Goes to Sydney. Again

So I'm up in Sydney for the second time this holidays for work, this time on business instead of leisure. Suffice to say I learnt my lesson and did not miss the plane. However being sent solo to Sydney has it's downsides. For example, the view from my hotel room this time:

This is like, the western side of Sydney bay or something, cannot see anything from the window. I even wrote a poem to describe this predicament:

Sydney,

So alone

Such bored

Much time

What do?

Well seeing as I can't see anything the only logical course of action is to go outside and take a look around. It turns out that the bridge is right next door. In fact that's what you're looking at from the hotel, except well, you can't see the actual bridge.

 

So going up to the bridge I noticed this...'lane' on the right of the stairs. Not sure if bike lane or wheelchair access.

This is what the bridge looks like when you're running along it.

And if you look to the right, opera house and all in all its glory. They do a pretty good job of keeping it lit.

Finally made it to the other side! Success.

There's a nice little park on the north shore where I took all of these. And a little path along the beach that just keeps going, across the beach, going through these gardens, going and going and...

And then it ends up in someone's backyard :( There was a dude looking at me from the balcony sicne I was running around outside his yard taking photos etc. But I got away before he called the coppers.

The problem with going across a bridge is you have to run all the way back. But the good thing is that sometimes the scenery is different depending on which way you're going.

And the last bit of drama was that I forgot to bring my hotel key (bought my office pass instead). Had to badger hotel staff to let me in. It's actually not that hard to get access to someone's room, all you need to do is provide:

• Name
• Room number
• Email
• Phone number/travel agent

And you're in. I think this could probably be abused to great affect if you know someone's details, in the right circumstances.

Anyway that's all for Sydney adventures. Next time: misadvanetures in more interesting places.

 

One for the ages

This is quite atrocious. I mean, really, the last post was December 2nd...that's so long ago. So much has happened in this last month that I've missed writing about.

Lets see:

• Old man Mandela passed away
• Kim Jong the 3rd kills off his 2nd uncle and entire family. Again.
• Bitcoin lost 50% of its value, then got it back
• The good ol' boys started playing Age.
• Bill went on a pilgrimage to china to find the holy doctor grail. Starts sending back people missing half their faces and people getting shitfaced.
• OJ started playing guild wars O: (he's probably max level now)
• I went running around the 'tan for the first time since year 12. Twice. (not strictly true, I've done it twice before, and one of those times twice).

Also Christmas/NYE happened. Which means it's resolution time, if you believe in such things. Instead of making up my own i'm going to borrow someone elses. But it is Something inspirational.

(Chris Hadfield is such a bro Canadian spaceman, you can watch him here.The powers of modern technology...too bad he's retired now :\)

Too many things I've wish I'd done in the past that I've ended up not doing because I didn't feel up to it, and too many I didn't really wanted to do but felt obliged to it.

What ends up happening is none of the things you want to do get done and you're stuck not really wanting to do the things you end up signing up for. It is useful to be able to do whatever you feel like but I feel in the long run it's

Well,enough philosophisizing at 3am since I have a client presentation tomorrow at 9am which I have to be in the office by 8 for that I still haven't done the final slide for, which will probably take a few hours of research plus more time putting it all down and then dumping it all it on powerpoint.

Back to making slides. Life is good.

"Put me on your next flight to Sydney"

Or, why I will fly 2nd rate airlines that no one generally wants to fly (A.K.A. Qantas) for important business.

Last week I began my great adventure, namely that of getting myself to the airport at 6:00am in order to start a new life in Sydney as a temp White Collar corporate minion. However, little did I know that Monday mornings are also rush mornings at the Tullamarine airport for the multitude of other undoubtedly more experienced people who fly morning flights up to Sydney.

So by the time I got to the departure lobby there was 15 minutes till my 6:30 flight was about to lift off. My Virgin Australia service reps decided against trying to figure out a way to get some random obviously young and inexperienced suit who obviously doesn't know what he's doing on to the plane he was about to miss, which thus left me with no other option but to seek a replacement.

It wasn't that simple though, seeing as there was no space on the 6:45 flight. Or the 7:00 flight. Or the 7:10 or the 7:15 or the...well, you get the point. In fact due to cancellations and overbookings there was apparently no flights until 1pm in the afternoon. This was bad because I needed to be in Sydney by 9:30: being late on the first day was probably not going to help anybody.

So what choice does one have in such a situation?

Qantas to the rescue. Being the airline that no one wants to fly at the moment, they had plenty of seats at exorbitant prices on the next available flight at 7. Which makes sense as there will always be last minute suckers like myself who need to be somewhere and don't care about the price involved. Qantas being the airlines with regular services can then pick up these people and ship them to wherever.

So next time if you need to be somewhere quickly, fly Qantas because no one else will want to fly them and steal all the seats in the event you get there late/get cancelled. Who needs pretty air hostesses anyway.

I was going to talk about Sydney, but not really much happened (besides getting drunk/being thrown out of a restaurant at 5pm and then finding OJ who just happened to be there later). Apparently people who have proper jobs don't party on monday-wednesdays. Until the next post.