Entry 5: To Sydney and Back

(Note: the pictures are all from Sydney -- a scene from the waterfront of Cockle Bay, the opera house as viewed from the bar, and the Harbor Bridge.)

So, we found a place to live. It’s not one of the three I mentioned in my last post. In fact, we put down a deposit on the nice but expensive place, but then this other place came out of nowhere. It’s not quite as nice, but it’s also furnished and about 75% of the cost. We decided to go for it, as even if we lose the deposit on the other place we would still come out ahead by the end of the month because of the rent differential. We are signing the papers, and hopefully moving in, tomorrow. It’s close to loads of restaurants, a bus line to my work, a gym, and the beach – really it sounds great.

Also, we went to Sydney this weekend. We took the train down on Saturday morning, stayed the night and headed back Sunday afternoon. It was a short, but pleasant trip. The forecast called for rain, but it was mostly blue skies, which in a way was annoying, as I specifically did not wear sneakers because I hate wearing sneakers in the rain. Instead, I wore my treated leather shoes which are better in the rain, but otherwise less comfortable. So although, I would much rather have it not rain than rain, I was irritated that I wasn’t wearing sneakers. To make matters worse I only had a single pair of clean socks (the ones on my feet), because when I went to do laundry the night before I realized we had no detergent and all the stores in our neighborhood were closed.

Anyway, we took the train down early Saturday morning. After arriving, we walked down to Cockle Bay and had nice lunch overlooking the water. We then bummed around the city a bit and ended up at this massive market in Chinatown where all sorts of gimcracks and knockoffs of major brands are sold. (They had baseball caps of American teams that were all a little bit off. Like, the NY didn’t quite look right, or the shade wasn’t quite Dodger Blue. It was pretty funny.) We bought a few souvenirs and I bought some socks with the Australian flag on them.

At night, we met a few friends of friends at the Opera House Bar. It was really terrific – great backdrop for a drink, and the weather was decent even though it is winter here. We had a few drinks and then moved on to a different bar to meet some more people. In all there were six of us – five girls and me. I was the sole bloke, but I didn’t mind. Five to one is a pretty good ratio. I thought about slipping the ring off and laying some game down, but then I remembered that one of the five was my wife, so it probably wouldn’t go over too well. Fun time, though. We watched some rugby (The All Blacks routed The Wallabies), had some libations, and listened to some good music. That latter one is huge. Music can make or break a night. There is nothing worse than being in a club or a bar and listening to crap all night. * They didn’t have the trough in the men's room at this establishment, which is good, but their urinals were still quite bizarre. They were long flat plates that looked like something you’d see in an old movie set in the future (think, the original Rollerball). You peed on the plates and then it ran down into a long common grate – very strange.

The next morning we woke up a little bit groggy and cranky (particularly me), so we just ate a little, did a little shopping (which only added to my crankiness, although I did get a cool new wallet), and then headed back to Newcastle. We thought about going up the Sydney Tower – the view is probably pretty cool, but it was sorta expensive and we had already spent a lot of money.**

The train ride back was a fiasco. Somehow, we ended up in a section with three families that were all together, and their kids were running and screaming the entire ride. I know that getting kids to behave is difficult, but these parents were especially terrible at it.*** The only saving grace was our iPods. A few weeks ago, S convinced me to buy these really nice Bose headphones and I am so glad that I did. They are awesome and they blocked out a lot of the commotion. About two thirds of the way through the trip, the train thinned out enough for us to move to a new section. The ride was much better after that and we made it home without incident. I’m not sure when we’ll go back to Sydney, but hopefully it’ll be soon.

* At this bar, they played “Pressure” by Queen (featuring David Bowie), and then a few songs later played “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Nice – a very nice touch in my opinion.

**We dropped like $50 on a light lunch at one of those conveyor belt sushi restaurants, because I didn’t realize that there were royal blue plates ($5.60) and baby blue plates ($2.00), so I grabbed a bunch of expensive pieces thinking they were cheap. Very sneaky coloring scheme, if you ask me.

***To use a South Park reference, these parents were a lot more like Kenny’s parents than Kyle’s. Of the couple sitting directly in front of us, the dad looked like a mixture between the guy who played Frank Sobotka on The Wire and John C. Reilly, and the mom looked like a heavier, less attractive version of Rosanne Barr. It’s sad when the inability to stand up is what’s preventing you from disciplining your child.