Day 7 - The Rocks and My Date

I decided to head down to The Rocks, which is in the same area as the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. For those who don't know, I guess The Rocks used to be a real slummy part of town where all of the convicts and stuff went, but it's cleaned up a bit since then. I also think it is probably the more touristy part of downtown Sydney. Along the harbor there are a bunch of street performers. The more popular type seemed to be these Aborigines that would play their music and pose for pictures in exchange for tips. I never did it but I did tape the guy playing his music for your viewing pleasure!

Dang kid in the blue shirt got in the way towards the end! It also proved to be a learning lesson because he went into the didjaredoo and how to play it. There are apparently about four different movements you're trying to do while playing this thing. Also, the Aboriginal name for it is not didjaredoo; that name comes from what it sounded like when the first Englishmen heard it being played (so the English name for it is more like an onomatopoeia). The guy actually played it so it did sound like "didjaredoo" but I wasn't able to record it for you. Too bad.

Disaster struck a second time when my poor camera broke!! I tried to fix it but the lens was permanently disabled so I was forced to buy another Australian camera with its wonky plug. I also managed to get a picture of myself in front of the Sydney Opera House!

Oh yeah, look at that modeling! ;)

Later on was my date with the Aussie guy! Alas, I was not able to think of a reason to take a picture with him in it so I guess you're SOL on that one. Basically he's also 26, a carpenter and a Sydneysider. He's not too tall, though (my height) but that's okay. He's overall cute but he's got a bit of a uni-brow. I should stop being superficial because that's nothing that a little tweezing couldn't fix! Haha! He's also got a really strong Australian accent.* He seems like a nice guy overall. We went to a rooftop bar in The Rocks overlooking the harbor (although we couldn't really see it from where we were sitting) and sort of went over the differences between Australia and America. It was interesting because he was able to tell me more about some of the local cultural things. As an example, we were riding on the train back to Burwood and there was some graffiti that said, "Bring back the beef." I commented on it because I thought it was weird and referring to hamburger, but he told me it was actually about some sort of character (mascot?) in Rugby who is always saying that phrase "Bring back the biff". I think biff refers to the fighting and stuff that used to be allowed in Rugby. I'm guessing beef is some form of biff? Or maybe they just sound alike? Obviously I would have no clue about this on my own, haha! So for that reason he's pretty good to have around. And he actually paid for my taxi back to my place so I wasn't stranded like last night! Score! ;)

*Fun fact - Australian accents are actually less attractive when you're surrounded by them. Weird eh?

Day 6 - Bondi Beach/Downtown Sydney

Last night was daylight savings time for Australia -- gained an hour!

On to the more interesting stuff...

I decided to go to Bondi Beach despite the fact that the weather was overcast and windy. Apparently, "Bondi" or "Boondi" means "water breaking over rocks or noise of water breaking over rocks" in Aborigine. Not sure if you can tell from my picture but the waves were pretty giant, especially compared to my standard Pensacola Beach waves!

The beach itself was pretty small, though... maybe three times the size of Casino Beach if you take the area from the pier to Crabs (for my Pensacola readers). I was reading about Bondi Beach on this one website and found an interesting factoid about a day called "Black Sunday":

Some 35,000 people were on the beach and a large group of lifesavers were about to start a surf race when three freak waves hit the beach, sweeping hundreds of people out to sea. Lifesavers rescued 300 people. The largest mass rescue in the history of surf bathing, it confirmed the place of the lifesaver in the national imagination.

Pretty crazy, eh? There's a path that starts at Bondi and goes to the other beaches like Tamarama and the like. I went a little bit of the distance with my German friends but we turned around about halfway because we were all hungry. Remember that picture of Hungry Jacks I took? It turns out it IS Burger King... I'm not sure why they don't just call it Burger King instead of Hungry Jacks, though. Either way, here's a picture of me in the middle of the pathway.

There's a club called the Bondi Icebergs, the only licensed Winter Swimming Club in the world (whatever that means). It was started by a group of people trying to maintain their fitness during the winter in the 1920s. I read that part of their membership requirement was competing in a few "races" every Sunday, which apparently were more novelty than anything else. My host family said that they would put ice in the pool and have people swim in it!

As you can see, it's a pool right by Bondi Beach (Bondi is actually to the left of where this picture is shown). I wasn't able to get to the actual pool because there was a charge and I didn't feel like paying $3AUD for it. But for the boys, click here to check out the Bondi Beach Babes! Haha!

Later that night, the two German guys, a German girl and their Australian friend and I went out to downtown Sydney to a club called Ivy. Apparently it's pretty "posh", and it cost me $20AUD to get in (we originally thought that if we went in early we could escape the cover... wrong!). There's a few things about Sydney bars that I don't like, namely:

1. Always a minimum charge to use your credit card, and they don't really believe in keeping a tab. The minimum charge for Ivy was $30AUD. Worst part? That only got me four drinks for $36!!! I had to give two of them to my friend for paying my cover. Ugh. They apparently use cash here a lot more than I'm used to.
2. The music is TERRIBLE. I don't really know how to describe it. I actually took a video of it with my camera but it broke today so I can't show you what it was like. It was some weird mixture of techno and pop that made no sense to me. And it was the only type of music you could hear in any of the bars I went to. I miss my American hip hop! :(
3. The guys here are, to quote Snooki, "gorilla juiceheads". What I mean, for those who don't dare watch Jersey Shore, is that they are all muscled up with faux-hawks. I'm not sure how they missed the memo that faux-hawks aren't in anymore, but they did. Sometimes it looks good on the right guy but with these guys, they just looked like Jersey boys. Also they are really cheap and don't like to buy drinks. Bastards.

The night ended fairly early and this is when the disaster started. The Aussie guy that the Germans are living with decided he'd go home the same time I did, and I thought we were both getting off at the same bus stop called Burwood Station (where I would have to transition to a taxi). No, friends, he decided to stop the bus at an earlier stop  -- the entrance of his neighborhood. When I got off, I realized that this was not Burwood Station, but rather his neighborhood! The guy knew perfectly well that this was not where I wanted to go! He sent me off in a taxi, but the taxi driver WOULDN'T GO TO CABARITA (where I am staying). I have no idea why, because when I asked him about twenty times why he wouldn't, he just mumbled something. Everyone I told this to later agreed that this was very suspect of him.

The taxi driver then dropped me off in the middle of nowhere, where there wasn't even another taxi to get me. I started to get nervous because it's 2 in the morning, I'm alone and I have no idea where I am. What kind of guy does that?! I eventually found another taxi who took me home. And it all began because the original guy had me get off at the wrong stop... jerk. Either way, this event has made me unlikely to try the Sydney nightlife again because I just don't like dealing with getting home when I'm the only person going the same way.

Update

I've been pretty good about updating every day but today it just has to wait! I'm too tired! 

At any rate, the next post will include the following:
1. Bondi Beach
2. Going out in the town

Get excited! I just didn't want anyone to get worried since I was behind on my daily updates or anything... I know how you guys live or die by what I write! ;)

Day 5 - Rugby and Irishmen

As far as clinic went, it was a day with "Prof" which meant it was supposed to be a learning day. Mostly we (Canadian friend named Christine and I) spent our time following either Prof or the registrar around. I did see a few weird skin diseases such as sarcoidosis and stuff like that. I also learned that America uses units that are apparently not used anywhere else in the world for things like cholesterol. Their upper limit of cholesterol is 5.0. I suppose they use mmol/?unit while we use g/dl? I don't know.

 The real fun of the day began when Christine (the Canadian) and I went to the rugby game. Apparently in Australia there are two types of rugby -- Union and League. I think the League version is more exciting and physical but the one we went to was Union, I believe. It was the Waratahs versus the Chiefs. Neither Christine or I had any idea of what was going on... I figured it might be somewhat intuitive but it really wasn't. It was almost like American football except when someone was tackled the ball was apparently still in play. Not quite sure on what the deal was with penalties and stuff. If you're REALLY interested, you can read about the game here..

I also tried my very first ever official "meat pie." It was gross. Basically imagine a chicken pot pie but fill it instead with beef and gravy. I took a picture of it:

We also took a picture about three times before someone was able to get it accurately... every time it was some new shenanigan! The guy taking it was very patient though. Props to him! Here's an accidental video so you can ever so briefly hear that ever charming Australian accent... haha.

  
I guess to further improve my blog, here are the three attempts at a picture:

 

 

  

Finally, a good one!

After the game, we went to a bar where we met these three Irish guys. Honestly I could only understand about 70% of what they were saying. Part of that was apparently my name meant I was more Irish than they were, and that any proper Murphy was immediately nicknamed "Spud" (for potato) because of something about potato soup during the famine (that was a part that I couldn't really understand). One of them was about to get Australian citizenship tomorrow and his friend could do a really good Australian accent! The funny thing was that both the Irish guy and the Belgian (from yesterday) both seemed to think that Australians were rather concerned with their appearance. I haven't really met enough of them to comment but it seems to be the going theme with outsider perceptions. At any rate, we attempted to take a picture with the Irish guys and we ended up having a bunch of strangers included in our picture!

 

The Irishmen were the two next to me and the last one on the top row (wearing the white shirt). Other than the my friend (Asian girl) I don't know the other three people, haha. 

After that, I took the train back home. I have to admit that around then I started to feel a little homesick for everyone and felt a little bit lonely. I know, it's kind of ridiculous to feel that way in a really awesome city but it's true! I miss America! I'll be back to normal in no time. :)

Day 4 - Balmain

I'll start with the boring stuff first -- today was procedure day in the dermatology clinic, so it consisted mostly of me following the registrar and resident as they cut off suspicious looking moles, seborrheic keratoses and the like. I was actually allowed to do a punch biopsy, which is basically a round incision into the skin. I also went to Grand Rounds, which was really boring and about some endocrine diseases. I'm starting to notice that they spell words the British way -- oedema, anaemia, etc. It's really weird. They also have different terminology. For instance, they use:

1. The abbreviation EUC for "electrolytes, urea and creatinine" instead of what we'd call a CMP
2. Urea instead of BUN (they shorten it to a "U" when going over lab values)
3. Frusemide instead of furosemide.

Once I figured those out the rest was pretty similar.

On to the date! Well, here's a picture of him since I know that Mom is probably sitting there saying to herself, "Let's see what this kid looks like!" This is us in front of the Sydney Harbour Bridge (across from the Opera House).

So I'll start off with a description of him so we have a good idea of who he is. He's a 25 year old Belgian guy, youngest of three children and apparently has been backpacking in some form or another since he was 15. Luckily he didn't have any issues with hygiene that I could tell, haha. He's also leaving on Tuesday so I guess this is it for us. Our future together ended before it even started...

At any rate, we met up in the suburb of Balmain. It sounds exotic but really it seemed to consist of neighborhoods with one street that had anything of interest on it. He was originally supposed to take me to some fish and chips shop that was "really good" but I guess it was closed so we went to another place that sold "eh" fish and chips. We ended up taking them to this park that overlooked the harbor.

The scary part about this park was that there were very few lights (I was starting to wonder if this is where I'd get raped) and there were giant bats flying around in the tree above me. Guys, these things had to have a wingspan of at least a foot!! Best part -- I THINK ONE OF THEM PEED ON ME!!!! Yes, friends, the night was starting off well. Shady park with giant bats. Wow...

I was pretty anxious to get back to Circular Quay because that was where my ferry to take me home was and I didn't want to miss it, so I pushed him into taking me back there and grabbing a drink or something while we waited for the ferry. He took me to a bar called Sydney Opera Bar, which is right in front of the Opera House (I'll include an incredibly rare picture of the Opera House I took -- not great quality but deal with it):

It was actually a really cool bar that I may go back to again later. At any rate, that ended our night! Tomorrow is the Rugby game with my Canadian friend, so I'm excited for that!

Date #2

Quick update -- At work today, we had a young guy as a patient (for once -- they are usually old) and he actually left me a note with his number saying if I needed someone to show me around Sydney, feel free to give him a call. Finally -- my own personal tour guide, haha! I'll give him a call later on and see what happens.

Hungry Jacks

This is a separate post, but this seems to be Sydney's #1 fast food joint... doesn't it look suspiciously like an old school Burger King symbol or whatever you call it? I think it does.