Being on TV, whale watching and smoke alarms.
This past month has flown by with no current updates - in short since the last blog post I have moved out of Urbanest into an AirBnb close to the beach, been on various day-trips and been fairly busy making the most of my time left here in Sydney.
Let's go wayyy back in time to Vivid, the light festival I have previously mentioned. After being ill in bed for a few days, we decided to go out and explore the festival before it came to an end. It was beautiful and thankfully the weather was nice enough (even if we were layered up) to walk around all evening, taking photos and admiring what Sydney has to offer - check my Instagram if you want to see exactly what we got up to and saw :)
I also somehow found myself almost appearing on TV as an extra for the Voice. Greta had signed her and myself up to be in a 'choir' with one of the acts on stage. So we spent a Saturday morning rehearsing and prepping for one of Ronan Keating's acts (we saw him in person, he's even cuter in real life), and then Sunday evening waiting around to go on stage. Unfortunately, as it is live TV, and the semi-finals, they couldn't guarantee that we would go on stage as our act may not go through. Of course our act was one of the last people of the night to find out if they were through or not, anddd she didn't get through - which meant we'd sat around waiting for nothing, but it was still an interesting experience.
But, because of that we got tickets to attend the live semi-finals the following week. So, the following Sunday we found ourselves waiting around again - in the cold. It was a long time standing on our feet because we were part of the audience crowd, but once the show started it was great. It's interesting to see the live aspect of it compared to TV, especially from a TV production student's perspective. We saw Delta Goodrem (Australia's sweetheart apparently) perform live, and saw Jessie J who was sat so close to us! And turns out, my favourite act just won the series :D
That week was full of TV experiences - we also got X-Factor tickets to the auditions, again it was a lot of waiting and standing around, but once it got started it was so worth it. I'm not allowed to disclose any information about the acts because it hasn't aired yet, but there were some VERY entertaining and hilarious people, as well as some genuinely good acts. I'll see if I watch the series when I'm back home or not, but I'd definitely go to other auditions for the entertainment.
This month we hit our 4 month anniversary - and decided to spend it by walking across the length of Harbour Bridge (very windy and cold, but beautiful views) and by visiting Luna Park. Luna Park is a traditional, amusement park on the harbour.... and to be honest it wasn't that great. It was over-priced and there was only about 2 rides we actually wanted to go on, which turned out to be not that great either. It's a very picturesque and fun place, but not worthy of another visit :(
So, to celebrate properly the next day we headed out quite early to our ultimate, favourite spot in Sydney - Palm Beach. We packed a lot of clothes, a lot of food and water, and hiked up to the lighthouse. Once at the top, we found a rock and sat there to whale watch for about 5 hours. It was so warm and sunny, I ended up sat in my t-shirt (with 3 sweaters inside my bag incase it got cold) and sunbathing! Despite my best efforts, aka downloading a whale watching app to see where they had last been spotted, we didn't see a thing :( But, the day was still perfect - it was warm, it was beautiful and it was peaceful. It's going to be places and days like this which I'll really miss!
So to bring you back up to speed, we moved out of Urbanest on the Tuesday just gone - but of course with my luck, it wasn't a smooth process.
There's a rule in Urbanest that if you set the fire alarm off, you have 30 seconds to get it to stop before the fire department are called and you have to pay them for wasting their time and resources. Naturally, 4 months had passed and we'd had a few scares, but nothing major. Come the last morning, where we were trying to use the last our food, I burnt the bread and set the smoke alarm off 😂 😭 Thankfully, despite the panic, swearing and shouting that occurred, we managed to stop it before the whole place got evacuated.
Then came room inspections - bearing in mind it's a place for students, and I'd spent an hour and a half cleaning the kitchen the night before, it wasn't 'up to scratch.' There were some minor issues that weren't 100% our fault - such as mould by the side of the sink (because the sink is so frickin small), a grubby shower glass and a nastttyy oven. The oven we had accepted, and we were willing to pay for but everything else just annoyed us. We went downstairs to look at prices that they might charge us and at one point it looked like I could easily lose around $700 from my bond!!! But, for whatever reason - maybe because of all the hassle I'd had with them, we only ended up having to pay $25 each.
So, we've moved into the new place, a few minutes away from Bronte beach with not much hassle - although it is freezing. I'm currently sat here in 3 layers, fluffy socks and a blanket and I'm still cold :( But, during the day walking along the beach and along the coast is beauttiffull.
Yesterday we took a 2 hour trip to the Central Coast to visit our friend Ava in her hometown, we had a delicious lunch in a very quiet spot and she drove us around to show us her favourite spots and hideaways and it was so gorgeous.
We walked to Bondi for lunch today, and then watched the sun set at Bronte - it was so pretty, and again made me realise that it's little things like watching the colour of the sky change over the water that I'm going to miss.
Sunday, a group of us are off to the Blue Mountains for a few days for my birthday - but I'm going to make a separate post next week about my birthday shenanigans because quite a lot has happened already and it's not even my birthday yet! :D Also, I don't know what the wifi or signal is going to be like where we are going, so I'll just write everything after it has happened.
Not only is this my first ever birthday without any family members around (feels weird), but it's also my first ever birthday in the cold! There's snow in some parts of the Bluey's, and being a summer baby usually I spend the day on the beach or by the pool! There's a first for everything I guess!
I'll keep you all informed of the happenings next week,
Byeee from a slightly cold, and 19 year old Becca.
