Cupcake

Getting quite excited for our hardcore trip through Tasmania and New Zealand. Fancy big bro flies in tomorrow morning. Fancy Steve is going out to celebrate.



















(Happy birthday to me!)

Close Encounters | Great Barrier Reef

Last weekend, I flew up to Cairns, that crazy town in Queensland, home to the Great Barrier Reef. Cairns is up in the northeast part of Australia. It's still the wet season in the jungle, but even the rain didn't stop me from having a great time! An old friend of mine was visiting me from Hong Kong, so it was fun to have a travel buddy. We left Sydney early Saturday morning and arrived in Cairns at around 10am with the whole day ahead of us.

Croc Hunting
We checked into our hotel, which was about a 20 minute walk from the center of town. It's a cool little town; booming with tourists and activity booths, yet still has a cool local vibe. Cairns reminded me a bit of Lahaina, HI - which once again made me miss Hawaii! Saturday afternoon, we rented a boat and headed up the murky-brown estuary, searching for crocodiles. The light blue aluminum boat screamed "we're tourists!" It had a crappy 6hp engine, so it took us a lifetime to navigate through all the little nooks and crannies of the river - but we did see a couple of crocodiles, er salties. We really just saw the eyes, noses and bubbles because the crocs were all hiding underwater - could have been a combination between the engine noise, the high tide, and the fact that the air was much cooler than the water - not that I was about to put my hand in there to check the temperature. I need my hands, thanks.

Are you for scuba?
On Sunday, we headed out to the reef on a catamaran. It turned out to be the nicest day Cairns had seen in a couple weeks, so we were told - which made for the perfect day out on the reef. It was a 2 hour journey out to the reef. Luckily I'd already popped some dramamine to avoid losing my breakfast like 7 other people on the boat. Smart thinking.
Heading out to sea.









Once at the reef, I'd planned on just snorkeling, but decided to give scuba diving a shot - no license was needed, so what the hell! While waiting for the scuba instructor to arrive from below deck, I was picturing a tall naked French guy named Claude, talking about "hippo-pot-o-mooses" and constantly asking "are you for scuba?" But I wasn't disappointed when the instructor showed up - a really cute Aussie girl.

Scuba Steve, ready for action:












We went over all the gizmos and gadgets on the scuba gear, then jumped in the water for some practice. Once I figured out how to use the Force and breathe like Darth Vader, we headed down. Right away, I spotted a giant clam (more than a meter wide) and silly me, I stuck my hand in it. Of course, it started to close its jaws, but got my hand out in time. It took me a few minutes before I touched anything else. I spotted nemo and his girlfriend who were hanging out in the anenome, just like in the movie. I dove back down and saw all sorts of coral, 2 eels, crabs, sea cucumbers, pretty fishes and 3 evil-looking sting rays.

Chilling after a hard day's work (not sure why I bring out the shaka in every picture...)












Making Friends
On Monday, I hopped on a bus and headed up to Cape Tribulation, a cool little jungle town. It took all day to get up there - lots of stopping along the way. We stopped at a cool little wildlife park, where I made some furry, and slippery friends.

Yep, there's a python... wrapped around my neck.













Something so cute shouldn't taste so good.










(I'm not showing the picture of me holding a koala because I look like a freak).

Later on, we headed up the river and hunted for more crocodiles.
This was a big one, and within striking distance. Yes, I'm an idiot.

Rugby: Waratahs vs Brumbies

In NY, you go to a Yankees game. In Sydney, rugby is the sport to watch, so I joined 35,000 crazy fans at the Sydney Football Stadium in the pouring rain. The Waratahs won, 24-17.

I've never paid much attention to the rugby on tv, so was fortunate enough to have a friend commentate for me.

February's Cliff's Notes

The month of February was a complete blur. Part of me feels like the naughty 3rd grader who didn't write in his diary. But the good news is, I've been having a hell of a good time! Here's a quick recap of what I've been up to.

Australia Day
Saturday, January 26th was Australia Day - Australia's version of the 4th of July. Aussie's love their heritage; they absolutely love the fact that they're Aussie. Lots of painted faces, Aussie flags printed on limbs, and flags hanging patriotically from their shoulders were commonsight. I spent the day at Manly Beach (a 40 minute ferry ride from Circular Quay), then joined up with some friends in the arvo to catch some live shows in The Rocks (the area near the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House). Capped the perfect day with a classic fireworks display over Darling Harbour.













Blue Mountains
A couple weeks ago, I took a weekend trip up to the Blue Mountains. This is Australia's version of the Grand Canyon. The views are excellent, and the mountains really are blue - from the sun rays reflecting off evaporating water droplets on the eucalyptus trees. There's a lot of hiking to be had in the mountains. I didn't hike nearly enough - only a few hours - but there will be plenty left to explore when I go back another day.










Bondi to Coogee Walk
A beautiful day calls for a nice long walk. The Bondi to Coogee walk is a must-do while in Sydney. Breathtaking views along the coast. I've done it a handful of times now, and can picture myself doing this a couple times a month if I lived here permanently. You start at Bondi Beach, the most famous of the Sydney beaches. It's clearly the breast implant capital of Sydney, where fashion is ultra cool and a hairy beast like me feels awkward for not having a smooth waxy chest. You walk past abandoned hippie caves, lots of turquoise water and sexy beaches on your way to Coogee, a hip little beach town. The total trip takes about 3 hours (if you're swimming and taking pictures along the way), so a beer at the Coogee Bay Hotel is a refreshing way to celebrate the finish line. I've also continued an hour or so past Coogee, with a slight buzz, down to Maroubra Beach, the less visited by tourists surfer dude beach.










Allergic to Sydney?
Apparently I'm allergic to something in the air here in Sydney! Never thought I'd be the allergy-type, but I've spent the first 2 months with a runny nose, puffy eyes, and the constant urge to sneeze! It ain't attractive, especially when I take a big puff of my inhaler at the beach. Luckily, the people are nice enough here that when I meet someone and say, "Don't worry, it's not contagious," they don't avoid me like the plague. Good things, all good things.










Surf Camp! A couple weekends ago, I joined a crazy bunch of backpackers and headed up the coast on a 7hr bus ride to Crescent Head for a weekend surf camp. Met some great people, caught some serious waves and finally saw wild kangaroos and even goannas!












Wildlife World & Centerpoint
Last weekend I held butterflies, touched beetles and cockroaches, squeezed the tail of a python, pretended I was a wallaby and admired the sleepy koalas at Sydney Wildlife World. Even though it's a complete tourist trap, I enjoyed every minute of it! With snake goo on my hands, we headed up to Centerpoint, the highest spot in Sydney, for some great views of the city.

Kangaroo - where you at?

The bad news
I've been in Sydney for almost a month and a half and still haven't seen a wild kangaroo. Makes me think, "What have I been doing?"

The good news?
Kangaroo... tastes like venison.

Sasquatch Sighting

A sasquatch was spotted recently at an undisclosed beach in Australia. Sunbathers were shocked by the scene, with one local saying, "I just couldn't believe the hair." This was the first sasquatch sighting in the modern era south of the equator. Experts have many theories about why a sasquatch would be out in the open and in such warm weather. But most are convinced it's related to the great surf.

Sasquatch, also referred to as Bigfoot or Yeti, are believed by many to be the missing link between humans and gorillas.

My Fifth Set Tiebreaker

I love my marathon weekends. My trip to Melbourne was exactly that - a marathon.

I'll start where I left off - Friday night, watching the Roddick match. I ended up cheering for the losing American until the very end - 2:30am. By the time I packed my day-bag and killed some time, I didn't make it to bed until 3:30am. With about 1hr of quality sleep, I was naturally pissed when my alarm clock went off at 5am. But with no snoozes, I splashed some water on my face, grabbed a cab to the airport and headed south to Melbourne. Everything was right on schedule. And I was quite giddy.

9am. Shortly after touchdown, I grabbed a free shuttle to the Hilton across from Melbourne Park (yes, sneaky) and skipped along the fields of Yarra toward the grounds of the Australian Open. The setup is well laid out and very spacious.

10:45am. Camera in tow, I snapped pictures along the way and headed straight to Rod Laver Arena. Tickets to the Aussie Open are hard to come by - I got mine back in November. All of Saturday's sessions were sold out. When I entered the stadium, I headed straight to the information booth to find out which players were in action. My ticket (for Rod Laver Arena) featured Roger Federer - but I really wanted to watch the matches on Vodafone, which featured Kuznetsova, Radwanska, Ivanovic, Djokovic, Querrey, and - Blake v Grosjean! (How could I possibly miss out on watching James Blake live from Melbourne?) I walked around the grounds for a while, meeting people, trying to trade my ticket. After about a half hour, I found a lucky customer, made the trade, and headed over to Vodafone.

11:00am. The tickets I scored on Vodafone were quite good! Much better than the tickets I had on Rod Laver. The Blake match was incredible. Blake had never beaten Grosjean - from the get-go, Grosjean's dominance was clear. Grosjean was passing Blake left and right, always guessing where Blake was about to hit the ball. Great anticipation on Grosjean's part, which gave Grosjean a 2-sets-to-love lead. Blake, of course, came back - for his first 2-sets-down victory. I was cheering like a madman - there were only a handful of loud Americans in the crowd - I was clearly one of them.

7:00pm. The rain was still coming down, which meant no outdoor play, but plenty of Vodofone action. After watching a few other matches in Vodofone (including Djokovic's straight set thumping of Sam Querrey), I overheard that there was an upset in the making over at Rod Laver. Federer was down 2 sets to 1 against Tipsaravic (another young Serb). I rushed outside, and joined the massive party watching the match on the big screen tv. Everyone was soaking wet, but content. The majority of the big screen gathering had ground passes that day; since all outdoor matches were rained out, most of the fans decided to drink all day. The crowd smelled of beer, chips and rain. It was a mixed crowd; not many Aussies, and mostly Serbs routing for Tipsaravic. When Federer won 10-8 in the 5th, a small fight broke out amongst the drunken fans, but it was broken up quickly.

9:00pm. Since most of the day matches in Vodofone were wrapping up, I decided to try my luck at getting a Night ticket. The night session on Rod Laver Arena was delayed a few hours because of the extended Federer-Tipsaravic match. Featured matches were Venus Williams vs S. Peer and Marco Bhagdatis vs Lleyton Hewitt. Tickets were sold out back in November. I thought I had a small shot at scoring a ticket. (Sponsors and players are given a certain number of tickets each night and since it was so late I thought for sure some tickets would be released). I was exhausted, and hadn't checked into my hotel yet - all reasoning pointed to "Steve, get a cab and get some rest" - but I kept wondering, "what if..."

11pm. So - I waited in line for a couple hours. There were about 50 people in front of me - all crazy fans, just like me. I chatted with some guys in line, and we took turns getting the beers. As the time passed, the line got shorter. We inched forward, minute by minute, but they weren't releasing any tickets - people were just getting tired and calling it a night. When there were just 15 people in front of me, the ticket manager made the announcement that there was no chance in hell any of us would get tickets. She said (politely), "Just call it a night - it's late".

I loitered with a hardcore Hewitt fan (Greg from Perth) for a few minutes. Even though we'd been waiting for so long to get in, we still thought there was a chance at scoring tickets. We pondered for a little while and I had an idea - we ask the next people that leave the stadium if we can have their tickets. It seemed logical at the time, so we went ahead with it. About 10 minutes later, sure enough, an older couple was leaving. I asked them politely if we could have their tickets (that I traveled all the way from California, schmooze, schmooze, schmooze, etc) and they handed them right over! Amazing! I traded tickets earlier that day - and was given tickets at the end. Could it get any better?

11:30pm. I entered the stadium with Greg - Venus was almost done with her match. The seats were good, but we definitely had our eyes on seats closer to the action. (We were just getting greedy at this point). After Venus won, the crowd was sleepy, but there were no signs of clearing out. The stage was set for Hewitt/Baghdatis and the crowd was ready for something special.

The match was amazing. The crowd went crazy when the players did just about anything. The match never had a dull moment. Both players were on the ropes countless times. Jab for jab, punch for punch, the players were neck and neck. Even though Hewitt is an Aussie, the crowd really didn't know who to root for. The quality of play was excellent; the points were long, the sets were taking forever - and the crowd was secretly hoping for a ridiculously late finish. Because what's the difference between 2am and 4am? "Not a whole lot," says the 10,000+ fans.

The crowd certainly got what we came for. We snuck down to the 1st rows as the match got better and better. (I watched a replay on tv and you can actually see me behind the players in a few views). In the 4th set, just when we thought Hewitt was taking control and a few games from closing the match, Baghdatis came back strong and stole the set in a tiebreaker. I've never heard such a loud tennis crowd (I was definitely playing my part!). It was nearing 4am. I'd stopped drinking beer a while ago and had switched over to Cokes.

4:45am. In the 5th and final set, the crowd got louder and louder. One fan got kicked out for making Baghdatis double-fault at a critical moment. The crowd stayed on the feet most of the set (not a typical tennis fan position). Hewitt took a lead, and after blowing a few match points, Hewitt finally ran around a second serve and smoked a forehand return down the line for a winner. He fell to the ground, the crowd went wild. Out of control. It was 4:45 in the morning!

5:30am. Raining cats and dogs, I waited in line for about 40 minutes for a cab. I took the 30-minute cab ride to my hotel and checked in around 6am. Yes, I checked in at 6am. Freaking crazy. Even crazier - when I got up to my room and saw that I had a nice tub, with jets, bath crystals, and the works, I ended up taking a bath. Yes, I took a freakin bubble bath. That's how out of sorts I was. Didn't really go to sleep until around 7am.

11am to 5pm. On a few hours of rest, I headed back to the Tennis Center for some more matches. The weather was beautiful and sunny. I watched Ferrero, Nalbandian, Tsonga, Gasquet, Williams, Vaidisova, Niemenin, Kohlschreiber, Sharapova, and many more. At around 5pm, I flagged a cab to the airport and headed back to Sydney.

I slept well that night. :)

Antibiotics & Melbourne-Bound

Spent the last few days with a tickly, wheezy cough and a bit of fatigue. I was rather impressed and surprisingly excited about my first Australian medical centre experience. I walked in off the street and within 15 minutes of walking through the door, I was diagnosed (upper respiratory infection - ew!), had my meds in hand, and all paid up! 15 minutes. The doctor was friendly, courteous, and there wasn't a ridiculous amount of paperwork to fill out. The simplicity of it all must help the healing process, because I'm feeling much better now!

I'm hopping on a plane to Melbourne early Saturday morning (in a few hours) for some weekend fun. From what I hear, Melbourne's an amazing city - they also have some pretty good tennis this time of year, too! Most of the top players will be in action at the Aussie Open. The only question mark is Roddick, who's down 2 sets to 1 in his 3rd round match (as of 12:45am Friday night).

I've got my bag packed, camera charged, sunscreen and hat ready to go! Needless to say, my next post will come live from Melbourne! Look for me in the nosebleeds.

Beach Cricket

I spent my Sunday at Maroubra Beach. The sun was screaming, the crowds were hungry, and the stage was set for an exciting professional Beach Cricket finale. As the name suggests, it was cricket. But on the beach. (Beach on a hot day = awesome). The first match was between Australia and England. Australia won the match against England, but then lost the final match against New Zealand.

To give a little more background and insight into what the day of beach cricket entailed: beach cricket is to cricket as the homerun derby is to baseball. The game is simplified and faster than it's respective parent, and there's a boatload of scoring. From what I hear, beach cricket is more fun for the spectators, mostly because it's - at the beach.

In normal cricket, the field looks like a big oval - not the diamond shape of a baseball field. In the middle of the field are 2 "wickets", spaced about 22 yards apart on a strip called "the pitch". A bowler (pitcher in baseball), bowls toward the batsman, who hits the ball. If the batsman doesn't get out, he runs to the other wicket while the fielders try to get the ball. Each sprint between the wickets counts as a "run". In between innings, the teams break for lunch and some matches can last for 4-5 days - sometimes without a result! The match is won by the team with the most runs, which can often be 200-300 runs.

Cricket isn't quite the money and media-driven sport that baseball is in America, but it still has more of an international following than.baseball. It's the 2nd most popular sport in the world, behind soccer. Behind crocodile wrestling, cricket is the number 1 sport in Australia. Instead of throwing around a football or Frisbee at a beach, it's more common to see kids playing cricket instead.

As you can see in the video, we had a big change in the weather towards the end of play. From a ridiculously hot mid-morning and early afternoon to a rainy, breezy afternoon - and my first Sydney beach storm. Australia hits one over the fence in the video, a 6 pointer.

As Natural as a Kangaroo on Ice Skates

With so much to do in Australia, it's almost hard to believe I spent 4 hours today - get this - ice skating in a suburb of Sydney. Although the average bear wouldn't consider ice skating a traditional Aussie sport, I went along with some coworkers and we indeed had a fantastic time, with a ton of laughter, which to me is the definition of a fantastic.

While skating along, I couldn't help but think how surreal this experience actually was. Similar to those indoor downhill ski slopes in Dubai, or seeing Pandas in a zoo in Washington DC - it just didn't seem quite right. Sure, my body was in the rink, skating around in circles, a familiar activity, reminding me of lumbering around on skates, lugging around an over-sized hockey stick in a flooded backyard - with really no clue what I was doing. (To me, and apparently the rest of the world, ice skating isn't quite one of those "natural" activities. To this day, I'm really not quite sure humans were meant to waltz around on ice with razors attached to their feet. Iron lotus, anyone?)

Even though the essence of skating was the same in Sydney as anywhere else - the equipment, the awkwardness, the disorder, the counter clockwise direction, people hanging onto the rink wall for dear life, and a world owned by teens and tweens - something was still a bit... off. Maybe it was the fact that it was 108 degrees outside the glass walls. Or maybe that there was nearly an inch of water on the ice, making the rink like one giant Slip N Slide. Or the fact that skaters were gliding around not in sweaters and jeans, but their shorts and tees.

Regardless of what was off about ice skating in Sydney, it's fun to "do as the locals do" as much as possible when traveling. And apparently, Aussies have an affinity for ice skating almost as much as Americans! It's certainly not quite as I'd expected, and of course that makes it even more fun. Although I'll probably opt to head for the beach next time, or maybe hitch a ride to the outback - this experience was one for the books.

Tennis & Tomato Sauce

Took the early train out of work and headed for the Olympic grounds to check out the Sydney Open. The Sydney Olympic Center is impressive - hard to believe all the work they did just for one event. The Olympics is huge, of course, but these grounds are mind bottling.

The sun was quite hot on the courts, even at 5:30pm. Sunscreen anyone? The first match between Carlos Moya and Agustin Calleri was a nightmare - at least for Carlos Moya. The match was being held on Court 1, not Center Court, so I mosied up and prime seating. Sat next to a nice couple, chatted about tennis, beer, and food, and enjoyed the match. Moya, of course, got his butt whooped.

The featured match on Center Court was between Jankovic and Vaidisova. Although an "exciting" 3-setter, the only thing really exciting was the crazy Serbian fans almost getting kicked out of the stadium for being absolutely nuts. There was of course a lot of ooh-ing and ah-ing from the civilized blend of Englishmen and Australians. One fist fight between a Serb and an Aussie, but it was broken up quickly.

I usually have a hard time following women's tennis, so took a time out at the end of the second set to grab some fish and chips. The meal was delicious. But ya know, they do weird things with sauce down here. First, it's called tomato sauce, not ketchup. Second, I had to pay for it. Yes, I paid for the ketchup (er, tomato sauce). And third, it comes in this awkward container where you have to pinch to small bins together to release the juicyness - but when I tried, it exploded all over me and on a woman walking by. Woops! The sauce says "Squeeze On" in large print, but I must have missed the part where it follows with (Squeeze On) "Your Body and everyone walking behind you." This picture shows the fish n chips, minus the fish, and minus the mess. Yep, didn't take a picture after the mess. (I can take a picture of bat shit, but for some reason taking a picture of ketchup was too complicated.)

Armed with blotches of tomato sauce, an ice cold beer for myself (and a beer for the poor woman sharing the tomato sauce), I headed off to watch the oh-so-exciting finale to the women's match. After Vaidisova gave her victory speech, it made room for the Bryan Brothers to take the court.

The next match was awesome. Doubles. Front Row. Fun crowd. Lots of noise. Just about as exciting as tennis can get. Almost as exciting as next week's Australian Open (can't wait!). The Bryan Brothers traded some magnificent rallies with their Israeli opponents - and won in a thrilling 11-9 third set tiebreaker. After the big win, I hustled back to the train stop just after midnight, traveled through the sleepy suburbs of Sydney and toward my lively neighborhood, where I danced with some local folk at my new local bar to classic, comfortable American rock.

Aussie Breakfast, Fishies & Bat Dung

G'Day!

My first weekend in Australia was quite packed. It all started Saturday morning, where I enjoyed a traditional Aussie Breakfast and headed to the Sydney Aquarium, which is by far the nicest aquarium I can remember visiting (with the exception of Sea World). There's a full Great Barrier Reef exhibit, plus sharks, crocs, platypus, and lots of little Nemos. Makes me want to get up to the reef soon and swim with the fishies - minus the sharks.

On Saturday night, I checked out the amazing Sydney Festival, a month-long free event. It was opening night, so we got to see fireworks and all! Aussies certainly do love their fireworks! Shortly after the display, I was intrigued by how many bats were flying around Hyde Park. There were hundreds. While following the crowd's queue, pointing at and tracking the ginormous flying rodents, I felt this icky "slap!" on my shoulder. Although I can't fully explain how it felt, I can at least show you what bat poo looks like. I hear it's good luck when birds poop on you. But I'm not sure about bats. To me, it's just freaking gross!

After such a busy Saturday and many drinks trying to forget the bat extravaganza, most of Sunday was spent recovering at Manly Beach. It's the nicest beach I've been to thus far - much better than the highly coveted Bondi Beach. The ferry ride is fantastic, with great views of the Harbour.

For more pics, check out my Picasa Web Albums.

Fire Brigade

Fire alarm went off at midnight last night and the fire brigade evacuated my building. Hundreds of sleepyheads piled down the staircase. Luckily, it was a false alarm and I chalked up the 63-floor downward climb as a good workout - then went to the ba'!

Happy New Year!

G'Day from Down Under!

I arrived safe and sound in Sydney, celebrated the New Year long before anyone reading this. I left San Francisco on 12/29 at 10pm - my flight arrived 12/31 at 8am. I never saw 12/30 this year!

Shortly after touchdown...
...I took a stroll through Central Sydney. My pad is near China Town, at the southern part of Central Sydney. It has some amazing 270-degree views of the city! I walked up to Darling Harbour, had a pie for lunch (delicious), then headed up to the Circular Quay (pronounced "Key") to see the Opera House. Then I hopped on a ferry back to Darling Harbour and rested up for the evening.

Celebrated the New Year...
...at a co-worker's apartment in Darlinghurst for a great view of the fireworks. The display was fantastic! A great way to bring in the New Year! Was pretty wired after my nap so used the city's energy to keep me going until about 6am.

Spent the 1st of the Year...
...at Bondi Beach with other fellow sun worshippers. It was then that I realized, Australians are hot.

For more pics, check out my Picasa Web Albums.

Cheers,
Steve