A note: Don’t sweat the small stuff

Hi all my lovely blog followers,

 I just wanted to do a post with a very different topic today, as I have had something terrible that has happened to two of my friends.

In a second I realised that you can’t sweat the small stuff, there are more important things to worry about and that life’s too short. I guess the connotations of those remarks can be taken as they will, but essentially I have been inspired by the strength of my friends that have been directly affected by these terrible events, and those that have been there to pick them up when they needed them the most.

 This terrible accident two weeks ago that has left our local community back home shell shocked, along with many friends over here!

What happened?

Two good friends from my home town have been in holiday in Australia having the time of their lives, a six month break to see Australia with all of their best friends. They’ve travelled around and worked hard. They were due to go home in four weeks…

They went away for Easter to Surfers Paradise and has a great time. That was until one of the guys got caught up in the middle of someone else’s fight (wrong place wring time, he wouldn’t hurt a fly). He was knocked unconscious by a guy who hit him around the head with a chair. He collapsed, but came round shortly after.

Three days later he was back in Sydney and he felt faint, he ended up passing out and having a severe seizure. After being rushed into hospital they concluded that he has in fact fractured his skull as a result of the blow to the head and fluid had been leaking on his brain. He has been told just this week that it is infected and he will not be able to leave the hospital for at least one month. No one yet knows what the long term effects will be.

Whilst he was undergoing brain surgery his best friend offered to cover his job for him so that  he didn’t lose it. It was on a building site in Randwick. On his first day (whilst his friends was undergoing brain surgery)a terrible accident happened, a crate of heavy timber fell onto him, leaving him with a broken spine and no feeling below his neck. He is in Randwick hospital and needs 24 hours care, the outcome of his injuries is yet unknown (he has been given just a 10% chance he’ll ever walk again). His parents have just arrived in Australia to support him.

How you can help:

The fundraiser will be on Friday 20^th May at the Kogarah RSL, I will post the flyer up later today.

They have already secured lots of prizes for a raffle on the day. Prizes include rugby shirts, meals for two, hotel stay for two in city, XBOX 360, HTC Desire and HTC Mozart, 20^th Century Fox DVDs and many more!  

Hopefully you’ll be able to make it to the event, if not if you’re able to donate any prizes, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Thank you in advance for any kind donations (big or small) towards this worthy cause.

Optimist101

Savoury Sydney family

Living over the other side of the world is an adventure, tick! A learning experience, tick! Sometimes lonely, tick! Now I am one of a very lucky group of friends that really considers Sydney our second home, thanks is the most part to our amazing ‘Sydney family’.

Missing friends getting married, having babies, building homes and futures can be so hard, but it is part and parcel of being independent and following your dream to live the true ‘Aussie life’ on the other side of the globe.

My family back home have been great, my mum arrives in Sydney next week for five weeks and will be her second venture to visit me in the ‘Land D’n Under’ in 12 months. My brother arrived in Melbourne last week and will be here for a whole year. I can’t believe it, going to be awesome having them here! When my mum leaves though, I know I’ll miss her and be sad, but I always know I’ve got my bessies here on this amazing adventure with me.

There’s a term coined in Sydney by many nationalities to describe the people who flew the nest a little further than maybe their parents would have liked, we often describe each other as ‘Sydney orphans’.  Typically we’re a group of young professionals working and living here, our home from home. Any occasion such as Christmas, Easter and birthdays, we all pull together to celebrate together. It’s not just the Brits it’s Kiwis, Canadians, Dutch, French, South American, African etc

One thing that really stood out to me when I’d been here for a year was how approachable everyone is here. Not like London where if you look at someone sideways, or heaven forbid, you try to say hello you’re looked at like you’ve got two heads.

It also stood out to me how much of a completely small world it is, never before has the term ‘six degrees of separation’ rang more true.

Source: http://blog.familyvalue.com.au/?p=68

Here are just a few examples:

Steve arrived in the Hostel, we got to chatting after he’d been here a few hours. He explained that he only knew one person in Sydney, the girl who placed him in his last job, oh and that she was from Wigan. He then told me her name: Julie XX. Yes, yes that’s right the same Julie that I went to college and uni with, the one that I now live with and is my best friend.

I continue… I met Dave, a friend or a friend of Louise’s. We were at my friends 30^th BBQ and got talking, turns out that he’s from near my home town back home. I explain to him that my lovely friend Sophie and a guy I used to date back home are from there. He asked his name, I wasn’t optimistic that he would know him, I said his name… yup that’s right he knew him, not only did he know him, they were best friends at high school and college. Also, my lovely friend Sophie text me the next week, she only had a crush on Dave all though college too and she couldn’t believe he was here! The walls are starting to close in!

Finally, I’ve already told you about Darren, who I met and we arranged a date a few weeks later. Turns out that the day before the date I bump into his ex GF through a friend of a friend… who he’d been with for NINE years! That’s was an awkward conversation I tell ya!

So you can see from my examples (there are more, however I’ll bank those for later) that Sydney is a small place where everyone knows everyone – one way or another!

So it’s great to have your core friends at the centre of it all. Baring in mind, me and my friend Helen arrived in Sydney two years ago and we only knew each other. Julie arrived three days later, her and Helen hit it off immediately. Steve arrived a month later, who already knew Julie and was staying in mine and Helen’s hostel. Sally arrived that May, she was one of Julie’s friends from university, the same uni that I went to. We all hit it off. Lizzie and Emily worked with Julie we all got on massively. That was just after six months…

Penny arrived in January, she was on the same course as Sally, Julie and me at university. She hit is off with Helen and we all moved in together. Lucy arrived in July 2009, a lovely girl that I worked with in Manchester, she met the girls and clicked straight away.

 A year later Dean arrived with all of the other lads from our home town, they went to university with Penny, Sally and Julie and me. Louise arrived that May and met Julie through a colleague. We met one Sunday at the Beach Road in Bondi – she’s from Widnes, which is down the road from us. She’s now one of our bessies too.

It’s confusing for even me, but you catch my drift. It’s a massive Sydney family that just keeps growing. It’s got to the point when I meet people now, when we add each other on the book of face, I’m more surprised if we don’t have any friends in common, ha!

I’m going to get some of them to pop guest blogs up so you have a different perspective of or silly Sydney times.