What I Did On My Weekend(s)

For no particular reason, except that I did a bunch of cool stuff over the last couple of weeks, I'm going to indulge in a little cat blogging and recite the (hopefully not too tedious) details of my life over the last few weeks.

Last weekend (the 28th and 29th) my work flew everyone up to Port Douglas for a holiday (thank you U.S. stock market crashes!) I'd never been up to that part of Australia before (I never even realised how huge Queensland is compared to New South Wales, but I guess that's what you get when most of the country is desert that's no use for anything) so it was pretty exciting. Unfortunately the weekend was somewhat marred by the fact that some of my luggage was lost on the way up (and I'm still waiting to get it back), but other than that it was great fun.

On Saturday we went on a trip out to the Great Barrier Reef to go diving and snorkelling. I passed on the diving on account of feeling a little unwell, but I regret that now. At least I got in the water (unlike some people), and at least once I got in the water I didn't jump straight back out again because I saw a big fish (unlike some other people). The reef is a very unique, beautiful place (almost as good as New Zealand) but unfortunately none of my photos turned out very well. At least I got this one of a whale on the trip back:


Later that night we went out to dinner at Nautilus, one of the swankiest restaurants in this swanky resort town. It was open to the rainforest and the ambience was superb. The waiters certainly knew what to do when they saw a big corporate group come in with the company paying the tab and plied us with all manner of expensive wines, and even egged us on by telling us that the next table had spent more than us and we should try to catch up. I hate to think how much I drank and considering that I woke up without a hangover when red wine usually seriously disagrees with me it must have been very good quality. The food was excellent too.

Afterwards there was a spot of clubbing and then a long walk down the beach back to the resort. The beach looked amazing in the moonlight even when perceived through my hazy drunken memories. Back at the hotel much room service was consumed and drinking games continued well into the morning.

The next day was spent lounging by the pool and on the beach, with a spot of Coconut Olympics in the afternoon (won by the UK in a controversial round of 'who can throw the coconut the furthest', which could not be resolved due to the object of play bursting open and leaving smelly, rotten coconut milk all over the hands of the contestants).

It was a pretty cool holiday.

This weekend just been was supposed to be a quiet one but the Death Metal Kindy Teacher was ill, leaving me to wander the streets of Sydney without the tender oversight of a woman to keep me from going off the rails. Friday night ended up being work drinks, and a few unsuspecting co-workers were press ganged into a slow, meandering ramble down Oxford Street, during which I learned the following valuable lessons:

• Doing two consecutive jagerbombs is easier than a single shot of 42 below.
• Living so close to Oxford Street has made me surprisingly comfortable in gay bars.
• It's always the foreigners who go home last.

I actually got a little too wasted that night but my friend E. was having a birthday party on the Saturday so I soldiered on the next night too. We began with a very nice home cooked meal before heading off to the Crystal Boudoir, Sydney's trendiest burlesque club. The term burlesque seems to be a fairly unspecific one, and can mean anything from a slightly classier variety of stripping to something quite arty and pretentious. Crystal Boudoir is located right in Martin Place, more or less the most sophisticated (or at least perceived as the most sophisticated) part of Sydney (home to the most expensive bars and stores like Armani and Louis Vuitton) so it tended towards the latter. Things almost went awry with the door staff having issues with some of our shoes, but a party of twelve with prebookings pretty much does as the proverbial five hundred pound gorilla so in we went anyway.

But man, what a great show! The bar itself is a very nice venue, with lots of class and ambience. The drinks are expensive but not too bad for that part of town. You sit there and drink and eat nibbles, and periodically the performers take the stage and entertain the crowd for a while. The first few dances leant very much to the 'arty' side of things, being slow, graceful and moody, while still sensual. Later on things got more fun and light hearted. The performers themselves, male and female, were just brilliant, exuding so much grace and sexuality that the entire room was enraptured every time they took the stage. A bit of audience participation never fails to go down well either, as one relatively straight laced girl in our group learned when she got a face full of hot, jiggling burlesque dancer arse. Anyway, if you get the chance to go to anything like that do it, because I don't think I've been so well entertained for a long time.

Afterwards we ended up back on Oxford Street at Spectrum, a club that I loathe with every fibre of my hipster hating soul, but it was the birthday boys choice so there we were, hanging out with eighteen year olds who think they invented cool because they've heard of The Smiths.

Overall it was a very fun night, especially the burlesque, but what goes up must come down and on Sunday night I found myself sicker than I can remember being in eight years. I trundled off to bed at about ten (pretty early for me) where I was beset by a fever and dreams that three wizards were having a fight (complete with purple and green lasers shooting from their staves) inside my head. Finally at about midday on Monday one of the wizards triumphed, emerging from a shattered hole in my crown that had been opened by a final climactic concussion, and declared victory. I then returned to the realm of the sensible, although I was still unable to get out of bed until four hours later, when I staggered down to the dairy to buy the only dinner I could stomach the thought of; several cans of tinned fruit and a big tub of chocolate ice cream. A worthy reward for such a tiring couple of weeks.