Thursday was Mary's first day of freedome, i.e. Done-With-Work. She earned a sleep-in and I can sleep all day if I'm not needed in the shop. We began our day around 11 and left the apartment an hour later.
We both decided that we would call home. We stopped at a payphone near the apartment by the monorail station. Mary went first. She had a calling card that her parents left her to use and this was the first time she attempted. She lifted the receiver from its cradle and put it to her ear, and crooked it in her shoulder as she looked over the card's instructions. I thought to myself that this phone was dirty because there was a big stain in the part of the cradle where the ear piece goes. Hadn't been cleaned in awhile.
Mary commented that she hates payphones because more often than not, they are pretty rank. The homeless congregate around them, or they go uncleaned for too long, but invariably, they just smell horribly.
She said this payphone area in particular smelled bad. I was a few feet away and didn't really smell anything above and beyond a typical payphone. Then she slowly began to interpret this phone to have a really vile smell, an unusually nasty scent way worse than normal. She had had enough. She looked at the receiver and noticed there was something on it. She looked at me, and with wild eyes and tears beginning to well up in them, tumbled out the words: "What is that? Is that shit!?!
I was totally disgusted at the idea. But I looked and I smelled and yes, I confirmed that it was.
"That's not only shit, Mary, that's human shit!"
She let out some primal noises that one would make after discovering someone else's shit on your face. I, meanwhile, could not stop laughing. I honestly don't know if I've ever found anything more funny. I think I stopped breathing for about five minutes I was laughing so hard, especially when Mary was gagging and spit was falling out of her mouth. I was certain she would throw up. Then she wondered if any got on her ear. I didn't see any, but I smelled her hair and ear, and indeed, the shit had lifted from the phone and landed on her person. Like lice, but shit.
The whole walk down the stairs was internminable because she was paralyzed with disgust and I couldn't stop laughing. We went into the Harbourside Mall and she washed her ear out and her hair and came back out and said "I don't want to talk about it for the rest of the day" in her matter-of-fact way. We couldn't fathom who would do something like that. How did they do it? Did they wipe their ass with the phone? Did they shit into a cupped hand and smear it on the receiver? Did it involve a plastic bag transfer like a reverse C.S.I.? Was he/she nearby watching? Was he/she perfectly content with the knowledge that of what he/she did and was safely ensconsed in his/her cubicle getting off to the sick sick act?
Mary said that she never used to believe in the death penalty, but that person should be give the chair. Or maybe a firing squad.
We never found another pay phone all day; we wouldn't make those calls for two more days. The memory of the fresh shit on the phone was just too much....
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Food Holiday
Wednesday the 18th. Fifteen hours ahead of time. Mary's last day of work in Sydney (or so we thought) and Jeff's second day of work in a string of five. 9AM.
Had honey nut corn flakes with peaches on top. Jeff got this when they went surfing over Easter Week and can't get enough of it. Very good. I will continue to have this at home. Also had a banana. Very healthy. It wouldn't last.
I walked to the Pakhi Cafe for the first time. It's a Pakistani internet cafe that has many different cuisines, but specializes in Italian. It's brothers or friends, but the two guys are ALWAYS there. Great people. The internet is free for customers. Technically you can just get a can of pop or bottle of water, but I wanted to get something that actually costs something to patronize them since this was my first visit. Show them that I'm not a freeloader. I got a fruit plate. It was fucking enormous. Full of rockmelon, honeydew, watermelon and tons and tons of (unripe) pineapple. Mary said that once when she ordered the fruit plate, all she got was a plateful of rockmelon. She then said she was allergic to it, did they have anything else (a total lie) and they looked panicked. They only give you what they have and that day, they were fresh out of everything but cantaloupe. Anyway, it was a good fruitplate, even with the pineapple.
After blogging I walked over to Chinatown. Got a couple good views on the way, of the skyline from a different angle. Why go the same way twice?
Had lunch at the BBQ King, a Chinese place I'd read was the best in Sydney's Chinatown. They had BBQ ducks hanging in the windows. When I walked in, they pounced and sat me at a communal table with two Asian guys eating separately. I perused the menu and decided on the chicken fillets in a honey sauce. I got tea, which was great, and hot. The waitress was this fat Chinese woman, and was a really funny person and could not have been nicer. There's no tipping here, so the service was a little surprising. Makes you further question Americans' motives for things. The food was awesome, and roughly three or four meals in one. It was $16.50, which was on the cheaper end of the spectrum, and was expensive for lunch, but when you eat it over three meals, its pretty affordable. It was a little sickly sweet after awhile, and was making me a little sick. I was proud of myself and how masterful I was with the chopsticks. All those years of Ron of Japan really honed my skills.
After lunch, I walked through Chinatown, and went into St. Honore's Cake Shop and got a couple of cocktail buns for $0.80 each, which were the shape of long john doughnuts but were like rolls and had a sweet coconut filling inside. They were fantastic. I also got some guava gelato at the Gelatissimo a few storefronts down. Only ok. The flavor was a little weak; not nearly as perfect as the mango gelato.
After dropping off my leftovers at the apartment and avoiding rain all morning, though it did come down in waves, I made my way to George St. and found a Bureau de Change at the Westpac branch. I changed a traveller's check and was pleased to find they charged no commission and I got a monster of a rate. I walked around George St. and went into a few shops. There are two Virgin Megastores a block or two apart. There are three Westpac banks in four blocks. Two Macca's (McDonald's) within three or four blocks.
CD's here are cheap if they're $20. Paperback books here go for $35. Highway robbery!
Went into Gowings and found a cool hooded sweatshirt and a jacket. Didn't buy them yet.
Did some food shopping at Woolworths (mainly for TimTams and red apples) and went back and we ate some dinner and watched a few episodes of Project Greenlight Season 2. Efram is a cock. It was late and none of us especially felt up to going out to a pub, so we just kinda hung out there. Plus with Jeff's work schedule sometimes requiring him to get up at 5:30 in the AM, I totally understood that he didn't want to be up all night only to work all day very early. We can't go out all night every night, we're old men and women now.
Had honey nut corn flakes with peaches on top. Jeff got this when they went surfing over Easter Week and can't get enough of it. Very good. I will continue to have this at home. Also had a banana. Very healthy. It wouldn't last.
I walked to the Pakhi Cafe for the first time. It's a Pakistani internet cafe that has many different cuisines, but specializes in Italian. It's brothers or friends, but the two guys are ALWAYS there. Great people. The internet is free for customers. Technically you can just get a can of pop or bottle of water, but I wanted to get something that actually costs something to patronize them since this was my first visit. Show them that I'm not a freeloader. I got a fruit plate. It was fucking enormous. Full of rockmelon, honeydew, watermelon and tons and tons of (unripe) pineapple. Mary said that once when she ordered the fruit plate, all she got was a plateful of rockmelon. She then said she was allergic to it, did they have anything else (a total lie) and they looked panicked. They only give you what they have and that day, they were fresh out of everything but cantaloupe. Anyway, it was a good fruitplate, even with the pineapple.
After blogging I walked over to Chinatown. Got a couple good views on the way, of the skyline from a different angle. Why go the same way twice?
Had lunch at the BBQ King, a Chinese place I'd read was the best in Sydney's Chinatown. They had BBQ ducks hanging in the windows. When I walked in, they pounced and sat me at a communal table with two Asian guys eating separately. I perused the menu and decided on the chicken fillets in a honey sauce. I got tea, which was great, and hot. The waitress was this fat Chinese woman, and was a really funny person and could not have been nicer. There's no tipping here, so the service was a little surprising. Makes you further question Americans' motives for things. The food was awesome, and roughly three or four meals in one. It was $16.50, which was on the cheaper end of the spectrum, and was expensive for lunch, but when you eat it over three meals, its pretty affordable. It was a little sickly sweet after awhile, and was making me a little sick. I was proud of myself and how masterful I was with the chopsticks. All those years of Ron of Japan really honed my skills.
After lunch, I walked through Chinatown, and went into St. Honore's Cake Shop and got a couple of cocktail buns for $0.80 each, which were the shape of long john doughnuts but were like rolls and had a sweet coconut filling inside. They were fantastic. I also got some guava gelato at the Gelatissimo a few storefronts down. Only ok. The flavor was a little weak; not nearly as perfect as the mango gelato.
After dropping off my leftovers at the apartment and avoiding rain all morning, though it did come down in waves, I made my way to George St. and found a Bureau de Change at the Westpac branch. I changed a traveller's check and was pleased to find they charged no commission and I got a monster of a rate. I walked around George St. and went into a few shops. There are two Virgin Megastores a block or two apart. There are three Westpac banks in four blocks. Two Macca's (McDonald's) within three or four blocks.
CD's here are cheap if they're $20. Paperback books here go for $35. Highway robbery!
Went into Gowings and found a cool hooded sweatshirt and a jacket. Didn't buy them yet.
Did some food shopping at Woolworths (mainly for TimTams and red apples) and went back and we ate some dinner and watched a few episodes of Project Greenlight Season 2. Efram is a cock. It was late and none of us especially felt up to going out to a pub, so we just kinda hung out there. Plus with Jeff's work schedule sometimes requiring him to get up at 5:30 in the AM, I totally understood that he didn't want to be up all night only to work all day very early. We can't go out all night every night, we're old men and women now.
Monday, May 23, 2005
A Smile Just for Me?
Tuesday Down Under was a continuation of the day previous. Weather-wise. The rain came down in spurts, not really letting up for all too long before drowning the city again. Both of my hosts had to work, so this was my first day on my own, in earnest.
I had brekkie at the Cockle Bay Wharf which is two steps from the Goldsbrough, where we are located. The Wharf is in Darling Harbour and has some incredible, thousand word views. I had only fifteen dollars Australian and a MasterCard on me. The only place open in the Harbourside arcade was this upstairs restaurant which was more or less empty by the time I got there. I sat down at a window table with a view of a drenched Harbour. Well, the land around the harbour was drenched anyway. I got crepes with maple syrup and cream and a banana smoothie. Very good, and heavier than I expected. Don't know what I was thinking, really. The bill was $14 and I went to pay with the credit card because I didn't know when/if I'd have a chance to change more money right away and I might need the cash. They can only charge with a minimum of $15, the cashier said, so I had to break out the bills. Oh well.
I repeated the Monday walk, to the Quay and the Rocks. The rain pretty much held off for this part, but it was on again off again warm and cold. Everyone I passed, locals anyway, were wearing their work clothes or whatever but also scarves (but no jackets) and passing conversation that I heard were things like "It's FREEZING!" Here I am in shorts and a sweatshirt, alternately comfortable and then really fucking hot and they're saying it's freezing? It's really bizarre. They should come to North America sometime in the winter and then we'll talk.
I postponed my trip to Taronga Zoo for the first time of the trip, an action I repeated many times. It was overcast and a trip on a ferry to the zoo would A) be cold and B) not provide the photo ops I wanted. So instead I walked back to Darling Harbour where I sat and had a cup of pineapple-watermelon-orange juice at some health juice bar. I sat at a table for about an hour, doing a little note writing to myself about what I've done and trying to figure out my plans for the trip in general.
Then I walked a block or two to the Aquarium. It was a pretty cool place, with the expected marine animals in display tanks and such. I was mesmerized by the platypus, er, platypi. Crazy creatures. Before long I was clotheslined by a fifth-grade field trip, inundated with little fuckin weasels with no sense of space. They seemingly saw no one else in the joint, not me or the throng of Asians that are everywhere. Everywhere I went, even at my own slower pace, I was confronted by the same group of kids, all bowing to their king, Jackson. He was obviously the cool kid, the one everyone tries to impress and please, because every two seconds I could hear someone yell "Jackson, come look at this! Jackson, you'll love this!!" It was constant.
The kids had a worksheet/assignment to complete on their field trip, and it was pleasing to see they all were cheating off of the smart kid. Everyone was passing along the answers, just like at home. It was nice to learn that kids are the same everywhere. Comforting, even.
The highlight of the Aquarium was definitely the underground section. You go down a couple floors on the descending ramps and you end up under the tank in tunnels and the marine life swim above you. In each tank are huge sharks, small fish, everything. It's really amazing. Stingrays are incredible creatures. They're humongous and I swear they have a face. Smack in the middle of their undersides are their eyes, and some gills where cheek lines (dimples) would be and then they have a mouth. And as they passed over the crowds of people, it was like they knew something we didn't, or were putting on a show, because I swear to God they all paused directly overhead, almost investigating us, and then smiled. It was probably an involuntary reflex they have, and isn't a real smile, but it sure fucking looked like it. It was hilarious. I really think Jackson liked it, which is really the whole point anyway.
When I finished with the Aquarium, the rain was coming down the hardest it had been since I got here, cats and dogs. I had really no choice but to leave, under my umbrella that really doesn't do much, and go find someplace for lunch. I went to Wagamama, a place I'd seen in my guidebook. I had pumpkin, eggplant and aubergine breaded in panko breadcrumbs and fried, covered in a great mild curry sauce with a side salad with red pickles and to drink I had what they call raw juice, a mixture of carrot, cucumber, tomato, orange and apple juices. Delicious. Expensive. But I'm on vacation.
I picked up my photos, and was really happy with the results. I think I got some great ones. Almost so much that it makes me want to take up amateur photography again. I haven't since I had the class in high school but I forgot how satisfying it is. I probably won't go the whole hog and build a darkroom, but the act of taking interesting pictures is really rewarding.
I had brekkie at the Cockle Bay Wharf which is two steps from the Goldsbrough, where we are located. The Wharf is in Darling Harbour and has some incredible, thousand word views. I had only fifteen dollars Australian and a MasterCard on me. The only place open in the Harbourside arcade was this upstairs restaurant which was more or less empty by the time I got there. I sat down at a window table with a view of a drenched Harbour. Well, the land around the harbour was drenched anyway. I got crepes with maple syrup and cream and a banana smoothie. Very good, and heavier than I expected. Don't know what I was thinking, really. The bill was $14 and I went to pay with the credit card because I didn't know when/if I'd have a chance to change more money right away and I might need the cash. They can only charge with a minimum of $15, the cashier said, so I had to break out the bills. Oh well.
I repeated the Monday walk, to the Quay and the Rocks. The rain pretty much held off for this part, but it was on again off again warm and cold. Everyone I passed, locals anyway, were wearing their work clothes or whatever but also scarves (but no jackets) and passing conversation that I heard were things like "It's FREEZING!" Here I am in shorts and a sweatshirt, alternately comfortable and then really fucking hot and they're saying it's freezing? It's really bizarre. They should come to North America sometime in the winter and then we'll talk.
I postponed my trip to Taronga Zoo for the first time of the trip, an action I repeated many times. It was overcast and a trip on a ferry to the zoo would A) be cold and B) not provide the photo ops I wanted. So instead I walked back to Darling Harbour where I sat and had a cup of pineapple-watermelon-orange juice at some health juice bar. I sat at a table for about an hour, doing a little note writing to myself about what I've done and trying to figure out my plans for the trip in general.
Then I walked a block or two to the Aquarium. It was a pretty cool place, with the expected marine animals in display tanks and such. I was mesmerized by the platypus, er, platypi. Crazy creatures. Before long I was clotheslined by a fifth-grade field trip, inundated with little fuckin weasels with no sense of space. They seemingly saw no one else in the joint, not me or the throng of Asians that are everywhere. Everywhere I went, even at my own slower pace, I was confronted by the same group of kids, all bowing to their king, Jackson. He was obviously the cool kid, the one everyone tries to impress and please, because every two seconds I could hear someone yell "Jackson, come look at this! Jackson, you'll love this!!" It was constant.
The kids had a worksheet/assignment to complete on their field trip, and it was pleasing to see they all were cheating off of the smart kid. Everyone was passing along the answers, just like at home. It was nice to learn that kids are the same everywhere. Comforting, even.
The highlight of the Aquarium was definitely the underground section. You go down a couple floors on the descending ramps and you end up under the tank in tunnels and the marine life swim above you. In each tank are huge sharks, small fish, everything. It's really amazing. Stingrays are incredible creatures. They're humongous and I swear they have a face. Smack in the middle of their undersides are their eyes, and some gills where cheek lines (dimples) would be and then they have a mouth. And as they passed over the crowds of people, it was like they knew something we didn't, or were putting on a show, because I swear to God they all paused directly overhead, almost investigating us, and then smiled. It was probably an involuntary reflex they have, and isn't a real smile, but it sure fucking looked like it. It was hilarious. I really think Jackson liked it, which is really the whole point anyway.
When I finished with the Aquarium, the rain was coming down the hardest it had been since I got here, cats and dogs. I had really no choice but to leave, under my umbrella that really doesn't do much, and go find someplace for lunch. I went to Wagamama, a place I'd seen in my guidebook. I had pumpkin, eggplant and aubergine breaded in panko breadcrumbs and fried, covered in a great mild curry sauce with a side salad with red pickles and to drink I had what they call raw juice, a mixture of carrot, cucumber, tomato, orange and apple juices. Delicious. Expensive. But I'm on vacation.
I picked up my photos, and was really happy with the results. I think I got some great ones. Almost so much that it makes me want to take up amateur photography again. I haven't since I had the class in high school but I forgot how satisfying it is. I probably won't go the whole hog and build a darkroom, but the act of taking interesting pictures is really rewarding.
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