On the Bottom Half

Sydney

What better place to meet up with one's parents than in Sydney, Australia?

It seems such a cosmic convergence to think of the distances that were travelled from such disparate places for us to meet up on 2 April. They over the whole expanse of the Pacific and I from Melbourne. So many things had to work for that, or any, meeting to happen: the thousands of moving parts on the 747 had to run flawlessly for 13 hours, likewise for the A320 from Melbourne; vehicles and people all had to work and function in so many places; I liken it to a computer finding a single byte of information in a sea of billions of other bytes knowing just where to look. Kind of an ignoring of all other things around to locate the one important bit. Hmmm, I guess that doesn't really communicate well...


Anyway, I got to Sydney a day before my parents arrived because Sydney is lovely city. I met up with an Indian-Canadian fella and we hung out for the day after I found out that he'd not seen the Opera House yet. He'd been in the city for a week already and I simply couldn't let him leave without seeing it. The Opera house is truly one of the world's most beautiful buildings. It just so happened that the weekend of 2-3 April was the Sydney Indian festival, so while I played tour guide to downtown Sydney, he played tour guide to Indian culture. It was an interesting insight into the culture - though it seemed funny to get an Indian culture intro from an Indian-Canadian while in Australia. Anyway, we toured the highlights of Sydney: Darling Harbour, the Opera House, the city... then we stayed up late and went to a pub called Minus 5, which I've mentioned before. The whole concept is sponsored by the Absolut vodka people, so it's a big promotional woo-haa, but it's fun anyway. That's my glass in the picture and it's completely ice. As is the bar it's sitting on, the walls beyond, and pretty well everything else. Kinda made it feel a bit like home, really ;-)

Next up was the climatic meeting with my parents. I couldn't really sleep at all that night, so I was ready to go by about 0300. And, since I was going to an airport, my favourite place in the world, I was not at all averse to getting there very early.

So, I caught the 0700 airport shuttle and started the waiting game. I couldn't remember exactly what flight number there's was, so I stood expectantly for a couple of the wrong flights before I realised that the one they were on was two hours delayed leaving Los Angeles. Then, finally, they rounded the corner from customs/quarantine and what a rush!!

We quickly set about finding coffees and places to sit outside in the sunshine while we caught up, then beelined to the Sydney Aquarium after checking into the hotel. While there, we saw Nemo and all his friends in their indoor-aquarium-reef glory. I thought of no one else but R-man for the entire time.

After that, we then wandered the city and went to bed. The next day was an early rise to wander the shops and see world-famous sites - the Harbour Bridge and the Opera house. The Opera House is made of thousands of tiles and the story goes that the sweeping roof-shapes are made to resemble orange pieces. I originally thought maybe shells or sails, but it's oranges. Which reminds me of this quote from A Brief History of Time, paraphrased thus: "At a public physics lecture, an old lady listened to a scientist presenting on current ideas about cosmology and the universe. 'What you have told us is rubbish,' she said. 'The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortise.' The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, 'What is the tortise standing on?' - 'You're very clever young man, very clever,' said the old lady. 'But it's turtles all the way down.' "

Don't know where that came from but something about perception and opinion and other stuff have coloured it I think. Anyway, there's a wonderful spot to pose for a picture at the base of the Opera House that frames couples perfectly under the Harbour Bridge. Mom and Bob posed and I took the snap. After this, we took a nighttime harbour cruise to see the lights, then took off back to the hotel because everyone was getting tired after all that travelling. The next day we picked up the motor home and that brings me to a close for this blog because the next picture features cheap poo for you and you've already seen it!

posted by Kyle @ 04:28