I arrived in Australia with little problem. Luckily, the metro took me practically right to my hostel. I got in rather late with an hour to spare until I could check-in, then found my way to my bed in the dark. This was the largest room I had stayed in thus far, an 18 topper, as I would come to call them. 
This meant that there were nine bunk beds in one room, five against one wall, and four against another, all full. I woke in the morning with the intent of touring the famous Sydney Opera House and walking the Sydney Harbor Bridge. I had the included breakfast (trying vegemite once again, still gross) then headed out for my tours.
The first part of my day was visiting the ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corp) Memorial, which is in the middle of one of the most beautiful parks I have ever seen, Hyde Park. Surrounded by figs, conifers, and palms, this art-deco styled Memorial stands as a reminder for all those lost in the Great War as well as World War II and all subsequent conflicts where Aussies have shed their blood. Much like New Zealand, every city, town, and hamlet in the country lost someone. Inside, among the flags, and Eternal Flames, 
there is a haunting image of a prostrate figure, representing the death of Christ-like too young a man with the words, ‘Let silent contemplation be your offering.’ It was incredibly powerful.
The Opera house was close; just about a 25 minute walks away, down the sloping lanes to Bennelong Point. I bought my ticket and waited for the English language tour, as there were Chinese, Japanese, and French groups before me. I loved the tour. I had four major takeaways from it. The first is that the government of New South Wales wished to redefine themselves as an Oceanic Mecca of culture and refinement in the wake of the Second World War. So, after much lobbying, on September 13, 1955, a design competition began that saw entries from all over the world. While this might be legend more than fact, the design we know today by Jørn Utzon, a 38-year-old Danish architect, was rescued from the trash heap of the “rejects” pile. The second interesting fact is that he was inspired by Mayan architecture of terraced structures, but he wanted to make them spherical, so he decided that the best was to do it was to cut a sphere at right angles. Third, when inside the building, there was a manner of vaulted concrete that showed the ingenuity of designing something so unique. Finally, the land was consecrated by the local government as a homage to the native Aborigines and made sure to let everyone know that they are being thanked for the use of the land.
After the Opera house, I walked the Sydney Harbor Bridge. The last time I did it, I was 18 years old, strapped to a harness, and traversed the high point, over the top of the bridge. This time, I just walked along the regular pedestrian path, being sure to stop and take in the scenery. After I relaxed a little and got some water, I made my way to Luna Park, which is Sydney’s answer to Coney Island. To enter, one needed to walk through the mouth of this giant, terrifying figure, which was utterly surreal.
As I was headed home, I encountered something interesting. There was a young woman standing on the metro platform dressed in a modest t-shirt and jean cutoffs. I looked down and saw that she was shoeless. On a metro platform. In a major city. I then recalled back to the time I was dating a young Australian lady, and she hipped me to the term that even though she was educated in England as a lawyer still used to define herself, a Bogan. Now, the textbook definition of a Bogan is Australian and New Zealand slang for a person whose speech, clothing, attitude, and behavior are considered unrefined or unsophisticated. For my own edification, I condensed it to the idea of an Australian Redneck. Now, as someone that spent a lot of their youth South of the Mason-Dixon Line, I know that there are Rednecks that live in trailers as well as mansions that work in dead-end jobs and others that are paid millions of dollars. Bogan, like Redneck, is not a pejorative anymore, but a way one chooses to negotiate this world. I then took the train with my shoeless fellow passenger, headed home, where I took a nap, as I needed to get ready for a silent disco at SideBar.
You know how it is said that people have $1 Million ideas all the time, but they never act on them? Well, this silent disco was mine. The way it worked was that everyone who entered a discotheque was given a headset. On it, the patron can adjust the volume of the music and even change the frequency to a different spinning DJ. What this party added to my idea was color-coded lights on the headset so that if a group of people was grooving on a particular channel, other people could tune in to see what was playing. If you wanted to grab a drink or talk to someone, you could simply take off the headphones and have a conversation. It was ingenious, and IT WAS MY IDEA!
I enjoyed the silent disco. It was an incredibly weird night, though. Rehashing some messages I sent to friends, I found a pretty thorough accounting of the previous night. I went to the disco, which was being thrown by a bunch of hostels to get kids all together. It was great. I was at the bar, minding my own business when this guy shows up and starts talking to me in an American accent. We start having a conversation, and he says, “Let’s get fucked up!” I was game. He then ordered us five tequila shots, then four Jaeger Bombs, so at this point, I am feeling no pain. We keep talking, and then it turns out that he is not American at all. He is Filipino, from Manila, in Australia, working as a business recruiter. However, he has a perfect Californian accent. I still cannot believe that he was not from San Diego.
I then started talking to a young German lady who is fleeing her homeland for the time being as she confided in me that she is 70% lesbian and that her family does not understand. Being a red-blooded American male, I was pulling for that other 30%. Anyway, after we went to a stairwell to talk for a bit, she decided that she needed a cigarette and asks if I would like to join her. I did, so we headed outside to the designated smoking section where several of her compatriots were. She rolled a cigarette while I was just standing there while all four of them continued jabbering in German. 
Since I was the only one that did not speak German, I understood from their body language that they are all talking about me. She was beautiful, so I knew what these other guys were thinking. This was fine. Not my first rodeo. We all headed back downstairs to dance. We were dancing in a group, and one of her guy friends tries to box me out. I was not having it, so I whirl around him. I ask if she’d like to continue our conversation. She says that she wanted to keep dancing with the boys. I sweep my hand across the room and ask, “All of the boys?” She said yes. I told her it was a pleasure meeting her, turned my back, and walked away.
I found my Filipino friend again; it was then when it got very awkward. He invited me to come back and start talking to a new friend he made from Long Beach, California, which was appropriate because he looked like a younger Snoop Dogg. Anyway, recall that I am in Australia with a very drunk but happy Filipino. He puts his arms around us and says, “You know what? You guys are my N*ggas.” Young Snoop and I shared an incredibly awkward glance. He then repeated it. I did not want to embarrass my new Filipino friend, as he was someone raised on Western media without Western context, so I offered to get the next round if he came and helped me get drinks. When we were at the bar, I gave him a crash course on what the word meant. Now, I am far from qualified to provide the finer emotional ins and outs of racism in America. However, in lesser terms, I explained that while some in the African American community use that word as one that shows camaraderie when someone outside the community uses it, it returns to a word full of contempt, anger, and violence. We got our drinks and headed back to our friend. We all raised a glass to a fuller understanding, and that was that. Looking at my watch, I saw that it was close to 4 am, so I bid my friends adieu and walked back to my hostel, avoiding the various gentleman on my way home that wanted me to help them continue the party.
The first thoughts going through my head the next morning were: NEVER. DRINKING. AGAIN. I decided on taking a bit of a mental health day as I partied a little too much last night. However, as I recouped and did some work, checking in on clients, I garnered enough strength that evening to head to a sort of speakeasy. There is a bar in the Surry Hills area of Sydney called The Soda Factory. When one enters, it is a non-descript olde timey soda shop. However, there is a secret door disguised as an old Coca-Cola refrigerator that opens up to a bar-restaurant. I walked in, got my club soda, and just took it all in. As I was walking back at about 11 at night, there was a group of Asian hip hop dancers having a Zoolander-esque breakdance fight; head spins, and all. I just stood there and watched for a bit, they were amazing.
The following day I decided I was going to tour Parliament. As a kind of politics and history nerd, I wanted to see how their system of government differed from not only my own but different parliaments all across the Commonwealth. The first thing I learned after arriving there at 9 am was that the tour did not start until 1:30 pm.
So, to kill time, I headed back down to the Martin Place fountain. Given the artistic scene and relative economics of Australia, there have been quite a few films shot there. Remember the Woman in the Red Dress? This scene occurred in front of the Martin Place Fountain.
After, I headed to the local library for some free internet and a coffee. I headed back to Hyde Park, then took a left and headed over to St Mary’s Cathedral. I was not allowed entry as there was a funeral procession. I would come to learn later that the departed’s name was Mike Willesee and that he was a reporter. He also had an AO attached to his name. The AO or Order of Australia is a national order bestowed upon citizens of their country by their queen for achievement or meritorious service. 
Since I could not enter at this time, I headed back towards a dollar store for a brace as my ankle was hurting from all my walking. I bought one, slipped it on, and felt right with the world. After the funeral had cleared out, I walked back through St Mary’s Cathedral. It was something to be in such a beautiful cathedral on the other end of the world. Afterward, I took a seat in Hyde Park, gathering some shade from fig trees until Parliament opened.
The second thing I learned about the New South Wales Parliament is that other than being most unfunkadelic, unlike the Parliament in Wellington, it is not the national one. Now, as I mentioned before, this is going to be a travel log, warts and all. I will not pull punches, and I will not make myself look to be a hero more than I already 
am. That said, even though I had a childhood fascination with the country, and I had been here before, I thought Sydney was the capital of Australia. It is not. Just like there are State Senators in the US, this Parliament was specifically for New South Wales. The National Parliament is in a town to the south called Canberra.
The third thing I learned is that there is incredible pomp, circumstance, and rituals involved in the parliamentary process, at least from what I could ascertain from my tour guide’s drunkenly slurred words. Some people needed to enter one way, others another, the mace required to point in one direction, and should the reigning monarch arrive, there is always a seat open. One of the things that I learned in New Zealand that I happily saw even in this smaller parliament was the Gentleman or Lady Usher of the Black Rod. This post is responsible for controlling access and maintaining order in the House of Lords. How do they do this, one might ask? With a big, fucking black rod of metered justice.
After my tour through the smaller Westminster Style of Parliament, I hopped a bus and headed to one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, Bondi. As it was an early summer afternoon, most of the world was there. It reminded me of some time that I spent in the South of France along the Cote d’Azur. After having a beer on a hillside, I took a stroll along a craggy mountain path overlooking the water. I sat on 
some rocks overlooking the crashing waves, still amazed that I was here. I hopped a bus and headed back home where dinner was waiting for me for the second night in a row! At dinner, being about a decade and a half older than most of the other people at the hostel as well as feeling more introverted at that moment, I kind of kept to myself. However, there was a young Brazilian girl that saw me sitting alone and invited me to eat with everyone. I did and met a lot of interesting people. Much like New Zealand, many are from developing countries that were here to both earn money and learn English. I met a young man named Hayden from the UK, and I offered him some pearls of wisdom, polished with the coarseness of my many bad judgments. After a few beers, a group of us headed out on the town. As I am fair-skinned, when I imbibe, I tend to show it with flushness in my cheeks. It was in this state that something happened to me that has never happened to me before and hopefully will never happen again.
I was turned away from not only one bar, but two! I asked the bouncer his reasoning. He said that I appeared drunk already. Now, that was the ultimate insult. Seeing how I cut my drinking teeth in New Orleans, am of partial Irish heritage, and know my limits, I doth protested. Upon further inquiry as to this decision, I was asked to get out of line and leave. Never in my life had I been so aggrieved. I came to learn later, that this was a curative measure as too many Aussie bar fights started when people were let into bars already half in the bag. No bother, as I took my new friends in tow back to the SideBar. We were let in with no trouble.
The next morning, I headed to the Australian Museum. It is a natural history museum that talks about all the unique flora and fauna that this continent has to offer. However, there was an incredibly disturbing exhibit. There was an education program discussing the anatomy of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, aptly titled, T-Rex Autopsy. 
Well, this museum had the rights to the fake corpse, as it was laying there in its entire dissected splendor. An eye was here, a liver there, etc. I decided to take one final walk down to the Opera House and spent the rest of my evening there. I had to get up early to catch the Metro back to the airport, so it was just going to be a relaxing evening. It wasn’t. Seeing how it was a Saturday night in a room full of drunken 20-year-olds far from home, needless to say, there were many beds a-squeaking. Also, as previously noted, I do not sleep well when I know there are pending deadlines. This included needing to wake up at 5 am to catch my morning flight to Melbourne.
