Hello people, Damo here, updating the postcards section with another postcard!! Its hard to believe that a good few weeks have gone by since the last postcard, oh yes. But it is true indeed and as holder of the position 'website updater' it falls upon me to do the chore!!! I dont mind really as it gives me a chance to waffle on about what we have been up to. At the moment, its Thursday afternoon - 25th November and I have just started taking some ear drops for my 'swimmers ear' infection. Strange, seeing as I havent been in the sea since Thailand, but maybe its to do with going from 2 months of cold thai showers to having hot oz showers everyday. Still, I am fine, so dont you all worry (HAA!) its just changed our plans slightly as we were going to do a learn to surf course for 5 days heading North on the East coast up to Byron Bay. But allow me to start at what I believe to be as near to the beginning of the list of things we have done that we can remember!! Races - went to 'Harold Park Raceway' on the last Friday in October to check out the comedy cart racing (horse pulling a 2 wheeled buggy/pram contraption). You pay $10 to get in but get $15 vouchers to spend on booze, and $15 to spend on food. With a race starting every 30 mins, it gets into a quick routine (bet, drink, food, race X repeat till spent) and by race 6/7, so do the bets. Thats when I quit - never being a big gambler, I knew I wasnt going to pick a winner, especially when you are placing dollar bets!! That was the good thing about going there - you can still have a laugh without losing money. Cheaper than a lot of nights out in the city. Mind you, the best was to come as we pulled together our spare food vouchers (you cant spend them all - its just not possible!) and bought (what some americans described as) 'a bunch of food' - a tray with 10+ pies, some deep fried calamari rings and some chicken wings..! All I will say is pie placing - a new sport we devised which involves placing a pie on a road and waiting till a car runs it over.. Highly irresponsible but ever so much fun and doesnt cause any harm to the cars.. Well, the pies maybe..! finding it very hard to re-capture the spontaneous drunken fun from pie placing (and lilo style in thailand) we journeyed into town a few days later to do the amp tower aka sydney tower and get sim cards for our phones. firstly we popped into hmv and saw a kiwi band called evermore playing which was quite a treat. they seem to be quite popular here, and quite young, so im sure they will do well. after that we moved over to centre point and the tower. the tower was wicked (see photos in the respective album) and the view was great on the day we went up - nice and clear from 250metres. we did the tour around the observation deck and had a few places of interest pointed out to us and after snapping away, we decided to go back down and check out the other half of what we paid for - skytour... this has got to be the 'thrill of a lifetime' NOT.. all i can say is 'hold on to your seats..' they dont allow any photography and that is probably a good idea as less people would turn up for it.. imagine the teckiness of a blackpool theme ride in the early 80's combined with 2inch high projected aussie presenters (like leia on star wars projected by r2d2) beamed onto this model backround and a bit of australian history thrown in. followed by a 'white knuckle' ride at the end which amounted to some hydraulic cars that move to the film (a crude 3 screen cinema).. the only thing it gave us was a bad neck...! since then we have been into town a few more times and are getting a bit more familiar with our locations, etc. plus we have done most of the boring admin type stuff which you need to do, like, bank accounts, tax file numbers, medicare registration, etc.. what people say about aussie life is nearly all true, they love beer and they love barbys. we have had many weekends and evenings sat round the table (jnside and out) enjoying the traditional aussie lifestyle. oh, yes, my birthday passed recently which was a bit of a giggle. jane and myself went out earlyish for a meal down at darling harbour (bit like ocean village is what most people from the south of uk usually say!) and had a nice meal then onto a trendy bar which was nice and chilled until about 10pm, when all of a sudden it turned into a massive meat market with city boys breakdancing and asian girls sniffing out the cash. we left soon after that! about 10 of us ended up going to home, which is in darling harbour and boasts sydneys best friday night out 3 years running. called 'sublime' it features 4 types of music, so most tastes are covered for. i think we rolled out of there sometime around 6am and got a cab home.. then we went to bondi to drop a mate off and checked out the most famous beach (in the world?). jane's response was 'is that it' to which simon said 'it is actually quite long, you know'. it was only until we were actually on the promenade that you realise just how big it really is. its got to be to hold all those pink british people that will flock there on xmas day! later that weekend we did check out bondi again as there was a 'sculptures by the sea' exhibition which was free and wicked. lots of conceptual art placed strategically on the cliffs (1 piece was even washed away!) and to see them, you just follow the daisy chain. lots of interesting works there - my fave being a massive elephant made out of junk (tvs, typewriters, washing machines, etc). well readers (as if there are any!!) thats all i can remember - the rest of the time we have probably been to the shops, to the pub or figuring out what we are going to do next! janes birthday is on monday, so we are out to celebrate on friday - might go back to home if we can blag discounted entry, but if we cant im sure we will find somewhere else. more news later! caio for now!