James O'Brien

By night it’s lots of glamorous restaurants, while by day it’s often a lot of people with substance abuse problems. This morning, for example, there were two blokes at the bus-stop who had been drinking for days on end, it seems. I’ve actually seen these two blokes before and I think they look like they might be brothers. Brothers who obviously have had too much to drink over a long period of time. Every time I see them it’s early or mid-morning and they each have a bottle in hand, and they’re always shouting and screaming at each other.

Still, I love Surry Hills even if it’s sometimes a little confronting. And it’s kinda nice just hangin’ out in my ‘hood. doing nothing in particular, except relaxing and getting to do the things I really like doing. For example, instead of gulping down a coffee on the way to work and reading the newspapers online, I had lovely a mid-morning coffee at Cossie’s Cafe.

While I normally read the papers “for a living”, mostly skimming them to be honest, it was such a pleasure to actually read all the stories that I found personally genuinely interesting. And I love the little witty one liners you find in the opinion and letters columns such as this one in today’s SMH by Michael Deeth of Como West…

Mr Rudd’s intinerary for his last day in China is as follows: a meeting with President Hu Jintao and then a tour of a power station. The remains of the day will be at his disposal. In summary – Hu’s on first, watts on second and I don’t know is on third.

Right now, it’s lunchtime and it’s a bit wet and miserable. Hardly the best weather for my holiday-ette, is it? Still, the goal for this week was a bit of “me” time, so the weather doesn’t matter so much, does it? I half-thought about going to the beach for a walk this morning, but it was cold and miserable when I woke at about five o’clock. So I bashed out a few work-related emails, feeling happy and confident that I had done all that I needed to do for a guilt-free week away from the salt-mine.

I’ve also had a reasonably productive couple of hours at the State Library this morning doing some family history research. I’m heading off to North Sydney shortly for lunch with a friend. Don’t you just love holidays?