Tom Is A Blog Neglector This is a great site, it's not like I'll update it or anything.

Sunset at the Opera House

  Opera House at sunset

  Sydney skyline at sunset.

  Opera House at twilight.

Building pictures

Here are pictures of a few of the buildings around here. 

  An apartment building.    Close up.

  Kinda cool.          Mushroom?

  Part of the Sydney Hospital. 

   Coutyard at Sydney Hospital.

Busting a move and the 80s

So we were walking home from dinner the other night and passed by the ground level of some high rise.  It's all marble or some kind of smooth polished stone by the entrance to the building.  So there's about 5-10 mostly asian guys (teenagers/early 20's) hanging around this entrance area and there is this kid on the ground spinning around.  We stopped dead in our tracks and were like "Oh. My. God."  They were Break dancing. Yes Break Dancing.  It was Breakin' and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo right there in front of me.  I was looking to see if they had a huge silver boom box with a cassette player that takes like 40 "D" size batteries to operate. (like this!)  To my disappointment I didn't see one, but that doesn't mean there wasn't one! 

Maybe we were witness to a "Beat It" style gang fight/turf war.  A dance-off.  I wanted to jump in and do the Robot all over their sorry asses.  Bring it to them Old Skool.  But I didn't have my Herbie Hancock mix tape, and I left my "Breakin' 2:Electric Boogaloo" soundtrack at home.  They're lucky.  They would have been calling me Master T...

So we were wondering what a phone call between these people would be like.  Here's what I think:  Hello? Hey what are you doing tonight?  Nothing what are you doing tonight?  Nothing.  Do you want to head down to Central Center and bust a move?  Yeah I'm down with that! Shee.  I will bring my ghetto blaster and my mix tape.  Do you have 24 "D" batteries I can borrow? 

There's a number of weird 80's kind of things here.  I see a lot of heavy metal t-shirts.  Like Metallica, Iron Maiden, Guns N Roses.  Old metal.  And many people wear their pants tight like in the 80s.  I have seen big wide belts that women wore.  And studded belts.  Upturned polo shirt collars.  The whole "Axl Rose" look.  I've seen it all really.  The skate boarders here have it all wrong.  They wear skin tight jeans and studded belts, but their asses hang out like the retards at home with the baggy jeans.  I don't understand how they manage the skin tight jeans halfway down their asses.  And mohawks.  For the love of God.  A lot of people (mostly asian from what I have seen) have these half-ass "I'm not going to shave my head" mohawks.  I guess they gel their hair and then push it all towards the middle of their head to make a kind of short mohawk.  More like a shark fin.  And there's lots of half-assed spikey hair, which reminds me of Cameron Diaz's hair in "Something About Mary" after the "hair gel" incident.

There seems to be no sense of age appropriate clothing here. People just wear whatever they want, whether they should wear it or not.  Belly shirts with BIG belly's hanging out.  OH and dreadlocks.  They should outlaw dreadlocks.  Seriously.  Lice condominiums.  There definitely should be an age limit for dreadlocks.  They need to get all the hair dressers together all over the world and decide on a dreadlock age cut off.  Somewhere around 30.  I have seen a number of over 40 (in one case WAY over 40) year olds with dreadlocks here.  The only people who should be permitted to have dreadlocks are people who live on tropical islands and play steel drums and say "Hey Mon!" a lot.  Not stupid white people from suburbia who think its "cool".  I mean, where do you work with hair like that?  

Also, another weird thing is the neck ties.  A lot of men have these giant, almost clown-like neck ties with these huge knots.  I hate them.  Apparently this is the new style of neck tie?  It's terrible.  Please tell me this isn't true at home too. They make me want to laugh they're so ridiculous.

Can't think of anything else at the moment.  More pictures coming shortly!

Money

I've been trying to write about the money here for weeks now.  I keep forgetting.  I was going to take pictures of the money myself, but figured I would just find pictures on the internet.  I had this nicely composed post almost completed and I hit something on the keyboard and it all went away.  I couldn't find a way to make it come back.  Was I mad?  Ooooh you betcha. 

Their money is called "Dollars" (Yeah it's such a weird name right? Hehe).  Their "paper" money comes in 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 dollar bills.  Notice there is no 1 dollar bill. That was discontinued in 1984 and replaced with a coin.  Their bills are different colors and different sizes.  The 50 dollar bill is about 1/8 inch shorter than our bills, and they go down in size from there.  The 100 dollar bill is a little bigger than the 50, but I have never seen one in person.  Their "paper" money is actually plastic.  There is a clear window in the bills with a white design in it.  You can kind of see it in the pictures.  You can't tear their money like you can ours, and it lasts longer than paper bills. 

Their coins are broken down into 5, 10, 20, and 50 cent coins, a 1 dollar coin, and a 2 dollar coin.  Notice there is no 1 cent coin.  They don't do the one cent coins anymore.  That was stopped in 1991 (along with their 2 cent coin).  Now prices are rounded to the nearest 5 cent. It's basically an automatic "Take a penny, leave a penny".  It's weird when I get change from the store.  Say I am supposed to get $7.20 change, and the lady hands me a $5 dollar bill and some change.  I immediately think she made a mistake, but then remember that the coins are dollars.  I hate walking around with a bunch of change jingling in my pocket. I don't know how they do it, though I guess it's okay if everyone else is jingling too.

Our dollar is worth more than their dollar.  So when I see a price here, I take off about 25% and that's about what it costs in our money, which we refer to as "real money".  We call Australian money "PayDay" money because its brightly colored like the Parker Bros. "PayDay" game. (I just spent 45 minutes looking for a decent picture of PayDay money to illustrate my point, and I couldn't find one.) Some more information about Australia's currency can be found here.  (The More You Know...)

Anyway, below are some pictures of the bills and coins used here.  They pictures are not to scale, but you get the idea.  The coins are various thicknesses also, but I couldn't find a picture to illustrate that.  I don't have any US coins with me or I would take pictures with the Australian coins so you have some kind of reference.  I have a picture of all of the bills/coins, and then individual pictures of each.  The group picture have thumbnails, the individuals do not. 

Bills Side 1:     Bills Side 2:     (Not sure which side is front and which is the back.)

Individual Bills:  5,  10,  20,  50,  100  

Coins Front Side:      Coins Back Side:     

  Bigger picture of the backs of the coins.  You can see the details better.

Individual Coins: 5,  10,  20,  50,  $1,  $2

Pluto

Ok this has nothing to do with Australia or with me per say, it's something that makes me mad.  Officially, Pluto is not a planet anymore. See this article.  It's crap. I've lived the past 35 years knowing that there are 9 planets and Pluto is the last one.  I can easily accept a new planet into the universe if one is found, but I'm not about to start removing planets.  Don't these people have better things to argue about and spend money on?  What did Pluto do to them that they feel they need to retaliate and strip it of it's planetary status?  Hopefully this will be like the metric system.  Something they talked about and talked about and then nothing ever came of it.  (Which blows because everything here is Metric).

Pluto is now officially just a number: 134340.  Not in my world.  Pluto is still the ninth planet.  Those of you who want demote Pluto can go blow it out your anus.  (Get it? Uranus? I'm so witty.) 

Lights, Toilet, Power Outlet

Here is a little mundane post, but I thought it might be interesting.  A few common everyday things that are a little different here.

  This is a light switch here.  The one on the left is on, the right is off. 

  These are the flush buttons on the toilet.  They have a half flush and a full flush.  The button on the left is for "Number 1", and the one on the right is for "Number 2".  The left button uses less water, since they are always in a drought and try to conserve their natural resources.

  Power outlet.  The switches turn the power on and off to the outlet.  I don't quite see the point, I mean, we just unplug the applicance when we don't want power to it. 

Catching up

It's been a week since my last post. I didn't think it was that long.  Let's see.  Over the weekend, I went to the Art Gallery of New South Wales to see this exhibit that I saw featured on "Yahoo! Pictures of the Week" back in July.  It's like 1200 colored balls on strings.  There are fans that come on and make the strings move and the balls vibrate.  I think its supposed to be the colors of the Australian Outback and the movement is like the heat coming off the ground in the desert.  I have pictures and short video but they both look crappy.  Here's a screen capture I made of the Yahoo! Picture of the Week.  Obviously the actual exhibit doesn't have the artist in it.  (You can click the word "exhibit" or the picture below for a better view.)

Sunday I was here at around 1 pm and had the balcony doors opened.  I kept hearing this guy yelling for like 5 minutes.  So I went out to see what was going on.  This guy was in the crosswalk yelling and kicking his suit jacket across the street.  He was punching buses and cars as they drove by him.  He had traffic stopped and I don't know what he was yelling about.  I couldn't understand him.  I don't know if he was yelling in English or if he was just drunk or what.  Then he pushed a couple pedestrians and someone yelled, "Hey!", but obviously that didn't stop him.  I ran to get my camera and I missed him jumping on someone's hood (bonnet as they call it here) and punching the windshield.  Then he got off and punched the passenger's window.  Finally the cops came and the cop arrested him.  I have it on video, but won't upload it because you can hear me talking on it.  Plus it's like 20 Megs and I don't have that kind of time to upload it.  I'm busy.  Lol  My theory is that his girlfriend broke up with him after church, because it was Sunday and he was in a suit.  Then he must have gone and gotten wasted at some bar around here. I think he was trying to get run over or something.  That's just my theory, and I'm probably just talking out of my ass. 

Oh I went to yoga classes.  I was annoyed.  It's supposed to be relaxing or something, but I just wanted to punch the wall.  My favorite part is at the end when we just laid there quietly with the lights off and our eyes covered. Of course.  Maybe I will learn to appreciate it.  I don't know. 

Apartment pictures

Here are a some pictures of my "corporate apartment" (hotel room with a living room and kitchen).  These were previously available on my shutterfly page, but I wasn't happy with the picture quality there.

  This is the apartment building.  My room is a loft on the top floor.  The second window to the right of the corner.  My balcony is directly under the window.

  Here is a close up of my balcony and window etc.  Exciting huh?

  This is the view from the door.  Kitchen is to the right. The sliding doors to the balcony are behind the curtains.

  Kitchen. There's a tiny dishwasher that matches the tiny refrigerator.

  Looking in from the balcony.  Bathroom and bedroom are upstairs.  Those are the steps I fell down the second day I was here.  I don't walk down the steps with just socks on anymore. 

  Bedroom.  There's a window, but the blind is broken.  We've asked three times to get it fixed but it's still broken. 

      Bathroom.  Washer and dryer are in there also. 

  View to the left from the balcony.

  View to the right from the balcony. 

  Bus stop directly below my balcony.  I live right next to Central Station (a big train station like 30th Street Station at home).  This bus stop has underground connection to the train station. 

Shocking

Last night, after dinner, I was riding the stationary bike in the gym, (I'll wait for you to get back on the chair...) and the TV was on.  They have their own Survivor here, and its a celebrity edition. Anyway, if you have ever watched Survivor, they have these segments where it's the contestant talking about a particular event or person, just the contestant and the camera.  So I'm watching and I'm like, "What the hell is this chick wearing?" because I couldn't tell if she had a bikini top on or something.  It turns out she wasn't wearing a top.  I almost fell off the bike!  She's just talking about who knows what, and her breast is there, on tv, not blurred out or anything. This is on regular network TV at like 9 pm. Last time that happened at home, Janet Jackson ended up in some kind of trouble and the "whole" country was outraged. (By "whole" country I mean the Bible thumpers and those people who get showers in the dark so they won't see their own nakedness.) 

Anyway, my point is that they are a lot more relaxed about naked breasts here.  The beaches seem to all be topless-optional (or whatever you call it) and no one stares or points or giggles. (except fat americans like me!)  It amazes me the things that are taboo in America.  We are supposedly so progressive and free and open-minded.  Which I think most of us are.  It's the people in power who are from the Dark Ages.  It's so ridiculous.