293 Sydney Goodbye Evening Efan 9.5.2019
The morning was dedicated to working, maybe my blog will finally be up to date when I leave, and then again summing up an even bigger delay of 20 or more days, because, first I am on the ship and then there might be intense and busy days in Singapore and Malaysia, most probably without posting anything, before I finally board the last ship for even longer (24 days!) and then start my 1400km home-run from France to Vienna.
Efan and I met for a good-bye evening. We also talked about the Uganda project and Efan has a lot of helpful ideas, thoughts and hints. But first, she had the spontaneous idea to go shopping together because she had chosen a winter coat online and wanted to see and try it in reality.
I am not a specialist in fashion, so I am also not good in accelerating the corresponding decision-making processes, so it was good that Efan knew what she wanted. In the end she knew what she didn’t want and that was this coat, so she left the shop richer than expected but insofar un-coated.
We had a great chocolate dessert and then walked home and for me this was like a count-down to another of these good-byes for long or for ever that accompany this trip or – in a way – the journey of our life.
Of course, you can stay in contact even with 20000km in between, now much easier than in older times but I prefer to have the possibility to have my friends around me…
294 Sydney football 10.5.2019
In the morning, I worked with windows in two ways, on my PC and with those M&M had got the day before. There were holes that needed to be filled with wood filler before you can polish the frames before you can paint them.
In the evening, we met Jack, a former colleague of Martina to go to the Stadium to watch a match of Australian football, a unique mixture, but near to American or also Gaelic football and even the aboriginal Marn Grook and envented 1858 by Thomas Wills. I put on all my available clothes and without wind it was only a bit cold for me, with wind it was freezing. Most of the natives were wearing much less but I saw some of them also feeling cold.
The match was a confusing mixture of running, pushing around, falling + others jumping on that one, called kick, hand pass, tackle, mark and contests.
Sometimes you could see how well they performed with the ball, sometimes I wondered why they couldn’t find the goal when shooting in a situation where I guessed everyone should get a goal.
The play 4x20min, but you actually don’t know when it is over, because they stop the time for every interruption, so in fact it is about 30min. The last quarter was most exciting, because Sydney was ahead, but within a few minutes that can turn completely and you could see that both teams gave their best to win (and Sydney won).
It was great to see the fans of both teams going peaceful, relaxed and laughing when I compare that to the always at least potentially violent atmosphere in Vienna (but as far as I know also elsewhere)
295 Sydney windows 11.5.2019
Again, we had a start of the days with breakfast outside and buying some food. I feared or even expected that Lulu & Mick + Hugo again would not come to Redfern (it was scheduled to last Saturday) but I decided to bake a cake anyway, because it is not too hard to eat it for us three. So, I was not surprised, when I got the cancel-email during baking and we knew that we now would proceed with working on the windows. The biggest task was to get one big window/door to the upper floor. First, we took a break with coffee and cake and then we prepared a lot with ropes and blankets for protecting the wooden frame, but in the end, it was easier than expected. Later, I tried to get a bus ticket from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, but this was harder than the window-maneuver, mainly because my phone again didn’t get access to the Australian net and the booking site demanded this and other things that didn’t work.