Robocop and ping pong in a cold sports bar.

Poor Allen has a stress fracture in his foot, caused by too much walking while on holiday around Uluru. What really didn't help was the flying doctor whom he saw in Uluru said it was probably just gout and he should be able to walk on the foot fine. So after many miles of walking he felt much worse and his food really swelled up. After having various xrays and other scans on his foot in the Sydney hospital he was diagnosed with a stress fracture. The extra walking that he did around Uluru was probably the worse thing he could have done for his poor foot!

Unfortunately that means he has to wear this ski boot like cast on his foot when walking around. He does sound a bit like Robocop walking around the place! You can hear him coming from around the corner at work. :-)

A couple of weekends ago we went out for some great seafood in Balmain, near to where Deirdre and Allen live. The restaurant was only a small one but the seafood platter that we had was fantastic. It was a little expensive for Balmain at $40 a head but that's only around £18 each and for the amount and variety of seafood that we had it was great value.

Last night we went to a sports bar around the corner from where I live here in Sydney. It was one of those really small doorways off the main street that goes straight downstairs to a good sized sports bar underground.

It was a proper sports bar too, as well as a few pool tables, pinball machines and big screen TV's there was also a table tennis table too! It would have been fun to try playing the game after a few beers, but unfortunately it was karaoke night last night so we didn't get a chance.

Allen and I had to play a couple of games of pinball after I had earlier challenged him to some games, we both played quite often during our times at Uni. so both fancied our chances against each other. Fortunately I was the luckier one this evening and won both games.

Despite the heavy rain outside and cooler weather the bar still had their air conditioning on. So much so that Deirdre felt very cold, she had to put on Joe's coat as well as her own layers underneath. Here she is moving some beers as we tried to relocate to a table that wasn't in direct line of an air conditioning vent.

I have a top tip for everyone out there, don't go for a gym work out when you have a hang over. It may sound obvious but I tried it this morning and it's not the best feeling in the world to have done a two hour workout, feel drained of energy, aching muscles AND have a stonking headache. To be honest while I was working out I generally felt fine and quite enjoyed it, but when I stopped between machines and caught my breath I really felt terrible.

I went shopping around china town this afternoon. I had wandered around the place before when I first got here, but only around the main streets. Today I went more off the beaten track and explored some of the inner side streets. I was very impressed with what I found. I didn't think there were many supermarkets there but I found plenty of them today, and lots of smaller cafe style restaurants where you can get really good food at a cheap price. Mmm, can you say roast duck and rice!