Brazilians, Rugby, Karaoke and Belgians

Sunday, after a few hours at work, Matteo and I went to meet Zoe at Darling Harbour to see some Brazilian festival and maybe watch a bit of rugby. The Brazilian thing was ok, a bunch of food stalls at one end of the area with a stage at the other end, not my sort of thing really, all that samba and odd looking mascots isn't my bag, baby.

Seriously, this has something to do with meat.

So we had a bite to eat at Pontoon and wandered around towards some big screens that were showing the England match, but we stopped off to watch some muscular men do muscular things (no homo)

And then we watched the first half of more muscular men doing muscular things before going to Helm (not a gay bar) to watch the second half in which England prevailed, but not before knocking some Georgian guy out and worrying everybody who was watching.

Work on Monday was probably the easiest day ever and... that’s about all that happened.

Tuesday was a day off! Hooray! I met Zoe on Manly beach and we were shortly joined by Jena and then Matteo, but they were not the only people I met there. I should probably mention I had a day off, I already did? OK, but some people didn’t, namely John and Phillip, now can you guess who happened to be working near Manly and sitting by the beach as I walked passed... No, not Dame Edna! It was John and Phillip! Before bumping into those guys I also bumped into Sebastian from work at the ferry terminal, which was kind of weird.

The beach was very windy, which was a problem, and a bit cloudy, so much like the beaches at home and like the beaches at home we stayed there regardless. The four of us went for a meal at the Ivanhoe as we watched in awe as Italy took Russia by the scruff of the neck and booted their arse out of the stadium.

We got the ferry back to Circular Quay, went our separate ways and that was it for the evening.

Or so we thought, as Matteo and I walked into the 311 we were greeted by our three Belgian lady roommates who informed us that they would like to go to World Bar. As we are gentlemen and all round nice guys we decided to accompany our roommates as we were well versed in the Tuesday night happenings in Kings Cross. First up, free drinks in Trademark, in which I met two more people from work (Gary and Tom, which means in my day off I met over half of the people I work with) then onto World Bar, where the Elephant Backpackers were in attendance and showing the Cross how we roll in Woolloomooloo.

Coolest kids in the building

The Belgian girls went back to Trademark with Matteo, I stayed as I promised a certain liebling that I would take to the stage with her. Now I’m not saying we were the best of the night, but when Amanda and I sang ‘Come Together’ (Amanda’s choice) we were awesome and when a few of us sang ‘Wild Thing’ (Amanda’s choice) we were straight up steak sauce!

I think the t-shirt helped

The karaoke stopped but we didn't, Matteo and the girls had since returned and as 2am crept around the corner the numbers dwindled and we walked back to the hostel. Today I have so far been to Coles, written a blog post and I am currently considering sitting in the botanic garden and reading a book in the glorious sunshine!

Fireworks Over Darling Harbour

There is a law in NSW that the public are not allowed to do firework displays, because of this all of the fireworks in the area have to be used sometime, so why not every couple of weeks at Darling Harbour! Now I may not be the greatest fan of fireworks, I often say you’d be better off setting fire to some money, at least then it will last longer, but there was something kind of special about seeing the display at Darling Harbour, but that wasn't even the best part of the evening!

And here is a little video so you can enjoy it via a glowing rectangle 10,000 miles away.

With uni mode still in full effect I and the other two amigos (with Zoe) met up with a few of the girls from the previous night, we then went to Cargo Bar for beer and talking nonsense, I got a phone number, we went for ice cream, came back and after a quick change of personnel spent the rest of the night with a bunch of people from the hostel (regular readers may recognise some/all of them in the slideshow below) then after some beer and dancing we went home (via McDonalds). That’s about it, not much happened to really make a note of, although getting a German girl’s number was a highlight I guess, along with getting a free beer for being polite. Apparently letting a guy get served before you because he was there first is worthy of him buying you a beer over here (a girl did the same thing for me a few weeks ago, but I thought it was a one off) I'd say that free beer was better than the fireworks, but probably not as good as re-meeting a certain German girl.
Here's a slideshow with a bunch of photos from last night, until next time, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet!

Darling Harbour by Night, Bondi Beach by Day

What a superb 24 hours. Last night I and the blokes from the room went to Darling Harbour, on the off chance we happened upon some live music, a covers band in a place called Tokio Hotel,

Fortunately it wasn't as confusing as this guy(?)

The band went by the name of... um... I don’t recall their name, but they were good. We also met up with Zoe, the German girl who was once part of our room’s motley crew! We got talking to a couple of Americans and an Aussie girl, the Aussie seemed to really like Queens of the Stone Age. The beers did flow and the music was funky so dancing was on the cards and dance we did! Here’s a short video of the band to create some ambience for the following pictures...

One native New Yorker and his crazy Aussie companion.

This is Mark, our resident Czech guy!

Coolest table in the building!

So that was Darling Harbour, this morning Matteo, Alex and myself were supposed to go to the Blue Mountains, but it seemed pointless as it takes two hours on the train to get there and as we didn't wake up until about 11. So if we did go we’d have about two hours of daylight before having to come back. So Alex and I went to Bondi Beach (Matteo wanted to sleep some more). We wondered around the beach, got our feet wet and managed to do some pretty risky climbing...

Cool...

...Still cool!

Inappropriate footwear makes this kind of thing even more fun!

Pictured: Fun

And then we bumped into two people from our hostel, Ben and Harriet (Harriet from our room, which was a nice coincidence). So Ben, Harriet, Alex and me trotted off towards Tamarama Beach and watched the sky change colour as the sun set behind Bondi, of course we did have a laugh on our mini adventure as well but the sun set was a nice close to the day.

Tamarama beach, if you squint you can see New Zealand.

Kudos to Alex for this pic of Bondi.

Tomorrow I will venture to the Blue Mountains and I have also promised myself that I will go to Manly beach next week and actually try my hand at surfing!

What's the worst that could happen?

This could be the last time, maybe the last time I don’t know?

Oh no... Tomorrow I have to work, for (in case you haven’t guessed) maybe the last time. But to tell you about that would mean I would be all ‘non-linear’ and annoying. So Friday I was free to walk around and take pictures of parades against communism and get my TFN (finally) and then came Saturday...

FIIIIIIIGHT!

I wasn’t needed for work so I decided to wonder about, like you do. I went to the ‘Centre of Photography’ on Oxford Street (not the gay part, although there was a photo of a man with a full erection dressed as an angel, but I’m sure that was taking with completely heterosexual intentions). I then decided that Paddington Reservoir would be a good place to prove that turgid penises are not what photography is about and took a few snaps. In my pretentiousness I imagined how I would describe my images. 

It 'reflects' the pillars of society that are quite old but re-enforced with modern values

Arches that support nothing are like Greek social workers...

On Renny Lane there is a loser taking photographs, without indigestion.

I went back to the hostel, but not before visiting the NSW Art Gallery where I realised that art can be more than just a pile of bricks or an unmade bed. The sculpture of ‘An Athlete Struggling With A Cobra’ is so ShitBad that words could not describe just how awesome an album cover would be if it was inspired by the Fredric Leighton sculpture.

Pictured: Pure awesomeness

 Art is great sometimes. It can conjure images of childhood, the human psyche and HOLY SHIT WHAT IS THAT?!?!

Great use of colour...

An interesting take on the human form...

WHAT THE PUTAN?!?!

So after running as fast as I could away from the grinning freak child and her companion, I found myself back at the hostel. I had dinner and then after a while decided to go to Darling Harbour with two French people (Alex and Lucie (previously misspelt as Lucy)) But first we bumped into Australia’s most deadly tree climbing furry monstrosity, THE POSSUM! Photos below...

It will kill you...

I'm on a bridge!

Another ShitBad sculpture that looks even cooler at night

Yes that is my Gorrilapod in action helping me take some brilliant night shots!

Impressed? Well good. So back to today. I went to the Rocks market after helping Zoe (the German girl, although there is another German girl called Tabia now) carry some stuff into her new apartment (which is in Darling Harbour). I can’t remember if I mentioned the two Frenchies who were in my room when I began my adventure for reals have left for the Gold Coast (as of tomorrow, Lucie will be going that way too), but that is the way of the hostel, people are constantly on differing paths and although we create bonds as our paths cross we must realise that that bond is temporary. So on a less philosophical note, I, Alex, Zoe and Matteo went to the rocks to see the market, which was actually kind of cool, and we also met up with Lucie and wandered around like the coolest European party ever formed!

Pictured: The European Union of Awesome!

Part of The Rocks market

 Good fun, but then the realisation that working tomorrow may be the most awkward feeling ever seeing as I have already accepted that I won’t be there the day after. Weirder still is that my ‘last day’ will be in Newtown, the lesbian area of Sydney. So not only do I have to get 2 people to sign up but those 2 people will most likely be man haters that will no doubt criticise me for have a ‘bite’. I have been researching lesbian culture via South Park, so as long as I know what scissoring is I can ‘relate’ to lesbian culture.

Scissor Me Timbers

So that's a good run down of my weekend. TTFN! Meanwhile heres some slideshow action!