Blogs from Olympic Park, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, Oceania - page 2

Sydney's Olympic Park was amazing! For those of you who don't know I am a massive Olympics fan. :) The Olympic Park site used to be a wasteland and they totally restored much of it to it's natural landscape. They finished building 8 months ahead of schedule, the best of any Olympic hosting city, and ALL athletes and participants were housed in the Olympic Park housing. Cool eh? I checked out the Aquatic Center which was cool but not as big as I had imagined. It did however have a small water park in it which was great because it really helps sustain the use of the Aquatic Center past swim & dive meets. The site also had a great memorial park in the middle with various large sculptures representing different facets of the Olympics, it ... read more

Now as previously mentioned in our other blogs, we have of course been keeping up to date on the pantomime, sorry, football season back home. We have checked the scores of our beloved Hearts each week and comfort from the fact that we have not been there to witness some of our performances, and yet more comfort still that we have been spared the many ingenious and witty comments from the Wee (flair) Team. Starved of a successful and entertaining team in Maroon to support, I have transferred a small part (albeit temporarily) of my allegiances to the Brisbane Broncos, of Queensland. When I was wee and my Saturdays constituted of spending the day glued to Grandstand, I used to watch a load of rugby league and really enjoyed watching the brilliant Wigan side of the ... read more

This weekend was set to be a busy one with Saturday tickets for the Easter Show and an AFL match on the Sunday. We went to our usual Friday night haunt at Megan and Stews, after a very tasty BBQ, which resulted in a few too many goons consumed by all. Despite the prospects of a few sore heads the next morning we all agreed to meet relatively early in an attempt to beat the crowds at the Easter Show. We had heard lots about the Easter Show from various locals at our work including the strain that it had on their wallets, despite this we were all quite excited and eager to minimise expenditure we packed a picnic armed with goodies and water bottles that could be refilled at the Show. The early start didnt ... read more

Four days off! It's a nice prospect at Easter which the majority of the population do enjoy. It's something of a conflict of interest though when you're temping; four days off is always nice, but the wage is reduced. I'd say it was worth it though and it felt like a much needed break from the mundane office environment which we both work in. For Good Friday, we had tickets booked for the Rugby League match between the South Sydney Rabbitohs and the Bulldogs at the ANZ Stadium, one used for the Sydney Olympics. One thing about Australia, and apparantly also North America, is the way that EVERY venue has corporate sponsorship/ownership, thus being named after companies. ANZ are a bank and it had previously been called the Telstra Stadium, which is the Australian BT. What ... read more

Big Day Out is a huge music festival that tours around Australia. Tickets for this event sold out in record time in October...but I was lucky enough to WIN tickets...so was the envy of everyone I met! These tickets were selling for 4 times thier face value a week before the festival date...CRAZY! The line up the day looked like this: Rage Against the Machine Björk Grinspoon Arcade Fire Hilltop Hoods Billy Bragg Paul Kelly LCD Soundsystem Sarah Blasko Faker Midnight Juggernauts Dizzee Rascal Something with Numbers Battles Cut Off Your Hands The Nightwatchman Blue King Brown Dr Octagon & Kutmasta Kurt British India Aceyalone Krill Bexta Shy Child Josh Pyke Kate Nash Silverchair Krafty Kuts & Dynamire MC Reguritator Carl Cox Die Die Die! Goodwill Spoon Augie March Brand New Gyroscope Anti Flag Karnivool Enter ... read more