day 2.

After a good night’s sleep, I headed back up towards the quays.
This time I took a different route.
On my way up I went into the botanical gardens...


the state library...

the libray was quite impressive


it also has the only copy of darwin's ORIGIN OF SPECIES in its original binding, held in any public collection in australia.


pretty cool.

and then through hyde park...

hyde park is no where near the size of central park in new york but there are parts of hyde that remind me of central. Like this:

also, the whole concept of having so much green space so close to the heart of the city reminds me of new york.

i also came across this statue.
apparently it was put up in my honour.

look just behind my head. it reads: "albert the good". :D

i then made my way to this building called the queen victoria building.
it is a beautiful victorian style buidling that's been turned into a shopping centre.
i have never seen such a beautiful 'mall' in my life.
it's got great big winding stairs with stained-glass windows.


giant clocks


and just has this real victorian feel to it.




On Thursday night, I went to a john mayer concert.

Now I’ve never really been a huge fan of john mayer. Not that I disliked him but to me he was just another musician. But after a few days of listening to his CDs (in preparation for this concert of course), I must say that he’s really started to grow on me.
I had a really good time at the concert. it was john in his jeans and t-shirt and his guitar. no fancy costumes. no fancy video show. just him and his band. And after hearing him live, it almost makes me want to pick up my guitar again. I can just hear my mom and dad saying “I TOLD YOU SO!”


Look how happy Julie is.
She now has no regrets. She has let john know how she feels about him - she was one of many girls (and boys) to yell out “I love you john!” during his performance.
Now the ball is in john’s court (Julie is on a first name basis with john. And well, so am i).
Let me know how that works out for ya jules!

After the concert, we just kind of stumbled on the back door of the building. There were heaps of people with their cameras ready and their faces pressed against the fence.

They were obviously waiting for john.
First to walk out was Jessica. Well I was convinced that it was Jessica. And after having witnessed julie’s bravado, I decided to follow suit. i told Jessica that I loved her and asked her to marry me.
So it was all in all a good day for jules and i. we both got some important things off of our chest. we’ll just wait and see as to how john and Jessica want to play this.

BUT the next morning we were watching the morning news and turns out elle mcpherson is in Sydney promoting her new lingerie collection. In retrospect, I think it was elle and not Jessica at john’s concert. Oh well.

sydney re-cap

so I’m back.
My trip to Sydney was an absolute blast. And I’m exhausted. I flew out of Brisbane on Wednesday morning and I just got home a few hours ago.
but it feels good to be home. that's right. i now refer to brisbane as home. don't worry though, toronto will always be HOME-home.

DAY 1.
The flight to Sydney went over without a hitch.
I even made it through the metal detector in one try.
I don’t think I told you guys this but during my flight from Toronto to Sydney, I had to walk through the metal detector at least a half dozen times. It kept beeping! On top of removing everything from my pockets, I had to remove my wristwatch, take my belt off and even take my shoes off! It was like that kayne west video “all falls down”. I thought I was either going to have to strip down to my socks or they were going to run me through the x-ray machine!

ANYWAYS…
I made my way from the airport to the city via a quick 11-minute train ride. (Toronto really needs to have the subway link to the airport; enough of this bus to the airport business). When the train pulled in, I was amazed to notice that it was a double decker train. As you walk into the car, there are stairs that lead up and down. I decided to go down. It’s kind of cool. Your eye level is at the feet of the people waiting on the platform. But as quickly as I was impressed with the whole double decker deal, I also noticed the smell and the dirt of the subway car. The best way to describe sydney’s trains is to say that they remind me of the ones in new york. If you’ve ever been on the subway in new york city, you know what I mean.

i then made my way from the trains to the bus stops to catch the bus to my friend’s place. As I walked through a long tunnel, all I could think about was how fast everyone was walking! After spending the past 3 months of my life living in the SUBURBS of Brisbane, I felt like a country boy in the city.

After dropping my stuff off at julie’s place, she gave me a tour of the university of Sydney.


So this is the Fischer library. It is said to have the biggest collection of books in the southern hemisphere. It doesn’t look worthy of having such a title.


Don’t you love aussies and their sense of humour?


It was kind of weird walking around thinking that this could’ve very well been MY campus.

Afterwards, I headed north towards the city and the quays.
I took the requisite pictures in front of the opera house and the harbour bridge.


that's the harbour bridge in the background. now i was initially planning to climb the harbour bridge but it was so expensive. to climb it during the day it's something like $160. if you want a romantic twilight climb, that price jumps up to $240. what the heck? it just wasn't worth it.


and the famous opera house.

Here’s a tip for all of you that are traveling by yourself.
When asking a stranger to take a picture for you, try and pick someone that is carrying a REAL camera. I’m talking about one of those SLR camera and not the point-and-shoot ones that everyone above the age of 12 has. Trust me. It’s worth the extra effort. A real photographer will take the effort to at least centre the picture for you. I have so many pics that were taken by strangers in which I or the building is not centered and/or cut-off.

i spent the rest of the day walking around sydney.
sydney's got so many beautiful buildings. here is just a little snippet.


this is sydney town hall. it's not a town hall where they hold town meeting and stuff like that - but perhaps they did a long time ago.


it's actually used for organ concerts. it's got this HUGE organ. i am told that the grand organ has 8,000 pipes!


chandelier hanging in the foyer of town hall.

i walked up and down and all over sydney. i felt like i had walked half way across the world. and on several occasions, i thought i was back in toronto.




later that day i met up with julie for some much needed korean food.
we decided to go for korean bbq. needless to say, it was good!

we then took a little stroll down to darling harbour. pictures really don't do this place justice.

trapped by a turkey

so i've spent most of yesterday and today at home getting some studying in.
this morning, i was peacefully reviewing over type I and type II diabetes (and minding my own business of course) when a TURKEY WALKED INTO MY ROOM!

i kid you not.
it COMPLETELY caught me off guard. i freaked like a little school girl and shooed it away.
i thought that would be the end of that but apparently not. the turkey keeps loitering around my doorway.

i'm scared... and now my door is closed. :(

surf and sun...

Just got home from my surfing weekend.
I had a WICKED time.
We went down to this place called coolangatta. it is on border of queensland and new south wales on the eastern coast. The beach was so gorgeous.



For $130 we got two 2-hour lessons, full equipment rental, 2 nights of accommodation and 2 continental breakfasts. Not too shabby… not too shabby at all.



Unfortunately I don’t have any action shots. But this is the all of us at the end of our second lesson.


l→r: kim, laura, tricia, susan, craig, victoria, sarah, Miguel (our instructor) and me!

who are all these people? Tricia and susan are my classmates. Laura is a friend from Toronto studying law at UQ. Kim is her roommate. Craig is kim’s boyfriend. Victoria is kim’s cousin from germany. She is here on exchange for a semester. Sarah is victoria’s friend. Also from germany.

in the mornings when the moon was still up,


we got up to catch the sunrise. It was quite nice.


We even had an aussie-style bbq. What’s so special about an aussie bbq? Well you know how back home we have bbq grills in parks where you can bring your own coal and have a bbq? Well here in oz, there are little stations with electrical barbies (bbqs). Just push a button and voila! you’ve got a huge frying pan!



And of course, we had the obligatory sausage sizzles.



Unfortunately the weather was not terribly cooperative.
But it did give us a beautiful rainbow.



As mentioned, coolangatta sits on the border of queensland and new south wales.


QUEENSLAND!


NEW SOUTH WALES!

How was the surfing itself?
It was great. It was a lot easier than I expected. I stood up on several occasions and caught some good waves.
The tricky thing is timing. Standing up isn’t so tough. It’s the paddling and knowing when to stand.
I’ve even got some battle wounds to show for my 2 days of hard surfing.


You normally wear a rash guard (when your skins rubs against the surf board it can easily get irritated). But the rash guards they had for us were short sleeves.

That’s a wrap!
I’ll try and post again before I fly off to Sydney on Wednesday morning.

TGIT! thank god it's THURSDAY!

woohoo!
it's the weekend. long weekend. not only that, it's AVCC week next week. what's AVCC? it's the australian vice-chancellor's committee. and why is this so special? well there are no classes during AVCC week. why? i don't know and i don't really care! my next class isn't until the 16th!
woohoo!

so what am i going to do with my well-deserved and long-awaited week off?
i've got a ton planned.
to kick things off, bruno and aj are holding an easter bash tonight.
bright and early tomorrow i'm off to the coast for a few days of surf and sun. some REAL surf. we've booked ourselves for some surf lessons. can't wait!
i'm back in brisbane on monday and will re-charge my batteries for a couple of days. i know how silly that sounds... recharging my batteries after 3 days of nothing but R&R on the beach. but hey... surfing and tanning is hard work!
wednesday morning i'm off to sydney! yay! i'll take in some of the sights and sounds, grab some korean food, see some friends...
i'm grinning ear to ear as i post this! :D
enjoy your week! i know i sure will!