Howdy folks!

Righty, well Pat spent quite a while each evening writing a daily diary thing to then put online. Thing is, I read through it prior to putting it online and realised that it was waffley and rather dull. Kind of like a Birdseye Potato Waffle made of McDonalds Fries. And no one wants that.

So what I’ve decided to do is continue the summary-bullet-point-stylee of the Sydney update.

Here goes:

Tuesday 23rd January: Bavarian Aquarium

• Two major highlights of the day:
• Sydney Aquarium: After falling out of bed late (again) Pat and Jersey walked to Hello Darling Harbour and visited this ‘ere place. There were lots of sea creatures to see (unsurprisingly) – the highlight for Pat was watching Seals swim about from within a glass tunnel:

  
  

  Aside from that it was, well, ok, but too full of unruly kids running around for Pat’s liking. Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater Adventure World Place Zone (or whatever it’s called) is much better, too. Admittedly it’s not much of an option if you’re in Sydney, as it’s in Aukland – about 2000 miles away.

• Evening Entertainment: This was situated at The Rocks (an area near the Harbour Bridge) and was rather entertaining. Pat and Jersey met up with Jersey’s cousin Anna and her mates for some food and drink. They ended up in a place called the Laurenbrau Keller. It’s a big restaurant room, with a stage at the front. This sort of thing happens on the stage:

  
  

  They also get people to participate. Pat was fully enjoying the friendly, party atmosphere of the place. Unfortunately for Jersey, he was sitting right next to the stage:

  

  Still, he was kept happy with the rather generous beer portions:

  

  These continued for a while, then several other beer-serving establishments were visited by the gang… before Pat and Jersey staggered back to the hostel at silly O’Clock AM.

Wednesday 24th January: Hungover

• A classic post-beers day for Pat:
  1. Get up very late: He awoke at gone 11am and managed to fall out of bed at close to 12pm.
  2. Do very little during the day:We saw nothing of interest today. Most of it has been spent chilling in this hostel:

     

     Which is no bad thing (particularly when you’re listening to the hilarious Adam and Joe Podcasts), unlike the third factor of post-beer days:

  3. Eat crap food: Jersey and Pat wandered wearily to Pizza Hut and had a buffet lunch. There goes the diet (again). Pat didn’t go too wild by his standards (like that says anything!), but poor ol’ Jersey didn’t quite know when to stop. He felt quite ill all afternoon.
• In the evening Pat, Jersey and Tim (their French roommate) went to Coogee to meet up with Anna – and have next-to-no beers. He enjoyed the sights… but Anna has lots of nurse friends, I’m not sure which “sights” Pat means…
• Some sights were odd though:

  
  (A large dog (being walked by an old woman), which was wearing little red booties)

  
  (A Domino’s Pizza van with an odd dorsal-fin-esque attachment)

  There was also a 7.1-on-the-richter-scale Earthquake, as can be seen above.

• Pat went to bed a bit annoyed after getting back and spending two hours poncing around trying to un-DRMify (that’s the technical term) some songs he bought on iTunes so he could put them on his iRiver. He failed. He only realised the next day that he could’ve just burned to CD and re-ripped. What a nonce.

Thursday 25th January: Opera House

• Today was a pretty good day.
• Despite waking up feeling fully knackered (mainly due to his PC entertainment the night before) Pat managed to do something he’d been meaning to for ages: go on the Opera House Tour!
• It was really pretty interesting hearing about the history of the place, particularly the political mess that caused the original architect Jorn Utzon to quit the project with only the outer part of the Opera House designed.
• It still looks quite cool:

  
  
  Unfortunately you’re not allowed to take photos inside the actual concert halls themselves, so the following picture was definitely not under any circumstances taken by Pat against The Rules:

  

  Utzon apparently wanted the interior of the “sails” framework to look “like a scuplture” and as such the big concrete framework’s never been painted. Shame, as it does look a little bit “Basildon” in places…

• During the tour Jersey and Pat fell for the “Show the tour participants the set for tonight’s performance” trick (Oh, that *classic* one… – Pat) and after seeing the (apparently awesome) set for the Sweeney Todd musical in the Opera Hall, they booked tickets for the evening’s performance. Second cheapest tickets ($65), but with a good view – middle of the back row. Nice!
• The musical itself was, in Pat’s words: “Really bloody good”. He expanded a little further but seeing as I’d been stuck in a bag in the Cloak Room for the entire performance, I wasn’t really in the mood for listening.
• Pat enjoyed an evening away from computers and had a fairly early night – in preparation for the My Chemical Romance gig the next evening… on Australia Day.

Friday 26th January: My Australia Day Romance

• So, it’s Australia Day. It’s the day Australian’s celebrate the first fleet arriving. So what better way to celebrate than have a lie in and spent an hour or two blogging? That’s what Pat decided anyway. And that’s what he did.
• Fortunately it did get better than that…
• After another pasta-and-veggies-based mid afternoon lunch, Jersey, Sam, Tim and Pat headed off into town towards Luna Park, where the evening’s My Chemical Romance gig was to occur.
• After a long yet enjoyable walk, through crowded, bustling streets, past lots of free live music and a large amount of Aussie flags…

  

  …we arrived outside Luna Park’s “Big Top” (which was more of a, say, large building than actual big top).

• Two things surprised Pat about the queue to get in:
  1. Size: Given that he arrived at 6:30pm and the doors didn’t open til 7:30pm, the several-hundred-people-long queue was a little longer than Pat had expected – or hoped for.
  2. People: Black was the clothing colour of choice, which wasn’t such a surprise, but Pat was a bit confused to find that he was quite clearly the oldest person out of the 100 or so he could see around him. There were a LOT of 16-18 year olds. He felt like he was gatecrashing a Goth School Trip.
• Anyway, after finally getting into the arena Pat and Tim found a spot by the sound stage in the (notably roomy) Over-18s (licensed) area whilst Jersey and Sam headed for the moshing area.
• The support were pretty good, despite Pat having no idea who they were (they’d introduced themselves by saying “Welcome to My Chemical Romance!”. It would be quite a coincidence if that were their name).
• My Chemical Romance themselves were excellent. Great interaction with the crowd and the ability to go from full-on CRAZSHY ROCK IN YOUR FAYSHE to heart-string-tugging (e.g. Cancer) with ease.
• Pat left impressed, somewhat tipsy (the bar was quite close to where he was standing) and with an urge to become a concert tech op (having been watching the sound booth as much as the band most of the evening, the saddo).
• A few long exposure shots (below) later and Pat and the gang were back at the hostel:

  

• Pat will probably be buying The Black Parade when he gets home. Hey, he might even buy it from iTunes whilst travelling! Or he might just poke his eyes out.

Saturday 27th January: Dossing

• Quite a “nothing” day today. In fact, it can be summarised in a simple paragraph:
• Pat woke up late, he drew a bit, he grabbed some food, he watched Apocalypto and he helped Jersey out with some CD burning. Then he went to bed.

So, yep, that’s it. As an aside, Apocalypto’s apparently pretty good (at least better than Pat expected), but Pat felt that the drunken rant from the lead character about how Jews will be responsible for all future wars was a little unnecessary.

Righty, next blog will be the ROAD TRIP (starting on Sunday 28th Jan)… til then, have a good [Time Between Reading This And The Road Trip Blog]!

Toodles,

Squage