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Published: October 7th 2007
Hi all, its been a long time coming I know but its finally update time! Its actually been nearly 3 months since the last (hope you have coped well, must have been tough) so there should be a load of stuff to tell but seeing as my blogs are long enough when I am just recounting a few weeks I will keep this one brief (well brief for me anyway). So the main news is that the long awaited leaving of Sydney is upon me and the real travels are set to begin, can you hear me cheering from there?? Actually, the great irony of it all is that now that its time I almost don't want to go, whilst I still find it a bit annoying to be in one place for so long and the job as rubbish as ever, I am loving the flat and flatmates and crazy times we are having and in another lifetime I could have seen myself staying here in this bubble for years. Work is still as mind numbinlgy boring as ever and is killing brain cells by the day but even there I have found some good friends I get along well
with, then I go back to the flat and chill out with that lot having many a random conversation, which all leads us to the weekends and nights (and sometimes days!) of unbridled drunken shennanigans. Whilst I am a hater of routine and being in one place I could quite easily stay here in this routine for a good while longer. Alas, the visa is up in January and I want to get around more of Aus before it expires, and although I did flirt with the idea of extending my visa to a second year and staying on longer it was merely that, mild flirting, I was tempted and teased by the sexy and alluring prospect of staying on and fufilling many a fantasy and wild dream, but in the end the overall love of the travel won out, she is a stern mistress and I bow to her.
So the basic plan is that I finish work on October 12th, then on the 17th I head up the East coast. Claire's boyfriend and her best friend arrive in Sydney around the same time for a short holiday, so myself and those 3 and a random friend of
theirs we are meeting in Brisbane are heading up together. To save some time as they are on a limited time frame we are flying from Sydney to Brisbane, then have about 2 weeks to get up to Cairns, they will then fly back to Sydney and I will continue alone (not for long mum, I will find other people soon, shhh now!). I then aim to spend a couple of months doing a massive loop around the entire coast of Aus, Cairns to Darwin, then all the way down to Perth, and finally along the south coast stopping in a few places perhaps before eventually getting back to Sydney. Seeing as I have done a large part of Aus on my previous trip (hello to the boys, Homer, Haines and Yank) I intend to be fairly fussy on where I stop and stay this time, but by the end of this little trip (I say little, a rough estimate is about 8000miles!!) I will have gone the entire long way around the coast of Aus, and having previously also gone down the middle then I will have pretty much done the vast majority of Aus which is a good
feeling. The aim is to be back in Sydney for Christmas, spend that and New Year with the flatmates (free accommodation on the setee bed, excellent) and from then its off to New Zealand at some stage, it may well be straight after New Year but the visa lasts till January 20th so could technically stay a bit longer if I choose. Where I go and who with and how I get there I am not planning much, going to leave that all up to the randomess of this travelling life and see what happens. Going to see and old mucker and another Barry boy Dave Morris in Perth though, so he is lining up the beers ready.
As you can imagine I am very excited for the trip and especially the intitial 2 weeks, we will fly to Brisbane and spend a couple of days there with some people we know and then make our way to Cairns. Its a bit strange to think that I have been here 9 months now and to be honest not done a lot of toursisty things-having done most of it on the previous trip-but that now in just 2
weeks I aim to do so many great things it makes me smile just to write it. The list of planned things rolls off the tongue like I am reciting a shopping list or something, a scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef, skydive out of a plane(again, cough), sail the WhitSundays for 3 days, spend a few days on Fraser Island camping and drinking and driving the jeep. Then there are some things penciled in but no confirmed, whale watching perhaps? why not! white water rafting maybe? sign me up! Throw in some beach time and of course it goes without saying the drinking and nights out and its going to be a hectic couple of weeks, it feels a bit like I am just waking from a long sleep or coma and am now going to go crazy in 2 weeks and cram in as much as I can, can't wait! Will probably blog more often now that I actually have more things to say other than just working and getting drunk so I hope me writing this and you reading it will be more interesting!
And so to sum up the last few months,
hmm could be tricky, time to be vague. Work was work, am pleased to be finishing and that I lasted this long, think I chose the right time to go because we have a new team leader now who is, quite frankly, crazy, and likes hypnotism and relaxation techniques etc. She has incoporated these into team meetings, so once a week we gather in a small room and discuss the business end of things, then we either lie on the floor or sit in a chair (for we have the choice, lucky us!) and close our eyes and release the stress and tensions of the week (her words not mine). This is done quite magically, we breathe a lot and clear our minds and she says lots of soothing words about relaxing and forgetting work and our muscles becoming like water and so on, and after a while we open our eyes and feel completely refershed and rejuvinated for our data entry jobs.. My contempt for this sort of thing is quite well known and we can opt not to do it, but if they want to pay me for an hour of lying on the floor with my eyes
closed then as the Lord is my witness I shall willingly take part and proclaim its worthiness. I was also nearly sacked a couple of times, firstly for sending too many emails and txt messages (moi?!) and secondly for getting drunk at a works party and insulting the big boss of the company. Not content with this I decided to bring his senior down to size and got her into an argument with her best friend by doing some well crafted and pre-meditated stirring. In my defence this was a free bar for 4 hours, I mean really, what did they expect?! I do now get pointed at quite a lot though when I walk around the office and lots of nudges of 'thats the one' which is funny, and as a perfect ending to the story it turns out that my last day in work is on the same day of the next office free bar party thingy, oh can you just picture it now? I have been planning the insults for weeks. Speaking of alcohol there have been our standard nights out with usual incidents that cannot be recited, although we do seem to have developed some kind
of fetish for flowers which can be seen in the pictures(Have also thrown in some touristy nice pictures for you too as I haven't previously). The Snow Patrol concert was amazingly good if you like that sort of thing, and luckily I do! We got wrecked and enjoyed it immensly, sang along to every song, got told off by numerous stewards for dancing on the seats and waved the Irish flag like it was going out of fashion. Before the concert we went to a BBQ with roughly half of Ireland who then all went to the concert too, Borat made an appearance, we destroyed a bus and train en route and had a messy old night, it was brilliant. We have also had a BBQ on the beach seeing as its the season and all and because we couldn't think of anything more stereotypical to do, we did not put any shrimps on the barbie though, I was quite upset at this.
In other news the Dublin girls (they of many a drunken weekend and laughs) left Sydney to do the East Coast but no sooner had the tears dried then they returned to wreck Scruffys
Cheeky...
The Irish proving that all parts of them are pasty white..and the Tea Gardens once more, its now like they have never left, only they are more tanned, well except Fiona.. Sarah-Jane (teaching friend from back home) took a break from her trip around NZ to pop to Sydney for a week. This was especially pleasing as she brought the new Harry Potter which of course meant I was as excited as...well as a kid who has just received Harry Potter, only I am 27, hmm.. sadly the book was a let down to me and not worth the wait(allow me to ruin it for anybody who hasn't read it, he dosen't die, humph) end of an era though so I await the next popular kiddies book I can read and be called names for. Her arrival also meant I got to do some touristy things (mainly dragged kicking and screaming may I add) like the aquarium, Bondi-Coogee coast walk and also a visit to Manly. As most of you know my blog died and I lost it all but it was then recovered and all is now well. Liverpool were top of the league but now normality has resumed and we are pants again, Wales were in the world
cup and looking half decent but now normalilty has resumed and we are knocked out and are pants. Around here the weather has picked up amazingly and its very warm every day, our 4 cold days of winter are a distant memory ha! Also there was a plane crash in Phuket, riots and deaths in Bhurma, a volcano erupting as well as an earthquake in New Zealand, plus a killer typhoon in Vietnam, all places I intend to go to, well at least it shan't be dull!! My dad and my mate Haines had a birthday and my brother and nans are imminent, happy birthdays all..
And so thats it in a blog shaped nutshell, the basic story being my time in Sydney is wasting away and I am sad for it but also excited for the countless adventures ahead. Sorry its been a while coming but hope you are all up to speed now and will enjoy reading about the next God knows how many months of travel ahead in who knows what countries with countless unmet people yet as much as I do. Abraham Lincoln once said "And in the end, its not the years
Not a bad view, great show
Plus Claire and Chantel wrecking it in your life that count. It's the life in your years" Quite right Abe, quite right, I intend to make them count.
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Sarah-Jane
non-member comment
Oh happy days!
TUT...you weren't dragged kicking and screaming! You loved every minute of our time together! (Especially the aquarium) Can't believe I carried a not entirely light book all the way around the world for you though. xxx