Today started out with a sunny, deep-blue sky. I c…
Today started out with a sunny, deep-blue sky. I checked out of the George St. Hostel, bidding a sad farewell to Andy with a gift of cookies for his already-ample stomach, and lugged my stuff up to the Town Hall station, on the subway train back to Bondi Junction, where I am going to stay tonight at Rick and Jimmy’s apartment.
I called up my friend at Fox Studios, Grant, and we arranged to have lunch over there at a place called the Fox and Lion. The weather was just about as perfect as one could wish for as I walked down Oxford St, making a mental note of a barbershop where I could get my hair cut later on my way back. It’s difficult to find a real men’s barbershop these days…so-called “stylists” are so much more popular, probably because women care a lot more about their hair than men do.
I circled the cricket grounds and the stadium, finally arriving at Fox Studios to find the usual assortment of high-powered movie execs mixing with the tourists like oil and water among the cheezy shops. We ordered BLTs and wedges, but the amounts were far greater than I had anticipated, and I had to order another LLB just for the wedges. Afterwards I paused to watch the people at the Sony shop demonstrate the Aibo robot dog, which was cute but surely annoying after about five minutes of its truck-backing-up noise. Clever, but rather useless. What they really need to do is make a robot maid, like the one on the Jetsons. That’d sell like hotcakes, provided hotcakes are something anyone would want to buy. I assume that whatever they are, they sold well at one point, otherwise we wouldn’t still have the saying. Aren’t weblogs wonderful? I can ramble like this all day and nobody’s going to slap me like they would in real life.
After lunch I walked back through the park. The weather was getting colder, and by the time I reached the barbershop, which was, of course, closed at 2pm because this is Sydney, the skies were cloudy and a cold wind was picking up. I looked all over for another barbershop that didn’t have the word “style” in it’s vocabulary, and finally found one. I usually cut my own hair, but I figured I would splurge a bit since I’m on vacation. I love the feeling of someone handling my head.
As I walked out of the barbershop, head freshly shorn, the shop’s sign blew down, and gusts of rain were spraying pedestrians. I walked past the Coles supermarket, which was chockablock with shoppers. I wondered if there had been another terrorist attack or something. I saw one man literally straining under the load of a few dozen boxes of Tim-tams. It looked serious, so I came back to the apartment. Jimmy just came back, and the three of us are going to go out for dinner later on tonight after Rick gets home from work. And tomorrow I’m flying out to Perth. Sydney’s been fun. I wouldn’t mind living here, or in Melbourne for that matter. The only problem with living in these cities is that they aren’t Chinese, which is something I’ve become rather accustomed to. In any case, I doubt I will be moving any time soon, but it’s nice to speculate about moving someplace new. I’ve been in Taiwan for so long it has become almost too familiar, or so I thought, but even now I am beginning to miss it just a little.
