day 16 of 24 - polished

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day 16

i'm not excited. i'm kinda tired. tired of the hustle and bustle. and sydney is the worst place if you feel like this. this is beehive australia.
the guys want to go out and explore sydney. i've done this twice before. i need to feel human again. clean. washed. reset. i feel like a killjoy, but i send them out without me. i spend the next few hours to myself. writing, thinking, scrubbing, laundry. its just what the doctor ordered. i finally get to tend to my foot and give it good dressings. in the afternoon, jenny's boyfriend comes home and we meet. he's a typical tradesman (traddie). rough around the edges. except he's quite withdrawn, less friendly and refined than i expected. almost a bogan. but he seems nice enough.

After a little while, the others return home and we all get ready for a night on the town. rob is unable, or unwilling it seems. We head towards the downtown area...before i know it aj and jenny are taking us to the 'cross'. kings-cross is the red light district of sydney, and perhaps all of australia. its also littered with pubs and hostels. Its a long walk. well it feels like this on my feet. As we approach we start seeing the prositutes line the streets. It seems seedier than the last time i was here. Aj suddenly says he thinks he sees daniel johns. For all of you that don't know music, this guy is the lead singer of australian band: silverchair. I'm not one for celebrities, but meeting an accomplished aussie musician is exciting to me. We seem him walking in his black pants and jacket, tie and bleached blonde hair, with 5 musically bohemic yes men following him. we follow down a street. we come to a corner and stop as we seem them all walk into this tiny alleyway pub. a canadian and german couple come up from behind us and ask: is that the dude from silverchair? haha. aj was right. We followed into the pub. Ordered a drink and went out to the smokebar. i couldn't see him anywhere. perhaps they were in a private room...or we got the wrong place. I leaned back, roll a smoke, and light up. i relax and look around the room. I see a patch of white in the corner of my eye. He's right next to me. Duh.. i'm sitting less than a foot from him. He lights up. He sees me and i say g'day. He says hey. i guess this qualifies for a drink and smoke with the man? no?

We leave and keep walking up the cross. aaron is disgusted. visibly and outcryingly. aj is excited. i'm between 2 polar extremes. We decide to leave and find a nice quiet bar downtown. Thanks guys. You could have saved me the bloodied foot walk. oh well. at least i got to say hey to johns. We head back and get to a famous pub called the 3 monkeys; depicted by the 3 giant monkeys of see, hear, and speak no evil above the front door. We watch a fight erupt between 3 asian guys and the bouncers that keep us entertained for about 30mins. We talk for about an hour and notice a smiley little older gentleman in a suit next to us. We engage him in converstaion. Before we know it, he's telling us stories about his life and buying eyes rounds of booze. He's from london but has lived in the usa, and had a facinating life through business. I have a smoke with him at one stage in the night and we get to talking. He offers me a job in london. I take his card. We go back inside for a few more drinks. Sooner than invited, the pub is kicking us out...despite being the last people there under a bribed last round. We say goodbye to our new friend jason, and stumble home.

We had all gone from low to high, thanks to our british buddy. As we round the corner to jennies apartment aj and i are confronted to 2 dolled up and attractive young girls. Aj reacts without a degree of intelligence and blurts out "OOhh mayy Godd!" The two girls both turn around and stare at us in unison. I break down in laughter, and manage to apologies and call him an idiot. We all came through the door in good spirits, aj goes back downstairs to chat up the girls. Were not drunk but definately jovial and conversational. We hear a knob click, and rob opens the door and tells us to keep it down. We shut up. Whisper a couple of jokes and head to bed. This was a good night - good clean fun.

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