clip clop, clip clop....

I live in an apartment building in Sydney, I live on the 4th floor.

In the apartment above me I swear is a crazy woman. Not crazy as in shouting or anything like that - no, I think this is a woman who either:
a) has a high heel shoe fetish, or
b) is extremely anxious and has to walk about her apartment... a lot.

It might be 6am or midnight, and there she is walking around in high heels, clip clopping around. What's with that? Has this woman never heard of slippers??

I've actually thought about going upstairs to see what's going on. I guess it might be more than one woman, but really it's not, I recognise her footsteps now.

I have to say though, it doesn't really bother me - I just can't imagine the necessity to keep walking around like that. I should probably get up and walk around as much as she does - maybe she's got a pedometer and she's trying to work up the numbers......

Football Mania

There's something going on on the right hand side of Australia right now - it's football mania. Not as we (brits) know it though, no, this type of football *seriously* sorts out the men from the boys. Aussie rules football makes Rugby look like a tea party. It's properly vicious and nasty - it's a wonder that people don't regularly die during/after matches things are that bad. I guess it demonstrates the sturdiness of the human body.

But I digress, this football mania is called 'State of Origin'. Funnily enough, I have no idea where the 'Origin' name originated so I've no idea what it refers to. But the football is a grudge match between New South Wales and Queensland and it appears to have the same kind of following (relatively) to an Arsenal vs Chelsea match. It kicks off tonight, 6.30pm. Where will I be..... in the swimming pool. Likely alone - given the fact that it's all that anyone has talked about all day - they're so excited...... And it goes on a bit as well, not sure how long for - a couple of matches at least.

Dullsville.

(However, being a resident of NSW - I want them to win - but christ, I wouldn't want to watch the match. And besides can you imagine the trauma in the office tomorrow if they don't win??)

Australia is weird.....

You couldn't make this stuff up....

They have a chedder type cheese here called 'Coon'. It doesn't seem to matter that to the rest of the world coon is offensive, no, here it's cheese. They've got no shame.
http://www.dairyfarmers.com.au/s02_products/coon.jsp

Here in Australia people 'joke' that it's ten years behind the times. To be fair, it's more like twenty. They don't have places where you can buy chilled ready meals. Not exactly something in the UK that you would think as unusual or special. You know, whatever they have in Tesco, Sainsburys or M&S - like ready pasta, mmmm spaghetti bolognaise, or mmmm macaroni cheese, or ready made chicken pie from M&S, yummmm. Australian equivalent - ZIP. You wouldn't think it would be that difficult - I mean think how many british ex-pats there are here who would sell their soul for an M&S??? M&S people listen up OPEN A STORE IN SYDNEY!!!! I mean they've got one in Hong Kong, why not here????

Other weird stuff:
They don't sell antibacterial hand soap here - you know like Carex.... why???? Surely germs don't avoid Australia??
They have maybe 2 or 3 brands of deodorant- that's it. Weird.

Terrible Tuesday

There's something about the fact that you're not at home which makes the bad days here seem worse. Or maybe it's just thr grass is greener effect. You know what it's like at home, a bad day and you start wishing you lived somewhere else, where magically bad days wouldn't happen. Maybe the sun would shine, or you'd be able to do something different.

Here when I have a bad day my immediate thoughts are 'What in the name of all that is holy am I doing here, when I could be at home, tucked up in my own bed?' There's no place really like your own bed to hide from the world! OK, here I have my own little flat and it's perfectly nice. Some would say it was really good, but it doesn't feel like home. I'm not sure why.

But I'm making it sound like I'm like this all the time, when in fact it's not true. I went out for dinner with some friends on Friday night and had a riot. Nearly got kicked out of the restaurant for being too loud - or it could have been what we were talking about - although actually I don't remember - probably something to do with the two bottles of wine we downed. Today, Sunday, I'm sitting here at just past midday waiting for my buddy to get back from the gym and then we're going to go and have lunch somewhere. Hey do you notice all my days out are related to food??? Hmmm, I see a pattern here.....

Maybe to counteract all that food stuff I have taken up swimming. There's a pool not two blocks from where I live so I nip down there 3 or 4 times a week and swim up and down. The result of that though is that I need to buy a new ipod so I can get waterproof casing and waterproof head phones, otherwise it's just dull. I get so bored and often forget how many laps I've done. Really, memory like a seive!

Anyway, got to go, I'm trying to find a cafe/restaurant which will serve brunch - so far I'm not making progress.....

Pink!

So, for the last three weeks I've not posted so I've got some catching up to do.

Not last weekend but the weekend before I went back to Adelaide. When I was staying there before Christmas I had agreed to go and see Pink in concert, thinking I would be staying there, but as it turned out, I moved to Sydney. No big deal though, Adelaide is an amazing place. I'm not sure if I've been brainwashed by my mate Andy telling me about Adelaide for all the time he was in the UK, but I really like it there. So, no drama to go back to Adelaide, not least to see Pink in concert. So we went to the concert and it was very good. I was surprised at how many songs of hers I knew - it was a great show. The only downside was the person sitting behind me...... imagine the scenario.....

We were in a rectangular concert hall. We were sitting about 2/3rds the way down one side, about 5 or 6 rows from the back. OK, it's not like Wembley Stadium, but it's not like you could have had a conversation with the person at the front of the hall if you'd wanted to - it's big enough. So at the start of the show I hear from behind me a sound comparable to a child having it's eyes gorged out with a red hot poker and a scream which says 'We love you Pink!!' Now bear in mind, even if Pink and this person behind me had been in hall all by themselves, I doubt she would have been able to make out what she was saying. But anyway, I'm sitting there thinking to myself 'Oh my god, what is this person, like 12 years old?' So I turn around and it transpires that she's not 12, she's about 8. But sadly, despite it clearly being past her bedtime, she continued to shriek in this fashion throughout the concert to a point at the end of the show where there's a two minute countdown to the wrap up and she literally screamed at top volume for the entire two minutes. Towards the end she began to cough and splutter (and with any luck, die) and it made me wonder why on earth her mother hadn't told her to shut up hours earlier. And then I realised..... This child won't be able to speak for days after this effort - days of pure silence. I understand. However my ears didn't and it took every inch of restraint not to turn around and punch her in the mouth. However, I'm sure punching kids is frowned upon, even under these extreme conditions......

But when I didn't have an 8 year old shrieking in my ear, Pink was very good. And she does a great piss-take of Paris Hilton which is nice.

All change?

I wonder if I should change the title of my blog to something else, now that the anticipated 3 continents has been somewhat monopolised by just one?

I've been considering staying here longer term for a couple of months now and really as I was meant to be going home (or at least to New Zealand and the US) this Sunday it was about time I actually made a decision and went for it. Not that it's as black and white as I'm making out. I had to apply for a visa. I had made some investigations about it earlier on but not followed it up - but at the time they told me the application process would take 6-8 weeks, so I wasn't expecting a fast answer. But in the end I did apply. I applied on the Thursday and on the following Tuesday the visa was approved.

So the deal is, I can now stay and work in Australia - and it's all legal and so on.. The limitations are: I have to work. Not exactly a big deal, although I did get used to the not working side of things when I first arrived here. But I'm back at work now, and it's not a huge drama. In fact it pays for me to live in a fairly nice apartment in the centre of an amazing city, so it's not all bad.

So let me think.... the last three weeks...... what have I been up to.....