In Australia

BY ONEIKA RAYMOND

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so I have been majorly slacking on the blog thing. Must update with Africa pics and photos. The Africa trip was wicked, saw tons of animals, didn’t get eaten, bitten, or contract malaria, so I guess you could say that it was a huge success. I did, however, suffer from another weird stomach thingy which had me well acquainted with the toilet (in most cases, a hole in the ground)… Lovely!

Most notably, we spent New Year’s in Zanzibar, the island paradise off the coast of Tanzania in the Indian Ocean. We partied it up with Maasai warriors, drunk foreigners, and local people and narrowly escaped injury when someone (probably wasted) decided it would be a good idea to let loose tear gas in the crowd of NYE partiers. Thank goodness I used to run track and therefore knew to get the heck outta dodge before my eyes got massacred!!!

But I digress. Work business has me in Australia. I arrived today. So…I’m in Australia!!! Took a long night flight from HK to Sydney and then was supposed to take another plane from Sydney to Adelaide (with only an hour layover)…. But of course, I missed my connecting flight to Adelaide because the Sydney airport was a nightmare, and they told me I was going to have to wait another three hours to be able to get on another flight to Adelaide…

What to do? Well, I was NOT in the mood to wait around the airport like a loser. So I took matters into my own hands and asked to get on an even later flight… I figured, what have I got to lose?!? And apparently, Adelaide is a boring town anyway, so there was really no point in rushing to get there.

So, after negotiating with a flight attendant, I rebooked onto a later flight, which gave me about 7 hours to kill in Sydney! So, without a map or anything, I bought a ticket into town and saw the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbor Bridge with my own eyes!! Was pretty cool!!!

Got on my flight to Adelaide and got to my hotel in Adelaide about an hour ago.

So, in the spirit of making blatantly uninformed statements, here are my first impressions of Australia:
-Looks a lot like Canada.
-People have crazy accents and everyone seems like they could be Steve Irwin’s or Crocodile Dundee’s cousin.
-It’s outrageously expensive for no good reason!
-People DO really say “G’day” and “Mate”!
-They have all my favourite fatty food restaurants.
-People are kinda big here (somebody told me last week that Australians are now the fattest people in the world? Must verify).
-Overall, seems kinda boring. But will reserve further judgement til I see more.

On the other hand, I still haven’t checked to see if the water in the toilet really flushes backwards… LOL 😉

Anyhoo, moral of the story: Every cloud has its silver lining. I used missing my connection in Sydney to take advantage of the opportunity to go see the city.

When life hands you lemons, baby, you gotta make lemonade!
Amen.

Stay tuned for more dispatches.

SHARING IS CARING

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