Everybody needs good Neighbours!!!

Well, we don't really have any at the moment. Actually, our are absolutely awful.  However, this weekend we head to Melbourne.  And amongst going out sightseeing and finding a pub to watch the Champions League Final, we will be going on the Neighbours tour.

We get picked up at 8:30am on friday and head to outer suburbs, via the studios, to Ramsey Street and then out to the Lassiters complex.  We also get to meet a star of the show, could be past or present.  So we will wait to see who that is. I am holding out for Karl or Susan!!!

Pictures will be up sometime next week.

Bondi - here we come!!!

Well in a month we move from our current place.  And as I mentioned in my last post, we were close to securing a new flat.  Well, we will soon be moving to bondi, and the flat is only a stone's throw from the beach too.  Here are a couple of photos from the advertisement although the lounge is slightly different now and has french windows that open out into the garden.  When we finally move and it looks a bit more homely, I will post more up.

Flat hunting, AFL and watching the champions!

In one month our lease is up on our crap flat in Darlinghurst, so we decided to get a head start in looking for a new place.  We decided early on that we want to move back down to Bondi, where we stayed for a week when we first got here.  So after spending several hours online looking we went to view a few places.  And we found a nice little place about a minute walk to the beach, and right on the transport links to the city.  Usually it's a complete dog fight here to get a flat, and apparently you have to as ruthless as possible, but it seems they actually want us in their place.  We now have until wednesday to decide if we want to take it.  Although we are in no rush as plenty of other places are sure to come up, however, this is pretty good, and i really can't be arsed searching for any longer than i have too.

On sat night we decided to head to our first AFL (Aussie Football League) game, otherwise known as Aussie Rules, otherwise known as a made up sport!  This was on my list of things to do, see post from 21st of March, so that is now two things down on the list of 10 and we are booked to go to Melbourne in 10 days time, and hopefully the neighbours tour, so that will be another couple completed.

So we went to see the Sydney Swans playing at their home ground, the SCG (Sydney Cricket Ground).  It was my colleague Bel who had drunkenly talked me into going the night before, so we arranged to meet her, her husband and friends at the ground.  After a couple of beers in the pub we then headed into the ground, being a cricket ground this place is huge as i am sure you can see from the pictures below.  And although we didn't have a clue what was going on during the game there was plenty of cheering and noise, we even managed to offend two old ladies sitting in front of us, nothing to do with me I must add.  We eventually got the hang of it and i think i now understand the main rules.  But essentially it is just a big scrummage of guys running around kicking a ball about, there doesn't seem to be a huge amount of skill involved apart from kicking ability and i am sure that if it wasn't for my crap knee i would be a star of the AFL.

We also managed to meet the club mascot, a big swan, this is mostly down to Will, who is the mascots 'handler', and who works with me at Momentum.  It was great though and we will definitely be back. Possibly this weekend.

Afterwards we headed to the pub to watch a proper sport, real football, as Man Utd drew with blackburn to win the league!!! Get in!!!

Greig with Bel in front of him and her friends.

New friends, surf and.............Spider bites

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post, but not much has been happening and I have been working hard, however on Friday night Greig, Chris and I decided to meet up for a few drinks.  Greig met us and informed us he had been bitten by a spider and his hand was now swollen.  Which it was, although it looked more like a sting than a bite to me.  See what you think?

So we started the night by going to the Shangri la in the Rocks, a bar on the 37 floor of a hotel.  The views were stunning but the drinks were coming in at a lovely $20 each. So we only had the one and then decided to move on, we were planning on heading to the Australian Pub to get a crocodile Pizza but when we got there is was packed.  So we went a small pub crawl before eventually finding the Hero of Waterloo pub. There was live music and good drinks so we ended up staying there for most of the night.  There was a dancing santa to entertain us too.  I say dancing santa, I mean old, drunk, hairy man.  But he was entertaining none the less.  Chris had been on the whisky most of the night, so was now being extremely aggressive for some reason and wanted fight with us, but he ran away and found a new friend in a homeless women to talk too down at circular quay.  He chatted to her for a while, so greig and I decided it best to go to the pub across the road.  He eventually joined us and informed us he had now learned this women’s life story, I am sure it was fascinating.   We finished the night by getting a pizza on the way home, disappointingly it was not a crocodile pizza but it was good none the less.  The croc pizza will happen one day. 

A pint, a proper pint, these are a very rare breed in Oz, beer is usually served in a schooner.

Chris with his new friend:

The next morning we were up fairly early considering, and headed, on the bus, to Dee Why, up on the northern beaches.  There had been a surfing competition on all week and now there was a kind of exhibition surfing competition on, where some celebs (I have no idea who any of them were) were competing with proper surfers against each other.  We arranged to meet Gemma and friends up there.  It was a very enjoyable afternoon, I would tell you who won the surfing but I don’t know who any of them are and although a couple of pictures are below, apparently one of them is from home and away, so we booed him and sang the neighbours theme tune…………………..we didn’t really but I did in my head a little. 

Some 'famous' surfers, we had no idea who any of them were:

On that note we have now booked to go to Melbourne at the end of the month and we will be taking in the neighbours tour.  Apparently we get to meet a star.  We enjoyed the rest of the afternoon with lunch an by watching random surfers and taking a walk up the beach, followed by going to the cinema to see source code at night.  A good weekend all round.