Words by:  Xenia Sanut 
Art by: Caitlin Cefai 

Let me say, straight out the garden gate, that I’m not a hardcore Swiftie. Or at least, I haven’t been an entirely loyal one.

My earliest Taylor memory is singing ‘The Way I Loved You’ in the shower with all the dating experience, but mainly hyperactive imagination, an eight-year-old could muster. Taylor was the soundtrack to all my romantic daydreams, but when my ‘not-like-other-girls’ phase began, her mainstream popularity was packed away for safekeeping. Later, when I could fully embrace my love for her lyricism and imagery, she announced that she was combining all her albums into a single show, and the glitter and red lipstick couldn’t be contained.

I was in Japan and had just started my two-week course at a local language school. I squealed into the pillow of my host family’s guest-room when I saw Taylor announce the international leg of her Eras Tour on Instagram. As my closest friends don’t wear Taylor-tinted glasses, I knew I’d be going solo if I could get my hands on a Melbourne ticket. But as I was going to pretend money was no object, Sydney was on the table too. Sitting in class during the pre-sales was going to slightly hinder my scheming, but because this was a fight I was going to win, I headed off to school with ‘Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince’ playing.

I joined the queue 90 minutes before Wednesday’s presale during my cycle to school. When I got to class, I immediately opened Twitter for updates and tried to distract myself with Japanese grammar and vocabulary for the next four hours. I watched as the allocations for the Sydney shows sold out and scrolled through frustrated netizens’ comments on how unfair it was that people who joined the queue later were having more success than them. My class was over by the time I moved to the Melbourne queue where I happened to be in a Japanese karaoke booth, belting out my frustrations at the blue loading bar. It took me four more hours, and some further distractions at a thrift shop, before I finally squeezed past the loading page door and collapsed on the ticket sales floor. Basket in (virtual) hand, I scrambled for any of the remaining packages, but because my data connection was so slow, it was yanked out of reach before I could run to the check-out.

Nevertheless, I was not going to be thwarted a second time, so before Friday’s presale, I sponged up all the Ticketek insider advice that the Google algorithm could give me. Connecting my laptop to the school wi-fi, and my phone to my 3G meant I could have two different IP addresses and hopefully double my chances. I joined the queue only 10 minutes before the pre-sale opened, since the order changed with every refresh and I didn’t want to waste my time. Whether my strategy worked, or it was just pure luck, I’ll never know. But about an hour into the presale, a D Reserve ticket for Sydney’s Friday show fell from the virtual heavens. I spent the rest of my last day at Japanese school booking accommodation and flights which — along with the ticket —was just under $600. As I was receiving my Japanese school graduation certificate, I knew exactly how I was going to celebrate this milestone — rent another karaoke booth and belt ‘The Way I Loved You’ and the entire Taylor Swift discography all afternoon long.