Sydney, the giraffe and the mo-to-sho!

No I’m not talking about the fact that as a tall Scandinavian you’re taller than most people here. I’m talking about who enjoys one of the very best locations and views in Sydney? It is none other than the giraffes at Taronga Zoo! – have a look:

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My giraffe legs need a pitstop because I have walked several marathons around Sydney, the beaches, the parks, the gardens, the bridges and the zoo. Granted I didn’t run these marathons I walked them, but I still reckon I got a fair bit of exercise shooting hundreds of shots in Sydney – my legs certainly need an oil change and new tires!  If I hadn’t dropped and broken my gps unit it would have been fun to see the routes (and no my routes were not from pub to pub, actually been working hard here!).

Here’s a few of my latest Sydney shots – more new shots at my gallery.

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Got lucky and caught a brilliant fiery sunset from Milsons Point Click to see larger size

The classic cityscapes at night from Milsons Point, the best place to see the sunset and shoot cityscapes at dusk

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Governor Philip Tower reaching for infinity

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A busy Saturday sunset at Ms Maquaries Point! Landscape photographers, wedding photographers, at least 5 newlywed couples and tourists all compete for that famous picture! A funny sight, the newlyweds were actually queuing to get their shots.

I like visiting Sydney and I love photographing Sydney – but it really is too big and busy and “mega-city” for me, too many people and wouldn’t want to live here. It’s all relative of course; I visited my mate Augusto here and he and his girlfriend lived in London before and they find this fairly quiet in comparison! Well, basically anything that isn’t me and a red desert I find too busy 🙂

My hotel is in Darling Harbour and as I got in the taxi at the Sydney airport and told the driver where I was going he (from Asia) asks me
“ah you go to mo-to-sho?”
Ehh…sorry mate, what? He repeats “mo-to-sho” 3 times and I just simply cannot hear what he is saying with the asian accent and I feel really embarrassed and stupid but I don’t understand a word, sounds like he’s shouting something from a Karate movie (“ka-ra-tei” as Ross would say in FRIENDS).
He then finally points to a flyer that says “Motor show at Darling Harbour”…
“ahhh, a motor show” I say and feel stupid…
“yes” he repeats, “the mo-to-sho! Many cars!”

And now for something completely different

Watching the news in Australia can be a weird experience but this week was special.
Australia can be so backwards sometimes you think it’s the 1950’s with weird moral issues and double standards. Especially in the cities, in the outback people are a bit more the more pioneering independent liberal type. But the “stuck-in-suburbia and morally offended by everything and the government should do something” person here is genuinely scary.  Australia is also incredibly far away from everything else and that is reflected in the news, you’re lucky to get one international story on the news and I have to use the internet to keep me up to date.

Australians hold sport stars in higher regard than anyone else and expect them to be the perfect role models of society. The no. 1 story on the news a few days ago was Ben Cousin (Australian Football player) getting caught with drugs again. Bad, yeah, but not like a national emergency I should think – but even the prime minister John Howard comments on this story as if the footballer let the entire nation down in battle and shot one of his own men in the back! Same a few months ago when Rugby legend Andrew Johns revealed he had done drugs for years after getting caught with an E. I think if our Crown Prince Frederik was found shooting heroin the outrage would still not match what we see here!

Thankfully for Ben Cousins the Chaser team (brilliantly funny team doing a great satirical TV-show on channel ABC) took the attention by doing a very dark funny satirical song about how people are glorified out of proportion after death (“even wankers turn into top blokes after death”) using Lady Di, Steve Irwin, John Lennon (singing “married a nutbag and his songs were never quite as good as Paul’s” hehehe!) etc. as examples. On the edge and offensive yeah, but it’s a dark edgy satirical show and don’t watch it if you don’t like this sorta stuff. But…the outrage in the news! And they were condemned by the Prime Minister again. I’m surprised the ABC building wasn’t burned to the ground.

Some of the bloody social commentators on TV here would not look out of place on FOX in USA and morning TV here is unbelievably bad and the news and TV channels generally are far too Americanised. Yesterday there was a story suggesting  to make buying, smoking or possessing cigarettes totally illegal…cos they’re bad for you and therefore bad for society. Well yes. Like alcohol. Burgers. Doughnuts. Chips…why stop at cigarettes? Ban the cars, they kill the most of all! Well this is a country that still had a “whites only” policy until the 1970’s and you still get people here saying aboriginals are not human and that Australia has no history (oldest country on Earth oldest still-living natives…ring a bell?) and you’re thinking “what the F#$, is it 1788 and the first fleet has just landed here?”

It truly boggles the mind how weird and backwards this country can be sometimes!

Randomness

  • In the Darling Harbour shopping mall I suddenly was struck by the sight of a huge white plastic decorated Christmas tree. Bugger! Reality check! Oh well, most of the the Darling Harbour area is one big ugly theme-park piece of eye-sore architecture anyway so why not a fake white Christmas tree on a warm sunny day!
  • In a Mac shop I tried the new spectacular Ipod iTouch (basically the Iphone without the phone). The touch interface is incredible and the built-in wifi and Safari browser is surprisingly good to use because the screen is sooooo gorgeous and the touch navigation great. It really is the internet in your pocket! I browsed my Pbase gallery from the itouch and it worked beautifully, fast downloading through the wi-fi and great quality – pictures looked great and the text was rendered in classy mac style. I can see why people rave about the iphone, I will definitely get one of these, preferably an iphone running on the 3G network!
  • I mentioned them in my post about Australian rock music, but they deserve to be mentioned again – cds from Evermore and Eskimo Joe are on ipod repeat, they’re brilliant! My kind of indie rock!
  • Apparently Australia is desperate for skilled IT guys at the moment and it’s easy to get a sponsorship visa. Only took my mate Augusto 2 weeks to get a great job in IT and then about 2 months to get the temporary 4 year visa. It’s only temporary which is a big minus for me, but still…something to think about I reckon. Not to move permanently but would be very cool to be able to go back and forth and work both places – Denmark and Australia.
  • Still waiting for my hair to grow back to surfer or rock star length…too bloody short presently, aargh!

Joke of the day:

One time a guy handed me a picture of himself and said ‘here’s a picture of me when I was younger.’

Every picture of you is when you were younger!

It’s like, ‘Here’s a picture of me when I’m older.’

You son of a bitch! How’d you pull that off? Let me see that camera. What’s it look like…?

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005), from Strategic Grill Locations

Thanks to The Online Photographer for originally posting the above Mitch Hedberg quote.

2 Comments on “Sydney, the giraffe and the mo-to-sho!”

  1. Dude, as if working with you and then seeing you off to 3 months of R&R Down Under wasn't enough….if you somehow manage to land a cozy techie job involving casual Denmark-Australia commuting, I will NEVER talk to you again! ;o)

    That would just be too bloody awesome for this world, even for a guy with your skills!

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