[10:00pm, Sydney, Thursday, August 3, 2006]
At the behest of a deaf friend of mine living in the Sydney metro area, I went to Parametta today to visit her mother’s (and her’s) offices. Deaf Education Network and the Deaf Society of NSW (New South Wales) are in the process of merging into the same office space. DEN is responsible for training and educating everyone with a variety of subjects, with my friend doing her part teaching Auslan, including some of the certification classes for future interpreters. Her mother is responsible for coordinating interpreters throughout the entire Sydney area to answer a need for deaf and hearing people as we all interacts with each other. Unfortunately, none of the interpreters that I am aware of is skilled with ASL enough to interpret for me. Darn.
When I used to live in Pittsburgh, which was born out of a collection of many smaller mining towns to a metropolitan area, I actually lived in an area called Monroeville, about 20 miles east of Pittsburgh. It is a unique and separate community with its own business center, shopping areas, and homes. The vast majority of its citizen travel to Pittsburgh for the jobs, but a growing number are finding jobs within the area. This is what Parametta is all about for Sydney — a second growing city to Sydney’s west, with plenty of people flowing to the city, and yet finding themselves also working in the Parametta proper. Thus, the area around Parametta have been booming, just as the area around Monroeville (well, Sydney is growing, while Pittsburgh is finding themselves shrinking, so it is all relative.)
There is a nice mall there, where I finally grabbed a copy of Ender’s Game by Oscar Scott Card, and enjoyed very much thus far. There were an ancient arcade, victim of lack of funding, lack of crowds, and a shifting marketplace toward the home for video games entertainment. It is sad to see that Australia could not escape this shrinking market either. I miss my Magic Ballroom of Salem, Virginia so much.
After the trip to Parametta, I went to the local post office, and got the 2006 Australian Proof Set coins, which includes the now-discontinued-except-for-big-bucks-proof-set 1 cent and 2 cent coins. With Australian currency, it is so nice to not have to worry about the pennies and two-pennies (for a lack of better word), with the stores now pricing not only in whole prices, but also including taxes. $2 AUD is $2 AUD. Thanks to this philosophy, the one cent/two cent coins pretty much are not missed. It is a shame I did not get the time to go to Canberra, where the Royal Australian Mint is based, just over 250 kilometers to the southwest. Next time!
At night, Jill and I spent the time being a typical tourist — looking for cheap junks to find and bring back to our friends and families. From what I saw, Jill’s friends and family will be tickled pink by her gifts.
But one thing finally caused me to wonders about Sydney’s sanity — everything downtown, all restaurants, and closes down at 9 to 10pm. Dead. So once we were done with shopping at 9, we were unable to find any place to eat dinner anywhere but the hotel. It was quite disappointing, though. You would think that a large footprint of a city like this would actively promote an influx of citizens toward downtown in the evenings, but their ferries stop around 10pm – 11pm, and their CityRail grinds to a stop at 11pm – 1am. This is so unlike Montreal — which does shut down most malls at 9pm on Thursdays, yet keep their restaurants open until midnight, and their metro open until 2am. I am quite curious on whether there is a cultural reason for this early closure of downtown.
In the end result, we went to bed, instead of staying up all night partying. We just did not know where to party after all.
