Day 2 - Plane Socks and Tube Mice

(no really, it does make sense)

Today the adventures began! J is still stuck at work this week, so it's up to me to amuse myself in a foreign town full of foreign speakers. This works out for the best, as he's most likely done all the touristy things he wants to, and so isn't forced through them all again. I woke at 8am, and promptly went back to sleep. I woke again at 8:09am, and slept again. Finally, I acquiesced and got up. My goal this week is to feel like a native, so I did what the Romans do, and made a cup of tea. I read the paper, too. (it's like the MX, but with more trash) Got ready, met another house mate (Jayson, a funny guy) and then left, walking to the big street at the end of the road, just to see what I could see. Today as an experiment, I was wearing the complimentary socks I received on the plane. Coloured like a first-aid bandage (and feeling like one), I was curious as to just how durable they were.

My walk took me to Maryland station, where I purchased a recommended ticket and found me a train. The job for today was to bend the Underground to my will, to understand it's bizarre machinations and make it a tool for my use and not a puzzle for my confusement. The interesting thing about the “Tube” is that it has 12 distinct lines, which all criss-cross each other at different points. No where is impossible to get to, it just may involve multiple changes. And they run every 5 minutes, making it a very simple matter to travel “across the grain” as it were. Something worth noting about the Tube is how aggressively noisy it is. I'm not sure what brings the cacophony about, but something about the design of the doors lets in the roar from the tunnel, meaning even with headphones you're not really getting much peace.

I then spent the day travelling around London, walking the streets and seeing the sights. I mooched my way up and down Oxford and Regent streets, and it was halfway down one of these, that I suddenly ripped my headphones out. Not due to any type of obscenity suddenly pouring from them, but rather I realised that I was in a foreign land, and following my usual patterns for avoiding the noise of the outside world. With those headphones in, I was suddenly gaining a deeper insight into the sociology classes I'd taken at Uni, and began to really click as to what Sony were all about. Plus, with the headphones in I could have been walking down a street in Melbourne – the accents would remove all doubt.

This casual stroll took me all the way up to Marble Arch, where I caught another train and got off at a random stop to continue my prowling. I eventually made my way through the edges of Soho, the theatre district, Picadilly Circus and Leicester Square. if I was really following my Monopoly board idea, today would have gained me bonus points for the locations I hit (quite by accident, too).

The day was drawing to an end and I thought it best to retreat back to Casa Di J. I had his house-key after all. Getting back to the required station, I stood on the edge of the platform, and noticed movement below. Small mice were zipping in an out of the rail-tracks, their brown forms blending in with the dirty concrete foundations. I had to look around and check that other people had seen them, as at first I thought I was getting delusional. Nope, they were definitely there. Then all of a sudden they vanished – not disappeared, just ran away. I figure they could sense the trains coming (like Tonto used to do) as the train did indeed arrive right after this. I boarded, like a piece in Tetris, fitting awkwardly yet precisely into the available gap. Unlike Tetris, this didn't result in a whole bunch of people disappearing and freeing up space. Eventually arrived back at J's, and fell asleep. All this walking around on 4 hours sleep is tiring! J and D prepared a lovely dinner, accompanied by chinese lager (pretty good, too) and we talked nonsense for hours.

Calling it a night, I unpacked my sling bag and took stock – camera worked like a charm, phone works like a charm (but you guys will never be able to call it), and as for the plane socks? Worn through on both big toes. Top marks for comfort, but failure in the durability department. Not quite sure what the airline expected me to do with them either.

New Thing Learnt Today – The Tube is chaos incarnate, but the british people have harnessed it's power and run it efficiently. Kudos!

Day 1 – Duty Free Time Travel

Things started just fine, and then inexplicably went downhill. I'm not one to worry about the vaguaries of travel (otherwise right now I'd be nigh-catatonic), but late Saturday I was gripped by a fully-fledged panic attack. At this point, little things began going wrong, but my hyperventilation was quicky inflating them to Marshmellow Man size in a few frantic heartbeats. That's now in the past, for which I'm thankful.

After that frenzied state, everything went well. Customs and Check-In were easy (But the other way aroud). I did get swabbed for bombs (lucky I had already swallowed the nitro-glycerine), and I fell into instant relaxation once on board. And by instant I mean I slept through take off. Slept almost the whole trip to Hong Kong, where we arrived a 7:15am. There's only a few hours difference (3) between HK and home, so felt great.

The airport is quite nice. Not the first place on my list of places to be kept in captivity for a day, but definitely one of the most stylish. I can't tell if my experience is indicative of all Hong Kong, but space does not appear to be a premium: Everything is arranged with abundant wiggle room. The concourses (of which the largest must be close to a kilometre in length) are designed with a vaulted ceiling motif, very much invoking the external look and dimensions of a hangar. Considering I had a whole day here, I thought it best to get some currency, and so headed rght to an exchange where I gave them all my Australian cash. ALL.

Swanning around with the resulting stack of bills, I thought the best thing to do before the daydreams of grandeur reached critical mass, was to get a coffee. Coffee, like the Big Mac is a pretty universal measure. Unfortunately, science does not reckon on the immeasurable, and my hunger got in the way, ordering a “quick fried beef with egg” as a close match for breakfast. It was better than close – It was! The repaste cost me $45, approximately $6.80Aus. Not bad! I spent the rest of my time walking around the gargantuan halls, meandered the free internet briefly, and then decided it was time to slake the thirst and start recording my thoughts. Ordering almost $100 of drinks (my perspective is shot), I went for my pen only to discover it had fallen in battle. The ink had erupted and filled the barrel. It was a sad moment for ball points everywhere. I finished my binge, and bought a new smooth writer for the princely sum of $15 ($2.20Aus). I still need to get over this exchange rate – when it's close to one-to-one, I can handle it, but when it's 6.7:1, I get confused.

So the days go by, and the airport begins to grow old. I waited at the gate for the connection and tried to focus on my book, but my brain was hammering away that it was almost time to eat. Naturally, brain is correct but flight comes first. We board, and this time my seat-mate is a lovely young lady who is almost the spitting image of Petreen. We didn't talk, but share a smile that puts her miles ahead of Captain Psycho from the morning.

Captain Psycho dressed in fatigues, had wild hair and an intense stare that looked determined enough to pull triggers on it's own. He didn't speak, but spent the whole flight watching Disney's “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”...repeatedly.

I promptly fell asleep, but this time am woken by the Captain announcing a fault on the plane that cannot be fixed, so we are being transferred. He hands it over to Ground Control, who opens with the very Shaun Micallef-styled intro: “Hello, my name is Director Manager of Ground Control.” I snigger. The joke is on me, as the concourse and I are re-acquainted for another hour. I contact family and friends to tell them of my plight, and eventually re-board. This time, all systems are go.

The flight passed quickly, again my mutant super power kicked in and allowed me to sleep through the majority of the trip. Pseudo-Petreen was good company, as it turned out we are in similar lines of work, and so we talked a little shop. She also worded me up on what to expect from english people – apparently they don't strike up conversations with strangers like Australians do. Interesting! Eventually the flight came to an end, and we disembarked – the fun now really began. Customs was a breeze – in fact, there was no customs. I contemplated what this would have meant had I stuff to declare, but this was a moot point as the declaration channel was empty too. After probing questions about who i was related to (part of me bit back the urge to say “The Queen”), I was let loose into the UK.

Relying on the train system to get me from Heathrow to Stratford, I found out that the delay had convenient had us arrive and get out of customs with about 30mins lee-way for travel. The first bit of advice from the train staff was “get to Liverpool St as fast as you can.” Which I attempted. I crossed paths with a traveller trying to do the same, a developer from Microsoft, and we tag-teamed our way through various stations and station staff (at one point I mused out loud that a bear had been stuck at Paddington station once – he looked at me like I was suggesting something absurd.) Eventually we got to Liverpool St and we parted ways. I walked out of the station to my connecting bus and took a deep breath – this was the first time I had stepped outside in God-knows how many hours...Getting on the bus, I popped out my trusty iPod and listened to the tune that was guiding me all this time. Man it felt good.

Finally got to my destination, and 30mins later so did my brother – he'd sent himself out as a search party to find me, and Heathrow had declared a delay that was a whole lot different to the truth. In the meantime I caught up with one of J's housemates, a guy who had been at high school with him. And another housemate, a french girl. Apparently the french greet strangers with hugs and kisses on both cheeks. To quote the All Stars, I really really love the french! :P At 4am we went to bed, and the travel officially ended.

(further posts will be shorter – this represents a period of 29 hours of experiences)

New Thing Learnt Today – I begin to act like a caged animal if kept inside for too long.

God Save The Queen

Because apparently a live-in security service, state of the art systems, guard dogs and a bunch of castles don't make her safe enough...

I've been planning a trip over the big blue ocean and around to the other side of this planet we call home, whilst the Martians refer to it as the “Funny blue marble”. This march, I'm finally getting the opportunity to make good on these plans. The initial driver to travel was to go visit my long-travelling brother over in our ancestral home ground.

Yes, that's right – we are of English heritage, and that is why i burn in direct sunlight. My vampirism has nothing to do with that. My drinking of blood in place of tea IS due to my vampirism, and receives no end of funny looks from my more conservative English family.

Another motivator is that the trip will allow me to get about as far away from work as physically possible. (To literally get to the physical extreme would put me somewhere remote in the middle of the ocean – not so enticing.) Living in this age of high technology, i understand work is only a web browser away, but the distance is a pretty compelling argument for “not being available”. I like the idea of not being able to work for a month. That unproductive idea holds a lot of merit with me.


Further reasons become flippant and border-line stupid.

* I want to hire a V For Vendetta costume, and wander around London, waltzing with the pretty ladies, and asking assorted people the best way to the Old Bailey.
*I want to go to the places on the monopoly board, and get a photo of me and that respective location's card.
*I want to smuggle the Ravens out of the Tower of London. All of them. And then send a postcard from Madrid allegedly posted by the ravens, to the Queen.
*I want to slip into my easily re-adopted accent, and confuse the hell out of tourists.

Lastly, a bit more seriously, I'm going to visit a chinese restaurant in Soho, named Lee Ho Fook's. I can't guarantee the presence of rain, but being England in the early moments of Spring, I'm not stressing it too much. What I can guarantee is an order of a big dish of beef chow-mein. This gorging will be followed by a pina colada at Trader Vic's. The whole time, my hair will be....perfect. HUT!

In case that last paragraph flew past you in a cloud of perplexity, they are multiple references to Warren Zevon's classic 'Werewolves Of London', a track originally conceived to be a bouncy number about the dance craze that was to be named for the track. As it turned out, Mr Zevon and his long-time collaborators were mulling over the project, when they were joined by another friend. “What are you guys up to?” He asked, with complete innocence. “We're writing the Werewolves Of London.” The sardonic songster replied. His friend blinked and said, “you mean, “AWOOOO?”'. The rest is history. Go listen to the song, dammit!

The trip will be more than my attempts to reenact a rock song's grooviest moments, as I'm also planning to see my family (there's a fair few of them over there still, we're the minority in those terms.) My brother and I have tentatively discussed the idea of a whirlwind tour of western europe (there's a rare turn of phrase), with a step and swivel through France as I've always wanted to go to a country where Superman has performed elevator maintenance. Next will be a hop and slide into Germany, the home of bratwurst, many beers and the Panzer tank. After this, we should be able to swing our way back over to Scotland, find ourselves completely thrown by the local dialect, before working our way back through to the ancestral home in Yorkshire. How's that strike you now? More than a silly song to power THIS jaunt!

But if whilst in Mayfair I come across a hairy-handed gent who ran amok in Kent, I won't let him rip my lungs out Jim, rather I'll treat him to a silver bullet. AWOOOO! I'm off to catch a plan. Bye!

Q: What do you see when you turn out the lights? A world without Ringo Starr's nose.
Song For The Day: "Werewolves Of London" by Warren Zevon

Opener From A Song Somewhere

...Pithy reply to said opener.

For the majority of these posts, I write rambling passages of hypothetical events or people, which amuses at least myself to a great degree. Instead of my usual brand of Martian paranoia, I thought I'd do a punch biopsy on the shielding that this blog provides to my life, and give you a tissue sample of the real world that lies beneath.

To really do this properly, I'd have to bore you to tears, and that would not do. Would not do at all. So instead, I've found an area of my life that is developing at a rapid pace, and would do well to be shared with the greater world.

I am talking of course, about how I wake up in the mornings. Firstly, to dispell the slanderous rumours, I only wake up in the mornings, I do not wake up at midday, tea-time, or Hammer-time. These are completely false accounts, and I would appreciate they are not spread further. Every morning I am expecting to be woken by the harsh droning alert from my alarm. This grating electronic dirge seems to have been chosen particularly for the effect it has on a nervous system, much like the sound of nails down a blackboard. As i said, this is the expected protagonist. Of late, there has been another sound responsible.

Initially, I thought it was crows. The sound was distinct, but after a few days I decided it didn't match the “caw! caw!” war cry of said black birds. My next thought was seagull, but similarly a small amount of investigation ruled the sound out as not being their “arr! arr!” announcements. My final, and rather hasty suspicion of chickens was dismissed when no signal matched their distinctive “ca ca-caw” and there was no accompanying, potentially homosexual clapping dance. Rather, the sound was a prolonged, guttural sound of air pushed through long disused lungs.

I am woken each morning by zombies. This prompted me to keep a diary.

11^th February, 6:15am
Zombies outside my window again. Their moaning has been going on for at least an hour. I opened a window before and threw a book at them. This didn't shut them up, but it certainly made me feel a little better. Hopefully they'll go away tomorrow.

12^th February, 6:00am
No such luck, they are still there. Went downstairs and made coffee. Felt better, poured the remainder out the window. Felt better still. Must remember to buy ear-plugs, books and more coffee today.

13^th February 6:10am
Ear plugs not very useful, can still hear zombies. Opened the window and told them to clear off. Also gave some harsh criticism about their sound as a group. They seemed to listen, and went away. Is this over??

14^th February 7:00am
No zombies today. Did a small victory dance.

15^th February 6:00am
THEY ARE BACK. This time they've brought a bass drum and a trombone. Much to my dismay, they have a slow rhythm. I also now know there is nothing worse than someone playing the trombone by wheezing. Threw birdseed at them = this is part of a bigger plan.

16^th February 5:45am
Woken by the sound of birds – birds trying to eat the seeds on the zombies! Did another small victory dance, until I realised this attack cost me more sleep.

17^th February 7:00am
I've finally snapped – called the authorities yesterday. Got sent to all different departments before someone would listen. Last person understood and apologised profusely. It appears the zombies were ordered by my neighbour. They have arranged the transfer and bought me a new alarm clock.


Zombies are still there.

Q: What advice would you give your younger self? Don't cross the streams. Crossing the streams...is bad.
Song For The Day: "Dance Epidemic" by Electric Six

“I'm sending an SOS to the world...”

(if I don't get a reply I'm gonna feel pretty ripped off.)

So, just like Horatio Cuthbert, the monologuing hero of The Police hit “Message In A Bottle”, I too am now in a position to communicate with the masses even if I have indeed found myself to be a tropical exile. But unlike Cuthbert, I will not be using second-hand glassware that has come into my possession by chance, but rather a sleek, futuristic device that I splurged on, out of total whim and impulse (Thank you also to Pablo, the arctic flightless bird of much knowledge and smiles.)

The ability to communicate over long distance has been something we humans have always desired to do. We've found a myriad of ways and instruments to achieve this end, from the eloquent sounds of Sir Tancred O'Laughlins soliloquy “Bullroarer”, to the sweet melodies of M'kombe Lildwala's “Message To My Girl” But the way I'm most interested is far more in line with the parable rich ramblings of Tyler Spencer, in the legendary “Synthesizer”.

In a day and age where a device's value isn't weighed so much on how well designed it is, but rather on how many functions of day-to-day life that it fulfils, more and more we are finding ways to incorporate gadgetry into our gizmos. We are putting mustard on that mustard, as it were. A few years back Victorinox hit the market with a Swiss Army knife that comprised of the regular assortment of useful implements PLUS A USB DRIVE. This indicator seemed to say that no matter how useful the implement already is, unless it possesses the ability to store massive amounts of data – it’s junk. People communicate with written word transmitted at speeds that make breaking the sound barrier look like a feat achieved in slow motion, and expect to be able to do anything on the move. Eat, read, communicate (I know, how crazy is the last one?)

So now I can travel on public transport, my iPod on and my varied selections playing directly into the eagerly receptive membrane that is my ear drum. In one hand, I have my mobile, frantically texting to people, using language that isn't so much a dialect as a distillation of words down into a semaphore-like arrangement of individual alpha-numerics, and the occasional outburst of punctuation to summon forth an avatar of faked emotions. On my lap, a compact machine that allows me to record my written thoughts and then wirelessly transmit them to the greater world, so that all the others with lifestyles that make them resemble well-dressed cyborgs can read and lol.

If I begin to forego human interaction at the expense of the electronic word, someone must interrupt me as I communicate with my thumbs, and put a magnet to my head for eight seconds. If you then utter the phrase, “That'll do nicely, pig”, I'll get the reference and the injection of pop culture shall restore me to the original factory settings. Which might indeed be a mistake, but it can't be too far a step backwards, especially in contrast to the fleshy automaton that I had become.

That's two posts in a row I've used the word fleshy. Egad.

In contrast though, would a race of cyborgs that are seamlessly integrated into our existing society be such a bad thing? They would still share the right DNA, they would work alongside us, just with the added benefit of being able to interact with our workplace tools on a more even keel. The added familiarity with the IT component of our lives would streamline a great deal of process, reduce the overheads caused by system interruption, and further the culture of in-jokes expressed through binary code. Ultimately, this would lead to a society where we are free to focus on the real issues at hand – the impending crusade against Mars.

Undoubtedly, the Martians dealt with the problem of yuppie cyborgs ages ago, and we're just playing catch-up. They'll be laughing hysterically at us when they see the way we clumsily add more and more devices into our lives as species-wide we suffer this odd form of computer envy. This is why we must trump them, we must do this better than they did. Whether this means an iPhone built into the arm of every man, woman and child, or whether it means Inspector Gadget style mobile telephony (which would be pretty cool), we're going to have to outdo our green/grey nemeses.

Imagine a world where the communications network is not just a bunch of satellites and wires, but composed of the organic web that can only be woven by linking every single person together. Nothing would get by us, we'd stand united. And when we saw a little green man descend from his saucer, trip and tumble down head-first, we'd all be able to share the moment, and laugh the guffaws of the righteous.

Gotta go, I'm getting a call from work on my shoe.

Q: Diamonds Or Pearls? I’m not fussed, it’s all Prince songs to me.
Song For The Day: “Whisper Your Name” by Harry Connick jr

And the dead shall rise...

I got so excited writing about the mythological clash that would be the result of Bob Dylan and Keith Richards crossing paths, I completely forgot about the other member of the Immortals that still walks the lands.

This one is mummified, and has gained the terrifying powers of the lich-priests, as his soul continues on after his body has expired. With the ability to shriek in such a manner as to paralyze his foes with fear, he then consumes their life essence and adds them to the many souls that he has already gathered to help him motivate the dry husk he calls home.

Man, Rod Stewart scares the hell out of me.

“There Can Be Only One!”

But he may have a side-kick…

This week’s post is a belated last week’s post. The reason for the delay can be clearly seen here. I won’t make any bones about it, I spent well over two hours of my life reading that forum thread, and it was two hours or more I’d gladly spend again. THAT GUY BUILT A BATMOBILE. Ahem, sorry. To make up for it, you have some awesome links this time (please check them - that kind of nonsense takes hard work)

!!!

This might mean there is a slim chance of a double-posting in one week, to make up for lost time. The posts will be thrown up in such rapid succession that if you blink, you’d not only miss it, but you’d miss the big headlines in all the major papers and the constant news feeds announcing the event. The zeppelins hoisting giant screens announcing the outrageousness would also sail completely by.

Yeah, it’d be THAT big.

The topic of today’s post is: Mortality. Yes. The Big M. I thought, instead of my usual rants on topics that lurk in the shadows of our culture, and ill-prepared arguments on vaguely heretical themes, we’d talk about something happy and full of rainbows and puppies for once.

More importantly, I want to write about the growing sense of obsoleteness and decay that I’ve begun to experience. This sense has made me question my own mortality – I’m fully aware that I will only last so long, before my joints weaken, my eye-sight fails and my brain becomes a complete lump of raspberry jelly (it’s about 20% there already). What has brought on this impending sense of goo? None other than THE FUTURE. Yes, I met the future. But how?! You say with virtual semaphore – that’s temporally impossible!!!

I hear your temporal impossibility, and I raise it a statistical probability. We’re bound to cross paths sooner or later. There may be a knife-fight, there may just be a sullen sneer – I can’t be sure. But I know where it is. It sits casually on a bracket at Allans Music, languidly relaxing in the company of it’s less advanced siblings, safe in the knowledge that it will survive long after they are defunct and nothing more than expensive firewood.

I am of course referring to the GIBSON ROBOT.

"it's now more machine, than Les Paul...twisted, and evil..."

Sent from the future, the Gibson Robot is here to save us all with it’s precision-built servo’s winding it in to any tuning you desire. It’s high-tech mind allowing it to survey the requirements of a single artist, and within seconds transform it’s tonal array to suit their situation – it is a weapon with no equal. And this is where the mortality issue begins.

With the introduction of such a powerful beast, us fleshy types that get out of tune quicker than you can drink a beer are on the way out. We will be replaced by mechanisms that do not suffer from old age, do not lose their vocal range through repeated stressings of said chords. Stainless steel musicians from the future will take up our fallen instruments and usher in a new era of sonic conquest.

But we will not go quietly. Most of us, sure we’ll fall before the might of the machine, our sinewy forms no match for hard-welded steel. They will thin our ranks in the time it takes to re-string one of our standard issue side-arms. The few who stand will be immune to the ravages of time, and will be able to endure any hardship that environment, enemy or biology throws their way. These people are none other than: The Immortals.

(No, not the group that did the dodgy Mortal Kombat song – rather, people who don’t die!!!)

The first of these, is already amongst us. He has walked the earth for many years, and told us many a parable. His styles are famous, and his rhymes are atrocious. With a vocal tuning not unlike an out of tune guitar himself, he is: BOB DYLAN. Every few decades, Dylan wades into battle, his six-string in hand like a Japanese blade. He will strike down all who come to claim his head, and then retire into the distance, to make another two albums.

So far none have been able to stand before him, but there is one out there he is expecting. A warrior of equal renown and skill, who has walked the earth for decades, seeking a worthy challenge. With a face whose weathered look could not only tell tales, but probably does if you look closely enough, he has seen fashions come and go. He has made come-back after come-back. His body has now all but mummified and he continues his quest through sheer willpower. He is of course, KEITH RICHARDS.

These two icons of the Rock Age will stride into battle, their creaking frames limiting their top speeds, their faces locked into expressions that could only be described as old. Wielding their chosen implements, Dylan shall employ the time honoured “wakizashi” of the folk-hero: the acoustic 'katana' in hand, the ‘tanto’-like harmonica clenched between his teeth. At the same time, Richards strikes a pose, his powered implement held loosely, and his wild hair blowing in the strategic breeze. It would take a well-trained eye to spot he has frozen on the spot, almost as if his bodily functions have at last given up. But that well-trained eye would be a fool – his bodily functions gave up years ago!

And with the dramatic tension that only a slowly-raged battle can elicit, they strike their blows, back and forth. The sky is lit up with the impacts of their weaponry, the rumbling of their collisions sounding like thunder to the primitives, and scaring away and Simon & Garfunkle listeners. This battle rages for an eternity…well, it may. It started about 200 years ago. In the mean-time, they even found time to release new albums.

Two go in…One comes out…

And then there’ll be a farewell tour. Geez. Someone call Messrs Lambert and Connery - we must remove their heads, stat.

Q: Why can’t Bono find what he’s looking for? Because the streets have no names.

Song For The Day: “Hands Open” by Snow Patrol