incy wincy spider

Another busy weekend down.

I continued my new found love of amber ale on friday night in the uni bar and then carried on in Glebe with Stephen and his flatmate, Conrad. I think he might be a little touched in the head but I like it! I also like his capacity for drinking which is as close a match to mine as I've yet found in Oz. We had intended to join people in Newtown for dinner, but well it was friday and the beerage had started early and I'm sure you know how the story goes. Got home to an empty house about 2am in a surprisingly reasonable state.

Next day I thought I should really go into town and have a look at the city I'm staying in. So I walked continuously for 4 hours. I tend to do that in new cities so I can get my bearings (and I'm cheap and refuse to take public transport). The weather wasn't very good but at least it was dry, so I walked into town with the intention of going to the Museum of Sydney which I heard was good and, more importantly, free. It took just over half an hour to get to Darling Harbour, then I went for a saunter through what I'm pretty sure was Chinatown, then up a part of George St which I presume is the adult bookshop part of town and then to Oxford St which, if I'm just going to generalise, was Japantown. This led me to Hyde Park and the museum. I had to pay to get in, tsk. It was pretty crap really. I had been hoping to learn more about the history of the place maybe with a view to getting an idea of where I would like to visit. Just seemed like a poorer version of the British Museum/Museum of Scotland/any museum. Bit about indigenous Australians, lots of pretty rocks, some skeletons and some stuffed animals. Not really a great deal about Sydney, in fact nothing about Sydney so I was a bit perplexed - that is, until I left the museum and realised that I had actually spent an hour and a half in the Australian musuem and not the Museum of Sydney - D'OH.
Oh well, at least I spent quite a few productive minutes trying to overcome my fear of spiders. In case you don't know I'm pretty arachnophobic and mostly can't even bear to look at a picture of a spider, never mind a live one. So I took myself off to the creepy crawly section of the museum and forced myself to look at the ugly 8 legged (dead and stuffed) beasties. The cabinets were on the left side of a narrow corridor with stuffed birds on the right hand side. I must have been amusing to watch as I realised after a while that as I was inching along the corridor I was getting closer and closer to the right hand side until I was actually sliding along the glass of the bird cabinet and peering at the spiders with only one eye open and a distinctly uncomfortable grimace! Beside kids who wanted to get the 'cute spiders' out and play with them. Huh, bet they don't have older siblings telling them every 5 minutes that they've got spiders in their hair causing a life long debilitating fear of anything with 8 legs. Off you go and have a guilt session now, Pete!!

Sat evening involved gate crashing a birthday party at the Mint Bar at the InterContinental Hotel. Group photo was taken there and features from L-R Mark, JP, Stephen, Conrad, myself and Joanne. Send me your 'hot or not' opinions!! Then it was off to a Karaoke bar. Not your usual karaoke event. This involved you and your friends having a (almost sound-proofed) room to yourselves, 2 mics, a sound/TV system and thousands of song choices and off you go....My love affair with Karaoke ended over a decade ago, but I was forced to sing The Proclaimers at the start. I mostly let the mic be passed to everyone/anyone else after that. Got home about 4am and my flatmate still got in after me (6 am). Think we might be having a competition.

Got rudely awoken at 11am with an invite to dinner so after a day of doing precisely nothing, off I went to Ben and David's to meet their friends Tat and Pauline. I think my sides are still hurting from laughing so much. Tat is a riot. Any story I tell here will lose its hilarity in the telling but suffice it to say that it tranpsired that we had cunt flavoured dessert. And I have to ensure that I don't injure myself at any public event I may go to in New South Wales as I may be attended to by Red Cross volunteers - 87 year old Nina who can only walk up stairs sideways and with sticks or a man with one functioning arm and an elephantitis-esque syndrome which involves massive cysts all over the face and body. Both of these volunteers are in charge of defibrillators and have requested to do CPR with their feet! Yep, kind of lost it in the telling there, didn't it! Ach well......