Bong Bong Racecourse & Wild Camels

Out in the boonies, the village I was staying in was very proud of its sense of local community and the fact that everyone knew each other etc. Such a small community often has many mechanisms for social gatherings, for example the yearly market fair or a sporting event that ends up with a big punch up with a neighbouring village. In this village the main event was held at Bong Bong Racecourse.

A yearly event where all villagers get hammered and bet on some horses (horses that are probably confused and in shock at the prospect of legging it around a field). The funny thing about Bong Bong racecourse is not the name but that fact that there is a large hill in the centre of the course. When the horses start off they quickly disappear out of sight, not to reappear until they are near to crossing the line, causing all sorts of issues and palpitations for those banking on their bets.

Another interesting piece of information I picked up was the fact that there are shit loads of wild camels running around the bush. Apparently they were imported years ago for whatever reason and now are running around like lunatics in large parts of Oz. I dunno why but that just makes me laugh. Wild Camels and 8 foot Kangaroos on the loose. You just dont think of natural pests including Camels and Kangaroos.

Wouldn't it be cool if at Bong Bong Racecourse the villagers embraced these pests and raced Camels against 8 foot Kangaroos. Find a purpose for the pests and put the village on the map...

Chardonnay and Lambs Testicles

Ill miss New Zealand. People are so cool and relaxed. No bullshit at all. Weather was fantastic and the meetings were a howl. Everyone I met looked like they had just come from a serious night out, no matter how senior. Nice guys.

I caught a flight from Wellington back to Sydney and decided to stay out in the boonies for a rest. I was staying in a local "pub", now there seems to be a lot of confusion over the terms "pub" and "hotel" out here. A hotel is in fact a pub, and the pub I stayed in had a load of rooms overlooking a lake (picture to right). Walking down any main street there are tons of "hotels" which are clearly not hotels at all, but in fact boozers. How does that work? I reckon its a plot deliberately set out to confuse those of us walking around with jetlag into thinking we are loosing our mind. Strange.



My hospitable colleagues dropped me off at the "pub" around 11:30am and we decided to have a pint and something to eat and discuss what we were going to do later. 9 hours later we were still there, after polishing off in the order of 9 bottles of local Chardonnay and worked our way through most of the menu.

The food as I mentioned earlier is quite good and often ambitously exotic. The dish that sticks out in my mind is a bowl of what the menu described as "Lambs Brains", a dish of unassuming deep fried rugby ball shaped stuff arrived. After biting into these things the texture was a little confusing, meaty bits in the middle surrounded by a layer of softer/moist "stuff", and finally encased in a deep fried coating. It turns out "Lambs Brains" really means "Lambs Testicles", another hotel/pub screw up. Even the aussie contingency began wretching on hearing the mixup. All I could think of was the poor castrated lambs running around depressed because their right to procreate had been cruelly wrenched away from them.

Unfamiliar Phone Layout

Just a quick note, but something funny happened last Sunday when I arrived in Sydney that warranted to be mentioned but I forgot. I went out in Sydney with some very hospitable colleagues when I arrived, enjoyed some good food and proceeded to get quite drunk on some even nicer Australian red wine. The evening continued on the way back to the hotel, stopping at various watering holes and finally ending up with more wine back at my hotel. Toddled off to bed at 3:30am, thinking discretion being the better part of valor, given I had to be up at 7am.

When I got to my room the first thing on my mind was to set a wakeup call, given the state I was in from the red wine it took me some time to even find the phone to be honest. I pressed what I thought was the wakeup call button and when the phone was picked up at the other end I proceeded to ask for a 7am wakeup. The response wasn’t exactly what I was expecting; I had somehow managed to get through to Sydney’s emergency services, who wanted quite aggressively to know which service from Ambulance/Fire/Police I was requesting. I’m not sure if they understood my drunken request for a wakeup call but I managed to get away without getting arrested.

Who the fuck puts a dedicated emergency services button right under the wakeup call button. It’s just stupid and asking for trouble.

Lord of the Rings

Caught a flight from Melbourne to Auckland. Its good to be in the competitive home of Rugby and the welcome from Immigration certainly lived up to that name. The guys asking the "what are you doing here" questions were massive and very intimidating, without any effort in trying to be, whatsoever. They make US immigration look like a bunch of tellytubbies.

Flew straight from Auckland to Wellington on a packed flight. The last 10 minutes of the flight were spectacular, I'd guess its where they filmed Lord of the Rings. Very cool scenery, very cool sky etc. Its just as well the scenery demanded your attention, because otherwise you could be distracted by the fact that the plane was coming in to land sideways and at a horizontal angle not normally related to commercial flights. Apparently pilots flying in need a special licence. Alton Towers eat your heart out. Was fun though.

Wellington is where the premiere of Lord of the Rings was shown, in a quaint cinema. Even the taxi driver from the airport was named "Ghulam", taking the lord of the rings thing a little far I thought.

Jetlag

I have never encountered the levels of emotional and physical turmoil that my body is currently going through before. Jetlag is kicking in big time and the meetings I'm attending are getting more and more surreal as a result. I'm waiting for peoples faces to turn different colours and floral patterns to start magically appearing on walls.

Reminds me of a story a friend of mine from Chicago told me of his school going days. Apparently one of his classmates dropped a tab of acid into their teachers cup of tea and they all sat back and watched as the effects kicked in. Poor woman, imagine not expecting a trip in a classroom full of nutty american kids, and it all starts going a bit strange. Guiltily makes me laugh.

Yesterday (Monday) I had a meeting in the morning and one in the afternoon, so after the morning meeting I decided to have a nap for a couple of hours, and when I woke up I was completely convinced it was Tuesday morning. So as a result Monday felt like 2 days. Its now Tuesday (I think) and I feel like I've been here for months.

Today I decided to not take a nap, in other words this is the first day I have been awake all the time, and I'm not so sure it was a good idea. As the meetings poured in I started to have ups and downs on regular intervals. Around every 20 minutes I would go from feeling ok to sweating and feeling very "floaty". I'm sure the last company I met this afternoon thought I was coming off heroin or something.

In Melbourne now and off to Wellington tomorrow just to completely fuck my body clock up.

Yabbies

What the fuck is a Yabbie (see right)? I had a very long conversation with the locals about how the super strain of nits that are plaguing the UK and greater Europe are almost certainly related to what is commonly known as a Yabbie over here. Half nit, half prawn. Man, there are so many wierd creatures over here, most of which people are happy to whack into their stomachs, we'd be putting some sort of chemicals on em in the UK to stop the itch.

Went to a restaurant last night that overlooked Sydney harbour, was very nice. However on first glance, the floor was covered with what looked like Swastika's. Now I'm not one to judge but the thought of a bunch of Australian Nazi's, goose stepping around the place was a little intimidating, especially after the realisation that every animal and creature that exists over here is designed to kill, now Id have to contend with a whole other kind of animal.

Turned out not to be a Swastika, but a Seikh symbol for something quite the opposite.

What a wierd place

The most interesting piece of information I think I have ever stumbled across, ever, is that in certain parts of Australia, there are 8 foot giant red Kangaroos. 8 foot Kangaroos!!! How cool is that. And they kill loads of people, although most things (if not everything) kill people over here.

60 percent of the worlds poisenous snakes are here and even in Sydney harbour there are sharks, and if you see a spider dont go fucking near it. Im not leaving the hotel. No wonder everyone is smoke free and fitness fanatic, they need to be able to leg it away from the mad bastard animals that are trying to kill everything in sight.

Apparently, recently a couple went balooning on their honeymoon, the baloon went down somewhere in southern australia and both the husband and the pilot were eaten by great white sharks in front of the bride. Suddenly the crap weather in UK doesnt sound too unpleasent.

I'm on the hunt for a wombat, i've given up on trying to figure a way to get an 8 foot kangeroo through customs, but I reckon if I sedate a wombat it could pass for a teddy bear.

Sydney, not Boston!

I have finally arrived in Sydney. I have no idea what time or day it is, but someone muttered something about it being Sunday, which given I left on Friday is more than a little bizarre.

On arriving at the hotel (7am) I find that I was expected the day before and now have no room. To which I replied, "it is the fucking day before!!", how weird. So I have to wait around until they kick someone out of their room. The check in guy, while apologetic and charming etc, suggested I go to the gym for 3 hours. Again my immediate response was something along the lines, "are you fucking mad!!". Instead I decided to write this blog and string out the whole internet surfing thing quite a bit.

Spent about 20 minutes trying to get a power adapter from its plastic, but surely weapons grade, coating. I finally conceeded I was never going to open it with the assortment of blunt objects in my bag and finally went looking for something industrial to blow the casing into oblivion. Concierge came up with a broken stanley knife to help the cause, the term broken refers to the fact that the blade was sliding up and down freely, making it quite a trick to cut the casing and not my hand off. Concierge guy wouldnt go near it, ponce!!!!

However, I did see a guy with some shamrocks and a pint of guiness painted on the side of a very bald head on the way home from a good day yesterday (or today depending where you are in the world). Cheered me up no end!!!! Thats him in the photo getting into a taxi.

By the way, Sydney reminds me of Boston, which is why the title above.

I've only just got here and its like the fucking twilight zone already.

Bangkok on Paddy's day

Just had 45 mins in Bangkok airport. My mission was to find a smoking room as quick as humanly possible before I throttled someone on the plane. On the way to the smoking room I encountered children wearing nothing but nappies and different coloured socks running free in quite a depressing part of the airport. People, half naked, were lying on the side of the concourse getting Thai massages, which I thought was rather open minded of them. Kindof letting the rest of us share in their experience.

Not a shamrock or drunken person dressed in green in sight. I feel compelled to warn Irish people everywhere... A country in need of some serious Paddy lovin

Oh and it was fucking hot.

Now I have to get back on the plane for another 11 hours. This is shite…

The night before Paddy's day never happened

St. Patricks day is not just a simple celebration of a welsh bloke that had a way with snakes. St. Patricks day is a cunning ploy by the Irish to remind the world of their genetic superiority. The Irish gene pool has evolved over thousands of years to overcome some fantastic obstacles; Irelands geography, nutritional attributes (or lack of), constant battles with anyone and everyone. All of which have led to a survival of the fittest regime over thousands of years that has, in effect, bred a bunch of super humans. Super strength, super clever, super fit, super everything. Unfortunately with the advancement of wartime weaponry and the industrial age in general, there are few ways for these super human paddys to show off their “superness”.
Paddy’s day is like doing the Haka on a massive global scale. It is a call for every paddy to demonstrate their powers, and also to blow off some steam. Without which our over tuned engines would explode in an uncontrollable manner, resulting in something somewhere being devastated.

These Irish super humans have travelled the world and through the support of a global network of Irish pubs, have a mechanism that can help to keep their super human power under control. Paddy’s day simply formalizes the need to force the offload of steam before something blows. It’s a necessity.

Anyway, as an Irish bloke who is waiting to get on a plane from London to Syndney on Friday 16th March. I’ve just realized that due to the various time zones and the incredible length of the flights, I’m going to completely miss paddy’s day. I’m now quite concerned about the effect this will have on my genetic makeup. Each year I have followed the Irish tradition of getting absolutely hammered in an irish pub no matter what part of the world, as has been handed down from generation to generation. This has helped me to control my genetic super engine. I can only hope that getting hammered on the plane will do the trick.

If not, God help Sydney...