july in review
so, another month gone. i’ve worked heaps, spent large amounts of money on plane tickets to new york, visited sydney for catch ups and shiny apple store goodness *and* i’ve done my tax. i feel accomplished!
~~
my u.s. trip at the end of the year is starting to take shape. one of the things i decided to do is spend the better part of a week in new york, including being there for the whole new years eve thing. that presented two problems – getting there and accommodation. new york is scary expensive, but i’ve found what is apparently quite a reasonable hotel maybe 10 minutes walk from times square .. the imaginatively-named “The Hotel at Times Square“, an apple core hotels property. it’s really not that cheap, but the alternatives were much worse. and i thought london was expensive!
getting to new york was the other problem, seeing as i’ll be over the other side of the country and all. cue one very substantial purchase with american airlines – i’m taking a red-eye flight from los angeles to new york la guardia via dallas fort-worth on the 29th, and the reverse on the 2nd. oh, and i’m flying first class! 
there’s a method to my madness – while first class on american domestic flights is generally rubbish, it will quite happily credit to qantas as a first class flight. with first class status credits. which means i get to keep my qantas gold frequent flyer for another year – and that makes me happy. 
~~
a couple weeks ago, i was in sydney for a weekend of catch ups with friends and generally getting away from it all. exceptionally poor timing on my behalf – it was the world yoof day weekend – but it wasn’t as crowded as i was worried it would be.
i flew up on the saturday afternoon, and got out to melbourne tullamarine early to take advantage of an offer that virgin blue had made to all qantas gold and platinum frequent flyers – a gratis visit to “the lounge”. say what you will about virgin (and i usually do), but their lounges are quite nice. great view of the tarmac, good food, real coffee, a pool table (!) and a mini-cinema. not bad! raced back over to the qantas terminal to grab a boarding pass and get moving – a nice boring flight that was *only* 20 minutes late leaving. some things never change…
i don’t have any friends that i can stay with in sydney now, so i was staying at a hotel in the city – the blacket hotel. it’s in the old anz building on the corner of king and george streets – great location, nice big rooms, nice bathroom, proper shower, reasonably priced internet, nice hotel bar – and cheap! what more could you ask for? will definitely be going back.
highlights of sydney include: the apple store, lunch at a cafe in the strand arcade, walks around the city, cheap cd stores, entertaining jesus statues, really really really good cosmopolitans at verde in east sydney, hyde park, a ferry trip across the harbour and some art galleries. it turns out the biennale of sydney was on while i was there, so i thought i’d check a few things out. the museum of contemporary art wasn’t nearly as bad as i was expecting it to be – fighter jet crucifixes are pretty awesome!
soon enough it was time to go back – my flight upgrade came through, so i thought i’d check out the new qantas domestic business lounge at sydney airport. slightly quieter, a few more seats but otherwise unimpressive – and having to make my own bloody mary was very ordinary indeed. 
the flight back was nice .. the plane was an international config 767-338, which meant they had the better seats in business class
~~
the only other real achievement this month was getting my tax done. my accountant is awesome; i can actually afford to go to new york now. 
- zac.