My first week

What a weird weird place this, the sun rises at 6am and sets again at 5.30pm, and yet the average peak day temperature is about 20 degrees at the moment. It's like having a half day of summer in England, very odd and certainly not helping my jetlag - which is currently causing me to drift off at about 7pm.

Added to this is a ridiculous dawn chorus which begins around 5.30 am and comprises the most god-awful screeching from unidentified bird-life. This is then followed at about 7 am by animalistic grunting emanating from men playing tennis behind my apartment, and the couple in the next apartment.

My life thus far has been fairly low key, I've had one night out with other Nick and Rich & Lucy who are currently visiting from Melbourne. We went to a place called The Clove, on Crown St and I was expecting the worst as most people have told me that Australia curry is pretty dire. However I was pleasantly surprised to be served an edible Lamb Dansak, and the peshwari naan was also pretty commendable, so I will definitely be visiting again. A nice touch was that it was BYOB so we had three bottles of red between us which temporarily negated my crushing drowsiness.

Got a cab home as the buses here are somewhat of an art form. I will probably follow that up in a later post once I've had a bit more experience of them. The tricky part is knowing when to get off as I suspect I've been somewhat spoiled by the disembodied voice on London buses. I'm contemplating investing in a GPS to aid me in this....

Went for a walk down to the beach again yesterday, but it was dark and I didn't feel like being dragged to my death so didn't go in the sea, just bought a pizza from a friendly independent Mediterranean place, I think the guy called it "Pizza Hut", and snarfled half whilst watching prison break. The rest I had for lunch today.