrow.

We left, and walked back to the city. We had another mate, a guy the guitarist and I were at school with, who works in Maitland too (as well as working at Target with my mates), he was coming down to go to the concert too.

My mate tried calling him, but there was no answer. He'd worked in Maitland today apparently, bugger, I could have worked today, and got a lift back with him, oh well.

We figured we'd go and get some food, and wait for him to contact us.

We walked down to the Entertainment Centre, and went into the pub across road. We ordered dinner, and then we were looking for a table to sit at.

The bouncer came and told us there was one outside, but by the time we got to the door, it was already taken.

We stood around for a while, looking for a table, with no luck.

Eventually our food was served, we spotted a table for 6, with 2 guys sitting at it, so the 3 of us sat down at that table with them, and ate our dinner.

I went and got more drinks, and then realised I needed more cash (to buy more, after these drinks), so I asked at the bar if they had an ATM, no, the chick told there's a CollectingWealth bank ATM around the corner though.

I finished my drink, and went off to find it. So much for "around the corner", it was ages away.

I got some cash out, found that I'd been paid (woohoo), and then I walked back to the pub.

I sat in there for a minute, but it was far too loud in there, all people being obnoxious, I couldn't stand it.

My mate said that our other mate had been in there, and was across the road getting some McDonalds.

I said I'd go and find him, and wait over there.

I left, walked across the road, found him, and we stood and chatted for a while.

The others came out of the pub, and across to us, and then the 4 of us went in.

On the way into the Entertainment Centre, the four of us got bailed up by charity workers, OxFam, and Amnesty International or something, getting us to sign petitions about golbalisation or something.

We go past them, and got to the bar, and got drinks, and then we went in, a bit after 8pm, found our seats, and sat through the opening acts.

Little Birdy had been on for a while before we got in there, they were just finishing up, did 2 or 3 more songs, not bad, and then went off.

We waited for about 15 minutes while they setup the next opening act. Michael Stipe came out and introduced them, a group called "Bright Eyes". They were absolute crap.

I was just about falling asleep listening to their boring songs, that all sounded the same.

The played for ages, and and ages, it seemed like they'd never end. Eventually they went off, and then we were left waiting another 25 minutes or so while they did another setup on the stage, and REM finally came on at 9.30pm.

Michael Stipe was done up with some weird face paint, like a mask across his eyes, I couldn't make out what it was to start with, and thought it was actually the shadow from him wearing a flat cap.

The started up, and did about 4000 shit songs off their crap new album, and then they did Orange Crush, which the whole audience got involved with, and then the spent more time playing crap new songs.

It got even worse from there, Stipe saying that "we come from a sometimes confusing place, the United States", at which point a whole lot of the audience booed at him.

He seemed to have trouble understanding that.

He went on to go on about the war in Iraq, that they didn't agree with, and they'd put together a couple of songs in protest of it.

Ugh I don't think I can handle this.

I went out, and went to the loo, which suprisingly quite a lot of people decided to do at that point.

I went back to the bar again after that, got another drink, and some popcorn, because it smelled pretty good.

My mate (the drummer) had come out too, we just sat outside, and waited for both of the crap songs to finish, and then we went back in.

After that they did more shit new songs, and the Stipe went on about how it was one of the roadies birthday's, and he hadn't said anything, so we all sang Happy Birthday, and the roady walked off the stage in the middle of it.

They did more crap songs after that, I think they did "Losing My Religion", and then they all went off the stage.

They came back after a couple of minutes, there wasn't a huge call for an encore, compared to some of the concerts I've been to, but they came back, and did a few more songs I don't reallty care for, and went off again.

Here's a setlist from the concert:

1. I Took Your Name
2. Bad Day
3. The Wake-Up Bomb
4. The Outsiders
5. Maps And Legends
6. Electron Blue
7. Electrolite
8. Strange Currencies
9. The Great Beyond
10. I've Been High
11. Leaving New York
12. Orange Crush
13. I Wanted To Be Wrong
14. Final Straw
15. Imitation Of Life
16. The One I Love
17. Walk Unafraid
18. Losing My Religion
Encore
19. What's The Frequency, Kenneth?
20. Everybody Hurts
21. Drive
22. Animal
23. Happy Birthday (to a road crew member)
24. I'm Gonna DJ
25. Man On The Moon

ripped off from here, and here's a setlist for the Friday concert (that I accidently put in here first):

Finest Worksong
Bad Day
So Fast So Numb
Boy In The Well
So. Central Rain
Electron Blue
Heron House
Leaving New York
7 Chinese Bros
Animal
Great Beyond
Orange Crush
Wanted to Be Wrong
Final Straw
Imitation of Life
The One I Love
Walk Unafraid
Losing My Religion

Encore
What's the Frequency Kenneth
Everybody Hurts
Exhuming McCarthy
Sweetnes Follows
DJ
Man on the Moon

ripped off from here.

That was it, so we all left. No one was terribly impressed with the concert, out of our group.

I couldn't believe they didn't do songs like "Stand", or "It's The End Of The World As We Know It".

We walked back to the car, and paid for the parking, we'd hit the maximum amount by now, $50, not hard since we'd been in there since about lunch time, and it was now almost midnight.

We jumped in the car, left the parking station, and got out of the city.

We stopped at a service station on the north shore, and got food and drinks, and then continued home, back to my mate's place.

We hung around there for a little while, and then my mate (the drummer), gave me a lift home, and I went to bed.