School Daze

OK, so I'm exhausted. How about you?

I started my internship this week. Which means that my alarm goes off at 6:45 am, and I haul my bum out of bed at 7 am, and then I get on a bus at 8:10 am, and I arrive in Balmain at 9:15 am. I then research all day, with various other fun bits in between, and hop on a bus around 6 pm and depending on the route I take home get back to North Ryde anywhere between 7 pm and 7:30 pm. And this is Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, except that Wednesday I leave the office at 1:45 pm because I have class at 3 pm. But the point is that it's freaking early in the morning and a long commute and we all know how I love being awake before 11 am.

I'm making this sound a lot worse than it is. It's not actually bad at all. In a way, I like getting up and doing something productive. It makes me feel like I'm not completely wasting my limited time here. Do now, sleep when you're dead.

And I like my internship. It's in a really cool suburb that has great Thai food and an amazing strip of shopping. And the bus ride gives me time to keep up with the readings for my two classes. Or, just listen to music on my iPod. Whatever. But please don't get me started on my classes. I sat though a lecture on the history of the computer yesterday for my multimedia class. Which is much better than what I'm sure I will endure on conducting an interview tomorrow. I should've signed up for 20th Century Australian Lit. Or something where I'd be learning something. OK, I shouldn't really say that. Did you know that the first computer took up three levels of a standard city-sized office building? I didn't. And I do need to take the writing class. I just don't want to because while I am capable of reporting I simply dislike to. And I am learning how to code HTML, which I suppose will eventually be useful.

I think I just need to stop being a J-School snob.

So, this weekend is not only every chick named Erin's favorite holiday, but also the 75th birthday of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It should be a pretty nifty day. The city is closing down the bridge to all traffic. But the thing is, they decided to sell something like 200,000 tickets to walk across it on the birthday and everyone's hacked off about it. I know I am, because I didn't know they were selling tickets and now I can't walk across the bridge on it's birthday. But I am going to go into the City and take lots of pictures. It should be pretty sweet.

We ended up having a huge pasta party last night. We invited a few people over for dinner last night, and ended up with about 15 people in our apartment! And we still have leftovers. But it was a good time. There's a small movement to institute Wednesday Night Dinners. Which would be amazingly fun because 1. big meals are cheaper, and 2. the bar everyone else goes that night stinks. And speaking of food, I found really tasty grapes for A$2.94 per kilo! Which is probably the most bang for the buck I've found around here. Things are expensive. I've been job hunting.

In other news, another one of my roommates is moving out. Apparently walking 10 minutes to class is too much of an inconvenience. Or I smell. Actually, I think Adam smells (he's the roommate who hasn't moved out yet!) So, if we don't get another roommate, it's going to be the two of us in a 4-person apartment, which isn't too bad at all.

MARDI GRAS!!!

It’s a different vibe in Sydney during Mardi Gras than in New Orleans or at Carnivale or other cool places with massive festivals and topless women. In Sydney, you’re much more likely to run into men wearing nothing but a g-string. Because in Sydney Mardi Gras is known as a homosexual festival, with a huge parade on Oxford Street and general insanity ensuing throughout the city. But everyone dresses really crazy, with special fondness for feather boas, regardless of sexual orientation, and has a blast. It’s just a huge party! My personal favorite sight was the Surf Lifesaving float, with a bunch of dancing men in speedos and surfie caps (I have one of those caps!). Or possibly the group of drag queens dressed as different incarnations of Kylie Minogue.

But we left the parade and followed a bunch of people to the other side of the city. They chose an outrageously expensive restaurant, and me and my flatmate Adam, Yuki from across the hall and Anne-Marie from the next building decided to find a McDonald's. We were feeling the urge to be as stereotypically American as possible. And it was a mission to find one! We walked all the way back to where we were! But it was yummy. And really cheap, which was nice.

We eventually met up with my other flatmates Doriana and Phil (and a few other people), by way of a pub by the Maccas, at a club where we danced until after the last bus left the station. We left the club at 4 a.m.! After hobbling back to QVB, we realized that the last bus left at 3:20 a.m. on Saturday nights (why there wasn’t special accommodation for the special event I have no clue). The city was still almost as crowded at 4 a.m. as it was at midnight, although we got away from Oxford Street to avoid the bulk of the crowds. So we called two cabs (there were eight of us) to split back to campus. Only one showed, and then the others thought we could get a free ride, so I hopped in a cab with Adam, Yuki and Anne-Marie and got back to the apartment at about 5 a.m. Turns out, the others ended up waiting at QVD for the 7 a.m. bus (honestly, I’d have rather waited for the bus and saved the money). But the cab was about A$40, which isn’t too bad split among 4 people.

I should also mention that me and my roomies FOUND A$280 Friday night. We were walking from the bar at the Rocks (which is the oldest part of Sydney and has some wicked cool pubs) to the bus stop at QVB and found a garter belt stuffed with money. We didn’t count it that night, but in the morning we were really excited. For the record, we did attempt to find the owner, but there was literally no one around. So we dubbed it the “hooker money” and bought drinks with it all night for Mardi Gras, and spent it on the cab ride home. We still have a fair bit of it left, so we’ll most likely either split it or save it for next weekend. Or Wednesday night. Whatever.

I know that I’ve been mostly writing about parties and pubs and clubs and drinking and having fun (which I am, by the way) but it’s really not as terrible as I make it seem. I do have uni stuff, I’m freaking out about one of my classes (it’s a magazine feature writing class and I am a terrible reporter and the professor is making us have our sources sign a permission slip and they had to explain the inverted pyramid to these kids on the first day of class and it just leaves me with a small rock in the pit of my stomach etc. etc.). And my internship starts next week. And it’s been raining for the past two days, and it’s actually kind of cold here today. But it is mostly wonderful. But I am not always partying it up. Just most of the time.

Adventures in finding one's way around

We had a bit of an adventure last Saturday night, trying to find a proper club in which to get our groove on. We started at QVB in the heart of the City, and walked to Chinatown for dinner. After wandering for a bit, we ended up having a really nice dinner at a place where only the patrons spoke English. But the Mongolian beef was amazing, even if they charged us about A$3 per person for white rice.

We had heard that the place to be on Saturday Nights is Oxford St, and being brave Americans (and Japanese and German, as the case may be) we decide to walk. Which really is a good idea. Unless you're wearing the heels I was wearing. Can you say blisters? But I managed to survive most of the night until the very end when I was walking on rough pavement screaming expletives in the hopes it would stop the burning in my feet. Anyhow, we made it to Oxford St. to find that while it really is the place to be, it wasn't exactly what we were looking for (what is electrofunk, anyway?). While we were wandering about, this guy and his mate stops us and asks if we need directions. He was also a North American and said we sounded like recent transplants. He didn't know much about dancing clubs, but could help us out if we were looking for a cool bar (which after walking from Chinatown, a bar wouldn't hurt). So we had a drink with them at a cool place called Velvet.

We did ask around a bit, and found that George St. was really the place to be for our kind of club (in case you were wondering, we were looking for hip-hop music) so after saying good-bye to our bar guides, we hopped a bus (the driver was nice enough to not make us pay because that would've held up traffic) and landed back at Market & George. And you better believe we found a place to be. And paid heavily for it! The cover was a bit pricey but it was cool. A little hip-hop, a little retro, nice and dark and crowded. It was awesome. No joke. Danced for hours. Until my feet felt like they were on fire.

And that was my evening clubbing in the city. It's been a lot more chill this week. Everyone started classes, and so far I've had a grand total of ONE class. My internship interview went well, though. The internship coordinator gave me a lift to the the interview. I've actually been staring at the Sydney public transport website trying to figure out how to get there on my own steam. There's a bus involved, but then I think I have to walk about a kilometre to get to the actual work (which stinks cos I'm lazy). I know that the only way to do it is to just go and find it but it's a little intimidating. And I prefer to be prepared.

Oh, it's Mardi Gras this weekend! We're going into the city for the parade! And the monstrous party they hold afterward. It's one of the largest Mardi Gras in the world (I think it's behind Rio, somewhere in France and of course, New Orleans).

I was going to go to Manly beach today, but they kept on forecasting rain and it's only now starting to get cloudy. Perhaps tomorrow after my SECOND class. But, I got my hair chopped off instead of going to the beach. And I do mean chopped. Oh, the mystery!