Dec 21 - Bondi and Burgers

Woke up at a reasonable hour today, ate breakfast and read a bit. Brennan slept in later due to not getting a good sleep during the night. So once he was up and had eaten, we walked over to the Hyde Park bus stop, picked up a couple bus tickets at a convenience store, and took the 333 to Bondi beach. Got off the bus and set up shop at our usual spot down from the main stairs, between the yellow/red swim flags. B immediately tossed on the iPod and napped, but I headed straight for the water. Well, down the beach actually. I wanted to surf I had decided, so I walked over to the northern end of Bondi, where there were surfing students and an instructor in the water. I stood on the beach and watched them for a good 20 minutes. And I decided that looked incredibly boring. They take these huge foam boards a few feet out into the ocean and try to stand up and ride whitewash. And the boards are too big and cumbersome to really go ride the bigger waves out further. Catch 22. If I'm surfing I want to be shredding nice 6 or 7 foot waves on a fiberglass board. I realize this is no easy feat and requires time spent on the learner boards and lame waves. But I don't want to put in the time on the beginner stuff. So I just won't surf. Or I'll need to find someone who will buy a good board with me and go out there and learn on the bigger waves. Unfortunately, that person is not Brennan. He had learned to surf in Hawaii on little waves and didn't find it thrilling, so he said enough of that. Fair enough, I didn't want to waste time moving at 5 km/hr for 10 feet after spending 5 minutes getting into position either. So I went back to the flagged off swim area and jumped over, dived under and body surfed waves. There's something amazingly fun and magical about being out the ocean on a sunny summer day, floating around or playing in the waves. I do it for hours every time I go to the beach here. Brennan joined me in the water after a couple hours to toss around the skim ball, but he wasn't feeling it, so he went back to lay on the beach and I resumed my wave jumping. I hopped my way out a ways to where the water was deeper than me, so I couldn't touch. There were a few other Aussie guys out as far as me and farther, so it wasn't dangerous or anything. Here you could float up and over big waves, that would always crash before they got further in where the majority of the people in the water were. I spent a good hour or two treading water, swimming, riding waves and going over and under them, then swam back to shore. Really good workout and tuckered me out sufficiently. Zipped over to McDonald's and had a meal, then went back and did the cliche move of reading on the beach. Once I was fully dry, we went and got a return bus ticket and rode the 333 back to Hyde Park, then walked back to the hostel.

On the way back to the hostel, we stopped at Coles and picked up some chips and pop and cake to go with dinner tonight. Back at the YHA, we got out the stuff for dinner and got to work right away. The kitchen was very busy because it was taco night or something, but we had a nice pack of burgers ready to cook. Brennan fried up the burgs in a pan (the lack of oven or BBQ is annoying) and I did up some carrots and we chowed down on that for dinner, with chocolate cake for dessert. Delicious. Went back to the room and read for a couple hours after that before bed. Half done my second book already, which I suppose is a testament to the lack of work and activities recently. Brennan hasn't heard back about a job from his interview yesterday and I got no call-backs today from the retail places I applied to either. It's starting to get a bit ridiculous, like will McDonald's tell us we're not qualified enough or turn us away because we're from Canada? Get your act together Australia, this is just plain dumb.