Lit Trip to Australia: Day 4

Day four started out with a city tour by bus with photo stops along the way. Rob stopped at a park on the other side of the harbour which granted the superb view below. It was here that we took the cursed banner out and proclaimed to the world that we were from our school. It was a long dreaded thing to do because it made us all look like very very very tacky tourists. Well, I am one anyway.

Under the cut: Beverly Hills of Australia, Bondi Beach, The State Library, Sydney Opera House, and a play, No Man's Land by Harold Pincter:

Filthy Rich: We went up to Sydney's version of Beverly Hills. The most expensive apartments in the whole of Sydney that overlook the harbour, complete with a beach view and bobbing yachts. This is the home of the richest real estate agent in Sydney. We started discussing how we would ditch school and work as a maid in this area.

Crime pays, actually: Fancy police station is fancy

Hogwarts: Fancy girls' school is very very fancy

Round the ragged rocks the rugged rascals ran: Andrea: "Bring me the horizon, really."

Andrea again: "Daisy dukes bikinis on top. Sun-kissed skin so hot, we'll melt your popsicle". We made a stop at Bondi Beach, with everyone really excited to catch a glimpse of flesh and hopefully the nude strip of the beach. This is really a bay, with headlands on either ends of the beach. A very fine sight indeed, and I'm not talking about the boys. Eh, not really.

Bondi Beach: We were in dresses for the play later that evening. Dresses! Still, not giving up a chance to play in the icy blue waters of Bondi. The sand there is finer than salt. Most definitely worth the wet and sandy leggings afterwards.

Sandy: Stood here and sang Behind the Sea and New Perspective. Most apt. 

Tamarama Beach: Rob said the locals started the sculpture placement to spice up the already beautiful beach and it has since stuck. 

Jacaranda Trees: I had wanted to take a perfect shot of these since day one. 

Luna Park: I squealed when I saw this because I recalled Brendon's tweet. That's right folks!

Cathedral: Sydney's full of such majestic buildings. The Sydney hospital and State Library are so beautiful and ... real. I hate to say this but in Singapore, hospitals look like hospitals, schools look like hospitals, libraries look like hospitals. No offense to hospitals though, we need you. 

Lunch: Picnic in High Park! We got chicken sandwiches from the YHA dining hall and Laura got us juice, apples and crackers.

Swedha's nemesis: Ibis, sacred birds from South Africa gave Swedha endless scares. The girl said they look "disgusting and evil". Rob mentioned that he once saw an Ibis that was knocked over by a car and looked very much dead when an Aboriginal man walked up to it and muttered a few words. The Ibis got up and walked away.

Quote: On a paper bag from the State Library's book store: "In books lies the soul of the whole past time and the articulate audible voice of the past when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream." This quote was from Thomas Carlyle's (1795-1881) Hero as Man of Letters is inscribed in stone on the eastern wall of the Mitchell Library vestibule

They actually exist: This is what a real library looks like on the inside. And this is only half of the hall. And only the Australian collection of books. 

I'll send you a letter: like that. Old people used to write horizontally then vertically in order to save space. Talk about reuse.

Holy yes: I think this picture speaks a lot. Yes a Shakespeare Room does exist in the library, smaller than what I thought it was though. In the room, a chair sits below a bust of him, a chair made of wood from the tree that once grew in his garden *cue oooohs and ahhhhs*

Not Without Right: The coat-of-arms says "Non Sanz Droict" ("Not Without Right"). Shakespeare had to submit an application several times in order to succeed this, his father's coat-of-arms. And he has all the right indeed. 

It's real: Things like these actually actually exist. This library holds artworks, manuscripts and many original pieces. The first original draft of the Sydney Opera House sits somewhere in the library. 

Next we headed over to the Sydney Opera House for a tour. We watched a video of how the house came into being and how close it was to staying a dream. We also visited all the concert halls. They were so darn grand. Too bad photography was not allowed in the halls.

That night we watched No Man's Land, a play by Harold Pinter. On the surface, it seems simple, four men talking and no set change, but the intensity is in the words. No Man's Land is about four men. The first is Hirst, a poet who has since fallen from his glory days. He now lives in a no man's land, moping around everyday, drinking to relive those days that brought him happiness. He has two male servants, Foster and Briggs, who abuse his obliviousness and take advantage of his moping for their own benefits. Then there is Spooner, a poet who wants to succeed very badly, but also sponges off others' goodwill.

The play is of these men's conversations and interactions in two days, from which their plights and intents can be inferred. It is a witty play with many puns and farcical ha ha moments. It was a little difficult to catch what the characters were trying to say and infer their implications, but it left me hanging on to every word. The play was pure genius.

My favourite anecdote was the one in which Briggs related the story of him giving directions to a motorist to Bolsover Street. He mentioned in the process that the motorist would "waste his youth" looking for the street. I think it implies that Spooner had wasted his youth and life going in one direction to the other, doing odd jobs off people and is likely to gain nothing this time around either.

Foster is my favourite character (and a lot of us love him, I'm sure) for he was made to be a sassy, flamboyant and well, obviously gay character, from the sexual/homosexual innuendos in the play. He was not meant to be gay by Pinter, according to Mdm Audra, but many have interpreted it to be so.

Anyway, Foster is my kind of character, loud and proud, intense and well, not unpleasant to look at. (The producers obviously made good use of his ideal body. cough. Just ask Zeqi. cough) Deborah and I were very much in awe of their production and I guess this is what we want us to work towards.

By the end of the night, and the following day, we could not stop spewing lines from the play. My personal favourite, which I had memorised from Hirst's mouth: "No Man's Land never moves, never changes, never  grows old, remains icy, silent."


Masterpost
Day Five