Last weekend was busy, busy, busy!

On Friday I started drinking at work (we had a bi-weekly discussion afternoon with nibbles and drinks). This was followed by Marc’s birthday party at the Victoria Room. (Some people describe the place as swanky, posh and other words I can’t remember.) After about a total of 5.5 hours of drinking and eating and 7 hours of sleeping it was Saturday and we went to Pete’s Australian citizenship BBQ. It was a great day and another 7 hours of drinking and eating. The day was just so relaxed and pleasant! And except for Pete, everyone was happy. For some reason I joined Pete and Dan when they went for a swim. Some spots were less than 16°C cold. I am not sure why I went in. Alcohol does not improve decision making.

On Sunday we did some dinner preparations, visited our neighbour Jason and later went into the Elizabeth Bay park with our neighbours’ daughter Milly and Jason. On the way home Martina and I dragged Milly for a good 30cm along the pavement which scratched one knee and made her very unhappy. It happened because Milly was holding both Martinas (with her right) and my (with her left) hands. Martina bent down because she tried to understand what Milly was saying while Milly thought she can swing between us and let her self hang from our arms. In this awkward situation I tried to dislocate Milly’s shoulder by pulling her arm all the way up with Martina hanging on to Milly. In the end it did not achieve anything except maybe dragging only one knee along the pavement.

In the evening we had a Lederhosen orgy. Without the orgy and the Lederhosen but instead with Rindsrouladen and boring potato gratin followed by soggy and flat Germknödel (yeast dumplings with poppy seed) and of course more alcohol to which we had invited our Austrian and German friends Angela, Barbara, Matthias and Roland.

To round up the weekend on Tuesday I had a few beers in the Belgium Beer Cafe in the Rocks to celebrate Jason’s birthday.

And now the world ends.

At about 5:45am I heard some alarm go off in the neighbourhood. At about 6:00am our strata’s fire alarm plus some generators chimed in and when we opened the curtain in our bedroom we saw this:

This view is interesting to wake up to in the morning. But to increase the impression, there was a very strong wind blowing. Combine this with too little sleep, too much alcohol left in the blood and a fire alarm going off.

We got up and got dressed and prepared passports and other stuff to leave the apartment. I shut down the machines and prepared to remove the harddisks while Martina went outside in a panic to try and find out what was going on. At some point I decided that staying in the apartment was the most rational course of action and instead took a shower.

Martina was on edge for about 1.5h till they finally turned off the alarm and it was evident that we wouldn’t be dying in the next couple of minutes.

On Triple J radio they played songs like R.E.M. “End of the world” and people texted in to confess either their love for co-workers or being fans of East 17.

Apparently the red sky was caused by dust coming all the way from South Australia. The pictures above are as they were taken (with WB being on sunny and reduced brightness to increase the shutter speed. It is very close to what we saw.).

There are a couple of good photos online too eg on www.smh.com.au orwww.boston.com