Working girl...

Am now in the full swing of working life here in Sydney. Last week Danielle and I moved into Steve's apartment in Mosman - a rather well-to-do suburb North of Sydney.

Working full-time five days a week has curbed our drinking and socialising - particularly as we are now two short bus rides from our friends in Manly. This is excellent for our waistlines and wallets on the one hand: on the other, we now enjoy buying cappucino's and flat whites, posh salads and pastas for lunch and shopping in our lunch hour.

I now want to have posh working outfits, iPods, a laptop, nice phone and all the trappings of working in the city. Sadly, the pay is pretty crud once the high taxation has been ripped from my weekly salary.

Kindly, Mr Steven Lewis (pictured above with Danielle and me) has allowed us to continue to rent his son's bedroom from him now that he has return from Thailand. We were delighted to accept until we discovered that the cockroaches we kept encountering in his flat were not just because of Sydney's humid climate and warmth. Oh no. He has been breeding them so his son can feed them to the bearded dragon lizard (Wesley) and it's wild and vicious friend the blue-tongued lizard (Bluey). Nice.

Thankfully, we have today been informed that the said cockroaches have been carpet bombed with insect killer and I expect a veritable graveyard of corpses upon my return home this evening.







Danielle and I managed to get to our Manly Wednesday night haunt last week - The Steyne. Karaoke and great music afterwards. There is always a good crowd there of serious and not-so-serious karaoke singers. A group of us from the hostel sang - very badly - last week. We were missing Jose though - our Chilean friend who sings Ricky Martin fantastically - who has moved on now.

During the day we were taken for our first work meal. Hannanprint - the printers for the magazines - took us to Blackbird Cafe at Cockle Bay Wharf (left) for a slap-up meal.

On Friday night we went for after-work drinks with the team from Mag Ops. Everyone migrates to The Shelbourne pub across the road from our office and we got to know the imaging guys and everyone from the team a little better. We then gorged on Subway before attempting to go to Manly.


Slightly tipsy, we could only find the bus to Mosman and jumped on that. By the time we got there we were sleepy and decided to go back to the apartment. Once there we realised we were way too tired to make it and ended up falling asleep on the sofa around 10pm. Unfortunately for Brett, a chap we know, he was on his way to visit and was trying to get to us before we headed to bed. He got a speeding ticket, 3 points on his licence, a $230 fine and then discovered I was not answering my phone because I had already fallen asleep. Whoops!


On Saturday, Danielle headed for her friend's 21st birthday while I returned to Manly for a toga party in honour of our friend John leaving. We all partied on the top floor of the hostel and on the balcony - dancing to iPod tunes and generally having a good natter and drink.

This week, we had our work Christmas party - about 35 of us from Magazine and Newspaper operations (the pre-printing bit) at La Cita. The bar at King's Wharf put on a salsa class and we had top quality canapes (lamb cutlets, ribs, chicken thighs, nachos and so on) and sangria with our new colleagues. It was all good fun but luckily we kept ourselves respectable - in fact far more respectable than our bosses...



We are hoping to return to Manly (above) and find somewhere to live there but it is very difficult at this time of year. Many places are let out at high prices to holiday makers and longer term accommodation is for 6 months minimum lease. The penalties for breaking leases are very high here and so we are a bit stumped.

We will stay at Steve's until next week when his mum comes to visit. Danielle will leave for her 5* apartment which her dad is renting for Christmas and New Year for her, her sisters and him. Looks like I will be back at the hostel. Not looking forward to that - mainly because I have accumulated a massive amount of stuff. It all piles up when you are buying things like washing powder and huge economy bottles of shampoo...

The weather here has been crazy. On Monday it was very hot and humid and by mid-afternoon it had clouded over in a dramatic fashion. Here on level 22 of Darling Park (three grey towers right of centre - below), we were watching the storm coming towards Sydney from the west. Forked lightning was soon piercing the grey day. It was spectacular.

Tuesday was then miserable and grey. It was raining and only about 22C - we felt very Christmassy because bright sunshine and Jingle Bells seems like an odd mix to us Brits. Then yesterday, Wednesday, was warm and cloudy but overcast, and today is 35C and sunny. Tomorrow, rain is forecast with temperatures only at 20C. Chilly! So although we're hoping for the beach this weekend (we haven't been since we started work) - it may be dvd's on the sofa again...