Napoleon's Grande Arc

Rain sweeps past the Eiffel Tower


In all my previous visits to Paris, I'd never been to the Arc de Triomphe - so we took care of that today. A quick rattle along le Metro to Charles-de-Gaulle-Etoile and we popped up at the imposing archway, looming over the traffic. Begun by Napoleon in 1806, it wasn't finished until 1836, and stands as a monument to France's armies. The traffic around the base is something to be seen, but thankfully an underpass spirits you to the base of the Arch without the need to risk your life above ground. The underside of the Arc is elegantly carved with the names of 660 Generals and various battles in which they distinguished themselves. Also underneath is an eternal flame to commemorate an unkown soldier from the Great War.

For €8, you can climb almost 300 steps to the top, which has a small museum to Napoleon and the campaigns of his time. Maps and plans of the Battle of Austerlitz line the walls, together with reproductions of the big man's battle tent and living quarters while he was overseeing his armies in action. He didn't half do things in style. A few more steps brings you blinking onto the roof, with stunning views all over Paris. In some respects, it's better than the view from the Eiffel Tower (as you can't see the Tower when you're up it).

Radiating off in all directions are imposingly straight roads, lined with tiny people rushing about, and clogged with cars and buses. In the distance the slight rise of Montmartre is given away by the pinnacle of the Sacre Coeur rising over the buildings. In the other direction are the tower blocks of the business district with the enormous square of la Defense sticking up like the other goal on a giant football pitch. The views are fantastic, especially looking down at the madcap traffic, as vehicles funnel into and out of the Place d'Etoile like blood cells shooting through veins.

We stayed up there for about half an hour, watching a storm cloud run over the East of the city. Eventually the rain reached us and arrived almost horizontally, whipped in by the strong wind. Taking cover behind one of the walls at the top, there was just time for another photo of the Eiffel Tower before we dashed down for the dryness of the interior and the long trek down the steps to ground level.

The most famous...

Ou est la Joconde?


Is there a more famous museum in the world than the Louvre? Not that I know of - and despite this being my fifth trip to Paris, I'd never actually been inside. Today was another dull grey morning, perfect for indoor things, so after a quick Metro trip into the city we found ourselves walking through the blustery Jardin de Tuileries towards the famous glass pyramids. The original Palais de Louvre was constructed in 1190 by Philippe-Auguste as a place to store his weapons, but it wasn't until 1360 that a king (Charles V) decided to live in the Palace. Eventually art was stored there, and it opened as an art gallery in 1793, the same year Louis XVI met his untimely and painful end. It also proved a convenient place for Napoleon to store his massive amounts of war booty, so the collection grew and grew.

Today it houses hundreds of thousands of paintings, sculpture, relics and artefacts from all over the world (which was news to me - I thought it was just paintings). To get in, you join a queue to descend an escalator for a cursory bag check, and then line up to pay your €8.50 - not a bad price when you think about it. The Museum is laid out over three enormous wings - Denon, Richelieu, and Sully. Just standing in the foyer gives you an idea of which is the most popular - Denon - because of one very special painting.

If the Louvre is the most famous museum in the world, then the Mona Lisa is without doubt the most famous painting, and of course the Louvre's star attraction. We were pulled along in the tide of people walking briskly past masterpiece after masterpiece when the corridor opened up and turning to the right, there she was. I had wanted to take a picture of the crowd of gawkers looking at it, but photography was strictly not allowed - ostensibly to avoid harsh flashes damaging the painting (sheltered behind a double layer of darkened bullet-proof glass), but the massed ranks of reproductions in the gift shop must have had something to do with it.

It's a beautiful painting, there's no denying it - but I wasn't blown away by the majesty of la Joconde as some are. Admittedly, I know very little about painting and art, but the other early renaissance pictures there were just as impressive - it's difficult to see just what makes that particular one stand out. Still, it was nice to look at for a while, and I guess that's what paintings are all about.

After the 'large Italian artworks' we wandered through the rest of the Denon wing, and by chance found ourselves in a small gallery of indigenous art from the Pacific region - a relatively new addition to the more traditional arty stuff. They even had an Easter Island stone head. The throng of people had thinned here, but increased dramatically as we wandered along the lower Denon through classical Greek sculptures. After a slight detour through a wonderful section of Roman mosaics, we came on a long pillared corridor with the Venus de Milo at the end. I hadn't known it was in the Louvre, so we had a close look and tried to avoid getting in the way of photograph-takers. It's a stunning statue, although all I could think of was the episode of the Simpsons where Homer goes to the candy fair and ends up stealing the jelly Venus de Milo and having to run for it.

At this point, we'd been in the Louvre for hours - hours of culture and enlightenment - but still hours. Around the Egyptian antiquities section we ran out of steam. When mummies don't get your interest levels up, you know it's time to go. So in the end we'd seen barely half of the Louvre's treasures - but at least we'd knocked off the 'big two' and seen a few more interesting bits and pieces, from Roman daggers to genuine Totem poles. And here's me thinking it was just paintings...

La Cité

Jardin de Tuileries


So, I'm back on the road - in Paris. I started off yesterday arriving on a tiny plane from Edinburgh (only about 20 people on board). The massive grey Charles de Gaulle airport was deathly silent, and I managed to get to the gare and find a train for the centre of Paris. I was due to meet my friend Erika at the Gare du Nord, but she was having her hair done and I had to wait around for a while at the station.

She soon arrived though, and we walked to her studio flat (a French euphamism for tiny flat) and dumped my stuff. We had picked up some cakes on the way, so before I'd even taken my shoes off I was tucking into the good stuff. We had to scoot over to Porte Maillot to meet another friend who was arriving from Beauvais airport, then went out for dinner. Erika was getting a few admiring French glances for dining out with two men on Valentine's Day - this is Paris after all.

The next morning, Tim and I set off to wander around in the light drizzle, and covered a fair proportion of the touristy stuff (it was his first time in Paris). The top of the Eiffel Tower was closed because of the strong winds, so we continued our ramblings, stopping off for a few cakes - it's got to be done. By 4pm we'd walked so far it was all we could do to stumble onto the Metro back to Chez Erika and flop on the sofa. Fortunately, a Japanese dinner revived us, and we went to a tiny bar near the Sorbonne, full of glamorously smoking students watching the rain drip through a crack in the ceiling...

Every man's worst nightmare

Come in number six...


No, not a giant jellyfish (more of that later) - but a disrupted Saturday routine. The traditional Saturday afternoon of sport on the telly, that great British tradition, ruined by the very worst...a broken television. The coupons had been placed, the tea freshly brewed, the papers on the table. It was all going so well. For the past few weeks the TV has been making odd squeaking noises, and suddenly turning itself off without warning. We thought this was just a defence mechanism whenever Celebrity Big Brother came on, but recently it's been getting far worse. Yesterday I spent the last of my pools winnings on a new Xbox game, only to be stymied by the TV turning itself off nine times in twenty minutes.

This afternoon the telly finally gave up the ghost, turning off seconds after it was turned on. Every time we pushed the button it would instantly shut down like a tetchy child not wanting to play. And all this was just as Sky Soccer Saturday was coming on - you can't get worse timing. The programme where a panel of football experts watch the live games and describe what's happening (to get round the rules preventing showing of live games at 3pm on a Saturday). As my Mum describes it - "Men watching men watching football". The wrecked television prompted us to sink to increased levels of bizarre desperation - as we plugged the digital receiver into the hi-fi, and became 'Men listening to men watching football'.

What with Match of the Day on later, not to mention the Winter Olympics (or the Olympic Winter Games as they seem to have re-branded it) - desperate measures were called for. When you stand a chance of missing the biathlon, I think you'll agree you've got no choice. So we went into the city to buy a telly. Sadly, the major retailers don't stock TV's anymore - they have display models. You choose the one you want, and it gets delivered within 28 days. "28 days?", I squawked at the bloke in Dixons. "But it's the women's moguls on in an hour!!". He looked at me like he didn't care whether I lived or died, and informed me that their warehouse is expecting a delivery in two weeks.

So we trudged home in what had become pouring rain, and took the TV apart to fiddle with the dusty wiring. After putting it back together, nothing was happening, and I was just about to reach for a book and read (on a weekend!!) when astonishingly the telly spluttered into life and stayed on for more than thirty seconds. That was four hours ago, and we're too scared to turn it off. We even managed to watch the women's moguls (what does that do to the knees?) - so crisis averted. I put down the hammer, and the book stayed in the glass case.


So next week I'm off travelling again. Yes, this erstwhile travel blog will move away from talk of trainers and flags and get back to why it was started. Although if I eat any good pies, you'll be the first to know Michele. I'm going to Paris for a week to catch up with my old friend Erika - I've not been there for a couple of years, so am really looking forward to getting back. In total, 7 of us are going over, so it should be a great week. Until then - au revoir, and salut maintenant...


Oh, the jellyfish. I just liked the picture. Giant Jellyfish invade Japan

Vexillology

Where's the dragon?


The study of flags.

When I was younger, I was a committed vexillophile. Before the News of the World send a hit-squad round to get me, I should say that it means 'someone who loves flags'. Why did I? I can't really remember - probably the mixture of exotic-sounding foreign names, far-away places and bright colours. I remember a 'Flags of the World' poster I had, which I knew so well I can still describe almost any flag at random. Of course, this is utterly un-useful - apart from during an old episode of The Amazing Race on the TV where the contestants were in the Philippines and had to land their small boat on whichever island had the national flag on it. Before we'd seen any of the options, I turned to my flatmate and said 'White triangle with star, upper blue band, lower red band', causing him to inch his chair away from me slightly.

If you like colourful rectangles, you should pay a visit to Nationmaster.com, which has over 49,000 flags, of every country in the world and then some. From the Cypriot Police Force to the Scout Association of Kazakhstan, if it has a flag, you'll find a picture of it there. Want to know the flag of the Bulgarian Ministry of the Interior in 1955? No, thought not. Still, if you did, it's on Nationmaster. Here are some of my favourites...




Qasigiannguit, Greenland.
Not enough global flags feature prawns, in my opinion. Here is the website of Qasigiannguit, which is written in the local language that has some of the longest words I've ever seen. Want to have a stab at pronouncing oqaluttuarisaaneranut? The flag represents the prawns that are the life-blood of the town, in their cooked and raw state. The 'friendly' town is situated in the improbably-named Disco Bay.



Municipality of Bievre, Namur, Belgium.
Bievre...Beaver. I get it. Not sure why it's by the seaside - but it looks mightily annoyed. Must have lost his frisbee, or something. Bievre is twinned with Desborough, Northamptonshire.



Vidovec, Varazdin, Croatia.
I don't know what Vidovec means, but it probably doesn't smell that nice there.



Municipality of Ciney, Namur, Belgium.
I presume this design is an old heraldic motif of squires or pages or something, but it just reminds me of a prog-rock video.



Aklavik, NW Territories, Canada.
This one's tremendous - it features a book, a rat, and the motto 'Never Say Die'. After a bit of crafty Googling, I learned all about the 'Mad Trapper of Rat River' - presumably he of the 'Never Say Die' attitude, as it took seventeen men and a strafing from a fighter plane to bring him down. They obviously breed them tough up in Aklavik.



Orehovica, Medjimurje, Croatia.
I wonder if the walnut-people of Orehovica live near the Cabbages of Vidovec?



Nezdenice, Czech Republic.
Many European flags have heraldic backgrounds. This one is by far the best. It seems to be based on the limbless Black Knight from Monty Python, stabbing himself through the head with his sword. Watch out for that menacing-looking giant key though.



Rakuvka, Czech Republic.
A lobster juggling mushrooms - something you don't see every day...

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Coudekerque-Branche Municipality, France.
I know the French like to play boules (or they do on TV programmes I've seen), so this 'throw the crown on the hedgehog' could be a local variation. Maybe you win a goldfish if you manage it.



Sicily, Italy.
'When Yoga goes bad'



Lofa County, Liberia.
Absolutely no idea - it seems to be an arm planting a sausage aross a river. Symbolic?



Hijum, Netherlands.
'So what shall we put on the flag guys?'
'How about a dancing frog?'
'Why not?'



Thanks to Flags of the World for descriptions and pictures.

Super Sunday

'Ooh! Me nuts!'


Yesterday was 'Super Sunday' - the annual orgy of consumerism that surrounds the final game of the American Football season. As usual, I stayed up to watch it - although last year in Australia it was on at breakfast time, which was odd (beer and cornflakes don't really go together). The game this year pitted the Seattle Seahawks against the Pittsburgh Steelers, and after a slow first half the Steelers wound out winners by 11 points. After Janet Jackson's 'wardrobe malfunction' of two years ago, this year's halftime show (the lengthily-named 'Super Bowl XL Sprint Half-time show featuring the Rolling Stones') was supposed to be family-friendly. I was delighted to learn that two of out their three songs were censored by panicky TV executives. The five-second delay obviously paid off as they saved the global public from hearing Mick Jagger complete the fantastic couplet:-

One time you were my baby chicken
Now you've grown into a fox
And once upon a time I was your little rooster
Am I just one of your c****?

Answers on a postcard...


Apart from archaic censorship, American sports are dominated by statistics and numbers. As an enthusiast of stats and facts, I collected a few Super Bowl facts. Enjoy!

- Fans at the game ate 5,000lb of hotdogs, which stretched end to end would reach 5 miles

- 24,000 cans of soda were sold at the Superbowl - more than 85 elephants drink in a day

- Super Bowl XXXIV (2000) ads cost an average of $73,333 per second

- Eight percent of those watching will be tuning in just to see the ads.

- In 1999, ABC made dot-com advertisers pay in advance for time in the advertising showcase

- Super Bowl ticket prices over the years: Super Bowl I (1967) $6-$12; Super Bowl XV (1981) $40; Super Bowl XXII (1988) $100; Super Bowl XXX (1996) $200-$350; Super Bowl XXXIII (1999) $325; Super Bowl XL (2006) $620 (£350)

- A commercial in the Super Bowl will reach 40% of all U.S. households (40 million out of 100 million or approximately 90 million people in the U.S. alone)

- Superbowl weekend will have fewer weddings than any other weekend in the year

- 6% of the American workforce will call in sick on Monday

- 20% of Super Bowl viewers stated they liked the TV ads more than the game

- 38% of people made some type of wager on the Super Bowl

- More Americans watched the 2004 Super Bowl than voted in the 2004 presidential election.

- Half of all Americans would rather go to a Super Bowl party than a New Year's Eve party.

- Two out of five Super Bowl watchers are not even football fans.

- 13% of Americans order takeout/delivery food from a restaurant for a Super Bowl gathering. 58% of them will choose pizza.

- On Super Bowl Sunday, Americans will eat an estimated 20 million pounds of potato and tortilla chips and eight million pounds of avocados.

- Sales of antacid increase by 20% on Super Bowl weekend.

- 35% of those who attend the Super Bowl write it off as a corporate expense.

- 58% of people would rather take their bathroom breaks during the game than miss the commercials.



sources
SuperBowl Monday
Official Super Bowl XL website
The Center for Research on the Effects of Television, Cornell University

Academics Anonymous

Do they have these anymore?


According to a recent survey carried out by a market research company, University students think their lecturers are 'stuck-up, disorganised, unpunctual, unfunny, badly dressed and too desperate to be "hip"'. As reported in the Times and by the BBC, the responses from 648 students found many thought academics were "snooty" and had "objectionable facial hair". I found that amusing, as I remember most of my lecturers would fit the bill exactly - in fact, I wondered why the press seemed to find it so surprising. Mind you, I did study science - a discipline where wild facial hair and crazed expressions seem to be a pre-requisite.

I studied at two Universities, and always marvelled at the mannerisms of some of my lecturers compared to those from other departments. There's something about the Biological Sciences that encourages oddball behaviour, and the longer you spend in that environment, the more infected you become. My supervisor at my first University was a cycling obsessive - so much so that he used to spend all day in his lycra biking outfit, lectures and all. He was a great bloke, if amazingly scatterbrained, and looked exactly like Richard O'Brien from the Crystal Maze. That photo's uncanny, actually. I once left him a vital form to sign, and when I went back a few days later he spent 20mins looking for it. Eventually he found it in the bin, uncrinkled it, signed it with a flourish, and handed it over. I've just checked the staff website, and was pleased to see he's still there.

Another character was a silver-haired biology lecturer who was once described to me as a 'bit of a ladies man' by another member of staff (I have no idea why he told me). He did actually have an affair with a student, but I can't remember if he had to leave because of it - he's not there anymore. His trademark was a large silver belt-buckle of his initials - which mirrors one of the main findings of the poll - "The poll suggests that many students find their lecturers' attempts at being trendy insufferable". I once went to see him to discuss an essay I was writing about deep-sea fish, and he raised a finger with a sudden cry of 'Ah-hah!', and rooted around in a cluttered cupboard before bringing out a blueish deep-sea fish in a test tube. I can only guess as to how long it had been there - or what else was in the cupboard. I once found a dried seahorse on the dashboard of the department minibus.

Academics also have a bizarre sense of humour - I once noted in an ecology paper I wrote about the problems of accurately measuring saplings with a tape measure (because I couldn't reach the tops), only to find the lecturer had written 'SHORTARSE!!' in the margin in red pen. Another left a binliner of fish for us to study in an unplugged lab fridge over the weekend (on purpose I always thought), so when we turned up on Monday morning to sort through them the smell was so awful it almost made the entire class ill. Ahh...happy days...

Blasting away at clay

'PULL!!...*BANG*...bugger'


This is your author clay pigeon shooting - or more accurately blasting away at the Derbyshire countryside whilst a tiny clay disc whizzes past, unharmed. One of my oldest friends from back home (in both senses) was celebrating his 30th over the weekend, so a few of us went to Manchester to see him. After driving over from Preston on a bright Saturday morning we linked up in a convoy and drove into the Peak District - which I learned recently is the second most visited National Park in the world behind Fuji-Hakone NP, where I was on a very un-bright weekend a few months ago.

We rolled through to Glossop, and then on to Crowden - half a dozen scattered houses in a wind-swept but striking valley. Up the hillside was the Boar Shooting Ground, overlooking the Torside Reservoir. Thankfully a misnoma - the only things we'd be shooting would be clay pigeons (and bracken, in my case). Now I've never held a gun in my life, so was looking forward to it - but also a bit nervous as to whether I'd hit anything. As it happened I hit the very first one I aimed at - but then nothing for a long while. We had split into groups of four, and as my mate Oliver goes shooting all the time (he brought his own ammo) the owner let him look after three novices - me and old schoolfriends Alex and Phil. Stages were marked out with scaffolding poles stuck into the ground like fenceposts (so you didn't wheel around and shoot over other people), and the clays were launched with a hand-held button (we still shouted 'PULL' instead of 'PUSH', though).

Oliver goes shooting practically every weekend, and is - and I'm sure he'll take this as a compliment - a ruthless machine. Clay after clay shattered into fragments, shrapnel spinning into the long grass in every direction. The rest of us were somewhat less effective, and managed to hit a few - I got 7 out of 30. Not too bad for a first go. It's difficult though - for a start the gun is longer than I was expecting, and pretty heavy. You lean into it, pressing it into your shoulder. This automatically tenses you up, so when the clay flings out of the bushes, you jerk around and try to follow it. Being smooth is the best way to hit one, and you follow the trajectory of the disc until you can't see it behind the end of the gun, and squeeze the trigger.

At this point, the shotgun kicks upwards and there's a earplug-shaking BANG. If you're lucky (or Oliver), the clay explodes into shards. If you're me, it continues to spiral merrily onwards and plops into the heather fifty feet away. I did get better, we moved around to different stages - designed to replicate a different kind of bird. I was pretty good at the one which comes directly at you at about 20ft in the air. I don't know what kind of bird that is (apart from suicidal), but using Oliver's special semi-automatic shotgun "Don't put your finger in the chamber, it'll take it off", I hit 4/5 (and more importantly retained all my fingers). At this point, a real-life pheasant wandered over to see what we were up to - which is as unadvised as a rabbit turning up to watch a greyhound race. The gunshots didn't seem to concern it, and after a while it hopped through a farm gate and away, unflustered...

The beauty of pies

Mmmmm...


I'm from Lancashire - so I like pies. Admittedly, I'm not from Wigan - the centre of the pie universe - but near enough. I was eating a Steak pie supper from the local chippy the other night, when I thought I should blog something about the greatness of the pastry case full of odd meat and vegetables. I should start by saying that this is a British blog - so all references to the p-word are involving 'savoury' pies, not fruity imposters like you get over the Atlantic. Try ordering Pie and Chips in the US, and see what you get. Apart from odd looks.

After a quick Google, I discovered that pies were invented by the Ancient Egyptians. Despite being fruit-based, I was delighted to learn that ...drawings of this can be found etched on the tomb walls of Ramses II, located in the Valley of the Kings. Ah, if only Indiana Jones had broken into the Temple of Pies ("I've got a bad feeling about this, Shortcrust"). I hope the hieroglyphics have side-on men with bird-heads holding a deep-filled Pastie. Later on, the first meat-based pie was created by the Ancient Greeks - a flour/water paste wrapped around meat to seal in the juices. When the Romans conquered Greece, they brought back the pie as one of their spoils of victory. "Hail Ceaser! We bring you this gift of Steak and Kidney!".

I used to eat a fair few pies at school, where Butter Pie was on the menu at least once a week. I could only find one mention of proper Butter Pies on Google - here - the rest being Butter pastry pies or Peanut Butter Pies (?). Essentially potato and onion pie, it probably was less than 50% butter. Good hearty food for schoolkids. So that's where I get it from, I suppose. Of course, pies are supposedly unhealthy, so I only eat them as part of a balanced diet of course - which in Wigan is a pie in each hand. Had to get that in somewhere. What's a kebab in Wigan? A pie on a stick. Hoho. Pies also go with football - I can remember one match at Blackburn where the half-time rush (which starts well before half-time) were queueing under the stand when Rovers scored. They were asking us what had happened, but of course didn't relinquish their spots in the queue.

As part of my research for this post - yes, you read that correctly - I looked at a few of the UK's major pie producers (or pieducers, if you will). As you should know, the number 1 branded pie in the stadia market (according to their website) is Pukka Pies (motto - 'Don't Compromise'). They only use 'young lean bullock beef cut from the forequarter. No head meat, no mechanically recovered meat and no cow meat. This has always been the case.' Honest. Although their range does include something called 'Catering Sausage'. Yum. Hollands Pies (motto - 'Every Pie has it's moment') have five pages of pies on their website, including the Cheese and Onion Pastie which contains '8% Cheese and 4.5% Onion' - and obviously a lot of something else. However, they claim a blind test of 'over 30 people' found their pies to be the best - 'The new Steak and Kidney pie has the edge...in the two most important areas - taste and texture'. On the other side of the pie lid, as it were, are Square Pie (no motto) - a London-based posh pie chain with fillings like 'Jerk Chicken' and 'Wild Mushroom and Asparagus'. Set up in 2001 because 'we believe the world needs better pies. The word pie had become synonymous with rubbery pastry and dodgy fillings you didn't trust', their website has poems and 'pie-stories'. No Catering Sausage here.

So it seems pies are here to stay. As bad for you are the chippy pies (cooked by being dropped into the chip fat), upmarket and gourmet pie sellers are putting the upper back into the crust. The rise of the middle-class foodie has meant an increase in popularity of regional variations like the Bridie and Cornish Pastie. Hopefully meat pies are making an impression in the tricky North American market - Steak and Kidney pie seems to be a euphamism for the perceived nastiness of British food. Pies are certainly going strong in Australia - the classic Pie Floater (a pie drowned in mushy peas) is a delight, and I sampled a few at Harry's Cafe de Wheels in Sydney, something of a national treasure. So I urge you all to enjoy your pies. If you need inspiration, have a look at the quite brilliant I Like Pies who have a 'Piemate of the Month'. So I'll be tucking into one of those soon. I still draw the line at Black Pudding, though.

Jog me to your leader

Shoes just got smarter


At the moment I've only got one pair of shoes. And you thought you had problems. When I was leaving Sydney, weight and amount of baggage became a priority - so I jettisoned anything I didn't immediately need to make it easier. Worn-out pairs of shoes were an easy loss, so in the bin they went and as a result when I leave the flat in the morning I've got one less decision to make. Of course, being a modern-man that state of affairs can't last forever, so I went shoe shopping today to put it right. I reckon that's about as far as most of you will read, and I can't say that I blame you. Still, I found out some interesting stuff.

I was in a couple of sports shops trying to buy some trainers (sneakers/runners/le pumps etc)(I don't know what the French really call trainers). What grim places they are - have you been in a Footlocker recently? The teenage staff lord it over the teenage customers, dressed in stripey outfits modelled on American Football referees - which only make them resemble prison commandants. After a quick glance at the shelves, I confirmed I didn't need any help to at least three of them - I think I actually apologised the third time - and fled for the safety of Inter Sport, or something similar. Here there were no staff at all, so I could look at the shoes in peace.

How badly made are trainers these days? Ahhhh - that's the first time I've ever used that phrase. I am nearly 30, after all. Don't get me started on Top of the Pops. Anyway, the footwear on display looked like an explosion in a polyurethane factory - swooshing and swirling shades of black/white/grey/blue, clear bits, plastic, metal. Honestly - you knew where you were with Air Jordans. Showing my age again there. I had just about given up, when I saw one that made my eyes light up - the Adidas_1, the 'World's First Intelligent Shoe'. Eh?

I seem to have missed an entire evolutionary level of footwear, as to my knowledge shoes have yet to master rudimentary tools - but there it was - a sentient being, sitting there on the shelf, priced (brace yourself) at a whopping £175. Must have been Harvard-educated, at that price. At first glance, it looks like any other poorly-made running shoe with crinkly bits, but turn it over and it appears to have a motor and gear system built into the heel. Clear plastic panels give you a view of cogs and sprockets, with a small control panel (looking like a volume control) mounted to the outer side, halfway along. I put it back, as obviously I wasn't going to pay that much - telling the shoe why (as an intelligent being it deserved an explanation).

Later on, I used the internet to find out what makes this brainy brogue so special. The spectacularly garish Adidas_1 website was the place to go of course (someone went overboard on the Flash there). You have to enter your name and shoe size before you can look at anything (I'm not making that up, honest). So after typing in 'Javier' and '6' I was in. I certainly learned something, I can tell you. The Adidas_1 has a "Built-in microprocessor capable of 5 million calculations per second" - something it uses not to warn you if there's dogshit approaching, or to bleep if you pass a pub, but to cushion your step irrespective of terrain - "put them on and only four steps from your front door the Adidas_1 has already analysed your speed, weight and the terrain underfoot and have determined the perfect level of cushioning for your needs." It can tell how much you weigh? Is that safe? Does it steer you away from the crisps aisle in the Supermarket? Maybe so - as the website also menacingly threatens "Adidas_1 is the first shoe that can think for itself and then do something about it". So no sneaking Creme Eggs on the quiet, fatty.

Having looked at all the fancy data, essentially the shoe can tell between concrete and sand, and tightens the springyness in the heel depending on what you're running on. The motor has "153% more torque", and the shoe is fitted with a "LightStrike™ EVA with adiPRENE®+ insert in the forefoot.", whatever that is. Maybe if you drop something on your foot, the shoe reacts and flings your leg to safety. Anyway, just as I was beginning to come round to the idea of footwear that you can converse with* I noticed a short and unflowery sentance hidden away in the tekky stuff - "So the change is undetectable to the user". What? So after all that - you can't actually notice if anything is happening? You just let the shoe get on with it, I suppose. Just don't ever throw them away - they'll hunt you down...




*sorry....

Behind the picture

City of York Bay


I was looking over some old posts today, and saw this photo again from the post I did recently about beaches. At first glance, it looks like a fairly normal (if stunningly beautiful) sandy beach. But looking at it I remembered a story I discovered about that beach, which is unimaginable when you simply look at the picture. This is City of York Bay on Rottnest Island, off the coast of Western Australia. I was wandering around the island and stopped here to eat my sandwich - after dodging the screeching seabirds that were obviously nesting nearby and were wheeling overhead. Those are my footprints, of course, and that black lump that breaks the horizon is actually a large craggy boulder with an Osprey nest on top. If you right-click the image and open it in a new window, you might just be able to make it out. I wasn't worried about the seagulls, but when the Osprey launched off from the nest and flew overhead, I scurried along out of range quickly. I think that's why my footprints start zigzagging around.

The other thing you can see from the picture is how pristine the beach is. Rottnest isn't exactly a crowded island, and this particular bay was off the beaten track enough that I saw nobody else the whole time I was there. The water is brilliantly clear, and you can see the volcanic-looking rocks in the water. These rocks are where the secret history of the beach starts, as I learned later that 137yrs ago 11 men were killed in that very water - drowning a hundred metres from the shore. Having sat there, I can't imagine people fighting for their lives in such a stunning setting. So after a bit of internet research, I found out the story of what happened.

On the 11th of July 1869 the 1,100 tonne iron barque City of York was approaching Fremantle docks, after sailing from San Francisco with a cargo of wooden doors and a crew of 26. The ship had crossed the Pacific in it's fastest recorded time, but as it approached Fremantle a heavy sea brewed, and blinding rain cut visibility dramatically. The Rottnest Lighthouse sent up a flare asking if the ship needed assistance. The man in charge of the City of York, Captain Jones, thought the flare had come from a pilot boat - so responded with a flare of his own before heaving the barque around and sailing towards the safety of the other ship. Tragically, the Lighthouse had sent up the wrong flare - and the unwitting Captain Jones was now steering directly towards it.

With the visbility almost nil, the ship's crew checked their depth and found they were in only 9m of water. Being so close to the reef, there was nothing they could do, and the City of York struck, and was swamped with water. Jones ordered the lifeboats out, but the ferocious waves overturned both of them almost immediately. Eight men managed to reboard the stricken ship, but the others were not so lucky. After four hours, seven had made it to shore - possibly on the very beach above. Two of them ran to the Lighthouse to raise the alarm. Eleven other crewmen - including Captain Jones - drowned. The next day a tugboat called Dunskey took three trips to rescue the eight survivors still on the wreck.

So that's the story behind the photo. At an inquiry, Captain Jones was criticised for 'gross carelessness and want of judgement', but after an appeal the actions of the Lighthouse keepers was questioned and the fault found with them. As a result, the shipping company was awarded £5000 damages, and the signalling system on Rottnest Island overhauled. The doors were later salvaged, and it was found that on the same night another ship - the Carlisle Castle - had been sunk in the storm, and a further 26 men killed. Today a small plaque marks the spot, which I walked past on my way back to Rottnest village to catch the ferry. I can't imagine what it must have been like on the day the City of York sank, as conditions were so very different to when I was there. I just couldn't comprehend that something so terrible had happened in a scene from a picture postcard.


Here's a second photo - taken in 1869. It's the City of York, before the waves broke it to pieces.




Further details on the sinking of the City of York can be found here.

Double top for the win

Lets...Play...Darts!


I was reading a piece in the paper the other week about the possibility of darts becoming an Olympic sport. Apparently it's unlikely, as the squabbling regulatory bodies have fallen out - and also there's uncertainty as to whether it's actually a sport. The argument goes that if you include darts, then you've got to consider snooker, fishing, ballroom dancing, stamp collecting, trainspotting and other 'hobbies'. I'd actually like to see trainspotting in the Olympics - the 'athletes' lined up on the platform edge like sprinters (behind the yellow line at all times), Nike notebooks in hand, peering eagerly down the tracks for the first locomotive. "And the Greek competitor spots a lovely Class 75 diesel there! Oh I say! The Germans have dropped the pencil!"

I mention darts because I've just finished watching the World Championships on the telly. It was live on the BBC, as are all the other parlour games played by pensioners/drunks such as snooker and bowls (Sky having stolen the proper sports years ago). I'm not a fan of darts, but if the alternative is watching Heartbeat or the Antiques Roadshow, I'd happily sit through anything. They should combine the Antiques Roadshow with Biathlon in the Olympics - Russians in spandex skiing around, shooting Delft pottery and Auntie Nora's Wedgewood dinner service. I'd definately watch that.

Anyway, the final was won by Jelle Klaasen - a 21yr old Dutch player (thrower? dartsman?) who started out as a 100-1 outsider (should have put my £50 on him) and wound up beating the multiple champion - also a Dutchman. Lot of pubs in the Netherlands, obviously. To be fair, darts has moved away from the stereotyped grotesquely obese lumps quivering as they flick metal arrows at the board, before downing half their pint. I've got a lot of respect for darts players - and not just because most of them look like East End gangsters who could get you concreted into a flyover if you spilled their drink. It's the maths. They are lightning-fast at working out what they have to aim for, and they do it counting backwards. Say they have 116 left to get, and they hit a treble 20. They instantly seem to know if they get a single 20 next, they have double 18 left. I have trouble just hitting the board. If you want to take on these mental giants - go here to take the BBC's darts arithmetic quiz. I did so badly, Jim Bowen refused to show me what I could have won. (It was probably a speedboat).

Japan on the cheap

Crab restaurant, Ebisu-bashi, Osaka


Not much has been happening these past few days - well, nothing blogworthy anyway. For those of you following my wacky gambling exploits, I reverted to my measly £2 bet yesterday instead of the £50 craziness. Good job too, as I got half of the games wrong and lost. So lucky me for doing the coupon equivalent of putting money on one spin of the roulette wheel and walking away. So, in an effort to cobble together something worth reading (in theory), I'm going to address the question of how expensive it is to visit Japan, as prompted by a comment on my last post.

Yes, it is expensive - but I'm convinced you can do Japan on the cheap. Staying in cheap ryokans, eating cheap bowls of ramen and so forth. Ramen are one of those things that tastes too good to be that cheap - like pickled onion Space Raiders, which I think are still 10p a packet. Just a bowl of noodles in broth maybe, but bloody good all the same. Another tip would be to eat your 'big meal of the day' at lunchtime (or dinnertime for us Northerners) instead of at dinnertime (teatime). Most restaurants have lunch specials, so you can find cheaper deals - especially if you go to a department store restaurant floor. You will have to queue up sitting on a row of chairs outside the door, like in some kind of waiting room, but it should be worth it.

Visit parks and gardens, they are almost always free or have a small fee. Wander about at night looking at the neon madness that is Shinjuku or the Dotonbori area of Osaka. Admire the restuarant signs, like my runaway favourite above for a famous Giant Spider crab restaurant. Hard to tell from the picture, but the crab there had moving legs and eyes. My number one tip for free in Tokyo would be (of course) the Tsukiji fish market - although you need to get up at a daft hour of the morning to see it in it's full glory. Another great thing to do is just wander around looking in all the magnificent shops. This can be financially dangerous though, of course.

Other blogs out there on the interweb have similar suggestions, like PingMag's 10 things to do for free in Tokyo. I missed the department store massage chairs, but highly recommend the nuttiness of Akihabara's manga shops and looking for a rubber stamp every time you visit somewhere. That can become addictive though. Another free activity in Japan is looking for people sleeping in public. Not the homeless, but people who miss the last train and doze off in the street in very odd places. Sleeping on a moped must take some balance. Finally, the Quirky Japan Homepage has a great long list of how to travel around the country cheaply, with tips on discount trains, ferries, hostels, and food. My personal favourite is to eat 'Challenge Ramen'. 3...2...1...go!

CHALLENGE RAMEN--Some Ramen shops have 'Challenge Ramen'. It's free if you can eat it within 15 minutes. CAUTION: a Challenge Ramen bowl is 3x larger than normal. If you don't finish it's about 1500 yen.

Fading away, slightly

Kinkaku-ji, The Golden Pavilion, Kyoto


I've now been back in the UK for three months since my year of travelling about ended - and back at work for two months. I still think about it every day, though. I've got a fairly good memory, but some of the details are starting to fray at the edges. On the bus to work this morning I was trying to remember the number of the bus I used to catch from the QVB to North Ryde in Sydney, but couldn't. Odd things, memories. I can picture exactly what the driver looked like (almost always the same bloke each day), the whirring sound the ticket machine made whilst it was reading my pass, the point at the start of the Harbour Bridge where we'd come out of the shadows of the CBD and the sun would make me squint - but I forget the bus number. I suppose eventually those recollections will be harder and harder to retrieve.

Increasingly, smaller things I never really paid much attention to keep coming back to me. When I was in Monkey Mia, Western Australia, I met up with an Aboriginal bushman (who's name I've forgotten). He showed me round a patch of red desert and taught me a huge amount about how they interact with the natural world, and maintain a balance with the plants and animals that live there. Anyway, I was in Tescos the other day standing at the poultry section - thinking uninteresting thoughts about what to cook - when it suddenly popped into my mind what the Aboriginal guide said to me about how they cook emu (they throw the entire bird, feathered and all, onto a massive fire and then eat what's left when the fire goes out). It just appeared in my mind - causing me to get some funny looks as I was stood there holding a pack of chicken breasts with a quizzical expression on my face. Tescos don't sell emu, incidentally.

I'm not really sure what I'm trying to say here, other than I keep forgetting parts of my travels, but other bits keep coming back to me when I don't expect them. It's good, I suppose, as thinking about it brings it all back. Also every time I read something in the paper, or online, or see something on the TV I get instantly transported back to when I was there. The other night I watched a programme about a British writer on a light-hearted attempt to become a samurai. He visited Kyoto and the Golden Pavilion, and as soon as I saw it I had a daft grin on my face, imagining again the stillness of the lake, the eagerness of the pushing schoolkids, and the stunning golden building. That, surely, is the best thing about travelling.

A Football Day

That's a big pile of money


Apologies if you don't like the sport, but this post is mostly about football. And betting. On Saturday I had almost the perfect football day, which saw the 3rd round fixtures in the English and Scottish FA Cups played. Traditionally these Cup competitions provide excitement and upsets, as teams from all leagues are drawn against eachother irrespective of the quality of their divisions. So you get lesser teams playing bigger ones, and the prospect of them winning and being 'giant-killers'. Phrases like 'The magic of the Cup' and 'The Cup's a great leveller' are bandied about as everyone roots for the plucky underdogs (in theory).

As regular readers of DUaB will know, I'm a sucker for the football coupon. In fact, you can read a previous entry about what the coupon is, and how I won £21, by going here. (Yes, I've remembered how to do HTML links). All week I'd been thinking of a strategy for this particular special coupon - the only one of the year with lots of good teams against lots of lesser teams. As a result, the odds were so short that if I'd put my normal £2 on, I'd have only won £11 back (if the 5 games I predicted had gone correctly). So I decided to put a bit more on to give me a better chance. So Saturday morning found me standing in the bookies with the thin slip of paper containing my choices, and £50.

Admittedly, I knew that was a daft amount of money for someone of my financial clout to risk on a few men kicking an air-filled bag around - but hey, nothing ventured etc. This was always going to be a one off (honest Mum). So the bet was placed, and off I went. At 1pm I went along to see my local team - who I have to say I'd never heard of until last week, Spartans FC. They had made it to the 3rd Round of the Scottish Cup against 3rd Division Queen's Park - a great achievement. They play at a tiny sloping pitch in North Edinburgh, next to a Morrisons Supermarket carpark, and surrounded by grey housing blocks. The 'stand' for seated spectators holds 120 - although there were about 30 people in it. Everyone else stands on the grass banks around the field.

Nobody expected Spartans to win - they are part-time footballers after all, but astonishingly they did, 3-2, in a cracking game that was full of good football, hard tackles, and outstanding swearing (you can hear everything when you're 20ft from the pitch). The crowd of 711 were into it too - I would guess a 50:50 split between Spartans fans and those who had travelled over from Glasgow to support Queen's Park. As it turned out, they had a long drive back, as non-league Spartans outplayed them and were deserved winners. It was amusing listening to their anguished cries as time was running out, and general shouts of things like 'Ach! That was SHITE, man!', as another Queen's Park pass went astray.

Anyway, so I'd seen a great game of football, and made it back to find out that 4/5 of my games had gone the way I predicted, with only one to go for a (sizeable) win on the coupon. That game was Luton Town v Liverpool, and I'd picked Liverpool to win. It was live on telly, and I sat through it with a couple of friends. Blimey - if you saw it you might have an idea of what I went through - but after Luton held a shock 3-1 lead, Liverpool eventually wound up 5-3 winners, and after a frantic double-checking of the bit of paper in my shaking hands, I'd won the coupon again, but off a stake fifty times higher than I normally bet.

So, with a bit of thought about 'going big' with the weekly bet, and five games of football played all over the country, I'd won myself more money in one go than all my winnings put together, ever. Today I fair scampered along to William Hill, which thankfully was open on Sunday, and nervously handed over my copy of the coupon. It felt good to stand in the 'WIN' section of the counter, rather than the usual 'BET' side I go to when I hand the money over - even if the serial gamblers in there weren't paying attention to anything other than the greyhound results. The bloke behind the counter scanned my coupon and fished out a wad of notes, which he put on the counter top before turning back to his paper. I hurriedly snatched it, and trotted back to the flat for a celebratory cup of tea. I'd bet £50 on five football games, and won £378 ($670). Not bad for a day's work. I'll be back on the £2 bets next weekend though. Probably...

Beaches to lift the mood

Reading over my last post, it has a rather negative theme to it - me complaining about colds, New Year's Eve, and desperate, bloodthirsty shoppers in the January sales. So this post is all about sunny beaches. I read somewhere that the first day back at work after the festive break is the most depressing of the year - presumably because of the mind-numbing number of months ahead, and because you have to take down the Christmas cards (I got 9!).

Most people would rather be on a warm beach somewhere than typing meaningless-looking numbers into a spreadsheet, so here are some of the sand-filled paradises I wandered around in the last twelve months. I accept this might not improve your mood any - especially if where you are is cloaked in dense freezing fog (3C in Edinburgh the other day) - but it needn't be that bad, trust me. Simply look at the pictures, turn that desk lamp towards your face, and put your coffee mug to your ear and pretend it's a seashell. Probably best to wait until the boss is in a meeting first. And that the mug is empty...



City of York Bay, Rottnest Island, WA



Shell Beach, near Coral Bay, WA



Whitehaven Beach, Whitsunday Islands, QLD (2002). Edd still can't throw a decent forehand...



Castle Rock Beach, Sydney harbour



Palm Beach, of Home and Away fame



Curl Curl Beach, Northern Sydney



Freshwater Beach, Queenscliff, Northern Sydney



Manly Beach - king of all beaches...

Hogmanayed out

My camera's not good enough for this...


Well happy new year everyone - I hope 2006 is all you want it to be, and more. This is the third calendar year of DUaB, which wasn't what I bargained for when I started it all those months ago. Never mind, eh? What did you get up to on NYE? I've got to say, I'm not a fan of New Year's at all - the compulsory enthusiasm and such. I'm not a miserable git, either - I'm just not sure about deliberately having to enjoy something because it's traditional. You can't get much more traditional than Hogmanay in Scotland of course - in fact the Scots take it to heart so much that we're given two days off to recover - the 2nd/3rd January are Bank Holidays, so I'm not back to work until tomorrow.

Which is a good thing, as I've got a stinking cold, that sapped my willingness to party even more on NYE. Still, we had to do something, and went to one of our local pubs where I had a few medicinal pints of lager and the Edinburgh fireworks were shown on their widescreen TV. For some reason, I felt even worse on New Year's Day, so wrote the entire day off. I remember this time last year I watched the Sydney harbour fireworks - seems like such a long time ago now. Incidentally, today was the hottest New Year's Day in history in Sydney, reaching a staggering 44.2C (116F). That's one thing I don't miss about being there. That and the flies.

Unfortunately I also had to brave the sales today, as during my flight back from London I managed to rip a huge hole in my jeans (don't ask). There can't be a worse time of year to go shopping. On a bus going along Princes Street the other day, I did a quick count of all the shops to see how many had advertised sales in the window - 68 out of 72. The other four were twee Scottish shops that were obviously confident enough that people would buy their tartan tat at full price. Anyway, today I ventured out to Ocean Terminal - the world's only shopping mall with a Royal yacht bolted to it. True story - the yacht Britannia is a permanent fixture there, so you can pick up some pants at M&S and then go and see where the Queen used to sleep when she was being sailed around the world at our expense. Anyway, needless to say I didn't find what I was looking for, as everything had been replaced with 'sale items' and all the shoppers there were hormonally-crazed psychopaths. But it got me out of the house...

Torchlight Procession

Every Christmas the city of Edinburgh hosts a parade through the centre, lit by thousands of torches. It's open to anybody who wants to walk - on payment of a £5 donation to charity you get a large candle, and then walk from the Royal Mile to Calton Hill for a fireworks display and large bonfire. This is the queue up the back road of Calton Hill, just as my mate Paul's torch got caught by a gust of wind and flamed spectacularly.



Your author braving the sub-zero temperatures to participate, hence the closed eyes. It might look like I'm wielding a flaming sword, but it was actually a canvas tube dipped in wax, with a wooden hilt you held onto. The cardboard coaster was to catch drips, but we all got covered anyway. My friend Michelle actually saw someone whose cardboard protector had caught fire. Time to drop the torch and run, I would have thought.



"Keep what away from my face? This large firey torch I'm holding? No - they can't mean that...it must be about something else. Ow! My face! And my cloth!"



Moving off from Bank Street down the Mound, with the trees of Princes Street Gardens lit up in the distance. This might look like me, but it's actually someone else - I'm in front on the right talking to my friend Mel from New Zealand.



This definately is me - because I've got my eyes closed again. I do this a lot when someone takes my photo. I never know when to stare, when to look normal, and when I can blink. So I just tend to do all three at once and end up looking like I've lapsed into a coma. Paul, as you can see, could out-grin Cherie Blair.



The rickety ferris wheel and carousel on Princes Street.



The procession ends at the top of Calton Hill, where there was a fireworks display. Sadly we missed most of it as we were at the back caught up in the logjam of people in picture 1, but we got up there anyway and made the most of it. The icy wind was whipping across the hill, playing havoc with our dwindling torches. L to R - Richard, Laura, me (with eyes open - I obviously guessed right), Michelle.



This was one of the big showpieces at the top of Calton Hill, a large whicker bull that was roaring away merrily when we arrived. The smoke rising to the right is from a huge bonfire that people were enlarging by hurling their torches at. After warming ourselves at the fire for a while, we went off to the pub for a few cold pints...

Festivity Finished

Christmas trees are just for Christmas


Edinburgh Council has an arrangement whereby you can offload your unwanted Christmas tree on them, and they take it away for recycling. They collect trees from the street, so at this time of year you see battered, yellowing Christmas trees lying forlornly at the side of the road, abandoned by the people who briefly owned them. This tradition signals the end of the festive period, and the start of the push towards the New Year celebrations of Hogmanay. More and more trees appear over the weeks into January, but I took the photo above at about 5pm on the 27th of December - barely 48hrs after the end of Christmas Day. It's certainly the earliest I've ever seen a tree discarded - like the first snowdrop or the new season of lambs, everything seems to be happening earlier and earlier - although I doubt global warming is responsible for this one.

Looking at this needleless sapling waiting for the one-way trip to the shredder, I started wondering about the plight of the humble Christmas tree. I have no idea how long it takes a spruce to grow to a 6ft height, but it must be a few years at least. The poor guy sits there quite happily in a plantation with birds and squirrels frolicking in his (her?) branches, enjoying the changing seasons, indulging in whatever it is trees get up to in a forest with no-one around. Then suddenly over the space of a few weeks, it's hacked out of the ground, bundled up, driven to a shop and sold, and then briefly draped with plasticky baubles, before being dumped in the street and taken away to be mulched. I think artificial trees are definately the way to go. They may look crap, but they look crap for many years.

I hope you all had a festive Christmas, and are looking forward to 2006. I was in London, as I said before, and had a good time. My flights behaved themselves - thankfully I got back before the latest batch of snow arrived in the Eastern UK. I could see it from my window as I was coming back - large pillowy clouds rising up along the coast. By the time we banked into Edinburgh, all I could see was a dark brown cloudmass coming off the sea in a threatening manner. At the moment the city is in the grip of the 'Six days' festival - the nothing gap between Christmas and Hogmanay - which has been marketed as a fun-filled minibreak excuse, apparently. I'll be back at work, but there's a Torchlight Parade coming up and various other festive events, so I'll probably drag myself into the cold for some blogworthy material. And some fun, of course...

Merry Christmas

A Christmas Robin...


A very merry Christmas to all readers of DUaB - and a very happy new year! I'm flying to London tomorrow for the Christmas festivities, but I'll be back on Wednesday the 27th (as I'll be back at work). So until then, all the best to you and yours, don't eat too much, and I'll see you in a few days...

Oh - if you were wondering about the Christmas desk displays, the management decided to award a joint prize between the two competitors I was talking about - so they both won, then. A bit of seasonal cheer all round...

De(s)korations

Christmas Competition


Well, it's less than a week until the big festive day, and at our office work is winding down for the holiday and everything is becoming more relaxed. Unless Dorothy is reading this, in which case we're working as productively and efficiently as ever - both as highly committed individuals, and together as a dedicated, customer-focused team. And not just when it comes to sharing out the Miniature Heroes. The office is becoming more Christmassey as people decorate their desks and whatnot - in the festive spirit the Management have offered a bottle of Champagne to the person judged to have the best display. Somehow I doubt your author is in the running for the award, unless they are looking for plastic model crabs and postcards of Sydney. I do have a snow globe from Blackpool Tower though, which you could argue is slightly festive. Not much though, admittedly.

I'm going to try and sneak a camera in to take pictures of some of these desk displays, as some people have gone to bewildering lengths for what will undoubtedly turn out to be a cheapo bottle of Aldi Bulgarian sparkling wine. The thing is, I can't go up to people and ask if I can photograph their pride and joy in order to ridicule them on the internet - which let's face it, is what the internet's for (aside from pornography, of course). So I might have to go in early and take a photo before the owner arrives, which means I run the gauntlet of someone seeing me and coming to the conclusion that I'm a secret fan of office decorations, and therefore a wierdo to be avoided at all costs. As if I have a scrapbook of tinsel samples, or something. I bet someone does, somewhere.

Two of the most spectacular desk displays are right in front of me, so I can look at them all day should I wish. Both put up by men, the first is a truly staggering mass of tinsel, lights, holly, streamers, beads, a 4ft tree (all on a standard office desk). The whole thing merges into a window display with a large flashing net-like arrangement of lights, a Christmas tree (or Holiday tree, if you prefer) made out of fabric, and strings of beads connected to the top of the PC monitor. In short, it's vile. But full marks for effort though. The bloke that put this up spent days - and I mean days - building it up, bringing new bits in, carefully rearranging things for maximum effect - and was then outdone by a competitor in a matter of seconds.

Another man (you can draw your own conclusions) came in and with a strange-sounding grating noise there suddenly emerged a 5ft high blue inflatable Santa Claus. Again, this in on his desk - my desk is full of worryingly urgent-looking pieces of paper, Miniature Heroes wrappers, and of course plastic crabs. With a wicked grin at the man with the window display, he then produced another Santa - this one a traditional red colour - and inflated that on the top of his monitor. It's huge, I'm not kidding. At this point, you could see the first bloke sink into his chair - as the twin Santas rose upwards, his spirits deflated like a week-old airbed. I almost feel sorry for him - all that effort, and he's gazumped by a couple of festive beach inflatables.

The judging is tomorrow, so I'll let you all know who got the prize. The inflatable man (although worryingly he's younger than me) taunted his opponent by tossing cotton wool balls around his desk as snow, and draping fairy lights over his potted plant, sure of victory. It's too close to call though, I don't know who'll be tasting the sweet Cava of victory. It won't be us though, I've got a token length of brown tinsel behind me along the window, and this morning amidst all the excitement one end parted company with the sellotape and flopped, crackling, to the carpet in defeat. It now looks like I've glued an eel to the window - but I like it, I can pretend it's a defiant statement about the over-commercial nature of Christmas. Oh crap. Christmas shopping. Erm...

Xmas in the Office

Disco Fever...highly contagious


Apologies about the lack of posts for the past week - the Christmas rush was combined with mysterious computer failure here, presenting difficulties with getting the blog updated. But, here we are, back to normal. As I promised on my last post this one is about the joys of the office Christmas party. As this time last year I wasn't yet working in Sydney (which thankfully seems to have calmed down recently, violence-wise), I didn't have an office party or staff night out or anything in 2004. This year, back in gainful employment I was determined to catch up on what I missed out on. Apparently what I missed out on was a party held at the local Masonic Lodge - for cost reasons I'm assured, although with our connections to the medical and political communities I bet there was more to it than that. The result, so I'm told, was a good night out - although I would have been more pre-occupied with finding hidden doors and paintings with holes for eyes and suchlike. TV has given me a pretty good understanding of what goes on at Masonic Lodges, I think you'll agree.

But it was not to be, as we were at a backroom of a large music venue/five-a-side football complex in the SE of Edinburgh. I won't name it - but let's just say you might go there to swap maize. We turned up at 7pm, fighting a bitter wind that was piling down from the Pentlands, and were promptly ushered out of a large ballroom with Champagne-toting waiters to a cramped disco round the back, with trays of sausage rolls. Ahh, the public sector. Having found the correct party, it turned into a pretty good night. I was expecting an unexciting wedding-like roomful of people sat at tables, slowly drinking - but give us credit - as soon as the music started everyone crammed onto the bathroom-sized dancefloor and went for it. I will freely admit to being the world's worst dancer - but even I was caught up in the heady atmosphere enough to put down some moves. Or it might have been the lager.

Actually I was still dancing when our pre-ordered taxi came at the end of the night. As usual, there were the serial dancers, who were camped in a small section of the wooden dancefloor all night. There were also the selective types who would rush on when they heard the first few beats of Dancing Queen, or something similar. The highlight of my night was watching what happened when the DJ played Summer of '69 by Bryan Adams, and to a man all the 40yr olds from the IT Department got up, creating a Buncefield-like haze of aftershave over the dancefloor. Aside from similar musical abbherations, the usual Christmassey music was on offer - including the songs where you have to do a special dance, like the bile-inducing Saturday Night by Whigfield. If this means nothing to you (Dad; Mum), then you are very, very lucky. YMCA was played too, of course, along with a few - yes - line dancing numbers I watched with fascination/terror. I'll say this - you put on a record that involves an organised, timed dance in a roomful of drunken statisticians - you'll witness a thing of beauty.

There was a raffle - the highlight of which being when the social club president (a rather portly woman) won a chocolate fondue set - and a semi-edible buffet. Despite there being about 150 people there, mostly we sat at large round tables, school disco-like, in our office sections. Ours had a drinks kitty, which we made full use of. To make life easier for the barstaff, not to mention ourselves, we wrote down each person's drink on a list and just presented it at the bar each time (statisticians, eh?). We had the ubiquitous Christmas crackers - I won what can only be described as a plastic moustache comb - and near the end of the night I realised that I was the last person in the room that was still wearing the paper hat. Festive to the last...

Riots in Sydney

Dark days loom in Cronulla


The news coming from my old home over the last few days has been worrying. A confrontation between a group of Lebanese-Australians and two white lifeguards seems to have caused underlying tensions to erupt. Nobody seems to know exactly what happened - maybe the Lebanese were running, divebombing, or indulging in heavy petting. It escalated from there and this weekend mobs of 'Anglo-Saxon' men went on the rampage - they might as well just call them racists - assaulting people of Mediterranean or Arabic appearance. Police made dozens of arrests in suburbs of South East Sydney - most of them in Cronulla (above) which I visited just over a year ago (see Dec 2004 archive). Predictably gangs of 'Middle-Eastern' youths responded with violence of their own, peaking on Monday night in an attack on Cronulla which forced people to run for their front doors...

...More than a dozen men leapt out of a van and jumped on [parked] cars, smashing the windows with baseball bats. Through a megaphone, they challenged residents to come out and face them. Those inside turned off the lights and hid behind the blinds. (Sydney Morning Herald, Dec 14th, 2005)

Now in an entire year of living in Sydney - I never once came across any racism. Although I'm not of 'Middle-Eastern' apperance of course - I'm a non-racist 'Anglo-Saxon', albeit more 'Anglo' than most Sydneysiders. I didn't even get much anti-English stuff either, even when Flintoff and the boys were creaming them in the Ashes all summer. But like most big cities, Sydney has a problem - segregation. This has come about as a result of two factors; size and community.

Sydney sprawls over such a colossal area that people building houses and communities were free to go where they liked - you go on a train from the Pacific coast to the Blue Mountains, it takes two hours to chug through the seemingly endless Western Suburbs. So new arrivals had plenty of choice when they had to find somewhere to live. The second factor then took over - everyone arriving in Australia is an immigrant, in the same boat (no pun intended). When you have to start a new life, it's natural to want to live near people that have come from your country, speak your language, can help you start out. Hence communities of single ethnic backgrounds spring up, and as they grow, become isolated.

Sydney has many of these communities. The Turkish community in Auburn, Vietnamese in Cabramatta, Irish in Bondi. Over the years people - for whatever reason - have felt more comfortable living amongst their own, and it's to the detriment of the overall city. Heck, it's something I was guilty of - I could have moved into any of Sydney's suburbs. I chose Paddington because it was popular with young, go-getting types like me (ahem). I could have lived in Eastwood with the Chinese community - but it didn't enter my mind. So when you have isolated communities, some will inevitably become disaffected, which leads to resentment and anger, and eventually there's a spark that ignites it all.

I think the Australians have been genuinely staggered that it has happened in their back yard - and in one of their beachfront neighbourhoods of all places, the most iconic Australian environment. Australia revels in it's 'fair go for everyone' mantra, and rightly takes pride in being a welcoming society. But maybe this has been relied on too much over the recent years, and the changing populations of the cities have combined with the Howard Government's increasingly Republican-esque leanings to tarnish that ideal (the Government says every few months that Islamic terrorists attacking Australian cities is not a case of 'if', but 'when'. How can those announcements serve any purpose other than to instill resentment?).

I don't think the problems - as of Tuesday night, when I'm writing this - are as critical as some are making out in the media. There have been recent riots in Paris and Birmingham without societies there falling apart. But the rumblings in Sydney have definately found a nerve - as can be seen from the editorial of Monday's Sydney Morning Herald...

..."A nation's reputation for tolerance has been severely damaged...Australia has changed suddenly and inexplicably into an uglier and darker place [and] is now in a racist cul-de-sac. To progress from here, the whole country needs to stop, examine what has gone wrong in Sydney's beachside suburbs, and find a way to reverse direction."

So if the recent trouble forces the Sydney public to look at themselves, and the authorities to look at the causes of the resentment, then hopefully things like this will be the wake-up call a large city needs to re-discover the wonderful reputation it sorely deserves. Anyway, just my thoughts. My next post will be after the office Christmas party, so will probably be a bit lighter in nature - although with 200 drunk statisticians in an enclosed space - you never know...