Saturday: Best. Day. Ever.

Awesome sunset from our balcony to end an awesome day

Saturday has a special place in the hearts and minds of the working - or recently working *cough* stiffs of the world. After 5 days of toiling, finally you don't HAVE to get up early and trudge to work with all of the other worker bees (even though the queen is their slave).

Despite this widely accepted concept of sleeping in, Amy dragged me out of bed at the ungodly hour of 8AM for a morning surf. It turned out to be sublime. Nice waves, uncrowded surf and the sun peeking through the few clouds in the morning sky. This was followed by a quick breakfast and then a call from James saying that Ian and him were ready for a surf. I ventured out again for a few rides with the boys.

Exhausted from the exertion, I took a quick nap and upon waking saw that the tide was perfect for....spearfishing! Amy and I suited up and went out for a swim. The results will not be discussed here but it will suffice to say that a trip to the store would be required if we were going to eat fish that night.

The view from the water while spearing

After exiting the water, we noticed a good amount of people bodysurfing at our end of the beach. We decided to show them how it was done. We dropped off our gear and dove in, catching some nice, long waves in as the sun was setting.

We capped off this perfect day with some Thai food, that included seafood curry served in a coconut and bad movies on the TV in the restaurant and then met up with Dan and Mel at a pub to watch the rugby game over drinks.

So, in closing, we pack the following into Saturday:

1. Surfing
2. More surfing
3. Nap
4. Spearfishing
5. Bodysurfing
6. Great food
7. Drinks
   

Best. Day. Ever.

Cheap flight of the week

Cops after you? Wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/husband nagging you? Secret lair invaded by spies and marines?

Why not take a break from it all?

Cheap flight of the week is $878. Start packing those bags, you know you want to.

http://www.skyscanner.net/flights/us/au/cheapest-flights-from-united-states-to-australia.html

Call me when you land, I promise we will do something awesome: 04 20 441 686

We're famous

Well....not really but our apartment is in the background of the picture in this NY Times article about things to do in Sydney:

http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/travel/11hours.html?src=me&ref=homepage

We are the white apartment block behind the red house, 2nd from the right.

Sydney Royal Easter Show

Preparing for the next heat...

The last thing we did on the long Easter weekend was take in the Sydney Royal Easter Show at the Sydney Olympic Park. This is a multi-day exposition of the culinary and agricultural products of various parts of Australia, combined with a carnival. Sounds like a great idea but mostly it was pushing through crowds and praying for The Rapture to come take all these people out of our way.

There was an interesting tradition within the show that was called "Show Bags". There are dozens of booths set up selling these bags which contain branded, themed merchandise. There were for example Simpsons Show bags, Family Guy ones, Cadbury bags, and other well known brands as well as more generic ones such as the "Karate Ninja" show back that contained what looked like a mid-range halloween costume for a.....Karate Ninja. Before anyone asks, the Karate Ninja show bag was sold out when we got there but we did several examples running around the show.

Due to Robosaurus not being scheduled to rampage while we were in attendance, the highlight was a lumberjack competition that we watched in awe in what appeared to be a stadium built exclusively for such events.

In a breathtaking display of hubris, they all wore sneakers.

Amy's and my exposure to such events consist of late night, bleary eyed clips on ESPN2 but even while watching those over the years, one could tell that there was some glory to be had in such contests.

The moment of victory

After watching several heats, Amy did her best to convince me that I could not in fact compete with the professional lumberjacks. I will prove her wrong or die trying.

Rugby.....ARRRRRR!!!!!

Kickoff!!!

Last Friday, Amy and I ventured out to see the Sydney Waratahs battle it out with the Free Stare Cheetahs at the Sydney Rugby Stadium. For those of you asking what a "Waratah" is, it is apparently a particularly vicious species of red flower, as well as the floral emblem of the state we live in, New South Wales.

As for the rugby itself, this was a Rugby Union game, rather than a Rugby League game - the differences of which I will leave to wikipedia to explain.

Amy, smiling the rain away.

There was a steady rain throughout the game which was really exciting, regardless. The Waratahs were considerate enough to trounce the Cheetahs 40-17 in our presence. Aussies are sports fanatics in general, we saw one guy cheering so hard that his wedding ring flew into the crowd. It was later recovered. We also had the pleasure of 3 pissed* yobbos** explaining to us throughout the game the various ways rugby was superior to "American Gridiron". They were however speechless when I described the concept of tailgating to them before sporting events and concerts. This revelation was on par with Prometheus giving fire to mortal man.

Kicking an extra point after scoring a Try.

I generally agreed with them, rugby was a grueling, brutal spectacle. At least as violent as American football, but without pads. The only thing it was really lacking was a passing game, no hail mary passes, etc. That and tailgating.

Preparing for a scrum.


"I would appreciate if you would not step on my fingers quite so hard"

* Pissed - adj - Aussie slang for drunk. Usage: I was so pissed last night that I fell up the stairs.
** Yobbo - noun - 1. a person who hails from a rural area. 2. redneck. Usage: The yobbos galloped after me because I insulted their cattle.

Happy Easter

Paging Felix....

Someone asked me, "So what do Australians do for Easter"? After careful research, I have found that they do pretty much the same as we do back home. Eat, drink and buy lots of chocolate for the kiddies, mostly in bunny form. Lamb and salmon were prevalent in the grocery stores in the week before and I suspect that enough barbecue smoke was put into the atmosphere over the weekend to raise the earth's temperature by a half a degree or so.

For Amy and I however, we celebrated by making sushi and inviting our American friend, Mel over for dinner. Mmmm...sushi.

We also took an awesome hike around Long Reef for a few hours on the be-utiful day that was Easter Sunday. The picture of the golf course by the sea above was taken while hiking, as were the couple below:

Cheap Flights!

For anyone looking to make the trip down, check out this site for cheap flights. They have some decent ones around $1000, cheapest one to Sydney listed is $891.

http://www.skyscanner.net/flights/us/au/cheapest-flights-from-united-states-to-australia.html