Whenever I hear one of these records, I am automatically transported back in time.
1) Nessun Dorma - Luciano Pavarotti: Any time I hear the last minute or so of Nessum Dorma, I'm 10 years old and spending the summer holidays with my Granny and Grampa in Brechin. The World Cup is on the BBC every day, and the green pitches seem especially bright under the Italian floodlights. Every match is preceded and followed by the tournament's adopted theme tune, bellowed by Pavarotti. This piece of music is a whole mish-mash of different memories - watching the matches in my Granny and Grampa's house, recreating Salvatori Schillachi's bug-eyed goal celebrations and Packie Bonner's penalty saves in Brechin Public Park, and generally playing more football in a day than my legs could now manage in a month.
2) This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours - Manic Street Preachers: This was the last album I bought before moving to Edinburgh for university at 18. In the flurry of leaving drinks, packing, work and general excitement in the week leading up to the move, I barely listened to the album. But once I'd unpacked in my new home in Craiglockhart Halls of Residence and set my stereo up, this album remained in the CD player for a while afterwards. All of the tracks are now forever associated with that first week away from home and the exciting new world it presented.
3) Who Killed The Zutons? - The Zutons: One of the first albums I bought after returning from a year traveling around the world, this coincided with me buying a car and an in-car CD player and getting a job with the Oban Times. As I scooted around the town from Mrs Wife's folks' house to the office, the Liverpudlians' first album became the soundtrack to that first week as a full-time journalist.
4) A Grand Don't Come For Free - The Streets: A few months into our round the world jaunt in 2003-2004, Mrs Wife and I were skint and living hand-to-mouth in Perth, Western Australia. One of my friends took pity and sent across a pile of albums to help pass the time. Later, when we were based in Melbourne, he did the same again, just before we started traveling down Australia's east coast by bus. One of the CDs was The Streets' second album, and I would often listen to it on overnight bus journies, this curious English concept album soundtracking sleepless nights staring out into the pitch-black bush.
5) Love Is Noise - The Verve: The Verve's fourth album was released the day I set off for Norway for the first time with work. I'd decided before leaving that Love Is Noise would be my anthem for the three-day jaunt, and I listened to the track any time I had a spare five minutes. I also drove my colleagues to distraction by singing it at all other times, including making an odd hooting noise to recreate the instruments. Any time I hear it now, I'm back in Stavanger in the summer sunshine.
6) Be Here Now - Oasis: Oasis opened the concerts on their Be Here Now tour of 1997 with the song of the same name, and any time I hear it I can remember the excitement of being in the front row, my arms squeezed against the barrier to stop my ribs snapping, as the band burst out of a red phonebox and straight into this song.
7) Did You Miss Me? - The Cooper Temple Clause: When working in a canteen while at university in 2001, I would arrive at 8am on Saturday morning (not a student-friendly time of the weekend), hook up my CD player and stick on my favourite album of the time, The Cooper Temple Clause's majestic debut See This Through and Leave. The opening keyboard refrain still helps perk me up on occasion, although I don't have an endless supply of bacon rolls and Coke on hand any more.
8) Death Trip 21 - Ash: In 1999, five of us from university went to Ireland for 10 days. These were the days of portable tape players, and my friends and I swapped compilation tapes. Strangely, the only track I can remember putting on mine is Death Trip 21 by Ash, from their Nu-Clear Sounds album. Hearing it now reminds me of the train ride from Belfast to Dublin.
9) In The Meantime - Spacehog: This song reminds me of the same holiday, as it was on the jukebox in the hostel we stayed in in Dublin. We were in the Irish capital in mid-April, but it was hammering down with snow for most of our time there. So we spent a lot of time in the hostel bar, and this song got a few airings during our stay.
10) Here, There and Everywhere - The Beatles: The first dance at our wedding. Mrs Wife had this on her list of potential first dances from her teenage years, and it was an easy choice to make. It also features in the episode of Friends where Phoebe gets married, played on a steel drum, but ours was the Fabs' version.
Showing posts with label Australia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Australia. Show all posts
Friday, January 22, 2010
Monday, September 28, 2009
Flashback
A while ago (well, two years ago if we're being accurate) I posted an old account of the time Mrs Wife and I were travelling around Vietnam.
Because I'm lazy and I was a better writer when I was a 23-year-old layabout than I am now that I'm a 29-year-old layabout, here's an account of when Mrs Wife and I first arrived in Australia in late 2003.
Happy New Year from Perth! Hope everybody had a good Hogmanay despite what I hear were hurricane-like weather conditions on the East of Scotland.
For the record, both New Year's Eve and New Year's Day were scorching here. As this is the start of the Ozzie summer, temperature is steadily rising, so although Xmas Day's 32 degrees seemed pretty darn hot, the temperature is now nudging 40 degrees almost every day, so it can almost seem unbearable - at least until I remember that the alternative is driving home from Aberdeen in the dark during a blizzard - then the ice lollies and sunbathing don't seem as bad....
Anyway, life in Perth is good. It's a lot smaller than I expected, especially after arriving from Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, but it's a lot more manageable than those three cities, and a lot more chilled out. We've been here since the 20th of December, and in that short space of time I have already had three different employers.
Finding work hasn't been that easy, our visas restrict us to three months in a single job, so employers tend to shy away from travellers. My first crack at employment was in a small cafe in the middle of Perth run by a psychotic Chinese woman called Nancy (that was what first set the alarm bells ringing, Chinese people aren't called Nancy, they're called Ng and Chan and things). The place was staffed almost exclusively by illegal immigrants, from places as diverse as Yugoslavia (the mysterious and suspicious Dragan - potentially evading war crimes charges I think), Ben from Taiwan (has now overstayed his visa by three years) and assorted other Orientals with all the warmth and endearing qualities of frozen vomit.
After a four-hour trial spent avoiding Nancy's death stare as much as possible, I was offered the job for $12 an hour, which Nancy assured me was a great wage. Which it is in British terms (almost five GBP an hour) but the minimum wage for waiters in Oz is $15ph. I also knew that if I had to work there for two months, there would either be a raid by the Department of Immigration, or I would end up knocking Nancy's head in with a coffee pot, so I politely declined her offer.
My second stab at earning some cash was scrubbing campervans near the airport. Although it sounds like a pretty crappy job, it paid $14ph (about six pounds), was outdoors in the sun, and the people were pretty sound. But there wasn't enough work to last all the employees, so it was a case of last in, first out, but I at least got three days out of this one.
And now we're both working for a telemarketing company, trying to sell mobile phones. There's a base rate to ensure we don't starve, but most of the money is made through commission, so we'll see how it goes. We're both looking for better jobs though. Personally, I'm just waiting for the job advert seeking an immediate vacancy for a roving music journalist on $100,000 a year....
Aside from the jobhunting, we haven't really done very much since we arrived, partly due to having nae cash, and partly because our time here has been interrupted by Xmas and New Year. We spent Xmas in the hostel, with a champagne brekky by the pool and then a full Xmas dinner and Xmas supper.
It was good to spend the day lazing round in the sun, and generally mucking round in the pool. We were out in Perth on Hogmanay, our hostel is in the 'trendy' area of Northbridge (imagine Camden in London or The Grassmarket in Edinburgh, but with more pissed British people and no rain and you're getting close), so we spent the night at the street party there, walking between the stages and through the huge crowds until the fireworks.
So now we've moved into a flat with a couple of Ozzies, business student Tim and Journalism graduate Leah, and we're trying to save a bit of cash to buy a car and keep on moving. Hope everybody is fully recovered from the festivities and glad to be back at work.
Because I'm lazy and I was a better writer when I was a 23-year-old layabout than I am now that I'm a 29-year-old layabout, here's an account of when Mrs Wife and I first arrived in Australia in late 2003.
Happy New Year from Perth! Hope everybody had a good Hogmanay despite what I hear were hurricane-like weather conditions on the East of Scotland.
For the record, both New Year's Eve and New Year's Day were scorching here. As this is the start of the Ozzie summer, temperature is steadily rising, so although Xmas Day's 32 degrees seemed pretty darn hot, the temperature is now nudging 40 degrees almost every day, so it can almost seem unbearable - at least until I remember that the alternative is driving home from Aberdeen in the dark during a blizzard - then the ice lollies and sunbathing don't seem as bad....
Anyway, life in Perth is good. It's a lot smaller than I expected, especially after arriving from Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, but it's a lot more manageable than those three cities, and a lot more chilled out. We've been here since the 20th of December, and in that short space of time I have already had three different employers.
Finding work hasn't been that easy, our visas restrict us to three months in a single job, so employers tend to shy away from travellers. My first crack at employment was in a small cafe in the middle of Perth run by a psychotic Chinese woman called Nancy (that was what first set the alarm bells ringing, Chinese people aren't called Nancy, they're called Ng and Chan and things). The place was staffed almost exclusively by illegal immigrants, from places as diverse as Yugoslavia (the mysterious and suspicious Dragan - potentially evading war crimes charges I think), Ben from Taiwan (has now overstayed his visa by three years) and assorted other Orientals with all the warmth and endearing qualities of frozen vomit.
After a four-hour trial spent avoiding Nancy's death stare as much as possible, I was offered the job for $12 an hour, which Nancy assured me was a great wage. Which it is in British terms (almost five GBP an hour) but the minimum wage for waiters in Oz is $15ph. I also knew that if I had to work there for two months, there would either be a raid by the Department of Immigration, or I would end up knocking Nancy's head in with a coffee pot, so I politely declined her offer.
My second stab at earning some cash was scrubbing campervans near the airport. Although it sounds like a pretty crappy job, it paid $14ph (about six pounds), was outdoors in the sun, and the people were pretty sound. But there wasn't enough work to last all the employees, so it was a case of last in, first out, but I at least got three days out of this one.
And now we're both working for a telemarketing company, trying to sell mobile phones. There's a base rate to ensure we don't starve, but most of the money is made through commission, so we'll see how it goes. We're both looking for better jobs though. Personally, I'm just waiting for the job advert seeking an immediate vacancy for a roving music journalist on $100,000 a year....
Aside from the jobhunting, we haven't really done very much since we arrived, partly due to having nae cash, and partly because our time here has been interrupted by Xmas and New Year. We spent Xmas in the hostel, with a champagne brekky by the pool and then a full Xmas dinner and Xmas supper.
It was good to spend the day lazing round in the sun, and generally mucking round in the pool. We were out in Perth on Hogmanay, our hostel is in the 'trendy' area of Northbridge (imagine Camden in London or The Grassmarket in Edinburgh, but with more pissed British people and no rain and you're getting close), so we spent the night at the street party there, walking between the stages and through the huge crowds until the fireworks.
So now we've moved into a flat with a couple of Ozzies, business student Tim and Journalism graduate Leah, and we're trying to save a bit of cash to buy a car and keep on moving. Hope everybody is fully recovered from the festivities and glad to be back at work.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Can You Spare A Minute?
Thankfully, strangers don't often stop me in the street.
Even the charity muggers attempting to part passers-by from their hard-earned cash don't often ask me if I can spare five minutes of my time to help save starving orphaned disabled endangered mice in famine-stricken Bosnia.
Maybe I don't look like I have the money to spare. For work, I wear a cheap Tesco suit, and my shoes have seen better days, thanks in no small part to my daily walk to the train, which involves walking over wet and muddy grass. Actually, my journey doesn't necessarily have to take me along such a route, as there's a perfectly dry concrete pavement on the other side of the road.
But using that pavement would mean my walk to the train would take a minute or two longer each morning. And I'm lazy.
Or maybe the charity muggers avoid me because I tend not to be smiling when I'm pounding the streets of Aberdeen, and my blank face/scowl acts as a deterrent. Or maybe I walk so fast that I seem uninterruptably busy, and the charity mugger decides that I'm unlikely to break my journey to help the starving orphaned mice of Bosnia.
But sometimes, very rarely, I'll arrive on the same part of the planet as some life form that decides I'm worthy of engaging in conversation.
Last Friday, for example, while waiting to be served in an Aberdeen city centre hostelry, a young man who had, I guess, partaken of a refreshment or two, decided to tell me all about his Argentinian mum. I'm not entirely sure why he picked me to be the receiver of such wisdom, nor why he picked that specific topic of conversation. But I can now tell anyone who's interested about the young man's mum's fascination and fervent support for Boca Juniors.
Perhaps the strangest occasion I was accosted by one of these curious souls was in Australia in 2004. Mrs Wife (then known as Miss Girlfriend) and I were at Cape Leeuwin lighthouse in Western Australia, the point at which the Indian and Southern Oceans meet. It was a cold and windy day, and it was bitterly apparent that the wind hailed from the next landmass south of this point, Antarctica.
Having risked being blown south to meet the penguins by climbing the lighthouse, Mrs Wife and I were taking a few photographs and ambling around at ground level, when a young couple came bounding up to us.
The female had an excited look on her face, and she could barely contain this excitement as she engaged us in conversation with the unforgettable opening gambit of: "Oh my god, are you two twins? You look so alike!"
Despite our obvious bemusement, it felt almost cruel to explain to this flustered young creature that, no, we weren't related, and that our relationship was on a slightly different tangent to the one she had imagined.
Nutters - wouldn't want to live with them, but the world would be a darker place without them.
Even the charity muggers attempting to part passers-by from their hard-earned cash don't often ask me if I can spare five minutes of my time to help save starving orphaned disabled endangered mice in famine-stricken Bosnia.
Maybe I don't look like I have the money to spare. For work, I wear a cheap Tesco suit, and my shoes have seen better days, thanks in no small part to my daily walk to the train, which involves walking over wet and muddy grass. Actually, my journey doesn't necessarily have to take me along such a route, as there's a perfectly dry concrete pavement on the other side of the road.
But using that pavement would mean my walk to the train would take a minute or two longer each morning. And I'm lazy.
Or maybe the charity muggers avoid me because I tend not to be smiling when I'm pounding the streets of Aberdeen, and my blank face/scowl acts as a deterrent. Or maybe I walk so fast that I seem uninterruptably busy, and the charity mugger decides that I'm unlikely to break my journey to help the starving orphaned mice of Bosnia.
But sometimes, very rarely, I'll arrive on the same part of the planet as some life form that decides I'm worthy of engaging in conversation.
Last Friday, for example, while waiting to be served in an Aberdeen city centre hostelry, a young man who had, I guess, partaken of a refreshment or two, decided to tell me all about his Argentinian mum. I'm not entirely sure why he picked me to be the receiver of such wisdom, nor why he picked that specific topic of conversation. But I can now tell anyone who's interested about the young man's mum's fascination and fervent support for Boca Juniors.
Perhaps the strangest occasion I was accosted by one of these curious souls was in Australia in 2004. Mrs Wife (then known as Miss Girlfriend) and I were at Cape Leeuwin lighthouse in Western Australia, the point at which the Indian and Southern Oceans meet. It was a cold and windy day, and it was bitterly apparent that the wind hailed from the next landmass south of this point, Antarctica.
Having risked being blown south to meet the penguins by climbing the lighthouse, Mrs Wife and I were taking a few photographs and ambling around at ground level, when a young couple came bounding up to us.
The female had an excited look on her face, and she could barely contain this excitement as she engaged us in conversation with the unforgettable opening gambit of: "Oh my god, are you two twins? You look so alike!"
Despite our obvious bemusement, it felt almost cruel to explain to this flustered young creature that, no, we weren't related, and that our relationship was on a slightly different tangent to the one she had imagined.
Nutters - wouldn't want to live with them, but the world would be a darker place without them.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Buying A Bitsashitty From Japanese Robbers
In yesterday's post, one of the eight fascinating facts I offered up to you strange people of the worldwide interweb was that I had visited seven of the eight Australian States and Territories, and that I missed out on the Northern Territory because of an exploding car engine.
Ole Blue The Heretic asked me to expand on this story, so I'm publishing an email sent to friends and family on February 1st 2004, shortly after the incident occurred:
Hello everybody, hope you are all well and not dying of hypothermia in the Arctic wastelands of northern Europe. Perth is almost unbearably hot during the day now, and we haven’t seen anything you could properly call rain since we were in Singapore six weeks ago (although Melbourne and Brisbane have been battered by huge storms which have caused floods big enough to submerge cars – thankfully that is 5000 miles away!)
The fact that we’re in Perth at all is due to a series of events which has given me the impression that we’re doomed to stay here forever more. Initially we arrived here just before Xmas, with the intention of finding jobs for a couple of months. The only problem with that plan was that there weren’t many jobs worth doing that were available to travelers (we’re only allowed to work in one job for three months at a time). So after a month or so of generally fruitless searching, albeit with a combined total of six days work between us for the month to show for our endeavours, we decided that our best option would be to buy a car and head south for some fruit picking work.
We purchased a decent-looking Mitsubishi Station Wagon from a Japanese couple, after test driving it and making sure that it wasn’t a battered old heap. After collecting the car on the Friday, we decided to spend the weekend visiting the Pinnacles desert 400km north of Perth, to see the standing stones and the stromatolites (the oldest life on Earth).
Two hours into our four-hour journey, the car began to lose power, eventually dying by the side of a near-deserted stretch of highway. For anyone picturing a small country road in the middle of nowhere, please take into account the fact that Western Australia is a state one-and-a-half times the size of the UK and Ireland put together, and that only 2.5 million people live in this huge expanse of nothing, 1.5 million of them in Perth. We are talking SERIOUSLY deserted stretches of road.
Looking under the bonnet of the car, smoke was rising from puddles of oil which had spurted from some mysterious fissure in the engine, which, despite an almost complete lack of mechanical knowledge, I deduced was not a good sign.
Fortunately, we had trundled to a halt near a small farmhouse, and I walked across to ask for the use of a phone. As this farmhouse was also running a small business selling watermelons and grapefruit, we also hoped for some refreshments while we awaited the arrival of our knight in shining tow truck.
As I approached the porch of the house, a woman emerged, eying me with a look of disdain as if I were about to deposit a decomposing skunk upon her doorstep. Explaining that our car had just broken down, I asked if I could call a local mechanic, to which this cheerful businesswoman replied “No” and walked off, possibly to torture small children in an outhouse somewhere. Completely unprepared for this event, I could only gaze open-mouthed before heading back to the car.
Now our only option was to use my British mobile phone to call the RAC in Australia. So for the next 20 minutes I patiently tried to explain to the monkey on the other end of the line that no, I wasn’t a member, and that yes, I would like to have somebody rescue our car, preferably before we had to resort to cannibalism to survive. Twenty pounds worth of exasperated conversation later, with the added treat of the $158 membership fee on top, we were promised that the mechanic would be with us in an hour.
Sure enough, he arrived at the allotted time, tried the engine a couple of times and declared that there was nothing he could do. Our options then were to get the car towed to the nearest town, Gin Gin, for free or anywhere else for $1 per kilometer. As Gin Gin is over 2hrs from Perth, we weren’t especially keen to take the car there, so we began the journey back to Perth. About an hour into the journey, Patrick (the mechanic) reminded us that we would have to pay $1 per km to Perth AND BACK, which would have cost us another $200+. So we decided instead to leave the car outside a garage in the town of Wannerroo, an hour from Perth by bus.
Which is where it still is two weeks later, having a replacement engine fitted. I think the only suitable name for the car now is Titanic, collapsing as she did on her maiden voyage. The car originally cost us $2500, a sum which has now inflated to $5200, money which has taken us exactly nowhere.
As a result, we are now back in Perth, in the same flat, with no realistic chance of moving in the near future. We’ve both found jobs in a British theme pub round the corner from the flat, [Miss Girlfriend] behind the bar, me collecting glasses, which is at least letting us pay the rent and feed ourselves on pasta. The pub is called the Elephant and Wheelbarrow, part of a chain across Australia, so if we can ever get to Melbourne or Sydney, we might be able to transfer across there. Although the 10pm-5am shifts are a bit of a weekend killer, the house band on a Friday is a pretty good Beatles tribute band, followed on Saturdays by a 70s and 80s cover band (the only band I’ve ever heard follow a Cyndi Lauper cover with Ram Jam’s Black Betty), which means it’s definitely not the worst job I’ve ever had.
Aside from this rather lengthy tale of misery, there’s not much else to tell. We’ve visited Rottnest Island, about 20 miles from Perth in the Indian Ocean. It’s the only place in the world where you can see wild Quokkas. A Quokka is a cat-sized marsupial with a long rat-like tail, and they are in over-abundant supply on Rottnest. The only real way to see the island is by bike, so we spent a day cycling round, and every time we stopped we were approached by groups of Quokkas looking for food and attention. We’ve got loads of photographs of them, should anybody want to see exactly what I’m talking about.
The only other event of any note was Australia Day last Monday, a nationwide celebration of all things Oz. [Miss Girlfriend], myself and our flatmate Leah spent most of the day on the bank of the Swan River, watching air shows, water displays and other entertainments, which culminated in a spectacular fireworks display from boats in the middle of the river and from the tops of the Perth CBD skyscrapers. There was also a fairly decent concert televised from Canberra, on a day which is as much an excuse for alcoholic over-indulgence as anything else.
Well, this episode of our adventures over, I am going to finish here. Keep in touch folks (thank you all my Celtic-supporting acquaintances, I am now well aware of the famous Glasgow Rangers’ capitulation in the Old Firm match, and of the gap at the top of the SPL, you may cease the reminders at any time).
Our address, should anyone wish to send cans of Irn Bru or UN-style food parcels is [address deleted to protect the current residents from the strange folk of the worldwide interweb].
And that is the sorry tale of the exploding Australian Mitsubishi. We did eventually get the car back, and managed to drive it all the way across Australia from Perth to Melbourne, eating and sleeping in it along the way. We made some good friends in Perth as well, so having to spend four months there wasn't so bad after all.
Ole Blue The Heretic asked me to expand on this story, so I'm publishing an email sent to friends and family on February 1st 2004, shortly after the incident occurred:
Hello everybody, hope you are all well and not dying of hypothermia in the Arctic wastelands of northern Europe. Perth is almost unbearably hot during the day now, and we haven’t seen anything you could properly call rain since we were in Singapore six weeks ago (although Melbourne and Brisbane have been battered by huge storms which have caused floods big enough to submerge cars – thankfully that is 5000 miles away!)
The fact that we’re in Perth at all is due to a series of events which has given me the impression that we’re doomed to stay here forever more. Initially we arrived here just before Xmas, with the intention of finding jobs for a couple of months. The only problem with that plan was that there weren’t many jobs worth doing that were available to travelers (we’re only allowed to work in one job for three months at a time). So after a month or so of generally fruitless searching, albeit with a combined total of six days work between us for the month to show for our endeavours, we decided that our best option would be to buy a car and head south for some fruit picking work.
We purchased a decent-looking Mitsubishi Station Wagon from a Japanese couple, after test driving it and making sure that it wasn’t a battered old heap. After collecting the car on the Friday, we decided to spend the weekend visiting the Pinnacles desert 400km north of Perth, to see the standing stones and the stromatolites (the oldest life on Earth).
Two hours into our four-hour journey, the car began to lose power, eventually dying by the side of a near-deserted stretch of highway. For anyone picturing a small country road in the middle of nowhere, please take into account the fact that Western Australia is a state one-and-a-half times the size of the UK and Ireland put together, and that only 2.5 million people live in this huge expanse of nothing, 1.5 million of them in Perth. We are talking SERIOUSLY deserted stretches of road.
Looking under the bonnet of the car, smoke was rising from puddles of oil which had spurted from some mysterious fissure in the engine, which, despite an almost complete lack of mechanical knowledge, I deduced was not a good sign.
Fortunately, we had trundled to a halt near a small farmhouse, and I walked across to ask for the use of a phone. As this farmhouse was also running a small business selling watermelons and grapefruit, we also hoped for some refreshments while we awaited the arrival of our knight in shining tow truck.
As I approached the porch of the house, a woman emerged, eying me with a look of disdain as if I were about to deposit a decomposing skunk upon her doorstep. Explaining that our car had just broken down, I asked if I could call a local mechanic, to which this cheerful businesswoman replied “No” and walked off, possibly to torture small children in an outhouse somewhere. Completely unprepared for this event, I could only gaze open-mouthed before heading back to the car.
Now our only option was to use my British mobile phone to call the RAC in Australia. So for the next 20 minutes I patiently tried to explain to the monkey on the other end of the line that no, I wasn’t a member, and that yes, I would like to have somebody rescue our car, preferably before we had to resort to cannibalism to survive. Twenty pounds worth of exasperated conversation later, with the added treat of the $158 membership fee on top, we were promised that the mechanic would be with us in an hour.
Sure enough, he arrived at the allotted time, tried the engine a couple of times and declared that there was nothing he could do. Our options then were to get the car towed to the nearest town, Gin Gin, for free or anywhere else for $1 per kilometer. As Gin Gin is over 2hrs from Perth, we weren’t especially keen to take the car there, so we began the journey back to Perth. About an hour into the journey, Patrick (the mechanic) reminded us that we would have to pay $1 per km to Perth AND BACK, which would have cost us another $200+. So we decided instead to leave the car outside a garage in the town of Wannerroo, an hour from Perth by bus.
Which is where it still is two weeks later, having a replacement engine fitted. I think the only suitable name for the car now is Titanic, collapsing as she did on her maiden voyage. The car originally cost us $2500, a sum which has now inflated to $5200, money which has taken us exactly nowhere.
As a result, we are now back in Perth, in the same flat, with no realistic chance of moving in the near future. We’ve both found jobs in a British theme pub round the corner from the flat, [Miss Girlfriend] behind the bar, me collecting glasses, which is at least letting us pay the rent and feed ourselves on pasta. The pub is called the Elephant and Wheelbarrow, part of a chain across Australia, so if we can ever get to Melbourne or Sydney, we might be able to transfer across there. Although the 10pm-5am shifts are a bit of a weekend killer, the house band on a Friday is a pretty good Beatles tribute band, followed on Saturdays by a 70s and 80s cover band (the only band I’ve ever heard follow a Cyndi Lauper cover with Ram Jam’s Black Betty), which means it’s definitely not the worst job I’ve ever had.
Aside from this rather lengthy tale of misery, there’s not much else to tell. We’ve visited Rottnest Island, about 20 miles from Perth in the Indian Ocean. It’s the only place in the world where you can see wild Quokkas. A Quokka is a cat-sized marsupial with a long rat-like tail, and they are in over-abundant supply on Rottnest. The only real way to see the island is by bike, so we spent a day cycling round, and every time we stopped we were approached by groups of Quokkas looking for food and attention. We’ve got loads of photographs of them, should anybody want to see exactly what I’m talking about.
The only other event of any note was Australia Day last Monday, a nationwide celebration of all things Oz. [Miss Girlfriend], myself and our flatmate Leah spent most of the day on the bank of the Swan River, watching air shows, water displays and other entertainments, which culminated in a spectacular fireworks display from boats in the middle of the river and from the tops of the Perth CBD skyscrapers. There was also a fairly decent concert televised from Canberra, on a day which is as much an excuse for alcoholic over-indulgence as anything else.
Well, this episode of our adventures over, I am going to finish here. Keep in touch folks (thank you all my Celtic-supporting acquaintances, I am now well aware of the famous Glasgow Rangers’ capitulation in the Old Firm match, and of the gap at the top of the SPL, you may cease the reminders at any time).
Our address, should anyone wish to send cans of Irn Bru or UN-style food parcels is [address deleted to protect the current residents from the strange folk of the worldwide interweb].
And that is the sorry tale of the exploding Australian Mitsubishi. We did eventually get the car back, and managed to drive it all the way across Australia from Perth to Melbourne, eating and sleeping in it along the way. We made some good friends in Perth as well, so having to spend four months there wasn't so bad after all.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Eight Things About Me
As seen over at Blog d'Elisson and at Blissful Bedlam - Eight Random Facts About Me.
The useless knowledge is listed below, but first we'd better keep things proper by explaining the rools:
Write a post enumerating eight facts/habits about yourself. Include the rules at the beginning of the post.
Tag eight people, posting their names and links to their sites. (I'm not going to do that - if anyone wants to play, feel free. If you don't, don't.)
Leave comments at the sites you’ve tagged, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.
So here we go - eight things you didn't need (or want) to know about me:
1. I've never had an operation under general anaesthetic. In fact, I can count my hospital visits on the fingers of one hand: the first was to get a piece of grit removed from my eye as a teenager, the second was to see how badly I'd damaged my ankle playing football (it turned out to be a strained ligament), the third was to see whether I'd broken my nose playing football (notice a theme here? I hadn't, just burst it open quite spectacularly), the fourth was to see if I'd broken my ribs playing football (I hadn't, they were just bruised) and the fifth was when I had my toenail removed by a doctor who gave me a single local anaesthetic injection. Please note that I was touching wood and crossing my fingers whilst I wrote that answer.
2. The longest I've lived in one house is seven years, when my parents and I (and for three of those years Baby Brother) lived in a small cottage in the countryside near Montrose. I took a drive down there on the way home from work a couple of weeks ago and it hasn't changed at all in the intervening 20 years.
3. The most keepie-uppies I have ever done with a football without it bouncing on the ground is 120. At the end of the session, my legs were exhausted and I'd moved about 10 metres in the time it took, which was probably about five minutes. So I can't begin to fathom how Martinho Eduardo Orige managed to keep a ball in the air for 19-and-a-half hours.
4. I've visited seven of the eight Australian States and Territories, including the Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania. Mrs Wife (then known as Miss Girlfriend) and I didn't make it to the Northern Territory because of an unfortunate incident with an exploding car engine that cost us $2,500 to fix.
5. I can lick my nose and wiggle my ears. But not at the same time.
6. Whilst at university I worked as a security guard, a kitchen porter and as a journalist for a Premier League football team.
7. My favourite alcoholic drink is Cointreau, lime and lemonade. Which is probably the least masculine drink that one can order at any bar in Scotland.
8. I'm allergic to cats and have a phobia of birds. Apart from that, I like animals.
The useless knowledge is listed below, but first we'd better keep things proper by explaining the rools:
Write a post enumerating eight facts/habits about yourself. Include the rules at the beginning of the post.
Tag eight people, posting their names and links to their sites. (I'm not going to do that - if anyone wants to play, feel free. If you don't, don't.)
Leave comments at the sites you’ve tagged, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.
So here we go - eight things you didn't need (or want) to know about me:
1. I've never had an operation under general anaesthetic. In fact, I can count my hospital visits on the fingers of one hand: the first was to get a piece of grit removed from my eye as a teenager, the second was to see how badly I'd damaged my ankle playing football (it turned out to be a strained ligament), the third was to see whether I'd broken my nose playing football (notice a theme here? I hadn't, just burst it open quite spectacularly), the fourth was to see if I'd broken my ribs playing football (I hadn't, they were just bruised) and the fifth was when I had my toenail removed by a doctor who gave me a single local anaesthetic injection. Please note that I was touching wood and crossing my fingers whilst I wrote that answer.
2. The longest I've lived in one house is seven years, when my parents and I (and for three of those years Baby Brother) lived in a small cottage in the countryside near Montrose. I took a drive down there on the way home from work a couple of weeks ago and it hasn't changed at all in the intervening 20 years.
3. The most keepie-uppies I have ever done with a football without it bouncing on the ground is 120. At the end of the session, my legs were exhausted and I'd moved about 10 metres in the time it took, which was probably about five minutes. So I can't begin to fathom how Martinho Eduardo Orige managed to keep a ball in the air for 19-and-a-half hours.
4. I've visited seven of the eight Australian States and Territories, including the Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania. Mrs Wife (then known as Miss Girlfriend) and I didn't make it to the Northern Territory because of an unfortunate incident with an exploding car engine that cost us $2,500 to fix.
5. I can lick my nose and wiggle my ears. But not at the same time.
6. Whilst at university I worked as a security guard, a kitchen porter and as a journalist for a Premier League football team.
7. My favourite alcoholic drink is Cointreau, lime and lemonade. Which is probably the least masculine drink that one can order at any bar in Scotland.
8. I'm allergic to cats and have a phobia of birds. Apart from that, I like animals.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Country Living
Along with Alasdair Gray, Bill Bryson is one of my favourite authors - I've yet to read one of his books that hasn't left me in stitches.
Perusing The Guardian website this morning, I was delighted to read Bryson's views on what makes the British countryside so special.
I agree with his statement that we seem to take our countryside and heritage for granted. I remember when Mrs Wife and I visited Tasmania, we were shown "the oldest bridge in Australia", built in 1823.
In my home town of Brechin, the Brechin Bridge is so old that no-one seems to know for certain how old it is. All that we seem to know for is that up until the 1780s it was the only bridge across the River South Esk. Which means that, in all likelihood, it is more than 100 years older than Australia's oldest bridge. And no-one knows or cares enough to bother even finding out when it was built.
I agree wholheartedly with Bryson's view that we should fight to protect our countryside and to preserve it from haphazard development. By all means, we should enable this country to grow, and we should be looking to build affordable homes, but not at the expense of our countryside.
Perusing The Guardian website this morning, I was delighted to read Bryson's views on what makes the British countryside so special.
I agree with his statement that we seem to take our countryside and heritage for granted. I remember when Mrs Wife and I visited Tasmania, we were shown "the oldest bridge in Australia", built in 1823.
In my home town of Brechin, the Brechin Bridge is so old that no-one seems to know for certain how old it is. All that we seem to know for is that up until the 1780s it was the only bridge across the River South Esk. Which means that, in all likelihood, it is more than 100 years older than Australia's oldest bridge. And no-one knows or cares enough to bother even finding out when it was built.
I agree wholheartedly with Bryson's view that we should fight to protect our countryside and to preserve it from haphazard development. By all means, we should enable this country to grow, and we should be looking to build affordable homes, but not at the expense of our countryside.
All Around The World
I would consider myself fairly well travelled - I've seen a good bit of Europe and spent a year travelling around the world before real life got in the way.
But, having ticked a few boxes on the Travbuddy website, it seems I've not seen as much of our home planet as I had imagined.
In fact, I've only been to 10% of the countries. Which isn't all that many really.
It's maybe a bit strange that I haven't been to Wales - but, in my defence, it is full of Welsh people and is basically just a smaller, crap version of Scotland, but with even worse football teams and a horrific accent.
And Mrs Wife and I missed out on the Northern Territory when we were in Australia, because it's largely just a desert and we were a bit too strapped for cash to travel 5,000 miles to look at a lot of sand and a big rock. But we'll go back at some point.
Meanwhile, there are places on this Earth that deserve to be listed simply through virtue of being unlike anywhere else on Earth - if we're going to include the Vatican City (essentially just a luxurious bit of Rome behind big walls), we should really include Scotland's islands, each of which has its own distinctive character.
And we most certainly should include The People's Republic of Tarbert, an insane north Kintyre village inhabited by insane villagers from the north of Kintyre - when you've been to Tarbert, you never forget it.
But, having ticked a few boxes on the Travbuddy website, it seems I've not seen as much of our home planet as I had imagined.
In fact, I've only been to 10% of the countries. Which isn't all that many really.
It's maybe a bit strange that I haven't been to Wales - but, in my defence, it is full of Welsh people and is basically just a smaller, crap version of Scotland, but with even worse football teams and a horrific accent.
And Mrs Wife and I missed out on the Northern Territory when we were in Australia, because it's largely just a desert and we were a bit too strapped for cash to travel 5,000 miles to look at a lot of sand and a big rock. But we'll go back at some point.
Meanwhile, there are places on this Earth that deserve to be listed simply through virtue of being unlike anywhere else on Earth - if we're going to include the Vatican City (essentially just a luxurious bit of Rome behind big walls), we should really include Scotland's islands, each of which has its own distinctive character.
And we most certainly should include The People's Republic of Tarbert, an insane north Kintyre village inhabited by insane villagers from the north of Kintyre - when you've been to Tarbert, you never forget it.
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