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Things that I learnt on my summer vacation in Australia | Feb 23, 2003 03:16
In Australia, it's okay for the Prime Minister to go to the Whitehouse, have a discussion with the President and come out addressing the nation with the phrase "We want Saddam Hussein to get Fair Dinkum!" Bush however, didn't find it to his liking, apparently getting weighed down by the detail and reasoning of Mr Howard's speech.
In Australia, marketing is either too easy, or they're in desperate need of some talented Kiwi ad execs. "When you think of B&D, think of the best garages in Australia!" and "Lipton Black Tea – it's the technical term for the brown tea you've always enjoyed" are true-life examples.
In Australia, in one of the main newspapers they have a section called "The Path to War." The morning I read it the lead article in that section was "US/Australia free trade agreement proceeding well says P.M."
In Australia, they have amazing snorkling and scuba diving. 1500 varieties of fish in the Great Barrier Reef alone, as well as some of the most amazing shapes and colours of coral.
The colour from coral is caused by an algae which lives on the coral. This algae can only survive within a narrow temperature band. Warming of the water in recent years, whether caused by global warming or a natural cyclic change has caused much of the algae to die off, resulting in underwater forests of dead white coral. The phenomenon is known as coral bleaching.
Strangely however, this algae has no problem living under your skin when you accidentally cut yourself on the coral while learning to scuba dive. Your hand gets really infected, swells up and you look like a retard.
In Australia, when you scuba dive, you must equalize the pressure in your ears upon your descent, approximately every 1 metre/3 feet. If you don't, and keep descending, you could perforate your eardrums. The same applies on the ascent to the surface.
If you don't equalize properly on your ascent, your ears remain blocked for a couple of days. You can't hear, sound like Helen Keller with a heroin habit and have to talk in sign language. With a swollen hand.
In Australia, there's a beach called Whitehaven Beach. It has the whitest sand anywhere in the world, due to the fact that it's composed of 98.9% silica. It reflects the sun really well.
When you land on Whitehaven Beach, it is essential to remember to bring AND APPLY sunscreen, don't just forget to bring it and leave it in your suitcase, reasoning that the ozone hole isn't even near Australia and you're 1/16 Maori or something anyway so it doesn't matter. YOU WILL GET VERY BURNT.
In Australia, the Queensland town of Airlie Beach has a 1 to 4 male to female ratio, composed almost entirely of tanned early 20-something European backpackers.
In Australia, very few tanned early 20-something European backpackers are interested in a deaf-mute, red-elephantitis-handed, psoriasis-skinned travel writer.
Psoriasis is a serious skin condition affecting 2.6% of the population, most commonly diagnosed between the ages of 15 and 35. It is no laughing matter. Nor is it the name of a Russian space station.
In New Zealand, it's surprising how interested Customs are in the film canister full of white powder you brought home.
Not so surprising is the difficulty convincing them it's merely Whitehaven Beach sand, 98.9% silica 'n' all, when you're completely deaf and the only phrase you can sign with your inflamed hand is "Keep Cool til After School".
Jeez it's great to be back home.
Boss, the Plane! The Plane! | Feb 10, 2003 01:04
Just a quick note to let y'all know that I'm off on a travel writing junket for a couple of weeks in the Whitsunday Islands. I mention this by way of giving myself a valid excuse for being bottom of the posting list for the next fortnight, rather than in a lauding-it-over way.
Not that I generally need an excuse for being slack of course. It's something of a generational thing I've been told. I'd taken to using the word "recalcitrant" to kinda give my inability to ever meet any sort of writing deadline a more formal, perhaps even psychological basis than merely using the word "slack". This all came to a screeching halt when I looked up "recalcitrant" in the dictionary not so long ago and found it didn't quite mean exactly what I thought. Not far off, but by no means bang on the money. Embarrassing, although not as bad as my friend who learnt most new words from reading books, didn't get out much, and for quite a while used to pronounce "misled" a little too much like "mizzled".
Anyway, this is a "BE BACK SOON" note, rather than a foray into semantics, so I'll leave it at that for now.
Upon my return I promise the full, unedited interview that I did after spending 7 months living with seminal US author William Gibson. We learn about how he invented the moonwalk, the true story of what happened to his nose, and did anyone really understand 'Neuromancer'? Actually he was a most interesting fellow, and what he has to say makes a damn fine read, so stay tuned...
In the meantime, if I can find a pool that has a floating bar AND an internet machine, I'll be sure to write.
DC
Trains, Planes and Space Shuttles | Feb 04, 2003 00:04
If there's one thing that really pisses me off, it's when big news happens on a Sunday.
I work, you see, at a small organisation whose responsibility it is to sit there, plugged into various talk-radio stations, listening to what's going on. We listen on behalf of people who are:
a) too busy;
b) too important; or (more likely);
c) having too much fun leading interesting lives;
to listen to fourteen hours of Radio Pacific each day. Unfortunately I'm:
d) none of the above.
So one of the few things that gets me through talkback caller after talkback caller, a disproportionate number of whom it turns out are called Tony, is the hope of some decent breaking news. It's a sad, scavenger existence, but it's a living.
My addiction for hourly instalments of the latest haps is such that on the weekend, I'm quivering like a railways worker going cold turkey from the Rothmans by the time the 6pm news comes on. I've been known to shush friends and flatmates who are getting a bit noisy outside of their allocated 'time for talking', also known as the adverts. I shush them. They call me dad. It's a thing we've got going.
So how annoyed was I to return home from Summer Series II (Goldenhorse, you rock) to be informed, not to see myself, but be informed by a flatmate, that the Space Shuttle Columbia had expelled itself over various parts of Texas. It didn't happen while I was at work, so it didn't seem quite real. Space Shuttle crash? You mean the one 17 years ago? Hang on, you're talking about another crash? The pieces began to click together in the slow, I've-been-at-summer-series-a-bit-too-long way.
I'm about the right age to be completely into Space Shuttles. I remember being seven in 1981 when Columbia, the first of the shuttles to be built, took off for the first time. It was a big moment. I had plastic model shuttles, die-cast shuttles, posters of shuttles, a shuttle drinkbottle (but still a Cookie Bear lunchbox, mind) and a desk with a map of the solar system on it.
In 1986 when the Challenger (the second of the shuttles to be built) went up in smoke, I was 11 going on 12, a cynical pre-pubescent shit, and all I can remember really was a series of jokes going around school. You know the ones and given the circumstances, it wouldn't seem appropriate to repeat them. If you really need to know what they were because you were on a different planet at the time, try here.
This time, the news seems even more esoteric than the last, if that's at all possible, what with exploding spaceships being considered pretty damn esoteric where I come from. Add to that the news of some stranded astronauts (or spacemen, as I prefer) on the space station, who can't get down unless they use some old Russian escape pods, and the whole thing has just gone straight out of The Herald and straight into a novel by Carl Sagan.
So much of our attention lately has been focused on the ground, and whose going to be invading which bit of it so that we can supposedly keep another bigger bit free, that we forget that at the same time, some small groups of mankind are still struggling to get off this hunk o' dirt and maybe pave the way for us all to follow.
What will be interesting to watch however, and for this next bit I will firmly have my ear pressed up to the wireless: to what extent will this tragic event be used by the Washington administration to consolidate the mood of the US people into a joint outpouring of grief, similar to that felt post-9/11. Completely different events on a different scale I know, but both with loss of heroic life, national icons destroyed – and all captured on film. Key elements that can be manipulated by media and politicians alike, and again reunite the sentiment of a nation whose support had been dissipating as the march towards Baghdad continues.
I hasten to add, I'm not suggesting that there's any suspicious connection between the two. I'll leave that to the listeners of Radio Pacific, who were already lining up to speak as I arrived at work this morning.
"Yes, hello Pam, now did you know there was an Israeli on that space shuttle… Hmm, makes you wonder doesn't it…"
No Tony, it doesn't. Although as far as stoopid things I've heard on the radio in the past week goes, it comes a distant second to John Howard's comments following the Sydney train derailment on Friday. A derailment which killed eight people, one more than the SS Columbia, but which is destined to disappear from memory a lot quicker. In any event, Howard's grief-stricken comments seem to be equally poignant in both situations:
"This is the latest in a series of challenges that we have, but such a loss of life in travelling to and from work is always a particularly chilling thing."
Yep, death-by-commuting, always been a big phobia of mine.
Finally, here's a nice picture of Space Shuttle Columbia the way I'd like to remember it, shortly before its first launch, 12 April 1981.
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