Sydney

When I get off the train at Roseville Station, Jiby is there to meet me. For those of you who have not red my posts from Vietnam, I met Jiby on our tourist boat in Ha Long Bay, Vietnam. We had some good talks, and decided to hang out a little more. So when we got back from the trip the two of us and Pedro from Chile had dinner together. During the bus trip from Hanoi to Vinh, the bus pulled over at a food court so we could eat. And out of nowhere Jiby comes walking down to my table. We keep in touch and when I get everything sorted out about going to Sydney, he offers to let me stay with him and his family.

We walked out of the station and the 5 minutes it took us to get to his house. The area was very peaceful and green. Coming in on the train, I could already tell that I liked the area a lot. The Phuntakey's house was very cozy house, about one hundred years old, so the ceilings were high and the wood really charming. We hung around so that I got time to know Jiby's father before we got the surfboards out of the shed and got in the car.

The drive down to Manly Beach was beautiful. The forest was so dense and green, the roads so nice and slick, and the suburbs so stylish that it reminded me about a clean and tropical Marin County. We arrived in Manly, a little beachside town with the surf club as the centerpiece of the long beach. The waves were quite large, and certainly a lot bigger than the ones I surfed in Hawaii in 2008. We went down to the surf school, where Jiby was an instructor. They let me borrow a longboard, which is a lot easier to balance on than the smaller, but more maneuverable boards. If I was to rent one that would have been very expensive, and including the short lesson Jiby gave me before we went in, it would have passed $60. Surfing is about balance, about picking the right wave, and about utilizing the energy of the wave to push you as far as you can go. For me it started out being more about getting out in the water, fighting the waves and the strong currents. Before we went in we picked an immovable landmark along the beach, in this case a large building. I would always have to look back to shore, and make sure I was still right off the landmark. In the strong currents, and strong waves it is easy to get washed hundreds of meters down the beach, without even realizing it. I was constantly pushed south towards the warning signs indicating a rip current. I would paddle north on my board, but some times I just had to float in to shore and walk back up along the beach. A rip current is created by the water the waves wash ashore. This water will have to run back into the sea, and because of the constant series of incoming waves, the water can not flow right back, but is pushed to the sides. But at some areas, where the water is deeper, the water going out will be able to make its way through the incoming waves. Since all the water washed ashore on say 300 meters of shoreline is going out in a 50 meter "tunnel", the speed of the water is very high, and can cause a risk of carrying people out to sea. The best way to get out of it is to swim diagonally out of it, and follow the waves. People drown trying to fight it and swim the shortest way to the shore. It was hard work, but I did get in a few good runs, in between every time the huge waves tossed me around like a ball.

The rest of the day we spent driving through a national park, on the way to pick up Jiby's mom from work, and then heading in to the city. I wanted to see the city both by night and by day, and a lot of it because of the Opera house. Walking down the streets of Sydney at night was really nice. Even more so than in Singapore I felt like I was back to the, maybe boring, but "civilized" world. We walked down George Street to Circular Quay, towards the docks. I spent a lot of time trying to get some good pictures of the opera house, utilizing all the various functions and settings my camera had. I got some great ones with the 15 second shutter speed, and to me, who always have been shooting "Auto" before I got my Canon G11, playing around with this was a lot of fun. We walked in the direction of "The Rocks", a part of Sydney that goes for being the historical part of town, I have not heard much about it, and will have to look it up when I get time. What I do know is that the area is filled with smaller shops and cozy buildings. At the end of these buildings, you can find the Harbor Bridge. I got some pictures of that too, and thinking about it, those two combined are pretty much all I ever see from Sydney on Norwegian television. The opera house is showed whenever there is some important meeting or sport event in Sydney, and the Harbor Bridge gets its minutes of fame every new years eve, when they are showing the fireworks from around the globe. In general we don't really hear about Australia in the news in Norway, and while traveling with Paul (Australia), Mohan (England) and Jared (USA), we talked a little about it, and Australia is off the map also in England and the US. The only news we get from Australia is the yearly major bush fires. Flying in over parts of Australia, I realized how enormous and vacant this land really is. It was like flying over Canada, where there are hours of flying without even seeing a single small town. All the cities are situated out by the coast, so in the bush, there is really nothing.

We walked back into "The Rocks" and started looking for a place to dine. We ended up at an Italian pizza restaurant. My pizza was topped with real ham, and it must have been the first time I saw that since I left Norway. The food was good, and so was the Australian beer I tried. The couple eating next to us were from New York, and we were the only ones left in the restaurant when we were finished eating. Jiby and I barely made it in, cause the kitchen was about to close when we arrived, at 9:30 PM or so. After eating we headed across the town and took a stroll in Darling Harbor. Darling Harbor is a nice harbor surrounded by restaurants, cafés and a lot of people sitting down along the docks. I really liked Sydney a lot, but was tired, and we headed back up to Roseville.

As we walked in through the front yard, I was looking at the stars, and had Jiby identify the Southern Cross. I have always wondered what it must have been like to see the southern hemisphere, and especially the star constellations. I have heard about the Southern Cross in movies and songs, but never even knew what they looked like. The song "Southern Cross" by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young was playing in my head as I looked for it. Jiby told me that the stars on the Australian flag symbolize the Southern Cross, and not just one star for each territory. It was also funny how the water in the sink actually did spin the other way when I pulled out the cork.

The next day we got up early and headed in to Sydney again. Jiby was going to Uni, and I was going to explore the city a little more. On the way down to to the Circular Qua area we encountered an aboriginal man playing a didgeridoo. I gave him a couple dollars and got a picture with him. We were a little early, so Jiby joined me down to the opera house to get some daytime pictures, and to take a closer look at the fascinating structure. I had seen the building on postcards and on TV hundreds of times, but I had never once questioned what the structure was built out off. From the distance the building looks completely white, and the large roofs look like sails. Coming up close I could tell that it was tiles that covered the sails, and that they were not all white, but had a few different colors ranging between white and pale brown. There were quite a few tourists there, and the weather was perfect. As Jiby headed indoors to study, I wanted to check out the famous Bondi Beach. I got on the bus and waited. It was really warm, and it so happened that I did not get on the direct bus, but the one that stopped every three minutes. It took me about 45 minutes to get there, or maybe more. But it was for sure worth the trip, Bondi Beach was very beautiful, and although it was a lot of people there, I had actually expected there to be more, since there had been a couple weeks of overcast and some rain. I laid down on the grass overlooking the beach for a while, just relaxing and taking a few notes about the day so far. When it got too hot I decided to get in the water. I was alone, and did have my camera in my daypack. I asked a girl who was studying on her towel, a few yards beside me if I could leave my bag there, and she said yes. I headed down for a quick swim, looking back every now and then to see that the bag was still there. The beach was very clean, and unlike the shallow ones they had in Thailand, this one brought you to waist high water after walking six feet off shore. The water was refreshingly cool, and I could play around in the waves for a while. When I got back up and picked up my towel I started chatting with the girl who watched my bag. Then I asked her: "Where in Norway are you from?" and she replied: "Hmm, Oslo, how did you know?" I kept asking about what she was doing in Australia and so on, but kept talking English. Then after a while she asked me where I was from, and I answered in Norwegian that I am from Trondhiem. It was really funny, and she thought I could tell since she was reading a Norwegian book, but it was her fat accent that reviled her.

Back in Central Sydney I met Jiby by the Queen Victoria Building. This building is a shopping mall, but it is raised in a beautiful Victorian-style architecture. On the way there I paid Apple Store a visit, and it was by far the best one I had been to. I loved every detail, especially the stairs going between the three stories. Jiby and I got on the train together, but this time we did not go to Roseville, but to Auburn. We were meeting Jiby's parents there, and were going to have dinner at a Turkish restaurant. Sydney has several areas with dense population of immigrants, and Auburn is kind of a "Little Turkey." We had some great food, and there was a lot of it too. We had the best Pide I have ever eaten, and the kebab meats were fantastic. In Australia the people can afford buying real meat, so it is not like in Turkey where you might end up eating your neighbor's cat if you go to a restaurant. The kitchen was clean as well, but there was one thing the Turks had brought with them down below. They were very little innovative when it came to luring people into their restaurant. Every time someone walked by on the street, the staff would yell from inside the restaurant. "Yes, please!"

The Phuntakey's are very nice, and during dinner we had many good conversations. They paid for all the food, and they even bought my movie ticket when we went to the movies after dinner. Jiby and I saw Avatar. Neither one of us had seen it yet, but we were both extremely surprised by how good it was. I have never seen a 3D movie that has seemed so real, the beauty of Pandora was stunning, and the animation in general was amazing. When I was in Beijing the Swedes and I were talking about going to watch Avatar, but ended up not doing it. I watched it the night after the Oscar's Academy Awards, and even if I had not yet seen all of the other price winners, I am very surprised that Avatar did not take home more awards. From what I had heard the story was not supposed to be very good, but I rather think that it was. The moral of the story was very good, and I think that it reflects American mentality very well. The only thing that disappointed me about the movie was the shape of the avatar-horses. They could have come up with something more interesting looking than a horse shape. That said, I did love the way they connected to the animals, let rider and ridden be one. The forces in the universe were within them all, and they were possible to unify. Maybe the forces of our world will be able to unify and coexist some day as well.

The rest of the night I got to hang out with Jiby and his brother, Jermir. I enjoyed my stay with the Phuntakey's a lot, and I would be back later, but the next morning I was leaving for Wollongong to see Paul. I spent the day with Paul, and that will all be in the blog post about Wollongong. When I came back to Roseville, I spent a few hours with the Phuntakey boys, and went to bed. My flight to Sydney left the next morning. Before I left Mrs. Phuntakey gave sent with me a gift to my mom, and told me to keep it away from the customs officers. I will not revile what it was quite yet though.

I caught my train to the Airport, and was off to Fiji.