From Tuesday->Friday I stayed with my friend from ChCh, Yvonne. Which was great – over in a place called Manly. A really chilled out place about a 30 min boat ride from Circular Quay. Great feel to the place, where more smoothies were consumed!
The flat itself was very nice. Though I was slightly unnerved by the sign
I mean just how many calls do these companies get that they think the phone might already be engaged?! (it was a pretty rickety lift!)
Cockatiels fly all around the place (and come to your 7th floor balcony to disturb ones reading of ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’.
But what can you do! Well, for one, you can try to scare them away. But this doesn’t work. I’m obviously not scary enough.
Also managed to meet my a friend from Openet, who is over doing contract work in Oz for the next few months (rolling out for the national service provider). Working crazy hours, but thriving. So thanks Graham for buying me a pink cocktail ;) Might meet up again in NZ if he comes to tour, which would be great fun!
And on Thursday, met up with Aoife again, and headed to the observatory, for their evening tour. That I would highly recommend. We lucked out a little bit with the weather – it was still a bit cloudy, but not too bad. Got to see some really nice constellations the Jewel Box was beautiful, and got to see that the brightest star of the southern cross – Alpha Crucis, which is actually a binary star system. Our Guide, Ian, was excellent. Really fun.. there was a wee 3D film presentation where they whizz you round the solar system. Ian happily told us, that if we were thinking of heading to Venus for a summer holiday it would be a pretty bad idea. He explained (gleefully) that if we went there, as soon as we stepped out we’d be crushed by the atmosphere, squished completely. But he then went on to say, that before that happened, the extreme temperature of Venus would probably have boiled our blood away, and he finished by saying that there’d not be much left of us as we’d be utterly dissolved by the Sulphuric Acid that would have rained down on us.
A cheery fellow :). So all in all an excellent tour, would really recommend it. Also has a good exhibition on the Transit of Venus (which Captain Cooks was ordered to record, before heading on to discover the Great South Land – what is now Australia).
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