Dave after Today

Lost, Vague As.

2008-09-21T23:36:00.000-07:00

Alright, so its been a while since I've written and my holiday is over so I reckon by Christmas I will have finished this blog and I'll be ready to send it off to a publisher just in time for the post-Christmas stock take sale.

'Just wait til it goes on sale' - cheap thrills at bargain basement prices - $20 blowjob from an old whore - the pulp fiction me.

Segueing to the hard sell: If you love me, I'd love you if you passed this around. Talk it up! I love writing this stuff and I would love it if the right person read it and gave me a job.

So, as the commercials promoting Las Vegas Tourism say: What Happens in Vegas - Stays in Vegas.

Lucky, because Vegas is one hell of a bore if you ask me and talking about it is like discussing a trip to the classic suburban shopping mall. Vegas is designed to make patrons feel comfortable by making them subconsciously uncomfortable. Its hard to find an exit and trying to find the time is even more difficult because disorientation is the name of the game.

Whatever your vice, the whole lot - its Vegas, baby!

This is a blog of honesty - I love to hate Vegas. I only really went to Vegas because it was a milestone birthday for Tania and she had organised some friends to come along and celebrate. I have no moral or ethical obligation against excessive drinking, gambling and/or debauchery - I can party and make rock stars blush, or at least make them feel really embarrassed by how trashy I am being in their presence.

So, our room: We had a great room at the Venetian - its one of those uber swanky over the top razzle dazzle fuck off resort hotels in Vegas. 2 huge beds plus a fold out sofa - I took the Sofa. The room was bigger than some of the apartments I have lived in over the years, and had all the trappings associated with royalty: Gold finish this, fancy toilet paper that.

We managed to sneak about 3 people in without paying the extra "per head" charge which saved us a bit of money - probably $50 per person per night.

This is the epitome of class in Vegas - no amount of flashy extravagance will ever erase the memory of me having to hide under the desk while hotel staff brought the extra three towels we requested. In hind site, the extra towels request was a dead give away.

To make matters worse, when the hotel staff arrived I was on hold to a OneWorld Alliance Customer Service Representative and after spending *that much time* on hold listening to how great Qantas is at doing just about everything except picking up the phone, I wasn't about to give up on the 20 or so minutes I had spent on hold. The bastards.

At least they had the good sense to keep me on hold for those fateful minutes I was in hiding so I didn't have to whisper my complaint down the phone. Now THAT would be humiliating. Ya gotta vocalise during a complaint, helps with the healing process.

I wondered if the hotel staff were completely stupid - did they notice the phone receiver was being pulled under the table? I am pretty sure they saw me pop my head out to check "all clear" at least twice but they were kind enough to let me go without being charged.

I especially appreciated it when they did not enquire as to what I was doing on the floor.

Basically I was in Vegas staying in this awesome hotel room and I'm hiding under the table like I'm Jewish and the Gestapo are doing a raid.

Vegas itself is pretty amazing in that its not really amazing at all, its just a fancy place for peasants to spend money they don't have, while they don't sleep and get pregnant and/or married.

You know, Vegas has so many celebrity endorsements - Cher, Elton John, Celine Dion, Bette Midler, Kevin Federline and anyone else seen on a Reality or Tabloid TV show. I mean these guys, even the D list tabloid fodder of the world, get paid BIG BUCKS to go there. They wouldn't do it otherwise.

Kevin Federline? He must pull a cool $50,000 to go and 'be seen' at some mega club and do fuck all except rap "Popo-Zao" - a song which was not cool, not even for 15 seconds let alone 15 minutes.

Britney passed out in a Vegas club on NYE and probably doubled her rate for the next appearance due to the publicity her overdose generated.

Its that sort of a town.

So the celebrities get all this money to go there, but the regular people pay all this money to act like celebrities. Its such a rort. The hotel room turns out to be the cheapest part - I think ours came in at something like $350 a night which divided by all the people sharing worked out to be about $50, which is quite reasonable.

I tipped the Mexican maid a $10 and received tacit approval to pocket anything that wasn't bolted into the foundations of the building. I also got about 20 items of shampoo and other toiletry items off her cart as well (Sanitary Bags anyone?) which I am sure she was totally okay with me helping myself to.

Tacit Approval rocks.

How does Vegas make this money? Gambling, duh. But they are also charging you for absolutely every little thing you could imagine - they haven't worked out how to tax breathing but I imagine that with every breath I take, someone near by is placing a bet on whether it would be my last.

Even the stupid fridge has one of those sensors so if you even think about touching the bottle and removing it - even if i do not consume it - yep, they charged me!! Worst part was spending nearly 30 minutes on hold for the Operator. When I finally got through, I made up some bullshit story about being alcoholic and could we have the fridge replaced out of respect for my sobriety, they told me it would cost $20 for an empty fridge to be delivered.

So yeah, with all the lying and deception and racketeering between me and the casino's - I really feel like I'm in Vegas.

The gambling thing is so intense and it is such a low-rent status symbol, like all of a sudden its cool to throw money away and drink cheap champagne. Rich/Richer, Poor/Poorer.

So get this, I'm playing Blackjack and I lose $100 in 10 minutes AND I was cheating. A textbook example of Poor/Poorer.

Vegas is also about the shopping, which is confusing to me as I am not sure who makes a profit out of this little side racket. I mean no one actually seems to buy anything, and if they did, do the profits go to the casino? I am sure the casinos would charge rent and utilities and all that kind of stuff but I highly doubt the shop would actually make enough sales to actually cover any expenses.

I am positive there is some kind of under the table arrangement going on - I know, in VEGAS of all places - where by the Louis Vuitton's and Victoria Secret's of the Strip are there purely to make people FEEL like they are living in the land of luxury not to actually, you know, sell anything.

So basically, EVERYONE is in on the blatant lying, deception and/or racketeering.

I tried to do Vegas on the cheap. I walked around a lot - Tania and I did a couple of late nite walks up and down the Vegas Strip stopping only to put $5 in the pokies to get the attention of one of the truly ghastly cocktail waitresses ("theres a 50c tip in it for you, toots") or to eat Fatburger.

We basically walked in and out of every casino and rated them based on its witching hour patrons, who seemed to be old people totally addicted to the slots or sleazy guys playing poker with elderly strippers gyrating on the table.

NOT Celine Dion, Elton John, Bette Midler, Paris Hilton or any of the Kardashians or Playboy Bunnies partying it up, like the press would have you believe.

Nor would Cher be seen dead playing the slots next to any of her elderly brethren - I doubt Cher will ever be seen dead to be honest.

We did The Strip twice and on the second nite we actually made it down to Mandalay Bay which is like, so far away from The Venetian. Its MILES or at least 1 Mile which is a very long way, especially in America.

As we made it to the Manadalay Bay the sun started coming up. We caught an unfortunate glimpse of ourselves and despite our ragged, exhausted appearance we were both sober and still enjoying the walk.

Still, we felt like most of the people we saw; they lost their life savings, gambled away payroll and then puked on themselves.

Anyway, at this hour all the shops were shut, the only food was 24 hour fast food. We did it so cheap I have no doubt in my mind that the overlords of Vegas were watching us on CCTV and hurting at how much money we didn't spend.

By day, I did more of the same, except I expanded my walking repertoire to include overpriced and faux ritzy shops. My personal favourite was to cross the road from The Venetian and walk up a little bit to Caesars Palace aka Palacio de Elton John, Cher & Bette Midler. They have this shopping bit called something really fancy but the best bit was: The Escalators.

These escalators went up AND around corners. They looked amazing and the best part was THEY WERE FREE.

I rode those babies all day. Up, Around & Down. Repeat. Free! Sex with handrails.

Okay so Vegas is also about the Buffet and Vegas would not be Vegas without a buffet or two. The first buffet was the holy mother of Buffets - THE Belagio Buffet. "All you can eat (Including Crab Legs) - $40". We went after we'd spent 4 hours in the car driving from Los Angeles to Vegas in insane heat and we were all rather catatonic - all that sitting really takes its toll.

So we got to the buffet and we went at it like famine was on the horizon and it may well be our last meal. All up we polished off at least 7 heaped plates each , not including the desserts which came on little plates and we all had about 5 of those as chasers.

Fuck we were full after that - I have no idea what happened after dinner because I was just too full to even think. I think my brain had all kinds of weirdo chemical imbalances happening from all the mercury I had from the crabs legs or just the insane amount of sugar and fats and protein and carbs I'd just put away.

I know I put a couple of bread rolls into my bag before we left "for later" but that's all I know.

The second buffet we went to had all the charm of a local community old people style buffet you'd find anywhere in the world - a few hot dishes, some bread, some hokey dessert that looks like dog shit in a fancy bowl.

We were running late for The Mirage buffet and when we arrived we were told we had 30 minutes before it closed and so we hit that buffet like it was the Grand Prix.

Fortunately for us, the food tasted like shit and so after a marathon round 1, rounds 2-5 were taken at a slow pace and we all ended up getting a little sick DURING the 30 minutes we were there - it was just that bad. Salmon with Salmonella Sauce sounded quite nice on the menu!

Ok so I said before how Vegas is all peasants trying to act like A-Listers and how full on it is. We were staying at The Venetian so we could get into Tao, the incredibly famous and popular nightclub in The Venetian complex. I have read about Tao on TMZ and Perez Hilton and all those tabloid webpages because it is a club that PAYS celebrities to be seen there, thus increasing its cred with the tabloid generation ie Me.

We managed to get on no less than 6 guest lists for Tao on Saturday Night - hell , we got on one just by hanging outside of the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf so it can't of been too much of a feat, but when we arrived the bouncers still tried to make us wait in a queue.

These bouncers thought they were such top shits in the celebrity world, like they were stopping people from experiencing "Paris Hiltons Vagina(TM)" instead of just herding people into a queue.

One of the guests lists paid off after someone called someone and our group was allowed to see "Paris Hiltons Vagina(TM)"- aka the overhyped clusterfuck that was the nightclub - before everyone else.

We got in to this mega club to find it absolutely packed. And not the good kind of packed, where everyone is going off and feeling the vibe and totally having a great time - We were going off like sardines in a can - in the sun. I managed to find a bar and get a drink which took about 30 minutes and involved being pushed and shoved like I was hanging out in the middle of a football scrum.

Tania and I had our drinks and tried to find a quiet place to stand and drink and wait - get this - another hour before our friends got served.

The sheer volume of people created like a sea current and we were literally whirled around the room against our will and we were not even able to enjoy a sip of our drinks without being sucked out into the proverbial sea and spat out miles away, somewhere near the DJ box.

Needless to say, we bailed. I reckon if Tao Nightclub paid me $20,000 to rock up and sing some Karaoke that I would be slightly more enthusiastic about being there, but as a paying patron it was a clubbing experience I'd rather forget.

Tania, Simone, Deb and I ended up at dubiously FREE entertainment, which attracted a lot of really daggy older people, dancing dirty in their high pants.

At this point, I decided that I would lose $20 on the slots and call it a night.

Tao Nightclub also has Tao Beach, a cool pool party at the Venetian Pool. It was a really great concept, except the pool for Tao Beach was super small, like almost a spa. The music was loud enough in the 'exclusive' area that most people were enjoying the tunes and the baking sun in the larger, not so exclusive pool. I spent a bit of time in this pool until I realised that everyone else in the pool was drinking, ergo, they were peeing. I know everyone pee's in pools and I am usually a card carrying enthusiast but with like 100+ people all regularly warming their spot, it was too much for even me to cope with.

I managed to get a free sun lounge in the shade (it was REALLY hot - desert - who knew?) and ordered one Jack Daniels which cost me an absolute fortune. So even sitting by the pool cost me an absolute fortune.

A drink here, a gamble there - it all adds up. Most people love it and I have to secretly admit, I do too.

Welcome to Nevada - CLOSED.

The Venetian

Bellagio Buffet

Tao Beach

Funky Escalator

McCarran Intl Airport - Las Vegas

Diva in LA - Who Knew?

2008-08-27T10:44:00.000-07:00

The Coast Starlight train goes from Seattle to San Diego, the entire West Coast of the USA, courtesy of Amtrak.

I was traveling between San Jose and Los Angeles, a journey of 13 hours which was for the most part, incredibly scenic. Through Salinas and down to Santa Barbara, along the coast down to Northridge and down in to Los Angeles Union Station.

The ride cost $49 which considering the fares, taxes, fees and charges the airlines slug you with, is cheap.

Hello - you want to check a bag? $30.
Hello - 2 bags? You need to speak to your Financial Advisor.

The part where the train went along the coast and being able to see the sun set while eating above-average train food - spectacular.

The part where the train was filled with rednecks and other funnies who ride the train - priceless.

Unfortunately, Amtrak reinforce how terrible travel is these days - like the airlines who point blank refuse to be civilized or helpful in any way, shape or form ("MISERY IS IN THE CONDITIONS OF CARRIAGE - NEXT!"). However planes are generally easily traced and delays, while frustrating, have some kind of associated reason or estimated time.

Amtrak are unable to know when or where their trains are expected to show up, so getting to the station early cemented my new philosophy in life to never ever take another optimistic stance when I'm trying to get somewhere on public transport.

For 2 hours a recorded announcement kept saying "The Train has been Delayed by 15 minutes" until the train eventually arrived. Call Amtrak the eternal optimists, they never gave up hope that the train *would* come.

Sometime, Someplace.

Across the aisle from me was Grammaw with her 2 unruly grandchildren. Initially Grammaw managed to convey some kind of olde world train sophistication, but after about 30 minutes it was clear that she was a one trick pony and sophistication wasn't it.

Her grand-daughters were total shits and after about 30 minutes of trying to be disciplinary, she gave up on that trick as well.

It was time for Grammaw to open her old bag of tricks, go to the cafe car and get some hard liquor.

Gram-maw got drunk and spoke of how dignified train journeys *used* to be, and she should know, her father was a train driver. This indicated to everyone within ear shot that her grand-children were shits who had no concept of their heritage and deserved to be run over by the train. Certainly not be allowed to ride the train, at least not with her.

Amtrak do not believe in letting people sleep.

I honestly believe that the train staff have an obsession with hearing their voices over the PA. This little obsession ensured that every 5 minutes someone had something to say - whether it be announcing how the dining car operates, to calling the coach attendants to bring their brooms to the lounge - repeatedly over 2 hours - obviously coach attendants are above sweeping, or the railway rednecks are especially dirty.

At one point they thought the PA had broken so they tested that for about an hour and even went so far as to stop the train so they could check the connections between carriages. You know, in case someone missed out on hearing the business processes associated with running a Dining Car.

"the dining car will be opening in 2 hours" *static*
"when we call your name, y'all come to the dining car" *static*
"we take your order" *static*
"you remain seated" *static*
"we serve your order" *static*

Got it? *static* *static* *static*

The gypsy-like cafe lady had several goes on the PA selling her wares, found in a nook under the Viewing Car. It was kind of hokey down there and while the food was good, the people who loitered in the cafe section as opposed to say, the Viewing section above, scared me. Why???

Cafe Gypsy even went as far as to announce the end of her shift; she would be getting off. "Thanks y'all for coming past and saying Hello" - like we had any choice - she had the monopoly on beer and cheap train food.

The D car had at attendant called Doris.

I am really not sure what planet Doris came from but she was a total space cadet - why she's hauling ass on Amtrak and not NASA, with her kind of experience, is a total mystery.

If someone was meant to sit in her carriage she would totally spend about 15 minutes trying to find a spare seat, despite having a seating plan. This worked in my favour as I scribbled on the little piece of paper above my seat and changed the 1 to a 2, indicating both seats were taken, and she sat no one next to me for the entire trip. I could spread out.

At one point, for absolutely no reason, Doris recalled all the pillows - there was a near riot. She achieved some success with her pillow recall mainly because she was unrelenting in her unexplained and rather random demands. Some people held out, most caved in. You could feel the blood in the car boiling.

Grammaw went so far as to put her 15th beer down, in easy reach of one of the grandchildren. I assumed she was hoping they'd sip a bit and go to sleep, but without a pillow there was no chance in hell.

An underground formed and I signed up. No names were exchanged, we shared the same ideal of a reclined seat and a railway pillow. A group of us went up past the Viewing Car and down into the store room of the B car and we found a stash of pillows in the storage section. It should be noted that every other passenger car had pillows - only Car D with Doris had been affected by the recall.

We took so many pillows back to D car and made such a fuss about handing them out, it was like we were liberating a city under siege. The whole palaver never registered with Doris. Still to this day I don't know what she thought about the up rise and subsequent conquering of the store room, or whether she really cared.

To be honest I don't think she noticed.

Having experienced the Cafe car and its trinkety gypsy food, I signed up for Dining Car Dinner. Initially I was thankful that the guy taking the names started from the back and worked forward so I was guaranteed to be one of the first up. The dining car opened after much PA fanfare (a speech including refresher training on the dining care business process) and the first names were called out.

I was totally killing myself laughing because the first batch called included people called 'Chastity' and 'Diva'.

These, I thought, were awesome black-chick names.

"DIVA - GET YO FAT ASS DOWN TO THE DINING CART GURL! BIG MAMA CHASTITY WANNA EAT! MMM HMMMM!!"

Not being racist - I just think its really cool when they talk like that.

Chastity must of rocked up, but Diva never came and so Diva got called and re-called several times until the penny dropped.

I was Diva.

The guy taking the names must of totally fucked up or been a total fuck up - or something. I mean an Australian accent is hard to understand at the best of times and sure, my name could sound like Dive - but DIVA? Although my nom-du-train had an element of truth to it, honest to god, in my paranoid state of mind I saw everyone on the train pointing to me in hushed whispers and then throwing their heads back laughing -"THATS HIM - THATS DIVA! HAHAHA".

Maybe thats not how it really happened but that's how I saw it.

I was a crazy person and for like the first time in my life, I'm trying to be invisible.

I kept my head down. Talking to nobody. Giggling at everything.

"Yes, hello - tee hee...just heading for the CAFE.. yes, CAFE.. not DINING. hee hee... Oh lookee here, DINING CAR.. I wonder if there is a spare seat tee hee" etc.

I finally make it to the Dining Car. The moment of truth.

"Name?"

".....Dave.....but i think they stuffed up".

EVERYONE in the dining cart heard what I said and stopped what they were doing. The car went silent. All eyes and ears are on me and i'm like a fucking mess by this point - shaky in the legs and feeling lightheaded and faint. I had to think of something to say but I was totally fucked up and kept on with the nervous giggling and fidgeting.

At one point I reached for my phone as if I could create one of those diversons like "OH TEXT MESSAGE" as if that would prove to everyone that someone out there had respect enough for me to want to actually associate themselves with me.

People were still staring. I'm still giggling and fumbling with my phone.

This made the situation worse and I think I will need repressed memory therapy to remember how I got out of it or it ended.

All i remember is being seated with a father and son who were initially embarrassed by my presence, and I made such a big deal about how my name is "Dave" and its really not that hard, but by that point they thought my name was "Crazy".

I did some of those pregnancy breathing exercises I learnt off a movie and had some hard liquor. Gram-maw must of heard the alcohol being poured cause her-of-the-unruly-grandchildren came in, they were next on the list.

I eventually lost my heart palpitations, stopped sweating and gained a dignified composure.

Turned out the father and son were in Car D as well and when I told the story of the pillows they were truely grateful and i went from being "Crazy" to "hero" - in their eyes anyway.

Over dinner, I'd taken to Doris Bashing as if to draw attention to people on the train who were worse off than me. I still reckon that the gig was up and everyone except the father, son and Gram-maw (who winked at me when i slugged some hard liquor) thought I was a total loser.

I yearned for the day the Polish Chick loudly exclaimed "I come after Dance" to the Department of Homeland Security guy at Chicago O'Hare in the Immigration queue.

We arrived at Los Angeles and my Aunty Lisa and Uncle Kirk came to pick me up in the Prius. How very LA!

They drove me to their house in Redondo Beach as I told stories of the train and how I will never take public transportation ever again.

They must have been nervous about my driving experience as they did not offer me use of their car. I must admit, I wouldn't let me drive my car. They mentioned something about a bus and my initial word association was 'RENTAL CAR'.

I have been driving for about 3 months, tho I have done more driving on the 'wrong' side of the road in foreign conditions than I ever did at home. I think this qualifies me as somewhat of an expert behind the wheel.

So no borrowing of the car in LA for me, but they had a bike.

Day 1 I rode bike up from Palos Verdes to Torrance, Redondo, Manhatten, El Segundo and eventually LAX airport. This is about 32Km and about the furthest I have ever gone under my own steam! It was a fantastic ride along the beach and I stopped in at various beaches, shops and cafes along the way to either cool down or piss, and met some interesting LA characters.

This stretch of LA coastline is not nearly as insane as the northern part which houses Venice and Santa Monica Beaches, but this part was amazing none the least. Locals embrace the idea of having a couch on the front porch and so many residents - why they are home during the day i do not know - would sit and watch the passing traffic.

In turn, we watched them. I see me watching you watching me, or however it goes.

Sitting under the flight path of LAX, some 100m away from the beach, was amazing. I could feel the warmth of the jet engine in my face as the planes took off over the beach, sometimes 2 next to each other on the parralel runways. Of course, I was all of a sudden a terrorist threat and some security guys came over. When they saw I was taking in the view and unarmed without a suicide bomb strapped to my chest - all was okay.

I am pretty sure the next time I enter the USA I am going to be sent to Guantanamo on some kind of unmarked aeroplane and will eventually spend the rest of my life rotting away in an Adelaide prison. If I get a good PR person I am sure the Australian people will come to love and adore me. My face will be on T-Shirts, my family will be on A Current Affair. Life may come good after all.

I rode the bike back to Redondo Beach to hang out with Aunty Lisa, Uncle Kirk, Cousin Katie and Cousin Carly that evening. They live on top of a hill and believe you me, I am not designed for going up-hill. I can cope really well with the down-hill but the up-hill is a total killer.

Many times I thought about sitting in the gutter and just idling away the time until death.

Bike Ride Map - there & back!

Another family dinner, this time Traditional Los Angeles cuisine - Mexican. It was such a nice meal, and I kept going back for more! LA Mexican is not as refried-bean intensive as Mexican Mexican, which is a huge relief for everyone near me.

After dinner the girls and I were excited to sit down and watch Episode 1 of the new series of Project Runway. We critiqued each and every scene, which was a repeat of Season 1's first task of designing a dress made entirely out of items sourced at a supermarket.

Being the connoseur of fine Reality TV such as Project Runway that I am, I was able to name the contestant who won said task the first time round - Austin Scarlett. This both impressed and scared my LA family. Project Runway included Austin as a judge of this round - FINGER ON THE PULSE!!!

Supermodel Heidi Klum was looking radiant as ever and it was good to see a series of Project Runway in which she is not pregnant. "One day you are in, the next you are out" indeed! I reckon she says that in her sultry german accent when she is giving birth.

Day 2, having done enough riding to last me the rest of my life - I hired a car and drove around LA with the assistance of GPS. I had lunch in Santa Monica with Tania, Simone and their host. Then I drove over to Beverly Hills and West Hollywood and vibed out. Basically I did nothing in particular, I paid for that full tank of Gas and i was gunna use it.

I did my favourite thing in LA - driving aimlessly around the Hollywood Hills checking out the rich peoples houses and their views. I also kept doing laps of Sunset despite the signs saying "any more than 2 laps in 1 hour will be fined" - fuck that - its a rental. If its good enough for Britney its good enough for me! I went past Kitson, The Ivy, The Roosevelt Hotel and drove up a street with a wicked view of the HOLLYWOOD sign. I also stopped by Canters Deli (again) and some other cool places on Fairfax.

Unfortunately I got stuck in Rush Hour on the I405 but GPS in the USA is able to forecast traffic conditions and for the most part had me going down La Cienega Blvd, which made for a much more scenic driving tour of LA anyway, despite LA being really unscenic.

Rush Hour seemed to be all the time but no more than when I happened to be on the road, which was kind of cool. Vibing the city in the way of the local. I had to be up early on Day 3 to drive to Northridge to get a lift with Deb, Tania & Simone to Las Vegas. We were driving through the desert on the 4 hour hike from LA to Vegas in Deb's SUV. I plugged my destination into the GPS , Budget Rent-A-Car Northridge, and off I went.

Ryan Seacrest was broadcasting his morning radio show as I sat in gridlock with a Starbucks coffee on I405 heading north.

How LA can you get?

I made it to Northridge, site of the famous earthquake and really needed to make an earthquake of my own. Thankfully, Americans love their fast food and fast food loves a free public toilet and so I popped in.

Alright, so I go to the bathroom. After the bathroom, I decide "I'll try a breakfast". All up, transaction time in McDonalds - 10 minutes. The breakfast sucked, so after the first bite I tossed it in the bin and continued my blind devotion to the GPS system to get me around the corner for the 30 second roll to the Budget Rent-A-Car.

Being 10 minutes late, I apologised saying "I went to McDonalds on the way". This raised the ire of my travel buddies, for they had not eaten breakfast. I protested, 'but the breakfast sucked' - but still, there had been words. It hung in the air. I felt bad.

Why did I feel bad? For the first time in my life i exercised discretion. Driving along, I had been thinking - "do i talk too much shit? Are all my stories about the toilet? Is this shit even funny any more?". I decided to play it down - I euphemised "McDonalds" in lieu of "Banging Crap" - essentially the same thing in my books anyway.

For once, I was actually ashamed to have to admit to a bowel movement. Misunderstanding cleared up. Word got around and defenses were lowered and I actually felt humiliated, which is odd considering how much literal shit I talk. I felt even worse than if i'd farted in front of the Pope - "Oops! Bless me!".

So... driving along, looking within - finding some kind of spiritual zen - self reflection on my life. Hamming it up like I had divine spiritual intervention on the interstate. How fucking LA!

It backfired, if you'll excuse the pun.

The Coast Starlight

Eerie "There Is Help - 1800 SUICIDE" signs are along the railway track, every 1km.

Grammaw (blue dress) has a cigarette at Salinas

Riding along LA coastline

I worship this thing!

USA OK?

2008-08-26T06:18:00.000-07:00

On arrival at Chicago O'Hare Airport the first world treated me like a poor cousin. On many levels, I was. I was happy to put my feeble and uneducated attempts at Spanish behind me.

Hola, Adios, Por Favor e Gracias!

Note to self: Learn Spanish Again.

The Immigration queue was easily a mile long if you take into consideration how many times it turned back on itself like that Pipe3D screen saver in Windows.

GRR - I hate that screen saver.

An Air India 747 had come in just before my flight and so there were plenty of terrorist threats for The Department of Homeland Security to interrogate before getting around to rubber gloving me.

I noticed how long the US Citizens queue was, and they quickly (oh, the irony) allocated all but 2 processing desks to the card carrying residents, who breezed through with a twangy accent or perhaps a honk of their home town ("Cincinnati Ohio YEA-AH!") as proof of residence.

The US Citizen queue also had full metal jacket style marine security detail, impressively armed to the hilt. The terror from within??

The Non US line was staffed by 3 unarmed Polish ladies of outsourced Airport Worker nature. When I asked if I was in the right queue, I was told "Yes, of course, this is Hello" and thrust a series of forms with no explanation.

The Polish ladies spoke no English or Indian, the Indians spoke no English or Polish. I knew I was in for a painfully long game of Pictionary/Cluedo/Charades with Immigration. This was going to be worse than that time I was at a dinner party with post dinner entertainment involving a PlayStation, a board game and questions no one could answer.

On the Immigration Form there is a question asking whether you are a Nazi wanted for war crimes - Y/N.

Given the level of frustration I had with the Polish chicks, I was seriously considering ticking Y.

I'm not sure whether we can laugh about WWII yet so I ticked N. I wonder if anyone ever does tick Y?

Its a very strange question none the less. Maybe a "yes" would make them do *some* work? The alternative is standing around yakking in the mother tongue about god knows what - certainly not how to manage a queue or help people make a connecting flight.

Even if you DO have a connecting flight, its all "Yes, Of Course, This is Queue....yackety-yak-yak-yak-yak".

At one point an officer from Department of Homeland Security came over and started trying to chat up one of the Polish ladies. In return, she was flirting in such broken English. The whole situation made me want to die and take the humiliation with me in the same way Jesus did our sins - I wanted to relieve the world of future awkwardness. I really am Saint Dave of the Airport Queue s- I preach tolerance, understanding and death if you dare humiliate yourself in front of others and burden us with the memory.

I finally made it through the queue and got as far as the 20 questions from the border control guy, who was American and spoke English. Hooray! He asked all manner of questions about my background, my employment history and everything in between.

I got really paranoid because he was reading the computer screen at the same time - what did they know - am i in the system?

I broke out into a sweat, which made me even more paranoid.

They were totally on to me.

The questions continued and after a while - maybe it was the nerves - maybe I was tired - Either way, I was so sick of trying to explain my answer to "Why did you leave your last job?" when the answer was found in the short story "I'm a Contractor" which had the line "3 month contract extended by 6 months".

Bored, over it and miserable, I cheered myself up by making friendly Australian conversation (read: i back chat him) about how he liked his job, how long he'd worked there, why did he leave his last job etc.

I got a swift stamp in my passport and a glare which said "get the fuck out of here before your next vacation is Guantanamo".

An airport dash through the terminals of Chicago O'Hare ensued, evoking the memory of the unfortunate Culkin Family in that movie Home Alone. I hit a roadblock with the terminal train I had to use to go from here to there for a domestic connection to San Francisco (SFO).

I only just barely made it.

They had already shut the door to the jetbridge and were minutes away from blowing my bags up for being a No-Show.

I copped a lecture from the American Airlines chick for being gate-late and gave it back ten fold, being very careful not to totally diss the security measures the US has in place.

"Rah rah rah, I UNDERSTAND WHY but rah rah rah, ITS NOT MY FAULT" etc.

I had to be careful - Guantanamo was still a possibility. I will never forget the time that my dad cracked a joke in the Detroit Airport security line about how we were Australian Terrorists.

My mum, sister and I all backed away from him faster than if he had said he had an incredibly contagious case of genital leprosy. I am sure that little episode comes up on the computer screen every time i go through US Immigration. I am positive this is why they ask me so many questions but let Akbar from Air India through with little more than a "yes, of course".

Nice time of year for Guantanamo, I can't say I'd enjoy Abu Ghraib in the summer.

I turned it up on the SFO flight as the sound in my seat did not work and rather than amusing myself with a book or my laptop; I was in a well stinky mood. I had no end of pent up anger and frustration I decided to get up the American Airlines Purser and hopefully score some free food and drink, a total rarity when flying a US Carrier especially American Airlines. The purser was dead nice about "the situation" and I felt really bad about ranting as much as I did.

After a couple of complimentary drinks and complimentary access to the buy-on-board meal cart, plus a change of seat to the Exit Row Window (yehar!) I felt better. The sound did not work on the new seat either, but by now it didn't matter - I was drunk.

Back in SFO, land of milk and honey. I was expecting Cousin Stephanie to pick me up but saw that Aunty Ailsa had come, with Cousin Stephanie in the passenger seat. This was unexpected and I knew something was up and it couldn't be good. It turned out Cousin Stephanie had a real day of it as their cat, Preston, had been involved in a brawl with the cat next door, and lost.

Preston is really old and can't defend the territory like it could "back in the day", and so a trip to the vet was in order.

Cousin Stephanie has absolutely no sense of smell which means she is the designated driver when it comes to taking Preston in the car. Preston, for his part, has absolutely no desire to travel in the car nor be at the vet and he takes these opportunities to clear his stomach and bowel.

He thinks he is human - We can all sympathize with the desire for comfort while traveling!

It is said by some in our family that Cousin Stephanie keeps Preston alive through pure love and affection. Cousin Stephanie empathized with Prestons situation as if the cat next door had directly attacked her, causing an injury such as the loss of sight or the gain of smell.

When we arrived back in Palo Alto I was pretty keen to see how Preston was holding up given the horrific version of events I had heard in the car. The stoic silence of Cousin Stephanie led me to believe that she was dwelling on possible revenge plans for the cat next door. This was situation critical and it dawned on me that we were only hours away from having a war room set up, in front of the television.

As a side note, this concept of giving too much of a shit about a cat when it gets into a fight was foreign to me.

My family had a cat, Bingo, and as much as we loved and adored him and showered him with no end of unnecessary attention, we totally drew the line at putting Bingo in the car for medical attention. We tried it once and it went so pear shaped - Bingo went berserk my mum and sister ended up getting so scratched and traumatized that THEY ended up requiring medical attention.

Bing was just fine, for 20 long, loving years.

It was one of those unspoken arrangements that we would let nature take its course should the need arise for future feline medical attention. Bingo was feral, he came from moggy background and so we lovingly assumed he had a thick skin even when he had the mange, was skinny and half dead. We were praying he would go soon ("he won't last the winter") so we could all sleep in without all that AAAOORRWAAA wailing guilt trip bullshit at 7am when he wanted to be fed.

I must admit, I got him stoned once or twice when he looked a bit beaten up - this made him eat more and sleep more which is, as we all know, the best remedy for what ails ya.

Back to Preston, bless him, he was higher than a kite on kitty pain killers and I must admit I was a little jealous at this point.

No one cared about MY day; trouble with Immigration, American Airlines - it paled in comparison. Nooo...Preston had a bad day AND got a valium.

Oh, to be a feline in my family - we just dope 'em up.

I cat sat Preston during my stay in SFO as he was incredibly grumpy after his fight and stopped eating. Everyone else had lives to lead, where as I was falling out of bed at the crack of noon and doing not much else (it was my holiday after all!). I tried to encourage happiness by enabling Prestons favourite past time. - licking water off leaves of outdoor plants. I would escort him outside, sitting guard against the Terrorist Cat next door. On request, I would re-water the plant.

AAAAOORRWWAA!!!!

I even made him an Art Deco styled box out of excess USPS boxes I had bought - this box was a total work of art and was designed with the discerning cat in mind. It had lots of edges on which he could scratch himself, it had a front door and a patio and a full view of the fridge and feed bowl.

AAAAOORRWWAA!!!!

Cousin Stephanie kept up with her undivided love and affection; Aunty Ailsa put his water bowl on a box so he didn't have to bend over to drink - It was never enough.

AAAAOORRWWAA!!!!

Another trip to the Vet, he was given some more medicine. This included some Thyroid medicine which had been prescribed in the past, that Nurse Stephanie had forgotten to administer. Love and affection indeed! Needless to say, after this he made a complete recovery.

Here is a video of me cat sitting Preston while he licked water off the leaves: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPmR3ZalLOo

Independence Day rocked around and I was pretty excited to share this most American days with my American family. We had planned a family bun-fight for the evening. Cousin Stephanie and I, always the keen errand-runners (especially where a parental credit card is concerned) decided to go to the store. We stopped first at WalMart, so I could experience this monstrosity in all of its Independence Day Glory.

"Wel-a-come tu Wal-a-Mart-a" was the mangled greeting.

The first of many morbidly obese woman rolled by in one of those carts with the flag designed to make the elderly more mobile. The bargains were great: I got a T-shirt of the American Flag and the words 'Faded Glory' which was so subversive I could not believe Walmart had them for $3.

US dissidents have really sold out, I yearn for the days when people actually made statements and had causes, not just a rack in WalMart.

I found 88c TV dinners consisting of Chicken nuggets, macaroni cheese and corn. I just had to buy and try - later in my stay I actually did. The meal had no flavor and had a texture like an old sock. I was basically eating processed goat feed. I guess all those greeters on minimum wage need to eat some how, and I guess flavor is one of those "value-adds" that WalMart passes on order to "pass on the savings!".

I am not sure whether cat food is cheaper (Prestons Gourmet Vet Only cat food is definitely not cheaper) but my nose tells me that it would at least bring flavor to the table.

After that we did a tour of Trader Joes, quite possibly the most amazing store i have ever seen in my life. I could write a whole blog on their range of "Inspected for Wholesomeness by the US Department of Agriculture" food - whatever that means, but it tasted great.

The day Trader Joes opens in Australia is the day I buy one of those mobile elderly flag cart things for myself.

Family dinner was amazing. Aunty Ailsa prepared refreshing salads as Cousin Stephanie and I cranked up the Breville and grilled a selection of meat. Uncle Steve prepared our families signature dish - Cucumber Salad; California Style.

Basically everyone in my Aussie-Hungarian family makes a vinegary cucumber salad and they all slightly vary in style. California Style is controversial in that it uses the herb Dill as opposed to the more traditional basic vinegar/water solution. Across the board, we all agree it tastes better the longer it stays in the fridge. The only problem is it never really stays more than 2 days in the fridge before someone has finished it.

Its our "thing".

San Francisco was spent in the kind of malaise I'd be in at my parents house; oh how I love family.

We set the DVR/Tivo to record quality television as Living Lohan, Denise Richards - "Its Complicated", The View, and other TV shows which looked too bad to be good.

Living Lohan was by far the worst as, despite the Tabloid Clusterfuck name, it had zero celebrity, lots of hangers on and was unashamedly BAD.

Person: Talent, do you know Ali Lohan?
Talent: I am not familiar with that one. I met her sister once...

Denise Richards is anything but complicated, she is a big pot of crazy slightly steaming away and then BOOM - the lid hits the roof, credit to Kathy Griffin for that call. Denise has no fucking idea, but its trainwreck TV that i love to hate and so I watched it. Finger on the pulse.

I saw a great show highlighting the various Southern Barbecue cooking methods and I knew at some point I had to get me some Barbeque. This is not like Australian Barbeque (that is "grill") the southerners cook the shit out of the meat and then lay on this amazing BBQ sauce. Barbecue is quite possibly the only reason I would fly across America and land somewhere that is not NYC or LAX/SFO.

Its hard discussing the rest of what I did in San Francisco as for the most part I was hanging out with Cousin Stephanie who had wizened up to my blogging and so whenever something happened it was "OFF THE RECORD".

GRR, i hate Off the Record.

So, without being specific about how we amused ourselves, we seemed to run a marathon of errands which were for the most part fruitless or based on my desire to drive somewhere. If the errand were fruitful it usually meant that we scored stuff that was entirely unnecessary to the greater cause or doing something relating to Cousin Stephanies company.

Company errands generally ran to time and budget and more often than not involved going to Home Depot, which was kind of cool.

One of our errands resulted in unplanned Southern Barbecue which was not a part of the greater cause but was incredibly fulfilling given the TV show I had previously seen.

Another time we ended up cruising Apple stores to scope out the news-making queues for the iPhone launch the next day. FINGER ON THE PULSE - I was so close to Apple HQ at 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA. Cute.

We stalked a lot of iPhone stores over a number of days and when we went in for the kill they were sold out - doh!

I'd go as far as to say we made a sport out of it: Extreme Errand Marathon.

An example, is in 1 hour going to Home Depot, Starbucks, Apple Store #1, Seed Store, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Pet store, somewhere else and Home. BOOM! We definitely streamlined our days, which almost always included a tour of local fast food establishments, errands, work and a DVD marathon. Check it out on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyYDFHFwC-8

I really did enjoy driving around the USA, the interstate system is so much fun. Given that the majority of my driving ended up with an In & Out burger it was double fun.

From time to time I assisted Cousin Stephanie with her work. This was mutually beneficial -I had to fund my arse around the world; she needed an extra set of hands.

Cousin Stephanie runs a small business which involves hard labor, some of which she performs herself. She follows that time honored US tradition of employing 'Day Laborers' and 'Their Mates' - who were really nice, pleasant guys and hard workers to boot. Hard to understand at times but we had fun. My various questions like"what does Mamacita mean and how is it used?"were met with a game of charades in which the lewd actions completely explained the colloquial Mexican saying and then some.

Its a mystery to me why these guys aren't working Chicago O'Hare Immigration... wait up!

I worked as efficiently as a disabled man changing a flat tire on the interstate in 40*c heat and so my first and last foray into hard labor was entirely forgettable. I volunteered to get los amigo's Subway for dinner each night and I did that almost perfectly and without any procrastination, despite forgetting who wanted Queso on their Jamon sub.

I found access to the roof of the building and thought it was the right thing to do to invite my boss up to take a little time and enjoy the view.

Despite all this, when there were goals set and an end in sight I worked really fucking hard and kind of enjoyed it - definitely fun running around an empty construction site occasionally being productive and not just a nuisance.

The weekend rocked around and Cousin Jeff arrived back from a stint in Florida finishing up on the project he literally launched in the days before Cousin Gregs wedding. I mean LAUNCHED. Into Space, not into the ether like on any of my projects.

Saturday night We had secured 3 tickets to see KATHY GRIFFIN LIVE at Concord, CA - a town about an hour or so's drive from Palo Alto. How fucking exciting, I totally rate Kathy Griffin. To see her live - AMAZING.

I "drove like the wind" along various interstates taking into consideration Detours and a tour of the nearest Fatburger fast-food establishment, the only one of its kind near San Francisco.

We managed to get to Kathy just in time, and we had pretty decent seats, and a fantastic parking spot. The gay parking lot attendant mafia was looking out for its Australian brethren!

Kathy Griffin is just an amazing entertainer, she is so real and just outrageously funny. Her show "My Life on the D List" is the absolute pinnacle of Reality TV as nothing in her life is scripted (unlike say, a Lohan production) and Kathy rolls with the punches. Her father died, she was recently divorced as her husband was defrauding her - Kathy deals, and she's bloody good.

When it comes to hanging shit on E List celebrities (like say, Ali Lohan and Denise Richards), she 'goes' there. She also tells stories of personal experience that celebrities would rather you didn't hear. Like how she got re-banned from 'The View' for broadcasting a conversation she had with Barbara Walters had about Lube. She says what other people dare not allegedly say.

For a pop culture junkie like me she is my one and only god - suck it jesus!

(Kathy Griffin got in trouble for saying "suck it Jesus" after receiving an Emmy award and saying it was her new God)

Given how the USA sells out at absolutely every opportunity (think AT&T Stadium, American Airlines Arena etc), Kathy Griffin was playing at the Concord - Sleepy Time Pavilion. How funny is that, the signs on the way in say "Sleepytime, your ticket to a good nights sleep".

Hardly what you want from a show, but Kathy managed to keep us all awake while she cracked it for a good 2 hours.

Seeing Kathy was definitely one of the seven wonders of my trip. Check it out on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqyVX_VisSk

Over all, I had the most fun in San Francisco hanging out with my family and getting to know them in a way that can't happen over one family dinner every few years. My clan are spread far and wide and to actually be able to experience family life on the other side of the world was cool. To realize that the SFO faction is almost the same as mine - the sibling rivalries; the obsession with trashy TV; the parents who wished we would watch less tv and eat healthier.

Blood runs thicker than the water that separates us.

Cousin Preston

WalMart on Independence Day

Extreme Errand Marathon

In and Out Drive Thru

Hard Labor

Videos

GRRR!!

The Real Cancun

2008-08-19T07:47:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Cancun on another first class bus, this one had extreme air conditioning but also had free tea, coffee AND a mens and ladies bathroom up the back. Such luxury! It reminded me of the time my friend Liz and I decided to bus it around the north island of New Zealand only to find the bus was actually a Tarago. While it turned out to be an alright experience, the humiliation we both felt at being shuttled around in a Tarago was our unspoken reality. Liz was once proudly Tarago people so I guess she was kind of used to it.

The NZ Tarago Experience was pretty funny, I guess that is what I miss when taking "first class" style transportation, its the ability to laugh at the hokey ways the operators save a quick buck, kind of like the camping chair experience on the people mover in Merida.

So, Cancun.

There is one thing I have noticed about places that claim to be relaxing and no hussle and bustle. Personalities cause the conflict, not the language barriers, nor the differing cultures. When there are huge language barriers and cultural differences that seem to make absolutely no sense at all (like Romanian road rules) there is a kind of camaraderie that takes place among the weary traveller.

When there is nothing to worry about and everything is taken care of, for a premium price of course, that is when the real issues begin. I was aware that on entering Cancun, it was not as calm and serene as it seemed.

We got off the bus in the swelteringly hot Cancun bus station and the immediate clusterfuck of local official and unofficial taxi drivers began, which of course raised Tania's ire to the point of almost suggesting we walk or catch a local bus ("its the principle of it...") when we were miles and miles away from the touristy part. We were all in on this currency induced indignation until we collectively realized that the exchange rate was like 10 to 1; yet again, we were getting upset about nickles and dimes.

Its funny how the exchange rates are almost perfectly calculated when we are in a shop ("CAN YOU BELIEVE HOW CHEAP CALVIN KLEIN IS??? $5 BACK HOME - HAHAHA - LETS SPEND SPEND quick.. BUY BUY BUY" etc) but when it comes down to the necessities in life like 'get me the fuck out of here... NOW', the exchange rate all of a sudden becomes a problem.

We arrived at the Fiesta Americana Condessa, a really flash and over the top western style resort where we had a total bargain booking due to Tania's friend Antonio's connections - his dad helped build the cone pergola thing out the front, which was MASSIVE - so he got discounted room rates and 3 pieces of laundry for free.

While 3 pieces of free Laundry sounds like not a big deal to anyone else in the world, in Tourist Cancun where money open doors, it talks English, it washes clothes...money does absolutely everything you could ever need to do. Its really funny how people who "no comprende englais" all of a sudden speak fluent English when a greenback is up for grabs, and while the Peso is still the Mexican currency, the rules are different in Cancun where it is US$ Dinero the whole way, baby!

Tania recommended we go to a place called Senor Frogs for dinner and some dancing, which sounded truely hideous but given we were on the arse end of busses, hokey hostels and Mexican "charm" (dirt and filth) it sounded like a good idea to go out Americana style and eat a burger and listen to some music.

It turned out to be how I imagined hell to be. The entire experience was so American it farted Britney Spears first album. Having spent a fair amount of time in America and believing them to be, generally speaking, a misunderstood people - the experience at Senor Frogs made me see Americans in the eyes of the Muslim Jihad.

Spring break, every night.

The black MC who rapped badly over the R&B music, the girls who bumped and grinded ANYTHING that moved (including waiters) and who took part in the various games run by the MC which included, top swapping, sculling beer and bursting the balloon in the waiters lap, by straddling him.

Whenever people had an opportunity to talk on the microphone they excitedly honked the name of their city/state like they were on Oprah -

"CINCINATTI, OHIO... YEA-AH!!!"
"WOOOO clapclapclapclap" etc

There is something Americans just *love* about screaming out the name of their home town, like there is any pride associated with yelling "FRESNO, CALIFORNIA! WOO!" or "BUFFALO, NEW YORK! YEA-AH!".

I know a chick from Wangaratta in Victoria and if she EVER went on say, Kerry Anne Kennerlys show, screaming out "Wangaratta, Victoria -YEEEAAAH! FOR THE WIN" I would completely abort the friendship. Its not that Wangaratta is as bad as say, Fresno or Buffalo (believe me, i know) or any other American city that is not San Francisco or New York, its just really appalling that people carry on like their hokey home town is some kind of badge of honor when they are public.

Everyone whooped it up as the girls got on stage, the cliches AND the tits came out.

Some really bored and uninspired waiter chick came around blowing a whistle so obscenely that I just had to see what it was she was carrying on about, and I found out she was selling shots. Why the hell not? This place could not get any worse. Basically, she would pour the most syrupy shots down my throat while rubbing my hair and slapping me all over and blowing that god-damn whistle.

It was almost the final straw before i stormed out of there, hoping to bump into the first Akbar, Mohammed or Jaleel with a crop dusting license and a butter knife.

I've gotten more drunk off mouthwash than those shots, that's for sure.

The final straw came when they started playing some cool disco music, while the Americans were doing a choo choo train around the venue, so we hit the newly cleared dance floor. As the choo choo train made it back, the vile slutty writhing of the young, drunk girls was just too humiliating to watch. Also, the bad dancing of the B-White-Boy wannabe's was so delusional that like Jesus, I wanted to die for having to witness their sins.

I was super righteous by this point, I'll tell ya that in English for nothing, a rarity in Cancun.

We left and walked along the lake commenting on how vile, nasty, horrible etc the whole place turned out to be, despite making a mean hamburger and fries. We had to walk back past Senor Frogs to catch the bus back to our resort to find one of the sluttiest girls passed out in a pool of her own vomit on the fake grass out the front. There was justification in this scene, and more self righteousness than a royale with cheese.

I wondered really a-loudly how many people would be pregnant by the morning.

Simone and I shared a room and Tania and Antonio shared another, a really flawed arrangement as both Antonio and I smoked and as such the two non smokers got stuck with 2 smokers. I did my best to smoke on the balcony, which was less than 1ft wide, but had the most amazing view of the ocean, the aqua sea, the white sand, the resort next door and copped the amazing sea breeze. It wasn't so bad, I have smoked in worse places like the smoking room at Madrid Airport which smells like burning hair.

Smoking "outside" gave me a good excuse to enjoy the view and linger a while longer; while the view was amazing, there is only so much ocean, sand and resort I can handle before it all gets a bit same-samey.

The girls and I motivated ourselves into a taxi one morning (read: early afternoon) to go across to Isla Mujeres, a small island about 30 minutes by ferry from Cancun. Once we had negotiated the local OXO (7/11 Mexico Style) and sourced more Peso (to avoid the outrageously bloated USD currency exchange) we were on the boat. It was a really pleasant ride and well worth whatever it cost, which was not much.

Once we arrived I spotted a place saying "GOLF CARTS FOR HIRE" and I knew I had arrived in heaven. I have always wanted to drive a golf cart around a Caribbean Island and as my future travel plans had changed some what, to not include a trip to Belize and Honduras, this was my only opportunity. More on that later.

I was kicking myself that I forgot my license AND my passport, negating the possibility of being the designated driver, but Simone who enjoys organization like I enjoy sleep, she was prepared and so for 450 pesos ($45AUD) we had ourselves a cart until 5pm.

We all took turns at driving the golf cart, which was speed restricted to the pace of a small child, unlike basically everywhere else in Mexico where the general rule of thumb when it comes to speed is is "just don't hit anything". The speed allowed us to take in the view and did not cripple us so bad that we did not get to see the entire island in one afternoon. We hit the furthermost most point and saw some Iguana's and a really shitful outside art gallery thing which offered basically nothing, except a view, which we already had.

We drove on past a flying fox which looked amazing, but given our propensity to save a quick buck here and there, we decided the only thing that the flying fox had going for it was the view, which we already had. It was my turn to drive and I wanted to take that bastard golf cart off road, so we did, going down the side of a mountain on what Lindsay Lohans PR rep would call a "paved road" where we found a nice, quiet beach and an opportunity to jump in and laze around in the water for a while.

I'm not sure why we left that beach, which appeared to have a restaurant, but we collectively decided to move on to a more popular area for lunch, hoping that the food would be of better quality or something. So we found that place, parked the golf cart under the shade (like it was gunna get so hot inside with all the windows up? der) and found ourselves a table.

This restaurant looked like it had it all - outside eating on the beach, heaps of people, lots of amazing dishes on the menu. The service was totally hopeless and the food tasted like something a shark ate and shat out, if it arrived at all. The girls grilled fish came, no problem. The prawns we ordered defied eating, even with lemon, tabasco, hell even being coated in sand and deep fried would have made those prawns taste better. They left the shit shaft in as well, which I think is gross, and so I sort of passed on the prawn dish.

The girls tried to politely not eat while they waited for my dish to come, which never came despite my repeated attempts at getting the waitresses attention, actually speaking to the waitress, and speaking to what appeared to be the "big island mama" in charge.

It is a total mystery to me what happened to my lunch because they had about an hour of me complaining while they responded with "just a minute, it will be minutes" before we got up and tried to do a runner. We left some money, but not the entire bill and tried to sneak off to the golf cart.

Unfortunately, due to the aforementioned speed restriction its not like we could discretely bail on to the door less and windowless golf cart and fang it the hell out of there, leaving an impressive sand storm in our wake.

When Big Island Mama came rolling over to the golf cart, I knew we were in trouble. Given the speed Big Island Mama had, it dawned on me that possibly the worst thing to do at that point would be to drive (roll) off because she could catch us quite easily at her pace.

She started complaining about the bill and how we were short and I started swearing in a variety of languages hoping she would understand one of them, Tania started up with her "its the principle of it" rant and Simone knew the only way out was to give this woman the money so we could drive (roll) out of there. I can't remember, but when we had enough distance between Big Island Mama and the golf cart I started yelling at the top of my lungs various words which despite language barriers, tone can still convey sufficient indignity and offense.

I did not want ANYONE in that restaurant to enjoy themselves as I did not have a full belly and paid however many pesos's (fuckin PRINCIPLE of it) so i could look at a dodgy plate of prawns sipping a warm coke.

Hows the calm and serentity now, ya f***** f** s****** c*** b**** s*** w****!

More off roading , this time onto what I now know to be a construction site, but which at the time looked like it would be a bit more fun. There were a couple of guys on another golf cart, but given the speed restrictions they were having real difficulty managing a burn out, so we turned around and went back to the beaten path.

Towards the absolute end of our day on the island, we found the most magical beach. Murphys Law. Of course, to be able to enjoy the beach cost a number of Peso's and given my self induced indignity due to an empty stomach, I was not going to spend another 0.0001 Australian cent on anything. "Fuck 'em", I'd say.

Magical.

We started taking photos on the underwater digital cameras when we realised that on the boat in the background, a couple were straddling each other. They appeared in the background of almost all of our photos as the boat looked calm, serene and gave the photos a sense of perspective.

I wonder if they saw us taking photos and thought "dirty pervs!" while we looked on thinking "get a room!". Funny - and then it was time to get the cart back to the ferry terminal and catch the boat back to Cancun.

All I remember about the boat is that it took forever for it to come and the heat on the jetty was almost unbearable, and we were about 5 metres away from the most beautiful blue water you could see. We were right up front on the queue, which ensured we would get a great seat for when we get off the boat and could bolt for a taxi and avoid any more queues. The boat left, then came back because a few more people wanted to get on. By this time, everyone was beyond over it having waited in the sweltering jetty.

The late comers took their fucking sweet time to walk down to the boat, laughing, stopping to take photos. The boat errupted - people were so collectivley pissed off by the time the stragglers arrived on board, absolutely everyone let them know what they thought. Tania dropped a C-bomb which paled in insignificance compared to what some of the other people came out with, even though it was in Spanish, the tone conveyed it all.

We didn't do much else in Cancun, what else is there to do when the beach and pool are free, and everything else costs the world? We did go clubbing one night to a place called Coco Bongo's which Antonio had recommended - $40USD for "all you could drink". This was both good, and bad.

The club itself was something I have never seen before - Vegas style shows every 15 minutes and a variety of top 40 and urban music inbetween. We were inebriated to say the least.

Michael Jackson, Superman, Elvis, Beetlejuice, Madonna - all had their shows. It was spectacular.

We were pretty drunk and I'm not going to go into it too much here, except to say "there were words". It was kind of awful and I could have been a bit more of a man and tried to avoid what happened sooner or all together, but I was pissed.

The Real Cancun.

We were all in some way involved in what transpired and it was unfortunate that it had to happen, but it did. At the very least it put everything on the table, there were no assumptions, there were no unreasonable expectations or misunderstandings for us to deal with in the future. And that is that.

A day or so later it was time for me to depart Cancun for the USA, instead of Belize (Puh-lease!) and Honduras.

A friend of mine, Chris2, who had been to the area before, conveyed his sense of shock that someone like me would be going somewhere like that, and sure enough, as I discovered - it really isn't my scene.

Maybe another day. But not today.

I was booked on American Airlines (Aerolineas Gringa's) to San Francisco via Chicago to meet up with Cousin Stephanie given that she was mourning the loss of family-en-masse as everyone had gone back to Australia after the wedding. It worked out perfectly because I was mourning the loss of cable tv and flushing toilet paper, so we could both offer some comfort to each other.

Cousin Stephanie and I had unresolved business to attend to, mainly relating to being idiots and cracking each other up with the various characters we create, but also the most pressing issue: the end of days.

We had 2 entire seasons of Jericho in which to watch and take notes, for future reference. We had seeds to buy, endless discussions on the merits of a "panic room" and solar panels.

There was In & Out Burger, Starbucks and Satellite TV.

I needed to be me again.

Cancun

Senor Frogs

Golf Carting!

Coco Bongo's Nightclub

Chitchen Itza

VIDEO SECTION: Coco Bongo Nightclub

Here today, Cenoté tomorrow.

2008-08-13T15:03:00.000-07:00

On the bus to Campeche, on the way - despite riding in business class luxury (you hear that, Lynn?) we were stopped by some scary looking military men who ordered everyone off the bus while they randomly selected suitcases for inspection. When I saw mine on the table, I started panicking, why i am not sure, because i had absolutely no reason to be concerned. It was just really full on and scary having someone point a machine gun at my suitcase and demand for it to be opened. Once I opened it, they did nothing more than a passing glance and we were given the all clear - Phew!! They didn't find that secret stash of pseudo ephedrine Sudafeds I'd lied to the authorities (a pharmacist for fucks sake) about back home, "just in case".

We arrived in Campeche refreshed and ready to hit the beach as Campeche appeared to be on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and so, naive as I am, I thought it would have a beach of some description.

At Campeche bus station, which was really clean and well organized we jumped in a cab, which for an incredibly cheap price offered to take us to the Hostel Monkey. I can't remember whether Tania got uppity about spending the money on this cab but we made it to our hostel with out much to-do.

Later, if she arked up about money at an inopportune moment, say, when I am just getting off a bus or trying to speak Romanian and I was just not in the mood for being frugal, i would glare one of those glares that would mean €200 is spent without ANY to-do.

This was the first of at least 2 accommodations we stayed at on this trip which involved hauling luggage up insane stairs either plentiful or steep or both.

Campeche itself was a welcome respite. The buildings had all been restored and colorfully painted making them look somewhat un-Mexican, but gorgeous none the less. It was hard to find the local stores as the facades were clearly the tourist attraction and were not befouled with the advertising or branding of the globalized world in which we live. Noted, I was still reading that book about Consumerism so I was prepared for a lengthy discussion on how its rare not to see Coca Cola or a telecommunications company logo for one entire block. Not that anyone really cared - These facades were really cool.

It never ceases to amaze me how corner stores the world over have coca cola branding, varying from the flashy to the imitation - the imitation branding, as hokey as it is, its kind of weird in that they're trying to convey coke cred to sell bread.

We wandered around, tried to find the beach only to find that there was no beach! Campeche was some kind of port, or bay, and the only thing they had by the side of the water was a walkway, a wall and some nasty looking rocks below. I do not understand why no one on city council did not think to haul sand in from, I dunno, anywhere - and place it here. At that moment, I needed a beach, even if it was a "bay beach". (pfft).

The skies looked ominous as we continued our walk along the bay - it actually started looking quite scary. I mused about how this is hurricane season and we were in hurricane territory and then had half a thought that we should have checked out the weather, or done something to ensure the safety and comfort of our holiday.

Next time I travel I almost definitely will look into the weather, and whether the place I am staying has stairs.

Tania met some locals and broke into her stories, in Spanish, which from what I can gather was saying the place names with the right accent and saying how nice and pretty it all was. Simone and I, not stupid - realized the heavens were about to open and ditched Tania with her 4 gentlemen friends & we found some hokey awning styled shelter just after the heavens opened.

The storm looked like a hurricane altho it wasn't that bad, I guess the palm tree's are used to swaying like that.

Tania caught up to us, with her local friends, who appeared more disinterested in her pronunciation of Latin American cities and more interested with the prospects of a drunken gringo later that night. I don't recall them featuring in any later stories so she some how must of ditched them somewhere around that awning - no easy feat.

So.. feeling like sewer rats after a hurricane, we resorted to the only other thing we seemed to do in Mexico - shop. Tania was hell bent on getting through all the shops in record time, lest they not open at a desirable hour the next day, while Simone and I went about finding some food - which we found, and was delightful. Its amazing how fulfilling a bread roll and salad with salad dressing can be after 2 weeks of refried beans.

We weren't sure what to do that night, given we had 2 potential touristy things to do - one was to see a "spectacular sound and light show" at one of the local pyramid ruins, the other was the Campeche Musical Fountain. The lady at the hostel who spoke little to no English almost had us on a very expensive taxi to catch the "spectacular sound and light show" but the kindly Swede working the night shift managed to catch Tania's attention as she was running for the taxi, advising her that the "spectacular sound and light show was not on that night".

This random American from Kansas told us in his incredibly slow drawl that the sound and light show was better at Uxmal anyway, and if we can get there, its definitely our best bet. So the fountain it was!

The rain had almost stopped, but later turned into a relentless drizzle which made the short stroll to the Musical Fountain not such a bad idea after all, as the hostel people had told us they can hear it from the hostel, meaning it must be close. We picked up this Canadian chick from the hostel who was also keen on seeing the fountain, and she ended up having about as much personality as a drowned beaver and we huddled under umbrellas and made awkward conversation as we walked through the picturesque main square of Campeche.

"You been to Canada?" ...
"uh..."
*Weird Awkward*

As the story goes, Simone fell down a hole. It was a pretty nasty, un-announced hole in the ground and she fell right in and managed to get a really nasty graze down her leg, not to mention the shock of falling a few feet into an abyss. While she was going through the worst of the pain, the pithy little fountain near where she was recovering ("Nah, that can't be it") roared into life and the most un-original big-orchestra oom-paa music started blaring.

Sad little streams of water rose and fell with the music and some of the lights changed colour at the same time. The streams crescendo-ed with the music - almost in time - and this said to me that we must be at the wretched Campeche Musical Fountain.

I could definitely put on a better performance by inviting everyone into my bathroom while i play Ravels Bolero while flicking the lights and flushing the toilet - almost in time.

Why any town would be proud to have this as a 'local attraction' with prime billing in all the tourist brochures is beyond me - its kind of like how people tell you to visit Federation Square when you go to Melbourne and when you finally do (after the excitement of catching a tram or marveling at the pretty lane ways which are really just convenient storage for expired food from local restaurants), you wonder if that's really it and then it dawns on you that the whole Fed Square experience is profoundly underwhelming in the grand scheme of things.

We wandered around a bit more, taking in the local cathedral, which had a statue of Jesus covered in many Lanyards - that was pretty funny - and then ended up at a local restaurant which a few locals told us was the local outlet for Ice, as Simone needed some for her leg. Double bonus - the restaurant had free Wi Fi and the WEP key was something really easy like "1234" which can be conveyed without a marathon game of charades, so I was happy too.

I went back to the room to read a book and chill out and the girls walked around to see what else was to be seen (which was nothing) and lo and behold, they bumped into "The English". In hind site I really wished I had stayed out as The English would have been really fun to get pissed with! Ah well..

The next day, we got up and caught the "tourist tram" (it was really a bus) around the small town with a bunch of school kids who were about as bored as we were, except we could make smart arse comments without copping a lecture from the teacher. Even the tour guide chick seemed a little bored in her explanations of it all - "here is some architecture - here is some more - and some more... pretty hey?"

After that we walked around a little - the girls hit the shops (again - more range by day) and i tried vainly to shop but was pretty bored of the offerings, except they had a cool BB gun in one of the shops and I really struggled to think up a good justification for any of the border crossings I had ahead of me, as to why I was armed.

That whole "end of days arm yourself and stockpile" justification does not necessarily translate well (I know in French it is "finisterre") and i had a few more countries in between, such as the US, which are pretty uppity about people being armed at the borders. Isn't it ironic?

So I ended up in a hammock. That was nice, I had a great view of the cathedral, and a great book - and really, that's about all Campeche had to offer.

We caught the bus to Merida which was again, uneventful and first class the whole way and I don't remember much about this trip except that I was sat next to this incredibly fat Mexican woman who would shift in her seat every once in a while, and the most abdominal smell would occur. This was funny until it wasn't, and that she kept diving into her bag for more food said that it was "ALL SYSTEMS GO" on that front (or back) and I was well impressed when we arrived.

Everything looked like even in the 70's, it would have been considered in poor taste. We got into our hostel, which was kind of charming from the outside. However, we discovered inside the room, the bathroom had this particular acoustic that meant everything was double amplified.

Poor Tania unintentionally reinforced how much discretion we should employ while using this facility in the future.

Thankfully, after a dispute with the room booking relating to our penchant for private bathrooms, Tania ended up calling the hostel worker a "fuck wit" ensuring that we had to find somewhere else to stay the night, if only to keep our dignity in tact - I was pretty sure that had we stayed we would have had a rough night of it.

Plan B (which i'd like to point out was my original Plan A) was a hotel which offered 5 stars and a pool for mere dollars extra per night. We found the hotel after midnight, after some aimless walking, got offered a good rate and we were in!

The joys of air conditioning, a pool and an insulated bathroom are never quite understood until its too late!

Merida was another clusterfuck of disorganization and despair at what to do, but following the sage advice from the Kansas Redneck we quickly hired a cab and got our Spectacular Sound and Light show at the Pyramid experience started. At one point, I had suggested we hire a car as Uxmal seemed to be quite a distance, but the Taxi quoted about 1000 peso's and as we were told this would be worth it, we decided to go along in the taxi.

The Taxi driver was quite funny and Tania sat up front and entertained him by saying the Latino Americana city names using the proper accents while Simone and I made small talk, occasionally trying really hard to understand each other over the loud Mexican folk music that was playing on the radio. We stopped at a servo on the way for some food (HOORAY!) and made our way out into the Mexican country side.

Let me just say this - the Spectacular Sound and Light show - it was worth it for the laugh at the very least. This "spectacular" show made the fountain in Campeche look positivley magical! Basically - at the beginning they lit up the various ruins sites, which was pretty amazing, but then we had to sit through nearly an hour of a story in Spanish of why everything was so important and how the people lived. Lights came on, they went off - they were sometimes red, sometimes green.

I kept commenting to Tania "this is soooo spectacular" and we giggled alot and when that got boring I burped, which raised the ire of the school kids around us who were equally as bored (and they spoke the language). It became double funny when one of them took the rap for my burp.

Then, being so so so bored, when they turned some of the lights off at a poignant moment of the long-winded story (think: Abe Simpson in Spanish) I started clapping, which made more people laugh. The taxi driver, who forked out however much it was for entry (30 pesos - what the hey? he just made 1000) was killing himself laughing at me, which as anyone who knows me knows - this makes me be even more outrageous. I'm not sure whether i was just too tired or exhausted but this time I decided to cool it , I felt bad for the school kids who were getting in trouble for my shenanigans (think: Bart Simpson).

When we left, I think Tania and I were the first people out. When I was pretty sure the "sound and light" part had ended, even before the "ambient exit light" part began, I was out of there. We found a gift store and decided that might be worth a chuckle and it was as we found a version of the Karma Sutra entitled "Mayan Sutra" and had various pictures, including a drunken fat man trying to hit on a latino princess, and that was just the icing on the cake for an otherwise shitful, excruciatingly boring and expensive afternoon.

The next day we went back to the erstwhile Hostel where we had booked a day trip to the Cenoté's (said 'Snotty'). Now, if ever there was something worth doing, it was this - and it was really cheap at like 300 pesos. We were picked up by a mini van which had more passengers than it could fit - no worry, a fold-up chair is all that is required. This was pretty funny. In Mexico where there is a will of making money, there is a way to make it happen.

It turns out we were travelling with 2 guides, one of the guides family (brother, parents, grandma), and a random Mexico City guy. We mainly spoke with the English speaking guide altho I am sure given half a chance in the commentary Tania would have wow'ed them with her correct pronunciations of ciudad's de latino americana but we were really wow'ed by the whole day so the small talk mainly focused on that.

Firstly, a trip to an "authentic" Mexican market place which smelled like shit and had so many flies and food that they really could have been selling shit - and then onto Cenoté number 1.

Amazing.

A hole in the ground, and in that hole, gloriously beautiful natural spring water. I climbed down the ladder, navigated the slippery rocks and jumped in first. Simone followed and Tania had a bit of a spac about the height of the jump, but eventually came in. We tooled around on our underwater digital cameras, snorkels, goggles etc.

We went to the next Cenoté which was just as spectacular and had this amazingly rickety ladder to climb down to gain access. I of course, went down first and the girls followed. Later in that swim we took turns at climbing the rickety ladder and jumping into the Cenoté from various heights.

Simone said she saw a dead bird in the Cenoté which momentarily concerned me that I would come down with a rare strain of Mexican Flu, however I started being a shit to Tania by telling here there was actually a dead horse in the Cenoté (it was really an under water rock formation) and various local small and furry animals such as Pisoté.

Dead Pisoté in the Cenoté!

After our time in Cenoté number 2, we climbed out and dried off as best we could. The tour guides (most ancient Mayan) grandma started laughing at me and the only words I could understand were "haha...Baños...hahaha". HOW DID SHE KNOW??? Maybe the girls chiding me for my earlier indiscretions had some how transcended language barriers, and the old girl was certainly not stupid.

At least she found it funny!

After Cenoté 2 with its dead horses, birds, pisotes and baños humour we made our way to a traditional Mayan Restaurant / Souvenir Shop and had a pretty nice traditional lunch, then back to Merida.

Later in Merida we bumped into "The English" another time, and I was dying to go out and get pissed with Jayne and Steve-o but due to a big night in Campeche and what Jayne claimed was food poisoning (for the second time) from fast food - they had to pike. I was SPEWING (well, not as bad as Jayne) but glad we got to catch up albeit briefly :)

The girls and I ended up in a variety of Meridan night clubs including a Karaoke bar which had the most awful sound system which actually hurt my ears, but as promised at 10pm they started playing House music even tho it was ear bleed by default. We then went to the hot spot club which really was warm and steamy inside, but it all kind of sucked big time and no matter how many shots I had it didn't get any better.

Not much else happened that I can remember, tho I am sure we had many experiences which will be told and re-told and embellished over a few drinks, like that time i saw a dead horse in the Cenoté... Spectacular!

Campeche

Campeche Storm

Campeche Cathedral

In the Cenote

Jumping into the Cenote (I am in this photo!)

VIDEOS!!
Awful Sound & Light Show at Uxmal Ruins

How to use the Mayan Toilet (From Palenque)

Cool Nightclub (from Mexico City)

Ruined at the Ruins

2008-08-11T09:44:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged for a while cause i've been busy.

Traveling is so fucking painful some times - I am never ever this busy at home!

-------------------

Having unsuccessfully auditioned for a two part episode of "Air Crash Investigation", when we arrived at Villahermosa Airport we were experiencing the kind of adrenalin rush usually associated with extreme sports or Montezuma's Revenge. While we waited for the bags we traded various stories about survival - how I managed to find God on the second landing attempt, the lady next to Simone offered her a lollipop and Tania was confident of a successful landing, but quietly shitting herself.

As Tania was the primary Spanish speaker in our group and I was the designated smoker, she went about finding us a transport into Villahermosa while I went about finding a nice quiet place to smoke and gather my thoughts. Despite being honestly terrified during the landing attempts, I had secretly enjoyed the rough ride on the ancient and almost extinct Boeing 737-200 jet.

Background: I had been a bit of a curmudgeon in Mexico City:

"GRR why do they make so much noise..."
"GRR re fried beans for every meal..."
"GRR people here are too poor" and
"GRR i feel sick" etc

When we landed in Villahermosa I was presented with what I thought to be a more leisurely pace - Villahermosa is a small town that reminded me too much of Newcastle, Australia for my liking, but it was a welcome change from the fast, loud pace of Mexico City.

The lady working the Taxi stall was incredibly helpful given that Tania was speaking in the native tongue. Despite my parents warnings that Mexico will be the death of me ("don't take taxi's , they will rip you off") - the Mexican airports have a pretty good system of pre-paying taxi's with prices clearly advertised and not subject to change.

From the Airport to Villahermosa was about 200 pesos ($20 AUD) and as we checked out the price board our eyes collectively focused on the price for Palenque, our final destination that night, at 1000 pesos ($100 AUD).

The girls had wanted to check out Villahermosa, walk around, vibe it out, while we waited for an ADO 1st class bus to take us to Palenque.

I had made my feelings known in Mexico City that I was not bus people and that the indignities associated with bus travel would make me more upset than if I died due to some freak plane accident and that I would only catch the bus if it was absolutely necessary.

The girls decided that the best option was to split a cab to Palenque, and to see if we can offer the driver a few more peso's for a quick tour around Villahermosa city. I, of course, needed no consultation on this decision and was extremely pleased with the outcome, especially the part about not having to lug our bags around Villahermosa and then onto some chicken bus.

Villahermosa turned out to be a bit of a shit hole (EXACTLY like Newcastle, Australia) and while it had all the attractions - a cathedral, a statue or 20, a river; there really wasn't much going on. The only thing which I found appealing in the town was that its in the province (or whatever) of Tabasco and almost every restaurant had a sign advertising Tabasco. This of course, was of great interest to me, but traveling with 2 people who avoid spicy food like I avoid fruit AND who had given up an afternoon of site seeing to avoid me having to catch the bus, I thought it wise to shut the fuck up and not suggest we stop for a meal.

As the story goes, We were all glad that we only spent 45 or so minutes in Villahermosa hopping in and out of the taxi for photo opportunities. The joy that we would be heading to Palenque in the comfort of a taxi, meaning we would arrive at about 8:30pm at night and not midnight like on the bus, was shared by all.

More to the point, the hotel I booked in Palenque had a pool. Hooray!

My first impressions of Palenque was how much it was like Goulburn, Australia - except with ancient Mayan ruins instead of a massive concrete sheep "tourist attraction / servo".

The town itself had a certain Mexican charm (it was dirty) but at the same time it was safe and did not feel totally overrun by tourists. Tania and I went on a walk that first night and discovered not much, but we were able to purchase a large jerrycan of Bonafont (my favorite purificado agua) and some other assorted necessities like a kit kat.

The early arrival gave us (more to the point, the girls) the opportunity to suss out day tours while we (more to the point, I) made good use of the pool and the wireless internet connection. Getting wireless internet connected in a foreign hotel really is pot luck - the people at the front desk spoke no English and no matter how much of a mexican accent i used with my English - they had no idea what I was on about.

Two games of charades + Tania + a crude drawing of a network = I was connected!!!

WEP keys are permanently on my list of things to bitch about until I die.

We spent a day checking out the Ruin's at Palenque which were spectacular like something out of a computer game - I can definitely see why the Mayan ruins are so iconic and replicated far and wide and I really felt like I was inside a Nintendo or Sierra computer game, trying to find the hidden key to get to the next level. At one point later in the day I found a random question mark next to a tree, EXACTLY like the ones in Super Mario Bros and I was positive that I was playing some kind of lost level game.

On arrival at the Ruins, Tania cracked the big time shits after her copious amounts of bi-lingual and artistic tactical organization did not entirely pay off and we ended up having to pay an extra 100 peso's for a guide, who in hind site walked us around the ruins telling us tit bits of information like

"this is a ruin",
"those are steps"
"they looked different back then",
"this is the ancient mayan Baños and this is how they used it" and
"you use Baños over there"

I didn't mind paying the extra 100 pesos ($10 AUD - ciggies cost more) and it turned out that our guide, "Professor Baños" was worth it for the laugh.

Tania is ever the one to crack the shits over nickles and dimes and i secretly thought the self induced indignation was quite funny, especially as the other guides were looking at our digital cameras and other flashy assorted western gear knowing full well we could afford the $10 AUD.

I get her point ("its the PRINCIPLE of it now") that at every step of the way in Mexico and Latin America they seem to lie to get more dinero out of the turista and it is incredibly frustrating until it becomes clear that its basically nickles and dimes they're extracting. Sometimes the rip offs are amazingly big and humiliating in hind site but thankfully , that did not happen to us.

Professor Baños was wearing a safari suit which made it all the more funny and reaffirmed my belief that I can NEVER trust a man in a safari suit.

About a hundred photo opportunities later it started pissing down in that tropical way where it seems never ending and an umbrella seems like a futile solution. We found a proper shelter and waited it out with some locals who appeared to be "working" in the jungle (I was secretly praying they were 'harvesting' something in the jungle and would produce some 'crop' for a rather stressed turista) but eventually the rain stopped and we continued on our jungle journey to some more ruins on the road less traveled.

It was gorgeous except for all the rotting fruit smells and flies, but we stopped for another photo opportunity, this time asking some random people to take the photos for us. It turned out, the people we asked were English and spoke English!

I affectionately referred to these people as "The English" (right up until today) but to their face it was Jayne and Steve-o. We bumped into them later on at a waterfall and then again at ANOTHER waterfall and ended up spending some time walking around and chewing the fat. Jayne and I found commonality in the TV shows we watched ("this is EXACTLY like i'm a celebrity get me out of here") and Steve-o worked at a big telecommunications company so we had some good laughs about that.

The English and I thought this part of Mexico was a bit peasant and backward and at times, shitful for the most part, but the last waterfall we were at was amazing. Unfortunately the locals were totally crazy and clearly accustomed to extracting dinero from turista, but this was rather funny so it was OK.

On the drive down to the last waterfall (on such dodgy mountain roads we were all about to hurl) our bus driver kept stopping as the ever resourceful locals would close the road by holding up some rope, waiting for the driver to pay however much it was, then dropping the rope and allowing us to pass.

This happened 3 or 4 times, and at all times there were entire families sitting by the road trying to sell local fruit, random items of folk clothing and tea towels.

On arrival we stopped at a restaurant, which in these parts was basically a roof over some ground and heaps of random stray dogs wandering around and we ordered things like bread, vegetable soup and fries as there was no way our stomachs could handle anything more flavorful on the ride back.

Interestingly, this roof/restaurant had Cable TV and a gaggle of random locals were sitting around watching a football match on ESPN. It was strangely comforting to know that even in places where kidnapping is not entirely out of the question, that if I was to be kidnapped, I could watch MTV.

After eating we strolled around the local area where the local elders had rather cunningly set up stalls at every single opportunity selling trinkety tourist stuff or access to a "clean" Baños. The local children who, perhaps, are not old enough to work a shop, simply ran around chasing after tourists begging for either money or chocolate or trying to sell some kind of berry they found in the jungle.

The waterfalls were amazing and the absolute best part was when I jumped in and swam around in water so pure and fresh it washed away all the negativity i'd been experiencing in the past few days. I felt SO great when I was in that water. Steve-o and his mate followed, then the girls came in, and it was totally relaxing to be away from the hustle and bustle that is Mexico for a few brief minutes. Water makes EVERYTHING better!

We ended up leaving on our bus back to Palenque and we said goodbye to The English. The trip down was equally as queasy as the trip up but we made it back safely.

That night the girls ended up walking around Palenque a bit and doing some shopping (or whatever it is that they do) and I stayed back and read a book.

That night, we ate dinner at a restaurant which appeared to be nice, but they managed to fuck up Spaghetti Bolognese so bad and my Kebab was alright except for the re-fried-fucking beans.

The next morning, I had fully come to terms with the realization that we were not about to take a taxi from Palenque to Campeche, our next stop. Not that I really pressed the point too much (if at all) but it was in the back of my mind like how I thought I would be kidnapped and watching MTV at the Waterfall.

Tania reassured me that the bus really was first class and that everything would be OK. I remember vaguely something my friend Lynn had said about how horrible her bus was around Mexico but that she went for the cheaper bus and that there were more expensive buses which could possibly be nicer.

To my absolute surprise and delight the bus that Tania had insisted on was like flying business class! It had TV, reclining chairs; it was heaven. I made a mental note to never ever catch a bus with Lynn who clearly has a problem spending $23AUD on luxury and quality for 5 hours.

Really easy to sleep as well - I was reading a book called Consumed which is about how we've all been turned into infantile consumers by marketers. While I completely agree with the sentiment, it was boring as hell as the author made his point on every single page (~400 pages). I felt like writing to him saying "i am an adult, you only needed to tell me twice" but having been infantile enough to spend $24USD on a book berating me for doing so, I deserved it.

Good sleep, anyway.

Palenque Ruins

Professor Baños and me, doing the proper Aussie tourist photo pose.

SEE!! I told you it was like a computer game!

Simone, Tania and I swimming at the waterfalls

UPDATE

2008-08-01T01:28:00.000-07:00

~ Update Only ~

In the last couple of weeks I have been in the United States including

- San Francisco (again)
- Los Angeles (again)
- Las Vegas
- New York City
- Philadelphia
- Washington DC
- Pittsburgh
- Buffalo
- Albany
- Catskill

1,176 mi – about 20 hours 28 mins on the road. I drove it myself and I am pretty proud, and got to see some amazing country from behind the wheel of the Chrysler Sebring we hired.

I'm in Madrid now and I will try to catch up on Mexico and everything shortly.

Uploading some pix to Facebook now :)

Me Sick Ho City

2008-07-08T18:58:00.000-07:00

"Thats life. And it's a festering pile of maggot-ridden shit" somebody famous once said, and I said that too when I had my first experience in Mexico City at 3am in the morning when my flight arrived, delayed due to thunderstorms over Dallas Fort Worth airport (DFW) aka the biggest god damn airport I have ever seen in my life. DFW was how I imagined future high capacity civilian space stations will look like on the moon.

Very Cool, with plenty to see and do and it was so self contained that there was a Hyatt hotel behind security meaning if I had a layover or missed connection I would never need to leave the protective cocoon of the terminals.

By some incredible cosmic intervention I met Simone at Mexico City airport, this was a magnificent feat of luck as Tania was meant to meet us at Mexico City airport around the same time and more importantly, introduce the two of us as we had never met before. Tania had major difficulties with her flight on Aerolineas Gringos (American Airlines) out of Venezuela and the infrastructure in that country does not cater for international direct dial to the US so she was basically stuck there until someone helped her work out the phones or the AA booking system, one of which eventually happened and she was on her way on a Mexicana flight. I am not sure how it happened but her story involves an overly friendly taxi driver-cum-stalker and is well worth listening to over a drink.

Thankfully I was on email at SFO and DFW airports (muchos gracias, Aerolineas Gringos) so I could keep in contact with Tania, but for reasons as yet unknown she had packed her mobile in her checked in luggage so had no way of getting word through to Simone, who was travelling Sydney to Mexico City via Fiji and Los Angeles.

Simone had no idea Tania's flight was delayed, nor what flight I would be on, nor which city I was flying in from (Dallas Fort Worth - who knew?) so when she walked past me after i cleared customs and cautiously asked if I was Dave, it was cause for much celebration; as much celebrating as 2 people can do after spending up to 24 hours in transit.

Simone had it way worse than I did but still had her wits about her and she didn't go into total panic mode (like i would have). It was one of those moments where Facebook, no matter how much it pesters me with friend, event or application requests, was really worth its weight in gold, as she was able to recognise me from Facebook.

Mexico City at 3am is really something else- the taxi driver ran 4 out of 5 red lights meaning we got to our hostel in about 10 minutes, but the upsetting thing was that I witnessed Mexico City at 3am and how the poverty manifested itself in poor people tearing through rubbish bags and leaving what was once a 1m x 1m bag of rubbish into about a 5m x 5m pile of shit. Not to mention the hundreds of dogs roaming the streets and appeared to be fighting the humans for food scraps.

There were police *everywhere* with their red and blue lights flashing; in Australia when the lights are flashing it usually means MAJOR shit is going down and there were so many police lights that I honestly thought the end of days had happened while i was at 37,000 feet. I was seriously wondering why the pilot didn't have the good sense to land the plane somewhere a bit more off the grid and self sufficient - like Cabo San Lucas - i mean fighting a dog for scraps of food? that is WAY third world and it signifies to me that anarchy has set in.

However, during my stay in Mexico City I discovered that it IS legal to run the reds at minor insersections after midnight and that the police DO drive around aimlessly with the red and blue lights flashing at all hours of the day, in fact I'm not sure what else the police do except drive around aimlessly because that is all they seemed to do. Britney Spears clearly had an impact on these people.

The other thing the Police do is to stand on the side of the road in riot gear prepared "just in case". Its confronting until you realise how pointless it is and that they are carrying on in this way to keep up appearances for the President of Uraguay or whatever visiting dignitary it happens to be, but I guess Mexico had its problems in the past and it may not have been as safe as it was when I visited there, so good on them for sorting that out.

At least the Mexicans keep their homeland security to pointless exercises of police variety shows rather than the good ol US of A who seem to impose the most inane laws and procedures in the name of 9/11 at every corner. You want a postage stamp? SPREAD 'EM.

All in all I quickly established that at night it is incredibly safe and fast to get around Mexico City including while being drunk beyond belief on dirt cheap alcohol, eating dirt cheap street vendor food, in the back of a dirt cheap taxi cab.

Even better than that was how safe I felt because every second person I saw was a cop "policing" something-or-other but loosely translated means they were on their mobiles or smoking or talking to tourists like me. I really enjoyed how the cops were up for talking shit with Australian tourists at 3am, and ever so helpfully pointing out 7/11's and once pointing out a rather public location for me to have a drunken street wee without even giving me a fine for public intoxication/lewdity/disgracefullness or what have you. Liberty and Justice for all!

I got really sick in Mexico City and so by day i was either miserable with a sore throat or miserable and suffering through a bout of "Montezumas Revenge", which is a really cultured way of saying "runny bum". I think this is funny because in Australia the big chain of "mexican" restaurants are called Montezuma's and everyone else in the world associates that word with incredibly painful bowel movements. Locals were flabbergastered when I told them about this restaurant chain and they all thought it was hilarious.

Note to self, Montezuma is a vengeful and unrelenting whatever-he-or-she-is and it really is possible to go overboard with the refried beans - on every single god-damn meal it is just asking for trouble.

While i'm on the Baños (bun-yoss = bathroom) stories, one of the rudest shocks I got was the discovery that the Mexican Sewerage System was not designed to handle paper. The two go hand in bowl where i'm from, not hand in bin-without-a-lid. I was greeted at 3am by a sign telling me not to flush the paper and to put it in the unlined open bin next to the toilet for disposal later and this was initially bemusing and then appalling when I thought back to the pepperoni pizza I had at SFO and the McDonalds i'd inhaled at DFW (aka "The Last Supper"). I knew I was in for a rough time of it. Its bad enough that I dry retch when I look at the paper the first time round, let alone every time I walk into the Baños and subjecting everyone else to this nightmare is just all kinds of wrong.

Baños is just a funny word and I used it in a variety of ways, like when I made up my Spanglish words like "Baños Grande" (Big Bathroom) which was coined when we were out with Tania's gentleman friend and she took a while in the Baños and in the interests of making conversation across language barriers I asked him "Tania tiene Baños Grande?" (Tania has big bathroom?) and he cracked it laughing - Tania was not so impressed, citing a lack of intelligible signage for her delay.

So despite being sick and Tania having travelled all through South America and only really partied once at a place called La Cucaracha (The Cockroach) she was well keen to hit the town and so we did - the first night we had together we went to a bar that served some awesome Mexican food but due to my families incessant warnings and avice about the food/water/air (basically "DON'T EAT, DRINK OR DO ANYTHING - you will get sick") i stuck to Jack Daniels with purificado ice and a rather average Hamburger made all the more palatable by loading up on the jalapeño's - but the Taco's Tania ordered were fucking fantastic and were nothing like what I had ever associated with the word "taco" before.

After that the girls insisted on checking out the pumping club area we were in and I protested due to my families warnings about doing *anything* and feeling sick and tired, but thankfully we did and walked past a club playing some awesome music, which turned out to be a gay bar.

All of a sudden, I forgave Mexico City.

They are such a nice people, I really discovered this by night when the Mexican youth were able to kick up their heels and party Latino style and that really was fun. Simone and I downed a top shelf tequila shot (at $3 USD it would be rude not to) and I inadvertantly ordered another round, despite trying to ask for the bill, but it went down a treat. Sick? me? NEVER!

Tania started to die in the arse and given that she had flown Venezuela, Miami, Mexico City earlier in the day I was surprised she made it out at all. When we were walking back to what appeared to be the taxi rank (it was actually a taco street vendor - same thing) I was drunkenly Hola'ing good looking people, one of which stopped and chatted to us for ages. He was Peruvian and had some story, but all I really knew about Peru was that la cocaína es especialidad de Peru and through a series of broken spanglish and hand gesturing we discovered that yes, it was indeed the source of much national pride.

The day after we ended up on the open topped Turibus in what can only be described as armageddon style "end of days" heat, which made that Tequila I had rented the night before evict itself thru my pores at an unprecidented rate. We had prime seats in the front row of the double decker bus and as such were not keen on the idea of "hop on, hop off" and god forbid, miss a photo opportunity. We stayed on that bus for what felt like an entire Summer and when as a group we decided "lets get the fuck out of here" we were back at the nightclub district which by day was kind of nice. I was dying of dehydration from a variety of reasons including but not limited to the heat and so had a soup, which turned out to be Alphabet Soup, in a restaurant. Go figure?

That night we ended up going out AGAIN this time with Tania's gentlemen friend who is a local and a local with connections, so while we got into the first, empty club for free, we went to another club which was not free (200 pesos - $20 - fair enough) which was TOTALLY pumping Latino Style. Live band with singers on stage performing a mix of Mexican Pop and Western Pop was a truely magical experience made all the more magical by the bottle of Absolut we had purchased. The night is a total blur as I drank to forget everything that upset me so far in Mexico City and I ended up making friends with a bunch of Mexican people who were ever so nice, except one chick just could not understand why I would not make out with her - it was just very weird and I ended up pretending that I already had a girlfriend just to get away from it. I'm a fan of Absolut Grape but i'm not a fan of the Absolut Grope!

In the following two days I was sick as a dog, as you can well imagine. Tequila and Vodka do provide temporary fortitude against illness but my body was just not coping with everything all at once, and so I missed out on going on a hostel tour to some Ruins near Mexico City, and I lay pretty low.

Tania kindly offered one afternoon to take me to a park to chill out and walk around in the fresh air, which turned out to be a complete shit fight because neither of us had looked into this situation, resulting in the park being closed when we arrived, and we had to experience peak hour on the Mexican Metro. The crush was so bad at one point that my feet didn't actually touch the ground and members of the catholic church could argue that my levitation onto the Metro train and subseqeuent getting of a seat was nothing short of a modern day miracle.

I also got to see the top of the Torre Latinoamericana building which gave me a really great 360 degree view of Mexico City from one of the the highest building in the world - not the tallest - as Mexico City is at least 2000m above sea level. The building itself looks totally third world and has under 50 floors, but given that Mexico sprawls so much and there really aren't that many 50 story buildings - it was impressive. The views were spectacular, especially of Mexico City airport which is located almost in the middle of the city, and would have to be one of the scariest landings to perform as the houses go right up to the runway. That building survived so many MAJOR earthquakes and had a museum of the destruction

When it came time to leave Mexico City I had almost fallen in love - maybe next time I will do things differently, I will stay somewhere which insulates me from the outside world a bit more because the outside world by day was really something else. Mexicans have no idea about how to shut the fuck up and so at every conceivable opportunity there was some outlandish noise which varied from some guy yelling about a WC (my business is clearly his business) to people playing street organ things to yelling and screaming and bad latino music. By night, the city was much quieter, it was managable, it was amazing.

We left Mexico City on what has to be one of the worlds oldest commercial aviation jets - the Boeing 737-200, flown by Aviacsa. Tanias Gentleman Friend had laughed when we told him which airline we booked and said he hoped we would survive the flight. That plane was so old it had not been fitted with the modern turbulence controls that we are used to on the planes that fly around Australia, which I thought was kind of cool because it felt like we were riding in a cart pulled down a dirt road by an irritable donkey. It was an experience to say the very least.

As we came in for landing in very bad weather at Villahermosa, WE ended up hoping that we would survive the flight. At one point we could see the leaves on the trees out the left hand side windows as the plane banked so sharply very close to the runway. We missed the runway and the pilots gunned the engines and i noticed some kind of smoke coming out of the ceiling which psychologically did not help the situation but no one seemed to fussed by this and I am sure it was normal and condensation of some sort. It just did not help the situation AT ALL.

We went around for another attempt at landing and by this point I had found God and prayed so incredibly hard, double hard when we appeared to be about 5 metres off the ground, surrounded by lush swamp lands and no sign of an airport. It was truely scary!!!! At the last second the runway appeared and I am pretty sure we landed before the "piano keys" which signify the beginning of the proper runway and the plane actually landed this time, which was SO GOOD.

Everyone on that old plane cheered so loud and clapped and everything.

We taxied to the gate and thus began the second part of our Mexican Adventure.

Tania and I at Centro Historico

Tania, Simone and I at Dinner

Alphabet Soup

Mexico Nightclub

Tania and Antonio

Lazy Blogger

2008-06-30T22:43:00.000-07:00

In the last two weeks I have been in Mexico City, Palenque, Campeche, Merida and Cancun. Its been hard finding the time to blog, but I have heaps of funny stories and will write them up in the next week or so.

Thanks for holding, your call has progressed in the queue.

cue latino musak

I'm in Carmel, by the sea.

2008-06-24T23:42:00.000-07:00

Having arrived back from LA to SFO it was time to get ready for Cousin Gregs wedding to Sarah. This was set to happen in the town of Carmel-By-The-Sea which is famous because Clint Eastwood used to be the mayor, or something, and it is incredibly posh and well to do - every second shop sells antiques or overpriced bric-a-brac and it is truely a sight to behold. Boring as bat shit if you are poor and still relativley young, but I managed to find some fun in the situation.

Cousin Stephanie and I shared the 2 hour drive from San Fran to Carmel, running about an hour late for the wedding rehearsal which was just finishing as we rocked up, and out lateness was slightly controvertial because it meant Stephanie missed the rehearsal for her part of the wedding ceremony, which was to open the door for the bride. If our excuse counts for anything: we had to run a few errands in Palo Alto before we left including going to Best Buy and In & Out burger for provisions. Not to mention an hour or so faffing around on the Internet.

After the wedding rehearsal was a dinner where the two families came together and met each other, which was cool because Sarah has a cool All American Family and the dynamic was interesting considering my family is All Australian and fairly lazy and we are not the kind of people who indulge in too much ceremony, but will go along with it if there is ample food and wine involved, and this place had a Buffet.

My family was well and truely exhausted having just arrived from Australia and while Sarah's family included people such as Airline Pilots and a Super Mom, my family is so spread out that when we do catch up, we have a lot of catching up to do. My family had people from Japan, New York City, Sydney and Melbourne and all of our weird and wonderful eccentricities, loyalties and all that other family stuff needed to be re-established.

Cousin Stephanie and I amused ourselves using Cousin Anna's Fiance Tomo's Japanese Translator thing to look up rude words. This ended up being double fun because we did not anticipate that as well as giving the japanese equivalent curse word, it also provided a Queens English dictionary definition of the curse. Another thing we did not anticipate was that the translator had a back button allowing the next user (more than likely Fiance Tomo) to go through the list of words we had translated and wonder what the hell he was marrying into.

The "bouf-ay" was quite nice, tho not up to the high standard set by places like Sizzler - they only had about 4 dishes on offer including one for fruit and one for baked vegetables - but I digress - judge not a gathering by its buffet but by the quality of its people. Speaking of Quality, at one point it was noted by guests on the grooms side (including but not limited to my family) that we had run dry on cigarettes, so being relativley sober (having had only 1 glass of wine) I set about finding some more with incredibly drunk Cousin Jeff as navigator.

Carmel is a funny little town in that it is built on a grid on the side of a hill and rather than having round-a-bouts or traffic lights at every intersection, it has these 4 way stop signs, which actually work quite well, but are full on scary the first few times. Under the drunken guidance of Cousin Jeff I was able to learn and execute the "California Roll" - slowing down on approach to a stop sign, then a gentle roll through the intersection, given that it is safe to do so. That it has a widely accepted name "The California Roll" says to me that not coming to a complete stop is not an offense, altho my parents would (and did) argue otherwise.

We discovered that Carmel is not like any other place on earth - there are no 7/11's. We came close to aborting the mission as we California Rolled around the smallish town looking for a place that would sell smokes, and when Cousin Stephanie, who forgot that I had asked for the car keys earlier, had called Cousin Jeff to report that her car had been stolen, it all became too much.

Once it had been established that the car had in fact not been stolen, that I was "sober" and that we were out doing a smoke run, we received another request, this time for Cigars, for the groom himself. So now our mission was even more complex, but in the end we found a store that sold smokes and the incredibly helpful checkout chick was able to point out the place next door where we could buy cigars. Hooray!

We made it back to the dinner and when we did the whole place went up in smoke, at least outside did and when my mum worked out what was going on, she said she was pretty sure I had something to do with this, as I do any kind of suspicious activity. When I said "I drove" she was unimpressed but I can hardly say she was surprised. This was the first of many indiscretions which I believe make my parents think that maybe me living in Melbourne is a good thing after all.

The entire family was staying at the Embassy Suites Hotel (aka "the family compound") in the suburb of Seaside which is about 10 minutes drive from Carmel and about 5 minutes from Monterrey, another gorgeous picture perfect town near by. Seaside felt a little bit like Penrith but with a sea breeze, but it was still alright. It evoked Middle America with the big hair, big malls and big parking lots and all the non descript housing. It was definitely nicer experiencing Middle America in Seaside, rather than actually going to Middle America, or flying over it.

It was one of the most enjoyable things ever having the entire family holed up together in the one hotel, bumping into relatives from far and wide and making chit chat in the lift about various plans we had; "what time is the wedding?", "who are you going with?", "do you know anyone who will be able to drive home from the reception?" etc.

It was also one of the most insane things ever having the entire family holed up together in the one hotel and having to deal with the idiosyncracies of everyone at the same time. All in all it was very funny and I will say this: my family is not as crazy as the fabled Spears, Lohans or more locally, the Newtons - but we are definitely up there!

I decided to drive across the road to the Starbucks where i got drive thru star bucks which took about 15 minutes all up - it would have been so much quicker to either walk (literally across the road) or park, get out and order, or use the starbucks plunger in the foyer. It was a truely cultural experience getting drive thru coffee and was made all the more better when they spilt mine inside the drive thru window and made me another one, with a voucher for a complimentary coffee because my star bucks experience was not the greatest, or whatever marketing want me to think. Whatever - free coffee!

Drive Thru is truely embraced in the USA to the point of stupidity - one night I felt like a midnight snack from McDonalds (next door to star bucks) and feeling rather foolish for the 15 minute drive thru coffee experience earlier in the day, I decided to walk. more fool me!! Apparently the restaurant had shut, but the drive thru remained open.

I remembered this was the case from last time I was in the USA and me and several of my family members tried unsuccessfully to go through the drive thru in a super market trolley which resulted in no big macs, but the cops being called. So i walked back, got the keys, drove to the McDonalds, and got the drive thru. When oil costs $10 a gallon, it will signal the death of the drive thru, which will kind of suck because its a convenience in life I could totally get used to.

We also "previewed" the hotels porn offerings, which involved watching movies for less than 5 minutes and calling up reception to have it taken off our bill "as its not to our liking". This is what happens when I get drunk and bored and want a laugh. We previewed "Even Ugly Gals Need Loving Too" (so bad its good, you won't confuse these older and unattractive ladies with your average porn star") and Bisexual Threeways. When we called to have Bisexual Threeways removed from the bill, it wouldn't go off the TV and we kept calling the front desk and eventually the guy at front desk asked if we were dressed, and came up and showed us how to turn it off. SO embarrassing - and of course we were fully dressed.

The wedding itself was gorgeous - straight to the point, delightful singing and reading and lots of Amen'ing and standing up and sitting down to the point of utter confusion, but my immediate family took their queue from the more religious among the congregation and didn't stand out too badly. Sarah looked absolutely gorgeous and seeing my two cousins up there as Groom and Grooms Man (or whatever they are called) was pretty cool. The wedding was in a church called, i think, "The Mission" and was one of the first spanish missions in California, so was shrouded in history and some really awesome architecture. Sarah's parents had been married there, as had some random elderly lady I had started talking to in the street, who mentioned she was married there, "but of course, divorced now". Given that Sarah's parents are still happily together, I did not take the old bats sage wisdom as a bad omen for Greg and Sarah.

The Reception was again, gorgeous- it was held at a near by country club. We arrived to some kind of pomegranite and champaigne cocktails and absolutely divine canapes - and an absolutely divine waiter. To cut a long story short, I don't really remember much about the wedding except that the aforementioned waiter was very open to many suggestions, one of which that he keep a bottle of champaigne at our table, which included Cousin Stephanie, Piano Man, Wes and myself - otherwise known as "trouble". At one point Piano man and Wes went on a mission to try and score some harder booze which at first was unsuccessful but upon finding the back bar and a bartender who was very open to suggestion, we secured Gin and later on, Cointreau.

It was noted by both families that we ("trouble") had our own bottle of champaigne at all times, not waiting for the waiters to top us up; we helped ourselves. I heard on the grapevine that Wes ended up taking a golf cart for a joy ride and Piano Man hooked up with someone from the bridal party, and i'm much more comfortable revealing that about the night rather than my antics, which mum and I agreed would not be discussed - at least not on here.

The DJ was not as receptive to our suggestions as the waiter or the bartender, but the absolute funniest moment was watching the "old" people, including my parents, getting down to "My Humps" by Fergie - we wondered if they had any idea what it was about, but I believe that Sarah's Super Mom had a quick word to the DJ who all of a sudden became receptive to suggestion, and he stuck to old classics from there. You just can't hear enough "Come On Eileen" at a wedding reception.

The whole night is a bit of a blur really, but its a good blur, and I really enjoyed running amok and celebrating the wedding and I am certainly happy that everyone had such a great night. Except Cousin Greg, whose expensive sunglasses were, allegedly, in the care of Cousin Stephanie, and could not be found in the morning.

Debates ensued as to who was ultimatley responsible for the glasses, and at 8am when Cousin Jeff received an urgent request by Piano Man to be picked up (the bridal party had sobered up) the shit really hit the fan and we all paid for our indiscretions with the champaigne/gin/contreau. It was exactly like that scene in Absolutely Fabulous where Saffron takes the wrong tape in for her Genetics and Ethics presentation and everyone is running around without any central co-ordination except we were not trying to locate pornography (we'd had enough the night before) we were trying to find glasses, camera's and tiny shreds of our dignity. I was reluctant to show my face but felt much more at peace when I had learned that others had disgraced themselves far more than I had, and the case of the missing glasses had consumed collective thought to the point that I was the good one, through a bit of denial and by default (I repeat, I had no involvement with the lost glasses)

Most of the family left the Embassy Suites after that - Kerry and Barry off to Philadelphia to see Barry's grandkids; Anna and Tomo back to Japan; Michael and Jessica back to New York City and the San Franciscan Ludvik's went back to their home to recoup. This left Kathy, my parents and me to hold fort. Kathy was quickly out of there as she had secured some fuddy duddy old worlde accommodation in Carmel which was great because she likes the finer things in life and her new accommodation was definitely that.

My parents, Kathy and I took a drive down Route 1 to see Big Sur and the AMAZING Californian coastline, which is a definite 'must see' and is even more fun to drive as its like an obstacle course with each twist in the road accompanied by a massive drop down to the ocean. I insisted on driving which was good because i learnt the ability to take corners slowly, something I had not quite mastered yet, and I am sure my parents hearts have been strengthened and they will have a few more good years in them yet - or their hearts are on the verge of stopping in which case, oops - but it was great fun anyway.

I drove most of the way back to San Francisco in the Rav 4 and insisted on listening to Country Music as nothing beats driving on the interstate with country music blaring, but when we ran out of signal (the Rav 4 was not Sirius Satellite Enabled - dammit) we went back to the old favourites of silence peppered with me cursing other cars on the road and at one point going 140km/h cause I was "overtaking".

Back in San Francisco I was sorta in the area of a drive by shooting, which was totally whack. I heard the gun shots, the tram I was on skidded to a halt and a few people hit the floor - I wasn't sure what to do but when I heard wheels screach and a car hooning off, I was pretty sure that trouble had passed. One lady started lamenting that her tax dollars pay for this and that they should put "them" all on an island with guns if that is what they want to do. It was very confronting and I ended up getting off the tram, walking a block or two in the opposite direction and jumping on a bus. I felt safer being away from the situation, and not having to deal with the cops who had arrived really quickly and were trying to establish what had happened. When I went past on the tram a few hours later, they were still trying to sort it out - so I am glad that I got out of there.

The USA is many things but one thing it is not is boring.

Next Stop: Mexico City.

The party goes up in smoke.

Aunty Kathy and I

Bride and Groom

The reception + The waiter

California Coastline

Viva Los Angeles

2008-06-21T17:04:00.000-07:00

After we spent the morning walking Venice Beach, checking out the freaks including, but not limited to: a D-grade TV show involving a cop and a busker, street vendors selling "plus size bikini's", art that consisted of wood burnt by the roaches of a joint and street musicians, some of which were so in your face it made it hard to relax and enjoy the spectacle.

One guy was so invasive in his attempt to put headphones on us so he could play his CD and that he actually succeeded and the track ended up being something about his mama getting shot and it was all just a bit too full on.

Venice Beach is nothing like anything back in Australia - its maybe like Manly Beach on Acid - which sounds like a great idea at the time but you end up really disorientated with a lot of sand up your nose. I was disorientated, as I always am on the West Coast of anywhere (i'm used to ALL beaches facing east) but I had my wits about me and managed to keep the majority of the sand on the beach.

I had an absolute thumping headache and necked about 4 Nurofen when I realised I hadn't had caffeine all day and that a caffeine headache can only be cured with caffeine. As an aside to this situation, I read an article in the American Airlines magazine called "American Way" entitled "America - Caffinated Nation" (i'm in America, der!).

The article was an interesting read as it pointed out that a caffeine addiction is "negativley reinforced" in our psyche just like cigarettes are, so we all stay addicted. We drink to stop the headaches, we smoke to avoid withdrawals.

Interesting! I wonder if soon they will start taxing Caffeine?

It was at 7/11 that i saw the most abhorrent thing on holidays thus far - a morbidly obese man sort of half passed out, half resting by the door of the 7/11;

"*WHEEZE* ... gahd ah ... *HUFF* ... dahllaaah?"

I am not sure how long he had been there but he looked fairly settled in, and it was just an appalling situation to be in, trying to process and reconcile what I had just seen.

- If he is so poor how did he get SO FAT?

- Maybe he is fat as people donate leftover nasty from the 7/11?

- Had he got a good butt groove going on the concrete?

- How will he get up?

- Will he ever get up?

I should have tried a little harder than I did at the time to get a photo of this spectacle of a man (Only in America) but at the time I felt it would have been inappropriate to laugh at his misfortune using a photograph as evidence, as opposed to now, using just the written word. Everyone deserves their dignity, but in hindsite if I was not feeling so moral and ethical at the time, if he did not take to the camera kindly I could have either given him some cash or just not, because what are the chances he's going to stand up at all, let alone chase and (b)eat me.

After this, we drove around some more while listening to Howard Sterns show on Sirius Satellite Radio. As Howard Stern is so brilliant, we were inspired to drive to a bakery across town to get cupcakes some of which were in turn inspired by Howard Stern and his on air team.

Cousin Stephanie was calling the bakery and asking for directions which were helpfully provided by the employee as "its near the car park!" or "just past the mexican restaurant!" As it turned out, getting some relevant directions, such as the nearest cross street, was like getting the 7/11 fat man on his feet - it took us a few goes before we succeeded.

Several phone calls later (to the same employee) we found it - sure enough there was a car park near by and several mexican restaurants, so the employee was helpfully describing about 90% of greater Los Angeles so it really was a special moment when we found those cupcakes.

The cupcakes were divine, I didn't bother taking a photo of them because I started feeling like the fat man at 7/11 with all the junk i'd been eating (6 burgers, 4 days) and to obsess over the beauty of a cupcake was not going to help a thing when it comes to my impending hardened arteries/gout/cholesterol/obesity etc.

I'd rather not have the evidence; unhealthy is denial and cupcakes.

Suffice it to say, the cupcake had about 5cm of frosting, a pretty little carrot made out of frosting and I think beneath the frosting was some carrot cake but with that much frosting going on I really couldn't tell what was happening when I ate it. I can just imagine trying to justify this indulgence to an ex Colleague of mine Jill, who is to health as I am to junk - a keen enthusiast.

"At least it had a carrot on it!"

The dumb part is that I actually got the carrot cake thinking it might be the healthiest of the options, but alas - I am in America.

Cousin Stephanie had the "Artie Lange" cupcake as it is frequently mentioned on the Howard Stern show and she is a devotee if ever there was one. I saw a picture of Artie Lange and he is one fat bastard so I dunno what was going on with her cupcake but it made the carrot one look TOTALLY like the healthy option, so Jill would be proud of my attempts at being healthy. cough, wheeze.

If there is one thing Cousin Stephanie and I share in common aside from some DNA it is a love of good radio. Howard Stern, he is brilliant, I can understand why so many people are offended by him but he "goes there" and that is really refreshing to hear sometimes.

From my limited knowledge of the guy, he started on syndicated broadcast radio around America but was far too risque for public broadcast radio and as such, ended up causing quite the scandal on a couple of occasions. Using Radio as a medium, he successfully involved sex, nudity, porn and lewdity in his show, and rather than being rewarded for his creativity he was promptly was taken off the air.

Now, on Subscription Satellite Radio, he's free to do as he pleases as Satellite is not held to the same "high standards" as the FCC holds the free to air TV networks and public broadcast radio.

It came to me on one of our many looong drives around LA that in Australia we have very little by way of good mainstream celebrities or icons or mouthpieces. Bert Newton and Kerry Ann Kennerley - spare me. John Laws and Alan Jones - well one retired and I am not sure what the other one is up to but he is full of contradictions which are even more insane than the FCC who are still on "Code Red" after Janet Jacksons boob fell out during Superbowl a few years back.

So, I ended up driving the convertible around LA and "getting my wheels" via a baptism of fire - Driving on LA roads and freeways!. And drove I did - I initially got my wheels in the Hollywood Hills, which were incredibly steep and tight and arrow but we made it up there and back down and learning to drive on the wrong side of the road in LA really paid off - The view paid off, LA at night is totally gorgeous and now I know why all the celebrities seem to sleep during the day, it is because they would not be able to see a thing from their houses on the Hollywood Hills for the smog, but by night - heat that plate!

Aside from that, I did some driving around LA at night when the streets were relativley quiet and got FAT BURGER which was absolutely divine despite the politically incorrect (yet strangely, the most appropriate) name.

The next morning we sadly checked out of the Hotel Roosevelt and left its celebrities, its pool, its cable TV, its CCTV, its room service, its pill bottles, its crisp linen sheets - basically everything I value in life I left it all behind.

There was a photo shoot for P Diddy's new something (I never know what he is called or what he is selling these days) and that was cool to watch until we realised it made the valet an absolute clusterfuck of confused people trying to find their cars. Clearly, Sean Coombes paid good coin for that location and made the hotel guests chopped liver for the duration of the shoot.

Speaking of chopped liver, we checked out Canters Deli which is a famous Jewish cafe slash institution not far from where we had been staying, and I wondered how many back room deals had occured in that deli. Maybe the decision to make Britney "THE proverbial cash cow" came from a meeting over a Reuben in a back room at Canters? I will never know, but my quest to find Britney was rekindled.

Having eaten a Reuben for breakfast and feeling an incredible bowel movement on its way, we cruised on over to Melrose where I found a Tea Bean & Coffee Leaf and used their facilities. I quickly ordered a large coffee and went about my business, which involved the not so discrete getting of the key to the bathroom, and when I came out the barista announced really loudly that he had mad mine really hot, coz he thought I might have been a while.

If ever I have been mortified it was then.

So aside from a mercy coffee, all I bought on Melrose was a T-Mobile Sim Card and as it turns out I was in the right place for a COOL NUMBER. THe 323 area code signifies "Los Angeles" to the rest of America and so to drop that into a conversation or onto a form usually got me a second glance, just incase I was famous.

Then it happened - on Melrose: I found Britney.

It happened in a Vintage Tshirt Shop and it wasn't what I expected ie the recovering addict with mental issues that we hear about today. Instead I saw the not-so-innocent gal that had so much going for her in 2004, which was when she'd autographed the wall of the shop.

She had written about her "fine hubby" Kevin Federline who was the "Sexiest Man Alive" and to be honest with you, based on what I know from what I read, that is probably when she was at her happiest; she was free of the corporate money making machines, she was free from her overbearing pageant style parents, she was not pleasing any record label who had managed her life to the point of her never actually having her own life and she had let go - At this time, it really was Britney, bitches.

This is how I like to remember her.

Viva Los Angeles.

TravelBlog #2 - A Day in LA

2008-06-16T00:54:00.000-07:00

My LA experience was limited to a red convertible, driving around aimlessly and almost exclusively eating either drive thru, or burgers, or both. Cousin Stephanie and I did it Britney Stylee!!!

We landed in LA to Fog which is definitely out of character for that city (they prefer Smog) and caught the bus to Budget rent a car. This was the beginning of what was to be, many "in jokes" which you had to be there for, and when we told the lady we were staying at the "Hotel Roosevelt" she immediatley assumed we were way more upper class than we looked and wrote down a whole host of celebrity hot spots that we should visit around our hotel and engaged in some really funny conversation that involved a personal commentary on the Musak they had playing.

On the first of many aimless drives around LA we passed some really seedy motels like the Sunset Motor Inn or the Shady Pines Motor Inn and worked these into theoretical interactions with the Budget Rent a Car Lady:

"So, where 'bouts y'all staying?"

"Sunset Motor Inn"

".........Oh... I...*shrug*...I dunno it - have a nice day now!"

We drove seriously aimlessly around LA but I got to see some topical celebrity hotspots such as Kitsons, Cedar Sinai Medical Centre (ominously, George Burns Road leads into it), Fred Segal ($400 t-shirts - not), the studio where Dr Phil gets filmed, Amoeba Music and the Hollywood Sign (from a distance).

First up, we had to have something to eat and my cousin said I was in for a real surprise. I honestly thought we'd be going to a celebrity hotspot like Koi or The Ivy but for us that fateful morning, it was ROSCOES CHICKEN AND WAFFLES. Thats right - that is all they serve.

The place is an institution in LA and the food is truely gross and still turns my stomach just thinking about it. It could be the killer hangover i'm nursing or just the gastric recollections of digesting half a chicken covered in batter, deep fried, served with a huge waffle covered in butter and maple syrup. Honest to god!!!

I would not even dream that up in my most stoned of stoner fantasies nor would I wish it upon my worst enemy even if i spat in the maple syrup.

Regardless, I put that food away like it was going out of fashion, despite that combination of food never really being in fashion in the first place, and felt slightly more cultured and less like a tourist because there is no way in hell Lonely Planet could find any reason to tell you to go there.

You need to go and see it for yourself - "soul food" - perhaps because you will be bloated into your next life?

After that experience, we drove up to Griffith Observatory which was kind of cool and involved going up onto one of the many hills that surrounds LA. My first impressions were that they would be lucky to see *anything* out of their telecope because I could not see any of Downtown LA which was a few miles away, due to the smog.

By this time the fog had lifted and we were up high enough that you could clearly see where the smog ended and the clear blue sky began. It was unsettling to say the least, but hey, its America and given that LA is all about driving around aimlessly, there really isn't much that can be done in the short term, but this is one place that the High Price of Oil ("a new record!") can only mean good things.

They have "Smog Check" stations everywhere for peoples cars, which appeared to be as effective as relying on Alka Seltzer and a tabloid magazine from 1991 to relieve and distract a woman in the throes of childbirth.

Full Disclosure: I was chainsmoking at this point and can't place the entire blame on the cars for the smog, but in my defence I was trying really to pass the Roscoes and was using any and all methods to speed up nature!

Griffith was cool and we did all the free stuff which included using a public toilet (Hooray!) and viewing some really cool exhibits like the Foucault Pendulum which set about proving the earths rotation by knocking a pin down every 10 minutes. It was just like bowling, but the swinging pendulum did not deviate from its course and it was the earth that was rotating and causing the pins to be knocked down. That was WAY cool!

I actually found some of the imagery which adorned the building to be quite confronting, as they were images which evoked the Illuminati conspiracy; the "all seeing eye", the pyramids and the masonic square and compass symbol. If you've ever seen a US $1 bill you'll find the same images there and some latin stuff about new world order. I'm almost loathe to mention any more incase I have trouble with the Department of Homeland and Security - but suffice to say, I noticed these images and it made my hair stand up a little bit. I've found that the foil cap i've taken to wearing kind of stops the hair from sticking up which is totally cool, but a total nightmare when passing through the TSA at any airport.

The Griffith Observatory has been featured in many films like Terminator and is a truely wonderful way to see LA, and it reinforces the reality that California is one big desert - you can see where people stop watering and the ground goes from lush green to dust.

After that we drove back down the mountain and continued our aimless driving along streets like Melrose, La Brea, Robertson Sunset and Santa Monica Boulevard and, rather disappointingly did not encounter a single clusterfuck of paparazzi, so we called it a very early day and checked into the Hotel Roosevelt.

I must say, there is a certain "je ne sais quoi" about rocking up to a celebrity hot spot hotel in a red convertible and having it valet parked. It was kind of "de rigeur" for those parts of town and if you'll pardon my try hard french, we felt less like the F List and more like the D List and it was at this point that we were truely thankful that we forked out the $20 and upgraded from a Budget Economy car (2 door lawnmower) to something with a bit of cred, even if it was a Convertible Mitsubishi.

The Convertible Mitzo had satellite radio which made the ride all the more sweeter - i "sirius"-ly can't wait until we have satellite radio in Australia!

We soon discovered that we did not need to leave our hotel to check out the Chinese Theatre across the road as they had CCTV installed on the hotel roof giving us a birds eye view, which was kind of lazy but cool at the same time.

I decided that I had seen enough of Hollywood on the TV both at the Hotel Roosevelt and on the TV back in Australia so I head out on a solo mission and walked around only a little bit, only to be incredibly annoyed by the black guys pushing burnt cd's yelling "MAKE ME FAMOUS" and some other street performers who defy anything more than a passing mention.

It was very tacky to say the least, so I decided to get some take away food and go back to watching Hollywood on the TV.

This was where I had my first and only real celebrity encounter - I had take-away Baja Fresh (Australian Pronounciation: Bar Jar Fresh. American Pronounciation: Bai yah fresh) and was struggling to work the card reader in the lift, when it stopped on the Mezzanine floor and who should walk in but Seann William Scott!!!!!!!! (of American Pie Fame)

I immediately recognised him but was totally paralysed in fear as I had never met someone so famous before, except maybe Kamahl, but you get what I am saying. Seann (First Name Basis) had trouble working the card too and I nervously showed him how it was done - quite simple in the end, you put the card in the way the arrows are facing and Stifflers mom's your uncle.

I couldn't quite remember his name and I didn't wanna make a vague reference to one of his iconic movies by saying "so, your mama still wanna fuck?" incase he totally misunderstood the situation and I ended up with an eye the same colour and texture as my impending Baja shit.

He knew that I knew and I knew that he knew and I was eternally grateful when he broke the silence and said "hey man, I'm going on Jimmy Kimmel Live in about 45 minutes, why don't you head on down" and so I wrote my name down (with a +1) and got out of the lift and nearly died about a thousand times and ran back to the room to wake my cousin from her slumber (hollywood CCTV was boring) and we made the whole half a block walk to the live studio taping of Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Watching a talk show being produced was a part of My American Dream(tm) and so I really enjoyed the experience and relished in the fakeness of it all, but to Jimmy Kimmels credit, despite being recorded hours before being broadcast, it was filmed in a live format - there was no stopping once it started and no take two's.

Stiffler told a few stories about the toilet and his brother sleeping with a midget, some chick came on and talked about her experiences on Entourage and, the poor little lamb, some story about a crush she had on Lance Bass and then we were all herded outside for an exclusive N.E.R.D concert!!! I mean, i'm not a huge fan of N.E.R.D but they were way cool and they had a full festival set up for maybe 100 people who were totally into him, so I stood back and vibed it out.

It was definitely an amazing way to spend a day in LA with my most awesome cousin. :)

More Soon :)

- How i brought SHAME to my family name
- Why I will never ever be invited to another family wedding

LA in a Convertible!

LA in Smog

LA in Gluttony

Chicken & Waffles

Cousin Stephanie

Griffith Observatory

Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Snuck Backstage!

TravelBlog #1 - The US of Wa-hey

2008-06-11T19:23:00.000-07:00

Lets begin.

Lynn drove me to the airport in what is a new tradition (she drove me to the airport for one of my other O/S trips) and we had McDonalds which is never a good idea before a flight because something they put in the special sauce "at altitude" turns in to a scientific experiment of turning a solid into a gas and several hours later, a super sized solid. Fun hey? I opened my travel blog with a fart joke.

Leaving for a big holiday is always stressful, and the major source of stress more often than not is "what have I left behind?".

Despite the stress of packing up and leaving, all along I was told by my friends that houses, jobs and posessions can easily be replaced. If i leave something behind, no worry, buy it again.

As I discovered on Saturday morning, a forgotten drivers licence is INCREDIBLY hard to replace. Especially when the drivers licence is in Melbourne, I'm in Sydney and in 24 hours I would be in San Francisco. Shit.

What really annoyed me is that I had to show my drivers licence and lie to buy Codral at the chemist. I wanted the Codral with pseudo ephedrine incase I came down with something overseas that required medication, and the over the counter non pseudo ephedrine stuff claims to make one "drowsy".

I don't want to spend my holiday "drowsy" in bed, at major landmarks, in LA traffic, or at nightclubs (i do enough of that at home) so that is why Codral was an absolute must.

As I was technically "not sick" the Pharmacist refused my request stating that I needed an 'immediate need' for Codral and it can't be given out for "preventative purposes" and so when I said "ok, i have a little sniffle" the medicine chest was opened! I was free to buy pseudo ephedrine.

The downside to this incredibly unnecessarily exercise in bullshitting is that I left my licence behind in the confusion of the situation involving me, a bored and unfulfilled pharmacist and his dumb fuck pharmacy assistant, and ended up breaking several more laws including driving without a licence several times. Go that! It seems pointless to have all these measures in place so that (for arguments sake) law-abiding citizens are required to make up lies to get medicinal assistance.

While i agree that Meth is bad and that measures should be put in place to make it less available, this game of charades at the pharmacy is like the Australian Government taxing 'alco-pops' to try and deal with the problem of underage binge drinking. A 6 pack of Bacardi Breezers has gone up? Its almost worth buying a whole bottle of Bacardi! Next they'll be taxing Red Cordial.

Thankfully, despite the initial stress and anxiety that I would not be able to legally drive in far away and exotic places I managed to locate my licence at the pharmacy in Chadstone, Melbourne. They told me I had forgotten to take the Codral as well, so I formulated a plan involving Australia Post, Fed Ex and the services of a Columbian Cartel so it all arrives safely to me somewhere in the USA. I should specify here, i'm referring to my drivers licence AND THE CODRAL.

The flight to the USA was half empty (or half full, which is actually the pessimistic way of looking at it) which was great because it meant that we were able to stretch out. My aunt had 2 seats to herself and I moved 2 rows back and had my own two seats. This meant that I was able to feign sleep for about 5 hours despite having my legally-obtained-but-somewhat-questionable Valium but the absolute horror of a 14 hour flight means that when you reach the 6 hour mark, you are really and truely over it and want to get off.

My feet were itching, but it was more of a psychological itch than a tinea itch, which was great because my tinea cream was in the hold.

My aunt commented that Qantas flight attendants are "getting a bit long in the tooth" after one of the ladies, who I should say performed her job amazingly, announced to an older couple that she was a "war baby, born in 1945".

I wondered aloud, maybe too a-loudly, whether she was member number #00000001 of the Mile High Club and is now spending her time serving chicken or beef on the long haul before she qualifies for some profoundly amazing retirement package.

This, of course, would involve first class flights and all the long service perks the airlines would loathe to offer new recruits citing oil prices or 9/11 or any of those politically motivated excuses that someone speculated about on a cable news network and we have collectively accepted as "fact".

Good on her!

We got to San Francisco Airport and the wheel chair I had organised for my Aunt really paid off as we were wheeled through Dept of Homeland Security Immigration ahead of everyone else, including a former boss of mine whose name I will not mention, but he recognised me and I recognised him - standing in a queue! HA! It goes without saying that he was probably flown all expenses by the company we worked at, but I skipped the queue - so i win.

I'm now thinking up creative excuses as to why I need a wheel chair in *every* airport, but given that I am able bodied I figure I'll not ask too much of the universe.

Tania, my travel buddy, not so lucky - say she should accidentally and unfortunately "trip" somewhere in the airport, i'd hate for her ankle to get twisted...

One thing I noticed in America is that a lot of taxi drivers are of Eastern European decent. This made me think of "The American Dream (TM)" and how big budget Hollywood has developed this image of America as the Land of Opportunity. It made me wonder whether Murials Wedding and Pricilla were hugely influential in places like India and Pakistan and the freakonomic analysis would say that having seen and met the people of the not-so-fictional Poipoise Spit ("he's a good man, charlie chan") and the talented Ping Pong champ from Bangkok in outback Australia (*pop* *pop*) that some of our Australian taxi drivers thought "Fuck America - Australia is the land of Opportunity!".

We had a rather spunky Latvian driver drive us from SFO airport to Fishermans Wharf and given that I had just arrived and not yet mastered the art of Tipping, rather than giving him a monetary tip I thought I'd offer to do something involving another tip, but lets face it - after a 14 hour flight from Australia and having being served food that I would not offer my worst enemy (maybe I would but with bodily fluids), i had about the same chances at "tipping" the hot Latvian as the Pakistani or Indian would have at independent wealth and success outside of the taxi cab in the progressive and racially tolerant fictional backwater of Porpoise Spit.

San Fran was great - the day we landed my aunty and I checked into the Holiday Inn Fishermans Wharf which did not offer a wheel chair service and involved far too many hoops to jump through and a more thorough interrogation and a longer walk than San Francisco Airport could ever dream of.

Once we found the room and worked out how to use the US phone service (hint: call the operator, ask for connection) we were starving, so went out and sampled the local seafood fare at Fishermans Wharf. The memory of that calamari still turns my stomach and how anyone could manage to fuck up a salad like they did is beyond me - but the point is we ate.

After that we walked around a little bit and decided that we were pretty tired, so we would buy a 3-day tourist bus pass for some exhorbitant amount of money, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I had neglected to realise that I have been to San Fran a few times and being jetlagged and bored I ended up sleeping for most of the ride. It was a nice, sunny day on an open topped bus - who wouldn't?

I eventually woke up and my Aunt told me I'd been sleeping and I made more of an effort to stay awake, then I realised she had fallen asleep. Later in the trip when it came to recalling what the guide had said about various parts of the city, we had to piece it together based on who was awake for that district and we realised that the bus tour guide really sucked because all he seemed to do was tell us which Irish bars NOT to drink at, like that was all we came here to do.

Later that night when we were peckish and judging by the appearance of the place (think Sizzlers Poor Cousin without the Buffet) the Denny's 24 hour restaurant in the foyer defied eating, so I suggested we go for In and Out burgers. That place is AWESOME and I would consider giving everything up in Australia to open my own franchise of this amazingly cool fast food restaurant.

We ended up back in Denny's for dessert and the quality of the pancakes and cake said to me that the rest of the food there was going to be awful, as if I couldn't already tell that by the dreadful smell in the lobby shared by Holiday Inn and Dennys.

When I refused to get out of bed the next morning due to jetlag, my Aunt went down to have breakfast and by all reports my predictions of unsavouryness were proven correct.

San Francisco has the best public transport I have seen in America, cept for NYC and its sewer trains - San Fran have busses that run on electricity ("Zero Emission Vehicle"), trams, and a metro style train called BART. The trams are amazing - the city has restored trams from such far away places as Philadelphia and Italy and restored them to the former glory, usually the 1950's style, and run them up and down Market St linking the Castro (gay town) with Fishermans Wharf.

For $1.50 we were able to ride all public transport up until 4pm, meaning that the workers had to pay the $1.50 twice but for tourists, it worked out to be a fantastic way to see the city and get around. The Castro is amazing by day, by night I imagine it to be a little seedy, but its nothing like Darlinghurst or Oxford St and has some really amazing book stores, antiques, furniture and of course, the architecture for which San Francisco is famous for (think Full House opening credits but without an Olsen spoiling the view).

I met up with my parents that evening and we went to the San Franciscan China Town and had a really pleasant meal, then I went to bed early as I had to be at San Francisco Airport at 6am for a 8am flight to Los Angeles.

The Moldavian who drove me to SFO airport at 5am after I missed the affectionatley known "PEASANT SHUTTLE" entertained me with stories of the motherland, including what was, in his eyes, the greatest accomplishment associated with the downfall of the Soviet Union: The speed limit in Moldavia was increased.

Apparently to visit his wife in Odessa, across the border, he was restricted to driving 90km/h however after the downfall of all things Bloc the speed limits in Moldavia were no longer under Soviet control, and they went a little crazy.

Clearly many decades of an iron fist makes one want to push that Skoda to the limits and it took him one hour less to travel to Odessa for a little 'somethin' somethin' (i believe - my Moldavian is not up to scratch but i am sure that is what he was saying) and clearly this was a good thing.

Slow and steady does not necessarily win the race!

I guess old habits die hard and he seemed to drive at 90 km/h to the airport while everyone else (including the aforementioned Latvian) drove at speeds more comparable to 140 km/h.

I hope the Latvian is not so much of a fast lover as he was driver but he certainly knew how to get me where I wanted to be and bloody fast.

COMING UP!

- Los Angeles
- Meeting a Celebrity
- Attending Jimmy Kimmel LIVE! including N.E.R.D and Seann William Scott (American Pie)

Qantas Dave

San Fran Tram

No Beaver

Gay Trash

Bay Bridge

The Absolute Horror of Technical Support

2008-05-19T16:38:00.000-07:00

My travel buddy got an Express Card for her Wireless service so we can use it in my laptop when we're over seas, with global roaming.

I knew this would not be as simple as it seems, in my many years of dealing with The Company I have never had the seamless 'integrated customer experience' that their ads promise. Reluctantly, I put the CD in my laptop thinking "it won't be long before I'm on the phone" but, shock, the CD actually worked and seemed to be doing what I wanted it to do.

Unfortunately at the end, even though it had successfully tested everything to do with this connection , when I tried to connect it came up with "INVALID USERNAME OR PASSWORD". grr..

So I rebooted, then I gave it a while (i went to Coles) and when I returned home thirty minutes later I tried it again, still the same error.

It was time to call The Company.

I was hung up on twice by the interactive voice recording system, which kept cracking me up because I remember the guys who "managed" the IVR and they thought they were so great and that the rest of us had no idea, and it was fulfilling on some level to find out that they had less of a clue than me all along. Thanks guys!

On the third attempt I got through after yelling "c*nt" at the recorded person, and made it through to a consultant in like 30 seconds, impressive.

I told the guy my situation, the problem, and the desired solution and he started troubleshooting. At first he was doing some meaningful stuff like checking the connection manager but when the most basic of tasks failed ("retype the password, press ok, try again") he resorted to "well we are having problems with Authentication nationwide at the moment" and i was like "oh, really?" and let him carry on about that for a while. Having worked in several Internet Service Providers I understand the implication of a nationwide Authentication outage, but that stuff happened back in the 90's when Point of Presence for Dial Up were scattered in strategic locations around the country and not centralised like they are now.

Had I reset my password in the last 24 hours? no. He asked this about 3 times and I kept repeating the same answer.

I said "i thought that The Company would have multiple redundant systems in case of a situation like this?" and the guy was like "oh yeah, but this is pretty big". While I mentioned to him early on in the call that I had worked for The Company at a point in time, I neglected to say that I had a fairly good understanding of the systems, including the backups.

I asked him to check the event log to make sure that the system had recorded the new device to which he replied "oh yeah-- hold up... yep, yep it has".

Great - *I* was finally getting somewhere.

Anyway, he continues on about this Authentication outage, about how it started on Friday afternoon and went over the weekend and was still being worked on, as we speak.

He told me to try again in 24 to 48 hours because "someone is working on this as we speak" (I heard you the first time) and having worked at The Company I knew this probably meant that someone probably sent an email about it last Friday and then the recipient had Monday off, or something like that.

While he was doing this, I fired up my fully functional Unwired connection and checked out The Company Service Status which of course, said there were absolutely no problems with the network that I was attempting to connect to.

I said to the guy "Listen, I have checked out the service status page and it tells me there is no problem, but you tell me there has been a problem since Friday? Surely it would have hit the Service Status page by now. I'm not sure who to believe, you or the web page. I'd like an explanation".

For good measure I also tacked on a "if I was a paying customer, i would be appalled at The Company for not being able to provide the most basic of services, for which you charge a premium price".

He puts me on hold for 3 minutes, during which time I tried the The Company Wireless connection again and shock of shocks, it connected!

The consultant took me off hold and wouldn't let me interrupt, so I let him carry on about how it had only been raised in the call centre as an issue and hadn't yet been transferred to Operations (or something) and got the whole long and convoluted story about how he was right & i am wrong, but that a technician was working on it and I should sit tight. Right!

So I said to him "Well sunshine (i actually said that!), its your lucky day. It connected while you had me on hold".

He responded with several explanations but my all time favourite was "oh! ... had you reset your password in the last 24 to 48 hours?" and i was like "c'mon man... we established that i hadn't a while back. Aren't you taking notes?".

Anyway, rather than banging on any more I thanked him for his time and infinite amounts of wisdom, and hung up.

What REALLY frustrated me was how the guy on the phone thought he was just the bee's knee's authoritative source and I was some pathetic customer who had no idea, when he was talking out of his a r s e the whole time.

It is how The Company rolls these days I guess. Its all Marketing Spin and not an ounce of Service. I don't wish to paint the entire employee base with the same brush, there are some really cool people who work there, but the unfortunate majority who assume that because they work for The Company that everyone is supposed to believe everything they say without question, because that is how they operate.

I called a friend who works at The Company.

"Guess what, i have a story"

"yeah? shoot"

"I had to call The Company".

We shared experiences, she had to call last week for something similar and was being bullsh~tted to in the exact same way, but she had the benefit of reading the internal notes and catching the consultant out at his game, after eventually revealing her sources to him after he asked "where are you getting your information?".

Its funny that she was getting it from the same place he was.

Rather than just going "yeah... you caught me out, i have no idea what i'm on about" and eating some humble pie, which can be reciprocated with "its alright, it happens" - The Company mantra seems to be to spin more and more and more to make it seem like they're "in control" of the situation.

I was wondering what other excuses they use to get people off the phone, because the only time The Company wants to talk is when they are making a sale, not when they're supporting something they've already sold.

"oh, you can't connect - what colour is your hair? blonde - unsupported!"

"your phone won't work - did you have chicken for lunch - well that would be it then!"

As a way of wrapping up this overly long blog post, I'll leave you with one of the most inane situations I've encountered with The Company. Whenever I call they try to "upsell" me products which I can legitimately get for free from The Internet.

All along, this guy was trying to flog me their "firewall and security software" but the first thing he did when I rang was to ask me to disable all of my security software, and not once tell me to re-enable it after the call. So you pay, to turn it off.

The miscommunication in the place that is trusted with OUR communication is appalling, but the new ad about how easy life can be with their products and services - priceless.

blah

2008-05-13T02:27:00.000-07:00

sup?

i was in sydney on the weekend - hectic visit. ended up greeting my mum with "fuck off!" when she woke me up on mothers day for an early breakfast with family. as soon as i realised where i was i felt so bad, but these days i wake up at some really strange places and it can be a little confusing.

huge fuck off tarantula walked across the dash board when i was attempting to do a manual hill start, both of which i hate, and that was an exceptionally fucked up moment that came very close to disaster.

my folks let me drive the Audi on my own, which was a total wheel spin, so i did... but a turbo A3 manual is a bit too much for me. i stalled it once and was shaking and dad specifically said "no smoking in the car" . I don't think i could relax anyway, imagine if shit happened with that car, i'm positive they would take it out of my inheritance. haha... kidding. that car IS my inheritance, so it is in the cars best interest that i don't drive it right now.

i called my sis and asked her to swing past my friends place on her way home from work and swap cars... i traded audi for excel, and that was a bit more fun for me. not so much stress!!

people looked at me in the audi as well cause i did some of the absolute worst driving ever

another source of stress was my sisters Wii. Nintendo took it one step further with Wii as it is no longer taboo to emphatically move the controller in a vain attempt to get around a corner faster in mario kart - however poking out the tongue during game play is still controversial in some circles.

I found that the new Wii cordless remote thing brought a level of stress which goes against the sense of relaxation which these games were originally designed to provide. we would finish races and feel physically and emotionally drained when we didn't place, or super hyperactive if we placed.

it is weird living on a floor in melbourne but kind of cool - my home life revolves around my mattress and whatever mess i make has to be on it, which means before bed i have to clean it up. i highly recommend it as a life style, very japanese and all that. cultural squatting, i'd better get used to it now.

if you ate meat a big mac, you would totally understand the weird, bland zen that my life is right now.

Moving House Blues

2008-05-02T06:35:00.000-07:00

I am on the cusp of living in the suburbs.

I am vacating my much loved shack in Richmond, next door to a quiet train station 5 minutes from the middle of the city, with Vic St and Bridge Rd within walking distance, to live in a triplex two towns over. I shouldn't talk down about it, its a great place to squat while I prepare for 3-6 months travelling the world (starting June 8).

I have been running a shuttle service between Richmond and Oakleigh or Murrumbeena or whatever the suburb is called (Chadstone?) and I'm an expert at the Monash's random speed limits (not as bad as the Maroondah Hwy) and one more than one occasion I've driven along random backstreets in the direction I thought to be home, which was for the most part, successful, and along the way i got to see some of the more weird and wonderful parts of Melbourne.

There is this intersection on Glenferrie Road that involves 2 trains, 2 trams, 4 car lanes and 2 bike lanes. Its amazing more people don't get hurt. Someone is always running into mass transit in this state, its almost epidemic! Shane Warne did it a couple of weeks ago.

A really nice chick came with a spunky guy to pick up some shelves i sold her via ebay and it didn't fit in her car. The situation played out in a comical way as we all pretended that with a bit of push and shove and nudge and tweak that we would get it in. The spunky guy was useless and i was equally unhelpful, only really stating the obvious and occasionally scratching my chin like i gave a shit. So the chick resorted to calling her father. This achieved nothing, but bought me some time to come up with the helpful suggestion that they go on a mission to buy hockey straps. First attempt at the servo was unsuccessful - second attempt at Coles was successful. The spunky guy knew what to do with the straps so they were on their way in no time.

Still, their car looked like something from the third world - That photo of that eastern bloc guy driving his Skoda with the horse squeezsed in the back seat - they know how that man felt.

After this debacle, I drove Tania home with an absolute truck load of stuff shoved in to the boot and back seat of The Silver Bullet in a fashion that can only be described as "illegal", on top of this I managed to fit in two really bulky plaster casts (for use in Tania's personal endeavors) in by sliding them on top of everything else, including surface that made the heavy casts the perfect projectiles. I didn't realize the casts were so bulky and heavy and she didn't say anything when she saw my car bursting at the seams, but i wasn't going to back down from the challenge.

Those bastards slid in on top of the clothes drying rack, which was on top of several layers of boxes and random stuff that fit in (like a toaster that was poking the back of my seat). It may have been a bit silly and it probably was... i was packing shit the whole way... literally... stuff was falling into the front (thankfully not the plaster casts) and it was pretty funny in the end. I unpacked that car that night in the way of a manic obsessive - i never ever want to drive a car that feels like i am providing a taxi driver service for a horse.

Other trips to the suburbs have involved screaming at an old person and i ALLEGEDLY had a little fender bender in a narrow street during a three point turn, if you can find the evidence.

So all in all it has been an incredibly frustrating and fulfilling few weeks, I can't wait to actually move, then run some interstate errands, then go out with my nearest & dearest and get trashed and celebrate the good times.

Good bye Richmond! xo

I also had an MRI today, it was weird. I fell asleep which is really strange because it is constantly making weird and wonderful noises not unlike a jack hammer or some hard trance. At some points the magnets really did sound like the beat of some of the more shit subgenres of trance which at least to me, was strangely comforting.

Miley Cyrus

2008-04-29T21:59:00.000-07:00

Miley Cyrus, 15-year-old teen star who attributes her family and Christian faith for keeping her grounded in her fast-pace lifestyle, will write about her life before becoming Hannah Montana in a book deal that was confirmed by the publisher for Disney on Tuesday.
- Christian Post 23 April 2008

I thought about this over a smoke break.

People who are Miley Cyrus enthusiasts are, I am guessing, predominantly religious people who bemoan how wantonly disgusting media has become today. They embrace shows like Hannah Montana and Zoey 101 and encourage their children to watch these wholesome shows, while they are reinforcing their beliefs by busying themselves voting against sx in the city, gay marriage or whatever their organised religion tells them to do in the name of their God - and the children.

The Evangelical religious people (read: megachurches) are among the most vocal people in our society today; when it comes to letter writing campaigns or the swaying of politicians, they are totally on the ball and this works for them because ppl who do not really care what other people do, and believe in "each to their own"; they do not write letters!

So, the people like myself and many others on this earth, who believe we should all have freedom of choice and all those liberties, we may get our noses out of joint about the Vanity Fair / Miley Cyrus nudie pix "scandal" but chances are that when appropriate, we are are quietly watching pron or discretely satisfying our urges in a safe and healthy way, so we do not really care that much about the "scandal", except to say its a little wrong and insensitive to send that message.

That the media has sent this message time and time again; for the last 10 or so years we have had Britney Spears professing to be a virgin via a press release, and then proving to the world (on so many occasions) how incredibly flawed that press release was, and her sister, Jamie Lynn, she is 16 and in a family way as well. Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Tisdale from High School Musical, both young, one has nude pictures on the internet and the other one got a nose job.

These kids really want to "make it".

So... these Miley pron pictures, they were probably incredibly calculated for her by her managenment team which, no doubt, includes "concerned parents" - to subconsciously become a sex object and thus further her career, which is fairly stock standard stuff these days.

What I find irritating is that the only people who would really see this stunt as pronographic (and not just a little insensitive) are the ones who are against pronography in the first place and make a huge deal about stuff like this - but as a result of the publicity surrounding the "scandal" the pictures of Miley are readily available on well over 1000 free and uncensored news webpages and blogs and will no doubt be in the MX this afternoon.

How many people actually read Vanity Fair?

Religion has always tolerated the virgin fantasy in one way or another - so that this has become a beat-up says to me that this outrage is led by the hardcore religious and it is all smoke and mirrors to reinforce that as a whole, we as a people, we are not like this.

But just quietly, take a look at the photos...

PS - isn't it funny how all the Disney kids are so rebellious? Disney is so evil it is not funny but what we believe about Mickey and Walt and all the other characters makes us think its still a nice company and so much fun!

I think i will boycott them for personal reasons.