Sydney Traffic Chaos and Cityrail Woes
Yesterday I was sitting in the window seat of a Devonshire Street bar in Sydney’s Surry Hills with a local named Gus. It was a Tuesday night, at a time of year when the evening air starts to feel less like atmosphere and more like an aggressive, ethereal defender, protecting the outdoors from humans. In spite of these facts the pub was full and lively and warm. There wasn’t even trivia on, to draw this crowd, or happy hours deals to keep them inside. The content, chattering populous was there for two reasons. One was the venue itself, a traditional brick pub with polished floorboards and a restored wooden bar featuring old style taps. A long wall was covered by a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf filled with hardback collections that would have fit in perfectly in the den of any respectable professor from the turn of the century.
The other reason was, four and a half million people live in Sydney, and after the sun goes down they all have to end up somewhere.
It was Gus who had decided we should choose this venue for our meeting. He had local knowledge, and recommended it as “a nice place to have a drink.” As we sat by the window watching the light traffic on Crown Street go by I was compelled to agree.
As the evening progressed it did not take long for our conversation to turn to the topic of our trips into town, both by car and by train. Public transport and work commutes, I believe, are two of the most popular topics of discussion and contention in Sydney. Others obviously share my theory as every time I see an advert for any of the commercial television stations’ current affair programs they are always yelling “trains!” or “Sydney’s biggest road network fail!” and usually in all caps. The most read section of the Herald and the Telegraph almost always leads with an editorial on Rail changes or an article about road works and delays. It seems like you only have to put phrases like “Sydney traffic chaos” or “cityrail woes” into the title of your article and every idiot will clamour to read no matter how banal the actual content is.
Gus recently had to drive from Barangaroo to Woolloomooloo in mid-afternoon traffic. A twenty minute walk or, as he informed me, a thirty minute drive. After this experience he said he was “astounded” that people would choose to drive their cars into Sydney’s CBD and deal with the congestion, parking charges and one way streets when they could easily arrive by train instead. I agreed with him, saying that I myself would never do such a thing, but I added that after my experience with peak hour trains I could understand why others might make that decision. While I have no problems catching the train that I want and disembarking where I plan to, I have seen enough short people sardined in the morning trains, crowd surfing for the best part of an hour because they can’t reach anything to hold on to. On other occasions I have also witnessed small students and the elderly trying to alight at Redfern or Wynyard stations only for the awaiting masses to decide that the time to board had now come and in the process dragged them back into the train like a tourist in a riptide, forced to look hopelessly out the window as the train carries them away from their intended destination while they’re trapped between travellers in a stairwell, or lobbed up onto a luggage rack.
Following these tales Gus and I both processed what we had learnt from each other. After this moment of thought we simultaneously came to the same conclusion:
“Something needs to be done about Sydney’s trains...” he said.
“And something must be done about Sydney’s traffic,” I finished his sentence.
We nodded a confirmation, and I took another sip from my middy of Little Creatures Pale Ale.
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Treed and Fumbling
IT'S AUTUMN, A TIME OF the year that seems to always bring with it change. Not major changes, since the obvious major changes earlier, but the minor changes of May. Small deviances in lifestyle that has turned my habits into freed, tumbling leaves.
I stopped rolling my work shirt sleeves up before I leave home in the morning. I now need warm forearms for the walk to the train. I am trying to delay the advent of wearing a jacket to work for as long as possible, but every cold morning feels like it will be the last before I double my layers.
I stopped flushing my used dental floss down the toilet every night. Now I carry it to a bin after brushing. I miss peeing on it.
I stopped drinking Pepsi Max the day before Anzac Day. So that's fifteen days without soda. I'm not sure when exactly I became a Pepsi Max fiend, somewhere between the 29c can sale during BULKtember and this day. What I do know is that I have averaged two cans a day since. I stopped mainly to help preserve my teeth, and also because I was feeling paranoid about drinking a Pepsi Max at 1:30pm every single day at work and I couldn't stop thinking that my predictably presented the perfect opportunity for someone to poison me.
Not posting journal entries very often is a change.
I had my hair cut on the weekend, mainly so I would look less awkward in my new baseball cap. I spent a whole day dealing with my trimmings falling from my head like freed, tumbling leaves.
I have eaten a minimum of four pieces of fruit each day this week, and cut out all baked goods and processed foods. It makes me feel tingly at times.
I started posting my journal entries on weird backgrounds.
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Typical Sydney
After another week of Sydney rain the skies cleared for the weekend and Vanessa and I spent Sunday walking around the city. Despite being here for over a year there is still so many "Sydney" places we have not been to yet. We caught the train to Central Station and walked from there to Moore Park and looked at the SCG. After the EQ Sunday Markets we then walked up Oxford Street and lost our Max Brenner virginity in Paddington. I also found a hardback copy of Shaun Micallef's Preincarnate in a second hand book-store/cafe for $10!
After a break in Hyde Park we started walking in the direction of Pyrmont to visit the Sydney Fish Markets. One of the nice things about Sydney and its surrounds is the abundance of cool animals, birds and fish to see and hear. I was really looking forward to the ocean breeze of Pyrmont bay and seeing all the fish doing their shopping at the fish markets, buying dehydrated food flakes and tiny castles before returning back to the ocean.
The Sydney Fish Markets is not a supermarket for fish! This was immediately obvious when I walked in and saw thousands and thousands of dead fish and no cute underwater fish trolleys.
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Journal Entry 3 Pack
The rain stopped and then it was cold. This really is the most inconsiderate state. I found my slippers under the bed and the moment I slipped them on I remembered I'd spent all last winter procrastinating about buying new slippers. Despite all their holes and tears they're still warm. I think that my feet feeling warm when I put them on is just a conditioned response at this point.
Sometimes I think that nostalgia is just a different flavour of guilt that humans feel when they are reminded of a period in time where they didn't have to focus on survival.
I was looking closely at the inside of our dishwasher to try and calculate the necessary clearance for some glasses. While I was looking for the roof mounted sprinkler I realised our current model doesn't have one, just a silicone fixture I'd never scrutinised before. I realised I could unscrew it and immediately regretted it. Inside was a grey, pasty matter that made me want to immediately drive to the 24 hour K-Mart and buy all new crockery and dinner sets. How are you supposed to learn about these perils and pitfalls in life? If I was a God, all powerful and omnipotent, I would totally dedicate time each week to familiarising new renters with the obscure quirks of their inherited large appliances.
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Firm Grasp of History
I don't remember the first CD I ever bought with my own money. I think it was maybe Everclear's So Much for the Afterglow. I do know what it should have been, Electriclarryland. When I used to care more about music I was always irked by the fact that I couldn't point to Butthole Surfers as proof of me having above average musical tastes from the very beginning. Sure, they were no Wolf Parade, but they were better than Everclear and I think that liking them as a pre-teen would have impressed street press readers.
The reason I remember my original first CD plans is because I was actually very excited to be buying my first CD with my own money, and my brain was memorising things all over the place. My parents took me to the Myer Centre and I browsed through the racks to find it. I think I really enjoyed the song Pepper at the time. Also as a twelve year old the name Butthole Surfers was pretty funny. I think my parents thought I was after a comedy album and not the 50 minutes of alt rock psychedelia I could have had on that disc I found under "B" at the Virgin Music Megastore.
The reason I did not buy Electriclarryland is actually kind of funny. It was $30. I was prepared for this. Somewhere before arriving at the cash register, however, I discovered the same exact album on cassette was only $21.95. It was the same music, but I would save $8 which in 1996 money was actually closer to TWELVE DOLLARS in today's money. I believe this is the first documented event of me being a tightass.
In hindsight, the choice probably made sense as I didn't even own a CD player at the time and I did own a Walkman. Mum bought me a CD player in 1997 and I played Everclear on it a lot. In the years that followed I would have no hesitation in describing my musical tastes as "the same or similar to the band Everclear." If I had owned Electriclarryland on CD instead of tape would I have listened to it more? Would I have gone down an entirely different, life defining path in musical tastes? Could I have been more artistic, more philosophical? More abstract?
Who knows.
If I had bought the CD instead of the cassette, would I have gone down a totally different, life redefining path of not being stingy and currently be swamped with credit card debt and have no health insurance? Maybe.
I don't know what I did with that $8 I saved. I'm pretty sure I still have it.
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No Explanation
A few weeks ago I was thinking about an appropriately awesome way to celebrate my 1300th Bradism.com entry. Around the same time Vanessa had recently purchased some old school, flat topped pink shower caps which she left in the bathroom. Two inclinations became one and I decided I wanted to take a photo of myself in the shower with a pink shower cap and post it on the internet as my 1300th entry.
This did not go well. First, the bathroom is very dark and I was trying to wrap my head around how best to light it. I also wanted to invest in a long wooden brush that I could coat with soap bubbles and pose with. I planned it to be a tasteful shot, the bottom of the frame cut just below my belly button so that children too could enjoy my artistic endeavour. On my face would be a cheeky smile surrounded by perfectly timed stubble, and bubbles would be floating through the air. I was going to overexpose the background a tad to try and make the shower tiles look a little less dirty.
Long bathing brushes are hard to find, though, and I was further put off when I discovered my head was too big for the ladies shower cap I'd planned to wear. The project never found any traction and before I knew it I wasn't even spending my lunch breaks in homewares departments any more. After a couple more weeks went by I accepted that I was never going to take this photo. Unfortunately, I had never published any journal entries in the meantime. And after almost a month suddenly I couldn't think of anything to post on my journal except a picture of me in the shower with a pink head cap and a giant, soapy brush. I didn't know what to do. Eventually I decided if I described the picture and posted that description it might unclog the backlog of creativity that was somewhere deep in my off-camera pipes.
The End
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This Summer
This Summer has brought 400mls of rain, in between days of warm sunshine and greenhouse like humidity. When I lie in bed early in the morning I can fucking hear the lawn photosynthesizing. This bothers me, because I have to mow it, and I hate mowing. I mowed for two hours today and I scowled at every plant I passed.
The five day forecast is for up to 110mls of rain and a mean daily maximum of 27 degrees. That's terrifying. You can actually see the grass growing in the hours after a storm, thickening and creeping further and further up the back stairs.
I am never going to use the phrase "like watching grass grow" to describe something boring again. From now on it will mean "horrifying". Someone will be, like, "Brad, did you see one of the Western Bulldogs dislocate both his knees in the first quarter of Saturday's game?" and I will reply, "I did, I saw the super slow-motion replay and you can see the bulge of the tendons as they lose grip of the knee cap. It was horrifying. It was like watching grass grow."
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