Give me a D …. D

Give me an I … I

Give me an S ….. S

Give me a C …… C

Give me an O ...OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ………… LETS ALL HAVE A DICSO, LETS ALL HAVE A DISCO LA LA LA LA, LA LA LA LA …

Sorry still in Barmy army mode, yep I made it to the ashes and yes it was great, even if we were piss poor, more about that later. Right ladies and gents, boys and girls the time has come once again for me to ramble on about what I’ve been up top and you get a half hour break from work (or at least a period where you flick between windows when no one is looking, its ok I wont tell).

This is gonna be pretty sizable so get ready for some intense reading. SO, since last time I’ve ….*looks back though diary …. Recovered from that last party and then been to more parties and generally been getting wasted. But I’ve done some cool and productive things in between.

The next week after my last update I went to the aquarium, that was surprisingly cool, saw loads of fish obviously but they’re just cooler than English fish. Neon coral ! … didn’t know there was such a thing, I want some! Also I hate jellyfish (the antichrist possibly?) but they do look quite spectacular under the right lighting, and I saw the biggest string ray, that thing was huge. Look at the photo and see for yourself.

By the Wednesday (20th) of that week I left wake up and moved down to my supposed luxury hostel in coogee …. Yeah bollox! Now coogee is a wicked place, great beach, amazing food but this hostel was a five star s*** hole, more class A drugs than a south London warehouse rave and just generally was not worth 25 quid a night. Goes without saying that I was counting down the days from the minute I got there. The first night I didn’t sleep at all as the pill head scousers in my room came in at 5am and decided to play guess that gay, annoying ringtone until 7am … Ringtones should be banned!!! The next day I was back in the city as soon as poss (this tended to be the general trend as I try not to associate with druggies). That night I met Sy and went to the World bar in kings cross. There we meet Karen and Mike, both legends! …. Now this bar is ace and I wish there was one where I lived. Not only do they play The Clash and the Happy Mondays but they sell tea pots of shot and upstairs there’s an old skool street fighter arcade machine. Needless to say that was rinsed and more shapes were cut on the rather sweaty dance floor. Another cool thing about the bar was that is had a wall covered entirely in scaletrix.

Spent the next few days chilling on the beach, topping up my sun burn. But within that time Sharpy also landed in town. Wicked to see him and hang out in somewhere other than uxb, we met up and wandered around the city for a bit before arranging to meet up on xmas eve. I did go out on the Saturday night but in my defense i was practically dragged. Jenny moved into our room in coogee and within five minutes had me on the snakey B down CBH. This girl is a party monster and drinks like a fish. I was finished by two and just wanted to watch the footy, I believe she pounced on some other unsuspecting backpacker and went back out again.

Sunday, well Sunday was Christmas eve and the whole day revolved around the night out (does that make sense?). So anyway, as is standard procedure we went down to the bar for happy hour and didn’t leave until the early hours, a little worse for wear. Met some nice people that night, although I’m having distinct difficulty remembering half their names. There was Andy from Canada and then Amanda from Sydney, there were others aswell but I forget.

Christmas day was a weird one, in no way did it feel like xmas day. It was spent on the green by the beach. My hostel actually got something right and laid on a free bbq complete with free goon (rank but lethal wine) and beer. Sy and Carl came down to meet me and we just basically chilled down there all day. In all honesty it wasn’t nothing too special, just seemed like another day, a nice day though.

Boxing Day I met Karen, Mike, Hannah & Paul down the beach, but that was all I could manage for the day. The Wednesday was really cool though. I met up with Sharpy and Karen and we booked our bridge walks before walking to circular quay and catching the ferry to the Olympic Park. This place was something special. We done a tour of the Telstra stadium and got given free tickets to the cricket this coming Wednesday. Shame Carl and Karen aren’t actually here for it but Sy said he’ll come with. Right, so we went around the Telstra, then to the skate park, then the water centre and finally to the observation tower. During the day Carl managed to pick up the best sun burn on his face I’ve pretty much ever seen, situation where it really shouldn’t be funny but you cant help but laugh. Did look painful though! We got the train back and went for a drink in side bar. It was supposed to be for one anyway. Sharpy left us about 7 and well, ….. me and Karen kind of didn’t leave. There were this wicked acoustic duo on playing classic sing alongs, and well we couldn’t help ourselves. We danced the night away whilst getting through scooner after scooner of cider. It was a little messy but a wicked night! I just made the bus home after walking Karen back to her hostel in kings cross. Its hard to describe wicked nights out because all you effectively do is drink and dance – the same as most other nights. I think that night was so good because we didn’t plan it, it just kinda happened and I think those unplanned nights always turn out to the best. That night pretty much set the tone for the past week or so, ended up drinking with Karen on numerous occasions since and had so much fun, the girls an utter legend! Exactly the sort of person I wanted to meet out here, she’s with friends from home – Hannah & Paul – their also awesome, going to a comedy show with them on monday night.

Thursday 28th (my sisters birthday … which my mum thought I’d forgot, no trust in family). So guess what happened on Thursday, Thursday is officially world bar night. I met up with Carl and we went and met Karen, Hannah and Paul at the their hostel, after a bit of good old English TV we hit world bar and hit it pretty hard. By the time we met up with mike in there he was smashed, I actually thought he’d taken something but he said he hadn’t. After that night he went missing for about a week, he said he woke up the next morning in someone’s front garden and had broken his phone – gd effort. Next to fall was Carl, who in fairness I think was still suffering at the hand of the sun stroke he picked up in the Olympic park. Paul was next, finally succumbing to the vast quantities of stella he’d been necking, and we all know that Stella is evil! So after Hannah took Paul home it was left to me and Karen to represent again, which we did until around 3 am before I followed a now familiar routine of walking her back and then legging it for the bus.

By the 30th my Cousin Nicki had arrived in town so I went with Carl & Sy to meet her down Darling Harbour. Couple of drinks in the posh end of town, it was just nice to see family and catch up. She’d been a busy girl and told me about the places she’d been and where I’m planning to go. Cant wait for the gold coast now! … only 3 months to go. It was a little short lived the night and we never managed to crawl out of bed to meet on new years day, but we’ve sent the odd text.

New Years Eve, now that was something special. No prizes for guessing where I went. Me, Carl, Karen, Hannah & Paul sat down the rocks from about 3 in the afternoon in anticipation of the fireworks. Some people got down there at 10am. It seems like a lot of hours to kill but it went pretty quickly, we had cards, saw a hardcore girly fight, sharpy provided us with a treasure hunt as only he can do by losing one of his contact lenses ... killed an hour but didnt find it, and Paul does all these balancing tricks (the other night he balanced a chair on his chin). I managed to stay off the booze as I wanted to remember it all, and when the fireworks came they were literally unforgettable. The clock ticked down to 2007 and then as we hugged, kissed (not me and Carl) and shook hands the sky turned into a sea of exploding colours, and it kind of sent you into a trance. The bridge, opera house and sky scrappers behind us all erupted with greens, reds and blues, and this all went on for a good 15 minutes, it was so spectacular. It certainly beat Ruislip rugby clubs bon fire night displays. My pictures aren’t the greatest, but the videos I got are amazing, I’m sure if you look on youtube.com there’ll be some vids already on there. As the drunk Scotts lads slurred in my ear as it all finshed ‘You’ll never forget that mate, NEVER!’, he may have been hammered but I think he was right.

After the fireworks there was the walk home. We saw a street party that I got a good video of, Carl then set off for the train station whilst the rest of us walked up to Kings cross. I had every intention of catching the bus home, it just never worked out that way. As we were walking up to the others hostel we stumbled across a little Irish bar which had live music and was free to get in … they were playing ‘sweet home alabamma’ … it would have been rude not to. We said we’d go for one but as per usual ended staying. It was really good in there and seemed more like new years with a couple of drinks and some music. Needless to say I missed my buss but the others let me crash in their spare bed which was really good of them. Actually felt really bad about doing that, it was a bit selfish I should really have got the buss, but they were all really cool about it. I’ve apologized since.

I made it back to Coogee at about 8am only to find some random in my bed, no problem I just took the next available one. I managed to get an hour’s sleep before I was up again and on the bus back to town. Cleverly we had booked to do our bridge walks on New Year’s Day. I had serious doubts about passing the breath test but passed luckily. The climb is amazing and I think I’ll try get the parents to do it when they come out here. Karen’s got a bit of a fear of heights but she done really well and conquered it, I’d like to think we helped in some small way … but we probably didn’t. The day had started off with lashing rain, but by the time we got to the top the sun was out and the sky was clear. The views were astonishing, you could see for miles, definitely worth the effort. The climb took a good three hours and by the end we were all lagging a bit. We wandered down to darling harbour and had a well earned subway before collapsing on the grass for the rest of the afternoon.

Still with me?? … I told you it was a long one

So that brings us around to this last week or so. On Wednesday I, along with Andy from my room in Coogee, made an unsuccessful attempt to get into the ashes. But, where we failed on Wednesday we conquered on Thursday. The tickets cost us 40 quid which isn’t bad at all. We got there at about 8am and made it all the way to the ticket windows before they declared it sold out … CRAP. We then went on the hunt for touts (I hate them). Some wanted 200 dollars a ticket, yeah right. We had a right touch in the end, I bumped into a lad who had a genuine spare and sold it to me at face value, then Andy got one at a half decent price, we split the difference and I headed into my first ashes game. Within two minutes of sitting down Jimmy Anderson had Hussy caught behind and I thought we were on for a good day. It was a good day, but not in a cricketing sense. I did get to see Monty clean bowl Symonds and high five everyone in the ground, and I saw Shane Warne make 70 odd in his last game. It was good to watch, and it all goes a lot quicker when your there. The best bit though was when the barmy army got going after tea and we went and found some seats up with them. There were some wicked costumes and even though we were 4-0 down and inevitably gonna lose this one too everyone one was in good spirits. Warney and Brett Lee had songs dedicated to them, Lee threw his toys out of the pram after he got constant abuse through song ‘Keep ya arm straight, keep ya arm straight, keep ya arm straight when you bowl’. I’ve got some good videos of the barmy army in full voice. The ozzy’s just can’t lose at anything, obviously they were out sung but they just couldn’t take it and started having a right go, F’ing and blinding it was quite sad in places, we were just having a laugh. One ozzy got so annoyed with us singing over the top of him trying to slag us off that he eventually lashed out … and then got chucked out … KNOB! Probably something to do with their crap beer, 2%, tasted like water. 9 out of 10 ‘poms’ cant tell the difference. Singing with that lot put me on a proper high for at evening. Thursday as is routine was world bar, it wasn’t that heavy a night. I played a lot of pool with Paul and actually beat him once, HIGH FIVE! However he did once more get chucked out whilst me and Karen were doing the robot to The Clash, The Libertines and the Artic Monkeys. After residing ourselves to the fact we are and probably will always be the last two out we slouched on the sofas and chatted the rest of the night away. Once more I legged it for the bus, just making it.

I was awoken yesterday by what I thought was the crappy fan playing up again, as it turns out Jenny had made a new friend and they were getting to know one another in the bed across from mine … just what you want, pillow over the head time! I left that s***hole at 11 and checked back into wake up, home sweet home. I met up with Karen down darling harbour, and Sy, Hannah & Paul joined us later. What goes up must come down! After one of the most amazing months in my life it feels as if its all coming to an end slightly, or this period if you like. Everyone I’ve met and been hanging around with is slowly leaving, even Sy has decided to cut his losses and head home in the next two weeks. I waved Karen off at the bus stop last night, that was pretty hard, she will be missed even if she is only away for three weeks before coming back to Sydney for one more week, we’re going to a concert and go to a neighbors night, but it was the first of many goodbyes I don’t wanna have to make. Sharpy’s off home next, then Hannah & Paul move over the Perth, and then Sy goes home. In a way its not all bad, Karen, Hannah & Paul all live near Sam Philips so I might see them around next time I visit Sam, and Sy’s moving to London so I’ll try keep in touch with him. Its and emotional rollercoaster this traveling lark.

I have met some cool people in my new room in wake up, I walked in on one of their birthday parties last night and was given loads of goon and beer as we played ring of fire, everyone in the room is a mess this morning.

On Monday and Tuesday I have meetings with job agencies. Tomorrow night I’m going to see Sydney FC again, Monday night I’m meeting Hannah & Paul and going to a comedy night. Then on Wednesday me and Sy are going to the 20/20 game I got given tickets for. BUSY BUSY.

Well that’s my month or so in four pages folks, hope you enjoyed and I hope you all had a wicked xmas and new years! I’m off to go see if anyone wants to be my friend ... i'd better get some cash out.

Take care

Nelly.