Whew, five days in Sydney sure flew. right. by.
Sad, too, because I could get used to life in this city. The people are Awesome. The food is Awesome. The beaches are Awesome.
Wait...did I just say beach??
There hasn't been an Awesome blog for a few days (probably ruined your weekend, right?) because yesterday, on my last full day here in Sydney, I had four hours of free time. The choice then had to be made: write blog or go to beach (Manly Beach, to be specific).
What would you choose??
Um, duh:
For the first time in (my) on-location history, I went to a beach in my bikini and got in the water. I even got tan lines. It was a big moment. A glorious moment. An oh-my-gosh-I-actually-feel-like-I'm-on-vacation moment. An equalizing moment between me and the real vacationers who I usually just glare at for days. For an all too brief hour, we were one.
But let's back track a bit, and convince you all that I do get paid to be here for some kind of reason.
I skipped breakfast Saturday morning. Why? We were off to film a cooking segment with a chef here in Sydney and he had tweeted at me the night before that we would be cooking the "beef dish" on the menu. Vague enough, but I also knew I had my work cut out for me. I've been a vegetarian for a good fifteen years, so beef and I aren't real good friends. I knew this day would come, though, and I've been training. A good thing about having a meat-eating boyfriend is that it's relatively easy to steal bites off his plate during dinner, in an attempt to reacclimate your body (and mind) to meat without committing to a whole dish.
Thank you, Cesar Flores.
Friends, it was delicious. I didn't just have one bite; I had like seven. The (apparently super great) Australian beef tenderloin was pretty fantastically cooked (in butter, none the less), and then served over fresh local veggies and handmade (by me!) potato gnocchi. YUM. MAJOR YUM.
Chef Barkham couldn't have been nicer too, or more fun to film with. Overall a really rad way to spend a morning.
We hopped in car after that and drove about an hour outside of Sydney to the Muru Mittigar Aboriginal Cultural Center where an Aboriginal guy named Anthony had the unfortunate task of teaching me how to throw a boomerang. Anthony learned from his dad when he was five years old, and claims to have mastered the skill in two weeks. I probably needed about two years. Especially for someone who wants to throw everything like an ultimate frisbee, throwing a boomerang (well) is not an easy thing to do.
Anthony, however, could throw it and have it come right back to him to catch it. As a result, we kept the camera on him a lot. The magic of editing might even make it look like I had some grasp of what I was doing. Wouldn't that be cool!
Either way, it was a blast. Anthony makes the boomerangs himself (his dad taught him that too), which I thought was seriously Awesome, and he plays the didgeridoo. I learned, though, that women are forbidden from playing the didgeridoo (it's actually a law in Aboriginal culture), because it's believed that the muscles women would need to use to play the instrument are the same used in childbirth, and they could wear the muscles out before being able to have a child. Interesting.
We only had two hours at the center; I could have been there for an entire day. Super nice people, really cool information, and it was just fun. As if that wasn't enough, to top it all off, an orphaned possum made a surprise appearance (he's being raised after his mom was hit by a car up north), and I got to hold him. I gotta say, Aussie possums are way cuter than stateside possums.
Saturday ended (whew, these days are packed sometimes) with a giant fireworks display. I suppose I haven't mentioned it yet, but this week is International Fleet Review in Sydney, and approximately 1.5 million people are in town to celebrate. It's nuts. There have been all kinds of tall ships and war ships sailing into the harbor the last few days, and they were in full force for what had to be one of the largest fireworks displays in history. Fireworks were shooting off of naval ships, off barges, and raining down from the Sydney Harbor Bridge. The opera house was covered in projections, and the harbor was glowing with a laser light show.
Holy crap.
We had media passes to the whole event, and therefore pretty much the best view ever. Not a bad way to end the day.
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