Out with a Paddy. In with a Frog

I’ve at long last booked my plane tickets after weeks of faffing around! I finish work on Friday the 4th May, fly out of Sydney on Tuesday the 8th May and arrive back home in London on Thursday the 31st May. This has enabled me to give notice at work and I’m much happier that everything’s now out in the open. No more having to be cagey every time conversation moves onto my travel plans.

Two weeks ago the Irish girl in our house moved out and on Friday a Frenchman moved in. He seems like a decent chap so the good atmosphere in the house has been maintained and it remains a lovely place to live.

It’s been lovely weather here lately, clear skies and lots of sunshine, warm but not too hot. I’ve heard that it’s been the same in England, an early Summer, spreading its tentacles into Spring. Well here we are having a late Summer, rolling into Autumn. Anyway partly due to this I’ve had a nice laid back weekend leisurely sorting things out, doing chores and strolling around town seeing a few sights. Sunday got a ferry across the Sydney harbour for the first time and the harbour was so beautiful I chastised myself for not having done it so far. The harbour is one of Sydney’s greatest assets and I haven’t been utilising it enough. So before I go, I’m going to spend a few days getting ferries across the harbour and strolling along the shore.

Not much else to report of note. Oh yeah sort of related to the topic of the weather, the time zone in Sydney is all messed up and stupid. It gets dark here at 5:30pm, so I leave work and it’s dark. Absolutely Ridiculous! We are in a subtropical country not near the North Pole like England! At the equidistant point (where there are exactly 12 hours of sunshine in the day) – 21 March or 21 September in England it gets dark after 7pm, however here on the 21st March it was dark before 6pm and it gets light just after 5am. Clearly they’ve got it all wrong and need to move the clocks forward by an hour or two! Mind, my Aussie housemate and everyone at work all get up at the crack of dawn; it suits their cheery, wake up bright and early, positive attitude. This attitude is irritating and it pisses me off because I am no good at it! I’m always the last one in the office and I arrive in at 9am! In England there would always be a few late stragglers arriving in after me, but here no, they all get in at 8am. I am most definitely a Whingeing Pom!

Also the TV here is ABSOLUTE SHITE! Adverts every 5 minutes or so with total drivel inbetween. Mostly cheap crappy American shows, the only Aussie TV programs being Neighbours, Home & Away and a few shitty gameshow/reality TV programs. It makes me appreciate British TV a lot more!

But these really are minor grievances. If the only things I can find of fault in this country are its TV, time zone abnormality and oh its poisonous spiders and snakes then it has a lot to say concerning how nice it is here, don’t’ you reckon?