Back from New Zealand.
It's hot here... maybe 26C/78F, not the 18C/66F we had every day on the North Island. It's humid. We saw a bit of Australia 500km out, blowing across the Tasman, dust from the drought flying away.
And Sydney is... annoying, without having to be. Quarantine inspector power tripping. No toilet paper in our upper-range hotel.
And weird taxi drivers.
Taxi driver from Sydney Airport asks us "how do we want to get to our hotel at Liverpool and George?" Mind you, this is one block from what I consider to be the center of Sydney, Town Hall railway station.
The Sydney Shakedown begins. He should've just asked us, once he heard our American accents, "How much do you want to be ripped off?"
For the record, I said "up the Eastern Distributor, exit at Cleveland, left at Oxford to Liverpool". Uh oh, that threw him. What, Americans knowing where they want to go in Sydney? Yes. And he continued to be obstinate... I had to prod him severely not to turn left on Cleveland. His excuse: "Uh, I thought one of you wanted to be dropped off on Cleveland."
His attitude improved immensely once Chris mentioned that he worked on Mozilla. Taxi driver: "that's cool, dude, wow, you're from like California? cool. Mozilla 1.0's just released, though I still prefer Opera."
Whatever. Just get us to our hotel for less than A$30 and I'll be happy. Dude. And lose the loopy ski hat. It's bloody sticky out.