Sunday, February 7, 2016

I love random surprises

I had a job interview yesterday. Fingers crossed it was successful because we need the cash! I was feeling hopeful and happy to head home after the interview, walking between the platforms at Flinders Street Station when I saw this as I got to the bottom of the stairs to the underground passageway:


At first I thought they were in the middle of installing new turnstiles, but then I saw all kinds of people standing around with their phones and digital cameras out. A group of three people that walked down the stairs opposite the passageway at the same time as me exclaimed to each other, "Oh! The dominoes! Do you want to stay and watch?"


I had never heard of the dominoes before, so I asked the guy standing next to me what it was all about. He said that these concrete dominoes had been set up all throughout the city and now they were being knocked down "like a domino effect."

"Oh cool! ...what for?"

"...Unity and bringing the city together? ...something fun to do, I guess."

Turns out he wasn't far off. The Arts Centre created this event after being inspired by the same thing done in London preceding the 2012 Olympics to sort of unite the city in preparation for hosting the world. The London dominoes went through all five of the city's main boroughs and...was...cool to watch, I guess. I have no idea if it really inspired a spirit of unity, but the event had a domino effect (see what I did there) and started a trend. According to the video on the Arts Centre website, the dominoes have fallen in cities all around Europe, too. I literally had never heard of this event nor Melbourne's version until I stumbled upon it on my way home, but I'm sure glad I did!

It was fun to do, just like the guy next to me said.

I caught the dominoes near the end of their route that started a little ways across town at the Melbourne Town Hall, and it appeared there were people that had been running the route along side the falling dominoes the whole way. I didn't pick up quite that much exuberance for the dominoes, but I did catch this little snippet of video:



Not really sure why the guy needed to have his shirt off, but it was a warm day and if he had been running along side the dominoes the whole time then he had run at least a kilometer by the time he got to the station...so...maybe he got hot? It was a little anticlimactic that so many were placed ever so slightly off and didn't hit the next one in the line, but it's not like there could have been a dry run to make sure it would go off completely without a hitch and it didn't detract from the excitement around the event.

Anyway, it was a really cool thing to just randomly run into on my way home from work. As one of the little girls that was getting on the train at the same time as me said, "That's something you don't see every day!"



I love living here.

Vicariously yours,