Mannish boy

Sunday, 16/09/2012 - 94 A.D.

35, huh? I woke up with that feeling that everything had changed, and yet it all still felt the same. I’ve never experienced a birthday outside of the family fold before, what with being born at the beginning of the academic year, but today I was just glad that it was taking place in a happening city like Sydney. No one wants to turn 35 somewhere like Maroochydore or [shudder] Southport, Queensland! I worked out that, allowing for a leap year, my 40^th will be on a Saturday, and you’re all invited.

[I kept it on for most of the day!]

We both ignored Tim’s phone alarm when it went off and rushed out of bed at 09:15, mistakenly believing that breakfast stopped serving at 09:30. Semi-dressed and half-showered, we discovered it was actually 10:30, and relaxed. Down in the foyer, we were told we could pay an extra bit of cash to upgrade our brekky to bacon, eggs, etc., or we could settle for cereal. However, cereal in this case was a wide selection that included coco pops – New Zealand flashback! That would do for me and I poured myself a huge bowls-worth. They probably had Cheerios up there as well, but they’re old news now. I wonder…do they eat cereal in Asia? 

We had a lot of admin to sort out (sounds just like being in the office!) so we hung around the hotel for a while, taking care of business. Tim was planning to go into the Unilever office in Sydney tomorrow, so he wanted to look reasonably smart, not having brought his suit with him. That meant that five weeks of hairy growth was gradually taken away from his face. Although he took pictures at every stage, e.g. goatee, handlebar moustache, etc., I’ll suffice with the before and after pics. Personally I thought he looked quite good with the beard,  but I’d never say that to his face (and I know he doesn’t read this blog!)

How to take ten years off your life...

When we did finally venture into the outside world it was well into the afternoon. The YWCA is just south of Hyde Park, which is where the worst of Saturday’s protest violence occurred. Today you wouldn’t know it ever took place, though there were random pockets of police here and there to make sure things remained calm. Although the weather was pretty good, it wasn’t cracking the flags and this would be my first day in Oz in which I applied no suncream. The next thing you know the skies will blacken, empires will crumble and the Earth will stop spinning on its axis.

Our ultimate destination was Sydney Harbour Bridge. The pictures from yesterday were fine, but a bit grey and cloudy, so we’d try and capture the Opera House from the sunnier angle. Plus we just wanted to walk across the bridge, which reminded us a little of crossing over to Brooklyn in the very early days of this trip (Golden Gate doesn’t count because we only got halfway across). It was at this point that I realised that, with Cassandra’s (hopefully) positive reference, I would become the most experienced Couchsurfer in Southport. All those hundreds of people flocking to visit the town and do the tourist thing would be sending me request after request to stay on my couch. Thing is, I don’t currently own a couch!

Today was one of those days when we always seemed to be playing catch-up against the time – birthdays never last long enough, do they? We’d planned to skype Mum and Dad at 6 p.m. our time (9 a.m. their time) and so we skipped merrily home past all of the posh clothes shops on Elizabethe Street, such as Prada, Gucci and K-mart. Plus we had to work out where to actually go that night – I’d fancied a quiz night (or “trivia night” as they call them over here) because it was far too long since I went to one, but they just don’t do them on a Sunday in Sydney.

We ended up going to a place called Star Bar for our steaks and schooners, which wasn’t bad, but a little quiet. Plus I’d forgotten to put a T-shirt on under my shirt and, seeing as they don’t do heating in Australia in Spring, I found myself nipping to the Gents even more than usual. As we sipped our Carltons, we found ourselves reminiscing over all of the places we’d stayed in so far and working out which was the worst one for this, that and the other. Sorry, Reef Backpackers of Cairns, but overall it’s still you.

I’d considered heading down to King Cross (the so-called red light district) to round off the evening, but cometh the hour I really couldn’t be bothered. Therefore we switched to Three Wise Monkeys pub and bought seven dollar pints of tooheys. And now for my birthday rant – THIS COUNTRY IS SO DAMN EXPENSIVE! There, I’ve been holding back ever since we landed, but now I’ve said it. And I won’t go on about it again now that it’s off my chest. While drinking our tooheys we noticed the big television screen was showing complete runs of the recent English Premiership matches – woohoo! We haven’t had our footy fix yet and have had to cope without Match Of The Day at the weekend. And so we endured the 90+ minutes of Chelsea dragging out a 0-0 draw with Queens Park Rangers. By the time we left the place I felt as though I could have been walking out of any boozer in any British city!

There was still about an hour to go of my birthday night and I’d stuck a bottle of white wine in the fridge of the kitchen close to our room back at the YWCA. However, in my quest to keep the chardonnay cool I’d forgotten that the kitchen gets locked at nine o`clock! Nooooooo! Is this forgetfulness something that gets worse when you hit 35 or am I just making excuses? No matter, I’ve still got three months of adventures to go, so missing a planned nightcap one night isn’t the end of the world. It just means more for tomorrow.