Sydney for the weekend

See, now that I LIVE in Australia, I can do things like go to Sydney for the weekend.

In fact, I may do it so much that it becomes rote, mundane, boring even. But it's not like that yet. I got to go to Sydney for the weekend man! Without enduring hours on a jet, suffering from jet lag, or shelling out thousands of dollars. Oh wait, I get to do that to go home. In the other hemisphere. I seem to be obsessed with that fact lately - that I live in a different hemisphere. All of a sudden the $700 plane tickets to get from Atlanta to CA seem shockingly reasonable. But I digress...

I met my friend Jim (from UCSD) in Sydney for the weekend. The ya-ya girls are coming here for Christmas and New Year's and our task for the weekend was to scope out Sydney Harbour for potential New Year's Eve spot. We stayed at my friend Jennie's place in Clovelly - an eastern suburb, near all the eastern beaches. All weekend I was having major orientation issues - the ocean is on the wrong side man! I kept thinking north was south and vice versa, and you couldn't pay me to correctly tell you where east was. But whatever, I wasn't orienteering, I was enjoying being near the beach.

This is me with Bondi in the background. Jim and I walked from Clovelly to Bondi on Saturday - about 6 miles round trip. It was a gorgeous day and the "Sculptures by the Sea" exhibit was on, a large public sculpture exhibit. By the Sea. I know it's hard to discern what it actually was from the name.






There were some very cool sculptures. My favorite was the following - from one direction it was













From the other direction it was














Some of my other favorites were the melting ice cream truck


and the silhouetted women


Saturday evening Jim and I went to a show at the Opera House - a very weird drama called "Hospital" - an dance performance/play written by a Norwegian about 3 women, speaking in a nonsense language based on Icelandic, who were going crazy in a deserted military hospital. I'm sure it had deeper meaning than that, but I couldn't get it.
http://www.jskompani.no/pages/productions/the_hospital.html
I just read a bit more about it, and I got none of that from the show. I think I'm too literal. Or I could have used the Cliff Notes.

We had dinner at the cafe and discovered that there is a New Year's Eve concert and gala that we have convinced the ya-yas to go to - so we'll be spending New Year's in the Opera House with a view of the bridge for the fireworks. YAY!