The Opera House and reflections

‘Sydney is one of the 3 most beautiful ports in the world’, we were told by our eccentric cruise director Naosan. We docked in Clarke Quay, prime real estate. To my right was the Sydney Opera house, on the left the Sydney harbour bridge. The day was not entirely mine; I’d volunteered for the GET challenge tour, basically a day round Sydney with students. I made the most of a few free hours in the morning though, and saw the central sights with Risa. With the students, the idea was we cruise the city with a check list of things to do and find, and speak only in English. My lads did well and although it wasn’t free time, we made our own fun. We finished up in the late afternoon at Coojie beach and we had a bit of free time before beer and burgers with the others. I seized the chance to have a swim and was loving it for all of 30 seconds. I felt a sharp, stinging pain shoot through my left arm. I was shocked to see a blue bottle wrapped completely around it. I pulled the bugger’s tentacles off with my other hand and swam in. Some people say pee on it, others say ice. The ice didn’t work, but some gels that the restaurant had on hand cooled the burning feeling.

Fed and watered, we later headed back to the Opera House bar for a beer ‘on the Peace Boat’. Chibi Bonita, J, Aarif and I tried to make a night of it and headed into Kings Cross. I can’t say town was pumping on a Thursday night, but we did ok to find a few decent places to sample the night life.

Waving fairwell to Sydney

I did get up in the morning to have a fry up breakfast at a little café at the Rocks. My arm was swollen something awesome from the blue bottle sting. The Australian newspaper had interviewed the cruise director and featured an article plastered across the 3rd page. The headline read: ‘Japanese activists said in to back anti-whaling effort’. Reading on…’As Japanese ships continue to hunt for whales in the Southern Ocean, an ocean liner packed with Japanese activists opposed to “scientific” whaling has docked in Australia. The Peace Boat – a vessel carrying 1000 Japanese passengers on a 110-day voyage to promote human rights and environmental issues – is demanding the Japan ends its scientific whaling program…’ WHAT THE?? Activists? Demanding what? The story goes on to link our arrival with the departure of the activist boat Sea Shepherd and the anti whaling movement. On the boat I had heard little of this controversy in the media, let alone seen any anti whaling activists! I am personally opposed to the Japanese ‘scientific’ whaling program, but this story was a complete cook up by journalist Matthew Knot.

I wish I had the time to put together a jishukikaku (self planned event) about 1) Media reporting and 2) international whaling issues.

But I didn’t have the time. I was busy as a tanto (leader) organising the speech contest and, of course, writing my own speech in Japanese. It was a character building and emotional experience for many of our students who had never given a speech to an audience, let alone in a foreign language.

New Years - We had a stonking party on the boat, and muchos thanks goes to Sam and Kane for putting together a wicked slide show and DJ Sam for spinning the vinyl well into the morning

Here’s my speech in Japanese Romaji (so you can actually read it)
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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 at 3:37 pm and is filed under Peace Boat, Australia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.