Aug 2007

We had quite an eventful weekend last weekend, beginning with a late night trip to the local hospital late Friday night/early Saturday morning. We'd had an early night after polishing off a bottle of wine, but I woke up at 4 am to find Jenny crawling about the floor of the toilet, clutching her stomach and not looking too clever. She had a really sore stomach and said it had been getting worse for the 1/2 hour she'd already been up. Luckily for me though she'd saved the main event for me waking up - her sitting on the toilet spewing into a pan. I wasn't much help, indeed had to leave her too it and quickly empty the kitchen sink of dirty dishes as I felt like I was going to have an episode myself. I "heroically" managed to compose myself and we decided to phone an ambulance. Never done that before, so I was quite excited about it all. It wasn't quite the scene from casualty/ER that I'd expected when the paramedics arrived, rather, the guy stood with his hands in his pockets, asked a few questions, grunted at the answers, didn't seem interested at all, then told us to follow him to the ambulance. When we were in the ambulance they didn't even put the siren, nor the lights on which was disappointing.

When we got to the hospital Jenny was given some pills by a nurse and we sat next to the door and waited and waited and waited. Only when Jenny started shivering and was about to pass out did she get any attention and I'd basically had to grab a doctor as he went passed. Turns out I managed to grab probably the strangest "Doctor" (if that's what he really was) in Australia.....maybe the world. He was from Peru and had some pretty controversial medical opinions which he decided to openly share with us e.g. - "when I'm dealing with HIV/AIDS victims I like to keep the door to the room we are in open so that I'm breathing fresh air and don't catch what they've got!?!" He also said that he was convinced that one of the nurses at the hospital had "healing hands", and she could cure patients just by touching them. He said it was a shame that it was her day off otherwise she would have sorted Jenny out by touching her stomach. He went on to justify this claim by telling us a story of how this woman had sorted out a patient's severely swollen testicle just by touching it?? He didn't inspire a lot of confidence, although he was quite funny....peculiar. We were then abruptly left by him, to think about what he'd told us for the next 2-3 hours before a real doctor came and told Jenny that she had sever period pains, and we were sent home - 6 1/2 hours after arriving.

By the time we got home it was 12pm on Saturday, and we got a couple of hours sleep before heading out to the AFL game that we'd booked tickets to go see that night. Jenny felt a lot better after a lie down and was scooping the wine back by 5pm.

We went to meet James at the Opera bar. This is literally right next to the Opera House. Really spectacular location - even managed yet another sneaky photo of the opera house pretending to take one of Jenny. The bar is probably the most expensive in Australia however, at $7 for the cheapest bottle of beer.

From here we went and hooked up with Niki and Russel before taking the 20 minute train ride out to the Telstra Stadium (where most of the Olympics were held). We arrived at the ground about 5pm, a good 3 hours before kick off. The intention - for the girls certainly - was to don a pink poncho and go stand on the pitch before the game in support of a breast cancer charity. That didn't quite happen. Instead, we all just stood in a car park and ate kebabs and drank a few tinnies. We had however paid double the ticket price, half going to the charity, so we felt we'd done our bit and weren't just being tight and shunning it.

The game was between the Sydney Swans and St Kilda (Melbourne). It was really good. Lot better than I'd expected, and I've decided AFL is far superior to rugby. Far more exciting, fast paced and skilfull. It's obvioulsy nowhere near as good as football, but it's kind of a cross between football and rugby.

I was well impressed. It was helped by the fact it was quite a big game for the Swans, they won, the stadium was amazing - absolutely giant - there were 60,000+ there all wearing colours..........and they sold beer and wine in the ground.

So even though we were all pretty well oiled before the game, there was no escape inside the ground, and we were all well on the way by the time we left. Joining in with the locals behind us shouting at the referees.

Was really good laugh and would definitely go back.

We headed back into town and had a few light refreshments. Niki had to pour Russel into a cab, as all the fun and games pulling faces at the camera had taken its toll on him.

We headed back to James's for a few more and for Jenny to take some interesting pictures of the harbour before we called it a night and Jenny poured me into a taxi where we took some even more interesting photos.




Bit of a mess

Other than that we've had a quite week. I've got a new job that is just as boring as all the others that I've had. Working in a massive private dental centre. The office is in a scyscraper and they have a whole floor with 10 dental chairs on it, if you were scared of the dentist this would be a living nightmare of a place. I'm not doing any dentistry myself just office junior crap. So so boring. Although we do have a radio.........that's tuned into Sydney's top Easy Listening station. Having been there for a week I'd rather they just turned it off, because if I have to listen to "tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree" one more time I'll be forced to take matters into my own hands.

Speaking of music, in the loosest sense of the word, Pop Idol has just started on TV out here. The only reason I mention that is because I worked with a guy doing data entry who a week later appeared on the show and has got down to the last 24 which is quite impressive.

Been through a series of rubbish jobs now, and am currently unemployed, but have something lined up in a few days. All been data entry drivel. Very dull. One was slightly less dull and involved phoning up major investment companies and asking them various strange questions to put info into a database for a client, whose identity my boss didn't know (allegedly)?? And I was told if anyone I phoned asked what it the info was for, I was just to make something up. All very dodgy. Other than working not been doing much. Jenny did a little estate agent's montage of photos of the flat:

Still enjoying living there, other than the cockroaches, which are everywhere. Every morning they appear, scuttling about the walls, ceiling and toilet. I'm sure they are crawling about the bed and over our faces in the night, but there's not a lot you can do to stop them. It's not a hygiene issue, rather we are on the outskirst of the city, where things like that live. Trying not to imagine what other things might be eating the cockroaches and lurking in our garden.

Unfotunately the guy in the room next to us has recently invested in a drum kit, which he enjoys practising every night. Last night at 11.30pm. Jenny was not amused. He is absolutley useless, and can only make very basic rhythmic bangs like a small child might manage.

There was a massive boat show the other weekend in Darling Harbour, which Jenny dragged me along to. Don't like boats. Having said that some of the yachts were pretty swanky. You had to take your shoes off before getting on them to snoop around. Some of them were invitation only. Needless to say we weren't invited on any of those ones. Should have gone to a fancy dress shop before going here and bought a Captains outfit. There seemed to be a lot of people who had been and done that. Lots of Captain Birdseye lookalikes strolling about the place. We went to Manly the other day, on the ferry. It's on the North shore, 30 mins across the water from Sydeny. Ferry ride is pretty spectacular as it leaves from Circular quay between the harbour bridge and the opera house, so you get amazing view of both.

We also ventured across to the middle of the Harbour Bridge one night as you get really good photos of the opera house from there. I think I'm becoming a bit obsessed by the opera house. It's very strange, but I feel compelled to take millions of photos of it every time we go past it. Jenny near enough has to wrestle the camera away from me.

Manly is a kind of upmarket version of Bondi beach. Very nice. Lots of very plush appartments and people walking their rat-like dogs with coats along the promenade.

We have tickets to an AFL game on Saturday night, at the Telstra stadium which I think is the Olympic stadium, which should be a laugh. The fans are supposed to be pretty mental, there has just been a strike by the train drivers, who refuse to take one set of fans anywhere because the other week they were caught with molotov cocktails on with them!? They're not the team that we're going to watch though, and it should be a tame affair, as there is a Breast Cancer Awareness gig before the game.

Anyway better go. Seeing as I have a day off I'm going to maybe make a trip to the beach, as it's very nice and warm outside. Roll on Summer, because if this is what winter's like, summer must be amazing.