Wedding Cake Island

This past Saturday kicked off the start of the summer swimming season in Australia. To commemorate the occasion they had a swimming race around wedding cake island which is just off the shore of Coogee Beach. It was quite a sight to see, hundreds of swimmers all diving in the water and racing into the waves. Also right on cue the weather has heated up, it was over 90 all weekend and tomorrow it's supposed to be 107!!! I'm gonna be so mad that I have to be in the office instead of on the beach. Coinciding with the start of the summer swimming season is of course the summer outdoor drinking season which me and my roomates offically got off to a start yesterday evening in Darling Harbour. There are so many bars there with huge patios overlooking the water, it was the perfect way to start off the summer!

Canadian Girls are Heartbreakers-An Update

A couple of days after I wrote about our lovely neighbors to the north I was sitting outside at a cafe eating a doner kebab (which was delicous by the way) when who should I spot but Sylvane/Setine, the French-Canadian Celine Dion fan for over 21 years! It turns out that she is currently living around the corner from Five Star Kebab but is soon planning on leaving Sydney for Adelaide. She says that she met a nice man that wants to help her out and he lives in Adelaide so she's gonna go there as soon as her holiday job at Crabtree and Evelyn is over. The whole situation sounds super fishy to me so we should all pray for Slyvane because I really don't want to walk into Five Star Kebab one day and see a flyer posted for a missing French-Canadian backpacker.

Canadian Girls are Heartbreakers

I saw a girl with that on her t-shirt this morning and well it’s kinda funny. I’ve met exactly 3 Canadian Girls since I’ve been here and none of them I would say were heartbreakers.
#1- Sylvane who I kept accidentally calling Setine (Eric said that Setine was the name of some character in Moulin Rouge) anyways she was French-Canadian and our roommate for a few days in the hostel, she spoke a limited amount of English and always said it slow which made it sound like maybe she was a bit slow if you know what I mean, although if I was trying to speak a foreign language that’s probably how I’d sound too. She was always exasperated and would put her hand on her forehead and say..with a French-english accent..”Oh my god..I hate to backpack, I hate the beach, I hate to work, oh if there’s a party count me out!” I swear she hated every reason one would come to Australia..still not sure why she’s here. Also when she found out we were American she asked us straightaway if we’d ever been to Las Vegas to see Celine Dion that for 21 years she has been the number one fan of Celine..I just looove her she’d say..just like Celine would say it I bet. Last we heard she was living in some girls dorm and trying to get a job at the Body Shop.
#2-Pissy Missy-not sure what her real name is but well she always looks super pissy and I’ve heard her snap at people on several occasions. She works at one of the most popular backpacker bars in Sydney as a bartender. One night after I’d seen her pissy on several occasions me and a friend of mine went in for $11 pizza and jug of beer and got to chatting with pissy. Turns out she’s the only full time employee at the bar and she’s working to save money b/c she wants to get her PhD in marine biology here. During the conversation I discovered why missy is pissy A) she works at a super busy bar at least 40 hours a week and they don’t’ get tips here so the pay must suck. B) always dealing with lots of drunk people and not able to go out yourself ever! C) She lives in a house with 17 other people and 2 bathrooms, which she said she had to b/c that was the only way she could afford her own room and she can’t stand to room with another person D) apparently the bar closes at 4am and she never gets home til like 6am. I’m convinced that if she got another job she wouldn’t be so pissy and perhaps could one day be a heartbreaker.
#3-Julie, another French-Canadian that was our roommate in the hostel. She had lots of attitude, always yelling at our Irish roommate Viv who didn’t quite know what to make of her/probably couldn’t understand her english so well. Julie hates Sydney or so she told us after she’d been here for all of 30 minutes and she was getting out as soon as possible. She met some other French-Canadian girls and they all decided to go up to Darwin and pick Mangoes…b/c they could make lots of cash (as she said it she kept rubbing her hands together). They were taking a bus up there, Darwin is far probably at least 1,000 miles/20 hour bus ride and it’s super hot and humid up there, lots of bugs and what not and I’m sure the mango picking is horrible..I bet Julie is mad with herself that she went to pick mangoes, although I’m sure she does enjoy rolling in all that dough.

Feelin' a bit dusty today are ya'?

So yesterday was this girl in the marketing deptartment's last day, since I work in Accounting I don't even know her just know that there was some cake they had and what not. Anyways apparently last night the gals from the Marketing Department all went out til the wee hours. So this morning I hear one of the Supervisors asking 2 of the marketing girls, "You feeling a bit dusty today after your big night out?" To which one of them replied, "Very dusty, I haven't felt this bad in a while." In other words if you have a hangover you're feeling a bit dusty. So that got me to thinking, I have literally and figuratively felt dusty after many a night of drinking. Lets list some of the times I was both: The night Rudy and I wrestled in Jolly's driveway, the night we went to the Navasota cookoff, after new years in Brazil when I woke up with sand all in my bed, after the infamous UCS cookoff and although I don't remember that clearly I'm sure that I was very dusty the entire spring break week I spent in South Padre.

Coogee Beach

Just wanted to do a quick post and put up a link that has some pictures of where I live--Coogee Beach..no not pics taken by me yet..i need to get it together and take some pictures of my house and stuff, I'll try to do that this week but in the meantime you can get an idea of where I'm at.

http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/mons1/

Sunday Session

So here in Australia Sunday drinking is big, in fact all week all people at work were talking about was where they were gonna go for Sunday Session, it's like church or something, everyone always saying where are you going to session? Yesterday I went to my first Sunday Session to this bar that's right on the beach and has a huge beer garden, perfect day for it, they were having live music and raffles (which incidently the prize was 15 pounds of meat, that the raffle guy was carrying with him and no I didn't enter the raw meat raffle). My Sunday Session laster from about 4pm-11pm but when I got there it was already totally packed and most people looked and sounded like they'd been there for quite a while. It was fun though, went with my brother and one of our roomates Melanie who's fun to go out with. On Friday she was telling us how most Brits think Americans are like the people on Jerry Springer so she's glad that she's living with Americans that are dispelling that rumor, although she was super excited when she found out that I've been on a talk show...it's the talk of the house at the moment. So I guess I'm not doing all that much to dispell the Jerry Springer Myth.

How you going today?

So instead of how are you doing today the Aussies say How are you going today..I like it. This week has been pretty hectic, #1 b/c I accidently ended up out on Monday night until 5am and had to work at 8:30am which made for a looong Tuesday but hell as my roomate pointed out I'm on vacation (even though I have a full-time job at this point) so it's all good. Also on Tuesday was the Melbourne Cup, which they say is the race that stops a nation. It's a big horse race that they have every year and it was Tues. afternoon, it really did stop everything, most offices were closed and the ones that weren't like the one I work at had parties. We had the races projected on the wall all day and free food and drink (lots of people had champagne which was gross) and they had all sorts of bets you could place on the race. I ended up winning $14 which was pretty cool. Also everyone was dressed up for race day and all the women had on big spring hats and stuff, really the festivities last all week it's called the Spring Carnival...very cool considering it's November. So last night my roomates and I were trying to figure out the plans for Christmas and New Years and it sounds like on Christmas Day we're have a Keg and a Barbie at the beach apparently it's the thing to do here..I can't wait!!!!