Sunday, January 7 2007, 9:15

A Diamond Night in Emerald City

2006 was the 75th anniversary of the opening of the Harbour Bridge, so the theme for the fireworks was "A Diamond Night in Emerald City", with Oz's most famous city lit up in green, and a pair of ruby slippers projected on one of the south bridge pylons clicking together, reminding Sydneysiders that "there's no place like home". Chris, Matt, and I watched the fireworks from Sam's place in Pott's Point - a great view right over the harbour, but sadly we managed to miss the green towers and ruby slippers. But the fireworks were still amazing. There are more photos like this one on the City of Sydney website.

For me, the highlight of the New Year celebrations was Toybox the following day. I know how much I bang on about this party, but it really does crap on every other party I've ever been to, and once again we weren't disappointed. Eight happy hours later, we emerged smiling and breathless, and started our walk home in the rain (undoubtedly a contributory factor of the cold I'm sniffling with as I write).

This was the week that Matt finished his Sydney sojourn and left to fly to Alice Springs and then Perth before returning to northern winter, and typically the weather's picked up now that he's gone! We did get in some beach time though (with Paris Hilton), not to mention a bit of thai food here and there, some coffees, some beers, some bedding shopping, and of course a mammoth chicken schnitzel or two at Una's. If I had a magic wand to wave (no giggling, please), I'd open up some media job opportunities here in Sydney so he'd consider moving here for a few years at least...

Anyway, Happy New Year, everyone. I hope it brings you something you've wished for - but, if it doesn't, make it happen yourself. xx

Thursday, January 11 2007, 15:01

John has now left the building...

It's funny how much traffic there is between London and Sydney - or at least among my friends. In the last three months alone, there has been me, then Chris, Pete, and Curtis a few weeks later, then Beth leaving on the plane that Chris McGillick arrived in, then Matt W and Chris Theodoridis (who's still here) on the same day, then there's Craig coming up, and after that a rash of Mardi Gras visitors, including Craig B, Greg, Tony, Dan, Robbie, and no doubt more people who I've temporarily forgotten about (sorry).

But the latest person to have departed London is John (you probably guessed from the pic!). After what seems like quite a while of preparations but only brief farewells (unlike Mikey's and Beth's week of events in 2005!), purging or storing his larger belongings, the minor mishap of leaving his passport in a library photocopier, and overpacking his luggage by about ten kilos, John has now left the building. Heathrow Airport, that is. His last words to me by SMS from Blighty were gushing about the size of his Thai Airways plane and the amount of legroom - and that the upholstery was pink and purple! That's my girl... ;)

I know that there are going to be a lot of people who will miss the boy very much - especially Beth, who has only had a short time's crossover in the UK since she got back, and I can think of three small kids who are going to miss Uncle John and his prickles...

John's got a couple of weeks travelling around Thailand on his own before he lands in Sydney on Australia Day - how apt! I'll do my best not to be completely smashed at the airport, but I'll be struggling against a deeply-ingrained national tradition here if I try to remain sober. Hopefully he's got his blog up and running to keep us current, although I think he's about to find out just what a labour of love I toil over just to keep you, my silent and unresponsive readership, apprised of my every twitch and smirk (let's see if that gets a rise out of any of you)...

Thursday, January 11 2007, 23:07

You don't see this every day...

I was just walking down Victoria Street with Nick, on our way to Caffe Tropicana (origin of the nationally famous Tropfest Film Festival), when I saw a guy ahead of us walking along in what appeared to be some fetching hospital jimjams from nearby St Vincent's. What made him even more of a spectacle to everyone on the streetside cafes was that he was carrying in his left hand a catheter bag that appeared to still be attached (and a third full)! And if that wasn't enough, he walked with determined purpose straight into the nearest bottle shop!

Hilarious. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried... :)

Saturday, January 13 2007, 9:56

HOT off the goddamn press

Nestling near the top of my inbox just now, I saw an email entitled "Business visa approval". That's right, ladies and gentlemen, I have my visa to stay here for four years!!!! [cue screaming and other sounds of inarticulate celebration].

That's about all I can manage today. I'm going to go and happily swoon in a corner now.... :D

Monday, January 15 2007, 22:04

I bet you look good in my passport

A sight for sore eyes! Ah bliss... :)

Wednesday, January 17 2007, 0:15

Good things come to those who wait

Do I seem like a patient person? I haven't been in the lengthy anticipation of my visa, but it came through in the end. And if that were not enough good luck for one week, today I found out that the application that Tim and I put in for an apartment on Saturday (what a day of destiny that turned out to be) was approved! At the end of the month, or thereabouts, we will be moving into a noice building called Tiara in Crown Square, not a million miles from where I'm living now. What better place for a pair of glama queens like our good selves?! I knew it was an omen as soon as I walked past the sign...

Just yesterday, with excitement slapped upon me as surely as that visa label was slapped in my passport, I was brought down to earth with a jolt; I'd indulged in a tasty burger for lunch from Oporto to celebrate the big event, and I was clearly too giddy to concentrate on eating, and gouged a hole in my tongue with my distracted mastication. It's still bleeding now, some 36 hours later, which is all quite vexing. But there's a moral in there, somewhere...

Is that enough exciting news for one day? Will I be able to top that tomorrow? I doubt it. So just to bring you down to the usual level of my news, I had my first Cadbury's Creme Egg today. That's right, folks. Easter's just around the corner...

Monday, January 22 2007, 0:03

Amazing weekend - part 1

Yesterday was a great day. Today has been amazing, but I'll come onto that in my next blog, I'm too tired to do it all tonight.

Some of you may know that I am so over (O V A H) this laptop of mine. I bought it to come out to Australia with in 2003, and it's got more and more truculent and cranky as it's entered its dotage. So Saturday was laptop shopping. John and I - not John P (he's still in Thailand), John W who I met in October - went trawling around shops in the city for a swanky new machine, and we finally tracked down something rather spesh in Harvey Norman, and I even did a bit of haggling in and knocked the price down a whopping $50! I know - I drive a hard bargain!

After a quick coffee with Wayne later, I discovered I'd blondely locked myself out of the apartment, with no hope of getting back in until Brian & Darren got back Sunday afternoon :( Luckily, I had my plans for the evening - Symphony in the Domain. But it does mean I haven't even switched my new laptop on yet...

Symphony in the Domain is part of the annual Sydney Festival, and is always popular - hundreds and hundreds of people turn up with their picnic blankets and eskies (that's coolboxes to non-Antipodeans), and the Domain begins to look like a patchwork of tartan rugs. Bryan and I found James and Marty and their friends and we ate and chatted and sipped cava until the music began.

My favourite piece of the evening was Barber's Adagio for Strings; I lay on my back and watched the bats wheeling above the twilight trees and let the soft and sonorous cello wash over me... Sip of red, more soft cello... Marvellous. Every year, the Symphony finishes with Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, and the "cannons" at the end of the piece are reinforced by a huge fireworks display - the bangs and explosions echo off the CBD and the brilliant flashes light up the darkened windows of the towers. It was beautiful; special. All around me everyone was smiling and laughing and singing along, and I thought, what a unique and wonderful Sydney experience this is! [sigh] I love it here :)

Tuesday, January 23 2007, 1:07

Amazing weekend - part 2

I was telling you that Saturday was a great day. Sunday was even better.

The day began hot and dry, and as Bryan and I walked to Darling Harbour, I thought our day in the sunshine was going to be unbearable. Even in the shade, it was uncomfortably warm as the heat radiated from every bit of stone and metal into the sultry, still air. By the time we got to Cargo Bar on Darling Harbour, we were both sweating. There we met Brent and Charles, Jon, David, and the others.

For his birthday, Brent had organised a party such as I'd never been to before - an afternoon on a private boat on Sydney Harbour. After the thirty or so of us were on board, we set off across the sparkling waters and immediately a refreshing breeze took the sting out of the temperature; all there was to do was sit back and enjoy the sweep of the panorama as we flew over the waves and under the Bridge, passing Sydney Cove, the Opera House, Farm Cove, Woolloomooloo Bay, Elizabeth Bay, Rushcutters Bay, Double Bay, Rose Bay, until at last the anchor dragged its chattering chains to the seabed at the ominously named Shark Bay.

One by one, the bravest of us (or the tipsiest, since the eskie, top-filled with bottle after bottle of Carlton, James Boag's, semillon, and friends, was already making room for more) threw ourselves into the bright and gentle swell and surfaced, gasping, smiling, and beckoning the rest of us in. We didn't all take a dip - maybe the sight of the beachgoers splashing inside the shark nets nearby was an uneasy admonition of what might be swimming in the deep expanse beneath our splashing legs...

The afternoon slipped carelessly by, and the beaches slipped lazily by, and the sun drew a languorous arc over our heads; but on the boat we ate and drank and laughed and chatted and smiled and watched the harbour picked out in all its summer finery. At four o'clock, we disembarked at the dock, languid and merry, and strolled in our groups of idle banter across the wharf, pausing to let the Pyrmont Bridge swing back into place after a passing yacht; eventually we came to the roof terrace of one of our little coterie, and continued our decadence into the balmy evening...

It was a wonderful day. A perfect day.

Photos from Brent's birthday

Tuesday, January 30 2007, 18:35

The only way is up!

Last Friday was Australia Day, commemorating the day the First Fleet arrived in Sydney Cove in 1788. There's always a huge amount of patriotic celebration on this public holiday, with the red, white, and blue flown from every second prominence, adorning hats and shorts, stuck up in windows, and temporarily tattooed to arms and faces; this year it was banned from the huge Big Day Out rock festival amid fears it would be used as "gang colours" by racists and right wing bigots... Anyone who's seen the people who wave England flags back in Blighty will know that there's a very fine line between nationalism and racism, so it would be a shame indeed if the Aussie flag suffered the same fate as St George's Cross...

Anyway... I didn't do anything particularly Aussie on Friday - I went indoor rock climbing with James, Marty, Jacqui, and Toby. I have tried rock climbing before - in the Lake District with other members of my team at Freeserve. It was cold, wet, and I wanted to do abseiling instead, but all the girls wanted to do that, so (the perfect gent), I grabbed the rock face and started hauling my vertiginious arse skywards. It was awful. I've never been so scared. So I'm not quite sure why I embraced James' suggestion with such enthusiasm...

The first thing I learned about climbing equipment is that the rubbery soled shoes we wear come in sizes that don't appear to be relevant to normal shoe sizes. After trying four pairs, I finally settled on size 46 (don't let me forget), and laced up these instruments of torture tightly. Once they were on, I slipped into James' spare harness (snigger). This is necessarily a snug fit, and it pulled the front of my shorts into an impromptu codpiece, which I found momentarily and richly amusing...

There really isn't much to it - I'm sure it gets more complicated as you get more advanced, but we were all scrambling up the walls in no time, grabbing at the brightly coloured handholds, shifting weight awkwardly from foot to hand, chalking up our sweaty palms, exhilarated by our lofty achievement, and then bouncing back down to the ground with laughing smiles and legs and hands trembling still from the tension. We grew hotter and sweatier and more skilled over the next few hours. I tried a couple of the more ambitious climbs that James had made look easy, but I was soon stripped of those illusions...

By the time early afternoon rolled around, we were all way too dead to continue. I'd given up midway through one climb, the repetitive and fast-paced decision-making of which smooth handhold to grab proving just too much stress for my tired brain, and my arms were killing me. We finished our day's activity off with a couple of pizzas before heading home for a nap.

Tuesday, January 30 2007, 18:37

John and the insects

After all that exertion, I spent the better part of Friday evening in the arrivals lounge at the airport waiting for John to emerge from Immigration, but that evening was full of madcap screaming children at my end and long delays at his, so he'd been in Sydney for a full hour and a half before he showed his novelly bearded face amid the bedlam of Arrivals South. It was (and still is) so good to see him after nearly four months! Actually, "good" is a rather understated word to describe it... I was a bundle of nervous energy once his plane had landed - too excited to continue reading my book, or do anything but fidget anxiously in anticipation. After a whole load of hugs and hellos, we took a cab back home and had a bit of verdelho refreshment before we went out for what turned out to be an extended night's clubbing. Some things don't change... ;)

We didn't get a whole lot of much done on Saturday, but we did squeeze in a Sydney institution that I didn't want John to miss: Opera in the Domain. This is much the same as Symphony the week before, but the opera buffs are a lot fewer in number, quieter and more attentive, and they're more likely to be quaffing Bolinger and pecking on sweet peppers stuffed with cream cheese than washing down chips 'n' dips with bottles of chardonnay. Granted, James, Marty, John, and I took so long in getting there that we missed the first hour or so of Turandot, but we stretched ourselves out under the stars and munched our antipasti and savoured the mood :)

Unfortunately, the holiday atmosphere evaporated on Sunday, aka moving in day. While John spent the day preparing for interviews, Tim and I began our long day which included driving in our hired van up to Neutral Bay to pick up some furniture, shopping in Bondi Junction for a washing machine and a few other household bits and pieces, and then moving Tim's considerable amount of books, boxes, ornaments, objets d'art of questionable taste, bed, fish tank and associated aquatic paraphernalia from his fourth floor apartment without the aid of a lift and into our new place with its carpets still damp from its early steam cleaning...

Luckily, Wayne was our hero, and tirelessly helped us lug all this stuff around, when he had intended to be getting bladdered at the pub with his mates. Once our helpful fairy godmother had left, we got stuck into unpacking, only to discover that our apartment is still inhabited by some of the previous tenants, who still seem quite reluctant to relinquish their home. That's right - we appear to have a cockroach infestation :(

But other than that, I'm loving the new apartment :)