Ocha And Missu

I woke at 7:38 in the am, still sitting on the Greyhound bus that was now parked up in a BP service station. Most people were getting off to have a smoke or take advantage of the restrooms so I readied myself to do the same. It was a nice sunny morning, a little chilly though, and we were still about 4 hours away from our destination…Sydney. I had my two cinnamon swirls for breakfast and then settled down again with some Eddie Izzard playing into my ears and dozed off to sleep again.

It wasn’t long before we were nearing Sydney and in truth it had been the best sleep yet on the Greyhound. That’s not saying much, as 6 hours in a real bed would be much better than 12 hours on a coach, but nevertheless we both felt pretty refreshed and ready to take on the day. We were un-ceremonially dumped at the side of the road outside the train station and checked the time. It was 11:30. We had 10 minutes to wait. We had arranged to meet Cassandra (Cass) at 11:40 and she had sent me a text saying that she was on her way. That gave us enough time to quickly use the restrooms and brush our teeth in readiness for meeting our next couchsurfing host.

James had arranged this one, and I had whole-heartedly approved for Cass and Tim would be hosting us for a night in (pretty much) the centre of Sydney before we moved on to our hotel for the next 3 nights. Sure enough, Cass arrived and we greeted each other with enthusiasm before we set off to get the tram to her place. It was either that or a 30 minute walk with the big bags, and we just weren’t in the mood for the latter! We were very impressed when we arrived at the apartment block as there were 4, count them, 4 lobbies and even a waterfall inside amongst all the greenery that decorated the walls and floors. The apartment itself was very nice too and even had a Manx cat called Napoleon, or “Po” to his friends and family. We were introduced to Cass’s Tim and enjoyed a chat and a cup of tea/coffee whilst we settled into the place. 

Sydney...at ground level

The first job was to take a trip in the car to the outskirts of Sydney to pick up some passes and then get back to the apartment without having some idiot side-swipe us or try to run us off the road. We achieved that successfully, mainly due to Cass’s expert control of the Mazda, and made it back in time to head out and see Centre Point. Centre Point is the huge tower in the centre of Sydney that has an observation deck at the top and looks out across the whole city. The passes that we had picked up were special annual passes purchased by Cass’s Sri Lankan friends but that we would supposedly be able to use to get free entry to the top of the tower. We assumed this would be fine so went along with the dastardly plan. Luckily the passes were for one girl and two guys so Cass took the girls pass, I took the one that had the beard and James was left with the remaining one. We eventually got to the admission desk and were unsure how to get through with the passes but the chap behind the desk handed out some 3D specs to us so we assumed that everything was all fine and above board. We rounded the corner only to find another queue in front of us with a woman asking us to all get our tickets out for inspection. We were going to be rumbled for sure. There was no way, even in the dim lighting, that I would be able to pass for a Sri Lankan man, nor James and Cass either. I thought about turning on my heels and running away in disgrace but the three of us just took a deep breath and went for it. What was the worst that could happen…

Cass had her pass scanned and ordered through to the next room, where the 4D movie would be playing. I was up next. I cunningly covered the photo of the Sri Lankan man with my thumb as it seemed the woman was just scanning the bar code on the plastic card. I held it out to her. She asked me to move my thumb from on top of the photo, which I dutifully did. She looked at the photo. She looked at me. She looked at the photo. She looked at me. Then she scanned the card and ushered me through. What just happened? Had I passed as a Sri Lankan man, beard or no beard, surely the fact that we look nothing like each other would have given the game away. Maybe she had taken pity on me for trying to sneak in. Maybe she just didn’t care. Whatever the reason me and Cass were in, with just James to get through. She checked his photo much the same as she did for me and then we were all in movie room and all questioning whether that sequence of events had just happened or it was just a dream.

Do you see the similarity?

The 4D movie was good – essentially a 3D movie with rainwater, smoke and lights to make it seem like we were really there. It wasn’t long before we were heading up in the elevator to the top of the tower. And then we were greeted with the sight of Sydney laid out before us, shimmering in the afternoon sun. A fantastic sight and it certainly matched the views from the Empire State Building, the Rockefella Centre and the one in Chicago (I forget what the building is called). We took some snaps and waited for the sun to set over Cass’s apartment down by the bridge. A fantastic start to our tour of Sydney.

After we had left Centre Point we grabbed some salad and wine (and beers for Tim) and headed back to the apartment. Tim had been out to get some meat as we were to have a proper Australian barbeque out on the balcony. Only one thing was missing though – no shrimp. No shrimp on the barbeque? What kind of Australia was this?! There was, however, steaks, chicken skewers, lamb chops and some kind of authentic British sausages made with Australian meat, or something like that. Tim expertly cooked away on the big gas-powered barbeque whilst Cass prepared the salad and bread rolls and James and I……opened the wine. We were very happy with ourselves as we had managed to sniff out a 2L box of Goon (cheap wine) for $7.50. Bargain. We were potentially to be joined by the Serbian downstairs with his Japanese girlfriend, but they never showed. But after Cass made a couple of calls it turned out that we were to be joined by their (the Serb and his girlfriend) lodgers; two Japanese girls who were in Australia studying nursing. That was fine by us, the more the merrier is always our motto. Well, maybe only second to “if it’s wet drink it”. Tim, Cass, James and I sat down to begin the feast as our two other guests would be joining us shortly. It was great food. Our hearty compliments to the chef.

As we were clearing our plates the two Japanese girls arrived and squeezed round the table. They were very polite and perhaps a little shy, but they joined the party and the girls got chatting away whilst us guys finished our conversation about Aussie Rules Football. We had seen couple fo games on TV and tried to work out the rules, but without someone “in the know” it is just too complicated. When Cass tried to tell the girls that we were Couch Surfers they just looked at her with blank expressions. There was no Japanese word for “couch” it seemed. We eventually got the message across (with a lot of help from Google and translation apps on the smart phones) and they seemed absolutely amazed that we had only met Cass and Tim about 8 hours ago. And to a degree we thought the same, as we had got on famously from 11:40 that morning. We all exchanged knowledge, sayings and traditions from our various cultures and the Japanese girls seemed very impressed with my Point It book that Helena from work had lent me. If you have never seen one it is basically a book with pictures of mundane things that you might need in a foreign country where you do not speak the language. Need a hospital? Point to the hospital in the book. Need a squid? Point to it in the book. You get the idea.

Ocha, Missu and the gang

I was very impressed with Cass’s grasp of Japanese and we even managed to work out what Tim and James mean. In Japanese, “Tim” is Ocha, which means Tea, whereas “James” is Mussu, which means Steam. We were impressed and happy with our new names and thought that maybe Ocha and Mussu could be a TV show about an English crime-fighting duo in Japan. I also managed to guess the Japanese words for “debit card” after hearing the words for “credit card” and suddenly speaking Japanese didn’t seem all that difficult. Until they told us what “egg” was. I gave up after that. And unbelievably they hadn’t ever seen an episode of Takeshi’s Castle, but they seemed quite impressed by a quick viewing of it on Youtube. Earlier in the evening I had had another of those “WTF moments” as we sat there eating great barbequed meats with an Australian couple who were putting us up for the night and a couple of friendly Japanese girls who had popped up from downstairs. It’s moments like that that make us think “is this really happening to us” as it seems so far removed from what we were doing 3 months ago back in England and our “normal” routines and everyday life.

Before we knew it the time was 12:15am and our visitors returned to the flat downstairs, leaving the rest of us to revel in bad jokes, Borat and the occasional Mighty Boosh reference. But soon it was time for us to turn in too and we retired to our respective bedrooms to sleep off an extraordinary first day in Sydney.