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Saturday, February 21, 2004

Last day in Sydney: hot, sweaty and pissed off about having to pack again, but excited about the fact that in no time at all we will be in Perth and meeting Johnny at long last :) It's utterly beautiful here. Yesterday we went to the zoo: to get there you take a sweeping ferry ride across Sydney harbour, then get in a cable car up the hill, taking you over the top of the gorillas, who hide from the mid day sun under sacks. Normally, I hate zoos. They are cruel. Animals should be free, not in captivity. But, we wanted to see at least one kangeroo on our trip, so there we were at the zoo. Now, I don't know if it was the sun that made the whole experience so much less bleak than english zoos, but it didn't seem as bad. You got to go into the enclosure with the koalas and take photos, although, unfortunately, not take one home with you :) We took loads of pictures, which I'll put up a link to when we get a chance to upload them... And there were kangeroos, one with a little pink wrinkled joey sticking it's head out of her pouch :) Very cute... So, the whole experience was a lot of fun, but we were totally exhausted by the time we left.
Now, I have to say, before we came to Australia I didn't have 100% positive thoughts about the place. It was associated with horrible english tourists and this obnoxious girl I used to know who was from here. But, I have been won over entirely so far. It's lovely.
  12:45 AM


Wednesday, February 18, 2004

So rather than finding a bookstore we ended up in Universal Studios :) That was fun but a bit of a surreal experience, as Theme Parks generally are. Human beings expand and ripen in the grips of theme parks, so the theory goes. My theory. Well, anyway, it was actually really fun. We took a behind the scenes studio tour, which was interesting... it showed how FAKE everything looks from the movies when you see it in real life. We also went on the Terminator 2 thingy, which was good fun. Then we had to go and catch the LA metro, which is weird, back to the hotel to get our stuff and then to the airport and then, very eventually, to Sydney where I am now typing from. We love Sydney. It feels very... civilised... compared to LA. Why is it that Australians get to have more varieties of Cadbury's than we do back home, though? The insanity of it all... :)
Well we want to move here already :)
  10:31 AM


Sunday, February 15, 2004

LA. What a strange place. I don't think there's a place in the world that me and Mike less wanted to visit. But, the vagaries of the long distance flying industry mean that this is where we are flying to Sydney from, so this is where we are. I was utterly prepared to hate it. Still, it's not that bad. We know nothing about it. Having ditched our USA rough guide in SF three weeks ago, we rely on the tiny map of downtown and our memory of The Big Lebowski to get us through. We are staying in this insanely plush hotel crowded with basketball players and their fans. This is fun to watch. Yesterday we went in search of something to eat and entertainment, on foot. We found... not a lot. Downtown LA is a place that - at first glace anyway - is full of contradictions. After Mexico DF the sleek mirror skyscrapers that stretch into the milky blue sky look like surreal signs of some other world. Walking around downtown gives a completely different impression. The crumbling grandiose buildings of last century are plastered with the billboards, plastic and cheap signs of poor capitalism. It looks very very like Oxford street. There is a massive Hispanic population, so all we see to eat is American-Mexican food. We want something different, at this point, so we carry on. Drug dealers, people hawking stolen gear out of black bin liners, people doing that stupid card trick, it's like we walked into the movies. Maybe we shouldn't be so surprised.
So, mixed feelings.
We are off to find a bookstore to get set up for our flight now... Wish us luck :)
  6:53 PM