The Brain Drain...

Yep, Sydney welcomes another kiwi to its sunny shores. The latest to jump ship from the land of the long grey rainy cloud is Mei's old flatmate Stef, albeit temporarily in her case. In between counting down the days to the start of her PhD at the University of Rhode Island she found time to pay the harbour city a visit. So, we popped on our tourist hats and headed for... the generic tourist traps of course...


...and you don't get more generic than the Opera House (unless you're Jared ordering your 10th consecutive mild butter chicken, but that's a whole other story). Nonetheless, even in this age of endless digital snaps there's always room for one more pic of most photographed landmark in Sydney.


The name's Zhu, Mei Zhu... hmmm... somehow it doesn't have quite the same ring when you're one of 56 million Zhu's on the planet.


Next stop, the Taronga Zoo overlooking the harbour on Sydney's north shore. Here a specimen from the earliest rungs of the primate evolutionary ladder makes her first foray into the world of spoken communication. A few rudimentary phrases are captured by the avid observers: "I'm hungy!"... "I'm tired!"... "I'm hungry!"... Ah well, at least we've moved slightly beyond the unicellular level.

An emu muses on some irrefutable evidence that brain capacity is unrelated to intellectual capacity ;)


These giraffes are undoubtably the proud owners of the most expensive plot of pseudo-savana in the world - sweeping views of the Sydney harbour and skyline that would fetch a fortune on the property market.

The march of the penguins!

Out of my way peons! I'm trying to spot Citigroup Centre.


Damn it, now there's a fat yankee tourist in my way!

And that's the wrap. Next photos are definitely from Japan. Final boarding call for QF021 is 2210 hours next Thursday. Pull out them sailor suits gals, I'm Tokyo bound!