Gifts

Brought the gifts into the office, the kids couldn't be happier.

Encoding

Finally figured out how to encode my skydiving dvd into a smaller video file for the web..

It ballooned into a 13GB file, but now it's a tiny 15MB.

Enjoy!

MY SKYDIVING VIDEO HERE

All pics uploaded...

When I figure out how to edit motion jpegs, then I'll put up some clips. Right now the clips are too big for web use...

Back in Toronto (Canada, not the one in New South Wales)

After 5 questionable in-flight meals, and 5 movies, I'm back.

Mom was less-than-impressed about my Didgeridoo playing abilities, she did like the skydiving DVD though.

If any of you want to see me play with my new instrument (the didgeridoo you pervs), just give me a shout.

OUR tower doesn't need cables

The car hire place has a good view of the Sydney tower.

It's not as tall as CN Tower, which I will conquer it's 1,776 steps this October for United Way.

It's a good cause, please donate and help me get the free t-shirt:

https://secure.e2rm.com/registrant/StartUp.aspx?SID=290143

Russell Crowe lives here

We drove around trying to return Brandon's Jag that he hired (rented) , and got lost sort of. But hey, I got to see Russell Crowe's multi-million dollar flat (condo) up close.

Really, they are called THONGS

Not things that girls cram up their ass, but the new-hippie slippers.


Anyway, we are staying at the Travelodge on Phillip street in Sydney, which happens to be the same building as the swanky NSW League club, they have a dress code. It's ok to wear shorts, as long as you wear long socks, ok?

Fellow Nerds Beware!

Please lobby to stop Australian government's persecution of anti-social behaviour!

So there you are contently being anti-social and playing with your blackberry or laptop or treo or whatever gadget, and you may get picked on!

Fat

Last night I weighed myself on Brandon's oh-so-cool scale, and found out that I'm 21.8% fat.

I don't know what to think about it, but at least I have a lot of reserves :)

Regardless, I head eggs and bacon for brekky anyway (breakfast)

Coffee

Canadians beware!!! They have no coffee here, well, not regular coffee anyway..
You have to buy expressos, and lattes and such. But they have no regular coffee, it's kind of weird.

Cell phones

I have been living without a cell phone for 9 days now. It's actually better than I thought it will be. But the uncertainty and the inability to change plans while meeting people would have been nice.

Sydneyers are crazy about their phones, just like any large city, but I'm sure it's even worse thanks to the large Asian population. In the subway (yeah, their phones work in subways), bus, street, cell phones are always ringing.

I think I would appreciate my cell phone more when I get back to Toronto.

Chatswood

So there we were, me and Barb dressed for a reception walking through the subway system on a saturday night.

I felt like a tool, as kids are dressed in their going out clothes, and I'm in this suit getting lost in subway stations.

Anyway, after lots of delays, we finally got to the reception late, or right on time depending on your perspective. The dinner must have been 9 course or something because I was stuffed at the end.

Brandon's dad gave a really funny speech about Brandon adding numbers together with fingers.
"That's cheating", Mr Lai said, so Brandon put his hands in his pockets. "Now what's 5+5?"... After much thought, Brandon said "eleven"... lol

Sue also gave a very nice speech thanking Brandon's parents and her own family, vowing to do her share as part of the family. --- That's a very Chinese thing to say, the obligation to family, the daughter in law being part of the family. That would have pushed all my mom's buttons for sure, as she always talk about the girl needing to commit to the guys family...

Anyway, as it turns out that Brandon is quite a party animal and danced up a storm, we had fun.

So today we're going back to the same restaurant to "Yum Cha" at noon. I have no idea what we're going to do afterwards.

Did you know?

That the two animals on the Australian crest, the Emu and the Kangaroo were chosen because they cannot naturally walk backwards?

Kangaroo means "what did you mean?" in Australian aboriginal language?

Brandon and Sue's wedding

Brandon and Sue had a beautiful wedding at the Royal Botanical Garden of Sydney. I've never seen people get married in the out doors, but it works, the weather was just perfect and we get lots of sun.

Brandon apparently picked a long vow to take, and in his nervousness he fumbled a bit, but that actually added to the situation. I'm sure it'll be fond memories for them for a long time.

So tonight we're heading off to Chatswood for the reception, apparently a rich neighbourhood populated my Chinese people.

The Chinese meal we had the other night at Chinatown was disappointing, but I have high hopes for tonight's feast.

My very own yadaki

or Didgeridoo, I bought one today off a tourist trap called outback something..
I managed better today with the didge at the lesson, and picked up the circular breathing technique. It's actually kind of hard and I had to suppress my normal reflexes a bit.

http://www.hauart.de/flash/yedakiwork1.html

My instructor, his name is Gamaroy, he's quite amazing where he uses the didge to imitate the sounds of animals like birds and such. He tried to get me to do them, but it's going to take a bit more time for me to pick it up.

New batch of pictures, wooohoo

Also managed to get a snapshot from the skydiving dvd

Canadians

You can find a lot of us here, backpackers with the Canadian flag (but I've heard of American imposters :P ) , the Canadian youth working in restaurants and the beaches, etc

That's great I think, I love it when I sit down at the restaurant and can pick out the "Canadian" accent from the waiter. Funny that I never considered Canadians to have an accent.

I suspect that if more Canadians come to visit Australia, we'll probably end up losing lots of population because of the nice weather!

Places like Brisbane seem nice to live in, probably too hot in the summer though.

Multiculturalism

Here in Sydney, in fact even Brisbane I see lots of different people - lots of Asians, some middle eastern. Although perhaps a lot of them are tourists like me probably. The paper says that the Australians are trying to recover from a slump in the number Japanese tourists. Something like 68,000 Japanese visits Australia every year, and 38,000 Americans - I wonder if it includes Canada.

I also read on the newspaper that 45% of the people here (Sydney) are immigrants or children of new immigrants. Making Australia the country with the most percentage of immigrants, followed by Canada. I was in the cityrail when I saw all these kids just running around hanging out. I guess in the next generation racism will be a completely foreign concept to cities like Toronto and Sydney, they will be as obsolete as gas lamps.

Sydney like Toronto also has a huge Chinese population, there are areas in Sydney that reminds me of Scarborough in T.O. where you would almost think that the white people are the minority here. But the Chinese here are different, subtly...
They call Dim Sum, Yum Cha - for those of you who don't know, Dim Sum is the noun, while Yum Cha is the verb of the same activity.

Kings Cross

Last night we went out to the Kings Cross area, which is sort of a red light district in Sydney.
It was exactly what you would expect from a red light district, with strip bars such as the Love Machine, Pleasure Chest, etc.

We sat down at a conveying sushi restaurant, which was kind of cool. You sit there and pick the sushi that's on a conveyor belt kind of like at the airport, and you pay the price based on the colour of the dish.

I'm sure Kings Cross is also some kind of hip neighbourhood, because I see office people eating and some girls from what appears to be a fashion magazine publisher came and got some take outs for the office.

Trains

They call their subways suburban trains, kind of like the GO trains back home, except it's the same system. I wonder if TTC and GO were the same system whether I'll use it more.

They are double decker trains, just like GO - pretty comfy inside.

The system has perhaps 4 or 5 colour coded lines that you can take from, snaking throughout the city. It actually makes me mad thinking about Toront's Sheppard subway stub with it's 5 stops - just a huge disappointment.

Backpacking

Backpacker's hostels seem to be all the rage here, tonnes of businesses are setup around this market. Toronto has some too, but not nearly as elaborate, I think.. not that I paid much attention.

A stay in a room with 7 other people will cost $28AUD each day... And there are places like this.
I checked out 2 places near the Central Station, WakeUp and YHA. They look quite hip and decent, with information about how to book trips, find jobs, etc.

http://www.wakeup.com.au/
http://www.yha.com.au/hostels/details.cfm?hostelid=29

Looks like a lot of fun, lots of people hang out and go through the place.
I wonder if I'm tool old to do something like this though.

Water at restaurants

In Toronto, some restaurants will peddle their sparkling water or spring water or what not. Some times they will give you water in a glass.

Seems like the restaurants here in Australia serve tap water in this glass bottle with a funky rubber lid.

Terms:

In Australia, they call curbs - Kerbs...

Also, the sandles that girls like to wear these days are called "thongs"... nice...

Bondi Beach

What a fantastic location, we took the subway for 3 stations and a 10 minute bus ride, and we're at a beautiful beach.

We grabed a table with a nice view and had lunch by the sea, what an amazing view.

Anyway, the beach have a "Surfboard hire" rental shop, where they rent out wet suits and provide lockers. A nice gentleman called Neil runs the place, he seemed to like Barb a lot. Every beach should have a place for lockers like that.

I rented a soft board, smaller than the long ones that we learned from, I can barely stay on top of it, nevermind standing up. I caught some waves and almost took out someone with a the board, yikes. Surfing, even without standing up is a lot of fun, I like it. There was a girl that keeps hoping on the beach breaks and the back wash, so she caught a lot of small waves without much paddling. I wish I was that good.

*edited* haha added pictures, got the Chinaman squinty eyes thing going... for you I give you good plice!!!

One thing that I forgot is how sticky you get after swimming in saltwater, so the fact that I took 5 minutes to get out of the wet suit had nothing to do we me being fat. :P

Afterwards I went for a Didge lesson, which I failed at miserably - so I'll have to head back again tomorrow between the wedding and the reception. So apparently it's sort of like playing a trumpet except more relaxed, but all I did was to make farting sounds into a hollow log, how sad.

I also did some gift shopping, a Kangaroo for my nephew Morris, etc. Gift shopping is stressful, I have great difficulty with it...

What should I get mom? She's been to Australia before..

Fed my girlfriend to the sharks

So after two loads of laundry, me and Barb head out across the harbour to Manly where Ocean World is.
We called up last minute to book an "Extreme Shark Dive" with them at 2pm, their site was broken where you can't actually make a payment.

Anyway, we had no idea what to expect - we headed down there, and Barb went to change and receive instructions from the staff, while I wondered around the shark tank.

The tank is arranged in a donut shape, and I get to walk in a glass tube along the bottom of the tank. That that was amazing, had sea turtles, sting rays, and lots of sharks!

Had to wait for a while, but eventually people and Barb and the group came out. They walked along and headed over to the sharks.

The sharks are of the Grey Nurse variety, they eat fishes whole, and their sharp teeth are built to hold their pray and not for tearing chunks off. So Barb was at least safe from losing limbs.
There were lots of sharks in that tank, the biggest ones being at least 10 feet long. So Barb was in her scuba gear within meters of these sharks.

One of the female sharks had bite marks all over her body, apparently she's been popular with the shark boys. Shark mating apparently involves biting because they had no arms to hold each other in place. So now she's taking a break from the boys in the other side of the tank to heal a bit.

Barb was thrilled by this experience, I'm glad she enjoyed it.
Tomorrow: Surfing at Bondi Beach

Got the surfing pics:

Quantas Airline

They have a neat hourly service to and from major Australian cities, call CityLink or something.. The part that I like is that it's cheap!

Anyway, we were given an apple and a cake for snack.. They even gave us a "table mat" that doubles as a garbage bag. Very stylish, then I look harder..

The stuff was designed by Egg, the same people who designed the iPod.

hmm...

Sydney @ 7pm

After I snucked out, it was starting to get dark.

People dressed in black suits were everywhere like in Matrix.
I guess we're just in the CBD (Central Business District) on a work night that's why.

I figure that people in Sydney have to wear a suit to work, or that 7pm is the time when all the lawyers come off from work.

Downtown Toronto wasn't quite the same where people don't wear only dark suits, you get more colours.. But this is cool, it's like a uniform for going to work.

Yay, I finally uploaded the pictures..

http://www.utmail.to/sydney/

Still pending are some surfing pictures that I took using a water proof camera.
That's next

We just discovered a new species....

Just watch the male and female interact, they may have a change table as an offspring..

Back in Sydney

Took a shuttle bus directly from the Airport to the hotel, but the traffic was bad so it look just shy of an hour to get there.

Barb was totally spent on the flight over, so I took off to take a look at the Sydney Tower and the monorail..

Then I headed over here to the Korean internet cafe. This place is great, but you have to jump through a lot of hoops to get past the Korean stuff.

On the way over, I took the monorail, but I slipped and spranged my ankle, bummer. I'll leave here as soon as it stops hurting. lol

In Brisbane...

Today we say goodbye to our wacky Contiki tour group, both me and Barb feel kind of sad.

Those kids will be staying on a farm tonight, and then a pyjama party on Frazier Island.

Brisbane seems to be a big city with high end shopping and a decent airport... I was surprised, considering how remote it is.

Status:

Temperature: 20C
Number of Clean underwear: 4
Number of Clean shirts: 2
Number of Clean shorts: 3
Number of Clean t-shirts: 0
Pairs of clean socks: 4

Days remaining: 5

Mood: Exhausted.

The kids are out partying to 3am, I don't know how they do it

After just a few days, I have accumulated a large amount of dirty clothes. Mom said that if I brought clothes that I can throw away, then I can make room for soveniers as I go.

I have not went through and identify items to discard, but I think I'll make up at least 10L of space.

Yay great idea mom..

They have a machine here in the hotel, where it can make a backup of your camera memory cards onto CD's, I tried to make it work, but I think my 1 Gb card had too much on it.
Nifty idea though.

I have yet to find an internet cafe to upload pictures, but I suspect that I'll have an easier time when I get back to Sydney.

Into town we go

Me and Barb opted out of a dinner/show, instead we went into the heart of surfer's paradise to develop our surfing/skydiving pictures and some shopping.

It was a pretty busy place, with Hard Rock Cafe, HMV and lots of Asian restaurants.

We ended up buying dinner at this "Seafood Mania" where I had the best seafood chowder ever.

Tomorrow we head to Brisbane then Sydney

It was scariest pants shitting experience.

The jump master with the camera asked me how it felt, I was speechless.

They have really industrialized this tandem diving thing, at 1:30 we were picked up by a van, an hour later I was falling out of a plane flying at 200 km/h spooning with another man.
I thought I was going to die attached to Bart's pelvis, not the perfect way to go, parents would not have been proud - especially when they'll probably have trouble separating our tissues..

Let's think about something more positive: the plane ride up there was amazing, if there's a place you want to jump, it's here on the Gold Coast of Australia, the view was fantastic. Miles and miles of perfect beach stretching north and south, the turquois ocean, channel snaking through the city.

When they opened the flimsy plastic door, I was shitting my pants. Good thing I brought a change of underwear and shorts. Barb went first, it was not a great feeling seeing her leave the moving plane, not more than 10 seconds later, I was out of the plane too. Free falling is a very unnatural feeling, I entered into shock for the first feel seconds then came out of it when we probably reached terminal velocity. The wind was rushing by so fast, it was like sticking your head out the window of your car at 170km/h. Not that I tried it or anything, but I don't recommend it, but if you were going to do it per se, don't do it on country roads where there are lots of bugs.

When the chute opens, it was a gentler deceleration than I expected, probably because we're doing tandem diving. I finally have a chance to appreciate the scenary around me, because I was focusing on the airport below thinking about how fast we're going to get there. Bart showed off a couple of tricks, doing some spiral rolls, some rapid high G turns, my harness was hurting me. I can spot Barb's blue canopy, below, and Tobin the English accountant-turn-policeman was not far behind us. He was also speechless after we land.

Then came the second unnatural feeling: Bart released the shoulder clip, so he can probably control the parachute - but after he released the clip, my position is lowered a bit - I thought I was going to detach and fall.. good thing there are more than a few clips connecting me to Bart and then the parachute.

The planned landing was to bum ski to a stop, but last minute Bart asked me to stand up, so we did a running landing instead. It hurt a bit to land, but that's because I didn't relax my legs and feet enough.

While they were processing our video, we headed out to see the Brown sisters land (Toronto girls who work at flight center). Then Luke the English student landed, he was still in shock...

Taste of salt water...

Here I am again, in salt water, I just love the smell of the salty air.

So the lot of us are taking surfing lessons this morning, sand surfing most of the time to learn the techniques, really not such a cool thing, you look like a tool paddling sand..

But hey, it's more fun when more people are doing it with you. I brought a water proof disposible camera to track our progress. I didn't do so well today, barely standing up, but of course I didn't have a good picture of myself surfing :)

So I will probably do more surfing down at Bondi beach next to Sydney, I heard it's topless over there.

Yesterday I bought a surfing shirt (skin tight) and today they gave us some wetsuits to stay warm.. that's the most skin tight clothing I've worn... ever...

So they were hard to get into but, I feel... super! hehe

I look forward to developing these pictures, there's something cool about seeing water droplets on photographs..

Surfing is such a great thing, but make sure you have enough breakfast and energy, cause it really takes it out of you fighting the waves..

Anyway, off to jump out of a plane...

Australian Money

Australians have very interesting looking money, they are printed on soft transparent plastic sheets. So each bill have a "window" through them, they are just as colourful as our canadian dollars. But the colour-to-value mapping was all wrong, the $20 is red, I always had to look twice because the canadian $50 is red.

*edited* Another interesting thing about Australian money is that their coins are smaller the more value it's worth. They don't have pennies either.

Australian Toilets

I didn't really look how the water swirls, but the design of the toilets here are deeper, and each toilet have 2 buttons on top.. Took me a while to figure out, but it's one button for small flush, the other for big flushes... BRILLIANT I promise pictures

Surfers Paradise

Exactly as the wikitravel site said, Surfers Paradise is a spoilt place to rip off tourist and an excellent place to visit seedy strip bars..

Before we got to Surfers Paradise, we spent about an hour in an animal santuary, where we got to hug a koala bear!

We had to pay for the priviledge to hold one though, $35 gets you 3 pics with the Koala..
- it smells funny
- it's soft and fluffy
- it likes clinging on
- it really doesn't enjoy it's job, she's constantly looking at the trainer with the "I can't believe you let them touch me" look

Then we walked over to the Kangoroos, they are so cool, I really like Kangaroos.
Up close, a Kangaroo looks like a dog, except with really long hind legs. They were mostly just lying around being disinterested, even if you approach with feed, it'd rather lie there and wait for you to feed than to stand up to reach for it..

Also saw a little joey, a baby kangaroo, he's hyper and feeding from his mom, but when us tourist approach, he just hopped off like a hyper out of control jack hammer!

Look picture with an emu, lol, I think emu's are funny. This is the biggest bird I've ever seen in real life. It's not really scared of people, but it doesn't look happy to be in the picture with me either, he was just interested in having his bum photographed.

We went out to a really nice thai restaurant in another hotel, all the guys headed off to the casino, so I went with Barb and had dinner with 10 other girls from the tour.
The coconut chicken soup was great, it was creamier and nuttier than the Thai Star on hwy 7.

Every night, Jo our tour guide puts up an info sheet with all the schedule time and info, it's really cool cause she puts her own spin into it. Took picture, but I don't have a way to upload the pictures yet.

Jo is pretty amazing for doing this job, everyone say, because she's got a tough yet have fun attitude. She said she as a police officer in New Zealand for years, but the job was too negative, and she wants to balance her life with something more happy and positive. Apparently she reported her handcuffs as "missing" when she quit... use your imagination.

Later today, I'll get to surf, then in the afternoon we'll do some tandem sky diving.

Somehow we convinced Barb to skydive, so it's going to be great. I hope she brought dark brown pants.... I'm not sure if I like the idea of Barb's bum attached to someone else's crouch, then again, I'm not sure if I like the idea of having another guys' crouch attached to my behind either.

Apparently skydiving is an experiences indescribable with words, because everyone who was asked to describe it was saying we've got to try it to find out.

Unable to upload pictures yet, because these internet machines have no way to read from the camera. But I bet later tonight I'll get to upload them. I miss those korean internet cafe places, they are so open you can install anything on them...

Now we finally got some action today.

We drove up to Bryon Bay today, apparently the east most point in continental Australia.
BEAUTIFUL spot. lots of surfing.

We went up to a lighthouse, took some pictures of that cape bryon, and then headed into town.



on the drive up here, we did a whole self introduction thing. Except there are like 30 of us, so it got kind of long. It's interesting that all the colorful people got up there first, probably because they get picked ..

We're suppose to tell people
- Name
-Where you came from
-Age
-Job
-Worst Fear
-Secret Fantasies
-Who you would like to meet
-Favorite Quote

My favorite one is from Mat the Kiwi (New Zealander) his worst fear is to get thrown in jail and becomes someone else's bitch..

When it's my time, I drew a blank, said some stuff that even I don't really remember...

Anyway, the beach here is gorgeous, the sand is fine, and the waves looked good for surfing.

Me and Barb looked around town and bought some stuff, I got a skin tight surfing shirt (watch out!)

Tonight I get to hug a kaola bear...

geez, this place only have a coin op internet dial up

I'm left with 1 minute after logging on...

The tour seems great, I'm going to try surfing and skydiving tomorrow

now I'm using up all my coins...


The tour is quite interesting, there is our tour guide Jo, she's obsessed with toilet jokes and is constantly eluding to people getting naked.

Paul our driver is cool, he drives what I consider the best bus ever, even the tires are shiney..

So today mostly we are heading north driving to a place called coff's habour, where we are staying at a resort.

We met a lot of fellow Canadians, especially from Toronto, there must be 8 of us out of 30. I guess they just do the best advertising here.

There are tourists from UK, Germany, New Zealand, and even Australia on ths contiki tour.

Jo our tour guide is quite funny but tough, she's apparently a cop from a previous life... so there are lots of rules:

1. no shiting in the bus toilet - it's hell to clean up and everyone gets to appreciate the smell for the whole trip
2. don't be late - apparently she has no trouble leaving people behind, and you'd believe her
3. no whining, "build a bridge, get over it"
4. no hot liquid, no hot food, because they stick up the bus
5. when she's talking, no talking over her! *swoons*
6. drink water, dehydration is bad, she doesn't want to do search on your body for any health info
7. FAC-U : after the bus stops, footrest, seat, arm rest, curtains in Up position

She played "I like big butts" from sir mixalot at the end of the day, she's got my respect :)

Look Right!

Another cool thing about Sydney, is that they have instructions at road crossings for us North Americans, no doubt.

I've been surprised a few times because cars come out of the wrong side...

Head is still swimming from the time difference..

Went to the aquarium yesterday, it was amazing! The whole aquatic theme and my jet-lagging made for a surreal experience.

The Sydney Aquarium is probably the coolest aquarium that I've ever been, although I haven't spent much time in Chicago's Shedd Aquarium.

They have an underwater tunnel for each of the seal, shark and barrier reef tanks.

The shark tank was particularly impressive... They have HUGE sharks size of cars, stingrays that are even larger.. and apparently through the glass, things appear 25% smaller!

We struggled to take pictures, but it was too dark, and the flash interfered with the pictures.

I was particularly interested in the Platypus the duck billed webbed feet four legged mammal.
Probably will find a stuffed one to bring back to Morris.

We walked around Darling Harbour after the acquarium, giving the Chinese garden a miss. They have the best crepe here from some Crazy Crepes place... hmm..

One of the shops is called the outback store, sells mostly Australian aboriginal art and equipment. A staff there was playing a 3 foot didgeridoo and that caught my attention.
It makes the dwoing-dwowing kind of low funny sounds.
They have classes, so I'm going to sign up to learn how to play the didge after we come back from surfing. They didn't allow pictures to be taken, but they have elaborate art on each of them.

A didge sells for $130 for a G key one, all the way up to a $800 concert C. Besides the low funny noise it makes, I think it makes for a great decoration in any home.

After Darling harbour, which was right next to China town and 10 minutes from the hotel - we met up with Brandon and Sue (the couple getting married) and went off to have dinner.
There was some adventure with finding parking space, but little I know it was a high end French restaurant!
My sandles and track pants contiki tourist attire didn't quite fit in, I can tell that the staff wasn't comfortable.

I had mussel brisque, and escagot, and a salmon pasta. It was pretty good, but the flavor is too strong for my taste.

Files are still being uploaded.... I'll link in pictures soon.
ftp://ftp36538318-5:dropoff@utmail.to/sydney

Today - Contiki tour to bus north! I wonder if I'm too old for the tour....

Just landed in Sydney - it freakin took forever!

Got to Peason around 3pm on Friday, it was probably too early, as we waited for 2 hours to board the plane.

I was somewhat excited, but kind of feeling like I'm missing out on something at work..

Right after boarding the plane in pearson, Barb noticed that I'm missing something - THE SUIT!! lucky that we haven't finished boarding everyone, I went back to the waiting area to find it. Barb was very unimpressed. :P

I brought my oh-so-cool brand spanking new mp3 player complete with 1Gb SD card loaded with all the audio books that I haven't yet listened to. Barb's camera's got the other SD card, but it's loaded with crap that I had on my treo.

As it turns out that Barb likes the songs already on the camera SD card, but we have to make space for pictures.. so after taking 154 pictures we'll have to find a way to make space..

After an uneventful flight to LA, we have to transfer to the Sydney flight. LAX is a huge ass building, we actually have to take a bus from terminal 2 to terminal 6 for the international United flights. A BUS! this is the same building here, reminds me of Atlanta's airport.

While we found out that we have to talk to someone at terminal 7 so we can enter terminal 6 (I know, stupid) I spotted a girl that must be Cameron Diaz... Barb doesn't think so , that girl was wearing a hat and was obviously trying to blend in.

I spotted her again when we have to talk to gate 74 so we can enter gate 77 (stupid, again)
Her whole entorage entered into the upper deck first class deck. hmm.

Same old couple who sat behind us on the flight to LAX is actually sitting with us on the way to SYD..

In flight movies - Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Herbie, Never been kissed.

The flight was hell, it took too long, briefly interruptted by snacks and meals. Feels like some alien is trying to farm us and make us fat like how chickens are raised.

As soon as we arrived at Sydney, we took a shuttle that dropped us off at the hotel for $18, vs $24 if we took the airlink train.

Sydney is... highly stylized, everything has the european style polish in designs.. such as the hotel, airport, furniture shops ala Ikea, etc

Checked in way too early, so the only room they can get us is the "accessible" room, the shower have a seat and hand rails.. I don't mind.

My "let's eat" instinct from the airplane/chicken farm kicked in and I immediately demanded to have breakfast at the travelodge hotel restaurant.

The bacon here is fantastic! the best bacon ever, I'm not kidding.. The scrambled egg is strangely powdery though.

We looked at the tea and decided that some tea would be great up in our room, so we devised a plan - we walk over to the tea counter, look normal, and steal as many tea bags as possible.

Afterwards, I interviewed Barb with my notepad "Ms. Pingyin, can you please describe the suspect?"

"Umm.. he's 5"8', black hair, buzz cut, wiskers off his left cheek..."

"that's going to narrow it down"

"monkey ears, orange and black shirt, pimple on forehead towards the right, ~160 lb, Chinese descent with a broad smile"..

I made a sketch.. she agreed with the drawing... it's hilarious, I'm going to post it as soon as I get the camera hooked up.

"he was last seen running away with 2 teabags..."


---------------

I came out just to buy some personal grooming and some tape to fix my suit bag, then I decided to checkout the internet cafes, and the likeliness that we can get the pictures posted.

Besides the fact that I don't have a USB keyboard, looks like I can!

Today we'll try to see the aquarium, then meet Brandon (groom) for dinner.
Tomorrow day 1 of Contiki tour begins! it's like 800 km to Surfer's Paradise.