Busy Busy Busy

So, it's been a while since I updated our blog, we've had a busy month! Happy New Year!

When I last updated this I was just finishing work for the summer holidays, and I went back this week after a lovely five weeks off work. I could get used to holidays like that! Those five weeks were spent pretty busy, but as I was not earning and enjoying myself, I have spent most of my earnings, so I've got to work work work for the next couple of months.

Mum came over for a month just after I finished work, so the week running up to Christmas we spent showing her around Sydney. We all went to a Christmas carol concert and saw people like The Wiggles, Leo Sayer, Engelbert Humperdink and Katherine Jenkins. Needless to say, this was a free concert, and weirdly most people were there to see the Wiggles. Once they had done their bit, a large portion of the crowd left. I understand why though, there is only so much of Leo Sayer you can take, so we didn't see the end of the concert either. On Christmas Eve we went to see the Fireworks on Darling Harbour, Sydneysiders are fireworks mad over the festive period, there must be a firework display at least once a week at the moment. The fireworks on Christmas Eve, were pretty good, and left us all wanting more for New Year.

Christmas was a strange day, the weather wasn't very good, it rained most of the day, so apart from going for a walk, we didn't really do much. We did have a Roast Turkey though! Had to be done!

New Year though was fantastic. The school I work at has great views of Sydney Harbour, and the Harbour Bridge, the focal point for the fireworks, and thankfully, staff were allowed in to watch them in the grounds. It was so nice to be able to have space, sit down, have a picnic and not be in the crowds that were in the city centre. Sydney had 1.5 Million (yes MILLION) people there for New Year, so you can just imagine what that would be like. At 9 o'clock they have the family fireworks, four barges down the harbour all firing off fireworks, they were OK, nothing that special, but it's done for the kids who can't stay up and out in Sydney til Midnight. It started the build up though, and every hour running up to midnight a few more fireworks would fire and the image in the middle of the bridge would change. At midnight though, a spectacular 12 minute display kicked off, with fireworks being fired off the Harbour Bridge, barges on the harbour and buildings all around Sydney. It literally was fireworks everywhere. They were all timed to presision with some fancy computer technology, it really was excellent. However, if I think I had been stuck in the city with all those people, I would have completely hated it. We were dead lucky.



Mum and I took a trip off down to Melbourne a couple of days in to the New Year. Sadly, Mike had to work, so he stayed behind in Sydney. We flew down to Melbourne, and the next day, Mum and I went on a tour of the Great Ocean Road. It was so peaceful down there compared to Sydney. Awesome beaches, stunning scenery and a lot less tourists. We took a helicopter ride at the Twelve Apostles, which really was the only way to see them, and we even drove past the Lighthouse from Round The Twist!! When Mike and I go there later this year, we will make sure to stop off there and sing the theme tune. The next day we walked round Melbourne, seeing as much as we could, for the nest three days, we hired a car and drove back to Sydney along the coast. We stopped off at a rather over grown Ramsey Street, they don't film Neighbours in January, so the gardeners hadn't been round, and took a few photos. We also stopped off at some beautiful National Parks and some even more beautiful beaches, saw plenty of countryside, it's a very long drive! Once back in Sydney we took a couple of days up to the Blue Mountains and the Jenolan Caves. I think I can safely say the Caves were a highlight for all of us.

Sadly, Mum went home at the end of last week, it was really nice to have her out here, and we did a lot of stuff over Christmas that we probably wouldn't have done otherwise. Now we have the next leg of our trip to start thinking about and plan. We are going to leave Sydney at Easter, and head West over to Perth, via Melbourne, Adelaide and Tasmania. Until then, we need to work and save hard. We have a few things planned until then, including some of Mike's friends visiting and a couple of weekends away, nice to have some things to look forward to as, to be honest, we have done Sydney to death now.

Hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year, survived the snow and the flooding or whatever other crazy weather you have been having back home. Miss you all lots, hopefully speak to some of you soon! xx

School's out for Summer!

Today is my last day of work for 5 weeks! FIVE WEEKS! That’s the advantage of working in a school, although, sadly, it’s 5 weeks without pay.

Although the job is pretty simple and boring, it’s been a nice easy, stress free job, and most of the teachers are really lovely and friendly. I have lunch provided, which is like getting a pay rise!

It is the poshest school I have ever been in, a private school full of very well behaved boys whose parents clearly have too much money. $20,000 will get you one years tuition! If you want to have your son boarding here, try doubling that figure! Saying that though, the standard of education and the facilities they have here are second to none. For example, they have a 500 seat theatre complete with Orchestra pit and a full lighting and sound rig, a well equipped gym, a swimming and diving pool, and a library full of thousands of books, CD’s and DVD’s. Oh, and they probably have one of the best views of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge anywhere in Sydney! We’re coming here for New Year!

It’s one of the top schools in Australia, and everyone in Sydney has heard of it. If you come out of here with average to good results, you are pretty much guaranteed a very well paid job later on in life. If I had a kid and the money, it’s the sort of school I would want them to be at.

It is a Church of England school, with a lot of traditions and a strong military emphasis. They have an optional Army Cadet section here, every Monday you wouldn’t be surprised to see some of the boys in camouflage and carrying a gun, although I do believe they are not loaded! Still, it was a bit of a shock the first time I saw it. They have two sergeant majors to enforce discipline, both of them are funny, they boss the boys around, make them do all the hard work while they stand around, watch and criticise.

I got one of the detention boys last week to help me out. The Sergeant Major described him as a fat lazy kid who whinges and moans to his parents and gets whatever he wants. He couldn’t have been more right! He looked like Augustus Gloop with the selfish mentality of Veruca Salt, Roald Dahl clearly had inspiration when he wrote those characters. All he had to do was fold some letters and put them into envelopes. OK, there was 300 of them, but he did make a meal out of it. I was a bit nasty though and didn’t tell him about the folding machine that he could’ve used. He was on detention!! I didn’t want to make it easy for him! A couple of the boys have been calling me “Sir” which is very weird. I keep telling them to call me Adam, but I think with the discipline they have here, Sir just becomes second nature.

So, what are we going to do during the Summer holidays? Well, sadly Mike is working as normal, but luckily, Mum is coming out to visit next Saturday. We plan to have a nice Christmas roast dinner at home on Christmas Eve, and maybe a picnic on Christmas day. We have trips planned to the Hunter Valley, Blue Mountains and Melbourne over the Christmas break, and of course, we have to show Mum round Sydney, so we will be busy, busy, busy.

If I don’t speak to any of you before, have a lovely Christmas and a fun New Year!

Video Killed the Radio Star!

Landing on our feet

To be honest, we were a bit down when I last updated this blog. We had spent all week looking for work, handing out CV's and registering with agencies, to hear nothing back. I know it was our first week, but I guess we just wanted results fast, and we knew that spending our savings was not ideal. With the exchange rate as bad as it is at the moment, we worked out that "if" we stuck to our budget and didn't find work, we would run out of money mid February. Living in a hostel was getting us down, and with thousands of back packers all in the same boat, our chances looked slim.

Well, what a difference a week makes.

As quick as 48 hours, our luck turned around. First Mike got a call about a job, next day he went for an interview, got the job and started the following day. It is pretty much identical to the job he was doing in London and the money is good. I got a call the next day and landed a job at a posh boys school in North Sydney working in their print room. It's a very basic job, but the people are really nice and I'm paid OK, with free school dinners included. What a difference school dinners are at a private school! Much better than the rubbish I had at school!

Finally to top it all off, we got a flat in Greenwich, North Sydney. It's a granny flat, living above a couple who own the house, but we wanted somewhere quiet and they seem really nice. It's a small world, the lady was born in Tooting, and her son lives with his boyfriend in Clapham. They seemed to really like us, and we move in Saturday, for at least 3-4 months. So anyone thinking of visiting, do it before Mid March, and we should be able to put you up! Free accommodation!

Thankfully no more hostel misery for now or stressing about where will be staying for Christmas. That said, we have made a few friends at our hostel, and will miss them, but I'm sure we will meet up fairly often for drinks thanks to the wonders of mobile phones and Facebook.

Now we can pretty much kick back, relax and enjoy ourselves a little. We've been doing a few things this week to celebrate. We went to Bill Grainger's restaurant for some pretty good meal, been out for drinks with the people we like in our hostel, Mike and I went to the Opera house for my birthday treat to see Camille O'Sullivan (amazing!) and we went to the Sydney aquarium on Sunday. Loads of fish, jelly fish, rays and sharks. The sharks were cool, although Mike wanted them to be aggressive and attack the glass tunnel we were in!

The weather has finally improved as well thankfully. We have had pretty cold, wet and grey weather since we have been here, but today it is 28 degrees (typical when I am working!) and looks to stay the same the rest of the week. The Aussie's are just as obsessed with weather as the Brits are, it’s a regular topic of conversation here! Hopefully the weather holds for the weekend so we can get to a beach. We have only been to one beach since we got here, and I had to leave as it was so cold.

I'll get Mike to write something next time, it's been a while since he updated the blog, and I will upload some more pictures when I get a chance, I know a few of you want to see more! Feels like we have been gone months, not 4 weeks, so missing everyone loads. I'll try phone/Skype some of you soon! Keep in touch! Adam x

Sydney Pics

As you can see the weather has improved, although the wind is still
pretty cold, so haven't packed away the jeans and jumpers just yet!!

G'day Australia!

We arrived in Australia on Friday and have had a nice few days
wondering around and seeing the sights! Sadly the weather has been
rubbish. It's a big fat lie that it is always sunny in Australia,
apart from Saturday the weather has been wet, overcast and grey. The
wind has been pretty cold as well, so it's been jeans and jumpers the
past couple of days, forecast is much the same for the rest of the
week. So you are all allowed to laugh at our misfortune!

We have moved into a hostel, hostels are OK, but I think we are both
craving some personal space, like not having to share a kitchen with
50 other people. So I don't think we will be here too long. Got a
tight tight budget to live on for the forseeable future until we find
some work, but we have put the wheels into motion with regards to that
and have got others things done like setting up a bank account and
getting a mobile phone number. Was going for a trip up the Sydney
tower but the weather has made us wait until it's a little clearer.

So we haven't done a lot to report really! We went to see Up at the
cinema on Saturday, I thought it was one of Pixar's best films yet,
and quite sad in places, I didn't cry thankfully! Go see it if you
haven't!

Will blog again when we have done something more interesting, but keep
your fingers crossed for us on the job front, never thought I would
actually "want" to work!

7 Eleven

So we finally made it to the capital of Malysia very pretty city but
also very "western" in places, you still have glimmers of the the Asia
I've grown to love with foodstalls and vendors selling an array of
bags, wallets, watches and knock off DVD's.

We went to check out the Petronas towers very impressive with a huge
mall attached to their base with tonnes of familiar named shops was
kind of nice but also the sort of thing you get back home really.

One exciting thing we got to try was the fish spa, you littrally dunk
your feet in a tank of fish who eat your dead skin, sounds weird and
it was but on the first go (which bearing in mind was only a £1 for 10
minutes) we decided to go for the smaller fish. These ones were quite
tigglish and it felt weird, but did a world of good for my feet. We
went back the next day and I went for the bigger fish, while Adam went
for having his hands done. The bigger fish felt weirder more like
running a massager over your feet but they did an even better job, I
wish I had time to go back for more maybe I'll try and bring it to
London.

We spent an extra night in KL was great fun we got to go to a theme
park and a Casino called Genting. Very funny like a crazy version of
Alton Towers with a shopping mall, cinema and a tonne of extras added
in for good measure. Was nice to take a break from sightseeing and
having a little bit of just pure fun.

We then headed down to a small town called Melaka very peaceful town
and a lot more historic, we were only there a short time but it was
very nice. The local dish chicken rice balls was delicious basically
balls of rice with a chicken flavour served with roast chicken.

We have now arrived in Singapore a very clean city, the people are
very friendly and helpful but prices have certainly increased from
what we were used to. We haven't done much really due to the prices
but Going on a night safari tonight. It's an early start tomorrow and
then it's on to Australia.