It is just great to be back in Sydney amid all the sunshine, the Australian people and the beach. I have settled into my old job at the Paddington Bowling Club and this summer/Christmas season is already shaping up to be incredible hours of work. The best part of it all is that I have oodles of time to do nothing in particular until November. To put it bluntly, since returning here, I have played Home Run Derby at a cricket oval for three hours and today I played a mutant form of baseball at Bondi Beach for two unbelievable hours. I would also like to tell you that I am 26 years old. Surreal does not even begin to explain my life over here.
However, this weekend I was schooled on Australian history/ life experiences 1o1 and I didn't even sign up for the classes. This weekend was a public holiday weekend meaning most people in NSW (New South Wales) had Monday off. I had to work a short shift at the bar on Sunday, but around 4pm, Sam and I went to Darling Harbour for a Latin American festival. There was music, dancing, Spanish speakers, basically heaven for me. We stayed at the festival and the Darling Harbour area until around 7 pm when we decided that we wanted to enjoy some wine and beer at Sam's place. Our regular bottle shop (or Botttleo, Australians have this curious and hilarious linguistic characteristic in which they shorten a lot of nouns and sometimes names and then either put an "O", "Y" or "IE" at the end of the words: Bottle Shop= BottleO; Jonathan= Jono; Registration for the car= Rego; Football= Footy; Sunglasses= sunnies; Person from the States= Sepo or short for Septic tank, which is derived from the word Yank....I am not that naive. ... you get the idea.) was closed so we had to go to one that was up the street. The area where this bottle shop is located is in a posh section of Sydney called Wollahra where coincidently, I work. To paint the picture for you, this is the place where dogs being walked are, in actuality, carried by their owners since a live thing is such a cool accessory. Sunglasses cover 3/4 of the people's faces and wearing a T-shirt and Jeans basically means you have come from the Twist genealogy.
I wanted to buy some beers and Sam wanted a crisp white wine for a relaxing night. Sydney was awash with excitement as people had Monday off, there was a huge music festival about 2km away from Woolahra, and a huge Rugby final was being played involving a team from Sydney. I selected my beers, and went to pay the shop keeper as Sam still was undecided about what wine to buy. We were the only patrons in this small shop, and as I finished my transaction, Sam questioned the shop keeper for suggestions on a good wine. At this point, class was in session. As we all know, Australia was founded by the English by transplanting criminals to the continent, I never thought I would get a live and updated tutorial on this historical fact.
I looked left and a short, stocky man entered wearing a mask. I paid no attention to this guy as he probably had been celebrating Sydney's win in the Rugby final, or had come from a costume party and was that guy with the lame idea. I turned away from him, only to see out of the corner of my eye, a very large knife. Again, Sydney slashed Melbourne in the Rugby final, but this physical pun was a step too far. It was not until he demanded money from the cash register that I realized this guy was serious. He came within a couple of feet of me, and pounded the knife on the counter top. Again, not to harp on the stereotypes, but all I was thinking was Paul Hogan's line "that's not a knoife, this is knoife." I stepped back to place myself in the path between him and Sam. He demanded money from the register, but did not focus his attention on us. I turned to Sam and she was rummaging through her bag to get her wallet, to which I quietly motioned for her to stop. The walking Australian stereotype took the money and to my absolute disbelief, walked out. I have no other verb to really describe how he exited, but I am pretty sure that a sloth would have beat him out the door. He gingerly got into his car and left.
Sam and I were shaken, but fine as was the shop keeper. As a hilarious statistic for you at home, this is the third time this shop keeper has been robbed at this store in the last 4 years....and he only works on Sunday and Monday!
The police arrived shortly after the robber left. Now as I described, there was a lot of events in Sydney this night, so one would surmise that the police force would be stretched out, incorrect. One car arrived , then another, then another and for posterity a paddy wagon arrived. For those scoring at home and this might be a little off, 7 witnesses (some 16 year boys caught a glimpse of the license plate number) to 79837 police officers. For about 30 minutes, the crime scene turned into a police officer chat session. Sam kept muttering within earshot of the police slumber party, that she is not going to pay taxes anymore if this is how it is spent on officers.
To end, police investigators took our statements and we ended the night at 10:45pm .
This event shed a lot of light on the notion of traveling to foreign countries; Australia is deemed a safe place to travel (except for the killer spiders, sharks, crocodiles, snakes, rips, sun, surfboards, koalas, on second thought, why would you come here?). From experience, people have been nervous with traveling through South America, Asia etc. However I am here to tell you that it doesn't matter, in Sydney my house has been broken into, I have had an ipod stolen and my girlfriend has stolen my heart. It really doesn't matter where you are, things are going to happen, you just have to chalk up to life experiences and learn from it.
I am extremely relieved nothing happened to Sam or the shop keeper, and my love for this city has not wavered. Just another crazy day here in Sydney.
Class over.
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