Sydney, a day

Reporting live from Sydney:

First stop today: the Chinese Garden. A great place, full of lizards, plants, a lake, trees, ducks and lizards.

We then took a ferry to the Harbour Bridge and Opera House. I think it's a bit over-rated, but it's still worth going to.

I've noticed that people in Sydney think nothing of bowling you over. They just keep walking. They also seem to find it very hard to say 'excuse me' or 'sorry'. Maybe I'm just being to general and forming my opinions based on a few bad people, but I seem to keep meeting bad people.

So anyway, I'll be back in Melbourne tomorrow, probably in time to watch the fireworks. Wish I could have stayed in Sydney for that. Rooms are a bit expensive at this time though ($1300). Just a bit.

Anyway, I've enjoyed my journey to Canberra and Sydney. It has indeed been insightful. Quote and ad lib: "Journey to Sydney was a grrrreat success."

Sydney

Before our journey to Sydney this morning, we visited the Royal Australian Mint in Canberra. Wasn't much to do there, apart from "making your own coin" and looking at the history of the mint. At around 11 o'clock we said good-bye to Canberra and travelled to Sydney, arriving at about 2 o'clock.

Sydney is a great place...if you like crazy driving, insane road designs, angry people, crazy driving, hard to find hotels, random weather and crazy driving. Things started off great, with two hoons with apparently broken indicator lights cutting in front of us. The situation got even better when we couldn't find the actual CBD. When we finally found it, my dad nudged a Benz. Even though you couldn't see it, the guy just blew up. We offered him our apologies and insurance number, but he told us, in effect, to get lost. So we did.

We got lost. Then we found a funny little Chinese restaurant near our original accident site so we parked there. After lunch, we found out that the Mr. Benz decided to stick a note to our windscreen after driving away and he said he wanted us to contact him. How weird is that? That's Sydney people for you.

We started searching for our hotel. After an hour and a half of no left turns, no right turns, dead ends, roadworks and angry people to reach our destination. The place is alright, but the chairs are falling apart.

On first assessment, Sydney seems to be a bit crowded and fast-paced. I'll get back to you when I scout stuff out better tomorrow.

Journey to Canberra

The journey to Canberra. It began today with me waking up at 4:30, feeling all revved and ready to go. Then I remembered how long it would take to get there and calmed down significantly. Anyway, we left at about 5 o'clock in the morn. The journey was relatively uneventful, unless you count the excruciatingly bad pun about us being 'yesmads' instead of nomads (clearly I didn't come up with it) and the toilet that was, to put it mildly, dirty. We also got ripped off by this 24 hour convenience store thingo for breakfast.

We started entering Canberra, but believe it or not, we almost got lost. We began our search for the golden arch, the yellow M, McDonald's. Anyway, we found it eventually at about 1 o'clock, although it took a while. It seems that Canberrasiders/Canberralians/Canberrazoids like putting the M sign down at ground level, hidden by huge buildings. Then they left two burgers, a coffee and a Happy Meal toy out of our meal. What do you expect?

We decided to take up John Howard's invitation to coffee at Parliament House at 3 o'clock, but he never fronted. In other words, we were stood up by Johnny. It's an alright place I guess, not all that exciting, but that's pretty much what one visits Canberra for. It's good if you like history. There's lots of museums here, but I think we'll just be visiting the Royal Australian Mint and leaving after that tomorrow. Until my next post, au revoir.

Cold

Sup all. Hope you all had a great and relatively warm Christmas.

By the way, I'm going to Canberra and Sydney on Thursday, so if anyone has any suggestions for where to go, especially for Canberra, give us a shout.

In case you were wondering, I obtained a grand score of 33 for bio. I know you're all thinking "step back" because it's such a great score, but you shouldn't. I'm sure many people did much better. Many, many people. In fact, now that I think about it, 33 isn't such a great score.

This post has been a revelation. I've discovered that 33 isn't the great score I thought it was, among other things. I'll blog my journey to Canberra and Sydney. Till next time, stay warm, cool and dry.

Sheva

I can just imagine the post-match conversation between Essien and Sheva after yesterday's clash.

Sheva: "Why didn't you pass to me? I was open."
Essien: "You would have missed anyway."

Snap.

Between Sheva and Drogba:
Sheva: "Hey Didier, get a haircut."
Drogba: "Hey Sheva, score a goal."

Double snap.

Anyway...

I swear I saw this gangsterise himself overnight. I mean, he was all good and normal the day before, then the next day he's got all the gangstery. Country road bag, orange hair, untucked shirt, massive pants...you name it, he's got it. It's funny how people do that. I've seen it a lot.

Crash

Just when I thought me and Jimmy where doing alright in the ASX Share Game thingo, along comes a share market crash. Such is the way of the world.

There's a new iPod nano out. It's kind of plagiarised my iPod mini, in that it looks exactly the same except slimmer. It's still pretty cool though.

Yeer

Yeer here being a variation of yeah (rhymes with here). Welcome to another post, another month, another day.

I was just thinking, why do mainlanders always suspect people of hating them? You say something like 'poor' as in the context of 'poor effort' and some of them will react and say 'Did you just say mainlanders are poor?' It's like the bald man overreacting to people saying 'shiny'. Of course, I'm not referring to anyone in particular. Just a random thought.

For those of you that care and appreciate it, I obtained an A on my clarinet exam. Not that any of you would care or appreciate it. Such is the way of the world.

Arsenal. Still haven't won a damn game. And what's with the Blackburn - Sheffield game? What kind of team gets two penalties blocked and blocks one themselves? The Blackburn keeper made 25 points from that game (clean sheet, penalty saves, etc.)

Sad things have been happening lately. Steve Irwin, Peter Brock...rest in peace.

Until next time, chill.