Christmas Day + New Years Eve

Firstly, apologise for the lacklustre updating of this 'ere 

blog, but in my defence sleeping is quite time consuming and therefore being awake is usually spent at work or doing anything but this 'ere blog.

Anyways, I'm here now, your here now, it’s all good. So, Christmas day, it was grand ta, Helena, Andy and I spent it all at Bondi Beach.  A mate of Andy's had brought him a ticket to an event being held at the beach called 'Sunburnt Christmas', Helena and I had heard about the event from being in the Hostel as they had advertisement up whilst we were there in October and we both agreed to attend, in fact, my Christmas present to Helena was the ticket in.
The big day came and the, to be fair, the weather looked a bit dubious with some grey clouds visible in the sky but fortunately nothing came of it and instead it turned out to be a ridiculously hot day - sweet.

The event itself was a bit of a letdown, it was situated in a pavilion a good 50 yards back across a road from the beach, and although we arrived there at about 12.30 (it opened at 12) the queue to get in gave the even more credit than it was due - don’t get me wrong the music inside was right up my street but the fact that drinks were pushing the $10 mark for a can the same size as a coke can back home it was pretty unreasonable especially considering that about 99% of the people there were backpackers and could in no way afford to spend that much, so, instead, for the couple of hours lock in we had to spend before we were eventually allowed to leave at 3 it was a mass of rowdy Irish and tan-lined English sweating there tits off and perving over a fine selection of girls which now gives me comfort that I will now never need to go to a Butlins held single night or anything of the sort.

So 3 O'clock arrived and we were allowed to leave the pavilion, the three of us headed straight to the unsurprisingly packed beach, found a spot and chilled, all three of us proceeded to give ourselves a nice little bit of sunburn as a present to ourselves and also helps to ease the pain at the price of the tickets for the event given the fact that they got at least one thing right.

All in all a good day was had by all and I thoroughly enjoyed myself safe within the knowledge that I could lounge all day at the beach without having to clock watch and trying to see just how late I could leave it before I had to go back home, have a shower, get dressed and still manage to get to work on time.

I would also like to thank all (three) of you who sent out Christmas cards to me, they were greatly appreciated and a pleasant surprise.

 After Christmas New Years has come and gone in a flash, literally, even though I was down to work all day and was unsure as to whether or not I would actually get to see the internationally acclaimed firework display at Harbour Bridge in all its glory I was pleased to be informed that Ram (the hardest working kid in Sydney who’s first ever experience of fireworks was last year’s NYE) and myself would be able to go down to Pyrmont Park at see it all happen along with a couple of locals.

At 11.45pm we all started to make a move and walk down to this ever popular but still relatively quiet considering the absolutely superb visibility the park has in its arsenal, found a spot and waited, it was a very surreal but surprisingly tension building couple of minutes until eventually it all started to happen.  Now I'd been told before that from our vantage spot not only would we be able to clearly see the Harbour Bridge but also three other in-time-and-in-sync displays in the surrounding areas, one on our side of the river in Darling Harbour and the other two from the other side bt nothing could ready me for the sight of everything, I didn’t know which way to turn.  The Harbour Bridge was obviously the main attraction and I’m pretty sure the fireworks there had a little more in them than their less-hyped surrounding suburbs but they were just as impressive, and the fact that they were all in sync perfectly with the four spots ranging over a good 500 yards was a phenomenal spectacle - I got 10 seconds shy of 7 minutes worth of video on my camera and a couple of still shots that turned out to be pretty bad and very blurred which I think is down to me just being a man and trying to watch the display and take shots at the same time but at least in some you can make out some sort of definition of the bridge and its surroundings.

 After the display, which lasted about 10-12 minutes it was back to work for a couple of hours and as we were one of only two pubs I can think of in the area we were to brace ourselves for the congregation of passing sober/semi-pissed and wrecked punters hoping to get a drink, in truth, it wasn’t so bad, allot of people had obviously kept check on themselves or had seen it all before that it was no more of a celebration than it is just being at home when the clock struck midnight but there were a couple of people who were obviously in no state to be served - I'm not even going to go into detail about some fella and his washing basket.  By the time the bar had shut at 2am and we had finished cleaning up at 3.30am I was well and truly shattered, I started work at noon the year earlier you see...but even so, it didn’t stop me snapping up the proposal of going out after work - especially as the proposal included going upstairs into the casino at Star City - up until that point I’d only been on the walk-through bit downstairs either to Subway, Score Bar or Paddy Maguire’s - there was a fair crowd, Adrian, his wife Naoko, Teagan, India, Helena who had turned up at the bar about 1.30am randomly and obviously myself.  I'd never been into a casino before and to go in now, as a backpacker were, although mum probably won’t agree, I’m watching my money was a scary prospect, what if I caught a gambling bug and spent my life savings on the pokies or sold Mums house back in England on a wild 7 red at roulette?? fortunately it wasn’t to be, although I did have a dabble at roulette and instead of losing money I surprised myself and made some, $10 turned into a nice $40 I hastily pressed the 'collect' button as such riches were on the verge of giving me dizzying possibilities and to this day I still have the slip to claim the mountain of cash in my wallet.

 We left the casino at about 6/6.30am with everyone, well I cant actually speak for them but I for one was feeling a little bit....not very sober shall we say and it was then that Adrian suggested we go back to his apartment and do ourselves proud by drinking copious amounts of alcohol back there in-between playing Wii and just idol chit-chat with each other, at some point I crashed for a massive two hours, woke up to the sounds of Mario Karts on the Wii and proceeded to feel like shit for a couple of hours to come, it was roughly about 11am before everyone decided a nice fried breakfast was obviously going to be the answer to all our pain and we promptly headed to another local pub called The Dunkirk, upon arrival we found regulars from the Harlequin situated outside and also across the road at another pub (The Quarryman’s) who had yet to get any sleep and, as you can imagine, a little bit 'jolly'.  We ordered, we (tried to) eat, we stumble up to the Harlequin now that it was finally open and promptly go about ordering jugs of water to drink and place our hopes on doing what the breakfast was unable to do.  I do believe it was roughly about 1pm before people started to drift off and I myself thought this to be a good idea, I go to my apartment only to find I'm locked out and no one’s home, so, I stumble back to the Harlequin and then proceed to try and get into my apartment on the hour every hour until I began to give up hope - it wasn’t until a brief trip to the Pyrmont Bridge Hotel (PBH), a few other stops at locals close by an the stroke of half past midnight was I able to finally get into my own apartment - by this time it was 2 hours sleep in 42 hours and I was a little tired, my 'day off' had been spent all day at my place of work and I was not looking forward to waking up feeling like death himself and having to drag my sorry ass into work the following day, miraculously however I felt fine upon awakening from my slumber, largely I believe because I had sobered up a great deal but just being awake for so long but either way I was relieved and proceeded to go to work with a spring in my step!

There’s more to add about what’s happened in the days following NYE’s, and although it’s not a great variation on what’s been written before there are a few interesting and fresh points made that may be of some slight interest to my avid readers back home!