Sydney ( /sɪdni/) is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is classified as an Alpha+ World City indicating its influence in the region and throughout the world.

Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people. Inhabitants of Sydney are called Sydneysiders, comprising a cosmopolitan and international population.

The site of the first British colony in Australia, Sydney was established in 1788 at Sydney Cove by Arthur Phillip, commodore of the First Fleet as a penal colony. The city is built on hills surrounding Port Jackson which is commonly known as Sydney Harbour, where the iconic Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge feature prominently. The hinterland of the metropolitan area is surrounded by national parks, and the coastal regions feature many bays, rivers, inlets and beaches including the famous Bondi Beach and Manly Beach. Within the city are many notable parks, including Hyde Park and the Royal Botanic Gardens.

Sydney George Shepherd (23 August 1908 - 20 December 1987) was an English cricketer: a right-handed batsman and right arm medium-fast bowler who made a single first-class appearance, for Worcestershire against Yorkshire in May 1936. Batting at nine, he scored 9 and 0, on the latter occasion being dismissed by Hedley Verity who was on his way to taking 8-40.

After World War II, Shepherd played for some years in minor counties cricket for Cheshire. His first appearance at that level was something of a mixed experience, as he took 4-71 in the first innings, but Cheshire lost by ten wickets to the Lancashire Second XI, never recovering from collapsing in their first innings from 85/2 to 120 all out with the last six Cheshire batsmen all making ducks.

Shepherd's final appearance in the Minor Counties Championship was in June 1959 against the Yorkshire seconds, when he was nearly 52 years of age, and his second-innings 3-83 included the distinguished scalps of Brian Bolus, Jack Birkenshaw and Barry Stead.

Regina Ilyinichna Spektor (Russian: Реги́нa Ильи́нична Спе́ктор, IPA: [rʲɪˈɡʲinə ˈspʲɛktər], English: /rɨˈdʒiːnə ˈspɛktər/; born February 18, 1980) is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. Her music is associated with the anti-folk scene centered in New York City's East Village.

Spektor was born in Moscow, Soviet Union in 1980 to a musical Russian Jewish family. Her father, Ilya Spektor, is a photographer and amateur violinist. Her mother, Bella Spektor, was a music professor in a Soviet college of music and now teaches at a public elementary school in Mount Vernon, New York. She has a brother Barry (Bear), who was featured in track 7, "* * *", or "Whisper", of her 2004 album, Soviet Kitsch.

She learned how to play piano by practising on a Petrof upright that was given to her mother by her grandfather. She was also exposed to the music of rock and roll bands such as The Beatles, Queen, and The Moody Blues by her father, who obtained such recordings in Eastern Europe and traded cassettes with friends in the Soviet Union. The family left the Soviet Union in 1989, when Regina was nine and a half, during the period of Perestroika, when Soviet citizens were permitted to emigrate. Regina had to leave her piano behind. The seriousness of her piano studies led her parents to consider not leaving the USSR, but they finally decided to emigrate, due to the ethnic and political discrimination that Jews faced. Spektor is fluent in Russian and reads Hebrew, and has since paid tribute to her Russian heritage, quoting the poem February by the Russian poet Boris Pasternak in her song Après Moi, and stating “I’m very connected to the language and the culture.”