Casino Night Zone

Based on the appearance of the front gate alone, I decided that Sydney’s Luna Park looked like a stage from Sonic the Hedgehog.

In addition to Sonic the Hedgehog: creepy in its unrelenting cheerfulness.

Tipsy Imperial Concubine (Parentage Unknown)

Yesterday, the sun was hot enough that we could justify spending the day at Bondi Beach, a famous surf spot with infamous riptides. We did not surf. I only toed the water and found that it was as cold as it is in Santa Barbara, though the temperature here would be measured in degrees Celsius, which makes me think it was even colder. Today, it's raining again and I think we will go to the Sydney art museum.

The only point I have worth noting is that the bus ride home from Bondi afforded us an opportunity to overhear and obnoxious American tourist -- the kind that defames all Americans away from their homelands -- loudly discussing her personal life, much to the chagrin of everyone on the bus. Topics overheard include that her boyfriend looked "just like Justin Timberlake, like his twin or something," that said boyfriend lost a ton of weight after this dumped him ("he looked anorexic or something"), that her friend's ring was "cute, but maybe too cute," that "it's totally crazy that they call bell peppers 'capsicum' here," that her friend is not a big enough bitch, that her iPod broke and she's mailing it back to her parents to get it fixed and then sent back again so she can listen to music, because "it's way hard to find good music." The then countered her previous statement by repeatedly singing the first line form the chorus of James Blunt's "Beautiful."

All statements were voiced in the stereotypical sorority rasp. Chatter was constant. I prayed that she might somehow die of kidney failure before my stop. My prayers were not answered.

The Idea of Growing Old

We've been good little tourists the past four days in Sydney. I can tell because my feet ache every night. Sure, we could bravely take on the Sydney bus system, save our feet the grief and still be good little tourists, but I'd personally rather feel every bit of horizon-broadening I experience, even if that feel that sensation in my feet specifically.

Really, finding our way around has been fairly easy, despite the city's size. Look on a map. It's a big one, with a number of suburbs that would make most major metropolitan California cities jealous. Initially, we had expected to meet up with my old roommate Moe at some point in Sydney, since she's planning on living here. Unfortunately, Moe had a bit of an altercation with a wombat as she was walking out of the Sydney airport. She's okay. We went to see her in the hospital and the doctor said there's been instance of people regrowing fingertips. Moe just wears sunglasses to cover up the rest. She's a bit lonely, though, since the hospital she's at is over on the bad side of town and it's not safe for her to leave. So if you think about it, give Moe and email and tell her your thoughts are with her.

KrisDina and I, who fared considerably better in Sydney, took a ferry over to the Taronga Zoo yesterday. It's like the Santa Barbara Zoo, in that strolly park-like way, but bigger. It closed earlier than we had expected, but we still managed to see all the Australia-specific animals that we might not have gotten a chance to see anywhere else. This list includes -- but is not limited to -- kangaroos of all makes and models, wallabies, emus, snub-nosed echidnas, swimming platypi, several dozing wombats, the Spindex Hopping Mice of central Australia and about five different koalas. I have the pictures to prove it, but you'll just have to wait until I get to my aunt's place in Townsville before I can upload them. That night, we walked to a touristy area called the Rocks and I ate a whole kangaroo pizza, in total disrespect to the animals I had cooed over only hours earlier.

Most of our time today was allotted to climbing the Sydney Harbor Bridge, which was neither as scary or as illegal as it sounds. It's city-sanctioned, quite expensive but entirely worth the time and money we spent. Luna Park, an attractive Coney Island-type boardwalk amusement park that has been recently restored, had closed early tonight and we saw none of it besides a blankly staring Man-in-the-Moon face that serves as the park's mascot.

Needless to say, I'm exhausted -- so much so that this, like many previous posts, will be appearing online without even a cursory spellcheck or grammar edit. Keep this in mind. Be well. And look forward to my safe return in just over two weeks.

Cheers.

Heard It on the Wireless

In Sydney. No one has uttered "g'day" yet. No koalas have been spotted. No one has instigated a game of Knifey Spoony yet.

We're staying directly between Kings Cross, which the natives abbreviate as "KingsX," and Darlinghurst, the hipster-gay-dressy bessy district. There's lots to do, and most of it is within walking distance of our little hotel cubicle.

By bedtime yesterday, we had seen a prison colony museum, trekked all the way to the Opera House -- and no, it doesn't resemble anything in particular up close, either -- and even caught a show there -- the Kranksy Sisters, this trio of musically inclined spinsters from the fictional Aussie town of Isk. They reinterpret pop songs they've heard on their radio. It's like if Allen and Grier and the Kulp-Mohan-Kulps were reconstituted as backwoods comediennes. I met one of them afterwards. She looked like Stephnie "No That's Not a Typo" Weir. She signed the CD I bought and was oddly deliberate about explaining that her last name was Kransky, which was odd since I had already had bought the tickets for a show that had her last name in the title. I liked her, though, and I'd like to think that she liked me.

The most remarkable thing happened in the lobby after the show, however. Weeks ago, KrisDina and I had this marathon dinner at the harbor and these loud-voiced, confused-seeming, senior Brooklynites approached us to ask us how we liked our dinner. The woman, louder of the two, seemed keen on telling us how her lamb "just fell off the bone." (She did not, tragically, say it was like "buttah.") These were the kind of tourists I usually dread, though they were kind of cute in their old, befuddled Americanness. So who do I see wandering around the lobby of the Opera House theater after the Kransky Sisters show but this same old lady. She was muttering "Where's my husband?" over and over again and she seemed to be mentally ill in a minor way. I can't believe she would have gone to see the same show as us, much less understood it. Still, it's nice to see a familiar face.

Nightlife here is good, in that it exists. (In New Zealand, it didn't, for the most part.) Dina tells me that these computers buzz out any words one might deem inappropriate, so let me tell you that the various party districts are rife with two types of people, alternately, depending on where you are. One of these people types sounds like "destitute." The other sounds like "undressed-ite." The words they sound like also kind of describe them. Needless to say, we got drunk.

[ lisa, watch your camera ]