Back home in Sydney and a bit culture shocked to tell the truth.....

 For the past year I've been keeping a blog called Cook2koto about my journey to raise enough fund to go and spend some time volunteering at the fantastic school in Hanoi where underprivileged kids get the chance of a new life through a hospitality qualification.  It was a sometimes rocky road which made for an amazing time but it has finally come to it's natural end....however I've got the blog bug now and it's been suggested to me to continue...so here I am.

After three months in Hanoi I am finally back home in the stunningly beautiful and really quite hot city of Sydney and feeling a bit of culture shock.  It's strange to look around and see a plethora of white faces, well fed, smooth and healthy white faces.  With a few notable exceptions walking round Newtown, most people look so well fed and well cared for.  Expensive clothing, cultivated tans, designer sunglasses....I should mention that I'm house-sitting in Paddington at present so it's probably not that representative of greater Sydney.  The price of everything is giving me coniptions...after paying 25,000vd for a kilo for dragonfruit I saw it today for $14.99 a kilo...and no matter how much I expect it I'm still a bit shocked.  For all it's pitfalls living in Vietnam certainly had many, many advantages.  Something that is striking me though is the relative quiet here....no horns blaring, no nocturnal cockrels competing for status at 3am....just the prosaic banging of the neighbours building something and their ghastly taste in music!

I got off the plane on Wednesday and went back to my fantastic casual job on the Thursday night.  I'm a discovery host at Taronga Zoo.  It's the most perfect job...I get paid to meet really nice people, and talk to them!  The fact that I'm talking about animals is an added bonus.  Thursday was a great night, the team I worked with were professional, efficient and just plain nice folk!  We worked together like a well oiled machine.  It didn't rain and the heat had abated just enough to make the night walk a pleasant experience also.  In the morning the two behind the scenes experiences were two of my favourites too.  Firstly we fed the giraffes...I was privileged enough to be a keeper at Taronga way back in the 80s and looked after the ungulate section for a spell so am already in love with these remarkable animals.

 

Good morning world....

Todd giving us a bit of inside info about the giraffes...

Showing how to feed safely...always of primary importance when bringing visitors into behind the scenes areas....

me being silly....

Wow...we could be in darkest Africa.....

On the previously evening our small but unusual pride of lions had been giving voice at dusk...the throaty groans travel for many kilometres and are usually a warning to other prides to avoid the area.  Our guys must think they are hot stuff since they've never been challenged back...:-)   Unfortunately because of the heat we only caught a glimpse of our dominant male Jambo in the evening...the rest were lolling about on the cool grass at the rear of the enclosure out of sight.  So the next morning when we came past and Kuchani; the adult female, was sitting front and centre waiting for her breakfast like this it made for some very happy snappers.

The demon eyes are my fault, I've got to learn how to take a low light photo without blurring it...I used a flash here with disastrous results....she's still beautiful though....

The happy group being sussed out by Satu; our male Sumatran Tiger...

Magnificent isn't he?

It was a great shift but at the end of it I was totally knackered...and I had to go home, unpack from Vietnam and repack to move into my home for the next two weeks.

I'm a full time student at UNSW and find it impossible to afford the rents that one needs to pay in Sydney if you don't want to live miles and miles away from uni so I house sit.  I've been doing it for three years now and thankfully now I'm pretty much booked out with return sits.  The first two years I paid a subscription to a website but this year I didn't need to.  By offering a service whereby the house gets looked after, the pet gets pampered and the returning homeowner gets fed (I leave a meal in the chiller - it helps that I'm also a chef) I'm only needing to book November and part of December this year....brilliant!  At the moment I'm in a nice wee place in Paddington,

a little bit of Bali in the middle of Paddo....

 after that it's Newtown, Clovelly, Newtown again then Rozelle.  If you can stand to live out of a suitcase it's a great way to get by when you can't earn a full time wage.

Each week I will feature a facet of my life in this glorious city to share with you....I hope you enjoy my life as much as I do....