Thursday, November 2 2006, 18:19

A handful of whinges

Well it's all been good news since I got here, and I don't want you thinking that Sydney is sooo much better than London and all sweetness and light - because it's not. There are some fairly hefty disappointments that have smacked me in the chops since I arrived, which I may have touched upon in previous journal entries, and it's only fair that I set the record straight...

Number one is Beth. Beth in herself is not a huge disappointment, but it is very sad that I've only just got here and she's packing her bags to go home already - indeed, she is swanning off around Australia as I type on her backpacking tour that she, quite frankly, could have (and should have) got out of the way before I arrived in the Lucky Country. She's not so much inconsiderate in that respect as spontaneous, so I won't hold it against her ;) It's been just over two years since I met her (and she forgot our anniversary), and I can't believe she's been in another hemisphere for half of it! Well. It's been great catching up with her after so long, and it's a funny thing that we realised that this is the first time we've ever socialised without anyone else there. And now she's going... Hmph. I can't believe she's taking her joie de vivre and dramas with her - I'll miss her all over again.

Number two is bananas, quite literally! Thirteen dollars a kilo!? I don't think so... So it seems that a cyclone wiped out the banana crop and now instead of supplementing the few that are left with imports, they've just racked up the price so that noone wants to buy them. Outrageous! No more bananas for me.

Number three is dusting. Brian and Darren will return from their holiday in Europe this weekend, so I did some preparatory dusting of the place to spruce it up last week. I now have a violent prejudice against the myriad gorgeous little things that seem to have untold thousands of niches for gathering specks of carpet fibres and dead skin. In my future home, there will be very few ornamental items. Maybe none.

Number four is mosquitoes. Just a few days ago, I was looking through the glass of the french windows into the yard, and I saw one of these unfriendly critters hurling itself against the flyscreen in a frenzied lust to sink its beak into my soft marble skin. If these bugs could bay for blood, it would have been making a terrible racket. I shall be investing in some Aeroguard for the summer months to protect myself from their unwanted advances.

Number five is Christmas. Yesterday I stood waiting to cross the road outside David Jones (kind of like John Lewis or Selfridges), and some heartless sadist inside had stuck some old and folksy version of We Wish You A Merry Christmas on loop, blaring out of the speakers. My fellow pedestrians and I were thoroughly nonplussed on that first day of November.

So there we go. Five little whinges. But I think we all know that I'm loving the 25 degree weather, no matter how much bananas cost ;)

Tuesday, November 7 2006, 0:10

Growin' a mo...

I've just had a very pleasant day just hanging out with Pete and Chris - just a bit of lunch, a bit of shopping in the city, a few drinks, dinner, more drinks. You know, the usual thing you do on holiday, which is what I am at the moment until my visa comes through. They're off to Melbourne tomorrow for the next few days, and then they're off home at the weekend - returning to what I hear is a very sudden onset of winter. I hope they'll cope!

Today I also decided to do something for noice for charity - during this month of Movember (sic), I shall be joining the Mo Bros and growing a moustache to raise awareness of health issues faced by men - in particular prostate cancer (more men in Australia die of this than women of breast cancer), depression (one in six men suffer from it at any given time but don't seek help), and testicular cancer (it's the second most common cancer in young men).

So it's a bizarre idea, I know. My friend, Tony, is doing it with a team of guys at work, and he was very excited when I said I was thinking about it. Anyone who knows me will know that shaving is an irregular activity for me at best, so facial hair is no problem. I think a moustache will look a bit silly on me though, so I'm going to go all out and grow a true Village People style handlebar, just like my Dad's!

Anyway, the important thing is to raise cash, so please sponsor me by going to the Movember website and typing in my Rego number, 41704, and then parting with some dosh. If you're in Australia, you might want to buy a gala party ticket instead ($33). Go on, you know you wanna - just for the comedy value if nothing else ;)

Friday, November 10 2006, 19:21

Fun with animals!

It's been a great day so far. I picked Neil up from the airport at 7am; ok, that wasn't such an amazing start to the day... It was actually worse for Neil; the customs lady couldn't believe he only had carry-on luggage from Singapore so gave him the third degree about his decadent weekend in Sydney. Once he was free, we had a bit of breakfast and wandered into town to get him some cheap trainers. Disposable shoes seem to be a feature of his holidays recently... Anyway, we went into a cheap cheap shop, and Neil defrauded the place of $25 dollars by shamelessly replying, "yes" when asked if his pick were from the $15 table... Tsk tsk. What a start to the weekend.

This afternoon I met up with Pete and Chris to go to the new WildlifeWorld next to the Aquarium in Cockle Bay Wharf. It was pretty cool actually - over 6,000 different Australian animals (lots of these were insects). They have this huge enclosure filled with desert animals on the roof - all red sand and spinifex grass, with tired wallabies hopping about in the sunshine, and a reported echidna hiding somewhere. I got very close to this wallaby who was sitting by the glass, and s/he turned to look at me a few times, so I took some really neat pictures like this one.

From there, I thought I was going to be hitting the gift shop, but imagine my surprise when I looked in the next enclosure and saw a cassowary! These huge flightless birds are extremely rare, and I didn't know that any had survived in captivity. I was very excited - it was just wandering around in front of the glass, preening for the camera ;) After that, I got to pet a lizard and a snake, but my day was already made!

I've attached another mo shot, so you can see how it's coming on. Hm. I think we can all see there's some red in there. That'll be interesting... Well I think that just goes to show it's a bigger sacrifice than I'd planned. Go on... sponsor me if you haven't already - www.movember.com.au (41704) ;)

Monday, November 13 2006, 13:39

Facially hair-raising

Well you're all no doubt laughing your socks off at the picture attached, and it's probably proportional to my horror this morning when I shaved off the rest of the week's stubble. Still, I'm game for a laugh, even if it means everyone laughing at me! I think I originally got confused between handlebar and horseshoe moustaches, because I'm definitely not doing this long enough to sport something as breathtakingly insanitary as a handlebar. I'm slightly dreading stepping outside the apartment now, but maybe I'll even get used to it. Anyway - get sponsoring! www.movember.com.au - my number is 41704!

Back to the rest of this weekend. Neil and I had a great weekend, which seemed to largely involve lots of clubbing, not enough sleeping, and a bit of brunch. It was all over rather quickly though, and before I knew it, we were having a beer in the terrace bar at the airport (what a surprise discovery!) and then saying our goodbyes.

Thursday, November 16 2006, 13:36

Showgirl!

Kylie fever has Sydney firmly in its grip at the moment - she's blasting out of every other shop, queued up on pub jukeboxes, plastered all over department stores with her new fragrance, darling, and of course she's back in town to finish her hugely successful Showgirl tour that was interrupted last year for her breast cancer treatment. The tour here has been rebranded Showgirl Homecoming and apparently has a few extra bells and whistles, and practically every homo worth his Clinique here has tickets or has already been to see her (like Scott and Tim who got this pic of her on opening night). It's a bit like a re-run of when loads of my friends in London went to see her last year and I endured the excited banter day after day ;)

Until I went to see Madonna with Ross this year, I wasn't convinced by the whole concert thing - squinting at a speck in the distance while your dream popstar mangles all the songs s/he barely got right the studio? I don't think so. Well Madonna changed all of that: I've had my road to La Isla Bonita conversion, and I was starting to get a mite bitter about missing out on Kylie a second time - that is, until Tony came through and surprised me with a ticket for Kylie on Tuesday!!! More exclamation marks necessary, I feel: !!!!!!

So two nights ago found me practically leaping up the stairs to our seats in the Sydney Entertainment Centre to watch Australia's favourite pop starlet belt out top tunes from Better the devil you know to Light years to Can't get you out of my head! There were strapping dancers in tiny Speedos, feather boas, blasts from the past, lasers, cybermen (sic), and more ostrich feathers and sequins than you could shake a diamante-encrusted microphone at! If Zidler had seen it, he might have called it "a magnificent, opulent, tremendous, stupendous, gargantuan bedazzlement!" The crowd went wild for I should be so lucky, and I don't think it was just me getting a little emotional for Kyles as she sang Especially for you to her home crowd as part of her encore. Bless. She's come a long way since her must-see shocking 80s debut with Dannii on Australian TV, although (by her own admission) she still can't dance for toffee!

Not bad eh? Queen and Princess of Pop inside one year! Who's left for next year?

Pictures and videos to come - yes and pics from Singapore and WildlifeWorld too - I'm a bit behind!

Monday, November 20 2006, 11:08

Wine-soaked Hunter Valley weekend

We had some great weather last weekend, and it was perfect timing for a little trip to the Hunter Valley, New South Wales' famous wine region. We drove up on Friday afternoon: Marty, Bryan and I in Marty's vetmobile, Jacqui and Toby in their car, and Tim and Scott with Ian in his car. Our accommodation for the weekend was a converted barn outside Wollombi, a tiny town in the middle of nowhere with a shockingly overpriced general store, and a single and very popular pub that warm afternoon. The blurb said that Barnstay slept ten people, but there was actually space for 23! Impressive (some pics here, but more in my photo gallery). Our first night was a little on the cold side, except around the fire that Tim tended with expertise born of his country origins, and was passed just relaxing, eating, and drinking with a view to not getting too smashed for our early start the following day.

Saturday morning saw all of us (except Bryan) up before we needed to be and piling into the back of our vineyard tour bus on time, hoping to have it to ourselves, but unsurprisingly disappointed. Our first stop, which was rather early to be knocking back alcohol really, was the Wandin Valley Estate at 10.15. Before getting stuck into the plonk, we fortified our stomachs a bit more with some cheese sampling; they were all really tasty, but I had a feeling I'd be buying too much that day anyway, so I restricted my purchases to one small tub of Duetto (mascarpone meets gorgonzola - delicious!). The wines were all very drinkable, and I picked up a bottle of dessert wine there.

Gartelmann, our next stop, felt much more inviting. The chap talked us through each wine properly, although I think I've forgotten it all now. Comes of drinking while getting educated... We stopped in the blazing midday heat to eat at the Hunter Valley Gardens Village - a little outdoor complex that must have purely been thrown up to give all these wino tourists somewhere to go for lunch and throw away more cash in little boutiquey stores...

After lunch we went to Ivanhoe, where 20 year-old Douggie did the now-familiar wine spiel with considerably less authority, and finished with a shameless sales pitch that I ignored. The only thing I got from the shop was a bottle of water to dilute the alcohol in my system... Our last vineyard stop was Iron Gate Estate, a little complex that looked like it had been picked up from somewhere in Spain and dropped into the Australian countryside. The chaps inside delivered the wines with aplomb, but by this stage I could only have a mouthful of each wine followed by a few gulps of water! The last stop was the Potter Brewery. I wasn't that bothered about trying beers anyway, so when we discovered we had to actually pay for tasting, we just left and went to the proper bar for a relaxing drink in the shade before climbing back on the bus. We were expecting to get dropped off back at the barn at that point, but our garrulous driver stopped off at Robyn Drayton's so one of our party could buy some wine for dinner (what had they been doing all day?), so we all tasted a bit more, and I came out with a bottle of white port.

Our second and final evening was spent eating Bryan's (surely famous by now) risotto, and drinking some of our purchases. I'd bought the Australian version of Articulate the previous week and brought it with me and, by the end of the night, managed to get board-game-hating Bryan and the reluctant Toby to join me, Jacqui, Tim, and Marty in a couple of loud and hysterical games involving much shouting and frustration. Just as it should be ;)

Sunday morning was another scorcher, and we got ourselves ready to go home at a leisurely pace and with a stomach full of cooked breakfast. The trip back seemed to go much quicker than our journey up, and certainly in our vetmobile, we were quietly sated :) All in all, a great weekend! Really nice to cross off one of my outstanding NSW places to visit and to have done it in style with a nice big group of mates, and on such a sunny weekend. Also nice to do something wholesome for a change, although it all went downhill on return to Sydney - demolishing the white port with Brian, Darren, and Bryan, demolishing myself at Opera Bar with Smirnoff Ices, and then letting Marty and James push me over the edge and taking me to ARQ. Oh well. I suppose I'm still on holiday... ;)

Photos from the Hunter Valley

Wednesday, November 22 2006, 0:08

Full frontal

Hm. So here it is after just two weeks. How scary! Finally, a full facial picture for you - mainly because Mum wanted one to see if it suited me (ha ha ha). Well I think you can all see now that it doesn't.

Today was only the second time that I shaved all the other stuff off from around my face, and I felt very odd wandering around town with it today, but noone's pointing or laughing at me yet... So the Movember Gala Party is on the 29th, and I'll be off to that with my camera for a laugh, and then there are only a few more days of itchy facial misery to go. In answer to one question some of you have asked me - no, I'm not going to keep it. It's uncomfortable and insanitary. Yuck.

So anyway, here's a reminder to get your cards out and sponsor me, if you haven't already done so. A few of you have said you just forget when you finish reading my emails, so here's a gentle prod! And a special mention for Bryan! ;) www.movember.com.au, reg number 41704. Thanks!

Monday, November 27 2006, 9:56

Mo Bros

Here's a rare treat for you - not just one shocking moustache, but two! Shaun has gone for the more classic mo, I'm not sure if that means he's lost less self-respect or not. Shaun and I are just two of over 40,000 guys in Australia and New Zealand who are cultivating these lip loungers, so I don't feel quite so weird when I'm walking through the city - every now and again you see another Mo Bro ;) There are a few local celebs taking part too - tv presenters, etc., but noone I've actually heard of yet!

Anyway, it's nearly over now. One more week to go, and it's coming off. I've raised a lot of money so far, and I'm not that far off getting $1000, so if you haven't sponsored me yet, your donation could help me get there. Details if you haven't memorised them by now... www.movember.com.au reg number 41704.

I'm actually getting SO bored with begging for money, it's so not my style. I'll be glad when it's all over. But between now and then, I've got the Movember Gala Party on Wednesday. I'll be taking my camera...