It's (finally) on like Kong!

After all the talking, after all the conjecture, after all the uncertainty, after everything... I'm here! Where's "here", you ask? Right at that little yellow thumbtack on left. That would be half a block away from a racetrack and about half an hour walk from the beach.



Thursday/Friday was interesting. Got through customs by about 9 and took this winner of a picture from outside the terminal:



For those who don't have superhuman eyesight, that says, "International Terminal Sydney." I think. Anyway, Maz and Nugget picked me up, then I struggled for a few hours before passing out around 1. (By the way, for those not in the know, these guys have some, ummmmmm, interesting nicknames. Right now, I'm living with Maz, Nugget and Yogi. And there's also Shorty, Jezza, Bitza and Anus. That's right -- ANUS!! This is actually someone's nickname. Unfortunately, I haven't seen the kid since I was first here in 2002, and I'm not sure if anyone still keeps in touch with him. I can only hope our paths cross sometime soon.)

Woke up at 5 on Saturday, ready to go. Faaaaantastic. Dozed for a few more hours and then headed out to an exciting club cricket match! Now, I've been to one other cricket match in my life, but it was a professional match and alcohol was very prominently involved. And after sitting through three thrilling (and very sober) hours of this club match, I'm absolutely shocked that I didn't require thrice as much alcohol last time. My God, what an excruciatingly boring sport. Here's a shot of the exhilarating scene that unfolded before my very eyes:


Saturday night was drinks. A lot of drinks. And more rugby than you could ever imagine. Currently, the Rugby World Cup is going on in France, so people are glued to the screen when Australia is playing, usually around midnight our time. (I think the US lost to Tonga a few days ago. TONGA! Yeeeeaaaaahhhh, not one of our strongest sports.) And then there's the finals for Rugby League (not to be confused with Rugby Union, which is an entirely different version of rugby altogether) that are currently going on. Oh, and on top of all this rugby, there's also the Twenty20 Cricket World Cup going on in South Africa right now. For the uninitiated, Twenty20 is a shorter version of the same boring cricket. So instead of being bored out of your mind for a one day test or the five day test (!!), these matches only bore you for three hours. Which seems manageable at first, but then once you start watching, you realize that three hours of the most boring sport ever is just as impossible to get through as eight hours.

Yesterday was recovery and a nice breakfast barbecue. Here's Jezza and Nugget cooking up some meat and eggs:




And this brings us to today, which is Day #1 of job search! So naturally, first order of business was to see if I could find any pubs playing the Sox-Yankees game. When I had no luck there, I bought a paper and went to the beach. So, uhhhhhh, I'll start looking tomorrow.