Mardi Gras Again - Sydney, Australia
This place was Amazing visited Mar 4, 2006
Having been in Brisbane a total of 6 days, it was obviously time to leave again, so I spent Mardi Gras weekend with Kate in her fancy new house in Sydney. It was, of course, great to spend time with Kate again (after a whole 9 days of separation!!) and Mardi Gras was a great excuse for us to dust off our tail coats and top hats. It was all a bit of a re-run of last year, as we were with the same float which had the same theme (repeal the same-sex marriage ban) and the same props, pretty much, and we were in the same outfits, but it was still fun as always. Other floats were all quite different, with a couple of decent political ones, and some inexplicable ones (the Ikea float? The Lincraft float? huh?) and some impressive ones (the Ikea float, the lincraft float... hmmm). On Sunday afternoon Kate had organised some of her friends to come over for a houswarming/welcome home/meet the girlfriend party, so I got a chance to meet a few more people I had been hearing about for most of a year, and catch up again with those I had met before. It was really nice to sit around and listen to a bunch of highly educated australians disecting current affairs - something I don't exactly get a lot of overseas. It was very nice. We also went for a walk around Kate's scarily perfect "village living" created suburb. Thankfully she lives right on the edge of it, as the rest all gets a little bit too "Truman Show" with perfect lawns and matched (though all slightly different and "individual") houses and apartment blocks in shades of beige. The perfect blue sky added considerably to the impression, I suppose! Anyway, now I'm back in hot and very sticky Brisbane, I had better get on with catching up on the two lectures I missed while I was away! I'll post photos soon, I promise.