(Day 44) A walk on the rich side (sort of)

Saturday 14^th April (Day 44)

Tonight I was going out on a night out in the posher and more upper class area of Sydney.  I was heading to a bar/club called The Argyle which was in an area of Sydney called The Rocks.  The Rocks is the north most point of downtown Sydney and it is where the Harbour Bridge begins.  It is right next to Circular Quays which was were the wine tasting was held.

The problem with going out in The Rocks was I had to dress up in a shirt and proper shoes.  I really don’t feel comfortable dressing up like this, I am much more of a tee-shirt and canvas trainers type of guy.

I headed off with Nick (cool English housemate) on the train to The Rocks.  It was late in the evening so all the ticket barriers at the train station were unmanned and open so we decided not to bother getting tickets.  However this is a risk because if we got stopped at some point on our journey by a ticket inspector we would have received an on the spot fine of $200.  It isn’t like in England were you can just buy a ticket on the train.  Here no ticket = $200 fine.

Luckily no-one was working the train and we made it to The Rocks without being $200 lighter.

The Argyle is a large red brick building with many windows.  All the windows are covered in black metal bars and the building from the outside looks like an old prison.

The interior was clearly designed by someone who has a fetish for wood; everything was made from wood.  But not like Scruffy’s, this was good solid wood.  Walking around inside this club was like walking around the bowels of an old pirate ship.

Everyone in the club was dressed in smart evening wear and I think that is what was the main problem with the place; the atmosphere was just pretty stale.  Everyone was just wearing different shades of grey or black.  It felt more like a works party at a law firm than a night out.

 

Despite all of this I did quite like the Argyle.  I guess it is just nice once in a while to go to a club which is actually a clean and pleasant environment to be in, even when sober.  It was just a polar opposite from Scruffy’s, a place that stinks of booze and body odour.

After a few uneventful hours at Argyle we went on an equally uneventful bar crawl.  I sound like I am complaining but I did have a good night, just not much to talk about.  No girls who were questionable prostitutes, no bar fights and no people getting kicked out.  We just went from one sensible bar to the other.

After a while we decided to head home.  We got the train to The Rocks because it is quite far to walk from Surry Hills where we live.  But we walked the way back and it didn’t feel long at all.  The journey coming back from a night out always seemed shorter than the journey there.

Anyway overall I would possibly recommend a night in The Rocks.  The place is nice but don’t expect anything mental.

Map from Google

neeaarrhh mateys, the crew of the boring ship!

The toilets are actually unisex here, and the
weird illuminated thing in the middle is the sink

Some crazy street with dozens of canary cages hanging above it

We passed this building with a big pile of coal in the middle,
it turns out this building is an art gallery and the pile
of coal is the main exhibit.  I personally
think it just looks like a big pile of coal.

(Day 43) "Gonna start a revolution from my bed"

Friday 13^th April (Day 43)

There are 2 things worth spending good money on in life.  Can you guess what they are?

Shoes and beds.  Why?  Because if you are not in one of them you are in the other.  You spend 1/3 of your life in bed (well in my case probably about 1/8 at the moment) and when you are not sleeping you are awake and probably wearing shoes.  They are the 2 unsung heroes of modern day life and they are worth investing in.

The reason why I am saying this is because my new mattress arrived today, only 4 weeks late!  I ordered a new mattress pretty much after the first night I attempted to sleep in this house.  The mattress left by the previous tenant was just horrific.

It has clearly been handed down through generations of tenants each leaving there own mark on it.  When it came to deciding which side of it I was going to sleep on I had to pick the less of the 2 evils.  One side had clearly been slept on by a girl during her menopause, the other side looked like it had been slept on by someone with bladder control problems.  Either way I was in for a rough night’s sleep.

It wasn’t a decent mattress to begin with anyway.  It is basically just a big piece of foam about the width of my fist.  Every time I want to turn over I feel my hip press into the slats of the bed.

After 4 weeks I just feel like I have been in a car crash.  To be honest I don’t even try and sleep at night now because it is just a chore.  I just make do with the odd nap here and there.  But anyway hopefully that will all change now with my new mattress!

The first thing I noticed whilst unpacking it was the smell.  It has that lovely fresh out of the Chinese factory that is clearly breaking all environmental laws smell.  I never knew you could make a mattress out of nail polish remover and cat piss.

Another complaint is that the mattress looks ridiculous on my bed.  The other anorexic mattress looked relatively normal on the little bed I have in my room but this mattress looks huge compared to the bed.

It isn’t half bad though lying on it.  As I was lying down on the new mattress I could already feel my back start to mend itself.  It might look a bit stupid and smell like my old chemistry teacher but it is exactly what I needed.

And on a note about work, since my attempt at work on Wednesday I have phoned up ill again Thursday and Friday.  I think it is just best to write this week off, sleep well over the weekend and start again fresh next week!

The old, about as fun to sleep on as a sack of potatoes 

I dread to think...

The new, looks a bit alien on my little bed

(Day 41) Heroin Highway and "The eyes have one language everywhere”

Wednesday 11^th April (Day 41)

Right, well I got my new job last Tuesday and had the training last Thursday.  Today is Wednesday and I have phoned up ill the last 2 days.  Since the weekend I have been ill and unable to get a decent amount of sleep.  I wasn’t feeling much better today but I was worried that the fundraising company were going to fire me before I had even started.  So I made a commitment to go in today.  Today I was working in a suburb called Cabramatta.

I googled Cabramatta and according to Wikipedia Cabramatta is a predominately Vietnamese surburb with a high crime rate and a large drug problem.  An MP was even assassinated here.  Great, I can’t wait to work here!  Though apparently there was a large police crackdown on the area a few years ago and the area is supposed to be alright now.

I got onto the train and headed off to Cabramatta.


At first I was feeling alright but it wasn’t long until I started feeling really ill again.  I don’t know what is wrong with me but I just want to projectile vomit everywhere.  Today I was working with a girl called Sarah and I texted her on the train saying I was on my way but to be honest I was feeling very ill.

I didn’t know what Sarah looked like but it wasn’t hard to find her at the train station with her charity clipboards and folders protruding out of her rucksack.  She said we were waiting for more people and she made me hold up one of the charity tee-shirts in front of me.  I was basically doing the same thing people do at arrival lounges in airports where they hold up a surname on a piece of card or something.  I was doing this with a tee-shirt and I must have looked like the worst fundraiser in the world, just walking around showing the back of a tee-shirt to people.

After a while nobody else came up to us so we headed off to the main high street where we were going to fundraise.  I had to pitch Sarah to show her that I knew my script and, well I didn’t know it.  I have been ill and I didn’t feel like learning it.  I thought I was going to get into trouble but Sarah was really fine about this.  She just said I had to go home and learn it for next time.

One thing I noticed about Sarah was that she was exceedingly pretty.  She had brown hair with bits of red in it, deep brown eyes, perfectly white teeth and a beautiful face.  I had been told she was a good fundraiser and I could see why!

There is another thing about her eyes, Sarah is German and so far I have met 2 German girls here and they both have the same eyes.  And when I say eyes I don’t just mean the colour of the eye but also the shape of the eye, facial structure around the eye and the eye brow.  All of these features were the same in both German girls.


Like both girls look different but they both have the same eyes.  Is this a German thing?  Do all German girls have eyes like these?  Or is it just a coincidence with the 2 girls I have met?

Either way you need to be careful, looking into eyes like these for too long just makes you want to lean forward and kiss that person, which would have been inappropriate for me with either girl.

Anyway another girl showed up after about 15 minutes.  I think Sarah had texted the main office saying that I wasn’t able to work and she needed another person in her team so they sent a girl from a neighbouring team.  You can’t fundraise on your own.

I wished both girls the best of luck and headed off home.  I had to get home, stop thinking about Sarah’s eyes and start learning my script.  Hopefully I will be better tomorrow and then I could start my second attempt at being a street fundraiser.

Cabramatta is about 30km from Sydney

A nice Vietnamese archway

Cate Blanchett starred in a film where she plays a
heroin addict living in Cabramatta.
Apparently heroin was so easy to get the main
highstreet in Cabramatta was dubbed as "heroin highway"