Arriving in Sydney was oddly like being in an alternate-universe version of Seattle. It was gray, rainy, and about 60° when I cleared customs and made it outside. The drive from Kingsford Smith International Airport to the hotel took about 20 minutes, most of it in traffic not dissimilar from, say, I-285 in Atlanta: trees on one side, cars on the other. Of course, since Australians drive on the right, everything looked wrong. My cab driver took me to the wrong hotel, and I was too dumb to notice, but the clerk who checked me in was from Seattle. Fortunately, the staff at the hotel where I actually had a reservation seems to be all-Aussie.

Downtown Sydney is a heady mix of the familiar and the strange. I've prepared a handy chart to help you identify the differences:

I had an enjoyable walk around part of the central business district (CBD), wherein I found an Apple store that had the power adapter I needed, a large number of sidewalk cafés, and a lot of Sydneysiders who looked, for the most part, distinctly unlike the sunny, bright people you see on Lonely Planet and the like. Perhaps that's because October is the rough equivalent of April in North America-- their spring just hasn't sprung yet.

Australia is an unusual place. As evidence, I present the fact that taxicabs distribute small cards that read, in part, "A person must not smoke tobacco or any other substance in any other taxi-cab." You don't see that in New York City. As if that weren't enough, I just saw a TV commercial for KFC in which the animated Colonel rides a motorcycle and says "Let's haul ass" after eating a piece of KFC chicken. As Dave Barry says, I am not making this up.

Class today went well; I had a total of 17 students, all from the Sydney area. One major difference from US students is that these guys (well, there's one lady, but she had to leave early) are all very soft-spoken. It's not that they ask fewer questions or anything, but they're just much quieter when they talk. Takes some getting used to.

One thing that's the same as the US is that all of my students had cell phones; many also had pagers. Cells seem to be more pervasive on the whole than they are in the US; I attribute that primarily to caller-pays pricing, since the services offered seem to be of similar quality and functionality to what GSM carriers offer in the States.

Today the sun was out, and the top temperature was probably around 23°-- quite nice. I drove over the Harbour Bridge going to and from the Microsoft building, and the scenery was arresting. You can only barely see the Sydney Opera House from the bridge, but there's a good view of Circular Quay (which is pronounced "key", thankyouverymuch) and the ferries crossing the harbour. Arlene and I plan to climb the bridge when she comes, so I'm really looking forward to that. Apart from that, I haven't seen much real scenery. I had good intentions of going to do something tourist-y after class today, but I was too tired. Maybe tomorrow.

Speaking of which, Arlene leaves tomorrow Huntsville time. I hope her trip is as uneventful and pleasant as mine was. I'm really looking forward to going to the Sydney temple with her.

It's not often that I can say I set a class on fire, but I did today-- smoke and all.

Australia uses 240V wall outlets, with a different plug type than the States. Since all of the laptops and other equipment I use in my class has US standard cabling, I needed a way to convert from 240V and a funny plug to good old 2-prong plus with 110V. The class kit included two step-down transformers, so I used them to connect 6-outlet power strips to power the laptops. This all worked fine, until one of the students in the front row shifted his feet around and kicked a power cord onto the top of the transformer. For some reason, the folks who designed these things left the transformer enclosure exposed, and these things put off quite a bit of heat. Hot metal + plastic = foul-smelling smoke, and lots of it. Fortunately unplugging the transformer, putting it to the side, and turning on the vent fan eventually cleared the smell. Apart from that, class was uneventful.

Talked to Arlene this afternoon as she was boarding her UA flight from LAX. She'll be here in the morning, so I'll pick her up at the airport, drop her off at the hotel, and go up to North Ryde to teach.

After I got back from class, I decided to walk around the CBD area a bit. For some reason I expected it to be different from other downtowns, and it wasn't-- by the time I got out on the street, practically everything was closed, making it pretty uninteresting. The touristy area over by The Rocks might be more active, but I got tired of walking and went back to the hotel. Any minute, my delicious three-cheese pizza will arrive; I will feast, then pop a Unisom and get a good night's rest.

What a day. I'm footsore and overstimulated. The hotel's a welcome respite at this point. We got up fairly early, called the boys (who were hungry, tired, and grumpy, not necessarily in that order), ate breakfast, and decamped for a day of sightseeing. First stop: The Rocks to look at opals, which are beautiful but expensive. We found a chemist and bought me a new toothbrush, then walked back over to Circular Quay and caught a ferry to the Taronga Zoo.

The zoo was really cool. The ferry docks at the base of a large hill; you can take a cable car or bus to the top, or walk. Since it was steadily raining, we opted for the cable car (an easy choice considering it was included in the price of our ferry ZooPass). Once we reached the top, we got to see a great variety of Australian wildlife: kangaroos, koalas, echidnas, and so forth. We skipped over the common zoo animals-- the tigers and so on-- since there's nothing particularly Australian about them. After an extended zoo walk, we took the cable car back down. While waiting for the ferry, we got to sample a local Aussie delicacy, the sausage roll. It's sort of like a Nacitotoches meat pie, only in a tube and without the bell peppers. Not too bad.

Arlene makes a friend at the zoo

Some kind of cool Australian flower

The ferry took us back to Circular Quay, at which point we took another ferry to Darling Harbour. That route took us under the Harbour Bridge and eventually to the Sydney Aquarium. If you've seen the New Orleans or Chattanooga aquariums, you've seen most of this one, except IMHO the sharks here were better. Like the New Orleans one, they have a big tank with a Plexiglas tunnel running through the middle, so you can walk through and look up at the fish. Actually, this aquarium has two of them, one for "open ocean" fish and one for sharks, rays, and their buddies. There's also a Great Barrier Reef exhibit, which is particularly vivid. Unfortunately, scuba diving isn't on our agenda this trip.

The rest of Darling Harbour is sort of like the Riverwalk in New Orleans or the newly shop-ified area around Times Square-- lots of restaurants, an upscale shopping center, and so forth. We whiled away a good time walking around the shops, where we bought some stuff for the boys and saw an amazing amount of "native Australian" products ranging from Aboriginal art to macadamia nut brittle (which we bought but haven't opened yet.)

Thankfully, we avoided any undue problems with Friday the 13th, although since it's still the 13th in the States I guess we're not completely out of the woods yet.

Last night we went for a walk up George Street, one of the main drags. We accidentally found the Queen Victoria Building, a beautiful late-19th-century building with huge stained glass windows, elaborate tiled floors, and all the trimmings. We'll head back over there this morning as soon as they bring our breakfast (porridge and a smoothie for me, eggs for Arlene, and pancakes to share--- mmm, mmm, good.)

One of the stained-glass windows at the QVB

What a day! We began with a walk down George Street, headed back towards the QVB. I wanted to look for a Drizabone coat, and we were looking for some books for the kids, plus a book on lighthouses for a friend of Arlene's. There's a Dymocks' bookseller very near our hotel, so we tried there first. No dice. We also didn't have any luck at the three other Dymocks' locations between our hotel and the QVB, nor at the other bookseller opposite the QVB on York Street. Makes me miss amazon.com. Anyway, we struck out on all counts, but at least I managed to turn my ankle while stepping off a curb. It stiffened up quite nicely on the walk back to the hotel but I was determined not to let it interfere with our bridge climb.

And a good thing, too-- the climb was everything I expected, and then some. When we left the hotel in the morning, it was about 65°, overcast, and breezy. By the time we walked to the BridgeClimb building, it was probably 70°, calm, and brilliantly sunny. We went in, picked up our tickets, and waited until the appointed time to join our group. We had several native Sydneysiders, a pair of Kiwis, one guy from the UK, and a few people from other places. Arlene & I were the only Yanks. As a group, we got jumpsuits that looked frighteningly similar to the ones in Ghostbusters. We were fitted with radios and climbing safety belts, and off we went.

The Opera House from the deck of a ferryboat

For our last dinner in Sydney, we decided to find a big fat steak. The concierge recommended three nearby steakhouses. After checking the menus, we eliminated Daniels' (no baked potatoes) and another one whose name I forget (its name was whatever-it-is Steakhouse & Cigar Bar). We ended up at Johnny Walkers' Angus. Best steak I've ever eaten, bar none. The beef was perfectly cooked and seasoned, and it really hit the spot. Unaccountably, the place was empty-- for the whole time we were there, we were the only diners. Too bad; those other folks missed out.

Tomorrow we fly on to Melbourne, so I'm making a halfhearted attempt to pack. However, there's a fascinating program on the BBC World Service about a group of English Mormons who retraced the Mormon Trail between Missouri and Salt Lake City, so that's been more interesting than stuffing clothes into suitcases.