Sydney

I arrived in Sydney after an epic 2.5 days travelling of which the vast majority was spent in zombie boredom apart from the suprise magic of a butterfly park inside Singapore airport terminal 3! It is an incredible airport and if you ever get the chance to transfer there then you should! There's also a free cinema, free internet, free butterfly park and if you're there more than 5 hours then there's a free Singapore city tour. Really, they could charge entrance fees, I'd go!

On arriving in Sydney I made my way to the apartment of Ashley, a friend from college who is Australian and works here as a lawyer, and his fiance Allison. I was very chuffed to find they have a lovely spare room, with a double bed and a fantastic view across the suburbs of Sydney towards the airport where you can watch planes taking off and landing from a distance. They are also a mere 10 minutes walk from Coogee beach which the next big place south of Bondi and the next day I walked with Allison from Coogee to Bondi along a coastal path lined with sculptures which were there for a competition called "sculptures by the sea" highlighting a simple philosophy here that if you take something and put it by the sea it will be better. They are afterall mostly descended from us sea-side loving brits! And I was not dissapointed either by the endless series of beaches or the endless numbers of posers in speedos, bikinis, clutching surf boards and clearly trying to test how far away you can sneak from the beach before your beachware counts only as underware.

The next day I had the surreal coincidence of meeting my Dad just down the road here on the other side world, which was fantastic because I got to join him for his hotels all-you-can-eat buffet breakfast and believe me I took on the challenge. He also offered the handy service of whisking away some of trekking gear to make more room for beach kit! So overall I came off well.

Over the next few days I headed into to the city (to the North) and then even further North up to Balmoral Beach where I was hoping to work as a dinghy instructor. I turned up on the off chance I might find the place in jeans and a t-shirt and all things undesigned for sailing instruction and was immediately told to go out, introduce myself to people and help out with the next session. Luckily it turned out to be a cool place, full of English people who had all had the same idea and the next day they even gave me some paid work...so here is a picture of 'the office', and another picture of 'the commute'. On the downside it really does take a good hour and a half to commute over from this side of the harbour to where I work and so soon I will be moving North to Manly (although I have been informed/ found out the embarrasing way that jokes to do with how 'Manly' the people there are will drop like a led balloon).