On Friday evening we went to a birthday party/housewarming for my friend Pauline. She is the partner of a guy I work with, and four of us girls get together fairly regularly. She's just moved into an apartment in Bondi so that they can be closer to the surfing, so she celebrated her birthday in their new space!
It was another night with a group of expats. We spent a good long while discussing how hard it is to pay taxes when you are a resident of one country and live in another. Toby and I were the lone Americans in the group, and we are certainly the most pitied of all - the complexity of the US tax system is known throughout the world! We also talked for a long while about how confusing it is in Australia to have debit cards that you can use as a credit card and a credit card that you can use as a debit card. I have to admit that I haven't understood that since the day we got them and I always just make my best guess at the register. Knowing that there are expats all across Sydney doing the exact same thing made me feel better!
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| The birthday girl getting a birthday hug! |
We had a good night, and then it was time to head back home. Leaving Bondi at midnight is its own kind of adventure. All the drunken tourists, backpackers, and uni students are leaving too. So the bus was packed with smelly, loud people, blatantly disregarding the open alcohol laws and having fun doing it. And when we got to the train, it just continued. However, people were generally happy and behaving, just being goofy. It was a great people-watching exercise. Our favorite was this guy, who boarded the train with a single flipper and just looked at it for the 20 minute ride.
Good times in Bondi!
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