Google has put up the hi-res pictures of Sydeny online. I am pretty excited about this, even though I missed my chance to get on the roof and wave on Australia day, you can now see better where I live: here. Christy goes to Uni over here, in that big white building.
Boy those are not very exciting. Well, for you people looking for the good stuff, here are some topless sunbathers hanging out on Bondi Beach, here. (Honestly, the view is much better when you are actually at the beach.) I have to give credit to googlesiteseeing for that find, as well as discovering a kid in swinging on a swingset here.
A certain person has reminded me that I left out what are probably the best two photographs I took in New Zealand. She is totally right about that, so to make up for this mistake I am just going to put them up today. Here, I present to you the tallest mountain of New Zealand, Mt. Cook. Click to make bigger.
I have been busy working back here in Sydney and that has made me want to revisit my last vacation. To make me feel better, I cooked up one last vacation album, this one of my travels through Arizona and New Zealand. I did spend some time in New York between these locals, but those pictures did not really fit into the nature motif. So without futher ado, here is the link.
The big celebration for fat Tuesday here in Sydney revolved around one of the world's biggest ships, the Queen Mary 2. A few years ago, I could have just said world's largest passenger ship, but the folks at the Royal Caribbean got to building a bigger cruise liner. Still, having the world's longest, widest and tallest passenger ship in port was enough to throw a wrench into Sydney's workings, basically cloging up all the roads in the city center. When the ship came into port, both the Sydney Harbor Bridge and the ANZAC bridge were closed.
I spent my day oblivious to all the fuss, working on website design as I tend to do here. It took a thirty minute barrage of fireworks for me to make it to the roof to check out this whole big boat invasion. From my roof I could see that it was one expletive inducing massive boat. It was time to get the camera and take a trip down the hill to Woollomoolo (my favorite Aussie word so far).
The boat:
Fun with my new lens I got for Christmas:
The tradition here in Sydney is to continue to celebrate Mardi Gras throughout the duration of Lent. I think that is cheating on the holiday calendar somehow, sort of like celebrating the New Years Day throughout the entire month of January and a bit into Feburary. The big Mardi Gras parade is on March 3, which would technically make it a Samedi Gras parade. Sigh. When in Rome. More on Gras Lent to come...
My work schedule down here in Sydney is very morning centric, due to the fact that there are all these American friends and colleagues with whom I keep in touch with, and my beginning of the day is the end of theirs. With this comes an odd dichotomy of morning calm and afternoon zany. A good example of this, in fact, came to me this morning, when I got instant messaged the following video, made in Brooklyn, by two of my friends who spent the day indoors, avoiding the cold.
Yup, this is how I start my day sometimes.
Tonight, I am off to eat $35 burritos. Technically, I am going to a full Mexican buffet, but still in US dollars, this will cost me $27.43. Or in Mexico, that would be 300.49 pesos. All that, plus, I am betting that drinks are not included.
Today, good friend plus birthday equals extortion.
Do you know the worst thing? I've been to this place before, for another birthday, and the food is not even that good. Mexican food may be exotic here in Australia—Thai is the equivalent of Mexican in these parts—but at a certain price point, I would expect that the chef could figure out how to cook a burrito. I mean really, they are only made out of beans, affordable meats, and industrial cheese in the first place. Let me put it this way, for $35, I could eat my self to nausea with top end sushi. How does bluefin tuna toro nigiri sound?
The profit margins this restaurant is getting tonight caused today's post. Take me to Taco Cabana and I can get you a far better meal for under ten dollars. Heck, take me to my kitchen, and I can fix you up.
Jimmy is here. It has been nice to have a familiar face around the house. Jimmy was Christy's old studio mate in New York. Here is a picture of him drawing on the couch.
I would have never thought that I would be hanging out with more than one of the people who came to my Super Bowl party last year, but there we were, early on a Monday morning, watching the Bears with their amazing first quarter performance slowly, painfully and decidedly get trounced by the Colts over the next three quarters. It was sad, but the Bears really did everything they could to lose the game. At least I had my people there.
Jimmy and I have been working on a project called printer press, where people print out a sheet of paper with eight panels that folds into a book. The project is on its way. We spent a few evenings here plotting the story of Giovanni, a pirate that decides to join the circus. It looks to be a good story, and we are soon to be getting it done. More on that when we get our ducks in order. I just want to say that it is great to have some interesting projects developing on the side.
Jimmy is a vast warehouse of random information. I think that the best tidbit that I received from him while he has been here is that Mr. T. once sang a song telling kids to not make fun of mothers. Sure enough, he was right:
Plus, with a short bust of online research, we found out that when Mr. T. was a bodyguard, his card said "Next to God, there is no greater protector than I." Goes to show why we all fear that man.
Jimmy is off soon to bike around Tasmania. I am a bit jealous, I must admit.
On my mind today is New Years Resolutions. I am taking my cue from my friend Katie, a.k.a. The Wifest who recently wrote about on how well she was doing keeping her resolutions. I like the idea of putting resolutions out there to the masses, if for no other reason, they will remind you if you are getting off track. I read somewhere that diets tend to work better if you tell everyone you are on them. Seems reasonable to me.
People don't email me. My resolution is simple, get more people to email me.
I have learned this last week that I alone am to blame for this. I really want to blame my friends for being lazy, but come find out that when I actually do write them as I did this week, they write me right back with great and interesting replies. It is me who is lazy. It is me who avoids the email.
I have developed a negative Pavlovian reaction to the sound of my email application beeping at me. I picked this up at my old job, where email only means more work and responsibility. And when that is the case, loquaciousness and creativity are the first things to go. I recon that I have spent the last two or so years simply writing short, if not terse, bare bones responses to only the emails of importance. It works for work, but when you are on the other side of the world with the internet as your main means of communication to friends and family, it is a good thing to put some more time into the emailing.
So if you are reading this and you want an email from me, just tell me so, and I will write you back. I will do my best to respond to any non-spam that reaches my inbox.
