After all the craziness of Adelaide, I needed some time to relax, so I booked myself in for three nights in Sydney.

It was basically a few days of reliving old memories. I actually checked into the same hotel I was in for the first week so many years ago, back when all this blogging nonsense was still getting started on the hallowed halls of MySpace. I called in to my old church and spent some time in my old work haunt in Chatswood (Appen appears to have long since relocated). I even walked across the same Sydney Harbour Bridge that I used to. I caught the ferry over to Manly for no reason at all, as it was cold and dark and in the middle of winter. The city lights on the way back are still awesome though.

Just for sentiment's sake, I stopped in at the shopping centre to visit the Oxfam shop which was the scene of so much made-up heartache. Not only was 'she' not there, but even the Oxfam shop itself was gone. I was heart broken, and a little disturbed. Oxfam Girl may have had some fictitiousness related issues, but I was sure the shop was real. Maybe the whole torrid affair was even more mental than I realised...

Given the amount of friends I still have in Sydney, and the relatively short time I had to spend there, I seemed to spend an entirely disproportionate amount of time with Kirribilli Kim. I choose to blame a corporate aversion to dish washing for this, but it did make for a great few days.

It all started innocently enough (well…) with a murder mystery party held in Kim’s flat. I was going to skip the explanation for this and just link you to Kim’s post about it, but that turns out to be just a bunch of photos and the rather spurious suggestion that I’m not as cranky as I seem (I flatly deny this). I’m still definitely too lazy to go over the details, but basically Suzie did it and we had taco salad for dinner.

I mention the “salad” for two reasons: firstly because none of us had ever heard of taco salad. I’m not sure if it’s a peculiarly American dish or whether I’ve just spent too much time avoiding anything connected with salads to pick up on it. Seriously, you could call a dish the “three kinds of meat and a couple of cheeses salad” and I would probably still skip over it on the menu. But it was pretty good.

Anyway…

The other reason to mention the meal is to foreshadow the frankly incredible amount of dishes generated by the preparation and consumption of said salad. As the other guests began to filter away from the party, I made the uncharacteristically chivalrous decision to hang around and help clean up. Seriously, the pile of plates was bigger than Kim.

In the subsequent hours, some of the following things happened. Some of them didn’t.

• We discussed the relative virtues of various chocolatier franchises.
• We invented a new species of duck.
• I learned to play euchre.
• Kim learned to play the cello.
• We washed the dishes.
• We discussed pressing social issues from various religious standpoints.
• We covered everything in Kim’s housemate’s room in aluminium foil.
• We made out for about an hour and a half.
• I fell down three flights of stairs.
• We slunk away as the sun rose over Neutral Bay, thinking “That was a crazy night. I’m going to regret this”.
• Kim walked into a glass door.

What a night! Make of that what you will.

 

 

Garry with 2 Rs