Reunion in Sydney!

Finally! After months of heart-wrenching separation anxiety, I finally got to meet up with Elliot and Stephanie and their friend Jay in Sydney! The entire blogosphere must be rejoicing as all the blogkeepers I've linked to on my blog and I have actually met up in the flesh! :-)

Immediately upon meeting up, the five of us went to see the film "300" in IMAX in Darling Harbour. (Apparently, Elliot and Jay had already seen it twice, and Stephanie once, but you just can't enough of ridiculously well-developed Greek bodies in tiny leather codpieces and maroon capes!) It was an amazing film, but I can't help but be a bit disappointed at the continuing "queerification" of villains in movies (in this case, Xerxes) and the undercurrent of homophobia (e.g., King Leonidas of Sparta deriding Athenians as "boy lovers," which is ironic since what he is presumably referring to was, in fact, an integral component of Spartan military training), especially since this movie's target audience is most likely young straight men. But even these misgivings couldn't take away from the sheer spectacle of it. Sydney claims to have the largest IMAX screen in the world, and I guess I didn't really appreciate how an eight-story tall screen could truly showcase hundred of male torsos, thighs and the aforementioned codpieces until now. What would we do without modern technology??? :-)

After the movie, we caught a drink overlooking Darling Harbour, then some dinner at an Irish pub, then visited the great variety of nightlife on offer here in Sydney. In keeping with the randomness of the evening, we somehow wound up at the Taxi Club along the way, which I can only describe as a tranny pokie bar. (Pokies are what they call slot machines here, and to say the Aussies are infatuated with pokies is an understatement. Every bar seems to have a "pokie room" full of entranced patrons robotically feeding these festive and voracious machines.) Here's a photo of Jay, Elliot and me with Melissa, a new friend we made visiting from Kuala Lumpur.



I'm slightly worried about the fact that we have another 4 nights here together -- I'm not sure I can handle this much fun... ;-)

Next up, Christine and I are about to take a ferry over to Manly, so I'll be reporting back soon...