Most of my time here has been spent working. I’ve just started a new job at Sabre which is a pretty cool place to work. For those of you not working in travel (ie. those of you with money), Sabre are one of about four companies in which all flights worldwide are booked. They are possibly the biggest, which looks nice on my CV. On top of that, it’s a systems job not a travel consultant job, which means I’m making sure stuff in their system is correct rather than booking flights for people. For those of you who book published fares and wonder what idiot put such unreadable fare rules in there, that’s me that is. Anyway, I started last week and the job should last at least 6 weeks. I need to make some money as I had a whole week in bed a while ago after I managed to get Australasian Deadly Flu. Actually, that’s probably not what it was really called but that’s what it should have been called as I couldn’t get out of bed for 6 days and I very rarely get ill. As much fun as it is living in a hostel with people you’ve only just met, it soon becomes un-fun when you’re stuck in your room for a week and nobody wants to bring you toast and treat you like a baby. That’s the whole point of being ill!
I have done a few fun things and been to a few interesting places. I’ve been to both the Sydney Aquarium and the Taronga Zoo, both of which were really good. The zoo wasn’t as big as Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo, but it’s a lot older and has a bigger variety including tigers and gorillas and stuff. You’d be amazed at how long a bunch of kids will laugh at a chimp picking his nose and eating it. Last weekend a load of us went to the Telstra Stadium (otherwise known as the Jonny Wilkinson Stadium), to watch an Aussie rules game. It was long (2 hours) and none of us had much idea what was going on (nothing new there), but we had a good time despite the rain and the lightning. Don’t believe those lying holiday brochures, Sydney weather is crap during the winter. The other night, to make a change from the backpackers bars, I got dragged along to a Salsa club. Before you start to laugh the deal was that I would come as long as nobody tried to get me to dance. You know what? I wish I could salsa dance. I’ve never seen so many hot girls looking for someone to dance with and so few blokes willing to dance. There was an old geezer who must have been nearly 70, but he was the best dancer in the place. He was dancing with a girl in her early 20’s for a bit, and then another one later on. Then the first one came back and stood around waiting until he had finished so he danced with them both at the same time! Legend! Next time you see me I might have a rose between my teeth saying Olé.
I’m still living in the hostel in Coogee, which is a really nice place when the sun comes out. Still not sunbathing weather, but when it’s a nice day it’s a nice place to be. Not full of weirdos like Bondi Beach either. From there being about 6 people in the hostel when I first moved in there are now about 30 of us fighting for showers and fridge space. Most of us are working and here for the long term, so there’s a good atmosphere between everyone as we all know each other pretty well by this stage. I’m not in the 10 bed dorm anymore since 9 kiwi rugby fans on a massive bender showed up a few nights after I moved in. Since I had to get up for work at 7am and they were coming back from the pub at about 4am, our schedules were ‘incompatible’ so I changed rooms to a charming little 4 bunk-bed property. My rough plan at the moment is to stay here until this job ends at the end of October, fly back up to Queensland for a few weeks for a ‘holiday’, come back to Sydney for Christmas and New Year, head to Melbourne in January and spend a bit of time working there, and spend a couple of weeks in New Zealand before coming home at about Easter. None of my plans have lasted very long though, and my passport runs out in January so I’m not exactly organised. Here are a couple of really good pictures that show how far Coogee is from the city, and what the beach looks like here:
By the way, the current Simpsons record was four in a row last week which included 2 normal repeats, 1 new episode and 1 ‘Greatest Simpsons Ever’ episode. If it wasn’t for Neighbours it would have been 5. And you thought you had it bad with two episodes of Coronation Street on a Wednesday night.
It’s Friday night, so I’m off to make a nuisance of myself and blow all the money I’ve made. Tomorrow I get to drive a van through the centre of Sydney which should be interesting. If you hear about a terrorist security alert at the Sydney Opera House, it’s probably just me sitting in the van looking at the A to Z trying to figure out where I am.
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