A Long Day

Sunday 2nd March

Once I get on a plane I immediately reset my watch to the local time at the destination. This meant it was almost midnight once the plane took off. Of course if you could go asleep then and there it would be OK, but they do insist on serving food and I never pass up a free meal. Anyway as I later found out, it wasn't going to be too easy to sleep with the rather large German gentleman sitting beside me. About 4 hours into the flight, and 2 hours into my sleep, he managed to elbow me in the head (he was asleep also so I guess it was an accident) and that was the end of my sleep.

The arrival in Sydney was fairly OK. As the first plane in that morning the queues at immigration and customs were fairly short, so I was out and in a taxi fairly quickly. Mind you I had to give the taxi driver directions to get to my cousin's place as he didn't see to know where it was, nor how to work his GPS. My minimal knowledge of Sydney was still better than his. (Apparently it is not uncommon in Sydney, or Dublin come to think of it, to have a taxi driver with no local knowledge.)

One other thing, having left the rain of Singapore behind, I was disappointed to see the rain of Sydney on my arrival, but it did clear up very quickly.

Anyway I got there, and got in eventually (a small bit of oversleeping on Janet's part) and we went down to Coogee Bay for breakfast with my other cousin, John, and his family. However we couldn't really stay long because I had to get to the SCG (Sydney Cricket Ground) to watch Australia take on India in the final of a one-day cricket tournament. It was my Christmas present from my sister, but in fairness she thought I was arriving in Sydney the day before. Luckily it was a day night match so didn't start until 2.45pm.

I'm not a cricket journalist, so I won't give a match report. If you really want to see what happened I suggest go to CricInfo.Com. Anyway in the end India won with a bit to spare. The result was known from about 8pm, so a lot of the Aussies, who aren't the best losers in the world, started leaving. Although in fairness a lot of them stayed on until Tendulkar got his century, his first in Oz, and he did get a standing ovation for it.

One thing about the SCG confused me for a while, I knew they had the Paddington end and the Randwick end, and I knew Paddington was North of Randwick. So when the opening bowler was bowling from the Randwick end I looked to me left thinking thats where it was. Of course he was off to my right. I'd used the Sun to work out the directions, forgetting I was now in the Southern hemisphere, so it was in the North not the South. I never even celebrated crossing the equator for the first time.

Not all the Aussies left early by their own accord, some left early by the hand of security. There was a fair amount of drinking going on, although it was only lite beer. They now can only sell low alcohol beer in the stadium because there has been so much trouble in the past. It was a bit disappointing that my first beers in Oz had to be LA, but what can you do. Anyway a lot of the lads would have been tanked up before the start so it didn't take too much more to put them over the top.

With all the empty premium seats (they were great seats, thanks Clare) in my area vacacted by Aussies, the Indians started coming down from the cheap seats, so by the time the Indians won there was a really good atmosphere again. It also seemed to get warmer as the night went on, which is a good thing because when the sun went down the temperature really dropped.

While it was a good thing that the cricket started late, it was also a bad thing because it was 10 when it was over, and 11 when I got back. With only 2 hours sleep the night before it made for a very long day, I was yawning a lot the whole way through the cricket, and unlike most others, it wasn't because I found it boring.