June 01, 2008
Sydney Wonders
I was planning to make the 45 minutes trip to work blog post. It would complement my Singapore and Auckland work trips nicely (Sydney is just SO different from those 2 places!), but I never got around to taking pictures all the way through the trip, so here's just a beginning, this is our Wollstonecraft train station. The platform is of an interesting curved shape (our house is actually surrounded by the train line!), so you can't see the other end of the train on that platform! Never thought that I'd appreciate public transport so much as I do here in Sydney. Trains are pretty old, tired and slow and they don't go too often after the rush hour, but I just love them for being there at all! Lots of Sydneysiders whinge how bad the service is, but I guess, everything is a matter of perspective... And ANYTHING is better that Auckland trains... :) These are electric, for one...
We still go surfing almost every weekend and the weather has been mostly pretty great (just read in the paper that we had "the driest May in 150 years"! The "est" again, but I'm not complaining this time, its been lovely!) All hopes for a year round beach season! It is quite unbelievable that you get conditions like this in the built up and very populated city beaches of the Eastern suburbs here. Last Friday humpback whales traveling up North decided to pop by and visit the Sydney Harbour. People could see them from Manly wharf on their way to work! Seriously, is there another city in the world where you could find this kind of amazing nature, beautiful beaches, whales and dolphins circling around while still having exciting city life, exhibitions, film festivals, etc?!?!
Palm Beach has become our favorite beach now, it has a very nice mellow wave and now that the summer is over (and the circus of tourist pilgrimage to Home and Away site has almost stopped), it has a very nice quaint feel to it.
We have discovered Bikram Yoga as our possible winter time hobby. It is yoga that you do in a room heated up to +40C degrees. During the first 10 minutes you find sweat pouring down your body and soaking the yoga mat, who would have ever thought that so much water could be lost in 1 1/2 hours without serious (fatal?) consequences?! Right now it is about the only place around here that is truly warm (except the bed with electric blanket cranked up to max!)