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During my travels in 2000, I started sending e-mails entitled 'Postcards from the Edge.' The legend has continued and just in case you have deleted your e-mails, I thought I had better put them on the web USA (9) 5/7/00 some bits of England USA (7) 21/6/00 from California
Postcard sent from Beijing, 19/7/1999 Dear Friends, This evening, I have had a truly bizarre evening in Beijing... It started with a work out in the gym. (Bare with me, this is relevant.) While doing the kms on the machine, the HG Wells "Island of Dr Moreau" was on the vidi screen. Guy lands on strange island. Lots of genetic experiments, zombie type creatures running around the place etc dot dot dot. One Marlon Brando absolutely off with the pixies. Sets the mood for the evening. I finish up in the gym and decide to head to "Poachers Inn the Park" for dinner. No references, just a spot I had seen on the map. The name sounded great. So I thought, a few ales, a bite to eat, home by 10pm, no problems. I jump in a cab, with the instructions. Go past a KFC and plenty of high density residential. Hmmm, looking questionable at this point, but salvageable if the place is good. Cab stops. Points into the gates of a park. It is now 9pm and dark. Hmmm. Go to man at gate. Grey/white spiked haircut on a man about 97 in the shade, with that toothless grin that is only too common over here. 2 RMB just enter the park, which is not well lit. I pay him and he says "ching wa hua ..... Poachers ... xing chu fen" and points to some far off place. What the heck and I start walking. Public park at night with about one 40 watt globe every 100 yards. Plenty of scope for young couples to find a secluded spot or a white man to find an untimely end. Enough people of a mature age around to encourage me to continue. There are spots where it is so dark, you can only just see the path and other people. By the way, it is about 32 degrees Centigrade. The Island of Dr Moreau comes flooding back to me. Strange people I can only see in the half light. Are they human, or half man, half boiled rice? After about 10 minutes along the path, I hear and see all these people dancing to vaguely classical music. I come to a clearing and they are waltzing in the dark. I see coloured lights in the background and think I'd better move on before I turn into a zombie and start dancing too. It's dark and there is not much around. The place is not Poachers Inn, but the Island Club. No matter, I am starved and need to escape the potential of becoming the first sacrifice of the evening. I walk in. No guests, only staff. Hmmm. Guiness posters on the wall. I am feeling more comfortable now. I ask if there is food. Blank look (number 153 for the day). I make gestures of putting things in my mouth, They indicate upstairs. Ever since Bangkok, I have been concerned about going upstairs after all the nasty stories I read about. I go up step by step, looking for nasty thugs. "May Chen" comes to greet me. Her English is very good. She explains that it was the Poachers Inn and is now the Island Club. She shows me the menu and the prices are good. I order a beer and sit down, oozing sweat. She asks if she can show me around. To the cannibal butcher perhaps? First of all is the side dining room. 4 wooden tables of 4 with wooden/leather dining chairs. We move into THE dining room which as 2 lovely tables of 24 with the same upholstered chairs. Is this a dream? We move into the library. 12 high back leather reading chairs. 2 walls, one 12 foot, one 15 foot long, nine feet high full of human heads - no just jokes - English books. Shakespeare, Austin, Rushdi (!), you name it, it was there. On through the lounge. Capacity for about 30 people to lounge and float in cocktails. We progress through to the games room. 3 card/mah-jongg (?) tables and a full size snooker table. I am beginning to think I have died and Lucifer is trying his best to tempt me. I am the only person in the establishment. I return to the library to await dinner and start reading Beowulf in the nice high back, leather chairs. Very interesting. Lots of old English names which I can't remember. I have read about 20 pages when "Excuse me sir... Mr Mike, your dinner is served. Can you please come though to the dining room?" Bummer, I had read in the intro that by the end of the first chapter, Beowulf was going to rip the arm off Grendel in the Danish castle and was nowhere near that bit. I arrive at the table. There is a bread basket with 6 pieces of bread, a lovely starched napkin, a gravy jug (train?), cutlery laid out for 3 courses, 2 wine glasses, a water glass, bread plate, salt, pepper and a partridge in a pear tree. "Would you like wine with your meal?" Knowing Asian pricing, I knew I had to ask the price first. 30 RMB ~ Aus$6. Bulgarian Medoc. Very, very tasty. Went with the medium-rare steak something wicked. The steak had seven vegetables on the plate and with the extra I had ordered to cover the vitamins and minerals, I was well and truly looked after. Every 3 minutes or so, a man comes over and asks how everything is. While I am eating, I read the brochures for the place. US$1,000 joining fee and US$240 per annum membership... After dinner, I wander back to the library. I figure "what the heck" and decide to have a cognac and pay for it myself. I duly snuggle back into Beowulf with the cognac. After about half an hour when Grendel has been disarmed, it is time to settle the account. About Aus$40 for the entire meal including beverages! Only one last hurdle. The park closes at 9.30pm and a "security guard" (grandfather looking for a bit of extra cash – scare factor of about -4) is to show me back to the main road. Despite my fear of being attacked by a lost waltzing couple, I make to the main road to find a cab. Exactly what I wasn't expecting. Good night everyone, Mike
Training seminar in Bangkok. Well that's a bummer isn't it? A brief stay in Singapore started the adventure. The Gareth O'Reilly Tourism and Brain Cell Depletion Service (Singapore) was a perfect way to start 9 days of sleep deprivation. Stingray at the local hawker stalls and plenty of beers. Mmmmm. Friday 9/7 was a cracker. Wake up at 7am to go to office. Feeling distinctly seedy. Possibly the 2am (?) finish of the night before. Lots of discussions with local staff, trying very hard not to look them in the eye or breath on them. Breezed through customer call in afternoon with brain, mouth and feet now working. Straight to airport. Two and a half hour flight to Thailand. Just enough time to read the "Rough Guide to Thailand" (inferior version of The Lonely Planet). Then a Jedi master of Thailand. Landed at 8.30pm local time. Within two and a half hours, the Gareth O'Reilly/Mike Adcock Tourism and Brain Cell Depletion Service (Bangkok) was founded and deemed to be functioning. End of report for night. Bangkok is a city mostly full of incredibly hospitable people. Taxi drivers will always try and take you for a ride - literally and figuratively. "O'Reillys Pub, Silom road please." "OK." "Please turn on the metre." "300 baht." "No, this usually costs us 100 baht. Metre please." "Ok 200 baht." "Sorry, not good enough. We're getting out. Stop!" "OK, I turn on metre." You arrive, the fare is 81 baht, give the man 100 baht and he holds out his hand for more money. G-man and I went to the royal temple. We happened to meet the self proclaimed architect for the current renovations. He showed us around for an hour (or so it felt) and didn't ask for money. I can't work these people out. We met up with a Tourist Authority of Thailand dude who lined up a tuk-tuk for us. Little did we know that the driver was paid in petrol coupons to take us to the National Lapidary which had a "one day in the year, tax free day." Total and utter crap. This happens all day, every day. 'Ken bastards. We caught a long tail boat ( 10 x 2 seater boat with a V6 strapped to the back with all the modern safety features -not) around the canals. Dead, bloated dogs did not stop the kiddies from swimming in the canal. Pulled up at the local snake farm to check out the local wares. What do you expect? Gibbons, tigers, pelicans, cassowaries and of course some way-cool snakes. Cobras, jumping snakes, pythons and all the works. We also checked out the local crocodile farm. Lots of instant gratification for big boys with bid animals. Guts dragging crocs around by the tail. Head in jaws. Stand on the backs of crocs - James Bond style. Pick up crocs like guitars. 'Ken amazing. Worth talking about when I next hit Aus. All the time on Bangkok, all white people have this sign on there back saying "farang" or "kick me" meaning foreigner and "please try to rip me off." We popped in to the Thai kick boxing stadium for a show. We were guided by our driver to the ticket seller. Only one ticket available, 1000baht ~ Aus$40. No sooner had we paid the money and taken our seats (3rd row and bloody good at that, we realised we had bought premium seats and could probably got in for 200baht. No matter, the view was superb and the beer man served us from our seats. Worth it in my mind. The first event we saw - event 6 - the guy was taken off an a stretcher, much to the pleasure of the locals. 5 days of work followed which were educational and constructive for the corporation, so I guess that justifies the trip to Bangkok. A trip to the National Palace today blew me away. Never have I seen entire buildings covered in gold leaf or wall murals that were 1.3km long. A one metre Buddha made out of Jade in a temple were it is rude to sit with your feet pointed towards the Buddha. I need more time and words to describe than e-mail allows. Off to China tomorrow, Later, Mike
Approximate reading time of 3 minutes Fellas, Here I am in downtown Taipei after having arrived last Thursday. Work looks like it will keep me occupied here until 21/5/99. Enough said about work. I hopped out of the taxi at my hotel, opposite the Taipei central railway station, into a cloud of god-awful traditional Asian street stench. God it was good to be back. It's hard to put down in bits and bytes, but it is something like a stew of rotten vegetables, spleens, dogs and old football socks. It usually seems to emanate from drains, but sometimes comes from roadside food carts selling fresh (!) produce. It is not uncommon to walk into a Seven Eleven/Circle K (OK to the locals) to see eggs cooking in some sort of brown liquid. The eggs, often cracked, seem to have been there for an eternity and I am sure are destined to stay for just as long. I have never yet seen one purchased, let alone eaten. I reckon the eggs are in training for general street release. I was a little stir crazy on Sunday, so I braved the Mass Rapid Transit system. I mastered that in about 2.416 minutes so I felt pretty good. I caught the train to Tanshui (Dunshri would be a good phonetic approximation) 20km, 45 minutes from the centre of Taipei to the coast. This was once the largest port in Taiwan. There is a cool fort built by the Spanish in 1629 during their brief occupation. It is one of the oldest buildings in Taiwan. Unfortunately, like many "tourist" attractions, the content is great but the presentation is poor. Bugger all signs or information plates (in Mandarin or English) and fat, usually grumpy attendants. Nonetheless there was enough to see and imagine to make it a bit of a spin out. I had a bout of temporary insanity and nearly ate at McDonalds (sometimes called "The American Embassy" - sorry Lisa). I was actually inside the structure when I came to. I went next door to what I suspect is the Taiwanese equivalent. It took much pointing, many blank looks and a friendly bilingual patron to get my meal. Aus$3.50 for some beef with rice. Certainly better than Ronnies. Enough of the communication, it was time to go and see a movie. Did I say enough communication - well.... the first trick was to get there. In this city, walking is long, aromatic and dangerous. Taxis are cheap. I duly presented the ripped out bit of newspaper to the taxi driver. Blank look (number 412 for the day). Out comes the magnifying glass and confused look on the face, but we set off. Through nameless lanes and streets, he finally points and indicates it was time to get out. I walk up to the cinema with an uneasy feeling. Wrong bloody cinema. They point down the street. Next cinema - wrong cinema. Mike is not a happy camper at this stage. 2 minutes until start time and I could be 5m or 5km from where I think I want to be. Beer has started to enter my mind. I start wandering the streets, shoulder to shoulder with about half the population of Chatswood. I glance up and see a street number - the same street number of the cinema. I blink and what I thought was the foyer of a shitty apartment block turns into a ticket office. What the heck. Watching (and listening) to movies is very different over here. I suffices to say that these guys don't really give a toss about hearing the movie because they read it. Sound effects are just a nice to have. Consequently the volume is a lot lower than Hoyts levels (possibly so it does not interfere with the other cinemas in the complex, neighbouring apartments etc) and there is a constant background noise of rustling plastics bags, chatting, belching (yes Lausie, BELCHING) and air conditioning. Luckily it was a bloke movie so you could guess most of it. Sleepies time. Sorry about the big chunky paragraphs, I will make an effort to reduce them next time. No guarantees. Love and regards to all, Mike
The voyage of discovery continues... I thought I was doing OK with nice tame food until my host took me to Madame Jill's Vietnamese Cuisine. Everything on the menu looked like pretty traditional, but Ivan in his unique way picked the eyes out of the menu, almost literally. Pig blood soup. Just what I needed after a night on the town. Billed as being just like tofu except dark, it was not. It did not taste that bad, but had a funny texture. It almost stuck to your teeth and made a slight squeaking sound as you chewed through it. Colour was a washed sort of blood/purple and it was sitting in chunks in a yellow, oily, soupy liquid. Boiled duck eggs. Cool. Problem was that the egg was inhabited. It looked like the little fella made it about a fifth of his way through it's ovular life. He/she was about 4cm long. Little head and chest could all be seen. With the boiling process the yolk had cooked, but there was still a clear liquid sloshing around inside the shell. My host quickly drank it from the shell but I choose the Heineken instead. Anyone that knows me knows that I believe Heineken is a long way down the list of potable beers, so you can tell I was not keen. I had the fella and yolk. The fella was soft and quite bland. The yolk was just like chicken (!) yolk. I declined the liquid and something else solid lurking at the bottom of the egg. When that happened on Saturday, and I have just come home on Sunday night and I am still alive. We just popped off to the local public links for a quick 18. With the green fees comes a caddy who drives a little cart with all the clubs. They come in two varieties; male and female. Ours was a she. Hopefully still is. She would advise which club to use, quite forcefully at times. The course was like playing on the roof of the world. It was the top of a mountain which had been landscaped. The other mountains were there and happening in the background. Ocean views. One inclimeter (?) and two walkalators. There were many opportunities to send the dimpled pill into the wild green yonder. I only liberated about 3 balls, which I thought was pretty good. The Taiwan president was also on the course at the same time. Nice showers and brylle cream. My host was pretty happy with the discount we got; only Aus$140 each. A Dilbert cartoon caught that my attention yesterday: Dilbert at his computer "This completes my portion of the project" Dilbert walking along corridor "This project is so well engineered it would take a squadron of idiots to ruin it" "Meanwhile in Marketing" 3 odd looking characters "And when I am napping, it is not okay to use my ears as coasters" Love, regards and Taiwan beer to all, Mike
Dear Movers, Shakers and Hill Enders, This one is brought to you from the edge - the edge of the technological civilisation. The Queens Birthday long weekend was a beaut. Wine tasting in Mudgee is very different to when we first started in 1987. I seem to remember the aim of the game was to sink as much as possible, buy as little as possible and score as many free glasses as possible. Or was that just me? Tip for mature players - book accommodation before you go. The wine tasting was excellent. Much more reasonable prices than the Hunter. Go the reds - nice earthy flavour. We came home via Hill End, with a specific mission to look at Craigmoor and dine at the pub. It was distinctly cool. In fact it was snowing. As I travelled down this road about 12 years since I first drove it, I wonder how a bunch of Engineers et al ever escaped their teenage years at Hill End. Old cars, lead feet, thirsty temperaments, chain saws, kleptomaniacal tendencies, neighbours with green thumbs, goats in the house, bats in overcoats, brown ghost trivial pursuit trivial teams, drinking games with port/stout/whisky/custard, hunting rabbits with Landcruisers in briars... the list goes on. We went to the visitors centre and saw a photo of Charlie [Marshall] and one of the Marshall family in the front room. Craigmoor is currently closed to visitors until spring or so. I was dying to get in and have a squiz, but no amount of BS was going to get me in the door. The house looks great from the road, although the colour was a little close to monkey-sh*! brown, and rather different to the greens of yesteryear. I could not see the hand-carved, log bench along the side of the house. Hopefully preserved in an antique museum somewhere. I was going to give a description of how everything is now, but there is no point - it is just as it was 12 years ago. Here are a couple of photos to jog the memory: (Please excuse the amateur quality, new PC camera. I am sure you can still appreciate the subjects) See you in cyberspace, Mike
G'day Chasps, I have arrived and am in good health. I had achieved many things, but I guess I had get the important stuff out off the way: I assume my e-mail address will stay the same. Will know in about 2 days. If it changes, I will let you know. [Contact information taken out to keep the crackpots off my case] I arrived just under 48 hours ago, and I am (this e-mail was started on Sat night) watching a Tom Baker episode of Dr Who whilst I write this. How good is that? A brief chronology:
Things not to say - found through experience:
I guess that's enough for now, See y'all, Mike
Chasps, Greetings form the land of super 'chunky' peanut butter. How is the wonderful world of Aus? What is news? By the way, for those I surprised, I am here for about 5 to 6 months. 3 summers in a row! A little bit of housekeeping - my internet e-mail address will remain as michael.adcock@honeywell.com and will go offline on Tuesday night (hopefully only for about 8 hours) when they link it to my Minneapolis e-mail account. If anything bounces, please re-send a day or two later. (This mail will have michael.adcock2@honeywell.com attached - DO NOT REPLY TO THIS)I am 'doing' well over here. The weather is absolutely bloody bewdiful. Today's max was 89 degrees (32.67 real degrees). How excellent. The morning held a quick bit of shopping and contrary to expectations, shopping is not 'cheap' here. What's the Aussie dollar worth at the moment? Something pitiful I imagine. The local paper does not publish exchange rates. Searching out 'value,' I found shorts for US$30, sandals for a very special price of US$40 (Gus, Dunc, James and Giulio you will love them - perfect lawnmowing sandals. 4 straps across the foot and a massive tongue across the top, leaving an exposed toe.) and linen shirt for US$29. By the way, the Billabong clothes here are made somewhere in Asia. I have forgotten where. I bought a wheely, overnight, PC type case. It was listed at US$160 and there was some sort of [trivial] sale on. They charged me $83, so I paid and just ran. The afternoon included some roller blading. After enjoying the 'scenery' last time, I figured I had better contribute. Despite being in the mid-west [Bible-belt], the lads seem to blade with the shirt off with the shorts hung low, showing a bit of underpant. The go seems to be to expose a bit of boxer short, but I find it all too crowded with boxers and the tackle, so the elastic band from the Aussie undies would be my option, but my shorts fit, so I will just have to leave the locals guessing. Obviously I went sans shirt. The apartment is great. This is the first time I have lived by myself. Talk about freedom! You will be pleased to know that I am still cooking and keeping the loo seat down! Shame there isn't anyone nearby 20 floors up to enjoy the view! (Am I exceeding my exclamation mark quota?) As we all know, the Mississippi separates the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul. Two of the reasons for the settlement in the early 1800s are the St Anthony falls, a 65 foot waterfall, preventing river transport and it just below that, and the junction of the Minnesota River. (Until 1803, the land east of the Mississippi was under French domination when the Louisiana Purchase was signed.) I skated over the Mis. on an old stone bridge and back on another one further upstream. What a feeling - the Mis. is something I have only read about (and which rock stars die in) - to see it, smell it and hear it was awesome. People are very friendly, at least an initial sense. We'll see what's that's like in the long run. Minneapolis has a lot of people of Scandinavian descent (the weather is apparently comparable) which makes the viewing very pleasant. No stories to tell, yet! Oh yeah, work. This week at work has been pretty intense - I have played a lead role in giving 2 days of training to sales and technical people from all over the US. It was tough but rewarding. As a consequence, I have not got out and about as much as I would like. I also get the feeling that I will need to learn of lot of market information which is going to keep me very busy and further impact my hopeful social outings. People here seem very pre-occupied with facts. Facts and figures about obscure companies, weather, sports events etc. Americans [Lisa and Tom - take no offense, these are just innocent Aussie observations from one not haviing been here long] seem to want to quote mindless facts at the drop of a hat, even if it does not add to the conversation. This is tough, because my natural feeling is only to say useful things and not to talk for talking sake. I think that they think I am either shy or knowledgeless. They will soon learn!I'm getting pretty good on the roads. I have pretty much got the indicator down pat, but I have not got the reflex actions together yet. If some goose does something unexpected, I still look in the wrong place for the mirrors. My car has this ridiculous column shift and a foot operated park brake. That should be mastered by the next e-mail. Americans are also painfully polite. All I have to do is walk down the corridor on the wrong side (funny how people walk on the same side that they drive - and I still walk on the wrong side sometimes) and nearly collide with someone and they will be all 'excuse me' and 'sorry.' I was talking to a fellow 'kangaroo' last night who absolutely hates tipping. As you might guess, even the hairdressers expect a tip. He doesn't and consequently only goes to each hairdresser once. He has got away with it for about 10 hairdressers so far! One of life's little mysteries - There is a cane stick in one of the work elevators which says 'For ADA (who the F are they?) use only. Do not remove.' It just leans against the wall, not supporting anything. No video cameras to monitor it.Enough for now, Miss you all, Mike
Well Chasps, It's been a killer day. I was in the office nice and early (~7.40am) only to notice the Swans lost on the weekend (Hels - pull your finger out and get them back on track would you?) I put this behind me and managed to get swags done. I had the afternoon lined up - leave the orifice [sic] at 5.30pm, go to the supermarket and rollerblade round a new lake - there are only 11,4xx lakes in this state. Happiness is a supermarket that sells fish sauce, rice vinegar and cumin. I celebrated by concocting a couple of strawberry daiquiris (both for me unfortunately) and a killer chilli beef dish. Anyway, enough waffle. [back to Friday when I started this on the Palm Pilot] I am starting this e-mail from Ontario, California. I took a flight from Minneapolis to San Jose (San Francisco) for a half day meeting. 4.5 hour flight (should have been 4, but there was a strong headwind). And that's only about 2/3 of the width of the States! I have met with one of our guys for 1.5 days to plan the rollout of our new product. In the space of about 30 minutes, we planned 2.5 months of my life, trying to keep it to 2 weeks on, 1 week off. There was a 2 week break in the middle, but my boss rang in with a Europe trip. I was hoping to do Latin America, but that got canned. Sounds great, but I think I am could be pretty tired by the end of it. Lucky we're talking about MAdcock here, otherwise I'd be absolutely knackered. California is a pretty progressive part of the States - seatbelts appear to be enforced and smoking is banned in bars (no 'pubs' here.) How good is that. Driving skills are becoming very good. I now have no fear. Driving here is really different. You need to have a good geographic knowledge of where you are going. Example - for me to get to my meeting, I need to go east down freeway 10, south down freeway 15, east along 90 etc. If you don't have it written down and with you or a good visual memory, you're f*cked. I still need to tell myself to stay 'right,' but there have been no errors. I still get windscreens instead of indicators every so often, but such is life. It's [now] Saturday afternoon & I have just wet my feet with the Pacific ocean again. It's good to see my old friend again. The feeling of sand under foot, the smell of salt, the sunshine & the smiling faces is just sensational. I seem to have found my way into 'The Laguna Beach Brewing Company.' Surprise, surprise. They have 2 phone numbers - (714) 499 BEER & (719) 494 BREW. The Black Ball Lager is a beaut drop. Unfortunately there is no one to talk to except my Palm Pilot. The evening then took me to a place Blue Beet where I ended up dancing to some Blues band at about midnight in my sandals. A good night. I had breakfast on Bolboa Peninsula. I bowl into a cafe and secure a position at the counter. Part way through breakfast, my waiter asks if I can move over one position. No problems. Two lovely women come and sit down. All I have to do is make some pithy comment about how hard it is to move the chairs and the conversation starts up. They love the accent Another tip to baffle the locals - use the word petrol, as in ~ station or the price of ~. They will look at you like you have 2 heads, every time. Other words to avoid or re-pronounce-
I have found two James Bond movies on the TV in the last 3 days. Life is definitely good. Sorry if I have bored you, Mike
Hey Chasps, I am writing this after having been here for over a month and I am only here for six. Primitive calculations indicate I have been here for 17.49% of my expected trip as at the time of writing this e-mail. (No consideration is given for time differences.) In the words of an Aussie, 'Christ it's going fast.' Anyway... It's Tuesday night after Memorial Day in the US. I'm not sure what it's in memory of, but I gladly took the public holiday. I fielded a call from James Miller on Thursday, so I made a beeline for the Big Apple on Saturday morning. I recommend to anyone wishing to manage air travel costs that they book travel at least 7 days if not 14 before the departure date. The day before is not a good deal. Let me say the first quote for the airfare was US$990. (i.e about $1,750 Aus or worse) I managed to improve, but not as much as I was hoping for. New York is an awesome, awesome place. The people in the office recommended it thoroughly, but said to 'watch out.' So I had the Christ scared out of me that the taxi driver was going to take me the long way and charge me an arm and a leg. Imagine my thoughts when I catch a taxi and it turns out to be a man of God behind the wheel. Relief. I was a bit dubious at first, but the quotes and the bible on the passenger seat convinced me. In all, the people seemed friendly and I never felt for my security anywhere in NYC. A brief synopsis of activities includes:
NYC is mind-blowing, but it is expensive. It did cost a sizeable sum at short notice, but a) it had to be done b) I had a fantastic accommodation deal and c) how often are you close enough to be able to do it? - Back to life in Minneapolis. Some life facts about living here for a month including 7 days of travel. In the apartment, I have:
Last night on the plane, I had to say 'tomayto' to get the 'beverage of my choice.' Very sad to have to give in, but as a matter of survival, sometimes you do not have a choice. They do not appear to have local Shirazs much to my disappointment. I refuse to drink a straight merlot and the cab sav seems to be rather ordinary. I have '96 Beautour Californian Zinfandel by the keyboard, but it's not quite right. Will I maintain my Aussie preferences, or will I adapt to availability? Time will tell. Photos to follow when I get the film developed/scanned. Catch you soon, Mike
Well Chasps, [Initiated 8/6/00] As you may have noticed, my 'postcards' are becoming less and less frequent. This means I am getting quite settled. I am no longer having novel experiences at the rate of one every 148 seconds. (usually at least a couple of dozen a day). Today's first was at breakfast while eating my toast with hideous 'chocolate chip peanut butter' (a slight faux pas in the supermarket. I thought I has buying superchunk). Imagine my shock when there was an ad for 'Nad's hair removal gel' (in Class-of-86-speak, nad is of course short for gonad). Luckily Nad is the manufacturer & not part of the anatomy. Another reason for reduced correspondence is that work has kicked in. People know who I am & what I do. The 'be gentle with him' phase has now finished. Travel has ramped up. 3 different states in 4 working days. Or to look at it another way - a flight a day for 6 out of 7 days. It doesn't bother me much, it just makes it just plain hard to plan the social life. Eric Idle (of Monty Python fame) and Motorhead are all coming to town. I was tempted to see Eric, but with tickets starting @ US$37.50, I think I will give it a miss. [and did] I went to Indianapolis yesterday [Wed]. While going from A to B we drove along part of the famous Indianapolis race track. That was 'kind of neat.' No - it was better than that. It was 'pretty cool.' [9/6/00] Today was Boston. We had such a good meeting, I am going to come back next week, which is good because I didn't get to see much this time. The hotel was opposite an old school dated 1685. I was so impressed I walked across the road just to touch it. I went to see Mission Impossible 2 the other night. That was a good 'Australia' fix. Mind you, I was not generally happy with the portrayal of Australians. Shockingly nasal accents. It's a bit rude when Tor Cruise & his American mate do all the high tech stuff & the Aussie guy pretends to be a doorman & a helicopter pilot. If I recall correctly, Australians were piloting helicopters in Skippy the Bush Kangaroo 25 years ago. We even had a kangaroo that could tell the pilot where to land the chopper and what medical provisions were required. Christ, the more I look at it, the world must think we are getting more & more stupid. Fosters & Michael Knight certainly do not help the situation. We just flew over Niagra Falls (end of lake Ontario?) Man - talk about awesome. Viewed from 31,000 feet you can see rim & the spray and lots of whitewater. This weeks new pronunciation is 'toona' as in toona fish. Again it is a matter of survival. If I was to say tüna I would go hungry. I ordered some form of toona sandwich/burger. I was expecting to get a steak, but it was a cake/r rather like a Thai fish cake. Rather disappointing. Served with a massive serving of chips, but only one slice of tomaydo, half a pickle & a leaf of lettuce. Friday last night I found my self with some friends from the apartments in about 28 degree heat, listening to live music about 70m away from the Mississippi - you could see it from where we were. What did a Spaniard, Irishman (Irishperson?) and Australian talk about? Our childhood experiences of Sesame street and the Muppets of course! Saturday night I had some people around for dinner. I used all four chairs, spoons and forks. What a night. Cold Moroccan soup followed by a Chinese drunken chicken dish. Not too bad. New word of the week - 'tube' as in the silver thing I am sitting in right now. Not to be confused with a vessel which holds 375ml of Australian gold. I am still managing to outrun the women, but I think it is only a matter of time before I am sprung down at the watering hole or while I am grazing [13/6/00] Back in Boston again. I have just had a lovely meal of scrod (can be either cod or haddock - the name defies logic) 20 miles south of Boston somewhere near a place called Scituate. Tomorrow I am trying to swing a view of the Boston skyline from the helipad of Massachusetts General Hospital and to visit the Ether Dome - a museum of where ether was first used as an anaesthetic. Working hard but still trying to smell the roses (and not the ether) Love to all, Mike
[Mindless waffle written in between flights. Delete now if you are on a tight schedule] [14/6/00] 1-800-BAGEL-ME. That about sums it up. I am in transit from Boston to Minneapolis via Chicago. The flight was delayed about 2 1/2 hours in Boston. Did we sit in the terminal waiting to board or did they put us on the plane & wait on the tarmac? I hope my tone conveys the latter. Well needless to say I missed my connecting flight. That's where the bagel comes in. I thought I had 40 minutes from when I organised my new flight to boarding, so I bought a bagel from the bagelry & sat by the gate. Not much action. Upon inquiry, the plane had not even taken off from the other end. Bummer. My current engineering estimate (accurate to 1 significant figure) is that it will take me about 8-9 hours door to door. 'Bummer' is now sounding a bit weak. Maybe feck, feck, feck is more like it. Thank God I have Sam Adams to talk to. At least I had a good customer visit. I was at Massachusetts General Hospital earlier. As I eluded, in 1846 this was the first hospital to use anaesthetics. They showed sketches of some of the tools used for amputation in the good old days. Hmmm.... They have the original operating theatre. This is the 'dome' part. In the olden days when artificial lighting was poor, they needed to use sunlight reflected by mirrors down to the operating table. They then had the lecture-theatre-style viewing gallery around the table rising up to the back of the 'dome' building. Very, very cool. Also on the premises of the hospital is the Charles Street Gaol (Jail?). Apparently in use until about 5 years ago. It is the stereotypical goal. Lots of very small cells (for 2 or 4 people) with a very basic lav and sink in a corner. Big nasty bars (not the ones serving liquid gold) and lots of concrete. One open space where presumably they ate. It was pretty eerie. When you see it empty with the dust and pigeon dropping everywhere, I kind of makes your skin crawl. Made it home now. I left the Boston meeting at 2.15pm and made it into my bed at 1am. Allowing for time differences, that is about 11hrs and 45 minutes. OK I am being a drama queen. 7hrs from schedule take off to actual touch down. The rest was driving and getting to the airport on time. [17/6/00] Had a great day touring outside of Minneapolis at a place called Stillwater on the St Croix River and then had a top Thai feed which we washed down with some West Australian Madfish Bay Chardonnay. I had a nice duck laab which I ordered with a 3/4 chilli rating, which I ordered thinking that the average American palette is rather vulnerable. Well it burnt on the way in ..... More details to come. I just got the New York photos back, so they'll be on the web soon. Later, Mike
[Sent from California 21/6/00] Well Dear Chasps, I have learned that you do not visit a city in the US without a car. I am in Santa Ana, California, south of Los Angeles, near Newport beach. Even though I am in a pretty busy area, where I thought there would be taxis everywhere - there are not. I am staying at a name brand hotel and it takes 15 minutes to get a taxi here. There is not even on a 'sidewalk' by the road outside the hotel. I feel lucky just to be able to walk to the local bar and grille (read pub). This is a mistake not to be made again. I see conflict with my 'live and drink' lifestyle, though. Some facets of my vocabulary that have stumped the locals-
I picked up a brochure for the Outback Steakhouse. Get a load of these:
Training is going to keep me busy - 70% of my time for the next 10 weeks, so there should be a few more postcards happening soon. A special trip to Meintal (near Frankfurt) Germany next week. [Ed - know anyone I can look up?] Guys, please continue to send me news updates of the homeland. I apologise if I do not respond to all of them, but I am grateful to get them. Have fun with the GST..... Mike
I am currently en route to Frankfurt and very annoyed that they won't take my breakfast tray away. Time to talk to Palm Pilot some more. It's amazing how easy it is to leave the US. After all the rigmarole of getting into the country. Just go the local airport. International check in counter right next to the domestic. No emigration counters or paperwork. No segregation of travellers in the gate area. Just show the passport as you enter the plane and you are out of there. I wonder if I am going to get back OK. Not that there is much I have to go back for... a T shirt from my favourite pub, roller blades.... I just had that wonderful experience of having to queue for the loo after a plane-breakfast. Just by the way we wander into the sort-of-waiting area, this elderly woman arrived after me & bagged a spot right outside the door. The occupant emerged and the geck shot in without so much as nod or 'do you mind?' Wretch! Had an absolute cracker of a weekend and wouldn't you know it, I couldn't sleep on the plane. Friday night we found an excellent jazz club called Jazzmines. (This was after a most tedious walk through downtown Minneapolis. In-synch, some teenybopper band were in town, causing the streets to be filled with luminescent wristbands, braces and platforms). The beers were going down a treat until I spied martinis on the menu. My first in the US. How negligent I have been! Then I guess I must have been feeling the effects because ordered a glass of Oxford Landing - cheap arsed Australian red. Well all of that ensured I slept well. An hour of sun on the roller-blades by the lake was a great start to the day. Then of course you get to the business end of the day. It started out very tame- dinner for 6 in my apartment including a friend's mum. Literally seconds after Mum left the apartment, we were dancing in the apartment. Down to the pub which fuelled us until 1am. Then back to the apartment. More dancing. Even some roller blading. It was only the second time in the US I have fallen over on my blades. Needless to say my drink wasn't spilt. The also seems to be a blade mark in the dining room carpet which might be hard to explain. I am quite certain there was a noise complaint, although person J doesn't seem to remember that bit... [after the first leg of the flight] Wandering around Amsterdam airport was different. Somehow you can just look at the people & know you are in Europe (and not the US) something about the eclectic clothes, longer & more unkempt hair (on the young ones) and the general attitude. People drinking beer at 7.00am and a distinct lack of laptops with a corresponding increase in 'cool' people. [27/6/00] Well Chasps, it's just after dinner. We walked home in the last photons of dusk at 10.45pm. I had a traditional meal of ox breast (hard to keep away from them) with some apfelwein (apple wine). It did look & taste like corned beef, but hey, it was traditional. I did have an entree of deep fried camembert, but despite not being traditional German, was really yummy. We walked down cobble stone roads past walls built in the 12th century. Hanau is the name of the place. About 20 minutes from Frankfurt airport. There are cylindrical stone buildings with conical roofs - looks really old. A very different feel to getting around Minneapolis. [28/6/00] For dinner, one of my colleagues assured me that some German sounding fish (kugelschreibeneinkartoffelnstrassengluckenfische ???) was worth eating. After ordering this dish, another colleague consulted the fish chart and informed me that my fish was really, really ugly. Apparently it was angler fish. It came with prawn, mussels, potato and looked pretty shocking. It did taste like a million bucks though. Despite a the brews, I woke at 5.30am and went for a run around town. It is a real pleasure knocking around a place that dates back to at least the 12th century. A castle with walls that go fro a couple of km through the old town (altstadt). Once I was outside and ready to go, I remembered that even though it is summer here, it was 10 degrees the night before. It is such a pleasure walking/running though a place with more than 212 years of history. Buildings with references to people who lived 450 years ago. Stone roads, wells, rathuauses, kellers, irregular streets.... such a change. After 2.5 days of good, hard work (11 hours in the office each day) I have once again eaten and imbibed well. We ate in the courtyard of the Hoffbrauhaus (15XX) and it was so pleasant. Back to it tomorrow. Bummer.. Clay, should I come and visit you this weekend? Time to go, Cheers (prost) Mike
After a several big days, it was time to relax on the weekend. What better way than to have a few the night before, hire a manual car with the steering wheel on the wrong side and drive through crowded cities with 2 Russians with limited English skills. We were heading for Russelsheim to cruise the Rhine, but we missed the turn and the weather was rather pissy, so we went to Köln instead. Very cool church/cathedral dating back to 1248. A bit older than Harry's Cafe De Wheels. Climbed that for an awesome view. 157m at it's highest. We had some bratwurst & sauerkraut by the Rhine wandered around a bit more and then found the beer museum. Now here's a little concept for you- 'the food index'. Consider that the meat component of a meal could be expressed as a ratio or fraction of the total meal which may optionally include such things as vegetables, grains etc. Let's use the expression x/(x + 2) where x is the food index. I like my meals with a food index of 1 or 2. So for the lawyers out there (apart from Alex!), that's 1/3 to 1/2 meat. Germans on the other hand seem to like an index of about 50 or more. Thinking as I write, this needs to be re-framed so that French fries, whilst seen as a vegetable, are considered to be the work of the Devil (b ut I do love his work). So the formula remains the same. 'x' now equals meat and 'bad' food, not that meat is bad per sé, but you need to balance it out. Now I can talk about Frankfurt. When I finally made it onto the Rhine, it was in Frankfurt where I decided to have a Frankfurt [sausage] meal. One large frankfurt, one pissy piece of lettuce and some canned corn. Serious food index of about 8. Well now I am on the train to Bracknell. "Train arriving on platform 1 is all stavmms to Rebbrmm hmm drvn, gurrummm & vrmvrm." Or alternatively "Re'ing trayn o' pla'form free is awl stayshuns to...." Whatever the case, you need to have a trained (no pun intended) ear. The train - or more to the point, the trip - has lost it's novelty. 20ish minute underground trip then change to a train for about 45 minutes. Fine the first time, but twice a day.... I have been mixing with the best of them this morning - Elizabeth I, Henry III, V & VII, Winston Churchill, Chaucer, Mary I, a bust of Shakespeare... I even said G'day to the unknown soldier. £5 to get into Westminster Abbey. That's about AU$12.50. Death and taxes all in one handy location. I had an early afternoon flight from Gatwick today and I didn't feel like lugging (humping in American) my suitcase on trains etc to go to the office for a couple of hours. So apart from a phone call, I took the morning off. Slack, I know. I had 2.25 hours to do London. I averaged about 794 milliseconds at each pub, 10 minutes at the national gallery, 4 minutes at the Sherlock Holmes Museum. You could say I was busier than a dog with 2. Well in reality I went to one place and even had to cut that short. America's tendrils are slowly taking me hostage. I had a momentary lapse when I found myself worrying about a car driving on the left hand side of the road. I think I have been away too long. Now I am back in the states as an alien. Americans are the most touchy-feely people I have noticed lately. Lots of people over 40 walking hand in hand here at the airport or down all the 'moll.' The young ones are all over each other. You should see the couple next to me. (Christ, I'd better find a bucket of cold water.) I think this is great (maybe it's been too long) but I must question the sincerity given the divorce rate. Maybe we all have the same amount & Americans choose to use it more quickly. Maybe it's all for show. Have you noticed how important presentation is to Americans. More often than not Americans are clean cut, well groomed, ironed shirts & neatly mown lawns. Fashion tends to be conservative (read boring). Compare that with the English. Messy bastards! The just-out-of-bed look is very popular with the youth which goes well with the just-off-the-line/just-out-of-the-drier look. There is definitely a much greater range in fashion. I'm boring myself with this monologue, so I think I'll go. Love to all, Mike
Fellas, It's been a cracking couple of weeks. The major news has been another weekend in New York, but a few little incidentals first. Check the website for shots of Europe and daily life in Minneapolis. http://www.oocities.org/mgadcock/europe.htm http://www.oocities.org/mgadcock/minneapolis.htmNow an omission from the last postcard - I dropped in on Muff (Gary Harrison) & Suz when in London to catch up and see the townhouse (love-nest). Met the new young pup, Bruiser. A gorgeous wee thing only 6 weeks old. Too young to wear the Muffler trademark studded collar. The 4 bedroom townie is under renovation. I took a taxi home after a quiet night at about 1.30am and had to direct the driver back to my hotel in Kensington. Now that I recall, the night before was a cracker. For a bit of a giggle. We went to the 'Outback Hotel' or something to that effect. I ordered a crocodile burger, but unfortunately they were out of the croc, so I went the kangaroo. Now you could pay me out for going all the way too London to eat Aussie food, but what else would I eat? A pork pie? A curry?? It tasted great and was good value. The interesting thing was the number of locals. Local reports indicate there are a staggering 250,000 Aussies (i.e. all of those are staggering!) in London. Well there were a few in Covent Garden, but certainly not a majority in our pub. Lots of locals. A mangy looking lot, but better than the local Aussies I would expect! Thursday after Europe I was feeling a bit calorie intensive so I got back out on the blades. I took the best fall of my blading career. A little more contact between me and the road resulting in a little less of my knee/leg than I would like. It's hard to describe, so I took a photo of my leg. Keep an eye out for it on the web page. It's now a week after the act and it still looks magic. I think I have got all the gravel out. Saturday night was smashing. We had a lovely dinner at Jo's apartment. Hat's off to Grace & Jo for the best Tom Yum, Thai fried rice, chicken....I have had in the US. We went out for 'quiet' drink afterwards. Life being the way it is, I found myself talking to a table of 4 women from Wisconsin. I was woken at 8.30 the next morning by a beautiful woman...............a telephone call from a friend in Aus. So despite these women throwing themselves at me, I managed to fight them off & make it home by myself (that's my story and I am sticking to it.) On the Sunday night, we saw the Complete Works of Shakespeare, all 37 of them in the local pub, Brits. Hamlet got about 45 minutes which included their standard version, a sped up version, a sped up version of the sped up version and a backwards version of the sped up, sped version. Mighty entertaining. Romeo & Juliet, Othello, Hamlet and Julius Caesar all received more than 5 minutes. Most of the rest were clumped together and blended. Over several pints of Big G (Guinness) what better way to appreciate the finer aspects of life? Monday night we went and saw the 1958 production of House on the Haunted Hill with Vincent Price in the local park. Picnic rug, nibblies etc very nice. Not as enthralling as a modern thriller, but absorbing in a quirky, dated way. I would classify special effects from 42 years ago as humorous rather than scary, but entertaining none the less. Did I mention that Minnesota is the state of 10,000 lakes? More like 11,483 actually, but these lakes provide an excellent breeding ground for the Minneapolis Mauler aka the humble mosquito. They did not leave our horror movie hungry for blood. *********************** Well Muff was over in the States with a weekend to spare, so we decided to meet up in New York for a bit of fun. We scored a hotel on Manhattan (55th and 7th - American for 55 STREET and 7th AVENUE) which is on Manhattan 4 blocks south of Central Park. On the corner is a subway stop. Excellent and only US$159 plus 3 taxes. Sill expensive in my mind, but that is a GOOD price for Manhattan Friday night was impacted slightly by delayed flights, but that didn't slow us down much. A quick bite to eat at Hooters - not because we wanted to, just to check it out) and off for a couple of beers. We had to have a quiet one because we had tickets to the Yankee [baseball] match the next day, so we made it home by 4. I set the alarm to watch the Bledesloe Cup which was on at 6am Saturday morning. Somehow I didn't hear the alarm Up in the morning and up the World Trade centre. It would have been even more awesome except for the fact that it was a cloudy/wet day and the observation deck on top was closed. But without knowing what the next day was going to be like, we had to do it. When it's wet, it changed the options for the day. So decided to have a look at Grand Central Station. Now that is station. It is hard to put in words, but it pisses over any other station I have said. Wait for the photos. While there we phoned the baseball people to find the Yankees was cancelled. Bummer. We had achieved, so we figured a margarita was a suitable reward and would help us decide what to do next. We decided we would need to have dinner in a jazz club. What a piece of luck, the waitress in Grand Central new a 'good place': BB Kings, just off Broadway. A leisurely stroll of about 1.5 hrs through Central Park on the way back to the hotel. Lots happy snaps of squirrels and the NY skyline and generally checking out the place. It is big - 59th Street to 110th Street and 4 [long] blocks wide. I estimate an area comparable to that of Centennial Park in Sydney. Not bad for Manhattan which is only 23 square miles Well it wasn't jazz, but funk that night, Oh well, good experience anyway. They had 14 people on stage and it was just bizarre. A middle aged tubby black guy gyrating with the microphone, a guy with bongos (I didn't see him hit them once, but I might have been distracted by the dancers), 2 more vocals, 2 guitars, bass, keyboards, drummer and I have forgotten what the last 2 were doing. It was an absolute picture. We sat at a table and had meals of truly American proportions. We didn't get up and dance like some of the other patrons, but we were singing and cheering with the best of them. It was very entertaining, but when they finished the show at 9.30pm (they do 3 shows on a Saturday night) it was time to move on. Off the Greenwich Village. On the subway platform, there was a guy in a kilt playing the bagpipes with some guys doing a form of jungle music. Only in New York I guess... We found a place called Art Bar. Almost walked straight past, but then though since it was only 10pm, it would hurt to have one beer there and check it out. I was very impressed to find them playing Exile on Main Street (Rolling Stones - my uncle Geoff gave one of the two [vinyl] records when I was young fella). It felt good, so we stayed for a Nuthery (another beer). We started talking to the girl at the bar next to as. As the evening went on, I found she had grabbed my hand while we were talking. This was pretty cool I thought, until noticed she had her hand on Muff's leg! Well that was enough of that, so we moved on [without her!]. More beers elsewhere, but nothing to report. Took the Statton Ferry the next day to have a look at the Statue of Liberty. I have been warned many times that you are usually faced with a 2 hour queue if you want to climb the old girl, so we figured the ferry trip. Given that the weather was now good, we toddled off to the Empire State Building. There was a one hour queue so we blew that off. We wandered around for a while before we had to start making tracks to get to airports etc. I missed my shuttle bus back to the airport because it was early, so it was a taxi, which us a chance to have a couple of pints to reminisce. We figured the next weekend should be New Orleans Love to all, Mike
Well Chasps, As usual life has been going at a million miles an hour. Rather than launch into a blow by blow description, I thought I would reflect on some of the cultural novelties. (Boys can scroll down to ACTIVITIES) I am starting to feel quite settled. I walk down the right side of corridors, I can almost understand Fahrenheit, I know what a hoagie is and I can fake an American accent so I can order food in restaurants. Although, my blood still boils with the number of idiots in airports and supermarkets that just stop in the middle of a thoroughfare who look offended when you say 'excuse me' in a curt fashion. I try to bump them only a little bit, but some deserve a bit more. There is a little social network we call the United Nations. The core players are an Australian (yours truly), Irish, Spanish & Filipinos with a couple of Brazilians lurking at the door. I have some American friends who are in a similar situation - relocated for work. Locals at my age tend to be married with ankle-biters, so I don't seem to meet too many of them. My favourite place is Lake Calhoun, where I can often be seen falling off my rollerblades or running around. This time of year is brilliant - twenty something degrees at dusk at 8.30pm and that is over a month after the summer solstice. It is conveniently located close to home and to work. I am there at least every second day when I am in town. The exercise must work because I am still the same shade that I arrived in, despite the large meal sizes and all the elbow bending that happens. I am very excited because I just bought 4 Margarita glasses and the gear to make them. The first one I made was pretty damn good. If the quality of this e-mail fades, you will understand why. The second is even better..... One thing that is interesting is the way that the English language is sanitised. For example, I was flying into Atlanta the other day and the landing was delayed because they were 'experiencing some weather.' Now correct me if I am wrong, but every square centimetre of the earth and several thousand metres above it 'experiences weather' 24 hours a day. Another is 'restrooms'. An interesting one is the proliference of the term 'beverage as in 'the beverage of your choice' or beverage holder in a car. The beverage holder in my car has a special gap so you can hold a coffee mug with handle. And conversely, if you use expressions like 'we have a problem' or 'this is an issue' the locals will be scared almost to the point of quivering. The definition of 'coffee' is much broader. First of all it costs - no free coffee in the office. If you [reader] work in the public sector, you may not find this odd, but Goddammit I believe it is the least the whipcracker can do. The 40c vending machine issues filtered dishwater. The 75c machine issues a range - usual varieties plus French vanilla & amoretto/almost essence one that I like. 12oz about 360ml. I wonder what is in it, because it does not rinse out of a coffee mug. You actively need top scrub it out. My limited chemistry experience tells me there are uglies in there. ACTIVITIES The last few weeks have been busy. Probably the highlight and lowlight would be the trip to Key West. Key West is the most southern part of the US (excluding Hawaii). It is an island with the Atlantic on one side and the Gulf of Mexico on the other side. The most disappointing part was the fact that I couldn't stay longer. It takes the best part of a day to get there or back when you consider connections and delays. So I travel all day Sunday to get there, give presentations for 2 days, listen to presentations for half a day before leaving on Thursday morning. So have I reinforced the fact that I WORKED there enough? So in the afternoon off we went out 'deep sea' fishing. Awesome. I caught a fish - probably the third in my life, but it wasn't big enough so he got another chance. We had Cuban food and local food. On the last night we caught a boat over to a nearby island. Outdoor setting amongst palm trees flares. Ocean breezes. All I needed was a beautiful woman to complete the picture.. We also hired some wave-runners (sit on jet-skis which can take 2 people) which were an absolute blast. 80km/h on the Atlantic. Talk about exhilaration. 42km around the island. We even chanced upon a pod of dolphins. The adrenalin was pumping for hours. I eluded to Atlanta a moment ago. Mission successful - 2 day business trip, but I saw nothing of the city. Such a shame, but I am not complaining - I still get to see a lot, meet great people & have a fun time. The last weekend was an absolute cracker. What better way to start than to see the Wallabies beat the All Blacks while you are down the pub on a Friday night with a couple of gorgeous women? (friend & her sister - so not good idea to make any moves). We went to 'Albertville Outlet Mall' shopping on Saturday (I had a nasty experience when I left a pen in the pocket of my shorts and then proceeded to was them late one night or early one morning, depending on how you look at it) About 40 factory outlets like Nike, Gap, and others selling fashion, homewares, power tools (much better) and what not. There went another $100. I got a great T-shirt, Big Dog brand with a bull dog and picture on the back saying 'Things to do, Places to go, People to sniff.' Took in a bit of an art fair which was a waste of space and choofed off to a BBQ at a mates place. An excellent job even with a heat-bead fired, circular Weber about 45cm in diameter. Talk about doing it tough. I still managed to take over as usual. That's one thing I really miss - having my own BBQ. I would buy one, but I do not have a balcony and most internal BBQ experiments have failed (apart from a Gusso Terrigal breakfast one morning with bacon, eggs and beverages of your choice in the kitchen). A spot of pub work completed the night nicely. Tennis at 8am the next day was a bit interesting, but I still whipped Simon my work mate. I got bored in the afternoon so I went to a free zoo in St Paul (the other half of the Twin Cities. Minneapolis being the first) and saw lions, tigers, zebras, giraffes, polar bears, gorillas, seals, fat people and more. It was great. I was all of 32 years old going on 5. To top off the weekend, Jo, Bernie & I went and saw a production of Twelfth night. Very well done. Set in the 1920's with great music (Gusso - you should have heard the jungle drums) and great costumes. I had a look at the program and found that all the major players had film/television experience as well as Broadway experience. No names that I knew before the night. 2 pints of Guinness and a short walk and the weekend was over. How sad. Time to go. I hope all is well with everyone. Please let me know of any engagements, conceptions etc. Cheers, Mike
Dear Chasps, It has been another fun filled fortnight (a word not to be used in the US) with barely enough time to eat, drink & be merry. Did I tell you I met a couple of lovely women (Andie & Kathy) in a bar last month? It is a place called The Loon. Not because they are the type of clientele, but because the loon is the state bird of Minnesota. Anyway, it is rare that you meet people in a bar that you have much in common with. Well 2 weeks ago I went to Kathy's cabin in Wisconsin for the weekend. There was going to be a whole swag of people, but it ended up being just me, Andie and Kathy (me and 2 chicks, damn shame. I was well behaved though. That's my story and I am sticking to it!). This part of the States is just full of lakes. Minnesota is 'the state of 10,000 lakes.' I am told there are actually 11,483, but sometimes it is hard to differentiate between a lake and spilt beer. Well Wisconsin also has a heaps of lakes as well. Our destination was Big Bear Lake. The directions included 'At the top of the exit ramp take a right and follow that hwy into WI we think it is 48 you will pass the casino in a corn field' and 'take a left at the stop sign near the gas station and second casino (called Hole in the wall).' In true Mike form, I spent most of the weekend in my swimmers and not much else. Saturday afternoon was spent canoeing around the lake, indulging in beautiful Riojan wine (Marqués de Cáceres) and barbequing. Naturally with my male, Australian genes I took control of the BBQ.Now those of you that know me know not only my extensive boating skills but also my uncanny ability engineering ability to work things out. So, armed with little more than enthusiasm, I persuaded Kathy into letting me take them out on Dad's water skiing boat for a scenic tour of the lake. In the blink of an eye I had managed to winch the boat into the water, blow the potentially nasty fumes out of the engine compartment, start the engine, back the boat out without lowering the prop into the sand, and fang of into distance at full speed. Once I built my confidence (about 157milliseconds) we even cracked some celebratory brewed hops to enhance the moment. Stopped the boat in the middle of the lake for a dip and listen to some music in the sunshine (water temp about 20 degrees C, air about early 30s). It was really tough. Fired up the barbie for lunch and we had to head home. How sad. Last Thursday night I went out with a work colleague. I figured I needed to integrate into society a little more. You know - when in Rome..... so we went down to the indoor shooting range. I don't want to over emphasise it for fear of being labelled as a 'gunhead' but for a one-off, it was good fun. My host has a couple of TARGET pistols (get the hint - used for responsible shooting) and we rented a Clint Eastwood .44 magnum to burn a little testosterone. I was a little perturbed at the ease at which you can rent guns, but it is done all very responsibly and most shooting incidents seem to happen in fast food restaurants and 'gas' stations, neither of which I was in, so I figured I was safe. I live to tell the tale, so there is proof. I have to say that whilst it is fun to shoot the .44, it is not a comfortable gun. We had ear protection and those little targets you hang a clip and send down the range by means of cables hanging from the ceiling, just like the movies. Anyway, I had a blast (pun intended), but I am not going to make a habit of it. Despite my efforts, I have not fully got the hang of it over here. We found a really good restaurant in Uptown last week. Despite my inquisitive efforts, I cannot give you a definition for where you would find an Uptown in a generic city. It seems to be a generally 'happening' place with regard to culture, food, clothing, movies etc. In Minneapolis' case, it seems to be like Newtown or Darlinghurst with a slither of Paddington thrown in. Anyway, I was directing one of my Spanish friends with a newly acquired driving license home after a fine meal with some fine beverages. I must have been convincing because despite his best protests, I managed to convince him that driving on the left hand side of the road was the go. Poor bastard. The rest of the passengers were not happy campers.I was driving to Wisconsin and I bought a packet of some cruddy cheese flavoured snacks shaped in O's and X's. Andie called them hugs and kisses (very cute I thought) but when I called them noughts and crosses, I got the look as if I had two heads. Obviously they play tic-tac-tow over here, but the word nought just simply does not exist. Another little cultural difference was the soft drink (soda or pop) I purchased the other day - ' Sunny Delight Real Fruit Beverage. Contains 2% juice.' That explains Miller 'Genuine ' Draught. Hmmm I wonder what it means to be a real man over here. I don't care, I just show them.I went to the Minnesota State Fair on Saturday. If you want to try to understand it, start with an image of the Easter Show when it was at Moore Park. Take out the show bags and add lots more fast food. No Pluto Pups, but plenty of new culinary delights such as Corn Dogs (saveloy (?) with corn 'stuff' around the outside and deep fried. Then shove a stick up it's date), alligator nuggets and pork chops on a stick. I went and checked out all the animals. Horses, pig, sheep, cows...... They were having a biggest boar competition and had a pig which weighed over 1000 pounds (450kg). Heavens. The side show alley is huge. You get to through baseballs at Budweiser bottles and real plates. There is a bungee lounge which sproings a sofa like seat about 40ish metres into the air with 2 passengers strapped in. We arrived at 3.30pm and stayed until 11.00pm, so obviously I enjoyed it, otherwise I would not have hung out that long. On Sunday I played a little tennis and rollerbladed (proactive waistline management - I am still a 32" waist) before heading over to the Guinness and Oyster Festival conveniently located within walking distance of the apartment block. You have to be suspicious of oysters over 1000km from the ocean, but I thought 'what the heck.' I am still alive and I felt a slight movement in the trouser department, so they must have been good. I have been here for over 4 months now and bloody pleased that I came over. Return date is still scheduled for late October. I am heading to Chicago for this [long] weekend and meeting up with Ed [Slee] (Woody, Ted, narlage) in Colorado for a 5 day weekend in September, so there is plenty planned. Take care everyone and keep me informed of news in the homeland, Mike
Well Chasps, This one is a bit long. There are a few preliminaries, then a long section on a trip to Colorado. PRELIMINARIES First up, I have extended my assignment until 14 December. I want to maximise the experience but still be home for plumb pudding. Chill the beers and warm up the barbie. Autumn (fall) has hit Minneapolis. A little cold snap the other day took us down to about 1 degree Centigrade overnight. All the squirrels are bolting about the place trying to find some last minute food before hiding away for winter. I nearly roller bladed over a couple the other night. I am expecting to see snow and hopefully skate on the frozen lakes before I leave. As always, I seem to need to argue that I am WORKING over here. The week before last, I did Western Canada. 5 cities in 5 days. Vancouver, Regina, Calgary, Yellowknife and Edmonton. I’d love to tell you all about these places, but I can’t because all I saw were airports, hotels and meeting rooms. (I did see a little bit, but not really enough to talk about except Yellowknife) Yellowknife is very cool. About 62 degrees of latitude cool. 4 degrees Centigrade when we were walking around after work. We went out on a boat after our meetings and motored around the lake. It’s a bit rough when you hold onto your beer to keep warm. Halt here if chronologically challenged. COLORADO ( http://www.oocities.org/mgadcock/colorado.htm )I took some leave to have a long weekend in Colorado. Ed was dropping in to Durango (Doorango) before heading over to Washington DC to visit family. Andie came over to join us, making us three. By some strange quirk of fate, all our flights and connecting flights were on time enough for us to get in on time. Travelling in the US is tricky. Most of the major airlines set up several 'hub' locations across the US. They act as regional home bases. Rather than fly from everywhere to everywhere, every flight goes to or comes from a hub location. So if I want to travel from Minneapolis to New York with XYZ airline, I need to go via their hub in Chicago. This is bad because as reported in the news, even the best airline can only land on time about 60 - 70ish% of the time. Want to introduce some stress in your life ? - put some connections in your journey. I started the 'weekend' by arriving at Minneapolis Airport 1hr before the flight. I am in the queue for 3 minutes before gwwwoooojjjjj as power fails to the entire airport and does not magically come back up after 1, 5 or even 20 minutes. Knowing that my connection at Denver was almost as tight as a fish's *$@!, I was rather concerned. I have to say that I was very impressed that United managed to take only 5 minutes late, which were made up in the air. This is not congruent with their image, I know, but they pulled it off. Anyway, we all get there. Ted has done Sydney, LA, Denver then finally Durango. A bloody good effort as far as I am concerned. Obviously a cold beverage was required. We had a team meeting in the 29 degree C temperatures over a margarita, to confirm the itinerary etc. Durango is only about 15,000 people, but it is a fun place. We went to a blues bar for dinner and some fun. Bare in mind Ted has not slept for 30 hours. Well after a ginormous meal, we went downstairs for the music. I am not an expert in blues, but I would say it wasn't... I would say the band played both kinds of music - country and western. Anyway, I used a couple of salsa moves on the dance floor which almost worked and were good enough. In my cargo shorts and sandals, I did not really compare to the hats, belts, boots & straight-leg-jeans, but I had a blast. Now, the entire reason for Durango was to do the Durango Silverton Narrow Gauge Rail Road, so we were up at the dawn of crack to catch the choo-choo. This line was originally used to move gold and silver from the mines. It follows and crosses the Animas river for 40 (?) miles. Ed had very considerately booked a gondola car - an open air carriage with a roof, offering superb (what a great word) views. Ed also picked the time of year just perfectly. Autumn (fall) was just hitting, leading to some beautiful colours (colors) to be seen in the trees. Tune in to the web site to see the evidence. Obviously the fir trees stay green, but the aspen go through some reds and browns before a lovely amber (lager?) colour. As I mentioned, the railway followed the river. You know what that means? Beaver territory! They literally build dams across the river which might be 10m wide (30 feet) and cause the water level to drop 1 foot. The maximum diameter of log appeared to be about 10cm. That's bloody big when you consider they gnaw through every piece of wood and they are probably no bigger than a deflated Aussie rules ball with a head and tail. You’d swear there was a Sydney Uni engineer about because I swear I heard the time honoured mating call - ‘show us you beaver.’ Well good old loco 482 took us to Silverton. I town that hasn’t changed much in the last hundred years. I was a bit peeved at the place as it was very much oriented to sliding the green ones out of your back pocket without giving much in return. Lots of crap curio stores or nice art stores charging an absolute motsa. We did manage to find a nice saloon style (straight out of a western movie) lunch, complete with the piano player. They didn’t have the slide counter, bastards. Being holidays, it is important to relax and keep up the fluids, so we managed to 1/3 fill our commemorative 750 ml (30oz) DSNGRR (Durango Silverton Narrow Gauge Rail Road) ‘soft drink’ vessels with a rather nice Marqués de Cáceres Spanish ummmm…. red cordial. What a way to ease into the afternoon. On the way back, we did a little animal spotting. The first critter to be seen was a chippendale (aka. chipmunk). Nice but small, so it doesn’t count. What was cool was the striped little tale. Then, just cruising through some of the flatter terrain, we spotted about 8 elk just hanging out in the grass. There were 2 bucks and 6 does. Not a bad ration eh? Back in Durango, we dropped in to the Strater Hotel for a cleansing ale. What a time warp of a place. We sat down in the saloon bar, rather similar to the lunch venue, but a whole lot classier. All the staff were in period clothing including the waitress who was wearing something akin to a skimpy cabaret outfit. I was sprung once or twice when the sideways glance lasted longer than intended - but definitely would not have been classified as an ogle. The pianist must have caught an accent from our table and asked us where we were from. Before we new it, we were leading a chorus of Waltzing Matilda throughout the bar. On the whole, they love us over here. Well if you hadn't guessed, Colorado is full of mountains. It is the 'highest' state with an average height of just under 6,000 feet. Keep in mind Kosciusko (?) is 7,000 odd. You can see why skiing is so big over here. We had planned Day 3 to include a round trip for a couple of hundred miles and to take in the scenes/activities along the way and then drive off to the nights accommodation. BAD PLAN. You simply cannot do lots of things in a hurry. After we’d found our morning destination, it quickly turned into lunch and we canned the rest of the circuit. The place was Telluride. Ski resort and mining town. Home to a 3 day blues festival each September. We were hoping to enjoy an hour or two in the sun with the music in the background. Wrong. The bastards wanted $30 (nearly 60 down under dollars) for a day pass. So we wandered around the town instead with the music in the background. A free gondola takes you up to mountain to the ski slopes and village. The village was mostly deserted, not being the ski season, but there was a nice alpine pub open for lunch with great food. Nothing like a lunch of chicken tenders (breast fillets crumbed and fried) and poppers (jalapenos stuffed with cheese and, you guessed it, fried). Sorry to let you down, but we also had a salad to ‘attempt’ a balanced diet. Whilst dining outdoors in the 30 degreeish weather, out kind host pointed out a hike to Bear Falls we could do in the afternoon. The first kilometre was up and along the valley past the music festival, so we got some more free music. Then up a side valley. Constantly watching out for bears we hiked up through the autumnal colours and firs. I concluded the bears must wear hiking boots up there, because I couldn’t see any tracks. The falls were pretty cool, but a little less than the 1,000 feet drop I was expecting. The view back down the valley was simply a million bucks combined with the fresh mountain air, and the company of course. By the time we achieved this goal, it was just after 6pm, which was a bit of a bummer when home for the night was still a 4 hour drive away, and we didn’t have a booking. No problems, we’ll use the mobile phone. Hmmm it turns out it didn’t work anywhere along our journey to Chama. After spending about $5 at a pay phone we secured some lodgings. Always the charmer, I must have spoken nicely to our hostess because when we arrived at the office at 11pm, there was no one and nothing there except for an envelope labelled ‘Mike’ taped to the door. Day 4 and off on another [steam] train from Chama to Antonito. Another absolute pearler of journey. Not as rugged as before, but a greater range of scenery in the Colorado / New Mexico mountains. It’s pretty hard to put it all into words, so you will need to go to the web site to check out the picks. Check with Ted to get the low-down on the 27 and 37 class engines and the narrow gauge specifications. A little too much for me to keep in RAM. This was a special trip because it was a ‘double header’ - using two locomotives to pull us heavy bastards up the hill. It was on this railway that they filmed one on the Indiana Jones movie scenes. One of the tressle bridges along the way was not rated for our full load, so we had to send the first loco on ahead to reduce the weight. It stopped just on the other side, so when the single loco pulled us over, it stopped to connect up to the first, leaving the majority of the train stationary on the wimpy bridge while the did the reconnection bit. Not particularly reassuring, but I live to type the e-mail, so you know it was safe enough. Because of a bus delay, we thought we might have missed our trip back to Chama from Antonito. A friendly local suggest we stay the night in town and spend some time at the [one and only] pub in town. I politely suggested that such a night might prevent us from going to church in the morning (it was Saturday night). The chap said that we just do like the locals - go home after the pub, change our boots and head straight in to church. Lucky the bus came….. Well we were ripe for a beer after the day, so we went to the first bar in Chama we could see called Fosters. I was put out by the name, but there are only 3 in town, so we figured we had better give it a go. A room with a counter, two ice-cream type fridges, a pool table, juke box and a lot of locals missing teeth and dusty tables. As in Australia, the place went quiet when the out-of-towners walked in. When the biggest meanest bloke with a pony tail and really, really bad breath came over to me and said….. just jokes, they were fine. On the way out, we met one guy who was pissed as a fart and professed to be local MP. Everyone swore he was, but the funny thing is, I think it was true. We also met a real Mike Hunt. He had the ID to prove it. It was then off to the White Mountain. Where do they get such names in these alpine-ish places? The ‘funny’ accent brought the owner of the bar and two friends over to our table. All three of them had spent time in Australia. Not bloody bad for a quiet town of 1,000 people (I think). We were all getting famously, even if no one could remember anyone else’s name. They liked us so much they gave us free beers and we liked them so much we tipped them about as much as the price of the beer. Funny how that works. It was a big day the next day, so we called it quits early, not that we can remember what time that was. When we got back to the lodge, Ed the Ninja wearing a toilet-paper headband attacked me. I quickly outsmarted him by taking one stagger to the left and he fell straight onto the bed, not to move for a long while. (Slight poetic licence there, but the headband was true) Lucky I have the metabolism I do, otherwise the fellas would have slept until God knows when. They put me on driving duty first up. We had planes to catch in the afternoon and about 5 hours of driving and Mesa Verde National Park to see. Mesa Verde was home to the Anasazi Indians from about 1AD to 1500AD when they were though to have left due to drought. They built these ‘dwellings’ in the cliffs in canyons of the plateaus in the area. Weird places if you ask me, but they offered protection from the elements and hostile tribes. YOU NEED TO CHECK THE PHOTOGRAPHS TO UNDERSTAND THIS. We visited the 3rd largest dwelling in the park of 114 rooms accommodating 100 people. As I said, these were vacated about 500 years ago. They were discovered late in the 19th century in a state of dilapidation, but nonetheless intact. Mud, stone and wood. All still there, including the wood! They have been touched up, but are at least 95% original. They have some interesting kivas (ceremonial chambers) which you can climb down into using ladders. We checked out the Spruce Tree House (named because of the tree that the discoverers using to climb down to the dwelling) and Cliff Palace. Would write more, but it’s late. Unfortunately we had to leg-it quick-smart to make our planes. All in all, it was another magic experience that I am glad to have shared with you. Love youse all, Mike
Well Chasps, After a few 'polite' comments, I shall be brief today. No trips lately, so it is back to the little insights into life in the land of opportunity. I have existed for 5.5 months without a street directory in this city. Considering there are about a million and something people here, I consider this to be quite an achievement. There are four reasons for this:
All in all, a man's heaven. No maps. You can drive around without asking for directions and without a directory for months. The weather here is awesome. Over summer, we had temps in the high 30s. (I'll talk Centigrade for the benefit of the world outside of the US). Within weeks of autumn (fall - I think I mentioned it starts at the equinox ~23 September) it had dropped to 1 overnight. It fluctuates for a while before getting COLD. Today the boss made me take him blading over lunch. It was 20 degrees - bloody bewdiful for this time of year. Potentially the warmest temperature for the next 4 months. We should see the first snow in the next couple of weeks. I bought a new leather jacket (and I hate fecking shopping!!!!!!!!!) so I feel a million bucks and ready for temperatures that will get to -20 before I fly. Hmmmm they are serious here. My objective before I leave is to skate on a frozen lake. Touch and go before mid December, but maybe if I wear my speedos I can combine several forms of exercise. I went to the local [modern] art gallery the other day and was pleasantly surprised to see some stuff I recognised - Warhol and Lichtenstein. And about 4 from each. Not bad I thought for a place as out of the way as Minneapolis. Although I guess each were pretty prolific, so maybe it does say that much. Apart from that, I spent about 2 hours there so I did enjoy myself. Followed by a brisk 10 degree walk home. Time to do the SMH crossword, kindly provided over the Internet, so have a good weekend everyone. Mike Is this a better length of e-mail?
Chasps, Short and sweet this time. It’s the last hour before I head for the land
down under. The last 7.5 months of my life is
contained in 2 suitcases and 4 boxes. Pretty
scary. I am proud to say I have experienced sub zero temperatures in
Fahrenheit. That’s roughly –20C. I survived comfortably until the last week when
this cold snap hit. This evening we had a Christmas bash which
included horse drawn carriage rides in the bloody cold weather which were awesome, if not
breathtaking, literally. I start the journey soon. 4 hours to LA.
A layover and 14.5 hours to Kingsford.
Heavens that’s a long time. Nothing
a trouper can’t manage. Back Friday
night, late. FYI, I have put some photos up on the web
page. Have a squiz when you have time: http://www.oocities.org/mgadcock/ http://www.oocities.org/mgadcock/canada.htm http://www.oocities.org/mgadcock/minneapolis.htm
some old and new here. What’s happening over the Christmas
break? I am thinking of hitting the Hunter to
catch up on new vineyards, a surfing safari down the south coast and maybe a road trip
somewhere. Any suggestions for New Years Eve
and general activities over the break would be greatly appreciated. Over and out from the US correspondent, Mike
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