After the football last Tuesday night, I enjoyed a quiet morning on Wednesday before quickly becoming bored of having nothing to do. It's always really strange that when you are incredibly busy and have lots of deadlines to meet, or tasks which need completed, you can't wait for some time off to simply do nothing and when that time eventually comes, you inevitably get bored after only a few hours. By the early afternoon I had decided to go for a swim at the free swimming pool nearby which one of my flatmates had been telling me about a few days previously. A quick bit of research on Google told me that the Prince Alfred Park, and swimming pool, was literally just at the other side of Central Station and only around 5 minutes walk away - and it was totally free! Superb! I headed over and enjoyed a few lengths of the large, outdoor pool before finding a place on the grassy hill to lie and chill out with my iPod plugged in for an hour or two. Excellent afternoon spent in the sunshine.
On Wednesday night in my pursuit of a new TV show to watch after Breaking Bad (which mum and dad have just started watching on my insistence) I began to watch the Walking Dead. It had been recommended to me quite a while ago by Cary and Fraser; the first four episodes were watched consecutively before I had to give in and go to bed since I was getting up around 4.30am to watch the football. It always amazes me that when my alarm goes off in the middle of the night, there is no hesitation in jumping up out of bed and getting my laptop powered up, excited by the prospect of the football - if someone woke me at that time for practically any other reason I would be beyond crabbit. Just remembered that 'crabbit' is one of the words on my Scottish dialect dish towel which Kerry, mum and dad gave me before I came to Australia and I've been using it to teach my flat mates some words! So far we've nailed "eejit" as well as "braw" and "wheesht" - all the key stuff really. The word "yes" has almost entirely been replaced with "aye" too, which really helps the place feel like home I think!
Speaking of home, I also found out on Wednesday that whilst Auntie Jean has booked her flight to come out and visit me as planned in January, my mum is also coming with her! Brilliant news, very much surprising to hear and it'll be great to see them both before Kerry is here next July. Wonder if dad will manage to land himself a Fitzcharles trip to Australia at some point...? Haha! Anyway, the football was a moderate success as United drew 1-1 away in the Ukraine to Shakhtar Donetsk and played fairly well. I went back to sleep for a couple of hours satisfied with both result and performance. On Thursday it was raining and pretty windy, which wasn't much fun so I spent the morning watching some TV, then made lunch and headed out to hand out some more CVs to some shops on Broadway as well as some coffee shops and cafes near Central Station. I also took a walk up to Coles to pick up some groceries which I needed; it's funny that as soon as there is a little rain here I seem to go into complete shut-down and hardly get anything done. I'm already completely used to the sunshine and have no idea how I will handle going home to the harsh Scottish winter next year!
On Friday I had another relatively quiet day; watched some more Walking Dead after having a shower and breakfast in the morning, caught up on some of the latest football news from back home and then had lunch and headed out to play football. I'm currently playing with a pretty large hole in the front of my right boot and I've emailed Sports Direct to try and get them to send me a new pair - I only bought the boots back in July before I left the UK and I've been using my law skills in order to try and force the issue a bit! Hopefully I'll have some new boots soon enough. After the football, a few of the guys were chatting about the plans for that night and suggested we meet up, go for some food and head out for a few drinks in Newtown. I hadn't been out in Newtown at all yet so I was definitely up for it and headed home to have a shower and get changed.
We decided to head to a Thai restaurant on the main street, but went to the liquor store along the street first and bought a bottle of wine. In Australia, restaurants either sell alcohol or allow you to simply bring your own and don't serve any alcohol themselves, which is quite cool and certainly helps keep the cost down when dining in restaurants. I enjoyed a dish which I seem to remember was called chicken pad kapao - sort of spicy chicken and veg stir fry with chilli and basil - it was excellent even if I can't remember the proper name. Afterwards, we headed to a bar above the Marlborough Hotel called Miss Peaches, which was a really cool place, although the music was very hipster and retro and there were quite a few middle aged women who were pretty drunk, which was strange. We then headed to another bar which I can't remember the name of at the moment, but the bar tender was a nice guy. Finally, we ended up in an Irish bar called Kelly's which was great, as are most Irish bars - they had pretty decent Guinness and the first song which was playing as we walked in was "There is a Light That Never Goes Out" by the Smiths. I knew I was going to like it from that moment. I headed home not long after 3am, quickly stopping into the local shop to get some milk for breakfast the next morning.
On Saturday morning, I hauled myself out of bed with a little bit of a headache, had some breakfast and a shower and soon felt spot on once again. Since it was such a nice day, I decided to head back to the pool at the Prince Alfred Park and enjoyed an afternoon in the sun with my iPod and my car magazine which I brought with me from home. The plan for that evening was to have a barbecue with my flatmates, which had been organised by Claire since her sister was visiting from Melbourne with her boyfriend. She had booked the communal cooking area downstairs for us and we were all chipping in with some contribution to the night. After returning from the pool, I got showered and headed to the Broadway Shopping Centre in order to pick up some food and wine - I also went to K-Mark to buy some more boxers, since I seem to have plenty of clothes, except underwear which is a bit annoying. I picked up some food in Coles and was pleased to see that my receipt had another 'Buy One Get One Free' deal for some particular bottle of wine in Liquorland, so headed off to find it; I'm still not really used to the supermarkets not serving alcohol. Anyway, I got two bottles of Counting Sheep Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand for $14 and headed home. It turned out to be really nice, especially once it had been chilled in the fridge for a while.
The communal area where the barbecue is here also has a ping-pong table which we made great use of throughout the night. The food was excellent and it was good to meet a few new people once more - I've found out through meeting such a number of new people since I've been here that I am very good at remembering people's faces but horrible at keeping track of all the names. I'll need to work on that. My personal highlights from the night were the baked potatoes, complete with sour cream, chives and bacon pieces, as well as one of Claire's friends arriving with two big bars of Toblerone - fantastic!
Before heading back upstairs, two other lads arrived in the living room and put the football on the TV, so I sat and watched the second half of Man City v Everton with them. I had never met them before, even though they live here too and it was good to once more meet some decent guys who enjoyed football. I went off to bed just before midnight since United were playing at 5.30pm at home, which meant a 2.30am kick off here! However, the clocks moved on Sunday night, which meant that at 2.30am it would actually be 3.30am and I had completely forgotten! Luckily, my iPhone is an incredibly useful piece of technology and not only corrected the time, but adjusted my alarm to the appropriate time too. I was very impressed when I woke up thinking that I had missed the first half of the game, but had simply been tricked by the clocks moving. At home, dad was driving a local youth football team down from Falkirk to go and watch the game, however he didn't manage to get himself a ticket unfortunately. It was a great game, even though United went 1-0 down, as Adnan Januzaj marked his first Premier League start with two stunning goals to win us the match! What an impact from a guy who is only 18 years old! Incredible!
On Sunday I had another quiet morning before heading to the pool for another day of swimming and sunbathing, since it was a scorching day. Afterwards I headed home, made dinner and watched some more Walking Dead - finished season 2 already! After showing mum this picture of my dinner from Sunday, she said that I'll be cooking more when I come home. So I reckon I'm going to stop showing her my excellent meals. Later on, I was on FaceTime chatting to Kerry as she baked at home but I was almost asleep whilst talking to her since I was totally knackered from my weekend, so headed to bed.
I must have been even more tired than I thought from my busy week, since my alarm went off at 9am on Monday morning and unfortunately, after turning it off, I closed my eyes just for a minute and next thing I knew I woke up again and it was almost 12 noon. I hate when that happens. I checked my phone and had a text from Jessica to see if I wanted to join her and Jordan for some lunch - I hadn't had breakfast yet. I jumped in the shower and after drying off, found another text to say that the plan was to meet at Town Hall station at 1pm which was only 20 minutes from then. I got dressed in super-fast time, made my way to Central and jumped on a train to Town Hall; we decided that I would just meet them wherever they decided to pick for lunch at Darling Harbour, so I arrived at a place called Margaritaville where the pair of them had already found us a table. There are still several tall ships and navy boats in the waters around Sydney Harbour at the moment after the International Fleet Review on Saturday, where Prince Harry was attendance marking 100 years since the naval fleet arrived in Sydney. I managed to snap a picture of one of the tall ships, which you were able to go on board and explore, except the queue was massive and the boat was so busy it looked like you could barely move, so it seemed totally pointless.
We ended up waiting quite some time on our food and after questioning how long it was taking to our waiter, another guy - who I assume was a manager - came out and suggested that he would sort us out with another round of drinks, which we were quite happy with. We weren't in any rush to go anywhere and the food barely took another 5 minutes after that. Lunch was really good; I had grilled barramundi fish with rice and salad and enjoyed a nice cold beer sat looking over the harbour. We headed home afterwards and the girls in the flat fancied another game of table tennis, so we played until late in the evening before moving back upstairs and making dinner. I watched some more Walking Dead and retired to my bed. Shattered once again.
Today it was supposed to be raining so it was pleasantly surprising to wake up and find that not only was it dry, but it was quite sunny outside. However, since there had been an expectation of rain, my motivation to do what I had planned to do quickly drained. It ended up taking me until shortly after lunchtime to get showered, have breakfast, put some washing in the laundry downstairs, tidy up my room and watch a couple of episodes of the Walking Dead. Around 1pm there was a post on the Soccer Society Facebook page asking if anyone fancied a game this afternoon, so I decided to head up to Victoria Park shortly after 3pm to see how many people would turn up. There ended up being 6 of us there so we played three-on-three with a short pitch and small goals; it was surprisingly good fun and a really good workout in the heat.
Until next time!
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