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May 29, 2006
Holiday?
Well...Mo is working tonight. Again. For the 16th or 17th day in a row I think, and she's scheduled to work for at least the next 10 as well - She's put in over 135 hours of work over the last couple weeks... So much for the holiday! Anyway, I miss her, but at least we do get to hang out for a few hours per day on the weekend and she's been coming to work with me a few days a week at Strathfield so that has been a bonus. Last night we got to go to the aquarium for a couple of hours...
CHECK THE GALLERY FOR NEW SYDNEY PHOTOS
...other than that, we've gone to see a movie (Inside Man - thumbs up), had the firefighters show up over burnt toast, got in a verbal sparring match with our building manager, got to go see the biggest Rugby League game of the year (or at least Paul and I did...Mo and Jisca had work). We've also taken some time to wander around the city some more - fun, but mostly everything revolves around work right now...we'll keep you posted.
Posted by David at 7:52 PM
May 18, 2006
Thank Goodness for ESPN.com
Every day I look at mobile phone contracts. Over and over and over and over and over. Checking names, serial #, dates, handset prices, signatures, ID, etc. over and over. It is so repetitive and mindnumbing that the first couple of days almost killed me...after months of daily mental stimuli it took me a bit to realize that I had to "dumb down" and zone out for large chunks of the day in order to make time pass quicker. On the other hand, I couldn't ask for much better pay - and I even get to wear sandals to work (or at least I haven't been told not to yet)...I'm moving towards the T-shirt also and I haven't shaved since I got the job 10 days ago. We'll see at what point the boss speaks up.
Besides being questioned about the theft of two 30gig Ipods on Monday (I was/am pretty much the main suspect) things have been really slow there...but that's where I love ESPN.com. Thanks to the fact that Montreal is 14 hours behind me and the west coast is 17 hours, the Eastern NBA and NHL playoff games start at 9am my time with the Westcoast games beginning at noon and running until 3pm or so. So, right after I log into the system at work in the morning I open espn.com and "watch" the games by updating the scores and statistics every few minutes or so. It's been a great distraction...not sure what I'll do when the playoffs end, but so far I've loved following the Oilers and Phoenix Suns games especially. I really lucked out yesterday and had a Phoenix Suns game go into double overtime so that it lasted from noon until 4:45 my time - pretty much the whole afternoon. Anyway, where would we be without sports to pass the time?
Posted by David at 11:31 PM
May 10, 2006
India Pics
The last pictures from India and a few from our last couple days in Thailand are now in the gallery.
Posted by Maureen at 2:41 PM
Back to life, back to reality....
ok, so not completely back to reality, but this first week in Sydney has been a bit of a shock to the system. All of a sudden we are dropped in the middle of a modern westernized city with the prices to match ($8.99/kg for bananas....that's even worse than Canada!!...and they grow them here!?!?). We have to work, find a place to live and cook for ourselves!!!! (I can just feel the sympathy coming through from your end) But I have to be honest, I'm sad to see our time in SE Asia come to an end...we had such a good time. I definitely hope to make back to that part of the world again some day. And now looking forward...
Australia is huge...in fact, just Sydney covers over 2100 square kilometers!!! So far, we are really enjoying the city. We are sharing a 1 bedroom apartment with Paul and Jisca (we'll each get the bedroom for one month while we stay there:o))...
...and we've all managed to find jobs within a week of being here. Our apartment is really nice...it overlooks the Sydney harbour and Opera house, is right by some nice botanical gardens and is within reasonable walking distance to downtown. Jisca and I are both working in a cute restaurant/cafe called "Violetta's" about a 10min walk from our place...seems like a good place to work and they serve amazing coffee which we get to partake of for free:o) Paul is working a manual labour job and David is in an office job that I'm sure he'll write about before too long.
We are just heading into their winter here, which is quite mild actually. It still gets up to the low 20's during the day but at night and in the morning it gets down to 10ish. It feels very cold for us right now just coming from Bangkok and India where they're in their hottest times of the year. But we'll get used to it, and we'll hit warmer weather once we start heading up the coast.
We are looking forward to exploring this area around Sydney fully in the two months that we'll be here working, then the plan is to quit and take a bit of time to explore up the east coast before heading back to Canada.
Posted by Maureen at 1:58 PM | Comments (1)
May 2, 2006
Wizard of Oz
After yet another night in transit (that makes 9 in the last 30 days) we arrived in Sydney, AUS this morning after leaving Bangkok yesterday. With that, our time in SE Asia has come to a close after 5 months and 2 days.
I gotta say, it feels really weird to be here...almost like being back in Canada or something. It's the first "developed" country we've been in for awhile. I don't know quite how I feel about it in the end. Maybe I just need some sleep...
Posted by David at 8:10 PM