| "Am still alive!" - part 1 |
| Well, Howdy people!! I know it's been an eternity since I last wrote, apologies and no excuses - have just been crap, basically!! Well, HAPPY CHRISTMAS to y'all - hope you guys all had a blast!! And an early HAPPY NEW YEAR if I don't get the chance before - hope y'all have lots of plans and behave yourselves!! ;0) So...what have I been up to?!?! Will try to make this as succint as poss, but some of you know I have a bit of trouble with that sometimes!! OK...oh the Rugby World Cup!!!! A good place to start!! Well, as I'm sure all you guys did (well, the England fans among you anyway!), I had an absolute blast and it was an AMAZING experience! As I mentioned a while back, got the chance to actually be IN the closing ceremony! If you blinked though, you may have missed it on TV! It was an 8 minute show, but I don't think they aired the whole thing! And coz of the rain we got to do alot less with our parts than had been anticipated - we were supposed to wheel the inflatable things around the field in a kinda formation, but as the ground was soaked, they didn't want us carving up the pitch - fair point!! So we just inflated them, stood by them for a while then wheeled them off the pitch...but even that was AWESOME!! All us brits had our St George flag temporary tattoos on our cheeks and so as we wlaked onto the field and past all the crowd, all the england fans were cheering at us and "high-fiving" us all the way along the barrier! and being on the pitch with 83,000 people singing "Waltzing Matilda" and "Swing Low" was stunning!! GIves me goosebumps just thinkin bout it!! Other highlights of the nite evn before the game started were seeing the Aussie team warming up just metres from us on the pitch, standing on the sidelines as Jonny Wilkinson was metres from us practising his goal kickin, meetin Dan Luger in the corridor while he was on his mobile phone, greeting the England team as their coach arrived into the stadium, and as their dressin room was next to ours, seeing the team warming up practising their passes in the room next to ours! Very cool experience! Then we got to go up into the stands, to try our luck at finding "spare" seats!! Luckily, me and my mate, after being moved by security several times, managed to find 2 very drunk aussies who "donated" their seats to us!!!! Fab seats not too far up - perfect view! Was sooooooooooo nerve wracking being there when we kept giving away points minutes before the end!! but the feeling when we won and the celebrations in the stadium was just breathtaking!! we stayed there for like an hour after, and partied to all the brit songs they were playing - "queen", "robbie" etc etc - the team were still on the pitch about half an hour after the award ceremony! then we partied the rest of the night away til 7am ish! Well, that was the rugby! Since then, we've been trying to get into the whole "Christmas in Summer" thing!! Have had MAJOR isues with this but the past few weeks have just about been getting used to it - only because we've HAD to!! Been trying to do things to make it feel more Christmassy, like going to the Tree Lighting in the city, going to a carols concert, Mass on Christmas Eve, and the like! But going christmas shopping in shorts and sunnies, and lying in the park in the sun after finishing work, and wearing santa hats for work on christmas eve, but having to take them off as it was too damn hot out...it's all a bit strange for us northern hemisphere people!!! Christmas did turn out to be better than expected though!! We wanted to have a "typical" Aussie christmas and think we almost achieved it! Went to church on christmas eve (missed ya from last year Lu!) with Sharon, then Christmas morning opened our pressies (thanks Mum & Dad for us having something to open!) and started the day with English Cadbury's chocs (thanks Mel!) a glass of Bucks Fizz (as ya do!) - after calling home, we spent the next hour and a half trying to get our BBQ to light! The damn thing!! Finally we all impressed ourselves as it was ready to actually cook on! Apparently this is the typical Aussie christmas lunch - BBQ food, salads, cold meats etc...we still had to have the traditional Christmas crackers and silly hats though! After that, the majority of our house went over to Bondi Beach - which we expected to be full of backpackers, which it was, but it looked SUCH a sight - just JAMMED with people, eskies full of beer, random christmas trees that various groups of people had brought with them on a day out, santa hats with bikinis (?!), fancy dress, St George flags and christmas music! Very surreal, and a real sight to see!! We luckily managed to be out of the water when they had a shark alarm round 8ish though!! Wondered what those sirens were coming from the lifeguard station, then as we were all looking out to sea, the lifeguards were trying to get everyone out of the water - apparently someone had spotted a few shark fins - tiger sharks i think they said - about 200m out - so they got the jetskis out and apparently the noise scares them away!! Pretty scary though! .... |
| 27 December 2003 |