1. Woman behind me on a bus talking on a phone: “Far ouuuuut!”
(said repeatedly and with a strong Aussie accent)
2. British girl sharing my hostel room: “I look like a wollie!”
(does anyone know what that means?)
3. Woman walking past me chatting to her friend: “Oh god, I’m
not a cougar! I don’t want to scare the poor boy!” (would have loved to see
that one face to face)
4. Irish guy in the beach hostel: “sfijouehrmjlgjs” (I
literally couldn’t understand anything the flocks of Irishmen at the beach were
talking about)
So far I’ve been trying to find jobs, and wandering around
the city, and officially killing my feet. I wandered all the way to the Rocks,
glimpsing an old haunt: The Australian Hotel. On the way back I got turned
around after buying potatoes in Woolworths and walked most of the way back
towards the Harbour before realizing my mistake – adding a few extra km to my already-long
walk.
I had a trial for a café waitress job in Hyde Park on
Thursday, which was fun, although I don’t know when I’ll hear from them. I feel
like I should have an advantage with my native English speaking abilities
(there are so many European tourists everywhere and some of them are really
hard to understand) but then again a few of their hired waitresses were almost
unintelligible (particularly the French girl).
I also wandered around King’s Cross, which is this funky
neighbourhood to the east of the main city, that’s got some sketchy bars but
then some elite-looking shops and restaurants – weird. They have a library,
though, so I rested there. They had a banned books display, which was funny,
and included a lot of the classics like Catcher in the Rye, Harry Potter, Of
Mice and Men, Farenheit 451, and Huckleberry Finn. I read a lot of the blurbs
to see if any had been banned in Australia, but most of them were from the US. There
was a really funny one about the post office refusing to ship a certain book to
Harvard (or maybe Yale…one of those Ivy Leagues) until someone intervened (if
only I could remember what the book was).
I was feeling really sick of the city by the time I get
back, so I went to Coogee Beach for Friday. I wanted to go for longer but the
weather was turning bad, so even though it was sunny when I was there, it was
definitely not warm enough to go swimming. Next time I should rent a wetsuit or
something. People were playing some sort of cricket-ish game and volleyball, though.
They have a nice diving bay nearby so I might do a PADI
Refresher Diving course there when I get a job or get more settled. There’s a
nice walking trail between Coogee and Bondi, and I went part of the way to see
some of the bay. If you go up farther there are sculptures on display until
next week, so I’ll have to go again soon.
Here’s a shot of one of the birds that frequent my normal
hostel looking for table scraps, though here they were in a more natural environment.
They’re kind of cute and squeaky, even if they are like cowbirds crossed with pigeons.
The beach hostel was a fun place to spend Friday night (lots
of stuff going on, though overshadowed by the many drunk Irish folks) but I
wouldn’t want to spend every night there, since it was pretty loud. Met a guy
from Nottingham, England who likes the Robin Hood movies, and a guy from
Okotoks, Alberta, which is really close to where I worked in Canada (and where
we bought groceries). The girls in my normal room are from England and New
Zealand. The only Americans I’ve met were from Chicago, Dallas, and San
Francisco, respectively. And then there are the uncountable Germans, French,
and other Europeans making up the rest of the eclectic hostel bunch!
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