Weekend in Oz

Friday I spent most of Boxing Day fixing my phone issues after losing it in the cab like an idiot (and I swear I was mostly sober). By the time I got back and set it up it was almost 5pm and I decided to head back to Bondi just for the sake of it. I had made plans to go out with Jacob that night but when I got out there I really just felt tired so I headed back for the cross ended up taking one late night lap there and after making plans to meet Anna the following day I went to bed fairly early (in Kings Cross terms). The next morning I went for a run to try and regain the feeling of being a human being, I thought Anna and I would have the day to hang out but when I called her she said she was on her way to work and wouldn’t be off again til 1am…so we again postponed plans to meet up. Still tired and with no real idea of what to do, I headed towards the city center on foot (a one mile walk) and after cruising the mall for a minute headed for the Rocks (the area most commonly compared to SF). On the way, I saw a pub called St. Patricks and figured why not stop in. The huge cricket test match between Aus (world #1) and South Africa (#2) was on the tv and a few people were sitting sucking down beers glued to the action. I started asking questions and after an hour and a half and 4 pints of Golden Ale (first place I had seen this Sydney local brew) I actually started developing an appreciation for the silly game. I was speaking/drinking with Simon a middle-aged Aussie sports fan from Perth. He told me the intricacies of rubbing up the ball, the different types of bowls (pitches) and the strategies for field and batting. As he taught me about cricket, I compared the strategies and nuances to baseball signals and tactics.

I had been on a search for the “best” fish and chips in Sydney so after four pints I decided to return to my quest. Next I stopped at a pub in the Rocks which had a live guitar player who played nothing but cliché American covers, I had a good conversation with the bartender and she told me to try “fish on the rocks” for the best fish and chips in Sydney. I headed in the direction she pointed me (one thing I’ve begun to notice is the colloquial directions you get from Australians rather than street names it is landmarks which can get confusing) I stumbled upon Lord Nelson’s (the second pub I had seen calling itself the oldest in Sydney…how could I resist). It turned out to be a nice microbrewery and as I was making conversation with a fresh batch of female bartenders and telling them where I’m from (I’ve settled into telling people Im from San Francisco (sorry SJ) and that I live in LA (suck it LE) for the sake of ease and obviously it sounds a lot cooler). A yankee girl settled along side of me as she overheard I was from SF and started talking to me about her backpacking travels along the northeast side of the country. She was a 21 year old recent grad from UCSB (I gave her my condolences for graduating early from a UC). We sampled a few of the microbrews and then noticed that it had begun to pour. In true CA fashion we looked at each other not sure what to do, we ended up splitting a cab back to Circular Quey where we bought train tickets and went our separate ways (I didn’t really have an interest in hitting on a spoiled gaucho anyway).

At about 11pm I got a call from Anna that she had gotten off work early and headed to the Rocks to meet her at a nearby pub. We met at the bus stop across from her work where I had first approached her a few weeks earlier and headed for the Argyle Store (a club that plays house music…this place really is like SF). I had brought a couple of drinks in the cab with me so we stood outside of the pub talking and drinking. In the 10 minutes we stood outside, we saw a guy getting jumped in an ally by three other guys and another guy sprinting past us being followed by another drunkard who ended up shoving him into moving traffic (and Americans are the ones that don’t know how to drink?). We ended up drinking and dancing for an hour or so before we were met by her friend Zuzanna at which point we hung out at another pub for a while and split a cab home…oh yeah at some point it happened to come up that Anna has a boyfriend in Poland…(but if Ludacris' song about area codes is crass, surely there must be a statute governing hemispheres)

Sunday morning I slept in late and then re-determined to find the best fish and chips in Sydney I headed back to the Rocks only to find that Fish on the Rocks didn’t open until 6pm. I decided to head to Manly Beach, which is said to rival Bondi. The ferry to Manly was packed, and I had to wait for the second one 30 mins later. When I got to the famed beach there were tons of tourists (present company included, the week between Christmas and New Years is peak tourist season) and just my luck clouds started rolling in and it began to drizzle. I found a beachside café and finally found some fish and chips (mundane at best) and asked the waitress what I should check out…she pointed me towards Shelly Beach a short walk away that faced back towards Manly. With the weather, my head hurting and the massive amounts of tourists I was fairly unimpressed. On my walk back to the ferry I passed a man who gives/takes free language lessons at Manly 7 days a week. He knows a ridiculous amount of languages and will sit there and teach you anyone you want to learn and if you know one he doesn’t, he wants to learn from you. I was wearing my UCLA shirt as I passed by and he asked me if I went there. When I said yes, he told me he was class of ’52 and after we talked for a bit he invited me to stay at a spare room in his house if ever I was in Manly again.

I got back to my apartment tired after a week of drinking non-stop and tried to take a nap. I ended up getting back up, packing just in case and started working on the bottle of absolut that had only had 2 drinks taken out of it. Again, Anna got off early and invited me to her apartment where Zuzanna had invited a couple of co-workers. I cleaned out the fridge of my apartment threw everything into a bag and caught a cab to the suburb of Broadway. We ended up drinking out on their balcony, with their other Polish roommate Kara, four Polish guys (one had studied in Delaware and was ecstatic to hang out with an American), Zuzanna’s coworkers were a couple of cool Australians and Anna’s final roommate J. The latter was a Korean girl who must have been absolutely smashed because she kept interrupting me to tell me to talk slower so she could hear my accent, and also she kept telling me I look like George Clooney…surprisingly I do get that a lot…from drunken Korean girls in broken English. Finally, I realized it was 5am and I had to hustle back to my apartment to get to the airport in time for my 7:10am flight. I arrived in Adelaide at 9am on no sleep and headed for Chris’s apartment where I crashed for most of the day.