A Manly Saturday

Hi. It's been a while but we're back with two new posts and plenty of news.

These photos are a little late going up, we were actually went to Manly 2 weeks ago now. The pictures have been on Picasa for a while but we haven't updated this thing with the links and our musings.

Gonna try out something new now (a lot of new things on here) We're adding Google Earth placemarks to mark the places we visit. Try it here with Manly. If you notice a place name we're talking about is a hyper-link just click it and open the file with Google Earth. It should fly you to the location!

Manly (so called because some old boy thought that the natives were very manly) was lovely. Hope that has come across in the photos. The weather was unseasonably nice, sunny and about 23 degrees. The ferry trip across was a bit of craic too, there was an American aircraft carrier in town so we got a good gander at that. Didn't see much of the sailors though. Chris caught a sight of three. We expected the bars to be flooded with them, there's something like 7000 packed into the floating steel thing, but they just didn't materialise. Apparently they spent $32 million dollars that weekend and they did charity work. Pretty boring if you ask us. You can have a look at the Manly galleries via the link below, you can makes your own minds up but we thought it was just perfect. Can't wait for the summer!

Our day out to Manly

Moving on....some of you will not be surprised to learn that we have been watching quite a few films in our time here. We've gone legit, got ourselves a membership at the local video shop and most weeks we take advantage of their 5 DVDs for a week for 7 days. The other week we got the 4 Harry Potter films out to prepare us for the new one being released. We went and saw the new movie at the IMAX cinema in Darling Harbour, throughly enjoyed it. The IMAX screen is huge, the picture is really sharp and the last 15 minutes were in 3D! Class. Not content with watching 5 movies a week from the comfort of our bed we also meet after work on Tuesdays to go to the cinema. Tight arsed Tuesdays mean the cinemas are half price. They're always packed with Asian people too mostly. Someone in work told Dave that something like 40% of Australia, or maybe it was Sydney, is Asian, staggering. Anyways we've seen Transformers (very enjoyable, good sense of humour a great action) and Knocked Up which was an absolute gem. Hilarious and had good heart.

We were out last night on the lash. Met up with a few people through Christines work-partner on the drought desk at CWA also confusingly called Chris. Went to the Abercrombie Hotel, good spot, like most quality bars it looked like a complete crap-hole but the music was good and the beers were cheapish (the white Russians weren't though, $27 for 2!) While the beers were cheap it was actually hard to get a nice one. All the domestic stuff was either ale or blond beers which are usually rotten. Later that night the place got too packed up and we couldn't get easy access to the bar so we headed on to the bar at the Wake Up hostel where we stayed in our first week. By strange coincidence Dave ran into a boy he used to go to uni with who he only knew by the apt nickname big Dave. A Derry lad in fact. Small world. It was weird cause we were both talking earlier in the night about how there was a few uncanny lookalikes for people back home in the pub and we felt as though someone we knew was about to walk in.

We're heading out with english Chris and his mates again next weekend to the Sydney Neighbours night! Can't wait. A load of the cast come up from Melbourne and there's drinks quizzes and music and chances to get photos. Should be some good snaps on next week. As an extra wee bonus Paul Anand is coming down from Bundaberg for his last week in Oz and to help celebrate Dave's birthday.

Paul was supposed to be staying with us for the week but we have just learned that he'll be shacking up with some Swedish bird in a hostel. We'd been down to K-mart this morning to get a blow up matress as well. Gonna have to leave that back which isn't so bad because we'll get a chance to have another look at the puppies at the pet store. Took a photo on Dave's phone which we're gonna put straight below here to brighten up the blog a little.


We were out and about in Balmain last week for a bite to eat when we came across an amusingly titled shop selling bedding and that. Think Ratz'll enjoy it if he ever looks at this thing. Have a look below:



Oh yeah forgot to mention we've gone and got the internet in. The cafe nearby us is a bit shit, the keyboards have all funny squiggles on them, we think it's called Chinese and we couldn't be arsed to head into town everytime we want to email. So anyways we should be easier to keep in touch with now. We even have landline number too so let us know if you'd like that so you can give us a buzz. We're much too tight to be phoning you. Here's some more photos below. Enjoy! Hope you're all having a fun summer!

Love,

Dave and Chris

As some keen eyed observers may have noticed the fonts on this post are a little screwed up. No explanation can be found for this at time of press but no doubt Dave'll come back to it cause it's the type of thing that'll nag him.

Other random recent photos

Night out and next day