Happy 18th Birthday Dee Dee

Tis my little cousins 18th Birthday today , 27 Feb. A day she thought would never come... now watch it go.
Still, at least now you can legally drink alcohol and talk to boys. So welcome to the “does my bum look big in this..” stage of your life !! Don’t drink too much tonight Dee Dee.. we don’t want you joining the pram pushing community of Tallaght.. the monthly cheque isn’t worth it !!

Happy Birthday Gillian !!

Sydney FC Days

Over the past couple of weeks I've been attending some 'events' at the Aussie Stadium.

Some would describe the event as football but Im still working that one out.
According to Paddy it was like going to the Coliseum ?!?!? Of course it was.. except for the non appearance of lions, Gladiators, horse and craft, blood and general lack of death. We can overlook the wrong century for the time being. Nowadays it’s illegal to throw stones no matter how bad the play is. I admit the away fans have been so minute in numbers that they resemble ‘the Peoples front of Judea’.. splitters!! It’s like listening to a fly fart in a jam jar when they celebrate the ‘occasional’ goal, which Sydney leek from time to time. The ground is oval shaped though and has a digital score board, just like the Coliseum !!


Walking through Bondi Junction (prepare to meet thy neighbour) I bumped into Paul Curry so that explains his appearance in these photo’s. It wasn’t the Tallaght yob contingency setting up.


If anything there’s more of a religious feel to it. Some of the fans hand out hymn sheets with times to sing them at.


A little manufactured maybe... “now hear this at 9:15 we’ll be singing ‘Sydney till I die’ followed by ‘When Sydney (Sid Knee) go marching in’ at 9:20.. the 9:25 is cancelled in place of toilet relief.”


The picture of Kelly with the bouncer came about because he asked her for ID after a match, and was genuine in thinking she was underage.( A big thumbs ups to him!!) And no it wasn’t a bingo hall we were entering…how could you ask that !!
Anyway the snaps are of Sydney’s last league game and the more recent semi final last Sunday ‘arvo’. Both games were against Adelaide and finished 2-1 to Sydney in each case. Now we're into the final on the 5th March.. whats that.. yes that is the day after my birthday !!

I'll leave you with Deco's impression of the Emperor from Star Wars !!

12/02/06 - OpenAir Cinema

Took a short trip to the openair cinema down at MacQuaries point, Sydney waterfront. It was worth it for the view alone.
An outdoor cinema overlooking the harbour bridge and Opera house. So if the show wasn't any good then at least you could take in the surroundings, coupled with the fruit bats and their offerings into your drinks. Hmmm tasty!

The film (pronounced fill-em.. quick as you like!! I think they are known as movies here.) wasn't bad either. A tale of the emperors new clothes in relation to Enron who had conned shareholders out of money and the world into thinking it was a thriving company. It was a great night out and ill have to do it again. Cheers to Kieran and Carla for the tickets.

The camera couldn’t keep up with my acting range (check out my range Ross! Im the best!!) so the photo’s aren’t the greatest.

18/12/05-> onwards.... Melbourne-> Sydney (The lost update).

Well I’ve been meaning to include this in the group of updates for some time.. after all the blog is entitled Tallaght to Sydney. So its about time I completed the journey..on paper at least !! The actual journey to destination Sydney was nearly two months ago.. look its just an excuse to put more pictures up with a wee yarn.


Melbourne 18 - 21/12/05
After getting over the shock of a cool 17 degrees in Melbourne we were able to pick ourselves up and do some exciting stuff.. like go to the cinema..wozers !! Yep I know..what a waste but I think the jet lag left us wanting for energy.
We did manage to catch up with the legend that is Bernard Spence and his lovely missus. Bernard has returned to Australia in search of a better life with the possibility of work. He has taken the responsibility of parenting at home while Albhie is the bread winner. The fact that they don’t have kids is incidental. Had a good night with them in a couple of pubs and a Chinese.
Good ole Spency’s time can now be occupied modelling sportswear at home..pending on whats on the box you may find him in the speedo’s or Cycling shorts.(don’t call in on sumo wrestling night.. Just a heads up!) If you phone him that’s not a beep, it’s a beer can opening.. the Australian dream !

Rented a car and drove the Great Ocean road. Upon reaching the 12 Apostles (of which only 8 remain.. please rename now to Snow White and the 7 dwarfs) we were met by the friendliest crowd. Everyone was waving at us and calling us over to them. Naturally when we got closer to the group we began waving ourselves at others. I suppose it was unavoidable with all the flies around. I’ve never seen so many. And suddenly you realise that babies are crying not smiling, and kids are picking flies not snots. There was a splinter group who appeared to be making the ‘who farted' gesture in the distance. Couldn’t take the chance on finding out that this was actually the correct gesture so we took some photo’s from where we stood.(the photo’s all tourists have) and made our exit. Check out the fly on Kelly’s lip in one photo.

Sydney 21/12/05 (and onwards)
Nearly 3 years to the day since we left and its touch down Sydney. It’s just like we never left. Clear blue sky, sweltering heat, crystal clear waters…awful really !! Deco and Paddy picked us up in the ute with some cool tunes and it wasn’t long before we were dipping in to home brew and smelling farts from Paddy’s dogs ass(you blamed Buddha not me).. talk about bin juice!

It was only fitting that we had our first meal back here in the Flavour of India.
A little history for all of you who don’t know this (and there will be many) Michael Hutchinson had his last meal here on the night he died. This is a fact which a lot of Australian’s love to tell you when you mention the place or walk past it, and each time I love playing dumb that I never heard it before (Apologies to Jodi if you ever read this.. I did know but I couldn’t help it!!) Of course Paddy Byrne used to love telling this story..think we had him going for a couple of months. So that’s why we returned here.



Resorted back to the original plan of staying in Deco’s house after we had locked ourselves out of my sisters apartment.(Marsha in your wonderful list you forgot to mention don't touch the bottom lock!!) The one trade glad to meet idiots are locksmiths ..I wasn’t even going to bother with my excuse to him. They dog ate the key. Within 5 seconds I was $90 down with only a receipt (brain dead certificate) to show for my troubles. The flat was ok though as we had a huntsman spider overseeing things on the balcony.. he came back a few days later to check on us again.. fair play.

Christmas was different.. no tree and only 2 bits of tinsel marked the apartment.. Turkey and ham swapped for potato salad and a blanket in the park with 15 of the lads and lasses.
A holiday from this holiday was needed so we followed the rest of the gang down to Jervis bay a few days later.. Dolphin’s and Sharks are in the water but we only saw the friendlier ones (well spotted Deco). I'll let the photo's do the talking for the remainder...It'just torture thinking about it again.

Australia Day 26th Jan 2006

Happy Australia Day !


A day to celebrate all things Australian. But to be honest we didn’t want to waste it by drinking, so we went camping and drinking instead. Drove 2 hours south of Sydney into the wilderness.

The camping was complete with the typical creepy crawlies, spiders, preying mantis’, dragon flies, Inbred people, you know.. that type of thing.
We were shown to our site by a participating womens rights activist. It was the only explanation I could think of for this German woman who didn't seem to have any 'support'. Paddy Byrne was the only male who claimed he didn't notice the ballons coming at us. Swaying like a gorrilas arms hanging low, I think it was only fair we named her 'droopy drangers' and how fitting the initials are DD.
She has a great life sucking sh1te from the portable toilets and tending to her husband, a burns victim(Might have happened when the wife was set fire to all her bra's!!). He didn't look to hot (pardon the pun) eating his sandwich anyway..square peg round hole and all that. For once I was thankful someone didn't offer me food.


And speaking of which with Deco on breakfast duty, Jen on Dinner and with lunch being a lite one there was nothing for me to do but supervise around the camp fire. I'd like to have helped out but to do that i'd have had to invent a new meal.. and thats the last thing the world needs. So I had to sit back and be pampered.

Paddy Deco Jen and Ingrid were going to visit some caves the day we left and then go canoeing up the river.
Deliverance comes to mind. I wont be surprised if the don’t come back. Ahh well..
Anyway it was a great trip.. and nice knowing them !!
Gav.

Unemployment

No its not a write up about the Kaiser Chiefs album. (because thats called employment..doh!)


I was just thinking of you all back home in Ireland working away and probably very unhappy with your lives. So I thought I would try and cheer you up a little. You think you have it hard.
It's not easy being unemployed here you know. During the day with nothing to do we have to drag ourselves to the beach. Terrible!!
The game of 'spot the Irish' is getting ridiculously easy now. We're the ugliest people on the face of the earth...seriously!! The game of spot the Brazilian is equally simple but far more pleasurable. They (i.e. the women) have the most amazing arses in the world(I am not a pervert I am just quoting Kelly!!).. and they all wear G-strings. And how do we compete with them.. with guts.. beer guts !! But we don't even cover it up. And we wouldn't know how to anyway..if it's not a balloon on a beach then it's a football shirt on the streets. Talk about culture..how many jerseys can you fit in a backpack ??
I'm not pretending that I don't belong to this nation.. I sit amongst the uglies, at the head of the table. My reassurance, being told by your uncle that you must have been beaten by an ugly stick, or that you must have horsed buckets of ugly tablets into you. Discovering the valentine cards you received were not from an admirer but from your dad hammers the nail further !!
We are in dire need of cross breeding with a good looking nation. Send out the distress call..use drink and darkness as your strength..…for gods sake stay away from the light !!


Today I bought a boogee board. Best investment ever for $50. Caught some great waves . One wiped me out.. I was speeding back towards the beach and rapidly gaining ground on a kid coming into the water. I had to try and turn from him but when I did the wave folded on me and I went tumbling. It was either me or him and I choose me.. talk about stupid.. should have knocked the little bastard out and thought him a lesson on the dangers of water.


As for the night.. well what else could you get up to but socializing in pubs.. to try and help you sleep better of course. Here's one photo where we dragged an innocent woman walking past and got a photo taken with her. Kelly said I saw her 'assets' and latched onto her.. but lets be honest.. they were looking at me first. I just accepted the invitation!



So really you can tell that we're not having that much fun at all.. we'd rather be at home hugging ourselves and waiting for the 5 day summer.. honest !