maxiewawa

Seeing this in a local bottle shop really made me miss Shanghai.

When we were living in Shanghai, a carton of Tsingdao would cost about 36RMB, about six dollars. A carton would be six of these bottles, and they would be delivered.

A sweaty old man, would bring them up the escalator, lift, and two flights of stairs, through the patio and to the door of our apartment. I’d pay him in cash for his troubles, minus a deposit for the empty bottles, which he’d take from me.

But here in Sydney, the same product costs $50, about eight times the price. And you have to drive yourself to the bottle shop, carry it to the checkout, to your car, load it in, drive home and lug it up the stairs to your kitchen get the same result. Eight times the price, and you have to do everything yourself, including throwing away the empties after.

A free and open press, separation of legislature and judiciary, and political transparancy is all fine and good, but we still have a lot of things to learn from the Chinese.

Sydney’s definitely a pretty place, but for someone who has lived here from a long time, it’s easy to get used to it.

This is a view that is always quite spectacular though.

After work, if I finish early enough, I get off the train at Milson’s Point, and make my way down to a jetty to catch a ferry home.

After getting off at Milson’s Point train station, one makes one’s way downhill to the jetty. You see the harbour through the frame of the Harbour Bridge, and when you finally get to the jetty you get a 180 degree panorama of Sydney Harbour.

I’ve tried to take a panoramic photo, but on a crappy computer screen it’s not the same at all. (I’ve actually tried to put the photos all together on a YouTube video. See it here.)

Seeing the enormous sweep of the harbour from a high vantage point, and getting closer to it, and the harbour bridge reaching across it… no matter how far you stand back you can’t get it all into focus. I haven’t captured the quiet majesty of it in my photos (or this post!) but I console myself that no one really could.

Also, cruising along the harbour on the ferry in sunny weather is a nice way to get home. I always feel priveliged when I see how many tourists take the ferry every day to enjoy the view. – They’ve travelled from other countries to take the same ferry that I take every day of the working week on my way home from work.

I quite enjoy exercise. I’m not particularly good at it, but after I do it I feel pretty good. Recently I’ve started running around the bay near our house; I don’t run very far or very fast, and have to stop for breaks every now and then, but I feel good after it.

In China, Aika and I were members of the local gym. Two or three times a week we’d go. I’d use the bikes, ski-thingy and weights. We wouldn’t stay very long, perhaps an hour or a half at a time, but would do it regularly.

I go past a gym every morning and afternoon on the way to and from work. There’s a big sign outside that says “10 visits for $20″. This is a pretty good deal, and since starting my runs around the bay I’ve been meaning to join a gym. I’m always conscious of joining something that I’m billed for regularly, so I haven’t joined one since coming back to Australia in April. This afternoon after work, I wandered in.

I said that this was my first time here, and I was looking to join in. The receptionist asked me to sit down and fill out a form. Quite standard stuff. By the time I’d finished a salesman had found me. He introduced himself and asked me some more questions. These were the first signs that this was going to be a waste of time.

You see, I’m not unsatisfied with my exercise regimen at the moment. I run around the bay until I’m tired, then walk back. That’s it. I don’t have any machines or weights though, which is why I’m interested in a gym. He was asking stupid questions like “When are you looking to see results? Within a week? A month? A year?” “Are you interested in targeting muscle groups?” “What’s more important to you: endurance or pure power?”

He eventually showed me around. I saw each of their 6 exercise studios, where slim girls dance to boppy music, hippie types do yoga and that sort of thing, and also saw their gym.

After we saw everything, we returned to the lobby, and I sat back in the seat where I’d filled out the forms and answered the stupid questions.

This is where we got down to business.

“Ok, we have three plans. The first is monthly. $70 join up fee, $230 processing fee and $30 a month. If you’re willing to join for a year, the processing fee is slashed to only $220, joining up is $69.95 and it’s only $28 a month. But for today, and only today, we have a special offer. We’ll waive the joining fee for both of these prices, and the processing fee is only half.”

Have you been following? Yes? Let me ask you this: how much is a monthly membership? You should be able to work it out with the info I’ve told you and a calculator, but here’s my point: You Shouldn’t Have To.

It’s not that I’m against the hard sell. Or any kind of selling. If I want something, and the price is right, I’ll bloody buy it. But it just annoys me when people try to confuse you with prices.

“So it usually costs X plus Y plus monthly payments of Z, but if you join up right this instant, I’ll divide X by three, let Y = the square root of X….”

I eventually made it clear that I was interested in 10 visits for $20, which is advertised on an enormous sign outside. Turns out that this offer is only valid for two weeks at a time, and one can only visit in the mornings. Not relevant for me. You might think that that might have resulted in a handshake and a polite “good day to you sir”, but they kept trying to push the other (more expensive) options on me.

They tried dropping the join up fee to zero, and the administration fee to only $70, and only charging me $30, and it sounded like a good deal, but it just wasn’t what I was looking for.

Now I’m not angry at them trying to rip me off, and I don’t even want to give the impression that they were trying to. I am just a little pissed off that they didn’t just tell me the price when I entered.

I wish that as soon as I’d walked in, there’d be someone who I could give my $20 to and receive 10 visits… at the very least they could have a sign saying “It Costs $140 To Join This Gym, And $30 Every Month Thereafter” or something similar. They wasted their time taking me around, trying to convince me how great the deal was… asking stupid questions like “So What Is It Holding You Back From Signing Up?” (I gave a straight answer: “The Price Is Too High.”)

Is it wishful thinking? Is a straight answer too much to ask? Every time the guy said “What I can do for you today…” I just gave a groan…

It’s only been a week since I finished my CELTA, but I’ve already landed a job teaching. I’m a classroom in North Sydney right now.

Sorry for not letting you know beforehand, I didn’t want to ‘jinx’ it. But I’ve officially begun and after two lessons of an hour each everything’s going well so far.

We’re on a break at the moment. My class has five students, but only three have shown up today! All three are Thai, and seem to be in their early twenties, like a lot of international students in Australia. I will teach them and only them four days a week.

They’re chatting away in Thai, which is very interesting for someone who loves languages, like me. Hopefully I can pick some up. One guy has just taught me “banana” which is “groe” (I’ve romanised it obviously).

Well I’m almost through the first week of my CELTA course. I’m almost a quarter of the way through it!

Each day is broken up into lessons in the morning, and teaching practice in the afternoon. We sit, listen carefully and take notes in the mornings, and teach the kiddies in the afternoon.

Well they’re not kiddies actually, but adults. Wouldn’t you know it, of a class of fifteen, we have one Thai, one Argentinian, and thirteen Koreans. Those guys are everywhere!

This gives me an advantage when correcting pronunciation; I know beforehand that students will probably Konglify words that have a Konglish equivalent, and know how hard it is for them to differentiate between ‘b’ and ‘v’ and ‘z’ and ‘ju’. I also knew today that the Koreans would have trouble understanding “brother” and “sister”; I explained that one’s “brother” is someone that has the same mother and/or father. If you didn’t already know, in Korea one often calls a good male friend of a similar age “brother”.

I haven’t had much of a chance to bust out my Korean language skills yet; naturally during class we’re expected to use only English. I’m trying to catch people in the corridoor after class to say 안녕 and ask how they thought everything went, but haven’t had many opportunities.

If you’re in Australia and want to come, feel free! Lessons are free. 11 York street, Sydney. Come Monday – Friday, at 3pm!
어서어새요!

I’m not sure if this story involves divine intervention or just coincidence but it’s pretty funny anyway if you ask me.

Aika and I were feeling a little sad. I won’t get into why, but we arrived where we were going, and were feeling just a bit down in the dumps.

I parked, we got out, and couldn’t have walked more than three metres when we came across someone’s front yard, with the aforementioned gifts from God.

About seven of them were crawling around someone’s front yard, biting things and generally making a mess. Two others could talk, and I shouted a greeting:

“Wow, that’s a lot of puppies you have there!”

“Yeah!” she replied (the other two ‘gifts’ were two little girls actually, one was four and one was six).

“How many have you got?”

“Um… seven.” said the older girl.

Aika, goes to absolute pieces when she sees a dog, and the seven puppies were too much for her. She squealed and picked one up.

The girls’ mother eventually came out in the front yard to say hello. Apparently she had had a dog, and agreed to adopt another one that no one else wanted. That dog had a litter of seven puppies a few days later, and that’s why her place was crawling with puppies.

We chatted for a while (as it turned out, both the girls and the puppies were half Chinese, just like me!) and eventually left. Aika was a little disappointed that they didn’t offer her a puppy, but I thought that it would be a bit too forward to ask someone for one of their animals after just meeting them.

As we were in a shop later, I remarked to her how lucky it was that we, in such a sad mood, just happened upon nine of the cutest beings (seven dogs and two little girls)  that exist on the earth. That’s when our conversation got into the theological; we didn’t actually resolve our opinions as to whether God, or a divine Being had taken pity on us and put those little balls of cuteness in our way, or it was just lucky… I guess you’ll have to make up your own opinion. I just think that you couldn’t have come up with a better way to cheer a person up if you’d tried. Lucky coincidence? Intelligent design? I don’t know, but I sure am thankful for it.

Oh and on another note, I start a CELTA course next week. After a month of full time study I will be a CELTA certified teacher of English. I’ll then start work in a private institution, move my way up the ranks, while accumulating experience in foreign locations (Seoul, Osaka, Dubai, Slovakia, Marseilles, Morocco etc). I’ll then start my own school in a location that is yet undecided. A lot of this is just pie-in-the-sky dreaming, but keep your fingers crossed!

Aika and I were in the Botanical Gardens today. Aika had picked a pretty little flower, and was considering putting it in her hair, or on her jacket, when we came across a flock of large white birds. Cockatoos.

I hadn’t seen cockatoos for a long time. I don’t think Aika had ever seen them. They are usually tame, and will allow you to come right up to them.

I got as close as I could, and Aika tried to get one’s attention with her flower.

It waddled over, clamped its beak on it, and pulled hard. Aika was a little surprised by this, and pulled back. It kept pulling though, and eventually got it out of Aika’s hand. It promptly tore it to shreds.

Cockatoos are notoriously loud, and aggressive. As we stood there, a few kept swooping at my head. I had a light coloured hood, and they kept trying to get at it for some reason. You’d suddenly feel a tug on your shoe, and you’d look down to see a cockatoo gnawing on it. They’re quite tame, tame enough that you can hand feed them, but if you’re not careful you’ll get a painful bite.

In the first house that I ever lived at we had a cockatoo problem. As I said they’re quite noisy, and have a bad habit of tearing to pieces anything they can get their hands on, whether or not it’s edible. Apparently my first complete sentence was “Go away cockie! Go away!” (a “cockie” is slang for “cockatoo”). I guess mum and dad used to yell that out a lot, and I picked it up. I have faint memories being a toddler, picking up a shoe and throwing it at a flock of cockatoos.

Aika and I went to a Japanese meeting last night. We had dinner at a pizza place, and afterwards retired to a bar (we call them “pubs” here).

At about 10:30 we left, and made our way down to the bus stop at Circular Quay. But just as we turned the corner, we saw our bus, not stopped at the bus stop waiting for us, but coming down the street towards us.

Public transport in Sydney is terrible, particularly bad on Sundays, and horrible on Sunday nights. If one misses a bus on a Sunday night, there’s every chance that there won’t be another one for an hour or so. And taxis are approximately 200 times the price of those in Shanghai.

We hurriedly said goodbye to our new friends and sprinted back the way we had come, towards the next bus stop. I frantically waved my hat at the bus driver, hoping to get his attention, and praying that he’d understand that we wanted to catch the bus at the next stop.

He stopped at that stop, and opened the door. We were still about 10 meters away and gaining fast, but I was worried that he’d pull out without waiting, but wait he did, and we were able to get on, luckily. We both thanked him, paid and sat down.

On a cold Sydney night (yes, they do get quite chilly I admit) when one’s funds are running low and needs to get home, and at a time of the week when public transport is hard to find, a bus driver who does something kindly like that deserves to be thanked. I didn’t think that the frantic thanks we gave him as we got on were enough, so I thought I’d write this post to say thanks more properly. I doubt that that specific guy is reading, but if by some chance you’re a bus driver that does stop for people running for the bus, on behalf of all your passengers, thank you.

Oh, and here’s a photo. It’s of the Sydney Opera House. People who live in Sydney usually don’t see what the all the fuss about it is (it loses the appeal when you see it often), but I had been away for so long that when I saw it last night, I was struck by how beautiful it looked. My crappy camera phone doesn’t really do it justice, but then again no camera can really capture the feeling of standing on under the Sydney Harbour Bridge on a clear night and looking across the Quay at the Opera House at that peculiar building.

I can understand why some people are put off by test cricket. For those who don’t know, test cricket is that form of the game where matches are so long that every now and then play is interrupted while the players go home, say hi to their family, sleep for eight hours or so, then return to the playing field.

Well, picture this. I’m sitting in a warm room, reading an interesting book (“Online Share Investing for Dummies” if you must know) and still enjoying the game. It’s the first match of the ashes, which is a series of matches between Australia and England.

I’m not sure if the fact that the game is so sedate that it doesn’t distract from one’s reading material is something that makes it more appealing to outsiders, but it’s something I’ve always liked.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to the game. Well, to be honest, I could probably keep writing and occasionally look up at the tv, as I’ve been doing, so I should probably say that I should get back to my book.

This is a blog post. If you can’t see the photos, come to www.maxiewawa.com. If you can, obviously you’re already here!

Some Swedish friends were enjoying a drink in a Shanghai bar one chilly winter night with Aika and I. We were sitting under one of those outdoor heaters, and so most of us had removed our jackets, and had piled them on an empty chair. They were all thick winter jackets, and so the pile of clothes was quite high. Naturally, the topic of conversation got to the weather.

Someone, I think it was Gunnar from Stockholm, who asked me about Australian winters.

“Oh, they get pretty cold,” I said.

“Really?” asked Ada, also from Stockholm. “How cold?”

“Well, when it gets really chilly, and I mean, REALLY cold,  it can get down to as low as fifteen degrees celsius.” I said. “And sometimes even colder.”

Both Ada and Gunnar, who were born and raised in Sweden, laughed heartily.

“No, really!” I said defensively. “Sometimes you even have to wear a sweater!”

“Cold” is something that we don’t have much understanding of here in Australia. Case in point: yesterday, July the fifth. If you didn’t know, July is the middle of winter in Australia. And what do we do in Australia in winter? Why, the same thing we do the rest of the time! Have a barbecue. We just put on a sweater (or “jumper”, as we call them).

Here’s a photo of Peter. It’s Peter’s house we were at. Thanks for having us. That’s the pool in the background. We weren’t able to swim in it though; another disadvantage of being in the middle of winter. Notice the short sleeves!

Big Max and Udo. Udo has recently come back from Alaska and Northern Canada, where it snows even in winter. Seems a little back to front: there we were having a BBQ in the middle of winter, and hearing about a place where there’s snow on the ground, even in the middle of summer.

Here’s Aika. Just before we took this photo we were saying how our friends in Shanghai wouldn’t believe that we were having an outdoor lunch in the middle of winter, which is how I got the idea for this blog post. Hope you like it!