TravelStream™ news feed for member cwendeln on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/cwendeln en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Wed, 25 Mar 2009 22:50:36 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cwendeln/1/1238121660/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cwendeln/1/1238121660/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/cwendeln/1/1238121660/tpod.html Wed, 25 Mar 2009 22:50:36 -0400 Out of the Chicago winter- a summer down under

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Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

As I write this, I am enjoying my last day in Sydney. I fly out tomorrow at 3 to San Francisco, where I'll connect to O'Hare and home. I'm not particularly looking forward to that 20+ hours of traveling,but I will enjoy traveling back in time, as I will land earlier than when I left thanks to the time/date change. I'm not doing a whole helluva lot today- just sitting outside and enjoying the sun right now, finishing up some laundry and packing, tying up some loose ends, etc.

Last night was a pretty big night out and was the last time I'll see many of my friends here, because they left to travel today. Tonight, I have organized a going away party for myself and the others leaving town, and we're expecting 25 people or so at Fringebar, so that should be a good time. I was supposed to take an exam today, my only one, in International Finance, but unfortunately, the school said we weren't allowed to take it early, so now I have to take it remotely at Kellogg on April 7th, after I've been back for two weeks. That pretty much sucks.

I have pretty mixed feelings about leaving Sydney. This has been one of the best experiences of my life- truly a great time, a great country, a great city, wonderful weather, etc. But, I am definitely missing my friends and family and Chicago, and it makes me realize just how much I really love living in Chicago. I think it hit me most on St. Patrick's day, when Brady had a massive party that Ihad to miss, and all of my friends and siblings were out having fun on one of my favorite days of the year. Anyways, I don't really have any more grandiose thoughts than that. I'm not looking forward to really hiting the job trail when I get back- it really isn't very fun to think about. In fact, I don't really ever want to work again after all of the traveling I've gotten to do over the last two years, but I suppose everyone feels that way. Anyways, this is me signing off on this blog- I hope you've enjoyed reading it, and sorry I haven't posted more pictures (as many of you have complained to me).
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Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Since not a whole lot happened on Sunday (other than me getting very angry at #4 of Western Kentucky for failing to play help defense on the last play against Gonzaga), I am going to simply compile a list of the things I really like and dislike about Sydney and Australia, since I've now been here long enough, in my opinion, to pass down some judgment. So here you go:

Likes:

The weather

The proximity of beaches to the city and how nice the beaches are

The large number of bars

The bus system is pretty good, though not always dependable

Cheap flights within the country. Also, security at the airports is ridiculously quick and easy. They don't even check your ID!

The density and walkability of Sydney and Melbourne, and Cairns for that matter (these are musts for any city that I am going to like)

Fantastic parks

Small things here that I like better than Europe- such as never having to buy condiments at a restaurant, never having to pay for the bathroom, never running into a toilet with no seat on it, always seeing familiar brands at the grocer (these are actually all good things)

Australia in general, and Sydney in particular, is incredibly beautiful and I could hang around the harbour for hours

My barber, who is a crusty old guy who steps outside to check out the girls walking by his barber shop every two minutes or so

The very friendly people

The fact that they like Americans here, and girls here actually like the American accent (a first in my travels, which have mostly been in Europe)

Dislikes:
The snottiness of so many clubs and bars

Not being able to wear flip flops out to the bars at night

The ridiculous drinking rules (no shots after midnight, no entry/re-entry into a club after 2, regardless of how late it is open, bar shutting down for 10 minutes of every hour after midnight)

Excessive taxes on drinking also makes it very expensive

Everything here is American- they have no culture of their own. Some of the following summarizes:

TV- there is almost NOTHING good or original on tv. The most watchable thing here are re-runs of American shows like the Simpsons, Law & Order, and Two and a Half Men (gag). Their daytime shows are The View, Oprah and American Soap Operas. Even their original shows are just American copies, such as The Biggest Loser, So You Think You Can Dance Australia, and Australian Idol. The only decent original things are some of their game shows. One channel does like to show a lot of stuff on WWII, which I actually enjoy, but its always on at like 2 in the afternoon, and is usually a PBS or BBC production, so its not theirs either.

All of their fast food/quick service restaurants are American- McDonald's, BK (called Hungry Jacks here), Subway, etc. They also have a copy here of Taco Bell and a place called Mad Mex that is identical to Chipotle (wait, I actually like that they have that here)

Almost all of the music is American, with obvious exceptions for mainstream British/Canadian acts or U2. They also love techno here, which I don't particularly like.

People dress here almost identical to what you'd see in the U.S., except they follow our trends about a year later

Not a large enough rail system in the city or country

They're really intolerant here in some regards- you see almost no one here of color, and people have a pretty strong bias against the aborigines that do live here.

There are fights at bars all of the time. My roommate was an innocent victim of a sucker punch and almost broke his jaw.

The hilliness of the city. I'd prefer it a little flatter.

Stupid Chinatown. I bought a new ipod armband for when I run for $10 in Chinatown, and it fell apart the first time I wore it. The velcro was glued on a with ten minutes the glue came apart. Should have known better. Calls to mind Jack Nicholson's partner's quote at the end of the movie Chinatown- "Forget it Jake, its Chinatown". Also, a funny thing I saw today in Chinatown- they had two authentic Ben Utecht Cincinnati Bengals jerseys (one black, one orange) for sale for $39. First of all, you'd have trouble finding that jersey in the U.S. (especially since Utecht just joined the team), you'd have trouble finding anyone on the street that could tell you who Ben Utecht is in the U.S. or Australia, and lastly, authentic jerseys go for like $200 in the U.S. So, I'm not sure why the heck they have that jersey and why it is so cheap. They had jerseys of everybody in there. I wanted to buy the Utecht jersey as a joke gift for Brady or my buddy Slops from home, or for myself, but the sizes weren't right. It reminds me of me buying a Notre Dame football nesting doll in Moscow, Russia, complete with actual player's names from the team on the dolls. I saw a Purdue one there as well. Who in Moscow is going to buy a Purdue football nesting doll?

Their generally crappy sports (with the exception of Aussie Rules Football, which is awesome)

Despite this list of dislikes, they are all pretty minor, and I really love Sydney and Australia, and although I miss home a little bit, I'm pretty sad to be leaving here in five days.
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Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

My last weekend in Sydney was hampered a bit by the fact that almost all of my friends were out of town for the weekend. I got up early to watch the NCAA basketball tournament, but when I went and checked out several bars, none of them had the games on. So I returned to my house and watched the games on my computer, which might be better anyways, since I can then choose which games I want to watch. My teams I drafted in our calcutta did well- my brackets, not so much. UConn and UNC in particular looked at the tops of their game, so I'm pretty pumped about that.

Friday night, I didn't have a whole lot going on, but I texted Sophie, a girl from Stanford I met through my friend Kim, and she said that her and some friends were at the Beauchamp, which is right around the corner from my place, so I went and joined them for a few drinks as they were playing pool. She was with some others I had met previously- another girl from Stanford named Julia, a couple of Aussie guys that live with Kim, and Sophie's cousin Kyle, who just moved here for 3 months and who is from California. They were all going to see a movie I had never heard of called "Let The Right One In", but I didn't have anything better to do, so I went and checked it out with them since the theatre is about half a block from my house.

What a crazy movie. I'm not really sure how to classify the film but here's my best effort. The movie is Swedish and subtitled, set in early 1980's Stockholm, and is about a 12 year old boy who is bullied by his classmates and who makes friends with the 12 year old girl that moved in next door. Simple enough. However, this "girl" is actually a vampire and her "dad" is actually this psychopath that kills people and then drains their blood so that she can drink it. Meanwhile, the kid falls in love with the vampire (whom he doesn't know is a vampire), and that's pretty much all I'll give away. Probably the strangest movie I've seen in awhile, yet it was strangely engrossing and I really liked it. Afterwards, I went and checked out the details on IMDB.com, and apparently this movie has gotten spectacular reviews and is the favorite to win best Foreign Language Film at the next Oscars, and is a dark-horse to be nominated for the Best Picture. It's already ranked in the top 200 films of all-time by IMDB.com users, which is actually a pretty high honor. That's higher than movies such as "The African Queen", "Rocky", "Casino", "A Streetcar Named Desire", "Patton" and other past Best Picture winners/nominees. So basically, what I am trying to tell you is, go see "Let The Right One In".

Saturday, after watching the NCAA tournament (most notably, the UD Flyers beating West Virginia, and Ohio State, whom I normally root against but I have in my Calcutta, sucking it up against Siena, somehow blowing an 11 point lead late), I met up with the same people I was with at the movie as well as Kim and her sister, who is a senior at USC, at lawn bowling. This was my second time lawn bowling, but instead of at Coogee, we were at Paddington Bowl, which is much closer and much more of a party atmosphere than the Coogee one. The Coogee one had a lot of crusty old farts who sit around and smoke, drink and bowl all day, while the Paddington one was full of young people, mostly bachelor and bachelorette parties, getting boozed up. One party was all dressed as pirates (I approve), and one bachelor party had a guy running around the courts in a "mankini", which is the green swimsuit that Borat wears in the movie Borat. This is actually my second encounter in a foreign country with a man wearing a mankini. The first was two years ago when I was in Krakow, Poland when I met a bunch of British guys on their "stag" party (as its known here and in Europe) and proceeded to go out with them and had one of the most memorable nights of my life. The bachelor that night wore a mankini the whole time and while I won't go into details here, we were interviewed by Polish national television that evening.

Saturday night after lawn bowling was a bit of a disappointment. I was supposed to meet Kim and some of her crew at a bar in the Cross called Trademark, but by the time I got there, there was a line and me being a guy trying to get in by myself, I was denied access to the bar via their "list" scam, where they ask if you are on a mythical "list", and if you are not, you are shown the proverbial door. So, I grabbed a couple drinks at a neighboring bar, tried again, and was able to get in this time, but by that time, Kim was apparently too drunk and had to be taken home, so all of my friends there left. So, I returned home on my last Saturday night in town relatively disappointed, though lawn bowling earlier in the day was certainly fun.
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Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Most of my friends here in Sydney decided to travel this weekend, and, as I mentioned in my previous entry, I'm starting to run low on cash flow, so I stuck around here again for my last weekend. On Thursday, I finally did something I've been wanting to do since I got here, which was to go up to Watson's Bay and walk the northern coast of the southern harbour. I took the ferry from circular quay up to Watson's Bay, which I could also reach by bus, but the ferry is much more interesting and only costs $2.60.
I arrived in Watson's Bay, and right as you get there, the first thing you see is Doyle's, which is a seafood restaurant/bar and is basically a Sydney institution. Several people have told me I need to check it out before I leave. From there, I walked the coastline to the north for about an hour. There are lots of isolated beaches, parks, and spectacular views of Sydney Harbour from this area. It is also incredibly wealthy around here- the homes are enormous. There's a nice "heritage walk" on the northeast end of the South Head, which is essentially the south end of the entrance to the harbour. There was a cool lighthouse and historic buildings up in this area, as well as some former military armaments, where the Australians had put in huge artillery to protect the harbour during WWII. However, they were somewhat unsuccessful, as in 1942, three Japanese submarines actually entered Sydney Harbour. The Japanese attacked Australia several times during WWII, mostly at the north end, which I didn't know until I came here. The only other thing of interest in this area is that the main nude beach in Sydney is right around here, but when I walked by it, I only saw a bunch of naked dudes walking around, so I quickly moved along.

After returning to the dock where I began, I grabbed some food at Doyle's. While there, a private boat pulled up, and about 8 dudes walked off, looking very self -important. There were two guys with huge cameras following them, which appeared to be papparazzi, and it was pretty clear that two of the guys were sort of the leaders of the group and the rest were just their entourage. The two guys had long black wavy hair and ridiculous tight black pants on and appeared to me to be rock stars of some variety, but I have no idea who they may have been. I later saw the one guy definitely trying to pick up a girl along the boardwalk while his entourage waited off to the side in a manner you would expect to see at 2 am at a bar, but not along the beach boardwalk at 4 PM.

After this, I decided to walk back towards the city along the coast, which is about 10 miles from downtown. I spent the greater part of the next four hours walking through some of Sydney's most exclusive neighborhoods and really awesome parks with isolated, deserted beaches. The homes in Vaucluse, which is just south of Watson's Bay, are some of the largest I've ever seen. There was also a really cool national park that contained a beach called Shark Bay and had a 2-mile nature walk that I took along the coast where I found lots of untouched beaches and absolutely no one around save an occasional fisherman.

I then continued down along the coast towards Rose Bay and continued to pass massive coastal homes. At the top of a big hill overlooking Rose Bay sat a huge old convent which I walked up to and enjoyed a great view of the Harbour. I then walked down the hill and walked the boardwalk on Rose Bay for about two miles before finally coming to Double Bay, which I've been wanting to check out for a while. Double Bay is probably Sydney's ritziest and priciest neighborhood, and it also has a really popular bar called the Golden Sheaf, which I've yet to go to. The Sheaf looks like a cool place, and I may have our going-away party there. Double Bay is extremely nice and is full of high-end boutiques and other types of stores that I would probably never step foot in. The neighborhood is nicknamed by locals as "Double Pay", which seems pretty appropriate.

After Double Bay, I decided to return home, so I took a bus to King's Cross, where I found this great little Mexican joint I had yet to discover and grabbed a bit of food there, and happened to run into a friend I had met my first week here but had yet to see again, so it was good to see her again before I take off for the States. Anyways, it was a pretty busy day but probably wasn't all that interesting to read about. I wanted to get to bed early that night because I wanted to get up early the following morning for the NCAA tournament, which I have a lot of interest in. I did a two hour conference call earlier in the week to draft teams in a "Calcutta" auction, and I was able to get UNC, UConn, Dayton, Ohio State and a few other teams of note, and of course I am in a couple of bracket contests as well.
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Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

This past weekend and Tuesday marked St. Patrick's Day here in Sydney. A significant number of Australians are of Irish descent, and there are a lot of native Irish living here as well, so St. Patrick's Day is a fairly large celebration here, though it is significantly smaller than New York or Chicago's celebrations. St. Patty's is one of my favorite days of the year in Chicago, so I was a little disappointed not to be there, especially since my brother Brady was holding a large party and my other siblings were coming to Chicago for it. Also notable is that most of my friends were traveling for the weekend- Ryan to Tasmania for his aunt's wedding, Most of my girl friends did a "wilderness weekend" through school, and a group went to Fiji for the weekend. My bank account standing prevented me from joining them on any trips, since I don't have a job lined up yet and the funds are quickly dwindling.

On Sunday, the St. Patrick's Day parade took place near Hyde Park, and then a big celebration took place in the park with bands and vendors and about 35,000 people. I went with Lori, who goes to Kellogg with me, and another exchange student named Devi who is from Toronto. Lori's friend Sophie also met us later. The day was pretty hot and sunny, and we just kind of sat around, watching the bands and drinking and eating greasy food and it was all pretty casual. At the end of the day, a U2 cover band played for about an hour or so and got the crowd pretty fired up. It also helped that the crowd was properly intoxicated by this time. Also notable is that I'm pretty sure the lead singer actually was Bono. He looked identical and sounded identical. Crazy to see. Afterwards, we headed to Scruffy Murphy's, an Irish bar near the park where a big crowd had assembled. We ate there, and then a friend from Kellogg named Krista came and met us with two of her friends. She had studied in Thailand this quarter and was visiting Sydney for a few days. I headed home about 9 after a long day.

The real St. Patrick's Day was more of a debacle. I arranged for a pub crawl to take place in The Rocks, which is the oldest neighborhood in the city and which has lots of Irish pubs. After starting at a few places, the bars started to get really crowded around 5, so we just settled on a place called The Orient and remained there the rest of the evening. Most of my friends from school had returned so we had a big crew at the bar. Also, I ran into my friends that went to Stanford, Kim and her friend Sophie and Kim's sister who was visiting. The bar had Irish bands and a great patio and tons of people participating in the revelry. We didn't leave until 1 or so, which made class not so fun the next morning.

Other than that, I'm just enjoying my last 10 days or so in Australia. I spent all day Monday at Coogee Beach and today I'm heading out to Watson's Bay to take a look around, which is supposed to be really nice. The weather is once again beautiful, so I'm hoping Chicago has sufficiently warmed up by the time I get back, or I may go into hibernation until it does.
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Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Well, it's been yet another great, though relatively uneventful week here in Sydney. The week began with with a bang at the previously described Mardi Gras debacle. Ryan's friends from Michigan took off to head back to Michigan on Sunday and things have very much returned back to normal. The weather in Sydney this time of year is really great- it rarely rains, its always in the high 70's or low 80's and the sun is almost always out. It's very much like late August/early September in Chicago right now, with really comfortable evenings and little, if any, humidity.

Not a whole lot happened early in the week. I've been getting in some nice long runs around Centennial Park. It's about a mile to run to the park entrance, then there's a roughly 3-mile loop around the park, and then a mile back, so five miles all in, with a few large hills in there to boot. I've been doing that 3 or 4 times per week, so I'm getting into pretty decent shape. I'm missing playing basketball, though. At school, I usually play 2 or 3 times per week, but for insurance reasons, and due to my uncanny ability to suffer costly injuries when I play basketball, I haven't been able to play here at all. It also doesn't help that I would have gotten to play against Chicago GSB at the United Center prior to a Chicago Bulls game if I hadn't come overseas. Additionally, my section intramural team, the Poets, won a back-to-back championship this week, and I had to miss that as well.

Another event I just missed at Kellogg was the Charity Auction Ball, which is a black-tie affair held annually where students donate items to be auctioned off via a silent acution, and is generally a fantastic time. Then, 10 or so items (usually the "best" items donated for the event) are auctioned off via a live auction. All kinds of things are donated, varying from the use of a professor's French Chateau or Aspen lodge, to a poker night with professors, to spots in fantasy baseball leagues, or, as my roommate Brian donated with two of our buddies, "Shanghai Massages". I donated (along with 19 of my best friends) a "Cubs Crawl", which consists of a pre-party at my apartment, then a trolley ride to a Cubs game (where as a bonus, they are playing the to-be 2009 World Series champion Reds), where we have 30 tickets together. It was one of the events chosen for the live auction. Nine of our female friends and one guy were the winners with a winning bid of $1,060, so I'm glad we were able to raise a nice sum for several charities.

Even with these missed events, I clearly don't regret coming over here- it's been a fantastic experience. Not a whole lot else happened this week. A new bar with twenty high-end beers on tap from all over the globe just opened up down the street, and its my new favorite place to hang out here in Sydney. It's a place where I can go and just sit down at the bar and have a beer, something I've found kind of difficult to find around here. An American guy that graduated from Texas two years ago and who is headed to Washington U for med school next year is a bartender there, so he's someone to chat with when I'm in there. He also happens to work at my school doing research, so I've seen him around quite a bit.

One other notable thing I did this week was I met with my old company, Jones Lang LaSalle on Thursday. The head of my old group in Chicago, the Capital Markets Group, put me in touch with the head of the group here in Australia and so I went down to their office in downtown to talk about the Australian market, the macro-economy and jobs at JLL. While I'd prefer to be in Chicago after graduation, I'm willing to live just about anywhere where English is spoken, and I love Sydney, so I'm pretty interested in possibly interviewing here since their economy is in better shape than the U.S. one right now. It would also bolster my resume to get some international work experience, which had I not gone to business school, I was planning on spending a year in London with JLL through their exchange program to get that experience. The guy I met with was a really great, sharp guy and he was extremely willing to help me out. We spoke for about 45 minutes or so. Unfortunately, he doesn't have anything available right now but said if he hears of any openings within the firm or with clients, he'll keep me in mind. There simply aren't any transactions occuring in the large commercial real estate arena because no one can get financing and the sellers and buyers are nowhere close to each other on pricing. When no transactions are occurring, there are no job openings in Capital Markets, nor in acquisitions or dispositions, which is really what I'd like to be doing.

Alright, this entry was a little longer than anticipated. The only other items of interest that I did this week were going out. Wednesday night is $2 steak night at a bar in Coogee Beach, so about 15 of us from school went down there, and what was supposed to just be a few drinks and dinner turned into me not getting home until midnight. :Last night was our friends John and Lori's birthday party, so a bunch of us went out for that till the wee hours of the evening. Well, that's all I've got. The countdown has begun until I leave- only two weeks left.
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Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

As I write, I'm recovering from yesterday's debacle which was the Sydney Mardi Gras. More specifically, the Sydney Gay Mardi Gras parade. Sydney is a big like San Francisco in that it is a very gay-friendly city, and every year for Mardi Gras, gay people from all over the world flock here. Approximately 500,000 people were along the parade route yesterday, most of whom are straight, since most of the gay people are actually in the parade. In fact, a guy we go to school with was in the parade. Why the Mardi Gras parade is held about two weeks after Fat Tuesday, I'm not really sure. My apartment happens to be located about half a block off of the main parade route, making it pretty much ideal for the parade. Because this is basically the biggest event in Sydney other than New Year's Eve, we decided to have a barbeque/party for the event and then go check out the parade.

I woke up Saturday morning and decided to go for a run around noon. Already, it was pretty evident that this event was going to be much larger than I had anticipated. The parade was starting until 8 PM, but by 2 they had all kinds of stuff set up and people were already lining the streets to reserve their spots. By 4 they had basically shut the streets down and getting around was a major problem. They even restricted getting across the street, which made it a hassle to get anywhere. I needed to go buy stuff for our barbeque, and trying to walk down Oxford Street (the main drag) with groceries was nearly impossible, because people were everywhere, dressed in crazy costumes. In an effort to find hot dog bus (alas, in vain, after going to four grocery stores), I probably ran into 50 people dressed in drag and another 100 guys wearing hot pants. If you can name a costume, I saw it yesterday.

Anyways, after getting the food and drinks, people started to arrive at our place around 5. A lot of people had trouble getting here due to the crowds and blocked off streets. Hutchins had two of his aunts and uncles in town for his aunt's wedding, so they came, and he also had some buddies from Michigan crashing with us, so they were there as well. All in, probably 20-25 people came over, and we grilled out as we watched the crowds gathering near my place. I also met a lot of our neighbors since they were all having parties as well, which was nice since I hadn't really met any of them yet. Every once in a while, randoms that really needed to go to the bathroom would beg us to use our restroom and we'd let them.

Once the parade started, we'd just go back and forth between our place and the parade (mainly for drink refills and using the bathroom). The crowd was about 10 deep from the street, so we brought chairs out from our house to stand on so that we could actually see the parade, which made us the envy of a lot of people there. Some entrepreneurs walk the streets with a ton of milk crates that they sell for exorbitant sums to people who want something to stand on during the parade. As for the parade itself, it is so over the top flamboyant I can't really describe it. I've been to the gay parade in Chicago, but I think this was on a much larger scale, and because of it being a night parade, I think the people have been partying for much longer and are therefore even more outrageous. Pictures and words don't really do it justice, but I saw some hilarious stuff.

After the parade, we just headed down to FringeBar for a bit and then of course, to the Cross later, which is walking distance from the parade. I've never seen so many people in the Cross. The streets were absolutely flooded and the lines ridiculously long. Fortunately, Hutchins works out with one of the bouncers at World Bar and he got us in right away, which was nice since it saved us a half hour wait, at least. Anyways, all in all, the Mardi Gras parade was a pretty unique experience and I doubt I will see anything quite like it again.
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Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Andy returned to the U.S. on Monday after a relatively uneventful weekend. Saturday was a day of rest and we went out to a few local bars that night. Most notably, we went to FringeBar, near my place, where we observed that not only do they have a dj playing at night, but they also have a guitarist and a drummer playing in unison with the song. Odd to see. We then headed to a small pub near my house called Durty Nelly's, a true Irish pub. We happened to catch Durty Nelly's on what turned out to be Sydney's most eligible Irish bachelor day, which brought in this massive crowd of girls all dressed up and exceedingly drunk. Andy and I just watched the whole debacle while sipping on our pints. Funny scene.

On Sunday, Andy and I went down to Coogee Beach all day. We laid out (since Andy wanted to go back with some semblance of a tan) and then went up to the Coogee Bay Hotel for an afternoon on their patio, which is a fun scene every Sunday. They have a grill going and pitchers (jugs, in Australia-speak) of beer are pretty cheap. We hung out there till early evening, and then returned home and fell asleep on the couch.

Andy left Monday and my life has returned to some normalcy. I had only my second test of my quarter thus far on Tuesday in International Finance, and I think I was beaten down by the multiple choice section, which basically didn't ask any questions covered in the classroom discussions, which makes it difficult to answer the questions correctly. At least there was an essay section where I actually got a chance to display some semblance of knowledge on the subject, of which I almost exclusively learned from reading the Economist, and not from the class. By the way, here is where I put in a good word for the Economist, which is easily my favorite periodical (and I read a lot of them). If you don't read it now, you should. It's all free on Economist.com.
Otherwise, not too much going on. This weekend, 500,000 people will be outside of my apartment for the big mardi gras parade, which is the largest gathering of gay people anywhere in the world, so I'm expecting a pretty entertaining weekend in the neighborhood, if the Sydney parade is anything like the Chicago one. We might have people over to observe the spectacle.

Also, my mentioning of the word "jug" above, reminded me that I wanted to mention some of the Aussie lingo I have picked up since I've been here. The aforementioned "jug" is a pitcher of beer. A "buggee smuggler" (a buggee is a small Australian bird) is a speedo, which is made fun of here much like it would be in the U.S. Sometimes people will respond to thank yous by saying "It's too easy" rather than "you're welcome". Instead of saying "a lot" or "a bunch", people will use "heaps", as in "he was making heaps of money". "Maccas" is short for McDonald's. Also, instead of saying "layoffs" as we would in the U.S., they use the equally p.c. phrase "redundancies", instead of just saying you were canned or fired. They also like to say "keen" around here, as in "come on over if you're keen". There are a bunch more, (or perhaps I should say heaps more), but those are some of the ones that came to mind. Until next time....
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Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Courtney left early on Thursday and Andy and I had the day to do whatever we wanted. We decided to walk back up to downtown Sydney to view the Queen Mary 2, the largest cruise ship in the world (possibly the largest ship, period), which was docked here for the day. We had seen the Queen Victoria a few days earlier, also one of the largest ships in the world, but this thing was absolutely massive. It was definitely bigger than most of the office buildings in Sydney, both in length, and definitely in terms of width. There were crowds all around the harbour to check it out.

After that, Andy and I decided to go up to the top of the Harbour Bridge Pylon, which we wanted to do since we had free tickets for it and we hadn't been able to take any photos on the Bridge Climb. On the way, Andy and I decided to walk through downtown and we found this great park I hadn't seen yet, called Observatory Hill. It was this big hill right in the middle of downtown, and at the top were some great views of the city, and the old national space observatory. We went in and checked out the museum, and then headed down to the bridge. We climbed up, snapped a few photos, and then decided to walk across the bridge to the north side neighborhood of Kirribilli. Despite living in Sydney for over two months, this was only my second trip to the north side of Sydney. The other time was when we took the ferry to Manly just a few days prior.

After walking across, we went and wandered around for a bit amongst the mansion near the coast, and then stumbled upon a wharf where a ferry was going to arrive shortly to take us back to Circular Quay downtown. So, we took the ferry back, made our way back home and then did a mini-pub crawl around Paddington to some bars that I hadn't been to yet in my neighborhood. We decided to head to the Blue Mountains the following day, so we were home by 12:30 or so.
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Katoomba, New South Wales, Australia

Andy and I got up around 9 on Friday to go to the Blue Mountains, but because we screwed around at the house for too long, and then had trouble getting a rental car for a reasonable price, we didn't actually hit the road until around noon. After talking to Budget, Avis, and Hertz, we located this total dive place that had one car available for us for only $45. This compared to the $100+ we were going to have to pay anywhere else. Let's just say you get what you pay for. Our car was a freshly minted brown 1989 Mazda MX6 with 195,000 kms on it. Sweet. When we first got in the car, I thought I pushed the unlock button, but it instead was the panic button and the car went crazy, with flashing lights, sirens, etc, and I didn't figure out how to turn it off for about a minute. After figuring out where to go and (nervously) driving for about 20 minutes on the left side, we stopped for gas. When we tried to restart the car, nothing happened other than the batttery coming on. We tried this for about 10 minutes and we examined the engine, but nothing was happening, not even a click. Fortunately, the guy pumping gas next to us saw our plight and took a look. He determined that the car was immobilized. Apparently, the panic button on our keychain also immobilizes the car, and we had managed to immobilize it. So, after figuring that out, we got it started and were back on our way. He also noted that our radiator was leaking and that we should probably bring some water along in case the engine overheated. Awesome.

The Blue Mountains are a UNESCO World Heritage Site located about two hours outside of Sydney. It's a major tourist attraction for tourists and locals, and is most noted for the Three Sisters, which is a rock formation located on some cliffs on a huge valley/canyon. There are also lots of waterfalls and other interesting natural sites as well as a series of small, charming towns. After driving our brown beast out there (a minor miracle in itself), we went to this great lookout and got a great view of the Three Sisters and the valley below. It was pretty spectacular- probably better than it had been advertised. We made our way to a place called Scenic World, where we took steepest train in the world down to the base of the valley. Down there, we walked around a rainforest for a while, saw a few waterfalls and old coal mines that used to be in the area, and then took a gondola back up, which gave us some great views. Andy and I then decided to follow the cliffs along the valley for a while and came upon a number of cool sites, paths and lookouts at a variety of spots, including some really cool slowly descending waterfalls called the Leura Cascades. All in all, we climbed a ton of stairs on this day, up and down the mountains. If you wanted to, you could spend days out there hiking the trails and camping, but alas, we only had about 5 hours.

Around 7, we started the drive back to Sydney. On the way home, I finally got to try Red Rooster, a roasted chicken chain here in Australia. They are a direct competitor of Oporto (my favorite) and they have these great commercials that poke fun at Americans, but there aren't really any right in Sydney, so I haven't been able to try it. It came better than advertised, and it has now usurped Oporto for my favorite fast food here. We dropped off the car at the dive we rented it from around 8:30 and, per their instructions, we stuck the keys under their front door. This was a very professionally run place. Andy and I grabbed a celebratory beer for getting home alive in that piece of junk, and then returned home to clean up for the evening. We met Lenny and Dale at the Argyle up in the Rocks and had a pretty good time, including a long conversation with a girl from Rhode Island who Andy and I agreed may have been the dumbest individual I've spoken to at length in a long time. Andy and I decided to close out the evening in Kings Cross and didn't get home until really late.
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