Sunday, February 25, 2007

Oz VIII - Week in Sydney

Last week there was heavy rain in Sydney. Rain in Sydney is not that unusual. Heavy rain however seems to produce the same collapse in society as snow does in Southern England. There were floods, car accidents, the traffic system ground to a halt. Yet Australians still refused to wear rain coats. It seems to be unacceptable for an Australian to wear a rain coat. At work all the ex-pats turned up looking suave in their macs the Australians strolled in wet.
As ever lots of things going on in Sydney this week. Last weekend I worked at the Good vibrations festival, it is a big annual dance music festival. I was working on one of the bars with friends of mine from work. It was manic. Nine hours passed in the blink of an eye, the only real break coming when Snoop Dogg was let off the leash. I must have made hundreds of vodka and red bulls. They gave everyone tea spoons to open the cans with. I thought this was slow and wimpy so used my fingers, after half an hour I had cut open both my thumbs and realised why we had been given spoons. The next day I went to Tropfest which is another annual event in the Domain, a short film festival, the biggest in the world. On Tuesday QM2 and QE2 came to town. Sydneysiders love any excuse to hang around the harbour in the sun and the biggest Queen in the world was more than enough reason. As with any event in Sydney this was followed by a spectacular firework display. I had a few days off work so went up to Taronga Zoo. It is a great setting in bushland with view of the harbour and the city. They have a couple of enclosures in the Zoo which you walk through with the animals around you, an Emu is a lot more intimidating without bars.
I continued my soap opera odyssey getting the bus to Palm Beach aka Summer Bay. It is a picturesque spot, far more beautiful then it appears to be on TV. Unfortunately there were no film crews to compliment this beauty or Home & Away stars to stalk. They reckon that the peninsula where Palm Beach sits will eventually be eroded away in 80 years time, so get here quick.
I have continued performing with Scared Scriptless. They are a good bunch of people and get decent audiences to watch. A couple of weeks ago I performed with an apparent legend of Australian TV. She meant nothing to me. She was a presenter of playschool and my friends from work who came to watch were star struck.
Spider watch - after 3 months of living in Australia I finally came across a big spider. The size of my palm. A huntsmen sitting on the ceiling of the bathroom. I decided to leave it alone, someone else decided to kill it after a couple of days. I went to the Australia Museum and they had a giant Funnel Web Spider (the size of a Mini) that moved. I wouldn't fancy coming across a life sized Funnel Web let alone one that was bigger than me. The Palm Beach area was covered in Orb Spiders. Back before Xmas a friend of mine was bitten by a red back spider and rushed to hospital. She was in and out of consciousness and at one point awoke to find 3 doctors trying to inject her with anti-venom at the same time. She said that before she was bitten she was scared of spiders, now she is terrified.

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