2001-09 (SEPTEMBER, 2001)

A Day Out - Sydney, Australia

Andy and I began the day with a scrumptious breakfast out. We then collected our cameras, a pair of red filters and a high-speed black & white film each and headed out to Anzac Bridge for a leisurely photo shoot of the bridge and it's surrounds (see the photo gallery). We had a scrumptious lunch at a café near the Channel Ten building before continuing our walk around the Pyrmont foreshore. One lucky find was a place beside the water that has free electric BBQs. Finally we arrived at our destination for the latter part of our afternoon - the Buran Space Shuttle exhibition.

The 'Buran' is the Russian equivalent of the US Space Shuttle. An enterprising entrepreneur had the test shuttle shipped all the way from Russia to a parking lot in Sydney and was charging AU$20 a head to look around it. It was a most interesting display. One amusing feature of the shuttle was the cockpit. It had been robbed from a MiG25 and still had the fully operation ejection seats in it - not of a whole lot of use in a space ship, I would have thought (the additional amusement being that they only had two ejection seats, despite having a crew of 10).

We drifted home around 18:00. A most excellent day out.

Sydney Opera House - Sydney, Australia

Andy and I spent a fab evening enjoying a brilliantly staged 'The Tales of Hoffman' at the Sydney Opera House. Most enjoyable.

Trivia Night At Star City - Sydney, Australia

The PwC social club here doesn't do things by halves. To most people, a Pub Quiz involves sitting in a dingy room at the back of a pub and scribbling your answers on increasingly beer soaked bits of paper. These guys rent out the largest conference room at the Star City Casino and have wireless electronic answer gathering devices. And free booze. Brilliant! ;-)

BBQ At Cooper Park - Sydney, Australia

Andy, Dave, Jenny, Judy, Chris and myself converged on Cooper Park, in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs, for a BBQ lunch and a good, long bush walk. At least that was the idea. In reality we had a good, long BBQ with tonnes of scrummy food, and a ten minute walk around the rain forest that is Cooper Park. A very pleasant day out.

My First Christening - Sydney, Australia

Not strictly true, actually - I presume I was in attendance at my own one - but the first one I've attended as a grown-up. Joanna and John had Alexander christened at a church in Balmain - and it was a comedy-fest from start to finish. Picture this: three concurrent christenings, one priest that didn't speak English and many, many people that had absolutely no idea what was going on. I swear all three of those children have been officially christened "What?" (almost definitely the wrong answer to the command "please now state the name of your child" - although all that most people heard was "plez say nim of killed"). Very amusing and, thankfully, very brief.