going to the harbour, darling

so now we have wireless broadband thank goodness – i never thought i’d come to rely so much on the internet for personal entertainment as i have done over the last three months

got back into the daily routine over the last few days with one change - breakfast takes place on the balcony with the latest pd james while i watch the trains and cars pass over the harbour bridge and the distinctive biege and green passenger ferries cross the bay from circular quay towards the little luna park docking jetty before they head off to darling harbour - the occasional giant container ship sails up the bay to dock in the harbour - yesterday it was one from stockholm, probably full of cute blond scandinavian merchant seamen (i won’t make the obvious pun there because i’m a nice clean-living country boy)

on sunday afternoon we walked down to the jetty and caught the ferry to darling harbour - the harbour was, of course, named after the oldest child in the darling family in j.m. barrie’s classic play, ‘peter pan’ - hence the expression ‘wendy boat comes in’ (thou shalt have a fishy on a little dishy) - and talking of fishies, we were shocked that our favourite seafood restaurant, ‘nick’s’ in darling harbour, where we often used to hook up with friends for lunch and where we intended to eat that afternoon, had put the price of its seafood platter for two up to 125 dollars - scandalous - so we wandered around like lost boys looking for somewhere to eat that didn’t cost an arm and a leg (or a hand) – but as i got quite alarmed by the thought of eating exotic dishes such as crocodile and the time was tick-tocking away, we headed towards market city in chinatown - enough with the ‘peter pan’ references already...

looking at the hawker style food stalls with their signs advertising dishes such as nasi lemak, popiah and laksa, i welled up a bit as it was the first real reminder of singapore i’d had in 2 years

we walked around chinatown for a while commenting that sydney’s is the biggest one out of all the chinatowns we’ve visited outside asia, and the most authentic in its atmosphere - like a cross between singapore and hong kong - then we tried to remember which street citysteam 357 was on and how to get there, but we couldn’t dredge it up from either of our murky memories of the more sleazy establishments in the city - i’m sure we’ll eventually relocate it and spend time there at some point over the next two months - if memory serves me right it's the only place of its kind that has two sizes of towel...