more sydney

After a nice long weekend touring the Rutherglen region of Victoria, I'm back in Sydney. Due to more delays in the project I'll be here next week as well. The nice thing about interstate as opposed to international travel is I can fly home for the weekend. And so I'll be doing that again. A good choice as it turns out it'll be raining in Sydney all weekend. Rain is good of course, but not quite to the same damaging extent as last weekend's storms I hope!

Luckily during the week days there has been fine weather. Warm during the day, but not quite warm enough in the morning to catch the ferry to work, still waiting to do that. By lunchtime however it's quite nice to head to Parramatta park to eat lunch. I was even able to donate blood yesterday at lunchtime. Parramatta has an impressive donation centre.

Last week I found some other Ericsson engineers to have a few dinners with; Stan and Dave. It's always nice to have company at dinner, to relax with and have a chat. I was able to give them a hard time about being old, and they got to give me a hard time about young. All in good fun. This week however I'm on my own again as they're back in Melbourne. Spanish tapas bars are a lone traveller's best friend - instead of looking like a loser sitting alone on a table, the traveller can look cool and sit at the bar. Other than looking cool, it's easy to befriend the barman and get some of that aforementioned dinner-time conversation.

Hence two of three nights I've had Spanish for dinner. Last night however, I headed out to Mark's house for dinner. As mentioned in an earlier post, Liz and Mark have just had twin girls. The twin's are now 15 weeks old and just starting to become self aware. For instance they're starting to listen to themselves when they make noises. This is a good thing as they don't scream as much : ) They're also starting to put their hands in their mouths and work out that it's part of their own body. Very cool stuff. They know who mum and dad are too. The twins would look at Mark or Liz if they were talking... and they'd cry if left with me!

Warning: if you don't like pink - do not have twin girls.

We watched the Rugby League state of origin match last night too. Alas, the Blue's couldn't quite pull a victory out for Mark though. It was Queensland's first victory at Homebush stadium. Tough times.

sydney by suburbs

Being a tourist in Sydney, you might get the impression that, historically, the whole town was once a slum. Over the weekend I visited The Rocks, which used to be the dodgy end of town. In the 1970's there was a push to demolish most of the area and build high rise apartments and offices. The local community and unions protested until the area was preserved. It's now rejuvenated - but basically only exists (as far as I can see) as a tourist trap. The historical pub's looked like they are over-priced places - but I didn't bother checking if that was true or not. There was plenty of boomerangs for sale and other souvenirs at the weekend market. For lunch I found a German themed pub, which served dark wheat beer; yum! To be honest though I suspect there isn't a real historical German presence in The Rocks.

In and around The Rocks are two of the world's most photographed structures. Of course this means that it's mandatory to take more photos of them: the Opera House, and the Harbour Bridge. They look damn good on a sunny day.

I'd never considered the contrast between these two landmarks. The Opera House is like nothing else, soaring, white and modern - whereas the bridge is dark grey and industrial.

When I wandered over to Circular Quay I found out that there is a ferry service to Parramatta. I'll catch that to work one day. It only takes 15 minutes longer. A nice sunny day is a pre-requisite however!

Back onto the topic of Sydney being all slums at some stage... On Sunday I went for brunch at Newtown, which has a reputation for good cafes these days. It didn't disappoint - I had some excellent poached eggs and smoked salmon. Newtown's history however, is one of a poor area. This means that low rents in the 80's and 90's attracted migrants and students, which gradually made the suburb a trendy place (and rent pricing rise).

Wandering around Newtown and neighbouring Stanmore it is possible to think that it'd be a good area to move to... until the inevitable happens... A 747 takes off over your head! They are noisy mongrels! Now I know what the inner west Sydney citizens complain about. This will probably stop the area being as popular as its Melbourne "equivalents" of Carlton or Fitzroy.

sydney take #2

I'm back on the road (or rather... in the sky). This past week I've been in Sydney again. This time the trip is a bit longer - at least until the end of next week. Unfortunately some of the equipment I need to use has been playing up, so the project is a bit behind. Hence Sydney might be graced with my presence even longer than expected!

Work this time around is out at Parramatta, but the hotel I'm staying in is in the CBD. So I've been catching the train out to work. The nice thing is there are plenty of express trains; strangely though the express trains don't seem to go as fast as express trains in Melbourne. (Nothing beats a 280km/h train trip in Japan though!)

Once back in Sydney, I couldn't resist heading back to Captain Torres for another batch of pan-fried flounder : ) This time I tried some Portuguese beers, which were very nice. For the home-brew enthusiasts the Portuguese beer even had the original gravity listed on the back label. (Gravity is the measure of the density of unfermented beer). My phone is fixed now, so I've uploaded photo's of various beers for the beer competition, such as the one below:

Wednesday night I had the worst Thai meal ever! I was wandering around the city looking for dinner, and found a place that looked good. What should have alerted me to the fact that it wasn't good at all, was the large bain-marie at the back of the restaurant. When I asked for the menu I was told there is none, you just pick your meal out from the bain-marie. Suspiciously all the meals were in take away containers... Being naïve I thought maybe this was just for take-away customers, so I asked for the Pad Thai. The waitress opened a take away container of Pad Thai and emptied it on to a plate for me. It was the worst tasting meal ever!! I gave up after a couple of mouthfuls, and went back to the hotel.

The French Open is on at the moment, and even better the hotel has "Fox Sports 2" in every room. Fox Sports has 24 hour coverage of the open : ) There is also a "sports" bar in the hotel, with a couple of big TV screens. After my Thai horror dinner, I retired to the sports bar to have a better meal, a local beer, and to watch Marat Safin bomb out of the open in the second round.

Tomorrow I'll head to The Rocks and Circular Quay and check out the famous sights (and pubs) of Sydney.