The Great Idea

Brains are very complex organs.
Especially mine.
Once in a while, a brilliant idea comes out of there. It’s rare, but it does happen.

The last time it did was last Wednesday…


I was sitting on the pavement outside Queen Victoria Market, eating my ‘roo burger (yes I did! I ate some Skippy!) with my cold Melbourne Bitter and listening to the live African drums band with Ze Germans (if I haven’t told you yet about them, they’re Elena, Jörn, Sabine and Robert, the German friends I hang out with these days) and a bunch of other international students. It was the last Wednesday evening music and food fair of the summer so we had all come out to enjoy its festive atmosphere.
Between two handfuls of dhal and rice, Francisco, aka The Chilean guy, who cut his long dreadlocks the night before (and sent them by mail to his mom who had been harassing him to get rid of it for the past three years), told me: "Sarrrrah! Guess what? I’m going to Sydneyyyy! Today, I buy this tourrr. And I will surrrrf therrre and they have like carrrnival therre! Is grrrreat!"
Damn right it’s great Francisco! If I had the 400$ I’d so do it…
Though I might pass on the surfing, cause me and waves are not on speaking terms and New South Wales sharks have quite a reputation, but…
"Sharrrrks? Nah! No sharrrks!"
Yes sharks.
"Rrrrreally?"
Unh-uhn.
Francisco looked down on his plate and I wondered what he was thinking about.
"Is ok. I’m not scarrred. I’m man you know."
That’s just Francisco’s favourite line ("I’m man you know").

I smiled and tried to contain my jealousy…no, not about being a man, on that side I’m good thanks, but the idea of spending a weekend in Sydney, cooling off at Bondi beach and dancing with the dragqueens for the Mardi Gras parade did sound grrrreat to me.

If only I could…

(And that’s when it happened:)

…but why not?!

24 hours later, I was on the top front sit of a huge double-decker bus speeding out of Melbourne in the dry and flat country towards the big metropolis, Sydney.

This should happen to me everyday.

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Here are some pictures of the adventure:

My big big bus at 2:30am, in the middle of absolutely nowhere (the kind of places where kangaroos are not in your plate but hopping around).

And here's the bwana, my good friend Ng'ang'a, whom I hadn't seen for a year and a half and who must love me very much to wake up at 6 to come and pick me up from the bus station. That's actually taken from Circular Quay station and at the back you can see the famous Sydney bridge and the Queen Elisabeth (who's been following me from Chile!)

Ng'ang'a, who's studying at Lafayette college in the US , is also on an exchange here in Australia. Life does these things: him from Kenya, me from Canada; meeting in Singapore, off to different countries for uni and curiously ending up on the same side of the planet once more...

That's his uni, University of New South Wales (that's the name of the state, cause some parts of Sydney reminded some guy of Wales... maybe it was a very cloudy and rainy day). Not quite as charming as Melbourne Uni's old campus, but still very nice I found. My other friend from Singapore Sandra (if you don't know her, you'll meet her in a few pics) also goes to school here.

Sydney is basically built all around an immense bay called Port Jackson but some of its suburbs, many of them with beautiful small beaches, are located right on the South Pacific Ocean. Ng'ang'a lives near Coogee Bay and from there we just walked for a few hours, following the coast all the way up to Bondi beach.

We spent some time looking at the old graves in the scenic Waverley cemetery (seriously, what a gorgeous place to spend the rest of your eternity). I guess it was a Catholic one cause most names were either Irish or Italian. It's funny how on the same family tombstone, the older generations have Italian inscriptions while the younger ones are now in English. That reflects well the reality of immigration (which is probably something I'll tell you more about soon cause 3 out of my 4 classes are pretty much about that).

Ng'ang'a trying to "catch a wave"...

...and me taking pictures that will piss people off :)

Famous Bondi beach... if you manage to zoom in on the "general warnings" sign, you can figure out why, although I put my feet in the water, I did NOT swim that day (just kidding, actually, I forgot my swimsuit and there just a little too many people for me to go skinny-dipping)
On the following day, we went to town and did what had to be done: a picture of the Sydney Opera House. I don't know if you knew that, but the architect who built it never saw it finished. No, not because he died, but because he got in a fight with the government over the financing of the project (which costed like 4 times what he initially told the government) and never set foot in Sydney again. Money, money, money... allows you to do loads, but can make you miss out on a lot too.

Before heading to the Art Gallery of New South Wales to see some fantastic Aboriginal art works, we walked and ate ice-cream (that what they say here: an ice-cream a day keeps the doctor away) in the very beautiful Royal Botanical Gardens.
Right in the middle of the city, it's an oasis from the urban noise and pollution. A good place to take a nap (tested and true). But you still have to pick a good spot...

...if you don't want surprises falling from the sky...

...or some big and hairy friends to cuddle up with you.

Downtown Sydney. It's a big city. The comparison with Toronto often holds I find (and with the funky artsy city, Montreal, being Melbourne...haha! nananan) and it's probably just as multicultural. On the bus, practically every sit had someone from a different skin shade. Out of the 5 girls who were wearing a Muslim headscarf, one was Indonesian, another one Somali, one seemed like North African, one was completely white (I have no clue from where...) and the other one, well, I couldn't tell cause she was wearing the full burkha. The whole world aboard the same bus.

Oh! I wanted to show you... on that last picture, can you see the monorail passing above the street? I thought that was very futuristically cool.

And of course, every town's got its Chinatown. And of course, every Chinatown's got its dumpling restaurant. And of course Sarah loves dumplings and can so many of them till her stomach starts hurting and she has to lie down to recover.

...which we did, on the grass of Tumbalong Park (where you can rent the coolest thing on the planet: pedal boats! I was very much tempted but I resisted). We needed to gather our strenghts for the very special Saturday night ahead of us: Mardi Gras!

First off all, if you don't know her, let me introduce you to Sandra O'Connor and her friendly red-haired buddy Dina. Sandra, that I hadn't seen for more than three years, was my half-Irish/half tribal Malaysian (also called Chinese with freckles) roomate for a year and a half in Singapore (her, me and Amanda, whom I saw briefly in Toronto). She's got more tatoos and about two dozens more piercings than the dozen she already had back then, but she's still the same. And we still have the same great time together.

Then, let me introduce you to Mardi Gras... It might not be on a Tuesday and the people there might tend to be more muscly and covered in oil and sparkles than fat, but that doesn't make it less fun. Au contraire mon frere! (sorry for the inside) Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras is one of the biggest event of this type in the world. Basically, it's a big parade and a night-long party during which the ban on public drinking is officially lifted and where half a million people come down in the street to watch or take part in the festivity, dressing up as anything inspired by the gay and lesbian iconography. The Marie-Antoinettes were there, so were the biker girls, the Cleopatras, all the Village people and many unidentifiable funky characters. All of them out to have fun and to party. To that we say sawah!

It's a night that celebrates diversity but also a night where differences are merged, lines blurred... We keep on putting people in boxes, trying to figure out who's what, who's who. Actually, we just assume (or, at least, I have the bad habit to...once again, I realized after three weeks, that my flatmate' boyfriend is in fact a girlfriend). Well on that night, you just can't. Really? You thought she was a girl? Well, think again! All assumptions, tonight, are vain. And it does feel good once in a while to have whatever you held obvious challenged.

Talking about diversity and blurriness... I just thought I'd stick in that one of us three in the steamy crowd, just in case some Benetton agent coincidentally surfing on my blog wants to cast us in one of their ads.

Some fireworks...

...and another explosive topic. They might not all agree on where you go after you die if you are "on the other team" (as fellow ex-workmates would say), but I thought it was interesting to see many churches affirm their support to the gay and lesbian community on that day. Needless to say, Good Old Roman Catholic Church wasn't at the party (maybe they just weren't invited, nahh!).

Talking about party, another kind of... Let's discuss politics. As you can notice from the poster on the left, there's a guy called John Howard whom people would like to come out...and out of office they mean. Howard, who readily calls himself the most conservative prime minister has ever had, has been around for a decade now, playing best friend with another well-liked bloke George "Dubya" Bush. Refusing to apologize for the harm caused to Aboriginals by the White settlers, sending Australia to Iraq, attacking US Democrats by saying Al-Qaida would be happy to see Obama elected (maybe he just got confused, B and S so look the same), toughening up on asylum seekers, and of course a strong opposition to legal union of same-sex partners, among others, are on his CV. This year being an election year, let's hope Australians get the message.

And the party continued till very very very late...

One last picture of me and Sandra (until she comes visit me) while I waited to board the bus that'd take me back to Melbourne, right on time for my 2 o'clock lecture...