Back in Sydney

So all in all the trip was fantastic. Because my skydive got rained out, that meant my last day in Cairns I had to choose between the skydive and scuba diving out on the barrier reef. I went with the skydive. Man, what an adrenaline rush that was. Sitting on the edge of the airplane looking down then all of a sudden your tandem instructor just pushes you out. The first 5 seconds is like "Holy shit" but then once you stabilize, it is awesome. I did the 14,000 foot jump which equates to 60 seconds of free fall then 4 minutes of falling after the shoot opens. That is the actual view pictured above I had. I got to control the parachute handles once we were floating for a minute or so which puts you into some major spins. I didn't pay to have the DVD video which is what the extra guy above is doing...that was like $200 extra. Anyway, back in Sydney and back in the grind. Still working on getting all my pics and videos up...that should be another day or so.

I am totally getting screwed in regards to my old apartment. They are having trouble finding someone to take it which means I still have to pay rent on it...so I am paying for 2 apartments in Bondi Beach at peak season...sweet. What a waste of money...$300 USD week for that old one.

Cairns - End of the line

So I just arrived into Cairns. I was suppose to stop in Mission Beach for the sky dive but it was raining so they canceled it. Of course it is beautiful and sunny right now. So it goes with tropic weather. I rescheduled for tomorrow so hopefully that works out. This is really the first time in my trip I have been able to sit down at a PC...the bus schedule and all my planned trips have been down to the minute. Hopefully before I fly back to Sydney tomorrow I can get a scuba and sky dive in. As for my details on my trip, the 2 days at Fraser Island was really cool. Fraser Island is the largest all sand island in the world, which is interesting in a lot of ways because there are loads of trees, which you wouldn't think could grow out of sand but the sand has lots of minerals. Both days we took a 4X4 throughout the island to swim in natural lakes (pure white sand). We also walked through sand drifts, drove along the ocean, and my favorite part was swimming in the 'Champagne pools'. The pool there on the right is the one I was swimming in. What happens is the waves crash right before the rocks, then splash over causing LOTS of bubbles. The water is fizzing like champagne. It's quite a workout because some waves come over pretty strong and you have to swim at full speed just to stay in the same place you are.


From Fraser Island I headed up to Airlie Beach where the Whitsunday Islands are. Airlie Beach doesn' thave an actual beach because of all the rocks, so there is a huge man-made lagoon in the middle of town that reminded me a lot of the Hard Rock pool in Vegas (minus the tables, blackjack tables, and bar).

This UK couple in their mid-twenties happened to be on the same trips and buses as me for 6 of my 8 days so I became quite good friends with them. From Airlie Beach I hopped on the Clipper for a 2 night sail of the Whitsundays.

There was 49 people on the boat. We sailed all through the Islands snorkling both days. I went scuba diving the last day but it did not come close to the diving in Belize. I hope to do 1 scuba trip here in Cairns which is where all the real Reef action is. On one snorkel trip I came up on a sea turtle and swam along with it. I don't have time to upload my pics to the blog so I'll do that when I'm back in Sydney this weekend. I met this Danish bloke on the boat who's a riot and he happens to be in Cairns right now as well so that will be fun. Cheers mates. Later.

Fraser Island and the Whitsundays

So I am in Airlie Beach right now. The 2-day boat trip through the Whitsunday islands (pictured above) was awesome. My boat had 49 people on it...people from all over the world that loved partying. I would need a 6-pack and an hour and half to fill you in on all the stories. Staying up til 4am and singing songs with the Irish was one highlight. Tons of drinking games but met some really amazing people. As always I'm the only American in the group, but had to dust off my French and Dutch and after 3 days of hanging with these people, I now have best friends in Switzerland, Denmark, UK, Brazil, German, Holland, Sweden, and Canada eh! It certainly will make traveling better. It's quite funny, an Irish accent after 7+ drinks is 10x more tough to understand than any German accent. Anyway, did some quite amazing snorkeling and scuba in the barrier reef. I'm here in Airlie another night then heading to Mission Beach for the skydive, then tomorrow night to Cairns which is the town closest to the best of the best of the Great Barrier Reef. I'll probably do another scuba dive there. Alright, I'm off for now. I have tons of great pics and will do a proper posting then.

Byron Bay

So first stop was Byron Bay. Chill beach. Met some awesome people at my hostel and partied late into the night in one of the chessiest bars of all time, Cheeky Monkeys. It made 'Gators' look like the 40-40 club. The dancefloor is all steel tables so everyone has to dance on the tables. I have pics I'll get up when I can. I'm departing now for my 4x4 trip around Fraser Island. Later chumps.

Corey the Legend...

So I happened to catch this live on the news the other night, and holy shit it is amazing. It's already going around the internet, so if you've already seen it, then nevermind. But anyway, this 16-year old kid's parents were out of town and he threw a party that got up to 500 kids. Multiple police forces had to come, the chopper, the dogs. The kids resisted against the police and neighbors cars/lawns were trashed. The kid decided to do an interview with the News (parents still out of town)...you think he'd be remorseful right? Nope. Not even close. It gets really good towards the end so hang on. His parents still are not back yet and he is not answering their calls and still partying. He was on Opie and Anthony yesterday and is now getting offers to throw parties around here. Jebus.

Itinerary for Jan 22-31 Queensland Vacation

View Larger Map
So I'm getting to my back-packer roots and heading out on a 8-day tour of the Queensland coast from Jan 22-31, hitting all the awesome beach towns along the Great Barrier Reef coastline. If you open up the map above, you can see my exact itinerary. People usually take 2-3 weeks to do this trip, but I'm cutting it to 8-days, which as the booking agent said, "I've been booking these trips for over 3 years and never heard of anyone try to do this in such little time." Now that everything is booked and paid for, I'm starting to realize what she means. I'm basically doing 2000 miles on a bus with most of the days on boats. That means my skinny, little ass is going to be in a bus seat A LOT for this trip, which is why people take the 2 weeks to break it up. In fact, counting up the total hours I'm on a bus, it's 36.5 hours if all goes well and 5.5 on a plane. And 2 of my "nights" are actually overnight bus trips. Lord help me. One of my bus legs is 12 hours and literally right as I get off the bus, I have to hop on a boat, which is a 2-day/2-night trip. You can be sure I'm bringing the Immodium AD.

Highlights of the trip, since I know you're all too lazy to click the map:
- Lots of scuba/snorkel
- Swimming in natural hot springs, waterfalls, and lagoons with turtles
- Skydiving over the great barrier reef
- 4WD tours through the island wild life, rain-forest
- Completely isolated white sand beaches
- 2 night boat trip through the Whitland Islands on 100-foot party yacht (boat has a disco on it) - scuba/snorkel/beach swims
- Hands On: Impregnate a kangaroo session. (kidding). Although the brochure claims we'll see dingos mating. YouTube definitely needs that video.
- Byron Beach/Airlie Beach - 2 massively famous party towns

I haven't been in a hostel since my last trip to Amsterdam 9 years ago and I'll be in them all week. I wonder what I'm going to get stuck with:
- the 300lb snorer
- the guy on his cell phone all night
- the guy that smells like he crapped himself
- the guy that sleeps on his back spread-eagle in his boxers with the lights fully on picking his nose and eating it.

Probably all the above with one person. I was reading one guy's blog about the 2-night boat tour I'm taking. He, like me, was traveling solo and as the pairings worked out, he got matched up with 2 Swedish girls in his cabin. No way I'm so lucky. My bag will be super small and light since I am starting and ending my trip from Sydney...so I got that going for me....which is nice. Later playas.

New Address (again) & My Office

I have moved back into my original apartment, which is fantastic b/c I have 24-hour wireless internet, no roaches, and an ocean view again. I've decided to cut my trip short and am coming back most likely in late February. I'm planning a 7-day trip to fly up to Cairns next week and drive down the coast hitting all the beaches (and bars) along the great barrier reef. It should be splendid. I also am hoping to drive the New Zealand coast with my NZ friends here. We'll see if that happens or not. If that doesn't, then I'll probably either just go myself or plan a short trip to Fiji or the Outback.

So here are some pics of my office in North Sydney. A friend of mine who lives/works in DC used to work in Melbourne for WebMethods, and one of his co-workers (whom he is friends with today) started her own company, which is very successful here (it's an IT company with 60+ employees, about 25 or so in my office). After putting the two of us in touch, she was very gracious in giving me some cube space. It is definitely nice having a place to work b/c working from home is not really my style. I take the train over the Harbour Bridge everyday...so not a bad commute.

This is the view from my cube (13th floor).


My desk....


Office view behind me...

Obama vs. Hillary

So being the only American in Sydney, the new question I get asked all the time is who is going to win the election. And since I am American, I am therefore Miss Cleo and can predict the future. Almost all the Australians I've met seem to want Hillary to win, but don't worry everyone, I am single-handedly turning them all against her. Haha. It's true, my biggest problem with her, besides having to look at this mug everyday for 4 years, is that I really have no idea what her stance is on anything. I do foresee 50% taxes when she gets into office and lots of behind-closed-doors lesbian parties (the butch kind, not the hot ones).
Anyway, the Republican party has no chance given how bad Bush screwed up so I have little faith there, and none of the Republic candidates seem to jump out as being honest people that would make me care. I've been telling the Aussies just to relax because these current polls mean absolute jack squat. Remember how well Kerry was doing and then that picture of him in the bunny suit got released? Bango...his numbers dropped. And they slammed his wife. The mudslinging won't kick into full gear until June and that's when the polls really matter.

As for you today's "Did you know"... it is actually mandatory that every Australian votes in the prime minister election. If you do not, you get fined and have to appear at a court. Their elections are on a Saturday which makes things easier. As I thought initially this was a good idea, it would no way work in the US. The lady I work with who I was talking to this about, I told her, "If you saw some of the people in DC, you would not want them voting." I will never forget the cab I took to Adams Morgan one night where I asked the cab driver who he was voting for in the 2004 election (I did this to all the cabbies for a solid month). His response, which I will paraphrase for you since I am the only fluent Ebonics-ian in this blog group, was:

"Well, all I know is I want to vote for the winner. And I seen that George Bush is winning so far...so I'm going to vote for him".

Lord help us. U-S-A!!! U-S-A!!!

Small World & Best Game Ever

So I'm walking home from dinner and I see a lot of people in front of the restaurant that I live above. I see one girl that looks A LOT like this girl I went to Loyola with, Deirdre (who one of my good friends dated). I gave a hard look and was like 'Nah, no way.' I heard one person in the group with an American accent, which is actually very rare in Sydney, but I still just walked on. I emailed one of her friends for the hell of it who replied that Deirdre is in fact in Sydney. So I emailed her and met up with her and her boyfriend for drinks. What a small world. It was great seeing someone from Loyola since none of my friends will pony up and come out here! wusses.

As for this telepathic game, its quite amazing. It takes 2 people to do it, so I will need to teach someone back over there the trick to make it work, but the way it works is basically I have someone at the bar (this is a great intro by the way) whisper any celebrity into my ear (you don't hear it). By snapping my fingers anywhere from 1-5 times you say the name of the celebrity. I don't mouth anything to you, it's just really clever. Any of the people who are not in on the joke are literally flabbergasted. I was for sure trying to figure it out and of course they never want to give up the secret, but I figured out half of it overhearing a conversation when they screwed it up once. Either way, we're gonna have a lot of fun with this one back in the States. I'm only going to tell one of you the trick so all you f'ers don't steal it and spread it around like a Paris Hilton STD. I am accepting applications now via Comments.

Cricket Match

So I went to a cricket match this weekend. Now, before I left the States, I really had no idea what cricket was except it was REALLY boring, similar to baseball, and the ball can be hit in any direction. After going to a match and now knowing ALL the rules, I can tell you that cricket is definitely still REALLY boring. To give a quick run down, cricket matches run for 5 days and are 8 hours a day. There are several breaks in the day for the players/fans to grab lunch and refreshment drinks. Most of the cricket match is talking to people around you, drinking beers, and shouting down to the players. The match I saw was Australia vs. India which are the 2 best teams in the world. So I actually saw the 2 best cricket players in the world and actually the one for India, Sachin Tendulkar, hit ALL day long and never got out. Basically, to get a batter out, which is called a 'wicket', you need to catch the ball off the bat on the fly. There are lots of strategies to position catchers behind the batter and throwing wicked spins on the pitch to get the batter to nick the ball. You can also get him out by pitching and hitting the 3 stakes behind him which I have never seen. Most of the time the batter will simply block the ball down to the ground and wait for the next pitch. Some pitchers do a running start of up to 40 yards before pitching it (all pitches have to bounce once) and can go up to 95 mph.

There was HUGE drama because the game was so close for 4 days going to the last day when India's 2nd best player Singh called Australia's best player, Andrew Sydmonds (pictured here) "a monkey".

There are strict rules against anything like this. Cricket is considered a gentleman's game and fans actually cheer for the other side when there is a good play or a milestone number is hit, so this made front page news on all the papers. What amazes me is that it is quite possible for the game to end in a draw after 5 days of this all day playing. I was like "WHAT??". Australia did end up winning on the last day and Singh got a 3-game ban for future matches.

Again, the stands was more fun. Beer snakes are the big crowd pleasers and this guy won for sure. I happened to catch a picture of him losing the snake which got him booted out of the stadium.


People here are complaining about the humidity, and I just laugh b/c they have NO IDEA what humidity is never being in D.C. in August. If you're curious about the Symonds white lips above, a lot of the players wear sunscreen and Zinc in stylish ways. Symonds is quite famous for this application and has sponsors and what not. I didn't know lips can get sunburnt but I guess so....several players do this.

My name is Ewok and I'll be your Tour Guide for the day....

So I sucked it up and decided to do the opera house tour last week. As you can tell by the picture, I have paparazzi following me around here too. It's annoying but it is the life I have chosen.

The opera house was a cool tour all-in-all...but the $30 entry fee was definitely over-priced. For that reason, I will give you the tour and all the facts and save yourself the hassle. My new camera arrived and I thought it would be fitting that the first picture I take with it be an old guy in a speedo. You can see that here.

As for the tour, Australia held an open, world-wide competition in 1960 for the design of the opera house, and the Danish architect Jorn Utzon won based solely on this loose sketch. It was originally budgeted for $7 million and 4 years, but ended up costing $102 million, which equates to $2.2 billion in today's currency, and took nearly 10 years to complete. Quite a lot of thought went into this design. The tiles on the outside structure (1 million in total) are 2 different color whites so as the sun moves throughout the day, the opera house actually appears as different colors. There are tons of stairs to get up to the main area and they did this on purpose to give it that cathedral-like feel. There are 5 theaters inside (including the main concert hall) , a couple on the outside grounds, and they do approximately 2000 shows a year. Utzon got booted off the project after he finished the major parts of the outside simply because they thought the project would move faster if Utzon reported to Australian architects. He refused to do that and flew back to Denmark, and though still alive today, he has never been back to Australia to see the completed building. The lights of the concert hall were out when I did my tour but here's a picture of the inside.

Everything including the seats is wood so the acoustics are truly amazing although the inside does not have that 'wow' factor like the Royal Albert Hall in London has. Anyway, they never use microphones for any shows (except for rock singers). Notice the clear 'acoustic discs' hanging from the ceiling...those lower a bit and actually are used to bounce the sound back down to the musicians so they can hear the other instruments as they are playing. This organ is also the largest in the world. There are 136 viewable pipes, but there are 10,000 in total...the wall where the pipes are go back 30 yards were the rest are. It has 5 keyboards as well. I was like..."is that many pipes really necessary?" Especially since it took several years just to tune it.

So these 'tour guide' videos are kind of poopy and the jokes are lame, especially the worst Ali G impression of all time. I am still learning this new camera so sorry for the bad angles but enjoy.



There are no supportive beams in the opera house construction. Everything is held together with support wires as this picture kind of shows.