Sep 2007

We managed to get a brief break from Bondi the other week, when we scored James's flat for the APEC long weekend.

Really plush little bachelor pad complete with harbour views, balcony and barbecue, and sky TV.....and most importantly of all no annoying drum playing neighbours. It was like a wee holiday for us. We were both just glad to get a couple of full nights sleep, and to have the luxury of sleeping without earplugs crammed in our ears, for the first time in weeks. Whilst we were satying there we got a proper view of the fuss that surrounds George W. What a carry on! Anytime he went anywhere in his convoy of 200 vehicles 3 or 4 helicopters would take off in advance to scout about the city, checking the entire CBD was safe. At night it was really creepy because they would hover and cirlce the skyscrapers shining the most powerful light I've ever seen in through the darkened windows, peering in looking for baddies I presume. They did this 3 or 4 times a day for the 4 days that he was in town.

We had to cook all our food on the BBQ because James doesn't have an oven. No bad thing though. Ate a lot of meat whilst we were there. Jenny let the BBQ get a bit out of control at one point and basically set fire to the balcony. I gave her moral support by shouting instructions, waving and sipping wine from the inside, behind the glass. Was great to get away from Bondi for a couple of nights.

We returned to our place to find a surpise in the fidge. A cockroach that had perished on its way to the turkey slice. Absolutley rank! but not as bad as the baby ones that we found scuttling about on the inside of the fridge door a couple of days later. Needless to say the fridge has been thoroughly scrubbed since then. Again I hasten to add that the cockroaches are not living with us because we are being dirty skanks, they are simply everywhere. The pest problem isn't helped by the fact that our neighbours are manky student scum. The communal kitchen is disgusting and smells like a public toilet. Also there is a weird fat dog that waddles about the place. It has free roam of the building and is left chicken carcasses and bones on the carpeted hall by its owner which is nice. It goes without saying, of course, that Jenny has befriended the animal and has invited it into our room for some of the turkey slice on a few occasions. I'm a bit wary of the dog because it's got a bit of a shifty look about it, like it might enjoy biting my hand if I went to clap it. So I've been trying to steer clear of it which was becoming more difficult as it now knows where we live and was beginning to lurk outside our door waiting for a feed. It was however run over by a car this week and has allegedly broken its back so it's been convalescing in its owner's room for the last few days.

Unfortunately, although I now have safe , unhindered passage to the room, the dog is now contributing to the already unbearable noise in the night by whining and howling, which is extremely irritating. I lost the plot last night when the drums started at 12.30 and went and did a bit of shouting and swearing at the guy which seemed to get through to him.

Managed to find Irn Bru in the supermarket which is a godsend of a Sunday morning. That's a good example of just how many Brits and Irish there are over here, that you can get that sort of thing so easily. What hasn't been easy, is watching any football. I spent a good few hours trying to find a pub to watch the France game, without success. There are plenty of 24 hour pubs, just there isn't any interest in "soccerball" over here. They don't care about football at all, which I find very sinister. A famous Aussie footballer John Warren 30 years ago quoted that the Australian attitude to the game was that it was fit only for "wogs, sheilas and poofs" and that attitude doesn't seem to have changed over the years which is a shame.

Other than that we've not been up to much except working. I've got a job at a bank now, which is just as depressing as all the other jobs that I've had. Not long to go though, and we've booked flights up and down the coast in three weeks time, so the beach beckons.

We took a trip to Taronga Zoo on Saturday with James. Fresh air on the ferry on the way across was the order of the day having had a pretty heavy night the night before. We ended up in a bar drunkenly debating whether pheasant is a red or white meat, as you do of an evening.

Taronga zoo sits right on the opposite shore to Sydney, so great views. Yet another zoo though. It's beginning to feel like we're doing a world tour of zoos. We're already planning the next one, Steve Irwin's, in about a months time. Woohoo. Taronga was pretty good as zoos go. There were quite a few impressive exhibits, most notably the biggest crocodile I've ever seen, about 4/5m long. They also had a little section where you could chase wallabies and Kangaroos about and molest them. They didn't seem to care much. They have the same kind of laid back attitude that the people have.

This one was quite happy lying flat on it's back watching tourists go by. Jenny gets scarily excited about being at the zoo, but she was in good company with James as he likes to run about with taking pictures through the glass of everything and anything too. He was even over the safety barrier at the snow leopards cage basically trying to get in with them.

The highlight of the zoo was a talk on spiders where we sat with a bunch of 5 year olds being shown funnel webs and red backs, which are both apparently really common and in every back garden in Sydney....which is nice. The star of the talk was the little boy sitting next to us who when asked "Do you know what the most venomous spider in the world is?", answered "Yes. Spiderman." Good answer.

The Oran-utan was pretty amazing as well. It had climbed right to the top of it's post and was giving disapproving looks at all the tourists. Really weird looking creature. So weird that it kind of looked like it might be a guy in a costume. If it is then that makes my job seem not so bad.

After gawking at the animals for a good couple of hours we went back to James's, via the butcher, for a BBQ. Australians are absolutely mad for BBQ's, indeed so far as food goes over here if it can't be mashed up into sausage or burger form for the grill, then I don't think they consider it edible. There are so many different types of sausage it's unreal. We got a selection of fish snags - shrimp and chilli, swordfish and feta etc. Probably the saltiest things I've ever eaten and wouldn't be rushing to get them again. The meat out here is all really good though, and very cheap. We had Kangaroo the other night which was pretty good - tastes like steak and I'd recommend it if you can see past the fact that you're essentially eating a giant rat.

All last week the weather was really good, and the temperature got up to 27 degrees on a couple of days, so on Sunday we took a trip to Cogee beach, a couple of bays south of Bondi. There was a guy with a message from God flying about above the beach in his little plane.

Cogee basically just a scaled down version of Bondi, but nice. Was so busy. Was sunny but windy so the T-shirt wasn't off for very long. In fact we got sucked into a beer garden not long after arriving. We were pretty warm when we left there though, a few hours later.

This week's been pretty chaotic in Sydney as the George Bush circus rolled into town last night for an APEC summit (which I think is kind of like G8 for Asia Pacific Countries). They're holding the summit in Sydney's CBD, so there's a public holiday on Friday which is a bonus. The whole CBD is being shut down and they've erected a 15 foot fence to keep everyone out, which is causing quite a lot of resentment amongst the locals. They're also closing Bondi beach on the Saturday so that the WAGs can have lunch safely, which is causing some resentment amongst me, because I want to go to the beach at the weekend.

We've both totally fallen in love with Sydney over the 2 months we've been here, and that's saying really something given the circumstances - ie we both have dead-end boring jobs on minimum wage; we're eating almost exclusively own brand supermarket products and reduced-to-clear kangaroo; we're living with cockroaches and selfish, nocturnal, drum and electric guitar playing twats; we're both completely sleep deprived; and up to now we've been wearing clothes and sleeping in a bed that stinks of piss because someone at some point clearly decided that they would use their own urine as a fabric softner in the communal washing machine. We are now handwashing all our clothes. However the point is that in the face of all that we're both having an amazing time and love living here, so it's become a real possibility to come back with a more permanent plan.....maybe. Sydney's got it all, although actually living in Bondi has dispelled the stereotypical image that I had of it before coming here. I envisaged it being a haven for bronzed, good looking surfer chicks and blokes with girly hair wandering about carrying surfboards. The reality is that it is full of pasty, chicken-skinned, Guiness guzzlers. There have to be more Irish folk here than in the whole of Ireland. Bondi is pretty cool though, (the woman at my work said it's "daggie" - but she's a "flaming galla") and although the beach is nothing like I expected it is great for a beach in the city, really clean and the water is crystal clear, unlike other city beaches I've been to.........Joppa.

We're both a bit fed up with work. It's ok although spiritcrushinly boring. The people I'm working with are real friendly however I've managed to create a potentially embarrasing situation for myself. Despite trying very very very hard to ensure that people are not confused about my name - enunciating it very clearly to everyone that I meet for the first time as if they are elderly and hard of hearing - I have failed spectacularly at work. The woman downstairs calls me Karl and there's another woman in the same room as me who calls me either Kaylum or Cayleb. For some reason I didn't correct either of them on the first occasion they got it wrong, and now 4 weeks on, there's no going back, as to do so would be more embarrassing than "simply" responding to my new various names. So I'm trying to avoid them both and the situation where the one who calls me Karl, calls me that in front of someone who knows me by my given name.....or worse still she calls me Karl in front of the one who calls me Kaylum. Not sure how I would explain myself. Anywho, I'm only there for another week so the odds are in my favour given how long I've kept up the charade so far.

We're currently planning our itinerary for travelling the East Coast of Australia which starts in 6 weeks, and also are planning an excursion to dive with sharks in the interim which should be pretty exciting.....