Sydney II
On Monday, I received an email on my phone that said “WE ARE HERE!” with an attached photo of Cairns Tourist Bureau.
Okay, that’s nice, but who are you?
Oh! Holy crap! M & T from Yokohama! My old students! They’re in Australia? Why didn’t they tell me?! One excited telephone conversation later, and I make plans to meet them in Sydney to give them a guided tour of the little I know. Yay! Yokohama friends! I’ve been feeling massively homesick for Yokohama lately and seeing M & T would probably only make matters worse but the weekend looked like it was going to be lots of fun.
Every day up until I left for Sydney, I received emails with cameraphone photos of things like shrimp-on-the-barbie, Ayer’s Rock and Fosters beer. They seemed to be having fun. After some misunderstandings, frustrations and drunkenness, Mi and I finally met up with M & T in seedy King’s Cross on Saturday. That place is kinda scary. It was even scarier when I learnt the next day that M & T decided to wander around there arter midnight! Anyway, hightailed it to George Street promptly, where we ate at a nice Spanish restaurant and caught up on the last few months and talked about their holiday so far.
“Did you see any Australian animals?”
“No, but I ate emu, kangaroo and crocodile”
“Ehhh~?!” (I reverted to my Japanish pretty quickly)
“I didn’t see anything!”
“Even at Ayer’s Rock? Or in the Daintree Rainforest?!”
“No! Nothing!”
“Okay, I’ll take you to Taronga Zoo tomorrow. You can see some Australian animals that aren’t on a plate”
I hadn’t been to Taronga since I was…oooh…6 years old? So I was looking forward to it. First we looked around Circular Quay to take happy snaps of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. Then the zoo, where those animals have a better bloody view than most human residents of Sydney.
After that, an accidental round trip on the ferry (they need to make signs that say ‘DARLING HARBOUR’ not just ‘Aquarium’) to have another nice meal where I discovered that I actually quite like oysters (Dad will have heart failure when he hears it). It seems that Australian seafood is much cheaper and better quality than in Japan, so M & T had been gorging themselves.
They wouldn’t let me pay for anything either! Two dinners, lunch and Taronga Zoo admittance! I felt quite bad. I know I was the guide but it wasn’t that much trouble that they had to pay for me. The best I could do was buy them a round of drinks at the pub >.< Gaah! Must go to Japan and buy them lots of meals!
It was a great day-and-a-half with them. I had lots of fun with Mi too, going on an Ikea adventure and learning just what household objects can double as a hammer when assembling furniture (note: solid glass candlestick is best). Cheers for looking after me, mate.
But, Chidade, what about that other part of your weekend? The one you were really looking forward to but blew up in your face and left burn marks so bad that no amount of Vitamin E cream seems to make it better?
Ah, well. Actually, I'm feeling kinda liberated now. It was like the last few weeks in Japan when my eikaiwa’s bullshit had reached new heights and although I loved Japan dearly, I couldn’t stand working there anymore. One day, I had a realisation that I could resign and go home. I was due to go home in two months anyway. Just quit! You have no obligation to go through this bullshit, and it seems like they will do nothing to help you out no matter what your own dedication is. So quit! It was a fucking fantastic feeling to hand in my resignation.
The same applies here. So much stress and frustration, but I had the same realisation - I don’t have to put up with this. I have no obligation to go through this bullshit, and it seems like they will do nothing to help me out no matter what my own dedication is. So walk away. No more bullshit! It’s very liberating.
Those burn marks will be gone soon.