This New Year was a fairly quiet one for me, I am not a huge NYE person and think it is over rated personally – everyone bumps up their prices its crazy! Well, Willo, blonde Em, Willo's mate R, and willo's brother and his girlfriend, A and S, we are all in Manly and we caught a ferry to Sydney at about 430pm-ish yesterday arvo. We needn’t have worried to camp out the night before to get a good spot overlooking the harbour to watch the hundreds of thousands of dollars the government has wasted on fireworks because we were lucky enough to be invited to a building (forgot the name, it houses the British and Italian consulates and credit swiss?) courtesy of S’s brother in law where the meeting room overlooked the harbour, harbour bridge and opera house. View was pretty good.

Anyway, we sat down in a German pub in The Rocks (forget the name, think there is one in Melbourne too) for a couple of hours, drinking beer and eating dinner ($18.50 for a cesar salad!!! And it didn’t even have chicken, egg or anchovies in it!) and chatting between ourselves. Of course, there was a problem with the bill, S ordered fries and they were $7.50, and willo’s fries were $10.50 and when A queried this, apparently because one set was ordered after 7pm and fries were not on the menu but in a huge demand, they increased the price by $3!!!! How ridiculous is that??? We were not even told!! Plus this pub were also selling the german sausages for $9.50…crazy and A did not even win the battle over the bill either...oh well…no tip for them!!

We then went to the building; it is called the AXA building (just remembered!) and we saw the 9pm firework show, then waited for 2.5 hours to see the real thing. Was pretty good actually. Did the count down, we were helped but light numbers being displayed on the pillars of the harbour bridge and fireworks started on the harbour bridge then there were two spots along the harbour synchronized and in sync with the music….and then a finale along the harbour bridge and again on the harbour. Got a call precisely about a minute and 26 seconds after midnight from jules! Nice surprise! I have mini movies…dunno how to upload those though…?? Photo might have to suffice. Droidy might do this for me. Oh, plus there were cool boats strategically placed in the harbour al lit up with call lights. I think some of the 80 000 different fireworks were launched from them. Following the fireworks there was a ‘high tech’ light display on the harbour and surrounding buildings. So sydney news say 'high tech'..we know what sydney people are like..

Anyway, after fireworks it was time to battle with the 750 000 (revised figure!) people done on the street to get a ferry – with the events of the groping, crowds, drunks, drunk men trying to kiss you, in Paris pretty clear in my memory, I was not looking forward to this. But elbows up there were no major incidents. Just can’t believe the mess and smell , pretty disgusting. Apparently it will take 2 days to clean up the city. Made it on the ferry where the Australian accents were far out numbered by american, german, british and other parts of the world accents that I cannot recognize….if it was for the view of the 'high tech' light show on the harbour bridge from the ferry, I would have thought I was in another country.

Overall, a pretty relaxed NYE and let's see what is in store for 2004 and I wish everyone well for the year!

Update via [0-0]: And here's a picture!