Michael Lives Here

Good times

2009-05-21T03:43:00.001-07:00

So, I had a pretty good week at work last week. The main reason for this was that I got to go on a semi-junket to San Francisco, which as a work destination is far, far better than Slough, Bristol and Elstree & Borehamwood (which had been my previous best work destinations). The fact that I was getting pummelled by emails on my Blackberry from multiple different time zones was only a minor annoyance because there's no better excuse than a long-distance flight to avoid answering emails. I have to admit that I made the flight over with some trepidation, as I was expecting to attend a meeting at which our side was going to be shouted at and humiliated and, in shameful style, would have to suck it up and take it. However, as it turns out, everyone at the meeting was lovely and we were welcomed with open arms and cream cheese bagels. Result!

After some brief exertion at the meeting, we were able to spend the rest of our short stay wandering around San Fran, checking out the extensive China town, eating seafood at Fisherman's Wharf (which we found only after asking some confused locals where we could find the Fisherman's Dwarf - Blackberry e-mail mix-up) and trying to avoid the smell of sun-bathing sea lions. Also, I was lucky enough to get prime tickets to the baseball, watching the SF Giants see off the Washington Nationals in a match so exciting that my companions had to explain at length that baseball wasn't normally this exciting and usually it was OK to ignore the game itself and just spend the whole time talking and eating corn dogs. Anyway, I quite like the version of baseball where the home team wins by hitting a two-run homer off the last pitch of the match.

Without even the meeting to worry about, the trip back was pleasant indeed and I have to say I was very impressed with the service on Virgin Atlantic. In fact, I was reminded of one of my favourite Seinfeld episodes where Jerry is upgraded to first class, where he gets to sit next to a super-model and choose from a wide selection of French wines. "More of anything?" asks the stewardess of Jerry. "More of everything!" replies Jerry. I did indeed have more of most things - including two desserts and two breakfasts, which is my idea of a good time. Unfortunately, my day-to-day life now seems quite dull and I'm pining for the excitement and cheerful nature of West Coast America. Fingers crossed I'll get to go back sometime, meanwhile I'm just going to have to put up with Moorgate, London. Luckily, I'm going to get to trade in this dull existence once again this weekend, as I'm heading to Paris to take in the French Open tennis. More updates on that later!

Monaco di Bavaria

2009-04-15T06:12:00.000-07:00

Melbourne may have a Paris end and a Beirut end, but Munich is Monaco all over. Except it's in Bavaria. And I think they probably eat more seafood than weisswurst in Monaco. And oompa music and lederhosen are probably less popular outside Bavaria. But otherwise Munich is Monaco all over. And it's great!

I spent the Easter weekend with old friends who are now Munich residents checking out Monaco di Bavaria and the nearby Alps. The weather was stunning, the best of the year so far, and the people of Munich responded by heading to the park to soak up the sun (in some cases lying on reflective mats to ensure they got evenly burnt all over), to the street cafes to sip espressos and pretend to be Italian and to the beer gardens to drink litres of lager and sing cheerful songs. As lifestyles go, it seems pretty hard to beat. Munich is an impressive place, though I have to say I enjoyed the gardens more than the intimidating architecture. The sun was most welcome after a long winter, though it was still good to be able to retreat to the cellar where my mate lives to cool off after a long day.

And we did have some long days. After a late night / early morning drinking lager, familiarising the locals with The Sound of Music soundtrack and explaining why carrots are orange, we managed a few hours of sleep before hopping on a train to Innsbruck in search of edelweiss and ibyx. We didn't find either (though we saw some goat tracks that could have been made by an ibyx), but the stunning mountains around Innsbruck more than made up for it. Unfortunately, the hot weather meant there was a risk of avalanches from fast-melting snow, so a lot of the best hiking routes were closed. Nonetheless, we found a good path straight up one mountain that took us to just below the snow-line before things started to get a little hairy (and the steep slope a little less solid) and we had to turn around.

Admittedly, we almost wimped out at an early stage when (having ignored a sign warning of avalanches) we came across a gully that was piled with snow and debris (including a massive tree trunk that had been ripped from the ground) from a recent slide. It looked a bit dodgy (particularly the bits where the fallen snow had melted through and you could see water rushing underneath) so we were about to turn around when we noticed some tyre tracks and realised that the three year old we had just passed riding his tricycle had just crossed the gully with his Mum. Hurt pride drove us across the gully and up the mountain for the rest of the day.

After the physical exertion of Innsbruck, we thought we'd sample some culture in Salzburg. Salzburg is a beautiful town - it's got nice buildings like Munich, but has been clever enough to put them on hills so that they can be admired from a distance. Smart people, those Salzburgers. After wandering around town for a bit, we stumbled up to the main schloss just before sunset and spent a few hours sampling the local brew on the castle walls, looking at the sunset and listening to random bell-ringing from the churches below. A very satisfying way to end the day, and a highlight of the weekend. The lesson? It doesn't take much more than a litre of beer, a sunny day and a nice view to make you very happy indeed.

The sincerest form

2009-03-22T09:22:00.000-07:00

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then the person who painted the picture appearing on the left of London temporary bar/restaurant/club "The Double Club" should feel very flattered ...

... because I have reinterpreted the picture in my own way and using the colours that were left in my paint box. I call this picture "Jungle" for no reason other than because I can. I am particularly proud of the sharp edges, which are quite different to the other paintings I have done. This period in my career may well be defined by the use of masking-tape.

For my next painting, I intend to leave the jungle and other natural inspirations behind and instead forcus on terraced houses and other urban gems. Fans of dodgy art, stay tuned.

Oh no!

2009-03-06T13:09:00.000-08:00

So Joyce has just joined the exodus back to Australia - the lure of Brisbane is obviously stronger than anyone ever imagined. Naturally, her farewell dinner last weekend was a fun though sad event, but I think the significance of her departure only hit me this week ... when the Timeout arrived in the post. I realised that, for the first time in a long time, I would actually need to READ it in order to find out what's going on in London. No more Joyce to sift through the crap and come up with the good stuff and then organise dates, buy tickets and find a good place to eat near by. From now on, the remaining Londoners have to do their own social organising. In Conrad's words "The horror!"

Creativity lacking

2009-02-22T01:50:00.000-08:00

I've had an artistic side ever since I was excluded from most of the proper lessons at the Dutch kindergarten and instead spent most of my time drawing pictures of the A Team (specifically, BA's black and red van). Since then, I've tried a full range of artistic pursuits. In high school, I tried to design and build a home entertainment cabinet, which was really a box made out of pine boards, which now holds up my Dad's worm farm. I tried creative writing in university and had pretensions of writing an Australian of Catcher in the Rye (just replacing the word "phoneys" with "wankers"). And when I started work, I bought an acoustic guitar and a book called "How to Play Acoustic Guitar", though I never really made it much beyond the contents page and that shows in my (non-existent) playing ability. More recently I've been drawing elephants and attending life drawing classes.

The point is, despite my artistic nature, I've struggled to find a consistent outlet. Elephants was promising for a while. But let's face it, there's only so many elephants you can draw in one lifetime. Part of the problem is that I can only handle one activity at a time - my creative energy doesn't stretch far enough. So when I've come home from life drawing classes, I'm just too exhausted to write this blog. Luckily, classes are over for a little while, and I can get back to business. I'd better try and knock out this post before I get distracted by that new pottery wheel I've just bought ... (I'm kidding, though I would really like to try pottery - once I considered it the lowest form of art, alongside modern dance, however I now have a growing appreciation of a well-thrown fruit bowl).

As I write, the rats are leaving the sinking ship of England in vast numbers. Just taking a quick poll of my friends (Tim, not sure if the sample size is sufficient, but we'll run with it). Tim, Jen, Brendan, Joyce and Tina have all left or are planning to leave. And this has all taken place in the last 6 months or so. Sure, given the number of friends I have, this number may seem like a drop in the ocean, but it is very significant. London won't be nearly as much fun without them. In any case, the vibe in London isn't at all like when I arrived - there's a general lack of optimism about the future (unlike 2 years ago, when the city was on a high that it hadn't experienced since Queen Victoria tried to take over the world). It's definitely a sobering thought to be at work worrying about getting a tap on the shoulder and 30 minutes to clear your desk and be out the door. Luckily my office has good feng shui and I have an excellent view of the door, so redundancy can't creep up on me that easily.

Nonetheless, despite the lack of friends and job prospects, London is still a great place to live. It's an artistic city, you know, and I'm sure the economic crisis will lead to some good art. I wonder how I could best capture the crisis in clay? Maybe a fruit bowl covered in pound signs and then broken into little pieces? Or filled with orange peelings? That's deep. I'm back!

New Year, New Art

2009-01-12T13:59:00.000-08:00

Well, after some time out from painting in order to try and develop some real artistic skills, I've returned to my first calling. This is my latest work, signalling a radical shift from lines and dots. This one is more about random shapes that fit together. It may be the first of a jigsaw series that I do. It may also be the last. So, you saw it here first. And last.

Hello again

2009-01-10T13:14:00.000-08:00

Uh, happy New Year. Obviously it's been a while since my last post. And now another year has ticked over on the clock. And what's different? Well, a lot and not much I suppose. The last couple of months have been very eventful, to say the least. Recently, I've omitted to blog about such excellent episodes as: a beautiful weekend in the Belgian countryside for Sophie's birthday, the funnest Festivus ever (featuring a very cathartic group airing of grievances), numerous Christmas celebrations (in which a group of my friends consumed the largest and most delicious fillet of beef I've ever seen), a new year celebrated alongside a group of transvestites lip synching to "Survivor" by Destiny's Child, a sad London farewell to Tranzie, my first (and slightly sleepy) trip to the Royal Opera and the start of a new job.

So it's been a hectic few months and, in fact, a hectic year overall. And 2009 looks like more of the same. Some things will be different, and some familiar faces will be missed (Tranzie and, shortly, J Kwok). But other things will be the same - travelling, eating, exploring, avoiding serious life choices, more work and less sleep than desired. I'm looking forward to it. I'm even looking forward to my year at work (remarkable for someone who can be a bit work-shy at times). Hopefully good things will happen this year. And hopefully I will be disciplined enough to blog about some of them at least. My trip to NYC later this month is shaping up as the first highlight of the year - a long overdue visit to see Marty and Mel before they ship off back to Australia. Here's hoping 2009 promises similar exciting adventures for you!

BINGO!

2008-11-16T10:21:00.000-08:00

I wouldn't describe myself as a superstitious person. However, I do have to admit to feeling uneasy in the mornings until I have rubbed my crystal buddha's belly for luck and, during university, I would often consult my mystic 8 ball on important life questions. Oh, and I almost cried when my lucky pacer pencil from high school, which I used for all of my final year exams, stopped working. What a sad day that was.

I admit that my superstitions don't always work. For example, I'm not sure what the mystic 8 ball was on about when it said "Things are looking up." when I was wondering about whether or not to take Legal Issues in Medicine in 4th year uni. But, on the whole, I'm quite happy with how things are going, so I'll keep following my superstitions for now, thank you. In fact, things are indeed looking up and perhaps it's my daily superstitions that are helping. In particular, I seem, all of a sudden, to have become very good at playing bingo.

Now, I say "all of a sudden" but who's to say that I haven't always been good at bingo? Last Friday night was, in fact, the first and only time I've ever played the game and I won twice in the space of 30 minutes. Did I deserve it? Well, hard to say, but I know that no one in the crowd at Underground Rebel Bingo wanted to win that electro shock ball more than me. The ball has certainly found a good home in the shoe box where I keep all my assorted novelty possessions. The 106 pounds in loose change also came in handy, and from the booing audience, I can only assume that it was a prize that people other than me also coveted. I hope I preserved some good karma by spending a portion of the winnings on buying mojitos for my friends. I intend to inject the remainder into the British economy in order to help ward off further economic crisis. A selfless cause, I think you'll agree. It's that kind of behaviour, along with the rubbing of my buddha's belly, that keeps me on the lucky side of the street. For those wanting to learn the secrets of my success, please just drop me an email with "guru" in the subject line.

Some pictures from Prague

2008-10-29T07:06:00.000-07:00

Here are a few photos from our weekend in Prague. I'll try and put more on my Facebook page over the weekend. The full album will consist largely of humiliating photos of me, looking variously pathetic and idiotic, together with a selection of photos of Meredith looking beautiful and gracefully poised. And there will be some nice scenery from Prague, too.

HOT or NOT?

2008-10-21T06:53:00.000-07:00

Any excuse, as they say, will do for a holiday. Last weekend Meredith and I conjured up a variety of excuses, from me being deadly quiet at work, to Meredith having recently finished a second-last round of exams and Easyjet having a sale on flights to central Europe. The result: a delightful weekend in Praha (aka Prague), capital of the equally delightful Czech Republic. Planning for the trip involved a close study of Jetsetting Joyce's excellent travel blog, a tribute to which I now present below in the form of "Praha: HOT or NOT?"

The Czech Inn - HOT

The Czech Inn (maybe not the most original of names, but still cute) is an amazingly well designed and constructed youth hostel situated close to central Prague (only a short trip on the number 22 tram from the centre of town). Set in a beautiful old building, the hostel is a modernistic marvel, with beautifully preserved period features and vaulted ceilings mixed with polished cement floors, blinding white walls and streamlined design. The service was amazingly friendly and helpful. Our room was large, clean and beautiful. The highlight though was an awesome bar / cafe, which proved to be a great venue for long breakfasts at the cheap buffet and a couple of bouts of chess over cheap Czech beer. Highly recommended.

The Triton Restaurant - HOT

"Is this hell?" I asked Meredith on arrival in the basement restaurant of the Triton hotel. Well, we were about 20 meters below ground, a world away from the very-commercial and slightly-trashy Wenceslas Square near which the Triton is located and a three-headed Cerberus-like dog was peering over us along with a man dressed in a toga, grasping a book with one hand out-stretched and his mouth open in a scream. Actually, it was far from hellish down there. In fact, it was amazing and the setting of our favourite meal in Prague. Apparently the Triton has been a stalactite-filled cave since 1912. What was it before then I wonder? I'm not convinced the stalactites were real, but that didn't detract from the charm of the place. The strange statues and wall-sized aquarium added to the ambience and the service and food could hardly be faulted. The atmosphere was refined and elegant, though Mez and I did our best to lighten the mood by perfecting our signature handshake. After dinner, the cognac-trolley laden with VSOPs and XOs was calling to me. But we had to scram because we had a date at a jazz club ...

U Maleho Glena Jazz Bar - HOT

For some reason, Prague is well-known as a jazz hotspot. The old town and Jewish quarter are full of smokey little underground cafes pumping out trumpets, saxophones and jazzy electric piano. However, we decided to head over the Charles bridge to the other side of the river to sample the delights of the well known U Maleho Glena. Down a steep set of stairs and past one of the coolest bars I saw in Prague, was a tiny smoke-filled room that sees live jazz seven nights a week, all year long. On the night we were there the band didn't get going until past 11pm, but when they did they busted out some of the best jazz I've heard ... although I haven't heard much. Mez, a much more experienced aficionado than me, concurred that it was excellent, particularly the bald-headed guitar player, who gave a virtuoso performance. The atmosphere of the place couldn't be beaten and we enjoyed the performance from our wobbly bar stools, drinking long pints of pilsner and excellent bloody marys, with muchos gusto.

The Franz Kafka Museum - HOT

I'd heard about Kafka before going to Prague, but have never read any of his books. I had a vague idea that he was like Proust, Tolstoy and Joyce in the sense that everyone agrees that he's a giant of literature without ever having the guts or patience to try reading any of his work. Anyway, young Franz was obviously a troubled character, but sufficiently brilliant to justify his own museum in his loved and hated home-town. The museum itself was wonderfully moody and disconcerting, with floating images, strange sounds and eerily dark lighting. Even though I didn't get a clear narrative of Kafka's life, I picked up enough of the themes of alienation, frustration and existential crisis to get a sense of his work. And I could associate with Kafka's sense of displacement and his uneasy relationship with office bureaucracy. Even though I've yet to read any of his books, I do intend to give them ago. In particular, I was intrigued by the sound of The Trial and The Castle. I think I might also hang a Kafka poster on my office wall - just in case my employers haven't yet identified my growing loss of motivation at work ...

The Orient Cafe - HOT

The citizens of Prague love a bit of cubism, not only on their walls but in their architecture too. Apparently, Prague is the only place in the world where you can find cubist architecture. With good reason too, I suspect, for why would you want all the windows on one wall, all the doors on the ceiling and carpet on the walls? Anyway, the Cafe Orient is situated on the first floor of The House of the Black Madonna (which for some reason reminded me of Allo Allo and the painting of the Madonna with the Big Boobies, but that's probably explained my lack of maturity), which apparently the finest cubist building in town and also home to a cubist gallery and art shop. It's a very pretty little spot and our meals were nice and simple - smoked salmon and a cheese and ham gallette. To top it off, we found seats on the balcony and were serenaded by a group of guitar-wielding buskers on the street below. We were having a great time, although the people walking below us may not have been having as much fun, as a prolonged moment of clumsiness on my part led to a shower of lettuce falling over the balcony.

So that's the end of a short list that could be much much longer. A lot of HOTs on that list you say? Well, that's true, but it was hard to find too many NOTs in Prague and we were throwing strikes all weekend. Loved it.

Better than never

2008-10-01T02:38:00.001-07:00

OK, so this post is a little late, but please refer to the title before getting too critical. Anyway, as regular readers of this blog would know (there must be a few out there), I love life in London. The last year has been one of the best in my life, though it seems to have raced by. When I first arrived in London I was too excited to feel homesick, though I expected that would soon wear off and I would start to miss my home town a lot. Wrong. I have to confess that I generally haven't missed Melbourne that much at all, despite starting most of my stories at work with "Well, that's OK I guess, but in Melbourne we do things much better". I miss my friends and family of course, but I address issue that by encouraging them to come over and visit me here. So, well, come on, where the bloody hell are you?! Anyway, given the lack of strings tugging at my heart, I was actually quite surprised by how much I enjoyed my two week break in Melbourne back in September. I headed back primarily to attend the wedding of Brian and Dilshani, two of my best friends. The bucks night on the first Saturday (which I won't blog about for fear of doing harm to what is still a very new marriage) and the wedding on the second Saturday were the only events I planned ahead of time. So I had heaps and heaps of spare time on my hands to just hang out and enjoy Melbourne. As it turns out, I managed to fill pretty much every day with visits to see old friends and rediscover old haunts. I caught up with a bunch of people from high school and was happy to see them all doing well. I went into town to catch up with some work mates and was happy to find that we didn't waste much time talking about work. I cruised around the south-eastern suburbs and bought a milkshake from Donut King in Dandenong Plaza and lunch at the food court at Knox City. I saw lots of babies, and one toddler with a great memory for dinosaur names. I did some bar hopping in China town and ate salt and pepper fried squid and stuffed tofu at the Supper Inn. Basically, I just had an awesome time. And the weather cooperated too - we had a series of glorious sunny days. Melbourne in spring time is a sight to behold. Driving down St Kilda road, in the middle of the city but surrounded by trees - brilliant. Oh, and I dropped by the Ian Potter gallery in Federation Square too - the collection of aboriginal art on the ground floor is stunning and a must-do if you're in Melbourne. So, yeah, this is turning into a pointless post. Or, technically, it was a pointless post from the start and hasn't gotten any better since then. I promise to finish soon. And I'll finish with the wedding. A truly picture perfect day as far as the weather was concerned, the ceremony and reception were both held up at Tatra Hut in the Dandenongs, in a stunning garden setting. The ceremony was fantastic and memorable, with an amusing speech by the pastor "If your wife is hungry, you must feed her." (I should have taken notes), tears shed by the groom (I pocketed 10 bucks as a result) and two long and sober vows that made a realistic forecast of what married life would be like (it won't be a fairy tale and bad words may be used). A magnificent day all round. It certainly reminded me what an awesome place Melbourne is ... but it wasn't quite enough to make me want to return. Not just yet anyway.

Turning 28

2008-08-28T08:41:00.000-07:00

I really enjoy celebrating other people's birthdays, but I've never been all that comfortable with my own. Basically, I don't deal well with being the centre of attention. It's one reason why my career as an after-dinner speaker never really took off. Anyway, until a couple of weeks ago, I had planned to let my 28th birthday just sail past without any real event to mark it. However, I really hadn't counted on Meredith turning out to be the world's best birthday celebrator. I now know that she is a one-woman birthday party machine who can convince even a birthday-grouch like me to lighten up and have a good time.

It seems that the birthday excitement was building in camp Beaumont well before the "big day" arrived and by the night before I think Meredith was about to explode with anticipation. To avert disaster, she arranged to start celebrations early with a trio of events on my birthday-eve. First, we started off with a meal in a really delightful old pub by Liverpool Street Station - it was all wooden floorboards and wood-panelled walls and served delicious food, including a plate of figs and parma ham, which I loved. From there we ran through the rain to one of London's swankiest bars Vertigo 42, which is situated on the top floor of what used to be the city's tallest building. It may be a bit of a gimmick venue, but we had an excellent time sipping champagne and looking out over the rain-drenched city. We were there after sunset, so the city was all dark streets and bright lights, which made it look very exciting and almost gothic in a Gotham City-like way. Very cool. From there, we moved on to another bar in a beautiful enclosed courtyard, which I would never have found if it weren't for my birthday guide. It was a cool venue, though it was winding down by the time we got there late on a Wednesday night. It was, however, funny to observe a bunch of drunk office colleagues obviously getting set to pair up and head home together though. Kids, please remember that too-much-alcohol and work parties don't mix!

The following day, I went to work still a little sleepy from the night before, but somehow managed to scrape through without doing too much work (except, of course, for an important teleconference that was unhelpfully scheduled for 5.30pm and lasted until about 7pm - much to my frustration). Anyway, straight after work, I jetted out the door to dinner at the Beach Blanket Babylon in Notting Hill. I'd had drinks there before and I like its quirkiness a lot (much more than its sister venue in Shoreditch, which is just pretentious without any real sense of fun). But I was a bit apprehensive, because Huy had given it a very big thumbs down as a place to eat and hang out. As it turns out, we had a great meal (sure, I just had a steak, which is hardly cutting edge cuisine, but it was really perfectly cooked and the handcut chips and veggies were also excellent) and the service was friendly, professional and not at all pretentious. The only thing better than the food was the long list of presents that Meredith gave me in between courses. I won't list them all here for fear of making you all jealous, but it should suffice to say that I will have to lift my game if I am to hold my own in the present-giving stakes this Christmas and on future birthdays.

Overall, I have to say that my 28th birthday was my best one yet and, despite myself, I'm even looking forward to the 29th. Thanks Mez! And thanks also to all my other friends for their kind birthday wishes and gifts. It's nice to know that you all care.

Norway

2008-08-27T04:04:00.000-07:00

Last weekend the usual suspects took full advantage of the Monday bank holiday and headed off to Norway. This was my second visit to Fjord-land and it made me wonder at how I managed to survive my previous visit 8 years ago, when I was travelling on a student's back-packing budget. As the expenses mounted, I cast my mind back to the days of buying stale bread at local supermarkets and living on no-brand peanut butter, bananas and canned ravioli in tomato sauce. Thankfully, these days I can afford to see Scandinavia in (a little) more style. Though the rate I ran through the krone was worrying at times (£2.50 for a bottle of water!), I had a great time in Norge. Highlights were numerous, but a few are listed below:

Smoked fish - Norwegians are a straight-forward people. When they find something they like, they stick with it. For example, they're quite into light fittings and seemingly delight in coming up with different ways of making darkness go away. Not that touch-sensitive lights in your kitchen add much convenience compared to, say, your traditional garden-variety light-switch, but you still have to admire the ingenuity. Anyway, I digress. Smoked salmon abounds in Norway and it's delicious. It's served practically at every meal (or at least it is by tourists such as us) with crackers and potato salad. It's delicious, and along with the prawns and mackerel, makes Norway a seafood lover's delight. I gorged myself senseless at the buffet dinner we had in Flam on Saturday night (hey, when food's that expensive, you've got to make sure you get good value) and don't regret a minute of it. Of course, those used to greater variety of food may get sick of the salmon-heavy diet quite soon - it took Huy around 18 hours from landing in Norway to decide he couldn't handle any more smoked fish.
Swimming in ice-water - Swimming in glacier-melt water sounds like a crazy thing to do, but no one's ever accused a Scandinavian person of being sane (quiet, maybe, but mistaking quiet for sane is a mistake that you don't often get to repeat). Strange then that the person urging us to swim in glacier-melt water was not Scandinavian but was in our kayaking guide from Catalonia. Having clambered up a steep Fjord-bank to stand below a thundering waterfall, our guide convinced the stupider members of the group (including me) to remove shoes, socks and shirts and get wet. It was a great, though cold, experience during which I was caught on camera looking like a pale-skinned Norwegian yeti / mountain gorilla clambering around under the raging torrent of water. I did myself no favours by screaming uncontrollably on hitting the water proper in a pool a little way down the hill. If you listen carefully you can probably still hear the echoes of the mountain gorilla's call bouncing around the hills of the Sognefjord.
Souvenir shopping - I'm not sure whether Norwegians really love souvenir shops and novelty gifts, but they sure think that the rest of the world does. Nothing else could explain the fact that all the shops in Norway sell moose-related paraphernalia, viking helmets, aqua-marine dyed mink sleeveless vests, snow-flake patterned cardigans and mittens. We had a ball trying things on and laughing at the extreme kitsch that surrounded us - sheep-fleece back-pack anyone? It's hard to say whether or not the Norwegian retail industry is flourishing, but if it is I have very little hope for Western European civilisation.
Hot dogs - Desperate for food and short for cash, imagine our collective delight when we discovered Norway's love for the ultimate fast/cheap food: hot dogs. Stumbling on a cheap and plentiful supply of grilled meat sangers late at night in Bergen must rank as one of the top moments of our trip (perhaps second only to Huy's discovery that for kr15 you could get 3 deliciously burnt and dry buffalo wings from McDonalds). I had the 150gr jagdtwurst (presumably a mix of reindeer, elk and other Norwegian game meats) and it was delicious. I could have opted for the 250gr version which was about a foot long, but I wasn't sure I was ready for that much oil. When they said that Norway's economy dependent on oil, I didn't realise their main supply came from fast food drip trays.
Eurosport Olympic coverage - One of the most memorable events of this year's Olympic games came at a moment when our group of hardy travellers was practically comatose (hey, sitting on a scenic railway really takes it out of you) and listlessly watching Eurosport in our Flam apartment. 10m platform diving is a scary event that is brilliant to watch because it is so accessible to the casual viewer. After 3 dives, everyone is an armchair expert on what level of splash is acceptable on any given dive and whether or not it's better to go for a complex dive with a 3.8 level of difficulty or for a simpler 3.2 level dive that you know you can nail. Matthew Mitcham, new Aussie hero, made the right choice when he absolutely dominated a triple-twisting back-double-somersault or some such similar combination to get the highest scoring dive in Olympic history and snatch the gold away from the home nation in the most dramatic fashion. It was pure sporting drama and shook us all out of our lethargy. Nice one Matt!

New painting

2008-08-03T12:35:00.000-07:00

After a short hiatus to refresh and regain some creative inspiration, I've started painting again. What's more, I've left dots behind to revisit my white lines phase. This one here now proudly graces the wall of Meredith's bedroom.

Investment opportunities up north

2008-07-28T03:49:00.000-07:00

I always thought that Australia was a land of opportunity, but it's got nothing on Scotland. I was there on the weekend and to all those youngsters out there hoping to strike it rich, I say take the next train to Aberdeen via the 'Burgh and you won't be sorry. In the short 48 hours I spent in town, shuffling along Princes St and the Royal Mile, I spied a bagful of excellent investment opportunities. I'll mention just a few of them here:

Fashion. Scottish people love clothes (they keep you warm, don't you know) but they seem to lack imagination when manufacturing them. A cursory glance along the shops on the Royal Mile illustrates this fact. Everything's made out of tartan. Kilts, sure, they're obvious tartan territory. But formal wear (including ball gowns), sleep wear, casual wear (including a surprisingly wide range of mini skirts, all made in larger sizes to accommodate the natural girth of bonnie northern lassies) and just about any other type of wear you can think of, is also sold exclusively in tartan fabric. My suggestion: open up a cloth factory and show the Scottish public that black is the new, well, tartan.
Furniture. The dominant architectural feature of Edinburgh is a grand castle that sits on a hill overlooking the city, looking very regal and impressive. Lit up by flames at night, it's a stirring sight and a magnificent setting for the Edinburgh military tattoo. In fact, I think it's one of the most impressive city landmarks I've seen, except for one thing - the inside is pretty shit. I mean, really, we poked around inside the castle for a couple of hours without really uncovering anything even vaguely impressive. The living quarters looked particularly drab and I wouldn't have been surprised to see a 1950s TV set in the corner, with a set of rabbit ears antennas and a small plaque saying "Here did Mary Queen of Scots watch Coronation Street of an afternoon." Home renovation shows are big down south, but obviously haven't made it to Edinburgh castle yet - bring on the reality TV I say, the Scots obviously need some inspiration. I have to admit that the regimental museum of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards was a bit more impressive. In particular, I enjoyed a diorama depicting desert warfare during WWII, which showed a Scottish soldier bravely identifying and then fighting off a German tank using only a metal detector (without the detector the tank no doubt would have caught them completely by surprise). I also enjoyed reading that the tremendous wartime success of the Guards can be attributed to four qualities: (1) Communication (2) Teamwork (3) Courage and (4) Weapons. I think (4) is particularly significant.
Children's toys. Meredith and I were the only visitors in Edinburgh last weekend that weren't part of a hen night or stag do. We were also the only ones not dressed up in costume (naughty nurses, devils and angels, escaped convicts and chasing policemen abounded). Thoughtfully, most of the hens identified themselves to the world by wearing pink sashes, halos and L plates. Equally thoughtfully, most of the stags identified themselves by drinking copious amounts of ale and marking the pavement with their vomit. During one 15 minute stretch late on Saturday night on Cowcross St, we were counting hens/stags at a rate of one per minute. Over 48 hours in Edinburgh, that makes 2880 people getting married soon. Our anecdotal evidence suggests that the vast majority of these people are extremely randy. Ergo, in 9 months there should be a proliferation of babies being born in Scotland and a consequent rush on baby toys. If you are a Scottish manufacturer of rattles, there are happy days ahead.

Magnetic Fields

2008-07-10T08:22:00.001-07:00

Since I barely listen to the radio any more, it's getting a little harder to hook into good new music. Or any new music in fact. Did anyone else realise that Coldplay has just released a new album? Luckily I know a lot of people with good musical taste, including Meredith, who slipped me a compilation of songs by the Magnetic Fields with a nod and a wink that clearly meant "check out this band, they're hot, so get into it". In the last couple of days I've listened to the CD six times and went to see the M Fields in concert last night and it's safe to say that I'm into it. They're brilliant. If a little strange. And dark. In a kind of light, bubbly sort of way. The concert was amazingly strange. The band came on stage dressed like they were just getting together to eat pizza and watch football on TV. Then they spent 10 minutes ranting about how the airline that flew them from Dublin that morning had lost all of their instruments so they were playing with all borrowed equipment. Then they explained that the audience wasn't allowed to clap or cheer except when the lead singer had his finger in his ear (he's damaged his hearing apparently and applause really messes him up) though we were at all times allowed to show our appreciation by clicking our fingers. Odd. But odder still was the selection of gently acoustic songs they played, including a song about a gargoyle that was inspired by a chihuahua and the occult and an unreasonably chirpy ditty about necrophilia. My advice? Get into it. My favourite M Fields song? If You Don't Cry. It's awesome.

Sucker

2008-06-27T08:15:00.000-07:00

I like to think of myself as a sophisticated consumer with discerning taste. However, I seem to be the only one who thinks that way. Sainsbury's for example, clearly has me pigeon-holed as a sucker who will throw away cash at the sligthest provocation. Everything they try works on me. They discount a family size trifle to £1.69 - I say "bargain" and buy one for dinner. Half a litre of tasteless cream, custard and jelly (net value 12p) later, I feel ill and slightly poorer. They put Cadbury flapjacks on display near the checkout - I say "delicious" and buy one for the tube ride home. Twenty minutes later I feel full of rolled oats and vegetable fat and almost considering saving the trifle for breakfast instead of dinner. They put their special butchers sausages on sale on a 2 for 1 offer - I say "bring on the bangers" and plunge in. A week later, I'm still shovelling away pork and sage sausages for dinner and there's still a mountain of them left in my fridge. It would be easier if Sainsbury's just decided what they wanted to sell me and delivered it to my door each week, then I could pay by direct debit and cut down their transaction costs. I'm sure they're considering it ...

Good things come in fours

2008-06-17T06:13:00.000-07:00

A quick wrap of the highlights of the past few weeks

Barthelona

Barthelona! What a town. My favourite European city so far. I love it. And I love that I love it. Even before I stepped on the plane at London City, I was expecting to enjoy Barcelona, as everyone I know who has been there before raves about it. And, of course, there is a small matter of Barcelona FC, the beating heart of Catalunian culture and long-time best friends with Dutch football (more about that later). My excuse for visiting this Mediterranean jewel was Huy's 30th birthday, an event that Huy micro-managed to perfection (Joyce - your position as top-dog organiser is under threat!). Arranging for 20+ people to fly in from around the world to celebrate your birthday is no mean feat and the fact he has such pulling power is testament to what a popular guy Huy is (despite my frequent attempts at slandering him in this blog). The weekend was just the best fun ever - gastronomic delights at La Boqueria market, shopping at hidden boutiques in the alleyways of the Born district, being transported to an underwater world in the Casa Botilo, the overwhelming flavour hit of the foams and other emulsions that pass for dinner at Hisop (actually, I think the restaurant was top class - great choice, Huy) and dancing the night away underneath a giant gorilla head at La Fira. What a weekend. I have to go back! Soon!

Holland 3 - Italy 0

Despite not having set foot in Holland for 15 years, having extremely minimal Dutch language skills and knowing very little about Dutch culture or history, my Dutch heritage is extremely important to me. Its fullest expression comes when watching the Oranje play football. Whenever the Oranje play, I go a little crazy - and the sight of the massed thousands of Dutch fans wearing orange shirts, clogs and clown wigs makes me well up with emotion. Usually, the overwhelming feeling I experience is disappointment (like when the Dutch conspired to lose the Euro 2000 semi-final against Italy by missing two penalties in normal time and two more in the shoot-out - I was travelling at the time and returning to my hostel dorm room to find it full of Italian supporters was one of the worst moments of my life) though there is the occasional highlight (Bergkamp's goal against Argentina in the 89th minute of the 1994 World Cup semi-final - incredible- you MUST watch it on youtube). Even outside the low lands, the Dutch are admired for the way they play the game - they're open, attacking, skilful, graceful and all those other complimentary adjectives I can't think of right now. Sure, they're also mentally fragile, prone to in-fighting and unfamiliar with the concept of defence, but for this I forgive them. And in their first game at Euro 2008 they repaid me by thumping the world champions by three goals. Apart from his first name, Wesley Sneijder is perfect.

Bec & Frank

Two of the best people I know, who happen to also be two of my closest friends, are now married. Sure it was inevitable from the moment Bec sacrificed years of sun worship to move to Dublin to be with Frank and was confirmed when they set up a joint "Bec & Frank" email account, but it's nice to make these things official by going through with the ceremony. In customarily diplomatic style, the couple chose neutral territory for the big event, and stepping off the plane onto Italian soil was a sweet moment, coming so soon after the Oranje humiliation of the Azzurri (see above). Not only was the venue non-partisan, it was also stunning. The ceremony was held at the Palazzo Publico in Siena, which is set against the stunning backdrop of Siena's famous town square (actually, it's shell-shaped, not square - but I could hardly describe it as the town shell). I can't think of a more beautiful place for a wedding. It was an intimate ceremony, punctuated by Frank's uncontrollable sobbing and Bec's cool detachment ... We all know now who wears the trousers in that relationship. After a brief interlude during which the couple were mobbed by snap-happy tourists / paparazzi taking pictures in the square, we all hopped on a party bus to Borgo di Fontebussi, a stunning villa / hotel set on a Tuscan hill side, overlooking olive groves, vineyards and rolling valleys. Amazing. Wonderful food, the world's most charismatic wedding singer (able to move from U2's "One", sung in a thick Italian accent, to "Figaro" and then to "Bohemian Rhapsody" with barely a pause, this guy was incredible) and mad cross-cultural dancing ... this wedding had it all. Congratulations again Bec & Frank!

Holland 4 - France 1

Holland's second game of Euro 2008 was inconveniently scheduled for the same time as dinner on the second night as Bec & Frank's wedding. OK, I admit that I thought about it for a bit, but in the end I got my priorities right ... I went to the dinner. But I politely excused myself every 15 minutes to check the score and then, after scoffing dessert, ran upstairs with a couple of the lads to watch the second half. What a game!!! After thrashing the World Cup champions, I didn't think we could back it up by dishing out another humiliation to the World Cup finalists, but somehow we did. In the words of the Dutch commentator, screamed repeatedly at a high pitch , "Ongeloofelijk!!!" It was an amazing game, punctuated for me by Arjen Robben's stunning solo goal from a tight angle that shut down any prospect of a French comeback. I watched with disbelief as we repeatedly shredded the French defence on the counter attack. Amazing, amazing, amazing. A match that will never be forgotten (at least not by me).

Allez! Vamos! C'mon!

2008-06-04T08:33:00.001-07:00

Tennis truly is an international language and, in my view, one of the best sports for spectators. One of the things I like most about tennis is the way that the game changes so completely depending on the court surface being used. Grass court is different from clay court tennis. Clay court tennis is different from hard court tennis. Hard court tennis is different to indoor carpet tennis. The list goes on. When people find out I'm a tennis fan and that I'm living in London, they usually ask if I've got plans to go to Wimbledon. Well, the answer is "no". Though I wouldn't turn down a free ticket offer, I have to confess that Wimbledon is my least favourite tournament (even though it was the only grand slam won by my all time favourite player R Krajicek). Sure, the tradition and history associated with Wimbledon is impressive, but with today's racquet technology and other advances in the sport, grass court tennis just isn't attractive to watch. The points are short and the play mostly one dimensional. The French Open on the other hand sits right on the other end of the spectrum, as it's played on slow clay, which means that the points can go on forever and players need to be amazingly fit and truly creative in order to succeed under those circumstances. Though I admit it tends to favour players who play from the baseline, I think clay gives most players a good shot (Pat Rafter, Tim Henman and, yes, R Krajicek all made the semis at the French during their career, so big servers can still prosper on the dirt). So, those of you still reading this somewhat boring post, will not be surprised to know that the French has always been a tournament that I look forward to. And this year I was lucky enough to go, thanks to the organisational genius of Huy, who put us into the ticket draw earlier this year.

The average punter like me doesn't need much of an excuse to head off to Paris for the weekend, but the tennis was an absolute clincher. We eurostarred under the channel on Thursday evening and were deposited neatly at Gare du Nord where, thanks to the wonderful Paris Metro, we were just a short trip away from our hotel in the 5th arrondisement (Parisians don't do suburbs). The next morning, after the obligatory shopping trip, we raced across the city to Roland Garros, the dusty, red centre of the French tennis world. I must say that I was very impressed with Roland Garros as a tennis venue. The courts are all quite close together, but there still enough room to move between them and most seats offer the crowd a good view. There are three very large show courts and a bunch of other outside courts with tiered seating where the plebs who can't afford to get onto centre court can still watch good matches in style and comfort. The crowd obviously knew their tennis well (you can tell this by the fact they gasp and clap at the appropriate moments), though I have to admit that they weren't quiet as enthusiastic in their support as the Oz Open crowds (I'm not used to watching tennis without 50 chanting vikings in the background and the sound of Swiss cow bells ringing out from centre court). We managed to catch quite a bit of good action, including a set of a doubles match featuring Lleyton Hewitt and Chris "I can serve but otherwise lack even the co-ordination of a 5 year old" Guccione. Sure, the Aussies lost, but they put up a good fight and, given that he had the Gooch as a handicap, Hewitt performed pretty well. We also saw a tight match between Mikhail "I may be a crazy Russian but don't mess with me because I have connections" Youzhny and Fernando "The poor man's Nadal" Verdasco. It was a real battle of styles, with Youzhny's attacking flair and misdirected aggression contrasting against Verdasco's spin-heavy backcourt game. Youzhny showed some spirit and broke some racquets, but Verdasco prevailed.

I could go on, but most of you probably stopped reading halfway through the first paragraph. If any tennis fans have actually made it to the end of this post, get in touch and we'll start organising Roland Garros 2009!

Pokusaj - Get into it

2008-05-27T01:40:00.000-07:00

The Cotswolds is a small area in the west country of England, roughly the size of Greater Tokyo. The Cotswolds is mostly famous for being the wettest part of the world, particularly on bank holiday weekends. It is also well known for its many quaintly named villages like Old Sodbury, Little Slaughter and Cold Ashton (it really was colder in Cold Ashton!) and the green rolling hills that separate them.

Anyway, I went to the Cotswolds last weekend to walk in the rain and enjoy the scenery. The trip was organised, like most trips I take, by Joyce and featured a motley crew of under prepared and overly optimistic walkers. The emergency search and rescue team in Bath must have looked on with unusual concern as we milled around in central Bath (the town where our train dropped us off) comparing muesli bars and complimenting each other on the new wet weather gear we'd purchased during the week. Some unusual choices had been made. One half of Tranzie had decided to wear a waterproof tent rather than a waterproof jacket (presumably it was cheaper?) while the other half had gone with a sharp little skin-tight number so as to preserve his aerodynamic profile. Smart. Only Joyce was clever enough to bring waterproof shoes, though in fairness my shoes were specifically designed for off-road use and made clever use of brown suede, which helps disguise mud.

In any case, at the end of the day, no amount of money spent on clothes made from fabrics with fabulous wicking qualities can replace the toughness and mental fortitude that we as a group possessed. So we set off in high spirits to tackle the gentle hills and meandering pathways that faced us. Joyce, as always, had done her work well and chose a terrific route for us to walk. The scenery was beautiful and classically "English" - cultivated, green, soft and muddy. Actually, to be fair, the rain held off for most of the time, with only one morning spent trudging through showers. It did rain heavily on the third day, but we were smart enough not to walk that day, preferring instead the six-seater taxis for which the Cotswolds are also rightly famous.

As an aside, Saturday night featured an impromptu rest-break in Bath where we managed to take in the Eurovision song contest. I hadn't watched Eurovision for roughly 10 years but I intend to never miss it it again. I loved every minute of it (well, every minute of the performances, the vote tallying did get a bit dull about half-way through the 43 voting countries). To do it justice would take a whole new blog posting, and I don't have energy for that. But my personal highlight was "Pokusaj" by Laka - the entry from Bosnia-Herzgovina featuring the most successful Bosnian alternative music act performing today (or so Wikipedia tells me). No joke, the song is fantastic - uplifting, exciting, fast-paced and seriously catchy. But the performance took it to new heights - a strange girl hanging up laundry, four more strange girls in wedding dresses knitting cardigans, an even stranger man in a powder blue suit acting like a puppet. It was all so strangely and fantastically unexplained. I couldn't get enough. Unfortunately they finished mid-table, as the Bosnians didn't have as many friends in other countries as the winning Russians did. Oh well. Look it up on youtube - it'll make your day.

My weakening resolve

2008-05-14T03:55:00.001-07:00

New Year's resolutions typically last no longer than 3 weeks (20 January being a particularly bad date for breaking resolutions as it is officially the most depressing day of the year, at least in the northern hemisphere, when people wake up to the harsh reality of winter without the promising glow of Christmas to look forward to). However, according to my posting history, mine seems to have lasted a little longer, well at least into February ... You see, I had resolved to try and blog a little more frequently this year, but you know what they say about best laid plans, and I didn't even lay my plan all that well. Worse still, I've been put to shame by a fellow blogger - Tim - who posts about five times a day. I would try and renew my resolution, but I know it's probably hopeless, so instead I'm just going to have to accept the reality that my postings won't be as frequent as I'd like.

Anyway, to get on with business, let's catch up on a little bit of news. I'll cover two noteworthy events. First, the all too brief visit of Tammie and Tom earlier this month. I have been friends with Tammie for as long as I can remember, well actually, come to think of it, we only became friends in year 10 and since I do have occasional flashbacks of life before I was 15yo, I suppose that's not technically true. But we've been friends for a long time. So I was naturally devastated to miss out on her wedding in April to another good mate of mine, Tom. Obviously sharing my distress, the two Ts decided to visit me on their honeymoon - a touching thought if not a little strange. An air mattress on my living room floor is not the most romantic way to spend your honeymoon, though before you worry too much, they were only stopping off in London before heading to Ireland where, in between doing other romantic things, they were staying in a castle. Laughing in the face of jetlag, Tammie and Tom were keen to see a few of London's sights during their short stay and since I've seen almost none of them, I was glad to tag along. We managed to fit in quite a lot during the 36 hours they were here, but the most notable event we saw was the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. I think the visitors enjoyed it, but I have to say I think it is the most overrated tourist attraction in London. To start off, you have to wait for 90 minutes surrounded by obnoxious Italian tourists (I'm not saying all Italian tourists are obnoxious, but the ones standing near us were) just in order to have a chance of getting half a glimpse of the action. Then you get to spend 40 minutes watching men in silly hats shuffling around on gravel and shouting at each other. The whole concept of the guards serving a practical purposes is ridiculous. If I was a burglar, I'd get into the palace through the back door (no doubt the door to the kitchen is always left open) rather than try to slip my way through a brass band with 50 soldiers playing the Star Wars theme (really, that's what they did) while each balancing half a dead bear on their heads. There's a reason why they keep the crown jewels in the tower and not in the palace - the security ain't great!

Well, enough about that, the second thing I wanted to tell you about is bikram yoga, which I recently tried for the first time. The thing about bikram yoga is that it makes you feel sick before it makes you feel better. As you'll probably know, the room that you do it in is heated to 40 plus degrees. This has a number of side effects: first it obviously makes you sweat a lot, which helps release toxins from your body, second it heats you up, which helps your flexibility and loosens your body up a bit, and third it helps get your heart rate going, which is good for your cardio fitness. It also makes you feel very ill if you've got any food in your stomach. Which is why my decision to eat a rich three course meal a couple of hours before the class wasn't one of my best (even though I did opt for the fish instead of the pork belly). I've heard that some people who have eaten before yoga have felt very queasy and ill afterwards. Luckily for me, I must have a good digestive system, because I didn't feel that bad. However, that was probably because I was only physically capable of participating in about half the class. Who would have thought yoga would be that hard? I got through the first few breathing exercises pretty easily and the smirk on my face obviously told the instructor I was a bit too cocky. So he threw us into a series of deep knee bends where you have to balance on one leg, bent so that your thigh is parallel to the ground (and therefore holding your entire weight), and then just sit there and stay still for 30 seconds at a time while madly trying to blink the sweat away from your eyes. I got through the first few repetitions but then had to spend the next ten minutes lying on the ground in a pool of sweat trying to get my heart rate back to normal. After that we did more tricks balancing on one leg, including a few that made me feel like something out of a Soulja Boy video clip. After the 90 minute class was over, I felt like a wreck. However, after a cool shower, a healthy "Berry Bliss" juice and about 3 hours of relaxation, I started to feel pretty good. I'm not sure it's all down to the yoga, but it might be, so I think I'll be back (which means that, like blogging, I'll probably do it once every three months for the next year or so and then quit).

Istanbul, not Constantinople

2008-04-20T04:51:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since my last post. Over a month, in fact. So much for my New Year's resolution. I've got an excuse that covers two weeks of that particular blogging black hole, though - I was in Turkey on holiday over the start of April and though I brought my crackberry with, it's not that convenient for writing blog postings.

I found Turkey to be a place of contradictions - everything there seems to be split into two: European and Asian Istanbul, Secular and Islamic, Old and New, Doner and Sis. I had a great time there. You can tell you're having a good time on holiday when you forget about work and your life at home, which I managed to do for a large part of the time I was away. In fact, when I did think about work it was like I was thinking about a particularly elusive dream from the night before.

Anyway, like I usually do with my postings about holidays, I'm going to write you a list of things that I will remember from Turkey:

The kebap - I've never seen such a prevalent national food as the kebap. It's not just for tourists - everyone seems to eat them and in Istanbul there's a kebap stall on every corner. And I'm not exaggerating. Australians and Turks share a lot - including war time experience and a love of lamb. I respect that.
The Aya Sofya - A candidate for the most impressive building I have ever seen, the Aya Sofya mosque started life as a Christian church built during the Byzantine era. When the Arabs later came through Turkey they were so impressed with its construction that they turned it into a mosque, and adopted its domed design into other mosques world-wide. The building is dominated by a central domed room with a ceiling that is 80m tall and has no obvious columns or other supports holding it up (except for a massive tower of scaffolding, which is an obvious modern addition). Walking inside that room for the first time takes your breath away, and to think it was built 1500 years ago is truly mind-boggling. I could have stayed in there all day if it wasn't for all the other tourists and their flash photography.
The Gallipoli peninsula - The Australian "pilgrimage" to Gallipoli (Gelibolu to the Turks) has grown in popularity over the last couple of years and I joined the herd in heading over that way. Luckily, I arrived a few weeks before Anzac Day, so was able to enjoy exploring the site in relative peace and quiet. It was a moving experience, but I won't lie and say I was overwhelmed by it. The thing that struck me was how small the place was. Anzac Cove was tiny and it's hard to imagine 20,000 soldiers landing there on 25 April 1915. The Nek too was such a tiny piece of land - two tennis courts in size, our guide told us, with the Australian and Turkish trenches not much more than 50m apart. Strategically important, maybe, but it's really depressing to think of so many people suffering and dying for two tennis courts worth of ground.
Ataturk - The father of the Turks, Mustafa Kemal as he was formerly known, led the Turkish defence at Gallipoli and then went on to mould post-war Turkey to his vision with more power and effect than perhaps any other world leader in the 20th century. I didn't know much about father Turk before arriving in Turkey, but everything I learned about him there I liked. His energy and vision in modernising post-war Turkey was quite something and Turks today still seem to appreciate his leadership in a very personal way. The reverence in which he is held may be justified, but I have to admit I do not like the laws that prohibit criticism of father Turk. It seems to me that it is not something that the man himself would ever have approved of.
The Turkish coastline - Turkey is a stunningly beautiful place - one of the main reasons I went there was to check out the Aegean coastline, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite as beautiful as it was. Driving in the bus down from Selcuk to Fethiye was an amazing experience - every turn on the highway reveals another panoramic view across green mountainsides to the sparkling Aegean sea. A serious rival for the Great Ocean Road as the greatest coastline drive I've been on.
Reality television - Turks have clearly embraced the concept of reality television. From Turkish pop idol, which is even trashier and more glitzy than the American, Australian and British versions combined, to the kickboxing knockout competition being filmed at the hostel I stayed at in Olympos, it seems like Turks can't get enough of reality. The kickboxing concept was a great one: (1) take a random selection of young, relatively athletic men from rural Turkey and Azerbaijan; (2) teach them the gentle and noble art of kickboxing over an intense period of training at various "exotic" locations (e.g. Olympos); and (3) watch them beat each other senseless live on TV. Great stuff. A couple of Turkish girls at the hostel suggested to me that the contestants on the show were all "muganda" (peasants) and I should tell them that. I declined the offer, politely.
Mehmet, the security guard - Mehmet worked night shift at the place where I stayed at Olympos. He was a very talkative and gentle guy who seemed to spend more time around the campfire and drinking free soft drinks than performing any security role, but he was a good source of conversation. The most memorable talk I had with him revolved around a large group of Australian tourists that were meant to be arriving the day after I left Olympos. Mehmet wanted to know how to speak to the Australian girls in the group, because he wanted a girlfriend and wasn't keen on Turkish girls. He told me that he did not have much experience with girls, as he was Kurdish and in the community he grew up in, he wasn't allowed to mix with girls and, until he was 17, had no idea what sex was. He told me that his lack of experience made him very nervous when trying to talk to girls and they could always sense that, so he'd had no real success with them to date. But he was hoping little by little, by getting tips from other men, he might improve. Despite me telling him that I was no expert on the topic, he insisted on taking notes during our conversation. So the Australian girls that arrived after me can expect Mehmet to give them plenty of compliments on what they're wearing and to ask lots of questions about where they're from and where they're travelling to. After we finished talking about girls, Mehmet told me about his previous career in the army. He was a sniper for two years and can take a man out with a rifle at 800m. Apparently, in order to kill, you have to hit them in the head or chest. A hit in the legs, according to Mehmet, will not kill and, therefore, is no good. Mehmet's credentials as a security guard are excellent.

I could go on, but this list is already too long. I may add some photos to this posting in a couple of days, but in the meantime you can check out some photos I added to my facebook page.

Hungary, I salute you

2008-03-17T10:34:00.000-07:00

Listen up folks for some interesting facts about Budapest and Hungary that I learnt when visiting there last weekend:

there was a revolution in Hungary in 1848 and it started in Budapest. Today, the revolutionary fever is still running high as the two political parties of the moment - the Conservatives and the Social Democrats - just ain't getting along. Luckily, plenty of riot police live in Budapest and, when not posing to have their photographs taken by German tourists, they keep violent demonstrations under control;
the Danube runs through Budapest, separating Buda from, you guessed it, Pest;
before they could afford Playstations, most children in Budapest entertained themselves by playing hopscotch or jumping over a rope spun in a circle by an indulging (and dizzy) adult;
the main industry in Hungary is paprika production. Hungary also has two airports and lots of swimming pools;
you can get very good steaks in Budapest. They come from Argentina. You can also get excellent veal stew. It comes from Hungary;
Budapest has the second oldest underground train system in Europe, after London. Although it hasn't been upgraded since it was first installed and notwithstanding that maintenance work has been sporadic, it still runs much more efficiently than the Tube;
Australian Video Hits is the most popular TV program in Hungary. Generally, music from the early 1990s, in particular Dr Alban and Whitney Houston, is very popular in Hungary. South American pan-pipes are also prevalent in Budapest.

That's enough for now, but I could go on forever. I love it when a trip away is educational as well as fun! I had a great time in Budapest, due in no small part to the great company and the fact that, well, Budapest is a beautiful town. It's no wonder than in times past it was considered a rival to Paris in terms of aesthetics and culture. Today, it looks slightly run-down compared to the French capital, but the potential for a new Hungarian renaissance is obvious. Grand boulevards, majestic architecture and a glorious river front make Budapest a very attractive city.

And, of course, the abundance of hot-spring bathing houses is a plus too. Two days in Budapest and two long soaks in a steaming bath shared with the cream of Hungarian society left me relaxed and recharged. It also gave me the perfect excuse to avoid studying for my QLTT exam, which is looming. I had a mock exam this morning and I'm happy to say that it hasn't entirely destroyed my post-holiday glow. Though, if work or study does start to get a bit too much, I know all I have to do is run a hot bath, put some pan pipe music on the CD player and I'll be right back in Budapest and happy again.

Of course, no posting about a weekend away would be complete without some photographs of city panoramas and tall objects:

Visiting

2008-02-18T01:18:00.000-08:00

While I think of it, I booked some flights back to Melbourne last week. I'll be over there for the first two weeks of September. So if anyone is reading this back in Australia and if you'll be in Melbourne during that period, it'd be great to catch up ... Obviously I'll remind you closer to the date.

Oh oh oh oh oh ooooooooooooh oh

2008-02-17T10:16:00.000-08:00

I've always been a big football (aka soccer) fan, but in Melbourne the options for watching live matches were limited. In England, the home of football (aka soccer), there is no such problem. After being here for almost a year, I've been to matches at Villa Park, Wembley, Emirates stadium and, on Saturday, Anfield in Liverpool, surely one of the most storied sporting stadiums in the world. Thanks to my boss at work, I managed to pick up tickets to what was probably one of the least glamorous games to be played at Anfield this year - a 5th round FA Cup tie between Liverpool and Championship strugglers Barnsley. Who are Barnsley? Apparently, they hail from Yorkshire and actually have one FA Cup to their name, won back in early days of last century. Their most famous supporter is retired test umpire Dickie Bird. Until last Wednesday, they didn't have a fit goalkeeper other than a 12 year old boy from Wales who didn't so much keep goal as collect balls from the back of the net.

My boss' grand plan was that he'd send me to watch Liverpool smash these small-time gormless losers and I'd come home a Reds fan through and through. Shame that the best plans always go awry. Barnsley WON. Not only did they win, they won with the last kick of the game, literally. After 92 minutes of domination by Liverpool during which time Barnsley defended grimly and with passion putting bodies and, in one notable case, future prospects of fatherhood, on the line, the teams were locked at one-all. This of itself had the 6,000 Barnsley supporters moshing in the stands with excitement at the prospect of a replay in a week's time. Like all sensible Spaniards, the Liverpool coach Rafa Benitez didn't much fancy the prospect of a weekend in Yorkshire, so he threw on his big guns in the last 15 minutes, including Harry Kewell (my nominee for next year's Australian of the year) and Stevie Gerrard, Liverpool captain and all-round good guy. But it was to no avail, Harry smashed shot after shot directly into opposition players, eliciting much cheering and encouraging shouts of "Retard!" and "Idiot!" from the crowd. Stevie moved the ball around dynamically and put his team mates in great scoring positions, only to see the 12 year old Welsh goal keeper play a blinder and make a series of finger tip saves. It was great stuff. Then with seconds ticking away and the Liverpool players obviously keen to get back into their posh dressing rooms to enjoy a post match rub-down and bath complete with glass of Dom Perignon and a selection of female back-up dancers from the Spice Girls reunion tour, Barnsley attacked. First, they played the ball into Liverpool's penalty box where Sami Hyypia hacked the legs from under the Barnsley captain. It should have been a penalty! But it was in front of the Kop, Liverpool's most intimidating stand and the ref plainly had too much common sense to give away a penalty to the visitors at that point in the game. But Barnsley didn't give up, they won back the ball and just as the final whistle was about to ring out, their captain smashed a left foot shot into the bottom corner. There was pandemonium. The Barnsley fans were delirious. The Liverpool fans were disgusted. It was great.

So, anyway, I wasn't converted into a Liverpool fan - I prefer the Gunners for lots of reasons, one of which is that they win all the time - but I had a great time. Anfield is definitely a special place to visit and the crowd is as entertaining as the football (aka soccer). One abiding memory will be having pre-match drink at The Albert, which is a pub right around the corner from the stadium. It was packed full of Liverpudlian desperados singing songs about their team. They're creative and musical those Liverpudlians. My favourite was their ode to Javier Mascherano, one of their key playmakers. Mascherano isn't the easiest name to fit into a song, but they'd figured out that it rhymed with "oh" and, so the song "Oh oh oh oh oh oh oooooooh oh, Javier Mascherano-o" was born. Great stuff!

Questions from Portugal

2008-02-15T13:44:00.000-08:00

I went to Lisbon last weekend and had a great time. The city was beautiful, the weather was warm and sunny and the company at the hostel where I stayed was great. But the weekend has left me with some questions.

When eating a whole sardine, do you also eat the head? I decided not to.
Why do some people travel to distant countries to stay in a youth hostel and then spend the whole day asleep? There was this German guy who stayed in the same dorm room as me. He was asleep in the room when I arrived to drop off my bags at around midday. He was still asleep when I came back to change before dinner. He woke up briefly and appeared in the common room for about an hour during the evening and then went to the room to sleep some more. He left the next day. Strange.
Why when I am on holiday in a strange city can I find my way around without a map but when I'm in my home town I always get lost?
Why do all the photos I take when on holiday feature either (1) buildings shown from a steep upwards looking angle or (2) views that consist mainly of horizon? Examples of both from my Lisbon trip appear below, but I have numerous others from lots of different places around the world. I obviously spend most of my holiday-time looking straight up or gazing at some non-specific distant point on the horizon.

On another note, I learnt a new word on the weekend - it's Portugese and I'm not sure how it's spelt but it sounds like "saldage" or "saldadge" or something like that. It means the feeling of missing somebody, which may be happy (like when you're reminiscing about a really good time you had on holiday with a friend) or sad (like when you're missing a family member who's passed away). I can't think of any direct translation in English, so I'm officially adopting it into the language. Is there a process that needs to be followed? Do I need to write to the OED or something like that?

Simple pleasures

2008-02-03T12:26:00.000-08:00

I'm writing this post while lying back on my couch watching the Ivory Coast play Guinea in the quarter-finals fo the African Cup of Nations. Lounging around watching sports on TV is just the latest of life's simple pleasures that I've sampled today. First of all, I had a proper sleep-in. I arrived home last night a little bit late, more than a little bit drunk and dressed like a Maasai, so I was in need of a decent sleep. Unfortunately for me, my body clock is usually uncooperative and stops me from properly enjoying a Sunday morning snooze. But on this occasion I'd had enough alcohol to confuse the clock and I didn't roll out from under the doona until well past 10.30am. I didn't have any specific plans for the day, so I took my time over breakfast, waiting for the Shreddies to go properly soggy before tucking into the bowl. Nice.

When breakfast was done, I packed up my sports gear and trundled off up to Kilburn to pay a visit to the gym. Browsing through YouTube the other day I saw some fascinating footage of the sauna world championships (almost every activity can be turned into ao competition if you try hard enough), so I thought I'd have a crack at the old sauna myself. The idea of sitting naked and sweaty on a wooden bench in a small room with a bunch of other naked and sweaty men may not sound all that appealing and to, tell you the truth, it's not. But the beautiful thing about the sauna is that it's so unpleasant inside, it makes the outside feel much, much nicer. Nothing beats the first lungful of cold air after you've just left the sauna. The gym brochure advertising the sauna promised that it would promote an "overall sense of wellbeing". It's pretty accurate, because I did feel pretty damn good after leaving the sweatbox. On a side note, do you think it's weird to read a newspaper in the sauna? Everytime I've been there, there have been discarded newspapers lying around, but I've never actually seen anyone read them. Weird.

After leaving the gym, I wandered down to the shops to buy groceries for dinner and then stopped off at the hairdressers on the way back home. My route didn't take me past the Turkish barbers I usually go to, and the Caribbean barbers always charge a little bit more, so instead I opted for a little Indian "boutique" that I spotted down a side street. My hair isn't all that complicated to cut, so any barbershop that has a working set of clippers is good enough for me. And this particular shop had the added benefits of Bollywood musicals on the TV which my barber sang along to while cutting my hair. There was a canary in a cage singing in the background, and the sound of the bird combined with the TV, the barber's singing and the buzz of the clippers was surprisingly fun to listen along to.

When I finally made it back home I took a long nap before waking up to spend an enjoyable half hour or so watching a music video show entitled "What on earth were they thinking?" Watching terrible music videos is fascinating and surprising good fun. By this time, it was getting on a bit, so I started preparing dinner. Cooking wise, Jamie Oliver is my main man at the moment. I'm working through his Italian cook book and every recipe so far has been a winner. Today I made pork chops with sage, prosciutto and dried apricot stuffing. In Italian that turns out to be costolette di maiale con salvia. In my language, it means "delicious". For dessert I had fresh berries, yoghurt and honey.

And now I'm lying on the couch watching football. In a few hours, coverage of the Superbowl (the world's ultimate televisual experience) begins. Does life get any better? The only thing I'm missing at the moment is a nubile Egyptian princess to scratch my back when it gets itchy and feed me grapes. Actually, I do have some grapes in the fridge. Yep, this is pretty close to perfection.

Epidemic

2008-01-26T08:30:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure when an outbreak turns into a plague or when a plague turns into an epidemic. But, notwithstanding this, I'm willing to call it now that the number of weddings scheduled for 2008 has reached epidemic proportions. I'm almost scared to check my gmail and facebook messages these days for fear that another one of my friends has decided to get hitched later this year.

Of course, I'm always delighted when my friends manage to bag themselves a keeper in the romantic stakes. But my big problem is that with so many weddings scheduled for this year, I can't attend them all. It's mostly my own fault, of course, spending this marriage-friendly year in the wrong hemisphere, but it's still frustrating having to write emails apologising for being a bad friend and not being able to attend that special engagement party, wedding ceremony or reception. I tell you, it sucks. I'm down to make one wedding-related trip back to Oz later this year in September. And I'm ducking over to Italy for another wedding in June. But further intercontinental coupling-related travel is unfortunately beyond my means.

Luckily, I can confirm that I won't be getting married this year. So I'm not going to have to test any friendships by asking people to make like geese and travel north for the summer. Not that you're not welcome to visit of course - please do come, you're always welcome. Except you. You know who you are. Just kidding. You can come too if you like.

To finish off this rant, I would just like to say CONGRATULATIONS to my excellent mates Tom and Jenny who have just welcomed their first child into the world - Lara Clare (nice name, huh?). Top work Mr and Mrs Small. Can't wait to admire your handiwork in person later in the year. To all you other couples out there - don't feel pressured, there's no rush, you've only just gotten engaged - children can wait for a little while yet.

A new painting for 2008

2008-01-14T12:08:00.000-08:00

Here's my first art work of 2008. Well, technically, apart from a few white dots, it was mostly painted over Christmas 2007, but since it's mostly white dots anyway, I think the work done in 2008 was significant enough to call this a 2008 painting. So what do you think? Honestly, when it was 3/4 done, I was pretty disappointed with it. But with the fourth row of dots, I think something happened and now I quite like it.

Anyway, this is the way it was painted.

But some people think it looks better this way.

Which do you prefer?

New years resolutions

2008-01-04T13:28:00.000-08:00

Blogging more is one of my new years resolutions and, as with most people, you can expect me to start off full of enthusiasm and then basically go missing from the first week of February. Anyway, there will hopefully be a few January-postings on this site before things start to go terribly wrong.

I was lucky enough to spend NYE 2007 in Paris. Last year I was in Harare, so I've started a good run of special locations for seeing in the New Year. I'm definitely going to have to plan something equally cool for NYE 2008, but since my name isn't Joyce, I won't start planning it just yet ... Anyway, back to Paris, it was my first visit to the French capital (I'm still a stranger to most of Europe, somewhat embarrassingly) but it certainly won't be my last. I was very, very impressed. The town is just beautiful - everywhere you look you see breathtaking architecture. And it's all so close together! Walk for half an hour in any direction and you will pass stunning churches, amazing restaurants offering fresh oysters and flowing champagne, incredible galleries full of renaissance and impressionist masterpieces and a seemingly never-ending selection of shops selling high-end, French and surprisingly hideous fashion.

In the four days I was there, I ate a lot. And I walked a lot too, partly to balance out the pastry eating and partly because there was so much I wanted to see. And I drank a lot, because I was thirsty after all that walking and, hey, it was New Years after all. The only downside was the queuing to get into the Notre Dame and the Louvre and the restaurants and, well, pretty much everywhere else. It's always my least favourite part about going to any popular destination, but it's a good way to learn tolerance for your fellow human beings. Not that my tolerance levels are that impressive, but I'm working on it. And everyone needs more than one New Years resolution to break. So, if the world is listening, January is the time to test my patience because from the first week of February, I'm sure that my fuse is going to be getting extremely short again.

My last resolution is to be better at remembering things and, in particular, peoples names so I don't have to keep on being reintroduced. Usually it takes me about 6 meetings to get someone's name down. Before you think that I'm rude and arrogant, it doesn't mean I've forgotten them - I can usually remember most things about them like what they do for work, who they're friends with, what we talked about last time we met, but I just can't remember names. So I'm going to try and improve that. And in the meantime, I'm going to stick with my tactic of calling everyone mate.

Getting back in the game

2007-12-25T13:43:00.000-08:00

So. It's obviously been a long time since my last post. There have been many times when I've thought about writing something new on here, but somehow I just never managed to get around to it. But I'm aiming to remedy that and get back into the blogging game very soon. In my defence, it's been a somewhat busy last month or two. Just looking back on it, I've managed to fit in a week long trip to Australia (I know, I know it's a long way to go for a week, but there were good reasons for it), had an early Christmas weekend away in an amazing English country house with 15 great friends (thanks for organising Joyce - my mind boggles at your logistical skills), suffered through a couple of months of intensity at work (including a series of 12-hour plus meetings that took up a whole fortnight) that ended in the biggest deal closing I've seen in my career so far (sadly, given the event consisted of a bunch of guys signing their names on a stack of paper, I found the whole thing quite exciting) and now have almost come to the end of my first Christmas Day in London. So with my belly full of lamb shanks, bread and butter pudding and a substantial part of one of Joyce's cheese platters, I am pretty satisfied with life. This weekend I'm heading off to Paris for a few days, including NYE. I promise I'll write more about that trip away when I get back. Until then, remember to stay beautiful.

Under the milky way

2007-11-18T08:09:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I was in Marrakech with a troop of others to celebrate Caroine's birthday. It's very fashionable right now to celebrate your birthday by taking a trip away with friends, and the more exotic the location the more fashionable you are. Marrakech is, naturally, very exotic and very fashionable, as the following facts prove:

Richard Branson is building a hotel there;
Gladiator was shot in the desert near Marrakech (I've seen the film set); and
Brad and Angelina stayed nearby while shooting the movie Babel (I've visited the hotel where they stayed (they rented out the entire place while they were there, but this is less impressive when you find out that it's only got 8 guest rooms)).

But even if it were not so fashionable, the bustle and turmoil of Marrakech and the frenzied locals makes a fantastic contrast to dreary greyness of London and the bland urbanity of Londonites. Although we were only there for 4 days, we managed to pack a lot in. In order to save time (and, being realistic, so that the readers of this blog don't tune out half-way through this posting), I'll just list some highlights:

an amazing dinner on the first night in a courtyard of an old riad hidden down a maze of narrow streets, far away from the usual tourist thoroughfare. The setting was beautiful - all candle light and intricately mosaiced walls - and the food was terrific (the honey glazed chicken hot was a particular favourite);
the madnes of Jamaa el Fna (the main market in Marrakech), whcih totally lived up to the pre-trip hype. You can hardly turn around in the market square without stumbling across cobras, street kids trying to force-feed you macaroons (though our group didn't require much forcing) and grinning men with massive moustaches offering you chipolatas straight from the BBQ or boiled snails straight from the pot. A little word of advice, it's fun to look at the stall-owners cooking the food, but when you actually order it, it generally doesn't taste nice and there's a high probability that you'll get food poisoning. Luckily, we were seasoned enough travellers to know that chicken that's cooked properly isn't pink;
the apparently barren Atlas mountains that we drove through with our guide Hassan, where every corner brings a new amazing view. The mountains look fairly inhospitable and you'd think it's practically impossible to grow anything there, but somehow the Berbers who live in the mountains manage to get by. In fact, they seem to be thriving as there was always people hanging around by the side of the road even in the most remote of the mountain passes that we drove through. I have no idea what they were doing there, but I respect the fact that they were doing it;
the local Berber pharmacy that Hassan kindly showed us for nothing other than some substantial kick-backs from the owners (he was generous like that). The pharmacy was full of exotic spices, scented oils, potions, lotions, perfumes and other exotic things. The shop assistant spent a long (and fairly lucrative) time while talking us through the various products that he had to offer and we all walked away smelling quite a bit better than when we walked in. Afterwards, while the others were busy pulling out their wallets though, the shop assistant came up to me and in a conspirational whisper mentioned that he could give me some traditional Berber viagra if that's what I was after. Now, I appreciate the manner in which the guy addressed a sensitive issue, but why did he assume that I was the one in need of help and not my travelling companions? Very worrying;
camel riding through the desert at dusk. OK, I'm not sure that the camels qualify as a highlight, because all of my previous experiences of camels were confirmed on this trip (they are ugly, have extremely bad dental hygiene and are supremely uncomfortable). But the camels did manage to get us to a desert camp where we spent the night around a bonfire, playing drums and staring up at the most amazing display of stars that I have ever seen (I've never seen the Milky Way as clearly as I did from the Moroccan desert). Our accommodation was a tent made out of Moroccan carpets and we slept wrapped in camel hair blankets. In a word: awesome.

And that's another Miami Dolphins FIRST DOWN!

2007-11-03T15:30:00.000-07:00

So it's Halloween tonight (or at least it was when I started writing this post) and the streets are full of kids dressed up as devils and witches and skeletons and (rather disturbingly) Britney Spears. Luckily I live in an apartment so I should be relatively safe from trick or treating. And even if they do come knocking, I'm on the 4th floor, so it's going to take some enterprising kids to play any serious tricks on me. Of course, I'm sure they'd find a way if I took my Dad's traditional approach of opening the front door to trick and treaters and then spending the next 15 minutes giving them a lecture on how Halloween isn't an Australian tradition and they should spend their time learning a bit more about Australia's colonial era instead of scouting for sweets. Or, alternatively, I could just try and offer them something nice to eat. Unfortunately, all I've got to offer at the moment is a tub of hummous and some carrots. I quite like it, but I'm not sure the sugar content in the hummous is high enough to satisfy the kids. So, to sum up, I may just need to take my chances.

While I'm waiting for the rotten eggs to start raining down on my roof, I may as well write a little bit about last Sunday, when the NFL came to town. It was the first time that any NFL regular season game had been played outside the US and they did it in style, playing in front of 85,000 plus one (me) fans at Wembley. About 50 players from the Miami Dolphins and NY Giants made the trip over for the match and they were accompanied by a team of around 100 Dolphins cheerleaders (supposedly the finest cheerers in the league, but then I bet they say that to all the girls).

Now the weather on Sunday wasn't great - hey, this is London after all - but that wasn't going to put my little crew off following NFL tradition and doing a little bit of tailgating. Tailgating basically involves breaking out a BBQ behind your pick-up truck and sinking a few beers before the game. Well, we didn't have a pick-up but we did have a little disposable BBQ, a packet of Sainsbury's finest wild boar bangers and a couple of 6 packs of Carlsberg, which went down a treat (both with us and a couple of friendly coppers who were a little hungry and a little too cheap to buy their own sausages). We had kind of expected there to a be a crowd of tailgaters, given that that there were several thousand Americans flying over especially for the match. But I suppose they all left their BBQs at home, because we were alone out the front of Wembley. Anyway, having wolfed down a couple of lonely sausages and more than a few lagers, we finally made it into the stadium as the players charged onto the field, fireworks exploded, cheerleaders bounced and Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" blared through the stadium speakers. Americans really know how to do entertainment.

The match itself was entertaining, but I don't think it was the best football ever played. The weather was partly to blame, as the players were having a hard time getting a grip on the wet ball, which meant that both teams preferred a running game over a passing game. So, really, the game soon degenerated into something closely resembling the recent rugby World Cup final, with two teams grinding it out for field position and then knocking over penalty kicks. Still, we were a few more beers down by that stage and were happy enough watching the cheerleaders do their thing. Also, I was becoming excellent at screaming out FIRST DOWN every time the Dolphins made their 10 yards. In fact, it was a bit of a shame that the crowd wasn't a bit louder - I was half hoping that the Giants fans would start singing "are you Tottenham in disguise" to the Dolphins players, but they don't seem to have the same sense of humour as the Gunners fans. Maybe next time. Anyway, the final result was 13-10 to the Giants. But on the day, we were all winners.

Jealous?

2007-10-22T11:37:00.000-07:00

Many bloggers write interminable postings about exciting nights out, brushes with celebrity and travel to exotic locations. I think a deep seated need to make other people jealous must form a significant part of the psyche of these people. But I for one am above such pettiness, as I shall demonstrate by telling you about the least eventful weekend of my life.

It started on Thursday evening when I managed to concoct one of the least appetising meals of history out of a seemingly innocuous combination of ricotta, spinach, pasta and (for some reason) plum tomatoes. Usually when I'm hungry I can eat practically anything, but even I had to ditch the slop I served up on Thursday. But unfortunately I had managed to plow through a good portion of it before coming to my senses and I was made to pay early on Friday morning when the sound of my gurgling stomach woke me up and told me it was time to head to Borehamwood (the world's least inspiring office location). 7 hours of keyboard tapping later, my stomach hadn't settled down but it was time to head off for a 10 course duck and crab banquet. I (manfully, in my opinion) battled through most of the duck courses, but I didn't get very far with the crab - partly due to my rebelling stomach and partly because I'm never very good with crab - the shell:meat ratio just doesn't work for me.

I woke up late on Saturday still feeling under the weather and spent most of the day curled in a ball in bed. Somehow I forced myself to wake up long enough in the evening to watch 80 minutes of the dullest rugby ever played. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm glad the Springboks won, but really you shouldn't be allowed to win a World Cup without at least scoring one try in the final. Fiji would have been worthier winners.

I woke up on Sunday to a beautiful autumn day in London with clear blue skies and bright sunshine. I was feeling much better as well, until I realised that it was almost 11am and I'd just slept for roughly 22 of the last 24 hours. Thinking I could just fight my way through the stomach issues, I then proceeded to make a series of really, really bad decisions by: going swimming, eating a lunch consisting almost entirely of rice pudding (my first meal in 36 hours), playing squash (a truly terrible effort - I could barely move) and downing a pint of Kronenburg 1664. The final move was my worst and my stomach exacted swift retribution. I spent the rest of the day crawling between the bathroom and my bedroom. I went to bed at 9pm.

I woke up this morning feeling just better enough to not be able to justify a sick day. In fact, I had to get up super early and arrive at the office at 7am in order to use the printer because the one in Borehamwood doesn't work. Lucky me. 12 hours after choosing the double-sided, two to a page option, I'm lying here on the couch watching Britain's Official Top 40 (which is reminding me why I don't generally watch TV any more). Feeling jealous yet? Thought so.

Keeping it real

2007-10-14T08:57:00.000-07:00

What a weekend. I am feeling exhausted even though I got a solid 7.5 hours sleep last night. My tiredness is possibly due to the game of squash I've just played. Or possibly it could be traced back to the six bags of groceries I've just hauled up the 4 flights of stairs up to my apartment. But I think it's more likely to be the effects of a long week at work (put in perspective by having dinner with two people from Clifford Chance and hearing how hard they work) followed up with a fairly packed weekend schedule.

On Friday night I snuck out of my temporary office in Borehamwood early and took the 4.54pm commuter special from Elstree&Borehamwood into West Hampstead station. Not used to the novelty of getting home so early and with dinner reservations at 9pm, I was at a bit of a loss for things to do, so I went for a jog, had a shower, rearranged my socks into colour groups and then headed out the door in the direction of Geales in Notting Hill. Supposedly one of the best fish n chip restaurants in London, which would make it one of the best in the world, I have to admit I was underwhelmed by Geales. My softshell crab starter was delicious, but my square shaped parcel of crisp fried haddock was fairly ordinary, which basically means it wasn't anything better than what you'd get from your local chip store. So I won't be hurrying back. But, hey, it was a fun night with friends and Friday fish suppers are part of the London experience.

I got up early on Saturday to run errands, which I had to finish by midday so I could shoot off to Marylebone in time to meet the chartered train to Wembley. I managed to sneak a ticket to Bird&Bird's corporate box to watch the England v Estonia game. I have to say, I was amazed by Wembley stadium. It may make you feel like you're inside a Heathrow airport terminal, but it is massive and comfortable and like no other stadium I have ever been in. Except for Arsenal's Emirates stadium, which is almost as good. MCG, take note, you have some serious competition out there. The corporate box was pretty sweet too - all plush leather, polished wood, full fridges and magnificent views, the box is a prime example why it is worthwhile having money. The clients and workmates I was with were a stellar group of people and we had a real ball. The game wasn't too bad either, though half our party missed significant chunks of the second half because of the rule that you can't drink alcohol in view of the pitch and the rest of the stadium - solution? you have to drink in your box with the blinds closed - bizarre. And to top it off, I won 20 squid by picking the correct final score (3-nil England). Nice.

While the others headed out to Paddington to watch the England v France rugby match (something that no longer interests me given that the Wallabies have lost and, as a reasonably rational person, the game of rugby confuses and frustrates me - practically anything you do on the pitch results in a penalty of some sort) I raced back home for a pitstop before shooting out East in the direction of Farringdon to meet up with my b boy and b girl buddies, Dan and Vanessa. The knock-out rounds of the UK b boy championship were being held on Saturday night and Dan, Vanessa and I wanted to represent the old Collins St crew. At first, the event was a bit underwhelming, as it basically seemed to involve a crowd of teenagers fighting over the free Snoop Dogg CDs and t-shirts that the MCs were throwing from the stage. But after the formalities were over and the dancing started, everything took off. As the fat MC said, this shit was real - no bullshit. The first competition was a doubles event and I have to say, I never realised break dancing could be so camp. From the French couple dressed like Marcel Marceau and doing their best to combine breaking and miming to the Japanese boys dressed in fluoro orange headbands and crop tops, there was a fair amount of preening and posing going on in between the popping and locking. But the action was fast and furious. When the one on one b boy battles started, though things went to a whole new level and started to get personal. There was a whole lot of attitude being thrown around the room that night and not all of it was coming from Vanessa - there was a fair bit of it up on the stage as well. Overall, a great night. To top it off, I managed to resist buying a sausage at Oxford Circus on the way home, so when I woke up on Sunday morning I didn't have a stomach ache. Brilliant.

A cure for insomnia

2007-10-01T13:02:00.000-07:00

I was going to call this blog "Seventh Level of Hell" but that really would have been doing Tuscany an injustice. I mean, I had a really good time in Tuscany last weekend. But then, I've never been a particularly harsh critic, unlike Huy who came out with the Seventh Level quote in the middle of the 14th (of around 53) hair-pin turn on the (scenic) route from Calci to Lucca.

You see, a group of 6 of us had set out on hired bikes from Pisa on Saturday morning in search of rural scenes, (gentle) adventure and gastronomic fulfillment. Only, in hindsight, we should probably not have left the navigation to the hard-core fitness freak German residents in our party. If the indolent Londoners in the group had been in charge, we probably wouldn't have chosen the longest and steepest route to Lucca. But then, if the indolent Londoners in the group had been in charge, we probably wouldn't have gotten much further than the first pizzeria in Pisa. Anyway, as things turned out, we spent a fairly large (and grim) part of Saturday struggling up a series of mountain passes trying to remember what it was like to have a sense of humour.

Needless to say, there was a fair amount of pushing mixed in with the cycling. In fairness, the conditions weren't exactly in our favour. For one thing, the bikes we hired were perfectly decent town bikes, but not exactly made for climbing up mountains. Joyce's was a particular stubborn beast that refused to change below third gear and kept on dropping it's chain at the most inopportune moments. And the paniers and front baskets may have been useful for carrying things, but they did make it a little more difficult to balance and made us look faintly ridiculous next to the multitudes of serious cyclists powering up the mountain in their fluoro-pink lycra and carbon-fibre racers. They may have been going quicker than us, but at least we were keeping it real.

Fortunately, once we'd crossed the peak and had a well-deserved picnic of bread, cheese and salami, we were able to roll all the way down to Lucca. While the cycling got a little easier, our troubles weren't quite over, as a small break-away developed near to Lucca and managed to leave the peloton far enough behind to cause some navigating confusion. Search parties were duly dispatched, tasked with locating the peloton somewhere "near a church with a green roof". Given the number of churches in Italy, this wasn't the most helpful of clues. But the combined deductive reasoning of 6 university educated minds overcame this small problem and we were soon ensconced in Lucca's oldest restaurant, admiring the copper pots and sinking Tuscan red late into the night, well, at until at least 10pm at least, at which point we were all dead on our feet. For all you insomniacs out there, a hard day in the Tuscan mountains followed by a bottle of red should fix you right up because I can't remember ever sleeping as well as I did on Saturday night.

I cleverly managed to forget my camera at home, so I didn't take any photos. But Tim had the trust SLR to hand and took some great shots, a sample of which I am pleased to present below.

My week

2007-09-16T12:08:00.000-07:00

It's Sunday night, which is my usual blogging time and I'm short of inspiration. I'm searching for a stand-out event of the past 7 days to write about, but I'm drawing a blank. In fact, I was speaking to my parents earlier this morning and was struggling for topics of conversation as nothing much seemed to have happened this week. But really, looking back on it, there are a few things worth writing about.

On Wednesday, I went to the theatre with Yalin to see "In Celebration". I've never been a regular theatre-goer, but there's so much out there in London that it's hard to avoid. In fact, I'm really growing to like the theatre and I almost prefer it to the cinema these days - for one thing I seem to have less of a problem staying awake when the actors are standing live in front of you. Anyway, although my opinion of theatre generally is rising, this particular production was a total bomb. The play itself was really quite dull - it's essentially an extended family melodrama, set in Yorkshire in the 60s and revolved around 3 brothers coming home for their parents' 40 year wedding anniversay. There's obvious tension between the family members but you never learn what the underlying cause is and it is never resolved. Everyone gets a fairly extended opportunity to have a philosophical rant about life in general and to accuse each other of vague misdoings. And then the lights go out and the audience is expected to clap. A total anticlimax. The most frustrating thing about it was that it made no sense from a production point of view. I mean, it "starred" Orlando Bloom and you would have thought the director would try and capitalise on his Hollywood profile. But instead they dressed him in a daggy brown cardigan and fake moustache and then got him to spend most of the play crying in bed. Very odd.

For the rest of the working week I had my head down at work doing a due diligence exercise and attending extended negotiations. Having meetings all day really makes it hard to get things done. I hate the feeling of being away from your desk for 8 hours in the middle of the day and then returning at 6pm to actually start working on all the things you've been discussing. But that's life I guess.

Next week looks like it will be busy again, but at least this weekend has been a good one - for some reason London seems to have been holding back the sunny weather during summer so that it can spend it all during the autumn. Which is lucky for the organises of the Thames Festival, which was on Saturday, because they'd basically organised a big series of outdoor events that would have tanked if it had been raining. For one thing, the fake beach on Southwark bridge would have turned into a muddy mess and the dancers with the flamenco-cross-hawaiian guitar band may have been a little chilly. Anyway, the sun was out and it was all good. In the evening I went to Brick Lane to check out Huy's new flat and ended up sticking around to help him move a bit of furniture around and eat some Vietnamese food. I have to say, I really liked the area around Brick Lane. It's very cool in a very self-conscious way. I'm not sure if it's ironic or not, but either way it's amusing. I think I may need to make a move east sometime in the next year or so.

And today I woke up late and then spent the day sitting in Kensington Palace Gardens having a picnic with friends and talking about crap. The perfect way to spend a Sunday - there is no need for pointless exertion on the day before you have to head back to work. And that's basically the end of my week. Interesting, huh?

Dublin

2007-09-10T13:30:00.001-07:00

So this is my first post in a while. I think there must be something wrong with my diet as my appetite for blogging and even writing emails seems to be waning. I suspect it's all the pesto I've been eating. Pesto with pasta and canned tuna is my standard quick meal these days. It's bad on two fronts: (1) apparently people have been known to overdose on pesto and die (apprently pine nuts are toxic when taken in massive quantities). Urban myth? Possibly; and (2) basil and tuna are generally considered (at least by the respondents to a casual survey I took this afternoon) a vile taste combination. I must have seriously damaged taste buds, because I don't mind it myself.

Anyway, I took a break from the pesto this weekend while I was visiting my friends Bec and Frank in Dublin. Frank is a master chef and put together a magnificent slow-roasted lamb dinner for us on Saturday and I am still dreaming about it some 3 days later. Let's linger on the subject of lamb for a minute. Three weeks ago, I ate a sublime roast at my mate Nick's place. A couple of weeks later I made my own first ever lamb roast (a Jamie Oliver inspired, Italian-influenced number, which has anchovies as it's killer secret ingredient). And now Frank comes along with his own interpretation of the theme. I wonder who will make roast lamb for me this weekend ... any takers?

Back to Dublin. It's a great town and I managed to see a fair bit of it thanks to my two dedicated and charming hosts. From the historic (Kilmainham jail) to the cultured (literary pub crawl) to the tacky (Bono's house), we had it all covered. For those who haven't been before, Dublin is a nice town. It's got some nice buildings - Trinity College is beautiful. It's got it's own instantly recognisable land mark - the millenium spire - in Frank's words "epic", in my words "plain". And it's got a decent night life - think Irish pubs, Guiness and Irish whiskey. But the highlight for me was spending a weekend surrounded by a nation of people who love to talk but manage to do so in such a way that the rest of the world can't understand a bloody word of what they're saying. I had thought that the Welsh spoke the most impenetrable English in the world, but I now think they have strong rivals in the shape of the Irish. If you're thinking about going, I recommend bringing a pad and pen and asking people to write things down for you - it's so much quicker that way.

On a final note, I took my beautiful new camera to Dublin with me but only managed to take one picture - a half-hearted snap of the city centre taken just before I hopped on the bus back to the airport. I used to love taking photos but I seem to have lost the passion for it. Taking photos just seems like so much trouble these days. Which is strange, because pushing a button is hardly difficult. Maybe it's something to do with my diet ...

My latest painting

2007-08-26T05:48:00.000-07:00

This is my latest painting. It is the first (and most likely the last) from my "dots" phase. The dots seemed like a good idea at the time, but I was pretty sick of them by the end. In making this painting, I was inspired by a number of aboriginal artists that I've been looking at online. In particular, I was inspired by the paintings of Kathleen Petyarre and Dorothy Napangardi.

Too easy? Not likely.

2007-08-20T07:03:00.000-07:00

Where some people are able to make hard things seem easy, I seem to be uniquely able to make easy things hard, as my experience of the last weekend shows.

First of all, softball. It's not the most traditional Enligh sport, but softball seems to have quite a following amongst English law firms. At Bird & Bird, we have a team that plays in a league each year and also enters the annual legal industry softball tournament. The 2007 edition of this tournament was held on Saturday and was a full-day event structured in such a way as to give almost every team a 75% chance of leaving with a trophy of some sort (lawyers are very bad losers, so it's best to try and make everyone feel like a winner). Despite this, an the fact that we showed some considerable style and panache (particularly with the bat), we managed to walk away with nothing except our (slightly wounded) pride. Our lack of success can be attributed to two main factors: (1) the fact that other teams had drafted into their ranks specialist squads of semi-professional Canadian softballers, who had been training for the tournament 12 hours a day, 7 days a week since February this year; and (2) our unfortunate tendency to pull out our worst plays just as we were on the verge of victory - like the time we were leading comfortably and only had to dismiss one more batter to end the opposition innings and then proceeded to concede 10 consecutive runs through an amazing series of dropped catches and wild over-throws. Despite our plentiful supply of natural talent, we really did make winning seem like hard work. At least there's always 2008 ...

Secondly, tennis. After a long lay-off (I think the last time I took the court in anger was sometime in the first half of 2006) I've been playing tennis again. My hitting partner is a guy called Anthony who's come off an even longer lay-off than me (something in the region of 8 years). However, unlike me, Anthony has the advantage of having real tennis-playing talent and was heavily involved in the sport during his university days. So while I can just about keep the ball in the court with him when we're rallying, it's an understatement to say that we're slightly mis-matched. On this particular occasion, we played on some carpet courts in the Harbour Club, which is a newly refurbished fitness centre on Harrow Road and about 15 minutes walk from my flat. The carpet is a nice quick surface that suits both our games, but the complex itself is a massive heat-trap with poor ventilation, and feels a little like you're playing tennis in a Turkish bath. After 5 minutes we were both dripping in sweat but decided we'd push on through and keep playing. It was great, but an hour or so of scrambling from side to side trying to track down Anthony's massive groundstrokes left me absolutely shattered. Today my legs are so stiff that I can hardly walk. I dropped a pound coin on the ground earlier and when I bent down to pick it up it felt like my hamstrings were about to snap.

Finally, the inaugural Tranzie degustation dinner. The five of us who shared lunch at the Fat Duck last weekend decided that anything Heston could do, we could do better and so decided to put on our own degustation feast, with each of us supplying a course. Jenny and Brendan, the consummate hosts, kindly volunteered their dining room for the occasion and also prepared menus, hilarious personalised profiles of each chef and a brief, but amusing, wine list. Having had advance notice of the event and always desperate for validation from my peer group, I put a fair amount of effort into my contribution - a palate cleansing sorbet. I've actually got some sorbet making experience, and a mango & passionfruit combination is my trade mark dish, but being so eager to impress I thought I'd try something different. My first attempt was a kiwi fruit number that turned into an unmitigated disaster. The sorbet turned brown and tasted terribly acidic. And a hairy half kiwi fruit filled with a pile of brown slush doesn't exactly look appetising. Not a good start. My next combination was apple and cinnamon and this one turned out OK, but for some reason it came out too icy. I know - sorbet is meant to be icy but this one was TOO icy. I can't explain it any better than that. Let's move on. My next combination was lime and basil. No good. One of my taste-testers said it tasted to her "like icy pesto". Tragedy. So after 2 weeks worth of experimentation, I went back to the trusty mango & passionfruit option. It did the job OK, but was completely overshadowed by the offerings of my more talented friends. Jenny's san choi bao was my personal favouite, followed closely by Brendan's interpretation of a dish known as "Fiona's Surprise". It was sublime.

Well done, Mr Blumenthal

2007-08-11T11:34:00.000-07:00

NOTE: In order to achieve a full "multi-modal" experience, I recommend listening to The Grey Album by Danger Mouse while reading this blog posting. A prize goes to the first person to correctly guess the significance of this choice of soundtrack.*

Now, to set the scene, it's worth stating upfront that in my early years I was a picky eater. The list of things that I would refuse to eat was worryingly long. In fact, my mum had a very limited range of ingredients that she could use if she wanted to make a meal that I would deem acceptable. I'm not sure how she managed to feed me a well-balanced diet using only: fish fingers, peanut butter, dried apricots and sultana bread. But somehow she did. And one of the strategies she used with great success was disguising ingredients so that I didn't realise what I was eating. For many, many years I wolfed down plate after plate of beef stroganoff without ever realising that it was full of mushrooms (which, at the time, I was sure would made me puke if ate one). Well done, Mum. And well done, Mr Blumenthal, a man who is continuing (to much acclaim) this fine tradition of making amazing food that isn't quite what it seems. This is Mr Blumenthal's story. This is the story of lunch at The Fat Duck.

The occasion was Jenny's birthday. The attendees were Jenny, Brendan, Joyce, Huy and me. Lunch lasted 4 hours. There were 16 courses. I ate 10 pieces of bread (the magic proportion - one part butter to two parts bread - that's a lot of butter). We had two bottles of wine (at which point our money ran out). The total cost was, well, that's enough statistics... let's get on with the real story

On arrival at the second best restaurant in the world (ie The Fat Duck) we were greeted by a small and unassuming building. We were soon seated in a small and impeccably decorated dining room (room for around 40 diners only, bespoke, slightly disturbing, yellow paintings lining the walls - inspired by egg and bacon ice cream? possibly) and presented with what appeared at first to be the Consolidated Oxford English Dictionary Volume A to E but turned out, on closer inspection, to be the wine list.

Traditional wisdom says the safest choice on a wine list is the second cheapest bottle. Joyce challenged this, saying the third cheapest is safer (as restaurateurs often try and shift bad wine by placing it in the second cheapest slot). At The Fat Duck the third cheapest wine cost 150 quid, so we decided to ignore convention and go for the cheapest wine instead. A rash move? Hardly, as the sommelier said, everything is quality at The Fat Duck. With wine ordered, food was next and that was easy. We all wanted to try Heston Blumenthal's tasting menu. Straight from his underground laboratory, Mr Blumenthal's tasting dishes are famous for being strange and fantastic. He didn't disappoint us. I won't go into detail about every one of the 16 different creations we tried. But here is just a sample:

Oak Moss - The smoky, woody essense of oak moss served as a plastic breath-freshener strip and followed by truffle toast. A square bed of moss is placed on your table and liquid nitrogen is poured on top to release the smell of the forest. Smoky tendrils of gas cover your table. It's like you're eating something out of a fantasy novel. It's brilliantly theatrical. And the truffles were truly out of this world.

Snail Porridge - Sounds awful, tastes delicious. It really is porridge (there are oats in there) but it looks nothing like what you imagine. A bright grass-green pool of porridge serves as a base for the thinnest saltiest strips of cured ham and delicious bite-sized pieces of snail topped by thin ribbons of fennel. Creamy and salty and meaty. It's great. This one was my favourite.

Sound of the Sea - As Huy knowledgeably told us, this was the ultimate "multi-modal" dish - providing pleasure for all the senses: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and well, ok, maybe not touching but I'm sure the staff would be discreet if you tried to eat the dish with your hands. Served on a glass plate, you get what looks like (but obviously is not) a small pile of sand, foam and seaweed. In front of you is a conch shell housing an iPod mini. Put the headphones on and you hear the sound of crashing waves and the screech of seagulls. When you start to eat, what you're tasting is the sensation of being at the beach. It sounds bizarre, but it works and will blow your mind.

Bacon and Egg Ice Cream - This one's a long-time Blumenthal favourite. The bacon is already in the eggs when they are brought to your table (just like the lime is in the coconut in the old Harry Nilsson song). They're cracked right in front of you and out pours a beautifully smooth custard into a copper pot. More liquid nitrogen and a bit of stirring later, and hey presto you have egg and bacon ice cream. Served up on your plate on a bed of the lightest french toast and a caramelised wafer of bacon, it is the strangest and most wonderful dessert finish to a meal you can imagine. Sweet and savoury. Breakfast and dessert. Incredible.

The food looked like nothing I had ever seen before. Or, actually, it did look vaguely familiar, but I didn't always recognise it as food. But the taste was special in the truest McAvaney-esque sense of the word. In fact, my taste buds are stimluated even as I'm typing now. Come to think of it, I have both eggs and bacon in the fridge. Now all I need to do is get the bacon inside the eggs and find some liquid nitrogen. This could take a while....

* There will be no prize.

Park life - It's nice

2007-08-05T05:01:00.000-07:00

So summer's finally made it to London, a few months late admittedly, but better later than never. This weekend it's been all sunshine and blue skies and I've been trying to make up for lost time by cramming all my favourite summer activities into two days: swimming, eating ice cream, making banana smoothies, tennis, beer in the afternoon, reggae and dance-hall music and of course, that most English of summer activities, sitting in the park. I've just come back from a couple of hours lazing in the sun in Paddington Rec and I have to say it is simply delightful. And my favourite part is the simplest thing of all - the grass. It's not the hard, dry, scratchy grass that you get at home - it's soft, sweet-smelling, springy green grass like they draw in children's books. Lying on the grass in Paddington Rec is like lying on a goose-down quilt, except it's outside and it's free. Perfection. And the locals love it - half of Maida Vale must be out there playing frisbee or sun-bathing or kicking a football or just generally lazing. But it's not crowded enough to spoil the fun - it's just right. Park life? Not bad, I must say.

Geographically challenged

2007-07-28T14:40:00.000-07:00

Why is my sense of direction so bad? I wanted to get my hair cut today and the hairdresser I go to is about 5-7 minutes walk from my house. I swear you only need to turn two corners to get there. Yet I spent 20 minutes walking in circles trying to find it and then gave up because I was running late anyway. What's wrong with me? I've been to that hairdresser twice before but I've got no idea what shops it was next to or even what street it's on. I'm very disappointed with myself. The only explanation I have is that I often listen to my iPod when I'm walking around my area and perhaps that's stopping me from paying attention to the direction I'm heading in. For example today I have to admit I was a bit preoccupied with walking like a robot while listening to Daft Punk's "Harder Better Faster Longer" and spent the 5 minutes after that nodding my head purposefully to Snoop Dogg's "Beautiful" (feat Pharrell). Next time I go out I'm leaving the headphones at home.

Luckily for me, with my haircut, it's hard to tell whether or not I've been to the hairdresser recently. In fact, I should really be able to cut my hair myself, which I did until recently when I found my (now lost) hairdresser that only charges 7 quid, which is a bargain too good to refuse. It's a Turkish barber shop on Harrow Road (at least that's what I thought, but it didn't seem to be there today) and specialises in shaved heads - there are always guys there getting interesting designs cut into their crew-cuts (like zig zags and Nike signs). I just get the corporate special, which is just a number 2 all over. The barbers always seem to be disappointed when I don't ask for something a little more creative. I suppose I should probably try and mix it up a little bit now and then. My latest thinking is a Kostya Tzsyu style fringe and pony tail. Thoughts?

More genius?

2007-07-21T09:15:00.001-07:00

This is my latest artwork, which I finished this morning. It's a continuation of my "white oblongs" series. What do you think?

I know your reaction will probably be "That'll look great on the wall of my bedroom / livingroom / internationally acclaimed art gallery." But I'm afraid that Mudiwa has first right of refusal on it as she laid claim to it while it was still only half-finished (though whether Mudiwa realised that at the time is hard to tell). Of course, she now just has to come back to London in order to pick it up ...

For no particular reason, I've also included a photo of the painting in its early stages.

Too much cheese is barely enough

2007-07-16T12:44:00.000-07:00

This is just one of many life lessons I learned on what was an amazingly wonderful weekend away in France to celebrate Joyce's birthday. The other lessons I learned are as follows:

When it's cold and wet in London, it's 30 degrees and sunny in the French Alps.

Even if your language skills are limited (like mine), it's always worth arming yourself with useful phrases such as "Gardez vos mains a vous-meme que mon mari est un policier", which (according to Babelfish) translates roughly as "Keep your hands as you-same that my husband is a police officer?"

When climbing a mountain, always opt for the near vertical, muddy and slippery goat trail rather than the wide gravel path with the easy gradient and clear signage. It feels so much more rewarding when you get past the tree line and realise you're nowhere near the peak and, in fact, nowhere near where you were aiming for. Just remember, if it's good enough for the goats, it's good enough for you. And the views will be spectacular, no matter what part of the mountain you're on.

Even when the sky is clear and sunny and there are no birds in sight, you can still get hit with bird shit. My baby-blue t-shirt is never going to be the same ...

Sometimes life presents you with an impossible choice. For instance, what would you do if presented with the following options: (1) hiking for an hour and a half up a mountain in searing heat to join the frenzied masses at the top of the pass to cheer on a bunch of riders in intense physical pain, only managing to stay on their bikes because of the adrenaline surge they get from seeing you jumping up and down and shouting for them; or (2) reclining in the sun on your balcony drinking champagne and eating cheese while watching a stream of cyclists hurtle down the mountain and terror-inducing speed. It's a hard choice, but there's no wrong answer.

There are few nicer places in the world than a chalet in the French Alps with a view looking out to the mountains and a fridge full of wine, beer, cheese and cold meat.

Even after a weekend full of raclette, hard cheese, soft cheese, blue cheese and more cheese, there is always still room for a quattro fromages pizza by the banks of Lake Geneva.

Killing me softly? I wish.

2007-07-10T07:42:00.000-07:00

This is the story of two vastly different musical experiences.

Last Friday night, a group of 10 or so (extremely beautiful) friends kicked off an extended celebration of the Joyce's birthday by over-dosing on three favourite, though indulgent, luxuries: fine food, fine wine and karaoke. Lucky Voice was our venue of choice and, to set the scene, you need to imagine a dimly lit, leather padded sauna with a large flat screen, a couple of mics and a hoarde of inflatable saxophones and bright pink afro-wigs. I admit that I was slightly sceptical about the whole thing. I've only done karaoke a couple of times before and last time I chose to do "Hey Jude", which is a great song and easy to sing for the most part, except it has about 4 minutes of "na na-na na-na-na-naaaaaaas" at the end, which gets a bit tedious for both the singer and the audience. But all it took was an explosive r-r-rendition of "Boom Shake the Room" by Brendan to turn me into a believer. Who would believe that anyone could mimic the s-s-s-stutter of the Fresh Prince so perfectly? After that followed a cavalcade of hits all sung in fine style. The highlights were simply too numerous to mention them all here, though special mention should be made of Yalin (the only one of us who might actually sound good to an independent third party - the man can sing and he's got soul), Huy's (perhaps overly?) sensual dancing to "Genie in a Bottle" and Jenny's dramatic and heart-rending intepretation of "Total Eclipse of the Heart". I was blown away by our collective talent, flair and sense of drama. It was fun.

On Sunday night, I went to see Lauryn Hill, acclaimed R&B superstar, play her comeback gig in London. I was excited at the prospect of seeing L-Boogie in the flesh. And, for the 20 seconds or so between Ms Hill being announced on-stage and the time when her microphone started working (I mean who lets the lead singer get on stage without checking that her microphone works?!), those hopes were sustained. It was at that point, that Lauryn started shouting (not singing, oh no, she didn't do much of that) the lyrics to Bob Marley's "The Heathen" backed by a 14 piece band that was loud, but unfortunately not quite loud enough to drown out her squawling. She then proceeded to shout and rasp her way through what I had thought was an impressive back catalogue of tracks (including a number of Fugees tunes that she massacred by forgetting half the lyrics), before caterwauling through a number of Bob Marley covers (it took me about 3 minutes of listening to "Zimbabwe" before realising what she was singing) and then finally showing no mercy for her tortured audience by forcing them to listen to new material that sounded a whole lot like two cats fighting in a metal rubbish bin. She was bad, folks, she was BAD. Have you ever seen a crowd of several thousand people stand dead still and with their arms crossed throughout an entire 90 minute musical performance? I have. Half-way through the show, Lauryn asked why everyone in the balcony was so quiet. It was because they were LEAVING Lauryn. It's a shame. She used to be so good.

Next time I want to hear good music, I'm going back to Lucky Voice ...

Huy Le, Egomaniac - Part 2

2007-07-07T00:37:00.000-07:00

Here is a picture of Huy Le, egomaniac, looking typically smug.

This is now three posts in a row in which I have written about Huy, which will no doubt only feed his ego further (it really doesn't take much). And my next proper posting is likely to be about our karaoke experience yesterday, and will no doubt feature a fairly favourable review of Huy's R&B stylings on the microphone. But after that I'm going to do my best to make sure my next few postings are Huy Le-free. Sorry, Huy.

Shout outs

2007-07-02T13:17:00.000-07:00

So since my readership seems to consist predominantly of three people - Tim, Huy and Joyce - I thought it would be appropriate to give them some props by promoting their own writings.

Huy has been blogging for longer than all of us, and his experience shows. Although it pains me to say it, his blog is tremendously funny, well-written and entertaining. I strongly recommend you become a regular reader, but please don't leave too many complimentary comments, as flattery to Huy is like chocolate mud-cake to a diabetic fat man (too much isn't good for him). http://huythelad.blogspot.com

Joyce is taking a slightly different approach to blogging by writing fewer entries and packing more into them. Basically, it's a necessary step, since Joyce doesn't have much free time and needs to schedule blogging entries between gigs, theatre, weekends away and culinary excursions. Reading a post on Joyce's blog makes you realise just how much is going on out there in the big city and also just how much of it involves Joyce (i.e. a lot). http://jetsettingjoyce.googlepages.com/

Tim's blog is relatively new, but I'm sure he'll soon overtake all of us both on number and length of postings. He also tends towards weightier topics - his insights into politics, literature and film are well worth reading - even though you have to sift through the odd piece of drivel about a now-defunct football team known only as the "Bears". http://walkaboutcreek.blogspot.com

Huy Le, Egomaniac

2007-06-27T15:06:00.000-07:00

When I started writing this blog I had no intention for it to become a forum for airing personal greivances. Unfortunately, that was somewhat naive of me. After all, blogging is all about the disenfranchised seeking a soap box from which to whinge. So listen up, good readers, and hear me complain about my "friend" Huy Le. Huy has an ego that is OUT OF CONTROL. It's evident in every aspect of his behaviour. Who else could care so much about the tightness of his shirts, about the number of mirrors in his one bedroom apartment and the amount of sweat that can pour from a bald guy's head? He's so self-centred that he complains about the fact that I don't write about him in my blog. I mean, it's like he's just ASSUMED that I have nothing better to write about than him and his total lack of perspective on the world. I mean, it's not like there aren't plenty of interesting things happening in my life that are far more important than Huy's warped sense of fashion. So listen carefully, Huy-Pac - my readers don't give a stuff about your super-pointy shoes or your skin-tight, stove-pipe, straight-leg, flat-front black pants. They're interested in more important issues. And I'm fully intending to write about some of those issues some time in the near future. So there.

Inspired?

2007-06-20T11:56:00.000-07:00

Here's my latest art work for your review. What do you think? A work of rare genius? Or merely the greatest artistic statement of my generation? I will let my public decide.

How sad am I?

2007-06-15T00:41:00.001-07:00

Pretty sad is the answer. I'm bored at work again. I mean, I've got a few things to do, but I'm not exactly run off my feet. I went through a brief (3 day) busy period last week when I had to work late, but that's over now. Sitting around for hours on end is pretty mind-numbing and right now my mind is so numb that I probably wouldn't feel anything if you opened up my skull and poked my brain with a fork. I mean I'm following the US Open golf online by watching the scores tick over on the leaderboard. And I've started to read up on golf statistics. For example, did you know that Ernie Els' average score per round over the 2004 golf season was 68.98. Not bad, hey? Um, yeah.

All the world's a stage

2007-06-13T12:26:00.000-07:00

Jenny and Rob were in London last weekend and were kind enough to stop by my place to say hello and spend a bit of time with me exploring London. We managed to pack quite a bit into only a couple of days, but the highlight for me was definitely catching a show (an utterly fantastic production of The Merchant of Venice) at Shakespeare's Globe theatre on Southbank.

For those of you not familiar with the Globe, it's a fairly authentic recreation of the theatre in which Shakespeare used to put on his productions some 400 odd years ago. It's got a great atmosphere, because the seats go straight up, rather than on an angle, which means the whole crowd stays close to the action. And for the punters without much cash, there are £5 standing tickets, where you get to watch the play from the Shakespearian equivalent of a mosh pit.

We'd actually been hoping to get some cheap seats, but they were all sold out, so we went with the standing option, which turned out to be a brilliant choice. The standing crowd gets right up close to the action - you can even lean on the stage if you like (though you need to watch out for actors randomly vomiting off the stage during certain scenes). Being so close to the actors really gets you involved in the play and engages you in an entirely different way.

The play itself is of course a work of genius. Despite the blatant anti-semitism in parts, which is pretty confronting to a modern audience, the themes of love, trust and revenge that run through the play have enduring relevance. I've got to admit that I haven't always been a big Shakespeare fan - mostly because I'm not sharp enough to take in all the dialogue at the speed at which it's delivered. I mean, I did study The Tempest and Hamlet at school, but I didn't ever feel like I got a good handle on them. Even with this play, I got lost in parts, but the acting was good enough to carry me along anyway and even when the words were lost on me, the drama of the events unfolding on stage was not.

As you'll have gathered by now, this is not so much a blog posting as an excited rant about how great the Globe is, so I'll end it here and put you out of your misery. But next time you get a chance, I highly recommend that you get along to the theatre and check it out for yourself. You won't regret it.

Ir-re-placeable

2007-06-04T12:21:00.000-07:00

Let's set some things straight before I get stuck into this post. I eat red meat. I drink beer. I love watching football, particularly when there's a bit of biff on the field. I have fairly relaxed standards of personal hygiene. I like environmentally unfriendly cars with big engines. Got it? Now, on the other hand a brief survey of last weekend shows that I also enjoy eating chicken caesar salad, drinking sugary-minty cocktails through a straw and spending evenings sipping champagne and reading Cosmopolitan magazine. And, on top of that, I'm also a MASSIVE fan of Beyonce Knowles. And I'm totally comfortable with that.

Now that we've sorted that out, let's get on with the real business of this post, which is to rave about the Beyonce concert that I went to last night. Without overstatement, it was stunning from start to finish from the opening blast of "Crazy In Love" to the final massed sing-along to the chorus of "Irreplaceable" it was quality all the way. Beyonce herself was fit with a capital F, I and T (think thighs and think fine) and her costumes were flattering to say the least (let's just say she was showing plenty of jiggle when she was getting her wiggle on). The all-girl band was tight too - and not shy about showing off their skills (particularly the drummer who insisted on eating grapes and french breadsticks while in the middle of her drum solos). But the back-up singers stole the show for me - let's just say that BIG is most definititely SEXY, particularly when you wrap it up in black sequins and mix in a healthy dose of 'tude.

So if the Beyonce Experience ever rolls through your part of the world, do yourself a favour and GO SEE IT. Sorry the pictures don't give you a better idea of what it was like. The first couple didn't come out exactly the way I intended. But I seem to have gotten it right with the last one.

A night out

2007-05-27T03:34:00.000-07:00

What does a normal night out in London involve? A pint of alcoholic milk at the Fat Badger. Trying to pass yourself off as a 5th year architecture student to get into Trellick Tower (built by a Hungarian called Erno Goldfinger - no joke) - one of the most notorious and architecturally disturbing council estates in London. And here I quote:

"Women raped in elevators, children attacked by heroin addicts in the basement, and homeless squatters setting fire to flats were among the more lurid. So bad was the Tower's reputation that one urban myth told how the architect (ie Goldfinger), wracked with guilt at creating this monstrosity, threw himself from the roof."

Finishing at a "members only" (yeah, right) club that was an odd mix between a high school disco and sophisticated inner-city bar (complete with a DJ who sounded like he was just pressing the skip button to move between tracks on an "'80s remixed" CD. Fun.

Excuse me, dear sir

2007-05-19T12:41:00.001-07:00

Today I went to Lords, the home of cricket, which conveniently enough is located only 20 minutes walk away from the home of me. My ticket came courtesy of Walshie and his boss Rex - thanks guys and shout outs to the crew at Eversheds. Walshie, Warwick and I agonised in the morning about what constituted suitable attire for Lords - there's nothing more embarrassing than being turned back by the bouncers at a cricket ground because you're wearing the wrong sort of shoes. On the one hand, there was the traditional Aussie dress of board shorts, singlet and thongs. On the other hand, there was the safe choice of neat jeans and a blazer. Luckily, we went with the safe choice. The crowd at Lords must have been the most refined, quiet, well-dressed and polite that I've ever seen. Where else does the crowd reward a fine shot from the opposition team with a round of applause? Where else do people say "My dear sir, would you please excuse us" when they're trying to get past you to take up their seats? Where else do they serve alcohol in glass glasses at a sporting event? All round, the Lords experience feels very strange and unnatural. It also felt strange and unnatural to watch cricket being played by two countries which were both not Australia. I mean, I've got plenty of time for the West Indies and watching England play is always entertaining because they've got no skills and they've got Monty Panesar in their team. But it's not the same as watching Haydos flex his muscles at the crease or Ricky Ponting flourish his bat like he's opening an umbrella every time he wants to let the ball go. And there's something special about the sustained abuse that Glenn McGrath can hurl at the opposing batsman that other cricketing nations just can't replicate. So after sitting through a couple of sessions, we'd had enough and decided to wander off to the pub to watch the FA Cup Final, which deserves a posting of its own, but will have to wait until another time.

Elephants anyone?

2007-05-16T13:36:00.000-07:00

As some of you may know, in some of my more far-fetched fantasies, I fancy myself as a bit of an artist. A few of you may have seen some of the works from my "early period" back in Melbourne (such as the masterful "minimalist penguin" aerated concrete sculpture in my parent's backyard and the "White Lines on a Blue Background" masterpiece that used to grace the living room of 6/217 Dandeong Rd). Well, after a few false starts, I think I've really found my niche as an artist - elephants. That's right, what started off as a playful experiment a few months ago has turned into a full-blown obsession. I'm pretty happy with my latest effort, which I did to fill up some of the wallspace in my bedroom. I just got a matt put on it today and here's a photo of it over the mantelpiece in my room. Whaddaya reckon?

Sting, Sir Paul, Me and a Few Friends

2007-05-06T13:01:00.000-07:00

Nothing to do on a Thursday night in London. Why not dull the boredom pains by donning the black tie and heading off the (Classical) Brit Music Awards. That's exactly what I did last week along with Huy, Jenny and Joyce (friends of mine from Melbourne). At this stage, I need to give a shout out to Huy for scavenging the tickets from his work. Nice work, Huy. And what tickets they were. We had a three-course meal and box seats located within spitting distance of royalty (Camilla Parker-Bowles aka the Duchess of Cornwall was in attendance). From our vantage point, we had a magnificent overview of proceedings, while the likes of Sting and Paul McCartney had to strain their necks and contend with the unwashed masses as they attempted to follow proceedings from ground level.

The Awards part of the evening, while obviously important, took up little time and served as a minimal distraction from the real highlight - the musical performances. Now, I'm no classical music aficianado, but I've got to say the performances were all stunning. There was real quality in the line up, from the Fron Choir giving a truly moving rendition of Land of My Fathers to the prodigy Lang Lang blowing the audience away with his mastery of the piano during a performance of Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No 2. While I restricted myself to restrained applause at the end of each round of amazing musical feats, I really wanted to jump up and cheer wildly. It was really that good. Do yourself a favour, if Lang Lang drops into your end of town, do anything you can to get tickets. It's worth it. Here are a couple of photos of the night, courtesy of Joyce.

My Place

2007-04-25T13:25:00.000-07:00

Just thought I'd post some photos of my new place ... taken on my phone so apologies for the quality ...

Je ne sais pas Francais

2007-04-23T02:07:00.000-07:00

So, I've made my first foray into mainland Europe - I hopped on the Eurostar to Lille on Saturday morning and spent the weekend sitting in the sun, drinking beer and eating chocolate. Lille maybe not top the average person's must-do-when-in-Europe list, but then I'm not your average person. Actually, I chose it because the Eurostar stops there and it's cheap ... but it's totally great for a relaxing weekend away. It was amazingly sunny too, which helped, and it was a "national day of reflection" in France (in advance of the election on Sunday) so everyone was in a cruisy, contemplative mood. Perfect for lazing around at a cafe polishing off a few Leffes and watching the world go by. The only thing to disturb the overall pleasantness of the weekend was my embarrassing lack of language skills. I've been in loads of countries before where I can't speak the local language, but haven't really felt all that guilty about it because, after all, who really expects a white tourist to speak Mandarin or Shona? But in France there was a pretty legitimate expectation from the locals that I'd have at least a basic command of their language. It can lead to some awkward situations, like when an old man in rough clothes comes bouncing towards you holding an empty sardine can with some coins in it, speaking rapidly in French. How do you react when you don't know what he's saying? I mean he could be saying "I've just found this can on the street, does it belong to you?" or "I'm running the Paris marathon in a couple of weeks, fancy sponsoring me?" or "I thought this can would have sardines in it, but for some reason it's only got coins, do you think it's a sign from God?" or of course he could have been asking for some spare change to buy food and shelter. Who knows? I found the perfect reaction for all these situations though - I gave an open-handed shrug and kept walking. It's a shame this doesn't work in all situations. Like when the bargirl asks whether you'll have another beer or when the waiter asks how you'd like to pay for the bill ... I think it would be wise to invest in some French lessons before the next excursion in a couple of weeks time.

Tips anyone?

2007-04-16T08:59:00.000-07:00

I've been at work here in London for around 3 weeks now and am yet to do anything productive. Unless you can count trawling through the latest statistics on the Herald Sun Supercoach website or watching "Ask Ninja" video clips on YouTube as being productive. Although I'm not at a magic circle firm, I was expecting work levels here to be a touch higher than they've turned out to be. In fact, the hardest thing I've had to do over the last couple of weeks has been work on my foozball. Foozball (aka table football to the Brits - how boring a name can you get?) is, in a kind of Ally McBeal-esque way, a huge sport around these parts. There's an old foozball table on my floor that seems to be the firm's social hub. Even as I speak I can hear deranged giggles from various partners as they bash away on the table. We're about to move to another building and two brand spanking new tables are a key part of the fit-out. The corridor gossip is all about what the playing characteristics of the new tables are going to be like. This is serious stuff. Not that I want to sound critical of a bit of uber-competitiveness - it's all good fun after all. But there is a serious downer about this whole craze: I suck at foozball. I mean, I'm really bad. At first I claimed it was because in Australia we played foozball with a different shaped ball and I was used to being able to pick it up with my hands. But those excuses are starting to wear thin and now it's dawning on everyone that I'm just really crap. Now, I'm not all that upset at being crap. In some ways, I'm actually glad that haven't developed a reputation for my "handy wrist action" the way some people here have. However, getting thrashed on a daily basis my my workmates is starting to get to me. The mocking comments from partners aren't doing my confidence (or career prospects) much good either. Clearly the way to win respect around here is to dazzle on the foozball pitch. So I've decided that I want to develop some skills. Any chance that those of you with some past foozball-playing experience can give me some tips?

Happy days for panel beaters

2007-04-04T06:11:00.000-07:00

One thing I've noticed about London is that there are a higher-than-usual number of expensive cars parked on its streets. And we're talking in the higher-ranges of "expensive" - like around the region of Ferrari, Bentley, Aston Martin, Porsche, that sort of thing. And when I say they're parked on the street, they're not just parked on the street on a Sunday afternoon when all the investment bankers leave the offices to show off their newest toys. No, they're actually parked out there ALL the time (apparently they didn't design London large enough to fit in any garages). Now, I've never owned an expensive car before (or even a car at all) so I can't really speak from experience, but it strikes me as a bit of a risk to leave your ride out in the open like that. I mean, a 15 year old kid with a set of keys could have lots of fun in London, if you know what I mean. And if you add a screwdriver into the mix, that kid is going to be able to pick up a very handy badge collection. And then there's London's weather to take into account. I imagine that every time it hails the number of pock-marked Benzes floating around town increases dramatically. All I can say is there must be some very happy panel-beaters out there ...

Was that Martin Lawrence? I don't think so.

2007-03-30T06:10:00.000-07:00

Star-spotting is a favourite passtime of most visitors to London. Nothing thrills a tourist more than the prospect of running into Jude Law coming out of a seedy nightclub or catching Hugh Grant and Liz Hurley making out in a dingy back-alley. Maybe that's why people in London spend so much time hanging around seedy nightclubs and dingy back-alleys ... but that's beside the point. Since I'm still very much in tourist mode, it's no surprise that I've been doing some star-spotting of my own. Well, actually, it was completely by accident that I stumbled across the red carpet premiere of the very art-house new flick "Wild Hogs", but what a happy accident it was. I saw all the stars of the show ... well, I saw a tall bald guy who I thought was John Travolta, but it turned out it wasn't. And I saw another guy that I thought was Martin Lawrence, but I later found out that he was just a security guard. And I probably saw William H Macy, but he was so nondescript that he blended into the crowd. And then we got bored and went to get dinner.

Answer: Not as sweet

2007-03-21T12:39:00.000-07:00

Well, in my first ever blog posting I wondered whether the traffic noise in London would sound as sweet as the noise of Dandenong Rd. The answer is no. In London, there are lots more buses, vans and wailing sirens than I ever heard along Dandenong Rd and most of them seem to like driving up and down my street - I didn' t realise that Upper Tollington Park was part of the "scenic route" to just about every destination in this city, but apparently it is. As a result of which, I've had very little sleep over the past week or so (notwithstanding the fact that I've bought Boots chemist's entire stock of earplugs). So I'm moving. Next weekend in fact, to a nice mansion flat in Maida Vale - different side of the city and potentially a little staid (there's very little funky urban grit in Maida Vale from what I've seen), but at least it's quiet (I'm on the fourth floor facing a one way street - gold). I'll post some photos when I can. In the meantime, if you want me to show you the sights of Finsbury Park, you'd better hurry up, because the last tour leaves on 31 March.

School fuel

2007-03-13T15:50:00.000-07:00

I know a lot of people my age who are still struggling to decide what they want to do with their lives. Everyone wants to do something that they feel passionate about, but sometimes it can be hard to find that passion. Me, I'm lucky - I found my passion at a very young age ... breakfast cereal. I love the stuffy - crunchy or soggy, sugary or plain, with fruit or without - it's all gold as far as I'm concerned. But for a little while now, I've had the feeling that something was missing from my cereal diet. I mean Weetbix was great and Just Right had its moments and nothing beat Mini Wheats as an after dinner treat, but somehow something was still lacking. And now I've found it ... SHREDDIES. This stuff is GOOD. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, it's the king of all cereals and I've been shovelling down boxes of the stuff ever since we landed. Do yourself a favour and try some. You won't regret it.

No longer homeless

2007-03-08T01:11:00.000-08:00

The housing market in London is so ridiculous that it takes about 3 generations of saving pennies in order to buy a property here - the only way to shorten the process is to make a windfall by winning the national lottery or scoring a football contract. Even renting is hard, but I've managed to break my way into the market by securing a room in a nice flat in Finsbury Park and a reasonable price. Now the word on the street about Finsbury Park is mixed - apparently there are some parts of the suburb that are a bit dodgy - but I like it and having to combat a bit of street crime on the way to and from the tube station should make a man of me. Anyway, check out these pictures of my new place ... I'm moving in on Sunday so feel free to come and stay any time after that ... just make sure you bring some capsicum spray and a personal alarm to make sure you get here safely.

Hello, London

2007-03-04T06:39:00.000-08:00

Well, I've just arrived in London - just two hours ago in fact (and I'm blogging about it already ... now that's commitment). Obviously I'm excited to arrive, but the welcome was not the warmest I've ever received. For a start there's the weather - grey skies and rain. But I was expecting bad weather ... more worrying was our driver who welcomed us with these words "Well you must have really pissed off someone in Australia if they've sent you out here." I wasn't sure whether or not to tell him that I'd actually chosen to come to London, but in any case I didn't have much chance as he quickly proceeded to reel off a long list of things that he personally dislikes about London (from minicab drivers to the gay population of Earl's Court) ... at least it helped pass the time on our drive to Kensington, where we'll be staying for the next few weeks.

Goodbye, Melbourne

2007-02-27T16:32:00.000-08:00

Well, this is my first-ever blog posting (for someone claiming to work in the technology industry, it's well overdue) and it's going to be a slightly bitter-sweet one.

First, the sweet part - I'm leaving for London in a couple of days and, with a new city full of new things to do and explore, not to mention a new job and all the travel I've got planned, the next couple of years should be lots of fun.

Now to the bitter part - my temporary life of leisure is about to come to an abrupt end. Having only done about 2 weeks of (fairly gentle) work in the last 3 months, I've grown used to waking up late, doing the crossword over breakfast, tuning in to the morning, afternoon, evening and late-night news and taking regular naps between meals. But with a new job looming on the horizon and a new boss with (I'm hoping fairly low) expectations to manage, this is all about to change ... but I always knew my luck couldn't last for ever, so I shouldn't complain that much.

I'm actually pretty grateful that during the last few weeks I've had the time to do all the Melbourne-things that I'm going to miss when I'm away. Like eating sushi at that little place in Port Phillip arcade, losing money playing mahjong and poker, eating out (a lot), swimming at the Prahran pool, shopping at the Prahran market, sitting in the sun out the back of my apartment listening to the traffic on Dandenong Rd ... all those good things. I wonder if the traffic in London will sound as sweet? I guess I'll find out soon enough ...

To those Melbourne-based people reading this blog - take care and stay in touch (don't just say you will, actually do it). Cheers.