Friday, April 28, 2006

Walking out of a job you hate is great, I highly advise it...

Last Saturday I'd had enough of all the rubbish new procedures and stuff that the new owners have thrown wastefully into Blackbird Café, so a few hours into my shift I just threw a wobbly, smashed a glass, threw a tantrum again and got my bag and walked off. That place is going down-hill, and fast, for anyone thinking of going to eat there; Don't!

I've been working in a new cafe in Parramatta, which is 30 to 40 minutes west of Sydney Central by train. Its a lovely new place called Transistor and is owned by the former owner of Blackbird. The food is great but still very affordable and its the only place in Parramatta thats worth going to for eats and drinks. Its a pain in the a*se travelling there to work but I hope to be out of the city soon as its boring me very quickly. I'm also not saving up much money at all and seeing as I'm doing the east coast in May/June, I need to get my skates on and save every dollar I can. Melbourne seems inviting for now, as does a bit of fruit picking...

Aside from that, well, my mini iPod has died, the stupid thing won't even start up, sounds like the hard drive is having a heart attack when I try to turn it on. So thats buggered as the warranty has ran out, the guy in the Apple store was about as helpful as a knife made out of margerine. I quickly took a look on the Apple website and found that to replace my mini iPod I might as well buy a new one. Great.... At least I backed up most of my music onto my flatmates lappy.

I've bought a Defected In the House compilation; Miami 2006, a 3cd 'chic' (as they call it) collection of the finest and latest house tunes.... Its the only thing I can listen to at the mo and its starting to drive me insane since the death of my iPod but its worth the pennies if you are into that kind of thing.

Thanks Bec for sending me my DMU fleece-stroke-hoody thing. Now I can walk around pretending that I went to a fantastic university, whearas anyone who knows Leicester will know thats pretty much a crock of s**t! Anyway its keeping me warm as the season moves into Autumn and the temperatures start to fall ever so slightly... The Aussie's complain that its too cold at the moment, but its actually still pretty warm; they should feel the winter cold of Britain!

I've got nothing else interesting to say except that I'm getting my hair done tomorrow, and I've got a new link on the right hand side of this page that will point you in the direction of my cousin Michelle's antics in the USA with her husband Chris and their lovely little cute kiddie called William. They seem to be doing a lot more interesting things than me at the moment so give that a read!

Its almost 3am, and if I don't go soon I will end up sleeping in this big comfy chair in this rather warm net cafe in the city centre, like the poor oriental sod sitting a few seats away who has been comfortably visiting dreamworld for the last couple of hours.

BYE!

xxx

Monday, April 03, 2006

The first time I have enjoyed a visit to a Zoo...

On the cable car ride from the wharf to the zoo front entrance


Louise and I took a trip from Circular Quay to Taronga Zoo last Thursday, a quick ferry trip followed by a cable car ride to the zoo from the wharf and entrace to the zoo cost a mere $37. I was never a fan of going to the zoo back home in England with the family, as it was usually in unbearably hot weather, or involved a lot of rain to see a fairly average collection of animals which I had no interest in whatsoever... But this zoo was different, it was pretty large, pretty informative though I have forgotten a lot of stuff I learnt on the day! Although some parts of the zoo were closed for development and there were no elephants (they were still in quarantine and won't be in the zoo for another month or two), it was still full of stuff to see. Flamingos, koala bears, tigers and lions, bears, peacocks, storks (which when I first saw I thought were fake big plastic things, but then they actually moved and they scared the sh*t out of me!), black swans, nasty big spiders that thankfully didn't run about, echidnas, monkeys, seals, camels, wombats, kangaroos and emus, the list is endless.. You could get right up close to a lot of the animals and the zoo itself seemed fairly well maintained and pretty clean compared to ones back home. The weather was awesome in the morning and the early afternoon, it rained a tad in the late afternoon but we weren't complaining as it was still really warm.

Thankful for thick glass between me and this chappie!


The picture speak for themselves, there is also a video of some wallyby thing hopping about. I wish I had my camcorder with me and I also wish I had a larger memory card for my camera, by the end of the day I kept having to delete photos so I could take newer ones... Oh, and I didn't see any penguins either, but I saw some of them at the aquarium so nay bother....

"Awwww!"

Aside from the above, our clocks have gone backwards an hour, so the UK is now 9 hours behind us again instead of 11. Its starting to get colder at night but its still pretty warm, today has been a glorious day for example. Work is crap, I'm hating the changes at Blackbird Cafe, so I'm off to find another bar job until I leave Sydney... I've also been off the alcohol for just over a week now *shock!* I told myself I'd go two weeks at least, so lets see how I do!

My mini 6gb iPod has also died, totally, and the guy at the Apple Shop was about as useful as a kick in the face. So I took a look at the Apple website and its out of warranty; to fix it will cost me $300, I could buy a 2nd hand 20gb iPod for that price! Rip-off merchants. I guess it teaches me not to drop my iPod, but it was still in its case. Dammit. My Swedish mate Chris is back in Sydney from doing the east coast, so I'll have to meet up with him this week. Jason is up near Fraser Island, he sounds like he's enjoying himself, Shaun is still up the coast too I think, just past Brisbane, I can't wait to go up the coast, I really can't!

Righty-ho, I'm off to buy some food and then its hometime for me.

Adios,

Steve.