So people I have been slightly AWOL since my arrival in Sydney! And I’m please to say it’s not because of lack of adventures....in all honestly it was mostly about enjoying being stationary for the first time in months and loving it!!! That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy my travels but after 7 months of living out of a bag it was nice to actually unpack my bag and own a drawer again!!!
So I’ve been in Sydney for almost 3 months now and I love it! Sydney is an amazing city...there is always something going on or something to see. This blog will be a mish-mash of random stories from the first couple of months here. There is no order to them, I’ll just write about them as I remember them and hopefully it’ll give you all a glimpse of what I’ve been up to over the last couple of months!
So the first story is about my fab new home! When we arrived in Sydney we moved into a really nice hostel that was quite comfortable but me and Joe knew we didn’t want to stay on the hostel long term (which is what a lot of people do!) So we started our apartment hunt straight away...and on our first night in Sydney we went to view an apartment!! It was in a really great location, just a half hour walk from Darling Harbour and only 5 minutes from Kings Cross. The apartment itself was brilliant too. It was nice and modern and bright and we instantly liked it. The Di (the woman who lived in it) asked if we wanted to see the laundry room. We did so she took us up onto the roof....I think this was a ploy of hers to make us fall even more in love with it! When we walked out onto the roof there was an amazing view over the city and a fantastic sunset...and as we looked around we saw the Harbour Bridge! We have a perfectly unspoilt view of it from the roof of the building! We both decided then and there without saying a word to each other that we wanted it!!! So the next day we got the ball rolling and went to the real estate agent and put in an application. It was a long week waiting to hear as the landlord was away on holidays but we eventually got news from the estate agent that we had got the apartment! We were delighted! So after just over a week in the hostel we packed up our bags (again!!!) and moved into Darley Street! And almost 3 months in and we still love it just as much...and let me tell you it does not get old to go up onto the roof and see that view! Every time I go up there it takes my breath away and I still can’t believe I actually live here!!!
I do have one story from the hostel that I will share with everyone. I’ve told it to Triona and if her reaction is anything to go by it’ll be a funny one that I should share with everyone else! So here goes! In my hostel room there was ten beds....7 of which were long stays which meant they were basically living in the hostel full time. There was one English guy who was in his 30s and over working as a tradie. The guy who shared the same bunk as me was a hairdresser and one evening the English bloke (Lets call him Tom!!!) came in at about 11 after a few pints after work and told Blake (the hairdresser) that he had been waiting around for him all evening to cut his hair. Blake said he had been waiting to see him but the obviously missed each other...so at 11pm the hair clippers came out and Tom got a haircut...then the HOOVER came out to clear up the hair clippings!!! After it was all cleared up Tom decided to pop out again and show off his new hairdo! In the hostel the doors are all opened by key cards so only the people in that room can get in. Our room always had the door jammed opened with a flip flop. When Tom came home that night he started banging on the door making Beth get up out of bed and pull the already open door open for him!!! Once he had finally made it into the room he decided it was the perfect time to plug in his electronic work device thing and charge it for the night! So he got himself undressed...got down on the floor to plug it in...And promptly passed out on the floor!! And so Tom slept curled up in a ball on the floor for the night...but he obviously has a pretty vivid dream pattern as in the middle of the night he started shouting “high five, high five” really loudly all over the room and waving his arm around in the air! So as you can see...hostel living has its moments but it’s definitely not something I could live with full time!!! And to add to that the next day Tom walked in and saw the new people in the room (me and Joe) and introduced himself to Joe. Joe said we met last night and Tom’s reply was “I wasn’t naked was I?”!!! Joe told him no and he said “that’s good....it’s happened before”!!!!
The next big thing on the list after sorting out our apartment was getting a job! Part of me was really looking forward to working again....and now that I am working again I’m not sure why! But nonetheless I threw myself into job hunting. Then one Friday morning at about 11 I applied for a job online. At 12 I got a call asking me to come for an interview at 2.30...so off I went to go to my first interview in a long time. I walked into the office and heard Irish voices all around me! The job itself was for a Collections Officer but my interview was in the call centre for the business. And most of the staff in the call centre were Irish or English on working holiday visas! So in I went to the interview (with a Liverpudlian!) and after talking for 15 minutes he asked me to wait around until 3 to meet the finance team. So I popped outside for a of couple minutes and went back at 3...and next thing ya know I’m sitting at a desk getting trained in!!! So it was all very quick and part of me wasn’t quite sure what I had gotten myself into! I ended up having 3 hours of training that evening...and then I was flying solo as the girl I was replacing was leaving that Friday. So when I went in on Monday I was slightly over my head! I gave the job a go for a couple of weeks but knew after a few days that it just wasn’t for me! I don’t like asking people for a fiver that they owe me so ringing up people and telling them they owe almost $200 and asking them for it really wasn’t a good job for me!! Luckily my boss was nice enough to see that I wasn’t happy and offered me another job that didn’t involve pestering people for money!! And so I have been doing that for the last couple months. Its office admin and data entry and such things...nothing too stimulating but its paying the rent so I’m not one to complain!!!
I did have a slight drama in work one day! They needed a hand on the customer service team so I was down in the call centre for the day. We have lifts in the building and after 6 you need a special fob to make the lifts go anywhere but the ground level. When I finished on CS I needed to go up to my desk to get my bag but the lift wouldn’t bring me up...so I decided to do the clever thing and walk up the stairs instead. So I opened to door to the stairs and walked from the 2nd to the 9th floor. When I got to the 9th floor I pulled the door handle...and discovered it was locked!!!! Slightly pissed off as my legs were killing me after walking up all the stairs...so I went back down to the 8th floor....and the door was locked!!! You can see where this story is going already! I walked all the way back down and tried every door on the way and none of them would open! I went down to the basement to the car park...and that wouldn’t open either! So I stood there slightly stuck not able to get out of the stairwell! After a couple of minutes I found another set of stairs that went down another level and then brought me back up two flights! So I just kept following the route, finding myself in a building site at one stage and then eureka! I saw a door to the street. My only last obstacle was that this door was going to be locked! So I tentatively tried it and thank God it opened! Even in my relief of being free I thought it very odd that a door out onto the street that lead into a whole building was unlocked...but then it dawned on me that even if someone came in they weren’t going to get far what with all the doors to every level being locked!! So what did I learn from this little adventure...mostly that if a building goes on fire in Sydney and I have to evacuate do a little test run first and go into the stairwell shut the door and see if I can get out again before continuing in my effort to evade the fire!!!!
Working on the phones in work has thought me a few lessons. The first thing I noticed was when I asked a customer for their number they would rattle it off in about 5 seconds! They were finished saying the number and I had the first 3 digits typed in!! So I very quickly had to learn to memorise number sequences! I think the funniest and most annoying thing about being on the phones though is the letter “R”. A simple enough letter but did you know that Irish people pronounce it “oar” rather than “ar”? This is something that was pointed out to myself and Dee a few weeks into the UKtoOz trip and became a running joke. However the problem continued when I got a job on phones that involved me saying the letter r a lot while also having to spell my name quite a bit!! In work we have to issue return authorisation numbers...which funnily enough all begin with the letters R and A!! So trying to get people to understand can become quite an ordeal...to the extent that I know don’t say the R at all and give them a code beginning with A instead!!! But more distressing than that is spelling my name. Here is the conversation:
“What’s your name?”
“Orla”
[Silence]
“Can you spell that please?”
“No problem...its O, R for Roger/Rabbit/Robert, L, A”
“Ok so that’s O, Four, L, A!
[In my head the reply is “Yes you silly pleb, I spell my name O 4 L A!!!!!]
[In reality I say]
“No its O R for ROGER”
“O FOUR??”
“No, no not four, R...R for Rabbit...the first letter of the word Rabbit”
“What?”
“The LETTER R. The first letter in rabbit”
“Oh R. Ok so O R L A”
[EUREKA!!!!]
“Yep that’s it”
This exact conversation I have had hundreds of times over at this stage. And I alternate my R words wondering if that will help....it doesn’t!! Although thinking about it Ofourla probably wouldn’t be an odd name over here...the weirdest one I have come across so far was Seismetota or Nhgugayeh and then my absolute favourite has been Clammy Orifice!!!!
In our first week in Sydney thanks to Bui and his brother we managed to score ourselves some tickets to see Don Giovanni in the Sydney Opera House! It was a great performance and amazing to see inside the Opera House. The performance was great, it was my first opera and the costumes and singing were brilliant. And luckily they had a small screen over the stage which translated the words so we actually knew what was going on! The Opera House is as stunning in real life as it looks in the pictures or on TV, especially when the sky is brilliant blue behind the curves of the roof. It’s definitely one of my favourite things in Sydney and it’s so easy to just stand and look at it for ages.
We have had mixed weather since being in Sydney. The first couple of weeks were amazing with really hot weather but then towards the end of November it started to suck a little! It was rainy and overcast but happily enough still quite warm. December marks the start of the Australian summer...which should also have been the start of the scorching hot weather. However we seemed to have jinxed Sydney this year as all the news reports said it was the wettest December they had had in 60 years/worst start of the summer in 50 years/lowest temperatures in 4o years or so!!! Now if the weather we were having here was at home nobody would be complaining!!! But for Australians it was not a good start to the summer and they didn’t mind talking about it! I did feel kinda sorry for them and for me at the same time...I mean I’m this far away from home in a country that is supposed to have great weather...and it rains!! But there wasn’t much I could do about it and it didn’t bother me all that much! Luckily the good weather did arrive back just in time for Christmas and we got some great weather for the festive season!!
One of my favourite things about Sydney is the fact that there is always something happening! Every Saturday evening at Darling Harbour they have a big fireworks display...not for any reason in particular, just because! Then before Christmas there was Santa Fest where Darling Harbour had Santas everywhere...including the lampposts getting Santa heads over them! At the moment there is the Sydney Festival where there are hundreds of events all over the city ranging from music to dance performances and art displays. And Sydney is in full swing of preparing for Chinese New Year at the moment with events planned over a 2 week period to mark the Chinese New Year. So no matter what day it is or what the budget it is, there is always something to go and see or do.
For those of you who are wondering about the shopping situation in Sydney...it’s pretty cool!! There is one shopping centre in particular that stunned me! I went into the Queen Victoria Building which is 4 stories in itself but when you go down to the basement you can walk in three different directions which stretches out across a couple of blocks and has shops all underground. One direction also brings you to the Myer store which had about 5 stories and is along the same size at Debenhams of Henry Street...and then from there you can walk to the Westfield shopping centre which is another huge centre. And there is access to all these buildings spreading across 3 blocks all underground! So you can be in it for hours and not know that it’s rained or snowed or anything outside! Part of me thinks it’s like the shoppers Vegas....no idea what time of day it is outside but endless entertainment and ways to spend money!!!
The shopping centres did come in very handy when we first arrived! After 7 months of living in the same clothes I thought my clothes had held up quite well and was quite pleased to think that they were still acceptable to wear in public. However after a few days of walking around Sydney in soon became abundantly clear that my clothes were old, tatty and well worn! However much to my joy I soon found that all the shops were in the middle of sales...although I did find the advertisements very confusing!! All the stores had signs up saying “Get your summer wardrobe” right beside big posters advertising “Christmas Sale”!!! Now that took some getting used to!! So I managed to find myself some socially acceptable clothes to get me by for awhile without feeling like I crawled out of a backpack every morning!!!
One of my favourite things that I’ve done in Sydney so far has been to go to Palm Beach (that’s the beach in Summer Bay to you and me!!) and have a BBQ. We first did it when we arrived in Sydney with Brian, Rhona, Rosie, Greg, Andy and Dee. We all headed up the road in a couple of cars and I will tell you that it is just as pretty in real life as it looks on the TV. We found the Surf Club and it had Alf Stewarts name on it any everything! Quite exciting! Though anytime anyone burst into “you and me belong together” they did ran the risk of getting Andy’s flip flop launched at their head...apparently he used to be forced to watch it with his mum and sister so has a few issues with the program!!! Anyway after we explored the beach we headed down the hill a little and went to the public BBQs. These are little units just in the middle of the park that anyone can use for free. The only thing that they ask you to do is to clean up so that it’s ready for the next people to use. So we rocked up with lots of burgers and sausages and had ourselves a nice feed. This is something we did again when Joe’s parents and Eddie came over for Christmas. And we were joined by Greg and Rosie on this trip too...but Joe did most of the cooking this time...he didn’t have much of a choice as he got two chefs hats for Christmas!
Joe’s parents and his Granduncle Eddie came over for Christmas and the New Years. It was great to have them here and to show them around. They went to the Aquarium and had a walk around the Botanic Gardens and we had a day trip up to the Blue Mountains and to Palm Beach. We also went up to Newcastle to meet a friend of Josephine’s that she had seen in about 30 years. It was nice to get right out of the city and to travel up the coast a little and see some amazing views. We had a fairly traditional Christmas with turkey and ham with all the trimmings on Christmas day. And Santa managed to find me a few times over in Sydney with parcels arriving quick and fast in the couple of weeks leading up to Christmas (once again thank you to everyone who popped something in the post!) We had ourselves a little tree too that looked nice and festive beside all the cards. But it still felt like an odd Christmas due to the fact that it was quite warm out and instead of being all cosy in a woolly Christmas jumper I was in a summer dress and flip flops for the day!!! Once again another new experience....I think I do prefer cold Irish Christmas though...it doesn’t feel right otherwise!!!
We had a great New Years Eve too. We went to a place called Barangaroo where we had a great view of the Harbour Bridge to watch the fireworks. They had a fireworks display at 9pm for all the kids and then at 10pm they let a few more off, then at 11, 11.15, 11.30 and 11.45...so there was a countdown to the countdown! One funny thing that did happen was that we nearly ended up in 2012 10 seconds early. From the side of the bridge we were standing on the countdown was backwards so when it did begin we could quite see it. Then there was a beam of the bridge that was in the way so when the countdown hit 19 everyone on our side of the bridge started at 9 and counted down, then when they got to 0 (which was actually 10) and no fireworks went off everyone started again!! So had a bit of a laugh at that! And with most of the city viewing points being alcohol free I cheered the New Year in with a can of Club Orange instead!!! The fireworks show was spectacular! It always looks stunning on the TV and it definitely takes your breath away in real life! Apparently there was 1.5 million people watching it from various viewpoints in Sydney...and it felt like that once we started walking back towards home as the streets were packed. It was a great night though and something I will always remember!
We also had a couple of visitors just before Christmas with Brian arriving back in Sydney at the start of December and being our first house guest! We had a lovely few days with him and he even though us something about our apartment. We have an extractor fan over our cooker but try as we might we could not figure it out when we moved in. So we just did without and didn’t bother with it. Brian arrived and decided to cook us dinner to say thanks for the bed (sofa!) and within minutes of him starting to cook he had the fan working! We both felt slightly stupid but what can ya do! At least we have it working now!!! Just after Brian left Rhona flew back in after 6 weeks in New Zealand. We had a great few days with her before she flew out to go and spend Christmas in Nepal with Rachel, Brian and the Chitwan family we had gained while in Nepal!
And so that is a very concise version of some of the highlights of Sydney so far! Much more has happened but due to the routine of work etc it seems like I’d be telling the same stories over and over again! I absolutely adore Sydney! It is a great city and even though it is quite big, all the main things to see are all within walking distance of each other...and within walking distance of our little apartment too!
I will try not to leave it so long next time to let you know what I have been up to over here. I know I have left loads out and no doubt I will think of more random stories to fill you all in on but for the moment I hope this will keep you satisfied in terms of my Aussie adventures thus far!!!
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