The most wonderful time of the year!

Was at the mall earlier. So weird hearing Christmas songs while wearing a tank top and shorts.

Random thought after spending several hours wandering through the stores around downtown Sydney:
I wish I liked clothing more and books less. Then (obviously) I'd be better dressed. And also, carrying the fruits of a shopping expedition would be easier on my shoulders.

Seriously, though, most of the time I go into a clothing store, I am just overwhelmed with choices and can't be bothered to dig through and try to find something I might like. In a bookstore, though, it's just the opposite. The bigger and more cluttered, the better. I'll spend forever and have a fabulous time looking through random titles. I'm a nerd. Who knew?

Say yes to life

I am watching "Yes Man" currently with flatmate Steve. Jim Carrey jst uttered the titular (very deep) quotation.

I saw a guy wearing a Phillies hat on Hall Street in Bondi today! He was probably drunk, definitely creeped out when I said "Hey, nice hat" upon passing him. Oh well!

Anyway, I've kind of buried the lead here because the real story is that I bought a car today! I now own this:


Awesome. Now that the quest for a car is (at last!) at an end, I am searching for a name for this vehicle. Consider the forum open for suggestions.

Happy almost Thanksgiving!!

Weird story

Thought I would share this, but I am a terrible blogger who can't figure out how to link. Here's the story from a paper in Perth:

"AUSTRALIAN twin sisters have been shot at a Colorado shooting range in a bizarre incident that has left one dead and the other critically wounded.

The 29-year-old siblings were simultaneously shot in the head at around 2.50pm local time on Monday at the Cherry Creek State Park shooting range southeast of Denver, the Denver Post reported today.

Reports suggest a suicide pact is suspected but police have not said whether the shooting was accidental or intentional.

One sister was pronounced dead at the scene and the other was taken to a local hospital where she underwent surgery and remained in a critical condition.

Arapahoe County Sheriff's Captain Louie Perea said the women were Australian and were not being named pending the notification of family members.

The Denver Post reported that their visas indicated one sister arrived in Colorado on September 7 and the other on August 19, with one scheduled to fly back to Australia on Wednesday.

Captain Louie Perea said the pair were traveling on cultural exchange visas.

Surveillance videos did not show the incident itself but suggested that there was no third party involved in the double-shooting, KDVR-TV said.

The owner of the shooting range, Doug Hamilton, told The Denver Post the women were shot almost simultaneously, adding they had appeared normal before the shooting.

"The ladies hit the pavement virtually at the same time," Mr Hamilton said.

"They were definitely normal," he said. "We are always aware and watching for signs. There was absolutely no indication."

Since I mentioned Katy and Ross, I thought it would be a treat to include some photos from our time staying with them. Our last night we made breakfast-for-dinner, and a Tim-Tam/banana parfait creation. Yummmmerz.



Also, would you believe these two lovely creatures (below) are 17? I'm getting old.

Midweek update

God, my feet are tired. I kind of hate my schedule because it ensures that whenever I have free time, I want to spend it off my feet, doing as little as possible and not dealing with people. Not exactly the key to a productive social or cultural life. Well, at the moment I am relaxing at a cafe on Pitt street, where I had to buy a diet Coke (which was tiny but will surely cost at least $3) for the privilege of using their wireless. Whatevs, well worth it. I like sitting in these little cafes and listening to the staff and the other patrons chatter, and it always smells good. I find I have to frequent a few different places, though, because I always buy only enough to not feel bad, and therefore am not exactly a huge source of revenue for these places.

ANYWAY. Not too much has been going on. Got to meet up with friends and best Couch Surfers ever Katy and Ross on Tuesday night, which was awesome! I paid the price yesterday, though, for only having gotten 4 hours of sleep. Hopefully will be meeting up with them again on Saturday at Bronte Beach. And my Dashboard tells me it will be nice weather, too-- hooray! It's lovely out today, though I don't have time to go home to the beach today since I just went to Redfern to (drumroll please)..... look at a car! That's right, I am currently investigating the possibility of buying a used car to road trip around this beautiful country. It's kind of cool, since there are so many backpackers here, there is always someone looking to sell off the station wagon or campervan they just used to drive to Cairns or to wherever, and they'll throw in their tents and maps and all the accoutrements as well. I am wary of getting shysted, though. And I know nothing about cars. All in all, a daunting prospect.

More later kids.
XOXO

PS Happy birthday (from the future) to my darling younger brother and sister!!

Polling for opinions...

"My friend back home in Canada just won the lottery and bought me an around-the-world plane ticket. Tonight is going to be my last shift."
--Co-worker's alibi yesterday, upon quitting. I find this, to put it mildly, a tad dubious. Thoughts?

Countdown: 12 days

Hello all! The titular countdown is to my birthday.... but is probably unnecessary because I imagine all of my friends have his/her own "Margaret's b-day" countdown, starting November 22 of every year.

Anyway. As always, I have much to say and not enough time to catch up on everything. I've included some random photos, too, so things don't get too dry. So, for the majority of my days I am occupied with work, but I try to make the most of downtime/days off. This includes exploring various aspects of Sydney life including the abundance of coffee shops, which they are obsessed with. Despite not drinking coffee, I usually manage to justify my presence in these establishments with skim hot chocolate and some kind of sugary creation. I have also been browsing at the various markets that pop up around the city on a weekly basis, and while I haven't bought much, I have come to a few realizations:
1. Most of this crap is over-priced and sells because people are of the mindset that markets are cheap and cool. And then you get home and it breaks and you realize it wasn't a bargain at all.
2. Chicks love markets. I guess this is true for shopping establishments everywhere, but it was especially apparent at this cool little market I went to in Paddington two weeks ago. It's set up inside a bar. All the tables and stuff are filled with people selling jewelry, clothes, purses, etc; it was a really cool set-up overall. The best part, though, was that the bar itself was still serving so you could see this whole congregation of bored boyfriends commiserating over a beer and wondering when their birds would be done. I LOL'd.

Another observation/rant is that EVERYONE who works in hospitality smokes. This makes things awkward for myself, a non-smoker, at my restaurant job, for the following reasons:
1. When asked to light the candles on the tables before dinner service, it was really embarrassing to tell my manager I don't know how to use a lighter.
2. I think it's massively unfair that smokers--and this is not just limited to hospitality jobs--are allowed to just go off, stand outside and smoke in the middle of a shift. First of all, is the addiction really so intense that you can't get through a six-hour shift without a fag? Second of all, when was it universally decided that tobacco is a permissible excuse to leave work for ten minutes? Would I be allowed to just be like, "I'm going for a Kit-Kat, be back in a few." I doubt it. What these breaks of theirs really mean is that they are being paid to smoke! We get the same hourly rate, and I am not skipping out everyone 90 minutes or so to smoke. I'm getting ripped off.
(I also feel ripped off in that the past 2 Saturday night shifts I have worked, I've gotten $5 and $2, respectively. Come ON Sydney diners!)

To the right here, surfer-in-training.
Oh-- one further note. I think I have kicked my Tim-Tam addiction for the time being. This has been accomplished by refusing to buy them or keep them in the house. I crumble in the face of Tim-Temptation (hahaha!), so it's been avoided altogether. The bad news is that I have picked up a new addiction to caramel slices, which are probably even worse for me. At this rate, I will be arriving home tipping the scales around 200 pounds. Awesome. Time to go for a LONG run.

Love and sunshine, Gossip Girl

Random thought

It is really disheartening to watch current 30 Rock at the same time as season 1 30 Rock. It used to be so much better!

I love Bondi Beach.
That is all.

Random stuff

Hello my unknown audience!

I must begin by admitting I am slightly discouraged by the progress of my blog. I feel like I just don't have enough time to keep up with it as much as I imagined doing. Also--perhaps--I am being lazy about it and not being proactive enough. I'm going to try to be better. I just had a caramel slice before opening up this page, so hopefully some kind of Pavlovian conditioning will take effect wherein I feel compelled to blog immediately after eating sugary foods. Then the posts will be rampant!

ANYWAY. I am currently sitting in a little cafe in the Surry Hills neighborhood, which is one of my favorite. "Hills" is not a misnomer, though, and my already over-used legs took a beating on the way here. I finished work at my own cafe just an hour or so ago, and am relaxing before going in to the restaurant to work the dinner shift. Another day, another dollar. (An Australian one, which grows ever more powerful while the US prints up a billion new dollars. Yikes.)

Yesterday was Melbourne Cup Day, which is basically Kentucky Derby times ten. It's a horse race in Melbourne; and Victoria gets the day off as a public holiday. In Sydney we do not, but everyone leaves work around one and gets pissed while watching the horsies and betting on them. It's seriously a HUGE deal-- every bar and restaurant in the city had been advertising their Melbourne Cup Package since I arrived in September, and yesterday there were balloons and decorations on every storefront I passed. At the coffee shop in the morning, everyone who came in talked about where they were going to watch the race, what horses they were betting on, etc. For the race itself, we had a function of 160 people come into the restaurant and drink for 5 hours. The ladies were all wearing fancy hats, and some of the men as well. The women seemed to all relish the opportunity to get all gussied up, whereas the male camp seemed to be divided between the traditional "gentleman" look (which was lovely and Mad Men-esque with fedoras and three-piece suits) and the outrageous (coonskin caps, bight turquoise brocade silk jackets). They were a nice enough bunch but obviously it's not the most fun to serve alcohol to a bunch of drunk people. Even less fun was telling them they had to leave and could not have any more wine when 5:00 FINALLY rolled around. C'est la vie.

Finally, I just want to share the book I finished a few weeks ago. It's an Australian book, and actually takes place in Melbourne. I loved it so much I wish I could go back to the time before I had started it just so I could read it again for the first time. But I'm a freak. It's called "The Slap" by Christos Tsiolkas and I encourage anyone who's interested to try and track it down.

Thanks for slogging through a picture-less blog post. I hope it wasn't too painful. Hope to write again soon!