Sydney, Pt 7

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Dan had invited us to a birthday party, but we weren't meeting him at the pub until 7:15. We went for lunch at Mother Chu's vegetarian kitchen, which was right around the corner. The food was maybe a little overpriced, but on par with most of the sit down restaurants in Sydney. Dishes were roughly $20, rice cost extra. They were quite good, though, and the little Mandarin Dynasty shaped hole in my heart ached a little.

Since we were in the area, we tried to look for the store I'd seen the koala in, but we'd been hopelessly lost when we got there, so trying to find a place you'd only stumbled into proved impossible. Chip is a good sport, and we circled the blocks for another hour or so, until it started to rain. Ross called when we got back - he'd told his friend that he'd already met everyone, so wanted to make that come true. I wasn't sure if we were doing drinks with Dan, or just meeting there and going straight to the party, so we agreed to meet at the Oxford Hotel around 6:15, which would give us time to drink with Ross.

We weren't sure exactly where on Oxford the bar was, so we just walked up the street that would take us to the very beginning. Looking, I saw that I had been just a few blocks from Oxford the other night when I was wandering around lost. But I would later find out that Arq isn't even on Oxford, it's on a side street, so even if I'd found my way to Oxford, I still wouldn't have found the party. When even hindsight isn't 20/20, you know you were fucked.

Ross, Kevin, and Randy were all already at the bar when we got there. Everyone offered to buy me a drink, which was lovely, but I declined. We were going to a party we'd already bought booze for - why spend more? Dan got there with his *very* handsome friend, Simon. It was a little tricky juggling diving attention to Chip, Ross, Dan, Kevin, & Randy, but it worked rather well. I felt a little bad - we left Ross there alone, but he was meeting other friends anyway.

We walked to the party, which was maybe about 20 min away. It was a small apartment, but the music was really good. We were also some of the very first to arrive, so not only did I not feel bad about being Dan's +1 and then having my own +3, I actually kind of felt like we brought the party. My first drink hit me *very* hard. Hard enough that I waited an hour or so for my next one. His roommate showed up at some point, with his own drunken entourage. I caught one of them looking at me a few times, and myself found him to be very very attractive, in a slightly husky sort of way. Michael? Brandon? Some fairly generic boy name. He's an attorney with the government there, and said my desire to be "amazing" at something is very American. I started to think he might have been patronizing to me at one point, but I gave him my card anyway.

We were going to maybe go to a bar after, but there were lines everywhere. Actually, we spent long enough chatting in front of the Oxford Hotel that we would've been long since inside if we'd just gotten in line to begin with. Kevin & Randy headed home. Dan suggested we all go back to his place, but I knew where that was headed. I'd have been happy to play with him & Simon, but that would've left Chip out, and I don't do that to my friends. Often.