Operaaaaaaaaa

This was a major workage weekend...worked hard but played hard as well. Well, really just Saturday night for the playing. Come on, I needed some sort of weekend after I spent all of Saturday trying to get wine stains out of my work shirt...

The Opera House events were so cool. Location, I think, really makes a difference on your work experience. Somehow overlooking Sydney Harbour made stuffing a bunch of people with food and drink not so bad. Friday night was a company awards dinner for Cadbury Schweppes...awesome for all the free chocolates. Saturday was the wedding reception for the daughter of Roger Fedderer's coach...so lots of tennis players were in attendance. But despite the reception being in a lavish location (inside a tent right on the Harbour)and the bride's family being wealthy, the party was very tastefully decorated...really simple but elegant. It was beautiful and really fun to work. The people were great, drank a lot, and were very friendly. I keep getting asked where my "lovely" accent is from. One guy actually asked if I was from County Cork! Granted, it was loud in the room. I'm also asked a lot if I'm Canadian because most people (including me) can't tell the difference between the accents. So whenever I tell people I'm from NY, they have the best reactions. Some of them launch into the ubiquitous New Yawk accent...quite a funny thing to hear on an Aussie. One guy called it the Big Pink Lady, a type of apple. Upon further discussion, we both discovered that Pink Ladies are one of our favorite types of apples. This was a wedding guest, mind you. Australians really are the friendliest folks. I happened to work a bit at a dinner for an American tour group and they seemed so grumpy! The difference was palpable. They had bad manners, hardly any said please or thank you, and they had such airs of entitlement. Not one asked where I was from--not like they would care, but I do happen to hail from the same country and I spoke quite a bit so they definitely heard my accent--but just in comparison to the Aussies who had a genuine interest in me despite being part of the waitstaff, they didn't seem to take much notice. I guess it's because I'm more of a novelty to the Aussies, but if I were in a foreign country and I heard an American accent, I would be curious. I don't know, maybe I got a bad batch, but it embittered me toward my countrymen.

Tonight Li is teaching the roomies how to make sushi, so I'm super excited. I'll let you know how it goes. Until then...ttfn.