We got an overnight train from Melbourne to Sydney which took about 12 hours. There were no beds on the train so we had to sleep in our seats not the most comfortable of journeys. Alastair Taylor(Zobel) met us off the train at Sydney and took us back to his flat were Pete and I slept until about midday. The rest of our first day involved a little walk around Bondi, which would turn out to be a big disappointment, catching up and drinking. Both Pete and I were not really taken with Bondi Beach. It is a world renowned beach area but to be honest I can't see how. It is surrounded by a lot of high rise apartments and buildings the area is not that nice and this will sound wierd but there are too many Brits there. The beach itself is nice but again its not the nicest beach I have ever seen, the beaches and surrounding areas in Thailand are much more beautiful. We stayed with Alastair for about a week while we looked for a place of our own. We eventually found a nice studio in Manly. Manly is a Peninusula at the North of Sydney. It is accessible by road or by ferry. Once we had sorted out our accomodation the job searching started, slowly.

Pete did his RSA(responsible service of alcohol) course which is needed if you wish to work in a bar in Sydney and I handed my CV into different recruitment agencies. It took a while for us to hear back about work so in the mean time we spent money we did not have and waited. In the end we took on a job doing door to door selling. Big mistake. We worked for a company where the average age of the sales people was about 18. A typical day would involve us leaving Manly about 10am and getting over to Bondi for 12. We then had to practice our pitches to people we worked with, which basically means practice what we would say to the people whose doors we knocked on. Then the boss would come in who was about 21 and really loud dance music would start and we would all form a circle and sing a song that went " Do you want a meeting? Hell ya, Do you really want a meeting? Hell ya Who wants a meeting who wants a meeting, Heres benny(who was our boss)" Picture Pete and I doing that it just didn't feel right. Then after the meeting we would pile into a mini bus and be driven about 2 hours out of Sydney. In the minibus you had to stand up and say your name, where your from, age and a stupid/interesting/funny fact about yourself and this was done every day. Also on the minibus they played really loud dance music and we all had to do our own little dance move, it went round the whole bus, and once you had done yours the others would clap and cheer. All this before we even try to sell electricity to people. The places we went to hardly anyone spoke English and the way you were told to sell was really rude. Needless to say we lasted 3 days at that job. We quit that job on the Thursday and we started our telesales job the following monday. The telesales was really easy all we had to do was sell American Express cards to existing customers. There was the odd person who would tell you to F#*^ off but in general they were friendly.

We would get the ferry to work everyday which took us past the opera house and the harbour bridge. Sydney as a city is really nice. Most of the time you don't feel like you are in a city as its made up of suburbs and each one has its own charm. You have the seedy nightlife of Kings cross where a walk down the street is defenitly an eye opener. Compare that to the relaxed laid back surfers attitude that greets you in either Manly or Coogee. Sydney has something for everyone. Every saturday after work we would go the opera bar and half a beer our 2 while we waited for our ferry. The Opera bar is not your usual backpacker haunt as its situated next to the opera house and has views over looking the harbour, needless to say drinks were not cheap.

During our 3 months in Sydney Peter and I fell in love with Australian rugby league. The game is so frantic and physical. We enjoyed it so much that we went to see 3 live rugby league games and we even chose teams to support. The atmosphere at 2 of the games was not so good as the teams play in stadiums that were built for the olympics and a lot of Aussies chose to watch the games at home on tv.

In Manly we lived in the house with a group of lads and a girl from Bournemouth. They basically lived in Manly so they could get up each day and go surfing. We got on really well with them and had some good nights out in Manly.

Not a lot else happened in Sydney as we basically worked and went out a lot.