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There are no polar bears in Sydney Zoo
A story of woe by Adny Warren

Those of you who know me, and no doubt some of you who don't, will probably know that I have spent the last four months living in Sydney, Australia. A very nice, if slightly tall, city located on what I was assured is one of the most spectacular natural harbours in the world. In truth, I returned over a month ago, but time being as it is, and me being a lazy bastard as I am, it's taken this long for any kind of writings about the trip to be forthcoming. Well, those of you who enjoy reading things that I've written (both of you) can rejoice, for here is the latest something.

Feeling little or no desire to go into the whys and wherefores of my decision to leave the country for slightly longer than is considered normal, I shall simply say that I was unhappy at work and the opportunity to leave and travel with a good friend presented itself. I could explain that the retarded sphincter of a man whose job description bordered on führer, was causing me to lose not only the will to work, but indeed the very will to live. Had I been forced to endure the torment of being dictated over by the petty little cuntybastard for very much longer, then I may have had to resort to handing in my notice stapled to a freshly laid turd. Before rubbing it into his face. And stabbing him with the nearest vaguely sharp object. Right in the face.

I could explain all of this, but I really don't see the point.

Needless to say, I was a little more than delighted to tell mein glorious leader that I would no longer require his employment, although the malicious glint in his utterly evil eyes suggested that he too would welcome us parting company. Whatever, I told myself, I'm just glad to be getting gone. Gone, no less, to the other side of the world, to spend what was planned to be 6 months travelling and working with Tony. Those of you who don't know Tony, consider yourself unlucky, unless you know somebody even better, in which case don't bother. For the record, Tony (AKA Mr T, Mr Tolley, Tea, the Teaman and (not by me, at least not very often) Twat) and I started "work" at the same time, and have therefore known each other for over 4 years now. I say "work", because when you sit next to somebody with whom you share a sense of humour, very little happens that the company might describe as productive.

When I say we share a sense of humour, I don't mean that we have only one between the two of us. Not only would this be highly impractical when trying to be funny independently, but it really wouldn't work as a concept based even loosely in reality. But I digress, as is my wont. The Teaman, unknown by myself at the time, had been planning a grand world tour for almost all of the 4 years since we'd first met, and when he informed me of his plans I instantly agreed that it was a most excellent plan. Much as I'd have liked to have joined him on the entire voyage, bills and commitments meant that I'd have only really been able to join him for the Australian section of the trek. We decided to meet in Sydney, stay for a while, work, travel, and after 6 months part ways, for the T to continue around the world and myself to return to good old, cold, wet Blighty.

With the preparation completed, finally the day of departure arrived (if that makes sense, which I fear it does). With a spring in my step and a monkey (named Kevin) lashed to my backpack, I set off for the airport. Two days and no sleep later, I landed in Sydney airport. For those of you who have never travelled on a plane for this long, I have some advice. Don't. EVER. Seriously, it's not big and it's not clever, and it sure as hell isn't much fun. Of course, it was all fine as soon as I met up with Tony at the airport, which happened about 2 hours after I landed, mainly because I landed an hour too early and Tony and I both got slightly lost trying to find each other in the airport. In fact, I was on my way to get a taxi into town when I saw him approaching, so I manoeuvred my airport trolley into his path in the hope of getting his attention. It wasn't until he moved to avoid me and walked right past that I realised he must not have recognised me.

Which brings me on to something that really annoys me. When people in the street approach me and say "hey, aren't you Andy Warren?", or words to that effect. Not that I don't like being approached, it's just that when these are people that I went to school with about 10 years ago I find it disconcerting that they instantly recognise me while I have no clue who they are. I mean really, have I not changed that much since those early school days? Do I still look as I did when I was 12? For the love of something holy, I have a beard now! Well, in truth it's little more than a ginger stain on the area around my mouth, but the thought was there. Anyway, once again I seem to have gone off on a tangent. Back to the matter in hand...

Eventually we arrived at the hostel, although on the way I was greeted by something that I thought I'd have seen the back of when leaving England. Rain. I left the UK at the beginning of October, and had hoped to avoid winter altogether since I would be travelling to the southern hemisphere, however it seemed that for whatever reason I would have to endure more rain in Sydney than I had at home. At least it was warm. Rain aside, first impressions were good. The city was clean, modern and fairly welcoming, and the hostel was tidy and well equipped. However, arriving at 7 in the morning meant that I wouldn't be able to check into my room (and more importantly, have a shower) for another 3 hours, so I left my stuff with the über-fit receptionist and headed with the T-meister to check out the city.

Finally got back to the hostel, freshened up and what have you, and was surprised by how tired I didn't feel. Having not slept properly (aeroplane sleep doesn't count, even in premier class (oh yes, I forgot to mention that for the second 10-hour leg of my journey I was very kindly given a free upgrade to premier class, which was very nice indeed. The food itself was incredible, mainly because it was actually edible)) for more than two days, I thought I'd have been ready to pass out. However, I didn't even feel dozy, in fact I felt more awake than I had done for quite some time. This concerned me a little, but I soon forgot about it and continued going about my business. Realising that boozing it up on the first night was perhaps not the greatest idea, we decided to see something at the cinema, which at the time happened to be Pirates of the Caribbean. Now, whether it was the darkness in the cinema, the sitting down in such comfy seats, or just the days catching up with me finally, I don't know. Whatever it was, it made me sleep almost straight away, meaning that I lost most of the film, and what I did see made no sense at all. All I clearly remembered was the zombie monkey, but then it's very likely that I just dreamed about such a beast, and one just happened to be in the film as well. I don't know.

Incidentally I recently watched the film on DVD, and it really is rather enjoyable. Not the greatest movie ever made, but good fun nonetheless.

So ended the first of many days in Sydney, and after that point we did most of the stuff that real tourists do. We went up the tall tower thing, into the Chinese gardens, around the harbours, up to Bondi Beach, and of course of the bay to Taronga Zoo. Zoos are great, period. They have animals in them, which is good, and more often than not they have monkeys, which borders on the sublime. The great thing about the zoo in Sydney is that to get there you first need to take a ferry ride across the harbour, which is an awesome sight in itself. Then, upon arriving at the zoo you take a cable car ride from one end to the other, which would have been quite spectacular had they not been in the process of building new stuff RIGHT UNDER THE BLOODY CAR ROUTE. Consequently there was very little to see other than lots of sweaty Australian men baking their bollocks off while trying to build a new home for the penguins, or something (this, incidentally, is not something that I'd rush out to see, however I understand that many people may prefer to witness this than an enclosure of penguins). However it was still rather good fun and better than walking all the way from one end to the other (which, of course, we had to do in the end anyway).

As soon as we had vacated the cable car, we found ourselves a map of the zoo from the back pocket of a friendly old man (at least, Tony told me he was friendly, I was too busy stealing his map to talk to him) and set about seeing the shows. Bird shows, penguin shows, and a rather abstract eel show that was less of a show and more of a "look at this eel" kind of thing. But the birds were good, and obviously the penguins were ace too, but nothing prepared us for the monkeys. Well, that is nothing except all the monkeys we've already seen, and the stuff we know about them. But they were great. Then we looked at the map and tried to find the polar bears, but we couldn't see them marked on the map. We asked a few people milling around where the polar bears were, but no-one knew. We asked a minor member of staff how to get to the polar bear enclosure, but she just stared blankly at us like we were cars and she was a rabbit. We eventually went all the way to the manager of the zoo, and asked him where we had to go to see the polar bears, and although he checked his real-time satellite map of the zoo, he couldn't find the bears for us. Finally we managed to meet with the President of Australia, and after a little general chatting we got to the matter at hand. And then, after all the time spent, he told us the truth.

They're in the enclosure next to the eels.