Darling Harbour

So I've been here in Sydney for approximately 4 days now, and last night I finally managed to set up my internet connection (on my own, trial and error!). It's funny, but it feels like I've been here for much much longer. Contrary to popular belief, I've settled in pretty easily: so far I've had no sad moments weeping in the corner, no breaking out crying while everyone stares, no tears sliding down into my food - I'm actually doing alright, so don't worry about me here, people! I've made a few friends, and we hang out together at mealtimes, sometimes we linger till they start cleaning and clearing away the dishes and plates (yesterday one of the cafeteria staff came up to us to tell us: if we were finished, could we please bring our plates to the washing area?). I've also gone out 'exploring' the area: on Saturday night my uncle and his friend brought me to Darling Harbour for dinner at a Malaysian restaurant, yesterday morning Yalini brought me to Broadway to open up my bank account, yesterday afternoon I went to Broadway again with Nori and Paulo, and today after lunch I walked all the way to Darling Harbour with Tania and Nori, and we ended up shopping at Broadway again. Here's a summary of where we walked this afternoon:

We walked along George St (I think), and stumbled upon a building with a statue of a woman in front of it. I asked Tania what that was, and she said it was Queen Victoria, and that the building was the Queen Victoria Building.

Walking along the streets of Sydney is in itself a sight-seeing tour; there's just so much to look at, so much to take note of. Everything's so alive, and people are walking everywhere.

Nori wanted to take a look around Darling Harbour, so it was a good thing Tania brought along a map of the city.

We eventually found the place, and it looked different from when I was there on Saturday night. The seagulls are so tame! Okay, maybe they're not tame tame, but they're definitely used to human presence! I went up quite close to them, and they didn't even blink an eye (do seagulls blink?), so I took the opportunity to snap some pics of the cute little critters.

There were several boats and ships anchored to the harbour, and I saw something that looked like a military/navy ship.

We rested for quite a bit on the promenade, just sitting there on the steps of the pier and enjoying the view.

Then we were very thirsty, so we dropped into Harbourside (another shopping place) and I purchased my first bottle of Coca-Cola. It's strange, the real Coke is so much more expensive than other soft drinks here. Even Pepsi is cheaper! Like, 2 litres of real Coke is about AUD$3.50, and you can get the same amount of Pepsi for about AUD$2 plus. My Coke, all 600 ml of it, cost a whopping AUD$3.50 because we bought our drinks at a tiny grocer's instead of at Coles (a supermarket chain recommended to international students for it's low prices, and where I could have gotten 2 litres of the same Coke for the same price! Grrr!). From now on I'll buy all my food at Coles.

Anyway, back to the original story.

After we bought our drinks (ooooh, I only took like 3 gulps of my Coke and now the remainder is sitting in my fridge, waiting for another day, it might be rather flat and gas-less, but it's still Coke - pathetic, right?), we found we didn't know how to get back to Chippendale (where our residence is located). So the map came out again, and after much examination, we decided to just walk along Pyrmont St. It took us maybe an hour, but we finally made it back to City Road. Nori and Tania wanted to buy some stuff at Broadway, so I went back there again, 3 times in the last 2 days. We ended up at Coles (the place to get stuff at a cheaper price, remember?), and I purchased a 1.25 litre bottle of Coles Cola for 69 cents (not the real Coke, but I thought I'd try it out because it was so cheap) and a 1.25 litre bottle of Deep Spring Lemon Sparkling Water for 1 dollar (again, cheap). I know you're wondering why I bought all these drinks, but it's for those days when everything's not going well and I need a little pick-me-up, y'know? So I needed those drinks, even if it was just for that psychological assurance, knowing I could sip a little happiness every once in a while. It's a sad life I lead here, everything is about counting all your dollars and cents. So that brings my total expenditures here in Sydney so far to exactly AUD$11.15 (I purchased Panadol the other day for AUD$5.95).

We made it back to our residential college just in time for dinner. And now I'm here, blogging and uploading pictures of today. I think I'll have to upload all my pictures and stuff here, and not on Facebook, cos uploading pictures there would take up too much of my free Internet quota (I only get 6 MB a day!!!!), so if you wanna read about my Sydney Snippets (as I'm labelling the bits and pieces, odds and ends of my misadventures in Sydney from now onwards), you'll find them here. And that's it for now. I've got to attend some orientation programme for full degree students tomorrow.

Cheers, people!