y.u.p

when piero and i were discussing our life-to-be-in-sydney , we came up with a phrase: young, urban, professional. that was who we wanted to be. we would use these three words to dictate purchasing decisions and to make lifestyle choices.

12-months-ago, when we were looking for a flat to rent, a friend was helping us. we told him about our mantra and he gave us ‘that’ look. in fairness, i understand how people might be reading this and are also mentally giving us a similar look, but 12-months on, our mantra has worked.

i’ve seen enough friends move back to australia to know what i wanted. 

i want to be successful, i want to be part of the beating heart of the city and i want a life that an older version of me will look back on and think ‘that was a life well-lived’.

part of our grand sydney plan was to buy a flat. in the end, it came down to two real possibilities. the sensible one and the one  young-urban-professional one. we stayed true to our mantra and are now the proud owners of our very own darlinghurst flat-of-dreams (down under)*.

now all we’ve got to do is furnish it in y.u.p style! piero... are you getting a bonus this year???

*flat-of-dreams (down under) is a trade mark of the fod franchise.

no more drama... just some fun memories

a group of us took the eurostar to paris one saturday night. we thought it was one of those fabulous-because-we-were-young-and-in-london moments. we wandered the streets of pigalle looking for a club and stumbled across les folies pigalle: a former theatre now decorated like a 30s bordello. it wasn’t the paris that i was expecting, but the best travel is rarely expected.

the place was heaving with 20-to-30-something frenchies, tourists, repressed people who go outrageous on the weekend and a huge number of drag queens and transvestites. there was an upstairs area that overlooked the dance floor which was pumping out your typical dancey-rnb-pop-funky-house mix.

and there were the most bizarre stage shows. a young woman came out and stripped to her underwear and a man did the same. an older woman – probably the age i am now as i write this – came out and stripped all the way and i remember thinking that she must have gone all the way to make up for the fact that she was the older, less pretty one.

and then the main show started. half-way through, cynthia leaned over to me and said ‘it reminds me of aerobics oz style’. a large drag queen dressed in lycra whirled around the stage as mary j bilge belted out no more drama from the speakers. the drag queen and her boyfriend then had an o-t-t argument complete with american-reality-tv-style hand movements before a policeman came and arrested him. for some reason, a nun was then on the stage holding a crucifix which the drag queen grabbed and held above her head as she closed her eyes and mouthed no more drama.

the night ended with us in a random cafe trying to stay awake as we waited for the morning return train to london.

sorry for the ramble. i felt the need to share this as the lycra-crucifix-drag-queen imagery is once again dancing around my head as mary j blige’s no more drama is playing in the background.

colour me purple

this morning was another pound-the-streets-in-search-of-the-dream-flat-morning. we saw five; two are potentials. as always, we broke it up with coffees here, green tea there and even a spot of lunch. but it wasn’t the flats that got my attention today, it was the jacaranda trees.   

as this city edges through spring, the jacarandas are bloomin’.

there’s something spectacular about one of these trees in flower. their loud-in-your-face-purple yet delicate flowers spectacularly clash with the hard-sharp-gray urban landscape. even when you see them amongst other trees, they shine spectacularly making their green neighbours seem almost bland.   

i’m loving discovering sydney. it seems every season has something beautiful to offer. 

P and Riley St 

View from over Darlinghurst & Paddington from one of the flats we viewed

building blocks

when the first of my friends bought their own home in their early 20s, i was excited for them but i just didn’t get it. why would anyone want to buy a house and lock themselves down? life is to be lived! travel beckoned. adventures were to be had. my saturday mornings were to be spent nursing  hangovers not mowing a lawn.


ten(ish) years later, i do get it. a house is a physical representation of a life you’re building with someone. it’s a financial investment in your future. and frankly, it beats paying i-dare-not-even-contemplate-exactly-how-much-i’ve-shelled-out-in-my-lifetime rent.


so piero and i are on the market for a flat. we’re both quite aligned with what we want: central, good view and no lawn to mow. neither of us want art deco (or as it should be known: crap architecture that sydneysiders tell themselves that they love because it’s slightly less offensive than some of the other monstrosities sprinkled throughout this city). and as we associate the word ‘screwdriver’  with vodka and o-j; we defo need something easy to maintain. 


like so many who have walked this journey before us, our saturday morning are now filled with viewings. fortunately, we’re looking over a small geographical area so it’s easy to walk from property to property. 


last weekend, we found one that we really liked. it’s not perfect, but it ticks a lot of our boxes. perhaps soon, i too will be entering the world of grown-ups.

looking forward through the past

running through regent’s park i suddenly stopped. the bt tower towered in the background. it’s never been a monument that i liked, but right there, right then, it seemed suddenly beautiful. an almost tangible link with my past and a city that defined me. it seemed very london. 


the day before, we had arrived at heathrow. it had been ten-months since we had left the british capital and we were excited about our three-week european jolly.  


i visited old haunts, neighbourhoods i loved, new restaurants and places i never quite made it to. for three weeks, i ate and drank myself around the capital and threw in a couple of side trips to york (to watch laura and barry get married) and sardinia (to visit’s piero’s family and eat even more!).


the highlight, as always, was just spending time with old friends. some people made a massive effort and for that i am incredibly grateful. with many, you can pick up where you left off. there’s a feeling that those bonds – no matter how geographically stretched they become – will always be strong. 


we had some truly beautiful moments with friends – a moments glance over a glass of wine; the real excitement you both feel when seeing each other again; and that conversational moment when you hit something deep and realise once again that your exposing yourself, sharing truly something personal and significant with someone who you implicitly trust and who you know who gets why it’s important. 


but the truth is; friendship dynamics do change. some bonds become weaker, the relationship between couples is in a different place from when you last saw them and the energy between groups of friend shifts. at first this can jar, but you have to adjust. 


perhaps the biggest change i noticed was that there was a stronger vibe of ‘we’re in our (early) 30s, some life decisions need to be made soonish’. this is healthy, of course, because the thing with london is that it can fill your life with so much adventure, noise and excitement, that you have to make sure that life’s other gifts don’t slip you by unless you will it.  


leaving london this time, i was sad to think it would be a while before i would see some people again, but i was looking forward to returning to sydney. ahead of me, I saw: a summer of sunshine, time with friends and family, and the building of my life with piero. 


london will always be london: fabulous, exciting, evolving, challenging and the permanent owner of a little bit of my heart.  

(... more pics to come!)

a date with daytime tv

i didn’t work for six months. it was great. i went to the gym, i read the newspaper at my favourite cafes and i explored my new city.

it was also incredibly challenging.

i’m not sure when, but my identity has got mixed up in my employment. i found meeting new people difficult, almost like i had to apologies for not working. i found casual questions by sales assistants ‘do you have a day off?’ almost confronting. and I began to avoid emails and facebook messages from good friends who asked ‘are you working yet?’.

it’s an odd process to go through (even when it’s your choice). and I’d like to think it made me more sensitive to people who aren't working.

smelling the roses (and staring at the bridge)

piero lives in the present. i don’t.

i live in the tomorrow.

lots of ‘happiness’ gurus say living in the present is one of the best strategies to ensuring you are happy. and i think i agree.

living in the tomorrow has its advantages though. when you have 4 friends crashing at your place, you think about practical things like linen, towels and toilet paper. but even typing that sentence re-enforced the gurus theory: towels, linen and toilet paper don’t equal happiness.

at doyle’s fish and chips (watson bay), we had a magnificent view of sydney harbour,  the city skyline and the bridge. it was powerful. it was stunning. i was blessed to own it there and then. i could of sat and stared and it for ages but... part of me wanted to move on. to go and do the next thing. wanting to experience new things isn’t bad – it's a trait i rarely see in dull people – but not appreciating what you’ve got is.

fortunately, despite my internal discomfort of sitting and staring at the beauty for a long time, one of my dining companions asked to stay longer. they too enjoy experiencing the new, but they were wise enough to know the value of living in the present. 

it’s hammer(ilton island) time

a weekend on a tropical island.

it’s an emotive phrase. andrea from italy said it was a must on his to-do-in-australia list. dave from the uk said much the same thing.

for me... mmeeehhhh... not so much. you see, growing up in hot-and-sticky-brisbane, i dreamt of europe. i had a map of the world on my wall and i used to lie on my bed and stare at the old continent. i wondered what it looked like, what all those languages sounded like and i imagined all the battles that those countries had fought against each other over the centuries. it was completely foreign to me. it seemed so magically wonderful.

for my friends from italy and uk - and i guess most of the world’s population - however, it is the tropics that are foreign.

while andrea and his mother, maria pia, were in town, we spent four days on hamilton island – a resort island in the whitsundays off the coast of queensland.

without the urging of foreigners, i think i would have quite happily lived me life without going... but that would have been a mistake.

hamilton island is beautiful. absolutely stunningly beautiful. i won’t lie and say the resort was perfect (seriously – fix your food offering people), but it was a magical four days. 

where are the kangaroos?

our sydney friend jason promised us and our italian guests (maria pia and andrea) a tour of kangaroo valley, south of sydney. mentally i ticked the ‘show our foreign guests some wild kangaroos’ box.

it was then with some surprise i heard jason say: ‘oh, you wont see any kangaroos. cows. lots of cows. but not any kangaroos’. i felt like i had been missold.

i was wrong. kangaroo valley was magnificent! i was gobsmacked by just how beautiful this part of the country was. it was lush. it was green. it was beautiful in a way that reminded me of england.

having travelled to new places in australia since i’ve been back, i realised how much of my country i just don’t know. i think i just always assumed that australia looked like the south-east corner of queensland where i grew up.

come to think of it, i didn’t see many kangaroos growing up either.

the waterfalls

on the way to kangaroo valley 

bundaberg dreaming

when i was in london, i moved flat/house/pad 9 times. i hate it. i hate packing up my stuff. i hate unpacking my stuff. i hate carrying large, heavy, odd-shaped objects through smaller, rectangular doors.

given this, i was surprised then when i found myself telling my brother i was heading up to bundaberg to help him move house. in fairness, i think he was surprised too.

i can’t say i enjoyed the moving, but it was a great weekend. i got to see the first house my little brother bought, i got to spend time with my gorgeous nephew jack and i caught up with my brother, sister-in-law and mum (who decided to join in the house moving fun).

now, back in sydney, i get to see what changes they’re making to their house through the medium of facebook. and best of all, when my sister-in-law texted me to tell me jack took his first step, i knew exactly where he did it.

andrew, loan, jack, mum and dave

escaping the eastern suburbs

in march, mum flew from brisbane to spend a week with us in sydney. i was excited to show mum my sydney and i think mum was equally as excited to re-discover her birth city.

until mum’s arrival, i hadn’t left the eastern surburbs – sydney’s glorious middle class bubble. with mum as my tour guide, i took my first steps out of my bubble and in return took mum to a few of my fav sydney places.

some of the highlights were: 

• catching the ferry to watson bay and finding out more about the dunbar shipwreck
• exploring balmain’s food strip
• taking mum to my favourite sydney restaurant, smiths of bayswater – butchers and wine merchant  
• walking around luna park – an amusement park that overlooks sydney’s cbd
• finishing up with lunch at icebergs overlooking beautiful bondi beach

coming together

sometimes, it all just comes together.

the players: piero’s mamma (maria pia) and fratello (andrea) are visiting from sardina. they have our spare room. crashing on our living room floor are our london friends dave and marta.

further up north, jaimee has touched down in brisbane for a mad 10-day visit of family, friends and home.

touring victoria are cynthia and gez – part of the london gang who now live in sydney.

the challenge: i want to catch up with jaimee, but i’m entertaining guests in sydney. gez and cynth want to catch up with mutual friends dave and marta but are holidaying in victoria. and piero needs to show his family some australian countryside.  

the solution: move everyone to the hunter valley wine region. and add a few more friends to boot!

i hired a 7-seater and drove piero, maria pia, andrea, marta and dave to the hunter. on the way, we picked up jaimee fresh off her flight from brisbane.

on saturday, cynth and gez arrived to take part in the day’s wine tasting. that night they headed back to sydney with jaimee who got her 9pm flight back to brisbane to continue her whirlwind adventure down under. perfect!

along the way we were joined by good friends emily, katie and melanie.  

was it worth that much coordination? i think the pics answer that!

the hunter valley highlights:

• we stayed at splinter's guest house in pokolbin
• we ate at botanica and mojo’s
• wineries i would rate are: scarborough, mistletoe and ernest hill.
• heading there, we drove the tourist route from sydney and on the way back we went via lake macquarie (the actual lake that is, not the town), the entrance and showed our european mates something they don’t always see: the pacific ocean.



changing seasons

the symbols of winter appeared. overnight. unannounced.

i found myself stopping. looking. mentally taking stock. the seasons were changing. was i ready?

you see in london, the approach of winter is fearful. my birthday always fell during that awful october week when british summer time ended, the clocks went forward an hour and darkness fell at 430pm. around the corner lurked winter chill, long-lasting colds and an unforgiving blip in london’s joie de vivre.

today, i sat at tigers bakers cafe, pondering the above. and then it hit me: i’m in sydney! winter isn’t to be feared. the lead up to winter is beautiful – the chill arrives with a freshness, leaves turn a beautiful orange and the sun still shines. truly, one of life’s greatest pleasures must be sunshine on your face during a winter’s day.

on the way home, i passed the symbols of winter which kicked started this entry; they are the rugby posts in the park opposite. you see, back in high school, after the easter holiday, the oval’s prized cricket pitch was left to fade while rugby posts were erected at either end of the field. until i saw them in rushcutter's bay park i had no idea i associated them so strongly with winter. i guess they are just another lifelong spill over from my five years of higher education.

the rugby posts in rushcutter's bay park

sunshine on a winter's (ok... autumn) day

would you like a discovery with that?

discovering is one of life’s best experiences. it’s the feeling that something wonderful is before you, anything is possible yet the tangible presence is tantalising close but still unknown.

one reason i loved london so much was because i was in a discovery stage of my life. every new street, every new experience and every new person could reveal more about the city i was falling in love with and more about a person who i was beginning to better understand, me.

nowdays, the discovery is less intense. i’m in a new city but a city that is not that unfamiliar to me and while self-discovery still happens , it’s certainly not to the same magnitude or surprise as what i experienced in the uk.

a couple of nights ago, piero and i went to the winery on crown st - it’s the sister restaurant of one of our local favourites, the gazebo. the place is an amazing discovery! it’s an outdoor-indoor venue that sits on a slightly raised position overlooking the city. piero and i happily sat there, staring at the skyline and taking stock of the last 6 months – from london to sydney via south america, flat hunting, mortgage hunting, job hunting, the amazing cast of people on the journey with us and all the emotions we experienced. it was lovely and rewarding to reflect on the journey we took and all our discoveries on the way. it was also great to do it in a venue that we can now add to our sydney discoveries list.

take off your clothes and show me your typeface

love to love you baby...oooooooohhhhh!

that donna summer’s anthem sums up my feelings for smiths on bayswater – butchers & wine merchant, my fav local restaurant.

i love everything about it – the food, the service, the name, the is-it-casual-is-it-formal-vibe, the interior design, the throwback black-and-white-floor-tiles and even the type font!  

as piero said in his tripadvisor review: 'Overall a great place: try it and you might find yourself hooked!'

all aboard popeye

sydney is all about the harbour. if you’re not near it, staring at it or on it, you’re simply not sydney. and that is something we’re just not prepared not to be.

having a flat that overlooks the harbour means we’ve got the near-it and staring-at-it criteria ticked. all we had to do was find a way to conquer the third. the answer? jet boating!

while jayde was in town, the three of us boarded a stunt boat that twisted, turned and spun as all aboard screamed, laughed and – to paraphrase geri – got absolutely soaking wet. it was 45mins of pure fun.

but once is never enough so we found a way to take to the harbour again: a learn to sail class. i think when we booked, we were imagining lounging on a deck, sipping champagne while staring at the harbour. i can assure you, it was not.

learning to sail means training to be crew – we tied knots, upped the sails, steered the boat, ducked s the boom swung over our heads and grasped nervously to the sides as the boat tilted so much it made the jet boat experience look tame. it was three hours of work, three hours of fun and three hours of understanding why the harbour is the heart of the city.  

compassion in the city

potts point and surrounds are truly gorgeous parts of sydney that are home to some of the city’s, and indeed the country’s, richest people. but nestled behind potts point’s trendy cafes is the wayside chapel – a homeless shelter that helps 200 people a day.

the wayside has just published an amazing book called stories from the wayside where four top fashion photographers took shots of wayside visitors to show the humanity that unites us all. as part of the book’s promotion, timeout sydney published a fascinating interview with the wayside’s reverend graham long. if you’re interested, it’s well worth the read (i couldn’t find the interview on their site unfortunately, only in hard copy) but i’ve reproduced the last paragraph for you which put a smile on my face.

reverend graham long: ‘look, i think sydney is mostly a place of enormous compassion. our governor (marie bashir) is an extraordinary person. she phoned me one day to say “graham, i’ve got clothes for your op shop, would you like them?” i said. “that’d be great.” next thing you know the governor’s car is down the road and a man hands me a bundle of clothes. i put it into the op shop, and within an hour i saw a bag lady walking up the street wearing the governor’s clothes. new tell me, when has that happened in the history of nsw?’ 

heading south

‘melbourne or sydney... melbourne or sydney,’ was the focus of our where-to-live-in-oz debate.

like many visitors to australia, piero had been wowed by sydney’s gorgeous harbour, enviable weather and world-class city beaches. like many brisbanites (and countless others who grow up in a city which is not their country’s biggest), i’ve always been weary of sydney’s brashness but loved melbourne’s more subtle charms of style, reserve and understatement.

in the end, we reasoned that as brilliant as melbourne was, its  offerings were similar but on a smaller scale to what we-had-and-were-leaving-behind in london. sydney, however has one trump card that london (god bless it) and melbourne just don’t have: fantastic weather. after seven years of random weather, we wanted sunshine.

fortunately, choosing to live in one of our preferred cities hasn’t ended our love affair with the other, especially when it’s only a one hour flight away. last weekend we took advantage of the short distance and flew south to melbourne to stay with our friend jayde.

the weekend reminded me of exactly why i love melbourne. the funky cafes burst with character while serving up first-class food, the people appear to be effortlessly cool and stylish, and the city itself is picturesque while being small enough to saunter around in a half-day. i found myself wondering, should we have chosen melbourne? 

and then it rained. and then it was cold. and then it rained again. and i remembered exactly why i was so happy to be in sydney . 

some of the great places we visited that get the patata-seal-of-approval are:

• madame sousou cafe for a fabulously parisian brunch 
• shou sumiyaki sake bar and grill for a cook-it-at-your-table japanese bbq
• de clieu cafe for the most amazing bacon and eggs i've ever had
• charcoal lane - a high-quality, aboriginal-themed mission australia restaurant that is all about enabling aboriginal and disadvantaged young people to gain work experience

show me the grey

the anti-carbon tax rally made me angry. not because it happened – power to anyone who wants to protest – but because the leader of the opposition, tony abbott, took part. he has every right to of course, but the rally appeared to have more than its fair share of extremists groups sporting placards that were cruel and sexist.

it’s easy – and pretty unimaginative – to criticise politicians. it’s even easier – and even more unimaginative – to say things are getting worse. but the rally really worried me as it seemed to justify both these statements. federal  australian politics has always been feisty but at the moment it appears to be sliding downwards, becoming unacceptably divisive.

i can’t pretend to like tony abbott.  his machiavellian approach to things like the rally appears to be underpinned by a belief that his world view is completely and morally right. i worry that he just doesn’t see, feel or experience the grey. the problem with this is that it’s the ability to see the grey and let it influence you that stops extremism, prevents us from forcing our views onto others and opens our hearts to real compassion.

there are many things i would like our politicians to do but top of the list for me is for the opposition to have the courage to elect a leader who sees the grey.

feeling smug

as part of the we-live-in-a-kick-arse-community stage we’re in, piero and i decided to brave our local theatre, darlinghurst theatre, for a double showing.  

the first show was gorgeous bastard! – three gay blokes attend the heterosexual wedding of their ex. while there was some witty dialogue, all up it was a bit disappointing as it wasn't cast well and the script wasn’t particularly adventurous (is anyone really surprised that gay guys marry women when homophobia is still rife in society) or insightful (money, kids and making the jump to the other side were all possible reasons given for the wedding). the most interesting plot theme - one of the blokes was the brother of the wife - was brushed over but if i was at a wedding and a guy told me he’d shagged his sister’s husband-to-be, i think that would be the focus of my play rather than a gay guy playing straight.

fortunately, the second show - jane austen’s guide to pornography -  was much better. jane austen and a modern author help each other out - jane helps him add real romance to his novels while he helps her add sex. the due-worldly-element was reminiscent of the hours and hearing romance-obsessed-jane describe sex and the sex-obsessed-author describe romance was entertaining. add some drag, ridiculous piss-take-18^th-century -dancing and a pertinent point about whether you can have romance without sacrifice, the second play was much more to my liking.

and the best bit: feeling smug that we’ve supported local theatre on our short walk home.

baby, i’m feeling bootyliscious

‘do you ever see people shagging?’ he asked as we stood on my balcony. it wasn’t the first time i’d been asked that question by a guest. you see, we live opposite the a hotel. every day, 100 bedroom windows tantalisingly open their curtains begging us to look in.

when i moved in i thought i would see a gigolo-concierge appearing in room 305 and then in room 378 one hour later. i imagined naked models having out-of-control pillow fights. and i assumed that late night skinny dipping would be rigueur-du-jour. but as i tell all my guests – and they almost all ask - all i’ve seen is an obese old dude walking around without pants and a busty teen’s back as she jumped into the pool topless. hardly, mills and boon.

the reality is, it is the hotel guests who have been getting an eyeful. at first, i was very careful, gentlemanly perhaps, and made sure i was never naked in view of the windows. but gradually that changed. i reasoned five-seconds-of-flesh didn’t justify shutting my curtains. dressing in the hidden-from-the hotel’s-view bathroom was a hassle when the floor was wet. and is opening the balcony door only wearing my shirt really that bad?

well played hotel... it appears the voyeur has become the voyee.

fleeting past, fish and chips future

the problem with history is that they teach it at schools. 

today, piero and i headed to watson bay - one of the entry points to sydney harbour. these days, the place is famous for doyles' fish and chips and breathtaking views of sydney city. but 223 years ago it was here that the first fleet passed on their way to landing at port jackson.

learning about the first fleet in school is important but the sheer scale of what the british achieved in taking 8 months to transport 1,400 people in 11 ships 12,000km to the other side of the world is often lost. standing on the headland staring at the ocean which stretches until it touches the sky, it struck me what a truly miraculous feat it must have been, how terrifying it must have been for so many of the convicts and soldiers, and how peculiar it must have been for the aborigines watching the ships arrive.

i think history crosses the line from school-yard-yawn to stop-you-in-your-tracks-fascinating when you stop thinking about it as events that happened and think about it as something that was once happening to people like you and me.

what they would have seen 223 years ago

piero with the city in the distance



standing tall

after our five-week-steak-and-wine-tour of south america, the thought of slipping into a body-hugging wet suit for a surf lesson was a bit daunting. but after yanking, pulling and jumping around to squeeze the suit on, i realised something: the suit is less body-hugging and more body-shaping.

after checking (and re-checking) every bulge in the mirror, we then headed to the waves for two hours of fun. both piero and i managed to stand up and piero even earned the coveted nose-dive-of-the-day award.

here’s a few photos from the day...

skinny flat white

it happened to me while drinking a skinny flat white at zinc. staring at the picturesque tree-lined street, watching the well-dressed potts point locals scurry by, the nice cars seemingly hurry-free as they pass... i felt a wave of happiness sweep me up. i felt i belonged.

perhaps it had to do with the beautiful card piero gave me the day before, the fantastic dinner we had last night at smiths's on bayswater - butchery and wine merchant or maybe it was just taking time to reflect on the now. whatever it was, it felt like i was at exactly the right place.

city virgin

experiencing something new is one of life’s great pleasures. experiencing a new city is a pure pleasure feast: finding a great local cafe, seeing a famous landmark for the first time and discovering how to walk somewhere without consulting a map. what makes the experience even better, is sharing it with mates.

since setting up flat, we’ve been lucky enough to be visited by friends from london, brisbane and melbourne: 

• we’ve laughed ourselves stupid with ms hong and oliver at the opium den
• watched the sun set over bondi from the deck of icebergs with emma and damon
• cooked graham an italian feast in our new flat
• partied with michael up and down oxford st
• and competed with jayde in tranny bingo

our next big arrival: piero’s mumma and fratello from sardinia for three weeks.

piero, me and jayde

cinema al fresco

in sydney, it’s all about the water. we live, work, play and, in summer, even watch movies against a big blue backdrop.  

last night, with the city skyline and opera house framing the screen, we checked out the matt-damon-acted, clint-eastwood-directed flick, hereafter, at the st george open air cinema.   

the movietrots rather than gallops along as the three main characters struggle to deal with aspects of the hereafter (the solution, apparently, can be found outside a london pizza express). but with the sydney harbour as the backdrop, the city lights glowing and bats flying overhead, the night was simply stunning.  

even sex and the city 2 would have been passable with this backdrop... well almost.