now

---

About 15 months ago I left home for a promising year-long career of picking fruit in Australia. My friend Jon called me and said something to this effect: "Arthur, I'm stranded in Australia but it's ok because the money here is really good. You can make up to 200 dollars a day picking fruit." Sounds better than teaching English, so two weeks later I showed up in Sydney with no job, no friends (Jon, it turns out, had gone to Indonesia), and as much money as I could make at $9.50/hr teaching English.

The thing about Sydney is that, like much of Australia, it's really not that different from the US. So my first impression was that I spent a lot of money and time - about 30 hours transit - to leave home, only to end up in a place that was just like it. There is one major difference though: Sydney has a "backpacker culture" like I've never seen before, and its epicenter is King's Cross - the red light district. Now, I didn't know any of this when I was in the cab coming from the airport. So when I asked my driver where the cheapest accommodation was and he said "probably something in King's Cross," I just said "Ok, let's go."

Here's a demographic layout of King's Cross: 30% Australians, 30 % German or French backpacker, 10 % other-Backpacker, and the rest is hookers, strippers, and/or drug-dealers. I didn't want to deal with any of it so I checked into a room, put my bags down, and fell asleep for 14 hours. It's the longest I've ever slept in one go.

---