Grey

A one-and-a-bit-picture only post about my daytrip to Sydney yesterday

4am and I'm up on a bit over an hour's sleep. Out the door by 4:30am and parked in a backstreet near the airport with plenty of time to walk and check in. It's drizzling but I don't care, I'm quite buzzing.
Dancing along the road to the stuff blasting thru my mp3 player, I notice that the new terminal looks rather dead and that I need to go to the old one. I walk across a median strip full of sand. Slurp! I sink to past my ankles in the bog made by the rain and it takes about 6 steps to get out of it.
Having only handluggage I can check in painlessly and quickly. My flight is delayed so I have time to lock myself in one of the vacant Disabled Persons toilet and clean alllllllll the mud off my shoes, jeans inside and out, and up my legs. I have a window seat and 2 seats to myself. On the plane I plan out two filmclips on the drawing board. The Virgin Blue staff suggests we use Europcar cos they have good deals and I decide I'll give it a whirl.
$90 later I'm driving to Sydney, I have no idea where I'm going and have half an hour til I'm supposed to be in the MLC Centre.
Thanks to signs and the supplied street directory, and a brief stop in the 7 Eleven to ask where I am, I find that I'm actually in the CBD and am, quite accidentally, on the right trail to my destination.
Sydney roads + no parking = mad me.
My matchbox hirecar fits perfectly into a miniscule space (albeit in a loading zone with several other illegally parked vehicles) and because I am the golden god of parallel parking I'm away to the MLC Centre which is alot closer than I thought.
Ground floor of the MLC Centre is level 6, the US Consulate is on level 59, the tower lobby is level 8. From Level 8 I have to walk/jog halfway around the large large courtyardy lobbyish thing to find elevators that service level 59. A nice lady tells me where to find them, but upon entering the lift I see a sign saying that to get to the US Consulate I have to go to level 10, the elevator to which is right back where I started.
I get to level 10, get screened and metal detected and escorted via security guard to level 59, where I'm searched and screened again by the first of the many unimpressable people I will encounter in the day.
I stumble thru the heavy door into the Consulate which consists of one wall filled entirely with bulletproofed service windows and lots of rows of seats of bored people sitting staring at me. I immediately think I've walked into a meeting of some sort and I'm not the speaker they were expecting: this travel worn hick from Adelaide staring blankly momentarily back at them.
I take my ticket and bounce to a vacant seat saying something like 'how exciting! I feel like we're about to all see a film.'
The stupid stupid people stare at me, not sure what I mean. I smother a laugh, shrug and sit down smirking. Here begins a 2 hour wait punctuated by 3 separate visits to the service windows to hand in forms and have my two index-fingers scanned.
When my number is first called I bounce up the the window with 'HELLO! HOW ARE YOU?!?!?!?!' grinning madly, which contrasts nicely to the grumpy cashier-window lady whos only words were "number ### window six" coming across the PA.
I actually fall asleep in my chair at some stage, which I find hilarious, and do many many 'eccentric' quirks to amuse myself amongst the tight-assed SERIOUS people with me with no sense of humour whatsoever.
I mean, if I came bouncing in, being me, would you not instantly wet your pants? or at least smile? Nooooooooo I was stared at like an insect for being happy. HOW DARE YOU, YOU HICK FROM ADELAIDE?!?!
Ok, so I did have a tic tac toe competition between my left and right hands then scribbled I WON largely and loudly over it. And I balanced my folder on head and conducted with my pen something by Mozart that was flowing through my head.
The only other person with a personality was another girl from hicksville Woollongong, going to Disneyworld, what a shock.
So anyway, once it was all over, I meet up with Maz.
Now that the shite part of my day was forever behind me, we made up for it, not including having to deal with stupid Sydney drivers who were baffled when I'd let someone in ahead of me.
We go for a short accidental trip over the Sydney Harbour Bridge and film our madness in the car, and I do a short shoot of Maz in all his glory. And then he takes some of me IN WONKA GLASSES!!

They bent my ears down a bit so I accentuate that by bringing the straps down further, then I walk around with some nerdy voice that I can't possibly transcribe into text for you. The sort of noise a human fly would make if he were kinda British and wore a business suit and had a stuffed nose.
We walk around the Rocks, find a new camera some poor sod has left behind, have lunch (Maz had what he called 'chips of delight' and I had a rather yummy milkshake), and pay $30 for some absurdly short amount of time in a parking lot tended by a man speaking what Maz calls 'Hindish'.
After doing a short flit about in the park filming all sorts of our craziness, and getting lost and ending up in Glebe - which works out nicely since Carly had suggested I see how pretty Glebe is - I drop Maz off and try my hardest to get out of the city and find the way I came in.
Somehow I manage it, go to the airport, drop off my hirecar praying they don't notice anything I may have done to it, race thru my handluggage-only check in, message a few people saying that Sydney sucks and thank god I'm coming home, fall asleep listening to music on the plane, stagger back to my car, drive home, have the most heavenly bath ever and collapse into bed.
Damn I love you Adelaide.

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