Wednesday, January 21, 2009

A bit of a delay

Sorry for not writing up the rest of the blog this week. I've been really busy. Please be patient and I'll have more up soon.

Friday, January 9, 2009

Day 3 - 9th January 2009

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - when I get back from Sydney I'm going to need a holiday from my holiday. Sydney's just got this buzz that you can't avoid getting caught up in.

In light of the fact that I'm staying up late writing these, I'm posing this (and the 10th's) article a day late.

Today was intended to be a leisurely day of wandering up and down King street in Newtown, and to be fair it did start out that way.

At breakfast, I was introduced to a new type of food - shredded wheat in warm milk with vanilla protein for flavour. It's very good for you, but not exactly to my tase (possibly because it IS good for you). However I do want to thank Shoba for introducing it to me because I've never had shredded wheat before. I also want to take the time to thank Shoba (if she reads this) for letting me use her bedroom whilst she slept on the couch.

We left Shoba's apartment at 10am and took her car to the Royal Price Alfred hospital where she works in the elderly persons department. From there it was a short walk to King street. I'm not too sure how to describe King street because if we have something similar in Adelaide I would have known about it. It's a cross between the Parade and O'Connell street. It's got some trendy shops and lots of little cafes but it's got a bit of a Hindley street mixed in. Shoba and I had a really nice drink at a cafe called "Citrus". She had a coffee and I had a fruit frappe (which is fruit and ice all crushed up) in a HUGE glass so it was worth the money spent on it.

Anyway, the major point for me on King street was that there were at least four second-hand bookstores that we could go to.I feel a bit sorry for Shoba because I dragged her through the bookshops after me - but she was very nice about it.

There was one bookstore that I would have investigated further if we'd had time. It had wall-to-ceiling bookcases, and after looking through three cases, the sci-fi/fantasy area had only reached the "authors beginning with L" section. As it takes so long to get to Newtown I think I'll have to put off further investigation until next time. You've got to leave something to do, right? :P

I'd rather stupidly chosen to look in one last bookstore before lunch. As a consequence we were running late and since Shoba had to get to work at 1pm, lunch was out of the question. Luckily Shoba knew an organic store that sold sandwitches and wraps, and after a quick detour and falafel wrap later, we were back on track. We went back to the car and Shoba offered to drop me at Newtown station.

The side of the street we went down was clear, but we could see that in the incoming lane, the cars were bumper to bumper. I pitied the poor drivers stck in the traffic, especially once we missed the station and joined them. I could mark our progress by a woman walking a small terrier - she passed us three times before we got out of the traffic.

I decided to sit back and enjoy the experience that was a cornerstone of daily life in Sydney, and amused myself by looking for interesting shop names. One that stuck with me was "Noddy Hairdresses. Hairdressing for humans". Does this imply that other hairdressers don't cater for humans? Or that Noddy's won't accept sheep?

Newtown station is interesting in that it isn't modernised at all. The train times are shown on painted clocks with moveable hands, and the destinations are listed on triangular prisms (similar to those on billboards) that can be rotated to reveal the appropriate station. I think that I expected it to be more in keeping with the central stations in the city, only because the area seemed very modern. However I've been told that Newtown used to be a bit of a dump, and that it's only now coming into it's own.

After changing trains at Central, I arrived back in time for Michelle to pick me up from Chatswood. By this time it was late afternoon, and I'd been buzzed out by my adventure - so I didn't go out to dinner with Michelle and her mother. I think it was a good decision though, as I probably wouldn't have been able to get up the next morning if I had gone.

Tomorrow is Saturday which I intend to spend with Justin in the city, so more buzzing is on the horizon.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Day 2 - 8th January 2009

Another busy day in Sydney for me. Please excuse any grammatical and spelling errors since it's 11pm and I'm rather tired. I'll fix it up tomorrow.

I'd like to amend my previous post regarding the public transport system and confine the praise to trains, and only trains.

It had been decided that I'd spend tonight at Shoba's place, and that I would make my way there by bus since it would be faster than using a train. In fact, buses were my only option for the first leg of the trip, as Chatswood station is a few k's away from Middle Cove.

Being the meticulous person that I am (and also so that I didn't have to lug all my supplies around for ages), I spent an hour or so on the internet, mapping out the routes I'd have to take. It seemed simple enough, but in reality nothing ever is.

Here are some public transport lessons that I have learned:

1. Calling the transport infoline for information on how to get to places is useless. You will not get through to a person, and none of the options on the automated system will give you useful information.

2. Sitting in a bus shelter doesn't necessarily mean that a bus will stop for you. Even if you get up and wave. Therefore, make sure you're standing exactly at the sign designated for bus stops, even if it is pouring with rain and you desperately need to sit down. Lucky for me, it wasn't pouring, but I was thinking of finding some red pompoms to wave at the bus, or employing some sort of elaborate roadworks scheme to get it to stop.

3. Bus stop numbers are completely useless. The internet will say something like "disembark at stop 222487" - I'm not kidding, this is actually how long the stop numbers are - but the signs at the stops are so small that the bus has to sit there for five minutes for you to get close enough to the front of the bus to read them. They aren't even sequential on the same road!

4. Bus drivers have no idea about bus stops, or indeed where they are going. I asked a bus driver if his bus went through Petersham and he replied with something along the lines of "I just go up paramatta road and turn right at the hospital". Luckily for me, I rang Shoba to ask where I needed to get off, and the bus had just passed her. So I hopped off at the next stop and we met up pretty quickly. I'm not sure what I would have done otherwise - I suppose that you could look at it as an "I'm going on a trip to unknown places" occasion but since this was at aroudn 4pm and I was tired, I didn't feel much like adventuring.

Anyway, enough complaints. I did have a really good day. Once I got into the city I went to Galaxy bookshop which is ALL science-fiction and fantasy books. I had bought a book there in October that had been recommended to me, but I didn't like it. So I kept it in perfect condition, with the receipt on my bookshelf at home, and remembered to pack it for the trip. Because of this, I managed to get a book swap for something I would have had difficulty finding in Adelaide. The book is "Not a Proper Princess" by Esther Freisner if you were at all interested.

Since the weather was weird and I was suddenly hot, I went into Gloria Jeans and grabbed a timtam icy milkshake thingy (I believe that's the technical term) and worked my way up to the bus interchange. After waiting for half an hour trying to figure out which bus to take, I made it to Shoba's place.

She's got a lovely apartment in the Lyndhurst area, and she's even volunteered to sleep on the couch! I would feel bad but it's a pretty comfy couch and it's only for one night. Her flatmate was supposed to be around, but when we got in, the flatmate was asleep and hadn't woken up by the time we headed out for dinner.

Shoba took us to a lovely place called "The Italian Forum". Since this is the suburb where most Italians live, there's a host of Italian restaurants around the place. The Forum is intended to look like a place in Italy, with an open square centered around a statue with shops/restaurants lining the sides. One thing that I'd forgotten about Sydney is that there are people whose job it is to stand outside and drag you into their restaurant. Since Shoba had tried all the restaurants on the square, she suggested that we take a look at two of the best.

The first one we went to had a young girl (around 14) encouraging us to come in with a tale of how the restaurant was run by her mother - an Italian cook of course. She had the patter down perfectly, including asking us where we were from and then saying something along the lines of "Well you know if you get an --insert customer's nationality here-- chef cooking Italian, it's not the same as an actual Italian cooking it and vice-versa. She actually ended her speech with "we make pasta the way your mamma makes it". Remind you of a television advert? It certainly did to me!
I think it might be a ploy for the restaurant to use a young girl to advertise as it's probably harder to walk away without feeling guilty.

We decided to go and have a look at the other restaurant after gently brushing the girl off. Since Shoba said that it had the best pizzas of the lot, we ended up getting a lovely vegetarian boconcini pizza, some garlic bread and steamed vegetables.

Afterwards we walked to a lovely bookshop that had a large range of new and second-hand books. In addition, it was open until 10pm so that we could take our time and used 3/4 of an hour browsing before I picked up three books (1 new and 2 second-hand) for $23 which is a great bargain.

Tomorrow Shoba is going to take me to Newtown which is apparently the "hip" suburb for young people around here - so Shoba and I should fit right in! We're going to drive there as she has staff parking at the hospital so I can leave all my stuff in the car and then go to a train station from there.

Then I've got dinner with Michelle and her family tomorrow night, and I'm meeting up with Justin at some point on Saturday.

Busy busy busy!

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Day 1 - 7th January 2009

I was up at 9am today, stressing about my packing. Of course, I'd made a list last night, and packed everything I could think of (including going on the MUD and asking what people usually forget to pack. This was useful since I had forgotten the sunscreen). So after checking my list (again) I had breakfast and played with the dogs for a bit before going outside to meet the taxi at 10:30am.

The taxi was right on time, and although the guy driving it looked a bit scary (he had a bikie beard) he was very nice, and we chatted about the cricket and how people were betting on it, all the way to the airport.

The flight was due to take off at 12 noon, and since it was a Virgin flight, there would be no food provided unless I wanted to pay extreme prices for it. I refuse on principle to buy any food on Virgin flights. If I'm going to be subjected to aeroplane food, I'm not going to pay exorbitant amounts for the "pleasure".

Since I had a bit of time to spare, I decided to be prepared and get some food. There is this place in the airport called "Cocolat & Wicked Desserts" (http://www.cocolat.com.au/) at which I had a very nice cinnamon waffle with whipped cream, honey and strawberries. Since it was at the airport the prices were a bit higher than usual ($6.50 for one 'half' waffle) but the food was so good that I didn't mind.

The timing was perfect, as I arrived at the gate just as it opened. I followed my usual practice of wandering around the gate area in order to stretch my legs, and to get in the line as close to the end as possible. I don't know why people rush to get on the plane. I don't want to sit for 20 minutes in a small space whilst other people are trying to load their overhead luggage - I may as well increase the flight time by 20 minutes.

When I got to my seat, I was suprised to see that it had a little screen on the back of the seat in front of me. Now remember, this is a Virgin flight so you don't usually get entertainment provided by the airline. True to form, there wasn't. The people at Virgin have dreamed up an insidious way to get you to pay more money for entertainment as well as food.

Whilst you're sitting on the tarmac, and for about five minutes into the flight,you can watch 24 channels of foxtel - silently. Then they pass around free headphones, and 10 minutes later a screen pops up saying "If you would like to watch more, please swipe your credit card in the slot next to the screen. It's only $4.95 for 2 hour flights, and for longer ones it's $9.50 - How cheap is that!" and so on. If you don't pay, you get adverts for the rest of the trip. Constantly. You can't even switch the screen off, you have to dim the brightness so that you can't see the screen. Luckily I had a book to entertain me (well not luckily, I always carry a book on flights) and the flight went reasonably quickly.

Then baggage collection. I had a scary moment when all of a sudden bags stopped coming through the on the carousel, but they quickly started up again.
I won't bore you with the travel details. Suffice it to say that I like Sydney's transport system, even if it means lugging my bag from station to station. I only had to switch trains twice and the entire trip (from the airport to chatswood station) took about 3/4 of an hour. Which in my mind is good for a city like Sydney.

I was lucky that the lifts worked, as an unfortunate fellow traveller from the airport couldn't get up the stairs to a platform because the lift was out of operation. She ended up having to go to the other end of the station, use the lift there and catch a train to the next stop, switch trains and then go back.

Michelle picked me up at the station (for those of you who don't know, Michelle is Nicole Hersch's mother - Nicole was studying med in Adelaide and was at our house for dinner a lot) and after a brief snack I went and had a nap.

Then Michelle's mother came around and we had a yummy dinner of lamb, pumpkin, mushrooms and salad. It was very kind of her to let me stay, so I gave her a BIG box of Lindt chocolates (quite frankly I'm going to hide away from them because I wouldn't be able to help myself).

Right now it's 8:20pm and I'm going to sign off because tomorrow's going to be busy.

My week seems to be filling up quite quickly actually.

Tomorrow I've got a plan to meet up with a friend called Shoba and she's going to take me around Newtown from the "local" point of view since I've already done the touristy stuff on previous trips here. I'm probably going to stay over at her place since she's on the other side of the city to where I'm staying and I don't feel like catching trains when I could be having fun. Plus, there will be more time for going to second-hand bookstores!

On Friday I'm going to dinner at Michelle's mum's house. I'm going to be meeting with Justin on Saturday, then on Sunday Michelle's booked us tickets for some weird 8hr show that is apparently very good. Monday will be my "rest" day. On Tuesday evening, Justin, Shoba and myself are going to "The Complete Works Of Shakespere (Abridged) in which they cram all of Shakespere's plays into 97 minutes. I recall something similar being performed in Adelaide at the Fringe a few years ago, so it should be fun. Finally, I return home on Wednesday and have a holiday from my holiday.

I have to say that I'm pretty proud of myself so far. This is the first trip I've had "on my own" and I haven't freaked out or anything. Even the flight wasn't bad, and I usually get very uncomfortable and anxious when flying.


Stay tuned for more of my adventures in Sydney