Had two very different nights out Thursday and Friday this week, summing up the differences between Sydney's flashy and not so flashy sides. On Thursday three of us from our dorm (three out of four - the German was out somewhere else) went out for a few drinks in Kings Cross. There are two others in the dorm, Rob and Matt, both typical 23yr old British backpackers - who refused to believe I was 28. We had plenty of drinks at a corner pub and ended up wandering around Kings Cross at 2am trying to stop Rob from chatting up the prostitutes.
The next night it was a birthday for one of the North Sydney lot, Hayley. I met her last week through Amy, she's a TV presenter for Channel 9 on a kids show called 'Totally Wild'. I got to the staggeringly swanky bar at Kings Street Wharf in the chic part of the harbour, only to discover a clipboard-toting matriarch with a guest list. After watching for a bit - and seeing they weren't letting anybody in who wasn't on the guestlist or didn't namedrop someone inside, I was starting to wonder how I was going to get in. Thankfully the day before I'd watched Hayley's TV programme (she was interviewing a schoolboy who collected reptiles) - and because I'd seen the end credits I knew her name. So I marched up to the clipboard and said 'I'm with Hayley Chapman', and they let me straight in. I was chuckling about that for ages - it turned out I was the only person in our group that Hayley didn't have to come down to the door and vouch for. Heh. Of course the swanky bar was full of pretentious idiots (although not in our group), but having outsmarted them, it didn't matter...
