The Land Down Under

Before I start this post about Australia, I would like to begin with how crappy an airline Qantas Air is. If you ever plan on going to Australia, don't EVER use Qantas Air. It is by far, the worst airline I have ever been on, and I would rather go to Australia in a boat than fly with Qantas again. On the way to Australia, our flight was delayed out of Shanghai, and when we finally arrived in Sydney, the workers decided to go on strike and refused to release any of our luggage. Luckily, I brought my bags as a carry-on, but I still had to wait at the airport with my coworkers. Secondly, my flight out of Sydney, back to Shanghai was delayed (again), so we missed our connecting flight from Shanghai to Beijing. This was the last flight to Beijing on any airline that night, so I ended up staying at a hotel in Shanghai, only to be taken across the city at 6:30am the next day to catch the first flight to Beijing. Qantas air...I hope you go out of business.

On a lighter note, Sydney was spectacular. If I could choose to work out of any city in the world, it would definitely be Sydney. Take all the great aspects of San Francisco, New York, and Boston, and you have Sydney. Sydney has all the great architecture of San Francisco, fashion of New York, and rustic landmarks of Boston all melded into one location. I didn't have much time to walk around and see everything since I was there on business, but fortunately I got to hang out with Nellina on my first day in. Here is a picture of us at an Irish pub on St. Patty's Day:

Nellina and I walked around the harbor and went to a bar called "Minus 5." The bar was pretty cool in that everything was carved out of ice, and we were only allowed to stay in there for 30 minutes since we would freeze to death. Well, I guess staying in there for 30 minutes wasn't that cool, but the ice bar concept was sort of cool. Here we are in our eskimo getup:

Unfortunately I didn't get to hug any koala bears, but I did get to see the famous opera house. Hopefully I'll get to visit Sydney again and appreciate all it has to offer. Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oy! Oy! Oy!

P.S. I apologize for such a crappy post, but I'm feeling lazy, and I don't get paid to do this. Stay tuned for a better anecdote.