More flat hunting and lots of walking (oh and a couple of beers)...

Went to Manley beach last night to meet up with the Wallingford Software Sales and senior support team who were on their jolly, sorry sales conference in Sydney. Managed to meet a lot of our sales and support staff from around the world. There must have been people from all over the world.

The beach image is of Manley beach which is north of Sydney. It took a pleasant half hour ferry trip to get here as there isn't any direct public transport route to get here.

I think Allen would rather live out here and they did have a serviced apartment that was next to the pictured beach. Personally I can't see the appeal to living next to this sandy beach with deep blue seas and all year round sun. :-)

This is a picture of some of our sales and support team from Wallingford Software. After beering at the Barracuda bar till almost midnight we went to a club for a quick beer. We had to catch the last 12.20 ferry back to Sydney centre and left the club at 12.15. We had a gentle jog to the ferry port, but unfortunately missed the last ferry home. So we were stuck catching a taxi home.

Because we were catching a taxi home we decided to go back to the club and carry on drinking. We finally finished drinking around 3am and the taxi was only around $30 to get the three of us back to our hotel.

Roger arrived on this mornings flight. He's the last of the three developers who will be working in Sydney for a year. Allen was up at ten am to meet him for breakfast, but seeing as I didn't get to bed till four am I missed breakfast and had some home made toast in my apartment.

We went to look at another apartment for me this morning. It was slightly outside of the central business district and just west of our hotel. A good location for work as it would only be a twenty minute walk or ten minute monorail ride and walk. The apartment block was a half converted car park block. They just converted half the block to self contained two and three bedroom apartments and left the other half for car parking places. Because of this there were big concrete pillars in every apartment. I suspect this was much cheaper to do rather than remove them and reinforce the walls.

The space was really good for the money, but the decor was quite 'funky' in the estate agents terms. I.e. plain unfinished concrete ceilings and some exposed brick walls. The decor was also very heavy on the brown look, almost everything from floor to walls was in some shade of dark brown. It really was much too much on the eyes. Everything was also still being finished and some rooms weren't even complete.

Despite the good price about $800 pw for a two bed furnished and the large space I doubt I'll be taking this property. The place looked really good, but I suspect the location and 'funky' decor would be a bit too much for me over a year.

Spent the rest of the day walking around the inner suburbs of south Sydney looking around potential properties for Allen and Roger. Most of the suburbs are as expected really. But near the end of the day we did really see some really nice ultra modern properties right beside the Sydney riverside. Didn't get a price, but we suspected that they would be well over our budget as they did look spectacular.

In the evening only Roger and I went out for dinner as Deirdre wasn't feeling very well and Allen decided to stay in with her.

We went to a really nice seafood restaurant beside Darling harbour. The food was really good, I had a chill octopus starter with soft shell crab for a main. The quality of the food was great and I'm very comfortably full now. Especially after a filling desert as well.

The above image is of Roger, my dinner partner for the evening, and this picture is of the much better view across the harbour to the central business district.

I can think of much worse ways to spend an evening. Mind you I can also think of much better dinner partners as well!

The evening weather here is delightful, there is a warm breeze in the air with cooling temperatures. Ideal for eating and drinking outside beside the harbour or the sea. Just think of the Bristol docks in a warm summer evening, but without any of the loud drunken bars or Bristol idiots and also on a much larger scale and you might be getting close to what's it like here. Actually it's nothing like that, it's infinitely better here. :-)

Will try to get to the local Fitness First gym tomorrow morning as I haven't done any exercise since last Wednesdays run around in Hong Kong and I'm suffering exercise withdrawal symptoms. Allen and Roger are going to continue their hunt around other inner suburbs while I might scout around other parts of the centre of Sydney, like the local china town.