Bridge celebrations and figure skating

(I´m being multifunctional: While writing this I´m also doing the first step of my do-it-yourself-pedicure. My feet are swimming in a sink of hot water. They´re so gross - blisters and hard skin - because of constantly wearing thongs. I bet you don´t wanna hear any more...)

On Sunday I got up decently early to read my marketing book but almost fell asleep. Fortunately it was the day of Sydney Harbour Bridge 75 Years celebrations so I didn´t have to study for long before Carla and I left to do the bridge walk. We took a train to Milsons Point, which is on the other side of the bridge, and crossed the bridge back to the city with tens of thousands of other people. We agreed the even was succesfully organized: There were no major delays on transportation schedules (or at least we didn´t notice any), people crossing the bridge were guided clearly on both ends and the walk itself went smoothly without unnecessary rushing or crowding. Everyone was given a free neon yellow cap and it looked cool having all the people wearing the same color. There were some helicopters flying over the bridge and the ABC had its stands along the bridge walk, but other than that there wasn´t anything else exciting. After the bridge walk we went to the Museum of Sydney to see a special exhibition of the bridge. They had mostly some old documents, architectual plans and pictures about the different stages of planning and building the bridge. We walked around the other parts of the museum, as well, but it was rather small and not as interesting as some other museums here.

People crossing the Harbour Bridge

Carla and I

(In the case you´re dying to know, I just went through the second phase of my pedicure: Smoothing my feet, and shaping and painting my toenails. Phase three is going to include sedond layer of nailpolish and lotioning.)

I spent Sunday evening watching an ice show at the Canterbury Ice Rink. Fire On Ice, the senior synchronized skating team of Sydney Figure Skating Club, won the Nationals and is going to represent Australia at the Worlds in Canada next week. The ice show was held mostly for them as a pre-competition performance. Taking into account the fact that figure skating doesn´t belong to the popular sports among Australias and their team hasn´t placed well at any of the previous Worlds, their programs were ok. With the constantly changing rules I think it´s great they´ve came up with two senior level programs. I didn´t notice any particular themes for their programs, expect that the free program music was specially made for them. I think the new 16-skater-rule is helping teams not having a lot of skaters to choose from to form a decent team. Also the junior team performed their short program and I have to say many of our juvenile teams in Finland are better! Besides synchro we got to see an ice dancing pair perform two show programs. Despite of being a bit slow they were skating rather well. Also this girl, who trains in Colorado, performed her short program. I don´t know if she can do any triple jumps, but this time she was jumping only douples, and a single axel. Her basic skating and foot work were fine, though, and she had adapted the American style in her skating. It´d be interesting to know if she competes internationally. After the show they provided tons of different kinds of pastries and cakes, and chocolate covered strawberries :P I just stood there by the foods table and kept eating, and also talked briefly to one of the Fire On Ice skaters. It was nice seeing some skating after a long break and I´ll definately go see some more of their shows and competitions during the year. By the way, the Figure Skating World Championships are held in Tokyo this week and I´m so excited about Susanna and Kiira!

Fire On Ice short program