This is what happens at the end of college. You show up at a party at a friend's spot. A house you've been to many many times to eat, drink, and hang out. But all of a sudden, with 5 weeks left of school you show up to that same house to drink those same beers and to grill on that same grill and you, Don't, Know, Anyone.
What the hell is going on? What's going on is people are saying to themselves, "dang it, I haven't gone out at all in 2 years and now I need to make up for lost time so I'm going to show up at as many parties and take as many pictures for my facebook profile as possible before this school thing is over". What can you do? Nothing actually. I've actually met some new people these past weeks, which is always nice. But when they say "how come I've never seen you out?" I just don't know how to respond. I just smile and say "I don't know".
I do know that I went to a sorority formal this past week and yeah, I was probably the oldest dude in the room. I had this weird dream where I'd get there and they'd check my ID and be like, "sorry sir, you are too old for this club" kind of like this clip from Knocked Up which is seriously one of my favorites. Man I do love this clip, which is not safe for work by the way...
"I can't let you in because you old as fuck...for this club...not you know, for the earth". Anyway, I had this other dream (lots of dreaming these days) where they'd be like sorry sir, you aren't 27, you are older, much older and then they'd rip my shirt off and I'd have one of those polio vaccine scars on my shoulder, and I'd be like "no, but I never had a polio vaccine!", and then I woke up and had to go to the bathroom. But that didn't happen and I had a lot of fun. I think the "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore" moment occurred when I rolled into the pre-game with a bottle of wine, and everyone was congregated in the kitchen pounding shots of vodka and tequila. I might as well have been wearing a huge label that said "A 1981 Vintage MBA from Greenwich, CT". Good lord, can you imagine if I showed up with flowers which is how we used to sometimes do it back in my undergrad days. I'm dying a million deaths inside just thinking about how mortifying that would've been. But I wasn't embarrassed with my wine. You don't get invited to something like that and show up empty-handed. Mama, you raised yourself a mensch. Anyway, fun evening, and again, and I say this time and again, may I never have daughters.
It's going to be tough to top last week. My bowling league finished up last Wednesday, that formal was Thursday, I got in 18 holes with some friends on Friday, and was back out at the bars on Saturday, and today I ate a triple chili cheeseburger with onion rings and passed out on my couch and then watched the games all day. If loving the MBA life is wrong, then I don't want to be right.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
Evening
Thursday through Sunday are de facto, every college basketball fans dream. Being in school has allowed me to appreciate this four-day festival in front of the TV, watching every dime and every dagger. I am taking a class this quarter that meets three times. One of those times happened to be during the Michigan game last night, which made me simultaneously mad, sad, and depressed. Michigan's first time in the tournament in 11 years and I was going to miss it...or was I.
As soon as we got into class I went to channelsurfing.net and started to watch the live stream of the game on my laptop, and just so I wasn't being inconsiderate I sat in the back row so nobody would be bothered by the game. About an hour into class we start talking about what our "class norms" should be. Unfortunately one of them was "closed laptops", so I did what any other basketball fan would do, I put my computer on the empty chair next to me and watched the game under the desk. It was weird watching a game that came down to the final shot and not being able to make a single peep. We won, and now we go on to play big bad Oklahoma tomorrow. Tomorrow happens to be the 2nd of three total sessions for this class, but by some scheduling miracle I will be done at 5pm and the game starts at 5:30pm. If that wasn't the case I just don't know what I would've done.
I want to talk a little bit about this class though. It's called Authentic Leadership. I thought it would be more interesting than it was. I just hope it gets better, but there's something significant that's going to prevent it from getting better and this significant thing is the presence of Evening MBA students. I feel like Evening MBAs have made it relatively unscathed by this blog, but that's about to end in 5...4...3...2...1.
It's not easy to work all day and go to class. I tried it once in New York and I briefly debated starting my coffee-drinking career. I could barely make it because I was so exhausted. I do give these Evening MBAs credit but that's where this group hug ends. So who are these people you ask? They work at Carhartt, Cargill, and shitty car companies. If you company doesn't have "car" in it, or is related to cars I think you can't be an Evening MBA student at Michigan. In my Corporate Financial Strategy class I was impressed by the ability of the Evening MBA students. This is not finance though, this is Management and Organizations, this is the fuzzy stuff, this is the "tell me how you feel" stuff, and these people drive me absolutely nuts.
These folks are ALL older, some in their 40s, and some look like they are in their 50s, but are probably in their 30s. These classes that are highly dependent upon group discussion become these Evening MBAs personal Amateur Night at the Apollo...and NONE of them are funny. Just because they are in some crap job and get yelled at all day at work and probably can't get in a word edge-wise at home because their wives are all naggy bitches they are not entitled to speaking like a bunch of jagasses during class. I cannot believe how annoying and borderline disrespectful these people are. Hey folks, you missed the boat on this whole "career" thing. You're not going to joke your way into a new job, in fact I wouldn't be surprised if you joked your way out of a job.
I have to sit from 8-5 tomorrow and listen to these Evening MBAs grandstand about cost centers and ineffective managers and the birth of their children blah blah. If they want to bitch they should do what I do and start a blog.
Anyway...Go Blue and go home evening MBA students.
As soon as we got into class I went to channelsurfing.net and started to watch the live stream of the game on my laptop, and just so I wasn't being inconsiderate I sat in the back row so nobody would be bothered by the game. About an hour into class we start talking about what our "class norms" should be. Unfortunately one of them was "closed laptops", so I did what any other basketball fan would do, I put my computer on the empty chair next to me and watched the game under the desk. It was weird watching a game that came down to the final shot and not being able to make a single peep. We won, and now we go on to play big bad Oklahoma tomorrow. Tomorrow happens to be the 2nd of three total sessions for this class, but by some scheduling miracle I will be done at 5pm and the game starts at 5:30pm. If that wasn't the case I just don't know what I would've done.
I want to talk a little bit about this class though. It's called Authentic Leadership. I thought it would be more interesting than it was. I just hope it gets better, but there's something significant that's going to prevent it from getting better and this significant thing is the presence of Evening MBA students. I feel like Evening MBAs have made it relatively unscathed by this blog, but that's about to end in 5...4...3...2...1.
It's not easy to work all day and go to class. I tried it once in New York and I briefly debated starting my coffee-drinking career. I could barely make it because I was so exhausted. I do give these Evening MBAs credit but that's where this group hug ends. So who are these people you ask? They work at Carhartt, Cargill, and shitty car companies. If you company doesn't have "car" in it, or is related to cars I think you can't be an Evening MBA student at Michigan. In my Corporate Financial Strategy class I was impressed by the ability of the Evening MBA students. This is not finance though, this is Management and Organizations, this is the fuzzy stuff, this is the "tell me how you feel" stuff, and these people drive me absolutely nuts.
These folks are ALL older, some in their 40s, and some look like they are in their 50s, but are probably in their 30s. These classes that are highly dependent upon group discussion become these Evening MBAs personal Amateur Night at the Apollo...and NONE of them are funny. Just because they are in some crap job and get yelled at all day at work and probably can't get in a word edge-wise at home because their wives are all naggy bitches they are not entitled to speaking like a bunch of jagasses during class. I cannot believe how annoying and borderline disrespectful these people are. Hey folks, you missed the boat on this whole "career" thing. You're not going to joke your way into a new job, in fact I wouldn't be surprised if you joked your way out of a job.
I have to sit from 8-5 tomorrow and listen to these Evening MBAs grandstand about cost centers and ineffective managers and the birth of their children blah blah. If they want to bitch they should do what I do and start a blog.
Anyway...Go Blue and go home evening MBA students.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Australia
I was going to blog this past weekend about my Australia trip but I thought what better way than to continue punishing my body than to go to Chicago for St Patty's Day. As for St Patty's Day, as the kids say "you can't drink all day unless you start in the morning"...
Morning.
So now that I have changed timezones in the past month more times than I'd like to count, have slept less in a one month period than I think I've ever slept, and am bordering on exhaustion, (I'm back to taking daily naps to try to catch up) I just think it would be wise to blog before I go into unplanned hibernation.
And when you talk about unplanned hibernation it probably makes sense to talk about planned hibernation. I don't like taking medicine, advil, tylenol, whatever. So taking an Ambien for the first time was kind of a necessary evil, since the total flight time from Detroit to Sydney was a total of 22 hours. I don't know why but I thought I'd never wake up after taking the Ambien, either that or I'd pee my pants while sleeping, so just to be safe I didn't drink any water for the first couple hours of my flight. I woke up and all said, the flight over wasn't too bad.
SYDNEY
Here is the question, why don't I live in Sydney? Why don't we all live in Sydney? Seriously, what's our collective problem? Do we just not like cool places, with beautiful people, beautiful beaches, and an amazing nightlife? Do we hate ridiculously awesome weather? I don't know. I just don't know. Explain yourself. Two of my friends arrived two days before the rest of our crew and spent the days at Bondi Beach and out at clubs at night. Jetlag certainly slapped me silly the first couple of days but we plowed through...just barely. You really can't talk about Sydney without talking about Bondi Beach.
View of Bondi from Icebergs
Bondi
And that my friends is one of Sydney's famed saltwater swimming pools. The best thing about these saltwater pools is that in these saltwater pools there are not saltwater sharks. The prospect of getting eaten by sharks kind of stinks and while we were at Bondi there were shark attacks, but I was able to keep my limbs thankfully. If you're swimming at breakfast time or dinnertime there's a chance you will end up breakfast or dinner, but as long as you avoid dawn and dusk you really should be fine. Should be. Aside from Jaws and his buddies coming to hang out from time to time Bondi is arguably the best beach I've ever been to. The water is warm and clear, the waves are perfect, and gorgeous woman of all nationalities sit on the beach and go untethered into the throes. Combine that with a beach wide enough to have a serious catch with a football, body surf, and surf surf, surrounded by bars and restaurants and really I'm not sure what else you could possibly need. Of course there was that one day where the wind picked up and about 200 people got stung by jellyfish, but still, Bondi rocks. And while I'm talking Bondi here I just should give a quick thank you to my buddy Dan who not only made the wise choice of moving to Sydney and literally living across the street from the beach, but was an excellent host, and Sydney guru.
And if Bondi was the overall 1-seed in the tournament, then Manly Beach was also a 1-seed. At Manly, a soft crescent of sand that seemed to run for a mile or so, we surfed, and had another picture perfect day. The ferry to Manly also took us through the harbor which lent itself to some picturesque views of the city and sights...
Opera House
Manly Beach from up high
Manly might've been my favorite day. And another favorite aspect of Sydney has to be that you CANNOT walk two blocks without running into a thai restaurant. I was probably two more thai dishes of way from turning into a giant pad see ew. The bottom line here is that if I could bathe in coconut curry I would, and if there was ever a place to make this happen (aside from Thailand of course) I has to be Sydney. And with 66 US cents getting you 1 Australian dollar, well let's just say if you cut me open you would've found about 4,000 kaffir lime leaves.
So I'll spare you the day by day rundown of the next couple days, but after we exhausted ourselves in Sydney for five days it was time to go to Cairns (specifically Palm Cove) and check out the Great Barrier Reef.
CAIRNS
Let's just start by saying there is no ozone above Cairns, and I believe Cairns is one of the few places in the world where the ozone is depleted. I used no less than SPF 30 the entire trip. The sun was scary but not as scary as our rental house welcoming committee...
This spider was easily as big as my hand, and I say "was" because it shortly met an untimely death by running into the back of a telephone book at full speed (or something like that). As the locals say, there are all kinds of "nasties" in Australia...the black widow, the funnel spider...and since I was told to check under the toilet seat every time I went to the bathroom I did.
I spearheaded the effort to rent a house in Palm Cove and I did it all from Ann Arbor and there were 7 of us making the trip to Cairns and I was a little worried, but when we got to Palm Cove I was pleasantly surprised by the enormous house, the pool, and the one block walk to the beach. Unfortunately, from about October to May you can't really swim off the coast of Cairns. I mean, you can swim, but you risk getting stung by the killer box jellies. Again, just another local "nasty".
Our first full day we went to the Great Barrier Reef via catamaran, and we weren't just going, we were going to SCUBA. I don't know how to SCUBA and after our guide gave us a 30 minute brief on how to SCUBA I still didn't know how to SCUBA. It was a perfect day...
to get eaten by...
a God damn tiger shark (picture courtesy of our day at the Sydney Aquarium). Oh well. I put on my stinger suit (don't forget those killer box jellies) and posed for a final picture that would be sent to my family after I drowned/got eaten out there...
Dead Man...Scuba Diving.
The Great Barrier Reef, like few things do, actually lived up to the hype. And I got to pet a living giant clam that was like nothing I'd ever seen before. Now I know why people get addicted to scuba. I loved it, but I think I'll stick to basketball. Fewer sharks.
After kicking ass on sea we were ready to kick ass on land and the next couple days we ate great food and drank our favorite beer (Toohey's New) and acted like gluttonous Roman business school students. This was the lazy part of our trip and we spent healthy time chilling by the pool, got some hiking in, and fished the estuaries around Cairns (I caught a log, but the log had two crabs in it, so I technically caught two crabs, and also a little sea bream) , and just generally relaxed.
The Ugly Americans at The Woolshed
Me and my weak-ass moustache playing a game of "What Would Bear Grylls Do?"
One quick anecdote from Cairns. At the Woolshed (pictured above) we met these two German girls who were sheep shearers in New Zealand. Honest truth. They spoke some english, and we were talking about sheep shearing and such. They made $400 New Zealand bucks a month, which I imagine they spent beer and wool sweaters. They asked me if I worked, to which I replied that I am in school but I worked this past summer. One asked where I worked, and I said JPMorgan and she looked at me, scrunched her nose, shook her head, took a sip of my beer and said "JPMorgan? What is this place?". At that moment I wished I was a sheep shearer. Ignorance is bliss.
I was somewhat sad to leave Cairns because the weather was absolutely phenomenal and we had yet to die, and we were having a splendid time. Melbourne was calling though, and we hadn't seen any 'roos yet (although we'd eaten some....over-rated in my opinion), and we had our Great Ocean Road roadtrip ahead of us.
MELBOURNE AND THE GREAT OCEAN ROAD
Melbourne was a bit overcast when we got there, and we stayed local in St. Kilda, eating dinner down by the beach and grabbing a few drinks, but before we called it a night we had to take pictures (read: torment) of some wild, sleepy penguins. I just have to say that Happy Feet was more or less an inaccurate protrayal of how penguins are. Yeah, they chriped, but none sang, spoke like Chicanos, or danced. They kind of just looked at us as if to say "hey asshole, do I snap the flash when you are trying to sleep in your bed?"
The following morning we set out to drive the Great Ocean Road. The drive down the coast was the most scenic drive I've ever taken, and of course we stopped to take a million pictures. The only thing was that since the brushfires were still threatening, the ground was dry as a bone, and lightening was predicted, we couldn't stop too long because we could theoretically end up caught in deadly fires. So that puts us at Sharks, Jellies, spiders, and now brushfires. Continuing...we also saw wild koalas, porcupines, and yes mangy small kangaroos, which I'll have you all know do not wear boxing gloves. Some pics from the Great Ocean Road...
The night we stayed at Apollo Bay the entire strip lost power except for one spot, so we ended up living out our environmental protectionist fantasies by playing hours upon hours of Buck Hunter and shooting every creature in sight. It was lovely. We book-ended our roadie by a last night in Melbourne which was fun, but at this point I think we were all ready to head back to Sydney for more beach and nightlife.
The last three days we spent on Bondi and Coogee Beach. We actually ended up staying at the Coogee Bay Hotel, which really is a hotel/bar/OTB/nightclub/liquor distributor all in one. It was the closest to living in the fraternity house that I've done in years, and yes, it was a blast. Just a lot of beach, thai food, and gelato and just when we thought things were dying down it was Gay Mardi Gras in Sydney, and it just so happened that at my buddy's place we crashed at the last night (and also several nights on the front end...thank you Hedgybear) was right in the middle, smack dab, in the epicenter of the gay parade. There was a full on tranny party across the street, and we, along with a ton of the gay and straight Sydney community members, watched the parade which of course was led off by none other than the Dykes on Bikes. You really think I'm making this up? My buddy had people over, we bbq'd, hung out, and then went to Kings Cross where I believe had thirty more people shown up the entire continent would have caved in. Absolute madness. Not exactly the mellow, pre-flight evening we were looking for but oh well. We had our Toohey's New and we made the best of it.
The flight back was, let me put this nicely, fuck United Airlines. SYD to San Fran they lost my friend's bag. I of course packed two plus weeks into a backpack and gym bag. There would be no checking for me. And then upon arriving from our SFO to Denver leg, we found out that Denver to Detroit was cancelled due to weather. Weather my ass. We caught a late flight standby to Chicago, crashed at a friend's girlfriend's place for 4 hours, and then caught the Chi to Detroit the next morning at 6am. And a week later here I am. Australia was a great trip and I feel bad because I've only scratched the surface for you, but I have to go to class, and get on with my life. Six more weeks here, which is scary as hell. It's great to be back though. Enjoy St. Patty's.
Morning.So now that I have changed timezones in the past month more times than I'd like to count, have slept less in a one month period than I think I've ever slept, and am bordering on exhaustion, (I'm back to taking daily naps to try to catch up) I just think it would be wise to blog before I go into unplanned hibernation.
And when you talk about unplanned hibernation it probably makes sense to talk about planned hibernation. I don't like taking medicine, advil, tylenol, whatever. So taking an Ambien for the first time was kind of a necessary evil, since the total flight time from Detroit to Sydney was a total of 22 hours. I don't know why but I thought I'd never wake up after taking the Ambien, either that or I'd pee my pants while sleeping, so just to be safe I didn't drink any water for the first couple hours of my flight. I woke up and all said, the flight over wasn't too bad.
SYDNEY
Here is the question, why don't I live in Sydney? Why don't we all live in Sydney? Seriously, what's our collective problem? Do we just not like cool places, with beautiful people, beautiful beaches, and an amazing nightlife? Do we hate ridiculously awesome weather? I don't know. I just don't know. Explain yourself. Two of my friends arrived two days before the rest of our crew and spent the days at Bondi Beach and out at clubs at night. Jetlag certainly slapped me silly the first couple of days but we plowed through...just barely. You really can't talk about Sydney without talking about Bondi Beach.
View of Bondi from Icebergs
BondiAnd that my friends is one of Sydney's famed saltwater swimming pools. The best thing about these saltwater pools is that in these saltwater pools there are not saltwater sharks. The prospect of getting eaten by sharks kind of stinks and while we were at Bondi there were shark attacks, but I was able to keep my limbs thankfully. If you're swimming at breakfast time or dinnertime there's a chance you will end up breakfast or dinner, but as long as you avoid dawn and dusk you really should be fine. Should be. Aside from Jaws and his buddies coming to hang out from time to time Bondi is arguably the best beach I've ever been to. The water is warm and clear, the waves are perfect, and gorgeous woman of all nationalities sit on the beach and go untethered into the throes. Combine that with a beach wide enough to have a serious catch with a football, body surf, and surf surf, surrounded by bars and restaurants and really I'm not sure what else you could possibly need. Of course there was that one day where the wind picked up and about 200 people got stung by jellyfish, but still, Bondi rocks. And while I'm talking Bondi here I just should give a quick thank you to my buddy Dan who not only made the wise choice of moving to Sydney and literally living across the street from the beach, but was an excellent host, and Sydney guru.
And if Bondi was the overall 1-seed in the tournament, then Manly Beach was also a 1-seed. At Manly, a soft crescent of sand that seemed to run for a mile or so, we surfed, and had another picture perfect day. The ferry to Manly also took us through the harbor which lent itself to some picturesque views of the city and sights...
Opera House
Manly Beach from up highManly might've been my favorite day. And another favorite aspect of Sydney has to be that you CANNOT walk two blocks without running into a thai restaurant. I was probably two more thai dishes of way from turning into a giant pad see ew. The bottom line here is that if I could bathe in coconut curry I would, and if there was ever a place to make this happen (aside from Thailand of course) I has to be Sydney. And with 66 US cents getting you 1 Australian dollar, well let's just say if you cut me open you would've found about 4,000 kaffir lime leaves.
So I'll spare you the day by day rundown of the next couple days, but after we exhausted ourselves in Sydney for five days it was time to go to Cairns (specifically Palm Cove) and check out the Great Barrier Reef.
CAIRNS
Let's just start by saying there is no ozone above Cairns, and I believe Cairns is one of the few places in the world where the ozone is depleted. I used no less than SPF 30 the entire trip. The sun was scary but not as scary as our rental house welcoming committee...
This spider was easily as big as my hand, and I say "was" because it shortly met an untimely death by running into the back of a telephone book at full speed (or something like that). As the locals say, there are all kinds of "nasties" in Australia...the black widow, the funnel spider...and since I was told to check under the toilet seat every time I went to the bathroom I did.I spearheaded the effort to rent a house in Palm Cove and I did it all from Ann Arbor and there were 7 of us making the trip to Cairns and I was a little worried, but when we got to Palm Cove I was pleasantly surprised by the enormous house, the pool, and the one block walk to the beach. Unfortunately, from about October to May you can't really swim off the coast of Cairns. I mean, you can swim, but you risk getting stung by the killer box jellies. Again, just another local "nasty".
Our first full day we went to the Great Barrier Reef via catamaran, and we weren't just going, we were going to SCUBA. I don't know how to SCUBA and after our guide gave us a 30 minute brief on how to SCUBA I still didn't know how to SCUBA. It was a perfect day...
to get eaten by...
a God damn tiger shark (picture courtesy of our day at the Sydney Aquarium). Oh well. I put on my stinger suit (don't forget those killer box jellies) and posed for a final picture that would be sent to my family after I drowned/got eaten out there...
Dead Man...Scuba Diving.The Great Barrier Reef, like few things do, actually lived up to the hype. And I got to pet a living giant clam that was like nothing I'd ever seen before. Now I know why people get addicted to scuba. I loved it, but I think I'll stick to basketball. Fewer sharks.
After kicking ass on sea we were ready to kick ass on land and the next couple days we ate great food and drank our favorite beer (Toohey's New) and acted like gluttonous Roman business school students. This was the lazy part of our trip and we spent healthy time chilling by the pool, got some hiking in, and fished the estuaries around Cairns (I caught a log, but the log had two crabs in it, so I technically caught two crabs, and also a little sea bream) , and just generally relaxed.
The Ugly Americans at The Woolshed
Me and my weak-ass moustache playing a game of "What Would Bear Grylls Do?"One quick anecdote from Cairns. At the Woolshed (pictured above) we met these two German girls who were sheep shearers in New Zealand. Honest truth. They spoke some english, and we were talking about sheep shearing and such. They made $400 New Zealand bucks a month, which I imagine they spent beer and wool sweaters. They asked me if I worked, to which I replied that I am in school but I worked this past summer. One asked where I worked, and I said JPMorgan and she looked at me, scrunched her nose, shook her head, took a sip of my beer and said "JPMorgan? What is this place?". At that moment I wished I was a sheep shearer. Ignorance is bliss.
I was somewhat sad to leave Cairns because the weather was absolutely phenomenal and we had yet to die, and we were having a splendid time. Melbourne was calling though, and we hadn't seen any 'roos yet (although we'd eaten some....over-rated in my opinion), and we had our Great Ocean Road roadtrip ahead of us.
MELBOURNE AND THE GREAT OCEAN ROAD
Melbourne was a bit overcast when we got there, and we stayed local in St. Kilda, eating dinner down by the beach and grabbing a few drinks, but before we called it a night we had to take pictures (read: torment) of some wild, sleepy penguins. I just have to say that Happy Feet was more or less an inaccurate protrayal of how penguins are. Yeah, they chriped, but none sang, spoke like Chicanos, or danced. They kind of just looked at us as if to say "hey asshole, do I snap the flash when you are trying to sleep in your bed?"
The following morning we set out to drive the Great Ocean Road. The drive down the coast was the most scenic drive I've ever taken, and of course we stopped to take a million pictures. The only thing was that since the brushfires were still threatening, the ground was dry as a bone, and lightening was predicted, we couldn't stop too long because we could theoretically end up caught in deadly fires. So that puts us at Sharks, Jellies, spiders, and now brushfires. Continuing...we also saw wild koalas, porcupines, and yes mangy small kangaroos, which I'll have you all know do not wear boxing gloves. Some pics from the Great Ocean Road...
The night we stayed at Apollo Bay the entire strip lost power except for one spot, so we ended up living out our environmental protectionist fantasies by playing hours upon hours of Buck Hunter and shooting every creature in sight. It was lovely. We book-ended our roadie by a last night in Melbourne which was fun, but at this point I think we were all ready to head back to Sydney for more beach and nightlife.
The last three days we spent on Bondi and Coogee Beach. We actually ended up staying at the Coogee Bay Hotel, which really is a hotel/bar/OTB/nightclub/liquor distributor all in one. It was the closest to living in the fraternity house that I've done in years, and yes, it was a blast. Just a lot of beach, thai food, and gelato and just when we thought things were dying down it was Gay Mardi Gras in Sydney, and it just so happened that at my buddy's place we crashed at the last night (and also several nights on the front end...thank you Hedgybear) was right in the middle, smack dab, in the epicenter of the gay parade. There was a full on tranny party across the street, and we, along with a ton of the gay and straight Sydney community members, watched the parade which of course was led off by none other than the Dykes on Bikes. You really think I'm making this up? My buddy had people over, we bbq'd, hung out, and then went to Kings Cross where I believe had thirty more people shown up the entire continent would have caved in. Absolute madness. Not exactly the mellow, pre-flight evening we were looking for but oh well. We had our Toohey's New and we made the best of it.
The flight back was, let me put this nicely, fuck United Airlines. SYD to San Fran they lost my friend's bag. I of course packed two plus weeks into a backpack and gym bag. There would be no checking for me. And then upon arriving from our SFO to Denver leg, we found out that Denver to Detroit was cancelled due to weather. Weather my ass. We caught a late flight standby to Chicago, crashed at a friend's girlfriend's place for 4 hours, and then caught the Chi to Detroit the next morning at 6am. And a week later here I am. Australia was a great trip and I feel bad because I've only scratched the surface for you, but I have to go to class, and get on with my life. Six more weeks here, which is scary as hell. It's great to be back though. Enjoy St. Patty's.
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