Author: karan

I’ve slowly started to get up & around this city as time goes by, and I’ve found the complexion of the place is different in many unsubtle ways depending on whether you’re a school kid, a tourist or a “suit”. I’m sure there’s other categories, but that’s the ones I’ve been, so that’s how I look at it :)

As a kid, you got off at Town Hall because that’s where all the Fun Stuff was. The arcades, the movies, the southern, less serious end of the city, bordering on Chinatown and Darling Harbour. You knew vaguely there was a whole lot more to the city further north, but even Martin Place seemed a long way away. Life is simple – you find the places where you can have fun, and you stick to them with your friends.

As a tourist, you had two options – the north end, where the world-famous harbour is, or the south end, where Darling Harbour and the other touristy stuff abounds. The easiest way around would be to get off at Circular Quay, explore the “north end” with the Rocks and the Opera House, and then catch a ferry to Darling Harbour, seeing a bit of the harbour along the way and generally avoiding the bits of the city devoted to standard-issue office buildings found anywhere else in the world.

But… as a “suit”, someone who comes into the city daily, you look at things in a different light. Slowly, those “gorgeous cobblestone steps” out the front of your building aren’t so pretty, because on a rainy day, they’re as slick as a skating rink and you’d better watch your step before you break a rib or two. THe “business” part of the city is between the touristy spots to the north and the ‘fun’ spots to the south, though my work is virtually next to Circular Quay. During the day, it’s a hive of activity, but at night, it’s eerily quiet and deserted, the shops and streets that were filled with people disappearing at night. This duality would happen in any city around the world, but I suppose this is the first chance I’ve had to observe it up close, and the clear zoning of Sydney makes it all the more obvious.

I’ve totally forgotten the point of this, but it’d be a waste not to get these thoughts out. I’m still very much exploring the city, comparing & contrasting with the other cities I’ve been to. By the standards of Delhi or Tokyo, Sydney’s a very compact and centralised city. By the standards of New York, it’s just tiny. In many ways, I’ve explored throughly only 10%, the area around my work, and I’ve got a lot to go. So I set this challenge to myself, and any takers: discover a new part of your city every week. Get to know the place, like a local should.

Walking back from the station, pitch dark (except for the part where it’s a clear night and it’s a full moon). I’m walking though the darkest part, where there are no street lights and there’s a forest to my left, and the wind blows that much harder. I pull my scarf tighter around my neck…

Then, I think, “If I was going to mug me, I’d use the scarf to choke me until I passed out. It’s right there already, and it’d be so easy to grab…” I look around, suddenly concerned, and readjust the scarf to avoid choking hazard. Yes, that’d be the mugger lying in wait on a cold winter’s night for semi-trendy pretentious businessy types walking past in the middle of true suburbia thwarted.

My mind is a dangerous thing, occasionally.

p.s. don’t forget to fill out the census!

Apologies to all those people I told I was coming down, and then didn’t do anything to actively go meet – in the end, it was about spending time with the family, who really define where home is. It’s been a fun couple of days, and I’ll be back in Sydney tonight.

My sister, who is in year 12, just got her half year results back – A A+, which means she’s on track to do better than me! Good on her, eh what? :D

Any tips for England, or Europe? I’m on the hunt to get hints from everyone before I leave.

I remember about 6 months ago, I was thinking along the lines of “Wow, what on earth would I do for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year?!” as I entered the workforce. I assumed work would be at the pace of assignments in their later stages, and there’s no way they could keep that pace up, all the time, could they? And yeah, while there were days where things ran together and suddenly the sun was setting outside and I barely realised the time, it wasn’t crunchy, it wasn’t like “whoa where did that hour disappear to?”. But I’d also had the opposite, days where I stared at the screen waiting for it to tick over to the next hour, and it just seemed to not want to.

Naturally, you will assume that I will next say “oh, but not today, etc etc”.

And you’d be oh-so-right.

31 days till London! *starts countdown timer*