Long weekend and Grand Finals

Labour day is Monday so I'm enjoying my first paid holiday in my grown up job. It's a huge weekend in sport since there are two Grand Finals for the footy this weekend, with AFL (Australian Football League) today and NRL (National Rugby League) tomorrow. I mostly watch the NRL, since it is the more popular sport in New South Wales and AFL seems to be bigger in Victoria. Another reason I kinda prefer NRL is because it's more like American football and just makes sense to me: good old-fashioned dudes crashing into each other. AFL involves too much running, and they do this weird move where they give each other boosts WAY up into the air:

Anyways I'll probably skip the AFL final and go hang out with Hayden's sister who has no interest in it either, and save my energy for tomorrow when the Canterbury Bulldogs play the Melbourne Storm in Sydney. It should be a good game, and although I really like watching Billy Slater play during the regular season (he plays for the Storm), I still have to support Sydney and say Go The Bulldogs!

Cockatoo eating a cheeseburger?

Protests in Sydney

Last weekend a crowd of about 500 people swept through downtown Sydney protesting some You Tube video about the prophet Muhammad. The protests were focused in Hyde Park (right across the street from where I work) and Martin Place, where the US consulate is located. It ended up all over the news since it turned into a non-peaceful demonstration, with six police officers being injured and several people arrested. One of the more disturbing images to come out of the whole thing was of a child holding this sign while his mom took a photo:

Australians tend to be less delicate than Americans when talking about race issues, and this demonstration just renewed a lot of anti-Muslim sentiment. One of the main principles here (and one that I had to agree to in writing to get a visa) is that if a person is living in Australia, they should do their best to respect the country's values, and in this case I have to agree completely. If you want to enjoy your freedom of speech by demonstrating peacefully, then you should also respect the freedom of speech of some idiot (who isn't even Australian) to make a movie about your prophet. 

Part of what bums me out about the whole thing is that an anti-American demonstration has brought violence to Australia, a country that has managed to avoid a lot of drama so far. The US consulate even issued a warning to American citizens in Australia advising them to avoid the central business district this weekend and to not identify themselves as American for the time being. Fortunately it looks like not much is going on downtown this weekend!

Back in Australasia

It’s my first full week back in the office. After arriving back in Sydney at 8pm last Tuesday and making the extremely ill-advised decision to come into work Wednesday morning, I’m finally feeling back to normal.

It was really great catching up with everyone in Seattle. People in Sydney are nice but it just takes me a really long time to make friends, and getting together with friends I hadn’t seen in over a year was pretty effortless. By the end I was ready to come back, which reassured me a bit that I’m making the right decision.

I have to admit, the view from Cronulla beach made the decision all the more easy. I took my book down to the beach on Saturday, and even though it’s just now spring it’s already getting up to about 70 degrees, so the kiddies surf lessons were going in full force!