The Sydney Files
Sunday 25th March
High drama with luggage storage - checkout was 10am, so we had to put our stuff in lockers downstairs while we went to Taronga.
Mirjana, lovable-but-frankly-crazy woman that she is, of course has 20kgs of clothes in a giant suitcase that could comfortably fit a fully-grown highland goat (we later disovered the suitcase was her brother's, and something he was unusually proud of) and so, right, of course the hulking big thing wouldn't fit into the ridiculously small lockers provided by the YHA.
Managed to find Wanderer's Travel down the road had bigger lockers, or rather a baggage-minding service.
After that drama was out of the way, time for brekky at Cafe de Macau on George St (just across from Wanderer's Travel), so Karen & I ate asian macaroni in soup and had toast & fried eggs.
Then we dashed to catch the ferry from Circular Quay to Taronga Zoo. Breathed in some fumes, got in a few cheesy asian-tourist-style snapshots of us three and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.. good stuff. ^-^
Taronga Zoo was big and had lots of variety (but no Butterfly House, to the disappointment of Mirj and me.. we'd hoped to see Karen with butterflies.)
Looked at some ducks, it rained.
Looked at some parrots, it rained.
Looked at some giraffes.. it POURED.
Karen's quote of the day was, "The zoo is wonderful. The rain is not."
Poor Mirjana was wearing a short jean skirt and thongs - her feet went so white they were bordering on turning blue with the cold.
It rained throughout the day. Fizzy, misty rain. BIG FAT splatty rain. It was like all the NSW rainclouds decided to converge on Taronga and take a dump that day. But we had an ace time despite the rain & the cold. The zoo's prety fantastic, and there's supposed to be a new marine-ocean creatures section with construction due to finish in 6 months. Maybe I should schedule another Sydney trip then.. ^-^
Left Taronga about 5pm, got back in time to go to Woolies for one last shoppage (fruit for Mirj), and catch dinner at the Passionflower Dessert Bar.
Yes, I had dessert for dinner. It was frickin' AWESOME. Crepes with taro + green tea ice cream, slathered with maple syrup. Mmmmm. Then we took photo-picture cards at the hongkie amusements upstairs (go the Sydney Skanks, haha) and dashed back for our luggage & train to the airport. Made it JUST in time. Mirj even managed to buy another t-shirt before hopping on the plane. ^-^
Plane trip was uneventful, then we spent ages in the melbourne cold (ahhh, beautiful crisp cold, how i've missed you..) till Mirjana's brother picked us up and drove us back to Karen's.
Mirj's brother is a strange, strange puppy. A very well-groomed cop who apparently has no qualms about telling us he'd be perfectly happy to dress up in fishnets and a short skirt because he reckons his legs are hotter than most chicks... okay. And he likes his cafe lattes.
I'm still not entirely sure if he was joking or serious, though Mirj assured me that she herself has wondered on numerous occasions whether her brother is, in fact, of the un-straight persuasion. And if he's not gay, then he's a metrosexual who is completely in love with himself and his reflection ^-^
So we laughed at him, and I hurt my lung from trying to breathe and laugh and inhale over an already existing breath all at the same time, then I went home, where I offloaded the sackful of gifties I'd bought for my own brother (mostly foodstuffs and a seadragon toy and a funny korean manga I know he likes) as well as 2 and a half kgs of larp cheongs for all my aunties and my grannie.
Hurray for daylight saving, an extra hour was had for sleeps, which means now my body insists that I should be asleep and dreaming of taro (and yes, Karen, taro IS wu tau and not farn shuu, although my mother tells me there are many joongs of farn shuu and one is purple but it is not a taro, because they are different. So HAH! Suck eggs! ^-^ But not too many eggs.. we don't want a repeat of the Taronga Shelter Incident ;)
Anyway, the clock says it's 1am Monday and my body says "it's 2am so go to sleep you stupid mad tosser".. I'd best get to bed.
Still, an ace holiday. Can't believe we had so much excitement over 4 days..
Saturday 24th March
Buying larp cheongs, and little phone accessories. Mirjana's love affair with Astroboy items continues.
Train to Bondi, for fun in the sun with Gerry. I guarded the towels, Mirjana shopped, and Karen and Gerry frolicked in the surf.
Then when it started to pour down with rain, we departed and Gerry took us (minus the vegan Mirjana) to the german Lowenbrau restaurant at Circular Quay, near Argyle St at the Rocks, where we ended up sharing a humungous platter of bavarian goodies - bratwurst sossies, frankfurt sossies, roast pork belly, crispy fried pork knuckle, meat loaf that was more like a big fat square-shaped sossie, sauerkraut, and the most beautiful buttery potato mash I have ever tasted.
The three of us couldn't finish it, and it was meant to be a "platter for two".
Yeah. For two big jolly Bavarian blokes, maybe.
Karen and Gerry went a little psycho after dinner (maybe a full stomach of meat and sauerkraut makes you extra happy inside?) playing little poking/running/stopping games as we walked down the street.. it was like watching two overexcited kittens at play. Late at night. On George St in Sydney where the crazy people roam free.
We saw quite a few Sydneysiders in freakshow costumes over the course of the night.. a beardy bloke dressed up in fishnets and black corset with a blonde viking-woman wig.. a black-garbed sequinned Greek Elvis.. a fairy princess bride and her fluffy-tiara-wearing handmaidens.. middle aged women wearing teenybopper clubbing dresses that showed off their saggy boobs, misshapen asses and all.. *shudder*
But I liked the dirndls that the waitresses wore, they were cool. I wanted one ^-^ and the waiters wore those bavarian thigh-slapping dance shorts with suspenders and clogs ^-^
After walking home amongst the crazies (even the poor homeless blokes sleeping on the streets got startled by drunk Sydneysiders waking them up for an uncoordinated-but-highly-enthusiastic high five by three cackling inebriated blonde women) I settled in for bed, while Karen and Gerry, party people that they are, continued on to Star City (which, we were told by Sydney native Carmen, is frankly crap and that Crown in Melb is much better - YES!! MELBOURNE RULES!!!)
I read my Penguin Revolution manga and went to sleep.
Friday 23rd March
9:45 am
Karen & Mirj are going on the Harbour Bridge Climb so I'm left to my own devices for the morning and lunch. Which is fine, 'cos I plan on doing some book-browsing and anime-hunting.
First stop is The Galeries Victoria, where Kinokuniya's Sydney bookstore is. It's a must for any bibliophile ^-^ I used to love spending hours at Kinokuniya in Singapore, it's like Borders only much, much better - they stock loads of asian-type books and mags too. But the shops at The Galeries (yes, it's only one L, total weirdness) don't open till 10am (lazy Sydneyside buggers) so I'm writing this now, to be blogged later. ^-^
The Galeries is awesome. So far I can see there's a monorail station, a Wagamama restaurant, a Paul Frank / Julius & Friends store, and japonica shops all 'round. Cafes and the usual fashion shops (yay Dangerfield) too.
Okay, gotta dash - Kinokuniya's open!!!
10:15am
Oh gawd.
I am doomed.
Fifteen minutes in, and I have picked up 6 books.. Kinokuniya has a huge range of anime dvds, manga titles & loads of chinese & jap books, mags and anime artbooks.. and the import manga is SO much cheaper here! about $13-14 a book!
10:30am
Sweet mother of pearl, and crap on a stick.
I am so going to go broke and come home with 10 extra kgs of luggage, all books. I have just wandered into the General Film section and encountered a lovely fat hardcover book.. The Art of Howl's Moving Castle, $52.
I haven't even looked at the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section yet, or examined zoology for penguin books..
10:45am
In the children's section. PINGU BOOKS!!!!!!
10:55am
*sweatdrop* ..have spent $90 in Kinokuniya. Please, nobody tell my mother.
11:00am
Met Andrew & Anthony from the Save The Children charity, got to chatting - Andrew was bored and didn't mind that I was already a supporter and needed no winning over. He was born in Seymour in Victoria and has lived in Syd since he was 1. He was delighted that I was from Melb - he loves AFL and apparently not many Sydneysiders follow AFL. Ah well. I wasn't much of a footy fan but I obliged him as much as I could before he discovered I go for Collingwood.. then he inched away, shuddering ^-^
We were interrupted by a homeless-looking old woman (she reminds me of one I see every week in Carlton, but this one had teeth!) who loudly told me not to fall for charities. She tottered off clutching her plastic bags, leaving Andrew and Anthony and I somewhat startled.
Two minutes later she wandered back to inform us that giving money to charities encouraged pedophilia?!
12:00pm
Got accosted by hippie-looking Greenpeace guy (it seems to be the day for charity bunnies) who leapt out at me, with arms wide like he was trying to fly (nothing would surprise me in Sydney anymore), then he brandished a picture of a bloodied whale in my face, proclaiming that we all needed to know of the cruelty being done to the sweet and innocent peaceful Kings of the Sea.
Politely informed him I was already a Greenie (a blatant lie - I stopped supporting Greenpeace last year because they couldn't even keep my contact details, address or suburb right, and yet month after month they never failed to withdraw the correct donation amount from my bank account) and continued on my merry way.
What an eventful morning.. I'd expected a quiet day of book-browsing since I'd be without the boisterous antics of Karen and Mirjana!!!
Dreamings in Sydney
Last night as we were trying to sleep, a foreign couple next door kept talking really loudly through the wall. Aaargh. It sounded like some sort of european language but nothing any of us recognised.. not german, not french, not russian, not serbian..
Ended up dreaming that they'd robbed a bank, and were arguing about what to do with the money. Karen and I went next door to complain about the noise, and the guy (who looked somewhat norwegian with long sandy curly hair) showed us how he'd pried loose a floorboard to hide their ill-gotten stash of $100's and $50's and $20's. The next night, while they were out, Karen nicked the bundle of money (actually only worth about $1000) and we hid it in a little cardboard box in our room, under Mirjana's many clothes.
I woke up thoroughly confused about which bits were real and which bits I'd dreamed, though Mirj and Karen assured me that they'd both heard loud european rantings from next door as well.
Thursday 22nd March
Greetings from sticky hot Sydney.. it's 28 degrees and humid gross and the drivers in Sydney are scary scary but it's all good ^-^
The YHA we're staying at is right next to Haymarket so we've spent our first day shopping around and exploring the Darling Harbour.
Went to Sydney Aquarium and, excitement of all excitements, there was a PENGUIN ENCLOSURE!!! ^-^ It was excellent, some of the penguins (fairy pengies) swam right up to me and one kept trying to eat my hat through the glass ^-^ So funny.. it completely made my day.
We also went to the 5-storey WOOLWORTHS (I kid you not, it's 5 floor with escalators, it's like a K-Mart/supermarket selling toasters & books & clothes & stuff!
Amazing.
High drama with luggage storage - checkout was 10am, so we had to put our stuff in lockers downstairs while we went to Taronga.
Mirjana, lovable-but-frankly-crazy woman that she is, of course has 20kgs of clothes in a giant suitcase that could comfortably fit a fully-grown highland goat (we later disovered the suitcase was her brother's, and something he was unusually proud of) and so, right, of course the hulking big thing wouldn't fit into the ridiculously small lockers provided by the YHA.
Managed to find Wanderer's Travel down the road had bigger lockers, or rather a baggage-minding service.
After that drama was out of the way, time for brekky at Cafe de Macau on George St (just across from Wanderer's Travel), so Karen & I ate asian macaroni in soup and had toast & fried eggs.
Then we dashed to catch the ferry from Circular Quay to Taronga Zoo. Breathed in some fumes, got in a few cheesy asian-tourist-style snapshots of us three and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.. good stuff. ^-^
Taronga Zoo was big and had lots of variety (but no Butterfly House, to the disappointment of Mirj and me.. we'd hoped to see Karen with butterflies.)
Looked at some ducks, it rained.
Looked at some parrots, it rained.
Looked at some giraffes.. it POURED.
Karen's quote of the day was, "The zoo is wonderful. The rain is not."
Poor Mirjana was wearing a short jean skirt and thongs - her feet went so white they were bordering on turning blue with the cold.
It rained throughout the day. Fizzy, misty rain. BIG FAT splatty rain. It was like all the NSW rainclouds decided to converge on Taronga and take a dump that day. But we had an ace time despite the rain & the cold. The zoo's prety fantastic, and there's supposed to be a new marine-ocean creatures section with construction due to finish in 6 months. Maybe I should schedule another Sydney trip then.. ^-^
Left Taronga about 5pm, got back in time to go to Woolies for one last shoppage (fruit for Mirj), and catch dinner at the Passionflower Dessert Bar.
Yes, I had dessert for dinner. It was frickin' AWESOME. Crepes with taro + green tea ice cream, slathered with maple syrup. Mmmmm. Then we took photo-picture cards at the hongkie amusements upstairs (go the Sydney Skanks, haha) and dashed back for our luggage & train to the airport. Made it JUST in time. Mirj even managed to buy another t-shirt before hopping on the plane. ^-^
Plane trip was uneventful, then we spent ages in the melbourne cold (ahhh, beautiful crisp cold, how i've missed you..) till Mirjana's brother picked us up and drove us back to Karen's.
Mirj's brother is a strange, strange puppy. A very well-groomed cop who apparently has no qualms about telling us he'd be perfectly happy to dress up in fishnets and a short skirt because he reckons his legs are hotter than most chicks... okay. And he likes his cafe lattes.
I'm still not entirely sure if he was joking or serious, though Mirj assured me that she herself has wondered on numerous occasions whether her brother is, in fact, of the un-straight persuasion. And if he's not gay, then he's a metrosexual who is completely in love with himself and his reflection ^-^
So we laughed at him, and I hurt my lung from trying to breathe and laugh and inhale over an already existing breath all at the same time, then I went home, where I offloaded the sackful of gifties I'd bought for my own brother (mostly foodstuffs and a seadragon toy and a funny korean manga I know he likes) as well as 2 and a half kgs of larp cheongs for all my aunties and my grannie.
Hurray for daylight saving, an extra hour was had for sleeps, which means now my body insists that I should be asleep and dreaming of taro (and yes, Karen, taro IS wu tau and not farn shuu, although my mother tells me there are many joongs of farn shuu and one is purple but it is not a taro, because they are different. So HAH! Suck eggs! ^-^ But not too many eggs.. we don't want a repeat of the Taronga Shelter Incident ;)
Anyway, the clock says it's 1am Monday and my body says "it's 2am so go to sleep you stupid mad tosser".. I'd best get to bed.
Still, an ace holiday. Can't believe we had so much excitement over 4 days..
Saturday 24th March
Buying larp cheongs, and little phone accessories. Mirjana's love affair with Astroboy items continues.
Train to Bondi, for fun in the sun with Gerry. I guarded the towels, Mirjana shopped, and Karen and Gerry frolicked in the surf.
Then when it started to pour down with rain, we departed and Gerry took us (minus the vegan Mirjana) to the german Lowenbrau restaurant at Circular Quay, near Argyle St at the Rocks, where we ended up sharing a humungous platter of bavarian goodies - bratwurst sossies, frankfurt sossies, roast pork belly, crispy fried pork knuckle, meat loaf that was more like a big fat square-shaped sossie, sauerkraut, and the most beautiful buttery potato mash I have ever tasted.
The three of us couldn't finish it, and it was meant to be a "platter for two".
Yeah. For two big jolly Bavarian blokes, maybe.
Karen and Gerry went a little psycho after dinner (maybe a full stomach of meat and sauerkraut makes you extra happy inside?) playing little poking/running/stopping games as we walked down the street.. it was like watching two overexcited kittens at play. Late at night. On George St in Sydney where the crazy people roam free.
We saw quite a few Sydneysiders in freakshow costumes over the course of the night.. a beardy bloke dressed up in fishnets and black corset with a blonde viking-woman wig.. a black-garbed sequinned Greek Elvis.. a fairy princess bride and her fluffy-tiara-wearing handmaidens.. middle aged women wearing teenybopper clubbing dresses that showed off their saggy boobs, misshapen asses and all.. *shudder*
But I liked the dirndls that the waitresses wore, they were cool. I wanted one ^-^ and the waiters wore those bavarian thigh-slapping dance shorts with suspenders and clogs ^-^
After walking home amongst the crazies (even the poor homeless blokes sleeping on the streets got startled by drunk Sydneysiders waking them up for an uncoordinated-but-highly-enthusiastic high five by three cackling inebriated blonde women) I settled in for bed, while Karen and Gerry, party people that they are, continued on to Star City (which, we were told by Sydney native Carmen, is frankly crap and that Crown in Melb is much better - YES!! MELBOURNE RULES!!!)
I read my Penguin Revolution manga and went to sleep.
Friday 23rd March
9:45 am
Karen & Mirj are going on the Harbour Bridge Climb so I'm left to my own devices for the morning and lunch. Which is fine, 'cos I plan on doing some book-browsing and anime-hunting.
First stop is The Galeries Victoria, where Kinokuniya's Sydney bookstore is. It's a must for any bibliophile ^-^ I used to love spending hours at Kinokuniya in Singapore, it's like Borders only much, much better - they stock loads of asian-type books and mags too. But the shops at The Galeries (yes, it's only one L, total weirdness) don't open till 10am (lazy Sydneyside buggers) so I'm writing this now, to be blogged later. ^-^
The Galeries is awesome. So far I can see there's a monorail station, a Wagamama restaurant, a Paul Frank / Julius & Friends store, and japonica shops all 'round. Cafes and the usual fashion shops (yay Dangerfield) too.
Okay, gotta dash - Kinokuniya's open!!!
10:15am
Oh gawd.
I am doomed.
Fifteen minutes in, and I have picked up 6 books.. Kinokuniya has a huge range of anime dvds, manga titles & loads of chinese & jap books, mags and anime artbooks.. and the import manga is SO much cheaper here! about $13-14 a book!
10:30am
Sweet mother of pearl, and crap on a stick.
I am so going to go broke and come home with 10 extra kgs of luggage, all books. I have just wandered into the General Film section and encountered a lovely fat hardcover book.. The Art of Howl's Moving Castle, $52.
I haven't even looked at the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section yet, or examined zoology for penguin books..
10:45am
In the children's section. PINGU BOOKS!!!!!!
10:55am
*sweatdrop* ..have spent $90 in Kinokuniya. Please, nobody tell my mother.
11:00am
Met Andrew & Anthony from the Save The Children charity, got to chatting - Andrew was bored and didn't mind that I was already a supporter and needed no winning over. He was born in Seymour in Victoria and has lived in Syd since he was 1. He was delighted that I was from Melb - he loves AFL and apparently not many Sydneysiders follow AFL. Ah well. I wasn't much of a footy fan but I obliged him as much as I could before he discovered I go for Collingwood.. then he inched away, shuddering ^-^
We were interrupted by a homeless-looking old woman (she reminds me of one I see every week in Carlton, but this one had teeth!) who loudly told me not to fall for charities. She tottered off clutching her plastic bags, leaving Andrew and Anthony and I somewhat startled.
Two minutes later she wandered back to inform us that giving money to charities encouraged pedophilia?!
12:00pm
Got accosted by hippie-looking Greenpeace guy (it seems to be the day for charity bunnies) who leapt out at me, with arms wide like he was trying to fly (nothing would surprise me in Sydney anymore), then he brandished a picture of a bloodied whale in my face, proclaiming that we all needed to know of the cruelty being done to the sweet and innocent peaceful Kings of the Sea.
Politely informed him I was already a Greenie (a blatant lie - I stopped supporting Greenpeace last year because they couldn't even keep my contact details, address or suburb right, and yet month after month they never failed to withdraw the correct donation amount from my bank account) and continued on my merry way.
What an eventful morning.. I'd expected a quiet day of book-browsing since I'd be without the boisterous antics of Karen and Mirjana!!!
Dreamings in Sydney
Last night as we were trying to sleep, a foreign couple next door kept talking really loudly through the wall. Aaargh. It sounded like some sort of european language but nothing any of us recognised.. not german, not french, not russian, not serbian..
Ended up dreaming that they'd robbed a bank, and were arguing about what to do with the money. Karen and I went next door to complain about the noise, and the guy (who looked somewhat norwegian with long sandy curly hair) showed us how he'd pried loose a floorboard to hide their ill-gotten stash of $100's and $50's and $20's. The next night, while they were out, Karen nicked the bundle of money (actually only worth about $1000) and we hid it in a little cardboard box in our room, under Mirjana's many clothes.
I woke up thoroughly confused about which bits were real and which bits I'd dreamed, though Mirj and Karen assured me that they'd both heard loud european rantings from next door as well.
Thursday 22nd March
Greetings from sticky hot Sydney.. it's 28 degrees and humid gross and the drivers in Sydney are scary scary but it's all good ^-^
The YHA we're staying at is right next to Haymarket so we've spent our first day shopping around and exploring the Darling Harbour.
Went to Sydney Aquarium and, excitement of all excitements, there was a PENGUIN ENCLOSURE!!! ^-^ It was excellent, some of the penguins (fairy pengies) swam right up to me and one kept trying to eat my hat through the glass ^-^ So funny.. it completely made my day.
We also went to the 5-storey WOOLWORTHS (I kid you not, it's 5 floor with escalators, it's like a K-Mart/supermarket selling toasters & books & clothes & stuff!
Amazing.
posted by c.a.r.o.l.i.t.h.e. at 7:42 pm
1 Comments:
OMG.. I'm hurting so much from holding in my laughter so that Elaine (my co-worker) wouldn't think I was nutz as well..
You are sooooo funny!!!
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