Walkabout Creek

Musings on the Australian Diaspora – An ex-pat Australia Day

2008-01-26T03:54:00.001+11:00

At any time there are almost 1 million Australians living overseas. That's one in twenty Australian citizens. There are 200,000 of us in London alone.

On top of this, 50% of Australians own a passport (more than twice as many as Americans) and around 20% of Australians travel overseas in any given year; despite the nearest country being a three hour flight away.

Since Australia is clearly the best place on earth (and the weather in London in particular is incomparably worse), this begs the question – why are Australians always leaving?

Well it's definitely not because those leaving are unhappy with Australia. The Productivity Commission has found that more than 3/4s of Australians who spend time living overseas ultimately return to Australia. But, for the past twenty years, for every ex-pat that returns to his native land, there's another on the way out the door.

IMHO I think there have been two reasons that have historically motivated this exodus:

We're basically an optimistic and confident country. Many Australians head overseas head overseas looking for adventure and to broaden their horizons. This will strike most Australians as a patently obvious statement – but it's not the norm internationally. Young people in comparable developed countries don't just set off for the other side of the world in the way young Australians do. While there are many developing countries with enormous disasporas (the Philippines in particular), Australia's ex-pat community is disproportionately large for a developed country. For example our international diaspora is per capita twice as large as that of the United States (Though our diaspora is proportionately a quarter of the size of the poor old Kiwis, of which 22% of their population is currently living overseas – though you could argue they are a developed country in name only J).
We're basically an insecure country and are in constant need of external validation. Any Australian will be familiar with how we slaver over even being noticed beyond our fair shores, let alone being favourably judged. The collective national euphoria that following Juan Antonio Sammaranch's confirmation that the Sydney Olympics were the 'best ever' was absurd considering that every Australia already knew as much themselves. Similarly, we have a special reverence for the Aussie bands that have 'made it' in the US (eg Jet, Wolfmother etc) at the expense of greatly loved bands that never did for whatever reason (eg Powderfinger, You Am I). Many Australians head overseas because they view being successful in London or New York or Oxford or Harvard as being inherently superior to achieving the same things in Australia.

So one unambiguously positive motivating factor, one less so. So what's the consequence of this mass circulation of Australia's population throughout the world?

While the Irish diaspora is a major part of the country's collective identity, the contribution of Australia's ex-pats to the national identity is still under appreciated.

I think this is because of the legacy of those who left Australia as part of the cultural cringe of the 1960s (for example Geoffrey Robertson, Clive James, Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes). Bemoaning the cultural back-water they were fleeing, these people created the perception that those that left the country thought they were somehow better than the rest of us. In contrast, today's Australian ex-pats are more likely to be lawyers chasing a pound in London, bankers chasing a buck in New York and volunteers chasing an end to poverty in Asia. They aren't fleeing Australia any more, they are chasing adventure.

And when they come back to Australia they are bringing with them valuable human capital (as well as foreign currency) and the stories that are giving the next generation of ex-pats a taste for a spell over seas. Which is unambiguously good for the nation.

So what got me onto to this train of thought? Well, have you ever noticed that half of the great Australian songs are about Australian's who are overseas?

Khe Sahn – Cold Chisel:

And I've travelled round the world from year to year
And each one found me aimless, one more year the more for wear
And I've been back to South East Asia
But the answer sure ain't there
But I'm drifting north, to check things out again

You know the last plane out of Sydney's almost gone
Only seven flying hours, and I'll be landing in Hong Kong

I Still Call Australia Home – Peter Allen

All the sons and daughters spinning 'round the world,
away from their family and friends,
but as the world gets older and colder,
it's good to know where your journey ends.
Someday we'll all be together once more,
when all of the ships come back to the shore,
I'll realise something I've always known,
I still call Australia home.

Down Under – Men at Work

Buying bread from a man in brussels
He was six foot four and full of muscles
I said, do you speak-a my language?
He just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich
And he said,

I come from a land down under
Where beer does flow and men chunder

Home among the Gum Trees – John Williamson

I've been around the world a couple of times, or maybe more,
I've seen the sights, I've had delights on every foreign shore,
but when my mates all ask me the place that I adore,
I tell them right away.

Give me a home among the gum trees,
with lots of plum trees, a sheep or two, a ka-kangaroo.
A clothes line out the back, verandah out the front,
and an old rocking chair.

Australian Crawl – Errol

Convict state
It just don't rate
He want to get higher
Apple Isle, the inbred smile
He's going to get by'a
His mother's hand
He could not stand
He left for the islands
To fish and hunt
He take a punt
The New Guinea Highlands

Whoa Errol – I would give everything, just to be like him.

Tenterfield Saddler – Peter Allen

The grandson of George has been all around the world
And lives no special place
Changed his last name and he married a girl with an interesting face
He'd almost forgotten them both because in the life that he leads
There's no where for George and his library or the son with his gun
To belong except in this song

Time is a meddler
Tenterfield saddler make your bed
Fly again Cockatoo
Down on the ground Emu up ahead

Great Southern Land – Icehouse

Standing at the limit of an endless ocean
stranded like a runaway, lost at sea
city on a rainy day down in the harbour
watching as the grey clouds shadow the bay
looking everywhere 'cause I had to find you
this is not the way that i remember it here
anyone will tell you its a prisoner island
hidden in the summer for a million years

I think that perhaps moreso than perhaps any other country (except possibly the Irish), culturally, we define ourselves against the rest of the world. We only realise how Australian we are when we are overseas. It's the Australian ex-pat experience that has defined the nation's cultural identity. Discuss.

Shane Warne National Disgrace and Champion

2008-01-07T09:59:00.001+11:00

I've got the itch again. Following in the footsteps of my provocative and (in my mind) highly successful 'Top Ten Greatest Oz Rock Songs' List, I've got a hankering for another classic Australiana debate.

Today's top ten is a question that has caused more controversy after a few beers than even the Craig McDermott Sex Tape; Shane Warne's Definitive Top Ten Best and Worst Performances for Australia.

I guarantee it - years into the future economists will be pondering the unexplained collective drop in Australian GDP that occurs while you consider this eternal question.

Top ten Shane Warne National Disgraces

The Diuretics and the 12 month ICC ban - Eve of the 2003 World Cup. Along with number two, this was one of only two genuine scandals in Warne's career. I don't care if they were weight loss pills your mum gave you Shane. They were banned. That was really poor form. The first of many Warnie events in this list that I remember where I was when I heard about it (in the basketball gym at Bond University – I actually didn't believe the person who told me; I thought they were joking).
John the bookie
1995 revealed in 1998. Sigh. Another genuine scandal. Providing 'pitch reports' to John the Bookie. If you were a politician this would have ended your career Shane. I blame that worthless wretch Mark Waugh for leading you astray.
"Can't Bowl, Can't Throw". Hobart, 1999-2000. I don't care what you say – this wasn't Joe the Camera Man – it was Warney. Even worse it was Warne sledging a teammate. A QUEENSLAND team mate. A Queensland team mate that took seven wickets in two test matches against Pakistan; nothing to be ashamed about. It might not be 708 test wickets, but he was still a team mate. And a QUEENSLANDER! The fact that Brett Lee's "band", 'Six and out', subsequently recorded a song titled "Can't bowl, Can't throw" is an insult to Scott Muller than should be ground for a human rights action in the International Criminal Court. Never again.
Niccorette, Niccorette, Shane Can't Beat the Cigarettes
New Zealand, 1999. Breaking the Kiwi kid's camera because he photographed him breaking his $200,000 Niccorette contract by having a sly durrie on a New Zealand tour. Niccorette didn't have the cool slogan back then so it's no wonder they couldn't get Warnie off the duffs.
"You F*****G arsy C**T" – yes Warney, getting hit for six by a slogging Zimbabwean sucks. But there are some things you just can't say over stump mike to a prime time national audience.
Doing the Dirty With a Pommie On the Hoodie of a Car. Having sex with the girl with the English women on the hood of the car parked outside a UK nightclub during the Ashes tour. This was the only 'sex scandal' that irritated me. This was in the middle of a finely balanced tour. Shenanigans like that could have hurt the team (though didn't).
Shane and the "dopey, hairy-backed Sheila" - Melbourne
2003. After the South African girl that Warnie allegedly cheated on his wife with appeared on national television what Shane DIDN'T need was for his coach, David Hookes, to label her as a 'some dopey, hairy-backed Sheila'. Hookesy share's this one posthumously.
Warnie, with the giant inflatable penis in the Playboy bunny G-String. Ok, I've spent some time as a political spinner. I'm sorry – there's no way you can talk your way out of being photographed in a threesome with two girls who were plants for an English newspaper and a giant inflatable penis while wearing a Playboy bunny g-string. Yes, he was separated from his wife at the time and therefore it technically wasn't cheating. But really, was that EVER going to stop the papers from publishing this one? On the plus side, this time he did get good reviews: "Coralie Eichholz, 25, said "Shane blew our minds. He was so fit. I'd give him top marks for more than satisfying us. He was talking dirty all the time. It was full-on, hardcore and we had a great time. In the trouser department, he was above average." Emma Kearney also praised Warne's performance. "Shane's a stallion and very willing to experiment. He loved playing around with the inflatable and was up for anything,". Unfortunately the News of the World went on to produce a "Shanes Sheilas" video (NSFW) to compound the embarrassment.
The Drunken, One Stump Dance - Trent Bridge 1997. No, this one isn't a sex scandal. Instead Warnie sticks it up the Poms with a strange gyrating dance while holding a cricket stump on the balcony at Trent Bridge as Australia retains the Ashes. Another one I can remember watching in a half awake/half asleep daze during high school.
The Madame Tussaud's Dummy Spit
London - 1997; Shane storms out of a press conference unveiling a likeness of himself in was after a journalist notes that the dummy is quite a bit more svelte than the great man. Well we all have our sensitivities.

Honourable Mentions:

First fine from the ICC for The Cullinan Send Off in South Africa (1994). And to think – Cullinan got this one BEFORE he proved himself singularly unable to even stand vertically at the striker's end while Warney was bowling.
Advanced Hair: Yeah, Yeah!, Greg Mathews I totally get. Even Grahame Gooch can be written off as a silly Pom. But Warney? Shilling for Advances Hair? Say it Ain't So Shane!
Dumped from Channel 9 for off field indiscretions, his fight with Australian Coach John Buchanan; I don't care who you are Shane – you don't publicly attack the coach.
Meet me in Wonthaggi: Shane, if you're going to leave a message on a girl's voice mail, PLEASE make it better than: 'Oh Donna, I'm picturing us together, I'm pouring the wine all over our bodies'. Oh dear.
The "Policeman's Uniform" sex scandal that produced this classic quote: "He really knows how to treat the ladies. He is a Test player, so he's got stamina." Kerrie was also impressed by the size of his bat, and giggled: "He was very satisfying.".
In contrast, the less than great 'Stripping naked and begging for sex episode of 2005' was less complimentary. "He's a bit chubby, but he's quite fit. It was all over very quickly and he wasn't very well-endowed. He just wanted to get laid.".
Ouch.
The Great Baked Beans Airlift of 1998 – getting Australian diplomatic staff to procure the goods was a nice touch. How little we knew him back then: "Alan Crompton, former ACB chairman, said today Warne should consider broadening his diet from well-known favourites such as spaghetti bolognaise, lasagna and pizza." Now we knowl that's not just the menu of a hopeless bachelor, it's also the breakfast of champions.
The Texting your wife for a booty call – accidentally- while she's in another hemisphere episode. As the Daily Mail tells it: 'Warne, 38, who captains Hampshire, was relaxing at his home near Southampton when he tapped into his mobile phone: "Hey beautiful, I'm just talking to my kids, the back door's open." Seconds later the message appeared on Simone's mobile in Melbourne. She replied saying: "You loser, you sent the message to the wrong person". Why Vodafone or one of the funkier mobile phone companies never sponsored this guy I'll never know.

Note: I haven't included the final test match of the 1998-99 Ashes series when the Australian selectors dropped a fit, but overweight and under-performing Warnie in favour of Stuart McGill. The third greatest selection miscarriage in Australian Test match history as this was a scandal associated with Warnie but not caused by the great man (Number one was the selectors decision to drop Ian Healy before the first test at the Gabba in x year. Gilly didn't deserve to start his test career being booed by me. Number 2 was the selectors criminally overlooking Mathew Hayden in favour of Mark Taylor for what seemed like eternity. He's only the third highest run scored in Australian test history now. Speaking of which, selection injustice Number 4 was the selection of Matthew 'bloody idiot' Elliot over Hayden for a Gabba test match but I'm getting side tracked here).

Girlfriends and other weak minded sorts may well be rolling their eyes at this stage. Yes, it's not pretty.

Of course, REAL AUSTRALIANS will realise that the above, while not exactly flattering in the job application/CV sense, was only half of the story. The Real Genius of Warney, a genius greater than his variation, his control of drift, his unparalleled cricketing mind, was his ability to perform in the face of the naysayers and the lack of perspective from the media.

I mean come on. This isn't some kind of 'sports starts can get away with anything' fetish. GENIUS'S can get away with anything. Think about it. Picasso was a prick. Hemmingway was a misogynist arsehole. Kennedy and Martin Luther King were both philanderers. Norman Mailer was a philanderer AND and an arsehole. The fact is we have a soft spot for the truly great amongst us – and Warnie was certainly one of them.

The fact remains that of all the cricketing champions we have seen in the last 20 years, Shane was the greatest. Everyone reading this post WILL at some stage tell your children and your grandchildren about watching Shane Warne bowl. McGrath might have better stats (and I don't take anything away from him), but everyone knows Shane was the best bowler Australia has ever seen.

Put it this way: It's the final day of a test match you're defending 200 with ten wickets to get and your life is on the line. Who do you want bowling? For me it's Warne every day of the week (and if he's not available Lillee, then McGrath).

So to put the above in perspective, I present Shane Warne's Top Ten performances for Australia.

Shane Warne's Heroic Efforts for Australia (thanks to the joys of the Internet, seven of these have been immortalised in a single video on Youtube):

Gatting Delivery (1993) Of course. I still remember watching this as an 11 year old late, late one night on the Ashes tour.
8/71 v England in the Second Innings at the Gabba. I saw this one which makes it personally significant (Ranks with Healy's 161 and Border's x before being run out with his bat in the air in my personal memories of the Gabba). Tubby enforced the follow on and Warne bowled us to victory with a series of vicious, high bouncing leggies.
The Gooch Delivery (1994/95)
The Strauss Delivery (2005) Crucial point of the series. People forget that while we lost this series Warne put in one of the greatest individual bowling performances in Ashes history (40 wickets in 5 tests! 16 more than the next best bowler) and carried us to within a whisper of winning a series in which we were comprehensively outplayed.
The Basit Ali Delivery (SCG – can't remember the year – 2004-05?). You know the one. Bowled between his legs –classic.
The Chanderpaul Delivery (Sydney again can't remember the year but Healy was keeping). Bowled off a MASSIVE leg break out of the rough. Spectacular as a lefty batsmen.
Devon Malcolm Hatrick Dismissal (1994/95) (Boonie probably deserves credit for this wicket on the back of an incredible catch).
7/52 v the West Indies at the MCG (1992/93) Included the Ritchie Richardson Delivery which was let a wet dream for the thinking cricketer (Stumped after a three ball trick)
Breaking Dennis Lillee's record with 96 wickets in a calendar year (2005). Astonishing.
The Daryl Cullinan Flipper (dozens of examples).

Honourable Mentions:

Pat Symcox (again – can't remember the year). Bowled around his pads off a massive leggie.
Jacques Kallis. 300^th test wicket with a beautiful overspinning leggie.

Phew, so there you go. This has taken longer than even I anticipated. Maybe it takes living in London for six months for it to manifest itself, but I love Warnie as a true Australian genius. How about you? Are there any disgraces I've missed? Heroic performances I haven't acknowledged? Now is the time to say – I want this to be a comprehensive resource for generations to come.....

Christmas Card 2007

2007-12-25T07:59:00.001+11:00

Tim is currently spending his first Christmas away from home in the United Kingdom. Given that the temperature in London hasn't gotten out of single figures in London for the past three weeks he is currently feeling very homesick about missing Christmas down under.

However, a little homesickness is a small price to pay for the great adventure that has been 2007.

Tim left Melbourne and Canberra behind in 2007 and set off to take on a Masters in Politics and Communications at the London School of Economics. However, he was struck by an acute case of Wanderlust on the way, visiting (in chronological order) Croatia, Bosnia, France (for Le Tour), Switzerland, Luxembourg, Germany, Japan, Uluru, China, Tuscany (for an endurance bike ride between Pisa and Lucca), Valencia, Amsterdam, Bologna and Bruges. Phew. Add to that two road trips from Queensland to Melbourne and a weekend drive down the Great Ocean Road before leaving Victoria and Tim had racked up over 70,000kms of travel in 2007. (Hello to everyone I visited and stayed with in 2007!)

With 2008 promising trips to India, Sri Lanka, Barcelona, Tallinn, Edinburgh, Bath and Stone Henge, Tim expects to add a few thousand more kilometres to the odometer next year.

Closer to his new home less than a hundred yards from Trafalgar Square, Tim has been able to enjoy the charms of London throughout the year, including theatre, arts (the highlight of which was a fantastic Henry Moore exhibition in Kew Gardens. The Turner Prize Retrospective at the Tate Britain wasn't quite as dazzling) dining and even some study when the social calendar permitted. Further, while Tim is far away from family and Australian friends he was at least able to enjoy a pre-Christmas retreat in an English Manor House with a group of similarly uprooted ex-pats.

The Greatest Oz Rock Song of All Time?

2007-12-04T09:13:00.001+11:00

It's outrageous to even ask the question I know. But it's assignment writing time for me and I'm struggling for motivation. This has been one of the best time wasting exercises I've ever undertaken....

My criteria:

It has to be iconic - people have to nod in approval when it comes on in a pub.
It has to be irreverent - one of the biggest differentiators of Oz Rock is that it takes the piss. OR
It has to make you crazy proud to be Australian.
It has to be capable of being sung by a drunken Australian male in public.

So what do you reckon? What have I left out? What have I hopelessly over-rated on the basis of the memories of a good night out at the pub?

The List

1. Cold Chisel - Khe Sanh (I don't think anyone will seriously dispute this)

2. Cold Chisel - Flame Trees (This film clip makes me tear up every time I see it. But enough of this sentimental bullshit. It takes more than just a memory to make me cry).

3. Australian Crawl - Errol (The Best Oz Rock Film Clip of All Time. Surfers Paradise in the hey day of Skase, the Bears and fluro girls bikinis).

4. Dragon - April Sun in Cuba
5. The Choirboys - Run to Paradise (Great Clip; big hair and denim on denim. The quality of the fashion was inversely proportionate to the music).

6. Men at Work - Down Under (Under-rated film clip. Great Fun. I dare anyone not to cheer when they see the Man From Brussels).

7. Icehouse - Great Southern Land (Not ironic – but it did feature in Young Einstein so it does have some comic value).

8. Hunters and Collectors - Holy Grail (Channel Ten did it a massive favour by making it the theme to the Footy but still an independently great song).

9. Mental as Anything - Nips are Getting Bigger (One of the all time greatest songs for any big session).

10. The Cruel Sea - The Honeymoon is Over (Tex Perkins = Oz Rock Star)

Honourable Mentions

Paul Kelly - Dumb Things (killed me to leave this out), Australian Crawl- The Boys Light Up, Hunters and Collectors - Throw Your Arms Around Me, Mental as Anything - Live It Up, Screaming Jets - Better, Stevie Wright - Evie, Noiseworks - Hot Chilli Woman, Goanna - Solid Rock, Hoodoo Gurus - Let's All Turn On, The Whitlams - I Make Hamburgers. Gangajang – Sounds of Then .

Notes:

I wanted to slot Bow River and Forever Now in there too but thought giving Chisel 1 and 2 was enough already.
Jimmy Barnes - Working Class Man is disqualified as while it is a classic, it was written by an American.
The list is heavily 80s/70s biased. I don't know what this means, but it just didn't feel right to include songs like Grinspoon - Dead Cat, Frenzal Rhomb - You Are Not My Friend, Silverchair - Tomorrow. Also disappointed that The Whitlams and The Living End don't get a look in.
Jet? Still feels too early for my mind but Are You Gonna Be My Girl is the best Oz Rock music video since Errol.
I wanted to include an AC/DC song but for some reason I couldn't define them as Oz Rock. They belong to the world. If they do count Long Way to the Top is the song.
Airbourne win the encouragement prize (I was at the gig when this clip was filmed. It was awesome).
I just threw in The Honeymoon is Over to be controversial. I can't really defend it.

London Day Trip - Henry Moore Exhibition at Kew Gardens

2007-10-29T22:29:00.000+11:00

Henry Moore - Kew Gardens - 2007

Cool Brittania - London First Month Wrap up

2007-10-29T22:01:00.000+11:00

Well it's been over a month since I got to London so it's past time for a Wrap Up of my London Life:

Living Situation

I've really fallen on my feet so far as my living situation is concerned.

Having been shunted into my second preference dorm I've managed to send up about at Northumberland House, 100 yards from Trafalgar Square (I can see Nelson's Column from my door step).

It's five mins walk along The Strand to the LSE and 1 min from Embankment and Charring Cross on the Tube.

My room is very large and has been recently renovated so is very civilised.

Plus my room mate is cool; an American, of which there are more than a few at the LSE.

Study Life

I'm finding student life very agreeable - being able to get up in the morning and just read about something fascinating all day instead of battling the phones and dealing with a deluge of emails is my idea of paradise.

I'm sure I'll miss the adrenalin rush eventually, but not quite yet.

The classes are great, but some are more interesting than others.

My favourite class this semester is New Media, Information and Knowledge Systems which is fascinating.

Next semester I'm looking forward to a class called Modern Campaigning Politics which is being taught by Lord Gould, a prominent architect of New Labour and the chief pollster for Tony Blair from 1996-2006. Apparently it's a very practical course on political campaigning so it should be great fun.

The best thing about the course so far is the diversity of the student body. My class has people from the US, Canada, Germany, Croatia, India, Monaco, Italy, Mexico, Turkey, Poland, Spain as well as me from Oz and a couple of Poms.

Since a lot of the students have experience in politics, it's been interesting to see which issues are universal and which only pop up in specific countries.

Extra-curricular activities

Life is busy outside the class room too.

I've joined the LSE Hockey team (and walked into the First XI which was unexpected), started yoga classes, met up with the Labour students club and the Democrats at LSE.

Most excitingly though, it looks like I'm going to be interning as a policy analyst at Google this year.

Details to be determined but looks promising and is very exciting.

The Arts

On top of all this, I've had a very full cultural calendar too, both at the theatre and in the cinema (for The Times London Film Festival).

So far I've seen:

Theatre

Mary Poppins (great production and great fun), Holding Fire at Shakespeare's Globe (slow moving but ultimately worthy), Rafta Rafta at the National Theatre (frequently hilarious if intermittently incomprehensible due to the mix of Northern English and Indian accents).

Soon to See: Spamalot, Masque of the Red Death.

Movies

Atonement (Too slow and I'm not really a McEwan fan), Redacted (Innovative but overdone at times), Rendition (Kinda formulaic but not too bad), Ratatouille(It's Pixar so I should have know this would be excellent but in the event it was a great surprise).

Soon to see: Elizabeth 2, An English Surgeon,

Planning to see: The Counterfeiters, Once.

That's all for now!

Will try to write more consistently in the future.....

Picassa WebAlbum available as usual:

Around London 2007

London Goings On

2007-10-19T21:28:00.000+10:00

I've been a bit slack in blogging about life around London (it's coming I promise!), but in the meantime Joyce's latest edition of Hot or Not is a pretty representative sample of my cultural escapades in the past few weeks.

My addendenums:

revising Redacted down to lukewarm (good in parts but over egged it in others);
revising Holding Fire up to lukewarm (started really really slowly but picked up in the end. And anyway, a play that deliberately choses a story of moderate, incrementalist political change as a canvas deserves encouragement - Nathan Lambert would have LOVED this one); and
adding a Cool for "Atonement", the movie adaptation of the Ian McEwan book staring Keira Knightly. KK was radiant as usual but I thought it was a bit dull.

Now if only I can convince Joyce to come with me to see Transformers at Imax I might have a really hot London cultural experience to blog about!

Travel Blogging - Valencia Edition

2007-10-16T05:32:00.000+10:00

One of the best part of living in London is being able to go to more interesting places on the weekend.

And thanks to the revolution brought on by cheap direct flights from companies like Ryanair and EasyJet, European weekenders are now within the grasp of even the most indigent.

So long as you're willing to fly at absurd times of the day and to endure the hour+ bus trip to Stanstead at said hours of day to take advantage.

So, following a well beaten path, Joyce (or Hhoyth as she was known for the weekend) set off to Valencia for a continental get away.

As Spain's third largest city, Valencia isn't the first place you'd go to Spain, but it's got more than enough to make for an interesting weekend on the continent.

As the home of Paella and with a plentiful supply of Sangria, Valencia is a great place to eat and drink yourself silly.

We certainly took full advantage having two fantastic Paella meals in two days (one of which at a restaurant that used to be a favourite haunt of Ernest Hemingway, La Pepica (presumably while he was writing "The Sun Also Rises") and buying up big in chorizo on shopping expedition at Valencia's excellent main market.

As an added bonus, Joyce took me to my first meal at a Michelin starred restaurant (at the mother and son run Ca’Sento). The food was fantastic, but I'm thinking that it's the fringe benefits of eating at truly world class restaurants that is what makes it truly worthwhile. For example, when we asked our hotel reception how to get to the restaurant, we were told in a suitably awed voice that Ca'Sento was "The Best Restaurant in Valencia" and was a seriously big deal.

In fact, it was a big enough deal to have intimidated Joyce (and I) to use the bread butter on a prawn entree (We're claiming this was a language miscommunication and not culinary ignorance).

In addition to being a culinary hotspot, Valencia can also claim to be home to the only Pope Endorsed Holy Grail in the world. Yes, everything you read in "The Da Vinci Code" is wrong (as well as being poorly written), because the Holy Grail is in Valencia and not Audrey Tatou's blood (though on that account I wouldn't necessarily disagree with The Da Vinci Code).

It was kind of weird actually, I didn't read about The Grail in any of the tourist paraphernalia I saw before getting to Valencia and it was kind of hidden in a side room of the town Cathedral.

I'm not religious or anything, but I would have thought that God (or at least the Catholic Church) would have been better at marketing.

While the marketing effort might have left something to be desired, Valencia was definitely an interesting place to hang out.

As one of those places that has had numerous influences (Moorish, Catholic, Nouveau) and numerous periods of prosperity (consecutive popes in the middle ages, the America's Cup in the 21st century) the architecture is quite eclectic.

I'm certainly no expert, but even I could see buildings with amazing pastiches of styles from Gothic to neo-classical to Art Nouveau layered on top of each other.

When these competing influences are combined with:

a good sense of Catholic guilt (leading to massive bequests for religiously motivated architecture);
A republican populous during the civil war (leading to a sprinkling of destruction and subsequent renewal of the buildings in the Old City); and
a typically European obsession with culture (leading to an abundance of public art)

and you have an interesting city to walk through for a weekend.

And if that doesn't take your fancy then there's the second cheapest Zara shops in Europe.

So something for everyone.

However, the thing that interested me the most about the city was the fact that after a catastrophic flood in the 1950's, the government decided to divert the major river that used to flow through the middle of the city to the south of the city (See Google Map below).

View Larger Map

While I've got no idea what the hydrological impact of such a decision has been (and I'm very suspicious considering the results of other grand 1950s environmental engineering escapades and the enormous amount of run off in the former river bed after one day's rain just before we arrived in the city) a fantastic side effect of the decision was that the government turned the river bed into public space. So now there are football fields, children's playgrounds, public art, museums and convention centres (so that the town can host a modern day Dungeons and Dragons Pro Tour - see left).

To my mind the city has made much better use of the seam of land than Berlin did of the stretch of land that the Berlin Wall used to be on (though that strip of land was much smaller to be fair).

All in all an interesting way to spend a weekend away from Sunny London!

Picassa WebAlbum available below:

Valencia (2007)

Holiday Reading Part 3

2007-10-09T22:30:00.000+10:00

More holiday reading brought to you by long train trips through the Chinese countryside...

The Crazed, Ha Jin

Synopsis: Set against the backdrop of the Tianamen Square uprising, a Chinese literature professor suffers a stroke and relives his suffering in the Cultural Revolution through his dementia. His star pupil and future son in law is tasked with caring for him but is disturbed at what he learns from the old man's ravings.

My Take: Before this book I hadn't been sure about what to make of Ha Jin. His most acclaimed book 'Waiting' is a justified classic (best described by a reviewer as taking Romeo and Juliet, extending the courtship over 20 years and setting it in North Western China). But I was less impressed with his collection of loosely themed short stories in "The Bridgegroom". It was interesting, but nothing special. I couldn't work out whether he was a great writer or whether he just struck it lucky with one great story. After reading The Crazed though I'm willing to give him his dues as a great writer. While he has a fairly bare style and a very dark outlook, Ha Jin is able to craft stories with remarkably strong emotional substance. As an ex-pat Chinese author he's got a rich palette of emotional subject matter to draw on, but he's careful not to overplay the emotional triggers.

Highlight: "It's personal interests, that motivate the individual and therefore generate the dynamics of history."

Lost in The Crowd: A Cultural Revolution Memoir, Yang Jiang

Synopsis: Memoirs of the experiences of Beijing literature scholar and her husband during the Cultural Revolution.

My Take: While I have a strong aversion to "suffering Chinese women literature" ("Wild Swans", "Good Women of China" "Mao's Concubine" etc etc - I get it ok, women suffered in China, but so did lots of other people and they don't have their own cottage industry) and this book was written by an oppressed Chinese woman, I took a punt on this book because it didn't look like it was aimed at the sisterhood. I'm glad I did.

Lost in the Crowd is an amazingly restrained and detailed account of the author's time in cadre schools and re-education labour camps during the Cultural Revolution. A prestigious professor of foreign literature before the revolution (ironically, translating Don Quixote into Chinese), Jiang was labeled a "Cow Monster" and was consigned to being a toilet cleaner before being moved to a rural labor and re-education camp.

Like Solzenitzen, the author has an understated grace and dignity that dramatically increases the impact of her descriptions of the calamitous events surrounding her. While she never capitulated to the revolutionaries, there is no anger or bitterness in her prose. For instance, at one point in the book she mentions the suicide of her son in law some months ago in passing as you would talk about a distant relative moving house of getting a new job. A very powerful book.

What the Chinese Don't Eat, XinRan

Synopsis: A collection of newspaper columns on Chinese/Western society written by the a columnist on Chinese life for The Guardian.

My Take: I grabbed this wanting an accessible layman's guide to the quirks of Chinese society. Unfortunately this collection is very uneven, ranging from shallow and patronising observations about the west to insightful explanations of the Chinese mindset. Given that Xinran is really not a very talented writer she needs extremely compelling content to keep you interested. This book doesn't deliver on this account. Xinran is at her best when she's writing about the Chinese but is simply painful when she ventures into commentaries on the West (apparently Western men are looking for the same things in a wife as Chinese men - A beautiful, quiet woman to do the house keeping and produce a male heir - hmmm).

The Long Tail, Chris Anderson

Synopsis: As search, storage and distribution costs trend towards zero in an increasingly digital world the economics of commerce are changing. While massively selling high-demand 'hits' remain important, lower costs have made it economical to trade in an ever increasing 'Long Tail' of low (but not zero) demand niche products a la iTunes, Amazon, eBay etc etc.

My Take: Should be seen as one of the most influential books written in recent years. Neatly identifies and summarises the paradigm change in the economics of culture and commerce that has been brought on by the Web 2.0 world. I'd read the original article this book was based on a while back so I thought I was across the concept and I wasn't in any hurry to read the extended version, but now I'm kicking myself for not having read it earlier. There are insights on every page.

Highlight: Some stunning facts about the history of media consumption including:

In 1954, 74% of houses with TVs tuned in to watch "I Love Lucy" (compared with only around 19% who watch the highest rating show on TV today - "CSI").
When the VCR was introduced in that late 1980s, early 1990s, movie distributors tried to sell videos at retail for $70-$80 a pop! Unsurprisingly, high market power content providers have struggled to deal with all historic changes to their market.
Finally, the most amusing description of the skills of a DJ I've ever read "Clubgoers vote instantly with their feet, relaying their decentralised expectation and preference info to the DJ in aggregate". ie they leave the dance floor if they don't like the music! (To be fair, this sentence is in no way reflective of what is an extremely accessible book).

The Black Swan, The Impact of the Highly Improbable, Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Synopsis: Highly improbable and unpredictable events are the main drivers of change in society and as such forming predictions of future events or developing explanations for past events is futile. If you go around using the words "will" or "because" you're a very silly boy.

My Take: Hmmm. An interesting concept and more power to anyone who sets out to tear down established paradigms. But if you are questioning fundamental concepts you have some pretty high logical and evidentiary hurdles to clear.

NNT doesn't help his cause in this regard by having produced a really poorly written book. Over long and repetitive, it doesn't do the reader any favours. Additionally I found the author to be intolerably and blindly egocentric. "Everyone is a fool but me" and "I have nothing but contempt for those I am critiquing" were reoccurring themes that I found pretty distasteful. Given that a major part of his argument is the foolish arrogance of human nature this was amusingly ironic. Despite all of this, given the innovativeness of the book's premise, I tried to look past this personal dislike and judge his underlying arguments (though it was a real struggle).

At the end of the day I don't think NNT comes close to making out his major thesis, but he is successful in making a range of useful, but less all encompassing points along the way. I think he establishes that human beings fail to adequately take into account the unexpected and that the unexpected happens much more than we think and has a much greater impact than we think. Well and good. But NNT's claim that the entire sweep of history has been directed by unexpected events is just reaching too far. The logical conclusion of this premise is that any planning or predicitive analysis of any kind is pointless. Quite simply, NNT just didn't produce enough evidence to convince me that every business executive, banker, financial analyst and policy maker in the world is spending a large part of their days wasting time. I just don't buy it. A conclusion along the lines of "You're not as smart as you think. Keep in mind that it's better to be generally right rather than specifically wrong" would have been a valuable and a more credible conclusion. Unfortunately the author's ego wouldn't permit it.

Tyler Cowan at Marginal Revolution sums it up well:

Oddly, Taleb's argument is weakest in the area he knows best, namely finance.
Only on Wall Street do people seem to give proper credence—not too much, not too
little—to very unlikely events. It is easy enough to use hindsight to identify
the black swans Wall Street has missed, such as stock-price crashes. But it is
harder to argue that the market undervalues surprise more generally. Stock and
bond markets offer simple ways to bet on black swans. In financial terminology,
you can purchase an option that is "deeply out of the money"; for instance, you
can bet that Google shares will rise or fall in value an enormous amount over
the next three months. These investments pay off precisely when the rest of the
market does not anticipate the scope for surprise. Yet "long-shot" strategies
are well-studied, and they do not yield extra profit. In other words, organized
securities markets track rare and unpredictable events as well as the current
state of knowledge will allow. If you don't believe me, it is easy enough to bet
on the Los Angeles Clippers to win the 2008 NBA title, or to bet on the longest
odds at the racetrack. Such actions are hardly the path to either happiness or
riches.

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2007/06/my_review_of_ta.html

Finally, I have a habit of dog earing the bottom corner of pages in books where interesting points I might want to refer to in the future or consider more are made. I should note that I made more of these dog ears in this book than probably any other I've read. Admittedly many of these were dog ears made in contemptuous disagreement, but at the very least I think this is an indicator that this book got me thinking. Worth a read as a bit of a thought puzzle.

The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman

Synopsis: Cheap, ubiquitous telecommunications have reshaped the globe into a 'flat world' in which individuals compete on an equal footing regardless of their geographical location.

My Take: Um, yeah Thomas - where have you been for the past 7 years?? A shallow conceptual analysis (excuse the pun) stretched into a 500(!) page book. Friedman is sometimes an ok journalist and this book has some enjoyable and enlightening sections (such as the chapter on the Japanese speaking Chinese province of Dalian and the Japanese outsourcing economy that has sprung up there) but when he flicks the switch to theorist/philosopher/grand theorist he's very very ordinary. His conclusions are patently obvious and not in the good "Why hasn't any one thought of that before" way but in the "It took you 500 pages to say something a half decent journalist could say in a column?!" way. To make matters worse, the way he carries on about his grand idea as being some kind of revelation is really irritating.

Highlight: "While the dynamic force of Globalisation 1.0 was countries globalising and the dynamic force in Globalisation 2.0 was companies globalising, the dynamic force in Globalisation 3.0 - the force that gives it its unique character - is the newfound power for individuals to collaborate and compete globally." Yep - I think this is a good, brief explanation. If only the rest of the book was as concise and lucid.

Tuscan Travel Blogging

2007-10-03T06:52:00.000+10:00

Last weekend was my final weekend before starting school and I took full advantage by travelling to Tuscany, Pisa, Calci and Lucca with four fellow Aussie ex-pats and a charming German hanger-on.

Since I've waited three days before getting around to blogging on this trip two of my blogging friends have already weighed in on the trip at Michael Lives Here and Huy the Lad.

Blogging about trips with blogging friends raises a whole number of concerns. Competing with Huy and Swino's acerbic wit and Joyce's military attention to detail is truly intimidating.

Also, there are ethical concerns, like whether to mention the shambolic fitness of certain members of the party and the limited spatial intelligence of others.

Finally, and most frustratingly, because there were independent witnesses present I can't just make things up. So while in 'wikiality' I could claim to have powered up the mountain stage of our 50km cycle in under 30mins, the presence of real world witnesses makes it a difficult claim to sustain.

So read on confident that truthiness is guaranteed.

Pisa

First stop on our trip was Pisa.

(Actually, first stop for me was BA ticket sales after I managed to miss my flight, but thanks to the excellent customer service of BA this turned out to be quite a minor hassle in the scheme of the trip).

Luckily our hotel location was very central and we were able to make a beeline to the Leaning Tower directly from our hotel.

And yes, it really does lean.

Quite dramatically in fact.

Dramatically enough that it had me wondering whether the property prices of the houses in its shadow were positively or negatively affected by their precariously close proximity.

The Tower was definitely worth a visit if only to see the hundreds of people from all walks of life taking the same picture.

Regardless of whether you were an elderly Italian couple or a young and cool Australian/German pairing it is always cool to grab a picture of you holding up the Leaning Tower.

I suppose everyone needs to do their bit to keep the thing standing.

After checking out the tower we headed into the city to buy food for a picnic lunch on our bike ride from Pisa to Lucca (via Calci).

Having never been to Italy before I thought wandering through the alleys, coffee houses and markets of Pisa was pretty cool.

The colourful wall, door and shutter combinations of the buildings were iconicly Italian without being cliched and the ubiquitous Vespers were great accessories in the winding city alleyways.

While only one of our group was actually a coffee drinker, we were at least able to take advantage of the coffee houses for thick and rich Italian hot chocolates and pastries.

Armed with panniers full of Italian meats, cheeses and breads we were ready to set out for Lucca.

Pisa to Calci to Lucca

This is about where the trip made a rather abrupt turn from the idyllic to tortuously painful. Actually, the exact point the trip started going downhill is where the bike path starts going uphill on the googlemap below.

View Larger Map

While Huy and Swino have laid the blame for half of our party being forced to resort to pushing their bike up the Monte Serra for two hours (blowing the total time for the 50kms trip out to 6 hours) squarely at the door of our German/German resident travel companions, I think collective responsibility is probably more appropriate.

I mean the warning signs were there:

Ev's comment in her initial email setting out the route that we shouldn't 'freak out' about the mountains should have been enough to spur at least someone into checking the route;
Our hotel proprietor's reaction when we told him we were riding to Lucca via Calci should have also been a warning. That and his 'Strong recommendation' that we catch the train instead; and
the fact that we rode beside the mountains we needed to climb for 30 mins at the start of our trip without anyone clicking that we would actually need to go OVER them.

All of this combined with the complete lack of CV fitness of half of the group, common sense could have easily averted the pain that followed.

Unfortunately, we were all too busy thinking about the pizza, pasta and Italian reds we would eat that night and as such we walked (or rode) into a beartrap.

Huy and Michael are right. The climb section of our bike ride was hell. I am willing to cop to perhaps not being at the peak of my physical fitness, but that mountain would have broken the heart of Cadel Evans.

In fact, it ground Huy into a powder like substance it used to season its Tuscan brunch.

It was so bad that while pushing my bike up the 500m vertical climb of Monte Serra and being passed by a continual stream of professional looking, Lycra clad cyclists I was thinking to myself "This climb so tough that I guarantee that the Giro d'Italia would come through here - I'm so looking that up when I get back to London".

Unfortunately, back in London and with access to the internet, my pride has been doubly dented by the fact that the Giro d'Italia DOESN'T go through, but the Women's Giro d'Italia does. And apparently they do the section that took us around 2 hours in thirty minutes. Ick.

Many names were suggested for this leg of the climb - the seventh level of hell, the farking great bike push of 2007. I prefer "The what road cycling felt like before modern pharmacy memorial ride". Ouch, Ouch, Ouch. Thankfully I did however manage to pick up on the second leg and thoroughly enjoyed the 20 odd km, relatively flat stretch to Lucca. Unfortunately, the breakaway enjoyed the second leg so much that it lost contact with the peleton, which then proceeded to lose contact with the way to Lucca. A further 30 minute ride for the search party later and we had all finally arrive in Lucca.

Lucca

After the pain of the journey there, my memories of Lucca itself are a bit of a blur in retrospect. The city centre was a quaint enough walled city with cobble stoned streets, ornate churches, piazzas and a gorgeous amphitheatre.

Another highlight was the food. After a 50km ride everyone decided that it was perfectly acceptable to eat as much pasta, pizza, gellati, chocolate and local lemon flavoured doughnuts as they want. So in addition to having sore legs and a sore arse, after a day in Lucca I had a sore stomach as well. A lesson in moderation well learnt.

One aspect of Lucca that was both unique and pretty cool was a very tall and clearly quite old family tower with a grove of oak trees on its roof. It was quite a strange sight to see a stone building towering over the city with a tuft of oak trees on its roof. While it was quite a climb to the top, the views of the city were great.

All in all I thought it was a great trip, pain notwithstanding. While I won't be rushing out to sign up for another cycling holiday in the near future, it felt great to belt along through the Tuscan country side with a pack on your back and the mountain stage behind you.

Now I'm off to the gym to start working on regaining my dignity.

The Group.

UPDATE: Ev and Dan now have their blog account up.

As usual, a Picassa Webalbum is also available online:

Tuscany 2007, Pisa - Lucca

China Blogging - Leshan

2007-10-02T07:08:00.000+10:00

My final China blogging dispatch comes from Leshan, a few hours further South-West of Chengdu.

Leshan is another multi-million person city that 90% of non-Chinese won't have heard of, but unlike Chengdu, it doesn't have quite the same youthful energy and charm.

What is does have however is a Buddha.

A really, really, really big Buddha. "Family of five could picnic on its toenail" big. In fact, the biggest Buddha in the world. It's quite a sight and worth bouncing along some decidedly dodgy roads for a few hours to get to.

In fact, I might be crazy, but the size of this Buddha could well have been the inspiration for the Buddha in Monkey Magic. In fact, the whole time I was there I kept thinking of the Episode of Monkey Magic in which Monkey talks to the Buddha while standing on his palm. The influences of an 80s Australian childhood no doubt.

In addition to its genuinely impressive scale, the Buddha at Leshan also has a quaint history.

The Buddha is situated on the banks of a river near the confluence of two rivers. Before the construction of the Buddha, boating in this area was fairly precarious as a result of a sink-hole that had formed at the confluence point and the resulting swirling currents.

The local Buddhist temple decided to construct the enormous Buddha to bring good luck to passing sailors.

Spiritual impact notwithstanding, the enormous volume of rock displaced by the carving of the statue had the side benefit of filling the sink hole in the river that was causing the problems and dramatically improved the rivers flow for boat traffic. Quite a cool story imho.

Another amusing aspect of the Buddha's history is the "Buddha's Aureole" phenomenon.

Because of the water vapour that often collected near the base of the Buddha, missionaries at the top often saw a halo like optical illusion over the head of missionaries at the base of the statue.

Anyway, the missionaries at the top of the Buddha often interpreted this as a sign that they had achieved enlightenment and would promptly jump from the cliffs (to their inevitable death).

The practice was apparently so prevalent that safety rails were erected at the Buddha hundreds of years before the arrival of the litigation society.

The final interesting thing about the Buddha was queueing up to make the climb to the base. The lines were at least an hour long and for the entire waiting period, a ballet of queue jumping played out in front of us. The concept of a queue is utterly foreign to the vast majority of Chinese and even the steel barriers establishing a single file line weren't enough of a hint to stop people from trying to physically push their way to the front of the line. By the time I got to the front of the queue my elbows had become pretty sharp.

Other than the Giant Buddha, Leshan was also home to one of the largest functioning Buddhist temples in China. Apparently it is good luck to rub the Buddha's toe (but not his belly).

The other, slightly odd attraction at Leshan was the 'Sleeping Buddha'. To see the Sleeping Buddha you needed to catch a boat across the river from the Giant Buddha. Looking back, the mountains surrounding the Giant Buddha vaguely resemble a Buddha lying on its back (with a very phallic pagoda protruding from its lower torso).

Again, Picassa WebAlbum available online:

China 2007

China Blogging Mark 3 - Chengdu - PANDA WATCH!!

2007-09-28T23:15:00.000+10:00

After Xian, I continued South-West (thankfully in a hard sleeper this time) to Chengdu in the Sichuan province of China.

Chengdu is one of the 160 cities in China with a population of over 1 million that you've never heard of before. While it was 24 hours west of Beijing on a train, the town was quite cosmopolitan - young and bustling. In fact, it was cosmopolitan enough for me to be able to watch the Wallabies beat Wales in the Rugby World Cup in an Irish Bar run by an Australian. Globalisation is a strange beast sometimes.

Chengdu is famous for:

Scorching Sichuan Hot Pot;
Dramatically Camp Sichuan Opera; and most importantly
Pandas.

The Giant Panda Breeding Research Centre, located just outside Chengdu, is the largest Panda breeding centre in the world.

The Centre has bred hundreds of Pandas in captivity, which given that there are less than 1000 Pandas in the wild or in captivity, is quite an achievement.

Unfortunately, the cutest part of the zoo, the Panda creche was a photo free area. I'm cringing writing about the 'cutest' part of my trip, but there's really no other way to describe it.

Tiny Pandas, no bigger than your hand, in incubators being bottle fed by attendants. Larger puppy size Pandas in children's playpens playing with children's' toys.

It was all a bit much for the girls from my hostel who went more than a little clucky at the sight.

But, as you can see, there was still more than enough Panda cuteness that was able to be captured for photographic posterity.

Given that Pandas are only able to absorb a tiny fraction of the nutrients in the bamboo shafts they exclusively eat, they are forced to spend 2/3rds of their day eating and need to conserve as much energy as they can. So in general they were a lazy lot, with only the younger ones in the group showing any interest in running around and most extraordinarily, climbing trees.

Panda's highly inefficient feeding routine was just a prelude for how unsuited Pandas are for survival. For instance, while at the Panda Research Centre I learnt that:

Pandas are solitary animals living in demarcated territories a few kilometres across. So habitat destruction has a disproportionate impact on their survival. More prosaically, it makes even finding another Panda of the opposite sex rather difficult.

Further, Pandas are largely uninterested in sex. Even if a Panda does manage to stumble on a Panda of the opposite sex, it's pretty uncommon they would actually do the deed. This is partly do to lack of instinct/knowledge about procreation (remedied at the zoo by screening Panda porn in the enclosures) but also simply related to lack of interest.

The Mighty Boosh weren't far off the mark in this respect.

Additionally, if two Pandas did manage to find each other and then actually knew what to do, the odds of them being able to do so are significantly limited by the fact that in general Panda penises are too small for procreation.

A fact rather graphically illustrated by the pickled Panda penises on display in the adjoining Panda museum.

FINALLY, if two Pandas were able to overcome all of these obstacles and actually conceive a baby Panda, the odds of the mother being able to raise it are slim. Baby Pandas are completely defenseless in the first month of their life (blind, without fur, unable to walk) and must be carried constantly in the mother's paws. Unfortunately, Pandas are terrible mothers and most new mothers do not instinctively understand what good Panda parenting involves. Many mothers abandon or accidentally crush their young.

All in all, this left me a little dubious about the Panda's prospects for survival in the wild. However, the Chengdu Research Centre is obviously becoming quite adept at the turkey baster method of Panda procreation so there'll always be some some cuddly animals for WWF marketing campaigns.

Also interesting at the Panda museum was:

The fact that in ancient times, Chinese emperors domesticated Pandas and used them as attack animals in battle.
Chinese museum exhibits; is pickled panda penises aren't your cup of tea, how about paper mache sabre tooth tigers attacking a stuffed fancy dress donkey costume?

Chengdu did have a number of other non-Panda related attractions. For starters, the food was fantastic. While the whole country is obsessed with food, the Chinese have a saying that "China is the home of food, Sichuan is the home of flavour". In general, the food was great and cheap, but after a few days I was getting a bit disappointed that I hadn't come across a really hot sichuan meal.

I raised it was the staff at my fantastic hostel and they told me that most restaurants have two menus - one in Chinese for the locals and another in English which has the prices doubled and the hotness of the dishes halved. So, armed with a note in Chinese explaining that I didn't want my food moderated, I set off for a traditional Sichuan hotpot restaurant.

While I like my food hot, about 30 seconds into my meal I'd realised I had bitten off more than I could chew. While the bright red hot pot dish of boiling fat filled with peppers and chillies looked fantastic, I couldn't even sniff it without my lips tingling. I returned to my hostel with my tail between my legs.

China 2007

China Blogging - Xian and the Terracotta Warriors

2007-09-28T22:41:00.000+10:00

Since I couldn't spend two weeks bludging at Trudi and Eugene's place, after a few days in China I made my way to the chaotic Beijing West Train Station and set off for inland China. I didn't really have much of a plan as to where I wanted to go (or where I'd be able to get to via the difficult to negotiate Chinese railway system), but I knew I wanted to see the Terracotta Warriors so my first destination was Xian.

Unfortunately, the only way I could get there was via a hard seat train ticket - the lowest class of travel in China. 14 hours sharing a bench with three other Chinese travellers wasn't the most comfortable of experiences. Yes, it's a great travel experience to ride the train with the masses but after 14 hours, the smell (cigarette smoke, body odour, snacks consisting of a variety of animal entrails), the noise (portable music players, shouting conversations, animated games of cards) and total lack of personal space is a bit much. At one stage I did manage to fall asleep, only to wake up with two people pulling my hair to see whether it was real or not. So I can tick the box for having experienced authentic Chinese travel but I can't say I'd recommend it.

Things got considerably more comfortable once I arrived in Xian. My hostel was great value and clean and comfortable. Amusingly the very charismatic proprietor of the hostel claimed to be called "Jim Beam". Even more amusing was the fact that his very helpful staff told me on check in that I needn't hang around town for for two days as I could see everything worth seeing in a day. In fact, they were more than happy to organise me a train ticket (hard sleeper :) ) to Chengdu for the next day where they told me I'd have a much better time!

Ultimately, the hostel staff were right too. While the Terracotta Warriors were excellent and the city's Muslim quarter was pretty interesting, Xian didn't really have much to offer as a city. Large, crowded and monochromatic, the city didn't have much personality. Also, while the Lonely Planet told me that the pollution was much less severe in Xian than Beijing, I found the smog to be MUCH worse. Maybe I was just there on a bad day.

The Terracotta Warriors, about an hour out of town were pretty impressive though. Given that there are more than 6000 individually crafted warriors and the tombs clearly would have cost a fortune, I found it extraordinary that there was no historical record of the tomb until three peasants accidentally broke through into the tomb chamber while digging a well. It really is quite a shock to see how large the excavation pit is and you can spend quite a while taking in the nuances between the soldiers. However, the viewing platforms are quite a distance from the warriors - I was really regretting not packing my telephoto lens.

Another annoyance is that an enormous shopping mall has been built around the excavation sites which detracted from the authenticity of the site a little bit.

The area around the site felt a bit like Surfers Paradise with cheap sandstone walkways, hawkers of tourist kitsch and western restaurants. Not very aesthetically pleasing.

I also neglected to note inmy last post that I have a Picasa Webalbum up with a selection of my China pictures in it. You can view it by clicking on the link below:

China 2007

London Calling - Week One

2007-09-28T22:27:00.000+10:00

It's been more than a week since I arrived in London, but to be honest, other than catching up with fellow ex-pats and new starters at LSE I haven't really done much of note. School starts next week and my time to date has been largely taken up negotitating my way through Britain's passion for bureaucracy (these guys would have done well under Communism).

But I can offer a few London observations so that Mum and Dad know I'm still alive:

It's rained for at least a few minutes every day since I got here. It's enough to make an Australian cry and a Queenslander miss Melbourne's weather.
It's been highly amusing following the speculation about Gordon Brown calling a snap election. In Australia we rule out election dates because of football matches and racing carnivals, while in London they rule out election dates due to lack of sunshine. Surely that says more about quality of life than any socio-economic indicator.
Either I'm less co-ordinated in the Northern Hemisphere or the sidewalks in London are less even than in Australia (and even China). I've been falling over uneven sidewalks ever since I arrived in the UK.
I am already losing touch with Australia. Somehow I've managed to organise a weekend trip to Tuscany on Grand Final weekend. Very UnAustralian. I'll have to make up for it by being boorishly ocker at the pub during the Wallabies next match.
At the same time, ABC Online's Vodcast service is a god send for keeping my finger on the pulse down under. Summer Heights High has to be the funniest Aussie comedy series since We Can Be Heroes. Funny that.

Off to Tuscany for a cycling weekend tonight so hopefully I'll have something more interesting to report after that....

Beijing Blogging - Backstreet's Back!

2007-09-11T09:57:00.000+10:00

Well it's been a week since I left China so I guess I should get going with a travel blogging post.

First stop in China was Beijing.

Arriving in Beijing after a long flight is a bit of a shock to the system. The first thing that hits you when you step off the plane is the air. While flavour you can see is great for BBQ shapes, it's less impressive in the air. The locals tell me that the Chinese government has been taking a number of air quality improvement measures in the lead up to the Olympics but if that's the case I would hate to have seen it before.

The second shock is the chaos. 14 million people and no rules or even conventions of social etiquette. Queueing is a completely foreign concept, spitting on someone else's shoes is utterly blase and children defecating on the streets is par for the course. It's every man for themselves and it's about as bewildering as a game of AFL to a foreigner.

The third shock is that the Chinese have even worse taste in music than the Europeans.

No 80s power ballads for the denizens of Beijing, their musical crime against humanity is the manufactured confection of dated pop schmaltz; specifically 90s boy bands like the Backstreet Boys.

Puts the Australian popularity of Shanon Noll in perspective.

But, Chinese crimes against the physical and aural environments notwithstanding Beijing had a lot to offer. A bustling and lively city, you really get the feeling you're in a place where something is happening. EVERYONE is on the make in one way or another trying to make buck any way they can. While it can be a little annoying at first (especially since most Chinese see dollar signs every time they see a Westerner), for me it was ultimately quite endearing to see the entrepreneurial spirit of the Chinese in rude health despite enormous governmental burdens.

Beijing Highlights:

The Forbidden City

The Chinese Imperial Palace from the Ming to the Qing Dynasties, the Forbidden City is one of the best known tourist sights in Beijing. Like the majority of historical sites in China it's been heavily restored and you have to wonder about the authenticity of parts of it. But on the whole, the sheer scale (more than 700,000 sqm) and ornate detail of the complex leaves you feeling well and truly in the land of emperors, concubines and eunuchs. Disappointingly, they've now closed the on site Starbucks that opened a few years ago.

The Great Wall (at Badaling)

Yes yes, I know. This is where the tourists go to see the Great Wall and the real travellers go out to the boondocks to see where it is falling down. But to my thinking, when you're going to see an icon it's ok to do it in a cliched way. At then end of the day the crowds weren't that bad, and Badaling is definitely the place to get your photos of the wall snaking into the distance (it's quite hilly and green and the wall has been restored for quite a distance).

While Badaling looked postcard perfect, what I hadn't anticipated was how STEEP the wall was (Emma - how did you survive???). Walking along the wall for a couple of kilometres was genuinely hard work; an effort that was only marginally eased by the presence of street vendors selling water every five metres.

The Summer Palace

The Summer Place (the home of the Chinese emperors during the summer months of the year when the Forbidden City presumably felt a bit crowded) is a tribute to the stupendous indulgence and self importance of China's emperors. Yes it's beautiful, but having spent close to a day walking around the Forbidden City only to come to an almost equally large and ostentatious Palace on the other side of town I was beginning to sympathise with the revolutionary instincts of the Chinese people.

The impact of the construction of this palace of the Chinese nation can't really be overstated. Comprising dozens of extraordinarily ornate buildings and a 2.2 sq km MAN-MADE lake, it's mind boggling to think of the resources that must have been expended on this flight of fancy. In fact, a large part of the palace was built using mis-appropriated money that was intended for the Chinese navy. Given that less than 50 years later the Japanese invaded China and inflicted untold human suffering with minimal resistance, this kinds of absurdly stupid extravagance had real consequences. The days before Senate Estimates Committees I guess. But at least they got a World Heritage Listed tourist attraction out of it so I guess it wasn't a total loss.

The Temple of Heaven

Yet another World Heritage Listed pagoda in Beijing, the Temple of Heaven is apparently one of the most significant tourist sights for domestic Chinese tourists. To be honest though, I'm not sure why. It's impressive and the architectural layout is aesthetically pleasing, but I'm not sure why it is more highly regarded than the Summer Palace or even the Forbidden City by some Chinese.

Tienanmen Square

A Ming Dynasty plaza built in central Beijing, Tienanmen Square has certainly seen its share of history. Named after the Gate of Heavenly Peace at its Northern End, the Square has always had an important symbolic function in Beijing. Now home to the Mao Mausoleum, the Monument to the People's Heroes, the Gate of Heavenly Peace and Zhengyangmen Gate, Tienanmen is an essential stop on every tourist's schedule.

Walking around the square I was quite struck by the courage of the 1989 student protesters. The Communist Party Headquarters overlooking the square really is quite imposing and to set up camp literally in its shadows was an incredibly bold statement. People will debate the most appropriate way for China to transition from dictatorship to democracy and how this process should be best managed, but it's pretty clear that history will look on the student protesters of 1989 in a favourable light.

Xian and Chengdu travel blogging to follow.....

Holiday Reading - Part 2

2007-08-31T17:13:00.000+10:00

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, Yukio Mishima

Synopsis: Teenage boy watches widowed mother sleep with handsome sailor through hole in bedroom wall. Boy becomes disillusioned with handsome sailor when he chooses his mother over the sea and begins plotting revenge.

My Take: In a word, dark. Brett Easton Ellis dark. Reminded me a lot of the Catcher in the Rye for its narcissistic narrator and ultimately nihilistic world view. I think I would have enjoyed this more as a teenager but Mishima is such a talented writer that the beauty of his prose alone was enough to keep me interested.

Highlight: "Do you remember that day on the pier when I said there was only one way to make him a hero again... Well, the time has come."

Love is a Mix Tape, Rod Sheffield

Synopsis: Autobiographical account of Boy meets girl. Boy marries girl. Boy and girl live happily until girl dies of pulmonary embolism. Boy spirals into depression before loving again etc etc.

My Take: Hmmm. I was rooting for this one to come off. The subject matter has great potential - very emotionally rich. Unfortunately, the author can't quite pull it off. I felt like the book couldn't decide whether to be serious literature or a magazine feature (the author is a writer for Rolling Stone) and ended up as a not particularly good hybrid. The whole idea of framing the relationship through 15 mix tapes the couple made for each other I'm sure sounded like a good idea at the time didn't really work in my opinion.

It's a shame because it's a horrific thing to happen to someone and he clearly loved this woman so much, but just wasn't able to convey this in an engaging way. It was a NYT best seller though so lots of people clearly disagree with me.

The Girl Who Played Go, Shan Sa

Synopsis: Chinese teenager and Japanese soldier develop a bond while playing Go in a small town in occupied Manchuria.

My Take: A common theme in the ex-pat Chinese authors I've read to date (eg Ha Jin, Yiyun Li) is melodrama and The Girl Who Played Go is no exception. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but they definitely turn the emotional torment of their characters up to 11. I'm still trying to work out whether this is an inherently Chinese characteristic or something that has been triggered by the torments of fleeing your home country. At any rate, I think the heightened emotions work in this book and fitted well with the story's dramatic canvas of soldiers, revolutionaries and teenage girls.

Highlight: From the reviews I've read the ending is a bit of a love it or loathe it affair. For my part I liked it and thought it gave the book a much greater impact than it had developed up to that time.

The Da Vinci Code

Synopsis: I think everyone pretty well knows the deal here.

My Take: WARNING RANT AHEAD

I would have never picked up this book if left to my own devices but I was bullied into it by both friends and family who accused me of being a shallow snob for turning my nose up at a book because the masses had embraced it. Given my love for Bundaberg Rum, a Holden V8 and Neighbours, I was unaccustomed to being labelled a snob and so resolved to see whether I really was being unreasonable about this and give Mr Brown a proper chance.

Having now actually read the book I now feel on firmer ground insisting that this book is crap. And it's not that I don't like trash, even popular trash. I love Tom Clancy. John Grisham is a great way to waste a couple of hours. It's just that this book was shit. I thought it was poorly written (cringingly expositional in parts), implausible (as a thriller, not historically) and mind numbingly obvious. I'm sorry, but the fact that people who don't often read read this book isn't an advertisement for its quality. I do often read and my mind rebels at being spoon fed formulaic drivel aimed at US soccer moms.

Fatally for The Da Vinci Code's chances with me, it reminded me of the plot of the grand novel that Ewan McGregor's deadbeat character in "A Life Less Ordinary" was planning:

Richard: Perhaps this is a good opportunity... to tell you about my novel.

Celine: Look, I'm not interested in your novel.

Richard: It's 1960 right? And Marilyn Monroe... is giving birth to a baby girl. She's on the phone to Jack Kennedy... saying, "Jack, it's yours. It's yours,Jack."

Celine: So the orphan grows up... And she solves some great mystery, right? It's kind of obvious, Robert.

I couldn't have said it better myself: It's kinda obvious Dan.

The Pianist, Wladyslaw Szpilman

Synopsis: The true story of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Jewish pianist who survives the German invasion of Poland, the Warsaw ghetto and the ultimate destruction of the city.

My Take: It's sad to say but at a certain point, first hand accounts of holocaust survival start to have a numbing affect at a certain point. It's hard to know whether it's better to read books like this to try to maintain the fires of outrage or whether you need to draw the line at a certain point to preserve a sense of innocence or humanity that is able to be outraged. Hmmm. An amazing and well written story regardless.

Highlight: The edition I read had an epilogue with diary entries from the German soldier who protected Szpilman in the final days of the war. To be honest I found the internal moral angst of someone struggling to do good against overwhelming evil more compelling than Szpilman's struggle for survival. Fighting to survive can be almost instinctive at times, fighting to do right in the face of enormous personal danger requires genuine courage.

Digging to America, Anne Tyler

Synopsis: Two Korean babies are adopted by American families with different approaches to ethnicity.

My Take: I only picked this one up because I thought the little Asian girls on the cover of the Australian edition were cute - and yes, you can judge a book by it's cover. A totally lightweight book targeted at stay at home mums. Not that there's anything wrong with being a stay at home mum, but the author was trying to tug at heart strings that I just didn't have.

Highlight: Yeah, it was the front cover.

Holiday Reading - Part 1

2007-08-31T17:00:00.000+10:00

Well my holidays haven' t all been beers and daytime TV. I have gotten a little bit of reading done, though of course nowhere near as much as my first best self would have liked (The Blair Diaries, while worthwhile, definitely slowed me down).

Here's part 1 of my wrap up of what was good, bad and indifferent.

The Guns of August 1914, Barbara Tuchman

Synopsis: Droll and erudite Pulitzer Prize winning account of the first month of the first World War.

My Take: I had wanted to read this book since reading RFK's account of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Serendipitously, The Guns of August won the Pulitzer Prize in 1962 and as a result came across JFK's desk just before the Missile Crisis. As a result, the book's insights into the momentum of war and the myopia of military commanders had more real world impact than possibly any historical account before it. It's no exaggeration to say that this book changed our understanding of organisational decision making forever.

Beyond this rich back story, The Guns of August is a really engaging read. Tuchman is a talented and dry writer ("with that marvelous incapacity to admit error that was ultimately to make him a Field-Marshal"), bringing detail and colour to the fascinating political and military narrative of the war. Tuchman's impressive coverage of the personal peccadilloes and idiocies of the political and military leaders of the time is both terrifying and amusing (the Russian general who insisted that bullets were simply a fad and that the Bayonet would continue to rule supreme was a personal favourite). I haven't read many history books that have had me chortling out loud like this one.

Highlights:

The first line: "So gorgeous was the spectacle n the May morning of 1910 when nine kinds rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration". Sets the tone for the whole book.
The personal descriptions of the protagonists eg: "The last-named, Prince Danilo, 'an amiable, extremely handsome young man of delightful manners', resembled the Merry Widow's lover in more than name for, to the consternation of British functionaries, he had arrived for the funeral the night before accompanied by a 'charming young lady of great personal attractions' whom he introduced as his wife's lady-in-waiting, come to London to do some shopping.'
Bismark's prediction that "Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans" would ignite the next war.
The Russian government's decision to ban it's alcoholic troops from drinking vodka. Possibly a good military decision, but given that vodka was at that time a state monopoly and the army drank 1/3rd of all vodka sold in Russia, an economically ruinous one that contributed in no small part to the subsequent revolution.

The Fall of Yugoslavia, Misha Glenny

Synopsis: A German, Czech, Serbo-Croat and Greek speaking BBC war correspondent's first hand account of the collapse of Yugoslavia and the descent into civil war.

My Take: A friend had recommended this book to me as a comprehensive account of recent history of the Balkans so on a sunny afternoon in Bosnia I sat myself down under the Stari Most in Mostar with a pint of beer and started reading. I've no idea how accurate it is, but the book certainly sounded authoritative to an outsider and spread the blame for the disaster around fairly liberally. The book was surprisingly accessible considering the alphabet soup of ethnic factions and military splinter groups that populate its pages. I'd highly recommend it to anyone looking for a crash course in the region.

Highlight: The author's reoccurring observation that the ethnic hatred in Yugoslavia was strongest in areas of ethnic homogeneity (eg amongst Serbs in Knin, Croats in Split, and Serb and Croatian ex-pats). In general, it was in the areas that the groups lived together in close proximity that relations were most friendly (eg in Sarajevo). This reinforced my long held belief that people are more often racist in the abstract than in practice. The fact that the Cronulla riots occurred in the most racially homogeneous suburb in Australia should come as no surprise.

The Undercover Economist, Tim Harford

Synopsis: The economics correspondent for the Financial Times writes a pop economics textbook illustrating economic principles in accessible and engaging examples.

My Take: Should be required reading for all high-school students.

Highlight: A great chapter highlighting the benefits of sweatshops as a transitional industry in countries like South Korea and India. They might be unappealing to Western minds, but in the short-term sweatshops are often the best of a bad set of choices in developing countries and in the long run a path out of poverty for those lucky enough to work in them.

One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitzyn

Synopsis: The story of a day in the life of soviet gulag prisoner Ivan Denisovich Shukhov.

My Take: I enjoyed this book tremendously. I've had a bit of a hit and miss history with Russian writers, some I've loved while others I've found interminable and depressing. What made this book so rewarding for me was that despite the dire subject matter, the book is ultimately genuinely optimistic. Shukov's enthusiasm for the small victories he is able to eek out are genuinely perspective building and you can't help but finish this book more positive about your own lot. Highly recommended.

Highlight: "A day without a dark cloud. Almost a happy day. There were three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days like that in his stretch. From the first clang of the rail to the last clang of the rail. Three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days. The three extra days were for leap years."

At the Movies - Brewster's Millions

2007-08-25T10:58:00.000+10:00

Entering the last week of the longest period of unproductive unemployment in my life I have finally given into the inevitable partner of indolence - day time television.

While it's inescapably pathetic, day time television does have a few redeeming features, and I'm not talking about Dr Phil. In the same way that Europe will always be home to the 1980s power ballad, day time television will always be home to the 1980s cheeseball movie. And the other day I stumbled across a classic - Brewster's Millions.

Brewster's Millions is the timeless tale of Monty Brewster, a minor league baseball player who will inherit $300 million from a long lost relative, on condition that he could spend $30 million in 30 days without owning any assets, without giving away more than 5% and without gambling more than 5%.

Ridiculous sure, but the thing that sets Brewster's Millions apart is the irrepressible Richard Prior. The direct forebear of Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle, Richard Prior pioneered the role of the manically obscene African American comedian. Prior was enormously influential, directly mentoring Eddie Murphy early in his career and famously advising him that "You can tell Bill Cosby to suck MY dick!" Where would we be without him?

Prior had a genuine golden age in the early 1980s with "Brewster's Millions", "The Toy" and best of all "Hear No Evil, See No Evil" (with Gene Wilder) and of course "Superman 3". He also managed to write "Blazing Saddles" in this period. Unfortunately Prior never reached the heights of Eddie Murphy or even Dave Chappelle and since his long overdue death last year is probably destined for obscurity - everywhere but daytime television.

Highlight: Prior's campaign for Mayor of New York under the slogan "Who's buying the booze? Brewster!"? Now that's an election winning slogan!

Travel Blogging Japan - Hiroshima

2007-08-23T10:14:00.001+10:00

Hiroshima

Ok, I'm sucking it up and punching this post out because once I'm done I'll actually be up to date on my travel blogging. How I've found it difficult to find time to blog between waking up at 10am, counter meals at the Spotted Cow and watching Dr Phil I've got no idea but there you go.

Hiroshima was close to the most uncomfortable place I've ever been (up there with Cloncurry at the height of the Qld summer). To start with I was quite crook on the day I went so I was running a fever to begin with. But stepping out of the air conditioned comfort of the bullet train and into the 35 degree, 95% humidity, Hiroshima summer was like walking out of a cold room and into a bowl of soup - icky. In fact, Hiroshima was the only place on my trip that budget conceded to comfort and I deigned to hail a cab rather than schlep my pack around.

As a day trip from Kyoto, Hiroshima is definitely worth an afternoon wander. While there's not a whole lot there beyond the obvious, the atomic bomb attack paraphernalia was both fascinating and surreal. It was odd to say the least to stand where an atomic bomb has hit. It reminded me a bit of being at the World Trade Centre in 2002, not so much a personal sadness, but feeling of being overwhelmed at the enormity of what had happened there.

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial park is really well done. An enormous open mall situated at the bomb hypocenter, the various monuments were a good mix of personal remembrance, historical memorial and political message.

Personally I found the Children's Peace Monument the most moving. The site is dedicated to a girl called Sadako who developed leukemia as a result of the background radiation remaining after the attack. Inspired by a Japanese legend that anyone who folds a thousand origami cranes is granted a wish, Sadako began folding with the wish of getting better. Popular belief in Japan is that she died before reaching her goal, but in fact Sadako apparently folded many more than a thousand cranes during her extended hospital stay. Regardless of what actually happened, Sadako became a symbol of the peace movement in Japan and her story is still taught in Japanese schools.

Also moving at the Peace Memorial Park is a burial mound where the ashes of tens of thousands of the initial victims of the attack are consecrated (left). Additionally, there is a cenotaph (above) on which all of the names of the victims of the attack are inscribed. Unfortunately, the cenotaph has to be updated every year.

From a historical perspective, the most interesting site in the park was the World Heritage Listed Genbaku Dome (above). The Genbaku Dome was one of the few buildings left standing in central Hiroshima after the attack and survived as a result of the good fortune of being located almost directly beneath the bomb hypocenter. When the bomb exploded around 150 m above the dome, the impact of the blast was dissipated by the curved roof of the building, allowing the dome to survive.

On a whole I thought the Peace Memorial Park was very well done. But it was difficult to miss a sense of victimhood in many of the displays. While the atomic bomb attack was clearly a crime against humanity motivated by geo-politcs rather than military necessity, there is still very little public recognition of Japanese atrocities during the war. Seeing exhibits in the Peace Museum that talked about 'allegations' that the Japanese had killed tens of thousands of Chinese during the Rape of Nanking definitely jarred and made it easy to see why the Chinese Government still has reservations about the listing of the Peace Memorial Park as a World Heritage Site. Having just seen the extreme self-flagellation of the Germans over the events of WW2 in Berlin, the continuing sense of denial in Hiroshima was a bit disappointing.

Picassa Web Album Available Online

Japan 2007

Central Australia - The Return to Oz

2007-08-18T09:52:00.000+10:00

After jetsetting through Europe and Asia looking at multi-hundred year old European attractions, I thought I'd get some REAL culture and check out the 40,000 year old heritage of central Australia.

So my Dad, Meryl (a college friend from Duke out for a visit) and Marcia (A South African on a working holiday with my dad's business) and I all piled into a 4WD in Alice Springs and headed off to the outback. We only had 6 days but managed to fit in Ormiston Gorge, Palm Valley, Kings Canyon, Uluru and Kata Juta.

Trip Highlight: Watching the rain on the Rock at Uluru.

This was one time when bad weather added to a travel experience rather than detracted from it. The storm clouds created quite a dramatic effect and when it actually rained, the surface water turned the rock a deep blue with visible veins of flowing (if not exactly gushing) water.

Best Culinary Experience: Bush cooked Kangaroo tails in Kings Canyon.

While my eagerness to ensure all of the hair on the Kangaroo tails was adequately burnt off meant that the final product was somewhat over charred, the meat that wasn't incinerated in the fire was red, tender and juicy. With a bit more practice in the preparation stakes this could become a camping mainstay for me. The smell of burning roo hair and the sound of retching foreigners definitely makes bush cooked roo tail a multi-modal dining experience.

Surprise of the Trip: Kings Canyon Rim Walk.

The biggest surprise of the trip for me was Kings Canyon. I read today in the Sunday Mail that UK tourists vote it the second most impressive sight in Australia which I never would have believed until I actually saw it. I used to think Kings Canyon was a secondary sight that you did if you had a few extra days in the area, but it's definitely a first tier sight in its own right. A 200m high canyon with the rims on each side topped with a 'Lost City' of Bungle Bungle style beehive shaped sedimentary domes and a 'Garden of Eden' oasis on the canyon floor. Spectacular.

Also surprising was the size of Kata Juta (The Olgas). I had always thought of Kata Juta as some loose rocks down the road from the Rock. But in reality Kata Juta was over 200m higher than Uluru and were quite an impressive sight.

Quirkiest Moment of the Trip: Three way tie between:

The Japanese couple in full formal wedding attire in 30 degree heat standing in front of a tripod mounted camera on the road to Uluru.

It transpires that it was the couple's 10th wedding anniversary and they had taken their original honeymoon in Australia and wanted to recreate the trip. Marcia and Meryl didn't know whether to be more impressed at the romanticism of the groom or at the fact that the bride still fitted into her wedding dress!

The Crazy Italian Cyclist on the Mereenie Loop.

After having driven for three hours on a ridiculously corrugated dirt road on the Mereenie Loop between Palm Valley and Kings Canyon we stumbled on a bloke on a bike - with no pack, no water and no visible support crew. Turns out he was riding from the east coast of Australia to the west and claimed to have been doing 300kms a day. However, given that the Mereenie Loop doesn't connect up to any westerly roads past Kings Canyon and we were flat out doing 70 kmph on this road without the 4WD shaking about I have to say we were dubious.

NT Traffic Signs.

Again on the Mereenie Loop the warning to slow down for an upcoming corner comes in the form of a 44 gallon steel drum with "Lift em Footum" painted on the side. Usefully after negotiating the corner there was another steel drum with "Put em Down" splashed across it.

Disappointment of the Trip: The total absence of native wildlife.

I had been excited about seeking Big Red Kangaroos, wild Budgerigar flocks, Bush Chooks and all the other icons of the red desert. Unfortunately, most native wildlife in the area seems to have been destroyed. The Ranger at Uluru said that 50% of the native mammal species in the National Park had been destroyed in the park since the 1950s and it was easy to believe. 100 years ago Uluru was home to bilby, rock wallabies, bandicoots etc etc today they are all gone. While there is an enclosed Mala (tiny, paddington bear size rock wallabies that used to live on Uluru) breeding program operating at the National Parks office, the presence of foxes and rabbits in the park mean that they'll never be able to be released into the wild and onto the rock. Very sad.

Update: Meryl's pics are now online

Update: Picassa Web Album now online:

Central Australia (2007)

Travel Blogging German Edition

2007-08-18T09:30:00.000+10:00

While Luxembourg was great, it wasn't big enough to hold Em and I for long.

So after a few days, armed with an address book of German friends, a heavily accented GPS and a transit van we headed east to Germany.

Trier/Mosel Region

First stop on our journey east was the town of Trier and the Mosel Valley wine growing region.

Trier was cute. It had cheap shopping for Luxembourgians, churches, the oldest roman ruins in Germany and deceptively quickly closing carpark boom gates.

After leaving Trier, we stopped at a winery in the Mosel region for dinner in the afternoon and had a meal of what Germans refer to as 'earnest farmer food' which was basically lots of uncooked meat, cheese and vegetables - great stuff!

Heidelberg

Next up Em and I headed across the top of the Black Forrest to Heidelberg to meet up with some of Em's friends. I really loved Heidelberg. The town was a great combination of a young and energetic university town and centuries old historical hamlet. The red stone churches and castles on the Neckar river (especially the gorgeous Heidelberger Schloss).

Heidelberg was real German heartland and central to a lot of German folklore (Siegfried etc). It was great to see some authentic German culture and have dinner in a genuine German beer house with lots of meat and shandies (which apparently are socially acceptable in Germany). Last but not least, I finished my time in Heidelberg with a ferocious game of Zug um Zug.

Berlin

Next stop from Heidelberg was Berlin.

Berlin was the biggest surprise for me on my trip and I absolutely loved it.

Berlin completely defied all of my expectations about Germany. Berlin was a really funky, bohemian city - great bars, great restaurants, great fun. I hadn't realised how depressed the city's economy was, but from the perspective of a young tourist, this was a good thing. Berlin is one of the most affordable cities in Europe and attracts a young and interesting crowd.

Much different to the buttoned down perception I had of Germany before the trip.

On top of the bohemian element, Berlin was absolutely dripping in history.

After being subjected to Nazi terror, Allied bombing and Communist oppression the city had a real texture. You can see the combined effect of one extreme experience after another on the city everywhere you look.

From an outsider's perspective it was fascinating.

Picasa Web Album available online:

Germany (2007)

Travel Blogging Luxembourg Edition

2007-08-18T09:25:00.000+10:00

Back to blogging the Europe/Japan 2007 travel extravaganza.

Next stop after Le Tour in the French Alps was Luxembourg to meet up with the blissfully married and decidedly Stepford Emma!

I had heard reports that Ms Kersh had settled into the role of housewife with some glee in the Grad Dutchy but I myself had doubts. I had difficulty picturing the high-powered, intensely driven multi-lingual financial services lawyer I knew from Em's MSJ days at home doing the knitting. And sure enough, Em's more of a housewife with with careerist characteristics as Deng might have put it - simultaneously running a house along with a translation consulting business, french and chinese language courses and a brutal travel schedule. After a week with Em I was ready to go back to Corporate Law!

Since I had such a charming and well organised guide I think I was able to squeeze absolutely everything possible out of Luxembourgs 2586 sq kms in the few days that I was there.

Highlights were:

The Roman built and World Heritage Listed Luxembourg City area (see above);
Castle hopping through the Luxembourg hinterland (see right and below);
As much modern art as you could fit inside a ridiculously wealthy Western European tax haven; and
The World Heritage Listed "Family of Man" photography exhibition.

All in all I was pleasently surprised by Luxembourg.

It might be a small country, but the Luxembourians are certainly different.

From their crazy royal family, to their fetish for painting their houses exteriors disgusting colours, to their peculiar national motto ("We Want to Remain What We Are") the people of Luxembourg definitely have a bit of a personality.

Which frankly was a pleasent change after a few days in Switzerland (Bear-pit loving Bern notwithstanding).

Update: Picassa Webalbum now online

Luxembourg (2007)

Live Free or Die Hard

2007-08-10T10:56:00.000+10:00

Had a spare couple of hours to kill in the city yesterday so I went to see Die Hard 4.

While it's been 20 years since John McClane tossed Hans Gruber off Nakatomi Plaza in Die Hard 1, the formula is still as good as its ever been. Ridiculously implausible plot, delightfully camp villians, a procession of dead henchmen, clever but cheeseball one liners and lots of big explosions. But the added ingredient that sets all Die Hards apart from your average action movie is Detective John McClane, the droll everyman's hero who also happens to be indestructible and REALLY good at killing goons. Die Hard 4.0 had all of the above in spades.

The plot of Die Hard 4.0 involved some kind of computer terrorist attack on US Independence Day (hence the absurd Live Free or Die Hard title). Beyond that, it's really too ridiculous to try to explain. More importantly Die Hard 4.0 had:

Computer programing Asian ninja chicks;

A chase scene between McClane in a cop car being pursued by a helicopter;

A chase scene between McClane in a semi-trailer being pursued by a fighter jet;

A morbidly obese Kevin Smith cameo; AND

Some franchise worthy lines:

"You just killed a helicopter with a car!" - "I was out of bullets"

"What's the plan?" - "The plan is: Find Lucy, kill everyone else. "

Worth the price of admission alone.

My favorite part of the movie though was the standard Die Hard plot device: the communications line between McClane and the head villain. Every Die Hard movie has this construct and it never gets tired seeing McClane taunting evil super villains and calling them "Dickhead". Gold.

I once read an essay (in the New Yorker I think?) arguing that John McClane's "Yipie-yi-yay Mofo" line from Die Hard 1 was intended to stake a conscious claim to linage for the character from the American heros past (ie laconic cowboys) to the present (ie laconic cops). An interesting theory, but one that I think is two or three arts Masters degrees of intellectualism beyond the franchise.

In my mind, the Die Hard series is the Apotheoses of the action movie genre. It's the henchmen killing, one liner giving, truth, freedom and the American way championing movie at its highest level. Die Hard 4.0 delivers exactly what we've come to expect from the franchise - and that's a good thing.

Travel Blogging Japan - Tokyo

2007-08-02T13:25:00.000+10:00

While Japan was the only leg of my trip that I would be doing solo, I was really looking forward to getting to Tokyo.

I really love 'Japanese' literature (Mishima, Murakami, Ishiguru) and was keen to see whether the perceptions I'd developed about the country squared with reality.

So with about a week up my sleeve in which to explore I touched down in Tokyo. Tokyo fit the stereotype pretty neatly. Super busy but highly efficient public transport, vending machines everywhere

Highlights:

Staying in traditional Ryokans

Ryokans are traditional style Japanese travellers inns. Tatami mat floors, paper thin walls, Japanese breakfast on low set tables, onsen bath houses and yukata gowns and sandals (see picture above) - Ryokan really give you a real flavour for traditional Japanese travel.

By the time I got to Japan I'd been on the road for nearly a month and my legs were getting pretty sore. A long onsen (Traditional Japanese Bath/Sauna) at the end of each day in Tokyo was just what the doctor ordered. Furthe, the firm futon mattresses on the Tatami mat floors were close to the most comfortable mattresses I've ever slept on. But it wasn't all relaxation there are a series of simple (but numerous) customs and mores governing behaviour in Ryokans.

As you'll all know, I'm a clumsy person even by Australian standards, so the precise etiquette of Ryokans was completely beyond me. Luckily it was no big deal though as there was always someone at hand with a pained face and a sympathetic tone to show you the proper action in any situation.

Tsukiji Fish Markets:

The smell was overwhelming and the action chaotic but Tsukiji was great fun.

The biggest fish market in the world, Tsukiji was a place of piscatorial abundance and variety on a mind boggling scale.

With the thousands of scooters, ricksaws, trucks and bicycles that careered around the place at high speed the place was a bloody menace and you really need to keep your wits about you though.

I was amazed that just centimetres from high-speed traffic vendors were cleaning and gutting fish with very large band saws and carving knives - an OHS nightmare!

People watching at Harajuku and Shinjuku:

In my mind, the real attraction of Tokyo weren't tourist attractions - it was the people. I've never been to a place as trend and fashion concious as Tokyo.

It seemed like everyone belonged to one group or another and dressed accordingly.

From Guitar Wolf style rockers in leather jackets and tight pants of Shinjuku the 'Gotic Lolita' girls of Harajuku to the Cos Play (Manga costume play) adherents from another planet, Tokyo took fashion to the extreme in every direction.

Unfortunately I lost half a gig worth of pictures, including a weekend excursion watching the teenage wildlife at Harajuku, in a language breakdown at a Japanese photo house. So my people watching pictures are sadly lacking - but you'll get the idea.

Crazy Japan

Yes, it might be cliche - but the Japanese really are crazy. Lovely and interesting and friendly - but also crazy. Whether it was haiku public health signs, Engrish shop signs ("Sale Price - With Honour!) or the chart topping number Japanese music single by title "Monkey Magic" by the band Monkey Majik (which comprised two long haired Canadian guitar players and a Japanese Bassist called DICK - their caps) - Japan was definitely odd.

The thing that struck me as the most strange though was the role of women in Japanese society.

Unmarried women over the age of 30 are colloquially called 'loser dogs'. While Japanese women are expected to be demure and ridiculously proper, the men can be as boorish as they like with seemingly few consequences. There are 'women only' carriages on the trains as groping of female passengers has become so endemic. Similarly pornography was utterly mainstream in Japan appearing in newspapers and major stores in busy shopping districts.

An amusing manifestation of this double standard was the not uncommon sight of Japanese women beautifully dressed in traditional style Kimonos with daggy t-shirt, shorts and thongs clad boyfriends by their side! I'm not sure I would like to be a woman in Japanese society.

Disappointments

Not many disappointments at all from my time in Tokyo. I didn't think the Imperial Gardens were particularly impressive (they pale in comparison to many of the gardens in Kyoto in both design and maintenance).

Studio Ghibli (Hayao Miyazaki's animation studio) is next to impossible to get into - you need to book more than a month ahead and even then are only given a limited time window to enter the museum.

Picasa Web Album available online:

Japan 2007

Travel Blogging Kyoto Edition

2007-08-02T13:23:00.000+10:00

Kyoto

While Tokyo is one of the great cities of the world, I spent the majority of my time in Japan in Kyoto, the cultural heart of the country.

Kyoto deserves to rank with the worlds greatest cultural areas.

Dozens of buddist temples and shinto shrines and their associated gardens dot the mountains surrounding the city.

In addition, as the capital for dozens of emperors, shoguns and puppet rulers over thousands of years, the city is dotted with palaces and castles.

As a result, there are 17 World Heritage Sites in the city - a staggering number and a real challenge to my quasi-life rule of never missing a world heritage site within an hour's travel.

The one drag about Kyoto was that the temperature was high thirties everyday and the humidity was high nineties - which made walking around the city like walking around in a soup bowl. I'd definitely like to go back to Kyoto - but just not at the same time of the year.

Highlights:

Kiyomizu-Dera Temple

A thousand year old buddist temple in the mountains of Kyoto, Kizyomizu-Dera considered one of the most important temples in Kyoto. A gorgeous area surrounded by the mountains of Kyoto, statuettes of Ksitigarbha and gorgeous little craft stores, the temple has a beautiful setting.

Kiyomizu-Dera is also home to a number of quaint superstitions, the cutest of which is pair of "love stones" (20m apart) which, if a vistor is able travel from one to the other with their eyes closed, is considered to be a sign that the visitor will find love. A less cute superstition is the belief that if you can survive jumping off the (15m high) verandah on the side of the temple you will have a wish granted. The survival rate is 85% apparently.

The Temple of the Golden Pavillion (Kinkaku-Ji Temple)

One of the most famous sights in Kyoto, the Temple of the Golden Pavilion really is gorgeous. Unfortunately, the day I was there was extremely overcast and I wasn't able to get the reflection effects in the surrounding water as clear as I would have liked but it was still fantastic.

The temple also has a great back story, having been burnt to the ground in 1950 by a deranged buddist monk. Yukio Mishima's fictionalised account of this event in "The Temple of the Golden Pavillion" is a great mediation on the nature of beauty.

Surprise of the trip

The best surprise of the trip was a buddist fire festival that was being held around the corner from my Ryokan on the night I arrived in Kyoto. The festival was a three hour extravaganza of pine torches lit in a mountain temple and then carried through the main streets of the town along with a procession of monks and tag along tourists.

I can't find the bloody thing online so I don't know all the details but it must have been reasonably significant as they closed down the main streets of the city for quite some time as it was coming through.

Picassa Web Album Available Online

Japan 2007

The Blair Years

2007-08-02T12:43:00.000+10:00

I've gotten so far behind in my holiday blogging that if I postpone all blogging until my holiday is up to date I'll never blog again.

So for a change of pace I thought I'd make a quick note about a The Alastair Campbell Diaries, The Blair Years, which I am reading at the moment. Ordinarily I steer clear of political biographies (diaries in particular!) but since I'll be shortly moving to the UK and hopefully getting a bit involved in the political scene over there I thought I had better do some research.

AC has been demonised as being the death knell of liberal democracy personified because of his alleged practice of the dark arts of political 'spin'. Far be it from me to have any public comment on the professionalism of contemporary journalists or their role in a functioning democracy, but AC really lines them up in this book (keep in mind he was a senior journalist for many years before moving into politics):

"For all its faults, our political process is a good one, and the means by which much meaningful change is made. That is not a very fashionable view to hold, but as someone who has operated at senior levels in journalism and politics, around a decade in each, it is my respect for the media that has shrunk, and my respect for politics that has grown."

and

"I have no idea what people will make of this book. I am probably too close to it all, both the events and the process of publishing. I know some newspapers and commentators will come to it with minds made up, and look to find those parts that help confirm their prejudices. It is what is wrong with some of them in the first place, and why I have next to no respect for them, and no real interest in their views. Amid the enormous cuts I have made are many which relate to my dealings with a 24 hour media that has in my view changed for the worse not only political debate but politics itself, as the politicians have to devote so much time and energy to dealing with people who believe their role is not to impart information and fuel healthy debate, but to undermine where possible the actions, decisions and motives of politicians. It is a sad irony that we have more media coverage than ever, but less understanding or real debate."

In fact, the only group he has less respect for than the media is the left:

"It is all about how the party sees them as they strut around the conference, and got fuck all to do with whether we ever actually get the power needed to do anything for the country."

and on encountering a lefty opposing Blair's move to remove the old Chapter 4 from the Labour Constitution

"Some twat with a Trot poster came up to me on the way in and yelled 'Butcher!' Traitor!' at me. I stopped and mustered as much visual contempt as I could, then assured him that if we win the general election then don't worry, thanks to wankers like him, there will always be another Tory government along afterwards. These people make me vomit.

I've no idea how accurate, self-serving, revisionist etc the book is, but I'm thoroughly enjoying it so far.

Korkula and Dubrovnik

2007-07-21T01:56:00.001+10:00

Korkula

After the Epicurean delights of Hvar, Madge and I moved onto the island of Korkula. Compared to the rest of Croatia, Korkula was pretty middle-aged. Nice restaurants quaint lavender and olive oil stalls and a charming walled old city on a small isthmus. But it was definitely missing the glam factor of Hvar and the city bustle of Split. Apart from a seriously quaint hotel (in which every building was 'H' block and the room and floor numbers were basically indicative) there wasn't much on Korkula that was unique or particularly memorable.

Dubrovnik

In contrast, Dubrovnik was amazing. Specifically, the Old Town in Dubrovnik was amazing. Walking the city wall at sunset was definitely a life experience I'll remember for a long time. Surprises about Dubrovnik: 1. The number of tourists - it was the only place in Croatia where the number of tourists were actually annoying, 2. The time it takes to walk the city wall - it genuinely takes more than an hour of going up and down stairs. In 35 degree heat - that's hard work. Like elsewhere in Croatia, the old town isn't just historically interesting, it's also a vibrant commercial centre for the town - packed with restaurants, bars and clothing stores. Totally lived up to the billing.

Update: Picassa Web album now online

Croatia (2007

Backpacking in Bosnia

2007-07-18T01:06:00.000+10:00

Back to the holiday blogging. From the fun and sun of Croatia I jumped on a bus and headed north into Bosnia.

The main reason for this excursion was to see the Stari Most, a 16th Century Moorish stone bridge in the Bosnian city of Mostar. As a link between the Muslim, Croat and Serb communities in the town the bridge had a high symbolic value in addition to its obvious aesthetic beauty. The symbolic value of the bridge only grew when in 1993 it was destroyed by Croat artillery fire.

While making any kind of comment on conflicts like this is utterly fraught and should be avoided by anyone with a modicum of tact* I couldn't help but feel that the destruction of the bridge combined with the shelling of the Old Town in Dubrovnik (by the Serbs this time) made the futility of the war and the shared responsibility of all parties pretty inescapable.

Seeing the Old Bridge (rebuilt with funding provided by the government of Luxembourg for reasons I wasn't able to determine) was definitely worth the trip. It's extraordinarily beautiful. Ironically, the pale white colouring of the stone combined with the elegant and uncomplicated sweep of the bridge creates a genuinely peaceful feeling. When the sun actually shone, the emerald green of the Neretva River was a striking backdrop for the bridge.

While it is tradition for local men to prove their manhood by jumping from the bridge into the (fairly shallow) river below, given that the centre of the bridge was 25 metres above the surface I didn't feel insecure enough to feel the need to have a go myself.

Unfortunately, despite the beauty of the bridge and the feel good factor surrounding its reconstruction, my enduring memory of Bosnia will be one of strong feeling of depression. Even 15 years after the war, the detritus of combat was still clearly visible throughout the town. A large proportion of the buildings were in ruins (up to 20%) and next to every building showed pretty clear signs of violence (many buildings were riddled with bullet holes).

The human scars of conflict were also everywhere you looked. While I was in Mostar I stayed in the house of an older woman who was offering accommodation at the bus stop. In her house there was a large shrine to her son who had been killed in the war. You didn't have to walk too far before you encountered mentally unwell men wandering the streets. I was clearly hopelessly naive not to have expected this 15 years after the war.

* To wit Frontline host Mike Moore's death- threat inducing interjection into the Greek-Macedonian dispute: "Hmmm - A complex issue. But if you ask me, the Greeks have no one to blame but themselves. Their stubborn refusal to accept Macedonia's flag and national symbols is not only nonsensical, but borders on the immoral. I'm Mike Moore"

Joyce's Birthday Extravaganza / Le Tour 2007

2007-07-17T20:12:00.000+10:00

After meeting up again with Majella in Geneva, I trekked up the French Alps for a joint celebration of Le Tour and Joyce's Birthday with 16 of my closest friends. The theme of the weekend was in a word Cheese. Hard, soft, melted, runny, fresh and aged, I ate more cheese in a weekend in Le Chinaillon than a small Asian family would have in a year. Unfortunately, having waited weeks until blogging on this leg of my trip most of the other people who were present have already stolen all the good cheese jokes so you'll have to bear with me here.

The weekend was a brie-ze thanks to Jetsetting Joyce's all around organisational abilities.

Many people ordered Racquelletes but were unable to edam.

We went for a muenster hike straight up the French Alps.

Watching Cadel Evans and Robbie McEwan fly the flag in Le Tour really gruyere Aussie pride.

But strangely enough, one of the most memorable things we saw during the weekend was an extraordinary Carousel with an extraordinary roquefort-ship on it that was very popular with the kids.

In fact, I can't remember ever having had as gouda time.

At the end of the weekend everyone was blue at the thought have having to leave.

Suffice to say, any weekend that you can laze around with your friends drinking champagne and eating cheese on the balcony of a French Chalet while watching Le Tour go past is going to be a pretty good weekend.

All in all a comprehensive victory for General Joyce.

Blogging Friends' Take on the Weekend

Michael Lives Here

Jetsetting Joyce

Huy the Lad

Online Photo Albums

Flickr

Facebook

Croatia Continued

2007-07-17T19:57:00.000+10:00

Hvar, Croatia, 8th July
After a few days in Split, Majella and I hopped onto a ferry leaving for the island of Hvar. Unlike Split and Dubrovnik, Madge and I hadn't done much reading up on what the islands had to offer. Besides having heard that Hvar had a pretty good nightlife we arrived on the islands with no expectations.

As it turned out, Hvar was my favourite part of Croatia. A sweet little port town overlooked by a 15th century castle and surrounded by some of the most electric blue water imaginable, Hvar was absolutely charming. But even better, Hvar seems to be where all of the Bright Young Things in Croatia congregate making for a multitude of high end beach cocktail bars, spas and resorts. The Glam Factor was almost as high as the UV factor.

Majella and I made the most of the surrounds by hiring a speed boat and spending a day jetting between the archipelago of smaller islands (and nude beaches) that surround Hvar. In the afternoon we explored the semi-restored castle overlooking the town to the dulcet tones of 'The Final Countdown' (god bless Europe, a land where the 80s-90s never ended).

At night we wandered from restaurant to bar to cocktail lounge and soaked up the atmosphere. A great way to spend a couple of days.

Update: Picassa Webalbum now online

Croatia (2007

Holiday Blogging - Finally!

2007-07-17T19:06:00.000+10:00

Well as you may have guessed by my radio silence over the past two weeks - Europe has been a blast. I've got about an hour in a 'Laundrenet' (combination laundromat and net cafe - brilliant business model) in Switzerland now though so I'll see if I can bring you up to speed.

London, 5th July

My flight was two hours late, it took me an hour to get through customs, I was jetlagged and summer in London would have passed for a reasonable day in Melbourne in the middle of winter, but still perfect.

Spent the day pottering around town and then went to see Ash at a funky venue called 'koko' in the evening. Hands down biggest Disco Ball I have ever seen. Very Nice.

Split, Croatia 6th July

After a day in the Old Dart I escaped dreary London for Croatia and the electric blue waters of the Adriatic.

I'd say that Croatia is Europe's best secret but I'd be two years too late. Croatia is a sensational holiday destination - great beaches, cheap beer beautiful women, interesting history and good tourist infrastructure without thousands of tourists - what more do you need?

Split was a good mix. The Diocletian Palace and the Roman ruins made for a good morning's worth of poking around and the beach and beach bars just to the north of the Old Town made for a good afternoon's lazing around in the sun. The fact that hundreds of people still lived in the buildings inside the Palace and dozens of shops and market stores operated inside the walls really brought the place to life. While it was odd to see sunglasses stores in Roman ruins, the fact that the Palace was still the focal point of the city really gave the area a feeling of vibrancy.

The people in Split (and throughout Croatia in fact) were extremely friendly and laid back).

Given that Majella and I had both been pretty flat out with work before this trip, Split was a good depressurisation destination.

Update: Picassa Webalbum now online

Croatia (2007

Blogging Friends

2007-07-03T09:44:00.000+10:00

Swinno sent Huy, Joyce and I a shout out this week noting that it seemed like we were the only people who read each other's blogs.

Lest this create the impression that our blogging efforts are somehow in vain I thought I'd return the favour with a shout out for Swino, while also making practical use of my experience as an ICT policy advisor to put everyone's minds at ease as to our Internet popularity.

Over the past few years, the Pew Internet and American Life Project (funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts) has undertaken a series of large scale surveys on the social impact of the Internet. Its findings are very interesting and informed a lot of my thinking on ICT policy.

So that's the earnest bit out of the way - how are the findings relevant to Swino, Joyce, Huy and I's predicament? Well a 2005 Pew Study of blog authors and readers made the rather amusing finding that:

While public discussion has raged about whether blogs constitute legitimate
journalism or are a reliable source of information, for teens, blogs are much
more about the maintenance and extension of personal relationships. When
teens do read blogs, they mainly read the blogs of people they know. About 62% of blog-reading teens say they only read the blogs of people they know. The remaining group (36%) reports reading the blogs of both people they know and people they have never met. A mere 2% report only reading the blogs of people they do not know.

This is consistent with subsequent Pew studies that found that 76% of bloggers stated that the primary reason for their blog was to document and share their personal experiences. With subject matter like that, you're necessarily looking at a pretty narrow audience.

Further, the VAST majority of blog readers are 'lurkers' ie readers who don't actually participate in the blog by posting comments etc. In fact, only 12% of Internet users have posted comments or other material on blogs.

So don't stress Swino. Your blog's potential audience was only ever as big as your immediate social group anyway. And if you take Joyce, Huy and I as the 12% of your friends who actually comment on the blog (as opposed to the total readership), that means you've got around 30 people reading your musings - not bad really.

That Sir, is an EX-Kangaroo

2007-07-03T08:17:00.000+10:00

Ok, I've got a number of emails from people asking for more details about my encounter with the Roo on the drive up from Melbourne. So here's the full story.

Animal lovers should probably skip this post.

I was driving between Goondowindi and Toowoomba at about 1am. Yes, this stretch of road is notorious for Roo strikes, but peak hour for this is around dawn and dusk so I thought I'd be ok. What I didn't take into account was the fact that it was a full moon which apparently means a pretty steady flow of Roos all night.

Anyway, I was heading through a stretch with heavy scrub on both sides of the road and this bugger hopped out from the left hand side of the road just a couple of metres in front of me. For international readers, Roos are notoriously stupid where cars and highways are involved (to the point where the biggest selling brand of bullbars in Australia is called "Boomer Bullbars"). Looking back on it I'm positive that there's nothing I could have done to avoid it - there wasn't even time to hit the brakes.

Unfortunately it was a pretty big roo (over 5 foot) so it made a decent thump on the bumper bar, then flipped and pirouetted on it's way into the windscreen. Weirdly enough, I swear I made eye contact with him just before he hit the windscreen which I guess you could call a "shared moment". Despite this, any feeling of connection I got from this moment quickly evaporated when I had to fish him out of my roof rack and then spend half an hour getting the front of my car in a state that would allow me to get to Toowoomba.

So - there you go. You asked.

More than meets the eye

2007-07-02T15:57:00.000+10:00

I love being unemployed. I got out of bed at 11am this morning and took myself down to the Toowoomba cinema to see the new Transformers movie (a Dreamworks movie - in conjunction with Hasbro!).

Like most guys my age I grew up with Transformers and spent many hours trying to imitate the ko-koo-ko-chit transformation sound (second in difficulty only to Monkey Magic's cloud summoning whistle). So the movie had a low bar to get over to impress me. But wow - I was blown away at how good this movie was.

It was a simple formula, shamelessly aimed at getting the teenage boys through the door - a great brand, smoking hot girls (Megan Fox - just wow, Rachael Taylor - well done), low brow (but clever) dialogue. Even Michael Bay directing didn't manage to screw it up (though changing bumblebee from a VW to a Camero was a bit dodgy IMHO). My only real beef is "How could they have left out Hot Rod?!"

Guys - I can't recommend this highly enough - do yourself a favour and check it out. Girls - go and play with barbie - there's nothing for you here.

Highlight: Best pick-up line in a movie: Girl: "You think I'm shallow don't you?" Guy: "No, I think you're more than meets the eye." Bang!

Cannonball Run (sort of)

2007-07-01T17:46:00.000+10:00

Well it's now Sunday night.

On Friday afternoon I set out from Melbourne with the intention of driving myself and all of my worldly possessions from Melbourne to Toowoomba in about 18 hours.

36 hours later I am in Toowoomba. It's a long story, but it involves:

a call to the RACV;
a broken distributor;
a call to the NRMA;
an unforeseen (and very cold) night sleeping in in the driver's seat of the car in Jerilderee while waiting for a mechanic;
an EXTREMELY talented and very friendly mechanic called Don who rebuilt my distributor for me instead of making me wait until Monday afternoon for a replacement as suggested by NRMA;
an encounter with a (now ex) kangaroo at 1:00am just north of Goondowindi (that unfortunately and grossly required fishing out of my roof rack - btw it's now officially settled, Sandman beats Kangaroo); and
almost a call to the RACQ for towing to Toowoomba, but averted by my McGyver style car repair abilities.

So, 36 hours later, I'm in Toowoomba in one piece but shattered. Sleep and nutrition in a form other than energy drinks is desperately needed.

Currently Reading...

2007-06-28T19:23:00.000+10:00

Winding down at work hasn't left me a lot of time for reading, but I have managed to get through David Malouf's "An Imaginary Life". Like most pseudo-intellectual Queensland men I discovered Malouf in first year uni. Anyone who's spent any time around Brisbane as a young man couldn't help but be touched by Johnno - a certified Australian classic.

"An Imaginary Life" is the heavily allegorical tale of an exiled Roman poet who while living amongst the heathens meets a boy raised by wild animals. Malouf is an astonishingly beautiful writer, so the plot isn't really important. But the classical setting is a fantastic canvas for Malouf to show off his talents. Malouf has a lot of fun with themes of pastoral and tribal life. Setting the book outside of Australia (unlike Johnno and The Great World) gives Malouf a lot more freedom to explore wanky (but interesting) metaphorical themes. The combination of the lyricism of the writing the very short length of the book makes "An Imaginary Life" more like Malouf's poetry than his other novels.

One common theme between An Imaginary Life and both Johnno and The Great World is an intellectual protagonist cut off from the rest of the world. One wonders how much of this theme is auto-biographical for Malouf. It must have been tough for Malouf to be a Queenslander who day dreams about exiled Augustan roman poets. I suspect this reveals itself in his writing.

As a fellow Queenslander I can say this!

While it's hardly a page turner, all in all, the beauty of the writing makes it a good read.

Great Ocean Road

2007-06-24T17:46:00.000+10:00

Believe it or not, despite having lived as an inner city professional in Melbourne for the past 4 1/2 years, I'd never spent a weekend driving the Great Ocean Road.

I'd done plenty of boys trips to Lorne, Torquay etc, but really, if you haven't got down to the 12 Apostles you haven't really done the road.

So this being my last weekend in Melbourne for quite a while I thought I'd better make the effort. So on Saturday morning, my uncle and I set out with no particular plan or destination and started driving.

All in all it was a great weekend, highlights were the 12 Apostles (obviously), Thunder cave and Timboon (great cheese!).

While i had been looking forward to getting out the digital SLR and having a proper play, unfortunately my camera's batteries died twenty minutes after we left. Luckily my uncle had his camera with him though so were were at least able to take the pictures below. Melbournites will no doubt find them tre boring, but for people who havn't done the road - check it out. It's pretty spectacular.

The Science of Sleep: Profoundly Strange

2007-06-16T17:00:00.000+10:00

Took a break from study today to go to movies and took in Michel Gondry's "The Science of Sleep". Very very strange, but also very good (I think). I was interested to see what Gondry would produce without his traditional offsider Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and the result is quite surprising. Believe it or not, but having watched The Science of Sleep I'm now sure that it was actually Kaufman who was keeping Gondry tethered to reality.

The movie is the story of Stephane, a Mexican/French illustrator who can't tell the difference between his dreams and reality, and Stephanie(a very cute Charlotte Gainsbourg), the object of his affections (sort of). If I'm not sounding particularly definitive, it's because the movie is extremely difficult to follow.

I'm not sure whether it's intentional or not, but Gondry synthesises the feeling of a dream very well in The Science of Sleep, mixing fragments of sensibility with a string of non-sequitors. Combine this with the fact that the movie has the aesthetic of an episode of Playschool produced by two RMIT art students while REALLY REALLY high and the movie takes on a profoundly strange quality.

The movie had the feeling of a Haruki Murakami book brought to the big screen with Gondry frequently opening and then promptly dropping increasingly bizarre plot threads throughout the movie with very little explanation. It worked for me, but I'm sure it wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea. As Stephane drolly noted in the movie "It's not funny, but I find it funny".

What I learnt from this movie: That a Goat on a Cliff can be very exciting indeed.

You can't choose your family...

2007-06-11T17:42:00.000+10:00

but presumably you can raise your children a bit better than this (especially if you're running for President):

That’s David Huckabee, 26-year-old son of GOP ninth-tier candidate Mike Huckabee — who seems like a perfectly respectable guy who believes bits and pieces of the Bible.
David, on the other hand, is what might happen if Roger Clinton ate Billy Carter. David Huckabee tries to smuggle his guns aboard commercial flights, angrily pays $6,000 fines in pennies, and brutally kills stray dogs at Boy Scout camps. He will also sue you if you say he’s a pothead.

Courtesy of Wonkette

At the movies...

2007-06-05T17:04:00.000+10:00

Got along to the movies with my uncle on Sunday night. I had wanted to see Science of Sleep but it hadn't started at Classic yet so we settled for Zodiac.

It's definitely not your typical David Fincher (Seven and Fight Club) movie. The movies essentially a process driven account of the police and media investigations into the Zodiac serial killer in California in the late 1960s.

I definitely enjoyed it as a change of pace from the usual serial killer formula, but I can see why all movies aren't made this way. While Fincher does well at keeping up the intrigue of a series of leads ending in dead ends, by the end of the movie the sheer bureaucracy of police investigative work is a bit much. Plus it was weird watching a David Fincher movie without all kinds of kooky CGI overlaid on the movie.

The Age described it as having an "All the Presidents Men" more than a "Seven" kind of feel which I think is apposite. I'd recommend it, but I wouldn't see it again myself.

Currently Reading....

2007-06-04T12:57:00.000+10:00

Unfortunately studying for final exams for my Masters has severely inhibited my discretionary reading.

However, I have had time to pick up a small book by one of my favourite authors -"Confessions of a Mask" by Yukio Mishima.

Mishima is one of those authors (like Solzenitzen or Hemmingway) whose work is made even richer by their his extraordinary personal life. A militant Japanese ultra-conservative (fascist really) martial arts aficionado, Mishima isn't your usual writer of fine literature. What makes him even more extraordinary however is the fact that he was an openly HOMOSEXUAL, militant Japanese fascist martial arts loving author. Given the contradictions inherent in that package it's perhaps no great surprise that Mishima ultimately killed himself by committing public Hari-kiri in protest at the modernisation of Japanese society.

I had devoured Mishima's most famous work, the Sea of Fertility tetralogy a few years ago and found it to be one of the most powerful works of literature I'd read. I mean this guy makes Gaberiel Garcia Marquez's protagonists look like dilettantes. "Spring Snow" (the first book in the tetralogy), a story of fatalistic love in post-feudal Japan harnesses emotion in a positively visceral way and one of my all time favourite books.

So, I had high hopes for "Confessions of a Mask"; hopes that were in the large part borne out. The book is one of Mishima's earliest works (he wrote it at just 24 years of age which is mildly depressing from a personal perspective) and doesn't have the literary polish of the Sea of Fertility. However, the book makes up for this lack of sheen through compelling subject matter. "Confessions of a Mask" is the (presumably auto-biographical) story of a young gay boy trying to fit into Japanese society. While it lacks the literary flourish of Spring Snow, it's extremely successful in communicating the sense of differentness and isolation a gay boy must feel. A vignette about secretly falling in love with a prince (as opposed to the princess) in a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale was especially touching in my view. Similarly, the continuing internal conflict in the protagonist between self-preservation (wearing the mask and conforming in society) and what he terms "self-destruction" (exploring his attractions) is also particularly rending.

All in all I quite enjoyed Confessions of a Mask. It's not brilliantly written, but the back story is more than enough to keep you interested.

Saving my pennies.....

2007-05-31T17:04:00.000+10:00

Having heard all the horror stories about how London literally bleeds money straight from your veins I have been pulling out all the stops to improve my financial position before I leave OZ.

To wit, the pooling of my coin jars. As most of you will know I am a compulsive hoarder of spare change and over the past two years have accumulated stashes at work in Melbourne and Canberra and at home in said cities.

All up there's enough change to fill an entire crumpler bag. I'm thinking of holding a sweep as to how much it's all worth...

UPDATE: Well now you all know - A Krumpler Bag holds $370 in 50c, 20c, 10c and 5c pieces. It's a bit of a drag to think I got more from my coin jars than I did from selling my couch!

Bees, Mobile Phones and the Impending Apocalypse

2007-05-29T13:56:00.000+10:00

Working in politics, every now and then you come across things that are well, strange.

While my personal favourite will always be Blimp Broadband, I have to say that the mobile-phone-induced-apocalypse-of-the-bees ranks up there with the weirder things I’ve had to consider.

In a nutshell, the story is thus:

All around the world, the bees are becoming disorientated. They are abandoning their hives en masse like a bad sci-fi movie and are stopping doing those things that bees do. Unfortunately one of those things that bees do is polinate the crops that humans cultivate for survival. Hence, the bees’ apocalypse is our apocalypse. And the alleged cause of this apocalypse: mobile phone radiation.

Of course there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that mobile phones are the culprit. Add to that the peculiar ability the human race has shown for muddling through past apocalyptic scenarios and I wasn’t too worried.

However it did make me think about what the impact would be if we were forced to do without mobiles for a while. While mobile phones were once viewed as the archetype of yuppie wankerism, the evidence suggests they’ve had a significant positive impact on economic prosperity.

A 2005 study at the London Business School found that for every 10 additional mobile phones per head of population in a developing country, per capita growth increases by 0.59% p.a. Further studies have measured this effect in real time through research into the introduction of mobile phone coverage in India and its impact on seller behaviour at fish markets.

The point is that a 0.6% impact on per capita GDP growth is nothing to be sneezed at. It could be what keeps a country out of recession and keeps tens of thousands of people in work. It’s at the very least something to keep in mind before we go rushing off to pull down all of the mobile phone towers in response to the latest cancer scare, Nimby objection or bee exodus.

Itinerary

2007-05-29T07:04:00.000+10:00

Where I'll be, When and with Whom - over the coming months.

Would love to catch up with as many people as possible so let me know if you can meet up with me anywhere.

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July

Sunday 1st - Wednesday 4th - Toowoomba with Mum and Dad

Thursday 5th - London with Joyce

Friday 6th - Sat 7th - Split, Croatia with Majella.

Sunday 8th - Hvar, Croatia with Majella.

Monday 9th - Korkula, Croatia with Majella.

Tuesday 10th - Dubrovnik, Croatia with Majella.

Wednesday 11th - Mostar, Bosnia with Majella.

Thursday 12th - Sarajevo, Bosnia with Majella.

Friday 13th - Geneva, Switzerland with Nick Z, Joyce and Majella.

Saturday 14th - Monday 16th - French Alps and Le Tour with the Gang.

Wedneday 18th - Friday 20th - Luxembourg with Em and Andreas and maybe Sophie and Jules.

Saturday 21st - Heidelberg, Germany with Em and Andreas.

Sunday 22nd - Tuesday 24th - Berlin with Em and hopefully Ev.

Tuesday 24th - Thurday 26th - Tokyo, Japan with now taking offers.

Friday 27th - Monday 30th - Kyoto, Japan with now taking offers.

Tuesday 31st - Brisbane.

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August

Wednesday 1st - Wednesday 8th - Toowoomba.

Thursday 9th - Saturday 11th - Melbourne with Ian, Chris and Meryl.

Saturday 11th - Thursday 16th - Uluru with Dad, Meryl and Marcia.

Friday 17th - Wednesday 5th - Toowoomba.

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September

Wednesday 5th - Monday 10th - Beijing, China with Trudi.

Tuesday 11th - Wednesday 12th - Xian, China.

Thursday 13th - Friday 14th - Chengdu, China (Gerry?).

Saturday 15th - Wednesday 17th - Guilin, China (Gerry?).

Tuesday 18th - London.

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Phew! I'm tired just writing that.

As I say - if anyone wants to tag along on any leg drop me an email!

Currently Reading....

2007-05-28T13:42:00.000+10:00

The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Love of Words

This book has been my white whale for about the past five years. Moving up and down my queue of books to be read but never quite getting to pole position.

Now that I'm finished it I don't know why I put it off for so long. It's a great read. The story of the 70 year process of compiling for first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary and the relationship between the primary editor, Dr James Murray and the most proflific contributor, the institutionalised and certifiably insane, Dr W.C. Minor.

I was struck while reading this book at the similarities between the compilation of the OED and the development of Wikipedia. An army of volunteer, amatuer enthusiasts collaborating on the production of a substantial work of reference beyond the scope of any one man. Except that the OED took 70 years to produce and Wikipedia has taken just on six years. And people question the productivity effects of Web 2.0!

What I learned from this book: The meanining of autopeotomy. Ouch - that's a word I never expected to use in a sentence.

False Start...

2007-05-27T13:39:00.000+10:00

The feeling of excitement at having everything I own packed and ready to hit the road has been dampened somewhat by the fact that the Sandman isn't actually starting.

The situation raises one of the great contradictions of driving a 'classic' car. While driving said cars frequently attracts admiring compliments from people who know a lot about cars; owning said cars also frequently requires the services of people who know a lot about cars.

It never surprises me how every mechanic, RACV guy and random passer-by can see the Sandman broken down by the side of the road and say "Great Car!" without a hint of irony....

The Time Has Come the Walrus Said...

2007-05-26T16:12:00.000+10:00

...to speak of many things.

Well, to speak of my adventures post-Melbourne at least!

Yes, I'm packing up and leaving the political game and hitting the road - initially for a bit of long anticipated travel and then for a Masters at the London School of Economics. And all of you (well Mum and Dad at least) will be able to read about it right here.

I've chosen today to kick off this blog because this weekend is my last in the hallowed walls of Barkly Manor. All of my worldly possessions are now in the back of the Sandman ready for long drive north to Dad's garage.

Given that the fuel efficiency of the Sandman's turbo charged Chevy 350 V8 is pretty Un-PC (in fact it's currently the subject of negotiations for a special annex to the Kyoto Protocol), I'm almost certain it's going to cost me more to do the drive myself than it would to get a moving company to move my gear.

But I'm a fan of a good road trip and anyway - I like the personal touch.

As the last person to leave Melbourne I'll try to remember to turn out the lights...