As of February 20 I have been in Sydney for one year. I've decided to devote a seperate entry for all the things I have learnt so far, being in Sydney and all that. Anyway, I have survived and have done okay, I believe. I also have got an article published here. Look at the World Pinoys section and you'll find me... everyone so far has been able to tell which one is my article without me telling them the title.
Whirlwind Weekend
The first weekend of February was full of activity for me. On Friday night Sacha and I went clubbing with Kat and Rob and all the clubs we went to despite having great music turned out to be daggy. They were late so Sacha and I decided to meet them in the city. I had thought we were going to be picked up in a car so I wore my three inch stilettos with ties. (Pictures later) One of the things that I love about Sydney is you can go clubbing in shorts, provided you know how to dress the rest of you up. So I wore my short black shorts, stilettos and a lace top that made my boobies look nice (I like my boobies). Sacha, ever the heartthrob almost got picked up the moment we stepped out of the bus by a bunch of guys that invited us to join them at the Establishment, which I will refer to as Sydney's main meat market - people dress up and go there to check out and be checked out - it also had a bit to do with the fact that she looked hot and was in red and you could see her a mile away.
We walked a bit downhill to get to the first club which was no joke as I was being gravitationally pulled down in those heels (I have since learned to bring tsinelas and carry the damn things). When we got there we grabbed a drink and started dancing right away, it was all RnB and full of Asians and the occasional Indian. I started texting my super clubbing queen friend Jane, who incidentally lives on the same street that I did growing up in my first house in Manila, (although we never met then) asking her what another good place to go would be. She gave some recommendations but we didn't end up going there and when she found out where we were (I don't even remember the name - Kat what was that place again?) she was like "its not my type, that place" and I started to wonder.
Sacha got picked up again by this guy on behalf of a friend which didn't bode too well as I mean, if you have to get some other guy to do the picking up for you, dude, I mean, come on. She looked like she could use some rescuing so we went and told them we were changing clubs. Not that she was getting bothered, more like they were just well, not worthy. So we moved.
We ended up walking around the city, getting asked to move by some cranky bouncer before ending up in La Campana, where they have RnB in one room and Salsa in the other. The music was better but the people were just dodgy and daggy as. I had to sit down a bit as I thought my stilettos would kill me and when I finally joined them on the dance floor this tiny - and i mean tiny - indian guy kept trying to slide up by me and kept touching my ass. When we finally got rid of him this giant tongan dude kept sliding up behind Sacha trying to lift up her skirt. He had two friends next to him so we decided - just as indian guy returned to try and touch my ass again - that it was time to go.
On Saturday it was Sacha and Rose's joint birthday celebration at a Turkish Bellydancing restaurant in Surry Hills. Most of the people there were Rose's friends but Andee, our housemates and Brendan, Sacha's physics friend made it over too. I had two birthdays to go to that night so I was sort of in a rush. Although the food was excellent the service sucked big time and it took forever to get us served even just with menus. I decided that since I had to go to another party there was not enough time for me to eat a full meal so I ended up just sticking to ordering appetizers, and we all shared a selection of dips with turkish bread, which were fantastic. I almost ordered a kebab and I'm glad I didn't because Andee's order of almost the same thing was big enough for two and I would never have made it out of there in time. Right in the middle of eating the belly dancer showed up. She was blonde and very elegant and somewhat exotic and she danced with bells and fake swords. She got the guys to get up and dance with her. Rose had selected the restaurant specifically because there was a male belly dancer that came on after her but since I had to go I didn't get to see him.
After rushing in a cab to central station I met up with Simone, my friend from work and we headed off to our workmate Jaya's birthday party. Jaya is our funky lesbian friend, who is a gifted hairdresser on the side - she did my haircut. Her partner Andie is filo as well and they have two adorable dogs, Buggy and Sooks and two cats. Jaya's birthday dinner was also at a Turkish Restaurant, this time in Enmore. Simone and I took a bus and then walked down. There were so many leftovers - huge servings as well - we just ended up eating them all and we got stuffed. We met some of Jaya's friends, including one from the Central Coast who baked wonderful cakes. She had baked one regular cake and one in the shape of a tulip for Jaya's birthday. I had a lot of cake.
Once we were done Simone and I headed off to Zanzibar to hang out and have a drink or too. I got so sleepy I dozed off while Simone was in the bathroom and one of the bouncers woke me up telling me it was time to go...
On Sunday I had a dinner, at least that's what my datebook says. I'm trying to remember which dinner it was but, you know what, I don't! Aside from the I went to see the Chinese New Year parade with my american friend Gwen and her husband Chris. Gwen woke up early to get to the front of the fence but got jostled by some impolite spectators. Nevertheless she managed to find herself a position towards the side and because she had a giant hi-tech camera she was able to stand next to the press section. She got some great shots. I, being a few rows back got a lot of heads in my pictures as well.
Wolverined
Here is an excerpt from my other journal about how I got to well, see Hugh Jackman because of work:
The whole event that we went to was a special event for group bookings. Group bookers are nice local agencies that buy tickets in the 20s or 50s then sell them to people seperately (possibly with additional cost) and/or with accomodation or certain travel packages. A lot of the people that came were from the country or even out of state. Most of them were nice looking old people that made us feel very young.
I went with my work friend Vanessa who is also a filo, being true filos, we found ourselves 2 seats towards the front (as in behind the two front tables) and shared a table with a whole bunch of people from various parts of sydney, all group bookers, and mostly baby boomers or older. There was free champagne and wine plus some various appetizers that we missed out on because everyone else at the table liked to eat so I went to nick some from the table where everyone else from work was.
The show started with introductions about Peter Allen, who is the guy who the Boy from Oz is about. He is an aussie performer who was once married to Liza Minelli, realised he was gay, met his partner and eventually died of AIDS. He is a true Australian icon, and he popularised the song "I call Australia home" which I had never heard of till that night, much to the shock of everyone in my office as its supposed to be an aussie legend that everyone sings when they want to be patriotic.
They showed a short clip of hugh, his background and winning the Tonys, then they introduced the producer and the director - who choreographed, among other things, the salt lake city winter olympics, several musicals, and cher/madonna/barbra's tours. (his credentials were rather impressive)
Then finally, out came Hugh.
The first thing you notice about him is that he is very tall. I mean the man is Wolverine for a reason. And that he has very clear skin and no wrinkles, which I believe is thanks to a lot of make up or as was pointed out to me later, possibly botox. He has nice crinkles around his eyes but that's it. He has a sense of humour and is very pleasant. The moment he walked on stage this old dude took his picture and there was a flash right in his face. He graciously stepped down and took a picture with him. But that was the most. He seemed to only pay attention to old people!
He talked a bit about the show and introduced the people performing with him, including Chrissy Amphlett, the lead singer of the Divinyls("When I think about you I touch myself...") who was playing Judy Garland in the film. Then he sang "I call Australia Home". Thanks to the camera I borrowed from Sacha I was able to take a lot of close ups but because he was singing and moving around a lot some of them were a bit fuzzy. He got this gift from this lady and walked around a bit near the tables in front of us. I was blocked by an entire table or I would've leapt up and possibly tried to take one of those insert yourself and me into the picture shots. When he left Vanessa leapt up and tried to get a picture of him walking by, but sadly, we missed getting that close.
After he left there was a short discussion and then they said goodbye. We hung around and they served all this yummy food - wonton, spring rolls, mini burgers and mini pizzas so we all ate. Vanessa and I hung around the media giveaway booth for so long that they finally gave us each a bag which means I now have the soundtrack, a promotional dvd, a poster, cap and a lot of other things.
I will however, not be watching the show because its too expensive and I'm not entirely a patriotic Australian... yet.
Rrrrrraunchy
A great part of what occupied my life for February was our project for Consumer Behaviour. Okay, to be fair I didn't put as much effort into this summer class as I usually do for regular classes and I still spent most of my time working but we tried. The requirements for the project involved observing a particular consumer behavior for a certain product and analyze it using marketing terms. We ended up doing Raunch Culture which is basically the consumption of sex and how it is portrayed in the media, etc. If you want an example of what Raunch Culture is, well, Paris Hilton is its poster girl.
I had to do a couple of interviews for the report so I interviewed practically all the Aussie born or bred people that I know - Simone and her boyfriend Maurice, Scott, Kartini's boyfriend and Karen her good friend, Kat, Rose, etc. asking them all these questions about what they thought about Raunch and showing them ads.
We had to do a presentation and a written report, half of which I ended up leaving to my groupmate - there were only two of us - as I had to take the exam earlier than she did. Our professor moved the exam to the Monday when I would be in the Gold Coast so I had to make arrangements to take it on the Friday anyway, which resulted in me running to Office Works to print out a ten page reviewer I had made (Thank God she gave out the exam questions early) at 10 in the morning for a 2 o clock test. (Yes. I cram.) Multiple amounts of coffee and Natural Snakes (think gummy worms) later I made my way through that exam. So far I have passed the subject, and although I did all right in my exam our presentation - which given its haphazardness I'm not surprised - although passing, didn't score so well. She appeared to have really high standards though, since the class average was even lower than our mark.
Housewarming
On the 25th of February we had our housewarming party finally at the house. I had work so my contribution pretty much was just alchohol and some dip. Sacha and Kartini went all out and made punch and whipped up home made dip. A lot of people brought beer. Sacha invited all the guys we met speed dating (yes, we went again and it was fun and we made friends, but no, i didn't meet anyone that rocked my world) but only two of them came.
The highlight of the evening was when this Russian woman who couldn't even speak english walked in through the front door and started playing the piano. We all thought she was someone else's friend but it turns out no one knew her. She started flailing around and dancing, she tried to take Rob (who we met speed dating) upstairs and she fell on some of the vegetables we had cut up for dip. Rob and Pat (new housemate) ushered her out and Rob ended up smooching with her outside. This we discovered thanks to Suheil, my friend from work who came along with Vanessa who provided running commentary. The police had to come and get her later on because someone reported her lying on the road. Rob seems to think she had been assaulted because she managed to ramble on in english when prompted and she lived in a shelter and was very frazzled and worried.
One of Kartini's friends who was a DJ spun some tunes in the lounge room while Brendan and David (also from speed dating) played acoustic music in the courtyard. There were a bunch of people we didn't know but it was pretty fun anyway. My cousin Miel and her housemate Yvette came, so did Martina from uni and her friend Yuka. We had a lot of fun entertaining. No one got really plastered. Most people stayed till around 2 or 3 - some of Sacha's friends stayed until 4 while the rest of us just knocked out - and it looks like everyone had a great time.
And the Rest of February
Will be explained by my next entry on the Gold Coast. We also had the exterminator come last Wednesday (which is technically March) and had to take all the things out of the kitchen. We are still in the process of moving everything back and the roaches are still there, primarily because we have so many methods of entry into our house. The last roach I saw the other night was huge and I actually stopped to examine it because it had interesting markings, indicating that it was one of those bush cockroaches again, which is okay as long as they aren't in the house. Thank God Lisa wasn't there or she just would have been hysterical, I was hysterical enough as it was screaming everytime I hit it as it was a really big one. We have resolved to attempt to plug up the holes in our house and get a doorstopper or as Pat says, get that powder you put under the door that stops them dead...
1 comment:
Seriously. I warned you about the whole clubbing thing and the potential dodginess of Rob's choice. In fact, I warned you multiple times. I am blaming Rob completely. :-)
BTW - your link to PINOYexpats is wrong and won't work.
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