Crickeet in Oz

Ashes series: Adelaide was a farce / the dumb adverts on TV drove me close to manic depression / MCG: watched England lose on day 3, so couldn't see day 4 / Monty was great!


One day series: watched England nearly grab defeat from the jaws of victory in their first win against NZ in a pub with random friendly English folk in the city. Then we lost the plot, don't remember much...


Went to England v Oz at MCG: everyone thought England were gonna get whipped again, but from absolutely nowhere we ended up giving Australia a beating for once. We were dead lucky to have bought tickets to a match that England actually won! Highlights: Gilchrist clean bowled first ball of the innings / massive snake in the crowd (see picture) / man next to me lending me his hat. Lowlights: they only served light beer, no matter how much you drink, all you get is a headache!


Then England beat NZ and got to the finals! Watched the final with Aussie workmate Andrew who at first wanted England to win ''just to make the finals interesting''. As we got closer to victory he was spitting feathers and being made to eat his words. Winning the final at last gave us something to cling to from a disappointing cricket summer and it was good to see the Aussies humbled once again!

Australia Day

A good excuse for a long weekend, I suppose, and certainly much better than St Georges Day.
Saw millions of boats bombing around in the harbour, some big guns firing, lots of bbqs all over the place, street music and bands at the rocks, walked over the harbour bridge and saw helicopters and a tall ships race, Triple J radio broadcast from Hyde Park

... Then went to see Kasabian at Enmore Theatre who were brillliant!

Rory's birthday

Got a monster monster chocolate cake from my new boss. Went to the James Squire brewery for proper beer and met Caroline & Sarah. Had posh dinner with Caz in Darling Harbour and they gave me a (free) cake - look at the joy on my face!

Rory's got another random job...

I've got a fairly varied work history: waiter (2 nights), local radio breakfast show co-host (less like Radio One, more like Radio No-One) barman, chef, work in an off-licence at uni, human resources, chef, more chef-ing, data entry, some more chef-ing, human resources, fence fixer/farm hand/trainee goat herder, courgette picker etc. So my latest job fits fairly well with my haphazard career path that has more meanders in it than the River Tees. And probably just as many ox-bow lakes. (year 9 geography anyone?)

Somehow I found a job working for the Trinidad and Tobago Consulate in Sydney, processing and issuing visas for the Circket World Cup in the Caribbean that starts in a couple of weeks. Better still, I'm working on the 57th floor of the tallest office tower in Sydney. The views are awesome: I can see the harbour bridge down below, all of the city centre laid out like Legoland, all the harbour, out to sea and the Bule Mountains in the distance. The people at work (half from Trinidad, half Aussies) are dead friendly and the offices are reet posh, ah tell thee. There's a capuccino machine in the kitchen, the fridge has beer in it and there are 5 spirits optics above the sink. Sadly we're not allowed to help ourselves to the booze, but we're never short of biscuits, Tim-Tams (like Penguins, but much better) and cakes. Speaking of which, it was my birthday on my 3rd day in the job and my boss Dr Byam (the Consul General) bought a monster chocolate cake which I think tops the Thomas the Tank Engine cake that I got for my 5th birthday (sorry mum!). Perhaps the only downside of the job was when we had a fire alarm and we had to walk down 57 flights of steps.