Nick's Overseas Adventures

Jarvis Harrison Lander. 23-03-10

2010-03-20T22:00:00.003+04:00

I was beginning to think it was all a hoax. Family, friends and even clients were calling me up asking if I was a father yet. But no signs of an impending kid aside from a big belly, so I kept thinking of those bad comedies where someone fakes a pregnancy as if she could possibly pull it off. At one week overdue Sarah and I decided to stop putting our lives on hold and to resume some normality. At 10 days late, I went for a morning run with my mate Mike and agreed to meet up the following morning for a bike ride around Marina.

Perhaps it was that planning (the cigarette-bus theory of cause and effect), perhaps it was the home remedy we tried to get labour started, or perhaps it was just the right time. But I came back from my run to find Sarah experiencing contractions every now and again. I decided it would be prudent to work from home. Sarah and her mum carried on as normally as possible.

Around 4:00pm, Sarah's mum went to the pool, so Sarah and I squeezed in another home remedy. And about that, if you want to induce labour, forget all the old wives' tales. Rasberry leaf tea: doesn't work. Pressure points in the hand: nothing. Foot massage: load of bollocks. Hot food: nada. Hot bath: big deal. So what works? Well, I don't like to kiss and tell so you'll have to ask your doctor.

So there we are at 5:00pm and Sarah's in active labour. She was about to go to the shops to get the dinner but decided that contractions at five minutes apart would have made it a hell of a long walk. Before we knew it, she was at three minutes apart and around 7:00pm I bundled her into the car for the drive to American Hospital.

Through peak hour traffic. Awesome.

But we arrived and Sarah was 3cm dilated. A few hours later she was at 6cm. I had to field calls from Glenn telling me to tell her to push as his wife, Tina, wanted baby's birthday to match hers and there were only 30 minutes to go.

And then things went slow. From about 1:00am until 7:00am, no progress was made and there was talk of breaking waters. Now guys, you may not be aware, but there seems to be a whole culture with pregnant women whereby any kind of intervention is seen as the first step that leads inevitably to a caesarian section. Some women even seem to think they've failed in some way unless they have a completely natural, non-interfered-with birth. (That probably helps explain the popularity of home births.) I'm not saying Sarah's one of these women, but the thought was there, (thanks I think to the pre-natal class), that breaking water would lead to further intervention.

Men, on the other hand, being somewhat disconnected from the birthing experience, tend to see things in terms of risks and benefits and what's the best way to get the job done with the minimum of fuss. Like cleaning the gutters. If something isn't going right, we want to know how best to fix it, and to hell with what "feelings" that may give rise to. Medical practice is there to help us, and any advance on how things were done in prehistory is exactly that: an advance. Bring it on! If men gave birth (and had the bits to do so), the c-section rate would be about 100%. I mean, it's a safe, straightforward procedure. It's quick and efficient. It leaves you with a scar. Gadgets are involved. What's not to like?

Anyway, Sarah's waters were broken, and still baby's head was high and not moving. At the 20h mark an epidural was introduced, as was a load of oxytocin. The former relaxed her, the latter increased the strength of the contractions and BAM! In 2 or 3 hours she was fully dilated, the head was down and she was starting to push.

Now at this point I'd like to say that my plan had always been to stay above the elbow. I didn't want to see anything gruesome, or anything that would put me off sex for 5 months as it did to my (other) friend Mike. Now, I don't know how long I thought Sarah was, but "above the elbow" isn't actually that far from the action. And because she had a tube sticking out of her spine, she had to push lying on her back with her knees drawn in. Without getting graphic, this meant my vantage point above the elbow was within reach, and certainly within sight, of what I was trying to avoid.

And like anything you try not to look at, I look.

And I'm glad I do. Seeing your child being born is simply incredible. One minute there are six people in the room (Sarah, me, the doula, the doctor, the mid wife, and the other mid wife who just seems to have popped her head in as she didn't have anything else to do), and the next minute there are seven. Another person, arriving, but not through the door. Then he's placed on Sarah's chest, and she smiles so wide I think her face is going to split. "He's so beautiful. Can we call him Jarvis? He's so beautiful."

We had agreed a shortlist of names and Jarvis was the top one. We'd also agreed to look at the baby first and decide which name suited him best. So when Sarah asks to name him Jarvis, I decide not to point out she hadn't actually seen him yet - she is clearly emotional and I'm not about to correct her on anything. Besides, it's an awesome name, so I say of course we can.

Then it's time to relax a bit and marvel at what we've done. Some skin-to-skin cuddling, then he's weighed (3.986kg), measured (55cm on the tape, but 51cm 2 days later on the measuring table) and dressed. Sarah's mum arrives in no time, phone calls are made, text messages sent and photos emailed from my phone. Before we know it, another six hours have passed and we're back in the room that's our home for the next two nights. Jarvis is in the cot, Sarah in the hospital bed. I hit the couch and ... collapse.

Now it's been three and a half weeks since the big day. Jarvis looks like he's going to be tall and lean. A witch doctor that Sarah saw said he'll be good at ball sports - if so he won't be getting that from me! He is very well behaved, though: sleeping a lot, eating well, spewing it back up over his dad's newly washed shirts, and pooing over his mum. I still look at him and am amazed. He is a gorgeous boy and I think I am a very lucky fellow indeed.

More images at http://picasaweb.google.com/Jarvis#

2010

2010-02-06T14:12:00.003+04:00

Well, it's a new year (5 weeks ago) and lots has happened.

Did I mention that back in March my entire team at work was sacked without any speaking to me about it? The way that whole episode was handled got my back up a little bit, I have to admit. So I did what any thinking man would do: looked for a new job myself.

That took approximately half an hour, when I rang up a guy I met at a conference in Venice and asked if he needed any building physics expertise.

"No, we have a team in house for that, so we won't sub out to Atkins."

"Actually, I meant in house."

"Shit! I've been wanting to head hunt you for 6 months."

Always nice to know someone loves you!! Anyway, long story short, I agreed to help some guys establish an office of a new firm focussed on specialist building services. Then it was just a matter of timing: did I resign from Atkins and walk out with my head held high? Or did I wait around to get made redundant and walk out with my bank balance topped up?

I chose the pragmatic route and a few months later moved into a new pad on the proceeds. See here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/njlander/Accommodation#

But all that is secondary. You see, Sarah got pregnant. If you're wondering when that happened, let me out it this way: I'm thinking of calling our first born Jebel Akhtar. That would make me Abu Jebel, or Father of the Mountains, which is a pretty awesome moniker for someone who loves the hills as much as I do.

Anyway, she is due any day now. And by any day I mean I had my weekend leave pass cancelled, and I'm not allowed to drink so I can drive her to the hospital. (The zero tolerance policy here means I really can't drink.) Her mum arrived yesterday to support us through these interesting times, so now it's just a matter of time.

We changed doctors half way through the pregnancy. The first one came highly regarded, much like my evil endodonist when I was 14. Let's just say that her personality and mine didn't exactly meld, so we transferred to a guy who is so laid back, if we here any more relaxed he'd be dead.

Well, Sarah has blogged about her pregnancy for 9 months, so I won't go into too much detail. My life has barely been disrupted - I've had to absorb a few mood swings along the way and, now she's not working, some more costs - but I still go to work every day. All in, it's been pretty easy for me! Of course, that means I haven't had the opportunity to adjust in the same way as Sarah has. One mate told me it took him about 9 months to come to terms with fatherhood once his first was born. He also told me he made the mistake of checking out the business end during the delivery, and it was 5 months before he wanted sex again.

Soon enough I'll be writing about the fun of fatherhood. I'm hoping I can get back to my style of seeing the humour in the little day events, but for now, I'm signing off.

Ray Bans

2009-07-31T09:37:00.000+04:00

A quick and unscientific poll in Williamsburg, NY, has revealed a new craze in the Big Apple that will surely hit the rest of the world soon, if it hasn’t already. And that’s Ray Bans. But not any old Ray Bans, but the clunky old Roy Orbison Ray Bans from the 50s, or something. (More strictly, Wayfarers and Wayfarers II.) The only thing is, they’ve been jazzed with new patterns and primary colours. And they’re no longer just sunglasses, but regular spectacles, too, for hip young folk who want to be original and ironic by wearing the same daggy glasses as one in every four people.

That’s right, my poll, conducted while sitting in the sun outside a "New York Muffins" shop, revealed that 23 out of 100 pairs of eyewear, including both sunnies and specs, were Roy O Ray Bans (or $10 copies thereof). Of course, that was in Williamsburg, the hip part of Brooklyn, other parts of NYC had lower densities, but they are still everywhere.

I wish I could work out how to repackage something pretty average (at best) from the past so everyone wants to buy it and make me rich...

New York

2009-07-31T08:54:00.003+04:00

We went to New York the other day. Sarah first spent 10 days in the UK for a wedding (that's one day, but why would you want to spend another nine there?) and we met up at JFK airport. Not before I was robbed, though.

That's right, robbed. You've got to love airline rules. I was getting on the plane in Dubai, one of those departure points that lets you use metal cutlery for your meals, and was asked if I had any liquids. Stupidly, I said toothpaste, and had it confiscated because the half used container was more than 100mL.

Less than 100mL of fluid - surely that's the key thing. Even with James Bond Licence To Kill exploding toothpaste, you can't do a lot of damage with half a tube.

But I digress.

Last time I was in New York I was 18 years old and with my parents so the experience this time around was a bit different. There was alcohol, going out, and not being dragged around a whole lot of women's clothing and shoe shops. (Sarah tried, but felt guilty because I wasn't really enjoying it. It cut both ways, though - I didn't want to bore her by spending too long in a climbing store and so walked out empty handed. Besides, there was too much to do.)

We checked off the big ticket items: Empire State on a perfect, cloudless day; Statue of Liberty; MoMA; New York Philharmonic in Central Park (unfortunately rained out halfway through); live jazz (and in a smoke-free venue. Yay to Michael Bloomberg!); as well as some not so big ticket things: boutique beers on the waterfront; cool cafes in Williamsburg; catching up with an old college friend, Jon; staying with Sarah's ex housemate, Sanne and his wife Sarah.

Oh, and there was Broadway. We went and saw Avenue Q on our last night. It's a very funny play with... let’s say “adult muppets”. They do a great song Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbwNSNLPIfw&feature=related) among many others. If you get a chance, and especially if you ever saw Sesame Street, check it out.

The other big highlight was Bear Mountain. On the Saturday we piled into Sanne's 1990-something Ford Thunderbird, (a monster vehicle of over 5 metres but with only two doors and vaguely sports styling that, according to Sanne, handles like a boat, despite it's awesome name), and drove to Bear Mountain national park where we hiked around for several hours in the sun and fresh air on the Appalachian Trail.

We came across a few crusty hikers who were walking serious lengths of the trail (it runs over 2,000 miles from Georgia to Maine) but hardly anyone else. Most of the day-trippers stayed by a small, artificial lake by the carpark and barbecued stuff. Walking back at the end of the day, we could smell the barbecue accelerant several minutes before we could smell any food. The crowds by the lake, sandwiched between the highway, too, were a bit much, and we got back into the car as fast as we could.

So New York is a fine place. Not sure I'd want to live there, though, as it's a bit full-on for my liking.

Goatmobile

2009-07-11T13:06:00.004+04:00

Here's something I never thought I'd say:

"My car was goated".

Yes, it turns out that goats are not as dumb as they look and if you park under a tree in goat country, they will use your vehicle as a stand from which to reach the leaves. If your car is a beat up Pajero, as Mike's is, no big deal. If it's a Mercedes CLK, then it's a little more frustrating to find scuff marks on every panel, including the doors.

Before

Luckily, Pete referred me to the grand master of car polishing and after Dh800, including interior and engine detailing, it came back looking like new. Amazingly, goat hooves don't seem to scratch that deeply.

After

Not that that seemed to make too much difference after a couple of weeks of parking outside back in Dubai. I left my job of 3 years at Atkins (a record time for me) and as such lost my underground carpark near my home. With only one car space in our building, and what with me being a gentlemen and letting Sarah continue to use it, I've been parking on the street and it's been getting filthy. The big mistake though was letting some car cleaner at the supermarket clean it - I think he scratched the hood more than the goats did.

(Just on that job thing: I was about to resign as I had another offer when Atkins thoughtfully made me redundant with a big fat pay cheque. So now I'm helping start up a new firm, still in Dubai for now, but maybe we'll move east in a few years.)

The Offender?

Snake Gorge

2009-05-24T22:24:00.004+04:00

Well, after planning to get out to Snake Gorge since last summer, it finally happened. May is not too hot, the water is still clean(ish) in the gorge, and nor is it too cold. In fact, even though it was 40-something degrees outside, the gorge was about 10° cooler.

So the fun kicked off on Thursday. I had planned to skip off work early, but a 4:30 meeting kyboshed that idea. Not that it mattered as Zoi got caught in traffic on the way back from Abu Dhabi, so we didn't leave finally until almost 9:00pm. Hit the border in Al Ain at midnight, got a little lost and drove straight past the turn off at Al Hamra, and finally made camp at about 4:00am.

Friday morning was pretty rough, but once we'd eaten a bit, loaded up on coffee (even I had coffee!) we were ok, and once we saw the gorge for the first time, all tiredness evaporated. Snake Gorge, (or Canyon, depending who you talk to), is a long, deep and narrow cut through some of the most spectacular mountains in the world. There is water running at the bottom year round, and this weekend the water was clean (mostly), cool and refreshing. And the gorge was simply spectacular.

The day involved a combination of jumping into water, abseiling, scrambling over rocks, helping each other up rock faces and generally having a blast. In fact, in terms of all time greatest sporting days in my life, this is up there with getting virgin tracks through sweet, sweet powder on the Volcano run at Las Lenas in 2004 (which, before I got married, I had listed as the happiest day of my life!)

Snake Gorge was that good.

see http://picasaweb.google.com/njlander and follow the link.

India - Part III

2009-04-17T11:32:00.006+04:00

Oops, forgot something. It's election time in India at the moment, which means every vertical surface has an election poster glued to it, from walls, to rocks, to old ladies too slow to get out of the way. Maybe because there is not a lot of TV coverage, election news is broadcast by cars with loudspeakers. The posters, meanwhile, just have mugshots of smiling politicians, smiling the smile of men thinking about how much loot they will embezzle once elected. ALL the photos are either mugshots or full body shot of the guy walking or, occasionally, shots of the politicians AND their cronies. So lots of pics of Sonya Ghandi and VJ Singh in the background...

And it's funny, but I think the policy of saturating the populace with photos of politicians backfires as you get sick to death of seeing their stupid faces. For example, as we left Munnar there were two guys running localls: Congress and the Commies. Now, the Commie looked right dodgy and the Congress guy looked like a kind and benevelont uncle. But after an hour and about 4,000 posters, you start to notice the beadiness of the eyes, the shifty look, and the hint of evil. And pretty soon, you hate the guy from Congress (and the Commie, who is still right dodgy, but now also a child molester), and you know that if you saw him, you'd get out of the car and punch him in his stupid smiling face.

But then you cross an electoral border and the posters change, and finally you're looking at a Communist who has the look of a guy who tortures kittens, a Congress guy who looks a little gay, and photos EVERYWHERE of Raul F-ing Ghandi, one of the million or so Ghandis (some free, some in jail but still running) that seem to dominate Indian politics.

Would you trust this man?

Or this one?

And what the hell? Communists? Didn't India learn anything from 1991?

India - Part II

2009-04-16T16:53:00.006+04:00

Trivandrum.

So next up we went down to Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala. You can tell it's a proper city because some streets have raised sidewalks. The roads are the same as the villages, though: single laned and patchy.

Actually, driving (or being driven) in India has opened my eyes to driving in Dubai. I thought I understood after going to Mumbai, but doing real driving in Kerala is something else. For starters, everything is single lane - but in the Indian sense, which means that if a car is overtaking an auto-rickshaw, and a bus is overtaking that, and you're going faster, then it's ok to overtake the bus, car and auto-rickshaw. And if the same thing's happening on the other side, that's ok too - everyone slows down and starts driving on the (dirt) sidewalk. Sometimes, though, it gets too crowded and someone needs to stop and wait, usually honking at someone to get out of the way first.

"Keep Left" is more a concept than a rule

In fact, honking, as alluded to in my Mumbai post a while back, is a key part of driving in India. Sometimes it means "Hello there, I am approaching from behind, so don't be frightened"; sometimes it means "I say, can you please move over so I can pass"; or perhaps "Hey! Dickhead! Hurry the hell up and get out of my way!"

Anyway, We had a look around Trivandrum with a guide, which was excellent. He really knew his stuff and spent a lot of time explaining about Hinduism and the gods and their stories in the museum. He also took us to a famous handicrafts store where I picked up a great (stone) chess set for about US$40 and some paintings for about the same.

Trivandrum from the Taj Hotel

We took a day trip to Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip of India. Just of the coast is the shrine on a rock where some great Indian thinker meditated for a few days some years back, and now it's a big tourist attraction. And while it's not a total Dog on the Tuckerbox, to be honest it's not far off.

We were meant to be able to see the three sees from this vantage point (ie, Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal). I guess we technically could see them as this was the point they all met, but it was difficult to make out the different colours as we'd been assured. It's pretty crazy to think, though, that if you headed out from there, the next landfall would be Antarctica.

Kovalam Beach.
Final stop was the Leela Hotel, famous for being super luxurious, etc, yet bugger-all per night (around AED700 or so). And yes, it was nice, but it was a little bit colour-by-numbers. Maybe we've been spoilt by frequenting 5-Star hotels in Dubai so often, but the Leela seemed like just another super luxurious hotel that could have been anywhere on Earth. (Unlike the Coconut Lagoon which was definitely Indian and hence our favourite place.)

The Sky Bar, an alright spot for a drink

The Leela also nearly killed me. After surviving 10 days without illness, I was taken down either by cheesecake or lime juice on our last full night. The next day, our last, featured an all time record for me for bathroom trips (7 in 7 hours, 10 in 12h) which completely cleaned me out. So much so that I couldn't eat when taken out for dinner by the travel agent (and friend of Anand's) on the last night, nor could I eat last night at a friend's place here in Dubai!

So that's India. More photos, as always, at picasaweb.google.com/njlander. In summary, nice trip, great honeymoon, glad to be home.

India - Part I

2009-04-16T08:28:00.007+04:00

Oh my god, I'm so slack - nothing since January. Apologies. Here is some news:

Munnar.

Munnar is tea country. It is where Sarah and I started our (overdue) honeymoon in Kerala, India. The town is high up in the mountains, about 3,000m above sea level, and the climate is cool despite the tropical latitude.

And there is tea: beautiful tea plantation on slopes of about 60°; a tea museum with working tea factory; whole leaf tea; dust tea; black, green, white and masala tea. We even stayed in a place called the Tea Country Hotel. Now, what type of tea do you reckon they served?

Tetleys.

(Tetleys, in fact, was served all over Kerala, and while way better than gut-rot Liptons, the standard hotel tea in Dubai, it is still really bad.)

Our time in Munnar also took in a trip to a dam which our driver, reluctant to carry on further, perhaps, or maybe eager to get back to hanging out with the other drivers, assured us was the same as Top Station. Now, I suspect that Top Station might have been near or at the top of the mountain and would have a killer view. The dam was picturesque, but the vista from a valley just isn't the same.

Kumarakom.

Four long hours after leaving Munnar we arrived at Kumarakom, just 175km away. We stayed at Coconut Lagoon, a very chilled resort on the backwaters where we could relax, get off Indian food for a bit (turns out Sarah doesn't like it) and get massaged.

Aruyvedic massage is a bit different to what I'm used to. For starters, the guy makes you strip, ties a cord around your waist, then tucks in a bit of material front and back for modesty, which he then takes off once you're face down on the table. The hard wooden table. With no hole for your face. Anyway, after some rubbing, he takes a small sack of herbs, heated to near the temperature of the sun, and tries to transfer the healing properties of thyme directly to your muscles by hitting you with the sack as hard and as often as he can. You basically come out of it smelling like a roast.

But it's good stuff: I had two in Coconut Lagoon, just focussing on my messed up, stressed out shoulders and back where the guy tried to squeeze the muscle knots into another dimension. God it hurt... But as I say, good stuff.

Back to Kumarakom, though, and Coconut Lagoon. This place rocks and would be perfect for a week long party. Anyone interested in a cheap holiday with a good crew: I want to recruit enough people to fill 50 rooms in around a year from now. There's a pool, you get there on a little boat, there's a great massage centre and free yoga every morning! Let me know.

Backwaters.

Coconut Lagoon is on the backwaters, a series of lakes and canals just back from the coast. Now, I didn't mean to rough it, I really didn't. I only wanted to spend an afternoon cruising the backwaters before heading back to the resort, but the agent suggested a houseboat, my friend Anand told me I should "rock the boat", it being our honeymooon and all, and there is something romantic about cruising around in a private boat being waited on hand and foot for a day and a night. But the truth is, after a couple of hours there's nothing new to see, and once it gets dark you realise that an afternoon cruise was certainly the best option.

Of course, I should have guessed that the water on the boat would not be from a tank of pristine, or even semi-clean water when I stepped aboard. And I was foolish not to twig when we washed our hands and they dried sticky. But it was only when I gave into the accumulated grime, sweat, suncream and mosquito repellent and stepped into the shower that I realised the taps drew directly from the fetid river that smelt of sewage (due, no doubt, to the high levels of sewage in the water).

Overdue

2009-01-16T09:05:00.010+04:00

Wow, I've been slack: no posts since October. So withour further ado...

It's winter again in Dubai and one of the things I love about this time of year is not the perfect weather (low 20s, sunny and clear), or even the occasional rain. It's the clothes.

People who have been here long enough adapt to the hot weather. The blood vessels move closer to the skin, never to return. Thus we get cold easily. And I'm guessing that the longer you're here, the closer to the surface those blood vessels get: the other day I was going to the shops at lunchtime. It was about 21°C and a bit cloudy, but looking around I saw people in winter coats, beanies and scarves. (Actually, I think it's a bit psychological as they also rug up for work, which is climate controlled...)

Since October's post I've gotten married, of course. But let's wind back the clock...

* * *

I've covered the whole really-bad-proposal chapter, but not the preparation. This is perhaps the best part of the whole process for the bride-to-be. She has been practicing for it since infancy, when she would play with her dolls - wedding between Barbie and Teddy, Barbie doing the dishes while Ted's away (remember, it was the 70s back then), that kind of thing. Then bedtime stories of Prince Charming, and later, dreams and plans of flowers and revolting bridesmaids dresses. (OK, I'm totally making this up, but I'M A MAN.)

Miss Tobias, soon to be wife to the luckiest guy around

So the question is asked and the bride-to-be immediately initiates the Plan and starts asking the hapless groom-to-be esoteric questions he doesn't quite realise the importance of. "What type of flowers should we have?" "What music should be playing as I walk down the aisle?"

And she imposes peculiar restrictions, such as not seeing the dress beforehand, which may involve not going into a certain room in your house for some time.

Would you look at the time!

But I'm being unfair on Sarah - she did a tremedous job of organising a superb wedding from across the world while I chipped in occasionally, trying to be helpful, but always feeling somewhat inadequate.

Of course, they say a wedding is all about the bride, but I'm not so sure. I think it's all about the mothers. A wedding is, of course, their chance to have the wedding that their mothers wouldn't let them have. The dress is wrong, the invitations are wrong, the list of invitees is wrong. My favourite was getting hassled for not wearing a dinner suit (this grievance later turned into disappointment I wasn't wearing tails) despite the fact it was a 5:30 wedding and my mother kicked off before my sister's 5:30 wedding because the groom was wearing tails before 6:00pm!!

But it all came together beautifully on the day. I was a little worried Mum wasn't going to dig the mariachi band or the magician, as she kept giving (still gives) me a hard time for having a 'non-traditional' wedding, but it turned out they were a big hit. It was the priest that got her goat.

Just the day before my family was saying how they hated it when people clap at weddings. So when Grant, our priest, told the congregation that weddings, though serious, are not solemn - so please clap - well, let's just say it didn't go down too well on the front row of the right hand side of the church. I was actually accused of putting the guy up to it - as if I would court that kind of misery.

Job done

As with everything, though, it worked out superbly. Both mothers had a great time, as did the guests (even those who took exception to Dad's speech about my dating restrictions as a lad: no blacks, no Chinese, no redheads and no Irish Catholics) and most importantly Sarah and I had a ball. It was tremendous seeing all our friends and family out in support, and a big thanks to those who came in from interstate and overseas to be there.

Presenting Mr and Mrs Lander

But jeez, I wish someone had told me to run my fingers through my hair before the photos...

More pics at: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=njlander&target=ALBUM&id=5288941129582699105&authkey=bU9E6f2d0-k&feat=email

More on that update

2008-10-04T15:17:00.000+04:00

Chapter 4. Ramadan
I've started the update afresh. Uploading pics onto blogger is a total pain in the arse. Speaking of which, when the world wide web was coming into prominence in the early nineties, I knew, deep down, that one day my arse would be on it. I picked up this bruise walking down a scree field after climbing all day. No injuries climbing, but walking is a different matter.

Where was I? That's right, Ramadan. The above bruise happened in Ramadan, the holy month for Muslims where we work shorter hours and get to not eat or drink in public all day long. Which is weird, because the whole thing is about Muslims testing their faith, so they should be tempted in order to really test themselves. Non muslims should be encouraged to eat bacon in front of them, and drink beer in front of them, that sort of thing.

Actually, I've got nothing else to say about Ramadan, except that it's a crap time for visitors.

Chapter 5. Visitors

Roger and Lynn came to visit the other day. I can't believe it's been a year since their last visit. I also can't believe that once again it coincided with other visitors on the same weekend, this time Jenny and Bill. The tour of Dubai was much as it was for Natasha, except this time I could drive right up to the top of the Palm, which hadn't been opened in May. A new hotel, Atlantis, is up there, which is famous for its underwater suites (they look into an aquarium). Apparently big aquariums have divers in them an awful lot, so as much fun as it might be to get on the job in an underwater suite, it may no be a very private affair...

No visit during Ramadan is complete without iftar, though. This is the evening breaking of the fast and is much like Friday brunch, only it's typically all-Arabic food and the booze is substituted, for some reason, with television. We went to an upmarket one at the Palace Hotel and were sat next to a TV. We got it turned down and eventually turned off, but instantly a nearby arab decided he was watching it so it went back on. Other iftars have been the same, even outdoor ones. Restaurants that normally have no TV in sight, suddenly wheel them out and turn them on full. I can't imagine what people did at iftar before TV. Talked?

We also went to Hatta which is in the Hajjar mountains on the border with Oman. It's a funny area as you actually go through Oman to get there but there is no border post. It used to be an enclave, just a little couple-of-kilometer stretch on the main road that actually belonged to Oman, but now it is connected up to the rest of the country. If you turn south off the main road, as we did this last week, you do hit a border post (no passports needed, just insurance papers) but you can loop around and get back to the UAE on another road without any more checks. Pretty slack, but so much more convenient than the alternative!!

6. Eid

The last few days have been Eid Al Fitr, the holiday to mark the end of Ramadan. Most people got at least three days off (Tue - Thur) but Atkins only gave 2 (Tue - Wed), so creative timesheet scoring was called for to go camping in Oman on Wednesday night. Stunning scenery but we forgot the camera. I will post shots if I get copies or when I go again, and I will be back! We went to a wadi near Ray which you could wander along. It's very mountainous and rocky, not at all sandy like the west cost. In fact, on the drive the scenery goes from yellow sand (coast), to red sand, to rock to jagged, barren mountains. It is just sensational.

Afterwards we went to Ghantoot (Thursday night) for some wakeboarding. The Thursday night session was choppy as hell, but we camped on the canal and on Friday morning the water was like glass.

We wakeboard on a canal on the Abu Dhabi - Dubai border, and the king of Bahrain has a palace there. It was occupied at the time, so we could only go as far down the canal as the gunboat patrolling near the palace, which was a bit of a pity, but who can complain when you've got the rest of it to yourself?

Right, that is it. You are updated. I will try to be more regular from here on in. Keep the comments coming.

Long overdue update

2008-10-04T13:24:00.001+04:00

I have, I admit, been a little slack. My last post was just after coming back from Jordan which means I haven't covered the following:

1. Engagement;
2. Natasha's visit;
3. Tuscany;

4. Ramadan in Dubai

5. Multiple visits

6. Eid

Chapter 1. Engagement

Yes, most of my readers should know by now that I asked Sarah to marry me and she was good enough to say yes. We were eating at a Spanish restaurant at Al Qasr, the waitress kept calling her Mrs Nicholas, so it wasn't too hard to work the conversation around to "Mrs Lander" and how did she like the sound of that. And so, in my typical fashion of being a little too laid back for my own good, I found myself engaged.

Now, of course I cleared this with Sarah's father. I phoned him up, got the all clear and said I was going to propose. But not when. Now, Sarah's parents had been giving her a hard time for quite a while about the whole marriage issue, so we thought it was only fair to leave them hanging for a bit. The day after the Big Question, Sarah phoned home and made small talk for an hour without the slightest hint of what had happened. This must have been agony for her mum, who had been awake all the previous night waiting for the call, and had spent the next day phoning people to give the good news.

Anyway, after an hour, just as she was about to sign off, Sarah slipped in that she had to go ring shopping and the cat was finally, and officially, out of the bag.

Me, the future Mrs Nicholas, and the in-laws.

Ring Shopping.

Oh. My. God.

What a pain in the arse. Dubai's Gold and Diamond Park, aka The Place To Go For Jewellery, has approximately 10,000 shops, 4,969,000 rings and 4 designs, all of which are crap. So we were excited to find someone with some interesting designs and we decided to get him to design one. Option 1 sucked. Option 2 was based on a design seen elsewhere, but took about 3 attempts to get right. Even then it wasn't andthe whole process of perfecting the ring took about 4 months, the highlight of which was Khalid, the shopkeep/designer, accusing me at one point of being drunk when tearing strips of him for being a lazy, lying, nogoodnik. Awesome! The end result, though, is a beautiful ring loaded with diamonds, and a plan to start a Facebook group "Don't Use Khalid The Jeweller".

Chapter Two. Natasha's Visit
Natasha stopped by in May on her way to Europe for a trade fair. Dubai was, she said, the number one place she wanted to go, following all the documentaries she's seen on Discovery Channel. So the morning tour, in my beautiful car (or maybe Sarah's beautiful car, I forget which, but wanted to throw in that I have a beautiful car) was much the same as all of them: Our place to Jumeira, past the big flag pole, past Jumeira mosque, down beach road to the Burj Al Arab, down to the Palm ("I can't believe I'm actually on the Palm!"), Dubai Marina, across to the Springs, where we used to live, to laugh at the soullessness of it, and up Sheikh Zayed Road past the Burj Dubai and the monstrosities lining the highway between Trade Centre and Defence Roundabout (which has nothing to do with Defence and isn't a roundabout. But it's like that here. I live in a part of town called the Old Pakistani Consulate area, there's an intersection nearby colloquially named after a long-demolished cinema, and a building similarly named after a billboard that was on it 15 years ago).

Tash's visit coincided with my birthday so it was off to Brunch at the Dusit Hotel. I think I've covered brunch before, so in brief, it is an afternoon-long affair involving a large buffet of great food, free flowing champagne and as many friends as you can muster. (Unless you go to the Double Deckers brunch, in which case it is English food (I'm guessing), lots of beer (I'm pretty certain), appalling music (sad experience), and abhorent drunk middle aged English chavs and laddettes (ditto).) Anyway, we had a grand time with all my friends from Dubai and even Mike and Emma from Abu Dhabi. All up, a great day and a great time the whole time my big sis was over. Come back soon!

Tash getting into the Dubai lifestyle with free Champagne.

Natasha and I by the Burj.

Chapter Three. Tuscany

July saw me at my wit's end at work and desperate for a holiday. Roll on Italy, then! That's right, 10 days in Tuscany was exactly what I needed, especially staying at a friend's apartment in San Baronto for just €100.

We started off with an overnight flight to Doha, then Rome, then a train to Florence. Half a day there checking things out put me in the mood for history, but in the afternoon we picked up the car and drove to San Boronto, where history was instantly replaced with the mood for sitting on my arse and looking out over the valley and the town of Vinci.

Don't get me wrong, Florence is beautiful. Its one way system is a little annoying, especially when you want to return the car, are about 30m from the hire place and then have to detour around for another 50 minutes on a full bladder. But Florence itself is superb. Beautiful scenery, architecture, lines at the Uffizi that were too long to even contemplate, and gelati. Awesome.

But San Boronto is what a stressed young professional needs. Clear mountain air, names of Giro D'Italia heroes painted on the road, and a view from the bedroom many would give their right arm for. I'd give their right arm for it, too. You can see for yourself:

View from the bedroom

Once settled in the flat, we occasionally made forays into the neighbouring towns: San Gimignano; Lucca (stumbled upon an orchestra practicing for an outdoor summer concert, and a gelati shop); Sienna; Volterra; and the Chianti region, where we couldn't help but stock up on Chianti and salami. But half the time, we just stayed in the mountains, relaxing, reading, eating, drinking and generally, (ahem), having a good time. For photos, see:

http://picasaweb.google.com/njlander/Tuscany#

Sarah did all the driving. She asked me once if I wanted to, but honestly, I found it too stressful! I'm used to highways and Indian and Pakistani and Arab drivers who have no concept of the size of their car who cut you up and cut you off and change 4 lanes in the space of 50m at 120kph. I'm used to being undertaken and overtaken on the hard shoulder. In fact, I expect all that now. What I'm not used to is two way traffic and tiny narrow, curvy lanes that articulated lorries thunder along with inches to spare. Nor am I used to order on the roads. It did my head in! I told her I was there to relax and if she was happy to take the wheel, I was happy to navigate. Play to your strengths, I say!

On the way home, we stopped in Rome for a quick visit. And I mean quick - 4 hours, in fact. Ah, Rome, the poor man's Paris.

I've actually been to Rome before, but I was 10. I do remember, though, seeing the Fourm from the street and not caring about it because I was 10 and didn't have a degree in history yet, and it just looked like a yard full of rubble so I wan't fussed that we didn't go in. In fact, I didn't realise you could. But this time we went in and I'm glad we did. We saw Augustus's house (who was NOT the first emperor of Rome, as the tour guides tell you), the remnants of the Vestal Virgin's house, which reminded me of the Lego houses I used to make as a kid - one block high and just showing the outlines so you could get the idea but still get inside it - and various other temples.

Other than that, we only had time for gelati on the way back to the station. (Why don't icecream companies make fruit flavoured icecream that you can buy at the store? Do the gelati shop people have some kind of cartel arrangement?)

All up, it's the thumbs up from me in Italy, although I found it hard having no Italian beyond semaforo and cacchio. A useful couple of words, it is true, but sadly not enough to get you fed or out of trouble with the police.

Jordan

2008-04-25T10:05:00.001+04:00

Barely a few days after getting back from Singapore, it was time to start using up some serious leave. I had 14 days to take off by July or I'd lose it, so with schools off on holidays, Sarah and I went to Jordan.

The fun kicked off in Petra, known to many film afficionados as the home of the Holy Grail. It's not anything like what you see in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, though. The ancient city is carved into cliff faces around a large wadi of rose coloured stone and there are more tourists than Nazi soldiers. It's a huge place, with some excellent walks up to the top of the cliffs where you can see for miles in the clear air. (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=38618&id=784253645)

After Petra we went to Wadi Rum, a large desert with mind blowing rock formations, and definitely the scene of a future rok climbing trip. It was also where they filmed Lawrence of Arabia, so get it out on video to check it out in detail.

Wadi Rum was also the scene of my first camel ride which differed markedly from my Patagonian pony ride a few years back, mainly in the testicular pain department, as well as the vehicular control department.

Anyway, my hot tip for Jordan: Petra and Wadi Rum. Interestingly, a friend of mine went and said to skip Wadi Rum and go for Aqaba instead. This is a small resort town with pretty average beaches, but if you like lazing around in an identikit resort, she probably has a point. We went, had lunch, and left for Amman.

(http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=38619&id=784253645)

Now, Amman is ok. It has some nice Roman ruins, and the locals are pretty friendly - we were invited in for tea by some guy we passed on the street, but once you've seen the ruins and been ripped off by the tour guides, it's just a very large city. Some parts are really nice and reminded me a bit of Mendoza, in terms of architecture and streetscape. For mine though, as a history graduate, the best bit about Amman is its proximity to Juresh, an old Roman city.

(http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=38621&id=784253645)

Much like other Roman ruins, Juresh has all the columns and straight streets you've come to expect. Of course, we were lucky to get there at all. The car we'd hired was the problem. First up, the cigarette lighter was blown so we couldn't plug the walkman in, but on the upside we did have some decent conversations. Then the brakes were shit, the tires had lost pressure after just a couple of days, it was dirty and smelt, it only had a two stroke engine, I think, and judging my the Mitsubishi badge and its overal performance, it certainly wasn't the Golf we thought we were going to get when we ordered it. Still, could've been worse. We saw some people pushing a car into a parking spot in Juresh. It didn't have reverse.

Singapore wedding

2008-04-25T09:46:00.002+04:00

isWell, since the skiing, things were pretty quiet for a while. Then Ian and Berns got hitched in Singapore so I went over for that.

Now, last time I flew to Singapore I was doing what has become my standard "fly Thursday night, arrive Friday morning, sleep over, fly back Saturday, back at work Sunday." And as I flew down, bolt upright, wide awake but craving sleep, I promised myself I would never do it again. So with light heart and lighter bank account, I checked into Business Class and proceded to get pissed up the front of the plane.

The wedding day was cool. First I went climbing with the groom, then we ducked home to shower and change and then off to the Shangri-La for a tea ceremony followed by a big banquet full of extended family and business contacts, and two tables of Ian and Bernie's mates - all climbers. As desert ended there were just the two tables left, and about three dozen bottles of wine. "Drink up", orders Ian, so we took the party back to the bridal suite where we were soon evicted for making too much noise. Then up to the bar where we paid too much corkage, and eventually, some hours and several drunken phone calls to people who'd left for bed later, we all hit the sack.

The next morning was pretty rotten, but Andy had it worst. He'd left last (same time as me - about 2:30), caught the 7:30 shuttle to KL and went to the Malaysian Grand Prix. Ouch!

(More photos should be accessible here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=36589&id=784253645)

Skiing

2008-02-16T11:26:00.000+04:00

The other week six of us went for a ski. In Iran. What a trip.

The fun kicked off at Terminal 2 at the airport. Very much the poor cousin of Terminal 1, T2 caters for little known airlines that fly to little known destinations with passengers to match. It's a good place to play spot-the-Russian (look for peroxide, pimp-wear and too much cheap gold).

Once arrived our first mission was to change enough money to Rials to cover us for the entire trip. With no international credit cards and a currency where IR10,000 is about US$1, you quickly wind up with a very big wad. This pic is how much we paid for the accommodation between us, which was €810.

So there we are on our way up to the mountain, which is just outside Tehran. We were in a green van being driven by a guy who pretty clearly thought of himself as a bit of a rally driver. The only time I've been driven through the mountains by a race-nut was with Matt King and we managed to spin out. And that was in an MX5 (admittedly on cold tyres but on a dry road. Actually, I've spun out twice with Matt on mountain roads, the first time in a Prelude in the snow.) So I was pretty amazed when Colin McRae Admaninhajad got us to the hotel in Dizin in one piece.

Dizin as a ski resort has both good and bad points. On the one hand, the terrain isn't too steep, but on the other, Iranians don't ski off-piste and there aren't too many there anyway so you can still get fresh tracks two days after a snow fall.

And really, isn't that what it's all about?

The facilities at the resort are a little old-school, to be honest. The gondolas have their windows held in with bits of twisted wire and date from the late seventies. On-mountain food is restricted to the Iranian version of KFC, but that's okay because you can go back to the base and one of the two hotels which, interestingly, have the same menu. Which never changes. And which doesn't cater for vegetarians.

If you go, take your own gear or at the least take your own tuning kit as the skis have no edges. The boots are nearly all rear-entry (sooooo 1986) and if you were to hire clothes you'd probably wind up in a fluoro onesy, and that's just inexcusable.

The hotel was pretty good and the bedroom was electrifying. Literally, not figuratively. The air was so dry that you could run your hand over the blankets with the lights out and see blue sparks flying off. It's taken me until now, two weeks later, to be comfortable touching metal door handles again.

In the next couple of years I think Iran will pick up a little as a ski destination and will hopefully be upgraded, although that would lose it some of its charm. It would also lose the freshies and therefore it would just be mountain of blue runs. All up, I'm very glad I went when I did.

y
ou can see more photos at:
http://www.facebook.com/photos.php?id=784253645
or maybe
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=29451&id=784253645

Christmas

2007-12-29T09:42:00.000+04:00

Ah, the festive season. Over here it starts with Diwali, the Indian new year, followed by Eid, the Muslim remembrance of Abraham nearly killing his son, then Christmas, the old pagan midwinter festival hijacked by the Christians.

Perhaps because of the large number of westerners here, or perhaps because of it's inherent commercialism, Christmas seems to dominate in terms of decorations. Thankfully, the pretty colours and annoying music don't start in September as they do in the west (or just after Easter as they do in Australia), but they make up for that by going all in. Shops, and I mean all shops, torture their customers and hapless employees with looped tapes of really shit music. No wonder suicide rates are so high over Christmas. It's nothing to do with lonliness, it's all about the lamentable tunes.

Meanwhile, decorations are everywhere. And real decorations, too: Christmas trees, signs that say "Merry Christmas", and nativity scenes. Yes, in a Muslim country they have nativity scenes because (in Dubai at least), they are tolerant of other cultures. Compare this to the idiocy seen in the West where councils can't put up decorations, nativity scenes are banned, and you can only say "happy holidays" or "seasons greetings" lest you offend someone. Personally, I think the only people to ever get offended are the wet lefty do-gooder apologists who think they know what's best for others. I'm pretty sure all the Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Animists, Jews, Pagans and Jedis living in countries like Australia or the UK or France accepts Christmas as part of the culture and don't get offended. Well I say, if you don't like it, get on a boat and leave. Then the Navy can do some target practice.

And here's another recent example. Sarah's school (run by a bunch of poms) put on a Christmas concert called "Winter Wonderland" (and not, oddly, "Taking the Christ out of Christmas"). This consisted of little kids singing Christmas songs, but not carols. (Santa Claus good, Three Wise Men bad. In fact, Sarah was nervous about one song as it referred to a Parson Brown, as that has religious connotations.)

Between songs individual kids would get up and tell the audience about Christmas in different parts of the world. The best part was the pommy kid: "the most important character... at Christmas time is Santa Claus." No jokes! It was all I could do not to shout out "what about Jesus?"

Once the kids were off the stage things got positively weird. Some guys dressed as snowmen, but resembling Santa's bovver boys - kind of a cross between A Clockwork Orange and Munch's The Scream - wandered onto stage and started to sing. Lucky the kids were gone or they'd have nightmares for years.

Back in the general population, though, there was one Christmas theme that didn't quite make sense: Wafi (a shopping centre) ran the following radio ads: "In the magical world of Narnia [mmm, ok], the lion awakes with a mighty roar [check]. In her castle, the Ice Queen knows she is defeated [check]. The woodland animals rejoice [check]. Children visit Santa in his secret grotto [WTF? Santa in a secret grotto? How does Santa figure in an alegorical story about the reincarnation of Christ?]..."

* * *

Christmas itself was okay as far as that kind of thing goes. Sarah's parents were over so we went to the park with a picnic after calling home to speak to the family. I called during the present opening ceremony so everyone seemed keen to get off the phone and get back to it, but I managed to cover everyone, so that was good. I might go back next year, though...

Weird Sports

2007-12-01T13:24:00.000+04:00

Deep Water Soloing

Step one: hire local fisherman to take you out to the cliffs off Dibba.

Step two: climb cliffs

Step three: jump

Awesome...

Unfortunately, we didn't take photos of the really good cliffs and climbing, but I'll be going back so stay tuned...

Meanwhile, the Rugby 7s are on again this weekend and this time it's warm and sunny. It's sold out, the rugby was good, beer cost Dh240 for 12 cans (around AU$60!!!) but everyone had a grand day out. Unfortunately, I didn't take a camera. So stiff, you'll just have to come and see it for yourself.

Culture Vulture

2007-12-01T12:42:00.000+04:00

One criticism a lot of people level at the UAE is that it lacks culture. Today I'm going to demonstrate that that is not the case, as in the last month I have experienced many fine examples of a culture much more sophisticated than the beer drinking expat pasttimes most people indulge in.

First up, Sarah and I have started going to free classical music concerts. These are varied affairs, with the first one being a piano recital by Sonya Bach.

Now, with a name like that, you'd think you'd be on a winner, but unfortunately the South Korean miss Bach was, while technically proficient at hitting the keys, very heavy on the pedal and had such weird interpretations of well known pieces that I couldn't recognise them. That didn't bother the audience though, who clapped like madmen and wouldn't stop, so she wound up trotting out about six times and subjecting us to two encores! The gall of some people, really! I always thought an encore was something you were invited to do, not just a live version of a hidden track to give yourself more time on stage.

Our second concert was much better, especially because Sarah was playing in it. She's in the Dubai Philharmonic Orchestra, a grandly titled ensemble of professionals and amateurs who play for kicks. This time they were playing with the Australian Jazz Quartet, which implies a sense of government sponsorship, and these guys had arranged some Mozart peices with a jazz flavour. They called it Jazz Meets Mozart, and it was Jazz Meets Mozart in an Ali Meets Foreman kind of way, or perhaps it should have been called Jazz Waylays Mozart In A Dark Alley And Leaves His Battered Body Behind The Dumpster.

Again, there were some examples of unrecognisable classics, but there was a great latin interpretation of something famous whose name I can't remember, but the comic highlight was this Swiss guy who sang the bassoon part of the Bassoon Concerto. Now, if he'd sang it in a classical style, maybe it would've worked. But he sang in scat (doobie-doobie do wah). People in the audience were openly laughing at this poor bastard. I guess it's technically tricky to do it, but it really just didn't work.

Number three was a quartet from Hungary at another free concert. These guys were good, but I can't rember their name...

That's about it for culture. Next up: sport.

Via Ferrata

2007-10-20T09:54:00.000+04:00

So I got all geared up for a via ferrata trip, which is where you traverse a cliff clipped in to a permanently fixed steel cable. So far, so easy, but throw in zip lines across an 80m canyon, added to my paralysing fear of hanging over a void (which is why I hate climbing overhangs) and I had to bail.

Which is a pity considering the 5 hour trip out, the one hour wait while one of the guys who was late to the Oman border caught in a queue of 6 busloads of holiday makers (it was the Eid weekend), and another half hour wait while the same guy realised at the last minute he'd forgotten his pulley and had to go back down the hill to get it.

The problem for me was really the zip line thing. Ben bailed first, freaked by the cliffs, but I got to the zip line. And my god, what a sight.

It was really hairy. I checked a couple of times after bailing that I'd made the right decision, and then I checked the photos later as well, and I made the right decision. It was too much for me at this point. Perhaps if I'd done zip lines before, perhaps over the sea and not so high, but for your first experience to be so scary one of the organisers bails, well, that's pretty scary.

But the scenery was beautiful, so it was worth a trip out. Unfortunately, the photo-uploader isn't working too well, so you'll have to imagine it, or check out Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/photos.php?id=784253645

Kuala Lumpur

2007-10-20T08:59:00.000+04:00

I followed up my trip to India with another flying visit to Singapore (leave Thursday night, arrive Friday morning, leave Saturday afternoon) to hand over the biggest cheque I've ever written. As a result, I now own 1/3 of a very expensive flat in the heart of Singapore. (A 5 minute walk to Robertson Quay, for those who know Sing, and that's only another 5 minute walk to Clarke Quay, one of the hippest parts of town.)

The following weekend I was back, but this time carried on to Kuala Lumpur to see my parents who were stopping off there rather than Dubai on their way home from Europe. (The Dubai stopover was prohibitively expensive, so fair call.) KL has come along a bit since I was last there in 2002 (see previous posts) with grand new malls, cleaner streets, and the removal of the smell of raw sewage that I remember so fondly from last time.

We were staying at the Westin Hotel, a comfortable but ultimately colour-by-numbers affair that was centrally located and overlooked the Petronas Towers.

The great thing about this trip, other than seeing my folks for the first time in nine months, was that I got to do some touristy things I missed out on last time. Like go to the telecoms tower, see batik getting made in a traditional tourist trap, and see the elephant sanctuary.

Malaysia still has elephants, but these are large creatures that like to eat so often encroach on farm land. This is not ideal (if you're a farmer), so the poor creatures are captured and relocated and at some point seem to pass through a sanctuary in the Genting Highlands.

Now all that's very cool, the sanctuary is nice and the elephants are well treated. But then come the tourists. In this case, a school trip from Australia, and these little bastards smelt around 100 times worse than the elephants. My god, those little f*ckers smelt as bad as Indian labourers in Dubai. Seriously. It made me ashamed to be Australian.

Anyway, our full day guided tour also involved a trip to the Batu caves and, once again, I was too embarrassed to buy the souvenir I wanted to get last time: a T-shirt of the caves with my face superimposed in the middle.

The Batu caves are pretty cool and involve over 200 steps to get to them. These steps were clearly built before the invention of codes, as they have a rise of about 500mm in places and are possibly the most strenuous I've encountered. Mum sensibly passed up the opportunity to haul herself to the top, cover herself in perspiration and then get subjected to some infuriatingly bad Bollywood music on a continual loop at the top of the stairs. Once you get to the top, you go into the cave and it opens out to a sky cave... with a smooth concrete floor.

Getting back to KL, Mum and I went to the markets to buy genuine copies of various goods, from ties to belts to DVDs. (I couldn't pass up every Jet Li film condensed to 5 discs for MR55. I was assured they had subtitles, only to discover they are Chinese subtitles. Then again, who needs dialogue in a Jet Li film?) Then we went for a foot massage...

The previous week I'd had a massage at Changi airport: it was a clean and subdued place, with a nice young Thai lady who rubbed my legs. The parlour in KL looked as bad as you're thinking, and the nice young Thai lady was in fact an old Malaysian crone who seemed intent on going above the knee. As a result, it was somewhat hard to relax, especially with Mum on the neighbouring table laughing every time I expressed surprise: such as when the crone got me in a headlock then cracked my neck. What part of "foot massage" didn't she get?

After that, it was back to Singapore to wait for a day for a connecting flight, bought some souvenirs in Chinatown (another touristy thing I had never done before) and then home to Dubai. And my sixth flight in three weeks where I got to load up on movies... (see my other blog, link on top right of page.)

Nick's Food Tour - India

2007-09-10T19:43:00.000+04:00

As my eyes wept, my nose ran and my ears started to ring, I realised that perhaps I should not have let myself be goaded by Arshad into eating the green chilli.

It was, however, possibly the best Indian meal I've ever had (and it thankfully did not degenerate into a murderous argument over the bill...). Luckily, I'd tasted everything before I seared the tastebuds off my tongue.

The restaurant was Kababs and Kurries at the ITC Grand Central in Mumbai. Despite the rather cavalier attitude to spelling, the food was excellent and not a chicken tikka marsala or other Euro-Indian dish in sight. The prawn kebab was subtle in flavour and made out of prawns the size of a baby's fist. The chicken was barbecued perfectly and went well with the yoghurt and the lamb was something else. Specifically, it was goat. It seems "lamb" is Indian for "goat meat".

Now, the fish (in kokunut kurry) was a little bland, but that may have been because I had most of it after trying the green chilli. (Fortunately, one bite was not enough to liquify my entire digestive system, but there were a few moments the next day when I felt like I'd been given a prostate exam by a doctor who confused the KY with Tiger Balm.)

* * *

Mumbai is a city of contrasts. Largely, it's the contrast between poverty and squallor, but you can also see that some people earn a rupee or two. The hotel, for example, was easily 5-star, I saw million dollar display homes, and I thnk I saw a car without dents. But the rest is raw. Like sewage. Particularly the sewage.

The grand old buildings look as worn as you could expect after 60 years of no maintenance, new buildings look old, and buildings under construction look like they may be under deconstruction. The lucky ones live in these. The not so lucky live in shanty towns on the footpaths, adn the really poor bastards live under tarpaulins on the side of the road. Suddenly I understoof why they flock to places like Dubai to work hard and live 8-12 to a room for scant pay: it's probably absolute luxury to them. It really makes you appreciate what you've got.

Children play on the streets in Mumbai, then grow up to play on the streets some more, only in a car. Traffic here is nuts. Not only is it one of the few places where you can still share the road with a bullock pulling a cart, but the bullock is actually the best driver around. I think Indian drivers have some kind of echo-location as they don't use their eyes at all, relying instead on constant honking. Once again, Dubai doesn't seem so bad.

Iran 01

2007-09-10T19:09:00.000+04:00

For a country where half the population is under 30, the flight to Iran certainly had a high proportion of old people. But no matter, myself and Sarah were on our way to one third of George Bush’s “axis of evil”. After an hour’s delay, while the Iran Air ground crew siphoned jet fuel from another plane, we got the announcement to board.

Once all the women had fixed their head scarves in place and we’d boarded the plane, I heard the first safety announcement that didn’t waste time with life jackets, then an hour later we hit Esfahan airport, where the Duty Free specialises in kitchen appliances from Wherethefuckistan, and where a guy collects your baggage tags in a make-work scheme the Emiratis would be proud of. Then it was into the car to speed along the highway running through a pretty desolate and grey landscape that reminded me a bit of footage from the Yugoslav war.

But eventually that gave way to a beautiful streetscape of trees, shaded paths, parks, and wonderfully decorated mosques. Our eyes hadn’t even had a chance to stop boggling before we were delivered to the Abassi Hotel, built around an old caravanserai, that is an opulent, old world sort of place with a large central courtyard that is filled with al fresco dining by night, and where the staff wear the kind of livery that convinces you to give the bellhop a large tip. And thus Sarah found out the value of the currency when she tried to tip the porter IR2,000, or AU$0.20. For some reason the central bank allowed the currency to collect quite a few zeroes over the years and as a result I was soon a millionaire. AED500 gets you IR1.25m, and buying souvenirs feels more like negotiating the price on a house in Double Bay.

* * *

Apart from the mosques, Esfahan reminds me of Mendoza in Argentina. Maybe it’s the tree lined boulevards, the perfect summer climate, or roads so chaotic you’re never actually sure which side of the road people are supposed to drive on. Or maybe it’s the vague sensation that you’ve been transported back to the seventies, when men and women competed as equals in Biggest Hair competitions. There are so many John Travolta (circa Saturday Night Fever) look-alikes, it’s a wonder his portrait doesn’t hang beside Khomeini’s!

Speaking of hair, the distribution of eyebrows in this country is quite uneven, particularly among the women. Some ladies have two, some just have one, but most seem to have none at all so they draw them on, giving themselves a permanent look of surprise. Maybe there’s a Conservation of Hair law going on here, whereby hair can neither be created nor destroyed, just redistributed among the population, with any surpluses ending up in the moustaches of waiters. (Which reminds me, Super Mario isn’t an Italian labourer, he’s the head waiter at the Abassi Hotel.)

Our first place to visit was Naqsh-e Jahan, renamed to Imam Square, the second largest square in the world after Tiananmen in Beijing. This is ringed by a bazaar (well, souvenir shops) and has stunning Imam Mosque at the south end, the formerly private Sheihk Lotfollah Mosque to the east, Ali Qapu Palace on the west, and the entrance to Bazar-e Bozorg, an everyday bazaar to the north.

This place is a must. The intricate tile work in the mosques astounds. I can’t do it justice in words, and barely in picture, but I’ve tried. Check out the following links for more (you may need to have a facebook account):

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=14316&l=26c2b&id=784253645

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=14312&l=c308b&id=784253645

The square, like much of the rest of Esfahan, is also full of people desperate to either get a photo of the strange creatures in colourful attire, or to practice their English. The photos are often attempted surreptitiously by people pretending to take a photo of a lamppost as you happen to walk by, but sometimes they just come out and ask to pose with you. The English practice might be in preparation for a trip overseas (which needs an exit visa!) or a future influx of tourists, but they’re not at all shy in trying. It can be a pretty laboured affair, but they’re so eager and welcoming it’s a pleasure to chat. Plus it quite often ends up with an invitation to share tea in their carpet shop which just happens to be just around the corner, so you can find yourself looking at dozens of carpets and having a generally relaxing time.

Just up the road from Naqsh-e Jahan is Jameh Mosque, the construction of which spans around 800 years, and the history of which includes the odd bit of destruction at the hands of the Iraqis in the 1980-1988 war. This is great for history buffs, but for shear beauty, my money’s on Imam Mosque.

I won’t go into all the details about the sites and sights we saw, but I will say this: if you ever feel you’re a little too good at navigating, just can’t seem to get lost and always find what you want straight away, then it’s time to follow a Lonely Planet map. These are possible the worst maps I have ever used, with non-existent streets, non-existent roundabouts and distance scales which are plain wrong. I thought the street map for Penang was bad a few years ago. The Esfahan map had us walk past our destination and waste so much time we only got to Vank Cathedral just after the one o’clock shut down and therefore ran out of time to see the famous shaking minarets. Bastards.

* * *

Our next stop was Shiraz. This isn’t as lively as Esfahan, and frankly the only reason I wanted to go was to see Persepolis, the ancient capital that Alexander the Great accidentally burned to the ground after a drunken orgy in 300BC.

Persepolis is stunning. You should go. It is around 2,500 years old and some of the reliefs and carvings are immaculate. Most of it has the odd corner or leg or something knocked off, and carved graffiti shows that mindless dickheads have been around for some time (who really cares if the British consul and his wife went there in the 1800s?) but overall it is just amazing. Again, you should go.

Amir, a colleague from Dubai, came over to Shiraz to show us around, which I believe is a pretty typical display of Iranian hospitality. We also went to some other nearby ruins and tombs. They were cool. But I’ve got a history degree. Still, you should go.

* * *

After a day wandering around Shiraz (and eating the best ice cream and faloudeh on the planet), it was time to go home. I just have to report on the scene at Shiraz airport. Checking in was like nothing I’d ever seen before. I thought the French were bad a queuing. There was one check-in guy, and about 100 people crowded around him trying to push their tickets in his face. I soon realised standing calmly behind the guy in front wouldn’t get me home, so I called on my tiny bit of French heritage (about 1/32nd) and worked my way through the throng of people and pushed my ticket in the check-in guy’s face. Another hour’s delay waiting for the plane to show up (are their watches all set back or something?) and we were airborne again, heading back to life in Dubai.

Axis of evil? Some things make you think so. The US currently wants to list the Revolutionary Guard (which is essentially a modern day Praetorian Guard) as a terrorist organisation but that’s probably a little silly, as it would be like Iran listing the CIA as such, but they must have their reasons. And the current Iranian administration has crackdowns on “bad hijab” (dress code violations). And of course the Ayatollah Khomeini looks down on the country from countless portraits. These all show a beady eyed, shifty looking, real son of a bitch evil bastard. Seriously, every picture, including paintings, are from the same official portrait, and the guy is out and out scary. Stalin had a bad rep, but he always looked like a kind old uncle. Khomeini probably had his moments, but he looks like the kind of bloke who tortured kittens in his spare time as a kid. Now perhaps I’m being naïve, but the people on the street aren’t like that. Everyone I spoke to wants things to change. They want to display their elaborate hairstyles and go on dates. They are kind and welcoming and have a stronger sense of hospitality than any group of people I’ve ever met. Plus the scenery and cities (sample size: two) are beautiful and vibrant (but maybe I’ve been in Dubai too long!) All up, my verdict is a big thumbs up for Iran. I’ll be back.

Dubai 15 - Summer Sales

2007-08-07T17:57:00.000+04:00

It's summer here and that means two things: first, it's really hot. Second, the sales are on!

Dubai has, perhaps, every chain of shops in the world, from Prada to Suzhou Heavy Industrial Pumps. Clothing wise, there are all the European brands, including quite a lot of Italian ones. Yessir, if you don't just want to look woggy, but you want to look Chapel Street-woggy, or like a footballer, come and shop here. Start with some white, pointy shoes, then head into one of the Dolce & Gabbana stores for something excessively flashy and then accessorise next door at the Louis Vuitton shop. (I said to my friend Bridge that LV just looked common and she came back with "that's because footballers' wives shop here". Nail. Head. Hit it. Why did LVMH chose to send its flagship down the same road as Burberry?) Finally, pop into Gucci for some sunglasses as big as your head. (I mean seriously, the next step up from the current oversized sun-gigs fashion is the sun-helmet with full-face visor.)

Now, if you want to deck out your home, the only place to go to satisfy your inner Greek is Home Centre. We're talking tassles on the ornate sofas, more tassles to hang around the door, braid trimming on the cushions, stone lions, and a good discount on concrete for your lawn.

There is no shortage of shops, either. Malls are so prevalent that people go mall-walking (power walking in malls for exercise) because everything else seems to be road (and you get to window shop at speed). I'd rather brave the heat personally, than the slow-walkers...

The other thing there are lots of are supermarkets. In my neighbourhood, there are a good half dozen within 5 - 10 minutes walk. These are kind of specialists supermarkets, but they don't specialise in things like expensive honey from Denmark (Carrefour carries that). Instead, it's more like one supermarket spread over six locations. The dairy products are in the Street 13a supermarket along with onions, Street 22 carries meat and stationery, while Mankhool Road has the other vegetables and luggage. Then you get the corner shops which are even more limited: cereal but no milk, for instance.

Carrefour piles everything under one roof, though. And I mean everything, from flat screen TVs to sacks of spice, Argentinian beef and, on a Friday, about 100,000 Indians - the poor bastards don't have any other entertainment and, since staying in on their day off means hanging out with a dozen roommates, Carrefour is the place to be. Makes you appreciate what you've got...

Time to push on for the day. Later.

Dubai 14 - Nick's Food Tour of the Middle East I

2007-07-29T14:15:00.000+04:00

Part One: Buffets

If you had to classify Dubai cuisine, it would be hard. There are probably traditional desert-peoples dishes (roast camel on a bed of rice, sprinkled with sand), but given the modern and cosmopolitan nature of the place now, I’d say it’s actually the buffet. And the two greatest examples of buffets here are break-fast (intentional hyphen) buffets of Ramadan, and Friday Brunch.

Every Friday the big hotels, and some of the smaller ones, host brunch. This is a largely western expat affair and varies greatly depending on where you go. My first brunch was at the Dussit, last summer. This brunch is located on the top floor of the Dussit Dubai overlooking Sheik Zayed Road and the sea beyond. Unfortunately, when we went it was a hazy day and you couldn’t even see the street below. The food was good – a choice of three restaurants, covering pan-Asian, identi-kit continental buffet foods like a carvery, smoked salmon, etc, and breakfast (eggs, bacon, hash browns, etc). Champagne was free flowing.

This particular brunch then kicked onto Double Deckers, the Worst Pub In Dubai. This has a London Transport theme, so is overcrowded, overly loud, and full of (fat middle aged) English people drinking too much and dancing to the Worst Music In Dubai. Abba had its day, and that day was 30 years ago. Seriously, the DJ in this place was playing music older than me, and that, unfortunately, is often the norm. (I finally found a good place to go (Radisson in Media City) where they had a visiting DJ from Japan who played some seriously good music. This guy could beat-mix as fluidly as walking, whereas the analogy for the DJ at Double Deckers is more along the lines of one of those children of thalidomide trying to jump rope.) Anyway, Double Deckers also has a brunch which probably consists of bacon, eggs, baked beans, chip butties, Yorkshire pudding, and none of that foreign muck. All set in the beautiful smoky ambience of a nightclub.

Brunch Number Two was Al Qasr. At Dh300 a head, this features free flowing Bollinger, three restaurants (Spanish, seafood and identikit but with Lebanese ingredients as well). Fantastic place, fantastic food. I must go back. I love jamon and I love Morton Bay Bugs. And I’m rather fond of Bollinger, too…

Yalumba. I went with Sarah’s workmates. This is the same Yalumba as in the Australian wine label, and the food was consequently … Australian in a Rolf Harris kind of way: lot’s of sparkling confidence but no taste. At Dh350 this is easily the most ripped off I’ve felt in this town. Not only is it located on the wrong side of the Creek, but the music was too loud and plain shit. (Again, Abba is history.) And frankly, when I dine out, even if it is with a bunch of half-cut poms, I don’t want some drunken wanker from the next table falling onto me because she can’t dance and remain upright but they’re playing her favourite song which reminds her of losing her virginity behind the toilet block at Broadmeadows High when she was 15. Call me old fashioned, but in my book, no matter how drunk you are, you just don’t dance in a restaurant.

Why it’s called brunch it a bit of a mystery. They don’t start before 12:00 and they go until 4:00 or 5:00, at which point you’re most likely loaded and willing to kick onto a nearby bar. You’ll be so full you won’t want dinner, so really it should be called linner, or dunch. Anyway, a great way to spend a Friday arvo and anyone coming to visit us will be treated to a good one.

Dubai 13 - Busy times

2007-07-29T14:13:00.000+04:00

I know, I know, I’ve been incredibly slack with this blog: sorry. I’ve had my head down leading the environmental design on the world’s lowest energy hot-climate skyscraper, so as you can imagine it’s taken a bit of my time.
None the less, I’ve still managed to get some other things done.

1. We moved house. I’ve ditched the soullessness of Legoland – I mean The Springs – the suburb of identical houses lined up one after the other, distinguishable only by the cars parked out front. The population was European, Indian, Asian, Arabian and Antipodean. After some nine months there for me sharing with Chris, about five for Sarah, and three for Tanya, I think everyone thought four people was too many, so Sarah and I left Chris and Tanya to it. I never did find out why the guard at the front gate took down my rego every time I entered, and now I guess never will.

We’ve moved to a two bedroom flat in Bur Dubai (the older part of town with bustling people, laundry hanging from balconies, stray cats and dirt – ie, character). Some people don’t like this part of town. Jumeirah Janes (see previous posts) are a rare sight here. I’ve even known people to take a shower after just walking through it to the tailor’s. Anyway, it’s super cheap as it’s owned by an Islamic bank and they don’t like ripping people off, and only a three minute walk to work!

Plus there’s a pool on the roof and a lot of my mates are in spitting distance. As a result the past few weeks have seen impromptu pool parties that, despite the total lack of organisation, have gone off like a frog in a sock. The other day the watchman came up and told us to leave as they had to have a lifeguard on duty and they shut the pool at 10:30. I told him I was rescue trained so effectively was a life guard, and that, being 4:30, it was still some 18 hours before closing time.

2. I did my Royal Yachting Associating Level 1 course (passed with flying colours) and am currently trying my best to ingratiate myself with the sailing club to accelerate my membership bid.

3. I bought a flat in Singapore. I took Sarah down one weekend to see it and to sign some papers and I’ll be back in September for settlement. It’s a three bedder in one of the best parts of town and is already valued at more than my partners and I paid for it.

4. I learnt how to snowboard. Yep, I finally got bored of skiing – at Ski Dubai. (I mean come on! It’s like doing Bourke Street at Mt Buller all day long.) Skiing is still where it’s at, obviously, but should I now find myself in a situation that requires a knowledge of snowboarding, for example being chased by machine-gun wielding thugs on ski-doos and my skis have been mysteriously mislaid but there’s a snowboard there, then I’ll be able to get away. Provided there are no bumps, no sharp turns and I don’t catch a front edge.

(If you want to learn how to snowboard, do it on a hill with plenty of snow, not a hill with concrete base. Ouch!)

5. And did I mention I delivered the concept design on the coolest bit of sustainable design in the region, if not the world? I did? Oh well, thought I’d repeat it in case you weren’t paying attention.

So that’s my life right now. Sarah’s back in Australia for a few weeks, but is back next weekend (yay!), in time for the tail end of the summer sales. Looking forward to that.

A quick one

2007-06-03T11:40:00.000+04:00

I'm searching on the web for images for a presentation, including one of a PV-powered golf buggie. I want this:

...and I get this:

Which in itself is worth posting.

More news soon, possibly about the music scene here.

Dubai 12 - 33 Today (or 3 weeks ago)

2007-05-25T19:26:00.000+04:00

Sorry for the lack of commentary: I've been a bit busy with work, brunches, snorkelling and golf. Read all about it... now:

It was my birthday three weeks ago. No matter how much Sarah tells me I'm old now at 34, the fact is I'm a very young 33. Or is that "immature"? Whatever, I don't feel too old, despite the creaks, the reduced tone and the fact I want to do nothing else on a Thursday night other than park my arse on the couch with a large whiskey and a DVD.

So the day started out very nicely indeed with golf at the local course. It was my first round since 1998, so even though we were only playing the par 3, I was a bit crap. My medium game is still ok (thanks for the lessons as a kid, Dad!) but my putting has gone to the dogs. (As, mind you, has the quality of television news which is on in the background as I type.)

After golf we had second breakfast at the club house (my favourite meal of the day!) then a break for a few hours at home to finish Splinter Cell Undercover on Playstation (much to Sarah's disgust, but I'd had a long week and needed to shot stuff) before getting picked up for a desert safari.

Everyone has to do a desert safari. It's a bit like getting a taxi on Sheik Zayed Road or in Sydney, except the car's a Land Cruiser rather than a Commodore (aka Lumina) or Corolla, the driver's Arab rather than Indian and getting thrown around in the back seat as the car careens on the edge of control is entirely intentional. The blaring Arabic music is the same, as is the realisation that you've been taken out to the middle of nowhere...

But not quite, you wind up, about sunset, at an "authentic" bedouin permanent camp with a buffet of unnamed meat, free henna painting and a Russian belly dancer.

So, what else has been going on? Well, last week we went to Snoopy Island off the east coast for some snorkelling (3 black tip reef sharks, 1 turtle, plenty of barras and parrot fish), and the weekend before was a fun excursion all over town looking for a car for Sarah (pictured right on the desert safari). I was a bit over it by hour 7, and in the end she picked up an ex-demo Audi A3 for not very much at all. No photos I'm afraid, I only have photos of my very slick CLK, the door of which has been hit TWICE by the Chinaman (polite version: Sum Dum Gi). Anyway, enough for now. Stay tuned for my food tour of the Middle East. Coming soon.

Dubai 11 - Drinkies

2007-04-07T12:12:00.000+04:00

Wow, either I was really drunk last night, or everyone else at the barbecue was talking Afrikaans.

Speaking of drinking, booze isn't hard to get here, it's just a little awkward. Technically you need a licence just to consume the stuff, and you definitely need one for take-out. The alternative is a trip to Barracuda in Ras Al Khaimer, an alcohol supermarket where the laws are different, the duty is less, and you don't need a licence. Of course, it's technically illegal to transport it between emirates (say, back home to Dubai), but you'd be pretty stiff if you got done.

The other option is to drink someone else's, which is what our cleaner does. This was welcome news in a way (it turns out I do know how much I drink), but also disappointing (Black Bush is hard to find in the Middle East, and idiotic new airline laws might make buying it at various airports problematic). So we're going to mark our bottles. I'm also going to replace my whiskey with tea, just to stick it to the dirty pig-fornicator.

Meanwhile, it's starting to heat up here, but the cold water isn't hot enough to shave with yet, so it's not officially summer in my book.

Later.

Dubai 10 - Side Trips - France and Switzerland

2007-04-01T13:49:00.000+04:00

Following on from the previous post, I took some time to continue the World Ski and Dive Tour the other day and went to Les Arcs with Rob.

We flew into Zurich, then drove down to Luzern, a stunningly beautiful town, where we decided to take a suite for the night at a 5 Star hotel on the lake (may as well treat yourself occasionally). Bit of a look around, a couple of oversized beers and a fondue and we felt right at home.

Then it was down to Wengen where I'd been tipped off about a cheap restaurant. Wengen is a ski town (without snow in the village this year) and the drive to get there (or to Lauterbrunnen where you catch the funicular - I know, my spelling's terrible) is spectacular. Driving through Switzerland is like driving through a postcard. Everywhere you look (scenery-wise) is so spectacular you become desensitised after a while.

(Everywhere you look shop-wise, however, are souvenirs. Victorinox and Wenger Swiss Army knives, Sigg drink bottles, cookoo clocks, flags.)

From Wengen we caught the funicular to the top of the Jungfrau (ironic name considering the train that penetrates the tunnel to the top, right through the Eiger!) where there are spectular views and where I froze my phone.

Then it was onto France for a week of skiing out of Arc 2000 with Mick from London and a bunch of his mates. Good snow, but not great. It snowed just before we got there, then it was sunny for the rest of the week. So south faces got a bit slushy and cruddy, the lower runs were patchy (ie, patches of snow!) but the top was nice. Lots of nice steeps runs! It was a good crew, too.

The funniest thing about Arc 2000 was the resident sports hero: Kevin Alderton, the double blind speed skiing champion. (It took us a while to work out he was the champion twice over, not blind twice over!) Basically, this bloke holds a record in an event with only one competitor: skiing fast down a hill without proper sight. How he gets his seeing eye dog on the skis is anyone's guess! So this bloke from the rough part of London, judging by his accent, props up bars in 2000 trying to score free drinks. His record is around half the speed of someone with eyes, which I find odd as they can at least see enough to be scared!

But here's the thing. His not even blind. He's "differently sighted" at best. And it's not a congenital disorder: he had his eyes gouged in a bar fight!

France, and Switzerland, are on the list for a return visit.

Dubai 09 - Side Trips - Mussandam

2007-04-01T12:32:00.000+04:00

I've been slack, I know, so a quick update is in order.

Life in Dubai continues on with ridiculous amounts of work and not enough time. I've had one new starter in my team (Bridge, a good mate from my Peterborough days, who was tempted across from Dublin by tax free money and lots of it), and a graduate (Saif) starts later this month. After some cunning manoeuvring in concert with the Marketing team, I got my position renamed from "Regional Building Physicist" to "Regional Head of Sustainability", which sounds a lot more important, if possible less maningful.

Naturally, all this work encourages the odd break to recharge, so a few weekends ago Sarah and I headed up to Mussandam in Oman to cruise through the fjords.

Now, when I think of fjords I think of Norway - snow capped peaks, ice bergs, blonde women: that kind of thing. But Oman has them too.

And they are beautiful to behold. Massive peaks rising vertically from the sea, and barely a single plant in sight. These hills are barren, but spectaqcular. Luckily the sea is full of life, and our first stop on our dhow cruise was to watch dolphins. Or watch grown men frantically push little kids out of the way so they could get a better vantage point themselves. And video the sea in the hope of getting a glimpse of a dolphin. (What is it with people video taping EVERYTHING on holiday. "Look, a fountain. Let's video it and subject our mates to it when we get home.")

After an hour and a half of circling these majestic and harried sea mammals, we were told the rudder was on the fritz so we transferred to two smaller dhows to continue the cruise. Everyone piled onto the one without the hordes of screaming Japanese children who wound up with a boat almost to themselves, while we all sat almost in each others laps. After a while we anchored for a spot of snorkelling where I discovered that the side of a dhow is a little too high to do a backwards roll into the water. I also discovered that the water was full of jellyfish and that most of these had a mild sting.

That night we went for dinner at a restaurant down the road a bit. We asked the waiter what the laws are regarding drink driving in Oman. (In Dubai you go to jail. Even if some muppet runs into you, if you have any alcohol in you, you go to jail.) His response: "Don't worry. Drink as much as you like. Drive home. Crash the car. No problem." I didn't crash my beautiful new Mercedes CLK 200 Kompessor, but I did have a quiet drink with my buffet. Good old Oman.

This is a really poor way to end an entry, but if you don't like it, write in and tell me.

Dubai 08 - Best Fans Ever

2007-02-06T20:07:00.000+04:00

For the Melburnians among my readers, you might think that Lygon Street and Chapel Street are the places to go to see joyous football (soccer) fans and hotted up cars, respectively. Well, the last few days have made me realise that, eager as the rice-boys are back in Aus, they are lame namby-pambies in comparison to the UAE.

Last week the UAE won the regional football championship and the fans celebrated in such style that, from here on in, the UAE is my team of choice. The UAE beat Oman to win the Gulf Cup final for the first time. I was in Sharjah on the night and the roads were gridlocked with people driving slowly, hanging out of windows and sunroofs, standing on running boards, all waving flags, ululating and cheering. A couple of days later a victory parade was staged in Dubai and it, and general revellers, clogged up Sheik Zayed Road and Beach Road (and many others). For once no-one was too upset by the traffic - everyone was having such fun.

But here's the thing. When Italy wins a game, you might expect mayhem on Lygon Street, but under no circumstances would you expect to see cars decorated with stars, little stick-on flags, or spray painted slogans and the national colours. That's right, people were spray painting their cars (new ones, that is - Prados and Mercedes, for example) and driving along celebrating. (Sorry for the photo quality, they're third party.) And no, it wasn't some kind of temporary paint...

And here's the other thing: everyone was happy and getting into the spirit of it. A major win in Australia is met with a low key beer and perhaps a few sly digs at the poms (or a visibly drunk Prime Minister telling the nation that any boss who fires staff for being late is a bum), while a major win in England quickly degenerates into drunken brawls. A major win in the UAE and it's burn-outs, standing atop moving cars, and severe panel damage. And not a drop of alcohol in sight. So well done to the UAE football team, you have my support.

Dubai 07 - Expat sport

2006-12-08T15:38:00.000+04:00

A few years ago I went to the annual AFL exhibition game at the Oval in London. West Coast vs Collingwood, perhaps. Frankly I don't remember and I really don't care: Australian Rules just isn't my game. Anyway, it was a beautiful sunny day and the ground was packed with Aussies munching on their ration packs from home - Twisties, Mint Slices and Tim Tams - and sucking down £6 cans of VB. My mate Jon remarked at the time that if you had 8,000 Englishmen drinking beer in the sun together, there'd be fights, no question about that. But Australians are a bit more laid back and so rather than fighting we streaked.

It started off with one galah nuding up and going for a quick sprint to the centre, before getting smacked to the ground by the cops and private security. The crowd took offence to this harsh treatement at a football friendly, and so retaliated by sending other runner onto the ground. Arrested.

The cycle was inevitable, as was the escalation. Before too long coordinated streaks occured with people running on from several directions. Eventually the police just gave up, and people would almost wander onto the field of play, (some of them clothed!) only to be smacked down by the still zealous private security personnel. All the while the PA was going on about how it was prohibited to go onto the pitch. Finally the game was abandoned once the players were outnumbered, and the PA switched to a message of please come onto the pitch, but stay off the centre square.

Naturally we ignored that message, too.

***
So last weekend was the Dubai Rugby 7s, the biggest social event on the calendar here. Everyone goes. Unless it rains. Which it did. All day.

The people who sold their Dh175 tickets to Dh1,000 in the lead up to the weekend must have been laughing as they sat at home watching the rainy event on TV. But I was there with Ben and Darren, two resilient Poms, (Christian, the Kiwi, bailed), and we got there just in time to see the Australians get caned by England in a quarter finals match. We were up in the stands (where it turned out the roof was not a roof but a loose-weave plastic sun shade), surrounded by drunken England supporters.

Now, I'm the first to admit that "aussie aussie aussie oi oi oi" isn't the most cerebral of supporting chants, and I am impressed that English crowds sing show tunes to cheer their players. But in rugby they sing a negro spiritual, Swing Low Sweet Chariot. Or more correctly, they sing the chorus. If that much. Sometimes someone will pipe up during a quiet moment with "...iot, coming for to [and now the crowd joins in with] carry me home." It's weird, and you can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_Low,_Sweet_Chariot.

Meanwhile, the other pitches at the Dubai Exiles ground (where I play touch rugby, coincidentally) were given over to club games, U21, and the like. Then, after the semis, there was a break on the main pitch for the internationals, and the school girls came out to play. And I have to say, there is nothing funnier than seeing school girls smack each other to the ground in a game of rugby. I hope next year they get to play the Samoans.

Anyway, it was a grand day out that reminded me what it was like to be wet and cold at the same time as well as the importance of proper footwear. Fun and learning in the one day. What more could you want?

Dubai 06 - Queues

2006-11-24T20:03:00.000+04:00

I gather, from reading the local paper, that people here are getting a little sick of things. Of course, I'm talking about the Letters page, so it's not just people here! The latest hated topic in my neck of the woods is queue jumping, specifically the drivers who push into a line of traffic, thus holding up two lanes at once (three if you count the guy who tries to squeeze past and stuffs it up).

Now I must really be fitting in because, altough I would never push in in traffic, I did go to the airport the other day and do something similar (and seriously, Dubai Airport is up there with San Rafael when it comes to quality and good layout. Actually, San Raf is better). I wandered up to my gate and came across a queue snaking to the left. Now I figured that if the queue is so stupid as to run to the left rather than straight, the sensible thing to do would be to form a new queue and merge. Sure, it was a queue of one, but it's an airport for crying out loud and seats are assigned. And I have French ancestors.

As luck would have it, I found myself merging in front of two Australians. Talk about confused: Their Anglo-Irish heritage told them to suffer in silence for the time being and bitch about it later, but their Australian upbringing told them to stand up for themselves. The following resulted:

Tall guy to short guy (sote voce hoping I'd hear, get embarrassed and go to the back): Look at this bloke.
Short guy: Huh?
Tall guy: Jumping in like that, etc etc etc

The queue moved on a bit, I continued to politely merge and politely ignore this poorly dressed buffoon, while he tried to wheel his oversized carry-on luggage into my feet. Then it got funny:

Tall guy (slowly and as if he was feeding an actor a line): Queue. Queue. Queue.
If this bloke had any cajones, he'd tap me on the shoulder and say, excuse me mate, go to the back. And I probably would have... considered it. Or at least let him go in front. But talking to yourself saying queue queue queue is just dumb. So finally I turned around, looked him in the eye and said:

Diddums

That went down well and elicited a "you're a blood idiot" (but an idiot in front of you in the line - ha!) and more luggage into ankles. A few more pleasantries came from him and then I eyeballed him a second time and suggested he accept his fate in this life and realise there are bigger issues at stake with a gentle

Get over it, mate

No response. He knew he was beaten by my superior reasoning. I turned back around.

Short guy: oh, he's your mate now. [grunt]

And that was it. I probably really ruined those guys' days and put them in foul moods. And I'm glad, because if you're 1) wound up that tight and 2) stupid enough to join an orderly queue that goes in the wrong direction and not merge yourself with the ready explanation of "I thought it was for something else because it started 3 gates to the side", then you deserve to have a shitty day.

Now I realise some of you might think that makes me a rude, pushy, arrogate queue-jumping bastard, but tell me you've never done it yourself. And really, except in traffic where it's dangerous, I'm with the French and Chinese in their attitude to waiting. Here's another one: I went to the hospital recently for my blood test and x-ray for my residency. I walked in to the place and the first room had a queue of several hundred Indians passively standing around waiting for god knows what. My Australian friend from the airport probably would have assumed that was a queue and meekly joined it. I went past it, found someone in a uniform and asked where to go for a blood test, and was back in the car a few minutes later. And I didn't even jump any queues. The Indian blokes could have been part of a post-Modernist art exhibition, or trying out for the world stand-silently-in-a-room record. (On the other hand, Indian blokes do seem to like standing around in groups...) Life's too short to follow the crowd - make your own queue.

Dubai 05 - My place

2006-11-24T19:03:00.000+04:00

Dubai is made up of Deira (north of the Creek, a brackish body of water that disects the city and has only three crossings), Bur Dubai and all the stuff between it and Jebel Ali. Deira is a mysterious place I never go to unless I need a blood test for immigration purposes, Bur Dubai is where I work, and Sheik Zayed Road (SZR) is the main artery beween it and all the stuff on the way to Jebel Ali, including The Springs.

Now, I'm sharing a villa with a South African bloke called Chris out in The Springs. This is a really fake little suburb about half an hour down SZR from Bur Dubai. All the houses are identical and it's a bit like being in Legoland. It's a gated suburb or compound (ie, a bloke operates a boom on the only road in or out, noting down the licence plates of all cars, including the residents, for reasons unknown. Actually, I think the guy's a trainspotter, but the total loack of railways here has reduced the poor fellow to carspotting), and actually there are 11 (?) Springs compounds ingeniously named Springs 1 through Springs 11. I'm in 2. Next to me is Meadows 6, another Legoland compound, for people with a bit more money. Out the back of M6 is Emirates Hills which faces onto a small man-made lake, and this is where the really rich live.

How do I know they're rich? By the cars of course. Parked outside the mansions are gleaming new BMW X5s, and Land Rovers, with number plates like "80". And these are parked on the street because the garage is housing the Bugatti. It's pretty flash. Out in the grotty old springs it's just SUVs with number plates like D 456245 - nothing special at all.

It's come on since the satellite took the above photos, mind you. Everything is planted and green - I'll post some more photos later - and not just sand. It's nice and quiet and relaxed out here, which beats the hell out of living in the 24h construction site that is Bur Dubai...

I really have no ending for this post. Sorry.

Dubai 04 - Copywatch

2006-10-22T11:58:00.000+04:00

One of the great things about developing countries is the black market for counterfeit goods. The ones that you see the most are DVDs, watches and handbags.

There are various moral and legal issues associated with this, of course, but on the whole I say it’s a good thing. Take watches: no one gets hurt by this trade. The prestige watch companies have the attitude that a person who’ll buy an Omega would never buy a fake Omega, and a person who buys a fake would never buy the real thing. And it’s pretty obvious why – a real Omega costs around AU$3,000+ here, and a fake one is very obviously fake – bezels freewheel, designs are ones you’ve never seen in the catalogue, the gold doesn’t look like gold, that sort of thing.

I’d’ve thought it would be the same with handbags – what is a little padlock on a Hermes bag becomes a Chubb security lock spray painted gold on the copy – but apparently the bag companies are getting a little dark at this sincerest form of flattery.

But DVDs are what I’m in the market for. This is definitely a zero-sum game with studios losing out big time, but it serves them right for not embracing new technology and coming up with a way of distributing their product more cheaply. Meanwhile, quality films from the independent studios don’t really get a look-in, so it’s not like you’re doing a struggling artist out of his dinner. And really, if I chose to watch Snakes On A Plane, there’s no way in hell I’m going to pay even the rental price to do so. And besides, how does going to the cinema or Virgin compare to the thrill of The Deal.

It goes like this: after deciding you need to add to your video library, you head down to Karama and just wander along. Within about 10 seconds some friendly chap and fifteen or so of his mates converge on you and ask if you’d like a “copywatch” (no thanks), sunglasses (no thanks), a handbag (for the ladies – no thanks), or DVDs (yes please!)

And now the adventure begins. If you’ve said yes to the wrong guy you get taken around the corner to the spot under some stairs, stopping first at a fire hose-reel cupboard to retrieve a plastic shopping bag full of pirated movies, while your man’s mate acts as a lookout for the fuzz.

If you say yes to the right bloke, though, or to someone selling copywatches or handbags, you get led away to a shop (eg, women’s ware), which is possibly located some distance away, and/or up several flights of rickety stairs in a residential building, down the back of the shop to the secret door and up some stairs into the attic where they store their inventory of undergarments and dodgy goods. You might even meet an American getting ripped off. The first time you do this you feel a little dodgy, like you’re doing a drug deal, or something.

But then you forget all that as you peruse their wares. Typically blockbuster fare or sometimes TV series. A lot of the goods come out of Europe so the cover might by written in French or Russian, but most comes from China and the copy on the cover is alone almost worth the purchase price. Usually the précis on the back is about the film – but not always – and usually it makes sense – but not always. This is from Cinderella Man:

The big recession of American industry is period, man cloth gram of New York pull the match gram for the sake of living,For feeding the family to attend the boxing match to acquire the cash award, did not thought of to therefore become the generation boxing champion.

The quality is generally good, unless you get a 5-in-1 disc, in which case the video is rotten, or you get one that's still in the cinemas and you're more likely to get a bootleg (ie, camcorder in the cinema) rather than a pirate (ie, copied from the master). In this case, the sound will blow and probably get increasingly out of sync with the action as the film goes on. This can ruin an otherwise damned awful film like Superman or X-men III.

Probably the best thing about pirate movies, in this country at least, is the lack of bewildering censorship. I recently picked up a (legal) copy of Enter The Dragon, to expand my Bruce Lee collection, and was stunned by what was left out. For example, Lee fights O'Hara and kicks his arse. The bit where O'Hara smashes two bottles together and charges Lee is completely cut and suddenly the guy is dead on the floor. Han says he deserved it for his treachery and you're thinking "WTF?" Or Li fights Bolo and, mid-fight, Bolo's suddenly lying on ground, deader than A-line flares with pockets in the knees. Or deader than the continuity in Goldmember which was on TV the other night, minus the jokes (eg, the entire Japanese twins scene. I turned off after that.)

So it'll be back to Karama for me.

Dubai 03 - Jumeira Jane

2006-10-20T16:05:00.000+04:00

Dubai is full of people from all over the world and so it's a great opportunity to mix with different nationalities. I have friends here from the Middle East, India, South Africa, NZ, USA, UK and Europe. Not so Jumeira Jane.

Jumeira Jane is the archetypal spoilt housewife who has suddenly found herself relatively well off. Out here with Hubby (who we can assume is on a good wicket – Jumeira is kind of like Armadale in Melbourne, Double Bay in Sydney, New Farm in Brisbane, and I can’t think of a London equivalent, but JJ and her friends are strong in number in the Springs, too), she finally has time to do all those things she’s always wanted to. Like flaunt her relative wealth in the most tactless ways possible.

For example, Jumeira Jane doesn’t do the shopping herself, that’s too far beneath her now she’s suddenly near the top of the social ladder. And obviously the maid can’t do it on her own, (she’d have to drive), so they both go to the shops, JJ points to what she wants, and the maid loads the cart. Sometimes poor Jane can’t afford a maid, so she gets one of the store clerks to help her with that big heavy trolley instead. And there’s no way she’ll load those bags into the SUV herself! Bags of shopping are like kids: JJ pays for them, but the maid looks after them.

(There’s currently a bit of a stink in the Letters to the Editor of the local rag: One JJ’s maid was refused entry to the country club and JJ had to look after her kids herself. She claimed racism as the maid was part of the family after eight years; everyone claims she ought to look after her own little terrors and no one wants the club overrun by screaming bastards while the parents are off playing golf.)

Jumeira Jane is typically British and, I think, would be right at home on Lamma Island in Hong Kong, or the Costa del Sol in Spain, hanging out with other poms and complaining about the food: “I’m not eating that foreign muck. I want fish and chips and a lager.” Don’t get me wrong, not all Brits here are like this, just like not all Americans are like the stereotypical American tourist, and not all Aussies are unsophisticated yobbos. But there are enough of them to warrant a stereotype of their own and a catchy name. And it’s not an exclusively British thing, either: but the Brits outnumber the other Western expats, and I don’t think the non-Westerns are as ostentatious about their money.

It’s a shame, really, because I think they’re missing out on a great experience by mixing with their own pretty much exclusively. It’s important to assimilate, if only to get something other than mindless rants in the Letters To The Editor pages of the local paper. (I seem to be doing a stirling job of integrating. Just last night Ben told me how well I was doing when he said: “I can’t believe you did that, you drive like a bloody Arab!”)

* * * WARNING: DESCENT INTO POLITICALLY INCORRECT RANT * * *
* * * Do not read the following if you are easily offended by other people's views * * *

And picking up on the Letters To The Ed thing: is it me, or do Muslims go on a bit too much about the things they don’t like? Like racism:

The paper publishes an ad for a skin whitening cream (ie, anti-spray-on-tan) and it's racist.
A British MP recommends a debate on veils and suddenly he’s a racist.
If you're a Westerner living over here you need to be respectful of local customs, but if you're a Muslim in the West, local customs (and sometimes laws) are irrelevant.

Or the issue of violence:

The Pope, in a lecture on theology, quotes some dead guy in what is essentially a footnote, and suddenly Muslims the world over demand his death and kill a nun because he dared to suggest they were violent (which he didn’t).
I write a personal opinion on a barely known blog, and I’m forced to wonder if I should.
America invades Iraq and it goes pear shaped - howls of invective from the Muslim world … protests from the West. A suicide bomber takes out a bus full of commuters – howls of invective from the West… silence (complicity?) from the Muslim world.

Here's my thought for the day: Is Islam a peaceful religion? If so, are Muslims peace loving? If so, why don't they write better letters to the ed? And WHY do they constantly bring EVERYTHING back to the issue of religion? Skin whitening cream is NOT a subtle attempt to overthrow Islam in the Middle East!!!

* * * END OF RANT * * *

And end of this post.

Dubai 02 - Driving

2006-08-19T19:44:00.000+04:00

You know, I think hazard lights go by a different name here. Not sure what, exactly, but it could be any of:

Parking lights (watch out, I’m reverse parking, this could be dangerous)
Waiting lights (watch out, I’m double parked waiting for someone. I could do anything, this could be dangerous)
Going slowly lights (watch out, I’m travelling at or below the speed limit, this could be dangerous)
Going fast lights (watch out, I’m travelling above the speed limit, and you’re in the damned way, this could be dangerous)
Indicators (watch out, I’m thinking about changing lanes or turning a corner, or maybe I’ll keep going straight, who knows? This could be dangerous)

Which segues nicely to the next observation: very few people seem to understand indicators here. Hardly anyone understands headlights (I can see where I’m going, so I don’t really need them) and, by all accounts, no one understands driving in the rain (omigod, there’s a puddle, better swerve wildly to avoid it, but I’ll still go really fast on this slicked up road that’s been accumulating oily residues for 10 months).

As for sharing the road with others, cutting in is an art form here. Let’s say you’re a car length behind a car in the slow lane and you’re closing in. Local thrill seekers will undertake you and then cut in, missing the slow car by millimetres and relying on you to ease off to avoid a major accident.

So basically, apart from the hazard lights, this is a city of Commodore drivers.

***

And speaking of cars, one of the satellite channels here is playing re-runs of Knight Rider. You know, I never realised how … un-macho that show was. And I’m not talking about David Hasselhoff – sure, we’ve all seen the photos of The Hoff in the buff cuddling puppies, The Hoff in the rain tearing off his frilly shirt, or The Hoff in a bubble bath wearing a cowboy hat – oh no, he was The Man in the show. I’m not even talking about his boss, Devon. He proved his blokey credentials despite his effeminate English accent by lovin’-from-beyond-the-grave in The Ghost and Mrs Muir.

Oh no, I mean the car itself, Kitt.

It’s a 1982 Pontiac Trans Am with a steering wheel straight out of a commercial airliner and a dashboard to match. It’s sleek and black. Everything about it looks boss. It looks like it should have a throaty roar from a V8 engine with no muffler. Instead, it whirrs. It sounds like a hover-car from Star Wars. My vacuum cleaner makes a better noise than that thing. It just screams golf cart with after-sales trans am panels.

And then it speaks. “Ooh, Michael, should we drive around and scare those nasty looking villains in their tight T-shirts, or shall we go and get a latte?” It should be more like: “YO! Get that damned perm in the car and lets RIDE, MUTHA-F*CKA! Let’s kick some A-S-S!” I reckon the producers were going for an accent that suggested refined sophistication: a fine wine and classical music sort of voice. Instead, it's shandy and Rick Astley.

Dubai 01

2006-08-19T19:41:00.000+04:00

23/7/2006

Three months ago I didn’t expect I’d be spending the Friday afternoon before last relaxing in the pool of the Radisson SAS hotel in Muscat, Oman. Yep, to quote Ferris: Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it.

For anyone who’s missed the news, I’ve taken a job in Dubai. I was planning to stick around at my last firm, really I was, but when someone phones you up and gives you a chance to work on world class buildings in the world’s biggest boom town for several times your current salary and asks that you can help make the planet’s least sustainable city a little more so, it’s hard to say no. And so, seven weeks after my phone rang, I rocked up to work in 40°C heat and got to it. My very first project is of a scale that you wouldn’t even dream of in Australia. But it’s confidential, so I can’t tell you about it.

And six days later I was in Oman helping out on projects there, too.

Anyway, the Middle East, this part of it at least, is crazy. (Other parts are crazy, too, but in a different way.) The world’s tallest building is going up down the road. Taipei 101 (current record holder, I believe) is so big it’s increasing earthquake activity in that city. The Burj Dubai is going to be bigger. Europe has a crane shortage because of this town (the machines, not the birds. I don’t know how Europe’s avian crane population is going, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they all came here too). It’s the building concepts that make this place nuts, though. Integrated wind turbines, no straight lines, buildings so skinny you wonder how the lifts can fit in, that sort of thing. But I’ll not bore you with shop talk.

Dubai seems to have taken the bits it likes from other places all over the world and combined them into a unique experience. So, cheap labour from India and the Philippines, skilled labour from the UK, the Antipodes, and the occasional European, driving skills from the Melbourne School of Taxi Driving, cars from Japan, Germany (and even Australia), and, my favourite, electrical appliance plugs from Europe (ie, two round pins) but electrical sockets from the UK (3 square pins).

I’m staying in a (company provided) serviced apartment at the moment which reminds me a little of some places I’ve stayed in China (and Sydney’s north shore), only the guys who clean it do a much better job: the bed has good hospital corners, the extract fans are always left on to suck out the cool air, the AC is turned down to compensate, and they even turn on the vacuum cleaner when I’m there so I think they’re vacuuming. It also comes with a one-size-fits-all saucepan (12”, perfect for boiling an egg), a blunt knife (for cooking safely), a dinner set for four and two glasses (for entertaining people who aren’t very thirsty). There’s even a gym and a pool, and it’s close to work, so all up, it’ll do just fine until I find somewhere better.

Finally, I thought I’d better dispel a few myths before signing off:

It’s not that hot. 42° today, but not very humid, so it’s probably more comfortable than Brisbane in summer. And the AC is so fierce I often need to step out just to thaw out.
There are no anti-women rules like in Saudi (well, there might be some, but they’re obscure if there are). Women can drive, walk around unaccompanied, and they don’t need to wear veils.
It is not illegal to drink alcohol.
Nearly everyone speaks English (or a heavily accented dialect thereof).

Right, that’s it. Nothing really to report on the sights and sounds around town: it’s too hot to go sightseeing on weekends, and a mall is a mall is a mall (unless it has a ski slope in it, which The Mall Of The Emirates does). (Besides, this place was little more than a hamlet 30 years ago, it’s not like it has any history.)

UK 12. Nick's Food Tour of Spain

2004-02-13T01:19:00.000+04:00

SAN SEBASTIAN. Friday 6th February

Postcards in San Sebastián showed the town covered in snow. February 6th showed the town bathed in sunshine and enjoying 24°C. Even at midnight it was still warm enough for a short sleeved shirt. Yep, the only logical explanation is that I'm a weather god.

After an hour in Spain I felt completely fluent in French. Sure, I only seem to speak that language every six years or so, but 2 days in Paris brought it all back. I know what to say in all manner of typical commercial and social situations (je voudrais...; ça fait combien?; Oh, bordelle de merde! Vous gros conasse!) but unfortunately none of this is much use in Spain.

But Day 1 passed easily. I met a Spanish speaking Aussie and his English girlfriend (fiancée? wife?) and we hung out for the day and evening and they dealt with the translating. Perfect. They also introduced me to the wonderful art of tapas hopping.

It's pretty simple, really. You start at a tapas bar, get drinks and a plate and take whatever you want from the bar to eat. Anchovy, jamon, creamed fish, artichokes... Then, and here's the good bit, you tell the barman how many pintxos you've had, pay up, go to a few doors down to the next tapas bar and repeat. The Parte Vieja (old part) of San Sebastián is loaded with such places so you can easily spend several hours working your way through a meal. My favourite was baby eel pie.

Tapas bars in other countries don't compare. There you sit down and order and a plate arrives and someone misses out on something because the number of servings never matches the number of people at your table. Here, it's all laid out on the bar, happily going off, with people happily smoking around the food and happily dropping their scraps and napkins and cigarette butts on the floor. You pick what you like the look of and it's fine. If there's something no-one likes there're not three left on the plate for you and your mates to pay for. What a great way to dine.

Apart from tapas, San Sebastián is a beautiful city with a crescent-shaped bay, beautiful beaches and two headlands overlooking the town. There's a castle (remains thereof) on one, with a not-quite-as-good-as-Rio statue of Christ making his presence felt. The views are spectacular, the walk up suitable tiring and in summer it's probably the best place in town for cool air and sea breezes.

This is one nice town. I recommend it. (Especially in unseasonably warm winters. You know, if I'm not a weather god, then this weather is probably due to global warming, something which, as an environmental designer, I'm dedicating my life to fixing up. But really, it's so damned pleasant to be enjoying the sun in February. Maybe I should get back into the oil business.)

PAMPLONA. Saturday 7th February

Seeing this country is fast becoming an exercise in culinary indulgence. I was lucky in San Sebastián to meet Michael and Rachel for tapas hopping. 2 hours for lunch and around the same for dinner. Then this morning's cold and wet weather caused me to change plans on the fly - I postponed Bilbao and headed straight to Pamplona. Just in time for lunch.

We (me and Spanish cousins) started around 3:00 with asparagus with capsicum and garlic; acorn-fed jamon (which is so far superior to "regular" ham it's as if it's from a different beast. Technically it is - it's from a black boar that only eats acorns - but even the normal jamon is far removed from the pink flabby stuff I'm used to); artichokes with clams; and marinated capsicum. This was pretty damned filling but there was still mains to come: monk fish in olive oil and garlic for Richard and me (and there's only been one better fish in my life so far - a barbecued fresh-water fish in Kuala Lumpur), steaks a foot and a half across for the girls, and a (perfectly cooked) steak as big as my head for Ana. She didn't leave any, either.

Feeling drowsy from the massive effort of digestion, we then decided to cleanse our palates with dessert. Sheep's yoghurt (basically) for me, which is another local dish; sorbet for the others.

We left around 5:00 and went home to rest up before dinner. I nibbled on some biscuits (local specialty biscuits, not Jatz crackers, or anything) for a while and about 9:30, fearing I might pass out from lack of food, Ana put some sausage and more jamon my way before a celery and walnut dinner (very small) with fruit and yoghurt for afters. Finished that around 11:00 and called it a night.

****

You know, I had been planning to write a food tour of England. (Oh, French tour: Nice duck, but the blueberry sauce was a little overpowering. Ox tongue: tender as can be, beautiful sauce, kinda weird seeing the taste buds.) But frankly, food here doesn't have what it takes. Despite the efforts of celebrity chefs like Jamie Oliver, on the evolutionary tree of cuisine, British food is situated on one of the lowest branches. On the most sickly looking twig slightly overhanging the neighbours fence line (and so asking to be pruned) is the chip buttie.

I was out cycling with some mates and we stopped at the World's Worst Pub for lunch. This place actively misled customers as to the menu, then the woman got abusive towards us when we asked where the salad was. It's always been written that way on the board, and as new customers we should have been aware that the salad is not part of the chip buttie order.

Anyway, Mike talked me into ordering this thing, saying they were really good. I received a limp hamburger bun covered in margarine with some below average chips inserted. And that was it! Apparently, at it's best, the chip buttie has better bread and nicer chips and no margarine. Wow.

Thanks, Britain, for your wonderful contribution.

UK 11. NHS

2004-02-12T01:23:00.000+04:00

I had my first experience of the NHS, (or No Help whatSoever), recently. I went to the NHS drop-in place and asked to see someone with medical experience. They were a bit put out that I wasn't registered with any doctors ("Who is your doctor?" "I don't know." "Well, where does he work?" "Australia." Sigh, roll eyes) but I was ushered in to see someone anyway. This bloke examined my condition, concluded it was an allergic reaction, wrote the name of an anti-histamine for me and said "If it doesn't clear up in a couple of days, go and see a doctor."

Hang on! Who the hell was this? Don't tell me I'd just fallen for the old trick of taking advice from someone because he was wearing a white coat.

When I explained I didn't have a doctor of my own, this bloke very politely gave me a list of doctors in the area and said if I didn't have any luck, to come back after hours as a GP would be on duty.

Fine.

So the next day I rang some surgeries, keen to get a more considered opinion than that of my nurse. The anti-histamines made me drowsy to the point of feeling stoned all day at work and my condition was worsening. But do you think any doctors (or at least their receptionists) wanted to see me? Did they f*ck! "If you're not registered you have to come and fill out a form and then we've got 48 hours to decide if we'll see you." Bitch.

So it was back to the NHS drop-in place.

"I believe you have a doctor here tonight."
"No."
"But the nurse yesterday said there was."
"Oh, there is one on duty, but only see emergency cases. You need to ring and make an appointment."
Because I'm meant to plan to get myself into an emergency situation, I suppose.
"We'll, I don't know the number, and I'm here now. Perhaps I can make an appointment with you." I'd be speaking to you anyway, you bureaucratic cow.
"No, you have to ring." Huh? "You can see a nurse and then they'll decide if you need to see a doctor. There's a half-hour wait. Or you could go to the A&E at the hospital." Then she smiled in the way that says "Get f*cked and die." Bitch.

So the hospital it was. And what joy. Friendly staff who smiled and joked, a really cute doctor, some mean-arsed anti-histamines and a course of steroids. And free, too. (Well, with the level of tax I'm paying, I should hope so!) A week later my allergic reaction has cleared up with only minor scarring which will hopefully disappear altogether. The only downside is that I think I've developed an allergy to alcohol.

UK 10. Some shallow and offensive remarks

2004-02-12T01:16:00.000+04:00

Paris. I'd forgotten how much I like it. Maybe it was the unseasonably warm weather, maybe it's the elegant architecture, maybe its the food.

Nah. I've been in all seasons, the architecture is all the same and so gets boring quickly and the food seems to consist of steak, steak, steak or veal. What I love about Paris is the women. They're better looking and better dressed than Spanish girls, although some Spanish women make you want to weep and give thanks to God for giving you eyes. Spanish men are probably better looking than the French, but that really doesn't say much at all. Both sexes of both countries are better looking than the English (curse my heritage). Again, that doesn't really say too much, either.

(Today, back in England, I saw what I've been joking about these past eight months: a baby with a big eye in the middle of its forehead. It hadn't fully developed but it was dead centre, was eye shaped, and stuck out about a centimetre from the forehead. No mole is ever that big, and everyday bumps don't form that shape. That kid was clearly the result of frucking.)

There are no fat chicks in Paris (or Marseilles, from memory) and no tracksuits, either. (My cousin who lives there confrims this.) But in Spain I daresay decades of chav* English tourism has left its mark in the form of sportswear, cheap gold and cheaper heaircuts. The mullet may not have been invented in Spain but it definitely has a solid foothold here. Oddly, they don't have a word for it.

What the Spanish lack in style they make up for in food. It's a mystery they'll not all bloaters. Sure I've only seen one corner of the country and didn't exactly indulge in Burgos (I went into a classy restaurant there with every indulgent intention, but couldn't find any staff. Talk about laid back). I definitely prefer it to the French, but that may just be because I only ate at Parisian boulangeries where the choice was limited.

Finally, give me French language any day over Spanish, but give me Spanish friendliness any day over French.

*A "chav", I learnt yesterday, is the sort of bloke who wears sportswear and white trainers, cheap gold, cheap aftershave and gels his fringe. The nav girl pulls her hair back and is often seen, in these parts anyway, pushing an infant approximately 12 to 15 years younger than her. Both sexes bear facial resemblances to weasels. The term "pikey" has apparently spread beyond gypsies to include people who eat discount burgers and oven cooked chips and watch TV all day. They drive cheap cars with alloy wheels. A "bogan" or "Bevan", really. This starts to cross into "Kev" territory, which is essentially the "rice boy" seen in Australia or the US: ie, kitted-up cars that are probably just heavier and slower, but sound faster and have bigger stereos.

UK 9. My weird landlord

2004-01-15T01:29:00.000+04:00

My landlord is weird. That's all there is to it.

I called him up the other day on his mobile to see whether it was okay to pay just two weeks rent now and for the last month to be covered by the bond. That way he wouldn't have to return the bond to me (very inconvenient). Sure, he says, no problem.

Then, out of nowhere, he says: "I'm in Bermuda".
So what? "I'd better get off the phone then," I say, "this will be costing you a fortune." International roaming charges, and all that.
Him: "No not you, me. I'm in Bermuda."
Stunned silence. A bit of bewildered banter from me.
Him again: "I've just bought some jeans."
Wow! This was getting too weird for me, so I rung off.

Then, today, I got a postcard from the bloke. From Tobacco Bay.

Dear Nicholas
Like I said.
I am here.
Lovely weather
very cool.
This time of year.
Sub tropical island.
Everton

Truely bizarre.

UK 8. New Year's Eve

2004-01-04T01:24:00.000+04:00

Okay, this is a real cack that I think you'll appreciate.

I went to Brighton for New Years and my mates Brigitte, Dan and I went to a party that Dan had somehow found out about. We rocked up around 11:00 to find a house full of women sitting around eating. No blokes, no loud music, all very polite. Naturally, we put two and two together and deduce we'd mistakenly arrived at the wrong house and had just gatecrashed a lesbian party. (Should be interesting, thought Dan and I. Bugger, thought Bridge.) Everyone was still sitting around in little groups so it didn't even have the critical mass required to mingle.

We're stoic sorts, though, and, after Bridge rifled through the mail to confirm the address, we settled down with a bottle of red to see how long we'd last until we were spotted and evicted.

But no! It was the right place and pretty soon a few dozen more people showed up, all the signs as to where you could or could not wear shoes or smoke were ignored, a DJ arrived and I made my own entertainment by telling everyone something different when they asked what I did. (I started out as a helicopter pilot and finally settled down to clearance diver with the Australian Navy, on secondment to the forces in Britain. As to why I was living in landlocked Peterborough I put down to working in a liaison role with the RAF. As you can see, like all good lies, it's really close to the truth with only a few technicalities not being entirely accurate. Still, that cover story's getting a bit old now, so it's time to think of something new for the next stranger I meet. Ideas are welcomed.)

But anyway, the funny thing about this party was the Ceremony. Just before 12:00 we were invited upstairs (a nominally shoe-free zone, with stress on nominally) for a special ceremony to see in the new year. We all sat in a circle and held hands and were asked to chant Omm three times in unison to raise the energy levels.

Now look, I don't have a problem with spirituality, qi, energy fields, religions or meditation. But sitting around with a bunch of strangers chanting is just fucking weird. Some people had a bit of a laugh at the idea and they were asked to leave by the hippie leader, I mean host of the party, so they wouldn't spoil it for the rest of us, and only people who wanted to participate should be there, unless, piped up another voice, they were already there, in which case they could stay. Quite right, says the host - all those outside the room (door was closed) who didn't want to be there should go, all those inside could stay because they were already there, presumably regardless of whether they were going to spoil it for everyone else or not. A great show of tolerance, if not clarity of mind.

Next up we had to think of something from 2003 we wanted to let go of (I think - this point wasn't communicated very well, but you get that when you have a hippie running the show), then think of something we wanted for 2004 (and I guess the earlier Omming was going to make this materialise), then someone passed me a slip of paper with a word on that was meant to be something I was to pursue in the new year. I don't actually remember what that word was, but I know it started in S and the only thing I could think of when asked later was "selfishness". This led to some an interesting discussion in which I convinced a palates instructor that selfishness is actually a good thing if looked at in the right way (thank you, Gordon Gecko).

To return to the Ceremony, no-one had bothered to set his or her watch beforehand so naturally the whole thing broke down to the hippies chanting Omm (they were working to the watch of the guy with the loudest voice, which was slow - the watch, not the voice) and the pragmatists singing Auld Langsyne (sp?) based on my watch which was fast.

The night degenerated from there and, due to the excess of smoke, I managed to lose my voice for two whole days (can someone explain why a non-smoker suffers more than a smoker?) and due to forces beyond my understanding, I managed to lose my phone as well. Anyway, I wound up watching Kiki's Delivery Service in the room that was showing animé films all night and that had the least smoke (I was really in a bad way by around 3:00). Despite the title and total lack of plot, this was not porn although it did have an unsettling number of glimpses of teenaged Kiki's underwear (that's Japanese animé for you), and no-one could sit through the whole thing.

UK 7. York. It smells of dripping

2003-12-22T01:33:00.000+04:00

I went to York last weekend. And what a lovely city it is. Ancient, historic, small enough to negotiate on foot, and with a smell not experienced since Dave and I rode through Footsgray last summer. I don't know if it's the river, if there's a rendering plant upwind, or if the weekend before last had been the annual roast-lamb cook-off.

Anyway, it was the first place I'd done the tourist thing at for a while (hence the near total lack of news from me) and I give it the big thumbs up. Not only was it a gloriously sunny day, but the Minster has great views from the tower which is, unfortunately, caged to prevent falls, and this takes some of the fun out of it, I think. Also, it doesn't have a tour-guide like Ely cathedral, so you have to skip up the 275 uneven steps on your own. (I only counted 271, but I'm never sure whether or not to count landings.)

The Minster also has a tremendous crypt display that explains the Roman and Norman history of the place. (The Norman construction techniques I described in an earler email were about to bring the whole place down in the 1960s, and foundation work uncovered quite a bit of history.) Emperor Constantine was crowned there around 307 (?), there are Roman artifacts and little wooden models, an original wall painting and an original Roman culvert that still flows to the river. Like any body of water / hole in the ground that is part of a display, the culvert is full of tourists' coins. Step around the corner to the next vertical level of excavation and you're in the middle ages, showing foundations and an original well (no water, plenty of coins). Another corner, and there is the OLDEST stained glass window in the country: mid 12th century, great condition, lots of colours. Breath-taking.

Also breath-taking in York, but for different reasons, is the Jorvik Viking Centre. Basically, whenever anything gets built in York that needs serious foundations, Norman, Viking or Roman ruins are uncovered. In this case, they decided to earn a pound or seven point two by recreating a little Viking village with sounds, smells and, oh joy, animatronic people! And they didn't stop there. Rather than walking around the recreated streets in your own time, looking at original stuff in a suitable setting, (as you do at the exemplary York Castle Museum, a strangely captivating collection of everyday items from the past few hundred years, whose living room displays full of china figurines lead you to the inescapable conclusion that the English have no taste whatsoever), you are transported along in suspended plastic cocoons that provide audio comentary and twist at the right moment to point out what to look at. The joke's been made before, but this is truly the It's A Small (Viking) World Afterall ride.

And for that, I felt decidely ripped off. Sure, it had animatronics (unfortunately, there were no animatronic animals: the wizzing dog was quite inert), but it lacked original artifacts, dictated the time spent and had a really cheesy time machine gag at the start of it.

I bet the kids love it, though.

**

Meanwhile, this country is getting cold (morning ice) and dark (dusk a bit after 3:00) and as a result it doesn't feel at all Christmassy. Oh, and they're STILL going on about the rugby world cup. Give it a rest! Of course, they won't: they're still going on about WWII, and you know my position on that.

UK 6. A public service announcement for foreigners

2003-09-11T00:47:00.000+04:00

There are some things the Brits (or should that be the English? I wouldn't want to offend anyone) just don't have a full working understanding of. As a public service to those of you either living here or thinking of coming here, I have provided a short list to help you understand. Don't be deceived by the length: I wrote it on a train rather than arse around at work. I don't have time for that!

1. Hot weather

It was quite warm here in August. It maxed at around 37°C one day and was in the high twenties quite often. Now, many Brits holiday in the Mediterranean and Australia and know what a hot day is. None the less, this freak occurance of pleasant weather brought the country to its knees. It was really quite funny. Train tracks buckled (I promise you this is true), delaying the already third-world public transport system; thousands of people got sickeningly sunburnt (keep your clothes ON in public! See Public Decency in a later chapter (if I write it). And use sunscreen! That burning sensation you feel - it's you BURNING!); and, perhaps most difficult of all, people had to stop complaining about the miserable weather. On the upside though, they quickly started complaining about the nice weather instead. There was a letter to the editor of The Times that I was sure, up until the last sentence, was meant to be ironic. "It's hot", the lady wrote, "the garden is wilting, the trains aren't working, I have a right to complain." And then, just when an Australian author would end with a joke, sarcasm or wit, she ends with "yours sincerely..."

There was also a half page article in the Times one day explaining why the hot weather sucked. The best reason was that studies (including one that used the LA "Rodney King" Riots as an example) showed a link between high temperatures (ie, above a scorching 26°C) and riots. Social problems in winter are manageable, the article seemed to suggest, but come a burst of sunshine and the heat drives people mad, resulting in violence and mass public unrest. As an afterthought it was conceded that just maybe the drinking of barrel-loads of lager in the hot sun might also be a contributing factor.

2. Lager

Despite the huge consumption of the stuff in this country, especially when it's time for a bit of social tension, English-brewed lager is terrible. Which is odd, considering how proud of their beer the English are. But of course, that's the warm, flat, unrefreshing stuff that doesn't taste very nice that they're proud of. And it's good to proud of something, and I'm sure it's just an aquired taste. But the lager! Even the English admit they can't do it properly. Rule of thumb: if it's from a tap, it's been locally brewed (despite names like Grolsch and Carling) and will taste like it's been in the barrel a decade or two too long. Avoid it. Stick to imported stuff. What I'd give for a Cascade right now.....

3. Washing

In Asia, Australia and America people wash in clean water. In England they wash in dirty water.

I had thought that ablution-related inadequacies stemmed from this country's developing-world water infrastructure (eg, 30% of water is lost to leaking pipes, which makes you wonder what the sewerage system is like), but closer investigation found it's an entirely optional state of affairs. Consider the following:

1. Basins have two taps
2. Showers are rare

The only logical explanation is that a constant supply of clean water is in some way considered inferior to soapy water. One theory put to me is that a bath is considered more luxurious as, no doubts, are such ostentacious displays of wealth such as separate hot water spouts. A penchant for comfort makes sense considering the other peculiarity of the English bathroom: carpet.

It seems a bathmat is too high maintenance so it's carpet by the bath, under the basin and around the toilet to catch any stray drips and give the place a homely smell. An old-persons-homely smell.

4. Fashion

If you want to go incognito in this country, especially outside London, the following fashion tips will help.

A. Football strip passes for fashion. So buy a socer team jersey and you'll pass for a Pom. You are not, of course, to wear these to play sport, only on the street. Tucked in with some nice pleated chinos and you've hit the pinnacle of high fashion!

For the ladies, you too can go for a team top, or why not try tracksuit pants with high heels?

B. If your strip is in the wash, however (look, even a washing machine has a rinse cycle! Your bath DOESN'T) don't despair. French Connection sells nearly half of all clothes in the UK, so you can still fit in with one of their T-shirts carrying an hilarious play on the abbreviation FCUK. FCUKWIT is my favourite. (For further insight into the wonders of English wit, I refer the reader to Mark Twain's essay "How To Tell A Story".)

UK 5. Notes on Peterborough

2003-07-22T00:44:00.000+04:00

THE CITY

Peterborough is a city by virtue of its cathedral, a beautiful medieval job that used to carry the bones of Catherine the Whatever, one of Henry VIII's birds. She was exhumed and shifted to Westminster, though, so there is no longer any significance to the building other than its architecture which, although striking, is similar to all the other ancient cathedrals dotting this country.

Without the cathedral the place would of course only be a town. It has about 150,000 people (more on them later) and all the excitement of Wangaratta on 70s Disco Nite at the Albion. This makes it a peaceful place and in 5 minutes on the bike you can be in the countryside admiring the views of the flat fields of crops and the River Nene (a bit like the Yarra only less brown). Also, Peterborough is one of the major stops on the train lines so you can get places pretty quickly: London is just under an hour away and only costs £31.00 ($77.50) return off-peak. It's rather flat, though, so I'd probably choose Wangaratta over Peterborough because Wang is so much closer to the mountains. And the roads are more conducive to cycling, being wider and surfaced with tarmac that doesn't melt over 25°C.

THE FLAT

I've rented a flat. It's on the river. Well, the building's on the river, with beautiful views. I face towards the cathedral, instead, which is fine because I don't need to worry about not having an alarm clock as the delivery trucks for the Asda supermarket across the way provide that service free of charge. It's a spacious enough flat, with room enough to turn around in, but not enough to swing a cat, at least not without serious injury to the cat. I need to duck through the doors, but that's the same everywhere in this country, and the hot water service hasn't quite come to terms with what its role in the overall plan is. Naturally, the bathroom is carpeted because its a wet area and the shower was only there thanks to the previous (Australian) tenant. I had to provide my own shower curtain and rod, though. My landlord is quite mad, but a friend here says his is the same. He explains everything. In detail. It took 2 1/2 hours to show me the flat. It's a single bedroom flat. I'm not exaggerating. "Vis is da winda, an' y'see it's got vees andles wot you can turn, like vis, and push an da winda opens. And ven, watch carefly, like, if ya want jus a bit a air comin in, you can pull da winda shut again, but not all the way or you wown get any air in. Oh, an I almos forgot, vair are keys ere and you put em in this bit of da andle and turn em in da lock so you can't open it, like." And on and on and on and on and on. Again, I am not exaggerating.

So this place was furnished and the first thing I did was to buy new linen (I realy don't like my linen furry), remove the lace curtains (tasteful) and the lampshapes (ditto), and the porcelain doll on the bedside table. ("Vat's one of dem porcelain dolls wot was poplar in da Edwardian times which is when my ability to recognise taste clearly ceased to be a goin concern.") There was even an iron and a board (designed for midgets with one leg shorter than the other) and a plethora of unstable chairs. Oddly, there were no plates on the wall.

There's a also a vacuum. Fascinating! I hear you cry. But wait. This vacuum is clearly in as much confusion as the boiler about what it's meant to do, and so Emerton, my insane landlord, who's a cleaner, by the way, demonstrated how to use it. With the shortest, narrowest attachment to get the most suck, bent double, doing a room a day, or maybe just half an hour a day, so that after 5 days you can repeat the cycle, not forgetting to vacuum the bed after use because I like to go to bed filthy because no-one likes showers in this country and baths (sorry, barves) are much more popular, if less effective at making you clean.

The shower is wonderful, though. Bless the previous tenants' Australian hearts. It's a pump with a built in heating element so the boiler (tepider?) doesn't even enter into the equation. These things excite you after two weeks at Mike's place sitting in the bath with a handheld nozzle and near zero water pressure and NO SOAP. (Thank god I had my own. I know I haven't been reading the papers, so you have to tell me if a new study has shown soap to be bad for you. It's as rare as hen's teeth in this country, it really is.) Anyway, my shower has something resembling water pressure, if you kinda squint and look at it from a distance.

THE LOCAL POPULATION

I think I should perform a public service whilst I'm here and locate and destroy that centre of Peterboroughian entertainment: the Ugly Tree. It's clearly a public safety issue, judging by the number of people who have fallen out of it (nearly everyone), not to mention a public health and well-being issue, judging my how many branches they hit on the way down (nearly every one). Tattoos are hugely popular, too, as are cigarettes and being overweight. Everytime I come back from London I step off the train and a part of me gives a cry and goes into a coma. I think it's my libido.

I've got to get transferred to London.

To find out why, stay tuned. I haven't a lot to say about the place other than I blundered across a charging of the guard at Buck House and got to follow it up to St James Palace, which was cool; it's vibrant and exciting and full of life and international (really international, not international like Sydney likes to think it is); and the high foreign population raises the BQ well into the positive; and there's more work there; and stuff to do; and museums and art galleries and shopping, even. (Actually, that's it, you've heard why, now.) Which reminds me. Peterborough, according to my Lonely Planet, likes to advertise itself as the shopping capital of England. No, really! This is like saying Wangaratta likes to advertise itself as the surfing capital of Australia. I guess it's because Pboro has a bunch of chain stores like Marks and Spencer, Woolworths and the Pound Shop. Woo-hoo. And they all shut early, too.

Anyway, everyone's back in the office so I'd best sign off for now. Once more, apologies for any advertising placed on this email by my IT department. Feel free to write and remind me that there is an outside world and that maybe I'm not stuck in the godforsaken third world hell hole for ever. Geez I've got to get to London.

UK 4. Beauty Quotient

2003-06-21T00:41:00.000+04:00

I thought you might appreciate this handy new tool I developed just this morning. We've all heard of Intelligence Quotients (IQ) and Emotional Quotients (EQ). Well, now there is the Beauty Quotient (BQ).

***

The Beauty Quotient provides a means for men, (and women with appropriate substitutions), of assessing the average beauty of a city's inhabitants, vital when trying to determine whether it's worth visiting in order to go on the pull. It is an absolute scale, allowing different cities to be compared quickly and easily.

Scoring:
This is based on the system of keeping count in Black Jack and has no sensitivity beyond the basics. Only count people of a do-able age. Score as follows:

Pretty girls +1

If you have to think about it
(or you would need 3 or 4 pints
before she were pretty) 0

Ugly girls
(or if you would need more than 4 pints) -1

Bonus Points:
As an option, use Bonus Points: +2 for someone so hot you'd do her right there, in the shopping centre, maybe in the photo booth; -2 for someone so repellant she could legally be shot for sport and the good of humanity.

Tally:
Keep a running tally of the score. If the BQ is positive, enjoy the city. If negative, leave.

***

Currently, I'm on -3 for Peterborough, but have only been at it since this morning and have spent most of the day in the office. Cambridge would be positive (probably around +3, from memory).

(Buenos Aires scores +8. No jokes. I was walking down the street there one day and there was a five storey poster of Mila Jovovich advertising makeup and I thought to myself, "she looks kind of plain." NJL 6/10/6)

UK 3. Ely. A History Lesson

2003-06-19T00:53:00.000+04:00

Well I never thought I'd say this about a tour of a dead person's house, but Oliver Cromwell's house in Ely is great.

Not only does it have animatronics (and you know how I love those. No furry animals, though), but it has informative commentary and good displays that you can touch, smell and even try on. (There was a load of period hats and other clothes in one room.) There was even a recipe card for ye boringe olde Englishe foode so you, too, can live a malnourished life like the Lord Protector of England. (He died a natural death, but was exhumed, hanged and beheaded, just to make triply sure that he was no longer a going concern.)

The only thing I'd have liked more of was history of the Revolution and republic, not knowing much about it, but they assume visitors will already know it all. The video presentation, for example, just talked about Oli the bloke. They made this as authentic as possible, though, narrating it in the character of a servant with a fierce and incomprehensible regional accent. This really helped the viewer understand how Mr C must have felt when he asked his servant something and was none the wiser afterwards. Of course, it may be that Cromwell had a similar accent and so understood everything his servant said. It's unlikely anyone understood *him* in this case. This would mean the entire civil war thing was probably just due to a communication breakdown.

This tour was capped off by one of Ely Cathedral, a real beauty and dating to the 11th Century. Unfortunately, Henry VIII, when he wanted to "dump his slapper", as they said in those days, caused the split with the RC church. He then ordered the dissolution of the monasteries and the removal of all the colourful paints that once covered the interiors of cathedrals to be scraped off. I hadn't realised before that these places weren't just big, barren stone places, but were actually kitted out to be friendly and welcoming. Some traces of colour are still left, but after several hundred years it's a tiny bit faded.

The Victorians came through and revitalised the place some time later (it had apparently gone to the dogs) but there is a lot of original Norman left in the structure. The Normans, though, weren't the best in this department. The place has hollow walls filled with rubble, which is causing them to bulge. Also, various bits fell down several times. Mainly roof structures, but also the northwest transept in 14something. They never rebuilt this bit (current replacement cost £54m), and this is a little surprising considering the medieval love for rebuilding. Take the bridge at Avignon (Pont St Bénézet) for example:

This guy (a shepherd called Bénézet) says the Virgin Mary tells him in a vision to whack up a bridge across the river at such-and-such a spot. He does this, but it collapses. No worries, I'll bung up another and she'll be apples (he says to himself, in the idiom of the time). Not long after, that also crashes into the Rhône. (He became a saint for this. Whether it's because he had a vision or if he's the patron saint of unstable bridges, I don't know. If it's the latter, the designer of the bridge at Tacoma Narrows must be vying for his patron saint job! But if you just need to have visions, then my mate Mark in Brisbane must be the holiest guy in town.) This goes on for around 500 years until someone finally has the brainwave: Maybe this spot isn't too flash. Let's leave the half-a-bridge up and charge people a fiver to get to the middle of the river only.

Hope you enjoyed the history lesson. (A tad longer than I'd planned, but that's what happens when you procrastinate.) Let me know if you didn't and you'll never hear from me again. Ha ha!

UK 2. Peterborough and Cambridge

2003-06-09T01:00:00.000+04:00

DATELINE: Peterborough and Cambridge 8/6/3
With a population of 65m people you'd think the English could avoid inbreeding. (I mean, the rules are fairly simple - if her parents were yours too, don't shag her.) But no. If looks are anything to go by, brotherly love, or "frucking", is alive and well in this part of England.

(Disclaimer: Not ALL of England. And I'm not saying all English people fell out of the Ugly Tree. Far from it. All my English friends are great looking people. Just that this city seems to have a few people who didn't just fall out of the aforementioned tree, but hit every branch on the way down. It's not like Marseilles where a bloke might get whiplash walking down the street. Anyway, it's a friggin joke so stop taking everything so damned seriously!)

What I've also learnt in the last few days is that Viz, like Dilbert, is a documentary. See the attached photo VIZ fat slag.jpg. Nuff said (if you've ever read Viz).

Actually, I exaggerate (No! Surely not, Nick. Next you'll be saying you use gross generalisations): England does have some very beautiful people. A lot of them are clearly of foreign extraction (eg the Indian stunner on the train) and as for the good-looking Whities, I suppose they choose to congregate where the opportunities are. Such as anywhere other than Peterborough. Cambridge for example.

Cambridge is crawling with talent, and not just the Isaac Newton kind. His statue is actually in the chapel at Trinity College, alongside Tennyson, Bacon and others. (How was that for a smooth segue?)

Naturally I did what anyone with my interest in science would do: I admired the statue of Newton, then went for lunch and a beer at the Great Eagle - Watson & Cricks' favourite pub. This was almost as great as the old Melbourne Uni routine: skip lectures and have lunch and a beer at the Prince Alfred - Dave's favourite pub.

(Of course no historical outing is complete without a loud American and the Great Eagle had one of those. What is it with them? Can they not control the volume or is it a function of their accent? Or are they somehow convinced that not only can the person they're talking to not hear them, but that someone out the back can't either?)

There was also time for a bit of a stroll along the Cam, looking at people in silly hats playing dodgem-punts while trying desperately to look relaxed and not at all scared of falling in, and past the lawns at The Backs (ie, the back of the colleges. Good name. I guess Tennyson came up with that one) where students were busy practicing their accents, ("Bee Emm Dubble You... Imm Dubble Ewe..."). The punting business must be pretty lucrative, though. You buy a punt and a pole and rent them out at £8/h and the best bit is, you don't even need to do the pushing! You get the clientele to do its own. Which often they can't, resulting in dodgem-punts and pained expressions.

Later, I went to Evensong at King's College Chapel. Crossley tipped me off about this with his DVD of the place. The organ was great and the choir sounded wonderful. The music really resonates in the chapel. Maybe they could cut down a little on the audience participation and readings, though. The spoken word does not fare as well acoustically as the music, as evidenced by the totally incomprehensible lesson, which went something along the lines of:

'...and the lord baketh huntoo sheen blatherwren dawg leeglebroth finsley common: "breaketh thee two eggs in bowlingstowmarket elmswell thurston bury st edmonds mixing until smooth warblemeister throat gobbler add raisins, hellfire & bramstroke dullingham harwich needham market into a hot oven for thirty minutes. Amen.'

In all, Cambridge is a top place. Lots of history, nice buildings. It would be a great place to go to uni. And the weather on the day was superb, which really made it. My rating: 4/5

Here's a riddle to end on. There are two 3D maps of the old part of town on the main drag so you can identify various old buildings. The names of the buildings are embossed on the side on these bronze maps, in English and Braille. I mean, what's the point? Think about it.

UK 1. Moving to the UK - the flight

2003-06-05T01:07:00.000+04:00

DATELINE: Airport Lounge, Bangkok. 4/6/3
9 1/2 hours down and I've become familiar with films I never expected to, largely because I let them slide by at the cinema and wouldn't normally hire them on video. Those of you that saw my Matrix Reloaded review might be keen to see what kind of treatment I give to "How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days"; "The Tuxedo" and "I Spy". Well, bad luck. (Oh, alright. Briefly: HTLAGITD: light, few laughs, delivered on expectations - adequate; TT: light, few laughs, fights weren't up to Jacky Chan's normal standard; IS: Dumb, few laughs, several unexplained jumps in the plot, no wonder it bombed. Saving grace was Famke Janssen, and Phil knows why.)

Bet no-one expected anything yet. But I have another couple of hours to go and there's not a lot to do.

DATELINE: Somewhere over Euorope, 5/6/3
There's a special kind of sleep that you can only get on a plane. It's the kind when you dream that you're in traction. (or the Spanish Inquisition if you're in Economy).

So I board the leg to London & manoeuvre my way into the empty front row of the top deck. Now, these Thai planes (or this one, at least) don't have in-seat personal entertainment systems (that's bad) but the armrest b/w the seats is removable (that's good). So by around 5am Melbourne time I'm laid out like a pretzel, punching out the Zs. That's 8pm London time, so that should give me about 8hrs of kip.

Cut to 01:30 (London time) and my neck's stiff and my back's sore and if I stay awake now I'll be operating on shift worker hours & won't last the day. Back to sleep.

By 03:30 I've stopped dreaming of traction & am now dreaming of something much worse - work! (and my back feels broken. Something to do with fitting 193cm of Nick into 110cm of seat.)

At 04:30 the sun is up, I've just woken from that dream where I'm back at uni with just days to go but haven't even started on my major project, breakfast is on the way and I figure I'm now on skier's hours and can go the distance.

It's now 05:30, I'm fed and watered, have had about 8 hours sleep and have missed most of Shanghai Noon. Lamb is on the MD player & Jackie Chan & Owen Wilson are having a naked pillow fight. I need a shower and a change of clothes but am reduced to wiping my face w/ a moistened towellette. Is this what it's like to be English?

(Actually, YES! I'm staying in a place with a bath, substandard plumbing and a handheld showerhead. GAAA!)

Sing 9. The Roads, Parts 2-4

2002-09-19T23:58:00.000+04:00

Some of you may know the story of how I lasted two whole days as a pizza delivery boy. I jacked it in because I couldn't stand trying to find places in the dark. Keep that one in the back of your mind while you read on. This is something I penned in Kota Bharu but never bothered sending until now.

The Roads, Part II

I took what I expected to be a soft option for getting around Malaysia on my week off: I hired a car. Armed with a zero-detail highway map and the city maps from the Lonely Planet, I headed for Pulau Pinang (Penang Island), straight up the motorway.

No worries, you may think: just get on the highway to Ipoh (along the way) and you're set. But no. The Malaysians like to give you a challenge. I think it all stems from their concept of service, or total and utter lack thereof. (See the book "The Malaysian Concept of Service", one of thinnest in the world, alongside "The German Book of Humour" and "British Cooking At Its Best".) Example: I missed the first turnoff because it wasn't signposted. Come to the second one at a roundabout. Big sign: Ipoh motorway, straight ahead. Now, there's a flyover running through the roundabout so you can't see until too late that straight ahead is clearly not the right way. Turns out the flyover was the motorway and I was meant to turn right.

So that's half an hour of my life gone but when I do get on the motorway I'm sure it's all okay from there. Pity it wasn't actually the motorway and I was meant to turn off soon. But being in the far right lane, and given that there wasn't any warning about the off-ramp, I missed that, too.

An hour later I'm finally on the damned thing once and for all after travelling the back roads. By nightfall I'm coming up to the island and get stuck in traffic. The plan had been to leave at 2:00, but there were check-out problems (they wanted me to pay! Can you believe it? I'd ordered room service every morning and all and they expected me to pay! What's worse is the Bank also expected me to pay, even though they had booked me in, and chosen one of the most expensive hotels in town to boot), so I didn't leave until 3:15. When I finally got to Penang, I saw the big sign for GEORGETOWN. Great, I thought, follow this and I'll be there in a jiffy. But then the Georgetown signs stopped, the road forked and by 8:00 I was cruising around a one-way streeted nightmare with an inaccurate map trying to find my hotel in a foreign city, with foreign language road signs, in the dark.

I could practically smell the pizza.

Part III: Cross Country

Driving across the peninsula is a real pain in the arse. The highlight was probably when, after a couple of wrong turns, I was happy to be on what I took to be the east-west highway. There was even a signpost for Kota Bahru (destination). Two Ks down the road the road just stopped. Yeahhhhh.

They're a lot more laid back out here, though. Sure, there are some riced-up P-platers doing 130+ and overtaking on blind corners, but on the whole everyone just cruises along. At around 50 in a 110 zone. Where overtaking is difficult. And then when you do get past you come up to a lorry or a truck doing 20kph up 10% hills. With blind corners. I don't want much. Just an overtaking lane every so often.

I was advised the 400-odd kilometre journey would take anywhere from four to six hours. One guy even said to go back to KL and get a bus. In the end it was around six and a bit. With no navigator to talk to and only my MD player to keep me company, I was pretty nutty by the end of it.

For the record the main roads were in good nick. The back streets were a little dodgy, but it's kinda cool cruising by cows, seeing elephant warning signs, and crossing jungled mountains. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of this stuff because I just wanted to get the hell to KB. And at the time it just didn't seem peculiar enough to stop for. Now I wish I had. Oh well.

PART IV: Merang

I was then faced with a drive back to KL in a few days time. This was too much - the long distances, the solitude, the crappy MD-car kit, the crippling driver's seat of the Proton Wira and the aspiring Alex Yoongs - so I left the car at KB airport (and, even though they have an office their, Budget fined me for changing the drop-off point) and hired a guy to drive me to Merang. This, despite a sizable cash outlay, was an excellent decision.

Merang is not exactly on the main highway and by now I'd realised that my map was as useful as a 1:100,000,000 topographical of the moon. Besides, it was cheaper than a hire car as well as more characteristic. This thing was a 1950's-vintage Mercedes with ample ventilation, original interior finishes and a partially renovated dashboard (ie, stuff was missing but hadn't been replaced). It also came with a couple of Poms in the back seat, one of whom proceeded to lecture me about motorcycles in Vietnam. She also managed to make clear, in that polite unspoken way that the English have, that I clearly didn't know anything about two-wheeled transport in KL, because she'd been to Hanoi.

No wonder the English lost their empire.

Sing 8. Nick's Food Tour of Asia, Parts 6 and 7

2002-08-30T00:02:00.000+04:00

Part VI: Ribs

Seeking a change from my all-rice diet and feeling like splashing out, I headed down to the local Fat Bastard-eria, Missippi Slim's. This is a restaurant, presumably a chain, named after the owner, Slim. Slim was obviously named by an Australian (probably a red head called Bluey) and he features prominently throughout his establishment. There's the big, 4-foot wide life sized photo of him out on the street, and he shows up on every page of the menu: there's Slim heartily tucking into a plate of fat; Slim wiping the grease from his bearded maw; Slim counting a wad of ringit he just relieved you of for a very tasty, if not entirely healthy, meal.

Now, I hadn't eaten (western-style) ribs for some time. My first trip to America was the last time, in fact, and that was in 1982. I remember them being pretty fatty and not particularly satisfying. More the kind of dish Fijians would get excited about, rather than Jack Sprat here. But lamb ribs, I thought, might be different. Lamb chops are ribs, aren't they? Maybe they just name things differently.

Well, they were nice, and Slim's special barbeque sauces were pretty tasty, too. And I probably needed a bit of fat to help give me that shiny coat. But at the end of the day, you're paying for a plate of fat covered bones. (It's the American version of chicken's feet.) This just leaves you hungry, so you have to order more, (in my case, Mississippi Chocolate Mud Cake), and that probably has no nutritional value, either (in my case, absolutely not!)

On the other hand, Mississippi Slim's does give the chance to catch up on what's been happening on the country and western music scene for the past 40 years, and the fat was damned tasty. But if you go, get the burger. It has meat in it, is half the price, and will leave you practically incapacitated from over-eating.

The overall score, based on two visits, is 3/5. Definitely worth a look when you want to get bloated on western food and still have a sense, false or otherwise, of having done better by your body than if you'd gone to KFC.

No wonder Americans are so fat.

PS: Vegetarians needn't apply.

PART VII: A&W

Went to a fast food place in Kota Bharu (A&W), only because a mate was. Pretty standard hamburgers, but served with root beer. Who the hell divised this cruel and revolting substitute for a beverage? It's not beer, it's not refreshing, in fact it's not even possible to drink: it tastes like cough syrup for crying out loud. I once tried it in America the first time I went. When I was eight. Urgh.

A&W scores a measly 1/5: eat it if you must, and if you want something that tastes the same as Burger King or MacDonalds, but in smaller servings.

So now my list of forbidden foods/drinks is as follows:

1. Anything endangered (eg bear paws)

2. Anything still alive (eg monkey brains)

3. Sun-dried tomatoes

4. Durian (pending further experimentation)

5. Root beer

This ends my food tour of Asia for the time being as I'm back in Melbourne and really need to start doing some work. But now:

A DIFFERENT NOTE

On a different note, the lack of booze in Muslim Kelantan reminds me of the funniest thing I saw in Malaysia. Being so Islamic, all the women in Kelantan, and indeed in much of Malaysia, wear head scarves that hide all the hair. This makes it difficult, therefore, to sell certain items to the consumer. Such as shampoo.

Sunsilk, however, has a billboard campaign featuring a bottle of shampoo, a slice of lime, a bit of water and a smiling, scarf-headed woman. "My hair's so shiny and full of life with new Sunsilk. If you were my husband and we were in the privacy of our own home, I'd show you. But check out these eyebrows. Aren't they something?"

Its probably the same advertising people who do the bank and tampon ads.

I wonder what they do in the Arabian countries where the women can only show their eyes...

Sing 7. Big Ol' Rant

2002-08-29T00:10:00.000+04:00

I was obviously an angry young man when I wrote this, but in the interests of journalistic integrity (ha!) I thought I'd include it. NJL 7/10/6

Anyway, I was asked the other day what I thought of the Malaysian concept of service. To which I naturally replied, "what concept?"

It's not that service here is bad. Service is actually very good in most cases. When it exists. Which is rare.

For example, the dodgy DVD seller who told me, without anyone asking him to, of his other stock, not on display, that I was also welcome to purchase. Or the pimp who hung out on Jalan Sultan Ismail, between my hotel and the restaurants, who asked me every time I passed whether I wanted a girl. Such unsolicited helpfullness is "good" service.

But contrast that to the taxi drivers who just ignore you standing at the taxi stop waving frantically, and when they do pick you up they have no idea where your destination is (ie, the twin building, 27 storey international hotel about 1,500m up the road, on the corner of Jalan Ampang and Jalan Sultan Ismail. What do you mean you don't know where Jalan Sultan Ismail is? It's a major road with a mono-rail running its length. Do you even know where we are now? No, turn *right*, in the direction I've been pointing all the time. Now turn *left* back onto Jalan Ampang, otherwise we're going back to where we started and where's the point in that, or can't you fathom that concept either? What do you mean I can't have a receipt? Of course I can. Every legal taxi has receipts. Fine, no receipt, no fare). Or the waitress who comes by to ask what you'd like (a menu, please), says "certainly, sir" and then forgets. Each time.

Or even my contact at the bank. I'd ask him for a power extension cord and he'd say something in Bahasa Malaysia to the girls that contained the phrase "power cord" and it would never show up. I think what he was saying was "Roza, I'm just going to say the words 'power extension cord'. Please ignore them, and do nothing."

I'm told all this stems from a Malaysian/Indonesian desire to tell you what you want to hear. Singaporeans tell it like it is. Yeah well that's nice, but who's more developed and who's living in filth?

Sing 6. The Roads, Part 1

2002-08-05T23:45:00.000+04:00

A note on roads for the petrol heads (and Dave).

Roads in Singapore are well maintained and sparsely populated. Because of restrictive Certificates Of Entitlement, a ten year life span of cars, and at least 100% tax on vehicles, the cars are all fairly new and classy: if you're spending $30,000 on a COE - ie, the right just to buy a car - and then $100,000 for a $50,000 car, you may as well get something good. Needless to say, they are often riced up.

There are also a lot of motorbikes, nearly all ridden by people wearing shirts backwards and unbuttoned. No-one actually knows why. I think someone cool did it once and everybody else just followed suit without asking why. Like bellbottoms. But the shirts invariably fall down to the elbows. So if it's an attempt to keep dirt off, it doesn't work. If it's an attempt to look cool, well that doesn't work either. I'm sure the unbuttoned look is to keep cool, but I'm also sure that the air currents would get dirt on their backs, too.

As for the roads, they're mainly divided. This is a good thing as indicating to change lanes isn't a fashion that took off here as readily as wearing improvised hospital gowns. It seems the way to do it is much like in Melbourne: occupy two lanes for a while and just drift into the next lane when you feel like it. Without the one-way system or road dividers, I'm sure things would get ugly, but everybody seems to understand and the system works.

Now Indonesia has some shitty roads. No edges. Lots of mud and dirty kids. Real third world stuff. I reckon you can tell if you're in the third world by looking for a combination of the following:

unsealed edges
lots of corrugated iron
shanty villages
dirty kids

The real giveaway, though, are the motorbikes. In the third world the motorbike is the family vehicle. Have to go to the grandparents' for the weekend? Not a problem, they're in the shed out the back. No! The other grandparents: No worries, just pile the missus and kids onto the Honda dirtbike and strap a case on wherever you can. Not enough helmets? Who cares? Small accidents don't happen here.

KL, in terms of roads, is like Paris. They're covered in shit, they stink and they're filled with fucking lunatics for whom road laws aren't so much disobeyed as disdained. Respect for other road users is more like a vague rumour, heard of but not fully understood, and certainly not considered applicable. Red lights mean nothing. This is not a city for pedestrians. Indicating just wastes time.

And the mopeds! Like Paris the place is full of them. I guess because they're too poor for cars bikes are the go. But not the big street machines of Singapore, or the dirt bikes of Batam. Oh no, here it's hundreds of shitty, gutless two-strokes. It sounds like the national whipper-snipper championships. Oh for the sweet hum of a 750.

And they are fucking liabilities to a man. Where are the police? Why aren't they out arresting these people. I don't know what the road toll's like here, but I bet it's high. Even though Malaysia has the death penalty, what they need is some good old Singapore style zero-tolerance policing.

After a little more than a day in this open sewer of a city, I'm reminded of Sydney. Replace the homosexuals with mopeds and the Opera House with the Petronas Towers and take out that ounce of culture that Sydney has (in Balmain) and you couldn't tell the two apart. (Especially in the really multicultural bits.) Maybe I'm getting soft after being spoiled for so long by the West. Maybe I just need to see the good part of town. I'm new here, after all. But right now, even though my hotel suite (it has a couch so to me it classifies as a suite) overlooks the Petronas Towers, I say this:

Get me the fuck out of this goddamned shit hole!!!

Sing 5. Nick's Food Tour of Asia, Part 5: The King of Fruit

2002-08-03T00:05:00.000+04:00

There are a lot of fruits in this part of the world that, as westerners, we'd consider 'exotic'. Jack fruit (yum), those weird little things a bit like segmented lychees (yum), all manner of stuff. But they say the king of fruit is the durian.

Now, durian is a little on the nose. Indeed, it's so pungent that it's banned in some places. Cut open a durian in the wrong company and there'll be trouble. That said, you can't really avoid smelling it sometime in SE Asia. For example, the Park N Shop supermarket beneath the office in Hong Kong used to smell of durian, and a lot of taxis, both here and there, smell of it too. It's a sickly sweet smell, a real I've-just-been-sick-in-the-corner type of smell. But they say that it smells a lot worse than it tastes.

So when I tried it last night at the Changi Yacht Club with Ben's friends I was surprised how wrong "they" were. Being somewhat used to it I didn't find the smell that bad. I didn't take a huge lungful-type smell, but I could tell it wasn't incapacitating. But as for the eating... Let's just say that if durian is the king of fruit, then it is the King John of fruit. The King Louis XVI. The Ivan the Terrible. The Good King Wencesles it ain't.

The flesh was gooey. (Apparently the Thais like the flesh hard - gooey flesh can be indicative of rottenness.) There's a big pip in the middle of the goo and around six sets of goo-covered pips in all. (I really didn't count them, so don't hold me to it.) This is surrounded by thick white rind and a softish, green spiky shell.

As for the taste, initially it tastes a bit like it smells: kind of a sickly, breadfruity taste. Then the aftertaste kicks in. This is hard to describe. Interesting, that's for sure. And definitely exotic. Bitter. Bile-like. Putrid probably sums it up best. And repeating. It's the taste that keeps on tasting. For hours.

Of course, as the newbie, I was offered the last piece after I'd already relished my first. Politely I declined, but these guys weren't taking "no" for an answer. If anything, this piece was even more interesting and exotic than the first.

Eating many foods requires you simply win the mind game. Dog, eyes, brains, intestines, fish head. Clear the mental barrier and you're fine. So far, though, only durian has presented itself to me as a food for which you have to physically train.

So give it go if you're out this way. Maybe you'll love it straight away. My score, however, is a low one: 1/5 (1 for the benefit of the doubt. I don't want to write it off yet. Maybe it's better hard.)

Indonesia

2002-07-30T23:50:00.000+04:00

After working so hard for so long, the boss gave me Friday off. Top bloke, the boss. Understanding, appreciative, witty. Great to work for. Sure, he keeps trying to touch me and making lewd, sexually suggestive comments, but who could blame him, what, with my chiselled Roman-Greco physique?

Anyhow, after giving myself the day off (get it now?) I decided to pop over to Indonesia. Two main Indonesian islands are apparently visited from Singapore: Pulaus Bintan and Batam. I understand Pulau Bintan is more for lazing around on the beach and playing golf. Batam is meant to have more stuff to do. This is a dubious claim.

Should you go to Pulau Batam, at all costs avoid the Penguin Ferry Services one-day tour. It was after two extremely brief stops at places that can only aspire to the term "tourist trap" (a really crap Chinese temple and a go-carting place) and several stops at stores selling local produce that I realised what was going on. You know those coaches that go to all the discount stores in town, loaded with women in tracksuits carrying a million shopping bags? I was on one of them. And these shops were nothing special. A Ralph Loren store, a dodgy department store, a street store selling Indonesian groceries, and a souvenir shop with prices in Singapore dollars. With the exception of the souvenir shop these places wouldn't even dream of aspiring to Tourist Trap status.

Batam is seriously third world and if you throw yourself in you'll probabaly find that it rocks. But from a coach full of dried fish and local handicrafts, all it does it make you appreciate, a week after you've done everything in Singapore, that Singapore is a great place.

On my daytrip to Indonesia I was befriended by a bunch of Philipinas. Over lunch they were talking about me in front of me, but in Philipino. I may not speak Philipino, but it seems some words don't translate. One of them, whose name I can't remember (call her Rosa for the sake of the story), was clearly keen on me and saying stuff like "yabba yabba yabba Nick yabba yabba Standard Chartered yabba yabba yabba yabba unlimited expense account yabba yabba yabba ha ha ha." No jokes.

Naturally, I failed to stick around after the tour.

Next night I'm on my way home after gorging myself at dinner when I bump into Rosa and her friend from the day before. So I get talking with her friend, who wasn't at all scary to look at, and we all trooped off to a club for a drink and dance.

So the friend (whose name I couldn't remember either) makes herself scarce while Rosa is trying her damnedest. I remember thinking: you'll regret it. DON'T. I only stayed in the bar as long as I did because I was checking out some sensational Chinese girls dancing in front of my seat. Finally the pressure got too much, I muttered an excuse, and I ran. I've never actively run from a girl before, but I seriously sprinted home. Urghhh.

Sing 4. Animatronics

2002-07-28T23:53:00.000+04:00

I went to Fort Canning the other day where you can see the Battle Box, the underground command bunker used by the British and ANZAC forces in WWII. A great experience, complete with animatronic dummies and stilted voice overs. It seems that the Fort Canning people blew the budget on the latest and greatest plastic, moving men. This only left S$15.47 to hire the actors to do the voice overs. Let's just say that the voices perfectly matched the robotic, plastic and thoroughly unconvincing look of the dummies.

But you know, something was missing. For mine, an animatronics display just isn't complete without an animatronic beaver. Or at least little animatronic children in national costumes singing "It's a small world afterall". Is that too much to expect? I'm sure they had beavers in the war. Surely they could work one into the story...

Sing 3. Nick's Food Tour of Asia, Parts 2-4

2002-07-28T23:37:00.000+04:00

Part II:

I'm a big believer in exploring all the local flavours in foreign countries. So, being in Singapore, and out with a bunch of poms in the boonies, it seemed only natural to go the pizza. But not any old pizza. One I've only seen in Singapore: Norwegian pizza. This is basically a cheese pizza with a hint of smoked salmon. Not bad, but not more than 2/5 on a good day.

Part III: Fish head curry.

Ben, my main man at Standard Chartered, offered to take me and Rob out for a fish-head curry. I'm game for anything, but Rob, being a typical conservative Englishman, was having none of it. "There is no way I'm eating fish head. I'll have to tell Ben a story. I've thought about it and can't do it." Luckily for him, he left before the Big Day.

The Big Day was actually pretty good. Three guys from the bank and I went up to the Civil Service Club and ate off banana leaves. The fish head was pretty sizeable and included a fair chunk of what would be the neck, if fish had necks. Basically all the flesh falls off and it's just like eating any other fish curry. Except any other fish curry doesn't have an over cooked eye staring up at you.

So of course Ben points out that eyes are a delicacy. What he actually said was "Nick, the eyes are a real delicacy here" but what he meant was "Nick, we want to see what you're made of. Eat the eyes or lose a lot of face."

I dropped the first one on the table.

The second one came with a great bit of cartilage, so I had to suck it down and couldn't savour the texture. Not that that was a major problem.

The brain is the other delicacy. Luckily I'd gained my share of face and didn't want to look greedy. Navith was more than keen to get his teeth into the skull, though, so we all let him.

All up, I give the fish head curry at the Civil Service Club a big 4 out of 5. Apparently it's peculiar to Singapore, so I guess you have to come here to have it. Just don't try it for dinner because the curry can go off during the day.

Part IV:

Saturday's plan was to wander down to Boat Quay for dinner, but I took a turn through Chijmes on the way. Well, there was a Philippino Mariachi band playing outside the Spanish restaurant. And I'm just a sucker for Philippino Mariachi bands, so that was that: dinner at Octo. I'd always wondered how many flamenco songs there were, and when the band started cranking out Up Town Girl, I found out: not that many.

The food, for the record, was vegetable paella. Pretty good, but nothing to write home about, even though I am. 3/5.

(Note: Chijmes is a big complex of bars and restaurants in an old convent, and everyone pronounces it "chimes", ie, with a silent J. But I reckon this is a cop-out. Adding mysterious silent letters make Hangman and Scrabble wholy different games, and seems a little pretentious. "It's spelt 'Sir Raymond Luxury Yacht' but it's pronounced 'stoat gobbler throat warbler'." But it's a good place. If you come to Sxingapore, make sure you ask the cabbie to take you to Chidgmees.)

Happy eating. Stay tuned for further gastronomic tales.

Sing 2. The Touristy Stuff

2002-07-22T23:42:00.000+04:00

Okay, so what's been happening in Singapore?

After getting in late on Saturday night, I went watch-hunting on Sunday. Just a simple dive watch, nothing too flash. Duty-free prices in Melbourne were around the $300 mark, so when the first place I went offered something at $260, things were looking good. I was prepared to pay that, if only I could look around a bit, first. But $260 was too high, only a fool would pay that, kind sir, and only a fool would waste his time looking elsewhere. $200. That's a much more reasonable price. What do you mean its suspiciously low? Are you serious sir? $150. International warrantee. I'm making a loss, but I want to see if you're serious, I don't think so, you're not serious about buying, yes we take Visa.

So then it was work for the afternoon, sitting in the well-air conditioned hotel bar. The air conditioning in this country is something else. Cryogenic preservation, to be exact. Let's just say that by the end of the briefing session I couldn't feel my feet. In Standard Chartered's offices it's even worse. Fancy needing a jumper 1° from the Equator!

On Sunday we (Rob the project leader and I) went to Boat Quay, kind of like Southbank, but more lively. This was followed by rickshaw-chicken, a game involving an old rickshaw driver complete with tired rickshaw, two expats, and lots of traffic, all going the other way. Then Monday was the Singapore Zoo Night Safari, one of the few places were you can see animals trying to sleep in the dark.

On Wednesday, Rob left for the UK, leaving me all alone with my first ever audit. Quite an experience. But enough about work.

The weekend was an exercise in refined culture, starting with sailing on Saturday out near the airport. It's quite exhilarating seeing jumbo jets coming in to land that close to the airport, but not as exhilarating as dodging the container ships and barges. Whilst sail has right of way, might is right when it takes several miles to stop.

Anyhow, that night I took a quick turn through one of the clubs at Chijmes. They had a cover band. How good was it, you ask? Well, let's just say they'd be a suitable band for Brisbane's Royal Exchange Hotel. But then I'm ordered to order a beer. All I caught was "cover charge ... have to buy a drink ... have to leave" How gay is that? I'll tell you. It's gayer than a black Lycra singlet and the greased-up, buffed-up, gold-jewellery-wearing guy wearing said singlet down Chapel Street. (I had a whole lot more, but I thought I'd keep it clean).

That's how gay it was.

So Sunday it was back to high culture: Rodin exhibition in the morning (much better sculptures than the Precious Moments dead-baby figurines on sale in the mall), Raffles after lunch for a drink, then a couple of temples with Kim, the Texan I met drinking at Raffles, (and she was ALL class).

Nothing else to report. I've got a tonne of work and a fast approaching deadline. So there.

Singapore 1. Nick's Food Tour of Asia, Part 1: Flying To Singapore

2002-07-16T23:32:00.000+04:00

The flight over to Singapore (six week business trip) was an exercise in indulgence. I hadn't even sat down and they were asking me what I'd like to drink, Mr Lander. Being only 4:00p.m., I thought it was a bit early for anything alcoholic. Then, before we'd even finished taxiing, they'd cleared up my orange juice and asked if I'd like anything a little stronger, Mr Lander. How about a newspaper, sir? Well, it was 4:10 by now and my will was broken, so it was The Strait Times, vodka-tonic, champagne, another VAT, then around 5:00 it was dinner time (a regular nursing home, is Singapore Airlines) and a beer to wash down all three courses. Quick nap, couple of dodgy movies, then "refreshments" (turkey sandwich and a side of salad) and there I was, in Singapore at last: bloated, barely sober and feeling very happy with myself. I've decided Economy Class just isn't worth it. My new rule of thumb is: anything over 6 hours (well, anything international) should be Business Class. Am I getting soft?