Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Arriving in Sydney
Soundtrack: “Parallel Lines” by Blondie
Saturday 2nd July. Aunty Wendy dropped me at the airport, half-an-hour before my flight was due to leave. Normally, this would be ample time to get on the plane for a domestic flight. Unfortunately, it was the first day of the school holidays, and there was a queue for check-in the length of the Nile. I stood there, shitting myself, thinking that I was going to miss my flight, but then the guy behind me told me to push to the front and say that my flight was leaving in fifteen minutes, which I did, and everything worked out fine. I got to the gate in time for the last call. Phew.
I was picked up at Sydney Airport by “Aunty” Ivy and “Uncle” Terrence. Aunty Wendy is my mother’s sister, and Ivy is Uncle Peter’s sister, so I wasn’t actually staying with relatives, but I’m not complaining because I had free accommodation, and they gave me breakfast and dinner as well. They are so Chinese. They live in a rather Asian part of town, they only drive Asian cars, and Terrence is obsessed with China. The children are very westernised, though. Even though the parents only speak to them in Foochow (a Chinese dialect), they talk to each other in English with strong Sydney accents. Belinda is 27 and works insane hours at Citibank, so I barely saw her as she left for work early and came home stupidly late. Nicholas is 25, and is training to be a surgeon. Josephine is the youngest and has just turned 20, and she’s studying commerce at the University of NSW. Funnily enough, Terrence went to school with my dad. He remembered the Old Man fine (most people do because he swam for Malaysia), but the Old Man had a hard time remembering who Terrence was. He spent days thinking about it, and it was only until he dug out his old school photo that he remembered who he was.
Terrence took me down the Chinese travel agents to book me a day trip to Canberra. I wasn’t much looking forward to that, because I was going to have to be ferried to the capital with a coachload of Chinese tourists. There wasn’t much of a choice, though, because there’s not an easy way to get to Canberra for a lame-o like me who can’t drive (I’ve already made up my mind: when I get home, I’m going to book some driving lessons for myself, I really am). I stopped Terrence from booking me a trip to the Blue Mountains with the same company, because I knew that I could take the train up on my own and that would be fine thank you. Afterwards, he took me to have a look at the Olympic Park, and we went inside the Aquatic Centre, which was very impressive.
I stayed up until 4am to watch the final of the NatWest series between England and Australia. At one stage, when England were 33-5 chasing 197 for victory, I was seriously regretting my decision to stay up all night. However, I knew that Paul Collingwood would save us… and he damn well nearly did. Then he ran himself out, and I can’t help thinking that if he’d stayed in, as well as Geraint Jones, we would’ve won. But hey, a tie’s fine, because all we really deserved was to lose, with a batting performance as terrible as that.
Saturday 2nd July. Aunty Wendy dropped me at the airport, half-an-hour before my flight was due to leave. Normally, this would be ample time to get on the plane for a domestic flight. Unfortunately, it was the first day of the school holidays, and there was a queue for check-in the length of the Nile. I stood there, shitting myself, thinking that I was going to miss my flight, but then the guy behind me told me to push to the front and say that my flight was leaving in fifteen minutes, which I did, and everything worked out fine. I got to the gate in time for the last call. Phew.
I was picked up at Sydney Airport by “Aunty” Ivy and “Uncle” Terrence. Aunty Wendy is my mother’s sister, and Ivy is Uncle Peter’s sister, so I wasn’t actually staying with relatives, but I’m not complaining because I had free accommodation, and they gave me breakfast and dinner as well. They are so Chinese. They live in a rather Asian part of town, they only drive Asian cars, and Terrence is obsessed with China. The children are very westernised, though. Even though the parents only speak to them in Foochow (a Chinese dialect), they talk to each other in English with strong Sydney accents. Belinda is 27 and works insane hours at Citibank, so I barely saw her as she left for work early and came home stupidly late. Nicholas is 25, and is training to be a surgeon. Josephine is the youngest and has just turned 20, and she’s studying commerce at the University of NSW. Funnily enough, Terrence went to school with my dad. He remembered the Old Man fine (most people do because he swam for Malaysia), but the Old Man had a hard time remembering who Terrence was. He spent days thinking about it, and it was only until he dug out his old school photo that he remembered who he was.
Terrence took me down the Chinese travel agents to book me a day trip to Canberra. I wasn’t much looking forward to that, because I was going to have to be ferried to the capital with a coachload of Chinese tourists. There wasn’t much of a choice, though, because there’s not an easy way to get to Canberra for a lame-o like me who can’t drive (I’ve already made up my mind: when I get home, I’m going to book some driving lessons for myself, I really am). I stopped Terrence from booking me a trip to the Blue Mountains with the same company, because I knew that I could take the train up on my own and that would be fine thank you. Afterwards, he took me to have a look at the Olympic Park, and we went inside the Aquatic Centre, which was very impressive.
I stayed up until 4am to watch the final of the NatWest series between England and Australia. At one stage, when England were 33-5 chasing 197 for victory, I was seriously regretting my decision to stay up all night. However, I knew that Paul Collingwood would save us… and he damn well nearly did. Then he ran himself out, and I can’t help thinking that if he’d stayed in, as well as Geraint Jones, we would’ve won. But hey, a tie’s fine, because all we really deserved was to lose, with a batting performance as terrible as that.
