Jan 29

Its been a week on "Swamp Rat", our board, and the only real progress that I have made is that the scabs on my chest are finally healing. Both of us haven't been progressing to much, Mike is definatly ahead of me but I'm SURE its because he has more exprience, nothing to do with my delusions that I wasn't as much of a clutz as I was when i left Canada...As it turns out Bondi isn't a really great surf beach, you have to be a couple of hours north or south of Sydney, so yesterday we took a ferry to Manly beach which is a little ways north. It helped a bit but I think the big hurdle is definatly just getting up on the wave and from there, things should pick up.

It has been a week and I can finally pronounce the name of everyone in our house. Tracy (the Canadian girl from the hostel moved in), then there are the 2 french guys, Fro and Flo (no kidding), and finally in the other room Johhana and Swantje (2 girls from Sweden and Germany, respectively). Its like a model UN in there, Canada has to hold me back from starting shit with Germany...just kidding, we actually all get along pretty well. Besides all of the forgeiners, it feels like im back at northland. There's constantly sand in my bed, its gets so hot at night and anything that even barely touches the bathroom floor is instantly thrown out. Other than that its only about 800 m to the beach (measured on mapquest) and we have 3 huge recycling bins, there isnt much more that I can ask for. The picture on the right was from the Aryan race convention that Mike and myself snuck into...or was it when we went out with Johanna (girl farthest on left) and her blonde hair blue eyed swedish friends? hard to remember.

Other than that its been more of the same here. I have an interview tommorow to stand on street corners and sell donations for charities (real ones...i hope :), which would be entirely for commision. Probably won't make a career of it. Running out of time on the internet and things to say. I guess that my only other goal right now, besides the job is to convince Mike to stop being a jerk and actually take some pictures with people inside of them. Because as it stands all of the cool pictures are the ones that I take...till i can figure out a way to get myself in them ill just have to include more "candid" Mike shots...sorry mom :)

Of Surfing

As it turns out surfing is really as hard as it looks. The board that we bought from Jack Johnson's stunt double, is a 7'4" hybrid between a "MiniMal" (beginers longboard) and a "Fish" (Tiny carving board). The plan is that we can progress into the board without being stuck with a huge board for the next couple of months.

Surfing always seemed like such a chilled thing to do. You just paddle out casually, wait for a good wave which you instantly stand up on, carve some turns, get off the wave and repeat...First off, a rashguard shirt is a must otherwise it feels like you spent a day diving headfirst down a slide without water. Its really hard to paddle out to the point were you catch the waves, and once your there you have to fight to not get washed away by the ripetide. Then to actually catch a wave you have to paddle as hard as you can only to miss a wave or get thrown from 6 feet into the air onto the sandbank at bondi which has about 6 inches of water over it. After about an hour of this, I could barely move my arms and had to let the waves just dump me on the beach.


I've got up a couple of times, but most of it has been after the wave crashes, just getting pushed along on the whitewater. Its an incredible feeling, but it is definatly as hard as it looks...but at least at the end of the day you get this view.

Mackers

For Tenielle, or anyone else that really really lurves McDonalds...or Mackers as they call it here. Basically the same crap as you get in Canada except for "McCafe" that every Mackers has here. Australians really take their coffee seriously. The only cool thing is the McOz, which is a normal burger except that it has a big slice of beetroot! Im still trying to figure that one out, but at most places you have to be carefull to make sure that you order your burger sans beetroot, but its really not all that bad. Nothing else to report here, ten, but ill keep you posted when visiting more exotic places in my travels :P

shiat, i thought that he was a she...

Its been 2 weeks and only 2 posts, but hopefully things will get a little more normal now...On wednesday mike and myself moved out of the comfortable homes that we were staying in, into a hostel in King's Cross. And as it turns out, as long with the usual female prostitutes our hostel was on the only street that has transvestite hookers as well. Took some getting used to because at first from far away everything looks in order, untill you get closer. Always funny to see people's reactions as it hit them. At least we didn't have to worry about any pimps...

The same day that we moved out, we checked out the first place that we could find that was cheap and near the beach and we took it. For the price its what you would expect (kinda like sharing a 1 person dorm room) but its only about a 5 -10 minute walk which is perfect, which will be our home for at the very least the next 5 weeks. That same night we found a used surfboard that is probably more advanced than either one of us would like to admit. Even though the guy denied it, I'm almost positive that he was Jack Johnson...expensive night.

The hostel was a lot of fun. Met all sorts of weird travellers, we ended up hanging out with the other canadian in the place (little tracy) and walking around the city and walking the north coast of sydney in the day. By night, the popular drink seemed to be boxes of wine, which is always fun. Mike had to drink for me, but i think he didnt mind that to much...

aussie dingo sax

I guess I should start this off with my plans for next 3 and a half months. Its actually pretty simple, flew into Sydney on January 8th, meet up with Mike and come back home on April 25th, with a 3 day stop in New Zealand. If in that time I could get some jobs as far from engineering work as possible, find a place to live, see the coast, surf as much as humanly possible and avoid death by shark or jellyfish, I think I'd be pretty lucky. Other than that there isn’t really anything planned, we kinda figured that would be the best plan : Anyway, I'll do my best to keep everyone updated with my cool new "blog", which turns out is more intimidating and much harder then I previously thought to maintain.

After tearful goodbyes at the airport and my solemn vow to my mom not to get married and stay in Australia, I boarded the plane for my odyssey. I Landed in Sydney just over a week ago after 25 hours of traveling from Toronto to Chicago to San Francisco and finally Sydney. At the very least I used those precious hours flying to discover my fear of turbulence while flying at 40000 feet over the pacific ocean at night.

Its pretty much been life as a tourist for the last week. Been to the beach, burned myself so badly I could barely move the next day. I've heard "a hole in the ozone above Australia" being thrown around a lot... maybe those weren’t just buzzwords. Despite the insane heat and humidity here, Sydney is a really beautiful city that doesn’t feel that dissimilar from Toronto and a bit of Montreal, just that its a surrounding by magnificent beaches :P

The highlights so far have defiantly been the beaches and these paths carved along the cliffs on the coast. An outdoor jazz festival [my bonnaroo fix for the year :( ] followed by a chilidog induced psychedelic trip and journey through king' s cross, Sydney's version of Amsterdam. Also managed to sneak a golf game, which didnt go to badly considering how long its been, but when you can see the ocean its hard to have a bad game. I know it seems like a lot but really most of the week I have spent running around trying to get things set up so that I can find a job and place to live...and recovering from that evil hotdog.

I have been staying with Marissa and Jeremy (cousin and her boyfriend) and family friends the Blooms who have been like a second family. On Wednesday Mike and myself are going to move into a hostel in King's Cross or maybe down to the one near the beach until we can find a place to live. Anyway it is getting late, or early there for you (who knows?) and I apologize but hopefully I can keep these posts more coherent in the futre.

Also please comment on the website, send me emails at adfrank18@msn.com, I’ll check frequently!