5 posts tagged “sydney”

It's been a while since my last entry; I haven't really been in a writing mood, but I thought I'd post something as a sign of my continued existence. Some things that have been happening:

Australia
I went home for a couple of weeks. It was great as usual. Even though so much has changed since I moved away, it takes about 40 seconds for me to become completely immersed in life at home again. Except for the light switches being the other way around and driving on the left and things like that, which took a little longer. Funny how the superficial differences take longer to get used to than big things like being with family again.

I squeezed in the usual catchups with friends, and as usual most of them felt too short for either party to do any more than skim the surface of what's rolling arouund each other's heads these days. I guess that's part of life; drifting away from people to such an extent that although you trust each other to talk about things, you have so little time with each other, and so rarely, that to dive headfirst into such topics feels like plunging into cold water and so you don't do it.

My parents organised a family trip to South Australia for four days, which was amazing. The highlight was definitely Kangaroo Island, which is like a huge wild menagerie of all different sorts of animals. Growing up in Australia I stopped seeing the novelty of kangaroos or koalas a long time ago, but seeing them just casually doing their thing in the wild really brought back some excitement to the tired stereotypes in my head. It also helps that Kangaroo Island is stupendously beautiful, with wild jagged coastal cliffs, pristine beaches, iconic mallee scrub, green meadows, and random sand dunes in the middle of nowhere. The other places we visited on the trip were the Barossa Valley for some wine tasting, and a tiny bit of Adelaide (unfortunately, we didn't get to walk around and explore very much).

Work
Work has been busy, have been staying past 7 most nights (although the hours that Jon puts in make me feel lazy). Some interesting news from this week is that I will have someone reporting directly to me from next week onwards. It'll be a challenge juggling that with my own work, but I guess it's a good opportunity to figure out whether I like the whole management track or not.

Oot and aboot
There are several travel plans in the works: going to New York for a few days next week, visiting Sam in Victoria (that's Victoria, British Columbia) a week or two after that, and Thanksgiving in Whistler. By all accounts the snow is bucketing down in the mountains, so it's likely we will have some fully sick pow, bro.

Music
Have been to some decent shows recently: Fujiya and Miyagi last week (pretty good), Great Lake Swimmers (even better), Patrick Wolf (outstanding). I also brought back the 2 latest Cat Empire albums from Australia, Cities (more of an experimental album) and So Many Nights (a mainstream release). The former is outstanding and hard to stop listening to on repeat; the latter was pretty disappointing, unfortunately. New album means touring though, so hopefully they will make it to Sea'le.

It's nice being back in Sydney. The last few days have been very relaxed, I've been bumming at home, going for walks with my mum, eating good food, not much else.

Some observations:

• The weather is still pretty cold right now despite it being late September. After being away for a year my brain somehow managed to reinvent Sydney as an idyllic place that is hot and sunny all year round. However the hoodie I brought from Seattle *just in case* has been getting a decent workout.
• When I got home my mum and grandma let me write a list of all the home-cooked food I want them to make, and they're now scheduling something for each day I'm home for dinner. Oh, this is the life. Going back to my wonderful (ahem) pasta and stir fries 5 days a week is going to be hard, hard, hard. Also in danger with all this yummy food promised at home is my other aim of hitting up all my favourite Sydney food haunts.
• I've been drinking Easyway every day, it's been great. Seems like their menu has really been trimmed down since I was at uni though. What happened to all the weird and wacky pearl teas I used to try with trepidation down at Market City? Even Gossip in Seattle seems to have a wider selection than Easyway now.
• I am working remotely for a week while I'm here since I couldn't get a whole two weeks off. The RAS is pretty responsive, so it's reasonably productive. I just have to stop myself from wandering into the kitchen and staring/sniffing longingly at whatever my grandma happens to be cooking at that moment.
• I have been staying up at odd hours watching the 20/20 cricket world cup on TV, it's been fun! I am a little nonplussed at ostentatiousness of the whole extravaganza - call me a purist but I still need more convincing that cheerleaders and fireworks belong on a cricket field. But the shorter format is definitely more compelling than one-day cricket though, which still seems like too much of a time investment for the casual spectator. Thrilling stuff.
• Heading to South Australia with the family later this week for the long weekend, I am looking forward to that, especially seeing Kangaroo Island and Adelaide Oval.