Umamiblog

I’m writing at the moment somewhere over the Tasman Sea. We took off, I guess, about an hour and bit ago. Last night was a fairly useless night of sleep. I was torn between staying up with Richie, getting to bed early as I needed to get up at 5:20am and then having to deal with drunk roommates coming home at all hours of the morning.

I had my alarm set at 5:20am, the last person to come home was at 5am and this guy was the worst. Earlier in the night I had seem him start drinking and I thought to myself, I feel sorry for whoever has to sleep with that guy… And it was us. He had the same accent as Boy George which was rather funny.

As I was waiting outside the hostel for the shuttle to go, I gave Richie a call to say come down and say goodbye. I figured that he would be sleeping and would take a while to answer his phone. Instead, after a couple of rings he picks up and there is a lot of music in the background. He was still out on the town with his mates.

We all knew it was going to be a fairly good night as it was Australia Day (the day when Aussies celebrate all things Australian: Phar Lap, Pavlova, Crowded House, Russell Crowe, etc) but I passed on it in favour of at least a little sleep before having to come home. Richie said on the phone that he was watching the time because he did want to say goodbye but somehow the time ran away on him and he wasn’t able to make it back in time. Hahahaha!

Waiting in the airport was fairly boring, I had a coffee at Starbucks and read some of my book. I did a wee bit of duty free shopping and slowly made my way through immigration picking up a banana on the way to the gate. We got away from the airport a little early and the flight back to NZ is a little quicker than to Aus because of the winds or some such so hopefully I’ll be back into Dunedin Airport at around 2pm.

I’ve already had a wee kip to pass the time, then I thought I would bring out the trusty ol’ lappy and pre-write my next post. The trip over has been great fun and writing this blog has been quite rewarding. I would say it has been received a lot better than I expected it to, with the comments, etc, so I’m very happy with that. If only I was able to get some photos online for you all. I’ll see if Richie won’t email a couple over to me to put online.

Sydney was great fun and far exceeded my expectations, so much so, I think it is my favorite city in Australia. I think I had expected it to just be a big Auckland, expecting Melbourne to be my favorite because of all the good things I’d heard. But, Melbourne seems like a bigger Chch only with more trams and taller buildings, and Sydney seems like a world city that is just charging forward. Of course, these observations are just based on a week long trip to Oz but I think I’d now be more inclined to visit Sydney before Melbourne.

It will be interesting going back to Dunedin after a week in 3 million plus cities with 25′C temperatures day and night. It will be great to finally see Sarah again. A whole 7 days without her, I feel like I’ve lost a leg or something. And on that note I will now put my computer away and try for another wee sleep, the plane is noticeably not full today as well.