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Published: March 6th 2008
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After the skydiving thrill, it was back to the 9-5 slog on the Monday, although I was starting my new job at a company called Pamcat. After being given the wrong address, I found myself wandering around Bondi Junction looking foolish, until I stumbled upon people who worked in the office itself, which was pretty lucky. I was shown my new working digs, which had no windows and about 6 members of staff. Presuming that I had debt collection experience, they gave me a 3 page list of all their debtors and told to get on with it. More on the job later though.
We hit the bright lights of the Star Bar on George St on Tuesday night for a reunion with our Irish friends from Vietnam, who had acquired 2 more since we last met. It was a fun night, despite the fact I was the only male there and it took a turn for the drunken when we ended up in Scruffy Murphys. We ended up doing what all travellers end up doing and recounting all our different stories to each other which made us wish we could travel again a lot sooner.
Wednesday was spent
hungover at our respective jobs, but by this point, I had pretty much done all the work assigned to me for my supposedly 4 week assignment. Getting a new smaller list, I worked through that but consciously slowed my pace, remembering that our flatmate Joe had said that it's quite easy to work yourself out of a temping postion.
On the Thursday, we took a trip down to Botanic gardens with Emma's work colleague Sharleen and ended up with photos of huge spiders, cockatoos, bats and dancing at the side of the Sydney harbour. Getting caught up in a rainstorm added to the fun of it though.
The following night, Emma had a work night out planned with her fellow temps which, with drunken persuasion, I ended up joining them later on in the 3 Wise Monkeys. Again, I was the solitary male however I was a bit more conscious of it this time being stone cold sober with all the girls who were dancing away and had a good few hours drinking head start on me. Our Canadian diving friends Stew and Megan arrived later on too, having just arrived in Sydney that day, so we caught
up with them and arranged to meet them the following day. The band playing at the bar were pretty good and we had a good night.
We arose early-ish on the Saturday and hit Kings Cross to meet Megan and Stew. We planned to do the famous Bondi to Coogee cliff side walk so we headed to the shop and bought provisions for a barbeque, having read there were public ones available on the walk. We headed to Bondi beach first of all and fortunately it was a pretty hot day. We lay down on the sand and watching the sea gave Stew and myself itchy feet. It looked so inviting and the waves were pretty sizable so it looked like a lot of fun was to be had.
We didn't realise there were only certain parts of the beach that you were meant to swim in. We found this out the hard way as we went in and had fun jumping the waves, but gradually moving further out from the shore. We found ourselves being pulled by a strong rip current (Backpackers Rip as it's infamously known as) which wasn't a problem at first, but as it
pulled us further out, the waves got bigger. The waves inevitably started dunking us in the water and with the rip, it became a bit more of a struggle to breathe. Realising no one else was out in this stretch, we decided to swim back although this proved very tricky. We were both fairly strong swimmers but the rip was hard to fight against (which is something you shouldn't be doing anyway) and we weren't getting much air for the waves constantly pushing us down. By the time we made it back to the shore, we were completely exhausted and out of energy. There was a lifeguard waiting who told us off for swimming at the wrong part. At least now we know why there are a surprising amount of drownings on what appears to be a nice tourist beach.
After drying off, he hit the cliffside trail which was a pretty amazing walk and both the weather and the sea couldn't have been more ideal. We stopped at the beaches we passed to try and use the barbeques, although we weren't too sure how they would work. They were swarmed with travellers (bloody backpackers) and they all seemed
The Temps!!
Enjoying a nice cold drink after work. to have tin foil and other provisions we didn't, so our barbeque dream looked to be fading. We ended up at another one though which was a lot more relaxed and a kind woman there cleaned it all for us so we were soon frying snags (sausages) while our stomachs rumbled. The food turned out to be tasty and Stew produced a bottle of Port which was drunk with gusto. By the time we got to Coogee, we were a bit tired so no more swimming and we just decided to jump on the bus back to the city. We made another bottle shop stop and headed back to our flat and had a really good night. We even introduced Megan to Irn Bru (Stew had had it in Canada at their Highland games before, he's a piper) and it became a vodka mixer, which was a good idea until some spilled on the cream carpet.
We had a lazy Sunday and ended up at the cinema. The day was to end on a sad note as Emma received some devastating news that her Papa had passed away in hospital, having been quite poorly for some time. It was
quite hard, particularly as we realistically couldn't attend the funeral (despite Emma checking for flights) and felt powerless to do anything. With regular contact back home though, Emma was able to write a speech to be read out at the funeral so she could say a form of goodbye and let everyone know that she was thinking of them. Needless to say, the rest of the week was very solemn and a lot of sleepless nights.
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