11 Down, 3 To Go!

Yet another weekend has passed where I couldn’t find time to get a blog post in! But I can’t complain, really. At least I am busy with friends and not with work!
Now I want to make sure everyone understands that you read the title of this post correctly… Yes, I am down to just three more weeks here for work! Honestly, I can’t believe it. I mean, I still remember back to when I was counting down three months, and now I am down to just a few weeks! Pretty soon, I will be down to days! And, of course, no, I have not gotten to see and do everything I wanted. But hopefully my 10 days of vacation here at the end of this trip will let me get in most of the things I want to see. If not, I’ll just have to come back and do a follow-up vacation in another year or two…
Let’s see… Where did I leave off at the last post? Oh, right, it was Thursday. My Thursday was pretty much the norm. On Wednesday night, I got home to find a finisher’s certificate from the City2Surf race in my mailbox. I looked at the time and thought, “That’s weird. It doesn’t look like my time.” On Thursday morning, there was an email from the folks at City2Surf stating that there had been a mix-up, and they put the wrong times on everyone’s certificate. The only reason this whole thing is so funny is because they used the timing chips for the first time this year, just so that everyone could have an accurate race time. Oops! HA!
In other mail news, I got a phone call Thursday morning from my friends at Federal Express. They have been holding a package that Sally mailed to me for about a week now. I think I might be on the blacklist or something, I don’t know. Customs has inspected every package I have received here, because there is always Customs tape all over it, and a note inside that says, “Your package has been opened and inspected.” Duh. Well, Sally was shipping me some medicine that I knew I would run out of while I was over here. But thanks to insurance and prescription rules, I could not get more than a 3-month supply. No big deal – I ordered the refill as early as I could, and told Sally to ship it as soon as she got it. I had 2, almost 3 weeks of overlap, so it shouldn’t have been a big deal.
Wrong. These guys were looking for information about the drug – the ingredients, whatever. I had told the guy that most prescriptions were patented in the US, and that I didn’t think I could get a complete listing for him. When he called me back on Wednesday, he told me that they had already called customs to open the package and go through it. I told the guy to do whatever they want. He could take a pill if he wanted to. (Then I thought better of what I had said and told him, “I mean take it to run tests on it.”) I was curious as to why they couldn’t just call a pharmacist to come look at the medicine for them, but from what I hear, you really shouldn’t mess with customs over here. I decided to let that one go. So on Thursday morning, I got a call that they had cleared my package, and it should be delivered that day. Thank God. It took about three weeks for me to get the stupid thing. I don’t think I will complain about the US postal system any more!
Thursday night, a group of us went out to dinner at the pub near my place. They all wanted to try the $7.90 steak, since steak here is usually $20, and only if you cook it yourself. By the end of the meal, one of the guys announced he would be in the pub every night from now on. It was fun, and there was a good group that showed up. Of course, I had to come home from the pub and get on a conference call with the folks back in the US. Luckily, no one was looking to stay out too late.
On Friday, we had a “Divisional Meeting” here in the office from 4-5. I have not figured these meetings out, yet. I am told that they are not monthly, but there has been on every month that I have been here. Regardless, it is when the firm goes over monthly results, passes along information, whatever. More importantly, it means everyone goes out afterwards for drinks. How unusual, right?
The entertaining part of Friday evening was that Saturday was the date for the Cup of Nations, which is a soccer match for those who work here. It is England vs. Rest of the World. I keep telling you guys that there are no Aussies who work here, and now you can see how true that fact is. The Rest of the World group includes other areas of the UK (Ireland, Scotland, etc.), and then folks from Australia, and everywhere else. So on Friday night, everyone was in full form, talking crap to everyone else about the “football” game the next day.
At one point, I was standing in a group with several people, mostly from the UK. One of them said something about “real football” and looked right at me. I looked around and said, “Oh crap. I’m a total minority right now.” They all laughed because I had sent an email out the day before to a group of people that started up a debate. It started quite innocently (I was trying to get some people together to go to dinner for Charlotte’s birthday in a couple of weeks), and it ended up being a soccer discussion. So Nate, the guy here from Texas, sent an email that said “Football = www.nfl.com.” So I spoke up at that point in time, and it all went downhill from there. There were lots of American insults thrown in there, where I returned the favor, and by the end of it, even the French has been dragged into the conversation, even though there are no French people here. It was pretty funny, and everyone seemed to enjoy having fun with it, especially making fun of American football. Which is why I caught it on Friday night.
So we wrapped up the evening early so that everyone could go home and get ready for the game the next day. Those of us not playing had made the tailgating plans, and were off. (I was trying to make it as much like real football as I could!)
Saturday morning, I got up and got dressed. I put on my football jersey that I have here with me, just to rub in that American football is real football. I got my food and beer all packed up, and got a text message. The game was cancelled due to rain. No! Actually, it was pouring outside. I was kind of wondering if they would call it off. When I turned on the weather, there were reports of flooding. So I guess it was a good thing to cancel! Plus it meant that I could hang out and take care of some things at home that day. I think it stopped raining at 7.00 that night. It was pretty nasty out! But since I have been feeling a little under the weather lately, I guess it was a good thing that the rain kept me in for the day.
Sunday was a good day. I got up and headed down to The Rocks for brunch with some of my friends. Pancakes On The Rocks – it came highly recommended, and I wanted to try it out. I had invited some folks to come along, and everyone who came was pretty excited for whatever reason. We all had been talking about pancakes the entire week, and it was well worth the excitement! We had to wait in line a little while. I get the feeling this place is already packed on weekends. But to add to it, Sunday was Father’s Day over here, so there were a ton of people out for brunch in the City. Luckily we got there ahead of several people. By the time we left, the line was probably three times as long as when we got there.
After brunch, some of us got on a bus and headed up to North Sydney. We went to Spit Bridge (sounds gross, right?) and decided to walk off the syrup by doing the famous walk from Spit Bridge to Manly beach. Manly is supposed to be quite beautiful (beautiful… Manly… sounds kind of funny to me), and the walk is supposed to be really cool.
We got there and found our way to the train. It winds around the shore, and is a 10 km trek. We figured we could be done in 2-2.5 hours. The sign said 4 hours, and we started to wonder who mapped it. Holy crap, what a walk! It was a lot of nature trails, steps, you name it. It was cool to be so entrenched in nature, but it really was quite an adventure. I took plenty of pictures for you guy, and have uploaded them for everyone to see. I will add comments later, but you can check out the views for now.
We got to one point, and were walking along the beach to get to the next part of the trail. We had to race through because the waves were crashing and moving in quickly, and there was a wall built up on the side of the beach. Basically, you could not get past any way but on the sand. Needless to say, we all got wet. Good move in tennis shoes and jeans. But it was funny, and everyone was cool about it.
After an hour, we figured out we were only 1/3 of the way done, we were tired and sweating, wet from the ocean, and we were worried that we would not make it to Manly before the sun set. So there we were, kind of in the middle of nowhere, and we had to figure out how to get anywhere that a bus might come by and take us to Manly. After wandering around a really nice neighborhood, we managed to find a bus stop. There was a guy sitting there, and we asked him if the bus that stopped there went to Manly. He told us that he had been sitting there an hour and just wanted to get on a bus. From the schedule, it was supposed to come in 15 minutes and head to Manly, so we waited. Another bus came from the other direction, so the guy jumped up, ran across the street, and got on it. The dude was pretty strung out. I don’t know what he was smoking, but he had rolled it himself, so we weren’t about to follow him. We sat and waited, and a bus finally came by.
Manly was an awesome beach. It had huge waves, and there were a ton of people out surfing. The restaurants were pretty entertaining, too. “Manly Italian Restaurant,” “Manly Diner,” whatever. One of the guys started making fun of what the pharmacist would recommend in the Manly Pharmacy. “What do you mean you have a headache? What’s the matter with you? Yeah, I can recommend something for you. Grow some hair on your chest and be a man!” So, of course, the jokes continued as we walked by all the “Manly” stores. I announced that I was a little upset that the Ladies Fashion store was not called the “Manly Ladies Fashion.” But it was still funny to walk around.
We stood on the beach a while, and then headed over to a bar to have a drink and sit down for a little while. A little while turned into about 3.5 hours. The place had a band come out and play live music. There are not too many live music places around Sydney, especially for free. So we decided to stay a while longer, and eventually ended up ordering some food. The band was really good, and the atmosphere in the bar was really nice. A very cool way to end the weekend!
Well, I am going to take off now. Sorry to say I don’t have much in the way of entertainment for you guys to close out. I will have mX updates all week, since I will be taking public transit to and from work all week. But let’s see what I can come up with right now for everyone…
Okay, I have one. There is a decent TV show on Sunday nights called Rove that I have started watching. It is like a cross between Saturday Night Live and Jay Leno. You know, interviewing guests, but also having some entertainment built in. Well, one of the funniest parts is the woman (Carrie Bickmore) who comes on and gives the news update. True stories, but with her sarcastic spin. (And people wonder why I like it.) There was on Sunday night that had me laughing pretty hard. To give a little background, if you haven’t heard, Heather Mirren, most famous as the actress from the movie Elizabeth I and The Queen, has admitted that she used to do drugs until she figured out who the proceeds went to. I’ll let Carrie from Rove finish this one up:
Helen Mirren has revealed she only gave up buying cocaine when she discovered the profits went to a drug lord. Before that, Miss Mirren believed the money went to the Make A Wish Foundation.