The Weekend
This has been my second weekend here, although not having a job makes it not a whole lot different to any other day. Having said that, it’s been a really cool weekend and I’ve done some fun and interesting stuff. On Friday, I went with Amanda down to the Markets by Moonlight at The Rocks, where we met up with a couple of her friends. You can see some pictures I took there by clicking on the pic at the top of this post. I must admit, it was still daylight when we were there, but pretty cool nonetheless. There was lots of ethnic food on sale, being cooked fresh in front of you, as well as stalls selling mostly ‘ethnic’ gifts, including one Irish stall selling, as well as ‘Celtic’ goods, various Guinness branded items. I was a little confused by the two people in this picture, who were walking their way through the crowds; the woman was dressed as a Flamenco dancer (albeit on stilts), while the man followed her around playing distinctly French sounding music on an accordion. Either the pair of them were somewhat culturally confused, or I’m just a philistine, ignorant of the famous French Flamenco.
Outside The Rocks Centre in the middle of the markets, a stage was set up where throughout the course of the Markets various performers will, um, perform. While we were there a guy named Eli Wolfe was playing (there are some pictures of him in the album), and while nobody else seemed particularly impressed by him, I thought he was really good. So having wondered through the market, we then walked through another little indoor arcade, where for some reason we discussed huntsman spiders, and my two Australian cousins’ complete inability to deal with one that was in our bathroom, while I happily casually trapped the thing under a plastic tub and dropped it off outside. Perhaps I’m blessed with the benefit of ignorance, or perhaps my profound hatred of insects truly does overcome any innate fear I’m supposed to instinctively have of spiders.
Anyway, back to the market. After that we wandered back to the central area with the stage to grab some food. After giving serious consideration to all the available options, Alice and David (Amanda’s friends) decided to go look for paella, while Amanda and I decided to try some Ethiopian food. If I’m being perfectly honest, my first reaction was that Ethiopian cuisine would involve sitting at a table and waiting for the UN to bring you a food package. I’m pleased to say I was proven spectacularly wrong. With a choice of rice or sourdough flatbread, the vegetarian option consisted of two kinds of lentils, salsa and mixed vegetables, wrapped into a tasty package. Amanda made the sensible choice and declined the additional chilli sauce, which I allowed them to generously heap on top of mine. The meal was delicious, but I could definitely feel flames coming from my mouth afterwards. This pretty much concluded the trip to the markets, as Amanda was heading on to a party after. So following the food we headed for home.
I managed to kill a few hours on Saturday by going shopping with Jeremy (uncle). This involved a trip to the supermarket, as you would expect, but also into a shop called Dan Murphy’s, a chain of what can only be described as alcohol supermarkets that seems to be popular here in Australia, and I can understand why. Aside from the rather impressive selection on offer (I feel I have understated that), the staff there are all cheerful, and extremely knowledgeable about what they’re selling. Rather than what you’d expect in the UK (”if we’ve got any, they’ll be…”), they are actually eager to help you, and all seem to be either wine or beer experts, or are very well trained. Something is definitely keeping them enthusiastic about what they’re doing, I wonder what it could be?
Saturday evening was also interesting. Went out to a Japanese restaurant called Sushi Samurai in Neutral Bay. Went by recommendations and ordered a vegetable tempura and noodles dish, and was advised, despite the ‘vegetarian’ assurances of the menu about this dish, to specify ‘no shrimp’ when ordering. This turned out to be a somewhat more complex task than you might expect; the Japanese waitress responded with “What’s shrimp?”. We thought it would be easier to just say no fish. So when the food was eventually brought out, there were crab sticks in it. Technically not fish, but still, not something I was prepared to eat. I took it back and explained that I’d specifically asked for no fish. They were apologetic and took it away from me. About a minute later, they brought it back with the crab sticks removed. This seemed to infuriate Amanda, who took it back over to them and demanded that they make me a fresh one. This approach seemed to work very well; they did in fact make me a fresh one, although the length of time taken for them to bring it out leads me to hope that they weren’t all taking turns to add ’special sauce’.
After the food we went to a pub called The Oaks, where we had a couple of drinks and played a couple of games of pool. I, as usual, sucked, but managed to get a couple of cheeky shots in and salvage some dignity. Didn’t stay too late, and headed back home in time for midnight.
That brings us to sunday. Not much interesting happened today; went to the Warringah mall, where I wandered around with Jeremy while Ariella went off and, I presume, shopped. Tomorrow brings another day of fresh job hunting. Plan is to slip into my suit and walk straight into the offices of some recruitment companies, and demand flat out that they give me some work. Failing that I may just politely introduce myself and explain my circumstances, and hope that there’s somebody there who’s got enough time to talk to me. Haven’t decided yet, but hopefully my next post will have some job related news!
Matt x
