Melbourne Madness

Reporting in from the office in Melbourne. It’s Friday night and we had a lovely thunder storm, which created amazing views of the harbour from our office on the 27th floor. I’m currently watching the sunset over the river.

I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had the chance to talk about half the crazy things I’ve done in the last week. I have, however, discovered an excellent term to describe myself that I hope to perpetuate- I’m a stuff-ologist. I like thinking about stuff. Ideas, languages, history, philosophy, urban legends, superstitions, swear words, bad jokes- all float around me and get absorbed into my stuffology collection.

I arrived at 6am almost two weeks ago. I got to the apartment in downtown Sydney and, since it was afternoon California time, and I had managed to sleep for 9 hours of the 14 hour flight (thank god!), I immediately began unpacking. Rupa, one of my favourite friends in the whole world (see HyderabadAdventures), who was visiting Sydney from India, met me at 8am in the morning and we just lay around the apartment and caught up on a years worth of stuff.

Eventually we mobilized and took the underground to Circular Quay and had an exceedingly expensive coffee and muffin overlooking the opera house and Harbour Bridge. Then we hopped a ferry to Manly beach, where I got to experience the joy of a ferry going across “abnormally large swells” ie like those pirate ships rides at amusement parks that swing back and forth, except actually on water. Luckily, I wasn’t sitting near people who get motion sickness, or else it could have gotten ugly- “Welcome to Sydney, blaaaaaahhhhh…”

Rupa and I walked around the beach, which had such rough surf that it was closed to swimmers, and watched the best of the best surfers catching 20 ft waves. The water was still too cold to enjoy, but the bright sun and turquoise colour made it so enticing that we spent the afternoon tiptoeing up, getting our feet wet, squealing, and running away.

I began my Australian health food diet with a meal of fish and chips and beer, followed up by a double chocolate gelato at the ferry terminal. This is a diet that, against all efforts, I have managed to maintain over the last two weeks, and have only been saved from the fate of ultimate blob-dom by the fact that Sydney is an easily walkable city and I don’t have a car to tempt me into driving anywhere.


I spent my first week hanging out with Rupa as much as possible and met all the other ex-pats currently in Sydney (ex-pats doesn’t really sound right when they’re not in a 3rd world country) – a few peeps from Hyderabad, Shaheen and Sandeep, Emma (my British counterpart at work who is also moving to Singapore) and her Canadian husband, Ryan, and another American, Eric. The group was smaller than the hoards of foreigners in India, but still had the fun dynamic of camp or a freshman dorm, where everyone is foreign and sharing the same experience, even though they are coming from such different places.

I remembered how much fun it was in Oxford and India to be in a group of people like this who can have the “tehehe, you call those thongs? Thongs means something else at home….” conversations.

I’m now off to watch Australian football and eat pizza with some people from the office. I’m sure that this is will be a prime opportunity for me to absorb more stuff into my stuffology portfolio.