Rescuers Down Under

What have we been up to?

2008-06-15T10:28:00.010+10:00

Hi Readers!

It's been a long time. We have been pretty busy and I'm finally taking the time to try and catch up on our blog. Last we left off, we had gone to Cairns and Ayers Rock with our friends. That was back in March and it's already June! What have we been doing since?

At end of March, we went on a surf weekend with work. Finally, David was going to learn how to surf and he loved it! Ever since then, he's been trying to go almost every weekend. I've only gone with him once because it was autumn and now winter. He refused to go with me over the summer, so I refuse to go over the colder months. Luckily, he's still able to find some other friends to go with him. Here he is with Matt before they went out.

Sometime in early May, we decided to check out Olympic Park, which is pretty far from the city. Lily, David and I made the trek out there from Manly. We decided to rent bikes to check out the park.

We ended up at this strange construction in the middle of the park. You can walk around the ring that's elevated from the ground. It was built for the olympics, but has no real purpose. It's over a lake and had some information about the history of brickies in the area.

We decided to pay money to enter the aquatic center even though we weren't dressed to go swimming. There were lots of families in the center because of this fun kids area! What Olympic sport involves slides and kiddie pools?

This looks more like the aquatic sports that I remember at the Olympics.

Here are the diving boards in the center and no one in the stands except for us.

The big adventure of our day was the fact that we rented a tandem bike! At first, we tried having David lead the bike and be the person in front, but it ended in a couple of disasters. At one point, David ended up sprawled in the middle of the road. So, we changed it up and had me become the leader and obviously it worked out perfectly.

We didn't mean to match, but this is what I would use to prove that we're ready for Amazing Race.

After we returned our bikes, we wandered around the souvenier shop and I found this cute set of animals that were barbequing.

In the middle of May, we also made a trip home, which was much needed. We stopped in San Francisco for 2 days to spend time with Sophia/Eddie and Elaine/Jim. We also looked at some houses to get an idea of what we could buy when we move out there. We learned that our money won't get us too much, but we determined that we'll rent out Sophia and Eddie's extra bedroom for the first couple of months while we keep looking! I can't wait to hang out with them all the time instead of only for mini reunions!

After San Francisco, we made it to Boston and saw Steph and Robin before spending some quality time with our family and other Boston friends. It was great being able to see everyone especially Cindy and Sarah who we hadn't seen since they last visited!

My last couple of days on the East Coast were spent with Anita looking at wedding dresses before heading back to Australia.

After we got back, we spent a weekend in Bondi so that we could attend a pirate party. As I've mentioned before, the Australians love theme parties as well as dressing up. Here's a photo of two of the best dressed as well as my only photo from the party. Anton makes a pretty good creepy pirate while Andrew looks like a cross between George Washington and pirate (if you could see his whole outfit).

After this weekend, I ended up getting pretty sick and it was the weekend before we went to Fraser Island. I tried to get healthy quickly, but I wasn't 100% when we left.

Next up, our trip to Fraser Island. We spent 3 days on the island and 1 day in Brisbane. It was extremely fun and can't wait to show you photos. Hopefully, I'll show you photos within this week!

Our final leg - Ayers Rock

2008-05-04T15:07:00.020+10:00

Sorry for the delay! It's been busy since our visitors have left. In Cairns, we parted ways from Adam and Brandon who went back to the US. The rest of the crew caught a flight to Ayers Rock. We went from luscious green lands of Queensland and landed in an alien part of the country. The ground was mostly red, very flat and little vegetation. We had landed in the Northern Territory.

After renting our super van, we drove immediately to the Olgas, which is a rock formation near Ayers Rock. Here we are approaching the Olgas.

Before we went, we were warned of the number of flies in this part of the country. We ended up having to constantly wear these fly nets on our head.

Eddie braved without his net, but look at the number of flies are on his and Jim's back. Gross! Even if you moved around, they would instantly come back and land on you again.

Here we are at the beginning of our hike. We were excited that it was cloudy otherwise it would have been steaming hot.

Along th trail, there were some pretty cool views of the surrounding rocks and land.

Finally, we reached a halfway point in the hike where we were in valley.

The only problem with the hike was that we started around 11 AM. We didn't have too much water or food, but started on a long hike. We rationed out Kit Kats when we were all finally starving. After the hike, we drove to the Sunset viewing spot for the Olgas. Since the weather had cleared out, it was amazing to see the Olgas after we had hiked through it.

We checked into our hotel, which was the cheapest place in the whole "resort" area. After finally feeding our stomaches with lunch, we decided to go to the grocery store to stock up on food. We ended up deciding that we'd eat some ramen for dinner to save some money. Look at all the ramen!

We finally went to Ayers Rock for sunset. This rock is HUGE.

As the sun was slowly going down, we ended up taking many different photos in front of the rock. This was our girls only photo, lifting Elaine up.

This was the guys only photo.

The rock changed colors as the sun went down and we got together to take a normal group photo.

While we watched the sunset, we feasted on some cheese and crackers with little saucer cups of wine. We didn't have any real cups so we had to improvise with whatever we could find at our "hotel".

After the sun had gone down, we drove back to the hotel and played many rounds of dominos until late in the evening. Then we had to get up at the crack of dawn to go watch sunrise at Ayers Rock. When we arrived at the viewing area, the moon was still visible.

The viewing areas allow you to see the rock change colors as the sun goes up or down. Therefore if you turn around from the rock, there are usually some impressive sky photos.

The sunrise was not as exciting as the sunset, but we were now at the rock. We went to the Cultural Centre to learn more about the history of Ayers Rock before walking a bit around the base of the rock. Here was a rock formation near a watering hole that looked like a heart.

We hadn't seen too many creatures in the wild at Ayers Rock until the last hour we were there. As we walked back to the car, we were able to see this lizard on a rock.

This is a photo of the crazy big ant we saw. Eddie was brave enough to stick out his foot to get the money shot.

We decided to drive around the whole rock and found this dingo on the side of the road. Dingos are famous for being rabid and stealing babies and eating them. We were fascinated by him, but ended up leaving him on the side of the road.

Finally, it was the end of our vacation with our friends. We went to the airport to fly back to Sydney. Thanks so much for visiting. It was awesome!

Last weekend, I went to Melbourne for the long weekend to spend some time with David. I forgot to bring the camera, but we had a pretty good weekend. We explored the city some more as well as rented a car to drive to the Macedon Ranges. It's considered spa country because of the number of spas in the area. The spas were all opened due to the mineral springs in the area. First, we went to Hanging Rock, which is a volcanic rock formation and walked around there. Then we visited a small winery before we went to the town. It had been raining on and off all day, but we decided to take a short hike to one of the springs. The spring ended up being completely disappointing. It was just a well with a pump that allowed you to taste the metallic water. On our way back, it started downpouring on us, BUT the only highlight was that we got to see a live echidna! After we got drenched, we went to the spa for our treatments before we finally drove back to Melbourne.

On Sunday, we went to the outlet malls and then to a footy match. Apparently, footy in Victoria means Aussie Rules Football, but footy in Sydney means Rugby. We got to cheer on the Sydney team before it ended up in a DRAW! Yes, that's right, they have draws in their games. It made the end of the game very exciting since Sydney came back to almost win, but in the end all of the fans left slightly dejected. The best part of Sunday was that we had dinner at Nobu in the casino. The food was delicious.

Since I've been working with so many locals, I've decided to start posting about the interesting phrases that I learn at work. I learn at least 1 every 2-3 days. My very first one was "Script". Since Australians hate using long words, they've shortened the word Prescription to Script. It's used like "I'm going to go pick up a script" and even the receipt has the word "script" printed on it!

Kuranda

2008-04-20T20:41:00.020+10:00

After a short break from blogging, I realized that I left my readers (if they are still there) hanging. So without further ado, we continue on our holiday! After the diving trip, we decided to sleep in and figure out what to do the next day after we got up.

Last minute, we decided to take the skyrail to Kuranda, which is a small town within a rainforest. Here we are climbing into our 6 person gondola.

As we climbed up to the mountain tops, there was an amazing view behind us. Doesn't this photo look fake? It was not photoshopped at all!!

Unfortunately, there side was not as exciting as ours. At least they were the ones who got to enjoy the great view behind us!

Elaine and Sophia were trying to get as close to the window as possible.

Along the way to Kuranda, the gondola has 2 stops that you can get out of. The first one, we got to walk around and learn about the rainforest. We found a vine hanging out over the boardwalk, so we acted like monkeys. First, there was Eddie trying to swing around.

Elaine got some pretty good high onto the vine.

After learning about the rainforest, we went to the next station. David was leading the way for us.

The second station was the Barron Falls. Unfortunately, it was hard for us to take a photo with people and the massive falls.

There was a little information center where we studied about rainforest creatures and food.

Elaine used the microscope to observe the veins in leaves and other random objects.

After our sky ride, we reached Kuranda! The cassowary was here to welcome us.

After walking around the town in the heat, we found this fun mural and acted like little kids.

Eddie practiced his didgeridoo playing skills.

We finished exploring the town in time to catch the train back to the city!

Even though we had assigned seats, we all took turns squatting in the aisle and looking out the windows.

We got to see some more falls on the way back as well as all different views of the rainforest and eventually the coast line.

The most irritating part of the trip was the girl who had a window seat and slept for the entire trip. GRRR!!!

Since it was our last night in Cairns, we decided to go all out and had a fancy dinner. We sampled kangaroo as well as emu. Everyone seemed to enjoy both meats and wished they had been more experimental earlier in the trip!

The next stop in our journey was Ayers Rock.

Overnight Dive Trip!

2008-04-09T18:55:00.012+10:00

The next morning, we took a small boat to our overnight dive boat. After a short briefing of the boat and lunch, we were then off in the water on our first dive. It was pretty amazing the different things we got to see and also touch. We touched different sea cucumbers and the inside of large clams. Our first dive was a little bit scary since I was getting close to running out of air! I indicated to our guide that I was low and at the time, it seemed as if we weren't getting ready to go up. I was a bit worried, but ended up being okay.

Sophia and I are on our dive deck after our first dive!

Our gear was all lined up next to each other.

After we got out of the water and dried off a bit, the boat would move to a new location before we would dive again. Eddie's ready to go out again!

Our 2nd dive of the day, the group of us volunteered to be videotaped by a guy. It was great because we got a free guide and later in the evening, we got to see us in the water touching things. We ended up buying a copy of the DVD and I can't wait to see it!

After the 2nd dive, we had dinner and then had to get ready for our night dive! David, Adam, Brandon and I had signed up for an adventure diver course. This meant we had an instructor us showing us around for 3 of the 6 dives we were going to be going on. The first class was for the night dive.

David and I are helping each other get ready.

After all the gear is on, don't forget your buddy check!

We're all ready to go!

Adam and Brandon are ready to jump in!

The night dive was one of the scariest things I have ever done in my life. While we were going down, I was super nervous. As we swam around the ocean, it was hard to look around for signs of any creatures. We did see a crustacean and lots of red bass, who use our flashlights to hunt for other fish.

After going to bed early, we were woken up at 5:30 am for a 6:00 am dive. We went off with our class again and did a deep dive. We dove to 28 m! It was crazy deep, but very interesting. Afterwards, our instructor showed us around the best dive site of the trip. There were coral and fish everywhere! We also swam through a small swim through in between the coral.

After our deep dive, we had breakfast and then it was time to get ready for the next dive already. This time, our class was to learn how to navigate underwater. We were sent off in our buddy pairs to do some manuevers underwater before exploring the site alone. The goal was to explore and then surface near the boat. David and I ended up doing pretty fine even though we didn't go where we expected. At least, we made it by the boat!

As we were hanging out with Sophia and Eddie, we realized that Adam and Brandon still hadn't returned. All of a sudden, we heard the signal for any divers to surface in case of emergency. We went to check it out and of course, Chaos were missing. That means the boat was looking for Chaos. They eventually surfaced 100 m away from the boat and had to be brought back through a dingy. The only reason they surfaced was because they were low on air. They were so far away that they didn't hear the signals! Obviously, they had failed the navigation part of our class, but were still considered as passing.

For our last dive of our trip, David and I finally got to dive with Sophia and Eddie! Eddie was our psuedo guide. I was very impressed with his navigation skills. We finished exploring our last reef and were able to spend the rest of the afternoon lounging on the deck.

I definitely want to go back to the Great Barrier Reef again! Hopefully we'll go again before we leave!

After we returned from the dive, we had to spend a day in Cairns before flying. Our day of relaxation/rainforest is next...

Cairns Tropical Zoo

2008-04-06T08:40:00.018+10:00

On Thursday, we all headed to Cairns in our own ways. David and I flew from Sydney on a different flight from Adam and Brandon, who were also leaving from Sydney. Sophia and Eddie flew directly to Cairns through Melbourne, while Elaine and Jim connected through Sydney (but were still on a different flight from any of us coming out of Sydney). Amazingly we all landed in the same airport about 1 hour apart from each other.

After we checked in, we tried to go to the Cairns Tropical Zoo as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, due to bad taxi service, it took us about an hour to even get transportation. Luckily for us, we still had time at the zoo to see plenty of the shows and tour the whole zoo.

As soon as we entered, there was a bird waiting for Eddie to play with him.

We headed over to the wombat exhibit to hear a talk about koalas. After learning about the koalas and wombats, the lady brought the koala around so we could pet him.

BUT we didn't go to the zoo to just pet the koala, we went to the zoo to CUDDLE one! Besides the standard photo that they gave us, they allowed us to take our own photos as well. Here's a group shot. Lucky Sophia got to be the one holding her.

In the koala exhibit, there was mommy with her joey.

We also got to hang out with a sleeping wombat. Sophia and Eddie practiced their chilling skills with him.

Then, I got to wrestle with a saltwater crocodile. The zoo people made sure that I held onto him tight so he wouldn't get away. I felt like I was going to hurt him.

Like almost all the zoos in Australia, there was a petting/feeding area for the kangaroos. Unlike the one in Tasmania, these kangaroos weren't scared of anything. They let Jim chill out with them.

I was able to feed one out of my hand.

Our final show of the day was the free flight bird show. They had all these trained birds swooping around the top of our heads. There was this really pretty pink cockatoo.

This white cockatoo was super trained. He could respond to simple commands as well as jump around on a rock pretending to be a kangaroo.

As the zoo person was discussing about the barn owl, he appeared out of his hole in the tree. It was like magic. Later, we discovered there was a small box holding the owl and at the right time, the box was opened so the owl would appear.

The final exhibit of the show was an eagle! It almost took the head off of a little kid, but it was pretty amazing to see it up close.

Even though all the girls were the only ones who paid to cuddle a koala, we made sure to get a photo of Eddie with his koala. =)

After the zoo closed, we went into Cairns center and walked around. After dinner, we headed back to our accommodations to get some rest before waking up early to go DIVING!

Day 2 in Sydney with the Gang

2008-04-05T15:57:00.009+11:00

After everyone woke up at 7am, I finally strolled back into our apartment around 8am. David and I had decided to crash at our friend's place since trying to fit 6 people in our little place was not ideal. Since it was gorgeous outside, we decided that it would be a beach day. We took the ferry over and sat in the front row outside.

See how we could get photos without anyone's head in our way...

Elaine and Jim are enjoying the sun!

Since we wanted to meet up with Chaos, who were already in the city, we decided to head to Darling Harbour to walk around before heading to Bondi. We stopped by Town Hall and took a photo before continuing on our journey.

Of course, we wanted to get a group photo in front of the Real World house.

Finally, we arrived at Bondi Beach. After fulfilling everyone's desire of fish and chips, we settled into the sand. The amazing parts about this beach is that there are very few fat people (maybe none), there are lots of men in speedos and there are lots of topless women. I think almost everyone (except me) decided to leave their mark in the ocean since they were too lazy to find a real bathroom.

Even though we weren't that hungry, we decided to get a snack at Bite Me. The mini burger hit the spot!

Since it was St. Patty's day, we felt like we had to drink something. I brought them to Kings Cross and we went to a bar called the Goldfish Bowl. We asked if they could make Irish Car Bombs, but apparently, it's not a popular drink in Australia. The bartender had to figure out how much he was going to charge us for them. Here we are drinking as fast as possible. Look how Eddie is basically done and I've just started.

By stopping in Kings Cross, I was really dragging them to eat at Pie Face. Even though there are lots of locations of Pie Face, I can only remember to drag people to the one in King Cross. At least it's also a good tourist point.

The next day, Elaine, Sophia, Jim and Eddie headed off to Melbourne for 2 days, and we were going to meet up with them in Cairns. I spent those 2 days working and having dinner with Adam and Brandon. We watched a decent amount of tv and had more fish and chips.

Next stop in our journey: Cairns (Great Barrier Reef)

Reunion! - Day 1

2008-04-02T20:05:00.014+11:00

After Steph left me alone, 2 of my favorite girls came to Australia with their boys. The Chaos also came at the exact same time. We went from a couple of guests to having 6!

After uniting in Circular Quay, we went straight to the markets for some shopping and food tastes!

Of course, I had another kangaroo race. No video this time, but I think I lost again!

Jim hoisted Elaine up on her shoulders despite her protests. Luckily, she still smiles for photos regardless.

We gave our cameras to some other people to get a group photo. Unfortunately, the tourist didn't understand the concept of the zoom feature.

As we walked to the Opera House, we were lured into this street performer. By the time she fit herself into this box, half of our group managed to burn their feet.

Finally a GOOD group photo with the bridge.

After giving the tour of the Opera House, we headed to the Botanial Gardens. We ended up hanging out with some rocks and eating doritos.

Elaine tried to jump from one to the other.

Then, Adam tried to do a handstand on a tall rock.

Which propelled Jim to try to do one on a shorter rock. He didn't quite make it up straight.

Dave was looking all GQ.

Since it was getting close to dusk, the bats are were starting to fly around. We stood their watching the bats for a relatively long time before we decided it was time to eat.

After our long day in Sydney, we went back to Manly and convinced Charlie and Lily to throw a BBQ for us and our friends. The jetlagged crew barely made it to dinner before they ended up passing out. But don't worry, the jet lag caused them to wake up at 7am the next day!

Sorry for the delay in photos/posts! With the guests and work, we've barely had time to relax at home. I'm finally getting back into a routine. =)

Remainder of Steph/Robin/Ali's Trip

2008-03-18T22:49:00.003+11:00

After our weekend of fun, the girls went off to Hamilton Island and Melbourne, while David and I went to work. After they got back, we explored more of Sydney with some yum cha, bridge walking and some pool time. On Monday, Robin and Ali left to go back to the working world while Steph and I spent the rest of the week doing a combination of nothing (which was perfect) and exploring Sydney.

Instead of posting ton of photos, I'm going to leave the link to this awesome video that Steph made of her time in Sydney.

http://www.vimeo.com/785725

A couple of notes of the video.

1. We never had music to dance too. We just danced.
2. The kangaroo that is pushed over is my kangaroo. Yes, I was trying to cheat to win.
3. The Rocks corn is the most delicious.

Sophia/Eddie, Elaine/Jim and Chaos are here for the week. It's been awesome to see everyone in Sydney and show them aronud. We're all going to Cairns (Great Barrier Reef) this Thursday. I can't wait to see some pretty fish and coral. Hopefully there won't be any sharks!

Mardi Gras Party and Parade!

2008-03-12T20:29:00.012+11:00

Steph, Robin and Ali arrived into Sydney on Friday, February 29. They came in an extra day early so that they didn't skip the leap year day while on the plane! After they arrived, we spent the day in Manly showing the girls around our area and trying to stay awake. We sent them off on a Manly to Spit Walk in the afternoon. When they returned, they weren't sure why they had decided to do a 6 mile hike after a 14 hour plane ride. =)

On Saturday, we headed into the city to explore the Opera House and the Rocks market. We got some corn on the cob which was delicious and did some dancing near the ferry. We rushed back to Manly so we could get ready for Gay Mardi Gras! Don't worry, we went all out by spending our money at Price War and Crazy Prices.

All of us had feather boas that were pastel colored and silver pieces in them. I spent the following week trying to vacuum those feathers and silver pieces up!! We also got safety whistles to be used in case someone got lost in the group.

Robin and I had on angel wings that are peeking out of our back.

Ajay, Dave and Charlie. I think Charlie is the odd man out in this group.

Alex, Jess and Casey. Casey's face paint was courtesy of me! What does the black things look like?

David and I are gay! (you know, happy)

The best costume of the night were the Hottie Police. The girls had found "hottie police" caps, garters, badges and leggings at a store and got matching gear to complete the outfits.

Ali had a light up tiara that was made for a little child's head. We got it to stay in her hair with some binder clips.

After the parade started, we headed over there from our friend's party. The crowds were already multiple rows deep. We had to walk down a couple of blocks before inching forward slowly to get a better view.

Finally, we were close enough to start seeing floats and people dancing in the parade.

Steph, David and I are smooshed in the crowd.

There were tons of people dancing around in the parade in so many different costumes.

As soon as the parade ended, we ran back to catch the ferry. Along the way, we saw lots of drunk people, heard lots of people peeing in the bushes and were able to get on the ferry in time! By rushing home, we were able to avoid the fights and drama that ensued in the streets.

Queenstown

2008-03-10T22:47:00.016+11:00

After leaving Wanaka, we drove through a very windy road up into the mountains and then back down. There were some amazing views of the mountains as we drove down.

After arriving in Queenstown, we checked in and went to the famous Fergburger for dinner. This place has delicious burgers. If you get the chance to eat there when you're in Queenstown, you should definitely try it!

The next morning, David, Dad and I went up the gondola to look at the views and try out the SkyLuge. At the top, there was a display of what the gondola cars used to look like. Wombat wished he had been able to go up one of these classic ones.

Below is the view of Queenstown. It's located right next to a lake. From the top, we saw people parasailing, which was fun to watch.

Here's the chairlift for the sky luge that we were going to go down. The SkyLuge has two small tracks where you can race down in these small luge cars.

On the way up, you got a beautiful view of Queenstown. We were able to get a photo of Dad on our way up for the first time!

This adventure was LOTS of fun. I'd also recommend definitely doing the SkyLuge if you can.

After lunch, David and I broke off from Mom and Dad to go canyoning. Here's our group posing in front of the Canyon track that we were about to go on.

We had to go into the water before our saftey speech. The water was cold!

After a short hike, we went ziplining across the canyon!

Then, we waited in line to go to down rappelling. Look at how big our instructor was!

Besides ziplining and rappelling, we did some jumping into some pools.

We were able to get a shot of us with a waterfall in the background in between some of our activities.

One of our final things was to dive/belly flop into a shallow pool. I was so excited to go in!

Finally, after we finished the canyon track, we jumped in excitement!

In our final day in Queenstown, we walked around a market and relaxed. It was nice to spend some time with David's parents before we headed off to our respective destinations.

After David's parents left, we had a couple of days to ourselves before Steph, Robin and Ali came into town!

Side note: Please be careful on clicking on comments, random people have been adding comments that say "See Here". Please don't click on them since we most likely don't know them.

Wanaka - The Drive and Puzzling World

2008-03-10T08:15:00.019+11:00

After the walk through the glacier, we set off to Wanaka! On the way, we stopped at some lookout points and admired the beautiful colored water.

About halfway there, we stopped at Haas to get some lunch. You'd expect Haas to be a town around the size of the glaciers, but it was actually smaller. There was only 1 restaurant by the edge of town. It was called Antler Lodge (or something to that effect). Inside all the taps were made of antlers.

They also had antlers all over the tops of their bar area.

After Haas, we drove along two large lakes for a long time.

When we finally reached Wanaka, we headed straight to the Rippon winery. Their winery had the most gorgeous views of Lake Wanaka. Here's the view from their cellar door.

This winery would be a great place to work. Look at the background that you'd get to stare at when you're dilly dallying.

As the sun sets, it would illuminate the mountains in the background.

The next morning, David, Dad and I went on a super long mountain biking ride along the water. It was a lot of fun and a lot of hard work. All of our bums were sore from the bike seat for the next couple of days! After lunch, we went to visit Puzzling World.

The first thing we visited was the illusion rooms. The room that I'm currently in has all these concave faces that look as if they are constantly looking at you and sticking out of the wall.

We also went into this room, where the floor was sloped 15 degrees. It was hard to walk around, but there were some fun illusions. Look at how David was able to stand tilting forwards so easily.

We thought this room was fun since it made me look like I was a giant compared to David.

We had to get the reverse photo as well to prove that I actually have not grown THAT big while I've been here. =) The cool thing about the room was that they had a video delay so that after you left the room, you could see yourselves in the room. In case you didn't have some parents sitting at the window waiting to capture your photos.

After the illusion rooms, we headed into the life-size maze. This was a lot of fun. It reminded me of Amazing Race a bit. We split up and decided to try and race through the maze. You had to find all 4 corners of the maze before heading to the exit point.

David and I ended up finishing relatively quickly and were trying to help Mom and Dad through the maze. Eventually they gave up and came out of the emergency exit.

Even the bathrooms were fun to play in.

Right before we left, I almost sat on the tower! Ouch!

After our fun time in Wanaka, we were heading to Queenstown, which was our final town in New Zealand.

To Fox Glacier We Go

2008-03-06T20:52:00.020+11:00

After our short time in Christchurch, we had a long drive ahead of us to make it to the glaciers. The best way to drive was to go through Arthur's pass, which meant we saw lots of mountains. On the way up, we stopped at this point to look at the strange rock formations that were randomly spread out.

How did these rocks get on these mountains?

We walked to the base of the where the rocks started, but since we had a long drive, we weren't going all the up. Look at the amazing mountains that we were surrounded by.

On the way to the glaciers, we stopped at this small town to look at some stores. David had been seeing sheep all day long that he decided that he wanted to be like one.

Jade from New Zealand is a big thing, but it's actually different from Chinese jade. They also tended to carve different shapes to represent different meanings. If you look closely, you can see my little friend hiding in the jade.

We ended up spending the night at Fox Glacier, which is the lesser known location of the 2 glaciers. Both of them are pretty close to each other. I would only recommend Fox Glacier because Lake Matheson is 5 minutes from the town.

We got to cross this bridge to get to our walking path. The bridge was fun since it would move around while you walked on it. If a lot of people were walking at once, it made you feel as if you were drunk while walking!

The key to coming to Lake Matheson is to come in the early morning. It's when the lake will be calm and the sun won't be too high in the sky. Then you can get some amazing photos with the reflections of the mountains and trees.

After we finished circling the lake, we drove to the parking area for Fox Glacier. We had decided to visit the glacier from a distance for free instead of paying NZ$85/person for a 4 hour hike and walking on the actual glacier. There was this stream running from the glacier and I think this sign was telling you to go swim in it.

Watch out for the falling rocks by posing as if you were a body builder.

The glacier is just a mountain of ice hidden between these two mountains. It seems to magically appear.

This was as close as we could get to the glacier. The weather was significantly colder closer to the glacier and in the shade compared to when we were in the parking lot.

I was a rebel and went past the boundaries, but I made sure to do it after the tour guide left the area so I wouldn't get in trouble.

To get to the base of the glacier, we had to cross this small stream. It seemed like a good family photo moment as we hopped across back towards our car.

Finally, to give you all some perspective of how big these mountains were and how small the path was. That blue figure in the bottom middle is David sitting on a rock waiting for us.

After we explored the glacier, we were off to Wanaka!

Sorry about the delay in posts. Between all the visitors that we've had, I've been working a lot so it makes it harder to commit to posting every day. Hopefully I finish up New Zealand by the weekend so that I'm not so far behind!

Christchurch

2008-03-03T20:43:00.008+11:00

Sorry for the delay! We have another set of guests, who are currently enjoying Hamilton Island. I'm jealous of them and wish I could be with them instead of going to work.

After Blenheim, we headed South towards Christchurch. On the way there, we stopped at one place and saw some seals! There were adults and babies playing by the water's edge. It was super cute. =)

After arriving in Christchurch, we decided to head to the Antarctic Centre, which is very close to the international airport in Christchurch. If you stop by the international airport and have time, you should try to check it out!

The Antarctic Centre was filled with information about Antartica and penguins! They had this giant stuffed one waiting to play with wombat!

They also had this simulation chamber that would imitate storm conditions as if we were in the Antarctic. For some reason, we CHOSE to go in. They even provided parkas. We also had some booties that were to keep the snow clean.

They even had a mini igloo to demonstrate how it would shelter us from the wind storm that was coming! Afterwards, there was even an ice slide that we went on. Too bad we didn't get a photo of Dad falling on his butt!

We also found a stuffed seal which tried to eat wombat.

Poor David went into the storm chamber in shorts. At least it emphasized the fact that we made the right decision to go to Australia during Boston's winter!

After Christchurch, we were off to the Glaciers!

New Zealand - Blenheim ie. Wine Country!

2008-02-28T19:45:00.014+11:00

After waking up at 4:30 AM or was it taking a cab at 4:30?? hmm. Anyways, after checking into our international flight, we made it to New Zealand. David and I were on separate flights from our parents, so we arrived in New Zealand a couple of hours ahead of them. Unfortunately, they must have arrived after multiple international flights landed, so instead of clearing customs quickly like us, they ended up having to run from the international terminal to the domestic terminal! It reminded me of our honeymoon, when David and I were running from place to place!

Anyways, after getting on our TINY plane to Blenheim. We got our rental car and made it to our hotel. While unpacking, I found that a little creature had decided to come on our journey with us...

Since it appeared that everyone liked to see the wombat more than they liked us, we had to get one of our own! He was quite excited to be traveling to New Zealand with us.

The first night in Blenheim, we walked into town, which was essentially empty and dead even though it was only 5:30 PM. After a delicious meal, we headed back to the hotel and relaxed while reading a book. The wombat wanted to read about Australia with David.

The next morning, we took a wine tour of the Marlborough region in New Zealand. Our first stop was Wither Hills. Even from this simple shot, you could already tell that New Zealand was going to be beautiful. Look at the vineyard with the background of mountains!

The wombat got a little thirsty and was hoping that something would come out of the barrel.

Unlike his last wine tour, wombat got up and close with the vines.

Since it was getting closer to ripening season, the vineyards will end up clipping some leaves and placing nets over their vines. This enables them to ripen quicker and keep the birds from eating the plump fruit. Wombat enjoyed climbing up the netting!

Our next stop was Matua Winery, which had many fun and intersting things to play with. We found this life size cage for David.

Wombat also almost got eatten alive by this fake crocodile!

For lunch, we stopped at a winery and was able to order a meal before sampling the wines. We found that there was a fun display of corks for wombat to spin around on.

One of the more interesting wineries we went to was Bladen, which is a boutique winery. They had a little shack as their cellar door unlike most of the other wineries we went to, which had huge buildings. Inside, they had a mini grape press that the wombat tried to use.

One of the more well known wineries that we stopped at was Forrest. It was great to learn about the wines and see the varieties they had, but what we didn't like was that they normally would have charged a fee for wine tasting (where as most other places are free). And they only allowed us to sample 6 of their 16 wines.

Our final winery was Cloudy Bay, which was overpriced wines. But the best part was they had crackers for us to enjoy for free!

After all these wines, we were ready to have a simple meal. Later that night, we taught our parents how to play dominoes, which ended up being a non-stop game for the rest of our trip!

Update - Random Photos and Visiting Family!

2008-02-26T18:24:00.023+11:00

Sorry for the delay in updates! It's not as if we haven't been doing fun stuff, but I just haven't had any time to update the blog.

While Sarah was still in town, we saw this statue being built. It was just randomly built between the Rocks and Circular Quay. It was made of fake plastic peaches, that looked very real.

On February 3rd, there was a Manly Open Swim, which was a 1K, 2K or 10K swim and a couple of our friends decided to swim it. Don't worry, neither David or I tried it. Here's David and Nicole before the swim.

It was pretty intense before the 1K race. There were lots of people waiting to get in the water. The race was divided to start in different races for men, women, nippers (kids) and "back of the pack".

Here's one of the heats that started the race. Apparently, if you were in the water, you were either constantly kicking someone in the face, side, etc or someone else was kicking or clawing you! Looked pretty dangerous to me...

After the swim, we hosted a BBQ with our friends Charlie and Lily who have a sweet apartment. Three bedrooms, huge living room, wrap around balcony with a grill. It was a great way to spend a rainy afternoon.

On Monday night, we met up with David's Aunt Maddy and Uncle Sheldon for dinner. They were in town with their friends, Arnie and Judy. Unfortunately, it had been pouring rain in Sydney since they had arrived into the city, but they still seemed in relatively high spirits. We ended up dining at Pier, which was a restaurant that used to be a pier. Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos, but imagine a dining room that jutted out into the water. It was super skinny and long. Thank you so much Maddy, Sheldon, Arnie and Judy for the treat!

During dinner, we created a plan to surprise David's parents who were arriving later that week. The plan was to bring the parents to yum cha (aka dim sum) and David's aunt/uncle would be there as a surprise!

After lunch, we took a small break since it began to rain again before we met up at the Opera House. The ship behind them is the cruise that Maddy, Sheldon, Judy and Arnie were boarding. It was a 21 day cruise!

After we walked around Circular Quay, we decided to bring them to the Rocks and ended up at the Argyle for some drinks. The downstairs had interesting types of chairs. It was either a big circular booth, which we chose to sat in. The other option was a couch like chair that had a table sticking out of it.

Amazingly, Mom and Dad were awake despite arriving that morning from San Diego.

Sheldon and Maddy were excited to spend time with all of us in Sydney!

The one thing that I have constantly heard about the Argyle was the bathrooms. So, we stopped by. When we entered, we saw these structures with a sink in the middle of a large room. There was no clear male/female sign.

The urinal was actually behind this cocoon shaped thing.

After Argyle, we ate at the Italian Villa that was in the Rocks. It was actually really good and after dinner, we finally called it a night. The next morning, after the parents visited the Aquarium, I met up with them for lunch and the afternoon. We walked around Darling Harbour and headed to Paddy's Market.

Eventually, we made it to Hyde Park and did some more walking around there. Amazingly enough, I was the one who was tired of walking and the parents could have kept going. Somehow, I managed to convince them it was time to take a rest and wait for David to meet us for dinner!

We ate in Darling Harbour and walked around and were able to enjoy the night time views.

We called it an early night because the next day was David's birthday! For David's birthday, we decided to do a Hunter Valley wine tour. First stop was Tempus Two. They had a lot of interesting wines to try. We ended up buying a dessert wine that was called Botrytis Riesling. Apparently, Botrytis is a disease that occurs to the grapes, so it's relatively hard to find this type.

We got to Hunter Valley around 10:00 AM, so it was a bit hard to imagine that we were going to start drinking so early! Here's the birthday boy with bottles and bottles of wine.

Next stop was McGuigan Wines. The bartender was a bit slow in pouring our samples, so we eventually gave up the wine tasting and went to cheese tasting!

We ended up having a light lunch in this little village that contained cellar doors, other small shops and cafes. Our "light" lunch was foccacia sandwiches and salads that could have fed at least double the amount of people.

One of our final stops was at this one vineyard that had some amazing views. This place was different because we didn't try any wines. Instead we had many different schnapps like liquors.

After our wine tour, we decided to bring the parents to Manly since they hadn't seen where we lived. It was a beautiful day so we decided to sit ouside on the ferry.

The final days in Sydney, we went to a symphony with the parents before we walked around to Woolloomooloo and got some meat pies, an Australian staple. Afterwards, the parents went to Melbourne for a couple days. They came back Friday afternoon and were able to spend the afternoon with David in Manly.

They walked to Shelley Beach and did a small hike near Shelley Beach.

On Saturday morning, we woke up at 4:30 AM to head to the airport for New Zealand!

Sydney Aquarium and Wildlife World

2008-02-11T08:34:00.000+11:00

Sarah and I spent the next day looking at all types of animals. First stop, Sydney aquarium. We found this friendly shark at the entrance. Does he look familiar to you?

In Australia, they always have these long-necked turtles. Look how long the neck is for this little guy. They look kind of funny to me.

There was a large salt water crocodile in the aquarium and you could look at him either on his level or walk up and take a look at him from the top. This sign was funny. It says "If the fall doesn't kill you, the crocodile will"

Besides the typical fish, there was some octopus that loved to hug the glass.

We also got to see some little penguins. These poor guys probably have terrible eyesight from all the people taking photos of them with flashes.

There was one whole tank of jellyfish. Sophia, this is for you!

We managed to catch the seal feeding and watch them constantly catch fish. I was able to capture this guy with a fish still in his mouth.

Sarah's holding a shark egg. The material of it is similar to what your nails are made of. It's circular/cone shaped so that they won't get swept away in the currents.

We found a shark tank and these big sharks were resting on the top of the tunnel.

There was another touch pool that allowed us to touch this sea cucumber. He was pretty squishy.

At the end of the aquarium, we sat down and just watched these fish/sharks/manta rays swim around.

After the aquarium, we headed to Sydney Wildlife World, which is right next to the aquarium. There was a butterfly exhibit, insects/bugs, reptiles and animals. This reptile has a tail that looks like his head to defend himself from other animals.

This guy got a pretty big cage compared to the other reptiles.

We also saw a lot of kangaroos lounging around and we wanted to join them.

Sarah was pretending to eat like the kangaroos and I caught her in mid munch.

The best part of our day was seeing the wombat. Unfortunately for us, he was sleeping the whole time. He's lying on his back all sprawled out!

We also saw a small koala exhibit. This guy was so cute!

After walking around all day, we took a break at a bar near Circular Quay before heading to Shangrila, which has a bar on their top floor. We met up with David before heading over there. There was a storm rolling in and we were able to watch some crazy lightning as it rolled over the city.

After our drink at Shangrila, we headed to Rockpool for a delicious dinner with Casey, Nicole, and Avaleigh. It was so yummy and a great way to end Sarah's trip in Australia. Sarah, we hope you had a great time!

Sarah's in Sydney

2008-02-10T21:12:00.000+11:00

After Tasmania, Sarah and I couldn't wait for a relaxing day in Manly. Our first day back in Sydney, we spent the morning relaxing by the pool. After grabbing some lunch, we rented some snorkeling gear and headed towards Shelley Beach. We spent the afternoon looking at fish and sea urchins! We ended up making dinner for David before heading to Max Brenner for some chocolate. =)

The next day, we headed into the city. Our first stop was the significant other's lunch at Doyle's in Watson's Bay. Luckily Sarah was able to join in for free! The food and view were pretty amazing. Sarah and Nicole enjoyed the view from the restaurant.

Back on the pier, we took a photo of Doyle's Restaurant before heading back into the city.

After lunch, we walked around the Rocks and took some fun photos.

Finally, we met up with David and headed to the Opera! We went to watch La Boheme and took this illegal photo.

During intermission, we were able to catch some nighttime photos with the city as a background.

The opera was very good! It was my first opera ever and it was great to watch La Boheme since the storyline of Rent is based off of the opera. Thanks Sarah for suggesting to go! On our way home, Sarah captured this excellent photo of the Opera house.

Hopefully, I'll be able to get our aquarium photos up tomorrow! David's parents are in town, so we've been spending the days with them exploring Sydney and celebrating David's birthday.

Tasmania - Day 3 - Port Arthur and Tasmania Devil Conservation Park

2008-02-06T19:14:00.000+11:00

After eating our fill of berries, we headed down towards Port Arthur area. Along the way, we stopped by the side of the road to take some photos!

We reached Port Arthur, but found out that we had to pay to visit the ruins. We found this lookout so that we could take a look at it. Port Arthur is an old prison that was used a long time ago.

Casey and David with the view of Port Arthur in the back!

After Port Arthur, we visited the Tasmania Devil Conservation Park. We had to pay to go in, but it was definitely worth it! We got to see some baby tasmania devils wander around. Nicole kept saying that tasmania devils were evil and not cute, but I think I'd have to disagree. I think it's because we never saw them being fed. She claims they sound evil and can act like a rabid animal.

Almost all tasmania devils have this cute little white stripe across their chest.

We thought we were done seeing tasmania devils, but Casey and David found some more in another pen.

They also had some cages with cockatoos and parrots. One of them came over to say hi to Casey.

Sarah really enjoyed the look of the kookaburra. They are supposed to have a sound like a crazy laugh.

Afterwards, we were able to go into a habitat of kangaroos and wallabies. We could get as close to them as possible. I tried to creep up to them, but they knew I was coming.

David and Sarah were able to get much closer than me without them being worried.

This kangaroo was Sarah's favorite in the group.

The most interesting was that there were some joeys in the group that were still nursing from their mothers!

Casey and David tried to approach this kangaroo, but he didn't even seem to look at them!

Finally, there was a cage that had these birds. They were just sleeping so peacefully and leaning against each other. They were meant to blend in with the logs as well.

We left the park in time to catch our flight out of Hobart and with that our trip in Tasmania was over.

But don't worry! Sarah was still here for the rest of the week, and we still have lots of photos to share. =)

Day 3 - Tasmania - Berry Farms!

2008-02-03T22:34:00.000+11:00

On our final day in Tasmania, we actually covered a lot of ground. After getting a delicious breakfast, which I managed to escape paying an extra $12, we set off to check out some berry farms. The first farm was near Swansea and it was called Kate's Berry Farm. The berry farm had a wonderful view of the Freycinet National Park in the distance, but the most interesting news was that apparently Kate's old name used to be Kevin. We had gotten the town gossip while waiting for breakfast.

Nicole and Sarah enjoying the view of the berry farm, water and park.

The sad part about this berry farm was that it was mostly an old barn converted to selling berry products and pre-made berry food. There was no berries to be picked by us, so we quickly left to find a berry farm that we could enjoy a little more.

After we drove back towards Hobart, we went to the Sorrell Berry Farm. This one was much bigger and better. For only $6/person, we each got our own container to pick as much fruit as we wanted. Here was the selection that the farm had to offer.

Unfortunately, not everything was in season, but we started at the top of the hill where there were cherries. Here are our empty containers waiting to be filled with delicious fruit.

The first stop was the cherry trees! There were two types of cherries, which were the dark skinned ones with the dark flesh and these lighter pink/reddish ones that had white flesh. They were usually bundled together in clusters.

Nicole found a good cluster and Casey was hoping to steal it from her basket!

Sarah and I were trying to help each other get the cherries. Since some of the branches were filled at the top, we usually had to try and pull down the branch so another person could gather the yumminess.

After a short while, we decided it was time to check out the other berries that were in season. Nicole and I show off our initial cherry collections.

We had to head back down the hill to get to the other berries. We ended up picking some strawberries before attempting the other berries. They had silvanberries, which were a cultivated blackberry. Unfortunately, there were all these thorns while picking them and since I didn't like the taste that much, I gave up hunting for them quite quickly.

Instead, I dragged David back up to the cherry trees to do some more cherry picking. See how my basket is almost full?

David's just topping off his container too.

After our hard work, we had filled 5 containers with all types of berries and by the time we left, most of us were berried out.

Sarah and I kept our containers until we boarded our airplane. They had an announcement on the plane that we weren't supposed to bring fresh fruit back into Sydney from Tasmania. Even though I wasn't too hungry, Sarah and I ate most of the fruit in our containers. The worst part was that when we finally got off the plane, there was no one making us throw away our fresh fruit and we could have brought them home! Oh well.

Next up: Port Arthur and Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park.

Tasmania - Day 2 - Freycinet National Park

2008-02-03T22:00:00.000+11:00

After an early morning, we made our way up to Freycinet National Park. The park is about 3 hour drive from Hobart on the right side of Tasmania. Along the way, we saw some amazing views of water/moutains/farms. Everytime Nicole saw something great, she'd say "Everyone but Dave look to the right." As the driver, David didn't get to enjoy all the views as much as the rest of us. He had to concentrate on avoiding the road kill that was along the road everywhere. There were wallabies and kangaroos everywhere. =(

When we got to the National Park, I had to repack my bag in order to fit all the stuff we wanted to carry on a hike. Of course, this process took a bit longer than expected and ended up being photographed.

We ended up hiking to the Wineglass Bay lookout. We found this mushroom rock on the way up. Since Nicole was bounding up the mountain with endless energy, she was able to easily whip out her camera at times like this.

When we finally reached the lookout, you were able to see this amazing view.

The other exciting part of the lookout was the wild wallaby. Unfortunately, there were some kids around who weren't taught what to do with wildlife. Even though she was constantly scolded at, one little girl thought that the wallaby wanted sand thrown in its face. I wanted to throw some sand at her to see if she liked it, but I don't think her mother would have been too happy with me. Another older girl was fascinated with feeding the wallaby with grapes, nuts, chips, anything left behind from other hikers.

At one point, Dave and I got close enough to touch the wallaby. You can't tell from this photo, but I'm actually barely touching it. You don't know what kind of diseases this wild animal has!!

At one point, I scrambled up this big rock to get a fun picture with Nicole. Wineglass Beach, which is in these pictures, was our next destination.

The view from Wineglass Beach.

Despite the lack of the sun, we tried to play in the water for a bit, but it was not only cold, but the waves were all shore breaking. Later, we kind of saw a man who tried to body surf who ended up breaking his hand from landing on it. Look at the difference in color between me and Sarah!

As I was taking a nap, Sarah and Dave were checking out the water. We eventually saw some dolphins swimming in the bay. Some of them even jumped all the way out and flipped!

After a grueling hike back to the car, we were excited to be done with the physical activity for the day!

Though we were exhausted, Nicole convinced us to go to the blowhole in Bicheno. This was one of the better blowholes that I've seen in my life and water actually came up through it!

Casey was trying to help time the waves so that Sarah could capture the water as it came through. This is her indication that it's time to take the photo.

After Bicheno, we went to check into our hotel. We relaxed and showered before heading out to a long dinner at The Ugly Duck. Since we were all starving, we ended up ordering lots of food and even dessert! We loved the restaurant so much that we went there for breakfast the next morning.

Tasmania - Day 1 - Hobart

2008-01-31T09:37:00.000+11:00

On our first day in Tasmania, we spent Saturday morning at the Salamanca markets. This market is only open on Saturdays and has a combination of crafts, jewelry, clothing and food stalls that line up the street. It is probably the best market that we've seen in Australia, which is probably why we bought the most souveniers from it. Plus, when's the next time we'll be in Tasmania? Tasmania is known for their wood, which is very pretty. Our favorite was Sassafras, which tends to be a mix of dark/light wood.

After the market, we decided to take a cruise of the bays/water around Hobart.

Along the way, we saw some great cliffs. Besides the cliffs, the boat would sometimes stop and lower a video camera into the water. It would allow you to show the sea life underneath. The best part was when these globefish suddenly turned around and started staring into the camera. They seemed to think that we were one of them!

For most of the time, we tried to sit in the back of the boat, but then we couldn't hear the information about the things we were seeing. But the back of the boat had some great views. Here's a photo of David and Casey enjoying the back.

At some points, we would stop and look at certain things, which was when we'd move to the front of the boat. Yep, I'm holding two beers in this picture, but one of them is David's.

Our cruise provided us a very big lunch. There was ham, chicken, smoked salmon, oyster, potato salad and some other goodies. One of the best parts was the berry dessert! We got to eat while we slowly moved around the bay.

During our circling, we encountered some white bellied eagles. The boat tried to feed them with some fish, but they weren't hungry.

After lunch, we stopped at Peppermint Bay and were given the opportunity to walk around. Nicole was never in the photo since she was too busy snapping away.

There were some beautiful views of the water.

Peppermint Bay was a restaurant that provided our lunch. It was also holding a wedding in one of its private rooms when we were there. Nicole wanted to get a photo to remember the name of where we went.

In the back of the restaurant, there were these giant pillows that we used to rest before heading back onto the boat. David and Sarah were staring at the clouds, while Casey (in the lower left) had decided to take a nap.

On our way back to Hobart, we stopped at a salmon farm. The salmon were constantly jumping out of the water. It's natural for them to jump out of the water as if they were jumping upstream when they want to spawn. You can see the fist in the right side of this photo. It kind of just looks like a black mark.

On our way back, Sarah, David and I enjoyed the views of leaving Peppermint Bay.

After the cruise, we were pretty tired. We headed back to our hotel and dropped off some stuff before we got ready for dinner. We ended up eating along the streets of where the Salamanca market had taken place. While we were there, we saw at least 3 hen parties (aka bachelorette parties) along the street. Apparently, Hobart is a happening place. =)

Sarah's Visit - Day 1

2008-01-30T08:42:00.000+11:00

After traveling for over 34 hours with 2 layovers, Sarah finally arrived in Sydney!!! I met her at Circular Quay wharf and even though I had just gotten off the ferry, we got back on immediately to travel back to Manly. We dropped off her stuff and I showed her around Manly before we got the regular Australian food choice, fish and chips. We ate by the beach and enjoyed the weather. After some debate, we finally decided to head into the city. We dropped of our luggage at Bain before we walked around the city.

We walked to Lady Macquarie's Chair and ended up finding this great site to take a photo of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. Sarah also took an amazing panoramic with her camera, but I haven't gotten that photo yet!

In the Royal Botanical Gardens, we saw a wedding! It was just starting when we walked by and we felt really bad for them. They were essentially almost in a zoo since any tourists that walked by would stop and stare. The worst was this mom and 2 kids who were set up exactly behind the bride and groom and wouldn't move. They were ruining their pictures because otherwise they would have had a perfect view of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge.

As we walked around the Botanical Gardens, Sarah was pointing out flowers left and right! She was very excited to see the different varieties, but I had barely ever noticed all of them before. I must have forgot to tell her that bats fly around at night in the area because at one point, we looked up and there were hundreds of bats in the trees. Sarah got extremely worried and started running ahead since she thought the bats were going to dive down and attack her!

We took our time through the Rose Garden and took some beautiful photos of the roses that were in bloom!

After our walk around the Royal Botanical Gardens, we headed back to Bain to meet David, Casey and Nicole. The five of us were going to Tasmania for the weekend!! Poor Sarah had barely been in Sydney for less than 12 hours and she was already getting back onto a plane.

I was impressed at how she was never too jetlagged. She took a small nap on the plane to Hobart, before I woke her up to let her know that there was an empty seat next to us. After arriving in our motel/apartment, she managed to stay up until 10:30/11 PM, which was very impressive! Even better was the fact that she never woke up at 5 AM and couldn't go back to sleep like most of us.

Coming up next time: Photos of our time in Tasmania!!

Weekend Update - Darn Mosquitoes!

2008-01-20T15:33:00.000+11:00

Since this was our last weekend before we have streams of visitors, we packed in the social calendar with the Bainies. This was the first time that we had hung out with some of them since before the holidays. Unfortunately, it ended up raining for the first half of the weekend.

On Friday night, we trekked out to Paddington, where Casey and Nicole were house sitting. We had organized a pub crawl around the area and were taking advantage of being able to stay somewhere closer to the city. The group started off small with 6 of us, but as we went to each bar, more and more people had come out to join us. We were a pretty big moving group, but luckily with Nicole's navigation and David's time keeping, we moved along easily. Everyone was surprised that our pub crawl actually went to almost all the bars on the list.

On Saturday, we had a slow start in the morning and finally made it to Ben's apartment for a BBQ despite the rain. His apartment was able to hold a big crowd even though we weren't able to take advantage of his patio. We watched a lot of cricket and tennis while just relaxing. As the day progressed, it was more and more apparent that David and I had been a tasty treat to some mosquitoes. It's unclear when/where all the bites occurred, but since no one else at the BBQ was getting bit, we can only assume that it was while we had been sleeping.

Originally, we had planned to play some golf on Sunday, but since the weather hadn't been cooperating, David and I decided to head back to Manly. By the time we got home, I had developed around 20 mosquito bites, mostly on my arms. Luckily, David doesn't have as many bites as me and he has a little more self control so he's not scratching them as much as me!

Weekend Fun

2008-01-14T08:46:00.000+11:00

Since this is one of our last weekends without guests, we did a series of random activities with our favorite pair of people, Casey and Nicole. Here's a photo of them diving in the Great Barrier Reef. Doesn't it look amazing!

On Friday, we checked out a different type of movie theatre. It's called Govindas. You can get a package deal for dinner and a movie. They have an all vegetarian buffet and after you've stuffed yourself you go upstairs to let your food digest.

You get to lie down on these bed/couch like things while watching the movie. Luckily for us, there were 4 of us and they had some beds that were made for 4 people to share. Therefore, we weren't lying next to any strangers. We had decided to catch the earlier movie, which was smart because the later movie had tons more people in line. We couldn't figure out how all of them were going to fit into the theatre!

On Saturday, the original plan was to go to the pool or beach and then play some golf in the early afternoon. Since we were trying to rush too many things into the day, we decided to move golf to Sunday and we went to the pool all day. The four of us had our own raft so we were able to enjoy the sunshine lying around.

While Casey and Nicole went to a fancy, paid for dinner, I cooked David dinner. For dessert, we decided to check out Max Brenner, which is this chocolate dessert place that it's in our ferry terminal. We've found a new night time activity for the multiple guests that are about to arrive. We had chocolate fondue that was delicious and we finished it off with a cup of hot chocolate. Sugar overload!

On Sunday, we had brunch with Charlie and Lily, who just moved into our building. After brunch, we went to a bar to watch the Patriots win! Casey and Nicole also joined us at the bar along with Ben, Avaleigh and Ajay. Though there were many anti-Pats fans at the bar, we showed them who was the better team to cheer for.

After the game, the fantastic four headed over to the golf course as dark clouds started rolling in. Since the man at the pro shop didn't believe we'd be able to finish our 9 holes, he gave us a super discount. David and I paid $17 for both of our 9 holes. That's only $8.50 a person!

Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera, but the club hire and buggy hire for Casey and Nicole was hilarious. They each got their own small blue leather golf bags that held their 6 clubs. The size of their golf bags were about 1/4 of the size of David and my bags. They put their tiny blue bags onto their yellow buggys (pull carts). Sometimes, when they stopped at their ball, the buggy would tip over since there wasn't enough weight with their tiny bags.

We had a great time even though it began to rain on our 3rd hole. We even finished all 9 holes in the rain. On the first hole, the sprinkler system started up near the green as soon as we were on the green. The sprinklers never seemed to turn off even though it was raining. We ended up playing speed golf at the greens since we had to try and putt before the sprinkler would rotate and hit you. On the final hole, there was a river in the middle of the green and the hole was waterlogged. We couldn't even finish it out.

Thanks for a great weekend guys! Thanks for trekking out to Manly 2 days in a row. We'll definitely make sure to come to Paddington sometime this coming weekend.

Wombat Info

2008-01-11T08:16:00.000+11:00

Since the Wombat has left to hang out in Hong Kong with Cindy, I figured I'd give everyone some more information about real-life wombats and some photos of them. Wombats are considered marsupials and their closest relation is the koala bear. They are generally slow movers, but if threatened, they can reach up to 25 miles/hour. That's pretty fast for this short legged creature!

Even though our wombat was very small and cute, most wombats are about 3 feet in length and unfortunately not as cute. Here are some more photos of the zoo's wombat. At first it was just wandering around.

It looked at us with curiosity.

At one point, the wombat went over to this water bucket and ended up dumping the bucket over. Oops!

Australia's interesting fact of the day: The movies! Besides the expensive price for going to see a movie, it's very different from the US. The theatre I went to wasn't quite as big so almost everyone had a great seat. Their seats were very comfortable, but didn't rock. The seat part didn't even move up so they weren't trying to cram as many people into the movie theatre. Finally, the big difference was assigned seating. Yep, that's right there was assigned seating. This was actually pretty great because you didn't have to try and get to the movie theatre on time since you knew you'd have a great seat. And since there are about 25 minutes of commercials mixed in with 3 previews at the "start" of the movie, you could show up 20 minutes late to avoid all that nonsense as well!

St. Kilda and Phillip Island

2008-01-09T09:41:00.000+11:00

On our last full day in Melbourne we decided to visit St. Kilda, which is a suburb near Melbourne that is accessible by tram. We didn't explore St. Kilda that much except to walk near the beach and onto the pier.

Wombat enjoyed the view from the boardwalk.

Out on the pier in St. Kilda, they have their own little penguin viewing area. While we were there, we found some hiding in their home!

After St. Kilda, we headed home to make the drive to Phillip Island. Phillip Island is a 2.5 hour drive from Melbourne and is connected to land by one bridge. The island itself is relatively small and we were able to enjoy dinner facing the beach before heading to the Penguin parade.

Wombat enjoyed his time on the beach. He even found a little seashell as a hat.

We got to the Penguin place a bit early and had time to kill in the shops. Wombat wanted to fit in with the other animals.

Wombat was even treated like a joey!

Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take any photos of the penguins. I wanted to sneak one in but was afraid of getting caught. If you ever have the chance to go to Melbourne, you MUST see the penguins. There are thousands of them and you get to see them cross the beach and then they will all walk towards their home. They have built boardwalks all along their path, so that you can get up close to them.

After you leave the place, don't forget to check under your car! The penguins are looking for any kind of shelter and they might think it's a home!

This was our last full day in Melbourne and we thoroughly enjoyed it!

Another funny food story for the readers: In St. Kilda, we were getting a light lunch and Cindy was in charge of ordering at the counter. When she came back, she told us that she had gotten a side of cous cous as well. I hadn't seen it on the menu so I had asked her where to point it out. She pointed to the "Shredded Cos Salad". I couldn't help laughing because in Australia, all their lettuce terms are different than in the US. Rocket = Arugula. Cos = Romaine. So instead of a cous cous dish, we were getting a salad dish. The best part was that even though it had said "shredded" in the dish, she still thought it was cous cous. Cindy, we love you. =)

On our final day in Melbourne, the only exciting thing we did was convince Dave to have pho for breakfast. For those who don't know it, David is one of those people who will only eat breakfast foods for breakfast. When I eat anything not thought of as a breakfast food (which I constantly do), he thinks it's weird. David was willing to eat because of a couple of reasons. He had been up for awhile so it wasn't too early in the day and in Vietnam they often have pho for breakfast. We stopped at a restaurant that claimed that Bill Clinton had eaten there and we weren't the only ones there! The restaurant was about half full at 10:15 AM. What a great way to start our day with a big bowl of pho in our tummies. yum.

Great Ocean Road

2008-01-07T10:34:00.000+11:00

We spent an entire day driving to the Great Ocean Road. After renting our car and having some nervous issues about driving on the other side of the road, we were off and reached the start after almost 3 hours. The start of Great Ocean Road is already almost 2 hours from Melbourne, but we managed to hit some traffic along the way.

After hitting up an information center, we were aiming to get to the 12 Apostles before sunset. We opted to avoid some of the stops that were for the beaches along the area and stopped at only a couple of places. First up, the lighthouse at Anglesea. We couldn't actually get to the top of the lighthouse unless you paid to take a tour.

Beyond the lighthouse, there were some paths that we could take and look out onto the ocean.

It seems as if lots of rock formations have drifted off the main island to create these rock formations.

Cindy was taking in the view from the other side of the lighthouse.

After the lighthouse, we kept driving along the road and hit even more traffic on our way to a little town called Lorne. By the time we arrived, we were starving for lunch and stopped as soon as we saw some shops. Little did we know that there were about 3 times as many cafes/shops if we had continued to drive for another block. After Lorne, it was a windy, narrow drive until we hit the next lookout point. At Cape Patton Lookout, we could see the drive that we were going to have to do in the distance.

After we reached the next small town of Apollo Bay, we stopped to stretch our legs. We found this little ice cream shop that had some amazing Marzipan ice cream. A couple of kilometers outside of Apollo Bay, there was a small rainforest area that had an easy walk/hike that we decided to take. Unfortunately, since there has been a drought in Australia, the rainforest wasn't thriving too much. We did see some trees where the roots had grown up and around something that no longer existed.

There were these convenient bridges along the path for when there was a river/water flowing through the rainforest. Cindy decided to meditate for a little bit.

After our rainforest hike, our last destination was the 12 Apostles. The road had turned off from the ocean and we drove through lots of countryside for awhile before finally reaching them. Wombat enjoyed the 12 Apostles, but he didn't like the number of flies that were in the area.

The amazing part of the area around the 12 Apostles is that there is no pathway to get down to the beach. These cliffs are at the edge of Australia.

The Apostles were on both sides of the little viewing area that we were able to walk around.

The 12 Apostles made the Great Ocean Road journey worthwhile, but it did take us almost 9 hours to finally reach them. Luckily, there is a shortcut through the countryside that can get you back to Melbourne in 3-3.5 hours.

Wombat in the Yarra Valley

2008-01-04T08:30:00.001+11:00

You were probably expecting to hear about the Great Ocean Road, but I forgot about our wine tour to the Yarra Valley, so you'll have to wait another day before hearing about the Great Ocean Road.

We had signed up for a wine tour with the Australian Wine Tour Company through the Yarra Valley. We took a small 20 person bus to the Yarra Valley and our first stop was Yering Farm. This winery is a family run business and does not sell many bottles outside of their shop. They had converted an old hay barn as their cellar door.

Wombat enjoyed the view of the valley.

Then, wombat started drinking. It was only 10:30 AM, but he was offered over 10 different types of wine. He didn't know what to choose.

Our next stop was Rochard. Besides providing lunch, they had a tower that overlooked their vineyards. Cindy enjoyed the view.

We got up close and personal with some grapes, but didn't taste any of them.

We also stopped at Yering Station, but no pictures came from our stop there. The exciting part of Yering Station was finding some truffle mixture made by Tetsuya's that is designated to mix with butter and create yummy truffle butter!

Our last stop of the day was Chandon, which is associated with Moet & Chandon. We went on a mini tour of how champagne/sparkling wine were made and were able to go into the room with all the bottles that were resting on racks. We weren't allowed to touch anything so Wombat was sad that he couldn't play with the bottles.

We were offered a full glass of bubbly before being able to taste their other bubbly and wines that Chandon produces. Wombat was excited to be around all these bottles of yummy tasting wines.

By the end of our tour, we had drank our fair share of wines and were looking forward to the nap on our car ride home. Maybe from all the wine, Cindy was drunk at dinner because this is the conversation that took place. Early on, Cindy had decided that she was going to order steak tartare, while David and I debated on what to get.

Waiter: Can I take your order?
Cindy: I'd like the Steak Tartare... Medium
Waiter: ummm...
(As David and Denise try to explain to Cindy that Steak Tartare is chopped up raw/rare steak, they can't stop giggling inside)

Amazingly, the waiter told us stories of how he has served steak tartare to other customers and they had told him that he had forgotten to cook their steaks. So, he was glad that Cindy had made the medium comment so that they could fix the situation immediately.

The second best part of this story besides the "medium" comment was that as Cindy was looking for other items to order, the waiter would try to explain her other items on the menu and Cindy would instantly put on a sour face when she heard something she didn't like or want.
Finally our waiter decided to let Cindy decide on her own and he would come back.

For the rest of the night, I couldn't stop laughing every time I thought of the story.

Anyways, tomorrow will be about the Great Ocean Road!

Wombat's Adventure to Melbourne - Part 1

2008-01-03T11:41:00.001+11:00

Early on in Cindy's visit, she randomly purchased a small wombat and it went on our adventure in Melbourne with us. I think we ended up taking more photos of the Wombat enjoying Melbourne than ourselves.

At the airport, we got some food. Wombat didn't really like the pasta since it was too dry, but the bacon in the pasta was pretty good. The domestic airport was very different than the US. It was like the old days in the US, where you didn't need a boarding pass to go through security so you could wait at the gate until it was time for your friends or family to leave. You could bring liquids over 3 oz onto your aircraft. It was just very casual.

Apparently on every domestic flight, they'll make an announcement requesting you listen to the safety features on the aircraft since every plane is different. But it seemed as if everything was still the same. Wombat was secured into his seat before we left the airport.

The flight to Melbourne was very short and when we arrived, it was dinner time! We got some recommendations for food, but ended up eating at a little Japanese cafe near Chinatown. The food was delicious! Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find as good food for as cheap in Sydney/Manly. Afterwards, it was bedtime in order to prepare for the next day.

The next morning, we stopped by Federation Square to eat our breakfast on the steps. The architecture in the area was amazing and since it was still early, there weren't too many people around.

After breakfast, we rushed over to Day 2 of the Boxing Day Test Match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. To give our US readers an idea of how big of an event it is, Day 1 of the Boxing Day Test Match is about the equivalent of Thanksgiving Day football games. Boxing Day is the day after Christmas and also a national holiday. The Test Match can last up to 5 days, but you would definitely want to go on Day 1 or 2 to guarantee some excitement. Every year, they rotate who Australia plays and this year they were playing India, which is a big rival.

The Melbourne Cricket Ground had all these rules that don't exist in the US. If you got onto the field, you were fined up to $6000. You couldn't start the wave and aren't supposed to participate in it. Apparently, people were throwing things during the wave, which is why it was banned. You couldn't make any racist comments or you'd be thrown out of the stadium for life. If you were seen inflating a beach ball and throwing it around, you could also get kicked out. The rules were pretty strict and we were able to see some people get walked out of the stadium.

We had bought tickets for general admission, which meant we could sit anywhere we wanted in a couple of areas. The view from the lower stand was great except for the beating sun. It got hot very quickly.

Wombat seemed to enjoy his view except that people are much bigger than him.

From the upper grandstand, you got a view of the entire arena without any obstructions, but the people ended up being very small and it was easy to miss the plays that were happening since it happens so fast. Luckily, they replayed all the events on the big screens so we could rewatch from there. We alternated between these two seating areas due to the sun. In the sun, it was too hot, but in the shade it was actually pretty chilly because of the wind.

Coming up tomorrow: The Great Ocean Road!

Happy New Year!

2008-01-02T09:25:00.000+11:00

Happy New Year! We returned from Melbourne on New Year's Eve and had to rush to get back to the city to make it to our New Year's Eve Party. It took us 2 hours each way to get to and from our apartment to our friends place, but it was definitely worth it!

The crowds were immense in Sydney Harbour. Here they are rushing to get onto a ferry to get across the wharf. It was chaotic trying to get to our friends apartment, but much worse trying to get home since the crowds were now also filled with drunk, pushy people.

We arrived before sunset and were able to take some great pictures of the view.

As night fell, the bridge had a couple of interesting things on it. In the middle, there was an hour glass where the balls in the hour glass would move every 5 minutes. On the side pillar, there was always something projected on it, which included the countdown.

Someone had brought sparklers to the party. Cindy and I were the first ones to start lighting them up.

There was a fireworks show at 9pm, which were called the Family Fireworks. It was for the kids so that they could see them and then go home. After the first set of fireworks, these boats would circle the harbour. They were all lit up, where some of them had years on them and some were just lined with lights.

This is a great picture of the firework show just about to show. It's 2 seconds before midnight and the bridge is starting to light up.

Fireworks were all around the harbour off of different barges, off of the building tops in the CBD, and they also came from the bridge. The bridge fireworks were amazing since they came from the top, the side and also they had this cool waterfall ones that were from the bottom.

I'll be updating about our trip from Melbourne over the next couple of days. We had a great time and can't wait to share pictures and information with all of you!

Taronga Zoo

2007-12-25T20:35:00.000+11:00

On Christmas Eve, David, Cindy and I went to the Taronga Zoo. We had to take a ferry from Circular Quay before getting to take a gondola ride to the zoo entrance.

As soon as we arrived, Cindy and David were quick to start looking for animals.

We were able to see giraffes up close and personal. They were much taller than us even though we were elevated! Did you know that a giraffe's tongue is dark blue to prevent sunburn as they eat the leaves at the top of trees?

We saw some elephants do some tricks, but afterwards, they just headed towards their barn.

Throughout the zoo, they had different animals that you could pretend to be. David and I decided that the gorillas were the best!

We saw some lions...

tigers...

and bears!

We've also been watching a show called "Meerkat Manor" and we were able to see the meerkats in person. This one was just sitting around!

The zoo was located at a distance where it had some amazing views of the city.

David discovered a new favorite animal. The ostrich.

We watched the gorillas fight over some long leaves after this courageous one went out into the water to retrieve them.

We watched the koala feeding which was very cute and a lot of fun! We learned that baby koalas eat their mother's poo so that they can develop the bacteria needed for them to digest the eucalyptus leaves.

Finally, we were able to go into an exhibit with kangaroos and emus. We were able to see the kangaroos jump around after the emu attacked them!

If you look closely, the kangaroo in the front has a joey in her pouch. Unfortunately, it wasn't as cute as you exhibit since the legs and tails are the only parts sticking out.

We also saw wombats, which were Cindy's new favorite animal. But this wombat was MUCH bigger than we thought wombats would be.

Isn't this kangaroo so cute? It's feasting on his holiday meal.

Overall, the zoo was definitely worth visiting if you had 4-5 hours to walk around. There were so many exhibits of animals that you can't see in the US.

Merry Christmas everyone! Our Christmas was spent on a 3 hour hike from the Spit Bridge to Manly. After we returned and had lunch, we rested before we made a Christmas dinner of a roast beef, roast veggies, homemade stuffing and chocolate cake!

We hope everyone else has a great Christmas!

Casino Night

2007-12-24T10:29:00.000+11:00

On Friday night, David and I went to Darling Harbour to eat dinner with some friends before we headed off to the only casino in New South Wales. It's considered a casino because it has tables as well as pokie (slot) machines. As mentioned before, most bars have pokie machines for your enjoyment, so we were going to check out the tables.

A couple of annoying things happened as we tried to enter the casino. As we entered, I was specifically stopped. You would think it's because of my age, but they stopped me because I wasn't allowed to bring in my messenger bag. Besides my messenger bag, the security guard also said that I wouldn't be allowed to enter since I was wearing thongs. He even mentioned that "especially on Friday", I wasn't allowed in with thongs. Luckily, we were able to go to another part of the casino to check in my bag and enter in another area, where the guards weren't looking at my feet.

My big complaints of this are: Don't casinos want ANYONE to come in and gamble away their money? Are they really restricting people based off of what they are wearing?

After we entered, we only ended up staying for a couple of hours for certain reasons.

1. The roulette table only had 1 zero, but all the numbers were scattered around the board and not the same as in the US. How could I play my numbers if they weren't touching each other?

2. ALL the blackjack tables had automatic shufflers. There was no shoe, so how could we even pretend to count cards??

3. Finally, the big annoying one. The craps tables was just very different. There was only 1 craps table in the entire state of New South Wales. The minimum bet was $10 and you couldn't bet $1 on the random small bets like hard ways or the C/E. Those bets were a minimum of $5 each. A couple of funny things were that instead of the pass/don't pass line, it was the win/don't win line. After losing some money, we decided it wasn't worth it to stay at the craps table!

After the casino, we headed back to Darling Harbour where I found a $20 bill on the ground! It makes up for part of our losses. Dave and I parted separate ways so that I could spend the night with Cindy in her hotel since she had just arrived!

The weekend has been very chill with Cindy, but I think we're going to try to go to the zoo today.

George's Random Visit

2007-12-20T08:45:00.000+11:00

On Tuesday, I get a message from George that he is in Sydney until Thursday morning. We decided to meet up for dinner on Wednesday night. After meeting up with George and teasing him, we decided to go eat dinner in the Sydney tower. There are 2 restaurants in the tower, 360 and Sydney Tower Restaurant. 360 didn't have any openings, so we went to Sydney Tower Restaurant.

It was a buffet style menu and the restaurant was revolving. The food wasn't that great, but you are paying for the view. Since it was George's last night, he really wanted to see the city.

Here's a picture of part of the view. Unfortunately, it's near impossible to take a good photo at night.

Here's a photo of George and me. We discovered that he cannot smile any bigger than that. Thanks for dinner! It was great being able to see you again and catch up after a couple of years. Hopefully I'll see you again sooner rather than later.

On my way back to the ferry, we walked past the Martin Place Christmas tree, so I took a photo of it. The lights on the tree change colors throughout the night.

I still can't believe Christmas is coming up. It doesn't feel like it since it's so warm here. But on a sad note, I'm a little sick and trying to get better before Cindy comes on Friday. I hope it goes away soon!

Congratulations!!

2007-12-18T11:46:00.000+11:00

Apparently, this past weekend was very busy back in the US for some of our friends. There were two wedding proposals over the weekend.

Congratulations, Mindy and Andrew! We hope you're enjoying your break in the warm weather in San Diego. A photo from our wedding with them.

Congratulations, Kristine and Oren! It sure looks cold back in MA with all that snow. What a pretty place to propose. =)

Audrey's last night

2007-12-17T16:35:00.000+11:00

Audrey had come to Sydney on December 1st, which was also our day at the horse races and Thanksgiving. She's been a great companion during the weekdays and very good at encouraging me to work out. Since she had been to Australia a couple of times before, we didn't have to do any sightseeing and she had some other friends in the area. This was a perfect combination since David and I had spent the past two weekends getting scuba certified. She was kind enough to not only leave her used surfboard for me to practice on, but brought us out to dinner on her last night.

We went to Whitewater Cafe in Manly, which had some great food. We sat in a booth made for 5 people so we were very spread out. David and Audrey decided to move closer to me to take a photo before dessert.

Audrey got something called the Affogatto, which was vanilla ice cream with a shot of espresso and a shot of frangelico. You take the two shots and mix it with the ice cream.

Dave got the chocolate dessert. It came with a chocolate decadent cake, which was like a molten chocolate cake. Bittersweet chocolate ice cream and a chocolate torte. There was also a shot of creme anglaise to pour over his chocolate cake.

I had gotten a passionfruit torte that was on top of a "salad" of tapioca and lychee. There was also some passionfruit sorbet on top of the other "salad". It was very tasty and I'm really appreciating the amount of passionfruit that I can find in Australia.

Audrey's currently on her flight home. Hopefully she was able to upgrade or at least have no one siting beside her. Maybe she'll be back in the new year with a job in Sydney. =)

Australia's strange word: Pressies. In context, "I've got to go to the mall and finish buying the pressies for Chrissie." Yes, apparently everything must be shortened and adding -ie to the end of it. This country is definitely weird...

SCUBA Certified

2007-12-16T15:06:00.000+11:00

David and I finished our SCUBA program this weekend. We are now officially able to go diving on our own. We went on two dives on Saturday at Fairlight beach, which is a rare site that classes go to. We saw some fish and lots of sea urchins. As I watched my fellow divers swim in the kelp, which is slightly prickly feeling, I was afraid that someone was going to put their hand onto a sea urchin. On Sunday, we went to Shelley Beach to finish our two final dives. There was a storm brewing for this afternoon and conditions in the water were increasingly worse on our second dive.

After our final dive, we only had to pass our final exam. The final exam is 50 multiple choice questions and you only need to get 38 right to pass. One girl managed to not pass the exam. It was kind of embarassing since within the mulitple choice questions, there is usually 1-2 absurd answers, so you only have 2-3 choices to really choose from. Instead of retaking the exam (after we went through all the wrong answers), she is going to re-read the book and come back to re-take the exam.

Anyways, David and I got a little certificate and a giant t-shirt for our certification. Sophia and Eddie, we can't wait for Cairns!

Besides SCUBA, I spent Friday enjoying the sun by running, laying by the pool and trying to surf again. This time, surfing was much harder because the current was so strong. It was much more fun with Nicole since both of us are pretty terrible and I can spend my time laughing when both of us are struggling to even stand in the shallow weather.

Australia's strange phrase: Have a good Chrissie. Yes, they'll even shorten Christmas. This country is so silly.

Tetsuya's - Number 5 Restaurant in the World

2007-12-13T07:59:00.000+11:00

On Tuesday night, we had a booking at Tetsuya's for 8 PM. Tetsuya's is ranked the 5th restaurant in the world and is known as Best Restaurant in Australia. The menu is a fixed price menu that is 14 courses and is very expensive. Seeing as this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, we were excited to go with a big group. The restaurant was like a little maze because there were so many hidden private rooms to hold different party sizes and a couple dining rooms to hold smaller groups.

We didn't start our meal until around 8:30 PM and didn't end our meal until around 12:30 AM. Yes, the meal took 4 hours to serve! Overall, it was relatively short turnarounds throughout most of the meal, but with all the courses and wine pourings, it was just a very long meal. Most of our group did the wine pairings with the meal, which was supposed to end up about 1 bottle per person. David and I decided to share a wine pairing between the two of us. I noticed that I'm very bad at remembering to drink the wine while eating my food since I'm too focused on the eating and tasting of the food.

We had our own private room for our group. Audrey and I were the first to arrive, so we were able to make ourselves comfortable.

In our room, there was this strange looking pole that was decoration along with some paintings. All the restaurant's artwork was a cross between aboriginal and something else.

Before the first course was served, we were served warm rolls (either white or sourdough) and they had this black truffle and parmesan butter on the table. I could have just eaten that all night if I didn't have 14 courses to go through!

Cold Corn Soup with Saffron & Vanilla Ice Cream
This soup was a bit thicker than expected, but it was obviously delicious. I was amazed at how the corn taste had penetrated throughout every bite. I couldn't really taste the saffron in the ice cream, but I think I was too happy with the corn part.

Smoked Ocean Trout and Avruga Caviar

The smoked ocean trout tasted and looked very similar to smoked salmon. It was diced into fine pieces. On top of the caviar is what they called a bon bon. It was a scallop mouse that was wrapped around a quail egg. To eat it, we were supposed to break the bon bon and mix the quail egg with the trout and caviar. Overall, this was probably my least favorite course because I'm not a huge fan of smoked fish, but it was still quite tasty and I finished my portion.

Leek & Crab Custard
This dish was thick and creamy. The broth on top was excellent and went very well with the custard, but I found it hard to ensure that I had enough broth at the end to mix with my custard. David said that he had perfect ratios throughout the entire dish.

Sashimi of Big Eye Tuna with Wasabi & Ginger Vinaigrette
The tuna was delicious and very delicate. It was also served on top of some finely sliced beets and pickled beet roots. I liked this dish a lot, but I also love raw tuna.

Tetsuya's Signature Dish
Confit of Petuna Tasmanian Ocean Trout with Konbu, Daikon & Fennel served with a Seasonal Green Salad

Even though this piece of ocean trout looks rare or raw, it is actually cooked. Instead of the traditional confit style of cooking slowly in duck fat, this piece was cooked in grapeseed oil and some other oil. It makes the taste much lighter. On top, it's seasoned with konbu and coriander seed. It's set on some daikon and has some ocean trout roe on the side of it. There is also some parsley sauce.

We could all see why this was his signature dish. It was not only delicious but very creative and different. The only change that I had wished was that the portion was smaller. Even though this was only the 5th course, I was getting quite full!

Ravioli of Queensland Spanner Crab with Tomato and Basil Vinaigrette
This dish was a ball of crab and something else that formed into a spongey like texture. The texture reminded me a lot of the fish balls that you eat with hot pot. It was set on top of some more loose crab that was wrapped in some seaweed. The fresh basil was very strong, but was quite good.

Steamed Baby Abalone with Braised Oxtail & Orange
There were three small pieces of abalone on this dish and a little bit of oxtail. I actually wished there was more oxtail because it was so tender and delicious. The abalone was very chewy, but I think that is just the way abalone tastes like.

Breast of Duck with Braised Witlof with Sansho & Walnut Jus
This was definitely my favorite dish of the night. The duck was perfectly cooked and the sauce was amazing. The braised "witlof" was just a fancy way of saying small endive.

Seared Filet of Veal with Wasabi Butter
By this course, I was starting to feel really full. I really enjoyed the wasabi butter, even though other people did not like it. I think it's because it reminds me of horseradish cream that I love. The veal was very tender and I actually didn't eat all my pieces because I knew we still had 3 sweet dishes to go.

Comte with Lentils
This was our transition from savory dishes to sweet. In the spoon was sweetened lentils and some grated cheese on top. The lentils reminded me of green bean soup in terms of taste so it was very weird combined with the cheese.

Each person only got one spoonful of the lentils and cheese. It would have been too much if we each had to eat 4 spoonfuls!

After our short transition, we decided it was time to take a photo of the group. From left to right is Oscar, Audrey, Ian, me, David, Katie, Lily, Charlie, Teddy, Endrico and Alex.

Lily was about to go home since she had arrived on Monday morning and was obviously jet lagged. She had even started her job as soon as she arrived. It was actually her birthday and our server convinced her to stay for a little longer because they brought out a birthday surprise for her. I didn't get to photograph the actual dish, but it was dark chocolate sorbet, orange sorbet with a flourless chocolate cake. She ended up staying for the entire dinner since by now we only had a couple of dishes to go.

Beetroot & Blood Orange Sorbet and Summer Pudding
The Australians love pickled beetroot. There are more cans of it in the supermarket than cans of other vegetables and they often put it in sandwiches. This sorbet was very powerful in terms of beetroot taste. I could barely taste the blood orange. There was also diced bits of pickled beats at the bottom of the glass.

The summer pudding was delicious. There were strawberries and blueberries in it.

Banana Mousse & Caramel Ice Cream
The banana mousse was in the rolled up pastry and it tasted as if I was eating a banana. The taste was very powerful, but in a good way. The caramel ice cream was delicious and set on some light spongy cake.

Chocolate & Coffee Pave with Cocoa Infused Jelly & Praline Ice Cream
The cocoa infused jelly is that strange filmy thing on top of the cake. The ice cream was delicious. Since I'm not a huge fan of coffee, the cake was a bit too coffee for me, but it was still pretty good.

Petit Fours

Green Tea Marshmallow Square,Chocolate Macaroon with Lemon Curd, maybe some sort of truffles. I think the white one was coconut based.

By this time, I was extremely stuffed and starting to not pay as much attention to the server during her descriptions. I was also very excited to see mini macaroons on the petit four plate.

By this point, I was getting very tired and was very full and content. The meal was amazing and definitely worth the money that we had spent. If you have an opportunity to go here, then make a booking early since the place is often sold out.

Scuba Diving

2007-12-11T09:16:00.000+11:00

David and I have completed one weekend of getting certified for scuba diving. We spent most of Saturday in a classroom talking about theory and reviewing our homework and taking short quizzes. We also talked about equipment. On Sunday, we had our pool training, which involved a morning of assembling and disassembling equipment, 200 M swim and 10 min of treading water. At first, I didn't think I'd be able to do the treading water bit, but amazingly David and I survived it!

In the afternoon, we finally got everything on and went into the pool for some lessons. Overall, it was pretty good and fun except that there is a lot of gross stuff in the pool. Lots of dead bugs, hair, bandaids, etc. It's very unpleasant.

We have more homework this week, but next weekend we'll be diving by Shelly Beach, where we will hopefully see lots of stuff! They even have an old motorcycle in the middle that has a reef around it. I wish I had an underwater camera that would take good photos that I could upload here!

Christmas Party

2007-12-08T09:59:00.000+11:00

This past week, the weather has been very weird. Some days it'll start off pouring rain, but will end up being very clear and bright blue skies. Other days, it has started off bright and clear and then in the afternoon, the clouds roll in and then it will rain for a half hour before clearing up again. The great thing about these short rainstorms is that I was able to get a great photo of the Opera House with no on on the steps!

We also walked in parts of the botanical gardens and went to visit this lovely pool that was in the gardens.

Yesterday night (Friday), it was Bain's Christmas Party. It was a masquerade ball, so earlier in the month, the retired crew had gone mask shopping. Here's a photo of David and I before the party.

The party was held in the Museum of Contemporary Art. Their upper levels are used as private function space and have some amazing views. Since we were the first ones to show up, we were able to get some great shots. Casey is checking out the view.

Nicole, me and Casey with our masks on and with the bridge view.

As you can see, it got more crowded, so you couldn't take any photos with no one else in it. Here's a photo of Kirsty and Ele. They had these masks that were attached to headbands so when you wanted to, you could just push it above your head so it wasn't on your face. I was definitely jealous since my mask was making my face hot.

Anton finally stopped working and showed up with Danielle. At least I was able to get a photo of him before he turned bright red from drinking. =)

Unlike the Boston Holiday Party, there was actually a sit down dinner with assigned seating. The favors at the party were there Christmas Crackers that you pull apart to open.

The retired crew, Danielle, Nicole and me.

Ben finally decided to show up during the middle of dinner and luckily he dragged us outside!

There were fireworks outside! I couldn't tell if it was only for Bain's party or for all the other Christmas parties that were happening in the area.

Overall, this Christmas party was great and we didn't want to leave so early. With the last ferry leaving at 11:45, we had to go home and get some rest. We're about to start our scuba diving lessons this weekend, so we need to be somewhat rested so I don't fall asleep in the classroom!

Australia's interesting fact of the day: Happy Christmas! All the banner in the area say "Happy Christmas" instead of Merry Christmas. I think they actually say happy christmas to you as well even though they all listen to the same Christmas music as us and it's definitely Merry Christmas!

Surfing!

2007-12-05T17:40:00.000+11:00

Since Audrey has surfed before, I asked her to give me a lesson on Monday. We decided to head out after the sun had disappeared and started our lesson as it was drizzing. Once we got into the water, the rain had stopped, but it was still very cloudy. This was ideal because it meant that there were less people on the beach and in the water for me to embrass myself in front of. I was actually a quick learner and was able to actually stand up a couple of times on the board and ride some waves!! I even tried to join Audrey on the outside to catch waves from there, but after one failed attempt, I decided to head back into the broken waves to get more practice. Overall, it was really fun and am excited for our next outing.

Weekend Fun

2007-12-03T19:40:00.000+11:00

Our weekend has been jam packed, so I haven't had a chance to update, but I have lots of photos. On Friday night, David and I went to a John Williams concert at the Opera House. It was a lot of fun because all the music was recognizable. Our emcee was great and really funny. The second half of the concert was all Star Wars songs, which led to some good photos!

They had some robots for picture taking before the concert started. During intermission R2D2 was moving around the lobby.

Our seats were very unique. We sat in the second row BEHIND the players, so it allowed us to see the rest of the auditorium and the conducter's facial expressions.

We were directly behind the percussion section that has multiple different instruments. So we were able to watch them switch between different percussion instruments throughout the various songs. My favorite was the overexpressive cymbals guy.

At the top of the concert hall, there are these donuts that hang from the ceiling to help with the sound.

During intermission, Darth Vadar and his Storm Troopers were running around so that we could take photos with them.

On Saturday, Audrey came into town and we instantly dragged her to the opening day of Randwick Racetrack. We went up to the grandstand and even with the crappy weather, there were lots of dressed up people walking around the grass.

Their racetrack was much fancier than Suffolk Downs. They even had a stage for bands to come up and play between the races. The Australian idol winner even played!

At one point, we checked out the horses as they were getting ready to race.

We watched our last race from the railing and took a picture of the grandstand. By this point, there were many intoxicated people and some were even being escorted out of the race track.

After the horse races, we went straight to Matt and Christine Owings apartment to have Thanksgiving. We had so much food that we ended up with lots of leftovers. Unfortunately, my camera was running out of batteries, so I don't have any photos of the night. Thank you Matt, Christine and Alex for organizing!

On Sunday, David and I rented bicycles and we tried going up to some of the Northern beaches. After biking up and down many hills, we ended up at Dee Why Beach. The beach was a bit longer than Manly Beach and much calmer.

Here I am on the beach enjoying the sun!

On our way back, we stopped at the other beaches on the coast. This was how dorky I looked, but the Curl Curl beach looked pretty good.

David is sporting the helmet look in front of Curl Curl.

After our bike ride, we headed back to Manly and met up with some of the new American transfers on the beach. It was a perfect biking day as well as a beach day and a great way to end the weekend!

Is it really good luck?

2007-11-30T10:49:00.000+11:00

Yesterday, Nicole and I were at the beach when the seagulls decided to poop on BOTH of us. I was lying down on my back and all of sudden, I felt a plop and looked down. On my bathing suit bottom, there was a nice small pile of poop that had fallen. Gross. At least it didn't fall on my skin! I went into the ocean to wash it off and when I came back, I looked over at Nicole. She was lying on her stomach and near her bathing suit bottom, there was some strange substance. I asked Nicole if she was possibly excreting some kind of suntan lotion. She had mentioned that she had felt something but was not able to see it. Yes, a bird had pooped on her as well.

They say that it's good luck, but I think people made up that story to make us feel better!

What I failed to write about earlier this week was that David worked from home on Tuesday. Instead of working, we went around the area and was able to find a bar that was playing Monday night football. We had lunch and watched almost every minute of the game. It was great to watch because of a couple of reasons.

1. We miss watching football in general. Since we used to have NFL ticket, we went from watching all the games to watching none.

2. It made me realize how warm/nice the weather is in Australia. I have been complaining that it has been cloudy, but it's nowhere near the terrible weather that was being shown on the telly. It was raining and had been raining to the point that the field was basically a swamp.

3. Now, we have a go to bar that serves great burgers to be able to watch the Monday Night Football game. Next week, the Patriots are playing and I definitely plan on stopping by!

Other than that, I've been playing travel agent for our trip in March and enjoying the sun. Today, I have to make mashed potatoes for 20 people. Hopefully they turn out great!

Australia's interesting fact of the day: 10% surcharge. On Sundays and Public Holidays, there is always an additional surcharge for your meal. This was extrememly annoying to us since we usually go out to eat on Sundays since it's the weekend and it doesn't exist in the US. We mentioned this to some of the locals and they gave a very reasonable explanation. On Sundays and Public Holidays, employees must be paid time and a half, therefore to cover the difference in having staff, they just add the surcharge on those days instead of raising the prices for all the time.

SAC Offsite

2007-11-27T10:54:00.000+11:00

This past Thursday & Friday, while you all were enjoying Turkey and football, we had our SAC (Senior Associate Consultant) offsite. Due to budget constraints (more SAC transfers coming in than anticiptated) we couldn't go to a sexy location. So, instead, we went to a nearby suburb of Sydney called Penrith.

Penrith is home to the stereotypical Australian Suburban type called Bogans. The best American equivalent description I've heard is "Redneck meets Jersey". To make the weekend more fun, everyone was encouraged to don their best Bogan outfits. Here are some examples.

Matt and David (one of our trainers!) showing off their mullets:

Lara, Kirsty, Ele, and Agathe ready to take on the town:

Nic, Damian, and Matt:

I didn't really have much to wear so I bought an Ozzie Osbourne shirt and did up my hair in a fo-hawk. What do you think?

The training consisted of 3 manager/partner presentations on previous cases they've done, all with a consumer products theme. After training, we met up for drinks, dinner, and extra-curricular activities. The event was held at the Penrith Panthers World of Entertainment.

The Penrith Panthers are a Rugby team in the National Rugby League. Their facility consisted of a number of bars, restaurants, night clubs, and other forms of entertainment such as tennis courts, a driving range, and of course, slot machines. In fact, I've heard that the Panthers World of Entertainment is host to the largets collection of slot machines (aka Pokies) in the southern hemisphere.

So of course, being the gambler that I am, I had to try my shot at the Pokies. With a bit of luck, I managed to hit the jackpot and won $490 on a nickel machine! Here's me with my winning machine:

The following day, we went to the Penrith Whitewater Stadium, which was built for the whitewater events (kayaking, etc.) in the 2000 Olympics. It's a pretty cool place, with a man-made course of whitewater rapids. Here's a picture of the course after the water had been drained:

We went whitewater rafting for about an hour and a half (unfortunately I don't have any pictures). Because it was a man made course, you could do cool things like get stuck "surfing" in eddys, flip the boat on purpose, and go through the same rapids with different lines, facing backwards, etc. Very different from all the real rivers I've gone rafting on before, and a lot of fun.

We then had a great BBQ afterwards to conclude the offsite.

Overall, it was an AWESOME two days and I'm definitely going to be lobbying Bain to do something similar for the SAC's in Boston.

Blue Mountains!

2007-11-26T09:33:00.001+11:00

While the rest of you stuffed your faces with Turkey and other traditional sides over your long weekend, we went to the Blue Mountains and filled our bellies with other kinds of food. The Blue Mountains are about an hour and a half to two hours away from Sydney. They are called the Blue Mountains because sometimes they will look blue due to the gum trees that line the mountains.

We stayed at the Lavendar Manor, which was indeed lavendar. You would be able to spot this house a mile away. It's much brighter in person than this photo gives it justice. It was made to house 12 people.

Since the house was half filled with Americans, we decided to show the non-Americans what a Thanksgiving apple should be decorated with. David was the artist to this piece of work.

We feasted on roast chicken and lamb, potatoes (regular and sweet), squash and apple pie.

A peak of the living space. There were plenty of couches to fit everyone comfortably. This is our post dinner lounging.

The next morning, we tried to take a scenic walk. Unfortunately, it's been overcast and raining the last couple of days. This was the view that we could see. Fog...

Here is our crew hiking to another viewing outlook. The hike was relatively difficult because of the water. Parts of the trail were very saturated and you had to be very careful of where you stepped. All of the Americans were wearing our "trainers" (aka sneakers) so if you accidentally stepped in a puddle, your shoe and sock was suddenly wet.

The crew trying to find something to look at. I'm not too sure what they see.

As the day went on and as we descended further down the mountain, the fog would lift occasionally for us to see glimpses of what we should be seeing. In between the fog, we could see some waterfalls.

By the end of our hike, you could even see across the valley to the other side of the mountains.

After a hearty lunch of gourmet sandwiches, a group decided to try a hike that was supposed to take 3-4 hours. When we got to the parking lot, it began pouring rain and half the group decided to no longer go. Luckily, David was stubborn enough to go and it turned out to be awesome. By the time we started descending the mountain, the rain had stopped. Here's a picture of Jo, Agathe and me heading down into the valley.

When we got to the bottom of the valley, it was very pretty. We were criss crossing a natural stream and found many waterfalls. In one of the places, we were forced to go behind the waterfall to continue our journey. There was even a short tunnel through the mountains at one point. Jo is taking in the environment.

We ended up finishing the hike in only 2 hours. We estimate that we didn't do about a half hour of hiking on the side of the road to get back to the car park area. Since the other half of the group didn't join us, they had taken the car and went into one of the towns. We started walking back to the house because the other group wasn't close enough to pick us up. The weather was startening to worsen and we were all exhausted, so Agathe and Jo convinced David and I to hitchhike our way back to the house. It was kind of silly because we were only a mile or two away. We finally picked up a car after I stuck my thumb out. Apparently I have a friendly face. =)

The next day, the sun had decided to come out. We went to Echo Point to see the Three Sisters, which are the three jagged points to our right.

You could go down a short path and touch the first sister.

After we took many stairs to the bottom of the mountain, we did a short walk and stumbled across some interesting waterfalls.

At one point, the group split into two and half the group headed back to the "Great Staircase" to walk back up to the top. The other half, which included the four of us who hiked yesterday, decided to go to the railway car and ride up to the top of the mountain. After we got to the top, we had to sprint back to the Echo Point to meet up the other group. Along the way, we stopped for a brief moment at Katoomba Falls for a photo op.

After our morning hike, we headed to a nice restaurant for lunch. Luckily, we had booked a table for lunch because within a half hour of sitting down, it was pouring outside. We all had the tasting menu, which was quite delicious, but took a very long time. Finally after our long lunch, which ended around 4:00 PM, we headed back to the city.

On our ferry ride back, the Australian Idol finale was getting ready outside the Opera House. They had an outdoor concert as well as an indoor one. Their finale is way better than the American Idol finale. It includes fireworks over Sydney Harbour and tons of live performances from other musicians. It was a 3 hour finale and we watched every minute of it!

Australian's interesting fact of the day: "Hotels". All around Sydney, you'll see signs for hotels, but over half of them will most likely not have rooms for you to stay in. Over here, a hotel means it's a place where you can drink. It's usually a bar, but sometimes it can also include a dance floor and be more like a club.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2007-11-22T10:49:00.000+11:00

Even though Aussies don't have Thanksgiving, we're thinking of home! We hope everyone will have safe travels and enjoy their fair share of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, etc etc. We'll be celebrating our American Thanksgiving next weekend.

David has gone off to an off-site meeting and will hopefully be taking lots of photos. People were asked to dress up so it should be an entertaining set of photos! I'm meeting him tomorrow up in the Blue Mountains where a bunch of people are spending the weekend. So, there will be no posts until early next week, but at least there will be more photos!

Not much else to report except that the sun has decided to hide again, which means no beach for me. Speaking of the beach, today's fact of the day is that I've seen way too many people at the beach in their UNDERWEAR. I understand that they cover the same parts of the body with the same amount of fabric, but it's still very strange to see a middle-aged woman sitting in her white bra that has some lace on it. Or to see a teenager lying near me in her underwear that has the ribbed scalloped edging at her waistband. The worst was definitely the poor woman who was walking and had obviously put on her underwear inside out. Do they think they are tricking other people that it's a bathing suit or do you think they just don't care?

Visitors!!!

2007-11-21T08:17:00.000+11:00

Some more visitors have bought their tickets to come out to visit us! Here's the current schedule.

Cindy Lee is coming from Hong Kong to spend Christmas and New Years with us. We'll be traveling to Melbourne and visiting all the sites there!

Sarah Hershey is making her way to Australia towards the end of January and will be traveling with us to Tasmania over Australia Day weekend. This lucky girl will then head over to Hong Kong to see Cindy and be able to celebrate Chinese New Year over there. She's taking advantage of all those random holidays in other countries!

David's parents are coming early February and will be spending a little over a week in Australia spreading their time between Sydney and Melbourne before all of us head to New Zealand for a week.

A week after we return from New Zealand, Steph and Robin will be landing on bissextile day, which is February 29! Steph didn't want to be traveling and spend her bissextile on a plane, so they are coming in on that day. After a week, Robin will be heading back to the US and I'll get to hang out with Stephanie by myself for another full week.

As soon as Stephanie leaves, Elaine and Jim arrive the next day with Sophia and Eddie heading over the day after that! The 6 of us will be traveling to Cairns and Ayers Rock for a super long weekend of fun. It will be our first reunion as only couples. Though, I guess even with our other reunions, we tend to break away from the group... We'll miss Anita and Josh!

Those are the people confirmed to come visit. Does anyone else want to come??

Australia's interesting fact of the day: The mall closes at 5:30 PM. This means that you can't expect to go to the mall after work. They open late on one weekday, but otherwise it always closes at 5:30 pm. I'm not sure if it's only the particular mall near us, but imagine our surprise when we headed over to the mall around 5:15ish and all the shops were closing down. We ended up leaving the mall 45 min later. So far, the one good thing about this combined with the expensive clothes is that I am not going shopping for anything but groceries!

Scuba Diving.. Here we come!

2007-11-19T10:47:00.000+11:00

On Sunday, David and I ventured over to sign up for our Scuba Diving classes that we wanted to take. Good thing we decided to go because the class only had 1 space left! Luckily, they decided to add another instructor so that both of us could do it. The crazy part is that since we need 2 consecutive weekends to complete the course, the only other weekends we could have done it would be in January. After early January, we do not have any more back to back free weekends!

Afterwards, we headed to the beach for the afternoon and just relaxed. Some friends came up to Manly to check it out, which was nice, but unfortunately we couldn't find some other friends since David's email started to act up.

On Monday, I headed over to Paddington to hang out with Nicole while she was dog/house sitting. I was able to watch the beginning half of the Patriots/Bills game and it was just so nice to be able to watch American football again. It was also great to see the Patriots destroy the Bills. =) Afterwards, we wandered around Oxford Street before heading to Bondi Junction.

Australia's interesting fact of the day: Calling the US is cheaper than calling other Aussie phone numbers. I am getting a pre-paid monthly plan and my first month was completed. We went to get a new recharge card, but I wanted to know how much it cost to call the US. It only costs $0.28 cents/minute to call the US, but it costs me $0.78 to call an Australian number!

Lawn Bowling

2007-11-18T08:42:00.000+11:00

On Saturday, a crew of us decided to try out lawn bowling. Every weekend on the telly, there are professional lawn bowlers competing so we figured we'd give it a shot. The game is like a combination of bocce ball and bowling. Here are the basic rules.

1. Object of the game is to get as many of your team's balls closest to the "jack" (white ball).

2. The jack is at the opposite end of the lawn and we take turns rolling our balls towards it. Rolling the ball is actually quite difficult because the ball is weighted so that one side is heavier. Therefore, you need to aim the ball to the right or left of the target with the heavy side placed correctly. Even after an hour of playing, a couple people would still accidentally roll incorrectly.

3. In the end, the team with the closest balls near the jack gets points. The number of points you receive is the number of balls that is closest to the jack before another team's ball is closer.

We ended up dividing into 6 teams where 3 teams were playing on each field. The ends of the field had benches, but we were in the sun the entire time, which was quite exhausting. Here we are getting ready to start playing.

Casey and Matt are either debating which ball is closest to the jack or they are organizing their balls to start the next game.

Casey showing us how to do it.

Kim's dressed in all white like a professional.

We played for 2 and a half hours and all of us loved it. Too bad they don't have anything like this in the US. It's becoming so popular in Australia, that we had to reserve our booking 3 weeks in advance. I can't wait for our next outing.

On our way to the lawn bowling site, we walked a coastal walk from Bondi to the site. There was an art project along the walkway called "Sculptures by the Sea". I didn't get as many photos as I would have liked, but this was one of my favorites. It's a tree and the leaves are actually peapods.

Australia's interesting fact of the day: "Good Onya". Australians have the most interesting phrases. "Good Onya" is said relatively often and it's the equivalent of good job. They even have the saying on some Australian souvenirs. I haven't been able to ever use the phrase, but maybe one day it'll slip into my vocabulary.

Biathlon Failure

2007-11-16T09:34:00.000+11:00

Every Thursday, we have the opportunity to run/swim the biathlon that I've written about. Unfortunately, this Thursday, I didn't finish it. There were a couple of factors going into it. In our previous biathlon experiences, Bain was kind of enough to pay for us as well as the Bain people. This week, the organizer specifically wrote that they were only paying for Bain employees. The race costs $17 to do every week. For me, I'd rather spend that money on yoga, surfing or food. =) So, the first part of the problem was that I didn't get a number so I wouldn't be able to track online how well I did.

The second part of the problem is these yoga classes that I started doing. Ever since the yoga class on Tuesday, my hamstrings and shoulder muscles have been very sore. I don't think it helped that we went to a Pilates class on Thursday morning. By the biathlon time, I was still very sore and it was actually hard to walk around or sit or basically move. Even without an official number, I decided to try running with Dave and Casey. They soon were farther ahead of me and it took all my mental power to finish the run part. Every step I took, my hamstrings were screaming at me. It was not a good sign. The amazing part was that even with my short breaks for walking, I still managed to do the run faster than the previous times.

By the time I got to the pool, I had convinced myself that I wasn't going to swim. I didn't want to hurt myself anymore and if I had to swim, I would have had my arms and legs crying to me in pain. So, instead I watched the rest of the group make their way across the pool lanes.

At the end of the race, we decided to take some photos. Nicole (the superstar) makes the biathlon look effortless, while Casey just looks silly.

David and I after the race. Amazingly, David didn't need as much time to move from one place to the other this time. You can see the pool that we swim in the background.

For once, we decided to check out the free chicken burger and drink that they give you after the race. It was a hotel that was near Harry's Cafe de Wheels. Apparently, this place is famous and a must try when you come.

Basically, they sold meat pies and hot dogs with all different variations of what you can put on top of it. Casey got a Hot Dog de Wheels and was loving it!

It's November and I'm going to the beach!

2007-11-15T15:34:00.000+11:00

On Tuesday, I set out to the market to look for some goods for our American Thanksgiving. We are celebrating Thanksgiving the week after the real Thanksgiving with the other Americans in the Sydney office! Unfortunately, turkey is very expensive here. It's about $20/kilo, which is about $9/pound!!

We were asked to bring a side dish. After scouring the supermarket, I was able to find instant mashed potatoes that were in a bag in the canned vegetable section. It was definitely not where I expected to find them, but then again, I can't remember where they are in the US. I looked up and down the aisles and was unable to find any cranberry sauce.

After looking around the market, I met up with Nicole and we got ready for a Yoga class. We signed up with this studio for an introductory offer of 5 classes for $25. $5/class is not a bad deal at all! Unfortunately, we have to squeeze 5 classes in 10 days. Even though it was Nicole's first time, I dragged her to the most "gymnastic" style of yoga. I think she still had fun even though she says that she think she tore her hamstrings from trying to stretch. When we arrived back in the apartment, we were temporarily scared because David was home for work. It was only 1:45 PM!!! The three of us ended up going to the beach for a couple of hours before Nicole went home and David got on a conference call. During this time, I did some research on Melbourne for our trip in December.

On Wednesday (yesterday), I woke up in lots of pain. Apparently, I am not as limber as I used to be. All sorts of muscles were sore from yoga. After finalizing a tentative itinerary for Melbourne, I met up with Nicole and we hit the beach again. Since the sun is finally shining, we wanted to enjoy it since last week was so cloudy. It was very windy and after an hour or two, a big cloud came over the beach and it didn't go away. Afterwards, I headed into the city to meet up with this girl!

Chrissie was in Australia with her family visiting some family and exploring. It was the first time we had met up in a couple of years! It's crazy that we were finally able to do it in Australia! We met up in Chinatown and had dinner in the food court. Honestly, these food courts are pretty amazing. It's all Asian cuisines and every place has pictures for you to look at so that you know what you are ordering.

Australia's interesting fact of the day: Chinatown. The gated part of Chinatown is a street that is open with no car lanes, so it'a sll pedestrians walking through the middle of the street. While we were walking in this part of Chinatown, this is what I noticed. There are all these restaurants that have outdoor seating. Each of them have a hostess standing outside on the street. Any non-Asian person, they would instantly start talking to and trying to get them to eat at their restaurant. Even if the person was far away, they would start to get their attention and try to shove menus in front of them as soon as they were close enough. BUT they only did it to non-Asian people. They ignored every Asian person that walked through. Even though we were walking around with David, these ladies still ignored us. Maybe they realize that Asian people would never eat at an Asian restaurant that has to flag people down to fill their seats!

Cricket

2007-11-13T21:39:00.000+11:00

For the past week, there has been nothing but Cricket on the telly. So, I figured I'd let all of you know what this funny sport is about.

Cricket is somewhat comparable to baseball, but quite different. Like baseball, the object is to score more runs than the other team. However, instead of 3 outs in an inning, the bowling (pitching) team has to get 10 outs, or "wickets" before they can bat. There are a number of ways to get the batter out, but there are four that are most common:

Bowling the stumps: If the bowler (pitcher) throws the ball and is able to knock over the stumps (wooden sticks that sit behind the batter), the batter is out. As a result, the batter's goal is to use his bat to protect the stumps.
Leg before wicket: If the batter swings and misses and the ball hits him, stopping it from hitting the stumps, he is out. This rule is meant so that the batters don't protect the stumps with their bodies, only the bat.
Fly ball: Like in baseball, if the batter hits a pop fly and it is caught in the air, the batter is out.
Throw out: After the batter hits the ball, he can run to the safe zone. If he makes it, he scores a run. If the fielder grabs the ball, throws it at the stumps, and knocks them over before the batter reaches the safe zone, the batter is out.

There are three different ways to score runs:

Six: This is the equivalent of a home run. If you hit the ball out of the field of play on the fly, it's worth six runs
Four: If you hit the ball out of the field of play on a roll (there aren't walls, it's just a line), you get four runs
One: If you hit the ball and run to the safe zone, you get a run. You can run back and forth from safe zone to safe zone as many times as you can while the ball is in play, scoring a run each time.

Because you don't have to run when you hit the ball, getting an out is very difficult. If you hit a little dribbler and don't think you can make it to the safe zone, you don't have to run. This means that games can go on for a very long time.

In Cricket's purest form, the "Test match", the game lasts for 5 days and consists of two innings. In order to win, you not only have to have a higher score than the other team, but you also have to get the 10 outs in each of the innings. If the two innings are not completed by the time the 5 days are up, then the match is declared a draw no matter what the score was at that point. Since obviously no one wants that to happen, there's a bit of strategy involved as to when to stop playing.

For example, in this weekend's match, Australia played Sri Lanka and Australia batted first. In the first 2 days, they had scored 551 runs and only gotten out 4 times. They felt that they had amassed enough of a lead, and conceded their other outs so that Sri Lanka could bat. As it turned out, Australia was able to get Sri Lanka out 10 times in each of the two innings (for a total of 20 outs) before they could get to 551 runs. So, Australia won and didn't even have to bat in their second inning. If Sri Lanka did get more than 551, Australia would have been able to bat again in their second inning to try and retake the lead, but they would never have gotten the 6 outs back that they conceded.

Because the games are so long, there are designated tea breaks and lunch breaks for the players. Plus, because they are in the sun all day, they all wear zinc on their noses and mouths, so they look very funny. Oh, and when they bowl the ball, they're not allowed to bend their arm. So, they get a running start and do a funny windmill motion to throw it.

We're hoping to go see some live cricket while we're here. Apparently it's not as boring to watch as it may sound, especially when there's beer involved.

Sydney Fish Market

2007-11-13T08:38:00.001+11:00

Since the sun has come out to play, I've been much more active this week than last week. After a morning run, I caught a ferry to meet Nicole in the early afternoon. We took the train to Chinatown to stop for some bubble tea before walking over to the Sydney Fish Market.

You might have imagined that the Fish Market would have been all these stalls that were outside like we did, but the market was actually very different. Along the sides of the parking lot, there were fish market stores.

Most of these stores looked similar to this one, where most of the fish fillets were contained behind a glass wall, while most of the whole fish were lying on beds of ice for you to look at.

There was also one main building that had many fish market stores. This "mall" also had a bakery, a cheese shop, fruit/vegetable shop and a variety of places to get food. Inside one of the fish market stores, I was startled by this basket of leftover fish heads that was hanging out in the aisle.

After some debate, we decided not to buy any fish because of the trek home, but we thought that we should come back with the intent of eating at the fish market one day.

On our way to the fish market, we saw a zebra crossing. Who knew there were zebras in the middle of the city?

Near the fish market, we also saw the Pyrmont Bridge that reminded me of home.

I was inspired by the Fish Market, so when David came home, we went to one of Manly's Fish Market stores to pick up some fish for dinner. We figured that while we're here, we should experiment with different fish varieties!

Australia's interesting fact: "No Worries". Australians love to use the phrase "no worries". I haven't quite figured out an equivalent phrase usage in the US. For example, I bought my ferry ticket the other day and said "Thank You". The clerk replied with "No Worries". Obviously, when I apologize for anything, they almost always reply "No Worries". I'm sure they use it in other context, but they like to use the phrase a lot!

Even though we've gotten used to not having real cable in our apartment, we still do not get to watch any American sports. That means no American football, baseball, basketball, etc etc. We do get to see the Australian versions of these sports though. Besides Rugby, there is Australian Football, which is combination of soccer/football/rugby (from what I understand). There is lots of cricket. Thee is also netball, which is similar to basketball, but no dribbling and no backboard. The hoop is lower to the ground and very strange to watch! But my favorite thing to watch on the telly is lawn bowling. We're trying it out this Saturday, so we'll have more to report on it over the weekend!

A Productive Sunday!

2007-11-12T08:24:00.000+11:00

After a relaxing Saturday, David and I had to wake up early because we had a 9AM tee time at Warringah Golf Club. We took the bus to the golf course, which was a short ride away. The green fees were actually decently priced compared to the US. The strange part was how there was no real starter so after we paid, we just started on the course by ourselves.

The course was very flat and there weren't that many bugs because these fly traps were hanging in the trees near the tees and greens.

It was a beautiful day and even though we had to wait sometimes for the people in front of me, we played very fast.

We found an interesting golf ball washer.

It was interesting because it was branded with "David" all over it.

After golfing, we headed back home. We decided to get some wedges and sit by the beach. They were having a carnival day, where the different beach clubs around the area were competing. All these children were competing in various relays. Afterwards, we wandered around the Corso before we headed back to our apartment. We went to the pool that was in our building and it was the first non salt water pool that I've heard of in Australia!!! It was very exciting and we'll probably hang around the pool some more now.

Australia's interesting fact of the day: Cable TV. Very few people in Australia have cable television and it's also very expensive to get. Everyone else lives on the 5 basic channels that are free. The only problem with these 5 channels is that 2 of them usually play random stuff, so it's really only 3 channels. It's very different from the US, but I'm learning to live off of these 3 channels.

SUN!

2007-11-11T20:25:00.000+11:00

Yesterday, the sun finally decided to stop hiding behind the clouds and came out to play! WOOHOO! We woke up in Coogee and walked near the beach to have some brunch before heading back to Manly.

Coogee Beach is much smaller than Manly, but the color of the water is beautiful!

It took us only an hour and a half to get back to Manly, which is something that we're getting used to. Since the sun was finally shining consistently, we decided to go to our beach and relax. There weren't too many people on the beach, which was nice. Farther down the beach, we found these blue jellyfish laying all around.

Here's what they looked like up close.

Apparently, they are called "Blue Bottles" and when they sting you, it is supposed to last about a half hour. Their tentacles look pretty long.

After our time in the beach, we made a delicious dinner with some Australia Ocean trout before watching a movie. We had to go to bed early because we were going golfing the next day!

Australia's interesting fact of the day: Phone Numbers. Whenever they describe phone numbers if there is 2 or 3 numbers in a row that are the same. They will describe it as "double x" or "triplex". For example, 617 555 3776 would be called 6-1-7-triple 5-3-double 7-6.

As for a response to some of the comments, the seasoned wedges are potato wedges. I have no photos of me in a French moustache because I ran away from the girl who was giving them. =) The funniest part about these moustaches is that after the party, some of us went to a bar and the girls didn't take off their moustaches before we went. They definitely got a lot of comments!

Agathe's Housewarming Party

2007-11-10T20:05:00.000+11:00

Yesterday, Agathe, who is another SAC transfer from Paris, had a housewarming party that was French themed. There were lots of French cheeses, baguettes, crudite, crisps (chips), other munchies and of course wine! Here's some of the displays of food that she had.

She was actually afraid that there wouldn't be enough food. I think by the end of the night there was still over half of the food left. Below, Alex and Nicole are starting up the party.

Kim and I are relaxing on the couch.

We noticed that all the Americans came relatively on time, while all the Europeans came an hour or two late! After they all arrived, it's started to get crowded in the apartment.

Anton, Me and David making sure not to give up the valuable couch seats.

As the party continued, The later the party went, the weirder it started getting. The French theme started getting out of control.

Anton, Ele and Carlo are displaying their French moustaches.

Agathe and Ele were putting on moustaches on everyone, but somehow David ended up with something a little different.

Thanks Agathe for hosting such a fun party! After the party, Alex was kind enough to let us stay at her place even though she had to get up early to go to Ayers Rock! Thanks Alex!!!

Recently, there have been a lot of cruise ships in the dock. They take up a lot of space compared to our ferry that we take every day.

Australia's interesting fact of the day: Their staple condiment choice. In America, we use ketchup on everything. I would call it America's staple condiment. In Australia, they use sweet chili sauce on everything! You can find as many bottles of it in the supermarket as there are for tomato sauce (ketchup). Usually, in America we would only find it in Thai places, but in Australia they'll eat it with any kind of food. The most common and weirdest combination that I've seen is that seasoned wedges are always served with sweet chili and sour cream. Amazingly, it is quite delicious.

End of the Week

2007-11-09T08:15:00.000+11:00

So I didn't post yesterday because I didn't have much to say. The weather has been pretty terrible, where it's been cloudy with random rain showers throughout the day. It basically means that I don't really leave the apartment to do much.

I have been playing travel agent during the week trying to nail down some trips around Australia that we want to take, which is relatively time consuming. We have finally purchased tickets to go visit Tasmania in end of January. It's very exciting!

Yesterday, I spent most of the day reading a book before I finally made it out of the house to go do the biathlon. Dave was unable to join me since he went do dinner and a comedy club through a Bain sponsored event. I ended up shaving 2 minutes off of my time! I think it's cause I was more prepared for the terible salt water and gulped some water after the run. Also, I spent about half the time in the pool on my back which allowed me to breathe easily and not require me to rest at the end of each length as much. It was exciting to finishe earlier than last time, but there weren't as many people at the race so I was still at the very end of the pack.

Recently, I haven't taken any photos since I haven't been anywhere, but I promise to post photos over the weekend since we'll be doing some stuff!

Today's fact of the day: Aussies love to shorten words. They love to shorten a word and add "y" or "ie" at the end of it. Here are some common examples:

Australians = Aussies
Breakfast = Brekkie
Sunglasses = Sunnies

I can't seem to remember any more at the moment, but I do remember hearing on TV how someone called his dad was a "Brickie" and the dad's job was to lay down bricks. So, if you ever come to Australia and here someone say something that ends in "ie/y", then it's probably a shortened version of some word.

Melbourne Cup

2007-11-07T10:09:00.000+11:00

Yesterday was the Melbourne Cup. Basically for the last 2 weeks, there's been all this talk about it on TV about fashion and racing. The Melbourne Cup Carnival consists of a series of horse races starting around 10:30 AM, but the last race is the important one that would win the Melbourne Cup. It's one of the biggest racing prizes (maybe the biggest) with the purse being $5.1 million.

During the day, you can see people everywhere dressed up in bright colors and funky hats. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos, but I did see three guys dressed in bright colored suits. Imagine lime green, pink and bright blue. All the women wear dresses, but the big thing are the hats and hair pieces, which have lace and feathers.

Nicole and I met up at the Rocks and checked out a couple of bars before settling down at the one that included a TAB. A TAB is where you can place bets on the horse races. We got there around 1pm and lines to place bets were constantly long. Even though the races are an all day event, the race that everyone wants to see is at 3:00 PM. It's called the "Race that stops the Nation." Literally, I think everyone stops working and goes to somewhere so that they can see the race. Everyone cheers when the race starts and then I think after the race, no one goes back to work.

The weather has been bleak here. Cloudy all day with spurts of rain every couple of hours. Where is the sun!? I guess I shouldn't complain too much because the flies aren't as annoying.

Australia's interesting fact of the day: The standard greeting. Whenever you meet up with an Aussie, they will most likely say "How are you going?" to you. It's funny to hear because in the US, we are used to "How's it going" or "How are you doing". I think this is one phrase that I will never be able to adapt to because it sounds so strange.

Strong Winds

2007-11-06T10:31:00.000+11:00

Though I didn't venture out of Manly, David and Nicole took ferry rides yesterday that were treacherous. Winds are very strong which are causing huge swells. Luckily, David was able to come home early because when Nicole tried to head back home, they had cancelled a lot of ferries and were starting to bus people instead.

Australia's interesting fact of the day: School Uniforms. Every student has to wear uniforms and each school has different ones. Unfortunately, we've seen some pretty ugly ones that are pink plaid dresses. We wonder how uniforms affect the mindset of students here...

Warringah Mall

2007-11-05T08:17:00.000+11:00

David and I decided to go on a little adventure yesterday. In our newspapers, we had been reading about these stores on Pittwater Road and Warringah Mall. So, our brilliant idea was to walk to down Pittwater to Warringah Mall, shop as we walked and in the mall before heading back to our apartment on the bus.

Unfortunately, the shops ended quite quickly on Pittwater Road and we were walking mostly in residential areas before we passed a big field with people playing cricket. We also passed 2 different golf courses. Amazingly, one of them has a bus stop right next to it. We'll definitely be checking it out soon, but this might be one of the rare things that are actually cheaper to do than in the US.

When we got into Warringah Mall, it was very different from any US mall that I've ever been to. It was a combination of an indoor and outdoor mall and was very confusing to walk around in. It had multiple department stores and multiple grocery stores, but there were a couple of weird parts. One was that one of the grocery stores had spilled out into the middle of the mall and had set up kiosks/bins that were selling fruit and vegetables. It looked very confusing on how to pay for these fruit and vegetables. The other strange thing is that besides the grocery stores they also have specialized markets within the mall. They have a stand dedicated to selling raw/cooked chicken, a butcher, a deli, etc. It was just bizarre to see these all in a mall.

After being confused in the mall for about an hour or two, David and I decided to hit up the grocery store that doesn't exist in our part of the town. We took a long bus ride back before finally getting home.

Australia's interesting fact of the day: Rove McManus. Rove McManus is kind of like the Regis in the US, but to the next level. Rove has a couple of his own shows and hosts other types of shows like Are you smarter than a 5th grader and the Aria Awards. From what David and I can tell, he basically hosts anything worth hosting. He's also done some radio work and is basically one of the biggest hosts in Australia.

Two Firsts

2007-11-04T10:36:00.000+11:00

This weekend had 2 firsts for us. The first one was our first visitor from the US, Wes. Granted he was cheating a little since he only had to come up from Melbourne, but at least we got to see him before he left to go back to the US. His visa is expired so he's being kicked out of this country! First, we had a delicious brunch at a cafe along the beach. Since it was cloudy, the view wasn't great, but at least the flies weren't everywhere!

Even though Wes has been in Australia for 5 months, he's been working so hard that he's only been to Sydney one other time and was only able to take a bus tour. So, we brought him to the Opera House.

We showed him how the tiles of the Opera House were different colors and finishes.

We walked around the Rocks and the market before finally settling down at a German Bar/Restaurant. Between the 3 of us, we got different sizes of beers.

Of course, Wes's beer was the biggest one. Look how big it is compared to his head!

After Wes left, we joined up with some Bain people for dinner and then a show at the Opera House. We ended up seeing Don's Party, which was based on a party during election night in the 1960s. There were a couple of jokes that we didn't understand and sometimes the accent was hard for us to understand, but overall the play was pretty entertaining.

The Aftermath

2007-11-03T10:47:00.000+11:00

Despite being exhausted from the biathlon, David and I managed to get a terrible night of sleep. Luckily, I wasn't the one who had to go to work so I was able to nap during the day. While watching Million Dollar Baby, I made a new necklace before finally deciding to go outside to try and work out again. I was only able to run a short distance before I was exhausted and had to stop.

Finally, I took a ferry over to meet up with David. Apparently, he was much more affected from the race and was walking around in pain. Steps were very hard for him. Despite the rainy evening, we wandered around looking for a place to eat for when Wes came in.

We ended up at the Bentley Restaurant and Bar, which was the nicest restaurant that we've eaten while in Sydney. It was voted best new restaurant in the area that we were in. And though we wandered in around 7:45 pm, we were able to get a reservation for 9:00 pm. This was fine since Wes's plane wasn't going to land until 8:00 pm. After a table finally left around 9:15 pm, we finally were able to sit down and order some food. The meal was fantastic, but the best part was the fact that we were able to get our drinks and our chickpea chips for free! Therefore, we decided that the waiter deserved a tip for helping us out.

After dinner, we headed back to our place and David and Wes hung out while I went to bed.

Australia's strange fact of the day: Mandatory Voting. Though we've already talked about the elections and how strange the process it is, apparently everyone HAS to vote. On election day, you have to go to the polls or send in a absentee ballot. Basically, you must make a choice in some form of writing, but you can choose to vote or abstain. If you don't send in your opinion, you get fined $20. Granted that is not a lot of money, but I think it encourages people to make the effort.

Biathlon = Pain

2007-11-02T08:16:00.000+11:00

Yesterday, I didn't go for my normal morning run because I was going to meet David after work. He had gotten an email from Bain's "sports committee", who had informed us about these biathlons that occur over the summer. The biathlon was a 4 KM run and a 300 m swim right afterwards. But before I go into the actual race, I had a very interesting ferry ride. Even though Halloween was the previous day, there were about 30-40 students dressed up in costume, and I mean ALL OUT in costume. People seem to take dressing up pretty seriously.

Most of them were drinking RTDs, which stand for Ready to Drink. These cans are usually mixes of soda and alcohol. Because of their happy state, they started to talk to most of the innocent bystanders that they were bothering. After some started talking to me and had asked me to take a photo of them, and then I whipped out my camera and asked if I could take a photo of them.

And then I shamelessly tried to get off the ferry first and prepare to take photos of them as they left the ferry. Apparently, they were all 11th graders going to their version of prom.

Back to the biathlon. David was very excited to try it out and seemed to think it would be doable. He was the one pushing me to do the race. The race was divided into 5 waves, and we started in Wave 5, which was the group that was last and that would do the race in 30+ minutes.

The rest of the Bain people started much earlier than us. Nicole was a speed demon and finished it in a little less than 24 minutes (I think), while David and I struggled to even finish. The run part wasn't too bad except that it was much hillier than what I normally run, but the first half was mostly uphill, so that the second half was a little easier. The swim part was the worst. The pools in Australia are a combination of chlorine and salt water. So as you are swimming, your tongue/mouth slowly gets this feeling that salt is encrusting it and nothing will relieve it until you are done.

After we finished, David was basically immobile and had claimed to know what death was like, but a couple hours later, he was pumped to do it again next week. I'm still torn on whether or not to torture myself again, but most likely we'll be doing it again...

Australia's strange fact of the day: The concern of obesity. Since I watch the news a decent amount while I'm here, there is always a small segment on how obesity is a huge concern for the country. The irony of this to me is that I haven't seen any obese people compared to Americans, so I'm not really sure where these obese people live. But I've been told that Sydney is like the Hollywood of the US where everyone is skinnier than the rest of the country. Ok, that's fine, but the next ironic thing is how fish and chips are part of the staple diet here. Not only are fish and chips stands more abundant than the Starbucks or McDonalds in the US, but they are also available in almost all restaurants like the Japanese restaurant we went to last night. If you're so concerned about obesity, maybe you should start eating fried foods all the time!

Bain Partner/Spouse Outing

2007-11-01T12:19:00.001+11:00

Yesterday, we had a picnic in the park with other Bain partners/spouses, but the weird part about it was that the Bain halves of our couples were not invited. I met up with Nicole before we went and headed over together. It was kind of strange since I had never met of the other halves of the people that we were meeting and they had never met Dave.

There was an array of food for all, but I didn't take any photos because it would have been a bit strange. The worst part of eating in the park was that the flies would not only bother you, but they would continuously try to get into all the food that we had. It was quite annoying.

I felt really bad for one of the wives, who's husband was from the Munich office. She's been in Sydney for about 4-5 months, is 4 months pregnant and barely speak English. She mostly speaks Spanish and German. So, while the rest of us were talking, she barely spoke a word probably because she could barely follow the conversation.

After the park, we helped bring the food back to the Sydney office and they have this awesome array of fruit just sitting in a bowl. It's much better than the fruit offered in the Boston office. This one has asian pears, regular pears, bananas, nectarine, peaches and sometimes kiwi. Obviously, I took some of the fruit to bring home since fruit is outrageously priced around here.

Australia's strange fact of the day: everything is expensive, nothing is considered a deal compared to the US. A bottle of soda is minimum $2.75. A mango can go for $4-6 per mango. The other day I had seen the price for cherries were $49.99 per kilo. A bag of chips is usually $4, but can be found on sale for $3. Sometimes it's hard to tell how much more expensive it is compared to the US since it uses per kilo versus per pound, but I haven't found anything that seems like it's cheaper here. Clinique is about 4 times the price that it is in the US. Since the Aussie dollar is stronger than it's ever been, the exchange rate is killing me and everything is definitely more expensive. I'm waiting to find that "cheaper" item and buying lots of it. I'll let you know if I ever do...

I'm back ONLINE! Did you miss me?

2007-10-31T19:15:00.000+11:00

Since our free wireless has stopped working, we finally decided to pick up some of our own. Luckily, we'll be able to expense most of it. =)

So, what have we been doing while we've been offline??? On Monday, Nicole and I decided to try to walk to North Head which is the farthest east on our peninsula. We started from Manly Wharf and soon had to start walking up some hills. It appears that most of Sydney is built on hills. As we left the developed area and entered some park areas, we saw some interesting signs. What is a bandicoot?!

We actually took a very long detour due to poor signage and some accidental ignoring on my part. When we finally reached the top, there were some amazing views of the city and the ocean.

It was quite windy up there and along our whole walk, there were lots of flies attacking us. It didn't help that it was very hot because it seems as if more flies come out the hotter it is.

Some photos of the ocean breaking into the cliffs.

Some of the cliffs that were unreachable.

On Tuesday, we went exploring to Bondi Junction specifically to go to KMart. While we were there, we found a couple of company rip offs.

There are actually a couple differences between this sign and the US sign. The font is different as well as the color and they added in an angled period at the end. Inside the store, it's very similar.

Even Kmart is different here, but it's still called Kmart. Unclear what the international copyright infringements are, but this seems wrong.

Australia's strange fact of the day: Taxicabs. Besides the driving on the other side, as a lone passenger, you are expected to sit in the front seat of a taxi cab. Also, since Sydney is pretty big, there is a chance that your taxi driver might ask you to check the map to find your exact address when you get into your town. Also, all taxis take credit cards, which is pretty nice. Finally, you don't need to tip on top of the amount that the taxi cab is charging you, but that is consistent with the fact that you aren't expected to tip anywhere.

Internet Down

2007-10-30T21:01:00.000+11:00

Sorry for no post earlier today. My free internet has been failing me and with David traveling, I haven't been able to be connected to the world since last night!

I'm looking into getting some real wireless that we pay for, so I'll update you with photos of what I've been up to once that is all settled!

Australia's strange fact of the day: Crossing the street. As all of you know, I'm from Boston where EVERYONE jaywalks. You cross whenever you can and just avoid the cars. In Australia, you can tell the difference between a tourist and a native. Natives will WAIT until the little green man appears indicating that you can walk. Even if no cars are at the intersection, they will still wait for the green man. And the little green man won't appear unless you actually push the button! It's amazingly weird, but I think it's part of the culture here. I'll give you more details on parts of their culture in a later time.

Traveling

2007-10-29T21:48:00.000+11:00

Today, I had the opportunity to travel to Adelaide to spend a few days at the client. I had a 7:10am flight, but I wasn't sure exactly how long it took to get to the airport, or how early I needed to be there. So, I got up early (5:00) and had a taxi pick me up at 5:30. I got to the airport at 6:00 and was literally at the gate at 6:05. It's amazing how little security there is for domestic flights here. I never once even had to show my ID! Here's what I went through when I got to the airport:

Walk to check in machine (10 seconds)
Stick credit card in slot (2 seconds)
Confirm flight, choose seat, and print boarding pass (1 minute)
Walk to security area (20 seconds)
Take laptop out of bag, change out of pockets, bags on conveyor belt, and walk through metal detector (40 seconds)
Put laptop back in bag and pick up bags (20 seconds)
Walk to gate (1 minute)

At this point in the states I wouldn't even have made it past the check in machine. Next time I come I'm bringing the full bottle of shampoo, all 16 ounces...because I CAN.

Luckily, I was able to kill the next hour before my flight in the Qantas Lounge (one of the benefits of working at Bain Australia is they buy you access to the Qantas Lounge) where they served breakfast and coffee and had a nice waiting area to sit.

Adelaide is a funny city. It's known as the "20 minute city" because you can literally walk from one end to the other in 20 minutes. Also, it's very squat. The tallest building has like 10 floors. It's good for us short people. I feel quite tall. Possibly the weirdest thing about this city is that there is a time difference from Sydney...of 30 minutes. The jet lag really sucks. Seriously though, 30 minutes? Why even bother? Personally I think it gets light out too early here - it really should be more like 15 minutes behind Sydney.

I know that Adelaide is a third-tier city because of my hotel room. For $200 a night, I am living in the most baller hotel room I've ever seen. It's a 2 bedroom apartment - literally, it has a full kitchen, living room, 2 bedrooms, and 2 baths, a bar, washer dryer, and 30 foot ceilings. Next time I come I will bring a camera to take pictures - it's amazing. And, there's a van parked across the street that sells meat pies late into the night.

Ok, enough posting - between Denise's entry and mine, you can thank us for at least 10 minutes of good time killing at work.

Oh, and way to go Sox!

Beach Day at Manly!

2007-10-29T10:32:00.001+11:00

After Bondi's beach excursion last week, we decided to invite the gang up to Manly to come hang out on our beach. The gang ended up on the same ferry and we met up briefly in the apartment before heading down to the beach. In the morning, the sun was out and it was gorgeous, but by the afternoon some clouds had rolled in and the sun decided to hide for the rest of the afternoon.

Alex took some pictures of the group on her camera, but here are the few pictures that I took. Mine were mostly focused on the Surf Rescue team. Here they are going out in their little boat. It was very hard for them to get past the waves.

After the boat finally got out into the ocean, it was looking around for someone/something and a helicopter joined in the search.

No one ended up getting saved, but it's unclear whether or not someone was actually in the water. David and Nicole played catch for awhile before coming back to just chill. It was still fun despite the fact that there was no sun. Finally, my wimpy self decided that it was too cold and I was going to head back to the apartment. Everyone else decided to join me!

At home, we had a feast of food and drink. We had made chicken curry for the group, but we also feasted on celery/chips and hummus, salad, toast with pesto tapenade and chocolate chip cookies. It was a good afternoon of food and drink.

Now to answer some questions that were brought up in the awesome comments!

1. Which was does the toilet flush? I still have not found a toilet that actually flushes like the ones in the US. It's always a rush of water that doesn't ever swirl in the toilet.

2. What does Kangaroo taste like? I have only seen one place that has mentioned serving kangaroo, but I wasn't eating at the place at the time. It was for a kangaroo pizza.

3. Is Fosters really Australian for beer? Fosters is NOT an Aussie beer. It's actually very hard to find Fosters around here and people don't like the fact that it's called the Australian beer.

Australia's strange fact of the day: Price of Beer. For some reason, the terrible beer they serve around here is extremely expensive. Usually $13-14 for a 6 pack! It's insane how expensive the beer is here.

Manly Scenic Walkway

2007-10-28T12:29:00.000+11:00

Yesterday, David and I decided to try the Manly Scenic Walkway. It allows us to walk from Manly Wharf to the Spit Bridge. Here's a map of what we were following. We started where the white dotted line meets the land. (Manly Wharf) and then headed along the coast until we found the Yellow line on the far left side, which is the Spit Bridge.

Overall, the route was supposed to be 9.5 KM and the original plan was to go there, eat lunch and then come back. But that plan soon changed about halfway into the "walk". The walk ended up being more like a hike where some parts we were climbing stairs made out of rocks or sometimes even built wooden stairs. The good thing about the hike was that there were some amazing views along the way.

The white building in this picture was a location that we were considering at one point.

Along the way, there were lots of lizards on the trail. Of course, I almost screamed everytime we saw one. I guess it didn't help that we had just gone to the dangerous australian reptiles exhibit a couple of days ago. I kept thinking a poisonous snake was going to come slithering out.

Besides the great lookout points, we were often walking in the middle of a forest.

Here was some of the "moderate" terrain that we had to go through. We forgot to take a picture of the "hard" terrain, but it was pretty much the same but steeper.

And we finally found our destination! The Spit Bridge!

We decided to bus it back to Manly since we were pretty exhausted and the whole journey took about 3 hours. Afterwards, we were beat for the day and didn't do much except relax and eat. =)

We just had Daylight Savings in Australia, but we sprung forward, so we're an extra hour ahead of everyone in the states. When you guys have your Daylight Savings, we'll be another hour ahead. That means for EST, we'll end up being 16 hours ahead and for PST, we'll be 19 hours ahead.

Australia's strange fact of the day: Elections! Within the last month, they recently decided to hold an election for Prime Minister. It's not like the US, where the elections happen every 4 years. They just suddenly decide to hold elections and the elections are usually 2 months after they declare the time for elections. Also, there's no limit on how long someone can be prime minister, so the current PM has won the last 3 elections.

I can't stop..

2007-10-27T10:29:00.001+10:00

Even though my cry for more comments only got one from David and another from Stacey, I'm still going to keep posting. What can I say? I'm addicted!

I didn't take any photos yesterday, but I can let you know what we did. While David was at work, I did my morning run and then headed out to Ikea. I had a couple of things I wanted to return and a couple of things I wanted to get. I met up with Nicole and we made it over there. The funniest part of the trip was that Nicole ended up buying the same rug that she had returned on our earlier trip.

After Ikea, we headed home and this crazy storm swept over New South Wales. There was a thunderstorm in Sydney, but I was on the ferry home at that time and fell asleep. In other parts of New South Wales, there were hail storms and even a twister!

After work, Casey and Nicole came over and we had wontons for dinner. We taught them how to play dominos and played a few games before they had to run to catch the ferry. We'll have to continue playing next time they come over!

Lucky for you, we're going on a scenic walk today, which means lots of pictures for tomorrow's post.

Australia's strange fact of the day: The weather forecasts. In the US, the different status is usually sunny, partly cloudy, cloudy, fair, rain, etc. Over here, the general status is usually between "Fine" and "Mostly Fine". I haven't quite figured out what exactly fine is, but I think it's the equivalent to our sunny. At least, that's what I can tell from the weather outside and their description. Almost all days are "Fine" here except for the occasional thunderstorm.

No Comments?!

2007-10-26T22:59:00.000+10:00

If no one is going to comment on my blog when I ask specific questions, then I'll guess I'll have to assume that no one is reading.... That means no more new posts and no pictures.

SO, if you want me to continue blogging, I'd love for you to comment and give us suggestions on movies to rent.

Love and miss you all!