Travel Story «Stuck in a rut»

Australia | 0 Comments 11 July 2006 - Last Update 24 December 2006

Life in Sydney has assumed a regularity, a routine if you will, which has mostly centered around where to get free stuff on which day.  By "stuff" of course, I mainly refer to alcohol but there are other things (I have heard) besides that.
Monday night is TV night - all the best shows squeezed into 4 hours and all too frequently punctuated by the worst ads in the world - honestly, they have three if not four sets of adverts in shows like Neighbours and Home and Away - oh and the dramatic marketing of them during the week is hilarious - no wonder no one watches these shows over here - they are promoted to the last.  That and of course they lack a certain ... how shall I say this... quality...?
Anyway, we are hooked on Desperate Housewives, Boston Legal, Grey's Anatomny, Scrubs and it used to be Commander in Chief until they axed it.. boo.  We may also have become slightly addicted to Big Brother but we can justify that because they are Australian and therefore it is a cultural thing - we are learning  about the natives! (It has nothing to do with the fact that it must have been a pre-requisite before you entered the BB House that you had a fabulous body... not at all... no no, it's the culture we are interested in).
So to sum up Monday is normally spent carving the perfect ass shape into the couch and brushing up on our Australian cultural trivia.
Tuesday is cheap cinema night (it's normally $15 - $20 per show - ouch!) and it would seem that the Australians want to shame anyone that takes advantage of this by naming it TIGHT ARSE TUESDAY.  Charmers aren't they?  Those that can make it out of work before midnight (For example, Grainne either has 
a) a very busy job or
b) she can't stand being in the apartment with us at night or
c) there is something at work other than work that is keeping her there past 5pm.... 
(I'm not implying anything) as she rarely comes home before she has completed a 12 hour day).  The rest of us seem less.... how shall I put this... committed to our jobs than she and normally manage to swing by the cinema each Tuesday which makes for a cheap nights entertainment.
Wednesday is TV night again with Prison Break night - a dramatic thriller with two (gorgeous) brothers in prison (one wrongly so) who are - yes you guessed it - attempting to break out!  This brill programme ends this week so we will have to change our routine to include free champagne night at the Shangri-La Hotel over looking the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House - life is tough.
Thursday is Establishment night.  Establishment is a wanna-be swanky bar (kinda like the Market Bar in Dublin) where it seems everybody in town in a suit rocks up at 6pm after work to collect their two tokens for free champagne in Establishment.  We have met more than our fair share of characters in there (for instance Mr Investment Banker from Sout Africa who claimed professional sport brought him to Sydney - he was (he claimed) a Professional Surfer(!). Where did he surf - but in Bondi of course! Now, the waves in Bondi are for beginners to say the least, and he was far from a Surfer with his receeding hair line and Armani Suit) but the free champagne draws us back in week after week and some people (no names mentioned) have yet to miss a week since we arrived in Sydney and have become Champgane addicts.
Friday has become a mixture of go home and sleep/go out after work/head to the infamous Tea Gardens in Bondi which if you are coming to Sydney anytime soon you will end up in at some point or another - no matter how hard you fight it, you will, so don't judge us when you finally see the place.
Saturday is taken up with shopping / sight seeing / BBQ's etc and then of course out at night. 
Sunday is recovery day and depending on GAA could see us heading out again to watch a match in the wee hours of the morning leading us back to Sunday and a quiet night in front of the TV to recover and so the cycle continues. 
Emily