What better way to get reacquainted with Sydney than to do a bit of geocaching around the CBD! On my first morning back in Australia Jc & I aimed for 6 caches – but found only 3 due to matters mostly out of our control. Many of the caches were themed on the movie “The Matrix” – due to it being filmed in Sydney: a city generally unidentifiable to Americans – and yet so American.

Some highlights of the caching in the sun…

sydney geocaching

And ever so slightly – the stats go up…

What are the odds!?

We’ll miss Sydney.  It was a great home for us for a couple of years.  I know I for one will miss:

• Laughing at snowed in nothern hemisphere dwellers in February, while enjoying week after week of +25C sunny weather
• “Aussie burgers”, meat pies and sausage rolls
• Living near countless beaches – even though we rarely exploited them!
• Big Brother, Kochie and Mel
  
• Saturday morning Japanese classes at Sydney Uni
• Working in a 2 (well now 3 or 4) man office
• Harbour ferry rides… *sigh*
• Monthly fireworks and festivals
• Surry Hills and its amazing selection of restaurants within walking distance of our apartment
• Our rooftop pool and BBQ area – complete with Sydney skyline views

What I won’t miss are:

• Deadly snakes and spiders
• The isolation of being so far from loved ones
• Overpriced everything ($3 for a canned soft drink – get real!)
• Crappy Internet service providers
• Rowdy drunkards parading down our street at 2AM on a Wednesday night

We tried to make the most of our remaining time in Australia once we knew we were on the way out, but now it seems there was never enough time to cross everything off that “to do” list.  Now how am I ever supposed to go streaking at a cricket match…

There’s pictures of the move if you want to dwell on it any longer.  I’m happy to move on though.

Hey Tokyo – we’re back!

Still – you gotta wonder – how good could these new arrivals be if they’re giving them out for free?

When I walk, I prefer to walk through this nearby park. Makiko prefers the noise and pollution of the main streets. Why would anyone prefer that to the glorious nature of a park? Well – it’s the birds. Not just a few birds – hundreds of birds. The birds flock here for one main reason:

The Bird Man. This hunched over old man shows up almost every afternoon with bags upon bags of stale bread.

The birds then leave drops upon drops of fresh white turd.

Polluted Street vs. Poopy Park … Which would you choose?

For now, let’s get back to the insanity.

Like pizza? Like meat pies? Ever wish you could eat them both at the same time? Thanks to Domino’s Australia – now you can!

Introducing the meat pie pizza!!!

Sweet! This is too good to be true. Two of my favorite junk foods have been fuzed together. This is indeed a historic event in my junk food filled life.

While Murf was visiting last month, we decided to throw caution into the wind and order ourselves one. Being the bachelors that we were (Makiko was in Japan for work for a couple weeks) it seemed like the ultimate bachelor chow.

So, what’s in the box with the dots?

It’s…

… what the.

Ok, it got a bit messed about en route – but perhaps it tastes better than it looks. Needless to say I was a bit disappointed. For some reason, I expected it to have more of a potato topping to it, or at least a pie top that fit it.

It’s basically a pizza with meat, peas and carrots filling, a square pie crust thrown on top, and some ketchup splattered about.

Let’s give it a closer look…

Tempting. Now for the taste test. Murf’s the first victim…

In the pie hole!

Mmmmm…

Now if that doesn’t make you salivate – nothing will.

Actually, it was pretty good. The pie crust topping gives it that extra bit of substance that Domino’s pizza is typically lacking.

I’m not saying I’d order it again. It was fun for the novelty – let’s just leave it at that.

Those wacky Aussies…

No – it’s Aussie barefoot season! Yes, every year around this time – hot, redneck Australians walk the city streets in search of ways of cooling down. Unfortunately, this is what a number of them resort to:

Even after a year and a half here, I still find this disgusting. Buy a pair of sandals, loser.

I woke up early and sat down in front of my PC to check my e-mail. As I picked up my headphones I noticed there was a single strand of spider web attached to them. Now, while normally this wouldn’t be that alarming – my mind began to race. This strand of web was unlike any I had seen before. It was thick and sticky. So thick in fact that you could see how its gooey-ness attached itself to my PC case. “OMG… Where did this come from??”, I thought. Panic ensued. I checked all around my PC, behind the filing cabinet, under the desk, under the chair… nothing. Great – well – I figured he’d turn up eventually if he was still around.

Indeed he did. When I went to wake up Makiko, as her eyes just opened for the day she said “What’s that?!?” as she stared up at the corner of our room near the ceiling. Lo and behold – there he was…

If you don’t think that shot’s impressive (and you’re brave) – read on for a closeup and all the gory details…

Now that is the ugliest spider I’ve ever seen outside of a pet store or zoo for that matter.

If I wasn’t a bit panicked already – I definitely was now. “What the hell do we do now? Is it poisonous? How do we get it out of here? Ahhh!!!!” … Oh what wimpy immigrants we are.

I wanted to just throw something at it – ambitiously thinking I would make a deadly blow. Makiko didn’t buy it. She wanted to catch it in a bag. I didn’t buy it. We eventually decided to move all the stuff off her dresser and jab it with this bubble wrapped curtain rod we had sitting around. It took me a few minutes to gather up enough courage, but eventually I executed on our plan…

I jabbed him up against the corner – a couple of legs fell off, and he fell off the wall onto the dresser – good thing we moved that stuff! He was still limping around a bit, so I smacked him with the rod. Still moving – WTF! So I smacked him again. Dead. Hooray! I then ran around the apartment screaming like a little school girl. I didn’t care – man that was scary.

So now we had dead spider guts and legs lying on our bedroom carpet and furniture. Great! I ended up picking it all up with some plastic bags (using them as gloves). You wouldn’t believe how hard the legs felt through the bags. They were like little sticks – real solid.

In the aftermath – I did some research. Even though the bugger looked pretty scary – he wasn’t one of those spiders you really have to be afraid of. It was a brown Huntsman spider. A relatively harmless spider that actually eats all the bad poisonous spiders.

Huh – cool. Maybe we should’ve kept Ol’ Hairy Legs around after all.

Check out one of their many takes, in which some poor saps have to scrape gum and crap off the sidewalk as they rush to keep up with the model:

Oh the glamour of the film industry! She seems to have it pretty easy at least:

The film crew actually had a whole army of models just sitting around on standby. There was about 10 I’d say – all of which were white skinned and anorexicly thin. I almost felt sorry for them. Almost. They were just sitting around drinking coffee, listening to their iPods and keeping out of the sun – waiting for something to happen. Getting paid no doubt. Paid to sit there and look pretty.

Makes you wonder what all these people do when they get older, fatter and balder like the rest of us. Surely they’ve got a backup plan for their looks…

None the less – I like basketball. I understand basketball. I can appreciate basketball. So, I wanted to see the local league first hand.

I bought us a couple of tickets online for the Sydney Kings vs. the Wollongong Hawks at the Sydney Entertainment Centre. At $60 a piece, it was a lot more expensive than a movie, but still cheaper than your North American equivalent. We had awesome seats – near center court, four rows back! I wouldn’t dream of buying such tickets in the States.

It was a good game, and I took lots of pictures, as well as a few videos. Experience the game for yourself…

The pre-game show:

The game:

The amazingly choreographed half-time show:

The ever more entertaining Firepower Dancers:

Sweet… I wanna go again!

Brought my camera along for our trip in hopes of snapping that “Look at me on Christmas day at the beach” photo that every Canadian dreams of. Problem was, my camera battery was spent. Doh! Not again. Ah well – who needs real photos nowadays? I can always photoshop something that captures the moment:

There we go – and no one’s the wiser (What do you mean that’s not my chest hair? Of course it is…). The hats are a dead giveaway that it really is in fact Christmas day. In all honesty, we weren’t wearing Santa hats though. Nor were we lounging around in our swimming trunks. Plenty were though, and it was quite the sight.

So, Christmas dinner? A turkey and all the fixings? No sir – not this year. There’s no point in cooking a massive bird that neither of us are that crazy about. I decided this year, we should do Christmas dinner in true traditional Japanese fashion: bucket o’ chicken. Yes, for generations, Japanese salarymen have been lining up at KFC on Christmas day to take home their hungry families a bucket of chicken. I kid you not – it’s even on Wikipedia:

KFC is so prevalent in Japan that many Japanese unknowingly consider it to be a Japanese Company. On Christmas day many families (who have made reservations weeks in advance), have their traditional Christmas dinner at KFC.

And if it’s on Wikipedia – you know it must be true. Those paying attention may even remember this picture from 2003.

So, we strolled over to the closest KFC to our apartment. Luckily it was open. No lineups or pre-ordering necessary – thank god. Walking into KFC for Christmas dinner, we probably looked like sad cases to the untrained Australian eye – but we knew fully what we were doing on Christmas day – and we liked it that way. Now, to get a whole bucket of chicken is a bit trickier when you’re buying dinner for just two. Apparently you need to get at least 15 pieces of chicken to get that infamous cardboard bucket. The effect gets a bit lost, but we opted for the 10 piece box instead:

After all, we wouldn’t want to be eating KFC until New Years…

So, bottom line: Christmas in the sun with fried chicken and potato salad. Not too shabby. We could get used to this.