Sat 27 June: Birthday paragliding & fireworks!

I celebrated my 31st birthday today in two parts, with another part to follow next weekend (trip to casino with $200 to gamble with from K – should be fun!)

Part 1 saw me paragliding on the South Coast of New South Wales, about an hour’s drive south of Sydney. This was me finally managing to use a ‘red balloon day’ voucher given to me for last year’s birthday by my pals. Although the wind conditions weren’t great, there was enough wind for me to do a short glide from a clifftop down to the beach (and I get to go back for a longer flight some time which is a bonus). There wasn’t much to learn – I was strapped in to a tandem harness with the instructor and told to “run towards that big cloud”, which I did and before I knew it my legs were in the air, the ground was disappearing underneath me and then I was floating out to sea. It was strangely peaceful and relaxing, not at all the adrenaline rush you might expect, and I could have stayed there all day really!

Click here for a link to the paragliding photos.

Part 2 of birthday treats was a meal out in Darling Harbour, the waterfront part of Sydney city centre. I’d chosen Jordon’s, a seafood restaurant. Quite randomly we were treated to a fireworks display on the water, part of the Sydney Winter Festival, which I thought was very nice of them to arrange just for my birthday, ha ha…

The meal was good but the service was very disappointing – we were seated for 20 mins before anyone came to take even a drinks order, and then we practically had to beg for our bill at the end of the meal as what seemed like hundreds of staff were busily buzzing around us while completely ignoring us at the same time. Given that it wasn’t the cheapest of places, it was a definite letdown and we filled our customer feedback form in accordingly! No tip for them…

After the meal we wandered along the harbourside in a pleasantly tipsy manner, and so to bed.

All in all, a lovely day.

Autumn socialising Aussie-style

Last week K and I were invited round for an evening barbecue to say goodbye to Ali, a colleague from the UK who’s been out here for a couple of months helping to set up the Aussie equivalent of his organisation, the School for Social Entrepreneurs (K and I both involved in School in typical small world way).

About 12 of us gathered in a lovely house near Bondi for a feast of deliciously juicy prawns, a huge and lightly flavoured snapper (about 2 foot long), heaps of salads and, the piece de resistance, a massive pavolva (with 12 eggs apparently!)

It was a clear autumn evening with lots of stars in the sky and it was only at about 10pm that it got cold enough for me to need a jacket, having been t-shirt temperature until that point.

Lots of good conversation (and not all of it about social enterprise!) and a lovely time all in all. The ubiquitous barbecue is one of the best things about this country!

Sydney in Spring

Spring is glorious here. It was 28 degrees yesterday and walking round Sydney city centre was like walking around in a warm bath. Even by the time the sun went down, it was still balmy enough to sit outside in a t-shirt and feel just fine. Today I sat in one of the big public squares to eat my lunch and basked in the baking sunshine. Although I’ll have to be careful and start using sunscreen soon as I had a distinct bit of colour on my skin by the time I got back after a mere 20 mins in the sun.

On the subject of lunch, this is another big thing in Sydney (and Australia)’s favour. In a five minute radius from my office, I can go and buy not just your average sandwich, but a whole range of yes, sandwiches (toasted, grilled, Turkish, multigrain, umpteen salads and meats), plus a vast array of fresh salads, soups, sushi, noodles, curries, burgers, fries, pizza…the list goes on and on. And it’s all delivered quickly and fairly cheaply. Today I had Malaysian chicken with flat noodles. Last week I had a multitude of different salads and one day (with a slight hangover) I had BBQ chicken and chips. It’s truly fantastic! On the downside, though, I can’t even begin to imagine how much waste goes to landfill as a result of all this – everything comes in a plastic box, with a plastic cutlery set and there are no recycling bins anywhere to be seen…come on Sydney, get your act together!!

The same could be said for the general approach to water consumption and saving. Australia is, famously, in the grip of a drought. But despite this, there are no water saving measures in place on any kind of scale. Even when it rains heavily, which it does (when it rains, it rains properly and for hours at a time), the water just runs straight into the sea – surely there must be a better way!?

Similarly, you’d think that a country like Australia might have invested in solar power on some kind of significant scale – but no, nothing doing. I’m sure it’s not as simple as you’d think but really, thousands of square miles are virtually uninhabitable because of the baking heat and yet there’s nothing in place to harness this!