Well now I know what is close to hell on earth and its all because of the Pope!! We live about five minutes walk away from the racecourse where the Pope is to celebrate Mass tomorrow and tonight is to take part in the vigil….where hundreds of thousands of people are anticipated to sleep over afterwards. So I shall do a countdown to the event…starting from now and perhaps in the process retain some of my sanity! As you may know I am a Christian albiet a low key one and am thrilled that the youth of the world want to celebrate their faith, however there are some issues which must be addressed …..not ignored so I shall attempt to do that here.
As I walked through our local shopping centre in the vain hope of getting some peace and quiet I chatted to some young Aussie pilgrims who had also come inside for a few hours to try to regroup ie sleep on each others shoulders, and in the process get away from the constant music and noise. They said they were sleeping out tonight but were exhausted by the constant music and the sheer volume of it and when asked why they thought the music was like this they said they felt it was aimed at keeping them going, keeping them awake.
Okay what noise is she talking about you ask? Well there are many many helicopters at present overhead…..its worse than APEC last year and for days now there has been almost constant music being blasted from the racecourse....see my other post. And this is a residential area twenty minutes by bus from the CBD. There are events all over Sydney, I am just going to report on what is affecting myself and others who live here and are impacted by this. The level of sound is unbelievable…all our doors and windows are shut….we have television on and we still cannot get away from it.
I bought some silicone ear plugs from the chemist for tomorrow although we are going to see the Batman movie…..and stay in the Westfield complex for most of the day….its all relative really as we usually find that noisy!!! The pharmacist Amanda said that she had heard that the vigil is largely silent so that is something although the helicopters shall be constant due to television and security coverage. When I walked through the centre several monks or priests from either the US or Canada came through in their white robes, accompanied by several young pilgrims. They looked prepared as they had sleeping bags and bedrolls however a lot of the pilgrims I saw had very little apart from each other to keep them warm.
A lot of the pilgrims have I Pods etc so maybe they are tuning the noise out to some degree….so does anyone know if this is a stategy for meetings or festivals like this one…….bearing in mind its a whole week of it? Also shall be trying to find out if this was considered by the state government ….they warned us of the disruption with traffic and closed roads etc ..was this covered? The reason why Randwick Racecourse was chosen was because of the mild temperatures at night …milder than the Western suburbs and the proximity to Centennial Park for the spillover. The public transport was a large part of it….easily accessable from all over and walkable for a lot of pilgrims and others.
I have also not found anywhere that there will be any form of ticketing at any stage and I thought I read that it is an offense to do so. My friend who is prone to taking urban legend as gospel was adamant that priests were charging $300 a ticket for tomorrow…I have found no evidence of that at all and am getting so fed up with these people who do not check their facts when slandering people. If anyone is being ticketed it is an offense and will be dealt with so do not fall for it if you are offered tickets…..though I probably do not needto tell you guys that.
