20. A New Beginning

Since I've been back from Perth, I haven't really gotten up to too much. I have had one of those irritating colds that won't go away for most of winter. You know, the kind of cold that every time you step outside and there's even the slightest breeze your nose starts to run? Or what about the type of cold that makes you tired when you need energy and then you have too much energy when you don't actually need it? (for example when you want to go to bed...)

Asides from that lovely aspect of winter (yes I know, winter here is far more reasonable than winter in Canada) I have been playing tennis at least once a week with my coach. He's been working on my footwork because it is atrocious (what a surprise!) and desperately needed help. I can't tell if it's because I am too dumb to understand or just lacking the clarity I need to comprehend what he is telling me, but there are so many different things to work on all at once that I seem to mess it all up or confuse it all. Who knew tennis could be such a complicated sport!

Today was also the last day of my job with American Express. It is now time to move on with the next job (which I still don't have a start date for, ah the life of being a temp!) and finish off the remaining months I have left here.

I called this entry a new beginning because I am slowly entering into what I think is the next phase of my time here in Australia. I have started some reconstructive surgery on my tennis and will be starting another new job role as well. It's also given me more clarity to this thing we call university...

I have 4 months left here in Australia and I want to maximize the time I spend here. Fingers crossed it will work out the way I hope it does...

20. Perth

Well I was lucky enough to finally make it to another part of Australia: Western Australia. It's quite a long distance to travel in order to get to Perth but after a long flight (nearly 6 hours!!!!) I got there.

The plan was for a nice weekend away where I could get out of Sydney and just relax. And relax I did! After I had some drama with my original hotel I booked, I ended up checking into another but then once settled headed around the city for a nice quiet afternoon wander. After doing that I made my way to a great Italian restaurant in Northbridge. I had dinner on my own in a restaurant for the first time and it was kind of nice to enjoy the food and wine and take it easy.

I headed home afterwards and had an early night and the next day took my time getting up. I had a leisurely early afternoon and then headed to some indoor tennis courts for a grueling 2 hour tennis lesson. It was quite a work out but I still managed to learn a few things to try and improve my game further, specifically with volleying and on my serve. Afterwards, I headed back to my hotel to shower before heading for a nice massage. It was quite relaxing!

The next day I headed down to Fremantle to explore the markets and what that area had to offer. I caught up with a friend named David and he took me around to a few different places. It was quite enjoyable and a really nice area to explore, especially to a pub with some drinks!

On my last day I went for a wander further out of the city towards Kings Park where they have the war memorial. It is a great walk but also has a fantastic view of the city from higher up.

They say Perth is the most isolated city in the world and I would believe it, but it's also one of the quietest cities and seemingly relaxed!

19. Winter

Right, so when I thought to myself that I would come here and be able to avoid winter, I clearly didn't do my research. Evidently, Sydney experiences winter, much like the rest of the world! Now when I say "experiences winter" I don't mean it has an abundance of snow for me to have to shovel, but it certainly isn't 28 and sunny every day. In fact, a couple weeks ago it was around 10 degrees as a high! For a dessert country, it can certainly get cold!

Now while it has decided to rain and be cold, I have discovered that Sydney is the only city in Australia without any indoor courts. Needless to say I am feeling rather obese because I haven't done much if any physical activity. I was trying to get my ass up and to the gym in my building a couple times a week, and that was going great for, oh, a week...Then I decided I was too tired to bother. Another hinderance has been getting a cold that just won't go away. Nothing is more of an excuse than "oh I'm fighting a cold, it's probably not a good idea to work out." So I decided I would force myself to go once a week and do something. I will be doing tennis lessons once a week for an hour. Hopefully it will be a good work out as well as a chance to work on my technique and tactics as well as consistency.

After falling out with one of my friends here, I kind of decided to refocus myself. First I set up the tennis lessons described above, then I discovered a glorious computer program called "Garage Band" where you can create your own music. Little did I know that this would become a huge distraction for me. I have only just started working with the program, but I have a few rough takes and one track that is close to being completed (I'll be sure to share it with you when it's done!) and a few more in the pipeline.

Hopefully something more interesting occurs sometimes soon so I can tell you about it!

18. Eurovision 2009 - Moscow

So it was my first year actually watching Eurovision on TV and not on the internet or YouTube. For those of you who don't know, Eurovision is a song contest that most of the countries in Europe compete in. I am not too sure what they get, asides from probably a record deal in their home country, but it's a pretty big deal nonetheless. It's also quite the spectacle!



They show it on TV here in 3 pieces. The first 2 semi-finals, where they select 10 from each semi-final to move to the final. This is where you see random shit (like the giant Babushka above) in the performances and hear some pretty terrible songs. You also get an idea of who will end up as a front runner. For me personally, I loved Iceland and really enjoyed Portugal as well. The ones I hate: Hungary and Greece. The local television channel that was airing Eurovision kept rattling on about the Australian connection with the Greek song, which I might add was a horrific attempt to sound like a Kylie Minogue song.



The girl above, from Albania, was a bit of an underdog. She is like 16 but really really good. She had quite a catchy song but unfortunately only made it to 17th place in the Grand Final. The front runner, Norway, really ran ahead. It was quite a ridiculous lead he had. You could tell the Australian commentators were getting bored of the whole thing by about hour 2. They kept trying to crack jokes and quickly started making jibes at different people. It was entertaining anyways. Iceland, one of my personal favourites (whose song sounded a lot like something Roxette would have released) came in second place! She was looking stunning in blue (as pictured below). And the UK managed their best showing in quite a few years by placing 5th. They did require the help of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Diane Warren to write their entry though.



Overall it was an entertaining show to follow this year!

17. Hobart

So sorry for my lack of posts! I have been keeping my head down working hard and it's paying off. My performance level is quite good, so that's good to hear.

I finally decided to visit somewhere outside of Sydney last weekend and chose Hobart. Who wouldn't want to go to Tasmania! It was quite an cool time to go, but still had good weather. The flight was interesting. It was 2 hours direct from Sydney and it was a plane with 2 rows of 3 seats. I told Mark (whom came with me) that whenever I sit on a plane where there are 3 seats, I either get a screaming child, or an obese man who takes up half my seat. What was my lucky fate for this flight? I'll let you guess. Bad body odour, the smell of cheese and half my seat gone later, we arrived in Hobart!

Mark ran into family there (since he's from there) and we ended up meeting up with them again later on. Our first day we went to Port Arthur, Australia's oldest prison settlement. It was beautiful, but also quite interesting to see. A lot of the buildings are in ruins due to bushfires in the areas in the late 1800's, but the area is beautifully manicured and restored now. My favourite parts were seeing the church as well as the actual penitentiary.



The next day we went to the Salamanca markets and they were very interesting. It's much like any market, but very interesting items can be found. It started to rain for the day, so we ended up looking at local art in the galleries around the markets, then had a lovely dinner. Food in Tasmania is much the same everywhere, but you do have to look hard to find some great spots. One of which was a restaurant called "Smolt"...very yummy!

The last day in Hobart, we faffed about and went to Richmond (where you can find the oldest bridge in Australia), a winery on the way (where we tried virtually every wine, and bought a few bottles as well hehe) and then went to this national park where you can find Wine Glass Bay. It was a spectacular drive and eventually a beautiful bay, though admittedly, we left it a little late in the day. We nearly freaked out on the way back as we were driving country roads in the dark and there is a lot of wildlife on the roads. I should say that I freaked I guess because Mark saw a wallaby on the side of the road and I saw it just as it was by the car and I freaked out lol.

Anyways, we made it back okay and for anyone who comes to Australia, you really need to visit Tassie!

16. A New Car and the Blue Mountains

I will be the first to admit that I have neglected this blog and am extremely lazy at updating it. So I am finally getting back on track with it! (Really this just means something interesting happened so I have something to write about...)

My friend Stephen decided that it was time he get a new vehicle. Don't get me wrong, he has had a ton of good memories with his Toyota Camry (lovingly renamed the Kath & Kim Camry), but it was time to move on. You'd be pretty sick of having to jump-start your car every 2 days because the battery wouldn't hold a charge! After doing some heavy research, he decided the Audi A3 was for him. (Who am I kidding? It was German and goes fast....I don't really think that's research, but at least he knew it was both!)

So I went with him to pick up his new Audi and man does the thing go! Who could say no to a car that likes going fast very quickly! It's pictured above, but let me rave about my favourite parts of the car: PANORAMIC SUNROOF. I'll admit I am a bit of a sucker for a nice sunroof, but a panoramic one is nuts. What is it you may ask? Why let me tell you! Not only is it one in the front above the driver and front passenger seats, but there is a fixed panel above the back seats as well. *swoon* If I could fall in love with a part of a car, it'd be a panoramic sunroof.

After Stephen picked up his new car, what better thing was there to do asides from go on a mini road trip?! Well we decided to go to the Blue Mountains as it was a nice drive and I had never been before. The Blue Mountains are quite spectacular to see, but in comparison to the mountains back home, then look more like speed bumps. They are definitely deceiving though as the go on for awhile, but do not have the high peaks like ones back in Canada do.

The Blue Mountains gets its name from the haze that sits over them. This bluish haze is from the Eucalyptus trees that are rampant through Australia and more densely spread over the Blue Mountains. It is really cool to see and I am told its more prevalent at dusk & dawn. We managed to view a few places, but the most famous is the 3 Sisters. We went down into the valley and walked around a bit. To get down there, you have to take a ridiculously steep train. They claim it's the world's steepest railway, but I am not too sure if it counts considering its attached to a cable. And when I say steep, the backs of the seats in front of you keep you from falling out, but if the cage wasn't above you, you most certainly would. Heading back up we took a gondola.

On the way back we stopped at a German cafe and it was so cute! The mountains have a bunch of little towns and they are kind of cute, but at the same time kind of dumpy. They are certainly no match for the Alps in Europe!

15. Another Bloody Water

So when Jonas was here, we went to this Kiwi burger place called Burger Fuel. Among their interesting flavours and doofers (patent pending apparently....I told Jonas to look into it) they had the most bizarre water bottle for sale. So considering I was in stitches while reading it, I figured I needed to type it out here for all to enjoy.

Here is the story of Another Bloody Water.....

Since we unceremoniously (some say rudely) barged our way into the overcrowded bottled water market with a good looking bottle, a smartarse name and a devil may care attitude it has come to our attention that our competitors don't like us*. They think we are taking the piss. That we mock the overly flowery, exaggerated language and the poorly drawn waterfalls and diagrams of volcanoes on their labels. They think that we are not taking the serious aquatic science of bottled water...well seriously.

So to quash any future smear campaign and rumour mongering they may come up with, we're going to set the record straight right here. Smart Alec name-yes. Just another water-no.

First up our water is bloody good. Better than most. It comes from a spring, high in the Victorian Alps, which is a bloody long drive from civilization (see:pollution). The only farms in the area are organic which means no nasty pesticides or any of those other evil poisons end up in the water. In fact we deal with the rampant blackberry problem by setting our deer on them. It's a tough gig for the deer, but they seem to like it. And while we're blowing our own trumpet, independent Government approved laboratories have done tests and they reckon it's lower in sodium than all other major brands on the Australian market. Did we say it tastes bloody good?

So there you go, Doubting Thomas competitors-cards on the table. Enjoy Another Bloody Water, everyone. And then when you're done with that enjoy another Another Bloody Water. And so on.

*We don't actually know if our competitors don't like us. But being competitors we're pretty sure they don't.


So there you have it...quite funny! Directly scribed from water bottle to my blog!