Chris bought a Frisbee to fling around. He bought the best one that he could, which still wasn’t saying much since they tend to only sell those light, thin, touristy ones around such public scenic areas. We threw it back and forth for a while. And when I say “throw,” I mean that I enjoyed my catching completion percentage while he was often chasing my tosses into the ground. He kept blaming the wind. I kept knowing he was just being nice. I just can’t get the damn technique down. At least I can throw a boomerang like a true bloke, so that will have to be enough in my book.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Bondi Beach Or Bust!
A brand new day to be spent at Bondi Beach! I knew I’d like the place the moment I saw the main mural: The back of Mickey Mouse surfing. I saw the sign. It opened up my eyes. I saw the sign. This beach would RULE! It wasn’t necessarily a big beach, in that you could see each end easily with your eyes, and I was rather surprised that it wasn’t too crowded.
Making Buttermilk Into Gold
On a side note, Chris stuck to his Toohey’s New, and he suggested a drink called “XXXX Gold.” In my world of everything XXX, wouldn’t the beer Four-X Gold be the evolution to all alcohol delicious and HARDCORE (like the second coming of Icehouse)? Drinks went up every hour at this place, so I kept drinking this beer, but I barely had a buzz. I had not drank excessively leading up to Australia, so I wanted to deny any acknowledgement that I might’ve built up a tolerance. About the fourth time I went to the bar, however, the bartender volunteered to inform me that Four-X Gold had a very low alcohol content. …I feel as if I wasted so much money for the sake of the awesome letter of “X.” Never again will I be spurned by anything more or less that XXX (with the exception of Dos Equis [XX], I suppose).
See No Evil, Speak No Evil, Hear No Evil
Finally… a night out! Allie had suggested a place called Scruffy Murphy’s for a Tuesday night, but we also heard from our local front desk fern Omar (that two single girls in the group were constantly flirting with) that Three Monkeys was close and the place to go. And so, we went. Only one member of the group stayed behind. The moment we walked in—two guys and nine girls—the women got absolutely swarmed with free drinks IMMEDIATELY. It was impressive. It also instantly revealed the absolute aggressiveness of Australian men that has continued through the trip thus far (I am in the Sydney airport waiting for our flight to Cairnes as I write this). We eventually all congregated on the second floor, while Chris and I completely people watched. I’ve heard it said many times, many different ways: Australians have a weird style of dancing. But there is no explaining it until you actually see it. Not quite in full rave mode, they do dance with some small pod shield surrounding them, hopping in place a bit and cocking and angling their joints in frantic, quick positions. Like “the robot” on a sugar high. The saving grace was a band (the house band?) that played American music. During their set, they even called out to ask for all the Georgia girls to shout out. To paraphrase Greer, “You know that they’ve made a splash when the band is calling them out in the entire bar.” I did get out and move to the beat a bit, but I honestly didn’t know where to begin with any moves.
The Wary Waiter
You know how on certain cartoons, characters will be in a restaurant and the waiter is real fidgety, scrambling all over the place always in a rush, with plates stacked high in one hand with the constant movement always giving that threatening crash of falling dishware? Yeah, well that was our waiter at this Italian place we went to. I kept it simple by ordering pepperoni, and it ended up being surprisingly spicy. In Australia, they put tap water in these large glass bottles. It’s kinda cool. No ice, though. I did my fair share of pouring and chugging to keep the mouth from flaming.
Cruisin’ AUS
The bus stopped at Sydney Olympic Park, from the 2000 Olympic Games, and after bidding adieu to our dear friend Mark (until Friday), we hopped onto a boat that cruised the harbor back to our destination. The wind was incredibly cold, but I grinned and bared it with Greer, Garrett, and a few others as we admired the insane houses on the edge of the harbor. Pictures were difficult to snap due to the steadiness required for nightshots with no flash, but I believe I managed to capture a couple of decent ones. Of special note was the Sydney KPMG building, which made me think of my mom and my sister.
“How Do You Think I Got This 12 Inch Pianist?”
Oh, man! It was tempting not to spoil this joke as Mark told it on the bus. Good to know that classics never die, and that some jokes are absolutely international.
1300 Steps/The Virgin Joke
Scenic Railway was the next stop. By this point on the bus, Mark was enlightening us with several key words and phrases from Australia that one might be hard pressed to discover on their own. I reveal some of them on the next post. The Scenic Railway involved going down 1300 steps, and we stopped at several outlooks to snag pictures. A contest of sorts of dirty jokes was created between Mark and Erin Bailey, and with a “virgin” joke spoken by Erin, she managed to cause the few of us within the joke-hearing range to burst out with laughter. Greer gawked so hard at the joke, that he somehow managed to twist his ankle! You can find the joke, with the now infamous punchline, in one of my photo albums if you are following both this blog and my photo albums on Facebook in sequence. After descending the 1300 steps that ranged from steep to shallow, we rode a railway that brought us back up. I was expecting it to be more fast and thrilling, but perhaps prolonged exposure to Disney and roller coasters in general has totally desensitized me.
High Noon On Sunset Rock
Blue Mountains or bust! There was a place in the Blue Mountains called Sunset Rock. The scope was breathtaking and incredibly impossible to capture accurately on camera. If anyone ever had a fear of heights, this was the true test. I feel as if I personally passed, for I had never been this high up without any safety railing or anything. Simply put, the scope was EPIC. There were many groovy optical illusions one could take with the camera to make it look like someone was about to fall or was climbing the rock. However, I shattered the perception with a reality picture of my own that revealed how the climbing pictures were done.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Boomerang Park
Mark then took us to an open park/field to show off his supreme boomerang skills. He gave us a brief introduction and instruction which I am sure will be injected into somebodies project. We then took turns throwing the boomerang, and I was the third one to volunteer. I wasn’t exactly nervous, but when you are in front of ten other girls—without sounding too sexist—there is a certain expectation for a guy to at least throw better than them. I’m miserable with a Frisbee, so I didn’t know if my general lack of skill applied here. To my own immense surprise… it seriously launched and came back! It didn’t come back close to me, but both times I threw it, the boomerang certainly soared to restore a confidence in boomerang tossing that I didn’t even know I had! After we all gave our fair share of throwing it in the air, some for better and some for worse, we went back to the bus as Mark revealed that he had boomerangs to sell. Demonstrate the product. Put it in their hands. Make them feel in control. And then… sell it to ‘em! Mark was a perfect salesman… and I almost bought two!
The Hand That Feeds…
The first stop on the tour was at the Featherdale Wildlife Park. Besides the dude that is hired to hold a baby kangaroo (a joey) when people get off the bus, the first creature encountered is the koala bear. They are very “cute” and cool and all that, but were also sleepy and very lazy. Greer explained from the very beginning about the stoner-like properties of the eucalyptus leaf, and the koalas were so entirely mellow that it proved to be true. Next area, we were given a cake cone full of feed for the kangaroos and emus wandering about the property. There was a small thrill in being able to guide and influence the pathways of the kangaroos with the influence of the food. I forget who it was, but one girl in our group almost got punched in the face for creeping behind one and sinking too closely too quickly to it. Yes, they definitely do box. As the group moved on, quotable Kristen and I went around a partially hidden corner to where a set of kangaroos were behind a wooden post. One of the kangaroos had a joey in its pouch, and I managed to lure the mom beyond the post to us with baby in tow. Using our feeding skills, Kristen completed her quest to touch the kangaroos pouch unharmed as we fed the joey! It was awesome. We finally finished and chose a path since the group was nowhere in sight, and we ran into Carrie who had just finished washing her hands. The three of us continued to explore the rest of the park as I snagged pictures of penguins, dingoes, Tasmanian devils, and other assorted creatures.
Hi, My Name Is Mark!
Meet Mark Perry. He was the tour guide that Greer used for last year’s crew, and he made his triumphant return this year. To say that this dude is awesome is an absolute understatement. Right from the very beginning, he was very cordial and casual. Despite being in Australia for 24 hours now, I had yet to have my ears influenced by more than three sentences of an Australian accent. It quickly became clear to me that Mark would become the local go-to guy about everything Australia that you might not find in a Frommer’s.
“That is a BIG piece of meat!” and “I just wasn’t into this meat pancake.”
Kristen Garrett has to be the single most quotable gal that I have ever met in recent memory. Se was a certain energetic innocence about her that makes her honest lines as entertaining and amusing as they are sincere. The above quotes come from her before and after dinner reaction to the restaurant we went to named Bill & Toni’s. The place was Italian-esque, but they didn’t serve pizza to the dismay to a couple of group members. Their specialty was schnitzel, which was a thin veal. The majority on my side of the table ordered the cheese schnitzel, which was the thin piece of veal covered in a blanket of cheese. It looks more appetizing than the picture actually reveals, trust me. I liked it, but I guess Kristen just wasn’t into the meat pancake.
A Masculine Happy Hour
The ladies hust didn’t have it in them, so it was just Greer and I for happy hour. He bought both “shouts” (Australian for rounds of drinks, per Mark Perry whom we’ll be introduced in a future post) in a truly generous gesture. My first beer in Australia was a Tuey’s New, and my second was a Pure Blonde. Mellow. Insightful. Memorable. It was a most excellent masculine happy hour.
The Cockatoo Flu
The Royal Botanical Gardens was our next stop after a very brief and jolly jaunt to this park area full of all things wonderful when it came to plants and animals. We gathered around in a circle to unwind and reflect. Y’know, beyond the harbor and the airport endurance, it was this moment that was my favorite on the entire trip thus far. It was as necessary as it was significant for me, signifying that we truly were a group, solidifying that this group should get along great, and encouraging in all the many adventures we had to look forward to together. There was a totally climbable tree that someone (Morgan, maybe?) suggested that we take a group picture. And so, we did. Another stellar shot seen on Chris’ side of the internet. We all huffed it once more as we rounded the corner and came across an area full of wild cockatoos. There was one Hispanic lady surrounded by the birds, and a young Indian girl overheard me asking the secret to getting the birds to climb on you. This ten-ish year old girl was kind in telling me the secret to it—which undoubtedly involved food. Borrowing a few pieces of Sam and Rachel’s sandwich, I sat down and tried to make a trail towards me for the white birds to follow. It didn’t work very well, until one bird finally spotted some crumbs on my arm and hopped up onto my leg and clawed on me a bit. Morgan put a piece of bread directly on my head, and a bird cawed as it gave its might swoop to snatch the edible item—all without losing a single hair. Impressive. Too bad no one was around to catch that bird of wonder in action! I managed to snag a couple of self-portraits that are already on Facebook as we speak. After seeing an absolute army of Werewolf Bats just hanging in an area of trees, we strolled into St. Mary’s church. I was truly awestruck and impressed, and the lighting of my camera fortunately agreed to be cooperative. That concluded Day 1’s official events, dinner excluded, and we all talked about indulging in a happy hour after a brief break for a good shower.
Allie The Reporter
Blonde. Plenty attractive. And, randomly American. This stranger approached our group as she must’ve overheard our natural aww of the area. She introduced herself as a student that was living in Sydney for a year, where she attended “uni” (University) here, which was about half an hour from our location. She was involved in journalism, and she was doing a report-esque piece on what people thought about the Sydney Opera House after seeing it in the paint for the very first time. Always one for classic quotes, I was quick to spit a few sincere lines about my lasting impressions. One of my personal quotes is buried in another entry back there somewhere, but I promised to get to it, and so here is the connection. After gathering a few lines from us, she explained how she was a student from San Francisco State and gave us a few nightlife recommendations. Her mission accomplished, we moved on… physically, anyway, as I mentally decided that I should’ve seized that opportunity to at least find a friend or fern (a term for “a local that guides a foreigner around” that I learned from The Amazing Race) in her, but there was no real opportunity without coming off as forced or awkward. We moved closer to the building, when we burdened Greer with taking another group photo in front of it. After that was finished, the San Fran blonde suddenly beckoned us again: “Hey! Can I take a photo of everyone together?” Of course we all said yes, and as soon as it was snapped, I asked her for her name. It took all but half a second before the entire group knew where this was going. The fact that her first name was “Allie” was no more help than her being named “Kristen” or “Lindsay,”—a name that could have multiple spellings and variations. The group began to disperse and I asked her on a more personal note her last name, which wasn’t one that was obvious or easy to spell. However, when I mentioned Facebook, she went ahead and wrote down her name, and as an added bonus, took it upon herself to add her e-mail address and Australian phone number. Nice. As of writing this, I do have one new Facebook friend, a first from Australia, and with any luck, an evening outing to the local Sydney scene is in order. After we parted ways and I joined the group, where more photo ops were created and enjoyed by various members among various cameras.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Hyde Park Hoppin’
We’ll shower when we’re dead! …Or something like that. Who needs a shower when you have Sydney to conquer? We checked into the Y Hotel in the Hyde Park area of Sydney, and two rooms weren’t ready yet, one of them being my single bedroom. Since it was about 7 AM and all, it could easily be forgiven! People changed and we met in the lobby, with the timing of the ladies being a little off, giving strong indications that this group may not be entirely punctual, but… we’ll just adjust! We went to a tiny shop around the corner from the hotel to eat lunch at a breakfast hour, and I had a beef burger. I told them to hold the beetroot (Australian’s put beets on their burgers), but it was on there anyway. I took half off and ate the entire thing. Beets aren’t bad! We spent the day walking around Sydney, starting with Hyde Park which had a few rad statues and a reflection pond. We then ventured into the harbor area, of Sydney Opera House harbor fame, and much like America, there were aborigines playing their dijeri-do’s on the streets with suitcase trunks open ready for money and CD’s with their recordings ready to sell. Soon enough, the Opera House revealed itself from a distance, and we were all instantly enamoured. Greer continuing to be great with all things Australia, he soon escorted us through an area known as The Rocks in a path towards a pylon that was a part of a massive bridge. This pylon had 900 steps, but were interrupted with a gift shop area and a place where you pay admission to see a small museum behind the history of the bridge, as well as paying the fee to scale to the top to see our promise picturesque view. So worth it. You could see the entire Sydney skyline and a breathtaking view of the Sydney Opera House. There were a few different Asian couples, and I took their pictures to get the bridge and the Opera House in the background by putting one foot on the bench and my other foot against the wall in an awkward split. I was proud of the shots I took for them, and it certainly harkened back to my halcyon days as a Walt Disney World photographer, pre-manager era. Now that we were able to get every angle of the national icon from a distance, it was time to dominate the structure up close and personal. Back to the harbor area for that scenic walk, and just when we arrived and began to do the visitor thing of taking turns with taking pictures of each other, our group was suddenly approached by a stranger. (To Be Continued!)
The HARDCORE Method To My HARDCORE Madness
I am starting to write about the first day in Sydney while I am still in the trenches of the third day in Sydney, if that is any early indication about how little time has been spent in the hotel room. Time has been maximized to perfection, and for that I am thankful. To give you an idea of the method behind the HARDCORE madness, I am simply typing a few potential subtitles into Microsoft Word on this MacBook as a mental bookmark as to what to type about. I know that some memories will still fail me, but the pictures will make up for it. In fact, uploading my first five albums that composed the first day in Australia definitely ate up both my paid internet time and my bandwith. Posting and tagging photos has always been a labor of love. It just so happens that now it is a labor of love that I have to actually pay for! Regardless, most subtitles should be making the cut, and make sure to check my Facebook, Twitter, this blog, and Chris Greer’s Australia page (which is the most consistently updated item) which can all be found as links beneath my Facebook profile picture.
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