Off to the Reef

Beyond my nonsensical -- and one could probably even claim lazy -- stream of consciousness post yesterday, I know I've been a bit delinquent recently in posting things on the blog. Unfortunately, that's gonna get worse before it gets better because in another nine hours, John and I hop on an overnight train to Brisbane. We get into town early tomorrow (Saturday) morning, meet Adrian and Jo (for those that know them) for breakfast, then get in our van and head north towards the Great Barrier Reef.

There still isn't much of a set itinerary, but it will most likely include any or all of the following along the Reef: Noosa, Hervey Bay, Fraser Island, Airlie Beach, Whitsunday Islands, Port Douglas and Cairns. (Not that any of these town names will mean anything to anyone.)

I'll be sure to take plenty of pictures, and once I find some time to write a recap (at least of what I can remember), sometime in 2008, I'll post some stories here.

For all my gentile friends, I hope you have a Merry Christmas. And to all, a Happy New Year. 2008 will be 0.0498% better than 2007. Do the math. It's true.

Throwin' Stream of Consciousness Kleinballs

I've been really into the stream of consciousness writing these days. And since I don't have much else to write about, I just sat down and wrote about whatever poppped into my head. Besides typos, haven't edited any of this.

My house is still good. I think I like the people. I think. Most of them are good. The Turkish guy's a little strange. He laughs like a hyena. And he describes all food as "very nice", but it sounds more like "veiwy nice." Kinda like Bugs Bunny. Not that this is what makes me dislike him. And I guess I don't necessarily dislike him. He's just strange. Which, I said above. Let's leave it at that.

It probably doesn't need to be said, but Lynyrd Skynyrd spells their name very strangely.

I think I've seen about 30 cumulative minutes of the NFL this year. I have absolutely no idea what's going on. And I think I'm okay with this.

Everyone wants to know about how my work is going. And I really don't know what to say. I mean, after that first few weeks, I found that it was really quite similar to working anywhere else. Except I have to dial "0" before a number except "9". That's probably been the biggest barrier to my domination of the Sydney market and ultimate ascension to becoming the Spam King of Sydney.

I miss New York. I miss being within five minutes of dozens of restaurants and bars. I miss stores being open past 6 and banks open on Saturdays. But I love living by the beach. I love walking along the water. And the smells of the ocean.

If I had to rank the continents, I think it would go: Europe, North America, Asia, South America, Australia, Africa and Antarctica. That's 100% subjective and not based on any criteria. Although I'm not sure how Antarctica could ever been anything but last.

Christmas cards are interesting.

I'm already fearing the winter here. Yes, I know that's insane. For several reasons. But it's true.

If your initials aren't JVA...

...you lose.

That's because in six hours' time, John Van Amburg will land in Sydney and become the first person from the States to visit me in Australia.

John's here until January 4, and we have a great, great few weeks planned.

This upcoming week, John will be doing his own thing during the day while I'm off working. But come next Friday, we're taking an overnight train up north to Brisbane, renting a campervan (basically a very mini RV) and doing a one week road trip up the Queensland coast to the Great Barrier Reef.

We'll figure out the detailed itinerary next week, but the basic idea is to do about two or three hours of driving a day and spend the rest of the time bumming around on the beach or seeing sites. We fly back to Sydney on December 30 in time for New Year's Eve.

I'm pumped. I'm beyond pumped. It's a plan that came together -- from conception to booking reservations -- in about three days, and it's going to be sweet. I'll be sure to take plenty of pictures, and once I fully recover (sometime in 2008), I'll recap the adventure here.

Don't knock it 'til you've tried it

When I first came here, I had quite the bias against cricket. Okay, I had a big bias. But this weekend, I played my first real cricket match and that's all changed.

Being desperately low on players for his normal Saturday morning cricket match, Maz called on Friday and pleaded with me -- me, a guy who's never played proper cricket in his life -- to play. After some hesitation, I realized I couldn't pass this up. Yes, there was the distinct possibility that I would horrendously embarrass myself, but how could I possibly not at least try?

Flash forward ahead to the next morning. My team's batting, I'm waiting for my turn. And I'm nervous. Nervous because I really had no idea what I was doing. Nervous because I was afraid of getting out before scoring a single run (known as a Golden Duck). Nervous because the other guys on my team were getting out far too quickly. (Although I soon realized that this was actually a good thing, as my suckage might not stand out as much.) And yes, nervous because I wasn't wearing a cup.

Finally, my turn comes and I walk out onto the pitch. I dig in in front of the wicket and all of a sudden things are moving a million miles an hour. The umpire says something to me that I don't understand, I inexplicably nod/grunt in acknowledgment, the bowler starts approaching, the guy hitting at the other end (Sean) is furiously waving for me to move closer to the wicket, the bowler's about to unleash the ball, I'm shuffling around as per Sean's directions, and the ball's heading my way. Literally. It's heading right at me. And before I know it, the ball bounces on the ground, comes straight up and hits me on the side of the throat. Faaaaaannnnnnnntastic.

Things slow down a bit from there. I do a quick check of the vitals. Seems like everything's okay. From the boundary, Leif (Sean's brother) yells, "Welcome to Australia, mate!" Everyone laughs. I nervously laugh. But my God! The boys on the other team apologize, I shake it off and we get back at it.

Next ball looks good, so I take a hack. And woefully miss. Fortunately, the ball also misses the wicket, so I'm still alive. I think I may have missed the next ball as well. But lo and behold, on one of the next few balls, I make contact, the ball gets by some fielders, and I'm off and running! I score my first ever cricket run (thus eliminating the chance of getting an embarrassing Golden Duck) and get rousing applause from the boys on the boundary. Meanwhile, the adrenaline has me literally shaking. Good stuff.

And serendipitously, illogically, amazingly, I keep at it. Sean and I stay out there for maybe ten minutes and some of my hits even go for two runs. After each over (six balls), I manage to amuse Sean as I ask him very basic questions about rules that I had never even thought to inquire about until I was out there.

Then I really start to get comfortable and take some healthy hacks. Don't connect too cleanly on anything but I keep going. And I finally get out on my hardest-hit ball of the day that a guy on the other team somehow manages to catch on the line.

My total tally for the morning was nine runs, which is far from anything to brag about. A mediocre to decent score for these guys is probably at least in the 20s or 30s. But that day, the other boys were playing like crap, and I actually managed to score the second most runs of anyone on the team. Domination, baby.

We fielded after that, and that was easy. Catch the ball on the fly if you can. Otherwise, chase it down and throw it in. Somewhat boring, actually. The only thing that kept me going was the chatter among the team that snowballed into some funny lines.

So now, despite my initial skepticism, I'm all about the cricket. Australia is playing a one day match against New Zealand next Sunday at the Sydney Cricket Ground, and I'm there. And the next time the boys need an extra hand, you better believe I'm there as well. Just need to get that cup.

Internet Bubble 2.0

It starts off a little slow, but this is brilliant.

The weekend trips have commenced

I've been in Sydney for over two and a half months now, and until last weekend, I probably hadn't been more than 10 km out of the center of the city. In retrospect -- now that I've passed that threshold -- waiting so long was lunacy.

Took off work a little early on Friday and hopped on a train to Forster, a small town on the beach about five hours north of Sydney, to meet up with my friend Jez. (You may best know Jez, real name Jeremy, as the person accompanying me in what I believe is the only remaining photo of my brief -- and some say ill-fated -- blond phase.) The weather was looking good and Jez' parents have a sweet penthouse apartment up there, only three minutes from the beach, so all was ripe for a good weekend.

Saturday was a tour of a few beaches, including the secluded Treachery Beach and the accurately-named One Mile Beach. (Apparently there's also a Seven Mile Beach and Nine Mile Beach nearby. Why the beaches are named in miles when Australia is on the metric system, I don't know. No one could offer a satisfactory answer.)

At Treachery, Jez and I had a little shrimp barbecue, which was delicious. However, it led to quite a contentious debate. You see, most Americans are familiar with the phrase, "Let's throw another shrimp on the barbie!" We've all grown up to believe that's an Australian phrase, right? But there's a problem. Because Australians don't refer to shrimp as shrimp. Here, they're prawns, and only prawns. I've called them shrimp on a few occasions and have actually been flat-out scoffed at. So how did we ever come to believe this was an Australian phrase? Was this Paul Hogan's doing? Again, no one could offer a satisfactory answer.

As the day gave way to night, Jez and I headed up to some headlands overlooking the ocean with some alcoholic beverages. This is where we saw the sign to the left. We're pretty sure this was trying to communicate that you're on a cliff and could fall off. But really??!? Let's forget for a moment that the figure (which I can only assume is meant to be a person) is not in scale to the rest of the sign. Just look at him! What kind of head is that? And is that his penis??!? Since Jez strongly maintained that there was nothing wrong with this sign, I felt a strong sense of redemption when this kid walked up to the sign and said, "Why is the ninja jumping off the cliff?"

This drama aside, the headlands were good. I got my obligatory self-photo with open mouth and took a nice, classy, sepia-toned picture of Jez. Of course, his seedy mustache (courtesy of Movember) and pre-mixed rum and coke kind of ruined the effect. Maybe I'll airbrush that stuff out.

The rest of Saturday is a blur. Wolfed down some Indian food, couldn't find a single bar open at 10:30 (!!), so we went back to Jez' place to drink some more. And some time around 12, as we watched a movie about a gang of tap dancers from Newcastle (I swear, this is what the movie was about), I passed out.

And then, with Sunday mostly consumed with travel and a brief stop in the actual Newcastle (kept my eye out for tap dancers but didn't see any), it was back to the work and the real world. Which is fine, I guess.

All in all, an excellent weekend. And I'll remember it for years to come. But what I have planned for later on this month, it's turning into quite a beast. And I'll touch on that in a few weeks.

This is the story of one shitty landlord

As you may recall from my first post about my place, I was pretty concerned about my housemates and how I'd get along with them. And fortunately, it's turned out very well. Everyone is very cool, loves to have a good time, and is respectful of each other. For the most part, we even keep the house clean. All in all, not a bad group.

What I didn't account for, however, was my landlord. Because it's becoming increasingly clear that she couldn't give two shits about us. If something breaks, the mantra is, "We'll come over tomorrow." Which turns into next week. Which turns into two weeks.

Roughly six weeks into moving in, and here's where we stand on the state of the house:

• The cold water in the washing machine (which we only got a few weeks ago) doesn't work
• The mirror in my bathroom was (finally) installed two weeks ago... and there still isn't one in the other one
• The sink in my bathroom leaks onto the floor
• The light in the pool regularly breaks
• The table lamp in my room broke
• The desk promised to me still hasn't been delivered
• Our barbecue is broken
• Cable TV (which I hoped to have for the World Series) hasn't been installed... although that's a bit of a moot point because:
• The sound on the first TV broke
• The sound on the second TV comes and goes (and no replacement yet)

Our landlord has made up for part of those last points by bringing a VCR to the living room. Oh, wait a minute. That doesn't make up for anything at all. It's a frickin' VCR! No one sells or rents VHS anymore! And even if this was the height of the VCR era, somewhere in between the death of Beta and the introduction of DVD, what the hell would we do with a VCR when the TV doesn't work?!?!?

When I moved into my place, not sure of how the housemates would be, I was consoled by the fact that the lease was for three months at a minimum. And today, I'm still glad that it's a minimum of three months, not because of those housemates, but because of this landlord. Goad.