Weekend Update

I just had a pretty awesome weekend. Friday night I went to see Ten Part Invention, an amazing jazz band that has been around for 20 years, with Matt and his friend Lawrence at the Sound Lounge. It's a great jazz venue that is the closest thing you can get to the Village. The show was fantastic and afterwards we went to Badde Manors in Glebe for some coffee with Matt's roommate and her boyfriend. Then we went back to Newtown for some bar hopping and great conversation.

Saturday I met Kate and Dennis at the Merc to listen to that band (whose name I still don't know) that plays there every Saturday afternoon, the one with which I played the tambourine my first day in Sydney. We had a couple of drinks before I had to go into work at the Entertainment Centre for the David Gray concert. I worked one of the candy bars with this Aussie guy named Paul who has lived in America (NY and California) for the past several years. He made some joke about getting citizenship and actually proposed to me! Well, not actually, I think he might've been joking. It was fun to work beside him because, although he was a strange guy, he made the shift fun by just goofing around and chatting with me about NY and "Strong Island" (his term, not mine). After we closed the bar, I went in to watch the concert. I've never really been familiar with David Gray (although it turns out I have one of his songs on my DJ), but he was pretty good! He did that song "Babylon," which is about the only song I know besides the one on my MP3 player. He does this Bob Dylan song too, and a cover of The Cure's "Friday I'm In Love." After the show I met up with Matt (again!) since he was working the same shift and we went to Chinatown for a bite to eat. Interesting dining experience that was.

Today I worked at Aussie Stadium again for a footy match this time. It was a better shift than last week's, but only because I wasn't feeling like crap. I worked with Polly, who is this cool Aussie chick I've worked with a bunch of times and who's house I almost moved into back when I was looking for a place to live. The supervisor was kind of a jackass though and we started the shift working with this really odd guy who had some sort of tantrum soon after starting and was asked to leave. Bizarre. I'm glad he left because he was being really condescending. I hate that...some people think that just because they're permanent staff they can treat the agency staff like children.

After work I met Becca in Surry Hills! She's back in town after travelling up the coast for over a month. It was so much fun catching up with her. She had some great stories and good travel tips as well. Next week Nathalie comes back to Sydney too! Can't wait to hear all about her tour, for which she was the French translator.

I'm starting to formulate a travel plan in my head. I think I'm going to start off in New Zealand for about 3 weeks starting at the beginning of June. Then I'll be back in Sydney at the end of June for the Coldplay concert (Kate bought tickets before she left NY!). After spending a few days in Sydney, I'll start travelling the rest of Australia, probably starting in Melbourne and making my way over to Adelaide, up to Alice Springs and Uluru, then up to Cairns and down the coast. I hope I can fit it all in. I should have about 5 weeks to do all of the Australia stuff. We shall see...