Sydney, Day Two: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaart

Yo, a little behind on my blogging. My cousin, who's place I'm staying in is the only person on EARTH without an internet connection at home. Compelling me to spend many a pleasant hour in this Smelly Nerd Basement. It is, however, a mighty cheap Internerd Cafe, if you can't stand the stench :-)

Wednesday, my first full day in Sydney, I decided to spend looking at aaaaaaaaaart. First, of course, I had to catch the tram. Sydneysiders will insist that it's a "light rail vehicle". Bollocks, it's a tram. If I took of them light rail vehicles and plonked it down on Bourke Street, no one would bat an eyelid! The only difference being for the most part it travels on dedicated tracks.

And passes right across the top of Annandale where I'm staying! Cool. Another notable difference - they have conductors still.

For some reason, my usually infallible sense of direction is completely broken here. I step out the front door and I'm completely disorientated. Can't tell if I have to go left or right! This Wednesday morning I went left, thought better of it, went right, changed my mind again, and discovered that left was indeed the correct direction. The barely adequate maps I have probably aren't helping, but then I sometimes can't tell which way up I should be holding them. More on this later...

Trammed it into Central (do I sound like a local yet?) and trained to Circular Quay. Over to one side of said Quay is the Museum of Contemporary Aaaaaaaart. They had two really interesting exhibitions on, and a couple of passable ones... The first was some amazing work by a Pakistani, now living in New York, called Shahzia Sikander, who did some amazing things with traditional miniatures. Wasn't so fond of her larger works, but the little paintings and the pencil drawings were really brilliant. A kind of twenty first century spin on a traditional medium, with lots of dancers mixed with Kalashnikov's and soccer balls etc.

Upstairs was a big collection of works by an American I'd also never heard of. Chap called Tim Hawkinson. His most interesting stuff was a series of kinetic sculptures, which is a hard thing to get right. The largest was a motion detector controlled squid thing which dripped water into various buckets in a random yet rhythmic way. Was also very impressed with a Klien bottle he'd woven as a basket, then hung from the ceiling on a mount that turned it slowly in two directions. Like a rendering of something on a PC screen, summoned into Real Life.

Caught the ferry out Cremoine (spellin'?), Mosman way. Man, I could smell the money again. As usual, didn't actually get off the ferry.

Wandered over to the Aaaaaaaaaaaart Gallery of NSW, which is in a park sort of to the south east of the Opera House. I actually can't remember too much of what I saw there - I've seen most of their collection before, except the bits they rotate every now and again. They did have a new and recent Anselm Kiefer, a major work which looked like it weighted about five tons - and this was a painting, mind you. Otherwise... Oh, they had a large collection of early 20th century portraits by a German photographer who's name escapes me. They were quite touching.

Lets see, what did I get up to then? Ah yes... A trip to the unlikely named Strawberry Hills Hotel. In the suburb of... Strawberry hills. To meet up with some friends of mine. Well, in actual fact, I'd only met two of the five folks in Real Life, the other two I knew by reputation... Or, possibly, from a mailing list associated with a long-disbanded... band...

TISM.

Anyway, they led me astray. It started with the first round - I figured, hey, I should have a couple of drinks, just to be friendly. First I had to ask what I should be ordering - didn't want to look like a right tourist and ask for "three pots" did I? So I ordered three "schooners" of... Carlton Draught... WTF???

We talked a lot of crap, and somehow they made me drink at least one more beer... and two Tequilas... and most of a Margaretta... I'm not equipped for this sort of thing! I'm so out of practice it ain't funny!!! We talked about good places to see bands in Sydney, which I might actually chase up over the weekend...

Anyway, after about five drinks, a chicken schnitzel, I bailed and attempted to find my way home. Walked under Central station, found my way to the bus stop...

Now, usually I have to catch the 433, except that after a certain time at night it becomes the 432. For some reason at 11PM, a little the worse for Victorian Beer and Mexican Firewater, I got on the 431. It terminated close to were I needed to be (Glebe point rather than Annandale), and thankfully it was only a pleasant walk across a park back to Annandale... Aside from the Dog Poo incident... Anyway, I spent Thursday with a mild hangover, but that's another story...

Sydney, Day Three: Meeting the Cousin

Weirdly, I'd been staying in cousin Tess's house for two days without actually meeting Tess - how does that work??? Anyway, whilst blundering about the kitchen looking for some breakfast (or for some way to revoke the drinking of Tequila the night before!) Tess appeared in person! Cool. We chatted, she went off to uni, and we made plans to have dinner that evening.

I needed some bacon and some Chai. Have I mentioned how hard it is to get Chai in this town??? I was chatting to a waitress in a cafe at Circular Quay, and she said they didn't serve it because the tourist's didn't know what it was! I said, I'm a tourist! And she warned that it was fattening... Well, the horse has bolted on that one... :-)

I knew there were some funky cafes on Glebe Point Road (for you Melbournites, think of Brunswick Street, kinda) so I hopped on the bus there. Ended up in a place on a corner called Badde Manor... Which had ace Chai (yay!) but no bacon (boo!)... Turns out later it was vegetarian, which I didn't realise :-)

Then I had to get to Ultimo to have lunch with a mate called Tim. I studied the map for a while, and decided that Harris Street in Ultimo was parallel to Glebe Point Road... But I couldn't for the life of me judge the actual distance... So I asked the lady behind the counter, who told me it was maybe ten minutes walk. Cool. So I hopped on my legs, and took the back streets. Past the church of Scientology!

Took me less than ten minutes, I was well early, so I peeked in the door of the Powerhouse museum. Sounded like there wasn't much on there that was of interest to me...

Met with Tim at a cafe near the ABC centre, a cafe which had even better chai than the Glebe place! Woo-yay, two chai's in about an hour, it never rains but it pours. Had a great old chat with Tim, a gnarly activist I know from my Jamming days. He has some great ideas.

Wandered over to the Chinese Garden, which was actually surprisingly good, and surprisingly peaceful considering it's slap bang in the middle of a really busy part of Sydney. They had these HUUUUUUUUUGE carp, about 70 centimeters long, some of them, bigger than Milkshake the Cat I recon...

Then I wandered over to the Maritime Museum. It was actually getting late in the afternoon - I didn't get my butt out of bed till quite late and more or less missed the morning. The museum itself isn't very exciting, but moored just outside it has two old vessels - the destroyer HMAS Vampire and the submarine HMAS Onslow, a submarine - both of which you can go on.

And both of which are really, really freaky. I recommend 'em. The sub one has to get into via the forward torpedo loading door, climbing backwards down some steep stairs. The whole thing is cramped as hell - I could bang my head in every room. There is one corridor running the length of the ship, and bunks jammed in every conceivable location. Short bunks, I'd have not been able to stretch out in some of them. Even the officers room was tiny and had three bunks crammed into it... The kitchen must have been a nightmare, a grill, a stove, a deep fryer and a bench all in a room the size of... well, smaller than my kitchen in my my one bedroom flat. The biggest compartment in the whole place contained the engines, two HUGE diesels which must have been at least four to five metres longs. The place still smelt of oil... Scary...

Then I faffed about trying to catch the ferry back to Circular Quay. I was convinced it docked on the Museum side, but couldn't find were. Then I was given some misguided directions by someone, and ended up walking all over Prymont Bay, first looking for the terminal then looking for somewhere to get a snack! It's all upmarket bars and shit there... Damn it. Anyway, made the ferry, decided against taking a bus up the completely chokers George Street, and end up catching the train to central and the tram back to Rozelle Bay. Did I mention that all the "light rail" stops say "Tram Stop"? They're in a deluded state :-)

So I went on a tram, a train, a bus, a ferry, a destroyer and a submarine this particular Thursday! To top this I'll have to go on a, I don't know, Monorail :-)

Tess made us dinner which was ace, and I tried to explain to her how the internet works. Then I had to crash - this holiday business is tiring :-)

Dear Sydney

Dear Sydney,

Please regularise your road system. It is a complete mess. I've never seen so many roads so tangled up and so poorly laid out. I've looked at a map, it looked like an upended bowl of spaghetti! Roads everywhere, connecting at all sorts of random angles. Would it be too hard to organise them all into some kind of grid?

And what is up with all these tiny one-way streets, or lanes that look like a nice place for a quiet cafe but are in fact main thoroughfares??? I've seen buses on roads I wouldn't drive a Mini down.

Not to mention all these hills! The bus I was on the other day went down a hill I couldn't see the bottom of! No bus has brakes that good!!!

And how can any city possibly need so many bays and inlets??? Everywhere I go, I keep almost falling in the ocean!

So, what I'd like to see is the following:
1. Bulldoze the whole lot. Start with that big thingy that looks like my nose out there on the point.
2. Flatten all the hills, and push the debris into the extraneous bits of ocean so the whole place is one continuous land area
3. Level the whole place till it's no more than three metres above sea level
4. Get out a ruler and lay out a flippin' road grid pattern!

No more of these roads which split into two or three! No more weird one-way streets! Or houses build on enormous piles of rock! No more trams which disappear into tunnels or huge cuts into piles of rock! No more random ocean placement! Just a lovely, regular north-south grid that I won't get lost on.

Thank you.

Coathanger

Coathanger, long view:

Welcome our Insect Overlords

I for one welcome our insect overlords...