Sunday, January 18, 2009

Today Has Been Awesome...

As the title suggests, I have had an awesome day today. It was Sunday so I only worked 5 hours, but work was interesting though. I saw my first protest today. There were thousands upon thousands of people that walked nearby Cartier protesting Isreal's occupation of the Gaza Strip.

It was quite cool. There were riot police everywhere. At first I had no idea what was going on, but then one of the security guys came up to me and told me that there was a protest heading our way. The Cartier store is located in the MLC building, which I learnt, also has the American Embassy in it, so there were some fears that the protesters might head there. Luckily, nothing got out of hand; the protesters were routed up King street to Hyde Park, and it remained peaceful. I was ready out front of Cartier though with orders to close and lock the doors had they come down the street. Here are some pictures of what I saw.


In this picture, I am standing in front of Cartier. The protesters can be seen walking past down the street. It was like a strange parade and it lasted around 10 minutes.Same thing. Sorry for the poor quality of the pics. You can make out the mounted police guarding the street so that they could not enter. The street has lots of expensive jewelery stores on it so it is not an ideal place for a riot to get out of hand.


This is just a picture of the mounted police, they were all girls ;). And at one point we have 5 riot SUV's infront of the store, several cop cars, and a couple riot trucks.
This is Cartier's mat. I am in charge of bringing it in. I also don't know how to rotate pictures yet, sorry about that. This I found ironic. This is at Hyde Park, where all the protesters ended up. As I walked past, I noticed an ad for ANZ was casting a shadow that looks like the Star of David on the ground. In the far back you can see, and could clearly hear all the protesters. I was just at the right time of day to walk by and see this because look at what the ad booth looks like.

So yeah, weird.


After I got off work I went SURFING!!! I rode my best wave ever; check out my surf journal at the top for the details.

And now Mike and I might head out to the casino for a bit. So great day overall.

Andy G

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey, sounds like an exciting day...
The picture of the star of David is pretty freaky eh?
Sounds too like you are becoming quite the surfer, maybe get Mike or someone to take a video of you surfing one day that would be cool to see..
Have a great day tomorrow too...
Love ya,
Mum xoxo