Room For Thought

Well, yet again, it's been a while since my last post.  It's been a busy old month here in Sydney, plenty has been happening, work has been manic, there have been plenty of nights out and of course the Rugby World Cup is on only a hop, skip and a jump away in New Zealand.

Firstly, I have been involved in a project here for American Express, their Room For Thought project, here we created an area like no other, you could experience a pop-up restaurant in the first week, a fashion boutique of bike helmets and currently we have live gigs from Australian bands simultaneously being streamed to your living room through Facebook.

Here is a link to where you can find out all the information on it: http://www.facebook.com/#!/americanexpressaustralia

Although not directly one of my projects I have been trying to help out where I can, and it's been great fun.  The best bit is actually getting to go to the events.  Two weeks ago a group of us went along to The Drummer Restaurant (the first event).  The idea of this was that it was run by refugees from Sudan and Burma, with a floor being dedicated to each culture.  We were on the Burmese floor and the food was fantastic!  I started with Beef Koftas and then Goat's Stew. 

The Burmese part of the Drummer Restaurant:

My starter of Beef Kofta's:

 
I even managed to persuade a group of colleagues to come and help me support Scotland against Georgia before we went along to the game.  I don't think they were that interested but I appreciate them coming along none the less!

Kate, Danni and Soph really were not interested in the Scotland game, more just looking for any excuse for a drink!

Sophie, Josh, James, Me, Sabrina and our local Burmese colleague William.

Last week we had the very successful fashion event at RFT, although I didn't manage to make it along to any of the days.  Although, I hear it was a great success. 

However, this week has been The Living Room, which intends to create an atmosphere as if in your own living room watching a gig and it certainly achieves this.  This has been my personal favourite of the 3 events.  Lot's of unsigned Australian acts, even some you might have heard off all being mentored for the day by the writer/producer/performer Paul Mac.   I went along on Wednesday night to work at the event, looking after the performers and helping set up the stage between acts.  It was great fun and I got to listen to some great music too.  It was so good I decided to go back last night too, to see Dappled cities playing, a fantastic young Aussie band.  I also even managed to get a private guitar lesson of an old cowboy from Nashville, Tennessee.  That was great, and made even better when he started playing Loch Lomond and I couldn't help but to start singing along.  There are pictures of this, when I get a hold of them I will post them up here.

If you read this quickly enough you will be able to watch the last couple of acts of the week playing live on facebook through this link:http://www.facebook.com/americanexpressaustralia?sk=app_263461633663964#!/americanexpressaustralia?sk=app_263461633663964

I will be at the final performance to see Tim Freedman playing at 11:30am UK time, 8:30pm here, so look out for me in the audience!

City2Surf

This is a big run that takes place in Sydney every August.  A run from the city centre all the way out to Bondi Beach, a total distance of 14k.  Although not running it, it was finishing just down the road from the flat so and I know several people that were running it.  Knowing how much it means to see people you know at the end of a run, after doing the edinburgh 10k last year, I decided to go and support them. 

80,000 people were taking part and it was incredibly difficult to find anyone I knew running over the the finishing line.  However, I did see my mates terry, gemma and justine finishing though.  It was a great atmosphere around Bondi today and it was thoroughly enjoyable being out watching everyone. 

Afterwords, everyone heads to the pubs around Bondi, so I decided this was part of the activity I could definitely take part in.  Although after spending a couple of hours in the Beach Road Hotel, it was more than enough.  It was packed the brim, you just couldn't move and after spending time trying to find people.  I decided enough was enough and I left everyone to it.

Well done to everyone I know that completed it, Gemma, Justine, Terry, Will, Josh, Sean and Joshie!

A busy few weeks

So the last few weeks have been fairly busy.  Firstly at work my boss got left very suddenly. This meant that I had to take on a majority of his work until a replacement was found.  However, it was a short wait as a freelancer was brought in a couple of days later to help out.  Although he is now leaving to work in New York, alright for some, in the next couple of weeks.  So the work may pile up again in the next couple of weeks. 

One thing I thought Sydney would be great for is having lots of random things going on.  Much like Edinburgh does.  I was, however, beginning to think that I was wrong and even a few English people here have told me that not much goes on and they were slightly disappointed.  In the last few weeks though, things have been happening around the city.  Firstly, there was the Sydney boat show, which was great, but looking at some of these boats just made me feel slightly jealous.  They were amazing, and what made it worse was that I had to walk past them every day on the way to and from work.  The show was on for a few days at the beginning of this month in Darling Harbour.  However, I now have a growing ambition to own a catamaran just like this one. 

Then today was city2surf.  I will create separate post for this though. 

Also recently, my old lecturer Paula McNulty was visiting Sydney, and it was great to meet up with her and her travel companion, Andrew.  It is always great to see a face from home.  And since Paula is a veggie, just to annoy her, I thought it best to go to Sydney’s most famous Restaurant and Grill, Hurricanes.  This place is awesome, and are famous for their ribs.  Pork, beef or lamb, although I would recommend going for the pork, they are amazing and come in half and full racks.  This time though I went for a steak, however Andrew went for the full rack of ribs, and finished them.  Always impressive!

6 months downunder

Today marks the 6 month mark since I arrived in Australia.  This got me thinking, about everything that has happened since the 10^th of February.  And all I can say is what a 6 months it has been, most of it documented on this blog.  I can’t believe it has been six months since all my leaving drinks and parties.  And 6 months since I saw all my family and friends.  I’m missing you all. 

It’s been an amazing 6 months, firstly there was the stop over in Bangkok, which was amazing, total culture shock but a great one at that.  I can’t help but laugh when I remember the first hostel we were in when we arrived in Bondi,, the Lamrock Lodge,  I can safely say I am delighted not to be living there now.  It just reminded me of Barlinnie Prison.  Absolutely horrible!  Then we moved into Chris and Lisa’a pad, which was like a 5 star Hilton compared to the Lamrock.  Unfortunately, we could only stay there for a week, until they kicked us out.  That week also involved meeting the worst recruitment person in history, she basically told me just to go home as I was wasting my time here. Two fingers to you now lady!!!

After that we ended up in, what was actually a very decent hostel, in Glebe and kept going by the local pizza shop.  We also spent the week looking for a flat to live in, without any luck at all.  However, eventually we came across what we thought was a nice flat in darlinghurst, well first impressions gave us that idea anyway.   However, shortly after moving in we realized we were blinded by our desperation and willingness not to be homeless.  No matter though as they moved out a few weeks later and we found two new flatmates.  Kerry and Pam from America.  They also moved in shortly before I started my first job in Australia, freelancing at momentum.  It turns out it was a good choice of place to work as I was eventually made permanent and moved into Production, and I am still with them now and loving it.  It’s a great company with great people.

Living in Sydney has been amazing, it’s a crazy place.  So much to see and do and getting invited to lots of random events, like the Island, visiting manly and the blue mountains all the different wildlife places have been cool.  And living in Bondi has been amazing. 

I have also managed to do a lot of touristy stuff especially in Sydney.  I think pretty much every tourist this has been done.  I just need to do the tour of the Sydney Opera House and climb the harbour bridge, the latter of which might be happening this weekend.  I also went to Melbourne for a long weekend.  Which was awesome.  It’s a great city and one which I would like to go back too.  The highlight though was doing the neighbours tour and going to Ramsey Street!

I have much planned for the future too.  Trips aplenty hopefully, including Brisbane, Adelaide and New Zealand all feature highly on the list, as does Cairns and Uluru.  So I better get planning. 

Spider alert

Well it's been nearly 6 months in Australia and I have mainly gone spider free so far, apart form the little one.  However, as I was making my porridge in the office kitchen this morning, all i heard was a scream from reception and i turned round to see a huge huntsman spider running across the desk. 

Now I am sure you are thinking that I jumped in and caught or killed it.  But no, my instant reaction was to go "cool" then, run away.  It was huge!!! No chance i wanted to try and catch this:

Thankfully a freelancer had arrived in reception, and being the 'bush' girl she is, was not afraid at all and just scooped it up and put it outside on the balcony.  NO CHANCE I WILL BE GOING OUT THERE FOR A LONG TIME!!!

Settling in...

So this is my 4th week in full-time permanent employment in Australia.  I was only freelancing before.  And so far things are going well.  It's been incredibly busy, but it's all good fun and I am enjoying it. 

Things have been a bit mad, but i am working on great clients, inc Coke and Lion Nathan (Australia's big beer company).  So the work is really interesting, although there's not much I can give away on here. 

I also have my first work party on friday, to celebrate the end of the financial year (which is the end of June here), any excuse for a party.  There was a awards ceremony in which i managed to pick up a trophy for have the best (or maybe it was worst) accent.  No matter, i was very happy as you can see. 

The night carried on quite late and turned into the usual mess
that advertising agency nights out usually do.  People embarrassed by doing stupid things and drinking far too much as usual.  I am sure there are many photo's that will be hiden away for eternity.  The worst part is I am sure it will happen all over again the next time we have a party.

Apart from work, living in Bondi has been awesome, I am out on the beach every saturday morning for a walk and last week managed to snap the photo's below.  The Bondi winter festival has been on for a few weeks now and they have a little market with an ice rink built on the sand at the south end of the beach. 

It's been a while!

Over 3 weeks since my last post folks, sorry about that but it’s been a busy time.  First of all, I got a promotion and made permanent at work!  Then it was my birthday and moving house and settling in.  It’s been a hectic few weeks.

So we have been in the new place for nearly 4 weeks now and we are completely settled!  It’s a bit of a treck to get into work, takes about an hour and involves a bus, a train and a 20 minute walk each way.  But it’s a fairly enjoyable trip as I have the company of several pretty ladies coming from Bondi with me to the city, so I won’t complain.

Work has been going well too, and 3 weeks ago I was offered a permanent job with the company I have been with since March.  That offer also came with a promotion too.  So I am now a Production Manager with Momentum.  And I started in that role last week, although my official start date was the week before, but I had a handover with the previous person in the job.  So this week has been a bit mental, with some crazy briefs and requests from clients, but it’s all been great and this week has been the best week in momentum so far.  I am delighted to be back in the production role!  Just need to dig out that production for dummies book again.

So 2 weeks ago it was my birthday and I turned the tender age of 26.  This is the 2^nd time I have had a birthday whilst living abroad.  I turned 19 when I spent 3 months in Florida back in 2004.  So I knew what it was like to spend a birthday away from your family and friends back home.  So since we had recently moved into our new flat, Greig and I felt it the perfect opportunity for a flat warming party.  So we invited more or everyone we knew (which isn’t really a lot of people), and decided to have it the night before my birthday.  About 20 people turned up and it was a cracking night.  Thoroughly enjoyable, apart from the twat that put his fist through greig’s bedroom window!  That has now been fixed and the guy paid for the damage, so no harm done in the long run. 

 The broken window.  With mike and greig outside.

 Greig, stealing someones bike.  (It was returned).

Then last Saturday, Celtic came to town, yes, the green and white lot from the east end of Glasgow.  They are in Australia on their pre-season tour, and had arranged a game against Gold Coast Mariners here in Sydney.  So Chris (being a part-time celtic fan) and I decided to go along.  So I put on my killie top and headed out to the Olympic village for the game.  I got a lot of weird looks for my kilie top but it was all good banter.  The game itself was a complete and utter waste of time.  Celtic had apparently been out on the piss the night before and had only landed 2 days before this game.  So they were completely out of it and could hardly string a pass together. If they keep that up killie might have a chance of the league this year. In the end they were beaten 1-0 thanks to a late goal from the Mariners.  However, the mariners will be more happy by the fact that they will have made about $30,000 in fines because celtic fans trying to run on the pitch, only to be rugby tackled to the ground by about 5 stewards each time.