L'arrivee


In which our narrator finally makes it to his intended destination, gets sick, and takes to bed.

Sydney, at long last. The weather here is coolish, not unlike mid-winter weather in Los Angeles - clear and in the low 60s. They say it was positively broiling a couple of weeks ago, but that is certainly no longer the case.

I write this on the 7:54 AM train out of Central Station - convienently located about 1/2 block from the front door of my apartment, on my way to Epping Station. That's where I'll need to catch a bus to AFTRS. I think I have the directions all down right, though I have no idea how to pay for the bus or anything like that, so I'm not quite sure what awaits me when I get to Epping. We'll find out.

Peter Giles very graciously picked me up at the airport on Monday morning. It took me some time to get to sleep - and 2.0 mg of Xanax plus an Ambien. Half that amount of Xanax or the Ambien alone should have been enough to do the job, but for some reason, though I grew a bit tired, I didn't really feel very sleepy. Finally, I don't know what happened - I think all the drugs might have caught up on me at once - I fell into a complete, dark, dreamless sleep, probably for six or eight hours. When I woke up, I discovered that dawn was breaking on the other side of the plane, which meant that were were getting close to Sydney. It was breakfast time.

For all the trouble I had getting a visa into Australia, it took practically no time at all to pass through customs; they waved me through after scanning my luggage through an X-Ray, and there I was, in the arrivals terminal at Sydney airport. Whee! At long last.

Peter drove me into Sydney, and we found my apartment building. I'll snap some photos of it within the next few days so that I can illustrate the whole thing clearly, but suffice it t say that it reminds me of the apartment I had when I first moved to Santa Monica - modern and functional, with a smallish kitchen and two bedrooms - one small and one large. The small one has become my office, while the large one is nearly completely filled by a queen size bed that I had Bernard (my landlord, as it were) rent for me, along with a washing machine (laundry, yay!) and a refrigerator.

I could feel myself a bit hot and sticky, and the back of my throat was a bit sore. I couldn't tell if this was because I'd spent the last 16 hours chewing nicotine gum (which does that to me) or if it was because I was getting a cold. We went for a cuppa, and - although I'm not sure - I believe I left my favorite item of clothing, that lovely orange jacket, behind at the Cafe. I haven't been back to check, and frankly I suspect I was meant to be stripped of that prized possession - left naked, as it were - upon my arrival in Sydney. It's a sign that I'm here on my own, to make my way on my own, and I had better do it without any of the props I acquired back in Los Angeles.

At least, that's what I hope it means. Because I'm really pissed that it's lost.

The Sydney suburbs rolling by on the train - it's a double-decker, and I'm in the upper compartment, which is nearly empty as I'm going against the flow of commuters heading in Sydney - looks like what I might see from a train (Eurostar, for example) rolling through the suburbs of London. Owen is right, people build what they know, and here in this country they know (or knew) what the homeland looked like, and replicated it here.

About the accent: I think my hearing is still a little bit off in the ear in which I had the infection, and it's made it a little bit difficult to hear from time to time. Certainly when Jason and his partner arrived to install my high-speed internet link on Tuesday morning (it's a point-to-point 802.11b connection, very cool indeed) they were talking amongst themselves using that clipped speech that an American, with that flat pronunciation finds nearly indecipherable. It's almost like a brogue, because it's thick and accented and while I can stop and parse the words, if given a chance, when it comes out it sounds more like Dutch to my ears than English. I presume that within a few weeks I'll have gotten used to it and won't notice it one little bit.

Bernard has been a dear; he took care of preparing the apartment, and gifted me with a couch & coffee table, a desk in the office for my computer, some towels and sheets. Plus some dishes, glasses, cups and silverware. What a king! That made the shopping trip to IKEA with Shilo later in the afternoon on Monday a whole lot less expensive - though I have probalby spent in excess of AUD $500 since landing on Monday, getting this and that as times require. However, since that's what I'll be earning, more or less, on a daily basis during the consultancy, it's not too bad.

And the suburbs continue to roll by. North Strathfield looks as though it is the very height of concrete-modernist nastiness. I wonder if those buildings we just passed were low-income "council" houses, or whether people just really live in what were decidedly ugly flats. Hard to know for sure. I'll have to take this ride with someone who knows the countryside and can speak authoritatively to it. Lots of brick, too, which is surely a British thing.

The schoolkids are on the train, in their various uniforms; it's funny because the older folks, the 20-somethings all seem to dress in a sort of modified LA grunge look, with shirttails flapping and plaid flannel shirts, etc. I wonder if one is a reaction ot the other. They look so - British - in their school uniforms. In some ways this country has copied the homeland precisely, though one wonders why they bothered. Perhaps because they were so very far away from home, all the trappings of home helped them to feel less removed.

I think I see the Olympic Stadium off to the left. It's HUGE. So huge, that's simply what it's got to be.

This whole nation was transformed by the Olympics, which is one of the reasons that nations host them. South Korea was transformed, and surely China will be transformed by the 2008 games. It would be nice to check out the Stadium at some point, because if it's as big as it looks from the distance I viewed it from, it's got to be simply outrageously big. And big is impressive.

So it's all going well; I'm bombing my cold with enough Zinc & vitamins to keep it under control; I've gotten enough sleep to make up for the very uncomfortable time I had at my father's place; and I'm starting to feel as though I've got my legs under me. It'll be a few more days before I really want to go wild out here, but for the moment, things seem to be well. The last thing I need to deal with is the bus ride to AFTRS. If I can manage that, all will be well.

I did take a sick day yesterday, and spent the day in bed, rising only to eat a little bit and take more decongestants, vitamins & Zinc. I hope that I haven't made a poor impression by sicking out on my first day here, but it couldn't be helped - I doubt that I'd be ambulatory today if I had gone into AFTRS yesterday. And thing right now are flexible enough that some room can be had to play with. I hope.

Posted: Wed - October 15, 2003 at 08:21 AM        

©