Yes, I Have Officially Hit A Milestone

Well, well, well. Happy birthday to me! That’s right – I got a great gift for my birthday. I FOUND THE CAT! It lives next door to me. I have yet to see it. And I am still not positive it is a cat, but I am pretty sure. I was headed out to the grocery store, and as I shut my door, I heard the cat. So I wandered down the hall to figure out where the sound was coming from. Oddly enough, I didn’t have to walk very far. I got to the next door neighbor’s door, and heard the cat. Sweet!
Sunday was a relatively laid-back day. I was planning to get up and go to church, but since I was up so late Friday night trying to give you people a good blog update, I ended up sleeping in some on Sunday. (The churches here all start at 9 or 9:30 – no 11 am services. I get the feeling I won’t be making too many services while I’m over here!) But I did not do anything big during the day on Sunday, aside from answering several phone calls from back in the States. So thanks for those of you who called! I spent the afternoon hanging out, and went grocery shopping. Exciting, I know. But the funny part was that I had the someone who lives in my building speak to me in the elevator when we were both coming back from the store. First off, there is rarely anyone in the elevator with me. Maybe five times since I have moved here. I also think that people who live in this building only live on the 5th floor. I think I have seen one person get off of the elevator on a different floor. Any other time I am riding with someone, we both get off on 5. So this guy gets on with me, looks down at my bags, looks at his bags, and says, “Another exciting Sunday afternoon, huh?” I just laughed and said, “Fun habit to get into, right?” Okay, so people here are finally starting to open up and actually talk to strangers now!
I then headed out to Darling Harbour for dinner with several co-workers. If you look in the July 12 slideshow, you can see the docked boat where we had dinner. There is a picture from Sunday night, too, but it is a little harder to see in the dark. Anyway, dinner was really good, and we had a lot of fun. I have some photos that I have put out there so that you guys can see some of my co-workers. These folks are pretty much the other “secondees” that have come to Australia recently. Although most of them are here for the long haul. Anyway, I added some captions so that you guys will know who is who and who I work with here. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way the photo of the other birthday girl and her boyfriend got deleted by accident. Not sure what happened; probably lost it when I was passing the camera around. I’ll see what I can do to get another shot of her sometime soon.
One of the guys I met at dinner was the boyfriend of Charlotte, who is here from Scotland. She’s the one who organized the whole dinner, and is a really nice girl. She is the same one that I will be commuting with all next week to the client. But I digress... So her boyfriend is also an accountant, pretty nice guy. We ended up walking back to the train station and getting on the same train. During the walk, he told me about how he had been taking a stand-up comedy class. Apparently he will be doing a 5-minute bit next month. I might have to go to hear him – it sounds like an entertaining evening! And he’s a pretty funny guy, so it might be fun. Maybe I could take that class – make a little money on the side while I’m here...
Of course, I also got a little bad news before dinner. It seems that the City to Surf race that I signed up to run next month is not a 10-K race – I was told wrong. No, apparently the City to Surf is a 14-K race. Crap. That’s about 8.7 miles. That means I need to start running. Soon. Crap.
After dinner, I hopped a train, and then figured out that I could either wait an hour or grab a taxi. At 11:30? Cab it is! So I got back home and headed to bed. About 3 am I learned that not only is the cat next door loud, but the people next door are loud, too. I had heard them before, but usually they are not too bad. At 3 am I woke up so some sort of loud thumping noise. It would carry on, stop, carry on, stop. It took me a minute, but I figured out that it was music being played. The thump I kept hearing was the bass line. I have no idea what song it was – the music was very faint. No party – I couldn’t hear any people. Just bass – over and over and over again. I think the fact that I am complaining makes it official – I am old!
So today is Monday, and because I am picking up people, I have to get up about 15 minutes earlier. 6:45 – man, I never get up this early at home! So I get up and going, and go pick up Charlotte. Nothing big, but I then have to head into the city to pick up Ryan, one of the other managers here. Here’s the thing about the city: I can get on a bus or a train, but ask me to drive around it, and it’s a little tougher. But I manage to find Ryan just find, and we head off to the client. We got there and got set up, and the next thing I know, there are 2 more people from the office standing next to me. I didn’t know that we were going to have a full house, but it’s a good thing. That office was twice as cold as it has been. If there hadn’t been more people around to warm up the back corner where I have been sitting, I might not have been able to take it! It’s also nice to have some people to talk to throughout the day. The folks I am working with are nice and pretty funny. So there are lots of stories that have been going around, since everyone on the job is pretty new to the office and from all different places.
We headed home, and I dropped Ryan off in the city. I thought I knew how to get back to the Harbour Bridge, but it was freaking impossible with all of the one-way streets! (Not quite the grid system like Charlotte.) So we drove around for a while before I made Charlotte get the map out and figure out how to get home.
It was pretty entertaining to drive around the city, though. For those of you fine Catholics, there are a ton of your people here in town this week! Tomorrow officially starts “World Youth Day” (WYD), which is actually a week, not a day. But the Pope is supposed to be here at the end of the week, and in the meantime, there are a ton of events throughout the city for youth from all around the world. Now, as we drove through the city, we saw several people who were here for the week’s WYD events. How did we know? Because they all have their country’s flags, goofy-looking hats, WYD ponchos, whatever. The only way I can think to describe it is that it looks like these people are here from the Olympics, wearing the colors of their country. And yes, the outfits are about as goofy looking here as they are at the Olympics.
Well, I don’t have much else to share with you today. Sorry! I have been racking my brain to come up with a good story to tell to close out this post. I can't come up with anything as entertaining as the mX updates, but I have a point to ponder:
Things I have see too much of here:
1. Skateboards and Razor scooters. Kids, adults, whatever. You name the age, and I have seen someone on one int he past 2 days. Yep, even some 60-year-old man was too lazy to walk across the Darling Harbour pedestrian bridge yesterday, and went rolling by on his scooter. I don't get it.
2. PDAs. No, Generation Y-ers, I am not talking about Blackberry devices. I mean "public displays of affection." I cannot go 15 minutes without seeing some couple all over each other. The men here are whipped. Which brings me to my next item on the list...
3. Man purses. Yep, the "murse" is here and living strong. For those of you who wondered whatever happened to that fad, the murses were all tossed into the ocean and just happened to wash up on the shores of Australia. And apparently they were taken in by some designer fashion store because every guy has one. (By the way, for any of you who would wonder what happened to the man purse, well, just don't admit it to anyone, okay?) Somewhat related is my next item...
4. Tight jeans. On guys. The 80s are back in full force. (If you read an earlier post, you know that I am wondering if the 80s ever left here.) But there are plenty of guys sporting the tight pants, and I wish they would stop. Even funnier, they wear them with the old 80s sneakers. Yep, I'm talking hightops with velcro. Oh boy.
5. Last year's re-runs. Better yet, re-runs from 3 years ago. And if anyone missed an episode of Friends, Will & Grace, Seinfeld, South Park, The Simpsons, or the Law & Order series (although I'm not complaining about that one), let me know and I'll record it for you, because those are on here all the time. It's kind of funny to be a year behind - I can finally catch up on some of the shows I missed last year.
6. Reality TV. Big Brother is now in the 8th season here. Something like 1,300 episodes. The last time I was here, it was the first season. And then it came to the US. Thanks for that lasting contribution of reality TV, Australia. Oh, wait... Big news today... (Seriously, it is all over the news here.) Big Brother has been officially cancelled! All it took was for Pamela Anderson to show up in Sydney for a guest spot on the show last week, and they pulled the plug. Man, I hope the US follows suit on this one...