Left side, Strong side

Second entry. I wasn’t prepared to stay away nearly as late as I did tonight, but did it anyways. Oh well, the last Lord of the Rings is on, a welcomed upgrade to a cricket game I couldn’t understand last night. Oh, and I’m eating Tom Yum soup again… there’s simply too much Thai, Japanese, and Indian food on every corner here to ignore.

I woke up at 7:00am this morning wide awake, maybe that will be my new thing now -- never thought I’d see the day.  My first order of business was to go buy some toothpaste... I hate dirty mouths and I hadn’t had any since I arrived.  I literally rinsed my mouth out with hand sanitizer last night. Forgot to mention yesterday that the airport lost one of my three bags on the way here. Despite there being more than $1000 worth of merchandise inside (sunglasses, toiletries, cologne, keyboard, batteries, enough eCig flavors to put an entire kindergarten class into a Nicotine coma etc.), I was fairly happy that it worked out that way. I already looked like an incapable tourist trying to drag two full-sized suitcases, one roll-away, and a backpack down a busy sidewalk… It would have been frustratingly impossible had there been a fourth one to lug around.  Brushing my teeth after 48 hours was such a priority I did it in the street as I walked the pharmacy: rawdog, no water. They found my bag and had it shipped here by noon by the way.

The Aussie people are as a whole very nice and welcoming, albeit fitting true to the stereotype of responding to everything with “G’day”, “Cheers”, and “No worries mate.”  I ate cheap street sushi for breakfast, then spent the morning hours booking apartment viewings for the next few days here in city. The sooner I can opt-out of paying $200/night for this fancy serviced apartment the better.

I was getting stir crazy around noon, so I strapped on some Nikes and a Hawks jersey (bro move), and decided to go run through one of the local parks nearby. I relied on Google maps to make sure I wasn’t getting into anything over 3-4 miles and took off towards Cooper Park, which was the closest sizable patch of green to my place on Grafton Street.  What I DIDN’T count on was that Cooper Park is literally a valley, and while running downhill into the woods through cobblestone paths blasting Australian Top Hits on Spotify in my headphones might been awesomely invigorating (it’s mainly just Eminem and Pharrell btw), I was pretty sure my knees were about to explode as I tried to make it back UP the hill towards where I came from.  It was 85 degrees out and I had convinced myself that sweat and tears were slowly dissolving my contacts into my burning eyes as I tried to push myself back up this concrete mountain: a 40-degree incline on a street where every single house had to be engineered to include a basement. Google Maps doesn’t offer much of a topographical view to present problems like these, but I later found a nice tilted view of just how aggressive this dip was.

I came back with a heart rate of 120bpm, took yet another shower, and ventured out into the Junction, which is essentially a huge mall that stretches across four city blocks.  I rode up and down about fifteen escalators, not really sure what I was looking for, just genuinely intrigued with all the retail here… it’s like even the stores that we have in the States I find myself wandering into, just so I can weigh in on the subtle differences in what/how people buy stuff.  How does anyone afford anything here?  When I finally got to the top of this 6-story mall tower, I found a movie theatre and, for a split second, considered seeing a movie by myself.  It was at this point that a little light flickered on in my head and I realized, “Jared, you’re like 10 minutes from the beach… what the hell are you doing inside a mall right now?!”  So after 2 hours of wandering from store to store, I bought only some sunscreen, a jar of pickles (crucial), and made my way back to the apartment to throw on some beach gear.

For the majority of you that don’t know, Bondi Beach is the most well-known -- and also the most touristy -- beach in Sydney. Bus ride there was only about 12 minutes and my legs and back were already achy from that miserable run.  Once I stepped out onto the sidewalk, I was truly shocked though… it looked like a mile-long crescent ant hill full of backpackers, beach bums, and amateur surfers.

The view from the street was spectacular, so I snapped a photo, climbed down the windy steppes like Frodo descending Mordor, and strolled out onto the beach.  One of the things I’ve picked up on the last two days is that I have a bad habit of bumping into strangers when navigating sidewalks.  It wasn’t until I was descending onto the beach that I realized why: not only to these blokes drive on the left side of the road, human traffic seems to follow the same unwritten law… you go right and I go left as we pass, COMPLETELY counterintuitive to all the street conduct I’ve ever been exposed to. There's no way I'll ever own a car down here.

After people-watching for half an hour through my Blublockers on the beach, I joined a group of four British guys who were throwing a rugby ball around and we took turns chasing place kicks out into the waves.  Haven’t tossed one of those balls around in a few years, but it came back pretty quickly and they might have even been mildly impressed that I knew a thing or two about the sport as an American native.  I did, however, make it a point to throw a few long overhead spirals to the guys before I left, prompting them to ask me if I was a football quarterback in high school haha yeahhh right but thanks for the ego boost nonetheless.  I was beat and probably sunburned so I headed back to the bus and cruised back to my place to take my fourth shower of the day. After all, I had another evening appointment to look at another apartment with some guys in the area I was staying.

I won’t mention the dudes nor the place I looked at tonight, as I really think it could be an awesome fit and don’t want to risk jinxing anything.  Should hear back by tomorrow night.  I wandered the streets again after I left, remembering how many times I’d purposely gotten myself lost when I lived in Spain, sheerly on the rush of having to find my way home without a phone or a native tongue to rely on… my Smartphone had plenty of charge and everyone speaks english here, so those days are clearly over.

However, as I strolled back through the now relatively streets of the Eastern Suburbs, I did capture a certain sense of nostalgia… despite the few people here and there closing up shops around me, the streets had turned dark and I felt very alone. Not lonely, but alone… in the more tranquil sense of the word.  Like when you walk down the shoreline of the beach in the middle of the night and you’re dead convinced the moon is staring at you, and only at you. There's a strange comfort in that feeling, and I’m looking forward to many more like it.  Frodo destroyed the ring. That’s all for tonight.

Cheers mates!